A Hard Lesson Learned (Part 2): SAN MARCOS

After California, things didn’t get any better between us. I knew that I was never going to be able to trust this guy, but I felt bad for him. While we were together he told me that he didn’t have a good relationship with his parents. He basically told me he had no one in the world. So I felt bad, and I told him I'd try and see if we could fix things.

I respected him because he seemed to be a good dad. He had visited his son a couple of times during the year that we were together ... one time he made a trip to Arizona after he got a phone call from his ex-wife saying his son was sick in the hospital. When we got back from California, he had made plans to go pick up his son so that he could spend the summer with him in Texas. His ex-wife had asked him if he’d take the little boy for a while because she was about to have another baby. He said yes, and I was excited to meet him.

When he went to Arizona, which was in May sometime. He called me and told me that when he got there that his ex-wife freaked out on him, was not going to allow him to take his son to Texas and that all she wanted to talk about was getting back together. Of course, I was mad because who would do that? Who would make someone drive all that way to be a complete asshole like that? So he came back to Lubbock and called a lawyer and said he was going to fight her for more custody for his son.

Around that time in May, he was also told by his bosses that he would have go to an eight-week training in San Marcos, which it started at the end of that month. I told him to go and that we’d try and see if we could fix everything and maybe make our broken relationship work ... And it was the space that I needed from him.

A week after he left to San Marcos, he came back to visit me in New Mexico, my family was having an event going on. On his drive from San Marcos to New Mexico he hit an animal on the road and completely totaled his car, which he had recently purchased in Lubbock.

It was like one thing after another with this guy, I used to call him ‘Bad News Bear.’ Anything and everything seemed to happen to him.

So we ended up having to tow his car back to town and took it to a mechanic, who told us that the car’s motor was destroyed and it needed a new one. After learning about all the mess with the car we had to try and figure out how he was going to get back to San Marcos for his training. My mom and dad were kind enough to loan him their diesel truck.

But before he left to San Marcos, I officially ended things with him. I told him that I couldn’t handle all the drama and the crazy things that kept happening to him. I couldn’t deal with his dishonesty and him not being reliable. So we broke up. And he left in my dad’s truck.

We continued to talk everyday while he was in San Marcos training and we talked about working on things and fixing things, but I knew that if anything was ever going to get fixed it’d have to wait until he came back to Lubbock. And I knew that I was going to have to see some drastic changes from him before I even considered a relationship with him again.

Sometime in June, he told me that he was going to Arizona for a court date to fight for more custody for his son. I told him to keep me updated and he did. He called me and said that his ex-wife freaked out in the courtroom and that a drug test was performed on her and it came back positive. The judge gave him full-custody of his son for six months. It was a win for him. But the problem was he was in the training in San Marcos.

So he told me he was going to call his parents who lived in Georgia and ask if they would take care of his son while he did his training. I thought that was a ludicrous idea, because he told me his parents had never met his son and I asked him how he could go leave his son with complete strangers? So I suggested he ask his bosses if it would be too big of a deal for his son to stay with him in the facilities they were providing while he did his training. He asked and they agreed. He found a daycare for his son and all was well.

For those weeks he was in San Marcos we talked, and there were a couple of times he was supposed to come visit me like for my birthday in June, but the truck ended up breaking down on him and he couldn’t make it. Things started to become more difficult with us because all we would do is argue nonstop. It was miserable.

July finally rolled around and I knew his training was supposed to wrap up on the 15th or 18th. But he called me and told me they were going to have to do extra weeks of training. I was disappointed, but understood. So after those weeks of training finished he told me he was coming back to Lubbock. That was around the end of July.

The night before he was supposed to come home, I got a call from him and he told me that he had to take his son to the hospital because he had bone spurs. I felt so bad for him and his son. They had no one in that area that they knew and I longed to be there just to be supportive. He said that his son got put in a hospital in Austin, called St. Davids.

The first week his son was in the hospital we got into a huge fight because he would refuse to answer my phone calls or respond to my texts. I was completely worried for him and his son and all I wanted was to check up on them and know how things were going. He told me that I was stressing him out by calling and being upset that he wasn’t responding and he told me that he wished I’d handle the situation better and just be there for him.

After a long fight and tears, I told him that I would no longer call or text him because I didn’t want to add more stress to his life, and I didn't want to continue feeling hurt and made felt like he didn't want to talk to me. I told him that he could call or text me updates on his son when, and if, he wanted to.

I didn’t call or text him, and it was torture because he basically stopped talking to me. I would get a text everyday around 6 p.m., like clock-work, that would say ‘Hey.’ I’d ask about his son and he’d tell me he was in pain or doing better and I’d ask how he was and he’d say good. And that would be our conversation. For weeks that’s all it was.

So I really started to move on. I told myself I had to let him go, that I could no longer wait for him to come back and try to make things work out. But once I started moving on, he caught on and told me I was breaking his heart. That he couldn’t understand why I couldn’t be patient with him and with his situation.

To me this was a person that had made it very clear that they didn’t need me in their life. They didn’t need my support or anything so what was I doing hanging around, waiting? And what was I waiting for? So we fought about why I didn’t want to try and work things out and it was the same conversations we had over and over — him begging me not to give up and to give him another chance. He was already on his fourth or fifth chance with me. And at the point I’d hit the point of no return. I was done.

The problem was he still had my dad’s truck.