#swat raid

Those of you who follow me very closely may know my story. I had severe health issues (cluster headaches, brain/pituitary tumor, Bipolar) and became homeless after my mom kicked me out. Out of desperation, I stayed at my best friend’s house for a short period of time. It was a full-blown drug den. During that time, I slipped to the lowest point in my life, and I abused hard drugs regularly. Once, I was even chased by an ex-Marine carrying a knife there. The garage is where everyone would go to use, and Cam had taken the liberty of writing “Welcome to Hell” right above the doorway in Sharpie when he was a kid. It fit.

After staying there briefly, I saw how badly I was slipping into addiction and how risky my staying there was. I left for the streets. I just couldn’t risk staying around there, where SWAT raids could happen any day and random people would wander through the unlocked house and sit down next to me while I slept and shoot up their meth.

Perhaps more important is my friend, Rob. If you would have talked to me January of this year, I would have considered him one of my best friends. We’d been this close for 12 years and even dated at one point.

Around April, Rob stabbed my other bestie Mikey with a box cutter (superficial wounds) and tried to steal his car and all of his belongings. Mikey told me that they were now dealing arms in addition to heroin and meth. Rob was put in jail for breaking a jar over his father Ed’s head and fracturing his eye socket. It had become clear to me that my best friend was gone.

Flash forward, to a few days ago, I see this news story:

https://www.vcstar.com/story/news/local/communities/conejo-valley/2018/12/05/thousand-oaks-probation-search-swat-barricade-situation/2217145002/

There was a 3 hour standoff at that house, and members of the SWAT team, Tactical Negotiations Unit, and Unmanned Aerial Systems Unit were all called in to negotiate. Rob attacked a cop with a bat. It seems like overkill, but the whole reason they were there was that they knew there were guns in the house and there were several warrants out for arrest already (some for aggravated assault).

It’s not that the event in and of itself is so surprising. Far worse things have happened at that house, but I wasn’t there to witness it. I guess that seeing it in the newspaper made it feel more real to me.

I told myself that after Rob attacked Mikey, I felt nothing for him. But this showed me I still care (even about Ed and his lil bro Cameron), no matter how much I try to convince myself otherwise. I still checked the jails to see how long they would be in there.

I’ve been clean from meth/heroin for almost 9 years now. I hit my life’s low point at that house, and it was my turning point too. This was creepy, because where would I have been if I hadn’t decided to leave that house for the streets? It’s like missing your flight and then watching the plane crash.

And life has been so different since I grew healthy enough to get through school and work. I take care of my body and stay out of trouble. Even going out past 10 pm is a big deal to me. Sometimes it feels like all of the things that happened back then were from an action movie; it’s just so disconnected from other times in my life. Sometimes I’d second-guess myself and wonder if I’d subconsciously embellished the situation as time passed, because fuck, it sounds almost fake it’s so off the wall. So I guess reading this was reassuring in a weird way too.