Chapter 2

"I'm a Thug"

I came to Cleveland excited about starting the next chapter of my life. I had left the military and moved back to my birthplace to be involved in my younger siblings’ lives. I had moved into that house that my mom owned knowing that everything there was temporary. I was mostly trying to figure out what I was doing with my post-military self.

Cleveland was the first move in my life that I made because I chose to make it. I had made many moves before, but none of them were my choice. My house was big, beautiful, and on a quiet little road in a nice suburb. I spent my teens and early twenties trying to make it out of and away from my childhood. My dad wasn’t much older than my mom when she abandoned us, but he was the one left with two toddlers.

My dad has battled mental health and substance abuse issues since before I was born, and I can’t imagine this surprise single-parent situation made things much better for him. He did the best he could with what he had at the time. He didn’t always make the right choices, but did any of us at 18?

What my dad had that my mom did not was a couple of pretty amazing parents that never gave up on him. He was certainly a shit head sometimes and I know that it couldn’t always be easy to be his mom or dad, but they have never wavered in their love and support of him. Grandma babysat from her home essentially running an in-home daycare, so dad always had reliable childcare and I know he’ll never stop being thankful for that.

Cleveland felt to me like my final destination. For the first time in my life, I knew that I never had to leave. I would never be ordered by the military to move away and I could finally put my feet on the ground. I was only an hour or so from where my kids lived with their dad and stepmom, and this was the closest that I had ever lived to them since we made the physical custody adjustment that sent them to Ohio while I was still serving on Active Duty in Maryland.

My life felt comfortable, stable, and perfect until one particular Saturday morning.

I had to be at work at 8. I didn’t get any damn sleep because of a wicked sore throat. It had started Friday at work, and Covid had been tap dancing in my mind since it had invaded humanity less than a year prior. The problem is that I had moved to Cleveland a week before outside closed, and I had done it on hopes and dreams. I needed to be closer to my kids, which this move accomplished, but I also wanted to apply to Case Western University. I always had an interest in psychology, and I specifically wanted to work with teens, young adults, gender identities, and sexual health issues. I went through the application process with Veteran’s Affairs for funding and was finally ready to apply to a school.

My plans to be a poor college student were absolutely wrecked by the pandemic. Well, at least temporarily. In the meantime, I needed to find a way to bring some money in. I had started working at the rich people grocery store only seven months prior. I made just enough money to get by and I was the happiest I had ever been. I didn’t have much in the way of spending money but my job was enjoyable, and my life was peaceful.

On at least three occasions during these months, I recognized that something was off in my body. I specifically remember one of them. I had slept almost all the way through my off-day, and that is absolutely uncharacteristic of me. The next morning, I called my General Manager, Todd, and he told me to go get tested and stay home until we could be sure if it was the virus or not. I then slept through the next two days.

Todd’s values were absolutely in line with the company’s and they were all very supportive of their employees. The health and wellness of all team members mattered more than anything else. My concerns were Todd’s concerns and that’s a lot of why he was my work dad in a city that I didn’t know a soul.

Because all three of my tests over those months came back negative, I didn’t receive pay for the time missed. My absence didn’t affect my attendance record or trigger the disciplinary system, and that was dope. If it turned out that I did have the virus, the company offered 14 days of pay backdating to the first day of absence to ensure employees’ ability to quarantine. I didn’t work there very many days before deciding that I wanted to stay there forever.

I had already been selected for a position in management, so I was training in different departments to better learn the store. I had recently joined the small but mighty team back in the dairy department, and I absolutely loved it. Because it was a team of just a handful of professionals, my attendance mattered in a very big way.

This specific (and unusually warm) morning toward the end of October, I was to be there at 8am when the store opened. I heavily considered calling off due to the sore throat stuff, but because of three previous Covid holes in my paychecks, I just couldn’t give up the hours.

I can clock in five minutes before the start of my shift, so I like to be in the parking lot ten minutes before that. That morning, I needed to leave my house within the next few minutes to make all of that happen, and I found myself standing in my kitchen with my dog, Lola, staring at a singular Tylenol pill.

I’ve watched a lot of Grey’s, and some of House, so I’m basically a nurse. I know that acetaminophen will help with the pain, but also the swelling. My throat felt like it was close to becoming completely blocked, and I couldn’t effectively talk. I texted my person, Kendall, whom is a licensed nurse, and asked if my throat could swell shut. She didn’t immediately respond because that’s how life in a hospital works. I put the pill in my mouth, and tried to take a drink of water to swallow it down. NOPE. I choked that pill, and all of the water that accompanied it, straight out and onto Lola’s face. I was in my work clothes, so my she knew that I was leaving, but that didn’t make her any less sad about it. She’s a 90-pound, all black, Labrador, Boxer, Mastiff mix making up the sweetest, best girl in the world. She was standing directly in front of me, looking me straight in the face, promising to keep the cat (Kiko is my emotionally unstable Bengal cat) from burning the house down when all of those things came forcefully from my mouth.