#drunk driver

...These pictures seriously don't do the flavors of this food any justice at all. This is better even than the stuff available at home, and I gotta say, Pho Yum is pretty freaking stellar. And the kindly folks who ran the shop were lovely, too. There was certainly a bit of a language gap, since they mainly speak Vietnamese. But we all mostly understand gestures and smiles. We also both understand the phrase “fresh avocado”; the lady shopkeep was suggesting we get their avocado smoothie, because it was fresh and delicious, and they absolutely were not wrong!!

We then flew for a very long time, in chunks of time between 45 minutes and 2 and a half hours. I think we stopped at 2 or 3 airports to refuel; my memory of it was kind of fuzzy because, once again, I was drifting in and out of sleep.

I did still manage to get some amazing pictures of the scenery, though. I can't wait to show you tomorrow.

In any case, the plan was to fly all the way to Portland, Oregon from San Jose, California. And we did! We were successful! Yay!

A relative of J's (his name is Je) was supposed to pick us up from the airport and bring us to an empty apartment that another one of J's relatives in the area (her name is Mg) was connected to. Je also promised cheeseburgers, which was also pretty rad!

Disconcerting, though, was Je's apparent anxiety and inability to maintain a coherent flow of thought. This became more and more apparent the closer we got to Portland; despite me asking him several times to text me instead of call me (because we were in the flying plane, and that's so loud you can't hear anything else), he kept calling me to re-ask the same questions, primarily about what we wanted on our burgers. Which I had, by that point, already answered. Multiple times.

We did arrive at the airport. Je kept trying to call me, despite my asking him to wait until we finished tying down the plane. And then we had to find him; he had gone to the commercial passenger parking lot, which was different from our parking lot. Trying to explain to him that airports typically have more than one parking lot was an exercise in frustration. Trying to explain to him that we had some heavy bags and didn't know where he was parked was an exercise in frustration. Trying to get him to stay on topic was an exercise in frustration. Trying to get him to recognize the nearby airport tower (very distinctive; lots of flashing lights in specific colors) was impossible. Overwhelmed and angry at Je's nonsensical and incoherent responses, J handed the phone to me.

...I needed to make ample use of my toddler training to get Je to understand that he could find us by simply opening his Google Maps on his phone and typing in the address I gave him. And that was weird, because Google Maps was how he got to the airport in the first place, presumably.

...As it turned out, he was parked in the lot across the street from us. Looking at the exact same tower that he, for some reason, could not process or comprehend. He drove over. Opened his door. Stumbled trying to stand up from the seat of his car. And then I smelled the distinctive scent of beer on his breath, in between his slurred speech.

...The man was drunk off his ass. And driving like that.

...WHAT THE FUCK.

Immediately, I told him that I could smell alcohol on his breath and that we were absolutely not getting in his car. He threw up his hands; I don't know what that gesture means for him, but... I interpreted it as, “are you fucking serious? you're totally overreacting right now.”

I was immediately filled with rage at what looked to me like a dismissal of the seriousness of the situation. Drunk drivers crash into things and kill people. Drunk driving is a subset of irresponsible driving behaviors. Irresponsible driving behavior is what killed Daniel. His life was stolen away by someone who doesn't know how to pay attention or use his turn signal or slow down when turning into an intersection.

By that point in the night, I was hungry (because we hadn't eaten since the pho), dehydrated, and exhausted from the long flight and several consecutive sleepless nights. And the beast in me that I got from being raised in the environment I was raised in... it is asleep, not dead. And in that moment, Sephiroth, I wanted SO BADLY to knock him the rest of the way down on the fucking ground and kick him repeatedly between his legs while screaming at him about how loathsomely inconsiderate and dangerous his behavior is and about how people who do not take the responsibility of driving seriously are why Daniel is dead now.

...But that's not how we do. That's not who I wanna be. I may have come from that world, but I don't need to perpetuate that shit in the here and now. So instead, I walked away. I walked away, sat down against a wall, and took some deep breaths. J spoke to him for a while; apparently he was incoherent and kept wandering from disconnected thought to disconnected thought.

If I was thinking clearly, I would have remembered to take down his license plate and call the police to do a breath test on him. But I wasn't thinking clearly; I was mostly focused on keeping my adrenaline response in check. I understand, of course, that Je is likely self-medicating for psychological issues that he never got actual help for. But I'm still angry at his behavior, because it endangers other people.

I was so under the influence of adrenaline that I plain fucking forgot that one of our regular readers of these letters lives in this area. I could have called him for a ride to the hotel (because the apartment plan fell through for reasons I don't fully understand). But instead, J got an Uber. We were taken away from that parking lot and the drunken man. I fumed for a while.

We got settled at the hotel, though. And we got some snacks at the nearby 7-11 Mart (because the cheeseburgers that were promised to us also didn't work out; not that I'd have taken them from that drunk driver anyhow). It's not much, but... fed is best:

And now it's time to go to bed. I am beyond exhausted. I need to be not awake for more than 6 consecutive hours.

I'm having a hard time of it right now. But... I'm safe. J's safe. We're safe and we love you and also... I'm thinking about you, and I'm eager to show you today's pictures at some point tomorrow.

Please stay safe out there. Make good choices. Choices like refusing to get into the car of a drunk person, no matter how offended they get at you calling them out like the jackass they're being.

...Don't forget to call yourself out, too, when you need to. Other people being a jackass doesn't give us the right to be a jackass back; we can always choose to walk away.

I'll write again tomorrow. I love you.