4-18-19

Dear Reader,

Hey. I hope you are well.

I'm a little under the weather tonight so I hope you don't mind me making this blog short.

Dinner hasn't quite agreed with my stomach and has left me feeling nauseous. It wasn't 30 minutes after I ate and I was hugging the steel toilet. It's going to be a rough night... In the last 9 years, that I've been on Death Row, I've gotten very ill about... hmmm... somewhere north of 100 times. Trays that aren't washed and sterilized thoroughly or food that's gone bad but still cooked + served... Your guess is as good as mine. Anyway, where was I...?

Home after my first bid in prison. The law has been put down by my sister and I had 30 days to get a job. So I go out in search of just that. I'm taking the bus all over my city. I'm filling out applications and going back to check in. I hit up around 50-70 businesses throughout the next month and not one bite. So out on the streets I found myself.

Now from here, unfortunately, my memory is blurred. I can only give you stories of events that took place in my life over the next few years. I received a critical head injury in 2003 and the few years around that event are a blur. So I will not be able to give you an accurate timeline. Instead I can say the following events took place between 1998 - 2004. I'll begin telling you those events in my next blog.

The head injury I received left me with a skull fracture in the back of my head, an injury to the front left of my forehead, and every one of my teeth caved in on the left side of my jaw. I remember nothing of it except waking up while I was being placed on the stretcher for a brief moment.

The witness who called the police said she saw me walking through her yard when a rock came flying from beside her house striking me in the back of the head. Later on in the investigation I learned it was a 9 pound creek rock. I went down. Out like a light. A few people ran to me and started going through my pockets. I came to and began to get up when one of them smashed a brick on my forehead. And, according to the witness, smashed it on my head and face 14 or 15 times.

I awoke in the hospital at a later date and my girlfriend at the time was snoozing in a chair next to my bed. She awoke and told me what was going on. And that the police were there and wanted to talk to me... Yikes! Noooo thank you. It's bad enough I'm messed up and can't remember anything but I can't remember if "I" committed a crime! So she helped me get out of there.

I just remembered something. I was living with my mom, sister and brother at the time this happened. I was walking home from a job interview when I was jumped and robbed. I was recovering at home with my family and this was after my 2nd bid in prison. As a matter of fact, I got into an argument with my sister about the 30 day mark. She was still imposing it even though I had several staples in the back of my head and a steel bar in my jaw. And I moved out and into a friend's. And that's when I began selling drugs.

- Writing is apparently pretty good therapy. If you have trouble remembering an event in your life and you want to remember it better, write it down. It might surprise you. :)

Until next time.

Yours truly,

Doug