Exactly twenty years ago, while I was on a 72-hour hold in a psych ward in San Francisco, a plump old hippie in all white asked me if I tried to kill myself. I laughed at him because I thought I had died. He smiled back and fondled his sandalwood beads. “No,” I said. I didn’t remember wanting to die as much as wanting to kill the feeling. I’d been tweaking for weeks and the…
When I broke my neck, I heard it break. A crisp "pop!" from the base of my neck. I’m told my gymnastics teammates heard it, too, from across the gym. I’d broken some bones in my feet, the occasional finger, and sprained my ankles a zillion times, but never experienced such an audial reminder that we are, physically, not so different than our tree friends - made up of limbs that can be bent, snapped…
Previous entries in the series can be found here. The sound of the tires exploding, the bottom of the car bouncing along the shoulder of the road, the screeching sound that comes with a vehicle out of control: none of that was enough to bring me out of my blackout. My car had veered off the interstate into the grass that separated it from the walled community on the other side. I…
My DUI happened on a Wednesday night. Earlier in the week, my boss, the owner of a very small consultancy on the outskirts of a large city, announced that we would be having a company-wide wine tasting. After his separation the year before, he had started holding monthly wine tastings in the office, an attempt to bolster camaraderie and assuage his loneliness. He would…
