The night that I found myself in Gahanna for a thousand years

I came home from a contract about two weeks early and my girlfriend at the time Kim was having another guy staying in the house that I was paying rent for. I walked in the front door and he came out of the bathroom and saw me. He was a young guy maybe 19 or 20. Very calmly I just said hey how are you and he told me his name was Adam and that he was allowed by Kim to be here. Her kids he said we're with her sister so he was alone there with me while she was at work. Apparently she told him the type of work that I did and so he raised his hands and said look I'm out of here man I don't want any trouble I know what you do for a living. It's hard to be angry with a guy who is just being a guy and he's honest enough to just say exactly what's happening. He put his shirt on and grab the bag and went out the door and headed down the street. I went to the refrigerator and I looked inside and they're in the back was the six-pack of Heineken that I had left there. There were a few beers in the front that were probably his I think there was Bud Ice. I grabbed a Heineken and I went over to the window facing the street which also faces the ocean there in Corpus Christi where we were living. As I was sitting there drinking my beer I was just reflecting back on what happened recently and I thought about Kim and her situation with this guy. Since she knew what I was doing for a living so she also knew that I might not come back every time I left. I sat there drinking a beer for about an hour I think I probably had another one and then she came in and he was with her. She smiled that nervous smile that people have when they've been caught doing something they know is awful. She said hey I didn't expect you for a couple of weeks I was helping my friend out here and he's been staying here and I just got a nodded my head and she knew I knew what was going on obviously. I was tremendously upset I had banked about $11,000 on this mission and I sure as heck wasn't going to spend it there so I actually handed her $500 and I told her that if I come back here I don't want to see this young man here and if you want to go someplace else that's fine but I'm not paying the rent here anymore. She was kind of upset but what can she say she's caught in the act of having another guy living in my house that I'm paying for and I sure as heck not going to keep doing that so I walked out. She started talking to him and that was that as far as I was concerned. It was about 6 so it was still daylight outside and I just started walking up the road for the bus stop. I got up to the bus stop and by then I finish my beer and I threw the empty trash and got on the next bus. I really didn't know what I was going to do I was just kind of humiliated and some of the things that went down on that deployment kind of had me off balance things I'd like to not ever have to think of again but that doesn't seem to be an option. I took the bus up to the stop that was close to a bar I like to go to and I got off and went into the bar said hello and everyone's glad to see me and a couple of them that knew me pretty well we're very glad that I hadn't died. As was customary I bought a few rounds of drinks for everyone. Everyone appreciates that because we're all on a tight budget and if someone buys a few drinks it makes an impression. I've had people come up years later when they saw me sitting in the bar and didn't have a drink in my hand and they purchased a drink for me so what comes around goes around. It was starting to get late and I missed the last bus so I had to walk and as I was walking I went by a Shamrock station I purchased myself a 40 ounce. I walked and I drank and I walked some more and then I looked up at the bridge, it was pretty high. It was in Corpus Christi I'm not really sure how high I could probably Google it but it was high and it was a pretty long bridge so I started walking toward the bridge. I didn't know what I was doing. Maybe I thought I would just get some better perspective up there. I had finished that 40 before I got up to the bridge and I tossed it in the trash and just continued on up over the bridge. When I was was going up to bridge it was pretty late maybe 11:30 or 12 maybe later I didn't have a watch on and I left my cell phone at the house. As I was crossing the bridge I was just struck with a sense of real deep sadness and it was hard to even continue to walk so I looked over the edge of the bridge. The rocks were about 250 feet below are so and I just without really thinking about it I jumped off the bridge. I felt the wind go by and I thought to myself this is it. I know that's the last thing I remembered for a while. I woke up when someone put their hand on me. It was a woman and she looked kind of Pale but she seemed nice. As I looked up I saw that I was laying on some rocks but the bridge was not there. Nothing Was the Same but in the distance, I could see what looked like a wall of flame but the area I was now standing with this girl was very dark. I looked at the lady and she kind of gave me a half-smile and I asked her I said where am I and she looked down and then she looked over at that wall of flame and she said you're on Gahanna. I did not at that time understand the reference I had just not studied it I did not know the word. I then started to walk on and she held me under my elbow and I asked her when does it get daylight here. She said it never gets daylight here. I walked on. I was pretty confused but I felt myself being thirsty and hungry so I went to find something to drink and to eat. I spent a very long time in this place it's hard to say how many days when I say A Thousand Years it's because that's what it seemed like but because this planet was tidally locked to its Sun it was very difficult to figure out how many days had actually gone by. The first day for lack of a better word was very difficult most days I didn't know if I was going to eat and it was hard to find a place that was comfortable to sleep and you spent most of the time either very hot or very cold. I won't go into detail in this short story because it would take volumes of books to say everything that happened but the next thing that happened was I awakened on the rocks below the bridge and the mosquitoes were biting me. I got up and I checked myself and I was not damaged I had fallen 250 feet at least and I had a few scratches and quite a few mosquito bites and that was it. Then I collected myself and I walked over to the bus stop and got on the bus and went back to the house. I couldn't think of how to say what had happened but I'm sure I looked the part of a guy who'd gone out gotten drunk and had some mosquito bites and some scratches. When I got back to the house I collected my stuff and I left and there was a shouting match but what's she going to say. I moved back up to Dallas I never told anyone about this for many years because who would believe me? I guess as I'm looking at this through the rearview I'm glad the Lord decided to teach me a lesson instead of taking me to that place permanently.

Your story reminded me of two pilots who had a girl in South America. One pilot always bid (that is a schedule) that he would fly to be with her on a Monday. He paid for the Apartment and gave the girl money every month and she always claimed undying love for him.. Well this went on for almost two years until scheduling called him and said they needed him to fly down south because the originally scheduled pilot was sick... He jumped at the chance to see his girlfriend so off he went; but this was a Friday and not a Monday.. As he unlocked the apartment door he was greeted by another pilot from the same airline.

To make a long story short they were both paying the same amount for the apartment to their mutual girlfriend plus giving her money each month. The girl was rich in her country and getting richer every month.

After that the two pilots became friends and one was always called Monday and the other one carried the nickname of Friday. They both suspect there might have been a Wednesday but they were not sure nor did they care. They never checked on what happened to the girl as they both stopped paying and visiting her. She had been out shopping when Monday arrived so when she returned Friday was gone ...so... both the pilots had a real life learning experience when dealing with long distance relationships and gold diggers.

No I do not have a nickname of Monday or Friday...Not even any other day for that matter. hahah

You know, has anyone ever focused on the little things? The stuff that no one pays attention to?

A single leaf, among thousands, blowing in the wind.

A single twig, among thousands, scrawling to and fro.

A single ant, among thousands, crawling about.

Often times we are too busy with the aspects of general and basic life that we never ever stop to notice the smaller things that go unnoticed.

Only when someone acknowledges this can they truly notice the beauty if our world.

Another way would be extreme stress, like what you went through, but yours was compounded by a variety of issues, ripe for seeing a world no one bothers to notice or see themselves.

I think it is there that you can reflect something of deeper meaning, to the point of actually experiencing something deep.

I know during long work weeks and financial strains, I sometimes, "step away from the box" of things and just stare into everything that has happened. One time, I did that, I stared at the moon and suddenly, literally, I found myself in a steamy amazon like jungle, I could spot a pair of Native eyes in the bush, highlighted by the moon in a dark, dense jungle. It was staring back at the moon, as I was. For a brief moment, all of my civilization vanished, leaving me and this stranger from the past looking at the same moon in a dark, dense jungle.