After I came back from Florida, Ken and I rented a house, the exact same layout of his mother Mickey’s house, on the same road as Mickey. We both got jobs, I was working at a local restaurant, O’Briensteins as a hostess and then server once I turned eighteen, Ken found a job as a draftsman for custom kitchens. Neither of us made much money, but it was enough to pay the $265 a month rent that we had.

Because Ken was always telling me I needed to “tone up” I joined a gym and started doing aerobics a couple of times a week. I had only been in Virginia a few months and had not made any friends, outside Ken’s family so when another girl who was around my age seemed to be at the gym whenever I was, I started talking to her. Her name was Renee and we hit it off. We would work out together a few times a week then walk next door for frozen yogurt. We both talked about how much weight we wanted to lose (each of us weighed maybe 115 lbs soaking wet), our boyfriends and where we were from. Turns out she was new to Richmond as well and was from West Virginia, her boy friend was a welder with the union and had a long term contract in Richmond, which is what brought them here. After she and I were friends for about a month, she invited Ken and I to her apartment to meet her boyfriend, Pete. Ken and I came over and Ken brought a six pack of beer for himself and none for anyone else. We played games and talked and got to know each other, it was nice to have friends again.

Around this same time I was in the process of getting my drivers license. Because I had switched high schools so often, I never got the opportunity to take drivers Ed, so now that I was eighteen I didn’t have to. All I had to do was pass the written and on road tests. Ken and I had bought me a car already, it was a 1977 Toyota Corolla and it was a stick shift. It was so funny learning how to drive that car, the stop and go, the stalls, but I did it and could not wait to get my license so I could drive it. One day I was running late for work, I had my car keys and a car but still no license. I decided I was going to drive rather than take the bus so I wouldn’t be late, so I nervously got in the car and made it about halfway there, when I chickened out, went to make a U-Turn, changed my mind, went back in the lane and almost wrecked my car by hitting another car. Apparently I’m not good at breaking the law and turned my ass around, went home and rode the bus, was late for work and got written up. This led me to speed up getting my license, so I studied harder and took the tests and passed. I loved that little car, I drove it for about eight years, rusted out bottom and all until I finally broke down and got another car.

The house next to us was vacant so I told Renee to apply. We were super excited when they got approved and Renee and I were now next door neighbors. Renee and I were polar opposites, I’m an extrovert, she is an introvert, I love crowds, she hates them, I will tell anyone anything they want to know (obviously) and she barely told anyone anything. But we were the best of friends and loved being so close to each other. Pete and Renee did not like Ken. They felt he was controlling, a self proclaimed know it all who was always right. Ken liked to sleep late whenever he could, so Pete decided to play a prank on Ken. Pet put a fake owl in the tree next to our house, what this did was cause a mob of crows to fly over our house every morning for about a month. Ken and I couldn’t for the life of us figure out why they was happening, waking us up at the break of dawn each day. When I found out, I thought it was hilarious, Ken was pissed.

While Ken was on West PAC he had gotten interested in religion, more so the subliminal messages in playing music backwards, which was popular at that time. I had hypocritically been around church my entire life. You know the kind one minute we are religious and God is so good, speaking in tongue’s, praising the lord, hallelujah all the way and the next we are drinking, doing drugs and not going to church, then all of the sudden we are getting up and ready for Sunday school again. I believed in God, I believed in Jesus, but I wasn’t religious, so it didn’t really bother me that Ken was going through that “phase”. The neighbors down the street went to a local baptist church and had invited us to go, but we made excuses as why we couldn’t. One day a couple of men from this church knocked on our door, Ken let them in and had a conversation with them for a couple of hours. They next Sunday we attended church at an Independent Fundamental Baptist Church (IFB). The IFB church is a strict conservative, men run, men controlling church that believe that the King James Version of the Bible is the only true word of God. Women and children had a mostly silent role in the church. Women should not wear pants and are to be submissive in everything to their husbands. They believe that only salvation through Jesus will get a person to heaven and that most other religions were false religions, this included Christian religions. On that first Sunday Ken and I got “saved” and made the decision to make that our lifestyle going forward. I had some trepidations about the conservative nature of that particular church and wanted to look around at other churches, but Ken vetoed me and said that this is the church we would be attending. He had found his place, a place that embraced his controlling nature towards me, encouraged being even more controlling and demanded that I be submissive. I was only eighteen years old, Ken was twenty three. I had no family near me, I couldn’t afford to live on my own and I didn’t want to go back to CA, so I chose to follow whatever Ken wanted to do. It was just easier that way.

After we had attended church a couple of times, the pastor of the church came to our house and had a talk with us about “living in sin”, basically saying we had to get married in order to become members of the church since the church would not condone us living together. There was no proposal, no bended knee or fanfare, just all of the sudden we were planning a wedding, still living together, just separate bedrooms and I was shopping for wedding dresses along with other dresses and skirts to add to my wardrobe. I went along with everything the church told us we had to do. I guess I just wanted to fit in and belong, to feel like I had a family that cared about me, not realizing I was joining a cult. Trauma is weird like that.