text: If I had a nickel for every time someone in my life was killed by a stray bullet, I would have 10 cents. That’s not a lot of money, but it is strange that it happened twice. The first time was 7 years, 214 days ago. It happened to my friend Savannah. We’d smoked a little bit of weed I picked up from a dispensary before I wanted some snacks and she wanted some cigarettes. I was indifferent to the cigarettes but I did want something salty so we walked over to the 7-11 by Belmont Station. I had a bag of corn chips in my hands and I was bent over slightly to peruse their selection of mints and chocolates as we checked out. She was asking the clerk for a pack of Camel Crushes when the sound of broken glass rang through the store. I looked up and saw a blank expression on her face, followed by a few steps forward, then she keeled over with a soft thud. She was dead before I could react. As her soul left her body, my mind was still trying to choose between Pretzel M&Ms and Sour Patch Kids. Everything that happened afterwards was a blur. To this day, when I recall the events of that night, the only thing that makes sense to me logically was that we would finish paying for our snacks, light up a cigarette for the walk home, smoke more weed and make hot chocolate and watch reruns of Housewives together. Unfortunately, logic is not always reality. Between the police report, the followup interviews, the funeral, her cousins, her brother, her mom & dad, there was only chaos in my life for 3 months. I only unblacked out briefly when I went back to her apartment with her brother and noticed that there was an un-empty pack of Camel Crushes sitting on her coffee table. Her death put us face to face with the chaos that lurks just behind the facade of a peaceful, inebriated afternoon. Savannah is a beautiful person. Funny, charming, irreverent, goofy, campy, loving, Savannah. It felt so unfair. Too quick, no recourse, no bargaining. It seemed like there was no one out there. It felt like as long as we live, random messed up stuff just will just happen *at* you, not to you. I accepted this randomness as a credo to help power through the rest of life, in honor of her. Thankfully I had a supportive partner who stuck by me throughout all of the mourning and a trauma-informed therapist under my parents’ insurance. We moved out of the city and into a small cabin by a lake in Ohio in order to live out a monastic lifestyle. We had our own garden, a few pets, and each other. They kept me intact, appreciative, and I was able to carry on. That is, until it happened again. It took about 15 minutes before I even realized what was happening. I was in my office, drinking tea, keeping up the appearance of being busy. He was in the living room taking an afternoon nap. I stepped out of my office to the sound of labored breathing, the sight of a small hole in our wall facing the lake. In contrast to the first time, this time was noiseless, slow moving. As soon as I saw the patch of red spread across his shirt, I was agonizingly aware of everything that would happen from here on out. When I held his hands and looked into their eyes after calling 911, his face was so apologetic, like he wanted me to know that they knew the sharp turn my life was about to take yet again. All I could do was hold him and cry. Whoever said that lightening never strikes the same place twice has obviously never been the punchline to God's fucked up sense of humor. I noticed that every time I stand next to someone, I want to align my head with theirs exactly, bending down when they bend down, tilting to the left when they tilted to the left. I’m not sure if I do that to protect them or to guarantee that next time a random bullet arrives, I’ll be in its trajectory too. Nowadays, I just avoid people altogether. I can’t handle the guilt any more. Even being around other people felt like I was bringing them to a magic show against their will, putting them at risk of being pulled onstage and belittled by a 40 year old man in a top hat. No one ever faced consequences for either deaths. Like a good joke, the original creator doesn’t matter. If I had a nickel for every time I’ve witnessed someone in my life be killed by a stray bullet, I would have 10 cents and several therapists to whom I’d have to rehash a story where the takeaway is not my trauma, or how much miss my friends, but a kind of novelty; a cruel glitch in the matrix type situation. I still stay in the house where they died. On foggy mornings, I look out across the lake, and I’m looking directly at his killer. There’s a few things I know will happen again, but I do not cower. I do not fear it any more. I know for the next sick joke, I will not be the butt of it. I will stare God in the eyes and I will laugh along.