Tag: divorce

I’d been meaning to write for a few days now, but since my Desktop computer is still ridiculously slow, and I can’t seem to remember my password for WordPress, and I’m using my iPad as a laptop but my keyboard died (I literally hadn’t charged it in like, 3 years), and I couldn’t find one of those old-connection chargers—I didn’t update. (Wasn’t THAT just the longest run-on sentence in the world?)

Anyway. I had my follow-up appointment with my ortho last Wednesday and of course it took 4 hours. Linda is a saint for sitting with me that long, but thank God she does ‘cause she makes it fun. So when we’ve almost been sitting there for 4 hours and the doc finally comes in to talk to me, he already seems annoyed. He says, “You were supposed to come in 2 weeks ago, what happened?” I said, “Oh, I had to call and cancel my appointment because I had Covid.” And he snaps, “Well, I didn’t know that.” You would think the woman I spoke to would have made a note or something about why I rescheduled. 🙄

He goes on and says I should already be out of the boot. I’m shocked and mumble, “But I’ve been using it for the 2 weeks and I just started putting weight on it. I can stand, but I can’t walk on it at all.” He closes his eyes and says, “Well you need to lose the crutches.” My mouth drops open and I ask when I’m starting physical therapy. He says he’ll get his Worker’s Comp girl to give me information and that I’ll be attending 3 times a week. So to further annoy the man, I ask if I can go to my old physical therapy place because well, it kinda takes a really long time here for follow-ups, and how long would it take at their therapy? He says about an hour or 2 (bullshit) and that he’s in charge of my surgery and after-care so I would be attending physical therapy at their office. 😡

I’ve been putting weight on my foot more and more and have been “walking”…with my crutches. There is NO WAY that I can make my brain communicate with my foot and leg and move it forward. And when I do, I feel like I’m going to collapse from the shocking pain I feel in my heel and the right side of my ankle, where the scar is.

I should be starting physical therapy tomorrow—with my old therapy place. I asked around and I can choose where I want to go so *hmph*. I have to admit though, I’m terrified of what exercises I’m going to have to do. Last time was just sprains and strains. This time I actually broke something and have metal in my leg and need to learn to walk all over again 🙁 .

And speaking of learning again—I’ll have to force myself to eventually learn to date again because Jorge and I are completely DUNZO. Not even sure if I ever mentioned that we were trying to “work things out” again but that was a total flop. I think the holidays made us lonely and nostalgic and it was convenient to spend the holidays together with the kids and our families. But spending a week together just showed me we really don’t belong together. Even for Alaethia’s birthday last week: he was just in such a rotten mood and told me the ugliest things. The one that stuck with me the most and I keep repeating in my head when he randomly texts and starts being “nice” is, “I never should have married you” and other horrible things he said about why we got married. So I was a bitch and talked shit back. Of course before the night was over he texted to say he made a fool of himself and he was sorry but he couldn’t stop himself 🙄 . But it was fine. It needed to happen. I don’t want to waste anymore time being unhappy or on edge. For now, I’m concentrating on the kids, work and just living day by day.

Eenan and Alaethia tested positive for Covid on Friday. Mary picked us all up and we went to get PCR tests done. I was supposed to go out on Friday night but decided I should probably quarantine. Again. We get our results on Wednesday. They called us today and scared the shit out of us saying that all 4 of us were positive. I was freaking out; my hypochondria was acting up and making me feel like I was having heart palpitations and trouble breathing, but I’m sure it was a mild panic attack LOL. They called back to tell us it was a mistake—we were negative on the rapid tests. Jesus Christ.

Anyway. It’s almost midnight and I have to work in the morning so I shall go to sleep.

Since the last time I wrote, there have been several major changes in my life.

