Little did I know when I last wrote how much was in store for me. I graduated the week after that entry. Bill got married that week and we chose to have Alyssa’s blessing the night before the wedding while Ken and Dad were in town. It was interesting that all the men from Laura’s side of the family ended up being unavailable by the time July 29th arrived. I started working at the FACT Center on August 1st and three weeks later I started grad school. I was soon very busy as I got elected as the President of the Instructional Technology Student Association (ITSA). Laura’s depression reached new depths in September and she started seeing a Psychiatrist. He gave her some powerful antidepressants and he kept adjusting her doses higher at least once each week even though she was satisfied with the results of the lower doses. The week before General Conference the high doses sent Laura into a manic episode in which she was cinvinced that she was supposed to die and that Lyssa was not supposed to be her child (she was the child of my next wife). This terrified Laura’s family. She had already moved down with her mom in Cedar Hills to have help with the girls but she spent most of that week with me. The experience of mania was very wierd, but I was not scared because I felt assured that everything would be fine. Friday night Marsha called to beg me to have Laura admitted to the hospital (AJ and Emily came down as well to encourage that course of action). I finally consented for Marsha’s sake. We went to the E and they turned us away saying that Marsha needed counseling more than Laura needed a hospital. The next week – on October 7th – the psychiatrist decided to have Laura admitted to the hospital. She stayed there for two days (the minimum stay). After she was released Laura told me that the hospital stay was the most demoralizing experience of her life and that she felt worse at the end than when she was admitted. They also started her on completely new drugs with more adjusting of doses. In late October I went to AECT and at the start of November I quit working at the FACT Center. Laura’s family talked me into moving to Utah County in late November (by contending that they would be better able to assist us there). I survived the semester with a 3.75. Savannah and Alyssa lived with Steve and Noreen from early October to early December. December consisted of the Gibbons’ trying to talk me into quitting school for a while. I bought a laptop to help with the commute and chose to keep going to school. I worked as a handyman for Steve in January and as a programmer for Bill Harten in February. I decided to slow down as March started and I quit my job with Bill. I had quit leading ITSA in November when it was obvious I had no time for it. Now I’m jobless but my family is intact. Laura and I had to move again in January to American Fork. Last week we visited Jared and Kim and Hyrum and Cynthia in Maryland.
I have included a letter from Andy, and a card from Grandma Simmons from that October period in my offline journal as well as a note that Jared wrote while we were in Maryland. (Perhaps one day I will upload scanned copies here.) I find that I still struggle with resentment towards Laura’s family in the aftermath of all that stress.