MY STORY

"I was a dead man walking..."

Jeremy Camp

"Grace is presently at work in our lives."

Robert Millet

Saturday, December 10th, 2016...

I woke up, lying on my side facing the window, and I was sick. I felt like I was dying. My head hurt so bad, it felt like it was being squeezed in a vice. My entire body was in pain, and I knew immediately I didn't have the energy to simply get out of bed. My stomach was churning - I was in bad shape.

I could see light seeping around the edges of the blackout curtain that covered the window, so I guessed it was morning, but had no idea what time it might be. All I knew was that I was alone...very alone...in a crappy room in an old motel on Fremont Street in Las Vegas, and I was sick. Really sick.

How did I get here?

When I was about eleven years old...it's a little difficult to remember exactly, since it was over fifty years ago...two thing happened to me. I discovered porn for the first time, and I began to be sexually abused (used may be a better word) by my assistant scoutmaster, who was probably eighteen at the time. It's interesting to me that these many years later I can still remember his name, see his face, and remember in some detail the things he did to me. Ron was fun to be around and drove a cool car...you get the idea. He introduced me to masturbation, and I was hooked. And the porn was found in magazines...long before internet or even videos. But that hooked me as well. Kind of a perfect storm.

Of course I didn't tell my parents, my scoutmaster, my friends, or my church leaders. I didn't tell anybody ever, until I shared it with my wife Marilyn, after we'd been married some twenty-five years.

My experiences with Ron didn't feel "right", but they "worked" for me, because it felt good. No one talked to me about this. No one had prepared me to say no. No one had warned me that this was inappropriate. We, meaning everyone, just didn't talk about stuff like that in the 1960's. Although deep inside I knew that none of this was ok, this would be the first time my physical self won a battle with my spiritual self...and won big! But at that age I really didn't realize I even had a spiritual self.

A couple of years later, when I was fourteen, my family moved from Northern California to Southern California. Rural to urban. Fairly quiet to pretty noisy. New environment, new school, new ward at church, new friends. As anyone who has made a move like that in their teenage years knows, it's tough. But I adjusted and I survived.

My fascination with porn and masturbation only grew in my new environment. In Santa Monica there was a liquor store on every corner, with magazine racks full of what I had fallen in love with. After I turned sixteen, and started working, I could buy them...for me it was fantasy heaven. But I told no one.

I was a Mormon, and I was good at it. Early morning seminary for four years, well at least most mornings, deacon's quorum president, teacher's quorum president, first assistant in the Priest's quorum, senior patrol leader in my scout troop, missionary at nineteen years old, district and zone leader during my mission in Chile. The point is, I checked all the boxes.

When I was a sophomore in high school, my parents divorced. My dad had met someone else while working in Mexico, and was done with my mom, whom I adored. So now I was part of a "broken home." I was really pissed at my dad...for many, many years. I didn't invite him to my high school graduation, missionary farewell or homecoming, or my wedding. Didn't see him for many years, and didn't want to.

I had some incredible friends in high school, almost all non-Mormons. Really great kids, who are now great people. I went with some of them to Young Life, a Christian youth organization, which I loved. But I never shared my "problem" with any of my friends, and it just continued. I knew I wanted to serve an LDS mission for two years, and also knew that I had to clean up my act to do so. So for the year leading up to my nineteenth birthday I was able to stop the porn and masturbation, and was clean. I served for two years in Chile, had many great experiences, some wonderful companions, an awesome mission president, and loved the Chilean people. And was able to behave myself while I was a missionary. I had a testimony of the restored gospel, and of my Savior, but I certainly can't say that I was really converted. I didn't have a lot of faith...I thought God had put me on this earth, and said "Good luck. See you on the other side."

While I was in Chile, my mom met someone...Jerry...and they were married about four months prior to me coming home. When I did come home, I arrived in a new city, and new ward, and a new stepdad. Weird. But he was an incredible man, who adored my mom and treated her like a queen. She was very, very happy, and they were married over thirty-five years until Jerry's death. I was really happy for her. Jerry attended church with mom almost every Sunday for all those years, yet never joined the church, although you'd never have known it. He lived the gospel as well as anyone I've ever known.

