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The years went by fast. My daughter was growing up so fast. I wanted to be a young dad. I had hoped it would help me stay hip and relate to my kids when they grew up.

I would be transferred to the Sunset & Vine store as Store Manager. I was doing well considering where I had started. The insecurity was still there, I had to travel now and then to meetings and conventions. She would freak out constantly. By freak out, I mean call me non stop until I answered. Then when I did, she would scream at me demanding to know what I was doing. Most of the time, my answer would be “Working”. I worked in retail, I couldn’t be on the phone with her all the time.

My daughter was a pretty good baby, she slept from 9pm to 9am every night. We were lucky. I turned out to be a pretty good dad, and I was happy about that.

The fighting would continue. We would go to the mall and LK would be rude to the staff. They would obviously be less polite back to her, and she would act offended. I would witness the entire thing, and I would try to get her to calm down. Wrong move. Never say any of these phrases to a woman who is visibly upset:

“You need to calm down.”

“You need to relax.”

“Take it easy.”

“It was kind of your fault.”

I guarantee you the opposite will happen and you will have a bigger problem on your hands.

It was totally embarrassing, she would make a scene in the store and fight with the clerks. Demand to see a manager, then argue with the manager. Then she would blame me for not backing her up. I could never win, damned if you do, damned if you don’t. It’s not in my nature to yell at staff, especially having worked at Blockbuster and been cussed out for $4.99 before.This happened often. I later learned to just pretend I didn’t see anything and feign ignorance.

Another time, I was sick with a 103 fever. She tells me to watch our daughter so her and her mom can go shopping. WTF. She came back to find me immobile in a pile on the floor with a 103 fever still. I had to sit in a bathtub of ice cold water that night. It was excruciating.

Job Drama

In 2005, EB was bought out by GameStop. We had heard some pretty bad things about GameStop. And typically with acquisitions, the new company weeds out the old one’s employees. All of us started job searching. I was referred to this furniture company by a friend of LK’s brother. I interviewed there, and got the job as an Office Manager/Project Manager. It was here that I met one of my best friends and his family.

The pay was slightly less when I started on account of overtime pay at EB. But it was a desk job and much less stressful at first. I would find out later the owners of the company were not very nice people. There were people who worked for them 10 years or more, and were still making minimum wage. I also made friends with someone we will call SeahawksGirl. She would later help me find my next job.

They were located in downtown LA, and I lived in the valley. That commute was brutal. Some days it would take me 2 hours, one way. I hated the traffic, the 101 and the 405.

Time flew by, I couldn’t stand the owners of that company. They were a married couple that was taking over the family business. The husband was a typical spoiled asian rich kid, made very irrational decisions and had no grasp of rewarding employees. The wife was a bit better, she was a little more sympathetic to people but we all knew she wore the pants. SeahawksGirl would leave the company and move to SFO for a better job. Not long after, she would refer me into her company.

Pregnant….again

My daughter grew, she started daycare, then kinder. It was here I met a lot of couples and made some great friends. When women are around babies, they want to have more babies. LK was pestering me to have another child. She wanted a boy. I was against it at the time, kids were a huge financial and emotional challenge. We had barely made it through our daughter’s 1-3 stage. She kept saying it would bring us closer together, and she really wanted another child. I told her we would try one time. What a dumbass I was.

She got pregnant. Fuck.

Now, our days were not any better than before. She was still as volatile as ever. I just learned to accept the bat shit crazy things that would happen. I sort of became numb to it. We still had the late night fights, the mall arguments, the trap questions. It just was normal to me now.

When we fought in the car, she would drive like a maniac. I pleaded to her that if our daughter was in the car, don’t be like this. If she wanted to kill me and her, fine but leave our daughter out of it. She didn’t care. I started to suspect she had bi polar disorder or OCD or both. I noticed small things would drive her nuts if something wasn’t done a certain way or how she wanted it. Some examples:

Her mother would help us with laundry, she would come over, pick it up, take it home, then wash/dry it. She would even fold it then deliver it back to our place. I was always appreciative of any help. LK would come home, see the laundry, grab it and smell it. “SHE FUCKING USED THE WRONG DETERGENT!!*&*#@&*(#&@*#&”. Grabs the phone, calls her mother, then screams at her for using the wrong detergent. I would try to tell her she shouldn’t be that way, her mom did us a favor. She wouldn’t listen. I would try to apologize to her mother when I had the chance.

