Never in a Million Years.

 When J would come home, things just weren't the same. It was very uncomfortable.
 One thing that J would do a lot that I felt was weird, is he was constantly going on walks. He would take the dog a lot, and would also just go alone. He would go on several walks a day. I started to wonder if he was going so that he could smoke. I didn't really smell smoke on him that often so I thought there was no way that could be it.
 He would sporadically go to counseling with me. He hated it worse every time we went. He would close up and most often wouldn't even listen to what the counselor was saying. He had it made up in his mind that he was an idiot that didn't know anything and he couldn't stand him. He eventually told me that he did smoke, but only one time and that was when he drank the one time.
 Things were just seeming to be getting worse and worse. I just didn't know what to do anymore. Why were things always so confusing? Why did I constantly live with these feelings of fear and uncertainty? As I sit here and write this, it is so obvious to me now. Hindsight right?
 At this point I was pretty sure he was lying (even though it was perfectly laid out in plain sight.). One day when he was home, I walked in our backyard and there were literally 50 or so cigarette butts in a corner of the back yard by the fence that I had never noticed before. J walked back there right after and I told him to look at all of them and wondered out loud where they came from and told him how disgusted I was. He said he was so mad that someone would do that. I knew it had to be him. The neighbors behind us were a sweet older couple that I know didn't smoke and the house next to us was a vacation home and there was rarely anyone there.
 I was starting to feel as though our marriage was completely falling apart. I just knew that even after I would try to believe and convince myself that J was being honest with me, I knew deep down that he really wasn't. I started thinking about divorce. It scared me. I NEVER thought that I would even let that cross my mind no matter what happened in our marriage. I even remember having conversations with J where we would be talking about other people going through divorce that we knew and how even if either one of us cheated on each other, we still couldn't fathom getting divorced. When I felt our marriage was hopeless,  I would shove that thought as far down in my mind as I possibly could. Even if J was lying or hiding something, we would work it out. It would be ok.
 He came home at Christmas time. He stayed for a few weeks and I thought that it was weird that he was able to have that much time off. He told me that he talked to the big boss of the company and told him that our marriage wasn't doing well. He said that the boss said to take all the time he needed because he felt that our marriage was certainly a thing that should not be put on the back burner. I was shocked that this guy would say that. Eric had worked for this company for a few years and he and Julie and even J all told me that he was the grouchiest, foul mouthed, selfish, person that would fire anyone at the drop of a hat.
 He went home a few days after Christmas. On New Years day I got a phone call. It was J telling me that he was laid off. I was sick. What were we going to do now? He wanted to just come home. I told him that he made the choice to go up there and he needed to stay up there and find another job because now he wasn't in school. I knew that if he came back here, he most likely wouldn't be able to find a decent job, and maybe not a job at all. He wasn't happy with that. It took a while, but about a month later he was hired with another company called Power Fuels. He worked there for two months. I got a text at work one day from him that said, "My boss just came to my trailer and told me that I was fired." That is all it said. I wasn't able to call or text him back right away because I was with my reading groups. I was just so worried and couldn't even focus on what I was doing. When I finally got a break, I called him and he told me that the people he worked with didn't like him because someone that they already knew tried to get his position, and when J was hired instead they were mad. So he said they basically sabotaged him so that he would be fired. I didn't feel that was really what happened, but I didn't argue with him.
 He stayed up there looking for another job. He moved to his friend's trailer. He was the friend that initially told him about North Dakota. He kept telling me that he was working with his friend. Then he told me that a lady that owned a company up there was going to hire him. He told me that he was working with her. The funny thing was I NEVER saw a paycheck. EVER. There was always a reason. She didn't get the right account number for it to be directly deposited, he had to wait a month before he would get his first check, she didn't get paid for a job and couldn't pay him til the next week. It got to the point that I was so fed up with it and knew that it was way too fishy to be the truth.
 Koleman turned 8 in January that year. Did J think he was going to baptize him? I felt that he definitely wasn't worthy. But would he think that he was? When I talked to J about it, he was planning on doing it. I was so worried. I talked to my bishop about it and he said that even if J wasn't worthy to baptize him that the ordinance would still be legitimate because Koleman was worthy, the consequence would just fall on J if he did it unworthily. Even then, I just didn't want to have him do it. I wanted it to be a special day, and as selfish as this is, I wanted to not feel yucky watching him baptize my sweet little boy KNOWING he wasn't worthy to do so. I told J that I felt it would be best that my dad baptize him. He was upset. But he didn't argue.
