Author: Calileolady

I Was an Idiot…. (Chapter 1)

It took me nearly a year to figure out that my husband had been lying to me about what he does for work. A year of smelling him when he got home to have dinner. He smelled like a skunk. Yeah, I thought it was a skunk smell.

Back in the summer of 2009, my husband’s father offered us a dilapidated cottage on the family ranch. The only requirement was that we invest and rebuild the cottage and it was ours. It was uninhabitable. My husband, without any discussion with me, enthusiastically accepted this offer. I had no idea what that would mean.

At the time, we were living in the East Bay, Bay Area, California. Kyle’s family ranch is in Humboldt County, California. I had never heard of Humboldt County. I am from Santa Cruz, CA and transplanted to the Bay Area in 2003. I met Kyle in 2004. We were living together within 6 months in the East Bay and married in the summer of 2005. We had our only child, a daughter, in 2008. We would visit his family for the holidays. 

It was very obvious that I was brought up very differently then him. They were a very conservative family that let racist remarks fly out of their mouths freely. They were also bigots and the men in the family were misogynists to the extreme.Guns were everywhere.  I did not mesh well with them from the beginning and me being a strong and independent woman with thoughts and opinions of my own, oftentimes conflicted with theirs. Some of their remarks to me about simply being a registered democrat were very negative to say the least. I think it was a fair assumption that they did not respect me but Kyle swore they liked me. I sometimes struggled with our differences but I always was respectful and I really wanted them to like me. I do not believe they ever did…..like me.

By fall of 2009, my husband began making the 6 hour drive to Humboldt every weekend and sometimes more. He was self-employed so any time there was no work locally, he headed north to start working on the cottage. I was working full time and taking care of our new baby who was just under a year old. He would tell me he was working on it for “us”. He wanted “us” to have our own place on the ranch. He was using both of our incomes & savings to invest in this project. 

It was really hard working full time and doing all of the parenting. His weekends turned to weeks and then all of the sudden he was living on the ranch and we were 6 hours away in the Bay Area. There were no discussions happening. He was just doing what he wanted without any regard for his new baby and wife at home. I was handling it all and it felt overwhelming. He also expected me to make the long drive north every weekend to visit him. I was starting to feel distant from him and felt the need to succumb to his pressure to come to him every weekend out of fear that our new family was falling apart. I was in the mindset of:  I am doing this for our daughter, we must stay together for her. I was in denial that he was doing anything wrong or selfish like abandoning his wife and child. 

By January of 2010, I finally had the courage to have that hard conversation with him. “When are you coming home?” “I am tired of doing this by myself and driving up here every weekend.” “What is going on?”

Kyle informed me that he wanted to work in the family construction business and that once the cottage was finished he wanted us to make the move. I was flabbergasted. 

What would I do in the boonies? No prospects for employment, scarce people other than his family, a teeny, tiny school for our daughter with no opportunities for extra curricular activities. We would literally be in the middle of nowhere. The closest grocery store was an hour and a half away. NOT TO MENTION that marijuana, which was illegal at the time, was the dominating industry there. I was always shocked to see people driving down the county road with their pickup truck beds overflowing with their harvest. An absolute blatant disregard for the law. This was the wild west! Even the locals called it that in the most endearing way. This was crazy! I could not live in a place like this!

Chapter 2 Accepting my Future Move

My average weekday started at 4:00am in the Bay Area. Up at 4, jump in the shower, get dressed, makeup & hair. Once I was ready I had to get the baby up, dressed and out the door we went. First stop, daycare, next stop BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) to San Francisco, at my desk by 8:00am. My job was fast paced, exciting and stressful all rolled up into one. I worked for Sephora in the Real Estate department. There was rarely any idle time at this job. I had ambition to advance in this career and I was working with the right people that supported me, mentored me and valued me as part of their team. I felt that I was part of something big and meaningful. I felt important. 

I have been working since I was 14 years old. My first job, like so many teenagers in Santa Cruz, was at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, making gyros. I have such happy memories of those days. That first job I learned a very strong work ethic. I liked making my own money and providing for myself. 

When I shared with my boss at Sephora that my husband wanted me to make the move to Humboldt County her response was “where the hell is Humboldt?” Once I shared more details about my future county and place of residence she laughed at me and told me she at least knew me well enough to know I could not survive in “Bumfuck Egypt!” She thought I was crazy and that my husband was selfish for asking this of me.

I loved my husband so deeply. I was absolutely terrified of losing him. Even more so once we had a baby and we were a family. I would have followed him anywhere to keep our family together. Sure, hindsight, I know I gave too much because it all ended anyways but, what a journey it has been. The stories I have to share. Not in a million years could I have ever imagined how my life would change.

I tried to talk with Kyle about when the best time to make the move would be. He was already living there at his parents’ place. He was in the midst of remodeling our future home. It was basically a completely new build with just a few parts left in place so it was classified by the county as a remodel. Kyle expressed that he did not want us to come until the house was done. This meant I had no idea how long we would have to continue to live apart and living as a single parent with a husband was taking its toll on me.

By spring of 2011, our new home was very close to complete. It still needed the fine touches but in my mind, it was close enough, I wanted to be together. Kyle pushed back. He wanted us to wait until it was 100% complete. I pushed back harder because it had been nearly 2 years apart and I was maxed out with the weekend journey from the Bay Area as well as the lack of support. I insisted and he objected, even after we arrived.

My daughter and I made the move to our new home in August of 2011. We were finally a family again! I came with enthusiasm and an open mind. I worked every day on finishing our home. Mostly painting and staining boards. I was unemployed for the first time in over 20 years!

The first few months were ok. Not great, but ok. I struggled with being unemployed and having to ask my husband for grocery money. It was definitely an adjustment. I was now a stay at home mom. My daughter was almost 3. I made the most of my new life. Kyle bought me a fancy quad and I would take my daughter on ranch adventures frequently. We lived on the river and in warm months, we would swim every day. We would not see Kyle until dinner each day because he was working very long hours. To give myself something to do, I decided I wanted to raise chickens. My husband built us a fabulous chicken coup.

I went from a corporate badass to a chicken farmer…..my life literally went from 60-0 overnight. I was determined to adapt and show everyone I could be happy here.

Chapter 3 – A Country Girl Is Born!

Living so far away from the comforts of city life was challenging at first. Each new thing I learned made me feel more powerful and like a survivalist even. Things like using power tools. I have never used power tools before. It was exciting! I always saw power tools, weed whackers, chainsaws, tractor mowers, axes, etc., as for the men. 

Once winter came I learned how to build a fire in the wood burning stove. Lots of stacking wood and dealing with the critters that hide in the wood like scorpions and spiders. I definitely developed a thicker skin and had to conquer some fears but I was an emerging bad ass! I felt proud of myself.

I found my tiny niche as a chicken farmer. I was supplying eggs for all of Kyle’s family and they loved it. I even had a couple of turkeys in the chicken coup. They were so much fun and really funny animals too. Me and the kids would catch giant grasshoppers and feed them to them. Once my turkeys were fully grown and fattened up, my husband and his brother wanted to harvest them. That is where I drew the line. I could not kill an animal I raised since it was just a few days old. I was emotionally attached to them but I did accept that they were livestock and allowed the boys to slaughter them. It was the best turkey I had ever tasted.

I experienced my first tragedy about 4 months after moving. My cat, “Wittle Guy”, was killed by a bobcat. I did not want to bring my cat with me. I had a friend that was willing to take him. I was worried about him living in an area with so many predators. Kyle convinced me that Wittle Guy would be just fine. He was obviously very wrong. One night, I could hear a ruckus under my house. It was clearly my cat and another animal. I ran outside with a flashlight to try and see what was going on. As I came closer to an opening under the house, a gigantic cat with my cat in his mouth emerged. It was terrifying and horrific to see. He ran off with my cat and I never saw Wittle Guy again. I was absolutely devastated. 

Today, as I reflect, that was really a clear and early sign of Kyle’s dismissive behavior towards me. That I knew nothing and he knew everything. This would become a problem in our marriage. Kyle had changed since he moved back to Humboldt. I remember when we had just started dating. He had described himself as politically progressive. I was seeing his transformation in real time once we were living together again. He was becoming someone I did not like. Racist jokes and comments, misogynistic behavior, hateful thoughts and ideas. I did not know this part of him at all. As I got to know his father and brother better, I could see that he was becoming just like them and I was very worried. Women had no voice in this family. That was becoming very evident.

I tried my best to look past the changes that were happening but I was changing too. I felt like a lesser version of me at first. I was no longer contributing over half of our income. I felt that took some of my power away. Kyle started auditing my grocery lists and asking me to settle for less. For example, instead of a couple of bottles of wine for the week, he asked me to buy a cheap box of wine. It was always things for me and my daughter he asked if we really needed and I would dutifully agree to those things because I felt guilty that I was not contributing an income.

