It was Thursday, May 28th 2009. My ex-girlfriend, Megan, and I were in the middle of packing our apartment in Long Beach. We had lived together for over a year and had broken up a few months prior. The time had come to move out, and move on. Megan's friend, Natasha, was over helping us pack. I think it was somewhere around 1pm when she got a call from her father. He had called to tell us that her brother-in-law, Mitch, had been shot and killed early that morning. This is a version of what happened. Let me quickly add, he did not lunge at the officer. He was fleeing the scene of the crime.
Before I continue, let me explain how I knew Mitch. We were brought together by our girlfriends, who are sisters, but he quickly became much more. He had helped me when Megan cheated on me. He was there when we had broken up. I helped him when he felt his family was falling apart. We saw each other through a lot. He was my dear friend, my brother and I loved him.
When Megan got off the phone and told me what had happened, I was angry. I started ranting about how stupid he was for doing what he did. About five minutes later, it started to hit me. I walked out of our apartment and lost it. My dear friend, my brother was gone.
While all this was happening, I was leaving my apartment to move back into my dads in Fountain Valley. My one real accomplishment in life was gone. I had lost my girlfriend, my home, and my friend. Needless to say, I was an emotional wreck. My dad was not providing any of the support I needed during the time I lived there. He was more like an anti-support system.
A few weeks later, I got a call from my Aunt Vickie. She told me that my mom was in the hospital and on a respirator and that's all she knew. I freaked out of course and went home from work. I was a wreck waiting to hear something. My sister wasn't picking up her phone and I knew nothing of what was happening. I later got a call from my sister, Courtney. She told me our mom had a brain aneurysm that had burst and she had a seizure. Thank god it wasn't in front of my 10-year old nephew. It took a day, but she was taken off the respirator. Later that day, she was conscious enough to talk to people. At first she couldn't talk very well and couldn't make new memories. Nor did she remember what had happened. Little by little she started to get better. By the grace of god, she has since made an almost full recovery. Needless to say, this was also very had to go through and made it harder to grieve for Mitch.
Getting back to Mitch. During the time right after his death, Megan and I were hanging out a lot. Her sister put it perfectly, "what, do you guys just not know how to be apart?" It was true, but we needed each other at the time. Her family was providing me with the much needed support I was looking for. They offered to take me in to help deal with the loss. It wasn't hard to do after I lost my job. So I was back in Long Beach.
I'm very good at putting up a front. I may have looked ok, but I wasn't. I wasn't really dealing with the loss. I masked the pain by surrounding myself with Mitch's friends and marijuana. I had been a pot-head for quite sometime by then, but never had it meant so much to me. It was my escape, my pain medication. I smoked all day every day. Nothing else mattered to me but getting to that next bowl. It was like that for about five months.
I had a few weeks of clarity. One being a birthday cruise with my birth family. Another was my cousins wedding back in Indiana. Although both gave me an escape from life, I still ended up in the same pattern. I knew something needed to change but had no idea where to begin.
Fast forwarding a bit, we come to Thanksgiving weekend. I made a very important decision, that would change my life forever... and that will be the subject of my next blog.
