His old life

I was born September 26th 1986 with viral pneumonia, but that doesn't mean that much to me considering I don't remember it. Yes its my birthday, and I am happy I was born, and survived against all odds, but I place more value in my first memories. My first memory is like a dream. I only know it is truly a memory because as I child I knew it as such. There were two faces peering down at me under a white light. I was not able to speak. I thought it was odd. The memory is very faded now. 

I can remember bits and pieces of being two and three. Like when I would stick things in grandpas VCR or try to rip the dust guard off the bottom of his chair. I remember listening to music and dancing like a toddler does to "man of steel" while eating Hershey's kisses from grandpas dish. I spent a lot of time with Grandpa and Grandma Cantrell, and it was always a good time so it makes sense that I would remember my childhood there the most. 

I can remember a swing out front of our first home in a trailer in Lebanon. I remember the brown apartments with big bulb lights in Albany where we lived under Donna and Kevin and grew up playing with Ashley and Jessica. I remember moving into the house on Broadway in Albany. Our dog Jazzy, and a puppy we didn't have long named Hugger. We had a few other dogs, but these two impacted me the most. Our neighbors the Summers and the Felps. Brice Summers was my first neighborhood friend I could play with over a fence. Sam summers was a terrible baby sitter along with Bryan and Eric from down the road. Jamie Felps was my favorite, and her parents I respected as much as my own. The red shed, dads garden, the apple tree turned into a chair, the giant pine tree, and the giant holly tree, but my first solid memory, one I can see clearly and play in my mind like a movie, and not a series of pictures is my brother and sisters 4th birthday. Not the party, but the morning when they woke up and came into the living room where I was sitting and my mother asking them how old they where and they each exclaimed four. 

I could ramble on as I recall my early childhood out of order. Its amazing what comes to you when you really sit and work to remember. I do this all the time. I've always had a fear of losing things, but the fear of losing my mind is probably my second most predominant fear. Now more than ever, but you can read about that some other time. All in all my childhood was very happy. I was loved greatly by all my family, and though I've not always shown it they were always loved by me. This isn't an attempt to paint over life's hardship with a broad stroked love brush. God knows I had my trials, but looking back at what I remember, though I do remember the bad things, I care as much about them as I do my first day on earth. It happened, it was hard, but through no works of my own I made it to the good times, and I made it to today. God provided everything I needed, and I met the trials of life armed to the teeth with love and family. 

Age ten to twenty was an interesting time to say the least. When I was ten years old I received a magic eight ball for Christmas. I asked it one day if I would live to see my sixteenth birthday. The answer was no, and I believed it. Much of what I chose to do for those six years was actually weighed against the unearned knowledge that I was going to die before I finished high school. I started writing very dark poetry, and made peace with a grim reality that would not come to pass. By my sixteenth birthday I had an elaborate recorded goodbye for each member of my family, a last will and testament, and a rather large book of poetry. It is comical now to look back on this and see how curiously not shocked I was to wake up on my sixteenth birthday. I just deleted the goodbye videos, and changed my tune when writing as if I hadn't spent the last six years preparing to die, and making decisions based on not being here much longer. I must say, in hind sight, my delusions in those years likely played a large role in the way I handle death, and the thought of death today. 

I was not a shy guy, but I was not outgoing either. I spent most my time in my head watching people. I had a group of friends that were close to me, but not close to each other from the third grade until high school when I turned sixteen and realized I was not going to die, at least not when I expected. I never really got involved in any kind of group friendship before then. I wrestled in the eighth grade, played football in the ninth. I might have played football longer, but to be honest I was not that into it despite being good at it, and when my brother broke his neck the summer before the tenth grade it gave me a good excuse not to continue. I wrestled that year, and then stopped that too after my first car accident in the tenth grade. Not because I was too hurt to continue, but because it gave me the excuse I needed to move on. I liked sports, but I did not love them. I did eventually start hanging out in a group of close friends, but only one of my best friends had those friends in common. His name was Jason, you can read about him in the family and friends section of this site.  

From the seventh grade to the tenth grade I had a few girls I called girlfriend, but it really was not my scene. My first kiss was Ashley, she was also my first real date. We went and saw the movie "Evolution" I think I watched more of it than she intended as we did not last much longer. After her was Leann, we didn't even sit together. Her friends asked me if I would date her, I said yes. We never did, and talked less. That was the sum of my middle school dating scene. My brother actually thought I might be gay, he was wrong, but I can see where he got the impression. By then he had really rung up a tally. I went into the summer before my freshman year thinking I might date a girl named Malicia. She had her mother send me a note asking to be my girlfriend. Her mother was the disciplinary at the school. It was strange, but that actually intrigued me. Alas she was attending a different school, the summer was upon us, and we really had no way to hang out so it just didn't happen.