I wanted to find a way to earn an income. I was trying to start my own business as well as constantly contacting the local school for a job. All of my business ideas were shot down by Kyle and his family. I wanted to buy a food truck and start an espresso bar. There were plenty of potential customers there, I spent time writing up a very thorough business plan, working with the county on requirements, etc. It was just a hard NO. I was feeling more and more deflated.

Kyle decided it would be a good idea to farm me out to clean his brother’s house. He did not ask me, told me. He said because I had nothing else to do, I should do it. I could not believe that this was happening. I cleaned his brother’s house for a period of time. After 4 or 5 months of this I had had enough. It felt degrading. I was being treated by the entire family as below them. Any task that came up that they wanted done, they would tell Kyle to have me do it. I pushed back hard. I just refused to do it. I was making maybe $100 a month for this degradation. I was done. I also began to withdraw from his family. It was very clear they did not respect me.

Chapter 4 – The Contrast of Our Relationship Before and After

I met Kyle on Match.com. He sent me a hello first. Honestly, I was not attracted to his picture. He did not look like my type at all. Pooka shells around his neck, obviously had spent time in a tanning bed, blonde tips on his black hair. But, I said hello back anyway. He asked if he could have my number instead of the constant texting back and forth. I said yes and he immediately called me. 

It was a typical first contact conversation. We shared a little bit about each other. He asked me out and wanted to get together that weekend. I suggested we take a hike on Mt. Tamalpais. I lived in San Francisco and he lived in Martinez. I told him I was going to invite my housemate and her new boyfriend to join us. Kyle met me at my house in San Francisco and we all carpooled together. It was a beautiful day. We enjoyed our hike and had a lovely lunch on the water in Tiburon. After that we went our separate ways.

Even though I had a nice time with Kyle, I didn’t really feel a connection. I wasn’t interested in a second date. Kyle was. He called me often. I declined most of his calls hoping he would take the hint. Occasionally I would pick up and talk to him and he would always make me laugh. He would even serenade me over the phone. He was starting to grow on me. It took five months for us to have a second date. He kissed me on the second date and I felt something. After that, we saw each other often. He was very romantic. I received flowers from him all the time. He would have them delivered to my work for everyone to see how much he cared about me. He made me feel very special and I reciprocated with gifts of his favorite candy, flowers and clothes from Abercrombie & Fitch which were his favorite. 

On our first Valentine’s Day, just 6 months after we had our second date, he told me he loved me and wanted me to move in with him. I did. Our love was so intense like so many first loves are. We said I love you too many times, every day. We were both in absolute bliss. I was madly in love with him.

I met his family for the first time that Christmas prior to Valentine’s Day. Like I said before, there were very obvious differences but I didn’t care, I was in love and they lived very far away and I could handle them just fine in small doses.

When we moved in together we were moving into a home we had just bought in the East Bay. We were working together to update the home. We were nesting. It was a magical time.

Kyle proposed to me about a year later. It was a terrible proposal, probably a sign of things to come. We had been in Humboldt visiting his family. All of us went out to dinner and then to a bar afterwards. At the bar, in front of me and several members of his family, he was intensely flirting with an older woman. She was just as intense to him. Kyle’s brother in-law came to sit with me and apologized for how Kyle was treating me. It made no sense, we were doing great. He was a little drunk but….right in front of me?

I chose to leave. I was going to leave him completely. That was enough of a red flag for me to know the relationship was over for me and it seemed he felt the same with his complete disregard and disrespect. I walked out the door to wait for a taxi to pick me up and take me to a hotel. I planned on leaving for home the next morning and getting all my things out of our home and staying with a friend until I could get my own place. He came running out the door after me. Begging me not to leave. That he was just flirting and having fun, that I was taking it too seriously. I told him I was leaving him. He kept begging and apologizing profusely. I told him that I would not have moved in with him if I wasn’t planning on a future with him and I assumed he felt the same way and how could he treat me this way? So right then and there he proposed. What a terrible proposal! I always hated telling people that asked me how he proposed. I did say yes but under extreme emotional duress.

There were a couple more hiccups, distressful and questionable behavior by Kyle that made me question whether or not I could trust and marry him. My friends all begged me not to marry him. But I did.

Our lives together for the next few years were mostly good. Kyle was still very loving and doting. We were happy. When we decided to have a baby, it took us a year to conceive. It was an amazing evening when that pregnancy test came back positive.

Fast forward to living in Humboldt County.

After the first year I was starting to feel more comfortable. I spent happy hour each day at one of his cousins’ houses sitting on the patio, drinking with several members of his family. It felt like a party starting at 5pm every day out there in the summer months. Everyone would come together for cocktail hour and it was fun! I was definitely drinking too much but there was nothing else to do! And, that was the only adult human contact I had each day. Our daughter would play with whatever cousins were out. I felt like I had settled into this life. I even started going hunting with the boys. I did not actually carry a rifle but I just went with them for the adventure on the ranch and for the company. The times I went out with just Kyle were precious. Our time together, just the two of us, was very rare. If I had to go hunting with him to see him, then so be it.

I did not notice while it was happening but we were growing apart rapidly. Kyle would depart for work early in the morning, maybe stop home once for a few minutes in the middle of the day and then home for dinner. After dinner he would either go back to work or invite his brother over and be in the garage with him all night. Our relationship including our sex life was dissolving at a steady pace. I started begging him to spend time with me and our daughter. It became an argument every time.

I missed my husband even more than when we were living 6 hours apart.

Chapter 5 – The Truth

I was not in the best of moods on this particular evening when my husband came home from work. I had been alone all day, alone for days and days, actually. I was with my 3 year old daughter but alone in the form of no adult contact for days and I was emotionally desperate for an adult conversation. As usual, on this evening, Kyle would arrive home and the first exchange he would have with me was that he didn’t have much time, he had to go back to work, and what is for dinner? This time I got angry and I told him that we had not had any family time or intimacy, for that matter, in over a month. I told him had I known that this was what my life was going to be like, I would never have moved here. I told him that we were not a family, he was never home for more than a meal, and he never spent time with his wife or his daughter. I wanted to know why he was working so many hours. Why was he the only one, not his father or his brother, working nights? The family construction business was him and his brother and dad.

He told me he was working on Tim and Duke’s “grow”. He had to cover and uncover the plants at odd hours as well as keep their generators running and who knows what else. I told him that he never told me he was involved with weed. He told me he had to do it to make a living to support us. I asked why he needed to do this if he was working full time for his dad. He said this makes more money. He was never working full time for his dad’s construction business.

Once again I was feeling dismissed. Obviously I am not important. He felt no need to have a discussion with me about the risks working in this illegal industry comes with. He could get arrested and incarcerated, were the two biggest fears. What would happen to me and our daughter if that happened? How would we put food on the table? What would we do without him?

As I thought more and more about it, I got very angry. He is putting us at risk! This is an illegal industry that is dangerous! What if we get robbed or worse? I gave up my career in San Francisco! I gave up my friends and family! I was manipulated and lied to! 

I always expressed disdain for this industry to Kyle. This wild west lifestyle that all the locals loved; I hated. It was wrong! It was illegal!  These people were breaking the law. I hate marijuana. I am a law abiding citizen. I want to teach my daughter the difference between right and wrong. I do not want to raise her in a lawless community.

The growers were ego maniacs. They acted like they were kings. Drove giant pick up trucks that were lifted and every aftermarket accessory added on. We called them “Growdozers”. You could tell who was a grower simply by the vehicle they were driving. They fluffed their feathers any chance they had. 

Kyle’s family profited from this industry. Their construction business built the roads and dug the ponds for water catchment on their land. They supplied them with dirt, fertilizer, greenhouses and all the equipment & supplies they needed to run their farms.

The men were all cheaters! They had their wives and kids at home and they would sleep with as many “trimmigrants” as they could. There was a complete void of moral compasses in the industry.

Kyle’s family loved them. They loved their money. At any holiday family gathering, there would be growers and trimmigrants there. Treated like family. It was odd. 

I felt completely hopeless. I felt like I was trapped in a situation that I could not remove myself from. I did not want this to be my daughter’s life. I did not know what to do or who I could talk to. I had been living on the family ranch for a little more than a year now. It felt like a compound to me. 

After hearing all of this I began to feel extremely isolated. I had no one to talk to. I had no friends. My daughter had no friends. My husband did not care about how I felt about this lifestyle. I was completely alone.

I went into survival mode. Kyle had dragged us up here. I had no money. It was all spent on the remodel of the house. I had no power.

I needed to make some friends and have people outside of his family to talk to.

There was a Google Group forum that the community used to communicate because there was only a country store and post office to randomly see people at. I posted in the forum looking for other mothers with young children to connect with. A few moms responded and I had our first gathering at my house a couple weeks later. Ironically, all of them were also married to or in a relationship with growers. I saw it as an opportunity to get informed and relate. I did not tell them how I was deceived. I just wanted friends. It was obvious to me that they could tell I was completely clueless about their lifestyles. They thought it was odd that I did not partake in marijuana. They did not know that Kyle was in the industry. Kyle’s family was a very well known ranching family. 

