Leeja Eden:  

I'm Leejaclane on insta In April of 1989, I seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth for 16 months & went to live at Camp Tracey Children's Home, which is how I ended up graduating from Harvest Christian Academy. My dad had remarried, again, and she & I didn't get along & even though I always had a wild streak, had actually calmed down quite a bit on my own by the time I was sent there. After I came home, I quickly realized that I'd never get any help ever being or doing anything by my parents. My mom moved back to New York state as soon as she could smell my 18th birthday & dad's wife was so controlling & jealous that there was no was no way that she'd ever do anything to even help me get to work, much less go to college. So, I met this guy who, at the time, was traveling selling magazines. Rusty was in town for 3 weeks & we hung out a few times & talked on the phone alot, both when he was there & after he left. A couple months later, he got sick in Texas & quit the job so they sent him home to Phenix City, AL. We talked alot on the phone for the next few months & I finally came up to visit him for the weekend, then he asked me to stay until Wednesday so I could go to a Poison concert with him on Tuesday night for his birthday. Wednesday morning, I called my roommate & found out she'd lost both of us our jobs (long story), so I hung around until the weekend & we drove to Jax. By Sunday, he'd asked me to come back with him. I felt like I really had nothing to lose at that point by leaving so I moved to Alabama. Skip ahead to October, 1991, I was early in my 3rd trimester when we lost our first child, a boy. He suddenly decided that he wanted to get married shortly after that & I don't know what possessed me, but I said yes. In November, 1992, my son Dusty was born. My ex-husband was a good provider and an above average father, but also controlling. Despite my efforts to reason with him about going to college, even part time, he wasn't having it. In hindsight, he was a high school dropout & part of me will always believe that he was afraid that I'd somehow get ahead of him, whether it was just intellectually or financially. Rusty was a carpenter who built houses and started his own business when he came home from Texas. Since I didn't work until Dusty was about a year old, by default, I became his bookkeeper. When I started looking for a...Expand for more