First, Jorge and I called it quits AGAIN sometime at the end of March 2021 (This was after the first time I found out he cheated with that little idiot, Sabrina, back in March of 2020). One of the conditions of getting back together back in November/December 2020 was him seeing a therapist for his mental health/anger issues and getting meds prescribed. And he did go—once. I could always tell when he had stopped taking them because he turned into a short-tempered jerk. Any little thing would set him off. It wasn’t long before he’d start calling the kids and I “worthless” because he wasn’t happy with something. And even though we were “working things out” he still lived at his house with his kids and I lived at my house with mine. He would sleep over every-so-often, or I would sleep over at his house. And then we would argue. He would take me out to eat and we’d still bond over playing Pokemon Go…until we would argue again. He’d storm off to his house and I’d fester in my anger at mine.

One day in late February 2021, we were up for a home inspection by my landlord. The house, which by this point I’ve lived at for 10 1/2 years, needed the doors and trim painted and I needed help organizing. Jorge said he would help me and of course the kids would help me. Even though I knew better, I made the mistake of waiting for him. But I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. That entire week, when I would try to paint after work, he’d want to go out to eat since we were “kid-less” and he would say, “What are you worried about, I’m going to help you on the weekend.” Something deep down inside kept bugging me about him saying that. I knew he wouldn’t.

Friday comes and he has to work late. *Insert facepalm here*. He doesn’t get here till 11pm and by then he just wants to go to bed because he’s tired. He says we’ll wake up early and go to Walmart (because I needed paint rollers). Our alarm goes off the next morning and I try waking him. He stirs and mumbles something about going to Stripes and getting breakfast tacos…and falls asleep again. Well, if he’s gonna sleep, I’ll sleep too. I set the alarm for another hour and go back to sleep. When he doesn’t wake up the 2nd and 3rd time I try waking him, I finally shake him awake because I’m panicking about the time; the day is going fast. His bi-polarism causes him to wake up in awful moods when he’s not medicated (pretty much how I was greeted every morning that we were together for 10 years). He storms around, bitching that the kids and I should have started early. I tell him, “But you told me all week you were going to help me. I waited for you like you told me to!” As we walk down the hallway to leave to Walmart, the dogs hear us and lose it because they want to go outside. He yells at Alaethia to wake up and take the dogs out and proceeds to talk about how lazy she is. I’m swallowing my anger by now. Then he’s complaining that he doesn’t have pants and he can’t believe he’s going in his sweatpants. I tell him we’ve gone to Walmart in pj’s plenty of times and that I don’t like how he spoke to Alaethia and he proceeds to call her lazy again, plus my other 2 kids. And I snap, “You are talking about ALL the children, including yours, right? Because yours are just as lazy!” And he says I need to get over it and that he doesn’t even LIVE HERE so why should he help me?? Then he says, “You know, you’re right— this shit really isn’t working.” And I said, “You leave this time and THAT’S IT! Don’t come begging back!” And he says, “Oh, I won’t, don’t worry!” He marches back in to get his things and drives off.

I’m so angry I stomp inside and start bawling from sheer frustration because how am I supposed to do this on my own?? But my gals came in clutch: Sally, Kary and Martha came over to help in the evening, thank God. Mario was coming to pick up the kids and starts helping, too. We order pizza and have wine and everyone is helping paint and organize. Somehow, we get everything painted and spic-n-span by the time the landlord shows up the following day. I was so grateful for everyone. Jorge called later that first night when his episode was over and asked if I needed help, way after the fact, mind you. But I was livid. I didn’t want his help at all.

A couple of weeks pass and he’s once again calling, asking to see me, or to have dinner, and so on. By this time, I’ve already replaced the TV and sofas that he took in October 2020, when he moved into the house he and Javi are renting. I had money saved and I felt like a strong, independent woman who don’t need no man! But he still calls. Still wants to work things out. Still takes us to the beach, twice. I told him he needed to be on his meds because I knew he wasn’t. I was extremely skeptical and still didn’t trust him after the whole cheating-with-Sabrina thing.

Then he gets this career opportunity right before my birthday to be the General Manager for either 1) a brand-new restaurant opening up in our city, or 2) the GM for 2 other already-established restaurants in our city. Let’s just say that I had no idea that choice #1 was the type of restaurant where the women are VERY scantily clad. He painted a pretty picture of it, saying that it was like a Hooters. Ok. I could handle Hooters, I guess. He kept saying he didn’t know if he should take the job because he would be away on training for a month and he didn’t know if his mental health would stay intact if he was so far away and alone, and he knew I wouldn’t like the idea of the new restaurant. I told him not to base his decision on what I would think, because obviously we weren’t doing very well and I wasn’t about to be blamed for him turning down a “good opportunity”. But deep down, I knew I wouldn’t be okay with that place. Especially after a quick Google search.