I didn't last long in my new surroundings, and within four months rented a very small one bedroom apartment back in Santa Monica. I had plans to attend school at BYU, but those got canceled when Marilyn and I got engaged on Thanksgiving night, just two months after my mission. I hadn't planned on that, although I think she had, but she was sweet, fun, beautiful, and I loved her. So instead of going to Provo I stayed in Santa Monica and went back to school at Cal State Dominguez Hills. I wanted to be a teacher. My mom was a teacher, my aunt and uncle were teachers...it seemed like the family business, and I thought I'd be good at it. We were married in the Los Angeles temple on June 25th, 1976.

Really, my addiction wasn't really an addiction yet. But as the years came and went, and we moved to Utah, had children, a career (not teaching) in the retail grocery business, it would flare up at times, and like a fire that really never got quite put out completely, the embers still burned. During our marriage we had experienced personal tragedy within our extended family, survived a financial black hole which caused a lot of suffering, heartache, and more family tension, and other stresses of life and work. And my addiction became, well, an addiction. I couldn't live without it. Videos and then the internet...my dream come true.

I became totally dependent on porn to numb my pain, to take me into a fantasy world where my problems didn't exist...but of course I didn't realize that. Not consciously anyway. I used it as a crutch almost every time I was intimate with my wife. Marilyn eventually caught me, and that's when I told her about my abuse so many years before. We talked to our bishop, and he said "just stop". You can imagine how well that worked! Later he took my temple recommend, which I wasn't using anyway. Didn't work.

Marilyn and my bishop wanted me to attend 12 step meetings in the Addiction Recovery Program sponsored by the church. So I went, even though I didn't want to be there with those losers. Yea, I felt like a loser too. Didn't want to be there, and didn't want to quit using porn. I went to some individual counseling sessions with a therapist at LDS Family Services, but I thought he was clueless, and I was just faking that I was interested. We never got remotely close to whatever may have been the root of my worsening addiction, and I was just going through the motions. Even during all this, I couldn't, or wouldn't, stay sober.

Addicts are so good at justifying and minimizing their behavior, and lying about it, and I was one of the best at all three. A least for many years while we raised our children I was able to focus on my career and my family, even in the midst of my problem. Sports, school events, time with family and friends, church callings and activities, taking care of a home and yard kept me busy and gave me some direction. Some way and some how, our children grew into two amazing successful adults...both married incredible people, and are successful in careers, as parents to our six awesome grandchildren, and as a husband and a wife. Our kids are loving, kind, wise, and sometimes tough parents, active in the church, but most importantly they "get it" - they have grown in love and grace, and are close to their Savior. Their butts are not just sitting in the pews on Sundays, but their hearts are as well, and they are living lives that reflect that. All that...in spite of our own sometimes feeble parenting skills. I consider them our two greatest blessings...and miracles.

But...when Adam and Kristen moved out and married I lost focus. I had been managing a large store with over a hundred employees for many years, and honestly was getting tired. Our company had gone through ownership changes with all the stresses and changes that go along with that, and it was difficult. I rarely, if ever, shared my stresses, my doubts, my insecurities, or my fears with Marilyn. She was open. I was closed. She would ask me how my day was, and like a thirteen year old I'd say "fine." I did not want to rehash my crappy day at work...I just wanted to forget about it. I was scared. I was making good money, and had been for most of the years I had worked, but had never finished college...one semester short...and had always looked at my job as sort of a default career. I had never done what I really wanted, but this paid the bills. It is said that you should "do what you love", but I had failed miserably at that. So I was not getting any younger, was stressed, unhappy, regretted much of my past, and scared to death of what the future might hold. That was a dangerous place to be for a porn addict...

And that's when things got physical. I had been to a strip club a few years before in Reno, and loved it. To make a long story a little less long, I discovered strip clubs in Salt Lake. Massage parlors. And escorts. I don't remember how, but I got deeper and deeper into this secret life style, lying the whole time...to everyone. This went on for about five years or so, and I was a mess. I was faking life. I faked it at work...acted like I was fully engaged in what I was doing there managing 120 people who looked to me as their leader. I faked it at home...acting like I cared, when I really didn't. Marilyn made the comment more than once that we were just "roommates" instead of a married couple. She knew I still had a problem, and there was an underlying feeling of anger because of it, although she had no idea how deep my problem was, or how really screwed up I was. I faked it at church...I was there every Sunday, acting like I had it together, when in fact the complete opposite was true. I believed God was there, but I just didn't care anymore. I was going to hell, and that was just fine. I was a freaking mess, and was acting out multiple times a week. Spending a lot of money that we didn't have for sex. I was, as the scriptures talk about, "past feeling". I'd come home from being with an escort and tell myself "I can't keep doing this!" Why? Not because it was wrong, but because I couldn't afford it any more. But that didn't stop me...I just kept digging this black hole I was living in deeper and deeper. There were times I'd fantasize about running away from home...just anywhere that wasn't here. I hated myself and I hated my life...but nobody knew it except me. It was hell...

