Evicted by the Truth Part 2: How cycles end when lies catch up to themselves.

We were always rushing out.

Not because we wanted to.

Because we had to.

Because his recklessness, impulsivity, and refusal to take accountability would explode again and again; and every time, it was the rest of us left scrambling to pick up the pieces.

He says the Anacortes place was “left a mess.” And it was entirely my burden to bear.

What he doesn’t say is that we were forced to leave early because he sabotaged our move-out plan, rushed the timeline, and didn’t lift a finger.

What he doesn’t say is that it was his father’s house, a man he despised, and that hatred poured into the chaos that followed.

What he doesn’t say is that he has a pattern.

One that led to us abandoning our lives more times than I can count.

It’s happened with rentals.

It’s happened with jobs.

It’s even happened with my family.

We were evicted by instability, not laziness.

We were chased out by trauma, not neglect.

And he was the one lighting the fuse every time.

The Con Was Always a Performance

The Portland apartment? That wasn’t even his.

I was paying for it.

I was trying to help him stay on his feet…again.

So I housed him in a studio.

And then he came to me with a “solution”:

Move in with my boyfriend (now husband), let him take over my place across the street, and that way the kids could stay close to both of us.

He sold it as a co-parenting dream.

He masked it as progress.

We fell for it.

Two weeks later, he abandoned the apartment.

Slipped into a sober living program, having conned his way in under false pretenses.

I had to clean up that mess, too.

The Pattern of Eviction Wasn’t Just Housing

It was jobs.

It was relationships.

It was emotional outbursts followed by flights from accountability.

He even got us kicked out of my parents’ house.

That loss nearly shattered me.

Losing my most treasured family relationship was the price I paid for loving him too long.

Thank God it has since been repaired. But the damage was deep.

And for years now, he’s barely been able to provide for the children.

Even when he had a home.

During his sober living stint, I still made sure the kids saw him.

Day visits.

Hotel stays.

I covered food, transportation, even gave him spending money so the kids could make memories.

Once he moved into his one-bedroom apartment, the neglect didn’t stop.

He couldn’t feed them, so we sent groceries.

He couldn’t drive them, so I shuttled them back and forth.

We sent Thanksgiving dinners, meals, support.

All to a man who got high in the apartment with our children present, a tiny unit saturated with weed smoke.

And it wasn’t just a smell.

The Smoke We Couldn’t Escape

Sometimes, the kids would come back reeking of weed. Not like someone passed by them in a hallway. Like they’d been marinating in it for days.

A few times, their behavior shifted. They seemed… off.

Slow. Foggy.

There were moments I wondered, Is this what a contact high looks like in children?

I wanted to take them to the pediatrician.

To ask the question out loud.

To get the truth confirmed.

But I didn’t.

Because I knew the minute I brought a professional into it, the chain reaction might begin.

I didn’t want to involve CPS.

Not because I didn’t want accountability, but because I’ve lived through the system’s inability to understand nuance.

I didn’t want my children interrogated, retraumatized, or punished for their father’s choices.

So I kept documenting.

I kept protecting.

And I kept hoping they’d be safe long enough for the truth to finally catch up to the lies.

The Setup That Almost Cost Me More

He left the car in Portland on purpose.

He wanted it stolen.

He was betting on insurance fraud, told me multiple times he should crash it or total it.

He even floated the idea that when we were moving from Anacortes to Vancouver, he should crash the U-Haul into it on “accident,” because he thought I had full coverage.

I didn’t.

I couldn’t afford it.

But this is how far he was willing to go:

To game the system.

To escape responsibility.

To win a bet he made with no chips on the table, because the loss would be mine.

Evicted by the Truth

And now?

Now he’s being evicted.

Not just from his apartment, where he paid one month of rent all year.

Where his landlord told me they were relieved to see him go.

Where I had once helped him qualify for a rental assistance program that paid his back rent and six months of living costs and he still blew it.

He’s being evicted from the carefully constructed fantasy he spun for everyone else:

The one where I’m the villain and he’s the hero.

The one where he’s the “better parent,” the “victim,” the “oppressed one.”

But lies only hold up so long.

Eventually, the weight of reality breaks the mask.