Journal Revival
Country. From the Brand New Man album, released in 1991. More info from Wikipedia.
It’s hard to believe that this account was created somewhere around 17 years ago. I recall the days of old, writing in this thing about Cassandra, taking breaks from writing, then writing about Liz, followed by more breaks, more about Cassandra, some about other women I was chatting up, and eventually culminating in a handful of entries about Kayla in the very early stages of our relationship back in 2011. Hell, it’s hard to believe that it’s been over ten years since my last update. As fate would have it, the purposes of knocking the dust off this old thing is the exact reason I stopped writing in it: Kayla.
A lot has changed in the past ten years, far more than I could ever accurately describe in a reasonable span of time. As such, my intent for the beginning of this update is to highlight the cliff notes and elaborate as needed after the fact.
2012: No significant events. Kayla and I continued to bond and develop a close, intimate relationship.
2013: I moved out to Bethune at the beginning of the year. I proposed to Kayla shortly thereafter, and we were married in October 2013.
2014: As part of the merging process for the owners of the plant I worked at, I transitioned from a contract employee to an actual company employee and started doing the job I always wanted to do since I started: sit behind the security computer. I was also the victim of a “soft” identity theft, where the password to my PayPal account was hacked, and the perpetrator carted off with thousands of dollars in microtransactions from games, maxing out my credit cards, then dipping into the bank account (since it was linked to my PayPal account). Fortunately for us, these charges were reversed.
2015-2016: Kayla and I bought a house at the end of October 2015 for a reasonably good deal. A three-bed, two-bath home with 2100 square feet that was sitting on nine acres of land, right around the corner from her parents’ house. I start to inquire about Freemasonry, knowing that all the males in her immediate family (grandfather, father, brother, uncle, cousin) are all Masons.
2017: I started down the path of becoming a Mason. This culminated on October 21, 2017, which was a day added to my list of days that I’ll never forget. Not only was that the day that I was “raised” to the degree of a Master Mason, but it was also the day in which Kayla told me that, after four long years of effort, tears, and frustration, she was pregnant. I don’t think I adequately conveyed my emotions to her when she broke the news, but deep inside I was overcome with joy and relief.
2018: Our first-born child was welcomed into the world on Friday, June 22, 2018, at 8:39 PM, weighing a healthy seven pounds, 11 ounces. I don’t think Kayla noticed it, but I had a couple tears run down my face. Just when I thought that my life couldn’t get any better, I was right there with my lovely wife bringing a human boy into the world. The tears were a result of not only knowing that our family roots have been fully developed, but I knew that my father was looking down on me and smiling, knowing that I had done well and was able to continue his family name.
2019: After a couple years of effort, I graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Grantham University. At the initial onset, I was not interested in attending my commencement, since the school was 100% online. However, as the prospect of graduating with honors started to look like an actual possibility, a spur-of-the-moment decision to attend my commencement was made. Kayla, Liam, and I hopped on a plane and flew up to Kansas City for a few days to attend my commencement and do a small bit of touring the area. After being out of the military for eight years, I had finally applied my veterans’ benefits to a degree and had graduated with a four-year degree in less than three years, with zero debt accumulated.
2020: Despite the whole world going apeshit over the COVID pandemic, my efforts in pursuing higher education were handsomely rewarded with a career change. While on vacation with the family, I received a text message from the hiring manager of a job I applied for, saying that he wanted to interview me for the position. A week later, I had a 15-minute phone call with him the day before the interview, where he expressed the situation, practically told me he wanted me on his team, and told me what I needed to consider going into the interview the following day. A month after the interview occurred, I was notified that I was selected for the position and was met with a generous raise, a normal work schedule, and work in a field closely related to my degree. I wasted no time accepting the position. After nine long years working in security, I had transition to cyber security, while still working for the same company at the same plant.
2021: Kayla and I welcomed our second (and final) child – Mia – on Saturday, October 9, 2021, at 4:58 AM, weighing five pounds, 15 ounces. This delivery gave me a healthy respect for my wife. She woke me up around 3 AM telling me that she needed to go to the hospital, so I quickly packed a bag, and we made our way there. By the time we got into the delivery room, Mia arrived less than 30 minutes later, with Kayla squeezing the life out of my right arm due to the pain. Nonetheless, the delivery provided us a healthy baby girl, and gave me an immeasurable level of respect and even more love for the woman who relied on me to help her through this process. The year concluded with me getting consulted (and subsequently scheduled) for a vasectomy, as our original plans were to stop at two children.
This brings us to the current year. While I would love to say that this year has been great, it is unfortunately not the case, and I have no one to blame but myself.
