Searching for Hope

“Janice, are you still with me?” The therapist breaks my concentration.

“Uh, yeah,” I reply.

“Okay then, tell me about your husband.”

April 2007, I had gotten my first job at Kentucky Fried Chicken in the great town on Maryville, Missouri. I think to myself in the most southern accent you can think of. I was still in training and this guy was supposed to be showing me how to close and clean the lobby in the evenings. However, he was one that was better at just doing something himself and then explaining what he did and why after the fact. After working several shifts with this guy, I finally remembered his name, Cory. After a few months of working in the lobby, I was moved up to cash register and guess who was training me on it. Yep, it was Cory. In the downtime of work, he started to explain to me his vision for a business called the thunder dome, which was going to be a place where you could play laser tag and watch movies in the same facility, but only have to pay one price for both. It was going to be a tower with a dome on top and floors that would shoot lightning from your feet outwards, when you stepped on them. It sounded so cool. As he talked, the more I was drawn to him. I remember going to school and talking about the thunder dome and Cory. One of my teachers asked me if I liked “this Cory guy.” I said, “As a friend. He’s not really boyfriend material.”

Ten months from the day I met this guy go by, my school was having a homecoming dance. I didn’t have a date to the dance so I finally muscled up the courage to ask Cory. At first when he checked the schedule, he had to work on that Friday so he wasn’t able to go. The Wednesday before the dance I get a phone call from Cory. Letting me know he was off Friday and could go to the dance. I get this phone call while I was pumping gas in my car. Three days after the dance, I remember calling Cory and asking him what it was I was supposed to call him and that people at school were wondering if he was my boyfriend. We decided we would go out and be boyfriend and girlfriend.

“Oh. He does cable work. He’s trying to understand and be supportive.”

May 2009 I graduated high school. No one from my family was there but Cory’s family was. His parents have always been supportive. Mine, not so much. After graduating high school, my goal was to go to college. The main reason for this goal was because I was under the impression that college was what it would take to be better than my biological parents, but it wasn’t easy. I tried and tried to get my adoptive mom to give me the financial information for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). In April of 2010, I was still trying to get into college. Like I said, my family isn’t the most supportive family out there. If you’ve never gone to college before, there is a form you fill out with lots of information and one portion of about your parents finances. This form helps pay for college either with a grant or through loans depending on your or your parents' income. If you don’t have your parents' information, you have to match 1 of 4 different situations in which you do not have to have your parents' finance information; your age is 24, your parents are deceased, you are married, or you have a child. I was 19 so that crossed the age one off. I wasn’t going to have a child when I was a child myself, so there went that one. My mom was alive and well that left one option.

“This would be so much easier if we were married!” I said out of frustration after getting off the phone with yet another college discussing options on how to get into said college.

“Okay,” Cory replied, “Let’s figure out what we need to do.”

I was shocked but Cory and I went to the courthouse in Maryville, Missouri to figure out what all was needed to get married. We applied for the marriage license, paid the fees, and chose between May 3rd or May 7th for the ceremony. May 7th was the day Iron Man 2 was coming out in theaters and my soon-to-be husband was all about movies, especially Marvel Universe ones. We didn’t tell anyone we were getting married. We just did it. May 7th 2010, Janice Groom was no longer for I was Janice Page.