This doesn't really have an ending, it just came from an exercise mentioned a while ago about narrating a story as if you were someone else.

I remember when I left Michigan- threw all my stuff in the back of dads old station wagon and went on my way. That was a long time ago. I’ve been back twice since then. Once to clear up an old disturbance summons I got when I was 16, the second for Susanna’s funeral... I grew up with Suzy, our houses were on diagonal corners of the street. When we were kids I'd let her play with my dog and she sneak me pound cake from her moms kitchen. When we got older we’d sneak Jack from my dad’s liquor cabinet and drink it on the back porch. The morning I left to New York Suzy stood next to my car and kissed me through the window. She told me to be safe. No tears. I think she figured I’d be back in a couple of months.

A few years after that a guy who had too much to drink ran over two people with his truck. Suzy died and her older brother lost all the sense a 36 year old man should have. I saw his wife at the funeral, she told me he can say her name and some other words, but still needs help eating and bathing. She doesn’t think he remembers the kids, but he smiles when they’re around. I heard the guy who was driving the truck got out before his three year sentence was up. Good behavior.

When I came back to NY after the funeral I got drunk and cried until I passed out. I’m not saying the whole thing made me a completely different person, but looking back I can see the change. I liked people less. I was living on Avenue A around then. Dangerous sometimes, different then now. More homeless people and junkies then art students. Got mugged twice. After the second time I started walking straight out of the bar with my empty beer bottle and carried it in my fist all the way to my front door. Never used it though.

I wrote a lot over those years in the city. Wrote about New York more than anything else- the people, their passion, their sadness, their hopes, dreams, drugs and jobs. The sometimes exciting and sometimes exhausting energy of it all. Knowing that all throughout the building and neighborhood and island there were thousands of other people writing and singing and painting the same things into their work. It wasn’t a competition- we fed off each other.

I met a woman named Brenda at a coffee shop in Midtown. She had long red hair and sweet eyes and a perfect laugh. We fell in love pretty quickly, got married within a few months. The reception was at O’Neils Pub. I was 26, she was 29. We found an apartment on 27th street near my job. I was doing data entry at the time, just mindless office work to pay the bills. The money was good, and it left me time to write. We really were happy. She cooked dinner almost every night and wanted a family to fill up table.

But I guess some things are meant to be and others aren’t, and after Brenda’s miscarriage things seemed like they just weren’t meant to be. It affects the woman more, I think. It hit her hard. She cried for weeks... refused to talk to me after I told her we would just try again. Home was tense and things never got back to how they were. Looking back I’m ashamed of every time we fought, every time I yelled at her. Maybe we could have been okay if I had understood better. But I was young, dumb. A man can only see his wife in pain for so long before he starts to feel like theres something wrong with HIM for not being able to fix things. She stayed in the apartment and I moved back downtown, west side this time.