Learning how to suck at life

At home I know how to do everything, and if I don’t, I know how to figure it out. I can mitigate the circumstances and control the variables. There are very few surprises in my daily life. Overall, I’m very good at life.

Here in Buenos Aires I completely suck at life. I can’t figure out phone service, public transportation, how to open a milk carton, flush the toilet, or walk on the sidewalk without tripping. I don’t know which store to go to for what thing I need and once I’m in the store I can never find what I’m looking for. I never know what I’m ordering in restaurants, the words mean nothing to me without memories to draw from and context. In the US I can visualize how the food is going to come, typically pretty accurately, based off of norms and past experiences. Here I’m frequently disappointed when my food arrives and it’s nothing like I expected.

I had to be taught how to hang up my clothes to dry, using clothes pins. When I told my friends, born and raised in Latin America, that I had hung up my clothes to dry for the first time in my life, two different people asked the exact same follow-up question. “But then who has been hanging up your clothes your whole life?” Just like they can’t conceive of never having had a dryer, I can’t conceptualize that doing laundry one day means your clothes won’t be available to wear for several more days. I keep running out of clothes—my brain simply can’t grasp it. It would be impossible to only have one set of sheets here, because washing sheets would mean they would need to dry 2-3 days before you can put them back on your bed. Laundry day means something different here.

Here I can’t control anything, much less everything, so I don’t even try. I go with the flow and practice radical acceptance. I walk around lost and confused. And you know what? It feels good.

But for real I don’t understand how people did study abroad before the internet and smart phones. I can barely manage my daily affairs even with constant internet access.

Buenos Aires

I’ve been here a week and a half now.

I’m starting to think I might be the luckiest person alive. I’m on federal supervision but in Buenos Aires, where my program costs are covered by scholarships. I won the host family lottery. I left my debit card in the ATM and actually got it back from the bank the next day. Tonight I found 200 pesos on the ground. I sat on a balcony last night and listened to songs that I listened to in prison. The contrast could not be greater.

I feel free here. Years younger. Life no longer feels so heavy. The tension that is omnipresent in the air in the US doesn’t exist here. The vibe is chill. People sit around and talk, drinking coffee at night. Dinner is at 9pm. It’s OK to be a few minutes late to anything, even school and work. My watch is not my master.

People are warm and friendly and always kiss you on the cheek to greet you. I spend most of my day speaking in Spanish, almost as an afterthought. It’s an incredibly beautiful life.

I’m already dreading going back home.

Ask and you shall receive

Just when I felt consumed by panic for my financial situation, I was notified yesterday that Portland State awarded me a $2,000 scholarship for Buenos Aires. Most of the program cost is now covered by scholarship and I only have to worry about actual spending money. It came at the perfect time—the universe provided.

I hope to actually blog about my experience, but I know what it’s like to get busy. I’ll have more cheery things to write about! I can get a bit doom and gloom. There’s just so much work to be done.

I leave in 48 hours. I have everything I need and all my loose ends at home are tied up. My car insurance has my car marked in “storage” beginning the day I leave, my cell phone service suspended the day after. There’s nothing left to Google, the YouTube videos have became repetitive.

I remember back when I thought, “Who actually checks their email? No one, right?” and I never planned anything. I sometimes pine for that light-hearted and spontaneous version of myself. Ever since getting out of prison, I see long-term consequences lurking at every corner. I compulsively try to mitigate them, control the variables, ensure I never feel that sense of guilt and regret again. I’m overly proactive—it’s compulsive. Did you know that could be a thing?

I seek balance. I’ve been relaxing lately. The feeling of guilt creeps in. “getupgetupbeproductiveyoulazypieceofshit”. But I’m learning to overrule that voice because relaxing feels good. Literally everything is done—the to-do list is finally empty. I can quiet the voice. I’ve been binge watching Big Mouth—which is the best raunchy social commentary I’ve ever seen. It’s the first time I’ve truly “binge watched” anything since the time “before”, the time of syringes, cigarettes, and sleeping until the sun went down. I can now binge watch sober.