Not long after I was at the country store with my daughter and a woman and her daughter about the same age approached us. She introduced herself as Sherry and her daughter was Sunrise. She was overly enthusiastic about meeting us and wanted to get together for a playdate as soon as possible. She was very loud and flamboyant. She would be a very interesting person in my life very soon.

Chapter 6 – Making the Most of It

Life was feeling tense and worrisome now that I knew my husband was at risk of getting busted on a pot farm. It was always on my mind. 

In a perfect world, if I had a flush bank account, I would have left after that news. We still had our home in the East Bay. I would have evicted our tenant and moved in and rebuilt my life in the Bay Area. I still had all of my work contacts and I was sure I could get a job fast.

On the flip side, as angry and stressed as I was, I also still loved him and I wanted our daughter to have a family vs the idea of having to ship her up north every time Kyle wanted visitation. I am a child of divorce and it was hard! My parents fought constantly. My mother hated my father. They both put their kids in the middle of their drama. I did not want that for our daughter. I was going to stick it out.

I tried to stay busy and found creative things to do like making our usual river spot more fun like adding a table, chairs and umbrella, making an area to store river equipment, inviting my new friends down for swim playdates and even a little camping with all of them. I finally had a few new friends and I was running with it. I always welcomed them to invite others. I was growing my posse!

I made one really good friend, Lillian. She had a son the same age as my daughter. She would come down nearly every afternoon to swim with us. Her husband was one of the men Kyle worked for. She was very open and tried to calm my fears of Kyle’s chosen occupation. She had been in it for many years. In fact, she met her husband when she was a trimmigrant. Her story was disheartening to me because her husband cheated on his wife with her and ultimately left his wife and married her. Morally I had a problem with Lillian but I was so desperate for a close friend that I tried not to think about it.

Let me explain “Trimmigrants”. Trimmigrants are people that travel to Humboldt from all over the U.S. and the rest of the world. A typical trimmigrant is someone young, like 20’s. They come here to trim the marijuana bud or flower. They trim away all of the leaves and stems. They would get paid on average, $200 per pound of bud they trimmed. It could be several hundred dollars a day if they worked all day and night. The growers would supply them with a place to sleep, food and some other basic necessities like cigarettes & Red Bull (so they could work long hours). It was a 100% profit for them.

Trimmigrants were young and vivacious. Both men and women. Most farmers preferred women to do the job. They would work during the harvest which was twice a year and then they would disappear to travel the world and have fun like young people do and return the following season.

Most of the trimmigrants that I had any interaction with were from Bulgaria, Russia, Columbia or Mexico but they were from all over.

That summer Kyle’s brother, Bobby, met a trimmigrant from Columbia. She was stunning. She reminded me of Jessica Rabbit with all of her curves. I liked her. She was probably only interested in Bobby because she perceived him as wealthy. Most people would not consider him an attractive man. He didn’t really have a personality to distract from his lack of good looks either. I understood her. She was raised in poverty and was trying to find a better life. Bobby was only interested in her to fluff his ego or, as some people call it, arm candy. They deserved each other.

One day my husband was excited to tell me he had a job for me and I could make $1K in just one day. Him and all his buddies wanted season tickets to the 49ers games. Humboldt County was a cash county. These guys did not have checking accounts. All of their business was done under the radar. Cash was buried on their property. They just needed to remember where they buried it and I say that because sometimes they forgot and would have to dig for days to find some cash!

I was handed several thousand dollars in cash to take to various post offices in the county to acquire money orders to send to the San Francisco 49ers to get these guys their season tickets. It took me just a few hours, mostly drive time, to get the job done and get paid.

My next job, which was weekly, was driving to Costco, the hardware store and anywhere else they needed me to go,  and buying all the food, drinks and other supplies needed for the trimmigrants. My SUV would be 100% filled from the floor to the ceiling with supplies. It would take me all day to get everything on the list. I would always make at least $200 or $300 a day doing this.

When I was making my own money I felt much better. I still did not have anything consistent but it was better than nothing and it was better than cleaning Bobby’s house!

Chapter 7 – Family Drama

Kyle’s father, Matt,  was the matriarch of the family. Oddly, even though Kyle was the oldest boy, his younger brother Bobby was treated as the prince, next to inherit the throne. It was such a bizarre family dynamic. Kyle’s siblings are his younger half brother, Bobby. A half sister from another mother, Jackie, that was the same age as Kyle and 3 other sisters from the same mother but 2 of them were half sisters. Only one of the siblings is from the same mother and father; Martha.

Bobby and his sister Jacky were also from the same mother and father. I found it scandalous that Jackie and Kyle were the same age because that meant that his father was cheating on his mother. I would learn that Matt had been married several times. I believe it was five times. His current wife was Bobby & Jackie’s mother, Melanie. Matt cheated on all of his women. Total disregard for being faithful or loyal to any woman. I can only imagine the trail of heartache he left behind him. This was a lack of morality he passed on to his children. 

I noticed that my sister-in-law, Jackie, was always with a Bulgarian man, Georgi, when she would join us for happy hour. Jackie was married. I really liked her husband, my brother-in-law. Jackie ran the family hardware store for her brother Bobby but she lived in town with her husband and two kids. Her husband worked full time so we only saw him on the weekends. He would come out with their two daughters. Jackie would be out there the majority of the week running the store.

Jackie and Georgi were causing lots of suspicions with all of us. She was blatant. It was very obvious there was something going on. I had a huge problem with this and I would leave if she showed up with him. I felt terrible for her husband. How humiliating.

Jackie is not the kind of woman that has a lot of female friends. She is the one that women pull their husbands closer to them when she comes around. She loved to flirt with men no matter what their marital status.

I personally never liked Jackie. She was a bully and conniving. She said terrible things about everyone. She is a greedy and jealous person. I learned very early in my relationship with Kyle that she was no friend of mine and not to trust her. She fought constantly with her brother Bobby. She felt she should be the owner of the store because she ran it. Bobby’s argument was the most obvious. He invested and started the store. If she wanted it, she should buy it. 

She could not afford it.

I adored Jackie’s daughters. I have been in their lives since they were babies. I spent a lot of time with them in the summer at the river. If I had to find something good to say about Jackie, I would say she is a good mother and a good auntie. She loves children.

Let’s talk about Bobby. In the beginning I really liked Bobby and he liked me too. He loved to take me up on the ranch when the boys went hunting. He would tell me all kinds of stories.

After I had my daughter our relationship changed. It was more distant. He was no longer interested in spending time with me. He and Kyle are fairly close but I could always sense some superiority coming from Bobby towards Kyle. Bobby knew he was the king’s favorite son.

Bobby is very overweight. He drinks a lot. He has a scary temper.

Kyle and his cousins and a couple of family members would make fun of Bobby in his 20’s because he was still a virgin. He had a very difficult time with women not to mention, being in such an isolated place. They all went to Vegas together one weekend and paid for a prostitute to be with Bobby. I was disgusted with this. 

Not long after Bobby would begin his relationship with the sexy Colombian.

King Matt was treated as such. He was the most misogynistic man I have ever met in my life. He loved to say controversial or racist things to upset me. One incident I will never forget was a time when Kyle, myself and our daughter were having dinner at Matt’s house. He was angry at Obama, the current president.  He was using the “N” word repeatedly. I spoke up and asked him to please not use that type of language at the dinner table around my daughter. That I did not want her to hear that word again! Kyle kicked me under the table which was his way of telling me to stop. I was not supposed to ever talk to his dad that way. I got angry and said I was leaving and taking Ella with me. That I would not allow someone to teach my daughter hatefulness no matter who they were.

Another incident was during the summer we were at Kyle’s father’s house again. Ella and her cousins were all playing together while the adults were having some cocktails. I noticed quite a few yellow jackets around where the kids were playing. I went to have a closer look and there was a yellow jacket nest right there next to them. I quickly corralled the kids out of that area and told my husband and everyone else about the nest. Matt’s response was that I should have allowed the kids to continue to play there so that they got stung a few times and then they would know not to play near a yellow jacket nest again. Outrageous!

This is the type of behavior I would have to deal with on a regular basis around his family. The men did not respond well to a strong woman or a woman that talked back. I was a bitch to them.

Chapter 8 – Scary Sherry

My new friend Lillian was really my salvation. I finally had someone to talk to. Someone that was very savvy in the weed industry. She knew everyone. She had lots of stories to share. We spent so many afternoons at the river just talking while the kids splashed around. Once summer came to an end I did not see her as much. Many of the growers had houses in town and they would not  be out on their farms in the winter (off season). It started to get lonely again. 

Sherry and her family lived full time, like me, in the area. We started to connect more. She was a lot to handle. Very loud, very arrogant, very masculine. She loved to throw around money and show off. She was as bad as the men. I would also start to see that she treated her workers very poorly.

She and her boyfriend, Erin, had two kids together. They also had a boy, Dallas. He was a couple of years older than Sunrise. Erin was her match with the ego. I was not a big fan of them but I could tell her daughter was desperate for a friend.

