Some names have been changed for reasons you will understand after reading this. My accountability is what’s important here. The others in this story came to terms with this history in their own way.
With honesty comes accountability. That’s something I’ve had to sit with, really sit with, as I do this work of breaking cycles and telling the truth. Because the truth is, I played a role in the chaos too. I made decisions, over the course of more than twenty years, that added fuel to a fire that was already burning. And I have to own that.
To understand where things started to unravel, you have to understand what we lost first.
My grandmother raised me alongside my mom. She was the backbone of our entire family, the kind of woman who holds everything together just by existing. She died of lung and liver cancer when my son, Brandon was just one week old. It was an awful, painful death. The kind you don’t forget. The kind that changes you.
When she died, everything fell apart. My mom lost the house I grew up in, which is still something I carry bitterness about, I believe the family should have stepped up and prevented that. But that’s a story for another day. What I know is that losing my grandmother was the first real loss I had ever experienced. She was the closest person to me I had ever lost, and I was completely and utterly devastated. I did not handle it well.
And neither did my husband, Sam though I say that without blame. He had never lost anyone either. He didn’t know how to comfort me, didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to show up for me in the way I needed. And on top of all of that, we were brand new parents, trying to hold the weight of grief in one hand and the awe of a new baby in the other. It was an impossible place to be.
I felt alone. I felt like I didn’t have a partner. And while that’s not an excuse for what came next, it is the context.
It was Halloween. Brandon was about five months old. My sister threw a party, and that’s where I met Cynthia. She was my sister’s friend, openly gay, confident, and warm. We clicked immediately. Before long, she was at my house almost every day. She helped me with Brandon. She listened to me cry about my grandmother. She was present in a way I was starving for.
And then one day, she kissed me.
When Sam came home from work, I told him what happened. He wasn’t upset, if anything, he was intrigued, and he asked if she’d be open to a three-way situation. I asked her. She said she’d try. So we did.
What I didn’t anticipate were the feelings that followed.
I was 21 years old, grief-stricken, lonely, and completely lost. I didn’t understand what was happening inside me. I loved Sam, I knew that. But I also couldn’t explain the pull I felt toward Cynthia. What I know now, that I couldn’t see then, is that she was filling a void. She was there every day while Sam came home from work and retreated to video games until dinner, then video games until bed. I was invisible in my own home. And Cynthia made me feel seen.
That’s not love. That’s survival. But I didn’t have the language for it then.
In January, I made the decision that I believe was the catalyst for years of pain that followed: I left Sam for Cynthia.
It was the worst decision I have ever made in my adult life.
Inevitably, Cynthia and I fell apart, because we were never really built for each other. I wasn’t in love with her; I was drowning in unresolved grief and trauma, and she was the hand I grabbed onto. I should have been in therapy. I wasn’t. And so the cycle kept spinning.
Sam and I tried to get back together more than once. We even moved out of state to try to start fresh in Ohio. But I still hadn’t figured out what was broken inside me, and I kept going back to Cynthia. It was a mess, and yet through all of it, Sam and I never fully let go of each other. We were still intimate, still tangled up in each other’s lives, somewhere between together and apart.
About a month after we moved to Ohio, I found out I was pregnant. I panicked. Things weren’t stable between me and Sam, Cynthia was still in the picture through late night phone calls, she was living in Las Vegas, and I didn’t know which way was up. We ended up selling most of what we had and going back home, I wanted to have my baby surrounded by something familiar.
And as soon as we got back, Cynthia came back too.
What happened next is exactly as complicated as you’d imagine: Sam, Cynthia, Brandon, and I all moved in together to wait for the baby to arrive.
The four of us living under one roof was exactly as complicated as it sounds.
Sam and I continued to be intimate, behind Cynthias’s back. She found out. We broke up, got back together, broke up again. That cycle became its own kind of normal, which is a painful thing to admit.
When the baby came, I’m sure we were the talk of the hospital. Cynthia was there, Sam was there. Cynthia slept in the hospital bed with me while Sam slept on the couch. And to make an already uncomfortable situation worse, Sam’s mother was an RN in mother-baby, at that same hospital. My nurses were all her friends and coworkers.
