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darktippedrose After my divorce I actually had a breakdown and was hospitalized (I almost lost/took my own life). I was unemployed for about another year after that while I recovered. I finally landed a job at our local Walmart where I worked in the produce department. She was working there too at the service desk, we met when they would call various departments up to collect any returns. She was friendly...a really sweet person and we would chat a little whenever I went up there and she was working. Was I attracted to her? Yes, but with my experiences in the past with women I chose to ignore that because I didn't want to chance being let down, disappointed, or even hurt again...it just wasn't worth it to me (you see, even though I still liked women, I didn't trust them). This went on for close to a year... us just sharing friendly chit chat, and then one day a fellow female associate said to me "I know someone who likes you". She had a big grin on her face and I thought she was just messing with me. I asked who (just playing along), and she disappeared on me still wearing that (what I thought was) a devilish grin. I sort of blew it off and continued on with my work not giving it much thought except that I was being pranked (you know, that she was just messing with me...it had happened before). She returned some time later and handed me a piece of paper with a phone number on it. No girl had ever given me her number before and that just added to my suspicions, it didn't help that for the rest of the day she kept bugging me and insisting that I call it even though she'd never tell me whose number it supposedly was. I stuck it in my pocket and finished out my shift then went home... I had no intention of calling that number because I did not wish to be made a fool of. A few hours passed and that number kept eating at me, I almost threw it away. Then I said "what the heck" because I was a bit curious to know how this prank would play out. I called it and found out that the girl (woman) on the other end had one of my favorite female names...Erica, it was the sweet/cute girl at the service desk ( that is the only way I referred to her as because even though she wore a name tag I hadn't paid it much mind so I didn't know her name). She told me that she did give me her number and we ended up talking for over two hours. Things just sort of took off from there and we officially began seeing each other. I found out that even though she had never been married before, we had similar experiences in the relationship department, that we had an extreme amount of things in common, and that we were born and grew up only 10 miles from one another though we had never once met before and neither was even aware of the others existence. I actually proposed to her over the Walmart intercom one evening after my shift ended, right there in front of fellow associates and customers...thank goodness she said 'Yes'😙. And the rest is as they say "is history".