Freshman year came, and during that year I dated  Felicia, Alicia, and Stephanie. Nothing serious there, just the names of a few girls I happened to like. Of course I was not that interested in pursuing anything more than a good friendship so those relationships naturally crumbled under the adolescent pressure to be more than friends. It was not until I was in the tenth grade that I would meet someone I felt as though I could love. Her name was Crystal, and we were steady for the remainder of high school right up until the last months of our senior year. I even asked her to be my "technical wife" on a sail boat in the San Francisco bay. She said yes, and we both wore promise rings, but what did that really mean? I wont lie, it broke my heart when she broke it off with me, and I believe it broke my spirit too. Shortly after would come Lynn. That poor girl did not deserve the mess I was, nor do I think she saw it until it was too late, but that's another story, for another time. 

I graduated High School with honors, and was offered an internship at Hewett Packard. I was making more money than I had ever expected to make, and I didn't even have to go to college to earn it. Its a shame I was so wrapped up in the loss of my first love I was not able to fully take advantage of the opportunity I was awarded. When the internship was over I applied for a Job at Tyco electronics, and was given four military contracts. The job was mine until I failed my first drug test, and watched it all fade away. Honestly, it was what I wanted. Even looking back on it now after all these years I can say without hesitation that the cubical life no matter how much money was involved was not a life for me.

What happened next was what I've come to know as the whirlwind. Age nineteen to twenty one. I went to work for Stayton homes with Lynn's mother, quit that job shortly after and went to college, quit that shortly after and started working at clear lake. At Clear lake in 2007 I was afforded the one thing I had needed since graduation. Time alone in the woods by a lake at the top of a mountain to just think. Though I felt the loss of Crystal I never grieved it properly. Though I liked Lynn, I wasn't ready for her. Though I hated that job, I lost it the wrong way, and though I had no idea where the hell I was supposed to be I knew that place was not anywhere near me. I wish I would have had more time in the mountains, but the summer ended, and the lake closed, and I was jobless. I went back to school, but wasn't there. I went back to work, but nothing stuck. I broke it off with Lynn without so much as a tear shed, and went on a bender that would make the devil blush. Alcohol, pills, weed, and women. Then one day for no particular reason at all I was thinking about Jason who had moved to Colorado.  He was always inviting me to move out there with him. Then some random TV commercial said don't wait, go now, so I did. 

I arrived in Colorado the 7th of January 2008. I was greeted at the airport by my best friend Jason, and I believe our first stop was his girlfriends house where I met Kiarra, Miriam, and Michael for the first time. I cant recall for sure, but I believe we had a few drinks. It was late and cold out so we traveled back to Jason's moms house where I lived for a few months while I tried to get a job and a place to stay. I was an ungrateful drifter, but I can only see that looking back on it now. I remember being quite offended when they started asking for rent to sleep on the couch. I did find a job and had been working for a few months before they even mentioned it. David and Angela where a blessing, and I wish I had seen that sooner. 

The day they asked for rent I drove all over town looking for an apartment. I thought if I was going to pay rent I was going to have my own space and more than a couch to sleep on. I drove around all day and found one place that would take my application, but they would not know if I was approved for a week. I went back to David and Angela's house where I had just made a fool of myself with a weeks worth of rent. They accepted it. I told them I would be moving into the 13th st. apartments the following week, but I needed help with the down payment so Jordan, Jason's brother, was going to move in with me. I covered my half of the deposit, and they covered his half. A week later Jordan and I were the proud new renters of a second story apartment in the ghetto of Aurora Colorado, and that's when things really started to get fun. 

 Jordan and I held a home welcoming party, the kind you would expect from two young bachelors. I was on my way home from work and had to stop for smokes at the seven eleven. When I got back into my truck, a young man waived me down before I took off and asked for a ride to his house. I was no stranger to hitch hikers, and had no issues giving him a ride, so I did. Now most people think the danger of picking up hitch hikers is the people, but I argue the danger is more often than not the destination. While that young man was in my car I knew exactly where I was going, but when he got out and entered his house, I was on my own in a new part of the city I had never been. 

