2008 The beginning of the end

I was shocked, to say the least.  I didn't even know what to say.  I thought she'd be happy.  In fact, I couldn't really understand what she was unhappy about.  To this day, I still don't get it.  I mean, I did exactly as she wanted - I got out of the navy 2 years early (which would screw my career later) to be with her and the kids - AND I landed a high paying job starting immediately after.  But still, she was pissed off.

My new schedule was 6:00 am to 3:00 pm - Monday thru Friday.  The perfect schedule, right?  I thought so.  My ex, however, was not even remotely pleased.

Since the navy had only given me 11 days notice that I had to find a new job and a new home, I was still scrambling to find some place to live.  Turns out, Santee is a very new and clean place, still being built and developed (this was in 2009).  So we checked it out.  My ex really liked  a certain home that came empty - by empty I mean no washer or dryer, no microwave and no refrigerator.  No appliances period.  Meaning, obviously, that we'd have to buy all of them.

Right across the street was an apartment complex that offered 2-bedroom apartments that actually had a washer and dryer included.  Turns out, they had one 2-bedroom left.  Just one.  I got it, despite the time constraint.  First floor - so moving would be easier.  So would loading groceries.

I was, again, so excited to tell her of what I perceived to be a victory.  She, again, was pissed.  She literally hissed at the prospect, telling me that she had no intention of living in an apartment.  She continued to pelt me with questions about how we could raise the children in such constrained conditions.

At any rate, we moved in.  The kids loved it because there was a pool we could go to every weekend.   Santee is hot as hell.  When I say that, I mean there is no wind, no breeze.  The circle of mountains surrounding the area act like an oven - cooking everyone inside.  And our air conditioner didn't work for shit.  Nights were miserable.  I remember lying in bed sweating.  The pool was a welcome respite, whenever we couldn't make our way to the beach.  The ladies in the office were friendly and generous in offering their time to help.  It was a nice life, on the corner of Mast Blvd.

It was about this time when I really got into a site called Interpals.net.  It was a penpal site, originally developed for people to learn languages, but it grew into a cultural extravaganza.  I thought it was awesome to be able to talk to people from countries all over the world.  And because I had started writing the first Akralon book, it was an immense aid in research.

I ran into a problem, though.  I could get lots of good information from guys, but I wanted a gender-equal viewpoint.  I wanted to hear what the females had to say about life in their countries.  Unfortunately for me, most girls I told my project to, stopped responding to me.  The ex told me that I should stop talking about my project and just engage them in normal conversation - talk about life and the information would come naturally.  So that's what I did.  And she's never forgiven me since.

The female crowd responded better when I simply made conversation and asked about life in those places.  Keep in mind, I am not a flirtatious person.  Never in my conversations did I make any kind of comments or remarks that could be taken that way.  I even left my account open so my ex could read it all, if she wanted.  She did, of course.  And as soon as I landed a few actual penpals, my ex decided that it had gone too far and she needed to stop it.  She did this by sending messages to everyone, even people I hardly knew and had only talked to maybe once or twice, telling them that I was married and that they were whores for trying to steal me from her.

You can only imagine how awkward this was when I had to talk to these people after they had been harassed and accused.  Most of them had no idea what was going on or why she was messaging them. I had to explain that my ex was insanely jealous and overly suspicious of everything.  That excuse didn't lessen the awkwardness in the slightest.

Most of the people were still willing to write as internet penpals, but some people did shy away.  I had been making good progress on my book, having researched culture and mythology in at least seven different countries.  I had even been going to Borders and Barnes & Noble bookstores to find old collections of myths and legends.  Akralon was beginning to take shape.

Meanwhile, the ex was picking arguments more and more frequently, about anything and everything, and pretty much on a daily basis.  I chalked it up to pregnancy at first.  It does that, sometimes.  But as you will soon see, it wasn't the pregnancy - because she's only gotten worse ever since.

