The end of an era

I am not certain what is going on here. I am at a stage in my life where I should be going through a plethora of emotions, yet the strangest thing has happened. I feel like I am drifting. I feel a lack of a “sense of self.” I feel lost. The truth is that I don’t feel anything at all.

I don’t want to get up on a cross here, but in the past two years I feel as if though I have gone through more than many war veterans. Let’s not change the subject here. I am not trying to minimize the horrifying bullshit that many war veterans have had to endure. I am just saying that to many, I compare, and to many I exceed. The types of things that I have gone through would send many people to their untimely grave but for me, it really just seems that it has dulled my senses.

About three years I accepted a job in Denver for one reason and one reason only. Denver has some of the best snowboarding in the entire world. I lived to snowboard. It was not unheard of for me to go to the mountains 40+ times a year. I immediately realized that the job I had accepted in Denver sucked but it did not matter. I was close to some epic mountains. At any given point I could be in Vail, Keystone, Breckenridge or Arapahoe basin. I could do all of this for a whole season by purchasing one $350 pass.

I had only been in Denver for one month. I had just closed the restaurant I was working at and was rushing home in my Subaru WRX to get a couple of hours of sleep so that I could come home and open the restaurant the next day. I could have easily shrugged off the speeding ticket that I received on my way home, but what happened next should have been a cue for me to take off running.

I was back home and half asleep. I was in that phase where you are not fully asleep but not fully awake. I heard a banging on the door and a voice yelling “Everyone get the fuck out!” I thought it was a dream so I drifted off again. A couple of minutes later I heard the same thing. I woke me this time so I got up and popped my window open. I looked out of my window and noticed that the apartment unit two doors down from me had flames pouring out of its windows.

I immediately jumped up and started grabbing as much stuff as I could. I made about 5 trips in and out until the fire department finally showed up and would not allow me back into the building. The fire department was also kind enough to park their fire trucks right in front of my car. This ensured that I was not able to go anywhere. It would have been nice to go to a co-workers house but my options were pretty much limited to watching every possession I own burn to a crisp.



Now it was 7am. I was sleep deprived, exhausted and in a pretty sour mood. Two cops were standing around talking and one of them was leaning on my car scratching the shit out of it with his holster. I walked up to him and told him to “get the fuck off of my car!” O.K. this was stupid, I know that, but I was not in a normal frame of mind. He looked at me and then he looked at my car. He asked me how long I had lived here. I said 1 month. He then proceeded to tell me that I only had one month to switch my California plates to Colorado plates and that the fine was $500 dollars. I snapped and told him to write me the fucking ticket and get off of my fucking car! I told him that he had a lot of nerve making threats and damaging the only thing that I owned after a night of watching my possessions burn to a crisp. He politely told me to get it taken care of as soon as possible and then he walked away. I quickly realized that he was only being so nice because the local news stations were everywhere with cameras. I guess something had to go my way eventually.

Well despite such a bad start I don’t believe that there is any meaning to such things. I bought a house in Denver and I got married in Denver. This is a part of my life I never expected to happen but I ended up loving it. ....for a whole 4 and a half weeks. That is when Mark Nigon got drunk. Not just drunk but annihilated. Mark Nigon had a B.A.C of .217. He was driving the wrong way down a one way street and hit my wife and I head on. He broke my pelvis and both of my legs. I had closed head injuries, pubic diastases and will be crippled for life from the accident.

My inability to work caused me to lose my house. My wife having given up her job to take care of me felt abandoned once I was able to go back to work (which requires me to travel) and she ended up leaving me. At this time my current work engagement in Las Vegas canceled my contract and I was suddenly homeless. I moved to a new city and that is where I am now.

I am in a brand new city. I do not know anyone. The phone keeps ringing and I keep hitting ignore. I am disappearing again. Mark Nigon gets out tomorrow. He will have served 11 months of a two year sentence. He got a two year sentence when he should have gotten 4 years. Somehow this is fair. Somehow I am supposed to feel redeemed. Somehow I am supposed to let go. Somehow if I could feel anything at all, I think I would feel depressed. Somehow, if I could feel, I would feel that the world is no longer safe. Of course we all know very well that it never was.