In Limbo

I’m having a hell of a time writing lately. I’ve got so many things going on in my head that every time I start I seem to go in a million different directions. I want to come up with something uplifting, but the truth is that I’m nothing but scattered. I want to move forward, but feel encaged. I want to connect with others, but feel completely isolated. I want a foundation on a new existence and feel nothing but unstable.

I’ve begun to attempt to put some plans in place for the future. After 12 years on the management and sales side of the health club industry, I’ve decided to re-up my personal training credentials and get back to the service side of the business. I swore I was done with that industry altogether, but over the last few weeks, it has begun to make sense. I never had as much fun or found as much peace in my career as I did when I ran my personal training business from ’97-’00. With all of the writing Sean and I are doing and with the book being my top priority right now, it seems to make complete sense in that I can build my training schedule around our writing.

Regardless of how the book does, or what my future may bring with regard to my writing, having my training credentials also guarantees that no matter where I decide to live, I’ll be able to find work. I know how to market myself, and with my resume, I’ll find employment wherever I decide to relocate, which is all that really matters to me. At this point in my life, career isn’t important to me at all. Being able to sustain myself wherever I decide to live is all that really matters anymore. I’ve had the house, the wife, and all of the material possessions. I want to live where I want to live. That’s all.

I’m totally restless here on the outskirts of Chattanooga in Northwest GA. This is not home for me. Although my family has lived in the area for 23 years, I can’t call this place home. It’s just not. The closest friends I have from childhood in Northern Illinois are still my best friends. I’ll always be a “Yankee.” I’m not into Southern culture, or as I would say, the lack thereof. It’s just who I am. I don’t fit in here at all, and although Shani was raised here, you never would have known it. She would have been the first to tell you that as soon as she graduated high school, she wanted to leave Ringgold, Georgia and put it in her rearview mirror. I doubt she ever would have come back at all had it not been for me. Actually, I know she wouldn’t have. She moved up here for me and then convinced me as quickly as she could to get the hell out of here.

“You’re wasting your time here,” she said to me in the spring of 2000, and on May 6 of that year, I started my job working with Crunch Fitness in Atlanta.

I’m grateful that my family has given me the time to come back and get grounded. I don’t know where I would be without them. I can’t even say that I would be alive. But every day here is a struggle. I need a faster pace. I need the energy of a big city and a progressive environment. I feed off of it. I try to tell myself that this is where I’m supposed to be right now. There are other reasons that I’m here. I’ve made the commitment to my daughter to be available for her, whether she feels the need to have me here or not. I have the book to finish. I want to make sure that wherever I go, or whatever I decide to do, that it’s done with enough thought and planning that I’m ready to leap, not just run from what I’m uncomfortable with.

At the same time, I want to move forward in certain aspects of my life now. I want a social life of some kind. I want to meet people. I’d like to date, to feel comfortable around women again. But when I get out to meet people and they ask the all of the mundane questions that they do, like, "What do you do? Where do you live? Are you married?" I realize how alone I am in my experience, and it makes me want to isolate. I feel so often that I’m consoling people who can’t process MY story. It’s like I’m saying, "My wife was murdered by her son, and her mother was murdered by her father. I know it makes no sense, and I know it’s horrific. I’m sorry that it’s difficult for you." That’s how it feels anytime I meet someone new, like I have to guard them from the shock of my experience. So, I wonder to myself why would I want to subject myself to that day-in and day-out in a place that I can’t even call home? Why should I put myself in these situations when I’m not going to stay here, and these people probably aren’t going to factor in my future anyway? I’m not going to be here long enough to establish any relationships with these people, but what am I to do, spend all of my time on my bike, in the pool, in yoga, in my head?

If I have to answer these questions, let me do it in the place that I want to call home. Let me pack my bags, go resettle somewhere and start over. I want to get out of here and start to make plans for what’s next. I’m here, but my soul is not. I’m here physically, but I already have one foot, probably more, out the door. I’m just trying to hang on without allowing my spirit to get crushed.

Knowing that I’m here for now, I have to do what I can to find peace, and that only happens when I’m able to see that I have plenty of time ahead of me to explore the world and that it’s not going to be that long before I’m able to do what I need to do. I’ll be able to go out and start a new life with an outlook few will ever experience. Deep down I know that there is nothing I can’t do if I’m willing to take a chance. There is nothing to be afraid of given what I have already seen. If I can continue to accept “what is” and to try to let go of the past, I’ll continue to move forward.

I was having a difficult time Friday morning, but I had begun to settle into “today.” When I can accept that today I am where I am right here, right now, because this is where I’m supposed to be, I can deal with my immediate reality, even if I am restless. That’s what I was doing. As I put my coffee cup in the sink and made my way to the shower, the phone rang. It was a call from the District Attorney’s office in Atlanta.

I get updates from them every 4-6 weeks concerning Zeke’s case and the status of the trial. Every time I get that call, I go into a tailspin. Without going into full detail about the conversation, the end result was that they hoped to have a trial by the end of the year. I’m not holding my breath. It seems that every time they hope to have anything done in a certain time frame, you can add at least 6 months to the date that they give. It’s amazing to me that you could kill someone, confess to how and why you did it, and a year later still be waiting for a trial. I’m told again and again that it’s all part of the process. Whatever.

As soon as I hang up the phone, I immediately realized that I have no control. I’ve had no say in anything outside of whether or not I wanted the state to pursue the death penalty against Zeke. I’ve had no control about what the media wanted to report. I had no control over what happened to Shani’s body after the murder. I have had no control over anything, and right now, I don’t even have control over my future.

As much as I want to get up and go, as much as I want to work on a future for myself, as much as I want to do whatever it is that I want to do, I can’t. If I decided to leave before the trial and start working somewhere, what am I going to say when it comes time to go to court? What am I going to do when I have to face the media all over again? It’s a high profile case? God, I wish they could just do it now. I just want closure, but I have no control over that, either. No matter how I want to move forward, I’m not allowed. What’s going to happen to me when this all comes up? I’m going to have to relive it all over again. No matter what I do to prepare for my future, this trial is a huge roadblock in the way. And even if I look at it as a door to walk through, it is an ever-elusive passageway, one that won’t present itself until the “process” plays out. I have no control over it.

So, I’m biding my time. A friend told me the other day to remember that no matter how much I’m being put on hold right now that Zeke is in the same situation. I don’t care if Zeke spends the rest of his life in that same cell. I don’t care if it’s in a padded cell. I don’t care it it’s in a pretty little hospital. I really don’t care. I just want to hear a judge’s gavel and to see him led off in shackles to wherever it is that he’s going to go. I want it over. I want closure. But I have no control over that, either. I don’t want him to suffer. It’s not about knowing that he’s in jail for the rest of his life. It’s about having to go to court and getting this damn thing over with. I want it done.

So I’ll bide my time. I’ll build up as much strength as I can until I get the call that a date is set. And then I’ll continue to train like Floyd Mayweather for the fight of my life, because no matter how far I’ve come, no matter what demons I’ve been able to face until now or whatever it is that the future has in store for me, none of my dreams or plans will be realized until this trial is over. I know that. It’s the trial that has control. It’s the not knowing and having to relive everything all over again that I’m waiting for. I can move forward, but I can’t move on until it’s done. It’s not a bump in the road to my healing. It’s another prize fight that few people who lose loved ones ever have to face. It’s another fight that will inevitably leave me battered and bruised, and I know I’m going to get my ass kicked.

I’ll stay where I’m not home. I’ll make plans for my future. I’ll embrace the unknown, and I’ll get myself in the best physical, mental, and emotional condition possible. And I’ll do all of this as I remain...in limbo.