Tora
speaker
105 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Jan 2025
Tora’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
And I sat and listened to him and I held the baby. And oh, my gosh, he was the cutest little thing. And then as we sort of wrapped up that conversation, it was the end of my day. And I said, OK, well, if you need anything, let me know. And he said, well, actually, I have paper I have to work on tonight.
Would you be able to come over and just hang out with him while I do my homework for an hour or two? And then I'll make dinner.
It was more this like Christian sense of duty that I had been trained into. Someone needs help, you show up even if it's inconvenient or you don't really want to. And that was my first thought is I don't really want to. I don't really want someone who's going to rely on me. I don't really want to be involved in someone else's drama. And I have a full-time job. I'm teaching. I'm busy.
I'm worried all the time that men are going to take my presence as some sort of an invitation. And I was so anti-dating and relationships that it was just something I never wanted to foster. So I'm thinking about all this as I'm driving the 20 minutes to his house. Like, okay, I'm going to have to think of boundaries. I'm going to have to be careful with saying yes.
He was just Aaron, and that made her feel comfortable. He was himself, the way he always was with me after class, just very warm and friendly and kind and thoughtful. So I stayed, had dinner, and then, you know, stay and we'll have an adult beverage is what he used to call them. Stay and we'll have an adult beverage after the boy goes to bed. And I didn't really have anything going on, so why not?
So I stayed and we had a beer, sat on the back patio. And he told me a little bit more about what was going on. And it was pretty bad. There were holes in the wall going up the stairs. There was a hole in the wall in the dining room. And we just talked and talked and talked and talked. He shared a little bit of the emotions that came up with him.
Oh, I feel bad, and she is my son's mother, but also we can't keep doing this, and I need to get out of this marriage. That night, they ended up talking until 1 a.m. I have work at 8 a.m., and he said, just crash in my guest room. Here's some clean pajamas. Here's a toothbrush. Just crash downstairs. And I did, which is so out of character for me.
I felt a little weird, but I was very happy to be around him and just wanted to stay there and be helpful. I love to be helpful. I love to be needed. So I stayed the night, got up in the morning, trucked off to work. And then the next day he said, hey, I've got a test coming up if you're free later on. I went back over there.
I was always sleeping in the guest room. I made it very clear to him. I don't let people touch me. I'm not interested in a romantic relationship. I'm just here to help. I want to be your friend. I want you to feel supported. But that's as far as this is going to go. And I just kept telling him, like, we're just friends. I don't let people touch me.
The fact that I give you hugs is kind of exceptional. You have to respect that. And he really did.
He was a very guarded person. So a lot of what he would talk about was things that were very present right now. If he brought up the past, it always felt like kind of an honor that he trusted me with that story. And he would point that out in a very subtle way of, oh, I don't really tell people this story, but you're different.
The whole time I'm with my family, I'm bringing him up and I'm talking with him on the phone. And they're seeing that this person is making me kind of giddy and smiley and those kinds of things.
He had cleaned the whole house. He had some of my favorite music on. Baby was in bed. He had, you know, a bouquet of flowers and a card welcoming me home and thanking me for being his friend. And that was my first sort of inkling, like, hmm, I'm going to have to keep an eye on this because here I was at home kind of being giddy about this person. Here he is bringing me flowers.
So there was this undercurrent starting where I'm repeatedly saying, like, we're just friends, but we're friends who are snuggling on the couch watching a movie and not touching, he just started just leaning like my head on his shoulder or something. So benign, so middle school, but it was perfect for me because I wasn't ready to do that.
He said something to me like, I think you're in love with me. And I said, I think you're in love with me. And that was it. We were in a relationship after that.
I leaned in and it was the most fulfilling time of my whole entire existence. I'm getting emotional just talking about it because that part is perfect in my mind.
His family was incredibly complicated, incredibly damaged, incredibly dysfunctional. And these were the reasons that he's so guarded. These are the reasons that he doesn't have a relationship with them or see them or go to visit them.
He got hurt in Iraq. They were on a drive through a city of some kind and hit an IED. And the Humvee in front of them blew up. Theirs didn't. But the impact knocked theirs off its balance. He got hurt. His foot was amputated because of that injury. And he was medically retired and then came home.
His dad showed up to the hospital and tried to get medical power of attorney so that he could sell Aaron's portion of land that he had been left by his grandparents on the Choctaw Reservation in Oklahoma. So Aaron fought tooth and nail to get better, to get stronger, and kicked his dad out of his life.
The man was covered in enormous scars. Everything about him screams, I have had a hard life. I have had a physically hard life. I've been injured. I've had surgeries.
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