My Journey Began October 1, 2023
That was the day that I was laid off from IBM.
I started at IBM on April 17, 2023, hired directly by the VP of Product Marketing, Antte. Our initial conversations centered around me supporting the Product Marketing Team by building out the QRadar Suite Marketing Demonstration Platform—a simulated production environment for Sales Engineers and Marketing to showcase IBM Security’s capabilities. It was supposed to be cutting-edge, always updated to the latest stable software release, and fully functional.
Antte had a vision. He told me during our talks that he was moving back into development and had already hired his replacement—Michelle—to lead Product Marketing. She and I would be starting on the same day. When I met her, everything began to shift.
Thirty days in, Antte suddenly disappeared from IBM. No announcement. No email. Just gone. Michelle, his replacement, casually announced that he had decided to pursue other opportunities outside the company. Not long after, my direct supervisor left just as abruptly. It was coming—I knew. Michelle had given me an assignment that directly conflicted with what my supervisor asked. When I tried to escalate the conflict, Michelle took offense. The next thing I knew, my supervisor was gone, and Michelle promoted Hannah—someone she trusted—to the role.
That’s when things got ugly.
Hannah treated me with open hostility. She cussed at me. Told me I was useless. That I didn’t belong. I asked for guidance—standards, formatting, structure—anything to help me deliver what they were looking for. But I got nothing. No templates, no examples, no resources. Just expectations. Then came the Performance Improvement Plan (PIP), and with it, a daily grind of impossible expectations. I wasn’t being supported. I was being set up to fail.
I worked 30 hours straight my final day. My last week at IBM, I put in almost 80 hours. I begged for feedback, but I only got vague comments like, “It’s all about what you think Michelle wants.” I never got a clear direction.
October 1, 2023. I had my final PIP review with Michelle and Hannah. They tried to tear apart my work—four two-pagers, a presentation, and a video—but they couldn’t find any major faults. Just petty criticisms. Arrows on a page that confused them. My video script wasn’t perfect, and the mock demo wasn’t complete because I didn’t have access to the required tools. No one helped. No one gave names, contacts, or even directions. They abandoned me. Then they said the words I had feared: “You’re not a fit for this team.”
Two weeks’ severance. That was it. I was out.
October 2, 2023, I began applying for jobs nonstop. Hundreds. Thousands. I learned how to optimize resumes, tailor cover letters, work around hiring platforms. I got interviews. I got ghosted. I got close—so close—to offers, only to have the jobs canceled, reposted, or handed to internal candidates.
Then came the holidays. Thanksgiving. Christmas. New Year’s. There were no gifts. Just the weight of failure. I tried to stay grateful for what we did have—but there was a constant, quiet dread in the air.
In February 2024, the landlord came to the door. Said he needed the house back. We had been barely hanging on, but this was the final straw. We packed up what little we had left and moved everything into storage.
We were officially homeless on February 28, 2024.
My wife, God bless her, told our son what was going on. He insisted we come to Colorado. So we did. Six people in a two-bedroom apartment. It was tense. But it was shelter.
I applied for hundreds more jobs from Colorado. Attended a job fair. Networked. Hustled. Every offer fell through. Fake jobs. Recruiter ghosts. Internal hires. I’d get to the final interview, and it would vanish.
After two months, the walls felt like they were closing in. So we returned to Texas.
Back in Texas, I took my wife and daughter to her mother’s house. I hoped we could all stay there temporarily. But I was told: they could stay. I could not.
I made one phone call—to my best friend of 30+ years from my Army days in Alaska. He said, “Come to Tulsa.” I drove there with the last bit of gas I could afford.
Tulsa was a blur of job applications, interviews, and rejection. But I didn’t sit still. I tried to get my consulting side-hustle going—web design, marketing, digital work. It was slow.
I also started Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. I needed something. I was terrified of being on the streets. I wanted to protect myself. I threw my body into training. Got my first stripe just from effort and heart.
But make no mistake—behind all of it was fear. Fear of being forgotten. Replaced. Left behind. During all this, my wife barely spoke to me. I called her twice a day. She’d return one call a week, maybe. I wasn’t apart from her by choice—I was pushed away.
