I'm Alive

As I sit here in the living room watching Alan Watts on GAIA, I ponder about what makes me "Remarkably Real" enough to even attempt entry into this writing challenge. Which story of mine, which personal experience, best portrays my true self and shines light on such a dark shadow? With a history like the one I have been creating, the possible topics are diverse as my interactions with our universe.

It's been a tough go, so far. That's an understatement but no matter how unbelievable or insane my experiences and perceptions have been or may be, I must admit, upfront, that I am content. I am secure in my own beliefs and identities however, being me up to this moment has been downright dangerous. I have no doubts with regard to how my youngest aspirations to be a superhero, a ninja, a cowboy, etc., increased the odds of danger finding me. I was looking for it.

When I was six or seven, I asked my mom if she would enroll me and my brother, Nick, in karate class. She was ready, and probably had been for some time, with a firm "No." What she did do was enroll us in beginner tumbling classes. I don't remember how many classes we attended, but it was enough to teach me how to do cartwheels, round-offs, handsprings and flips, all the basic ninja moves! We were good at it too, my brother and I. So good, we took it to the neighborhoods.

We moved to a small housing addition on the expanding edge of a mid-sized college town in Oklahoma, in the late '80s. I was nine and invincible with my recently acquired and constantly improving skills. One afternoon, it seems during an extended weekend, my friend Michael and I were up to mischief in the unoccupied playground where we attended elementary school. One of us found a golf ball in the grass and "somehow" it ended up on the roof of the school and for "some reason" we "had" to get it back.

I had been training for this very type of mission. I was ready. I was confident. I could see that the fence around the green electric boxes and meters went all the way up to the overhang jutting over the entrance. From there, it was a couple of feet to the rooftop. From where we stood, it was only moments before we were both up there hunting for the golf ball. I don't even remember if we found it. I do remember previously exploring the entirety of the roof with Michael and my brother, and we had discovered several ways up and down, one requiring a partner or a commitment. I hated that way. To get down, a three-foot-tall person had to hang on the edge of a brick wall and drop just too far to get back up without a buddy to help. From that spot, stranded upon another overhang protecting an entrance from weather, that person would have to hang on to the edge of the overhang, dangle and then drop to the asphalt. Even though I was a trained ninja, it always hurt my feet doing that.

On this particular endeavor, Michael and I were the only two on the roof and we decided to have a race to see which way down was the fastest. We agreed on a fair and equidistant starting point. Michael picked the commitment route, all I had to do was cover a lot of flat distance and get down the reverse way I got up. Easy peasy!

On "Go!" we both took off and I was going to win. I knew it already. I was the fastest in my grade and in my circle of friends. I was also a professional. As I neared the end of my path, the edge of the school getting closer and closer, I could taste my victory! Those bragging rights were as good as mine. They still are.

Flying at a full sprint, I jumped, timing my speed and distance just right to land past the edge of the school and onto the overhang. I miscalculated. I learned that victory tastes like whooshing air, asphalt, tar, tiny pebbles and blood. I hit that schoolyard basketball court hard but uniformly, from ankles to knees and elbows to wrists. Then, face, face, face, face, face...

I don't know how long I laid there, on my back, rolled over but still frozen in the position I landed. Eventually, I got my breath and I screamed but I could only hear a mind-splitting BUZZZZZZZZZZZZ, like I was a Pooh Bear after some honey with my head stuck in a hive. Michael appeared, apparently in a panic at the sight of me. I tried to get up but was too dizzy. I rolled to the rail that lined the entrance ramp and used it to help me up. Michael had gone to the doors and started pounding. It was no use. There was no school that day.

Miraculously, out of the hallway, a custodian emerged and opened the doors. Michael pointed him to my best efforts at making the trek home on my own, to avoid having to confess our shenanigans to our parents, and those efforts were not convincing in the least. My parents were at work so, the man picked me up, put me in his pickup and drove Michael and me to Michael's parents' house.

They got me inside and let me lie back on Michael's bed and I took a nap. That's right. I slept it off like a champ! When my parents picked me up, we went straight to the ER. I had a face full of gravel, embedded from under my chin to my hairline, a mild concussion and a chipped front tooth. It took me three weeks to walk on my own and feed myself. It took me another three or four months before I could turn my head at the neck, instead of turning at the waist. It took me not being supervised by adults before I was back on top of every climbable structure in my territory. To this day, I love to climb. To this day, I have only jumped off one school building. As quickly as I learned about jumping from schools is as slowly as I learned how to deal with the rest of life.

