Six Months

Six months ago today I found out the life I had been living with my boyfriend was a big fat lie. Rather than getting married, having kids and living happily ever after as Mr & Mrs Timmons, he as a special agent for the federal government and I probably as an attorney, with a house full of kids with a beautiful home in the country, I instead found myself on the doorstep of the house a man really named L------ shared with his wife and 18 month old baby, breaking her heart and mine all at once. She wasn't surprised and had pretty much already known he was cheating on her, but he had denied it and now the proof- me- was standing on her front porch. I died that day. Matt died that day. The man I knew died that day.

Matt had been acting weird. Distant, irritatable... weird. He told me he was getting rid of his phone. He said he couldn't afford it anymore. He had gotten rid of his email address the year before and never replaced it (said there was too much spam). He had also never given me his new mailing address at his parents house, where he had been staying since his dad had had a stroke and he had moved to help take care of him. Because I saw him, and we spent time together, talked, texted, etc., I thought about these things but not much. But when he said he was getting rid of his phone, alarm bells started going off like mad. How are we supposed to communicate and have a relationship when you live two hours away, you don't have an email address, and you have no phone? Then he started saying he wanted to make a "crazy move somewhere." That he was just going to pick up and leave. He didn't know where. More alarm bells. He said his family supported him in whatever he did, but this didn't ring true because they had heavily pressured him to move home to be close to family to be with the ailing grandparents and now his dad. Then he told me the CHP )highway patrol) had refused to give him his job back. The ultimate crusher. We had been waiting over six months for a result of his termination hearing and here it was. I was so sure he would get his job back because his termination was ridiculous. He had been riding in the passenger seat on patrol when his partner pulled over a drunk. His partner talked to the driver and then let the person go. Matt flipped out, asked his partner what he was doing, and the partner told him the drunk in the car was a senior officer from their office. Matt didn't know what to do. Both his partner and the drunk were his superiors. He didn't report it, and kept quiet. But somehow, it all went around the office anyway, got back to the State Personnel Board and he was terminated for failing to report it. His co-workers had more tenure and received a slap on the wrist. I couldn't believe he didn't get his job back. He would have gotten back pay, we had been counting on that. Once he got his job back the wedding was going to be on, I'd get my ring and we'd be good.  Back then I didn't know everything he was telling me about his job, his dad, moving... everything... was made up. All of it. ALL of it. Even his dad was and is an absolute picture of health and always has been.  But I didn't know that then. All  I knew was what he told me and I had no reason to doubt him. At least, not yet.

Now he said he wasn't getting his job back, our future was an immediate unknown, and he was getting rid of his phone? How does someone who says they are your soul mate do something that suddenly cuts off all communication with their partner? I confronted him and asked him if he was trying to end our relationship and he said No, but he didn't have any answers.

Something just... bugged me. His dad is a superior court judge and early on in our relationship I had tried to look him up on the state bar's website but couldn't find him. I figured I must be looking in the wrong place. Something told me to look again. I did. I still couldn't find him. I posted in a legal forum to see if I was looking in the right place. Someone suggested that perhaps Matt and his dad didn't have the same last name. I thought this was ridiculous- his parents had been married for forever- why wouldn't he have the same last name as his dad? But, there was literally no judge in this state with the same last name as Matt, so I sent him a text and asked him if he and his dad had different last names.

He flipped out. He said that as a matter of fact there were several last names in his family for a variety of reasons... Then he accused me of turning his family into a research project. He was very angry and I was very upset. I hadn't meant to do anything wrong and I felt very guilty. That I had somehow betrayed him by "sneaking around." I told him over and over I hadn't known they had different last names, I was just asking if they did, and I told him why. Suddenly his reaction struck me as odd... what's so wrong with Googling someone? He told me he never had and never would Google me, but it's the first thing any employer would do when they were looking at a potential candidate. I told him so. Suddenly he backed off. He told me "I'm just a very non-trusting, non-caring person anymore."  I calmed down for the time being but it made me pause...

I went to bed that night feeling restless. 


In the middle of the night I woke up out of a dead sleep. I remembered something. An email address. With a different last name. L-----------. He had emailed me from it right when he first started dating and then switched over from that address immediately to the other address that I had known him at. And the last name I had known him as.

I dreamed about that email address; I was haunted by it the rest of the night. I tried to forget about it because I didn't know what it meant. He had told me the last name was his grandmother's maiden name and he used it for security reasons... to protect himself since he worked in law enforcement, to protect himself against retaliation.

The next day I started digging again. I expanded my search. I sat down with a map of all of the surrounding counties around Redding, where he told me his parents lived and started looking at the names of all the judges. And then I found it. Many hours to the north, in a totally different county, and a guy with a totally different first name, was a judge with the last name L-------.