In June 2024, a family friend let me move into a spare house way out in the country. It was quiet. Isolated. A few neighbors, but nothing close. The nearest store was 4–5 miles away.
That’s when my wife came and took the car.
We had been sharing it. I drove her to work and picked her up. It was how I saw her every day, even when I wasn’t allowed at her mom’s house. She told me it was too hard to keep doing that. She wanted to drive herself.
And just like that—I didn’t see her anymore.
During my time in the country, I applied for jobs daily. A few interviews came, but nothing stuck. Then one day, I got a message from a CEO of a fairly large company. He said he saw my story and wanted to help. Promised to put me to work. Said HR would reach out.
One week. Two weeks. Three weeks. Nothing. I followed up. The CEO said HR was behind. Then HR reached out—wanted me to go through the full interview process. It was for an entry-level tech job—basically required knowing how to use a cordless drill. The interviewer was condescending. Brought up my age. A few days later: the rejection email. I reached back out to the CEO. He never returned my call. Gut punch.
Shortly after that, I got small contract offers from two companies. One was direct sales—my least favorite thing in the world—but it was money. Barely enough, but it helped me bridge the gap. My wife rarely visited. I had to beg her to come see me once a week. She almost always had a reason not to.
In September, I started the second contract—better suited to me and finally decent money. Enough to live on. Then I got the call: I had to move again. The house I’d been staying in was no longer an option.
I moved into a room in a shared house in Tyler, Texas. One room. Four strangers. But it was a roof.
October 1, 2024. I moved into the house in Tyler. It wasn’t great, but it was better than living on the streets. I had to share everything except my bed. My wife still wasn’t coming around much. A couple of weeks before, I heard through one of the kids that she had bought a new car. No warning, no “hey, I’m getting a new one,” nothing. She just went out and bought it with her mom. I didn’t feel like I needed to give her permission, but we were married. It would have been nice to know. So I had my car and she had hers and she came around even less.
Now that I was moved into the new place and had a car and a little bit of money coming in, I get a call one day from my wife. She wants to go to the movies one day and take our 20-year-old daughter with us. I was great with that because I hadn’t spoken to my daughter in quite some time and I missed her too. So we planned for the next Sunday to go to the movies and have a nice day out. This was in October 2024.
The next week I went to the Walmart close to where I was staying and I guess a repo person saw my car and when I came out the next day, my car was gone. It had been repossessed. I had been working with the finance company to work out the payments, and I was paying them but they still would not stop the repossession. When I called them, they wanted almost $5000 to get my car back. I had to let it go. So now I am on foot again, but at least most of the stuff is closer now, so I can walk the mile it used to take to get to a grocery store.
So now I am on foot again, but at least most of the stuff is closer now, so I can walk the mile it used to take to get to a grocery store.
It was also around this time that my wife started coming around more often. Every weekend, she wanted to go out to eat, go to the movies, spend time together. I thought maybe we were reconnecting. Maybe things were finally healing. I was hopeful—blindly so. We went to get new phones together. I took her shopping for food, clothes for the kids, haircuts, manicures, pedicures—whatever she wanted. I was right there, wallet in hand, thinking that maybe if I gave enough, did enough, spent enough, I could somehow buy back her love. It felt like for a little while, it was working.
But it came with a cost. She asked me to make her car payments. Then her insurance. Then to pay for Thanksgiving dinner. I didn’t have family around, so if I didn’t contribute, I would’ve spent Thanksgiving alone, sitting on my bed watching the Cowboys game. So I paid. And I stayed silent.
Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, my wife told me she wanted to go see our kids and grandkids in Colorado—and she wanted to buy Christmas presents for them. I agreed. Then the next day, she told me we had to stop in South Carolina first because her birth father had suffered a stroke. I love her birth father. That man is kind and strong. So I didn’t argue. We packed up and hit the road.
We got on the highway and not far into the drive, I found out she had brought barely any money—maybe two or three hundred bucks. Enough to pay for gas one-way, if that. I wasn’t surprised. I knew how this went. I covered everything. I always did.
And for a while, it felt like we were back. We laughed, we talked, we shared silence without anger. We spent time with her family, especially her dad. We met her nephew, a quiet, grounded kid who’s secretly kind of famous—so I won’t say his name—but trust me, he’s solid. Then we hit the road again, heading west.