Sherry loved to call me her “normal” friend. She said it like I was a rarity out there in the wild west. I was. I was a typical housewife those days. I kept the home clean, cars clean, yard kept, etc. My daughter was always dressed in freshly washed clothes. We looked like a typical suburban family. Sherry was thrilled to have a friend she perceived as normal because it also meant safe for her daughter. Pretty soon after we started spending time together, she would just drop Sunrise off and be on her way. She was definitely using me. At the time I did not care because Sunrise and my daughter, Ella, would play together. When it started becoming a problem was when she would not show up until days later to pick her up. She would just disappear for extended periods of time. The most outrageous time was when she dropped Sunrise off and called me from Cancun the next day! Who does that? She told me she was sorry, she just needed a break and she would pay me $2K when she got back for keeping Sunrise for a week. I was not happy with her at all. I was upset that she would treat her daughter that way, let alone me.  Sunrise did not care and even seemed to not want to go home when her mom would finally show up to retrieve her. 

It became very obvious quickly that Sherry and Erin had a substance abuse problem. I wasn’t sure what they were abusing other than alcohol and weed, but I suspected methamphetamine. 

I had been to their home just once in the beginning and they had a very large indoor grow. Their plants were at least 10 feet tall! My daughter was not allowed to have play dates on pot farms. I usually had kids at my house. Parents were all too happy to leave their children with me.

When Sherry got back from Mexico she showed up bearing many gifts for all of us. She threw her money at me like she had an unlimited supply. I could tell it made her feel powerful.

The more Sherry brought Sunrise to me, the more alarmed I became with Sherry’s physical & mental state. She seemed drunk, stoned or high everytime she came to my home. She was driving her children down a mountain like that. I would tell her that she was putting herself, her children and community members in danger. She did not care. Not long after that she had an accident. She ran off the road into Kyle’s dad’s fence in the middle of the night. She took out a large portion of the fence. It was a big deal because this fence kept the sheep in. She disappeared in the night leaving her wrecked vehicle embedded in the fence until the next morning. Thank god she did not have her kids in the car. She returned the next day to apologize to Kyle’s family and throw money at them for the cost of repairs.

Sherry would almost haunt me even when I tried to set boundaries in our friendship. Soon, both of our daughters would enter Transitional Kindergarten together at our local country school. Sherry would take advantage of my kindness and love for her daughter frequently. She knew I could not say no. I cared about Sunrise and I was worried about her and her brother’s home life and safety. 

Life was still going to get even crazier for me and Sherry and Erin would definitely play a big part in the craziness!

When the girls started TK, it opened new doors for me. I was meeting more families from the area. I had made a few new friends. Yes, they were also all in the weed industry but they were different. They had more of a hippie vibe. They were loving, doting parents. They grew responsibly, taking care not to harm the land. They treated their workers like family. They were very involved in our community with events like bake sales to raise money for the school. They also cherished friendships and would have friends over to their homes for BBQ’s often. I desperately wanted to steer their direction and away from people like Sherry and Erin. 

Sherry would attach herself to people like she did to me, oftentimes, overwhelming them which would push them away. She needed to know everyone, to be the most popular, to look like she had more than everyone else. She was an attention whore. Unfortunately I had the label of “Sherry’s friend”. I hated that label. I was nothing like her and I did not want to be considered a close friend of hers. I would communicate this to my new friends.

Another door that opened was that the school was going to be hiring in the near future. Sharon, the assistant principal, was my contact and now she was  my daughter’s teacher at the school. She knew I was seeking employment. She told me she would be in contact when she had the new position approved. I was so excited about the prospect of going back to work and working at my daughter’s school! Life was going to get better and it couldn’t have happened at a better time.

Chapter 9 – Desperate for a Connection

I really wanted to connect with my husband despite our differences and disagreements. I could feel us growing apart. I was always feeling hurt and rejected by Kyle. He seemed to have no interest in spending time with me or Ella. Ella was 4 now. Kyle and I used to be so happy to see each other at the end of every day when we lived in the Bay Area. We loved to go to San Francisco on the weekends and try new restaurants, walk around and explore like tourists. We never got tired of San Francisco. We also were Six Flags Discovery Kingdom season pass holders and we would go frequently before we had Ella and after. We were a fun couple! We really enjoyed each other’s company.

By this point in time we had been growing apart for almost 3 years. Ever since he started staying in Humboldt to work on the cottage. I really thought once we were all together as a family again, we would reconnect and be close again. Instead, it felt like the exact opposite.

I would see Kyle driving up and down the road all day. Waving at me if he saw me. Where was he going? Even some of his family members would joke about how many times he drove back and forth. So weird.

I thought maybe if I learned to do something he loved, that might bring us back together. Even though I really did not want to kill an animal, I was willing to do it for him, for a chance to connect.

I told him I was going to take a hunter safety course so that I could accompany him hunting and even participate. Deer hunting is one of his favorite things to do. He was excited and loved this idea. I even organized an instructor to come out to our small community and I reached out to the entire community to see who else would like to take this class. It would be a 10 hour class. Several community members signed up as well. We all passed our test at the end of the course.

As a congratulations, Kyle had bought me a brand new hunting rifle with a very nice scope and  a pink strap. He would take me down below our house to practice shooting it.

As soon as hunting season started Kyle and I went on our first hunting trip on the ranch. We left really early in the morning. We took the quad. He drove and I wrapped my arms around him to hang on. It felt good to hold him. We had a wonderful time. He expressed how happy it made him that I did this for him. 

We didn’t get anything on that first trip. It was about 3 trips later. I was with him and his brother and they spotted a nice buck. I was prompted to get my rifle ready and they both coached me to breath and reminded me how to best stance myself with my rifle. I had a major adrenaline rush. I pulled the trigger! I got him! My feelings were all over the place. As we went looking for where it dropped, it was more and more intense. When we finally got to the buck and I saw that I killed it, I felt a tremendous amount of guilt. I had to fight back my tears to look strong in front of the men but I was absolutely gutted. I could not believe that I had killed this poor, innocent animal.

Kyle could tell I was barely holding it together. He tried to comfort me by assuring me it was a clean shot and it died instantly and did not suffer. I knew right then and there that I would never do this again, kill an animal. I also knew that I would harvest and eat all of this buck and not let any meat go to waste.

I was not a hunter…..

Kyle and Bobby and the rest of their siblings were raised hunting. This was the norm for them.

Over time I found Bobby’s killing sprees of deer, bears, ground squirrels, feral cats or whatever he felt he could kill, to be terrible. He would kill deer even when it wasn’t hunting season. I remember one time going out with Bobby and Kyle and Bobby spotted a bear with cubs drinking from the creek. He killed them all! I screamed and asked him “what the fuck is wrong with you?” Absolutely no compassion towards any animal. I did not go on rides on the ranch any more with Bobby after that. I told my husband he was a monster.

Me not liking Bobby was a problem. One of the things I learned about Kyle’s family is that they were loyal to each other. They talked shit about each other profusely but they were loyal.

I remember a conversation I had with Lillian at the river one time. She told me that Bobby was telling all the growers that Kyle was his bitch. This angered me! They are brothers, they work as partners or at least, that is what I thought and that is what Kyle thought. Apparently Bobby felt that Kyle worked for him and Kyle was farmed out by Bobby.

I told Kyle what Lillian said and Kyle got angry with me instead of Bobby.

I was also learning that all of us “in-laws” were seen as second class citizens, not as family. No one was safe from attack. The worst shit talker was Jackie and Martha was a close second. These two could not live without some kind of drama and usually they were the ones creating it. This family was toxic! They were also very secretive.

I remember their cousin Mark bringing his brand new Harley Davidson out to the ranch one summer. He said he spent over $60K on it. Bobby wanted to take it for a ride and Mark did not object. Bobby was gone for a very long time. Everyone was getting worried. Finally, several hours later Bobby showed up on foot. He had had an accident on the Harley. He ran it off the road into a tree! He was hurt and in a lot of pain. He looked bad. I told his parents to call him an ambulance! He should be checked out for a concussion or broken bones. He had not been wearing a helmet. They were more worried that he had been drinking alcohol and that he could get in trouble so they waited several more hours before driving him to a hospital which is over an hour away over a treacherous mountain road. Later they would find out he had a fractured shoulder blade. Bobby had been suffering in tremendous pain for hours.

When he came back from the hospital there was a family meeting and we were all told not to say a word about this accident. Unfortunately for Mark, his new toy was totaled.

Chapter 10 – Insanity

Sherry, or, Scary Sherry, as Kyle and the rest of his family called her, was becoming a real problem in my life. Her and her boyfriend, Erin, were always fighting and I always had to hear about it. So much drama. Her behavior was still more and more alarming. I was getting calls at all hours of the night and early morning. 12AM, 2AM, 4AM. She had no respect for boundaries. No regard that “normal” people like me go to bed at a reasonable time. She would just keep calling until I picked up. She was always crazy when she called at those hours. One call after midnight she called to tell me that she had found an empty cement tomb underground on her property and she was convinced that Erin had made it to bury & conceal her body after he murdered her. She was always paranoid. She thought everyone was out to get her. Full of conspiracies. She was completely unhinged. She would show up at my house any time she felt like it and spend hours with me. It did not matter what else I had going on, she had no problem imposing. She would tell me how much Erin hated her and was trying to steal her property and all that she worked so hard for. That he was going to disappear with the kids. 

