Boarding, yet again, the roller coaster of emotions.

 I am so consumed with anger today. My feelings were so stable for so long, and yet again, here I go on the emotional roller coaster. I feel hurt, then peaceful, then sorrowful, then angry. Today I just feel so much anger. SO much. Last night I had the most beautiful, amazing, opportunity to attend the first ever General Women's Broadcast for girls and women ages 8 and up with my amazing Addie girl. Why am I so angry today then? I could not get enough of the meeting, and truly did not want it to end. The talks, the music, the videos they showed, it was all so amazing. At the beginning of the meeting the general Primary President of the church, Sister Wixom, had all of the girls who were not 12 yet stand. She had them sing the first verse of "Teach Me to Walk in the Light".
                                         Teach me to walk in the light of His love,
                                         Teach me to pray to my Father above.
                                        Teach me to know all the things that are right.
                                        Teach me, Teach me, to walk in the light.
It was so precious to hear them sing. She then had the rest of the women sing to them the second verse.
                                        Come little child and together we'll learn,
                                        Of His commandments that we may return,
                                        Home to His presence to live in His sight.
                                        Always, Always, we'll walk in the light. 

Before the General Women's Broadcast

 I was just watching Addie as the girls were singing and then as we sang the second verse. I was overcome with emotion as I sat there thinking about how much she has grown, how much she has matured, how she desires so deeply to stay close to her Heavenly Father, and do all she can to do what would be in line with His commandments. Then of course my mind goes to J. He doesn't even know. He doesn't know about how she stood up to some kids that were being mean at school to a boy that has Autism. He doesn't know that she is friends with anyone and everyone regardless of how they look, what worldly materials they have, or even what religion they are. He doesn't even know how hard she has been working to improve her talent in dance and works hard everyday. He doesn't know how much she has improved at playing the violin, or that she even plays it at all. He doesn't know the pain she bottles up and the heartache she feels as he is no longer in her life. He doesn't know that her face dropped as she sat there listening to some friends talking about their dads. He doesn't know how she sobbed when she sat one night looking at a picture of him when she didn't know I was watching. He doesn't know that the confidence and happiness she once had all the time as plummeted in the last year. He doesn't see her eyes drop to the ground when she walks in and sees me crying once again. He doesn't know the responsibility she takes upon herself to try to make me happy. He doesn't know the strength she tries to have, or the happy face she puts on when I know she is battling the pain inside. He doesn't even know or give regard to the pain he has brought into her life.
   Sister Wixom said in her talk, "We are daughters of our Heavenly Father. We are covenant making women of all ages, walking the path of mortality back to His presence. Keeping covenants protects us, prepares us, and empowers us." Those words have been ringing in my mind today. He made covenants to me. He made covenants to his children. He made covenants to the Lord. He doesn't even ask about them or care to know what they are doing. He only tells me to tell them he loves them. Telling them that would almost be a slap in the face to them. Abandoning them, choosing a substance, another women and HER kids, not even caring to ever call them or even ask about them, that is love??? I know he loves them because I understand the state of mind he is in (or at least that it is a very clouded state of mind), they don't know that. They don't understand that. He was released from jail on Wednesday night. I haven't heard a word from him.
 What in the world J? Where are you for your children? They know I love them with all that I am and I would do anything to show them that, but they deserve that from their dad as well.
  J came home from North Dakota after not being home for almost 4 months. It was Koleman's baptism and Addie had her end of year dance review where the dads escort their daughters out as their names are announced. He told me he was flying into Las Vegas the Sunday before the baptism and dance review. That Sunday night he called me and told me he made it to Las Vegas. I asked him how he was getting to St.George. He told me his good friend that was the one who originally told him about the work up in North Dakota, also flew in and that he was riding home with him and just staying at his house that night. At this point, I didn't feel it was a good idea to have J stay with us at our house.
