Well, I haven't written on here in almost three years. Two years, eight months, and 22 days, but who's counting?
A lot has happened. I went to Cape Verde on my mission. While there I became miserably ill and had to come home after only two-and-a-half months. When I got home I reapplied to BYU and was going to go back in about one month, but three weeks before I was supposed to leave I met a woman named Tina and her adorable daughter Olivia. One week before I was supposed to go back I decided not to go. I got a job at a local restaurant and kept getting to know this amazing woman. I enrolled at a local community college and asked Tina to marry me. While we were engaged we got a job managing an apartment complex an hour away and so Tina was living there, but teaching where I lived full time, while I was in school full time and managing the apartment complex while juggling wedding planning and our sweet little Olivia.
After we got married I earned my Associate's Degree in Psychology at a different community college and worked at an amazing Hardware Store. My wife managed the apartment complex that we lived at, and we had a baby. Just after the baby came we moved back to BYU and I am going to school full time while working for a company that houses and cares for individuals with mental illness or traumatic brain injuries that prevent them from being fully independent. And now you are all caught up.
That brings us to why I am writing now. I am currently experiencing reactive depression and panic attacks. I am depressed because I am a little over a year from graduating from college and I still have no idea how I am going to provide for my family. Will I work right out of school (and doing what?), or will I go to grad school? How am I going to make enough money to pay the bills? I guess I am really feeling depressed because I am feeling inadequate. And I have been having panic attacks that my wife is going to die and I am going to be left alone with a newborn and that Olivia will be taken from me and go live with her biological dad. I don't know why I am having these panic attacks, but they are pretty miserable. I don't know why I am putting this up here, but I guess I just needed to write it down. Anyway, for anyone reading this I hope that you are doing better than I am right now. I have full confidence that I will be fine and I will figure it out and have no problem taking care of my family, but intellectual knowledge and emotional knowledge are not the same thing.