Just a short time prior, Sherry and Erin had insisted on treating Kyle and I to lunch at a famous restaurant in St. Helena. They both wanted to thank me for always taking care of their daughter when they needed me. That meant we would have to drive 5+ hours to meet them for lunch because there was no way in hell I was carpooling with them. 10 hours round trip in a car with them was a hard NO! 

I did not know much about this restaurant, The French Laundry, but apparently it was a really big deal and the most extreme way for them to show their gratitude.

Interestingly, Kyle was excited to let them treat us. He did his research on the restaurant and said it was where very rich and famous people went for fine dining. This made sense, both Sherry and Erin were name droppers. They loved to talk about the people they knew or had met and how that made them special. Always show offs.

When we got to the restaurant they had reserved a private room for our group. It was a fixed menu. Sherry ordered many bottles of wine. The food was fine but I didn’t understand what all the hype was about. I was still hungry when we were done. Sherry and Erin got very drunk. When they were given the bill they made sure to show Kyle and I how much this meal was costing them. It was over $2500. I could not believe that! I would never have agreed to allowing them to take us to such an expensive place. I was worried that Sherry would treat me like I was indebted to her now.

Sherry was exhausting to have as a friend and nearly impossible to avoid. She was obviously in a very bad place mentally with what was going on with Erin. I had also been hearing rumors that some people were threatening her because she had not paid them for their work. She would tell me her life was in danger frequently. I would tell her if that was the case, she needed to stop coming to my home and potentially putting me and my family in danger. She would ask me and try to bribe me with money to ride with her all over California to sell her illegal cargo. I told her no way! I was not participating in transporting marijuana in a vehicle to deliver it to god knows who and then to be coming back with hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash in her vehicle. Sounded like a really fast way to get thrown into prison or robbed and killed. 

I needed to really get this woman out of my life but she would not leave me alone!

A short time later, Sherry showed up at my home in the middle of the night. Kyle was at work. She was pounding and screaming at my door to let her in. I would not let her in my house. She was clearly in a manic state. She had a lot of cash with her that was laminated in plastic. She told me it was 2 million dollars and asked me to hide it for her because “they” were after her and were trying to steal her money. She told me if they found her and killed her then I would be 2 million dollars richer. I was completely freaked out! I screamed at her to get her and her money the fuck off of my property right now or I was calling the police. How dare she put me and my family in that kind of danger! This was insane! She scolded me and told me that I was not a true friend and thankfully, left.

I immediately called Kyle and told him what was going on and that I was worried someone could come to the house looking for her and her money and could he please come home. He told me I was overreacting. That she was on drugs and was probably having a paranoid episode. I screamed at Kyle that I needed him to take this seriously and come home immediately! Begrudgingly, he did.

Fortunately she did not return that night. She texted me the next morning apologizing and I told her I wanted her to stay away from me and my family. She did for a time.

Some time later both Sherry and Erin came rolling up to my house. Fortunately Kyle was home too. They were both very happy and wanted to share the news that they had implants put in their bodies to stop the urges to do drugs. Erin showed me where they put his implant. I had never heard of such a thing. They were professing that they were starting their new drug free lives and how excited they were to finally be clean. They explained that the reason they fought so much and the paranoia was because of the drugs they were taking. They did not confess what drugs they were talking about. I didn’t know what to say. I still wanted them out of our lives. I just wanted them to leave. Kyle told them that was great but we were just leaving so goodbye. They left and I started to feel doomed that this was going to be my life here. Dealing whackos like Sherry and Erin. Feeling worried for me and my daughter’s safety all the time. I was feeling really unhappy.

Chapter 11 – The Hunt For a Killer

I was already feeling edgy with the worry that Sherry would invite herself to my home. At this point, I didn’t even have her daughter over. I had texted Sherry and told her that I needed some time with just me and my family with no friends over. So far she was respecting that request. The peace didn’t last long.

All over the local news this day they were talking about a man that had killed his wife and young daughter and was on the run. There was an active manhunt and they were seeking the public’s help to locate him. People from our area knew this man. He spent some of his childhood here. He even worked occasionally for Kyle’s aunt on the ranch. She and the rest of the family felt he would come out to our town to hide out. I was a little worried but there was no indication he was here. If he did show up out here, no one was going to hide him. People were angry and saying they would shoot him if they saw him. Rumors were swirling that this man had killed his wife when she confronted him about sexually abusing their daughter and then killed his daughter. It was awful.

Within a day or two, sheriff’s deputies were patrolling our area  looking for him. There had been reports of sightings. We were told to lock our doors, which no one did out here. I was getting nervous. Then, they found his truck about 15 miles up the road from us. They suspected he went into the wilderness to hide. All of the sudden we had cops everywhere. There were armored vehicles, check points on the main road and deputies going door to door searching for him. They stopped every car, all of the deputies carrying automatic rifles, and looked inside.

When they came to my house there were four deputies on my front porch. They did not ask to come in but just asked if I had seen anyone suspicious. I told them no. One of the deputies joked that if I did see him and shot him to drag his body into the road, they would take care of the rest. They also joked that they should plant some drugs on our property so they could seize it in a bust and make it a sheriff’s department retreat. They said they were just kidding and that my home and property was so beautiful and they were envious. What a weird and insane thing to say especially under such tense circumstances.

About a week later some local ladies on a hike found the guy dead. He was only a short distance from where they found his truck. They believe he committed suicide. I remember it was such a huge embarrassment, and an expensive one, for law enforcement. He was right there all along. His body was right under their noses.

Everyone was so relieved when he was found.

It was summertime. Things quieted down quite a bit. Soon, I heard from the school district. They had a job offer. I was so excited. I had to negotiate with them a bit because they didn’t even want to pay me enough to cover what it would cost me in fuel to drive there every day. They increased the offer and I accepted the job. I would be an administrative assistant to the principal. It was a tiny school district. Even though I was office personnel, I would do a little of everything. I would start in a little less than a month. 

Kyle was excited too. He gave me some money to buy some new clothes. I was absolutely certain that my life was going to be happy again. I could start contributing financially to the household and that would take a little pressure off of Kyle. The best part was that I got to be on campus with Ella every day. I felt so lucky!

A couple of weeks before I started my new job, Kyle went on a hunting trip with his brothers and a few other guys in his family. They had gone the year prior as well. It was to a friend of the family’s ranch. He had been trying to develop it into a hunting destination. He had recently purchased the property and invited them up. There was already a restaurant and bar on the property. 

I never objected to Kyle going out with the boys. I would tell him that he spends too much time working and not enough time enjoying life. I wished he would spend time with Ella and I but he also needed his guy time. Hunting was his favorite pastime. I wished him a safe and fun trip and he was on his way.

Kyle had also been down to Panama for vacation with the boys recently. One of the wealthier growers had been living there part of the year and invited Kyle, Bobby and a few other family friends to come down and spend time. I was not invited. No women were. Again, I did not object. I wasn’t that kind of a person to put a leash on my husband. I trusted him.

I was happy that Kyle started allowing himself to have some fun. We were doing a little bit better.

Chapter 12 – A New Job, A New Lease on Life

I was so excited to go to my first day of work! I started about a week, in mid-August, before school started and the students returned. I had been living in Humboldt for 3 years now. Ella had completed transitional kindergarten the past school year and she did so well she was promoted to 1st grade vs kindergarten. We were both excited. She was coming to school with mommy! 

Living in such a small community I already knew a lot of the kids and their parents. The preschool, elementary, jr. high and high school were all on the same campus. Our total student body from K-12 was around 55 kids that year. It was tiny. The high school had 14 kids.

One of the most noticeable things in the beginning was that parents raised their kids differently than the mainstream. I was definitely more of a mainstream parent. Ella was up to date on all of her vaccinations, she had rules in her life and faced consequences like time outs for acting out. I expected her to be respectful to authority and do what she was told by her teachers. Talking back to her parents or teachers was unacceptable. I mention this because she was not the norm. This “Wild West” community had a lot of people that were anti-authority, anti-government, anti-vaxxers. Most of these families were growers and marijuana was still illegal. During harvest, so many kids smelled strongly of weed because they were around it all the time. They were around the weed, the trimmigrants, the lifestyle, etc. I would learn that there were so many “helicopter” parents. They would complain about literally everything, tell the teachers how to do their jobs, insist that our cafeteria use all organic foods, etc. It was hard to not have negative feelings towards some parents. I felt bad for the teachers and the principal. They did not get paid enough for some of the bullshit they had to put up with.