12 Days

I leave for my study abroad in 12 days. I’m both excited and freaking out. I watched a few hours worth of YouTube videos last night and now I feel better. What did international travelers do before YouTube? Buenos Aires will provide some great blogging material. It will be good to switch topics for a while. I have a lot to do in the next 12 days here, though. When it rains it pours.

The Fallen

Helen Godvin, my mom, died in December of 2013 from an overdose of her VA prescribed opioid narcotics.

Justin Delong died in March of 2014 from a heroin overdose.

Jesse Spencer died in May of 2016 from a heroin overdose.

Monty Bergman died in September of 2018 from a heroin overdose.

I loved them and they died prematurely of preventable deaths.

Rest in peace.

My First Published Op-Ed

I spent almost a full year at Multnomah County jail while my case was awaiting sentencing. Every Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday morning I would make my instant coffee flavored with junior mints and sit and read the paper. I especially loved the op-eds. I made the bucket-list goal of one day writing an op-ed that got published in The Oregonian.

Today my dream came true. After seeing that the Oregon House had proposed a law to treat overdoses as homicides, I was inspired to write an op-ed against it and laws like it that double down on failed policies of incarceration.

Sitting in jail it seemed like fantasy. Today it became reality. I’m setting new goals.

The Kindness of Strangers on Bikes

My wife and I went bike shopping at Block Bike’s in St. Johns on Friday. She needs transportation for when I am in Argentina. We thought cycling would be a great couple’s activity, especially now that we’ve moved most of our lives within three miles of home. She bought a bike but I couldn’t stomach the cost ahead of my trip. That’s when an employee of Block Bike’s, Greg, offered to loan me one of his personal bikes until I leave. I am a total stranger to Greg and his bicycle is currently parked in my sunroom. I rode a bike for the first time since I was a child! My wife and I can now cycle together, something new for both of us.

Thanks to the kindness of a stranger. A stranger who entrusted me with something of value.

Addicts and inmates are universally distrusted; today I am neither.

A Reminder to Myself That I'm Human

I’m tired. I frequently get congratulated on my accomplishments since getting released from prison 14 months ago, but I’ve developed a sort of fatigue. Similar to how social media is saving snapshots and inane details of our life for us to remember forever, Google Calendar has saved the previous year of my life in appointments.

Hundreds. I have gone to hundreds of appointments. I didn’t actually count, but in the first four months of my release I frequently had two a day. I had so much lost time to make up for. Appointments for financial aid, my Veteran Service Officer, Veteran advocate, housing assistance, admissions, advising, scholarship workshops, legal services, medical, dental, court mandated drug treatment, UAs. I’d wake up early at the halfway house and leave for my appointments, which were sandwiched in-between my classes, and then at then go right to work until late at night. I did that most days for months and months.

The alternative was to sit aimlessly at the halfway house, which I didn’t consider an option. It was do something productive or do nothing and sit in quasi-jail. I frequently spent the maximum permissible time out of the halfway house per day—16 hours on the go.

Home confinement was similar as I made dozens of appointments to advocate for myself and my rights and try to overcome the myriad barriers imposed upon me by the criminal justice system. Successes were invigorating and kept me going. I maintained a 4.0 GPA and full-time enrollment. I suffered through a crippling bout of carpal tunnel/trigger finger/tendonitis in my hands that only resulted in dozens more appointments. I kept working despite it. I got my passport, my motorcycle license, I traveled to the Oregon State Capitol to share my re-entry concerns. I went to all the conferences, I volunteered, I networked. I berated myself if I slept more than 7 hours in a night. “Oh, what, you didn’t sleep enough in prison? You didn’t have enough time to rest in prison?”

