It begin with the crush of failure. All my focus on moving to New York came to a huge anti-climax. I found myself entangled with criminals. Suddenly, fighting for my dream was undesirable.

I came back to San Francisco with a new, if humbling, perspective. I realized I could be happy with it. With it's parks, clean air, and lackadaisical polish, I found relief. However, nothing is ever as fabulous as New York.

I talked myself out of it. I realized that every person I met from New York was dishonest, cruel, and shifty. I also noticed that everyone in New York has a terrible expression on their face: a grimace.

Of course it was nothing but excuses. Still, I pine, childishly enough, for the fashion and slick sense of style people have. I admire the sense of social ease people have. In San Francisco it is different.

All was well and slowly collecting back into a picture of happiness. I got a bike and could be found roaming the wintry streets with Renata. We rode to the bridge, to the mission, to her school, to the ghetto. It was fantastic, brilliant, memorable, happy.

One night my phone was disconnected and I was tormented by it. In my face was yet another failure. Renata, leaning against her bike before we went to a secret art show, said to me that things like that happen. "We are young, happy, beautiful, healthy, and living in San Francisco" she said, "That is what matters".

At one point, I couldn't get ahold of her and wrote her emails and left her messages. 'I know you're okay but I just want to know how you are" I said. Two days later I got the call that she had been in a coma for nearly a week.

I stood outside panting and trying to catch my breath. "Everything is going to be fine" I said to myself, trying to not cry in public. Will picked me up, we drove to the hospital, and gravely entered ER. There she sat bloody, bandaged, and lifeless, looking like an alien with her head swollen, a body bruised yellow with purpling wounds. Her idiotic family "held their heads high" as I sobbed unrelenting wishing that someone would stop saying she looked beautiful when she didn't.

Then I lost track of the stupor it left me. I didn't say goodbye when her vegetative body was helicoptered to San Antonio. I wanted to know she was dead. I was never given that closure.

Then the month dried up. In a nine month period I had nine jobs. Things began to look up again but here I am on the brink of failure. Will and I got married but it's constantly in question. We're on the brink of bankruptcy but I just want to pay what I owe. Unfortunately, what I make and what I owe is unparallelled. It's impossible for me to catch up.

I blame Will. I blame my mom. I blame my own sheer stupidity. However, I know better than to make excuses for myself or easily blame. My own character and common sense rejects that attitude. I am willing to suffer my faults and pay my consequences. I can take my own error and be responsible. I am an adult, I was stupid, but I'm stupid no more.