I've always been emotionally unstable. Geographically as well, I attended a new school almost every year (ten schools in thirteen school years, K-12). By the time I was a senior in high school, I was employed full time at a Taco Bell, living with young adult roommates and paying rent, I was a stoner, a tutor, a teacher's aide, cadet commander of my Air Force ROTC class, on the academic team, a saxophonist in the marching band and beginning to learn a third language. I scored well on my ASVAB in my junior year and the Navy recruiter was promising me a spot in the SEALs. Due to a broken family life and a couple of incidents that led to me getting arrested for truancy, curfew violations and marijuana possession, I dropped out a few months into my senior year, ran away from home and by the time I was an "adult" I had built a network of untrustworthy drug addicts and petty criminals.

Three and a half months after my eighteenth birthday, I was in a new place with new people, doing new things like snorting and smoking methamphetamine. Three weeks into my newfound reason for living, my girlfriend who had introduced me to that lifestyle, dumped me for the supply guy. I balled like a dying donkey. For a whole day I cried. Then, the guy who supplies the supply guy showed up and I became the "try"guy. Yeah! I guinea-pigged batch after batch of kitchen crank for a week straight. My status had immediately elevated from naive, nerdy nobody to... well, to put it plainly, high as the f'n stars.

I rode that comet for eight years without a clue as to the damage I was doing to my future. I didn't even want a future. My past was multi-traumatic, my current mind state (at that time) was suicidal at best. My baby-mama hated everything about me. I was a self-righteous, narcissistic sociopath with a drug problem. My drug problem was that I was in the loop. I was stuck in that loop. I was committed to it like a dangle-drop but running it like a ninja in a rooftop-race.

In 2004, a sentence was spoken to me that caused me to reevaluate my priorities and adjust accordingly. I can't repeat that sentence. I will tell you that it was a cautionary sentence explaining that the "other team" was coming to put a wrench in our system and "our team" was going to preemptively make a "public statement" to "protest" against such efforts. I packed up a moving truck, left that town and to this day, I have never had to jump off of that ledge. I don't know what happened with any of those "team members" but I made it out of that pan and hopped right into a bed of hot coals.

For the next ten years, I struggled with relapse after relapse; drinking, smoking meth, failing at relationships, the list is incriminating. In 2014, when I was thirty-five years old, I went back to my mommy. She lives on forty-acres in rural Oklahoma and I went there to self-quarantine with goals of building a food-forest/market garden/self-sufficient homestead and to turn my toxicity into a clean, morally sound and beneficial contribution to my community.

On April 26, 2014, I came inside to chat with my brother, Ryan, about the work I had done that day around the property. Our other brother's three daughters and our sister's son were all here in this living room, watching cartoons. At ages 7, 5, 3 and 1, the kids had completely trashed the room and were actively ignoring their uncles' requests to tidy up. After twenty minutes, I gave them the choice between picking up the toys and crayons and such, or getting a whooping and then picking up the toys and crayons and such. That's when the girls' dad, Clint, and I got into an argument that escalated rapidly.

As I spit venomous fact after venomous fact about his parenting methods, relationship habits, choice of mate and recreational activities, etc., he got angry to the point that he blacked out. He staggered to me like a cockroach in an Edgar-suit. It was as if a marionette on strings had grabbed my throat and laid me and the recliner I was sitting in, on my back. Leaning over me, his face contorted in rage, eight fingers and two thumbs gripping my neck like he wanted to pop my head off my body, I smiled and sneered, "My weed-smoking-throat-muscles are stronger than your video-game-thumbs!" Ryan grabbed his leg and pulled him backwards. He held onto me so tight that the chair sat upright before he lost his grip and fell onto the couch. He jumped back up and put me in a headlock and shook me around, still trying to decapitate me, unsuccessfully. I slipped out with some effort and he fell almost in the same spot, this time landing on the floor in front of the couch. During this second bout of armchair-wrestling, Ryan had rounded up the kids, herded them outside and loaded them into a vehicle. Clint's wife was getting keys and they were heading to town. As Clint sat in front of the couch, visibly swirling, eyes hazy and distant, I continued to sit on my throne and assault him with an endless and accurate tirade. I told him that after two failed attacks, a third would result in me fighting back and that he, "...can't handle what I have in store..." and many other oldest-brother phrases. It's true, in hand-to-hand combat I would have sent him to the hospital with multiple broken bones and dislocated joints. Ryan ordered us to "take it outside!" Clint stood up and walked toward the front door. I remained in my seat. For a few short seconds, I remained in my seat. Then Ryan said, "You better run." I was not phased. I was invincible! A ninja at his finest and I hadn't even gotten out of the Lazy Boy. That's when Clint reappeared in the entry way across from the living room. He was holding a shotgun.