Unlike most cities Aurora is very spread out. There are pockets of people, and buildings over a large amount of land, and the streets in each of these pockets are almost all named the same. I knew my place was somewhere off Colfax and Alameda, so I found Colfax, and kept driving. After about an hour Jason must have gotten worried because he called me. When I explained my situation he helped me get home. Turns out I had been driving the wrong direction for a very long time. I took the free way home using Jason as a GPS. When I got back to the house I was greeted with anger. Everyone was pissed that I took a hitchhiker home, but most pissed that he was a black hitchhiker which to me made no difference at all. I dismissed it as them all being too cautious and a little racist, poured myself a drink and sat down. Not two minutes into my drink Kiarra started sounding off on the issue again, I yelled at her, she slapped me, so I kicked her out. The party ended pretty quickly after that, with a lot of my friends including my roommate pissed off at me. This was the tone set for my first real run at independence.  

Later that month Jordan would be kicked out of the apartment by the apartment manager for facilitating under aged drinking. In all honesty I should have been kicked out too, but they only mentioned his name, and I wasn't about to try and find a new place to live. Really what had happened was his friends came over one day with several bottles of alcohol. We all naturally drank it no questions. Later that night the police showed up, and took all that alcohol. Why? because it belonged to the man those kids had robbed and almost every bottle was engraved with his name. It was a private, and personal collection. Those "friends" of Jordan's got busted and then lead the cops to our place to retrieve what they had taken. The property manager found out, and immediately banned Jordan from the premises. Knowing what I know now I do not think she had the legal right to do that as no charges were filed, but we were young, and didn't really know any better. Besides, it was a might bit better than going down for contributing to the delinquency of minors. It was not ideal, but we rolled with it. So there I was, living alone in a one bedroom apartment with furniture provided by Jordan who no longer lived there, no TV, a laptop without internet for entertainment, and no bed. That's right, I still had no bed.

Up to this point I was a heavy drinker, smoked cigarettes, and the occasional joint, but nothing else. One night while watching family guy in the back of Jason's car late with nothing to do the subject of cocaine came up. One thing lead to another, and the next thing I knew we were on the phone with Filipe trying to score a teener. I had a bank account that gave payday advances, so fifty bucks or so here and there was no problem. That night I took my first hit of cocaine, just a bump, then my friends polished it off. I went home, and swore it off. I hated it! It kept me up too late, I sucked at work, I had dark circles under my eyes, my mind was racing, it was so bad! Then the weekend came, and Jason had more, so I took another bump. Then I had some drinks, then took a line, and had more drinks, then another line, and more drinks, and to my surprise no mater how much I drank as long as I kept putting that white powder in my nose I never got too drunk. I just maintained a level headed buzz, and talked too fast. That was it, I was hooked. 

Then one day while laying in the grass at Kiarras house talking to Jason the subject of mushrooms came up. I had never done them, but I didn't tell him that. I wanted to try them anyway so I took out a payday advance and we got some shrooms. I can recall when they started to kick in vividly. I was smoking a cigarette, and the smoke started to pool around my head. I was watching it float in slow motion, and then started laughing uncontrollably. Someone decided we needed to go on a journey so we all loaded up in Jason's car and drove to Kiarras house. I was sitting on the couch in her fathers den watching Joe Bonamassa on a  big screen when the cigarette in my hand started to melt. Michael said we had to go before our trip got bad. So, we loaded into Jason's car again and found ourselves at a park. Jason got sick, and threw up what was left of the shrooms, colors started to blend, and three skulls bloomed up into the sky out of the clouds. One dog turned into seven, and a beetle tried to kill me. When it got dark the park changed into a magical place. Some of my friends were still trippin like I was, but Jason was not so he drove us around for a bit. I remember looking out the window and seeing myself drive by on a motorcycle. Then we parked by a field and the sky was painted with pastels. While walking through the neighborhood jimmy Hendrix was playing guitar in the windshield of a car, and as I started to come down I realized it had been 14 hours. When we pulled back into my apartment complex I thought to myself "the journey ended where it began" Of course it did, I had to work the next day, and we started at my house, but it felt at the time much more nuanced than that. 