So we spend time together here and there. He’s trying his best. But I’m still keeping my guard up.

April 13th is Sally’s birthday. She was feeling down so I gathered up the girls, a cake and some flowers and we had a little get together for her at The Oak Bar.

My birthday is on April 14th. When the day comes around, we get as many of the kids together as we can. We’re not doing too good with money but I had some saved up and John had sent me $200 so I took myself and the family out :). Things still felt awkward to me, though; it just felt like everything was…forced? And he’s in a bad mood, like always, but he was making an effort to keep it at bay. And he brought me flowers.

We decide on Cheddar’s and have a pretty good evening with the kids.

It was a great evening. I was feeling pretty darn blessed by the end of the night.

We (Jorge and I) celebrated my birthday at Suerte Uptown with Martha and Rudy that Friday. It was Selena-themed! Love those events! Sally and Kary didn’t go because they didn’t want to have anything to do with Jorge, which I’d grown used to, but I was also a little butthurt, not gonna lie.

We had a great time, we even danced. Jorge was due to leave to training the day after and he wanted to go out one more time before he left.

The next day Jorge got ready to go and Martha and I took an impromptu trip to San Antonio because she wanted to go to IKEA. She was a couple months pregnant and had terrible morning sickness plus motion sickness and got sick several times on the way over. I felt so bad for her. But we eventually made it and she felt better on solid ground, heh.

For the rest of the month while Jorge was away in Dallas for training, he would call and send photos. One of the days towards the end of his stay in Dallas we have a serious talk about working on getting back together. He would take his meds. I would work on forgiving him. He would move back home.

But once he got back from training mid-May, he was working long hours setting the restaurant up, hiring servers and training staff for the grand opening on May 31st. We took the kids to the soft opening and I was appalled. John went with us. The chicks were basically wearing thongs. I knew I wasn’t going to like this at all. Not because I’m a prude, but because I knew my husband.

Jorge sleeps over at the house several nights out of the week, but he goes home to his house on some nights to check on the boys and Javi, and to make sure they haven’t destroyed the house. There was one time when he was sleeping over at my house that he left at 3am because there was some “emergency”. My womanly instincts didn’t buy that shit. He had even started taking calls outside when we were together so I wouldn’t hear whom he was talking to. Then, not too long after, he starts calling after work saying he’s working super late and he’s the only one available. Even though my house is way closer to the restaurant, he makes it seem like he’s being thoughtful and is just going to go home because he doesn’t want to wake me up since he’d get here so late. I start getting Wing Stop vibes—back when he still worked in San Antonio and he wasn’t coming home anymore because he had started cheating with that little bitch, Sabrina.

In mid-July, Briana is packing up the house in Austin and moving back to the Valley. We decide to make a weekend of it. My girls and I would help her move and we’d all hang out. I tell Jorge about it and he isn’t going at first, then says he’ll join us. On Friday afternoon, as we’re getting ready to go, he is BITCHING that we’re running late and he has to go to a storage unit to rent for his mom (because he waited on his ass all damn day instead of going—but it was my fault, don’t you see). We get to the storage place and he says we’re super late and he’s not going to get the unit for this lady and we’re going to arrive super late and that EVERYTHING IS MY FAULT. The girls and I were thinking, WTF is his problem?? If I didn’t know any better I would have said it was drug withdrawals, or maybe he’d had a fight with one of his hoes, but who knows.

The entire 6 hours over there is brutal. He’s just in a terrible mood and at one point during the evening he starts telling me off. The girls are in the back, scared, and Emily even starts recording—just in case. How awful is it that she’s a little kid and she’s scared enough of his rage that she feels the need to record?? He’s going off on me and I told him to shut the fuck up because he’s showing my daughters exactly how a man SHOULDN’T be speaking to his spouse and he needed to stop being an asshole.

