I’ve been asking myself that question more often lately. The answer, I hope, is no – but I’ll let you decide.
In the past few years, I’ve gone through all the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally, a kind of exhausted acceptance. It wasn’t until my mid-thirties that I started connecting the dots. Before that, I just thought I was unlucky. Not in the typical ways – bad job interviews, failed relationships, spilled coffee – but cosmically unlucky. Historically unlucky.
Growing up, I thought it was just coincidence. I’d always happen to be nearby when something horrible made the news. Fires, shootings, explosions, plagues, disappearances, plane crashes. One per year, more-or-less like clockwork. Some were local tragedies. Some were global headlines. All were unfortunate.
At first, I chalked it up to bad timing and living in Los Angeles. But then I started scrolling Wikipedia one night – never a good idea – and noticed a disturbing pattern: I had been near a lot of disasters. Even as a child. Ones I barely remembered. Ones I couldn’t remember. And that’s when denial kicked in. Surely, I wasn’t connected to all of this.
To be clear: I didn’t cause anything. I didn’t set any fires or push any buttons or whisper to any cult leaders. Most of the time I was just there – at a hotel, a concert, a college campus, a boat. In the background. But still, always there.
Once denial faded, anger took its place. If I was somehow cursed, what kind of cosmic joke was this? Why me? I was just trying to live a boring middle-class life. I went to school, got decent grades, traveled a bit thanks to my dad’s military contractor job, and eventually found myself teaching. Nothing extraordinary. And yet, every year, like an unwanted birthday present, death and destruction.
Bargaining didn’t last long. I tried limiting travel. That didn’t help. I tried avoiding airports. Still no luck. I even tried staying home. Cue local school shooting. It started to feel like the universe had a very dark sense of humor and a keen sense of direction.
Depression came next. Still going strong, honestly. I started therapy in 2019 and eventually got on medication. I don’t want to kill myself all the time anymore, which is progress. But there are still weeks where I don’t want to leave the house – especially now that I know what tends to happen when I do.
Then came Tweed.
We met at a protest in 2020. He handed me a writing-therapy workbook and asked me to preview it. I figured, why not? The exercises ended up unlocking memories – some real, some half-formed – and a flood of feelings I didn’t know I’d buried. After a few emails, he encouraged me to write it all down. Not to publish. Just to process. So I did.
This book is the result.
As I wrote, I started organizing the events into a timeline. I thought maybe there’d be a pattern – certain dates, places, moon phases. But no. Nothing useful. Just one seemingly unconnected tragedy every year of my life. I even found a few from childhood thanks to my mom’s foggy memories. She’d never noticed the pattern either. Or maybe she did and just didn’t want to think about it. The first group of events, I don’t necessarily have any memory of, so they’re based on what my parents told me and the research I’ve done into these events.
This book isn’t meant to solve anything. I’m not trying to prove a theory or expose a conspiracy. I don’t think I’m cursed (though, if I am, it would explain a lot). This is just a record. A memoir of proximity. A field guide for the historically adjacent. I don’t have a Master’s degree in writing, I’m just a guy sharing the experiences of my all-too-weird life.
If you’re reading this, don’t worry. You’re probably safe. Probably.