Washing dishes. I had worked for my parents in high school, we had a restaurant. I washed plenty of dishes in my time. LK would demand that I rinse every dish at LEAST 10 times after soap. Otherwise, according to her, the soap was still there. And not just any 10 rinses, in a clockwise fashion. I didn’t know what to say. If I didn’t do it that way when she was around, all out war would break loose.

My Son

The time would go by, and my son would be born, February 2008. This is the photo I have carried in my wallet since:

My son was entirely different than my daughter as a baby. For a period of time, I thought he hated me. I usually went to bed last, I would make sure everyone else was safe and asleep first. I was always worried about home security, apartments were not the most secure places. I figured if I minimized my sleep time, it would minimize the window bad things could happen. My son would cry EVERY TIME I touched the bed. It baffled me. I would have to then pick him up and try to comfort him back to sleep. That would take at least an hour. I tried to get creative, I tried different methods of sliding into bed. I thought that maybe because his crib was next to our bed, he could feel the bed move. I consider myself a ninja, so I tried all kinds of ways to get into the bed. He would always cry.

I told LK about this, she didn’t believe me. I told her I would prove it. That night, we put our son to sleep. I wait a bit to make sure he’s sound asleep. We creep into the bedroom, I walk to the foot of the bed. I literally, take one finger, and touch the bed. He cries. LK was just as baffled as I was. I thought maybe he was psychic and was making my life miserable on purpose.

My Crazy Schedule

My stress level was insane during this time. I had a job that was 24/7, my phone would ring at all hours of the day. I was a Regional Manager for the Southwest area. Our company was progressive at the time, we offered private chauffeurs that would drive you in your own car. We undercut the limo and black car companies pretty significantly. I had some very high profile clients, including some of the richest people in the world. I remember going through 3 blackberry phones in a span of 2 years.

I had a super difficult client, whose mission in life was making my life miserable. He was very particular about his driver requests, they had to be young, Caucasian, pretty boys. The issue is, most drivers would refuse to drive for him after one time. I went through about a hundred drivers for this client alone over the years.

I was the account manager for a major company that had engineers all over the US, calling me for drivers at all hours of the day and expecting a rapid turnaround. Their engineers were usually from India, and it was almost impossible to understand them half the time.

We also did events, major auto manufacturers would use our services for press tours and auto shows. Those were the most fun. I got to drive some amazing cars of all kinds. My favorite sports car was the AMG C350. My favorite car to drive around was the S400H. I loved that car.

I covered LA, San Diego, Arizona, Las Vegas and everything in between. Essentially it was just myself, I had some phone support from corporate HQ. But I had to manage the business, hire and fire drivers, train drivers, pitch clients, manage accounts, negotiate contracts with major corporations, etc.

I managed probably anywhere from 50-250 drivers on a daily basis depending on the time. Do you have any idea how many phone calls you get, with that many people out and about? I remember I signed up for the google voice beta back then, they would take your voicemails and turn them into emails or text messages. In a maybe 6 month span, I had 900 voicemails. 900.

I will never listen to another voicemail again in my life.

Often times the drivers would just be lonely and want to chat. I didn’t have time for this shit. I kicked ass though, the drivers loved me. Mercedes Benz loved me. They wanted me to be their event person and travel around with them. More on this later.

I did all that working at home while the juggling kids and the ex wife. I went to bed nightly at 2am and woke up at 6am. I had little time to myself. It was exhausting.

My schedule would look like this:

6AM: Wake up – prep kids for school. Make breakfast.

7AM: Take kids to school.

8AM: Work, phone calls, emails, meetings etc. Walk the dogs.

Noon: Pick up son from daycare, he only did half-days. Continue to work while watching my son.

2:30PM – 8PM: Pick up daughter from school. Help her with homework, make dinner, bathe the kids, read them bedtime stories. Work. Spend time with kids. Laundry. Dishes. Walk the dogs. Pack kids lunches, pack LK’s lunch for work.

9PM: LK comes home, make her dinner, listen to her bitch about her work. Make her happy. She goes to bed around 11PM.

11PM – 2AM: If everyone else is asleep, I play WoW with some buddies. If not, I get no free time. LK bitches at me a lot for playing WoW, wife aggro.

Repeat on weekdays.

On weekends, LK would work. I would take kids to birthday parties, school functions, play dates. You name it. I found it strange that many of the mothers would admire me for being able to handle my kids. Lots of them lamented that their husbands were inept at even some of the simplest tasks. It was like I was SuperDad or something, but to me it felt like normal.

