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.
* * * * *
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.
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