I fatigued myself. We are only human. I must rest. I have a hard time allowing myself rest when I learned so viscerally in prison that having a purpose in life is what creates satisfaction. I’m struggling to find the balance between productivity and rest. As a junkie, I “rested” 16 hours per day. OK, I nodded off and slept. Same difference. Then I swung to the opposite extreme and for my first year out of prison, I tried to negate my humanity and operate at a machine’s pace. This American culture encouraged me and made me feel like it could be done. It nearly broke me.

I’m going to try to rest now. My study abroad for Argentina doesn’t start until mid-May. Until then? Read more, write more, rest more. I could use some advice on how to find the balance between the “there’s so much to do” bustle standard of American culture magnified by my lost time and the ability to rest and actually experience life as it passes before us.

I still have the voice in my head, berating me for resting. “But there’s so much to be done!” …But I am only human. For now, I will rest.l

19.1

I’ve never played sports a day in my life. I’m uncoordinated with poor spatial reasoning. But I opted to participate in the CrossFit open this year. There’s not so much a why as a “why not?”. My athletic performance was going to be judged as I did an intense workout with dozens of onlookers. I spent all of Friday nervous to the point of being scared. If I hadn’t have already told so many people I was going, I wouldn’t have showed up.

Reluctantly I showed up to Friday Night Lights. When I saw the first group do the workout—19 wall balls followed by a 19 calorie row—I felt even more terrified. The workout was long. Just by watching everyone be so encouraging and feeling the energy in the room my fear melted away. I was ready.

“Do your best.” My old prison mantra popped into my head. As long as you do your best, it’s fine. You can’t do any better than that.

I did the workout. I did my best. I don’t think I could have got any higher of a score, I gave it my all. I almost threw up, my score is fairly low. But I did something I thought I would never do. I did something I thought I could never do.

I’m still un-athletic and uncompetitive. But now I’m stronger, healthier, and more determined. I can go farther than I thought, push myself harder, endure more. For me, CrossFit has turned “I don’t think I can” into “I know I can because I did yesterday, and I can do it again today.”

And I’ll do it all again next Friday for 19.2.

Shout out to CrossFit Blue House for guiding me on my journey off the couch.

Murders in Mexico

My patient today told me about how four of her relatives were tortured and murdered in her hometown in Mexico in December. She said the violence has gotten so bad people are afraid to leave their homes. I was so grateful in that moment to be able to speak Spanish—to be able to hear her pain, that she could share it with me.

As long as there is demand, there will be supply. American culture is unrivaled in creating demand for narcotics. Our consumption of drugs has skyrocketed, right along side the spending on the drug war. In 2017, over 70,000 Americans died of a drug overdose. Hundreds of thousands of people are in prison for drugs. I served a 5-year sentence. El Chapo is in a federal prison. And yet… the flow of drugs is undeterred.

The DEA confirms that most drugs come over the border at legal points-of-entry. The image of someone trekking through the desert with a backpack is a fabrication. It’s not necessary when so many American citizens and Mexicans that have been granted visas are willing to attempt to cross the border with drugs hidden in their vehicle for the promise of a few thousand dollars, the going rate. As long as there is poverty and desperation, there will be drug mules and dealers.

If you arrest a dealer, others will expand to fill the gap. Where there is demand, poverty, and the opportunity for profit, there will be a constant supply of drugs, no matter how illegal you make them. If you arrest the leader of a drug ring, you leave a power vacuum which several people will try to fill, resulting in increased violence and ruthlessness. Never is the flow of drugs deterred.

America’s immense consumption of drugs is a profitable business. Drug policy gave all those profits to criminals. What happens when criminal enterprises become unimaginably rich? See today’s Mexico. The cartels war with each other, each one becoming more and more ruthless to try to control more of the market share. Money controls politics, as it does all over the world. Government officials and law enforcement are subjected to the cartel’s “plata o plomo” philosophy—silver or lead. Bribe or bullet, take your pick. Now criminals who have learned unconscionable brutality dominate parts of the country. The situation is untenable. And directly caused by America’s failed war on drugs.