I did love my job though. It was so nice to be exposed to the workforce again. It was a small group of us. Just about 12 people running the school. I loved working with kids. I would help out wherever there was a need whether it was in the kitchen or a classroom. I felt part of something important once again. I was definitely over qualified but it was the only job in town so I made the most of it. One of the best parts was being allowed to be a kid again myself. I volunteered to be a recess monitor and I would play with the kids all the time. Tag, soccer, parachutes, swings. It felt so sweet and endearing to be asked to play with them. We went on field trips too. Whether it was to the beach for national beach clean up day, to the forest to learn about trees, plants and critters, or trips to town to see the acrobats perform at the university. The school was a happy community. I was watching these kids grow up and you couldn’t help but care about all of them. I made many new friends through their kids. I was really happy!

Unfortunately my happiness would not last long. My life was about to take a terrible turn. 

It was October, the week before Halloween. I was excited for Halloween. I was going to dress up for the first time in many years. I had worked hard to get all the kids and teachers motivated and excited about Halloween. All the kids had been telling me what they were going to be.

One night around midnight, I woke up from a deep sleep. My husband was not in bed. This was not completely abnormal. Most of the time he had just fallen asleep on the couch. This time I had a gut feeling that I needed to go look for him. I went into the living room and he was not there so I looked out the front window and I could see him walking in front of the garage on the phone. I walked out the front door to go ask him what he was doing and he had disappeared behind the garage. When he came back around he was no longer on the phone. I asked him who he was talking to and he said “just the guys up at the barn, they were having trouble getting the generator going”. I asked him why they needed to run the generator after midnight and he said he didn’t know, they were idiots. He came back to the house with me and said he would be in bed soon.

To my core I did not believe him. Something was off, I felt he was lying. My intuition was screaming at me to investigate that phone call.

The next day at work I logged onto my Verizon account to see what number he had called last night. It was a phone number from another area code, which was not unusual but it was almost a two hour long phone call. I felt sick to my stomach. It took me about two weeks to confront him. I was afraid because I knew my life was going to change forever. 

Once again, I woke up very late one night and went looking for him. He was in the shower. I waited outside the bathroom door. I had the phone number written down on a sticky note and I was holding it in my hand. When he came out he asked me what I was doing up. I showed him the sticky note and asked him who’s phone number was this? He said it was one of his workers’ numbers up at the barn. I said ok, can we please call this number from your phone on speaker right now? He said no. I said if we didn’t call it from his phone that I would call it from mine and he again said no. He then confessed that it was a woman’s phone number. He swore it was nothing, he had just been talking on the phone to her. I told him I did not believe him and I pressed him further. He then said he had kissed her but that was it. I felt my heart sink and almost a feeling of my life flashing before my eyes. I started sobbing uncontrollably. I did not even recognize that sound coming from me. I have never cried like that. He kept swearing that it was just a kiss and he was sorry. I knew he was lying.

Chapter 13 – Devastation

The morning after my husband confessed to having a relationship with another woman I was an absolute train wreck. I showed up to the office and it was written all over my face and my body language. I had only been on the job for a little over 2 months. My boss asked me if I was ok and I fell apart. I told her what I had found out. I was sobbing. She tried her best to be a good listener and console me. I felt bad for her having to deal with me in this state. She was the first person I told. She was angry with Kyle. She said all the things you would expect a fellow woman to say in response to this news. He was a dirty dog, an idiot, a piece of shit, etc. She was very upset for me. 

I told her I did not know what this meant for me and my job. My first instinct was to go into flight mode and head back to the bay area with my daughter. I was absolutely gutted, devastated, humiliated and deeply hurt. I felt so completely alone. Even though I had made so many new friends recently, I did not have any close friends in Humboldt and no family. I just had Kyle’s family and I knew they would not offer me any support of any kind. If I told anyone in our community it would spread like wildfire. Part of me wanted it to. I wanted people to know what  a horrible person Kyle was.

My thoughts were all over the place. I was devastated for our daughter. Did this mean she would have to grow up in a broken family? Would I have to spend extended time away from my daughter for her to visit her dad? I was angry at this. I was so pissed at Kyle and the chain reaction I anticipated was going to occur. I felt that he thought his family was disposable. He was throwing us to the curb for some random trimmigrant with no life. Almost a transient. She had nothing. I had his daughter. I quit my job and moved to an area with nothing for him. I took care of him. I put up with his bullshit and mistreatment from him and his entire family for years and this is how he treats me?

I would go from devastation to anger to a sobbing basket case every single day for months!

There were times when I would wish he would collide with a tree in his vehicle and die. Then I would wish he would apologize and beg me to stay with him. I felt so unstable. I was worried about my daughter seeing me so emotional every day. 

For Kyle’s Christmas present I bought a weekend getaway to Las Vegas. I hoped that by taking a trip together, just the two of us, we could see a glimpse of why we loved each other. I bought the plane tickets, a hotel and tickets to a Cirque du Soleil show. I really hoped we would have a nice time. I wrote a sweet letter from Santa Claus to him with his present. I thought it was romantic.

When he opened his present he expressed immediately that he did not want to go on this trip with me. The trip was in a couple of weeks and he told me numerous times he could not take the time off work. In the winter, Kyle had loads of free time. I knew he was just being an asshole. I begged him to please go. When the day came that we were to depart he told me he wasn’t going. I once again was feeling desperate and emotional and I cried. He begrudgingly packed a bag and told me not to expect any affection from him. He would not hold my hand, sleep with me or tell me he loved me. He made it very clear that he did not want to go and that I repulsed him.

I should have just gone by myself. He kept all of those cruel promises. It was a terrible trip. He was ice cold towards me the entire weekend and disappeared for most of it.

Our marriage was definitely in the final death throes.

About 3 months later we tried counseling. We had one appointment and it made it worse (or maybe better) for me. He said terrible things like “I am on the fence on whether I want to work on my marriage or end it”. He did not take any accountability for how we got here. He refused to talk about his infidelity. I felt like he was portraying himself as a victim even. That I was to blame for where our marriage was. 

I had made a list, as assigned, of things that I would need him to address for our marriage to work. I asked for things like two family days per month where Kyle, Ella and I would leave the ranch and go to town and spend the day together. Another one was not having Kyle’s brother at the house every single night until nearly midnight. I asked him to set boundaries with his family so that we could have our own time together, including time for intimacy. I asked him for one week per year for us to take a family vacation. 

All of my requests were for the benefit of our relationship and our family. He said no to all of them.

On the drive home from that counseling appointment, I was alone and I started to feel a glimmer of myself returning. I realized that I did not like this man. I was starting to imagine my life divorced instead of the never ending battle to save our marriage. It was clear that I was the only one willing to save it. I was regaining my worth, my pride, my dignity. I almost needed to hear that little narcissist spout off to our counselor like that to finally see the light. Before him, I was a strong, powerful and independent woman! My fear for how our broken family was going to affect Ella was subsiding. I knew I could give her a good life no matter what her horrible father did to me. Fuck him!

The weekend following our one and only counseling session I was having lunch with my daughter on the back deck. I got a phone call from a fellow community member. She told me that she just saw Kyle with another woman and it looked like they were together. 

She did not know about Kyle’s infidelity. She was very upset. She apologized for telling me such bad news but thought I should know. I thanked her and hung up. I proceeded to the garage and punctured the sidewall on 3 of 4 of his tires on his pick up truck that he kept for his “town” truck. It felt extraordinarily liberating! God it felt good!!!!

I then went back inside the house and collected all of his clothes, toiletries,  and other belongings and threw them out on the back deck. Luckily for me, there was a new set of door locks in the garage. I changed the locks on both the front door and back door. ALL BY MYSELF!

When Kyle finally came home from his time with his other woman, he tried to unlock the door with his key and looked so confused why his key was not working. When he went to the backdoor and saw all of his clothes out there he obviously knew something was up. I went outside and told him I was done. He needed to go stay at his parent’s, his brother’s, his aunt’s or wherever he wanted but he was not living with us anymore, I wanted a divorce!

Chapter 14 – The Aftermath if my Decision

Once I did not have to see Kyle every morning and night I started to feel better, gaining my strength a little more every day. I would still have the occasional emotional breakdown and wish for my marriage and family to stay together but they were becoming less and less. I had no idea where Kyle was staying. I imagined he was probably enjoying himself with the woman he destroyed our family for and probably many more than just her. He would come by the house every other day to see Ella and spend time with her in the yard. If he didn’t get to see her in person he would call and talk to her on the phone.

We fought a lot. I told him that he needed to file for the divorce, I wasn’t going to do it. I demanded a house and a car whether I continue on in our home we built together, I move back to the Bay Area to our townhouse or another house all together. Early on in our relationship I paid for everything. Cars, insurance, utilities, groceries…literally every expense besides our mortgage. Kyle had a very good life because of my generosity. I planned to take my investment in him and our life together with me!

Kyle would tell me to be happy with whatever I got because he could give me nothing because he made nothing on paper. I took that as a direct threat and realized this was not going to be an easy divorce. I knew I needed an attorney but I did not have any money let alone a $5K retainer. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I got so desperate for my future with his threats that I went to the one person I was trying to avoid, Sherry. She immediately gave me the $5K in cash. She was also extremely upset with Kyle. 

