Scripted Life - Crash Inbound

I was born with the plan already written.

Firstborn son in a conservative, high-discipline house. Three boys total, but I was the drafted captain. From the time I could walk, the blueprint was clear: thirteen years of private school, required sports, straight A’s, attend a University of California campus, marry my high-school sweetheart the way my parents had, have children young, take over my father’s electrical contracting empire, and keep the whole machine running smoothly for the next generation.

That was the script. I never questioned it; I just performed it.

Childhood was a highlight reel of emergency room visits. At four, I crashed my little quad into the side of a motorhome and severed my left ring finger. It was hanging by a thread of skin. Surgeons sewed it back on, but I still have the thick, jagged scar to remind me that speed usually hurts.

At nine, I begged my dad for a BB gun he bought at the swap meet. He gave me one rule: shoot only into the soft dirt berm behind the house. The first Monday I had it, my best friend Daniel and I spent the day turning the yard into target practice. As the sun started to dip, Mom called us in for dinner. I yelled, "One last shot," aimed at a plastic bucket on the concrete patio, and pulled the trigger.

Physics is a cruel teacher. The BB hit flat, ricocheted at an impossible angle, and nailed Daniel directly in the eyeball while he was turning toward my mom.

Blood. Screaming. My mother screaming, swinging the BB gun she had freshly confiscated—I remember BBs everywhere. It was a one-in-two-billion shot, but it was mine. It represented the first trauma. The first domino.

There were plenty more traumas and injuries: broken arms, back, kneecap, dislocations, severed limbs, ruptured organs, stitches, dental reconstruction, three spinal surgeries. Doctors later said it was almost certainly undiagnosed Bipolar II expressing itself as zero impulse control and a freakish pain threshold. Back then, the adults just called me "all boy," handed me the next helmet, and told me to get back out there.

Freshman year of high school, I was still soft-hearted. I had no interest in football, but Dad was a coach, and I was 6'0", 155 pounds at fourteen. I was "voluntold" for the varsity defensive scrub team whether I liked it or not.

The upperclassmen didn’t see a teammate; they saw the coach’s kid as a free target. Blindside hits in practice were standard. Rocks were thrown at my head while walking to the parking lot. Lies were spread about me that had strangers threatening to jump me. One night, they held me down and tormented me.

I finally broke.

I left practice in full gear, cleats clacking on the pavement, and walked three miles crying to my grandma's house. I sat on her porch until dark, shivering in the sweat and the shame. Something innocent died on that walk. When I stood up to go home, I was different: guarded, quick to swing, deadly. Always watching angles. I vowed to never allow anyone to have that control or effect on me again.

I channeled the new edge. At fifteen, I started a DJ and IT consulting company. At sixteen, I was booking every party known—high school dances, weddings, corporate events—handling cash and contracts while my peers were flipping burgers or parking cars. After my high school girlfriend cheated on me with my two best friends on the same night (New Year's Eve, Y2K), I hit the gym like it owed me money. I started supplements at seventeen to armor-plate the body and heart they’d tried to break.

I built my body, my companies, my self.

Senior year I began dating Christina. She was beautiful, wholesome, and fit the script perfectly. Graduated with straight A’s, UCI acceptance letters—the future looked factory-direct.

September 2001. My entire extended family formed a caravan to move me into the dorms at UC Irvine. I knew no one. As their taillights faded, fear hit me, followed immediately by adrenaline. By October, I was friends with everyone on the floor. College became the freest I had ever felt. After eighteen years of rigid schedules and constant oversight, I finally lived in places where my friends and I made the rules. We got wild and weird, but nothing heavy or dangerous.

After bouncing through shitty apartments for my second and third years with my core group of friends, fourth year we rented the Newport Place: couches on the front porch, temp pool. Three of us lived and ran that place—Damon, Basic, and myself. The air smelled like stale beer and ocean salt. Weekends were Mexico runs, free Hawaii flights, Caribbean adventures, Vegas trips, pub crawls, concerts, and Mongolian BBQ at 2 a.m.

My first Vegas visit after my twenty-first birthday was a blur of neon and chaos: we won thousands at roulette, got banned from Coyote Ugly, and dared to jump into the suicide net on the Stratosphere, setting off alarms and sending EMS scrambling. Woke up with no voice and a story for life. Parties got shut down so often the cops greeted us by first name.

That summer after graduation, I was single for about five months. Then Christina and I locked back in. Engagement. Bought a fixer-upper house together from Dad's rental inventory. Set the wedding for September 2006.

I gutted and rebuilt that house with my own hands. I laid tile, knocked down walls, and hung drywall, all while planning the biggest wedding our crowd had ever seen. Everything was on rails. I was unstoppable.

Memorial Day weekend, 2006. We were at the Colorado River—my favorite place on earth. Three days of boats, sun, and horsepower. Sunday night, someone bought cases of Jäger and Red Bull, and the party restarted.

Around midnight, after years of abusing a spine already predisposed to injury, I walked to my truck to grab something from the cooler. I bent over at the waist—a movement I’d done a million times.

My back simply exploded.

I collapsed in the dirt. I couldn't move my legs. It felt like someone was sawing me in half at the waist with a rusty blade. Friends laid me in front of the trailer like a corpse. Someone had Vicodin; I chewed it and finally passed out.

I woke up at 3 a.m. screaming in agony. Ambulance. Morphine.

And then, the most beautiful quiet I’d ever known.

A week in the hospital on intravenous Dilaudid followed. When they discharged me, the doctor handed me a script for a full month of whatever I wanted: Percocet, Vicodin, Dilaudid. Dealer’s choice, all of the above.

I was twenty-two.

• College degree: Done.
• House: Bought and renovated.
• Fiancée: Moved in.
• Wedding: Four months away.
• Career: Waiting with Dad whenever I was ready.

Every box checked. The script executed perfectly.

Once married, I immediately realized I had been conned from the start.

See, our families are both devout Christian (as I am now). We were not to have sex until marriage. I was terrified at Christina's lack of affection; it was mentioned in pre-marital counseling many times and I was assured it was related to abstinence. Instead, abstinence was used as a cover for apathy, for asexuality.

On our honeymoon in Tahiti—paradise on earth—I lay in bed next to my beautiful new wife, staring at the ceiling fan, feeling lonelier than I ever had when I was single. The "wait" was over, but the distance remained.

Upon return from that horrible, loveless trip, I stood in the kitchen I had just finished, looking at the life I had followed every rule to earn. Sick with despair.

This is the peak? This is really it?

So I did the only thing that made the dread go quiet.

I took the pills I already had legally for my back and found my escape.

The fall was about to begin.