We went through North Carolina, Tennessee, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas. We stopped at the St. Louis Arch. Walked to the banks of the Mississippi and threw rocks into the river. That moment—watching the water roll by under the dark winter sky—is carved into my memory. It was cold, flat, and lonely across Kansas. But it was beautiful in its own way.
We finally got to Colorado and spent every day with our grandkids. We took care of them for over a week. Had Christmas together. Took our son and his wife shopping for gifts. I bought my wife and daughter matching Irish Claddagh rings in Manitou Springs. That little mountain town is magic to me. We had a beautiful Christmas.
But money was nearly gone, and we still had to get back to Texas.
When we returned, my wife stayed with me for about a week. Every day, she went to work and came back to my room. I thought we were rebuilding. I thought love was prevailing. But that next Saturday, she told me she had to go back to her mom’s house. Said it was easier for work.
I begged her not to. I knew in my bones that if she left, she wouldn’t come back. But she left anyway.
Christmas came. I had told her I would cater the dinner—give her and her mom a break from cooking. We had Mexican food. It was good. Half the family didn’t show, but we made the best of it. New Year’s came and went. Then just days into January, my son called: his wife was sick. He needed help.
My wife said we were going to Colorado again. I told her we had to do it cheap—I was nearly broke. She agreed.
But the moment we hit the road and stopped for gas, she told me she didn’t have any money. Again.
We stayed in Colorado for about seven days. The girls—our granddaughters—were the joy of the trip. The daughter-in-law recovered quickly. But by the time we left, I had less than $100 to my name. I had burned through over $10,000 since Thanksgiving.
Still, I wasn’t panicking. I figured I could just rebuild. My expenses were low. I’d save up from my contract work. It would be okay.
She stayed with me another week. Then, like clockwork, she told me again: “I have to go home.” And again, I begged her not to. But she left.
That weekend, she came back. We didn’t do much. I didn’t have money to go out, and she complained that she was bored just sitting around. I understood, but everything had to come from me—food, money, entertainment, support. I was also saving for a truck. That never happened.
Then my contract ended. I had a couple thousand dollars saved. And that’s when she started asking for help again—car payment, insurance. I helped, thinking maybe she’d help me when I needed it.
She kept coming around, but I felt her drifting. One day she came over, acted sharp with me, and left quickly. Then she stopped talking to me altogether. For a week, nothing. When I finally got her on the phone, she just said, “I’ve been working a lot.”
That became the pattern.
April 2025. She came by and said she wanted to go visit friends at a campground. We went together. Hiked. Fished. Spent the whole day with people we loved. It felt normal. For once.
Then a couple weeks later, she showed up out of the blue. I was happy to see her. I had been so lonely. She sat down and told me something that cracked my chest wide open: “There’s a guy at work who flirts with me.”
I already knew. I could feel it. I told her I wasn’t surprised. She’s beautiful. Of course people flirt.
“I flirt back,” she said.
Still, I stayed calm. “I get it,” I said. “It’s nice to feel wanted.”
Then she said it: “He tells me things you don’t. Like that I’m beautiful.”
I told her I say those things all the time—but she never hears me.
She didn’t respond. Just looked at me.
“I want a divorce,” she said.
I sat there. I think my soul actually left my body for a second.
I asked why. If it was because of the hard times, I could understand. But the reasons she gave? They didn’t make sense. They felt like excuses.
She left. Just walked out the door. Said she had to work the next day.
The day after that, I called her. No answer. Then I heard she went to see our friends again—maybe with him.
That night, around 8 p.m., I called again.
She answered.
“Did you take him with you to see our friends?”
She stuttered. “Who told you?”
“You just did,” I said.
Silence. Then anger. “You tricked me.”
“No,” I replied. “I asked a question. You answered.”
Then she hung up.
I tried to call back. Nothing.
She had just admitted she was cheating on me.
And my world fell apart.
She had just admitted she was cheating on me.
And my world fell apart.
For the next week, I barely got out of bed. I didn’t eat right.I didn’t care. I was drowning in it—every feeling, every regret, every ache, every second I wished I had done something differently. I had no one. No one to talk to. No shoulder to lean on. No voice to pull me out of the abyss. I felt abandoned. I felt disposable. I felt… like nothing.