With my patient’s story fresh in my mind, I saw the news about the border wall being declared a national emergency. The war on drugs has caused an international emergency. We’ve empowered cartels and destabilized Mexico. We’ve destroyed our own communities. We’ve incarcerated millions and torn apart families. Hundreds of thousands have died preventable deaths from overdoses, many caused by the varying purity of adulterated street drugs.

I see an international emergency. An actual crisis causing countless human suffering. It has nothing to do with a border wall.

My time

Yesterday I woke up at 5:45 am and started reading a novel that had been assigned as homework. My girlfriend still slept, the house was quiet. It reminded me of my time in county jail, but it was a good memory. At Inverness waking up early gave me the closest semblance of privacy to be found in that 78-person open dorm. You get used to the thundering snores of strangers and the wretching of the dopesick. Save for the tormented few and the handful of early risers, most people slept in the early morning and that’s why I was awake. It was the only time that I felt like was “mine”.

I wasn’t too hungry or cold and I had a good book. Life was good, or as good as possible for the circumstances. No matter how long I’d been reading my book I never had the invasive thought of you, “you should check your email.” Jail is a lonely place, but never did I feel lonely at that time—my time—I felt grounded.

I rarely feel that grounded anymore.

From a McDonald's eating, cigarette smoking, heroin junkie to an uptight CrossFitter

I used to eat exclusively fast food or candy from Plaid Pantry. I smoked menthols and lamented that cigarette smokers were an unfairly oppressed minority. I shot up heroin and slept 16 hours a day. None of those things bothered me much because I knew I would die young. I would never suffer the consequences of that lifestyle. Dying young was the goal. So have as much fleeting fun as possible in the meantime. Over time, my quest for “fun” became cyclical desperation, but that change happened gradually. It began as a hedonistic approach to life, the only response I saw to our meaningless existence on Earth.

Then my mom died, Justin died, and I was sentenced to 5 years in prison for his overdose death.

What really matters in life?

Now I shop at New Seasons and do CrossFit. I wake up early every day because there is life to be lived! I have became the type of person I used to ridicule. I am wound-up, can’t be still, can’t relax, and I worry excessively about my sugar intake. The fleeting internal reward of “fun” seems to pale in comparison the more profound elements of life that provide satisfaction. I do CrossFit because it makes me feel alive and healthy. When I don’t go for a day even though I could have, I get a feeling of guilt so heavy it affects my mental health. Because I’m hard on myself. Because I’m nothing like the person I used to be. Because all actions have consequences, you will face them, and you cannot predict them. Everything is interconnected, nothing occurs in a vacuum, and two bad decisions in between a hundred good decisions is still two bad decisions with unpredictable consequences.

When everything is taken from you and you’re alone with nothing but your thoughts, you reflect on the life you’ve lived. I didn’t regret not having more fun. Fun is superficial. I regretted not creating more meaning with my life. I understood that living a life with a purpose is the purpose to life. In prison, you can have brief moments of fun. But your meaning and purpose have been pulled out from under you. You can never feel satisfied from the inside-out, unless you find a way to restore that purpose from behind the walls.

Today I do not need to intake satisfaction from exterior sources. I have a pump that makes it within my body. Academics, CrossFit, healthy living, and community all fuel my inner pump. They don’t give me fleeting or superficial moments of satisfaction, they create self-perpetuating satisfaction within me. I don’t need to constantly intake chemicals or party to feel happy—those things are so short-acting, they wear off faster than you can consume them. I’ve discovered the secret to constantly self-replenishing internal contentment. And I don’t have to consume or intake anything to activate it. I just have to live healthy and do my best every day.

Life is short, life is precious. Do your best.

Find a way to fill yourself from the inside-out or you’ll spend your whole life trying and failing to fill yourself from the outside-in.