Sometime around 2015, I started slipping into a downward spiral. I started becoming bored with my job, and, needing to find a way to pass time overnight, I started leaning heavily into mobile games and started making purchases in them. Initially, the purchases were small and infrequent, but I eventually started making a regular routine: I would play a game, make some purchases to get ahead and have fun, then quit the game when I started to realize that the only way to continue progression was to spend more money. Simply lather, rinse, and repeat; before long, I was spending thousands on these games and stuck in a loop I felt that I couldn’t get out of.
Sadly, it got worse. When I started to find a way out of this destructive behavior, my attention turned from making purchases in mobile games to just making purchases in general. The worst of it all was that I was making up lies and other fabricated stories to explain to Kayla how I was getting these items. I ran the whole gamut, from saying an item was a gift from work (which wasn’t too farfetched, as my work job occasionally gave out random items as recognition gifts), to what I found was my personal favorite: “I bought this a long time ago.”
Before long, I realized that I needed help. I was racking up crippling debt that Kayla had zero knowledge about. I started to investigate ways that I could escape the debt without her knowledge. I took out a hefty loan on my retirement to help hide these expenses. When that didn’t prove to be effective (because I was still spending), I took out a loan and diverted extra funds to a bank account I opened back in 2015 that Kayla had no knowledge of.
Eventually, this all caught up to me. Kayla originally planned to leave the school she was working at after her maternity leave time ended, since she was continuously stressed out about her boss and the extra demands being placed on her. She crunched numbers constantly in the beginning months of this year and, without her knowledge of the astronomical debt I had accrued, determined that after the car payment and her student loans were paid off (after withdrawing from her retirement, since she left the school), we’d be able to live off my income, albeit a bit uncomfortably.
When she asked me to divulge what was coming out of my credit cards so she could budget for it, I realized that there was no more hiding it. I had to come clean. I told her about the spending I’ve done, how bad it was, and that I needed help to stop impulsively spending money. In doing so, she asked me if there was anything else she needed to know that I wasn’t telling her, which is where I made a crucial mistake by telling her no. In doing so, she still didn’t have any knowledge about the two loans I had – the retirement loan I took out at the beginning of 2020 and the personal loan at the beginning of last year.
A week later, after having broken down to her grandparents to help bail us out, she started doing digging and eventually discovered there was more to the story that I wasn’t telling her. This is where I made another critical mistake by initially denying it, then later recanting and spilling everything out to her. Completely devastated (as she should have been), she didn’t know how to respond. I could immediately tell that my inability to come clean from the prior week had quite possibly irrevocably damaged our marriage. At this point, I made the last crucial mistake out of this whole ordeal: instead of staying home to talk with her and work things out, I left to attend the regularly scheduled Lodge meeting. This was a mistake, because I received a text a little later saying that she needed time, I should find someplace to stay, and if I wanted her to pack me a bag. I stayed in the Lodge building that night; I had a key to the building and by the time the meeting was over, it was nearly 10 PM. I drove to work the next morning and reached out to my other best friend, Larry. I told him what was going on, and he readily agreed to let me stay at his house for a while. To this day, I’m still staying there; it’s been over a month since these events occurred.
This is a good time to segue into the developments over the past month, and the true reason for wanting to revive this old blog. In the time that I’ve been out of the house, I’ve only been able to see Kayla and the children a handful of times, often for only about an hour each time. I’ve been attending counseling – initially for the impulsivity and addictions, but lately dealing with the fallout between Kayla and I – and at my counselor’s request, I start writing journal entries, as she claims writing has some interesting therapeutic properties.
The worst part of everything is that Kayla feels that the only solution to our dilemma – not so much the financial aspect, but the fact that I hid everything and lied to her about it on multiple occasions – is a divorce. I was informed of this Monday afternoon, when I went over to the house to see the kids. She called her mother over to watch the kids while we went outside to talk, and that’s when she told me that she sees divorce being the only thing that comes out of our relationship. She said she’s already spoken to a lawyer about it and would prefer that her and I go about this process the amicable way, as it would be less of a blow to both of us and cheaper in the long run, as opposed to going down kicking and screaming. Given that me showing belligerence would only prove that I’m not willing to change my ways, it never once crossed my mind that we should handle this any way but amicably.
I proceeded to tell this information to my counselor (who I have been meeting once per week since this began), and the session itself highlighted some things that made her feel like I’ve already made some significant progress. She asked about where I stood with the marriage, to which I told her that I fully intended to fight constantly to save it. This is all true; I acknowledge that over the past several years, I’ve done a very poor job at communicating with Kayla, acknowledging the level of effort she’s been putting in with keeping up on household chores, caring for the kids, and everything else associated with family life. I also acknowledge that I have been extremely hostile towards her for no good reason and that she doesn’t deserve that. Despite all of this, it is, and will continue to be my intent to do everything humanly possible to save our marriage; to prove to her that I’m not only capable of and willing to change, but I have changed; to prove to her that I’m fully committed to being the father to our children and the husband to her that she and the kids deserve to have in their life.