I had no time to rest, really. I remember one time, I asked for a day off as my birthday present. Just a day to do nothing and veg out. It was denied because it meant LK would have to watch the kids for a day. The real reason was because her mom, who would have ended up watching the kids, was busy that day.

To give you more context on how she treated me, in our almost 7+ years of being together she bought me a gift once. One gift. It was a sweater. I let her spend money on things she liked. She went through all kinds of phases. Fingernail painting. Pandora bracelets. Buddhism. I supported everything she wanted to do without question.

Her father and her both converted to Buddhism together. They would spend 2-3 days a week at this Buddhist temple in Koreatown. I would stay home and watch the kids, as usual. She then met some other women around her age there, and for a period of time she would stay out late drinking with them. She’d show up at 2AM drunk. I have no idea if she did anything else at that time. I finally told her she had to stop hanging out with those people, it was affecting our already rocky relationship. Perhaps she was just as unhappy as I was at that time. We went through almost a year of no sex. It was rough.

Depression

I battled depression. I was isolated from friends, family. I didn’t know many people in LA. I chose not to tell my friends or family back home, they would just worry. My parents didn’t know about any of this until the very end. LK was controlling, she wouldn’t let me see my parents, wouldn’t let me take the kids to see them. My parents don’t have much of a relationship with the kids to this day because of this. It saddens me as a parent, I want my kids to feel as much love as they can in their lives. It’s so easy to end up in sorrow in this world, there are so many terrible people out there. I have recurring nightmares where my kids are kidnapped, I wake up frantic, terrified, drenched in a cold sweat. I developed anxiety issues, I would have panic attacks at night. I still get them sometimes, but much farther apart.

But I hid all this well. You can probably ask people who knew me then right now, and they probably had no idea what I was going through. Some days I had really dark thoughts. Like throwing my newborn son out a window. I remember walking in the mall and avoiding the rails on the second floor. I was afraid I couldn’t control myself and would fling him and maybe myself over the side. It was crazy. I was losing my mind. It’s painful to recall these things now. I felt like such a failure. I’m still not sure how I made it through this.

Parenting Issues

LK was not a good parent. She would make sure the kids were fed and bathed and such. But she didn’t know how to be a parent. She usually dumped the kids on her parents to watch while she slept or watched TV. There were days I felt bad for my daughter, she needed a woman’s influence in her life. Her mother would be her role model, and it felt almost non-existent. I decided I would try and be both for her as best I could. I would lay in bed with her at bedtime and just gossip with her. One day she would be so and so’s bff then the next day not. We used to lay in bed before she went to bed, and she would tell me the inner workings of elementary school girl drama. I miss those days. I miss her.

I felt like a nanny robot sometimes. It would be one thing if I was appreciated and treated well. Mix in fights till 2AM about random insane shit. Like leaving the toilet seat up once on accident. Or not washing the dishes the way she likes them. Fights where she would call her parents, who would come over and tell me I’m an asshole. Physical assault, from her. Threats of her killing herself.

Physical Assault

I never intentionally laid a hand on her, one time I was holding my wallet in my hand and she made a threatening motion towards me and I reached out to defend myself and it sort of push/slapped her on the cheek. She flipped out. I thought I was going to jail.

When she assaulted me, she swung. Haymakers. She clawed, scratched, screamed. I yelled HELP hoping my neighbors would call the police. No one did.

There was a period where I was truly afraid for my life. LK began watching nothing but Forensic Files, a show on TruTV that documents real crimes and how they were solved. Like real life CSI. She began watching this almost obsessively. I was a little uneasy about it after a while. One afternoon, an Amazon box shows up. I open the box, and inside is a book. Paperback, black cover with a picture of a woman in prison. The book is an autobiography about how she ALMOST got away with killing her husband. I almost shit myself. I told one of my good friends back home that night, if something happens to me, it was her. (When I saw Gone Girl recently, it was like a blast from my past. Although LK was not smart enough to pull it off, she definitely could have the intent.)

The Almost Divorce

At the end of year 6, I had to travel for almost 2 months. We had signed on new clients for CES in Vegas. I needed 125 drivers a day, for 5 days. I went out there with some people I was training to help me manage events. We had a total of 5 different events of various sizes concurrently at CES. I knew I couldn’t manage them all, so I would have event managers and I would just support and oversee them all. They would get paid better and be trained for possible growth. I selected my already de facto Assistant Manager at the time, Freddy J. His girlfriend also worked for our company and was bright, so I wanted to give her a shot as well. Our third person was a hostess we had used on previous events, we will call her SS. She was a pretty blonde aspiring actress at the time. She was sharp though and had a great personality. Freddy J actually suggested her as a candidate.