I had to meet a few attorney’s before I found one I liked. I told him that because I had a legal background I intended to do some of the work too so that I got some of my retainer back.

With Kyle’s threat of potentially leaving me with nothing and no support or at least just what he felt like giving me, I knew I had to put on my investigator hat to prove he had a heavy cash flow. Luckily, it was easy. I had receipts that proved he had spent well over $100K in less than a year. I had our family computer that had an inventory of collectibles worth over $200K. That was just the tip of the iceberg. There was so much proof that he was flush with income. I was blown away because he always told me he had no money. Critiquing my grocery lists, insisting I drive a very old vehicle, guilt tripping me if I needed new clothes or shoes, refusing to fund vacations, refusing to buy lots of necessities. It became so very clear that he was a massive control freak and of course, a liar!

Once Kyle realized that I was seeking half of these invisible assets and saw that I had proof, things got ugly really quickly. I was bullied frequently by him. I had to be so strong to not allow him to intimidate me. 

My attorney told me “do not leave your home”. Meaning do not move out. I was to stay there until there was a divorce settlement agreement filed in the courts. Living on his family ranch aka compound was so hard. His family were awful to me. Every one of them turned their backs to me. I was part of this family for nearly 12 years. I was completely ignored on the holidays and basically made to feel as though I did not exist. Even at Christmas time, they would have their usual gatherings and not one of them wished me a merry Christmas or bothered with me at all. I was the one that destroyed the marriage in their eyes. It hurt and they were showing my daughter and all of her little cousins how to treat people. I had been very close to all of Ella’s cousins. I have known them since they were babies. I was their favorite auntie.

I isolated myself in my house and steered clear of all of them. I needed support so I reached out to all of my new female friends in the area and invited them to the house for a party. I told them at the party what had happened and that we were divorcing. The cat was officially out of the bag and now the whole community would know. It was refreshing to share my heartache and have these women ready and happy to support me. Of course they all went straight home to tell their significant others and I am sure Kyle and I were the talk of the town.

After the party I am sure Kyle felt eyes on him and his ears were burning. Even though I felt humiliated being cheated on, it felt better that people knew than keeping it a secret. Many years later, I would come to find out that the kids in the family were told that I just wanted a divorce, for no reason and that I took all of Kyle’s money with me.

On my side of the family I had zero support. My mother would take my phone calls but she did not know how to deal with my desperation. I begged her to come and see me and stay a couple of weeks. She would not. She was absolutely ice cold about the entire situation. She could not handle it. Of course, she told me she knew we would never work out and she never liked him anyways. At one point she told me that she didn’t want me to call her if I was upset, that it stressed her out. My mother is a whole other blog. She is a non-present grandmother to my daughter to this day. I was completely on my own through my divorce other than my friends and I tried not to be too much of a downer to them because I know it was hard for them to hear it too. I really felt like I was alone through it all. That was so hard. No one should have to go through something like this alone.

Once my attorney presented Kyle’s attorney with the fact that I could prove his income, Kyle was willing to talk about a settlement. I suggested to him that the two of us sit down and come to an agreement together vs pay a combined $1K an hour to have our attorneys hash it out. Surprisingly, he agreed.

I came with what I thought was more than fair. We went back and forth on some things but eventually we did come to an agreement. I think we were just both so exhausted from being at war that we both knew we needed to move forward. I do believe, however, that if I had not found proof of income, he would have tried to leave me with absolutely nothing. No doubt in my mind. 

One of the terms of our settlement was that we would sell our house in the Bay Area and I would buy a home in Humboldt. At first I looked for a house in Eureka, which was an hour and a half away from the ranch. I really hate Eureka. It reminds me of Gotham City in Batman. Dark, industrial, dirty, etc. It was not my kind of place. I also had really come to love my job at the school and I did not want to give it up. There was a house for sale just 15 miles up the road from the ranch. I loved it. It was river front property and a modern style home being so far out in the boonies. It was on the grid with power and internet and it was just about a mile from the school. Another plus was that if we stayed in the area, Ella could take the school bus to her dad’s house any time she wanted. I was obviously very angry with Kyle but I wanted Ella to have him in her life as much as possible. She loved her daddy. It isn’t fair that our child should suffer because Kyle and I could not work it out. This was the main reason I did not flee back to the Bay Area. I could not do that to my daughter, I would not take her dad away from her. I also wanted Ella to have strong ties to Kyle’s family and all of her cousins. It is a big family. On my side it is just my mom and my brother. Kyle was ok with the idea of us moving to the Bay Area if that is what I needed to do to make a living. I bought the house and it worked out well for our entire family.

Chapter 15 – My New Home and New Life

I moved into my new home on Father’s Day. It was so exciting for Ella and I. This house is huge! More than double the size of our home on the ranch. I really enjoyed decorating it and making it a home. Ella loved choosing things for her bedroom. 

I was 15 miles away from Kyle and his family but it felt much further away. It felt really good. All of them are terrible people to me. I had no interest in maintaining relationships with any of them. I felt free at last!

One of the quickest things I learned is that it is hard being a homeowner. This was my very first home, just me. If something went wrong I had to come up with the way and the money to fix it. Kyle tried for a while to be helpful with things I could not fix on my own or that were a quick fix that he knew how to handle. I would be sure to pay attention and learn when he did repairs. We tried to have a civil co-parenting relationship. Ultimately, I wanted to be as self-sufficient as possible. I traded in my SUV for a sexy pick-up truck. I would have to use it to take garbage to the dump, haul wood and all kinds of home projects quite often. I even learned how to tow a trailer! It is not as easy as it looks! The more home and yard repairs and maintenance I did the more confident I felt being on my own. We lived very rurally out there.You are on your own out there. No garbage pickup every week, no plumbers to call with problems, no services of any kind. We had a volunteer fire department, a school, a post office and a country store with one gas pump. Living out there could be a little unnerving as a single mom but I was addressing issues head on and I was handling it! I learned to be very resourceful. I got to know people and who was good at fixing things I could not do myself.

I invited friends over frequently. I would host ladies brunch, Fugly Christmas sweater parties, Superbowl, etc. I loved having people over and sharing my beautiful home.

Ella was thriving. She loved the new house too. She had friends over for sleepovers often.

A few months after we moved to our new home I brought Buddy the Kunekune pig home. He was the size of a football when we got him. He was a snuggly pig. He loved us and anyone that would give him treats. There was an apple tree on the property and he would eat all of the fallen apples. Community members would stop by to visit Buddy through the fence. Everyone loved him. Buddy went from about 5 pounds to over 200 pounds pretty fast!

I always wanted a pet pig and a mini donkey. Kyle refused even though we had lots of space for pets. I never did get the donkey but Buddy was enough.

The house needed some work. It was a terrible color so the first thing I did was have it painted. Soon after I replaced the roof. I also converted two of the four bedrooms into a one bedroom apartment and started an Airbnb. I was surprised how busy I was with the Airbnb. 

I stayed very busy all the time but also found time for as many river days with friends as possible in the summer months. I really loved my new life!

About two or three months after the move, I got asked out on a date. This was going to be my first date since our separation and upcoming divorce. I was going to meet him in town. I remember being absolutely sick to my stomach in anticipation. I was so nervous, sad, scared and excited. When I arrived at the restaurant I was meeting him at I was literally shaking. He noticed. He was sweet and tried to calm my nerves. I told him that it was my first date in over 12 years. He was also just out of a two year relationship and felt nervous too. 

It was a nice time but I realized I was not ready to start dating yet. I was just too emotional still.

Our first winter in the house was challenging. The house has 20’ high ceilings which meant a lot of wood to burn which meant constant transferring wood from outside to inside. It would heavily rain for days and sometimes even weeks. We would be stuck indoors. I was still in the process of getting everything we needed. I got a giant flatscreen TV and subscribed to all the premium channels for entertainment. We also had frequent power outages. Kyle gave me an old generator for the outages and showed me how to use it. The house had a transfer switch for the essential areas like the kitchen. I really hated power outages. It was such a hassle. The storms were intense and fallen trees over power lines were very common. 

We didn’t have a mall or a movie theater to go to on rainy days so I worked hard at making my home a sanctuary.

We would watch the river rise from our back windows. Sometimes we would see entire trees going down the river. It was spectacular!

My favorite part of my house was the huge back deck. I spent a lot of time on it and entertained friends there. I felt so blessed to have such a lovely home. I felt that I was landing on my feet and I was going to be ok.

Chapter 16 – The Community

Working for the school district gave me a much broader view of a lot of different people in the valley. There were ultra conservative ranchers as well as extremely liberal hippies. I always felt like there was not much room in the middle. I definitely see myself as more of a centrist. My ex-husband would always call me a liberal as an insult because I did not agree 100% with his point of view and the liberals would consider me a conservative for the same reason. I learned to not talk about politics at all. People were very vocal out there and in such a small community you could feel the tension at times. 

Kyle and his family were strong Trump supporters. It seemed like most of the ranching families out there were. I definitely consider myself a feminist but not to the extreme but, I despise Trump mostly because of his misogynistic history and how my ex-husband behaved so much in the same way. I felt threatened by anyone that did not have a problem with sexism. I do not seek out debates or arguments. I just avoid those people.

