Lori 3/29/11

I know you didn't like me moving away to Maryland, but you need to understand that the problems we have now didn't start with me moving to Maryland, but the move to Maryland is only an addition to the core of the problems.

THE MOVE TO MARYLAND

The move to Maryland wasn't my first choice. I can tell you look that I had been fighting this for a while. Since 2006 and after getting my security clearance I knew that the MD area would provide me better and more abundant opportunities. I've had many friends tell me that Maryland is calling you but because of you and Riley I chose to keep on looking in Illinois. It was only after my savings of $35,000 was depleted that I had to choose to look in another direction. 

I didn't just spend  my hard earned (blood earned) savings like I had none, but rather I simply spent when bills came around. It's just that $35K can go very fast when you have no job and your only earnings are unemployment.

As I say over and over again. The MD/DC/VA area has more employment opportunities for ME in particular because of my combination of military and engineering. In Illinois my advantages are not advantages. I recently had to tell Sylvester this during a conversation. companies may say they appreciate military experience but in truth it's all about the one thing and that being what you can give the company, so no matter how many deployments, even if you had a Medal of Honor, companies only care about what you can bring to them. That's reality.

HOW WE SHOULD BE IN OUR MARRIAGE 

I respect your mother and love your sisters and brothers as if my own family. trust me I do, but the truth is they aren't our immediate family. they won't pay any of our bills nor if it came down to it help us with even a bed. That's no ding on them but we aren't their responsibility.

I understand that being that since 2007 I have been gone a lot and your mom and sisters have helped in raising Riley Rose they aren't the immediate family. When you got married you break from your family and I do with mine. Granted with mine it wasn't hard because my mom was dead and my dad lives in another state. But you break from them and start a new family. 

I think that we currently don't have that dynamic and this dynamic is the core or shoudl be the core of what our family is. It shoudl be an us against the world.

Currently it's been a Ron married into the Shumpert family and ever since I have felt like a butler not a husband that leads his family and there is a difference. 

Could I do better YES. I could show more definingly a better plan of action for our family. but this also requires you to be on board and assist in this plan. 

Currently right now like it or not it's your way and your way only. It's one reason I feel like a butler. Now I could simply be authoritarian and tell you what we should do but you wouldn't like that, no-one does. What happens with such relationshipsis a passive aggressive relationshio, which is what we have today because you want your way all the time. When you can't get your way you mention compromise and attempt to backdoor your way regardless. That's not compromise that's manipulation.

I want an us against the world mentality with us and I believe the only way to achieve this is to break from your family.  

Lori you need to understand
Just so you know for better understanding. My mother didn't leave me. My brother and I had different lives in terms of growing up. I hated my mother. I was young when she was in the binges of alcoholism. She beat me, abused me, I have seen her and been on mutiple
occasions at the bars drinking. I have seen my mother walk in a stumble more times than I can count. My mother had two dictinct personalities. The sober mom I loved and drunk one which I saw more I wanted to get away from. Even through all that I promised
myself that I would go and see her when she sobered up for good. That is why I established my relationship with her in 1993. A promise I kept, but it wasn't easy. My step mother tried to make me feel bad about it making me feel all confused making her love
as a barganing tool saying it would go away if I went to see her. It was Selina my girlfriend in college, who convinced me to go regardless. At the time I was a complete emotional wreck.

The person who you were referencing in our last conversation was actually my Dad. I used to cry like Riley did when he left. with him it was only for some weekends. My
dad also went from third shift to second shift which meant I never saw him when I came home from school, but I had to stay at home and take care of Gerald because my mother wasn't capable. She was at times but not all the time. Unlike many high school people who
had high school lives I didn't. I tried, but many nights I was at home with Gerald, and in many ways depressed beyond what you know.

Gerald grew up with my mom sobered up, yes weaker than before, but how my mom was when she didn't drink. Gerald did not have to take
care of anybody with no emotional support. Gerald grew up in a good environment.

The reason my mom and I had the relationship we had when you met us was because things were patched up. The mother you knew was very different
than the person I grew up with. Time does heal wounds but the scars remain.

I understand what you and Riley are going through. You think I liked leaving after seven months from coming back from Afghanistan. After
a year of dreaming that we can finally be together as a family and that everything was finally over.

You think I like the way Riley is growing up. I don't. But the one thing you never admit that I bring up many times, which kills me that you tend to ignore is hard decision making. All the decisions I have made haven't been decisions in black and white but decisions of what is the less evil or better good, with both choices having consequences and liabilities.

You may have to see those liabilities to truly understand. Like seeing that pink room of Riley's being lost because the house foreclosed.