I stood up with nowhere to go. In front of me, my half-brother, younger by five years but bigger than me physically by five inches and 160 lbs. plus, he was holding that 12-gauge. To my left was a couch and an end table. Jumping those would have put me at the back door but still in a direct path of the man with the gun. To my right, four steps gets me into a bedroom and a chair through the window could make a suitable exit. As I analyzed my dwindling options in my mind, an audible-to-me-only voice commanded me to, "Stand still!" I looked at Clint. He shimmered and went semi-invisible like the Predator in blur-mode. For real! I SAW that happen. I heard a shot go off.

I was hit! OUCH!

Two times! OWWWCH!

Two, tiny pellets had entered my body, one at the right hip and one in my right hand. So much for standing there! I chose option: chair-through-the-window and I went for it. I darted out of there like Snagglepuss: Exit, stage right!

As soon as my first step touched the floor, BLAM! A second shot from the thunder-stick rang out and I am squealing! I am falling? I am bleeding. The .06 bird-shot impaled my thighs and buttocks at least a hundred times. The plastic wad that separates the powder from the pellets was embedded in my left leg, where the butt cheek becomes the thigh. Within moments, a third shot echoes throughout the trailer and my left calf became hamburger.

I laid there on the floor, about one and a half feet to the right of the recliner I had been so safe and comfortable in just a half an hour before. I was losing blood at a rate for which I was unequipped to handle and under the circumstances, I wouldn't have been much help to myself in that condition anyway. I looked up at Ryan, who had ducked behind the short side of a couch and I said to him, "Now would be a good time to call 911." He pulled out his cell phone and did just that. I heard Clint begin speaking on the landline, "May I speak with Debbie, please? Mom, I think I just shot Seth, you need to come home." Click. He hung up! Then I heard him explaining to a 911 operator that he thought he had shot me but couldn't remember what happened and he gave them directions to the property. Click. He hung up on them too! What is with this guy and hanging up on people in an emergency? I remember thinking that.

He grabbed a bath towel, filled it with ice from the ice maker and wrapped my leg. He asked me if there was anything else I could use to be more comfortable until the ambulance got here. The nerve of this guy!

Ryan yelled at him, "I think you've done enough, Clint!"

I offered, real calm-like with a slight chuckle, "Ryan, if he wants to help, let him. Don't piss him off or he might reload."

That is the moment I knew I had forgiven him. Yeah, he had shot me for hurting his feelings. It was done. It sucked! But help was on the way and he was already genuinely sorry for doing something he didn't remember doing. I could see it. I watched the whole thing happen in front of me. I knew it was out of character for him to behave that way. This guy had never even gotten a traffic ticket! His first crime was shooting me for talking sh!t. I'm good at it, too. It just flows out like I'm connected to the infrastructure!

The cops were here within minutes. We live eleven miles from town and mom was right behind the cops. The ambulance passed her on the way but somehow, got lost and couldn't find the house. A second ambulance was dispatched from a town twenty miles further than the original dispatched ambulance came from. The second ambulance arrived before the first, almost one hour after shots fired. They drove me to town, put me on a helicopter, flew me to the city and after two hours of staying awake, coherent and begging for drugs, they put me on a frozen, metal table, told me the catheter was going to hurt and that's when I gave up my John Wayne and went to sleep. I was in surgery for something like fourteen hours. They could have skipped the two ambulances and just sent the chopper! My yard it totally big enough.

I returned to the same recliner after a month at the hospital and after three months of therapy, I was beginning to learn to walk again alternating between using a walker, crutches or a cane. I went to my sister's house to babysit my 1-year-old niece so my sister and her man could go out. I was needing a break from the never-ending-armchair anyway because doing most of my "recovering" a foot away from where the assault happened was not very conducive to a "get well soon" attitude. When they got home, we smoked a bowl of weed. I hadn't had any since a week before getting shot. I got baked and it felt great! I started finding reasons to be in town and within two weeks, I was getting handfuls of "sympathy drugs" from my network of cohorts. The methamphetamine had found me again. Again, at a fragile time in my life. I was on that binge for a year and a half and my "recovery" had halted. If I got better, how would I get free drugs?