We get to the house and he acts like absolutely everything is peachy in front of his mom and sister. She knows otherwise, of course. As they’re moving things the next day, he whines and complains about how they shouldn’t have asked him to come if Briana and Dinah didn’t like how he did things. Briana’s like, Um, nobody invited you LOL.

So it was a miserable time. The girls and I even left earlier than he did so we didn’t have to deal with him.

About a week goes by and every single time we talk, we argue. We can’t just be civil. Dinah and Briana and the kids are staying at Jorge and Javi’s while they find a suitable apartment. Briana and Jorge are fighting all the time and I tell her that she and the kids can stay with me and my kids at my house if she wants. Then, on a Wednesday morning, I get a text from Briana asking if she can stay with us after all because she doesn’t want to be there anymore and she has to tell me something.

Again—my spidey-womanly senses are a-tingling. It’s about Jorge. He did something, I know it. I’m on pins and needles until she finally calls. She sounds exasperated and angry and tells me that he took a tall, really young girl to the house and took her to his room. And that they’d been having pool parties with a girl named Daisy (who ends up becoming Justin’s fiancé later on). And that Jorge is just partying it up till all hours of the night acting like he’s a teenager himself. She said there’s beer bottles piled high in the bins. And he was waking everyone up making the chick breakfast (or dinner) at 5am.

I’m livid. I knew it the entire time. I looked through Facebook photos of the shitty “bar & grill” he worked at and I knew exactly who the little slut was. Some little bitch named “Steph”, who had JUST TURNED 19!! We have kids older than that! I was so disgusted by him. The girls were disgusted. And yet, he starts calling me a couple months later, after I broke my foot, asking if I need help, about my love life and telling me about his and that little whore. He come around acting as though we’re the best of friends. He ends up trying to weasel his way back in, but I’m pretty sure it’s because he was broke (oh, he ended up still owing me tons of money) and I was going to remove him and the boys from my health insurance in November and he wasn’t going to want to pay me if I kept them on. BUT. Needless to say, I stupidly gave it one more time—mostly because I needed the help. But he was still talking to her, I later found out. Still talking to several chicks and on Alaethia’s birthday, as we drove to pick up the Olive Garden order she requested, told me he didn’t want to be responsible for kids or me or anyone or anything. He just wanted to “do him”. Told me he regretted ever marrying me and that was it, the last straw. I stopped answering his calls when he called to say he “missed his best friend,” which is what he always said when he was feeling lonely and having regrets. I told him he couldn’t have it both ways. It took me a bit to get over it, especially because I couldn’t believe he did this to me AGAIN. But that was it. I was done. I wasn’t going to be stupid anymore. I’d wasted enough time.

I’ve had almost 3 months to cool off from my latest earth-shattering drama. I mean, “cool off” is quite an understatement, because I’m still incredibly livid. I guess you can say: I don’t know how to start.

For the 2nd time in my life, even before hitting the age of 40, I am going on my possible 2nd divorce.

I knew the move Jorge was making to San Antonio in 2018 was going to destroy us. Either he’d fuck up, or I would. But the money was amazing, he said. The kids would be 100% taken care of, and shit: if things worked out–eventually I could quit my job and we could work together!

I didn’t like the idea from the beginning and I even remember telling him, as he stood with his back against the sink in the kitchen and I stood directly in front of him, that I felt like history was repeating itself. I felt everything that happened with Mario at the end of our marriage was happening to us now. Except for the cheating part, of course, but everything else matched to the “T”.

He said it would be 1 year at least that we’d make these sacrifices and be distant, but we’d get to visit all the time!