Argentina, School, and Social Media

I officially received the Gilman scholarship today! I am completely accepted and ready to go to Argentina. CIEE, PSU, and Gilman each had their respective series of hoops to jump through. It’s done now! I’m ready. The only thing left is official permission from my judge.

This quarter is fairly difficult. Also I am free so I want to do everything and go everywhere. I have competing priorities but I’m finding balance. I’m working on not getting stressed out. I am prioritizing going to CrossFit, which though it takes an hour somehow adds MORE time to my days. I’m also just clearing out my schedule. Sparse it down, do less. It’s so paradoxical that we try to squeeze so much life into our lives that we end up missing out on life.

I’ve been doing periodic social media detoxes. The more homework I have left to do the more likely I am do delete Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook off of my phone. When they’re gone my life does not feel diminished, I’m not sure why I ever add them back. I somehow missed out on a mass incarceration event put on by the OJRC and hosted at PSU—that wouldn’t have happened had I been on Twitter more. I derive sick pleasure from watching people’s Instagram stories. But are those two benefits worth the cost? TBD.

I haven’t been writing as much as I’d like. I wrote so many scholarship essays I burnt myself out. Then immediately I became inundated with assigned readings squeezed in between weekend mini-vacations. What a beautiful life I have to complain about.

January 9th, 2018 (Happy Release Date Anniversary)

My prison sentence ended on Friday. But as of today, I’ve been home exactly one year. I still got a full year of halfway house while everyone else got their halfway house time reduced under then-Attorney General Jeff Session’s policy, and I don’t know why. January 9th, 2018, I was released from FCI Dublin near Oakland, California and ordered to report to the halfway house in Portland, Oregon that evening.

I’d been out of prison ten minutes when the cab driver tried to rip me off. The Bureau of Prison’s said it was against policy to use Lyft or Uber, so there I was sitting in an actual cab for maybe the third time in my entire life. After being quoted $60, he tried to charge me $180 for the ride to the airport. I only had $200 total. Prison trains you to surrender and oblige, but there was no way I was giving this guy that much money. Thank God my primal desire to pig out on airport food won out over my prisoner’s mentality of accepting injustices. I ended up paying him $120, still a scam, but without a cellphone and terrified of having police contact en route from prison, what else was I to do?

I got in the long line to check in for my airline. I couldn’t stop staring at people’s clothes and their infinite variety. I waited patiently as I was accustomed to do for a half hour before reaching the counter. The agent Kindly informed me I could have by-passed the entire line by flaunting my first class ticket and going through the VIP line. I never would have considered that an option, lines seemed like such inevitable necessities to me. I got through TSA having to undergo additional security procedures, a consequence of not having proper ID. 

After I’d made it through security I felt like time slowed down. For the first time I notice the cell phones. Everyone I saw had a device in their hand with their eyes glued to it. I walked by one of the many food courts and saw groups of people seated together, all staring into their respective phones. I felt like I’d walked into an episode of The Walking Dead. I wanted to call my aunt, but the courtesy phones didn’t work, and pay phones no longer existed. I’m not particularly shy. I wanted to ask someone to borrow their phone—but everyone looked so damn busy with their phones out. There was no chatter among the travelers, there was just an oppressive impersonal silence over the whole airport, interrupted only by the cold announcements over the PA. For the first time in many months, I felt lonely.

First I ate sushi. Then I was still hungry so I ate a cheeseburger. Forever those will be my first meals. I never did get to make the phone call. Six hours of wandering SFO later, I boarded my flight. I was sitting in first class. The time immediately before that I had flown had been on ConAir, shackled and handcuffed and herded like cattle. I woke up in prison and was on a first class flight later that afternoon. I thought that would be the most extreme contrast I could ever experience—I was wrong.

