The Story Behind My Book Foolish

The Story Behind My Book ‘Foolish’

I wrote the book "Foolish" for any woman who has ever been in love with a man, and even though you knew that man was bad for you, you still wanted to stick around to see if he would change. You believed that no matter what people said, your love could stand the test of time and that love can be found in some of the strangest places.  You see, in 2006, I became pen pals with a man that was incarcerated. It started out as an innocent thing. He saw a story about me that had been written in the local paper and started writing letters to me. I was doing my thing as an up and coming entrepreneur and was very happy in the place that I was in my life. At the time, I was a single mother and I had adjusted to that life. I was doing all kinds of interviews and working with people from across the country. Then the first letter came.

I had no intention on writing this man back. I was a woman who had high expectations for me and my daughter, which was part of the reason why I started my own business. I liked calling my own shots.

The first letter was just to introduce himself to me. I had a feeling in my gut that I shouldn’t have written him back. But I am the kind of person that saw nothing wrong with a friendly response. That’s where it would end, right?

Over the course of four months, I ended up falling for this man. Call it what you will, foolishness, blindness, whatever, I was that at the time. His letters were so sweet and convincing.

Falling for him was not even the crazy part.

He came home in June of 2006. That was the first time we saw each other face to face. I thought he was cute, he was built nice, his voice was addictive and this was the man who was going to be my husband. It was all we had talked about for the last few months in our letters. I was naïve enough to believe that you could find true love anywhere, even through the mail. Don’t get me wrong; love can be found anywhere. You just have to know if it’s really love you are feeling, or something totally opposite.

I didn’t care that my mom and dad begged me not to marry him. That my own daughter, my baby, begged me not to marry him and even told me that she didn’t like him. I just saw love and was naïve enough to believe that if I loved someone hard enough, they would change, or if I was a positive influence in his life, he would change, and everybody would love him and accept both him and his past the way that I had.

You can’t change a person. Only God can do that, and that person has to want to change. I learned the hard way.

In September of 2006, we were married in a courthouse ceremony. This was way against my dreams of having a big, huge, fairytale wedding, with my daughter as the flower girl, my nephew as the ring bearer (there was only one at that time) and my daddy walking me down the aisle in my beautiful, expensive wedding gown. A few of our family members attended, not because they were truly happy for us, but because they had accepted the fact that we were going to be together and there was no stopping that. His step mother told me it wasn’t too late to change my mind. My mother asked me if I was sure I really wanted to go through with this.

“Look at your daughter,” she told me. I turned to look at my baby, who had her eyes covered like she couldn’t bear to watch me dedicate my life to a man like him.

A man like him is the reason why I wrote this book. I am not alone in the "Foolish" society. You may not be married to an ex-con, but you may be in love with someone that is just wrong for you and you can’t see it, or you know he’s wrong but you refuse to let him go because that’s your man and you can’t live without him. That’s what happened to me. I couldn’t see that this man had come into my life to ruin it.

You may even be one of those women that have this belief that you can’t make it on your own and you just have to have a man, you need a man to complete you; to help you pay the bills and stuff like that. I know. My reason was I thought I needed a man to help me pay the rent, keep the car fixed and to take away that lonely feeling by being there to hold me at night.

Within six months, I had no business. No money. I ended up working in a group home for minimum wage, and paying all the bills because he couldn’t keep a job. Every time he would get a job, he would get in trouble and his parole officer would send him to a drug rehabilitation facility. He couldn’t stop smoking weed, popping pills and drinking himself into a coma.

In December 2006, we lost our home. The home we had picked out together. I couldn’t afford to pay the bills on my own because the few hours I was working were cut; and he was out of the facility but hadn’t started his job yet.

We ended up living in a family member’s basement against our better judgment just so that the two of us could stay together.

Did I mention I was pregnant?

It was almost as if overnight, I went from sitting on top of the world to being at the very bottom of the pit.

You have to be careful of the person you choose to spend your life with. If there are any red flags that signal trouble in paradise, heed to them. If I had done that, I would not have had to start all over from scratch.

It took him being returned to prison for a parole violation for my eyes to open up. I still made some foolish choices, but my eyes were opened before it was too late.

The man I had come to love, turned out to be abusive, a thief and just a cold hearted person. I knew I could not associate myself with that lifestyle any longer. Finally, I got up the courage to leave, for both me and my two little girls. There are so many women out here giving up things to be with a man. One thing you must realize is that a good man will never hurt you, and he will go out of his way to make you happy, no matter what. You deserve to be happy. You are worth it. Don’t let anybody tell you that you have set your standards too high. There will be plenty of men that will come your way, so take time and wait until the right one comes along. It will save you from a ton of hurt and heartbreak in the end.

Though my book is a work of fiction, I pulled things from my own life and placed them in this book.

It is my hope that after you read my book, you will take away the very lesson I have embedded within its pages: Don't be "Foolish"