It had been almost a year into the binge and the court date for my brother's plea bargain was upon us. I was in full space-man mode. I'm surprised I didn't show up to testify dressed like an astronaut because I was far out there. I do have one trait that helped me that day. It's my commitment to honesty. I tell the truth. Bluntly, tactlessly, painfully, I say true statements unless I am rapping in metaphors. Those can get tricky. I didn't do that in court. I took my place, said my oath and told the story from my perspective. I wrote an eight page affidavit detailing the incident and my opinions of what happened that day and submitted a copy to the court clerk, one to the district attorney's office and one to my brother's attorney. The good news is that my brother's charges were dropped from Shooting With Intent To Kill to Assault With A Dangerous Weapon. This, in turn, reduced his possible sentence. He got ten years and was ordered to pay the $500,000 restitution that had been estimated for my hospital bills. This amount was derived solely from my testimony. I told the court that the hospital gave me a discount and that my total debt for those medical procedures went from half a million dollars to somewhere around one hundred twenty-five thousand dollars. They never saw a bill or confirmed what I said in any way, they just said that they were going to set the restitution at the full amount of five hundred thousand dollars. Clint went to work until he had to go to prison. He went to work while he was in prison and I kept getting high.

My mom had witnessed enough of my self-destruction and she told me to go somewhere else. I stayed through the winter, researching the best places to be homeless in America. Three months on Google and I knew where I was going. April of 2016, I went to Denver, Colorado with a plan to either get help or get lost. That day, 4-20-2016, in Denver, not one person would smoke pot with me. I looked like Seth, The Meth Monster. I was him; Smeth, for short. I could barely get directions. Nobody wanted anything to do with me. Finally, a man did offer me some assistance downtown when he introduced me to the Denver Rescue Mission. I got acquainted with a pamphlet from the Mission and the next day, I signed up for the their New Life Program.

I had found the help, as lost as I already was. In order to join the New Life Program, first, I had to meet with the intake coordinator and answer some basic questions about myself, my issues and my goals. I had to commit to a drug-free, alcohol-free lifestyle while staying at the Mission, verified by daily urine tests and breath analyses, and often random ones as well. A positive result meant losing my guaranteed bed and starting back at square one. I passed every test. It took me twenty-two months, but I successfully graduated the New Life Program and I stayed sober the entire time. I left with a full-time job, money in the bank and almost two years' worth of sobriety under my belt.

A couple years later, Covid-19 happened. I lost my job, went on unemployment and sat in a basement for a year. I had found the dope again. Rather, it had found me again. One of my roommates was moving lots of product and after I stood up for her to our drunken, pervert of a landlord, she thanked me with a shard of toxic love. The next year was crazy as you couldn't believe. The landlord got more drunk. The house got filled up with meth users. The relationships got more violent. I got more high. I was finding chunks of meth crystals everywhere! On the carpet, in the driveway, on the table, in a pipe in the bathroom, you name it, I found some dope there. We even had to spend forty-five minutes standing on the sidewalk in front of the neighbor's house while the S.W.A.T. team tried to negotiate a standoff with the landlord's niece's boyfriend. I should have recorded that incident. It's a dead-wringer for the True Crime Comedy Award!

Well, it goes that, basically, I was dying. I was down to 115 pounds. I was dehydrated. I couldn't stop hitting the pipe. My sister called from Oklahoma and she wanted to help me. We decided that she and her dad, my step-dad, would drive six hours and I would get a ride for three hours and we would meet up in Colorado City and I would go back to the family land. After they drove the six hours to the meeting place, it took me twenty hours to meet them there. I don't know why they didn't just come to the house and get me, but I don't blame them. They waited and I finally got my stuff into the vehicle and we came back to Oklahoma.

That was fourteen months ago. I have been able to stay off the meth this past year. I am working with my half-brother, Clint, and his attorney to get the amount of restitution that was part of his sentencing, reduced to a payable amount. Some days when he is not working, he comes to help me with chores around the yard. I used my unemployment insurance benefits and bought a list of tools and supplies to help me transform this forty acres of sand and stickers into a profitable and self-sustainable food production enterprise. It's slow going, especially waddling around on my gimpy leg in the sand with the wind blowing 35 mph! But it's happening! I have been trying to get permission to remove the junk and start farming this land since I was fourteen years old. Now, at forty-three, I have my chance to change my life. I have the opportunity to become the difference that I want to see in the world. I get to mark over my past and mark out my future. Re-marking my path, I am becoming. I am a dying life, living through many deaths to die a death worth living a life worth dying for. That really is remarkable.