That was ok while it lasted; the little weekend trips to San Antonio and to visit the in-laws in Austin. Less than a year later he wasn’t getting paid the way he was supposed to and missing one paycheck and then another and then it was around the 3rd missed/late check that completely screwed us up and turned our bills upside down. It was impossible to catch up after that. He told me to quit paying our credit cards (which were actually MY credit cards since the majority were under my name) and our cars were about 2 months late. My car almost got repo’d once. But we worked together and thanks to his mom and my brother, we were able to stay afloat due to borrowing money from them. Along with money troubles come frustrations and fights, and we had a lot of those. A lot of the fights had to do with how hard/much he worked just to come home and find the house in shambles (I’m sorry if my depression due to my husband being away didn’t exactly make me want to clean and tidy up the house). Or how the kids and I were supposed to wait on him hand and foot just because he did work so hard and he was away from home and had just driven for 4 hours and why the fuck do I come home then?? I heard so much of how mediocre I was that I began to resent him (just like I did with Mario, because he did the same thing). The worst was when he had attitude about the kids–man, that pissed me off.

Refresher: January 6, 2019 is when Jorgie and Justin moved in with us and basically, I became their sole parent since Jorge wasn’t here and they weren’t visiting their mom for a few months. Add to that the stress of basically being a single mom, wanting to start school (because hearing how worthless I was had really taken its toll on my self-worth) and missing Jorge and just feeling overall lonely–and my anxiety and depression skyrocketed.

I had originally gone in February 2019 for a refill for my topical acne medication and to see what else I could do because my cystic acne had come back with a vengeance and my period was on the fritz again. I walked in for acne meds and walked out with anti-depressants and pills to help me sleep because I was once again clamping down on my jaws and teeth from stress.

The meds caused me to become lethargic and I slept every chance I got (which is really unlike me). I stopped running, I stopped my Keto lifestyle because I just didn’t care anymore and gained 20 lbs. in 6 months. Then I started drinking to help me just get through the evening alone after the kids were in bed. My depression got worse, especially while on my period. I started becoming unbearable even at work when I was on my period (snapping at the guys, even if they did deserve it sometimes) and cried randomly when I was on one of my “lows”. The worst part was: once it started it wouldn’t stop.

Jorge started working as the District Manager for a popular restaurant in June of 2019. Only…it wasn’t here at home, or even the same county. It was in San Antonio again. He did his training in the Valley for 2 months and then around August he took off to San Antonio, a couple of weeks earlier than he was to, originally. Again he said it would be for just a while and one day he could transfer.

Jorge would come home for 2-3 days a week at first. Then 2-3 days every two weeks. Then every three weeks. Other times he’d be gone three weeks and he’d say he was going to come home for a whole week because it was so unfair how long and hard he was working and he was going to put his foot down! but he would still only be here 2-3 days and then some emergency would happen and he would leave.

We went from texting our updates to each other throughout the day, talking several times a day, to texting sparsely, to speaking on the phone only once before bed and then…2-5 texts a day and no phone call at night. I knew by then either we’d been apart so long that we’d gotten comfortable with the distance or something was going on. By this time, I’d become so numb and so depressed that I just needed to make it through the day. Go to work, pick kids up from practices, spend time with the kids and make dinner, then watch TV for a bit with them and go to bed, then do it all again.

After Christmas 2019 (one of the worst Christmases on record) he came home briefly and left before New Year’s Eve. But not before asking to borrow my Audi, and he would leave me his Mercedes for me to use meanwhile. I told him how going from an SUV to the car made me feel SO paranoid to drive, I didn’t like that I couldn’t connect my Bluetooth correctly, and the seats were messed up and uncomfortable. And what did he want my car for anyway?

He snapped. “It’s my car. I PAY FOR IT. And I want to take it. You’re being really spoiled right now.”

So that was that. Like always, the big man reminded me that I couldn’t afford anything. I conceded and he took the Audi.

Alaethia had just gotten over Flu B over the Christmas holiday and now poor Justin and Jorgie had it. I got out of work on New Year’s Eve and went straight home to pick up the boys and go to the night clinic. My biologicals were with Mario for New Year’s Eve this year, so he picked them up. Jorge was going to come home that evening so we could celebrate the incoming new year together, but excuse after excuse kept coming.:

They were “understaffed”.

They were “swamped”.

They were “getting tons of orders for New Years, WTF??”

“Emergencies” kept happening. And so on.