 In March it was our spring break. My sister lives in New Mexico and my mom invited the kids and I to go down over spring break with her to see my sister and her family. While we were there, I got a phone call one night from my counselor telling me that he just got a text from J telling him that he was going to kill himself. He had some suicidal thoughts that he told me about a few months back when I told him that I was worried about our marriage. I tried to call J and he wouldn't answer. I was scared to death. He finally answered his phone and told me that he wasn't really going to do it. My counselor told me that it was a manipulative tool that he sees a lot of addicts use.
 My eating disorder at this point was getting worse and worse. I was having a hard time eating and when I did, if I didn't voluntarily purge, I would involuntarily. My counselor said that it would be best for me to not talk to J for a while. So we rarely talked on the pone.
 He came home in May again after not being home since Christmas. I didn't want him to stay at our house. I just couldn't feel good about it. I was just at a point where it was too hard. Plain as that. Koleman was getting baptized (finally), and Addie had her annual dance review where it is a tradition for the girls to get all dressed up and have their dads escort them out as their names are announced and then they have a daddy daughter dance. Of course she was counting on J being there. I wasn't even positive when he would be coming home.
 The Sunday before the dance review, which was the coming Saturday, I got a phone call from J. He told me he just flew into Las Vegas (which is the airport that we use to fly in and out of). He said he flew home with Tyler, his friend that he was staying with in North Dakota, and that they were on their way to St.George. He said he was just going to stay at Tyler's house that night. Then he would stay at his mom's house the rest of the time he was home. That week he came and saw us after not seeing us for almost five months. I was surprised that he didn't stay very long. I thought he would want to spend more time with the kids. He came over a few times throughout the week and each time he wouldn't stay too long. He told me that he was trying to find small jobs to do while he was here to make a little money. So that was his reason for not coming to see us very often.
 I found out in the midst of all of this that the owners of the house we were renting were going to be moving back to St.George and needed us out by June first. I had a less than three weeks to pack up everything and figure out what I was going to do. One night the kids went to sleep over at my mom's so that I could work through the night trying to pack. J came over to talk to me. We had a casual conversation and at this point he said he wanted to get divorced as well. I was surprised at how quickly he changed from begging me not to, to being the one pursuing it. We just talked for a little bit and in the conversation he told me that he hoped we could still be best friends and that if I ever got married again that he would have to make sure the guy was good enough. I just felt so weird. Where was this all coming from?
 That Saturday was the dance review. I told J over and over again that he needed to be there right at six thirty because that is when they would get all the girls and their dad's lined up and ready to go. We got there at about six fifteen. Six thirty rolls around, no J. Addie starts panicking immediately. Poor girl, she is just like me. We have anxiety and worry very easily. I tried to reassure her that there was nothing she needed to worry about. He would be there. Six forty five comes. Still, no J. At this point she was in tears. I'm trying to help her not cry and ruin her makeup for the recital. I called J on his phone and he tells me not to worry he's almost there. Finally at about ten minutes to seven (when the review started) he came running in.
 He sat down the row from me during the review. I would look down at him occasionally and almost every time, he was looking at his phone, or texting someone. I was really upset. He used to LOVE to watch Addie dance. He would sit through all of her performances beaming with a huge smile on his face. Not this time.
 After the review, I didn't even see J. He was gone so fast. I didn't even know if he went and told Addie that she did a good job or anything.
 The following Thursday it was Koleman's baptism. We had to have a personal one and get special permission to have it when we did so that J could be there. The baptism was really nice and went smoothly. My dad baptized him and my brother confirmed him. It was very special, but at the same time it was very hard. J should have been doing both of those things. After the closing prayer, it was the same as the dance review, J was gone so fast I didn't even realize that he left.
 I packed up the rest of the house and decided I would just have to move into my parents once again until I could figure something else out. J wasn't there to help move when he told me he would be. He wasn't there to help pack anything but a few of his own personal things.
 He stayed for a couple of more weeks and then went back to North Dakota. It was extremely hard. I moved in with my parents and was trying to figure a lot of things out. How long would I have to be there? Did I really want to go through with this divorce? Why did J not want me anymore? How was I going to get through this?
