2️⃣064: faces of death (2/??) ⚰️

If you didn’t catch it last night yesterday, make sure to read part one of this email so you can understand what’s going on.

Check it out right here 💀

Did you know they (used to) sell Montana cans for €2 in Madrid? That's crazy. It's a dream come true. Most of you have no idea what I'm talking about, and that's okay. I was studying abroad in Madrid during my Junior year of college, and one of my favorite things about the city was all the graffiti. Tags and bombs and pieces and vandalism everywhere. It's a beautiful sight to see. Not that shitty street art that people do with big ass stickers or stencils. I'm talking about that dirty, grimy shit your friends don't like, and people think is for losers who never grow up. Yeah, I'm one of those guys. I love that shit. Go out and vandalize something. These politicians and corporations are stealing our money and data and livelihood and making it so we can barely survive, but your weak-ass broken window theory is what's destroying society? Give me a fucking break.

Anyway, if you're a graffiti writer at any point in your life, one thing you never stop thinking about is "I would paint that spot." Anywhere you go, and you see a good spot in a prime location that wouldn't be buffed, “I'd paint that spot so hard." And Madrid is full of these spots.

One night, I was out partying with some friends, and things weren't going very well. I was in a long-distance relationship at the time, so I felt like I didn't care where we went because I was looking to have a good time with my friends and not focused on trying to pick up girls. So many times, I'd just let other people decide where to go. On this particular night, the friend leading me around didn't seem to be enjoying anything. We'd go from bar to bar, barely spending enough time to get a drink. I was starting to get pissed. I just wanted to chill. And then he decided to take us to a club where we had to pay €50 at the door. Finally, I thought, this is it, we're definitely staying here.

I was wrong.

Immediately after standing in line to get a drink, my friend comes up and says, "I'm not feeling this. I'm getting out of here," and starts walking out, leaving me completely alone. I didn't want to be in that place to start with, so I followed him out to see what was up, and he said he wanted to go somewhere else (again). At that point, I was fed up (and kinda drunk).

"Fuck this. I'm just going home to sleep." 

On my way home, I walked by a spot I had been looking at since the very first day I arrived in Madrid. It was a blank space on a brick wall about one story up, right above an air vent. It might sound impossible to get to, but there was a long staircase adjacent to the building that went right past the vent. All you had to do was hop a small wall and you were on top of the vent. Then slide down a bit to get to the good spot (had to make sure they could see it from the street). I had a few drinks in me, and I was in a bit of rage, so I said fuck it let's hit the spot.

I get my supplies from the apartment and walk to the stairs from a different direction from which I came to scope the area and make sure no one was around. I approached the vents right where I had planned, and it was an easy hop over the rail from the stairs to the vent. I walked about 15 feet on the vent along a wall (over a loading dock) and then slid down the vent about 10 feet to where it ends, the perfect spot. I do my thing, and as I'm preparing to leave, I try to start walking up the vent, only to realize I underestimated how hard it would be to climb this slope. Not only that, it had been raining earlier that night, and the vent was very slippery. There was no grip and no way for me to get back up. I started looking around (panicking), worried that my continued delay would give someone time to catch me, and then I'd really be stuck with nowhere to go. Knowing my options were few, I looked around, took a deep breath, and jumped.

I can't tell you exactly how high the jump was, but that shit was at least 15-20 feet. I'd jumped from plenty of places before and knew that the best way for me to land (personally) was directly on my feet and then to fall backward on my ass. I landed feet flat, but the momentum I was coming down with drove my head directly forward, and the front of my chin hit my knee driving my teeth deep into my lip, busting it open, and leaving a mark you can still see today (and I can feel with my tongue). I scrambled to my feet, ran back to the apartment where I was staying, and went to bed feeling triumphant. The following day I woke up to go to the bathroom, and the moment I placed my feet on the ground and stood up I immediately fell over because of an unbearable pain that wouldn't allow me to stand. I ended up going to the doctor several days later (almost crying with every step), and they said I had intense internal bleeding on the soles of my feet due to a traumatic injury.

"No, doctor, no tengo idea que pude haber causado esto. Solo llevo caminando por toda la ciudad y a mis clases de la universidad." 

Luckily, the doctor said I just needed to rest for several weeks without walking to get better. Every step I took for the next three weeks felt like walking on a million tiny pins stuck underneath my feet that were never going away. I was seconds away from collapsing or bursting into tears every time I tried to move, and I couldn't tell people to give up their seats on the subway for me because I looked like any regular, healthy, 23-year-old dude. I survived, but barely.

btw, one thing about this story i forgot to mention

At this moment in time, I had been walking around for four months with a torn meniscus in my right knee from playing soccer. I had surgery less than ten months after that incident on my knee, and I've never been able to play sports after that surgery.

In the craziness that are injuries in my life, I genuinely think that jump had zero effect on my knee issues (and I probably should've never been able to get up after the way I landed). Today, if I get up too quickly from my bed in the morning, I might not be able to walk properly for three days. But on that day, I escaped a wheelchair or a permanent limp. The human body is a crazy thing.

Let's keep this last one short. All my time spent in Miami, I've lived in the City of Miami and worked or studied further north. One time, I was driving to the office in the morning and taking the exit from I-95 to the Turnpike (if you live in this area, it's the one you take to go to Hard Rock Stadium). To switch from 95 to the Turnpike, you have to take this long curve that turns left. The signs on the curve say not to go faster than 30 mph. If you've ever driven on the highway here (or almost any highway), you know that the speed limits are way too low for the speeds people go. The limit might be 65, but someone going 65 or under seems to be moving at a snail's pace compared to everyone else. It's pretty dangerous.

That day I was taking the turn at around 50 mph like I regularly did. It wasn't raining, but it had been raining. My tires were wet from the water on the highway, and the asphalt on the road was still drying. I was taking the turn, when all of a sudden I began to feel like I had no control over the car. Like the car was gliding over the air. I felt the rear tires on my car starting to spin out, and my vision changed from the road ahead of me to the highway to the left and then directly facing the cars behind me. At that moment, I thought, "Damn, this is some crazy shit. I can’t believe this is actually happening. Chill, though. Remember, don't hit the breaks." I took my foot off the gas and started to turn the wheel back in the other direction, and the car began to turn. But it didn't stop turning. It spun around entirely in the other direction, and I faced the cars behind me once again. This time the car didn't stop spinning. It kept going until I did a whole spin and eventually stopped at the shoulder of the road. I looked back at the cars behind me and was lucky that they were far enough away they were able to brake without getting close. I looked to the road ahead and thought about how lucky I was that there was no one in front or next to me. Then I looked to either side of a rather narrow road (at least for doing donuts in a pickup truck) and thought about how I was only a few extra feet away from hitting the cement barrier and flipping my car and rolling down the hill (or any other injury caused by slamming into a cement wall while spinning out in a truck at 50 mph). I touched my body and thought, "Okay, nothing injured." Then I turned the engine on to make sure the car worked, and it did. I quickly got going in the right direction and made it to work on time.

That day at work, nothing mattered. I received probably the worst feedback I've ever gotten on a piece of writing in an email with 14 other co-workers CC'd, where I was basically told what I had written the day before should never be allowed to see the light of day. I looked at it, read it over a few times, and thought, "Fuck this person so fucking much. But I don't care because I can't believe I'm alive right now."

If you have any similar stories, please send them my way.

If cats have nine lives, I've used up three of mine (give or take a few more). Life is short, my friends, don't ever forget just how short it truly is 🫶🏽