* * * * *

My work routine/schedule never changed in the 3 years I worked at SWRMC.  I got off at 3 pm every day of the week, and for the time we lived in Santee, I got home at 3:30 pm.  Every day.

I had started working there in April of 2009.  By June, my ex had already started playing games.  A lot of the time I'd be out on a ship, working an install or below deck coordinating with the navy personnel.  Below deck, cell phones usually get no signal.  Any way, she'd call in the middle of the work day and if I didn't answer, she'd wait for me to call her back and then ream me out for not being available.  What if it had been an emergency? she would say.

One particular day, I think it was July, I was carrying a 25 mm machine gun barrel across the port side of a ship when my phone started buzzing.   We brought the barrel to the aft, set it down and I called her back.  She fumed that she knew I was unreliable and if she had gone into labor (she was pregnant with Tristram) I would have been unable to help her.  She went on, talking over me, about how she just didn't feel safe having the baby without her family here since she couldn't depend on me to answer the phone when she called.   This wasn't a one time occurrence, it's just the one I remember most because I had called her back within two minutes of her call.

We had started going to  a church and joined a small group for married couples with young children.  Most of the group were navy or marine families, but not all.  We made some good connections with this group and I'm still good friends with some of them today.  For a little while, we attended kid birthday parties, church group barbecues, and had somewhat of a life.

We enrolled Justin and Gabriel in a local elementary school.  Justin joined a soccer team and even attended  a few practices.  We were in the works of getting Gabriel into a kind of hip hop dance class, too.  During all this, my wife was still picking random fights, but I dealt with it because I felt our lives were finally stabilizing.  I was out of the navy, Gabriel was off treatment, and we had a home outside of the military.

Then she started on a whole deeper level.  She would go through my wallet, looking for receipts to see if I went anywhere she didn't know about.  She'd go through my phone and my emails to see if I was talking to anyone she didn't know.  She'd even check the odometer on my car and try to calculate how many miles I'd driven.  Again, I could understand being suspicious if I had done something - anything - to provoke it.  But I hadn't.  I had no life.  I came straight home from work Every Single Day.  Not that I minded, I loved being with the kids, but geezez.

Anyway, there was one particular day when she texted me to call her at 2:55 pm - five minutes before I left work.  I figured, I'm getting ready to leave, I'll just talk to her when I get home.  Well, on the drive home, I must have heard the phone buzz from a new text at least twelve times.  As I pulled into the apartment lot, I grabbed my phone and read the messages.  They started off, Why didn't you call me?  And rapidly descended into, Who are you with?  Each message was angrier than the last.  By the end, she had said, Don't even come home, I don't want to see you.

Not wanting to deal with her, I turned around and drove to the bookstore.  I thought I'd kill a little time and maybe pick out a new book or two.  More texts came.  Where are you?  I'm calling the police!  I'm filing a missing persons report!

I realized that nothing I did would make a difference.  When she wanted to argue, she was going to argue regardless of what I said or did.  So I went home.

She had been seeing a therapist about her childhood trauma for some time, and now the therapist wanted to see me with her for a few sessions, because my ex had been complaining to her that I was living a secret life and flirting with other women.  So I agreed to go.

We also, simultaneously, began seeing a marital counseling couple through the church.

Both attempts were miserable failures.

2006 - Gabriel's Cancer

A month into boot camp, I was woken up in the middle of the night by a commander, the lieutenant and two of my RDC's.  They told me not to bother putting a uniform on and to follow them to the commander's office.  A fax had come in the night from Red Cross.  Gabriel was in the hospital.  There was something wrong with his blood.  They couldn't be certain yet, but it looked like cancer.  He was a year old.

I was allowed to call several days later and the doctors confirmed it was cancer.  Acute Lymphomic Leukemia.  Fortunately, because I had joined the Navy before the diagnosis, Gabriel's treatment would be completely covered by the military health insurance, Tricare.  For those who know anything about cancer treatment, each procedure costs between $2,000 and $8,000 and Gabriel would be having them at least once a month, sometimes two or three times.