I had bought gum to alleviate the pressure I tend to get in my ears. I hadn’t had gum in years, and the incessant chewing without purpose seemed futile to me. Chew it just to spit it out? It still seems like wasted effort to me. I don’t like gum anymore. When I went to the bathroom during the flight I didn’t lock the door and someone walked in on me. After so many years of not being able to lock doors, I’d completely lost the habit. It took me months to learn it again.

My flight landed late and was delayed in debarking. I was going to be late for my halfway house check-in time, my family would be waiting for me, and I started to panic. Thankfully my seat mate wasn’t of the Walking Dead variety and we talked for most the flight. Then he let me borrow his phone to call my family. We still meet up for sushi occasionally—hi George! By the time I got off the plane I had 15 minutes to get to the halfway house or I was pretty sure I would go right back to prison, even though the delay wasn’t my fault, I’d long ago learned the BOP is illogical and ruthless. The long-awaited reunion with my family was cut short by the immense fear I had of arriving late and going back to prison and the panic that ensued.

The night was cold and raining much like tonight. I saw my city for the first time in years but I couldn’t enjoy it. I couldn’t process my release or my emotions because I was panicked and fearful. I arrived to the Northwest Regional Re-Entry Center three minutes late and full of adrenaline. They thought I was on drugs.

My first impression was that I’d arrived in paradise. Milk came out of a dispenser and not in individual serving plastic bags. They put out snacks at 9pm and the bathroom had a door that shut. The staff never screamed at me or called me “inmate”. Most importantly, I could look out the window and see Portland, Oregon, my fair city from which I’d been ripped away for so long.  

I’d idealized everything in my memory, you see, as humans do. My identity and the memory of the place from which I came were frozen in time the day I got arrested. They were not able to evolve and mature with me; they no longer existed in reality. 

If I could sum up my re-entry in one phrase it would be, “Identity crisis.”

"You should write a book"

When I meet new people and have the chance to share the condensed version of my life story, the most common response is, “you should write a book.” Though that is true—and slowly but surely I am doing just that—I’d like to address the comment.

I’m not telling you the plot line of a book. I’m telling you about my actual very real life. I realize that the factual events are so extraordinary it’s hard to still conceive of it as my real and personal experience, but it is. These things happened to me. I felt them. I endured them. It is not a book or a movie. The pain and suffering were real.

My life handed me the material for a book on a silver platter. But today when I look you in the eyes and tell you about my life, please don't reduce it to a work of fiction.

Don’t worry, I was listening, I am writing a book. This has got me thinking, though, that the absurd stories depicted in books and movies had to COME from somewhere, most likely real people’s lives. Then a disconnect grew and society started recognizing certain extraordinary events as more like works of fiction than real life—but originally the works of fiction were based in real lives, if even loosely.

Lives like mine.

Don’t get hung up on bizarre factual events. Those might be foreign to you. But the pain they caused is universally relatable. The next time you read a story of someone who endured some ridiculously absurd event, don’t dismiss it by relating it to a work of fiction. Humanize the story. Think about how they felt.

Buenos Aires Bound and Still on Home Confinement

I was released from FCI Dublin on January 9th. I started at PSU later that same week in one class, and then I got admitted for full-time for Spring quarter. I’ve gone full-time since then and earned placement on the President’s list three times. Over the summer the PSU World Language’s department began sending emails about the Gilman Scholarship. I’d never heard of it, so I attended an information session. I ended up finalizing my application just before the October 1st due date.

I won! I have secured a $5,000 scholarship through the US State Department to study public health in Buenos Aires, Argentina over the summer.

Here are the steps that this took to accomplish:

  • Forcing Dublin’s education department to print me a paper FAFSA so that I could mail it in.

  • Calling my Oregon state senator when I was improperly denied a state tuition grant.

  • Going to school full-time while working part-time and trying to rebuild my life from scratch.

  • Attending Senator Ron Wyden’s town hall and sharing my re-entry concerns with his chief-of-staff.

  • Maintaining a 4.0 GPA while simultaneously having to relearn how to use technology and integrate in PSU’s culture.