By 10pm he’s telling me he won’t be home till the next day and he “felt bad” and texted, “Are there any friends you can go out with?” Alarms went off. Typical cheating man thing to say. Mario did that too. I replied, “All of my friends are with their families, nobody is going to meet me to party and I’m not inviting myself anywhere.”

I was supposed to make shrimp cocktail to celebrate the New Year and I’d gotten us some Rancho La Gloria drinks to celebrate together on the patio, the way we used to, just us, when we first moved into the house.

The boys of course were miserable and stayed in bed. I watched TV with Bentley on the sofa. That’s how I brought in the new year: alone.

He doesn’t come home the next day, he comes home on the 2nd. There’s something awkward about him, but I don’t know what. Everything was just off, and he was in a bad mood, as usual. Javi came down, too, and was going to stay with us for a while. I finally make the darn shrimp cocktail, and I made way too much since I’m used to making enough food to feed a small army.

On Saturday morning Jorge and I go for breakfast buffet at Taco Ole. It almost felt like the old days! I’m feeling lovey and giddy. We’re almost done eating and he’s texting on his phone and announces that he’s going to drop me off and get ready to go. I said, “Go? Where?” He said, “I thought I told you, Princess, I could only stay till today. I absolutely have to go back tonight. It’s a Saturday and I have to close. I should have actually left last night.”

I couldn’t believe it. I just stared at him. I almost wanted to just start crying right there in the restaurant in front of everyone. It was so weird and disconcerting that he was just so used to not being home anymore. I always knew he was a hard worker. But this was something else.

He didn’t come home for his birthday on January 13th.

He did stop by on the way back from a meeting with his two co-workers on the 15th and I met them at Rudy’s. Something was weird about his co-worker, Christina. She couldn’t look me in the eye for a while and it was odd. He said, “She’s just weird like that.”

Justin borrowed my car to go see his girlfriend the first weekend of February. On the Monday after that weekend, as the girls and I were getting into the car to start the day, Emily opens the back driver door and says, “Hey, who’s phone is this?”

There’s a burgundy-colored LG phone with a really cracked screen on the seat. I can still turn it on and it says “Aweh Brother Love” and has 2 babies on the lock screen and a Gmail email address that begins with “Sabrina”. I had a weird feeling but I told the girls, “Ahh, Justin must have had a ton of kids in my car. I’ll ask him after school.”

I picked Alaethia up after school and I’d forgotten about the phone until I saw Justin at home. I ask him about it and he says, “Oh, Nailea found the phone in between the seats. She thought it was mine. I don’t know who’s it is so I just threw it back there.” I said, “Seriously? You didn’t have more kids in the car? I automatically thought you had tons of girls in the car.”

So. I text Jorge and ask him if he knows who it belongs to. He calls me immediately and says, “Princessss. Why, when something happens you automatically think it’s me?” I said, “Um, you were the only other person to use my car. Justin already said it’s not his or his friends’.” He said, “I don’t know why it’s there then, doesn’t make sense.” I seriously and irrationally start thinking, what if someone tried breaking into the car and they left it? What if it was a homeless person while he was in San Antonio? I didn’t know what to think anymore and I felt crazy. Justin and I start looking for that email and search through Facebook. There are lots of people with her name. I’m not sure what to look for. Weirdly, Justin gets a Snapchat request from someone with the exact name. He sends a message but never receives anything. I send an email to the email address and never received anything either.

Jorge didn’t come home for Alaethia’s birthday, which is January 24th. He didn’t come home till late on February 11th, on time for Valentine’s Day.

That night, as we got into bed, we actually had a serious talk. I told him how distant I felt us and how I felt like we were falling apart. He held me as I pathetically cried and promised me that we were fine, I was his best friend and his family was my family. That he loved me and we were great. I told him it didn’t feel like it lately.

Javi and Jorge picked me up from work for lunch at Kumori on Valentine’s Day. He brought me flowers and some succulents. He asked me what I wanted to do for dinner, but I just felt off, so instead of going out we got some tequila and ordered Palenque and stayed at home with Javi..