  He didn't show up to see us for a couple of days. When he came to our house, he stayed for maybe an hour at the most, after not seeing his kids for four months, and then told me he had to go because he was doing little random jobs he found on Craigslist to make some money as he was out of a job. He popped in a few more times that week, but would only stay for very short periods of time. He always had to be somewhere. I told J that I still hadn't bought Addie a dress for her review because I didn't have any money. I asked him to please help me. He told me he would make sure that she had a dress. So I took her to Kohls to try on dresses. We found the perfect one! She tried it on and looked beautiful in it! I sent a picture of her in it to him so he could see and told him how much it cost. He told me he would make sure she had it and how beautiful she looked in it. I ended up having to ask my parents to buy the dress for her. Her review came. I texted him and called him several times that day leaving voicemails reminding him that he needed to be there at 6:30 sharp to start lining up. He texted me back and told me he'd be there. Addie looked beautiful. She was so excited. We got there at about 6:20. J was not there yet. She immediately started to panic. I told her it wasn't even time yet and that it was ok. He would be there. As I was freaking out inside not knowing for sure. 6:30 came, still no J I call him. No answer. 6:40, no J. Addie comes to me in tears, "Mom, where is he? Is he not coming?" I tell her, "He'll be here sweetie of course he's coming. Maybe he just got held up in traffic somewhere" (because that is such a problem in St.George ;)). I call him again. He answers this time. "J where are you???!! Addie is in tears!" "I am almost there I'm just getting off the freeway exit", he replied angrily. Finally, 10 minutes before they were to walk out he comes running in. He had a white button up dress shirt on that was wrinkled, dress pants that were wrinkled, and hair that was long and unkempt. Luckily for me, Addie truly doesn't notice things like that. He ran to find her. During the review, he sat way down the row from me. I looked over several times to see him texting or doing something on his phone, not even paying attention to her dances. What has happened to him? I kept thinking. This is not the same daddy that wouldn't take his eyes off of her in all of her other recitals, sitting there the whole time with the biggest smile on his face as he watched her dance. I would watch Addie's face as she was performing. I noticed a couple of times her looking over at him. She wanted so badly for him to just show her how much he loved her and how important she was to him. Both times she looked at him, he was texting on his phone. The next week it was Koley's baptism. J came a little before. He even sat next to us. During the talks and even during a video presentation I made of Koley, I noticed he would continually check his phone. He didn't seem to be even paying attention to what was going on. After we sang the closing song and had the prayer, I didn't even see J. He left. I didn't know if he even said anything to Koley. J went back up to North Dakota a couple of weeks later. We saw him only a handful of times. He at this point, said that he was working for some older couple that owned a lot of land up there. He helped them take care of it and maintain it. I never saw a dime from that job. But that was supposedly the reason he was back up there, beside the fact that I initially told him after he was fired from his second oil field job, that he chose to go up there, and he needed to stick it out because now that he had quit school, there was definitely not money in St.George for him to make to provide enough for our family. Our anniversary was on June 8th. I received a text from him telling me happy anniversary and that he loved me. He sent me the song "I Won't Give Up" by Jason Maraz. I felt like maybe things would be ok. I didn't know exactly what was going on with him, but that gave me hope. A few weeks later, it was a Sunday night. Two days before the fourth of July. I called J to see how he was doing. He was breathing shallow, and kept saying something was wrong. I tried to get him to give me his friend's number that I knew was a good guy, so that he could go check on him. "No, you don't need to call him", he kept telling me. At one point he dropped the phone. I kept yelling, "J! Are you ok?! PLEASE ANSWER ME!!" He didn't answer for what seemed like hours, but probably really only a minute. Finally he got back on sounding like he could barely catch his breath. "J, if you don't tell me Tyler's number, I'm calling 911." That did it, he finally gave me his number. I called him immediately and he didn't answer. I left a voicemail telling him what was happening and asked if he could please go check on J. Not ten minutes later, Tyler calls me. "I just want you to know that I got your voicemail, and was close to J's trailer so I went over there before I called you. He is ok. He is just drunk." Oh boy. I was so relieved he was ok, but drunk? He told me he didn't drink. It was only a couple of times. Then Tyler says, "I have been wanting to call and