After my Dad died I had a lot of questions about life and death. The tragedy involving my Dad served as a constant reminder that life was not like a movie or a book. You don't have the ability to count how many pages are left in the story or how many minutes are left in the movie. It's a morbid thought but it's true that we are all potentially less than a minute away from breathing our final breath. I'm reminded of a time when my friends thought that I had taken mine.

It could be attributed to be general state of laziness, but I have problems with procrastination. Whether it was school, work, preparing for a show or trying to have lyrics completed by the time we had band practice, I would always think I had more time to prepare for things, so I would take it easy and relax until suddenly, out of nowhere, I would have a lot of work to do and not a lot of time.

When I was a freshman in college, I had a particularly rough week where I had a lot of assignments from different classes due at the end of the week and I had a recording studio appointment in which I needed to have the lyrics to a couple songs completed.

When I have two or three things to do, I start getting panic attacks because I don't know which of my tasks to accomplish first. I start working on my first tasks and a few minutes into it, I hit a wall, so then I decide that I'll come back to that later and I start my second tasks, the same thing happens again, I hit a wall and start working on a different tasks. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Time flies faster than usual when I'm in situations like this. Hours pass and then I realize that I haven't actually accomplished anything.

These days would be the worst days of my life. I wasn't able to sleep because I would constantly wake up in the middle of the night sweating from a panic attack. When I was awake, I could barely function because I barely slept. When I couldn't function, I wasn't able to sleep because I would always be too anxious. I started to fear that this vicious cycle would never end until Riley came up to me with a solution.

"Have you tried taking Xanax?" Riley asked me after I told her about my predicament.

"What does that do?" I asked in response.

"Well, it's supposed to help you deal with your anxiety" Riley replied, "Maybe you'll be able to deal with your anxiety better if you tried it. It might relax you and you might be able to accomplish stuff and feel better"

"I don't really like going to the doctor" I replied, "I've tried smoking weed but that hasn't really helped as much as I thought it would so I'm not sure Xanax would work either"

"You don't need to go to the doctor" Riley replied with a chuckle. "Talk to Kevin, I'm sure that he can get you some. You can try it, if you don't like it you can stop. If it helps you out, then great"

"Are there any side effects?" I asked

"I'm not a doctor Torrey" Riley replied. "I think there's some potential for it to be habit forming but I think you'll be fine. As long as you don't mix it with anything and take the right amount, you should be fine. There are definitely things out there that are much worse for you"

I talked to Kevin to find out what he thought of the whole thing and he agreed with Riley that taking Xanax may help me. He did what he felt any good friends would do and he got me a little bag of pills.

I loved it.

I didn't see any real risk in taking it because the effects of it didn't seem to last too long and I also felt the effects of it relatively quick. I would take a pill when I started to feel overwhelmed, and thirty minutes later I would feel a lot better.

There wouldn't have been any issues if I had just developed some better time management skills, but over and over again, I kept finding myself in situations that would require me to feel the need for more of this medication.

After a couple months, something unfortunate happened. I didn't feel it in the same way that I did before. I would have a lot of anxiety and taking a pill didn't do anything to fix it. I talked to Kevin to find out what I could do.

"There are many things you could do" Kevin said "If you're ingesting it as a pill, you could crush it and snort it, that way you feel the effects of it faster and it would be more intense, or else you can just take one extra pill or I can try to get you something a little bit stronger"

I started mixing my Xanax with other anxiety medication, I started taking it more and I also took Kevin's advice about crushing and snorting it. I should have known better than to take medical advice from someone like Kevin, but he had never let me down before.

One day, we had a party at Kevin's house. I had more than a couple milligrams of Xanax in my system, and we were taking shots and drinking.

"Are you alright?" Riley asked as she approached me while I was sitting on the edge of the couch

"I'm just feeling exhausted right now" I replied

"Already?" Riley replied. "The party is just getting started"

"I'm just gonna sit right here" I sheepishly replied.

"Torrey" Riley said. I must not have responded because she said my name again and again getting louder each time. I heard the music in the room stop following the sound of my shot glass crashing on the ground as I let it go. I didn't verbalize it to her but I felt like I was about to feel asleep and lay on the couch for a little while.

I didn't wake up on the couch.

I woke up in a hospital bed with a nervous Laurie sitting on the bed next to me on my right and Riley standing over me on my left.

Laurie told me that she was worried for my life and said that I need to move in with her so that she could keep an eye on me. I wasn't happy about it but I was in the minority when it came to thinking that way as all of my friends agreed that I needed to be supervised for a little bit.

I had always assumed that the only reason I lived with Laurie for this long was because of this night and this reason, but it turned out there were other reasons that Laurie still kept me around.

* * * * *

Tuesday, Sept 25th, 2018 (4 days before the arrest)

Riley is very conscious of the dynamic that our clique possesses. She does not like the idea of anyone in the band not getting along. I had presumed that she knew about what had happened with Kevin after our show at the Ale Chambers. Riley would have known that I would have been unhappy with Kevin, so I wasn't surprised to receive a call from her early in the morning.

"Are you doing anything right now?" Riley said

"Not really. What's up?" I asked

"Do you want to get lunch together? I figured we have some catching up to do" Riley said. Getting lunch was Riley's way of being a comforting friend.

"Yeah, I guess I can do that" I replied, and an hour later I picked her up and we walked into a restaurant to have some lunch.

We tried to have a little bit of small talk but both of us were aware of the gigantic elephant sitting in the room.

"We need to talk about Kevin" Riley said

"I know all about what happened. I don't want to talk about it"

"But we need to"

"No Riley, we don't, I really don't want to talk about Kevin. I'm not sure how I feel about him right now" I said

Riley took a deep breath.