Fast forward to March 2020. Mary (my ex-mother-in-law) wanted to get a head-start on Alaethia’s Quinceanera stuff so we’d started going to Expos and Open Houses, etc. We were on our 4th event by March 4th and we (Mary, Mario, Alaethia, Emily and I) walked into the hall, sat down and it wasn’t long before they were serving us the sample plates. Suddenly, I get a call from Jorge–which is extremely odd because it’s 6:30 p.m. and he hardly EVER called during the day anymore. I answer and tell him they just served us and he says he HAS to talk to me, it’s important.

I go outside to take the call and he tells me he just got into a car accident. Now, this will be the FOURTH time he either crashes or has the car side-swiped. So I go through the usual motions and questions: Are you ok? How bad is it? Was it your fault?

He’s oddly calm and says he’s ok. That it was his fault; he was trying to turn and the driver in another car let him through, but then another car didn’t see him and hit him. The entire driver’s side was crushed and an airbag popped in the center pillar. He said he was lucky that the driver door airbag didn’t pop. He chuckles and says, “That car is cursed!” I dryly say, “Yeah, or it could be the driver.” He says, “Que suerte! And it happened just down the street from my mom’s!”

Women’s intuition is a strange thing, isn’t it? I felt it in my bones that he was lying. That something about that conversation was very off and it was strange that the photos he sent me were sent almost an hour later and were SCREENSHOTS. I finished the rest of the dinner feeling uneasy and having to slap a smile on my face.

Skip forward to Monday, March 9th. I get out of work and go straight to pick up Alaethia from practice, like I usually do. I park in the parking lot to wait for her and I get a call from an Austin 512 area code. I never answer calls from numbers I don’t have saved (they’re usually bill collectors), but something told me to pick up. The person on the other line is a man named Frank, and he was calling from an attorney’s office in Austin, Texas and was inquiring about the accident I was in last week. I’m trying to slowly process the info and ask, “Accident last week? I haven’t been in an accident?”

He says, “I’m calling about the 2012 Mercedes Benz.” I say, “Oh! That was my husband, yes. That’s his vehicle. He had an accident last week.” He says, “Ok, what is your relation to Sabrina R.?” And then I remember the email address on the phone and everything just comes swirling back in and starts making sense. I tell Frank, “Well, maybe you should be asking my husband about Sabrina, because obviously I have no idea what he’s doing in Austin and San Antonio.” Frank is very apologetic, and I give him Jorge’s number. I hang up and think, Dammit!! I should have gotten a copy of the police report!

I call Frank back and ask him for a copy of the police report. He quickly obliges and apologizes again. He says he’s been calling my husband but he doesn’t answer. I say, “Oh yeah, I have been, too.”

Alaethia gets in the car and sits silently as she’s listening to my conversation. She asks to go to the mall and I tell her I’ve got some stuff to figure out, to ask one of her brothers, please.

I immediately get on our family chat with his mom, sister, brother, him, and his uncle. “So who wants to tell me who the fuck Sabrina R. is??” Everyone sees the message, but of course, no one answers.

Alaethia gets a text back from Justin that says, “You should go home. Now’s not a good time.”

She shows me the text and I feel irrationally angry. The first thought that pops into my head is, “Holy shit, he knows??”

We get home and the house is quiet. The boys are both not here and neither is Javi. I feel like everyone knew and I feel stupid and hatred to my core. It’s at this point that I lose my shit and scream. I couldn’t believe what was happening.

Briana finally answers in the family chat and says, “Sis, call me.” I very dramatically say, “No thanks. I know where I stand with this family.” She calls me immediately and I’m crying and angry and say, “What do you want??” She starts explaining that she wanted him to tell me right away when he took her to the apartment after the accident. He went and picked her up from the hospital and took her to the apartment and kept her there the next day while she recovered and he and his mom went to see another car for Justin. That was the reason for them being over there: Dinah was going to buy Justin a car. Briana said she was against it and was pissed off when she saw her just hanging out and watching TV as if she belonged there the next day. I said, “WHAT?? They stayed together at the apartment overnight??”

At that moment, I start getting a call from Jorge. I tell her and we hang up. I ask him, “What do you want, you piece of shit? Have enough time to get your story straight?!”