talk to you for quite a while, but J will never give me your number. Do you have a minute?" I told him I certainly did. He proceeded to tell me that he was extremely worried about J. J had stayed in his trailer with him for a while and while he was there, he was constantly drinking and going to bars. He told me that he was also taking a ton of his pain meds, which J told me he wasn't and hadn't taken any for a very long time. He didn't go into great detail with anything, just told me the main things. He then said, "One more thing I really don't want to have to tell you but you really need to know." Oh no, I thought, what more could there be?! "J has been communicating with a girl." Ok, I thought, it's probably just some friend or something innocent. He would NEVER cheat on me. I know that. "Who is she?" I asked. "She is some girl that he went to high school with. Her name is Morgan. She lives in Las Vegas." Again, I thought well that is ok, he just knew her from high school, no big deal right? I was trying desperately to convince myself it was nothing. "They talk on the phone constantly. One night, when he was staying in my trailer, it was about 11 o clock. I heard him on the phone with her talking and laughing, having a good time. I went to bed so I could get up early to go work. I woke up about 6 that morning and he was on the phone with her STILL." What? Now my heart began to sink to my toes. "What does he talk to her about?", I asked him. "I don't really know. He is usually very secretive when they talk and tries to be as far away from me as he can." With all of that being said, I still wasn't able to fully believe J would EVER even think about cheating on me. Then Tyler goes on, "So when J came home for your son's baptism, I don't know if you know, but he stayed a full week with her in Las Vegas before he came up to St.George." I dropped the phone. I couldn't even think straight. No, he has to be wrong. I picked the phone back up, "No, J came home and stayed with you, remember?" He kind of sighed and said, "That is what he told you. My wife does not like J at all and does not want him around me. She will not even let him in our home, let alone stay overnight there." I couldn't hear anymore right then. "Thank you so much for telling me Tyler. I really need to go now." I hung up with him and just sat there in complete shock. I didn't cry, I didn't move. Finally I went in on the computer. I pulled up our cell phone records. I saw a lot of the same phone number with a Las Vegas area code. I reluctantly called the number. It rang. My heart was racing. It kept ringing. I then hear, "Hey this is Mo, I can't talk right now so leave a message." Whew! She didn't answer, but it was confirmed that this number was in fact hers. I looked at the many, many, many phone calls and texts between them. There were pages and pages. I saw that they began talking/texting in April. I then added up all of the minutes and all of the texts. In a 3 month period of time, they talked over 15,000 minutes, and sent over 3,000 texts, many of which were multimedia texts. I felt like my heart was going to stop. I confronted J about her. He said that he had posted on Facebook that he was possibly going through a divorce and she commented and said that she had just gone through one and if he needed anything he could ask her. Ok, well first of all, why would you post that on Facebook, secondly if you had questions about divorce or needed someone to talk to, you seek out the proper resources like I had been doing; my Bishop, a counselor, and an attorney. I kept saying there was no way they could have spent that much time just talking about divorce. He got angry, and said that it really was. I asked again, "J, what is really going on? What are you really talking to her for?" He yelled, "ABOUT DIVORCE!" As crazy as it sounds I convinced myself to believe him a little bit. I guess solely for the fact that I wanted so badly for it not to be true that he would ever do this to me. The next day, I called him. No answer. I called him again a little later. Still no answer. I texted. No response. I called and texted throughout the day. Nothing. What was going on? Was he ok? What if something really happened? I called Tyler. He was working on a job site in Montana and wasn't anywhere near J. I found out in that conversation with him some more information. He told me that when J was home for the baptism and review that he stayed at some guys apartment that also worked in North Dakota when he was home because that guy wouldn't be there and said he was free to stay there. He then told me that Morgan came and stayed a whole week with him at that apartment. I wanted to die. The next morning was the fourth of July. My all time favorite holiday. Not that year. In fact it is now a holiday that I have anxiety over every time it comes around because of what happened that day. I still couldn't get a hold of J, so I decided that I should check the phone records to see if he had communicated with anyone, at least then I would know he was ok. Sure enough the last person he talked to was her. He declined all of my calls, ignored all of my texts, but he talked to her several times that day. I don't know what