4th, brother that's horrible. I'm really sorry to hear that.
What you said about losing a spouse or a child is kind of what made me think about the following. I've never been married and don't have any kids, so this won't compare to that in any way, it's simply me getting some stuff off my chest.
This past year, it all started in May of 2009. May 15th, 2009, I'm about to board a plane, headed to NY for the Atlantic States, show, I get a call from my gym. I got into a heated discussion with the GM, I had been a trainer there for some time and some stuff in my personal life came up. I was not employed by the gym, I was an independent contractor/trainer. Anyway, needless to say, I was asked to leave the gym and that was that. I had 50+ clients at that gym...so long to that pay check.
One month later, I've just gotten home from JR. Nationals, I receive a phone call from the guys at ProBB.com, they are selling the company and every one who worked there was let go. I was given two wks worth of pay and that's it. All my work, everything, flushed down the drain.
A couple wks after that, my girl, the girl I'd asked to marry me, she left me. I loved her more than anything in this world. The only woman I've ever actually truly loved and she was gone. Not because of anything I did, it really had nothing to do with my loss of employment...long story. But there was not much I could do, I tried to keep her, tried my best. Honestly, that was the hardest out of all that and harder than anything to come. It's still hard. She's the only woman I've never been able to fully get over and I honestly don't know if I ever will...I just don't know. No, she didn't die but sometimes that's exactly what it feels like.
Flash forward a few months, Nov. 23rd, I'm arrested for steroid charges. Anything of personal value I own, taken. The police report says they removed $5k from a safe in my bedroom, OK, fine but I had $87K in that safe. A lot of it, the majority of it was money I had made from training and contest prep work...I'd been saving. No, normally I didn't keep it in that safe, but it had been moved there for a couple days for a reason...obviously it ended up being the worst time on earth to do that.
So there you go, 2009 ended up being the worst year of my life. I'm still here though and very optimistic about the future. I don't know if I could handle another year like that again though, I just don't know. Last year nearly beat me to the ground, it took me to my knees that's for sure.
So here I am today, I'm in horrible shape, at least what I call horrible shape for myself. That's been kind of hard. Weaker in the gym than I've been in yrs but I started really getting after it a few wks ago, doing a new course of DC to get my strength back up and really enjoying training again for the first time in awhile. Working for my fathers business, he's been in business since 1979, construction, basically I work in sales and project managing. I don't know if it'll be permanent, but right now it's keeping food on my table and paying my legal fees. I'm working my hardest to get a possible new website up and running, it's simply a slow process and will take some time. This one I will own though...not going through that other garbage again. I've also been putting some feelers out for some other writing gigs in the fitness world, we'll see how that goes.
Anyway, tough year, very tough...at least to me. I sit here now a very broken and beaten man but I am also a man who is beyond grateful for God's mercy and beyond hopeful and driven for the future. Cheesy yes, but never say die.