Of course he starts asking what’s wrong with ME. Why am *I* writing those things in the family chat? He says Sabrina is just a co-worker and she was just helping him take the car to Austin because, how was he going to drive Justin’s car back on his own? I said, “Really? She was the only option? Nate or Art couldn’t help you?” It turns into a yelling match and he denies, denies, denies until I can’t stop screaming and he finally admits it. He says she was a huge mistake. That he couldn’t get out of it once it started. (I *STILL* don’t understand what the fuck that means.) That she was all drama. I told him to come home tonight to explain and get his shit and of course he says he only has 2 people working, plus himself, and he can’t leave till the morning. Typical story. I’m sure he warned her and gave her ample time to get her shit together, because I find out from her ex-baby daddy (oh yes, I tracked him down that same evening) that she’s a drug addict and he was trying to get custody of their son, she was homeless, didn’t have a car and that every time she had visitation that she arrived in either my Mercedes or my Audi (later on Justin told me he always had a hard time getting her red or blue hair out of the carpet in the Mercedes when he’d clean it). I ask baby-daddy if he knew how long she and Jorge were together. He said she started arriving in my vehicles around September/October. (WOW) Baby-daddy said he was with her, then she cheated with a 19-year-old kid who would supply her with drugs, then around September, when Jorge started working at the restaurant she worked at, they started talking. I was livid. I start putting two and two together and realize that all the time we were having money troubles he was shacking up with her at hotels. Then they started LIVING together at his AirBnB in January when he got it. The AirBnB I had just given him $500 for to pay for the month of March. I can’t believe it.

The boys came back that day and said they went to their mom’s (whom they hadn’t seen for a while) because they didn’t know where else they were supposed to go. That broke my heart again. I told them that no matter what, this was their house and nobody was going to uproot their lives.

Javi got here a little later and said he had no idea what was going on until he went over the messages. He didn’t know. I believe him.

To make an already long story short. He got home the next day and I wanted all the details. He admitted that yes, when he was renting hotels she was with him. He admitted that they did in fact live together at the AirBnB but that he was only with her since after his birthday, not September/October. That that was a huge lie, and whomever told me that was wrong. I said I didn’t care, he could live with her for a week, A DAY, and I didn’t give a fuck. What was done, was done.

I told him to get all his shit and leave.

I did what a typical woman scorned would do: I put Sabrina and Jorge on blast on Facebook. I blocked him on all social media. I also sent her an email, a message on Facebook and Instagram and she NEVER replied. Typical cowardly home wrecker. I didn’t care how petty it made me look, either.

I didn’t know what I was going to do. Like he’d said so many times: I couldn’t afford the bills on my own. But I was going to figure it out and he owed it to me and the kids to help me.

On March 21st my mom went into diabetic keto-acidosis and she had a bad case of para-influenza, which in turn caused her to have a heart attack. I was the only relative to a patient allowed in the entire ER due to Coronavirus, and only because she was in such shock when she arrived that her mental state seemed completely abnormal. My grief went from mourning the end of my marriage to praying that my mother would make it through the weekend.

I was…emotionally exhausted.

He wanted to work things out. Make things up to me. But I just felt so…disgusted. He kept coming and going and with Covid-19 on the rise I finally allowed him to stay here, but on the couch.

I received flowers and cards daily for a couple of weeks and was brought breakfast in bed, he took me lunch while he was on leave, dinners I wanted and he even cooked almost every day and cleaned without me asking him to.

(That lasted 2 months).

I still don’t know what I’m going to do. Everything triggers me. He stayed for a while and then I kicked him out again because I found their receipts from their outings together and her drug test forms that she kept in the glove compartment of the Mercedes. I guess she left them in there for me to find a little sooner than I did. And I also found out more things he lied about.

Then he came back, again.

Jesus. Writing things out makes me feel even more dumb and more lost. But I’ll figure it out. Eventually. For now, I’m concentrating my energy on the kids, my mom and losing the additional 10 lbs. I gained the month of March, after I found out. Now I have 30 to lose 😡 .