I was thanking God for the dreams about joining the military then, let me tell you.  It didn't change my ex's perspective, though.  She continually complained that I had abandoned her.  Even when we moved to sunny South Carolina for Nuclear A-school, Power school and Prototype, living about 30 mins from the beach, she never stopped complaining.

For almost two years we lived there, in a nice little military house.  We found a church, met the helpful staff of the Medical University of South Carolina, and explored the surrounding beaches and water parks.  We had our daughter Addy there.  For a short time, I actually thought our life would be a success story.  For a short time...

When I graduated from NPTU  (prototype) in Goose Creek, SC, I was given the CO's professionalism award.  They select one student from each group for the award, so it's not that big of a deal.  But I think in my case, it was given mainly for juggling a brutal 12 hour rotating shift schedule in an extremely demanding and stressful environment with my son dying of cancer in the background.

The hours spent in the hospital included spinal injections, red blood cell, white blood cell and platelet transfusions, and a feeding tube through his stomach.  They tried to do it through his nose, first.  Their procedure was hold him down and jam it up his nostril.  This resulted in him screaming at the top of his lungs, a bloody nose, and Gabriel vomiting repeatedly on himself as they pushed it down his throat.  He was red-faced and shrieking the entire time.  Afterward, they did an x-ray and found out that the tube "wasn't in right" and they'd have to take it out and put it back in again.  I said No.  Just do the stomach surgery.

You see, when adults have cancer and start withering away, they know they still have to eat.  Small children, however, don't.  Without food, the body stops regenerating and even stops growing.  Gabriel was paper thin and deteriorating fast.  So they put a tube through his stomach.  It hung out like the headphone connector to an I-pod, dangling there all day and worrying me that it might snag on something.  We had to hook it up at night and wake up every two hours throughout the night so the pump could push this milk-like nutrient mix into him - while he slept.

When the immune system is down, even a slightly high fever can kill.  So we were under doctor's orders to bring him to the hospital every single time his temperature rose over a certain number.  I can't remember, but I think it was 102.  No "quick run" to the hospital lasted less than six hours.  At any rate, the point is, my average day consisted of twelve plus hours in military school followed, almost every other day by six plus hours in the hospital.  The only days off were between rotated shifts, (like when your hours changed from a 12 hour day to a 12 hour night).  But I still managed to stay on the fast track and in the forefront of those who finished early.  I guess when they saw some student parents complaining they had to go home because their kid had asthma, they appreciated me not making excuses and doing my job.  It's like my RDC, Petty Officer Garcia, once said, "There are enough shitbags in the navy, that if you just do your job, you'll stand out."

Once we got to San Diego, we actually got a very nice military home in Serra Mesa - another 2 story, 4 bedroom that was even bigger than our last.  I was assigned to report to the USS Ronald Reagan, one of the newest aircraft carriers in the fleet.  For the next six or seven months, I pretty much lived on the ship (duty every 2 or 3 days), studying, training, and helping prepare for Naval Reactor's friendly visit (certifying us capable of running the reactor and the ship before we embarked on deployment).

A lot of my time at sea, Angela would send emails complaining about things that she knew I could do nothing about at the time.  I was in the middle of the ocean, after all.  If that wasn't enough, she'd go around telling people that I was off "living my dream" while she slaved away with the kids.  I made the mistake of telling one of my oldest friends, a gal from Salt Lake City that was a penpal since grade school, a little about my situation.  When she tried to be a friend and tell me I could use her ear whenever I needed, that was apparently crossing the line.  Angela would later hack into my email, print out the conversation, and read it to the therapist with her own bitterly jealous inflection, in attempt to prove that my friend, who was happily married with a kid, was secretly trying to steal me away from her.  Right.

