Must’ve been when chance went and picked her. The day should’ve been apparent when you were wiping away the fog that enveloped the shitty car that you drove to your shitty job in the shitty city you lived in to help support the shitty relationship you were suffocated by. The extent you wish you knew what happened to her, down to the exact detail, in the [incident] that took her. It drove you up the wall, flattened the core of your psyche and put you on track to where you are now.

Wait. Sorry. Getting ahead of myself. Need to stay in the moment..

You hoped you would get over it, everything she did. Everything she was and wasn’t. You stopped talking to her 6 months prior for a reason, no? It had to be for a reason, otherwise, the guilt that eats at you, was deserved the same way she would tell you, “You deserved what happened to you.” Couldn’t make sense of you then and why you’re gone now. It’s all by chance, isn’t it?

I jolt awake and I’m able to see all the warm air from the inside of the car is the balmy air that has caked on thickly compared to the desolate rigid air on the outside.

I check the time on my cell phone.

2:42am.

I fell asleep in the car again, again and again. Repeatedly, this became my new reality. I would have to drive up 7 levels of this stupid parking structure for this stupid apartment where, get this, I shared a room with a stranger, and I shared the entire apartment with 5 other messy, inconsiderate men. Which, mind you, I was paying close to 800 dollars for a month. I had no work anymore, all I could get into was instacart driving and doordashing. Never enough money, never enough energy, never am able to be enough.

I don’t feel like walking the 10 minutes from the car to the apartment. I don’t feel like anything anymore. I don’t feel like I’m worth anything anymore. I lay back softly on the driver’s seat that had become my new bed of woes. I doze off.

I jolt awake.

7:32a.

“Grande hot vanilla latte, what else? Does that complete your order? Okay. Pull up to the next window.”

Always moving, I always got to go. Either here at Starbucks or a retail adjacent job, you always keep it moving.

“Make sure you have a sense of urgency when you move around,” My supervisor barked at me, some years back. And so, I can’t stop. If I stop, I might as well die.

My aunt started providing a couch to me so I wouldn’t have bare the elements out in San Diego. After I had lost my ability to provide for myself and the apartment I was living in, I was priced out of the market. It was humiliating, I had been able to support myself (if barely) up to that point and now here I was, unable to see a way out of where I ended up both materially and financially. I truly became transient, life went on and I had, in my mind, become nothing.

I spent the better half of this year broke, unemployed, homeless, and existentially frightened. The culmination of choices I’ve made and choices that were forced on me had led to all of this. Twenty-one years of an existence where I treated my own needs like an inconvenience, something to be negotiated for, to be earned. I allowed this thought process to become my only mode of being, this rot of doubt. The rot I had allowed to permeate every pore of my body since I was a small kid, this was my birthright.

Okay, next steps after taking their order. Hmm.. Ah, yes. That’s right, “Queue the shots, steam the milk, pump the syrup, finish and connect. Finish and connect. Connect.”

How do you even connect anymore?

"Nah don't worry, I can take it." Before anyone could react, I snatched the tiny vial of potent, unknowable, yellowish liquid. I felt all the nerves rush out of my body while, they all took in what I released.

At this point nothing could go right in my life. I had been fired from my supervisory job at the Starbucks I had to drive almost 30 minutes to, almost every day. Walking into the store with every eye focused on the mess I had become. Replacement close in hand with the others, my manager pulled me outside. What transpired was probably the most humiliating and depressing moment I had experience thus far, well, until this moment.

"Do you want to go inside and get your stuff?" She nervously murmured.

"No, just throw it all away."

Of course, I was also homeless on top of all of this, did I mention that? Living in a shelter because the tension at my aunt's house had become too much to bear. So from one couch to a shared room I went, all I had was myself at this point.

And so, I squeezed the bottle directly in my mouth. See, I had taken this substance before, it had always been a pleasant time. And for a moment, it was, euphoric and mesmerizing. I had lost all sense of myself. I become more and then some.

The room began to shift and became indecipherable, I couldn't choke up a breath, my heart ready to burst out my chest, I tried to plead for water. From my understanding, I was erratic and terrified. They couldn't understand me and I couldn't either. It was coming, I knew it was coming. I was going to die. This really was it.

"Hello, are you [redacted]?" the officer asserted. I couldn't make sense of what really transpired next. I was forced to the ground by multiple officers. Pulled out of the house and into an ambulance that was patiently waiting for me out. In and out of consciousness I arrived at the hospital, I believe. Where else would they take me, I guess. Burning lights and what became foreign language to me, they asked me where I lived. And with that, off I went into the night back to my aunt's house. I didn't even live here anymore, why would I say I lived here. Maybe I had hoped I could find the comfort I craved inside but, no, I wasn't going to find it here.

Fortunately, my friend didn't live that far and so, became my long walk in clothes that didn't fit me because I soiled them at the hospital. I was lost, I was hopeless, and I should've died. I didn't know who I was anymore but, I still hoped for new beginnings.