I started looking up information on the judge. I found newspaper articles announcing his appointment to the bench. They included a short biography of his life. The biography matched what Matt had told me about his Dad. But the man had the wrong first name. Why would Matt lie about his dad's first name? It wasn't even close. I started searching the name he had given me, the one he said was his father's name- with that other last name- L--------. Matt had told me his uncle was a Dentist. I started searching in the county where his dad actually lived and I found him. A man with the name Matt said was his dad's name and with L---------- as the last name... and the guy was a dentist. What? So who was his dad? The judge? Or the dentist?
So I started researching both men... Matt told me his mom's name was Cheryl. When I looked up the judge's information, he was not married to a woman named Cheryl... but the dentist was. But the dentist didn't have a son listed... but he had a daughter who I was able to search for on Facebook.

I was so confused at this point. I had no idea what I was dealing with. Which was the lie? Had he lied about his dad being a judge to impress me? Because I had wanted to be a lawyer? Early on in our dating he had told me he went to one college- University of Oregon- when he really went to another- Southern Oregon University- because he was embarrassed about going to a small school and didn't think we'd ever really date. I caught him in the lie and he confessed immediately and apologized and I forgave him. Was this the same thing? Did it just get out of hand? Is this why I hadn't met his family? What on Earth was going on? Was he adopted? Were his parents not married when he was born? Why did he and his dad have different last names? Which family was his family?

I went through the dentist's daughter's Facebook friend list and opened every link to every person with the last name L--------. There wasn't anyone on there with Matt's last name (as I knew it to be). I was so confused. While I was on there I found Matt's sister in law. I searched for her online and found an alumni newsletter announcing the birth of her son. Now I knew I had the right family at least, for sure. But even more weird? Matt told me his middle name was Joaquin- a secret that took him six months to divulge because he was so embarrassed. We had joked back and forth about how we were going to get out of naming one of our kids Joaquin because it was a family name. On the birth announcement it listed Matt's brother Brian's middle name as Joaquin, and his new son's middle name as Joaquin. But Matt told me that was HIS middle name, not his brother's. But... maybe that didn't mean anything. After all, my sisters and I all have the same middle name. But finding his sister in law, and then his brother and their kids and confirming their names- I knew I was barking up the right tree...

I kept going through all of the L--------'s on the daughter's friend list when I got to the S's. There was this picture of a baby on the profile picture and it said that the person lived in the same city Matt lived before he had moved  to be with his family.

This was really, really, REALLY weird.  Matt is really close to his family. That he would have a family member living in the same small town that he [originally] lived in and that he wouldn't mention it was just... bizarre.  So I started looking this person up.  The information was conflicting. It said that Sydney was a man... but it also said there was a Matt L------- living in the same house. Matt L---------? My Matt was Matt Timmons. But L------- was the last name I now knew to be his dad's last name, and the last name he had used on that "fake" email address that was supposedly his grandmother's maiden name. Matt L----------?

My heart sank... I started to panic. I wasn't sure what was happening. I called friends. I literally had no idea what I had stumbled into here. Online it also listed Matt as a child, so it could have just been a big coincidence. I just didn't know. And who was this baby on the profile picture? I kept trying to talk to Matt- not telling him what I had found, I kept trying to get him to see me but he said he felt too down, he kept pulling away. I had so many questions and was so mistrusting at this point my gut told me not to raise any alarms with Matt by telling him what I had been up to.

I kept researching... and that's when it blew up. I found the address of the home where they lived. Sydney and Matt L--------, a married couple, purchased the home together several years before. The baby in the profile was probably their baby. I looked up salary information on the state's website (it's all public record) and although there was a Matt Timmons who worked for the CHP... he had the wrong middle initial as my Matt. I looked up this man I had found... he was also listed as being employed by the CHP... and his middle initial? Well, remember that email address from the beginning of the story? Well, the middle initial matched. It wasn't J for Joaquin, but it matched that email address, and it was actually the same name as the judge's first name. This Matt had the judge's first name as his middle name, and my Matt had been using that email address with the same full name and initials as this person. That's when I knew.

I was absolutely HYSTERICAL crying. But I knew what I had to do too. I again kept calling and texting Matt, trying to get him to see me, or meet with me that day. But he wouldn't. He said he wasn't up to it, he couldn't handle it, he couldn't afford it... whatever. There was an excuse. If I hadn't known the truth, it would have sounded like a totally legitimate excuse, as it always had, perfectly consistent with what he had shown me was his mental state up to this point- that he was so depressed and down on himself. He told me he didn't deserve me, that he needed space and time to take care of himself. I said to him something along the lines of  how are we going to get married, or how can I be your wife if we don't see each other? His response, somewhere in there, that day that I found out, the day I went to his house and exposed him, he told me, "I don't want a wife or a girlfriend right now." Having no idea I knew that he had BOTH.

Which is how I found myself standing on that front porch, crying, holding myself, wringing my hands and not wanting to do what I needed to do. I think I sent one final text from his front porch even, trying to get Matt to meet with me... Please see me today... let's talk.. I need to talk to you... He said he couldn't. I shook my head, took a breath and  I rang the bell; his wife and baby came to the door. We talked and I handed her the picture of us together. The baby took it, pointed to Matt in the picture and happily squealed, "Da-da!"

I can only pray I never experience lower moments in my life than these.