After repeated issues with Gabriel's health, my division began advising me to seek a humanitarian reassignment to shore duty while my son finished his chemotherapy.  I will always respect a good amount of the sailors for that.  With the exception of a sadistic and narcissistic masterchief, I had everyone's cooperation and blessing.  Well, there was one commander who had a daughter that had endured an even worse form of Leukemia - type AML, that infects the bone marrow.  Fortunately, she came through.  His intentions were noble at first - to aid me in pursuing the best course of action.  Soon, however, he started dictating to me every step of what I was supposed to do for my son and demanding I create a binder of information and report it to him.  When I didn't do that, he told me that if my son died I would never forgive myself.  I couldn't believe he said that.  That's the presumptuousness of officers, though.

Eventually I transferred to SWRMC and worked in the mail room, lol.  That is where I met the best boss I've ever known, and also experienced that last glimpse of a stable and secure life.

Arriving at SWRMC - acronym for Southwest Regional Maintenance Center (the main navy base in San Diego on 32nd street), I was sent to the mail room.  Yes, that's right.  After two and a half years of nuclear physics and electrical engineering, they sent me to the mailroom, because - well, that's where they needed a body.  Go US government.  You are so smart and on top of everything.

At any rate, I'm not complaining.  If they wanted to pay me the full pay and benefits of a nuke to sort mail, that was their prerogative.  I did it gladly.

My boss, an older black woman, introduced herself as Ms Janice and told me she would be the best boss I would ever work for.

She was right.

For about a year, I worked in this mailroom.  Ms Janice would instruct me about the different departments of SWRMC - admin, planning, shops (like guns, machines, engines and paint), finance, environmental, travel, etc.  I would do my best to talk to each individual who was selected or volunteered by their department to pickup mail.  Most of these people were very cool and extremely interesting and told me some pretty crazy stories.

Once in awhile, a balding, overweight lt. commander would try and make me do his bitch-work.  The first time I did it, no questions asked.  After all, I was enlisted and that was part of my job description - serve officers (as long as their orders were lawful).  Ms Janice, however, was not about to play that game.  She wasted no time telling these officers that I worked for her, and that if they felt they could steal me out of her office without the proper respect and tact to ask her for permission, she would simply inform the CEO that they were interfering with the system of mail delivery for the base.  God I loved her as a boss.  She really was the best.  Ms Janice had worked government for longer than most people had been in the navy.  Her husband was a retired torpedo-man chief who worked in the security office for a time before retiring again.  He was cool as hell, too.

At any rate, Ms Janice frequently stopped me on slow days and told me that I needed to spend more time with my family, especially Gabe, who was still struggling with cancer at the time, and sent me home to be with them.  When my humanitarian assignment ended, the navy told me they couldn't give me shore duty and that I would have to either go back to sea or get out of the navy.

As much as I really honestly wanted to stay in the navy (I just passed the E5 exam and was due for promotion), my wife at the time was pregnant and unable to take Gabriel to his cancer treatment.  I was the only one who knew the situation well enough to take him where he needed to go.  I couldn't leave him at that time, so I opted for the "hardship discharge".  I always hated the name, it sounded like a cop-out for people who couldn't hack it in the military.  But what else could I do?

The navy responded by telling me that I had 11 days and then I was out.  This was somewhat disturbing, because it meant that I had little more than a week to find a job, find a new home, and move all our belongings.  I was feeling a little stressed at this point.

Ms Janice, however, marched straight into the CEO's office and told him my situation and that I needed a job.  So the CEO said, OK, and called the vice president of Epsilon Systems.  He said, we have this guy that needs a job, can we help him out?  They said sure.  I started the very next day I got out of the navy.

I was so excited - it was a job with no delay.  I could barely contain myself until my break when I could call my wife to tell her the good news.  Hey, I got a job that starts the day after I get out - and it pays $23 an hour to start with government holidays and similar benefits!

Her response was, quite literally, "That's all??  Don't they know you have children??  What are we supposed to do now?!"