Fast forward to Thursday, December 8th, 2016. Thursday. My day off from work. Marilyn and I were at the mall doing some Christmas shopping, and I had gotten a couple of texts from work that were bad news...it seemed they were always bad news. I was in a pretty foul mood, and I can still remember the feeling of dread and fear in my gut about going to work the next day. I was depressed and scared, and of course that didn't help Marilyn's mood. I wasn't faking it very well that day. That night we were decorating the Christmas tree in our basement, and some of the lights were out. I really didn't care, but Marilyn did! Everything had to be perfect, especially at Christmas. She was pissed, at me and the tree, and after some words were exchanged she told me just to go upstairs and she'd do it herself. So I did. I went upstairs and went to bed because I had to be at work at six the next morning.

The next morning I got up, got ready for work, and left home. During the drive downtown

on I-15 I remember having this conversation with myself about running away from home. I had this fantasy about living on the beach somewhere warm, where I could do whatever I wanted to do whenever I wanted to do it. I was actually challenging myself to do it...to not wimp out, and I formulated a plan in my mind. At work I was all smiles, acting normally, and no one had a clue what was going on in my head. But this conversation was still playing out in my mind all morning, and I actually called our credit union to find out how much I could withdraw from our savings account in cash at one time. I found out the limit was $10,000, but I could go to different branches and get 10K from each branch. Sweet! One of my assistant managers had a meeting at another store that morning, but when he came back early, I made my move...

I told him I was going to lunch, left my keys, name badge, and other stuff in my

desk drawer, and left the store about 12:30. I went to the downtown credit union branch and withdrew the 10K in cash, making up a story about buying a car, and the seller needed cash. I was a good liar. I went to two more branches between work and home and did the same thing. I called Marilyn, thinking she was probably at the grocery store, and she was. I lied some more. So I raced home, threw some stuff in a bag, and ran out the door. Then I went to a fourth credit union branch for more cash, stopped at Walmart to buy a burner phone (didn't want mine traced), and had lunch at McDonald's. And then off I went...heading to Las Vegas. Thought I'd spend a couple of nights there, leave my car in a parking lot, text Marilyn where she could find it, and take a bus east...maybe Florida? That part was a little fuzzy...

I stopped in Mesquite to buy some toiletries at Walmart, arrived in Las Vegas and checked into the City Center motel. Didn't want to spend too much of my cash for a room, but this place was a serious dump. Looking back, it was a perfect match for my life. I got some dinner in a nearby casino, and then decided to go to the Palomino Club. I spent most of the night, and over a thousand dollars there. I had gone online and made an appointment with an escort, so I left the club around midnight or so and then spent an hour with her. When I arrived back at the motel I was exhausted, and went to bed. Could not sleep. Once again I was having a conversation in my head about how this plan was going to work, and my logical self was shooting holes in it...but at no time did I once think about what I was doing to Marilyn, my children, my grandchildren, my friends, or my co-workers. Not once.

So after a restless night of little sleep, I woke up. Sick. Feeling like death would be welcome relief. And that's were this story started.

I lay there for a long time, telling myself I had to get up and get some food. But I couldn't. Why was I so sick? No drugs, ever. No alcohol, ever. That was never my problem...not even a temptation. And it hadn't been the night before. There was simply no reason for me to be this sick. Sometime in the afternoon, as I lay suffering, a thought came into my head. "Call Marilyn." Oh no, I'm not going to do that! I lay there some more, and that thought returned. "Call Marilyn." I said "no way" once again. A few more minutes went by, and I felt I was getting a little closer to death's door, and that thought came again...a little more forcefully. "Call Marilyn." This was the first time I had thought about her in two days. And at this point, I had no choice. I needed to be rescued...

More to come...