Marriage number two ends

I made the decision to end my second marriage due to how my son was being treated. Plain and simple. The narrative was always the same and it was clear to me that my son was being treated unfairly anytime I wasn't home. I would be at work and almost always get a call about how Tyler was supposedly behaving with Josh.  Never once did I hear about what Josh might be doing to contribute to the behavior.  He was viewed as the golden child in these scenarios. Almost two years to the day after we started dating I moved into my own place in Tacoma just off of 64th and Park Avenue.

I had made a couple of job changes along the way that I remembered as I was typing that. My brother was managing a store called The Locker Room at the Tacoma Mall and needed someone part time. Oh man, just typing that sentence brought up even more memories! This was another one of those times where I remember asking him, do they do background checks?  He said no, so I said alright. He hired me and I started working there.  Almost right away, my memory tells me it wasn't but a month or two after I started, he got moved to a different location.  The assistant manager, Dave, got promoted to be the manager in his place. I am kicking myself right now for not remembering his last name!  Dave was, and is, an amazing person. 

Pretty quickly I went full time and was promoted to be a shift manager, and, not long after that, Dave left all together, and, I was promoted to Manager.  But, before that all happened I must tell you a wild story that happened. I will never forget the night I was closing as the shift manager and I witnessed it happen. I had another employee working with me and we were closing up the store.  Out of the corner of my eye I saw her do it...but, I thought to myself, nah, maybe I am just seeing things...maybe it was her money.   I saw her put money in her pocket as she was closing out the till.  

Not to long passed, maybe a week, and all hell broke lose in the store.  Dave told us our District Manager, who by the way was a real treat. She was not nice in any way, shape, or form. She was ruthless in her managing style and I would later get to experience it first hand when I became the manager.  I used to hear Dave on the phone with her on her hour to two hour long morning calls...crazy.  Well, guess what, the till had been found to be short at our store.  I remember hearing this and thinking I was right with what I had seen. I knew I wasn't seeing shit. 

Dave and I had quickly become close at this point.  We were becoming friends and I loved working for him.  With this new scenario I was scared to death.  Why?  Well, our lovely district manager, immediately, and she told Dave this, said I must have been the one to steal the money. I was the shift manager on duty, I was ultimately responsible for the money, it must have been me!  Wholly crap I thought.  I am screwed. All I could think is if they decided to do background checks on us I was done. I decided to talk to Dave and reveal my past to him. I had too. I also had to tell him what I witnessed with the employee. I was scared shitless to do this.

Dave listened and never once judged me. He also believed me when I said I witnessed the employee do what she did. Dave decided, since the company was sending an investigator in to find out what happened, that we wouldn't say anything about my past to anyone. He believed, and it proved to be spot on, that the truth would come out in the investigation and I should tell the investigator what I had seen. The investigator came, interviewed all of us, and, the employee admitted to stealing money.   Whew!  I should note that our district manager never once apologized to Dave or I for accusing me of stealing the money.  Alas, I felt relieved and the situation resolved itself.

I did like the job and the work at the store.  I liked it enough that when Dave had enough and left, I took on the role as the manager of the store.  I kicked ass while I was in that role.  Our store was at the top for sales and I won awards from the Tacoma Mall for my marketing efforts.  With that, came 60+ hour working weeks.....It was brutal.  No holidays and one day off a week, maybe.  I was also in school at the time. After about six months I left.  Being salaried, working 60+ hours a week, and having no time for my son, and, a boss that made you regret showing up day after day, I was done.  I went back to the cooking job at KC's Caboose!  Not long after that came the opportunity at Fred Meyer.   

So, it is about June of 1998 and I moved into my own place. I remember the day I moved out of Sue's and into my own place.  Tyler was 8 and I remember expressing remorse to him about another move. I didn't want him to experience what I had experienced as a child. Him being only 8, he was happy that he had his Dad all to himself now and had his own room in our new place. I am remembering, when I made this move, yes, it was at this time, I was now at Fred Meyer.  

I started at Fred Meyer as a Loss Prevention Specialist in what used to be the Lakewood Store in Feb of '98.  I was driving a Honda Accord I was buying from my sister and brother-in-law, and getting the job at Freddie's was good for me financially and it gave me health insurance. There was a lot of potential for advancement in loss prevention at Fred Meyer.  They had an amazing LP program all around.  My job, as a Loss Prevention Specialist was to look for shoplifters. I was good at it; duh! I didn't remember to write about, in the 80's after getting out of the military, I had worked in LP....This was pre-heavy drug use. My brother-in-law Vern worked for, and than bought, a company that contracted with grocery stores and provided LP services. So, I had experience doing this type of work.  I caught a lot of shoplifters......a lot.  All the way from kids stealing packs of cigarettes to literally professional shoplifters that did this for a living.  The thing that really attracted me to stay with Freddie's for a while was the Loss Prevention Management training program.  As a Loss Prevention Manager you not only supervise your Loss Prevention Specialist's efforts, you focus a lot of your efforts on internal theft.  You were also given an immense amount of management training in all around management and specific to the LP world.   I went full time with Fred Meyer quickly and decided to stop going to school.  Fred Meyer is where I wanted to be. 

It was also at Fred Meyer where I would meet Stephanie DeWitt.  Her and I would begin a near ten year relationship/marriage.  When I look back on my time with Stephanie my telling of it is usually the same.  Her and I really gave it our best effort, and in the end, both of us realized we were two good people who just were not going to be able to make it as a couple.  I am still friends with her to this day and she is one of the first relationships in my life where I truly started to change my behaviors to support a healthy relationship.

Below is a great memory from that letter to my mom I have referred to a couple times while writing this month.  It is truly because of a life in recovery that I was able to write this letter to her and let go of my anger and be able to love her through a new set of viewpoints moving forward. I wrote the letter right in this time period of my first couple years of recovery