I decided that though I had fun it was probably best to never do shrooms again. I had an expensive cocaine habit despite getting most of it free, and I was very scared of having a bad trip. I figured I would leave it on a good note, and never touched magic mushrooms again. In late June of 2008 Sean came to visit me. It is important to note that he had no idea that I had even moved to Colorado until he called one day to hang out and I told him I didn't live in Oregon anymore. I was not a good friend. We had an okay time, but not the best time. I worked a lot of over time to pay for my habits. I had no food in the house, and I was used to living alone so having someone else there to see the mess I lived in was irritating to me. I was a jerk the whole time unless we were wasted. Then, I was just wasted and didn't care. Our best moment in his visit was when he finally let loose and got drunk. Looking back with honesty I must admit that was the worst moment. A friend should want the best for their friend, I just wanted him to join me at my worst. 

When Sean flew back my parents paid for me to fly back too to see everyone for the fourth of July. I remember being most amazed by how green it all was from Portland to sweet home. I remember a large welcome home banner my grandfather had made me. I still have it. Most of all I remember being very disappointed in myself because all I could think about was getting back to Colorado where I was free to snort cocaine. Don't get me wrong, I had a good time, but there was always that constant nagging reminder that here I was not free to do what I wanted. Of course that wasn't actually what it was. Really it was a constant nagging reminder that here around family I still had standards, and I wasn't living up to them, but it took a little longer to see that. While in Oregon my laptop died, and my father replaced it with a portable DVD player so I wouldn't have nothing at all for entertainment. I don't think I ever properly thanked him for that. I flew back to Colorado with one thing on my mind.

So that was it, that was my life. Work all week, party all weekend. What happened next was predictable, but not for me at the time. The weekend lines slowly became weekday morning bumps, then lines, then lunch break lines, and before I knew it I was snorting more than I was breathing, and drinking more than I was snorting. I had one rule, I would never do any drugs that were not procured by Jason, because I trusted him, and no one else. You see despite what others may think Jason actually did have my best interest at heart. He didn't see drugs as an issue, he never had, but he would never give me anything he wouldn't trust to do himself. Jason was, and is still a good friend. What I don't think he saw, until it was too late, was that my Iron will went two ways. I could stop anything, and I would prove that soon, but more maliciously I could continue anything and maintain a stable life. That would have remained true right up until my mysterious death that, thank God, never came to pass. 

I am going to admit something here I've only ever admitted to a handful of people. Meth saved my life. Meth was something Jason and I swore we would never do. It was the line we would not cross. He would never do it or sell it to me, and I would never buy it. Filipe on the other hand did not share that sentiment, and did not share the same love for my wellbeing as Jason. While Jason was working to come off the cocaine, I was still working to score it. Jason would have helped me, but he was already gone and in bed one lovely Tuesday night. So I broke my rule and turned to Filipe with my last twenty bucks. I told him specifically no Meth. Just a small amount of coke if he could score it, but anyone reading this has deduced how that went. He showed up an hour later with a small bag of white fluffy looking crystals. I mentioned the state of the cocaine, and he said it was just crushed a little from cutting it off the eight ball. He knew that was a lie, and so did I. Truth be told I don't know what it was. he never admitted it was anything but cocaine, and I didn't know enough about meth to confirm it was meth. I took one bump, A BUMP! That's a dot about a millimeter high, with a diameter across a little less the diameter of a pencil eraser. As my nose began to burn and my mind started to race I got a familiar feeling. I felt like I was back at that first night when I took my first bump of cocaine and hated it. Filipe stayed in my apartment, and did the rest of the bag. I went for a drive, and I was panicked. 

I found myself parked in front of Kiarra's house. I didn't even know what time it was. There were a few times Jason and I would go too far with the coke and we would smoke weed to calm us down. I figured Jason might have some pot, but if not, I would at least be in the company of a good friend I trusted with my life.  Michael answered the door, and he could see I was not well. He called irritated for Jason. Jason could see I was not well. I told him I think I over dosed on cocaine and needed to get some pot to calm down. My jaw was sweeping, and he was talking, but I was more interested in the smoke that formed the shape of a cat going down the road. I could feel the irritation from everyone in that house. I was not welcome, and Jason had no weed. He tried to reassure me I would be okay, and that it was just the drugs, and they would wear off. I got the sense had he known what really happened he would have stayed with me longer, but given what I told him there was really no true cause for concern as we had both been there before. He politely turned me away, and I went home. I actually don't recall how Filipe got home, or when I got to bed, but I do recall work the next day. It was cold, and it was hell. 