We went to Vegas for 3 weekends in December to do interviews, training and hiring. We managed to staff what we needed plus insurance. We had to hire around 125 drivers on top of our existing pool of about 50. We were accounting for scheduling issues, some idiots would probably be fired along the way, etc. We were prepared.

CES would be the first week of January. We also had to be in San Diego almost immediately after CES for a Mercedes Press tour. The San Diego event would last about 2 weeks.

LK was obviously upset about the whole thing. I had arranged for my mom to come up and stay with her to help watch the kids for a week. She had asked her friend to come down as well and help. Her parents and brother were still around. I had worked it all out so that she had support during my absence.

The time came, and we headed out to Vegas. We stayed in some shitty hotels near the Orleans. It was cheap and we could fit 2-3 people in each room. We rocked CES. I was good at that job. I could make magic happen with a smartphone and the internet. We handled everything that was thrown at us. I even stayed up for almost 48 hours straight to make sure shit was done on time. Whatever it took.

Each night I would call home and talk to the kids and LK for a bit. My schedule was hectic though so at times I couldn’t talk much. I tried to keep in regular contact but things happen and I get swept away in fire drills and emergencies. She would flip out if I was unreachable, which was often.

The last night in Vegas, I wanted to reward the critical staff for their hard work and we went out for Korean BBQ. I was proud, the people I had picked all did great. We were the A Team, I treated them all to dinner and drinks.

The next day, the plan was I would rent a car and head to San Diego first. I needed to meet with the inbound Mercedes folks and go over the logistics and schedules for the press tour. My team would stay a few days behind me and tie up loose ends in Vegas for me. Then something strange happened.

I got my rental and was about to head out. SS says she wants to go with me. I was taken by surprise at the request. I explained to her that since it wasn’t pre-planned, they only had one hotel room for me that night. She said she didn’t mind, she would drive so I could prep in the car. I couldn’t find a reason not to, other than LK flipping out. I had this cute bubbly blonde in front of me versus a bitchy, crazy wife at home who was already giving me shit during my stint in Vegas. I said fuck it, why not. Not like anything was gonna happen anyway.

We drive out, we chat a lot, I do some work on the way. She’s super cool, funny and we get along really well. During Vegas I was too busy and hadn’t spent too much time with SS other than prepping her for her event. I get this strange feeling that she might actually like me. I decide that I’m thinking too much. We get to the hotel, it has a sofabed and a king size bed. I shower and get dressed, I have a dinner meeting with the Mercedes folks. She says she will go jogging and explore the area. It was a beautiful hotel, located in Rancho Bernardo. During dinner, we text a bit. I ask if she needs food for dinner, she tells me she’s out getting stuff at the store and some booze. Ok, see you at the room later.

We end up sort of flirting that night. I tell her she can sleep in the bed and I’ll sleep on the sofa, but she refuses and sleeps on the sofa. I give up and sleep in the bed. We would spend the next night in a similar way, but nothing happened beyond that. We would bond watching silly youtube videos and other random things. She told me about her movie that she was in, I promise to watch it when I can. She sends me a facebook friend request and tells me that she never does that. I sort of felt special. She was really nice to me and I was in an unhappy place in my marriage.

The rest of the crew shows up, hotel rooms open up but not enough. The Mercedes people had miscounted and needed more space for the guests, SS was stuck with me for another couple of days. We start the event, things go good. I’m from San Diego, so it was nice to be back home again. They would put us up at classy restaurants and venues. We were given S400 Hybrids to drive around town. It was great. Some days we had off, we would go out and see the beach and unwind. I needed it after all the shit in my life, Vegas and the drama my ex wife was giving me during Vegas.

SS and I would go out for lunch, I took her to the mall. It was sort of like we were together, but not. I started feeling really unsure about what was happening. One night, we were drinking and I recall asking Freddy J if I was making things up. He said I was thinking too much. I trusted him, so I thought nothing of it. But I have to say, I started becoming attracted to SS more each day. I felt like our personalities were so much more compatible. Then one night we went out to karaoke. We all got wasted, and SS sat next to me the bulk of the night. She would get a little touchy feely, at one point she would lay across my lap. I was getting really confused. On the car ride back to the hotel, we held hands. I didn’t know what was happening.

