THE STORY OF US

Nick and I met in 2010 at our place of employment. You know that feeling you get when there’s just that instant spark of attraction? You could say we had that times 💯 !!! At that time I was a single mom of two wonderful little girls and Nick believed he was the father of a young son (that’s a long story we will need to address in a later blog entry). We started dating, taking it very slowly as my girls were my TOP priority. I refused to let any relationship– new or old– interfere with that. It was months before I introduced my girls to him. I didn’t want to add any confusion to their lives if we weren’t meant to be together. Nick was also going to school while working full time, so he also had other priorities. We spent a lot of time getting to know each other and started developing a strong foundation to our relationship.

Over time he moved into the family home where I grew up. I’ve been here for years taking care of my mother who we moved to a nursing home this past November. Everything was going so perfect. We had so much in common: the same goals, dreams, and values. We have the same taste in food and even the same taste in music and believe me that is very important! When we had our amazing son together, I believed we really had the perfect family. Life was good, so very good. But, as life is imperfect, it wasn’t long before we fell on bad times. It’s a long story that will have to be covered in numerous blog posts, but soon I discovered a pornography addiction that Nick was struggling with. It also included developing inappropriate online relationships with old “friends” via social media. I was completely devastated. This is not what I wanted for my life, my relationship, and my family….

I told him he had to leave and he did. That’s my go to: pushing my loved ones away to protect myself. To protect my self-esteem and my self worth. He was gone for about a month before we started talking more in depth. During this time I was trying to keep it together while I moved my first born baby girl away to college. Such a transitional season I had found myself in. After many fights we both started individual therapy. Back to my friend Google. I am pretty good at researching and found a good Christian based counseling center that would be best based on our true morals and values. Some time later he proved he was trying and I allowed him back in our home, but we weren’t sharing a room. I had many boundaries in place at this time. Fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me! I certainly wasn’t ready to be intimate at this point. He switched to a flip phone for awhile to remove the temptation of pornography at his fingertips 24 hours a day– it truly is everywhere. I liked to refer to this new phone as Nick’s “dumb phone”. Since this is about honesty I have to say I even saved the name to his new number in my contacts as “Nick’s dumb like his phone”. I was really traumatized during this period. Trying to take care of my family, my mom with all her health issues, while working a full-time job, running a household with everything that requires, all while trying to pretend like I was ok. I was treading water and just barely keeping my head above the surface. There was no time to take care of myself. I was broken.

A few weeks down the road as he progressed through his therapy he moved back to his smartphone. I was getting ready to go on a girls trip with a group of 43 women I had met in a Facebook group. Another blog post in the making on that story. 🤣 I couldn’t fathom not knowing what he was doing while I was away. I had zero trust. Zip! Zilch! Nada! I mean how could I have? We started doing some research and came across accountability apps. After diving into many articles and reviews we decided on one. We installed the accountability app to help me rebuild my trust in him. Believing we were on the right track things were actually good for awhile. I was focusing on my own therapy while he was working on himself. Unfortunately that didn’t last long before I felt something else was laying right under the surface.

I didn’t know what it was. We were falling apart and he wasn’t the man I had fallen in love with. He was working third shift so our time together while awake was minimal. Plus, he was working 7 days a week by choice. He wasn’t getting enough rest, wasn’t spending any quality time with his family, and he just was not acting like himself. He was angry, paranoid, and moody on the regular. All the ways you would never want your spouse to act. We were all walking on eggshells around him..

One day I found a tiny green baggie in the bottom of the washer. I was shaking. Terrified! What in the world was this? What would he say when I showed him this discovery? As he was walking up the driveway I stared him down and instantly said to him, “empty your pockets”. He was confused as I confronted him. I pulled the tiny green baggie out of my pocket and said, “what in the hell is this?” He nonchalantly said it was from an Adderall that he had gotten from some guy at work. No big deal! As naive as I was, I thought that since it was a pharmaceutical it wasn’t that big of a deal.

In the coming weeks he began accusing me of having boyfriends and being unfaithful. Things weren’t good and again, me being me, I told him to get out. I said if he couldn’t be the man I brought home, the man I fell in love with, he had to go. He moved out again and signed a one year lease. His mom and family were all feeling so sorry for him and helped him any way they could– financially or otherwise. He wasn’t being honest with them either. It was ALL my fault, or so they believed.

I threw myself into researching Adderall use. Most of it made sense but not all of it. I would send his family screenshots of the research but to no avail. There had to be more. The day he moved out he removed the accountability app and started signing up for dating and porn websites. He was spiraling out of control: making poor choices and lying to himself as well as his family.

We didn’t really talk for several weeks and when we did we mostly fought. Eventually he started being honest (or so I thought) and we decided to try to work on us again. I allowed him to go camping one long weekend with us. With him working third shift he would be at the campsite during the day with our son while I was at work. It would be perfect.

When I got out to the lake on July 19th I went in the camper to find him completely passed out while our son was sitting at the dinette playing on his tablet. I picked up his keys to go look for the other tablet in his car as we hadn’t seen it since showing up to the campsite. I just knew it had to be in his car, so off I went to start looking for it. No tablet to be found. Then I stumbled upon a bag of Walmart sacks right under the front of his driver’s seat.

Odd. Why would he have all these bags shoved here? I picked up the bag and realized it was heavier than just empty Walmart sacks. In these bags was a giant torch lighter, a glass pipe tucked into a cigarette pack and several little green baggies with a crystal like substance inside of them. My heart started pounding out of my chest. I was shaking so bad. What the hell was this? Back to me being naive. I was clueless! I instantly woke him up and kept asking, “What is this? What is this?” He was so caught off guard and startled from being awoken so abruptly. He finally said, “It’s meth! I have a problem. I need help!”

To be continued…