"I'm sorry that you feel like you're in the middle of this, but you don't have to worry about Kevin and I. You didn't betray me, Kevin did. This has nothing to do with you"

"It has nothing to do with you either. It's not about betraying you, it's about her. Kevin doesn't know I'm talking to you right now, but he feels really bad about what happened after the show. He feels like he should have talked to you about it right from the beginning and he hates that you're finding out this way" Riley said.

"Well, don't you think that's something he should tell me himself?"

"I told him to talk to you, but you know how he is" Riley said "He's not great in situations like this and he doesn't want to have that discussion with you because of how you'll react"

"That's not fair Riley, how would you react if you were me"

"I guess I'd be a little upset too, but I would talk about it, and that's what I want you to do. I want you to talk to Kevin about it"

"Why is it so important that I talk to Kevin?" I asked

"For the sake of the band and for the sake of all our friendships" Riley responded. "I know that you already know about everything. It's an awful situation and something needs to be done. If you don't talk about it now, I'm afraid that you might just do something that you regret. We all need to figure out a plan to work this out"

"I feel like you could have just called or texted me, Riley. We could have done away with this whole discussion if I knew that this was the only reason for lunch"

"No, I need you here Torrey. I want to go over to Kevin's house and I want us all to talk about it and move on"

"Riley, I'm sorry for all the thought and time you've put into this but it's not going to happen" I said

"You need to grow up Torrey, I'm going to talk to Kevin right now. If I don't force things to happen then nothing happens around here"

Riley had made up her mind, she pulled out her cell phone and she got ready to call Kevin. The interesting thing about the conversation was that it was by phone and I could only hear one end, but you don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out what Kevin was saying on the other side.

"Hey Kevin, what's up?"

"Can you talk right now?"

"Yeah, I'm with Torrey right now"

"Yeah, he's here, we were just planning on coming over"

"Yes. Coming over to see you"

"Because we need to talk about the two of you and fix your relationship"

"I can't, I've already told Torrey that we're coming over"

"She's there right now?"

"Well, maybe it's a good idea that she's there. The four of us can all get together and figure it out"

The last bit made my ears perk up. Kevin was hanging out with Hailey again? That definitely made me not want to go over. I had no issues with Hailey, my issues were only with Kevin, and I couldn't have Hailey know that I was upset by the whole thing.

"Riley, I'm not going over there" I said.

"Look" Riley responded. "I don't think it's bad that she's there. You can talk to her too. This is a conversation that you're going to have with her eventually, you may as well get it over with"

"I don't need to have this conversation with her" I said

"Eventually, you're going to have to. I just think it's better to get it out of the way right now" Riley said

"Why? Is it serious? Is this just hooking up or is this going to turn into a relationship" I asked.

"Well, Torrey, It's obviously not going to be a relationship. He's not into her. I don't think Kevin is interested and even if he was, nothing is going to happen while she's still with Ben" Riley said

"Ben?" I asked.

"Yeah" Riley replied "Laurie and Ben need to be divorced before we can even start to think about anything happening between Laurie and Kevin"

My head was spinning.

"Wait, Laurie and Kevin?" I asked Riley

"Don't you know about all of this?" Riley asked me.

"Weren't we just talking about Kevin hooking up with Hailey?"

"Hailey? No, what are you talking about? Kevin never hooked up with Hailey" Riley said.

"After the show at Ale Chambers?"

"Torrey, are we really not understanding each other? I thought you knew this" Riley said. "Laurie went to Kevin's house after our show"

"But Cindy told me that Hailey went home with someone from the band after the show" I replied.

"I don't know anything about anyone hooking up with Hailey. I just know that if someone did, It wasn't Kevin. Kevin was with Laurie"

I have so many questions at this point

"Maybe we should stop talking about this. I don't really break any news to you or say anything that you don't know. You need to talk to Laurie and Kevin about this"

"You need to back up a little bit" I responded, "Laurie's going to leave Ben?"

"Torrey, call Kevin or Laurie and talk to them. I'm not the right person to talk to about all of this."

"Tell me what you know, Riley"

After a lot of hesitation, Riley was finally ready to give me a little more information.

"Kevin is trying to get Laurie to file for divorce. We both agree that she needs to leave Ben" Riley said

"To be with Kevin?"

"There's nothing like that going on between Laurie and Kevin" Riley said

"If it's not to be with Kevin, then why does Laurie want to leave Ben?"

"Do you really not know?" Riley asked me, getting more and more uneasy the deeper we got into this conversation.

"It's pretty clear that no one's telling me anything Riley" I replied, "Please tell me what's going on"

"Torrey. If I tell you, I need you to promise that you won't do anything. You can talk to Laurie, you can talk to Kevin, but you can't do anything" Riley said

"Okay"

"Ben's been hurting her" Riley softly said.

"Hurting her?" I asked Riley, out of disbelief.

"Yes. Ben has been really abusive with Laurie. He's been beating her, and we're trying to talk her into the direction of leaving him"

This explained the bruises.

Like I said before, when my Dad died, I had a lot of questions about life and death. We're all renting our bodies and time on Earth. It feels like life is a right that all of us have for at least 80 years. If we die and we're around that age, it feels natural and it feels alright, but a life that ends when someone is a lot younger becomes a tragedy.

As you probably already know, the reason that I'm writing this from behind a prison cell is because I was holding the gun in the scene of a tragedy. It'll be up to you to use your own discretion and decide if it was worth it or not.

A Nuclear Family - Over You By Then