 One night towards the end of June, I called and talked to J. He sounded terrible. It sounded like he was having a hard time breathing and he kept telling me he didn't feel very well. At this point, he didn't live in his friend's trailer anymore. He moved to some other guy's trailer so that he could work somewhere else. If this is confusing to read, it is because it was confusing to understand. Nothing really ever made sense to me so it's hard to write what was really happening with him because I, to this day, don't know what he was REALLY doing. At one point during our phone conversation, he said he felt like he was going to die. He felt terrible and then I heard a crash as if the phone fell on the ground. I kept screaming, "J!" over and over again and there wasn't an answer. I thought he had died. Finally he got back on and said "what?" I told him I needed his friend Tyler's number so that I could call him and he could go check on him. No way was he going to give it to me. He kept telling me after all of that, that he was fine. I told him that if he didn't give it to me, I would call the police so that they could go find him because I didn't know exactly where he lived, and get some help for him. That is when he consented and gave me the number.
 I called Tyler. No answer. I left a voice mail telling him that I was worried about J, that something was wrong with him, and asked if there was any way he could go check on him. A little while later, Tyler called me back. He told me he got my message and just went and checked on J. He said that he was ok, he was just drunk. What?! Drunk? Again, I convinced myself that he was telling the truth when he said he only drank one time. Tyler proceeded to tell me that there was a lot of things going on with J that he knew I wasn't aware of and that I needed to know. He said, he was drinking a lot. That he saw him drunk more than he didn't. He said that he was smoking. He said that he was taking a lot of his pain medication (when I thought for a long time now that he wasn't taking ANY). My stomach was all knotted up. This was so heart breaking. Then the last thing he told me, I literally did not believe. He told me that he thought I should know that J was communicating with another girl. Ok, no big deal it was probably nothing. He said they went to high school together but didn't really know each other because she was a couple of years younger and they connected on Facebook. Still, I felt nothing. I am pretty sure I was in shock because it still seemed like it was no big deal. The drinking, smoking, and drugs were hard to believe, but I somewhat believed it. J cheating on me. NO WAY. Not in a MILLION years. NEVER. I knew that wouldn't happen. Not J. I trusted him one billion and ten percent in that regard. I was angry at Tyler. Why would he make this such a big deal and lead me to believe it was something to worry about? He told me he was on the phone with this girl ALL the time. For hours. He said if he were me, I would go and look up our cell phone records and see for myself how often they were talking.
 I asked J about this girl. Apparently, she lived in LasVegas. He said that he put on his relationship status on Facebook that he was separated. So this girl started talking to him telling him that she had just gone through a divorce and was asking him if she could do anything for him. He told me he only talked to her a couple of times because he had a lot of questions about divorce and where she had just gone through one, she would probably know a lot of answers. I was thinking, I knew nothing about divorce either, but I didn't go ask a newly divorced guy about it. I went to an attorney, my bishop, and a counselor.
 I decided I would look up our phone records just to put my mind at rest. I pulled them up and saw that during the month of June there were a TON of calls to and from a number with a 702 area code which is a Las Vegas area code. I reluctantly called the number. No answer, but sure enough there was a voice message from a girl named Morgan (which Tyler told me that was this girl's name). No way. There were SEVERAL phone calls literally every day between the two of them. They weren't just talking about "divorce". I looked through previous months. More phone calls and TONS of texts. I finally sat one night and added up all of the minutes and texts. In a three month period of time, there were over 15,000 minutes, and over 3,000 texts between the two of them. I was beyond DEVASTATED. I called J on July 3rd. I wanted to confront him. No answer. I called over and over all day. I texted and texted. No answer. No response. I ended up calling Tyler again to see if he had talked to him. He told me he hadn't. He then said that there was more to this than he told me. He told me that when J came home in May, he was here a whole week prior to when he actually called me that Sunday telling me that he had just flown in. He said he stayed a whole week with this girl and her FOUR kids in Vegas. He then told me that while he was home, he didn't stay at his mom's the whole time like I had thought. He said that he stayed at some guy's apartment that also worked in North Dakota. He said that this guy was up there still and offered to let J stay there while he was here. He then told me that Morgan came up for a whole week and stayed with him at that apartment. I couldn't hear anymore. I couldn't. I tried calling J again. Still nothing. I looked at the phone records for the day and saw that he talked to Morgan. I actually called her. I asked her where J was and why he wasn't answering his WIFE'S phone calls. She told me that he was in a really horrible place mentally and that he was wanting to kill himself. She said he was going to check himself into a hospital. I told her how awesome it was that he would tell her and not even respond to a text from his wife. She told me she knew how I felt. I told her that in fact she did not, and hung up on her. That night, I hacked into his Facebook account. I went to the messages. I read the most disturbing messages sent between the two of them that when I was done, I felt like I needed to go confess to my Bishop the filth I had read. I dry heaved all night. I couldn't do this. I couldn't. I wasn't strong enough.

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