SS would move out of my room and into Freddy J and his girlfriend’s room instead. I sort of felt sad and confused about it. But figured it was for the best.

I would end up having to do lots of paperwork at nights, entering people’s hours from all the Vegas events. I would wrestle with these feelings and wonder was it real? Or was it because we have been stuck together for almost a month. All the while LK was flipping out on me. I guess she had reason to this time. In hindsight, I made a lot of poor decisions and didn’t take her feelings into account. My rationale was, she wasn’t considerate to me, why should I be? There were other women in the world who seemed to like me and treat me a thousand times better than she ever did. I had an artificial boost in confidence.

One of the following nights we went out drinking, she had lost her Drivers License. We searched everywhere for it. I finally found it in my S400, in a strange place. I don’t know if she planted it there or what, but it was neatly tucked in a small crevice under the seatbelt on the passenger side seat. I texted her I found it. She came running barefoot to my room. She seemed playful and happy. I considered messing with her, but I gave it to her and she ran off.

Things got strange with SS, I felt like she was waiting for me to make a move. I struggled with this internally, I didn’t want to be a cheater. That was something you never can remove from your title. I ended up not doing anything and we went our separate ways after the event ended. I admit, I still wanted to pursue SS on the inside but I had to restrain myself. I watched her movie, it actually wasn’t bad.

The last thing that happened was I went home to visit my parents on the last day of the event. My mother had returned home early from my place. I met with her and asked what happened. She looked at me, with tears in her eyes. She told me that she now knew what I was going through. One week with LK was enough for my mom to crack and go home. My mother told me a lot of things that happened to her and it made her so upset that she just left. LK would go out with her friend and party till 2, leaving my mom with the kids the entire night. Multiple nights. She would scold my mother for feeding the kids Chinese food. LK would also yell at the kids in front of my mother. She couldn’t take it and left. I consoled her and said things would be ok. At the time, I thought she was crying because of what happened to her. Later I would find out, she cried because I was her son and she finally saw that my life was so miserable.

I decided I wanted to take some time apart. I told LK and she went ballistic. How else would she react? I packed some things, and stayed at an apartment some of my employees owned. By the way, never underestimate people. I found out two of my employees were actually doing the job for fun. They owned apartment buildings in different parts of Los Angeles and had businesses back home in the Philippines. They even invited me to ride in their limo to go hang out with Manny Pacquiao in Vegas. Goes to show you, treat everyone the same, you never know who people might be or become.

The separation was short lived, I missed my kids too much. The loneliness drove me crazy. I crawled back to LK and begged her to take me back.

Pancreatic Cancer

Then her dad got sick. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She was devastated. We decided I should quit my job and be a stay at home dad. Since she was a nurse, she could make up the money pretty easy. This would allow her to spend more time with her father and I could watch and raise the kids. We also thought it would help mend our tenuous relationship situation. I was fine with it, I wanted to try and be supportive. I hoped things would get better if I was home all the time.

I would be a stay at home dad. I would do all the cooking and cleaning. I stayed home all day with my son, we reduced his day care since I was home all day. I would spend the day playing with him and teaching him. We would go to the park sometimes and just horse around for the most part. My son had this strange habit of testing the strength of things with his head. He would run around head first into walls or bang his head on objects. We almost got him a helmet. Playing with him was hazardous too, at times he would suddenly try to headbutt you in the face. Luckily I was a ninja, I never got hit.

Time would pass, her father was given only a year or so to live. He ended up making it close to 3. I give him enormous credit. He worked for the MTA all his life, and after a certain number of years your pension pays your full salary to your spouse if you pass away. He willed himself to live those last few years so his wife could be taken care of. I admire the sheer determination he had, It was difficult to see someone deteriorate over time. He would become thinner and thinner, more frail by the day. He tried everything, juicing, vegetarian diets, crazy old Buddhists, eastern medicine, you name it. I can’t tell if any of it helped him or not, I contend that he lived on pure willpower alone. I would spend time and chat with him as much as I could, but we didn’t have the best relationship either.

LK’s parents did love our kids very much, and for that I am grateful.

Special Thanks to LK’s brother. He was the only sane person who would stick up for me. He knew what was going on and would always get stuck in the middle. I always felt bad having to pull him away from his family and his own struggles to deal with our bullshit. Throughout it all, we still have a good relationship and I will never forget what he did for me.

Continue Reading – Chapter 3 – Ex Wife – The Final Year