As I sit here in my work office typing this massive update in a Word document for later upload (because I can’t access LJ on my work computer, duh), I realize that I’m well into the fourth page of this document, so now is probably a good time to start putting the closing touches on this update, by expressing some of the comments and feelings I’ve had and observed from Kayla.
When Kayla told me that she thinks divorce is the way to go, I naturally lost it. I fully disagree with her; I don’t think we’re at that point yet. I don’t believe we’ve exhausted absolutely every means of repairing our situation. After she told me about divorce, I asked her if that’s what she wanted, to which she replied, “I never wanted any of this;” while she didn’t flat-out say she did want a divorce, I could tell in how she was avoiding my direct question that she does in fact want this. This apparently has been a thought of hers for the past couple weeks, and it was a complete surprise to me because she never once talked to me about her thoughts and what led her down the path to this decision. I also asked if there’s anything else she wanted to talk about; she replied, “There’s so much I want to talk to you about.” However, we were both getting to our emotional breaking points, so we left it at that, under the premise that we would have opportunities to talk later.
Going down this path is not good. My counselor believes that Kayla hasn’t fully grasped just how destructive a divorce is, not just to the children, but to mine and Kayla’s emotional well-being as well, and I’m inclined to agree with her logic. Kayla mentioned that she wanted us to be a kick-ass parenting unit, coming up with awesome ideas, agreeing on visitation arrangements and plans, and even being friendly and open with each other around the kids. That’s a wonderful idea, and I’m one billion percent on board. However, I also believe that a divorce will not provide that avenue, no matter how much we both try to make it so. I believe that Kayla and I could exhaust an infinite supply of energy in providing the absolute best environment post-divorce, and it wouldn’t be anywhere near enough to provide the atmosphere that she is envisioning.
Nonetheless, my next steps going forward are quite clear. I have accepted a part-time job providing data entry services to a small company in California that provides environmental reports using a collection of data within the public domain. This job is convenient because I have a fair degree of flexibility in when I can start, and based on the info gained from my interview, starting right after I get off work from my full-time job is an ideal time for them to be working. The income that comes from this part-time job will be used to help pay down some of this debt and get the finances back on track.
Second, I need to continue being a father to our children. In the joint session Kayla and I had with my counselor last week, Kayla said something that stung, but was irrefutably accurate: In the time that I’ve been out of the house, I’ve been more of a father to the kids than I have in the past few years. As much as those words hurt me, I know without a shadow of a doubt that I have not been the father that those two wonderful children deserve. In that same session, I admitted that I was disgusted with myself for allowing myself to sink to that level; that my father would not be proud. Now, more than ever, I don’t want the children to grow up in the same broken family that I did. I don’t want them to grow up having to fend for themselves, not being able to see both parents as often as they needed, to see what true love between both parents and a loving family looks like, and I’m committed to making this my top priority, because that’s what these children deserve.
Lastly, I need to be a better husband. I believe that part of this equation is solved simply by being a better father to the children. I’m of the mindset that Kayla will see the change I’ve made in my devotion to the children that she would naturally start finding herself more attracted to me, which in turn would rekindle what we initially had and begin our own healing process. I’m fully aware that our own healing process will take years, and it may not ever fully recover to what I expect. However, I believe we must start somewhere, and I think that being a better father is a good entry point.
The other part in this equation stems from my need to get right with the Lord. When I first mentioned this to Kayla, she said that I didn’t need that to be a prerequisite of mending things, and at the time, I agreed with her. However, considering everything that has happened since that first talk, I believe it to most definitely be a prerequisite. My relationship with the Lord has certainly seen suffering, and I believe that by repairing my relationship with Him first, other desired sequences of events will naturally occur. To that end, I have been praying every night, praying He would heal and bless everyone I’ve impacted through this process. I pray for healing and comfort for Kayla and pray that she finds it in her heart to forgive me. Lastly, I pray that the Lord grant me the strength needed to retain my faith in Him, knowing that He would not put me in situations I can’t handle, and that He leads Kayla and I down a path that pleases Him the most.
I am committed to repairing the relationship I have with the Lord. I am committed to repairing my relationship with the two wonderful children Kayla and I brought into this world. I am committed to repairing my relationship with everyone that has been affected by these events. And I am committed to dedicating every possible effort to salvage and restore my marriage with my best friend and the person who has brought me nothing but happiness since our very first date.
I told Kayla that I would fight every step of the way to save our marriage until we were eligible for divorce, which won’t happen until at least next year. Should divorce be the route we ultimately take, my priority switches from fighting to save the marriage to fighting to recover it.
I’m ready to do literally everything in my power to grow old together with the woman I love the most. I just pray and hope that she is willing to work with me as well. Until then, time will tell.
Expect more updates regularly, especially as I work my way through this process.