got in me, and I still can't believe I did this, but I texted her. I said: This is Andrea Hadley. I am J's wife. I haven't been able to get a hold of him and I checked our phone records and saw that he had talked to you. Can you please tell me if you know anything about what is happening. No response for about ten minutes. My phone rings. It is her. Reluctantly I answer. "Hi, Andrea?" "Yes." "Hi, yes I did talk to J yesterday. He was not doing well at all and was in a very dark place." "Who are you and why is my husband even talking to you?" "I am just someone he went to high school with. We have just become very good friends. He was talking very suicidal yesterday." "So he talks to some girl he went to high school with about it, and won't even talk to his own wife? That is not ok!" "I know. I know it doesn't sound good. I know the pain you must be feeling." I interrupted, "NO YOU DON'T KNOW!!!" I hung up. How dare she? I hated her. I hated J right then. What was happening? I didn't understand. I hid in my room the rest of the day and wanted to die. My parents took my kids to all of the fourth of July festivities that normally I absolutely loved and looked forward to each year. At about four that afternoon, I get a call from some weird hospital saying, "We have a patient (I then heard J say "J") that would like to speak to you. Press one to accept, 2 to decline, etc." I pressed one. "J? I don't even know what to say. I just talked to your friend Morgan. You are a liar! How could you do this to me? Who are you? What happened to you? You are a liar!" He yells back, "ANDREA! Did you not hear where I even am? I am in a hospital in a psychiatric unit. I am trying to get help. I was about to kill myself last night. I DON'T need this crap on top of it!" I once again let him fool me into believing I was the bad guy. That I had no right to even question the fact that my husband was having an affair. I told him I was sorry for yelling. He was in that hospital for about one week. It was when the nightmare began, and never seemed to end. One night soon after he was released from that hospital, I hacked into his Facebook account. I was going to find proof of this. He couldn't make me think I was crazy anymore. They had something going on and I was going to figure out what. I did it! I can't even tell you to this day how I did it, but I was able to get into his account. I pulled up his private messages. The first messages I saw there was a picture of Addie he had sent to her the night of her review. How dare he?! That was MY daughter. She had no right to even see her. I then saw messages that were sent back and forth the same time and date of her review! He was texting HER when Addie was dancing!! I then read a message from her to him about how she had a dream about Addie and Koleman. I was beside myself. THOSE ARE MY INNOCENT PRECIOUS CHILDREN! YOU ARE HAVING AN AFFAIR WITH THEIR FATHER! YOU DO NOT HAVE ANY RIGHT TO EVEN KNOW THEIR NAMES!!! The next messages I read were so disturbing, I literally started dry heaving. Sexually explicit messages. I immediately called J. It was two o clock in the morning and I didn't care. I told him what I had found. The first thing he says (or yells rather), "I can not believe you got into my personal messages! How dare you get into my account!" Really J, how dare I? How dare YOU? I started sobbing uncontrollably as he yelled at me for a good five minutes. I eventually just hung up. I turned on conference talks from lds.org so that I could get the disgusting messages out of my mind somehow. I sat and tried to listen to the words of the talks as I was sobbing. I continued to dry heave. I laid on the bathroom floor next to the toilet sobbing. I finally stopped dry heaving. I went in on the living room couch. Still sobbing. My dad woke up from my crying. He came in and I could barely get out any words. All I could get out was, "Please, blessing." He held me tight while I cried and gave me a blessing that I didn't even hear the words to.
 I have been on this roller coaster of emotions for a solid three years now. I have gotten off the ride for longer periods of time and have been able to truly feel happy a lot of times. I am again, back and forth. SO MUCH has happened between the night of finding those messages. I tried so hard to save our marriage. I love him so much. The real him. But this person he is now, I have been so angry at today. I just want to scream at him. I just want him to wake up and show even a little emotion or regard for the pain not only for me, but mostly my kids. Anger is in no way a good emotion to harbor. That is when I turn to this blog. I just need to write. The more I write the better I feel.
   Listening to that beautiful broadcast was so uplifting and just what I needed. Today, I have let Satan take over my thoughts again. I have let him put negative, angry, hurt thoughts and memories in my mind, making me forget the great spirit and feeling I had as I sat in that meeting and for the rest of the night last night. I need to focus on that. I need to remember that I am a daughter of my Heavenly Father Who loves me! What a blessing to know that! He does love me. He loves EVERY single one of us. He loves J.