I would say that the majority of families that I knew from the school were liberals. Strong Bernie Sanders supporters. I did not get involved in political conversations with them either.

I found the adults, the liberal ones, that were born and raised out there to be the craziest and strangest people of all. The worst, most entitled behaviors. Most of them were marijuana farmers. They were flush with cash but many of them abused the welfare system because they were poor on paper.The were anti-government but fine with taking a handout.  

I used to joke that our school should be gold plated and brand new everything because of the amount of cash that flowed through our valley from weed. 

Any time new people would move into our community, they would be sized up, judged and classified as a welcome or unwelcome community member. If they were anti-government, anti-authority then they were welcomed. 

The problem with all of these anti-government and anti-authority people was that they looked at the school as both. The school was the only government entity other than the post office and it was a threat to them but they had no other option other than homeschooling out there.

One of my jobs was to enroll students and inform the parents of the requirements to attend a California public school. Of course that meant immunizations. They would lash out at me as if I made these laws. They were verbally abusive even. No one was going to tell them how to raise their child! I really did not care what their beliefs and feelings were. I would explain to them that their beef was with the State of California, not me but, they were so unreasonable and had such a need to act out that they did so towards me and the rest of school administration. I realized fairly early on that in general, I did not fit in on the ranch or in my new town. I thought many of these parents were absolutely crazy extremists. I did not like them one bit. This community was clicky like a high school cheerleading team. In general, I avoided community events because of my experience working at the school.

Some transplants that were accepted in the community would go on and on that this place was “utopia”. I found that laughable. People were weird out here! Even one of our school teachers. She was born and raised in the area and she was the most entitled person I have ever come across in my life. It was hard to even be on campus with her. She was anti-marijuana even though that is what her family did for a living. She would put long rants in the local Google Group forum lambasting all of the parents that grew weed. Preaching what terrible parents and community members they were. She was on a mission to get all of the school administration fired and felt she should be the principal and superintendent with zero qualifications for the job. This woman could not even manage an attendance sheet for her classroom once a week. Absolutely unorganized, unprofessional and just a bitch, really. She had made many enemies in the valley.

My personality type is that I try to find the good in everyone. I am very optimistic and most people would tell you I am very friendly. She was one of a small number of people in my life I can wholeheartedly tell you I could not stand. A lot of people felt the same way as me. She had no regard for how anyone else felt about anything. She saw herself as the authority on everything. She has a circle of friends that all behaved the same way. 

We have the guy that walks around barefoot everywhere, the houseless man that has relied on the entire community’s compassion for many years moving from home to home or living in his van on someone’s property. He successfully burned many bridges taking advantage of people’s kindness. Then there is the attorney who has been successfully squatting on someone’s property for decades, his son and daughter in law who also squat on the same property and wreak havoc in the community, in particular the school complaining about anything and everything and trying to tell our superintendent how to run it. Then we have the community bully that loves to call this place her utopia and gets on her soap box frequently and posts long winded stories on the Google Forum about herself and how wonderful she is. So self righteous! I could go on and on! This community did not feel like home at all.

There are also things I love about my new town. I love the river, the spectacular, wild beaches, my house and property, my pig, my dog, my cats, my new friends, my independence. Even though it has never really felt like home, Humboldt in general doesn’t feel like home. I felt more at home in the Bay Area. My hometown is Santa Cruz and that will always be where my heart is. Humboldt is just so different from what I know and how I was raised.

Not long after I moved into my house, marijuana was on the ballot to be legalized for recreational use. It was already legal for medicinal use. You could draw a line down the center of people that were for or against this. It would end up getting legalized but that would cause many big problems for our community in the near future.

Even though I did not feel connected to my new community, I still was so very grateful for so many things. I had a beautiful riverfront home, a small Airbnb business, a job, friends, a stress free life, etc. It was an odd place but there were positives too. We all knew each other. Despite our differences, we would all come together when there was a need. All those people that I disliked didn’t like me either.

Ella was doing well in school. My only purpose in life is her happiness. It still is. Every year Ella and I would go on vacation. We usually went to Hawaii or Mexico. It is difficult to teach your child about the world when you live in such an isolated, rural area. The entire county of Humboldt feels that way. There is very little culture here. I was very intentional in teaching Ella that this was not a normal lifestyle, that there was much more to the world than this place. There was no diversity to be found there and in most of Humboldt. We would visit friends and family in Santa Cruz and try and have as many adventures as possible.

Chapter 17 – Another Life Change

We lived in our home there for just under 7 years. When Ella started high school is was time to leave that town. Since marijuana became legal about 4 years prior, so many families had to leave the area because they could no longer make an income living out there. Legalizing marijuana drove the price way down. When I had first moved to Humboldt I was told it sold for around $1800 a pound. Now, they were lucky to make $500 a pound. Everyone’s lives dramatically changed. To buy a permit to legally grow it was too expensive for most. On Ella’s first day of 9th grade, there were only 2 other freshmen in her class. A brother and sister that she grew up with and she was not friends with. When I realized how lonely her high school years would be I realized we were going to have to also do the great migration out of this valley.

I reached out to Kyle. He and I had talked about this casually for years. We had talked about her going to a school in town maybe junior year so that she could have a “typical” high school experience. We really never talked about how that would happen. I told Kyle that we needed to think about doing this now vs in 3 years because Ella needed to have friends and opportunities like sports or clubs and all the other things high school offers that ours school did not. Kyle pushed back and said “she is fine”. I offered an option that both of could share an apartment in town. I could stay part of the week with her there and he could stay part of the week. This was so that I would not have to quit my job. We would share the load. He said no. That he would not change his life in any way for this to happen. I was not surprised at all. That’s how it’s always been. The world revolves around him of course. Kyle always felt more like a friend than a parent to Ella. He felt his monthly check for child support was sufficient and that everything else should be my responsibility. It is still like this to this day.

Because of Kyle’s clear message that he was not going to change his life or make any sacrifices in any way for his daughter, I knew it was up to me and I knew trying to reason with him was pointless. It would be like trying to reason with a rock. I decided to check out the job market in town and got my resume up to date. Fortunately, there was a robust job market! I started sending my resume off and started looking at rentals in town. I was always texting Kyle, keeping him in the loop and telling him that I was doing this and that I was making plans to move to town with Ella. I invited him multiple times to come over and have a family meeting. He ignored me, completely. Not even an acknowledgement of my texts. I emailed him too. Called multiple times. Nothing. He decided he was not going to talk to me about it and probably thought that by ghosting me, I would just give up on this whole idea. He was wrong! I realized that what was best for Ella was not his concern. What was best for him, was and always has been his only concern.

When I started interviewing for jobs, I tried to call and text him. I really tried to keep him in the loop at real time. He continued the ghosting (did I mention what a misogynist he is)? This was a typical tactic he learned from his father. Women don’t matter. They don’t make decisions, they are weak. I truly felt that Kyle never thought I would ever make the move so he wasn’t going to even discuss it with me.

I had been checking Craigslist for rentals. I found an adorable little bungalow that was in my price range and was meeting up with the property owner the next day. I called and texted Kyle to tell him and also to ask him for help with the deposit because it was over $4K to secure the rental. Ghosted! Ok Kyle………fine. When there is a will there is a way! He was obviously very aware by this point that things were happening and he made a very clear choice to avoid a conversation about it so, I was on my own!

I found that money and I rented that bungalow before I even had a job offer. I was interviewing for multiple jobs and getting job offers and I knew I just had to find the perfect option. There were 2 jobs I wanted and I was offered both and I took my first choice and felt so fortunate! I really felt like things were going my way. I got a cute home for us and a good job! I felt like God was on my side. I was on a mission to give my daughter a good life and dammit, it was happening! The bungalow was 1 mile from the local high school. Ella could walk home from school every day. It was just 6 miles to my work! This felt meant to be!

After I paid the rent on the bungalow, I informed Kyle that we were moving. It was 1 month’s notice. That is when he decided he wanted to be part of the conversation and he was angry! He accused me of making this decision without him. That he should have been consulted first. That he was her dad and he has a say, etc. I expected this response. It didn’t matter that I had proof that I relentlessly tried to involve him. All the offers for family meetings that were ignored. Countless texts and emails. Even with proof, he denied that I tried. I believe that Kyle thought I did not have the nerve or financial means to make this happen. He felt he had the power here and chose to disrespect me vs be an involved parent.

Regardless of Kyle’s gaslighting, we were moving! It was such an exciting time. So many new life experiences to come. I was so very optimistic for both of our futures. I did not break any stipulations in our divorce/custody agreement. I was only obligated to stay within Humboldt County. He was pissed!

Author’s note:

**There is so much more to this story; much of which I have not found the courage to write about in fear of retaliation from Kyle and his family. There is more to write about the continued harassment nearly 10 years after his infidelity and subsequent divorce. This man still seeks control over my life and the need to cause harm. There is much more to be written. This is a work in progress.