I didn't talk to Filipe much after that, Jason kind of figured that something happened that night, and it might have involved meth, but I wasn't sure. Filipe wouldn't admit it, and eventually Jason dropped it. About a month went by, it was close to my birthday, and I had been cocaine free since that night. Meth is what I decided it was, and it really did put a fear into me I had never known. Jason wanted to get some coke, maybe to celebrate, and I was open to the idea after a few drinks. On the way to the dealer Sean called, and he was crying. When I answered the phone I was wasted and exclaimed in the stupidest voice ever "Heyyyy maaaan" He squeaked out "Mom died" I was sober in an instant. Unbeknownst to me Terry, Sean's mother, had been battling cancer. One of my best friends was thousands of miles away living out a nightmare, and I was wasted in the back of an Audi about to start back up a recently kicked problem.  I felt small for the first time in my life. When I hung up the phone I was in tears. Jason looked back and asked what happened. I said "Sean's mom died" The indifference was clear, but not anyone's fault, they didn't know him, or her. I was the only one around that did. I had Jason Take me home, I didn't participate in the festivities planned. As I laid down for bed that night I called my dad and asked him if I could come home. He said yes and offered to buy a plane ticket. I refused the ticket so I could drive, and be alone.  On October 16th 2008 only about ten months after moving to Colorado, I had lived enough to die twice. I packed up what little I owned, dropped my key off at the front office of the apartment, said goodbye to all I worked with, spent one last night with Jason, then drove off into the moonlight with a green chilly burrito in one hand, Oregon bound, with Colorado fading in the rearview.

I want to preface this section of the old life with one fact. Though many people believe, and will suggest otherwise based on a number of false assumptions, I never once even thought about, or looked at cocaine or any other hard drug again. It was easy for me to quit, and I understand that that is not normal. Many people struggle with their addictions. I didn't struggle with mine. Everything I ever did was a choice not a condition, and that remains true to this day. That being said I did choose to keep drinking copious amounts of alcohol, and continue to smoke cigarettes and weed from time to time throughout this period of my life. I had left behind a major distraction, but came back to everything I was running from. Nothing was gone, nothing was different, nothing was changed, not even me...

My parents, God bless them, Allowed me to move back into the house to get my feet back underneath me. Of course I had to go to collage, and get a job. No problem. I just went back to LBCC for the winter and waited for Clear Lake to open back up. From spring of 2009 to the summer of 2011 I was a seasonal cook at clear lake for the spring and summer, and a student or temp worker for the other months. Now, I am giving myself a lot of leeway when I say student and worker. I think I could be best described as a hustler, and the top of my class at the school of hard knocks. Either way, and though so much more was involved in these few years the most important part about 2009 -2011 was the time I was afforded alone in the woods by a lake at the top of a mountain to just think. In fact if it was not for this time, I can say with almost one hundred percent certainty that I would not have survived to see my twenty fifth birthday. 

During this time I suffered greatly from an anxiety disorder I used to blame entirely on my earlier cocaine use. More than once I found myself in an emergency room with nothing wrong at all other than the fear that there might be something life threateningly wrong with me. A co worker, and good friend Betsy called it the fear of the fear. She was the first person to recognize it, and explain it in a way I could understand. I needed this. When she explained to me what a panic attack was I knew instantly that this was my problem, and I was able to start to cope, and redirect my fear so that the physical symptoms would not present themselves. Once I was able to control that, I never had another panic attack again. It took me three years to defeat it, but it would be a little longer than that before I could understand what was actually causing it. 

In the winter months away from the lake I was cold and depressed. I masked my depression with alcohol, and attached myself to the company of a woman, and in some cases more than one. Never more than one at the same time, just more than one in that calendar year. I went from being able to count my girlfriends on one hand to having to take off my shoes in rather short order. Some in todays society might say I was making up for lost time. In reality I was trying to fill a void. I was missing something that I used to have, and I was too blind to see it. Though I still believed in God I was ignoring him. I talked to him most at the lake, and attributed my peace there to the trees, and the wind. I was a fool. My peace at the lake was not the lake, it was my counsel with God, but I didn't see that then.

In 2010 I met a women named Amber. I had actually originally met her friend Renae, but really I had met both of them mostly through a chat site called FUBAR. The Irony in that name would be defined by my relationship with Amber. I married Amber January 6th of 2011 a few short months before my son Jayden was born. I could present horror stories about this marriage that would leave the devil himself speechless, but those things were just a means to an end. The truly life defining parts in this portion of my life were beyond the disaster. In the spring of 2011 I learned that I didn't just want to be a father. I wanted to be the best father. I took on the care of Katelyn and Britany. Katelyn was Ambers daughter, and now my step daughter, and Britany was her Aunt who we took on in foster care. A real Jerry Springer situation, but a challenge I was not aware I was ready for until I was right in the middle of it. 