I still feel terrible about that. I think about her sometimes, what she must have gone through, what she must have felt watching all of that unfold. There is no apology big enough. I know that. And I carry it.
After we came home, I fell apart in a different way. The postpartum depression hit me hard, I mean hard. I was on the verge of suicidal. Sam called my mom, told her I needed her, and she and my stepdad came to stay with us. I’m grateful he did that. I’m grateful she came.
Eventually, I got better. Sam moved out, in with his mom. I enrolled in cosmetology school, working at Sonic, trying to build something, some kind of foundation where I could support my kids on my own terms.
Then one day, Sam called and offered to take the kids while I finished school. I could have them on weekends.
My mom warned me. She said, Sarah, this could turn into something.
I didn’t listen. I couldn’t imagine Sam being vindictive. I thought he was just trying to help, and honestly, I was stretched so thin I let myself believe that.
So I agreed.
Looking back, that was the first time I saw the door open to something I wouldn’t be able to close easily. But at the time, things between us were still okay. We had family Sundays, both of us together with the kids, spending time like some version of a family. We were still intimate. I was still confused, still spinning, still unable to figure out what I actually wanted or needed.
Cynthia and I split for good eventually. And even then, I couldn’t just go back to Sam, not because I didn’t love him, but because I was terrified of hurting him again. I knew something was still broken in me that I hadn’t fixed. And I think some part of me believed that protecting him from more damage meant keeping my distance. I think he always held onto hope that I’d figure it out. That we’d find our way back to each other.
I didn’t figure it out. Not then.
When I moved in with my sister and brother-in-law for a while, I fell in with a group of women in the apartment complex, a close-knit group, all lesbians. I started dating one of them, split up, then another one, split up, then I ended up in a relationship with one of them. Her name was Tara. We eventually moved in together at my mom and stepdad’s place.
That hurt Sam, I think he had been quietly holding his breath, waiting. And when I moved on, something in him shifted.
He started dating a woman who worked at the daycare where our kids went.
My first reaction was territorial and ugly, if I’m being honest. This woman saw my children every day. More than I did. It felt wrong, and I said so, and for a short time, he stopped seeing her. But that didn’t last. And looking back, I can’t really blame him. I had put him through years of confusion and heartbreak. He deserved to move on.
So he did.
By this point, Sam had his own apartment in our hometown. Since I’d dropped out of cosmetology school and Tara and I were staying with mom without air conditioning that summer, I would spend my days at his apartment with the kids. Tara would drop me off in the morning and pick me up after work. Sam and I, still, would sometimes sleep together before he left for the day. And I would spend the rest of it cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, keeping his place spotless.
His new girlfriend Rianna thought he was a clean freak when she first started coming around. I eventually blew his cover on that.
Somehow, the four of us, me, Tara, Sam, and Rianna actually got along. We’d hang out, play board games, have drinks. It sounds strange, but it was our version of normal.
Then one night, Tara took me to dinner. And asked me to marry her.
I won’t pretend the decision was purely romantic. It wasn’t. Tara was a hard worker. Dependable. I knew she would take care of me and my kids, and at that point in my life, stability felt like love. So I said yes.
Sam found out about a week later.
He went to his mother and asked for her wedding ring. She gave it to him. He took it to a jeweler, had the diamonds removed, and had them reset into something new.
He proposed to Rianna. She said yes.
I knew what it was. I knew he was hurting, and I knew this was his answer to that pain. I never wanted to hurt him, not intentionally, not ever. But the truth is, I was a woman drowning in decades of trauma, abuse, mental illness, grief, and loss, just trying to find the surface. And Sam was collateral damage. So were others. That doesn’t make it okay. It just makes it real.
What I haven’t said plainly yet is this: Sam and I continued being intimate even after Rianna became pregnant with their first daughter.
One day, trying to reach Sam, I got Rianna instead. She had found out about me and Sam and confronted me. Told me that I would never deal with Sam directly again, that from that point forward, everything went through her. And that was it. That was the end of whatever Sam and I had been to each other for all those years.
