Vic's Story, part 5...

How we met
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Although Vic had taken up residence in that dark pit called depression, somehow he kept going. I guess one of the ways he managed it was to spend as little time as possible at home. Between his full time firefighting gig, the part time dispatching position, and his volunteer work at the rescue squad, it wasn't too hard to avoid the house and the psycho bitch from hell who owned it. But, PBH took advantage of his absence and had Amy coming over all the time. They would eat the food he bought, drink any beer that was left around, and didn't think twice about it. Pretty soon Vic wised up to that and at least managed to cut off her beer supply. The only time he brought any of that home was when he and his dog, Leipzig, had a *pizza and beer party scheduled. Sadly, he didn't think to lock up his financial records and PBH used his frequent absences to help herself to his credit card information and ran up about $20,000 of debt in his name in a really short period of time. When Vic became aware of that he thought about pressing charges but,he decided not to for two reasons....1) because of the living arrangements and relationship history, it would have been hard to convince any DA there was really a case and 2) I mentioned PBH was a cop, right? Well, charges like that would have terminated her job and, frankly, without that job, the house was gone and Vic just didn't want to deal with moving.

When you are that far down in the dumps, it's hard to find the motivation to make any major changes even if it's just kicking a psycho bitch to the curb. But, in his quest to avoid the house, Vic made one change that eventually led to the doorway out of the hell hole he'd been living in. Vic took on the responsibility for training the rescue squad members who wanted to work on the wreck truck. This added responsibility around the rescue squad meant Vic was spending more and more time there. He was pulling extra duty shift and came in frequently to meet new members for training. It was during one of those extra duty shifts that we met. Well, not exactly met, because we had both been in the building for meetings and events at the same time before, but it was the **first time we actually got to talk and get to know each other.

Although that day was the start of our story, it definitely did not mark the end of Vic's story. It would be over a year until Vic and I moved in together...a year in which PBH continued to wreak havoc both with Vic's life and (almost) with his career. See, PBH may have decided to go back to her former lover but that didn't mean she wanted Vic to move on....

To Be Continued...

*For any of you who are worried, the dog stuck to pizza.
**click on the how we met link for more details