My Son Jayden was born March 28th 2011. At the time I was working night shift at the Oaks old folks home in Lebanon Oregon and attending accounting school online full time during the day. 9pm to 6am I was counting pills for the elderly. 6am to 11am I would sleep, and 11am to 9pm I was at school. I do not remember much about that time in my life, but I do remember vividly the moment I held my son and realized how absolutely lost I was until that second. Nothing else in the world mattered but the safety and care of my boy. I held him close to my chest, nick named him bubby, and swore no harm would come to him so long as I was still breathing. At 3am the morning after he was born the nurse had to wake me up to even get to him for his tests because I had barricaded him between myself and the wall so no one could do anything without waking me up. I even won an award at the hospital for making sure I and everyone around me abided by the bracelet rule. In hindsight maybe it was a bit obsessive and neurotic, but I found a purpose for myself in my son, and I lived out the most important thing I would ever do with myself as though I had been doing it all my life. Jayden saved my life in a way I didn't even know needed saving until it was done. I loved Katelyn and Britany, but until Jayden was born I was not able to love them like they deserved. Once I felt that unmistakable feeling wash over me I was instantly awakened to the kind of man I needed to be for them, and the kind of love they were missing. The love of a Father, and the love of a man are not the same. It takes complete surrender to parenthood to realize this fully, and I was in an instant all in. 

While I was working for the Oaks and going to school I managed to find time to also get my insurance license. In May of 2011 I went back to work at clear lake, and in-between shifts I would sell insurance for Farmers. I knew I needed to get a more stable job. It was time to find a career. Over that summer I sold enough policies to get hired on permanent with the company, and started my own insurance agency. I hated it, and still hate it, but it has been the career that has fed, clothed, and housed my children for thirteen years now. I figured then like I know now that I would always miss working at clear lake, but seasonal and temp jobs leave little time for family, and don't pay the bills. By the spring of 2012, Jayden's 1st birthday we were moving in to our first house. We still rented, but it was 3 beds, and in a nice neighborhood in Albany Lexington area. I was selling insurance full time bringing in more money than I had ever known, and Amber was a full time stay at home mom. From the outside at face value this was the American dream gone right, but from the inside there was more wrong with this picture than I would know right up until it was far too late to fix. 

Amber was a mom but not a mother, and certainly she was no wife. I say this and it sounds cold. Perhaps I am jaded, but looking back at my life I can typically find the good in all bad situations. When it comes to Amber I can find no good. Selfish, crude, violent, degrading, petty, pitiful, perverted, obnoxious, narcissistic, neurotic bitch. Nothing was good enough, nothing was bad enough. If there was money to spend it was spent. If there was something to yell about it was shouted. If there was nothing to yell about it was created. She pawned everything I owned multiple times. I spent more money paying back pawn shops and payday advances than I may ever earn again. A daily fight, a daily struggle, a daily torment over things that I would later realize were worthless, but I being a weak man at the time bent over and took it all for the sake of that perfect little picture only I could see. I would shut my mouth, bite my tongue, and wade through the dark murky waters of every day life with her, accepting the rain of the storm as my reward, and the moments that I was able to keep my head above water as my goal. You can read this and tell yourself its only my side of the story, and I would not blame you, but also there is not enough room anywhere on earth to write the whole story. I will give you one very small piece to help you understand what kind of person she was. She one time convinced me that Jayden had rolled off the bed and broken his arm to get me home from work early. I rushed home to find her laughing at my panic. I was obviously beside myself, and no one other than her could have enjoyed it so much. This was no ordinary women with no financial savvy. She was cruel, and contributed only to the harm of our children. There are things she did that I was not made aware of until years after our divorce, but I blame myself still. I blame myself for not being a stronger man sooner. I didn't even have the strength to end it when she cheated on me. Thank God that she was so hell bent on making sure I never had what I wanted. She left simply because I asked her not to. 

