Mandatory warning

This is a place with stories from my life – the good and the bad and the outright f… up.  So why should you stay? Well, maybe you’ve been through some of the same. Maybe you like a quick story for the commute. Maybe you just agree with my weird nostalgic taste in music, books and movies (yeah, right). Whatever the case, I hope you will have a look around… But before you do – here’s a sort of biographical warning so you know what you are getting into…

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9 March 1979 - I was born (through no fault of my own)

@ Portree Hospital, the Isle of Skye, in the fourth-most-far-out part of Scotland (only the Outer Hebrides and Orkney + Shetland are further away from civilization).

My mom, Deborah Sawyer, was a 1st year biology student (granddad’s orders) who decided to blow her huge allowance on going solo to Scotland instead of helping with granddad’s campaign – ostensibly to study some kind of special moss or something for a project she’d do in her second year. She didn’t return for 15 years because she met my dad, Calum McDonnell, over there.

Mom moved in with dad in Glendale, a tiny village on the west coast of Skye. She goes through all sorts of part-time jobs but mostly lives on my father’s income. Yes, dad made the money, when he didn’t blow them on booze, that is. Like mom, I was the only child and in some ways I’m grateful for that. It would’ve been great to have had a sister or a brother, but then again – they’d have to put up with my mum and dad, wouldn’t they?

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12 June 1990 – I almost die, falling over 25 meters down from a cliff

Rory Mcpherson from class isn’t so lucky. I fall down the cliffs with him but his body hits the rocks below first and cushions my fall. Rory dies instantly.

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May 1995 – My parents finally divorce

Deb and I move back to Cleveland,  her home city. Start at Cuyahoga Heights High School that autumn. I try to forget that dad won’t have any contact with me, because he is angry that I chose to go with mum to the US. To this day we haven’t spoken and I don’t know if he’s alive or dead.

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14 December 1995 – I meet my best, most insane friend

Adeline Christakis – at a party in her parent’s ‘castle’ in Bay Village. We almost tear out each other’s throats . It’s the start of a beautiful friendship…

Lin also hijacks me, more or less, to do illustrations for her Super-secret Novel Project; so secret in fact that I rarely get to read what it is I’m supposed to illustrate. But it’s good for me. I had long since lost faith in my ability to draw and in the possibility that I could actually use this unpolished talent for something. Lin tells me what I want to hear. Not that I mind…

She becomes a true soul friend for me, if there ever was any meaning to that silly term. We get very attached to each other, the strangest, oddest, most awkward couple of friends you ever saw, but somehow it works. Unfortunately that kind of attachment also makes you vulnerable…

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September 1997 – We start at Columbus University together

I have law school in my sights; she dabbles in English Literature and Philosophy. Her novel, Many Worlds Are Born Tonight, still very much in the works, and after a short period of immersion in her studies, Lin decides to slack the studies and just go full time writing.

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February 1998 – Lin meets Mr. Wrong

She hooks up with Billy Marc; who’s real bad news for her, just like the lyrics in the Finnish black metal-music he is inspired by when jamming in his garage trying to make the perfect hit. Yes, Billy’s going to make it big and Lin’s going with him.

Unfortunately there’s no way to that big place in the sky without a little help and Billy helps himself a lot, with cocaine. Lin has already experimented and her mental condition is deteriorating rapidly in these years, so it’s not really a choice for her. She just does it. And all the time she goes through fire and water to hide it from me.

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1999 – Lin falls mentally ill

Lin doesn’t tell me, either, that she has a longtime psychiatric diagnosis – some schizophrenia-type thing, with depressive mood swings to go. In fact, she’s exceptionally good at pretending to be normal, and when she’s normal she’s one of the sweetest, gentlest persons I’ve ever known.

Or maybe I’m just slipping away from her, getting too fixated on making it with my studies, living up to some stupid ambition about success I didn’t even know I had…  Whatever the case, I don’t see it coming – or I don’t want to see it coming.

That is a mistake I’m not sure I can ever forgive myself.

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27 March 2000 - Lin kills herself

- with an overdose of cocaine, in an abandoned house in Cleveland. It was her former kindergarten. She leaves no good-bye letter or anything, just a single chapter (or novella if you will) from Many Worlds in an envelope with my name on it.

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7 April 2000 – I quit law school

-  and sell whatever I have left and travel on the road, no end date set. Route: US-Mexico – Central America – Peru-Bolivia: Lake Titicaca, the place of that left-over chapter in Lin’s unpublished Many Worlds mega-novel.

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September 2000 – I end up in Bolivia just in time for the country to explode in something akin’ to civil war…my timing’s never been better!

… But something good comes from all the chaos and mess: I meet Julia Martinez, whom I promise to tell you lots more about later. She deserves that extra space, my dear, dear friend – Julia.

Maybe life can be fair after all…? There’s loss, yes, but that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing left for us. I certainly learned that with Julia. I was sick with grief and self-recrimination after Lin’s suicide.

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2001-2010 – All the rest…

So much to tell, about how I bungled around for most of the 00’s and ended up in AZ with a man who actually loves me and some kind of resemblance of a meaningful job (if only it was paid) at the immigrants counseling office here in Yuma. But we live together Jon and I and we are happy and we have little Emma and little Michael now… and a kind of happiness that I’ve not really known before.

I’m afraid to think about how long it’ll last…