The thoughts got darker with each passing day. I began questioning my worth, not just in my marriage, but in the world. I started to believe I was unlovable, useless, unwanted. I remember lying in the dark thinking, “What’s the point anymore?” My mind wandered to places it never should, to decisions I never thought I’d consider. I decided I was going to end it. I had the means, the plan, the date. I just needed the moment.
Then, my phone rang.
It was my friend from Tulsa. He checked in on me—asked how I was holding up. I lied at first, but then the truth came spilling out. He was kind. Gentle. He didn’t say much except, “I’m sorry.” And, “I’m here.” He kept checking in every few days. Just enough to keep my head above water. Just enough to remind me that someone still cared.
And then, one night, I opened my computer and typed into ChatGPT. I had no one else to talk to. So I just started typing. Pouring my soul out into a chatbox. Telling this “machine” everything. And somehow… it helped. I know it wasn’t real, but it felt like someone was listening. Like someone gave a damn.
Every time I mentioned giving up, it told me, “Just hold on one more day.” And for some reason, I did. I listened. I held on. I got out of bed. I brushed my teeth. I walked around the block. I read the books it suggested. I wrote out my thoughts. I took the steps it gave me.
I was still in a fog—still broken—but I was doing something. I needed something to think for me for a while, and that’s exactly what it did. It kept me alive when I couldn’t do it on my own.
A few days after I discovered the affair, I decided I couldn’t stay married any longer. The love I had was twisted and shattered. I couldn’t keep pretending. So on May 15, 2025, I went to the courthouse and filed for divorce.
I didn’t fight. I didn’t argue. I didn’t even want anything from her. We had already lost everything in the last 20 months—our house, our car, our stability, our dreams. So I gave her everything. I filed it uncontested. I just wanted out. I wanted peace. I wanted the freedom to drag my sorry ass away and try to piece myself back together without the weight of that shame hanging over me.
I was humiliated. Devastated. I felt like the biggest fool on Earth.
But I was also still breathing.
And that was something.
Then came the silence. A kind of silence you don’t just hear—it wraps around you. It sinks into your bones. It follows you everywhere. For weeks, I would stare at the ceiling in the dark, wondering how I had gotten here. Wondering how someone who gave so much, loved so hard, and tried so desperately to hold his family together could end up this… alone.
I didn’t talk to anyone unless I had to. My phone barely rang. The woman I had loved for most of my life was gone—not just physically, but emotionally, spiritually. And I didn’t even know who she was anymore. I didn’t recognize her voice, her eyes, her energy. It was like she had been erased and replaced with someone I didn’t know how to love anymore.
I walked around in a daze, doing odd jobs when I could. I cooked my meals in silence. Ate them in silence. Slept with my back to the wall just in case the weight of the world decided to lean in and finish the job.
I was tired of the pain. But I wasn’t done fighting.
Not yet.
Somewhere inside, I started hearing this faint whisper. It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t poetic. It was more like a grunt. A stubborn breath. A whisper that said, “Get up. Not like this. Not now. Not yet.”
So I got up. I stood in front of a mirror and stared at the stranger looking back. That guy had lost a lot—nearly everything. But he wasn’t dead yet. And he wasn’t going out without swinging back.
This story isn’t finished. Not by a long shot.
Reclaiming Myself
It didn’t happen in a lightning bolt. No movie moment. No grand gesture. Just small things—making my bed. Washing my clothes. Calling a friend. Talking to my son. Walking longer than the day before. Refusing to scroll. Listening to music that didn’t remind me of her. Bit by bit, I started carving out space again. Space that was just mine.
I still broke down some days. I still found myself staring at my phone, hoping for a message that never came. But I didn’t let it stop me. The fire wasn’t back yet, but the ember was still glowing.
I began looking for work again—real work, not just something to fill time. I reached out to people I hadn’t talked to in years. I revisited the dreams I shelved when I thought I’d never need them again. I started building. Slowly. Imperfectly. Honestly.
I’m not healed. Not even close.
But I’m here.
And sometimes… that’s the beginning of everything.