  • Getting permission from my interim PO to apply for the Gilman and obtain my passport.

  • Contacting Ron Wyden’s office about my concerns that the US State Department would deny my passport application for my drug convictions, when I’m applying for a passport to further my education.

  • Getting my passport two weeks later.

  • Attending the Gilman workshop.

  • Writing the essay.

  • Submitting everything by the deadline.

  • Patiently waiting three months while silently continuing on course.

  • Keeping a positive attitude.

  • Prioritizing my mental health in the face of stressors.

  • Being awarded the Gilman and having such such a record that US Probation is willing to support my study-abroad.

  • Jumping through dozens of additional hurdles with a smile on my face, grateful for the opportunity and willing to put in all the extra work to achieve my dreams.

BE A RELENTLESS SELF-ADVOCATE!

Actually don't call 911

Driving to school I saw a man walking down Columbia Boulevard in the pouring rain. He was barefoot and gesticulating wildly, walking directly in the lane of traffic. Visibility was low and speeds were high there, as usual. I worried that someone would come over the crest and hit him.

“I should call 911.”

My instinct was to call 911 so that this man didn’t get hurt.

Police respond when you call 911. I didn’t want this man arrested, I wanted him protected. Even if the police did respond, the inventory of their toolbox is low. The odds are high he’d be taken to jail, and I’ve seen what happens to people in acute mental health crises in jail. Solitary confinement. My instinct to call 911 would most likely hurt this man. Even though I know the hurt that police and jail cause, as citizens we have no other recourse and we’ve been taught to call 911.

We’ve created a system where the only first responders to people in mental health crisis are police officers and all they’ll do is throw you in jail.

Police are not equipped to act as mental health first responders—nor do they want to be. I heard the deputy chief of the Portland Police department critique the system that’s been created, where the task has fallen to police officers because there was no one else to do it. 40% of calls to Portland police out of the central precinct were for “disturbance” calls, almost all of which would have been better suited for a response by a mental health team and not police. It does not need to be this way.

Eugene is doing it differently.

Suffering claims another life of someone that I love

Suffering has killed another one of my loved ones. Specifically what form that suffering took is irrelevant.

Yesterday my day started with a call to the medical examiner’s office. Where I found my friend Monty, who had been missing since early October. . Our last video visit, September 13th,  he said, “If I died in my apartment, no one would even find my body.”

“Monty, text me your new address please.”

“OK, I will.”

He never did. When I called the Seattle PD to do a welfare check in early October, I gave them the old address and told them the apartments had moved him units due to renovations, but explained he was still at the same complex and they just need to figure out which unit. Instead, the responding officer left a voicemail saying I’d given them the wrong address because that whole building is closed for renovations. Yeah, no shit.

He’d been dead for 3 weeks at that point. He wasn’t found for three more weeks.

I called the VA to notify them of his death and get the information on his burial benefits, they hadn’t been notified of his death. Meaning his family hadn’t arranged his military plot. I called the medical examiner back and got him to give my number to Monty’s family. Monty’s sister and brother-in-law called me, and I had a tough conversation with total strangers about levels of decomposition and cremation costs.

I got home and called the medical examiner again, who said they would hold the body indefinitely. I can’t go up there to handle the affairs because I’m on house arrest. I went to CrossFit instead of moping around in depression. On the rower, I repeated the mantra I will not die young like them. Like all the people I loved that died young. Not me. In January, if not sooner, I’ll drive to Seattle and ensure my friend gets the respect he deserves.

I’m filing a complaint with Seattle PD for how they handled the welfare check. It makes me feel better to do something.

Monty could never find peace on Earth. He’s still now. He is not forgotten.

montyandmorganzoo

Monty and I at the

Oregon Zoo.

July 19th, 2018.

This man was the best friend I could have ever asked for. Three and a half years of jail and prison, and he was always there for me.