Death Rattle

I was doing well for about 2 months. I was trying to take care of myself – exercising, accupuncture, nutripuncture, quantum techniques, herbal concoctions, psycho-therapy and following the newest fad, The Secret (if you envision it, it will come to fruition). All of these things made sense of course, whereas Christianity…who would believe that mumbo-jumbo? 

But I was still lonely so I went hunting for a boyfriend. I met a man online who had all the right stuff: cute, a doctor, single, well-traveled, etc. He quickly became the new fixture in my life and I had become too dependent on him emotionally before the truth came out. He had elaborate excuses for everything. See, he could have been a doctor but he was forced to drop out of medical school early because his crack-addict mom stole all of his money. And he had made smart decisions by buying those four houses to flip and make the money back to get into school, but the market crashed so he had to foreclose and claim bankruptcy. And he just wanted to help a poor immigrant out so he married her. And, well, they had to still live together so she could fool immigration and get her green card.

It’s not that I believed his excuses or that I was in love with him, but I kept him around as a punching bag. I found someone worse off than me towards whom I could project all my anger and he just took it.

During our relationship he was charged with a few felonies when he beat up a tenant. Again, of course, he had excuses and had convinced himself that he was the victim. I loaned him money for his lawyer’s retainer and after several months it was clear he had no plans to pay me back. By this time, I was out of my mind all the time, whether I was drinking or not. To say my thoughts were cloudy is an understatement and any sense of right or wrong was long gone. I finally broke it off, for good, at the end of the year. But I still couldn’t let the money thing go. One night I called him and said I was going to his house to get my money back and that I would stay there until he handed it over. No one was home when I got there so I climbed in through a window (like I said, out of my mind) and waited for him. At some point his wife came home and saw my car in the driveway. She called the police without even coming to the door and the next thing I knew I was being handcuffed at gunpoint.

It was pretty clear to the detectives what was going on and I sat in the police car for four hours while they talked to Joseph on the phone trying to get him to come over and clear everything up. He refused so I was taken to jail. I was charged with felony burglary (FYI it’s considered burglary if you’re in someone’s house even if you don’t take anything) and criminal mischief. Upon release I found a lawyer through a friend. He charged me the “friend” rate which I later found out was several thousand dollars more expensive than the regular rate. Gotta love it.  His tactic was to intimidate Joseph into convincing his wife to drop the charges by threatening to have me testify against him at his own pending trial. Not surprisingly this only made him more defensive and angry towards me and not only did he not drop the charges but I was also served with a stay-away order. When my lawyer asked for more money to start the “second phase” of the process I fired him and got new representation. But I was now entirely distrustful of any lawyer and in constant fear that I might actually go to prison.

Go to The Death Miracle:  Suicide #2.