(And the bitter lessons I learn from them).
If hell were a cocktail bar, I’d be the bartender.
I worked in a place that looked just like the bar in the movie
From Dusk Till Daw (but without vampires 🙂 for over five years.
In that bar,
- They pulled a gun on me.
- They assaulted me several times.
- And even once, they tried to hold me in the warehouse against my will while they mugged me.
But it wasn’t there that I had the scariest experiences of my life.
The most terrifying experiences a human can have come one day without warning and change your life completely.
These are the three most terrifying ones I remember and the bitter lessons.
I learned from them.
1. My best friend jumps out of a window.
I am 13 years old. I’m a hotel with my Scouts group. It’s the middle of the night, and Raul, a friend, shows me some strange cigars he bought at a flea market.
We spend the night smoking these hippie cigars. At three in the morning, I tell him I’m going to sleep because I feel very dizzy (it’s the first time I smoke), and he asks me to continue the party.
I politely decline his invitation. And I go to sleep.
A few minutes later, someone slips a note under the door. The note says, “Go to the balcony”. I do. On the next balcony is Raul, with the sheets of his bed knotted around his neck. My friend jumps out.
I’m on the third floor, and Raul’s door is locked; I go down to the second floor half-naked and barefoot and jump into the snowy street through a window. I go to the place where my friend is hanging; I hold his legs so he doesn’t drown. A monitor, alerted by my screams, breaks down the door of Raul’s room and cuts the rope that was made from the sheets. Miraculously, Raul survives.
Lesson: some people don’t know how to ask for help. Usually, these people smile and say that everything is fine. But deep down, it’s their way of yelling, “Help me!”. They don’t know how to do it any other way. It doesn’t come out.
2. The day I almost died.
I am 19 years old. I am studying in a student apartment for a critical physics exam (I am risking my scholarship). I take valerian infusion. I feel dizzy. I stopped breathing and went into the corridor to ask my flatmates for help.
I can’t speak, only emit moans of despair.
I notice how I lose strength in my legs, and I see myself collapsing to the floor in slow motion.
I lose mobility from my feet to my waist, then my arms. The last thing I can control in my body are my eyelids; I try not to close them while I collapse; I try with all my strength. It doesn’t work. My eyelids close. I crash to the floor, but I don’t feel anything anymore.
My last thought is, “I’m dying. Not now. Not without making peace with my mother.”
(Fortunately, I was revived by the paramedics).
Lesson: most of the time, we don’t know our true priorities. I thought my priorities at that time were studying engineering, making money, and partying; I had almost to die to discover that what I wanted most in life was not money, fame, and girls but to reconcile with my mother.
3. My boss cheats on me.
I am 34 years old; I work in a multinational company after losing everything: my partner, savings, and startup. At a company party, I made the mistake of hooking up with Teresa, my boss.
We go out several times, and we tell each other what I call “the sentimental resume,” which is nothing more than all the shitty stories you’ve been through in your previous relationships.
I discover that Teresa is as damaged as I am,
- She was a girlfriend of a drug dealer who abused her.
- She couldn’t get into a relationship that lasted more than three months.
- Her last relationship was with a pharmaceutical salesman, who turned out to lead a double life: he was married and had three children.
One weekend, I went to play a poker tournament at the Benalmadena casino with my friends at the time, and she took the opportunity to spend the weekend with the married guy she had supposedly left when she found out about his double life.
I found out because when I returned, under a magnet on the refrigerator door of Teresa’s house, I had put a note with all the nice things I thought of Teresa: beautiful, intelligent, sophisticated.
Next to each word, words were written in a different handwriting that was neither mine nor Teresa’s.
- Where I put “Pretty,” someone had put “Ugly.”
- Where I had put “Intelligent,” someone had put “Idiot.”
- Where I had put “Sophisticated,” someone had put “Worthless.”
She was still hooked on that toxic relationship with the married guy. We severed the relationship.
Lesson: you attract people similar to you, but when you are healing, you can’t afford to stay and help if you are not healed.
A virtual hug
AG
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