In the summer of 2014 Amber turned thirty. I took her to the coast just me and her to have some time away alone. It was on this trip while building a sand castle on the beach that she asked me for an open relationship. This was where I drew my line, and this is the line that broke the curse. By the fall of 2014 she had already cheated on me several times trying to force the issue. Then on her return from Florida where I had sent her for a "get away" she decided she was going to leave. I knew it was for another man, and I knew she had already slept with him, but still I asked her not to go. I had actually just been offered a big promotion with the agency I worked for, and was planning on moving the whole family to Minnesota. I thought surely we could make it work with more money and a new start. What happened next would change the course of my life forever, and transform me into the man I should have been all those pathetic years I spent trying to look like the man I thought I wanted to be. The very next day after she announced she was leaving I received a call from my father. He said mom had a stroke and was in the hospital. It was not a stroke. My mother was suffering from herpes simplex encephalitis, a name I will never forget. Basically chicken pox on the brain. Amber was well on her way to being packed up and gone when I told her what was going on. All she had to say was that it changed nothing, and she was still leaving. I didn't care. I went to the hospital where my mother was still awake, but not right. She was worried I was moving to Minnesota. I told her that if it meant that much to her I would not take the job. She never answered me. They placed her in a medically induced coma to stop the damage of the virus. I never moved to Minnesota. I spent the next month sleeping in a five foot long hospital couch waiting for my mother to die. She didn't die, but she didn't come back either. When she woke up from her coma my father and I were beside ourselves. The day before they were openly discussing cutting open her skull to relieve pressure on the brain. My father was basically told to get his affairs in order. There is a bit of a dark joke we tell sometimes. Its unspoken, but understood that my mother woke up specifically to save her hair. She had long beautiful hair and she knew it. The cutting into her skull would have ruined it forever so she decided to come back. It would take a long time for that to be funny. My mother lost much of her adult mind, and my father became the keeper of her shadow. I realized that I had lost any chance of getting to know my mother again. I had been absent for so long my whole family felt like strangers. Of all of them I hurt my mother the worst, and I would never get the chance to atone for that. This is a punishment justly given to a weak man, and I bore it in silence. For the first time in my life I was not a weak man, and I never would be again. 

When I returned home I returned home different. I was not the weak man I was, I was the beginning of the strong man I promised my son I could be. I offered her everything she could sell plus five thousand dollars to leave me my son, and she accepted without hesitation. When she finally left us I had two lawn chairs and a 40inch TV to my name. Luckily I was the only one with a job so naturally I got to keep the rental. My plan for the next day was simple. Take the day off to be with Jayden and play games in our lawn chairs in the living room until the sun went down. Unfortunately I had failed to calculate just how badly he would take the shock of having nothing. He came out that morning, laid his head in my lap, and cried out "where is my couch" I didn't so much as bat an eye to hold back a tear. I simply picked him up and looked him in the eye and asked if he would like to go shopping for a couch and some pictures for the bare walls. He smiled and shook his head, and so that is what we did instead. Later that night after the excitement of the day was done, and our new pictures hung on the wall with a couch on its way. I put him in to bed. It is this moment that will forever be etched into my mind as the moment I realized what I was missing, and the cause of my anxiety for all those years. Jayden looked up at me crying in a way I had never witnessed and asked "What is going on in my house" I tucked him into bed, said all the soothing things a father should, kissed him softly, said goodnight, shut out his light, walked into my room, shut the door, fell down into my bed and cried. I didn't cry because Amber was gone. I didn't cry because mom was sick, and dad was grief stricken. I didn't cry for all the wrong things I had done, or even all the time I had lost with my family. I didn't cry because I was alone, or didn't know what to do. I cried because I knew instantly, and without question that I had let my son down, and that was not acceptable. That night I appealed the best I could to the only person who had never let me down, God. I started to pray to God in a way I had never prayed before in my life. I didn't ask for intervention, or good fortune. I simply asked for the wisdom, and strength I would need to never let my son down again. It was not a short talk, and in this prayer I realized that it was my distance from God that kept me weak, and made me anxious. When I chose to ignore God I suffered the hell that comes from that separation. Not a punishment, but a consequence, and all the people around me suffered that consequence too. I would love to tell you I never ignored God again, but that is not true. I can however tell you that I never let my son down again. That says more about God than it does about me. 

Over the course of the next couple months I was given my promotion without having to move out of state. I was afforded the opportunity to work from home which eliminated my need for childcare. My daughters both moved back to be with me. First Brittany, and then Katelyn for obvious reasons, and I met the strength and wisdom I asked for face to face. Her name was Tabitha, and she is my wife today.