Then she called Tara and told her everything.
Tara stayed with me for almost a year after that. But she never trusted me again, and the weight of that eventually crushed what was left between us. I found an apartment for me and the kids and kept trying, kept pushing forward, kept trying to understand myself. I had another relationship, nearly two years, with another woman. And then Cynthia came back.
Eye roll.
We got back together immediately, because apparently I hadn’t learned enough yet. It was a disaster, as it always was.
Then one day I came home from work to find Sam and Rianna sitting in my apartment. They had something to tell me.
My son Brandon had come forward and revealed a secret so big it required immediate action. Please understand I cannot share those details because he was a child and it’s his story to tell, not mine. And the details are not important right now for this. My son is a very strong young man and I promise is doing his part to break curses.
I couldn’t breathe. But it was real. And Brandon, my boy, had gone to his dad because he knew he needed help. That took courage I still think about.
I went into action immediately. I made the calls. And Brandon was required to spend a year in a mental health facility in Oklahoma City, an hour and a half away.
So I worked all week, every week, so I could take weekends off. I’d get a motel room in the city and go see him.
*Important Side Note*
After Sam married Rianna, I was constantly navigating what felt like an endless war with Sam over custody. He had tried to take the kids from me twice. He lost both times, because there was no real grounds to remove them from me. My relationships had been complicated and unconventional, but that alone is not a reason to take children from their mother.
Sam made more money than I did and was ordered to pay two hundred and fifty dollars a month in child support. The moment that was enforced, he took me to court. He lost.
When Rianna got pregnant with their second daughter and Sam started panicking when about the money coming out of his check, I actually gave him the child support debit card. Handed it over. Let him hold it. But when I lost my job and needed it back, he refused. I ordered a new card. He lost access. Next thing I know, we’re back in court over custody, he lost again.
But none of that prepared me for what was coming.
I was driving my daughter to her dad’s for his week. Joint custody, which I had fought hard to keep, because my kids needed both of their parents. Out of nowhere, somewhere on that drive, I started crying. I couldn’t stop. My daughter looked at me with those wide, worried eyes and I couldn’t explain it. I didn’t understand it myself. That crying was the first warning sign, the first red flag that something inside me was breaking in a way I couldn’t hold together anymore.
I dropped her off and went to work.
The crying didn’t stop. It escalated. And somewhere in the middle of my shift, I had a full breakdown. I don’t remember much of it. What I know is that I ended up at Laureate, a psychiatric facility, and they kept me for a week.
I was going to miss my visitation with Brandon. So I called him and told him what was happening. He told his dad.
Sam saw an opportunity. And he took it.
When I was released, I called to make arrangements to pick up my daughter. I was at my aunt’s house. I wanted to take her swimming. Sam asked for the address, said he’d bring her to me. I remember thinking, that’s surprisingly kind of him. That should have been my warning. He never did anything kind without a reason.
He didn’t bring her.
A process server showed up at my aunt’s door instead. An ex parte order. A restraining order. No contact with my children, none, whatsoever.
I had been sober from alcohol for almost two years. I broke that sobriety that night. I didn’t see the point anymore.
I went to Legal Aid of Tulsa hoping to find free representation, I had lost my job from the breakdown and had nothing. But Sam and Rianna had already gotten there first. Conflict of interest. They couldn’t help me.
I was completely alone. I didn’t know my rights. I didn’t know what I could fight for or how to fight for it. And because of that, more than two years passed before I could see my children again.
Two years. The distance from them nearly killed me.
And that’s where I’ll leave part one of this chapter, not because the story is over, but because some weight needs to be set down before you can pick it back up again. What I’ve shared here is the part I’m most ashamed of. The choices I made, the people I hurt, the version of myself I was when I didn’t yet understand why I was so broken. I was never a bad person. I was a deeply wounded one. And there is a difference, though it took me a long time to believe that about myself.
Part two is where things get darker before they get lighter. But I promise you, they do get lighter. I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this if they didn’t.
Rock Bottom Was Only The Lobby 