I finally felt safe for the first time in my life. I just found my new lover and was going to die. The largest hurricane ever recorded was approaching my home city of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. All exits were closed and there was no way out. Should I tell her I was in love?
If I did, she would have to live the rest of her life knowing the man who loved here died before we could embrace. If I didn't, I would die and she would never know how I felt.
It was October 23, 2015. My two daughters and their boyfriends entered the master suite of my condo and said, "It's time to go Dad." I cannot remember a more tragic moment.
I had just fully recovered from six of the hardest years of my life. On menu of hardships was police raids, arrests, and living on the run in Venezuela and Brazil. I had moved twenty-two different times during my flight before I arrived in Mazatlan, Mexico as a free man. Thinking peace had finally rested on my life, I was suddenly hit with a surprise divorce.
Without notice, my third wife flew away with my good friend and my son. They never returned. Overnight, I lost everything including my son, home, and several family members. For the first time in twenty-eight years, I was all alone.
I barely recall the six-hour bus ride from Mazatlan to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. For the next two months I would be broke, shattered, confused and sleeping on the floor. I was still the man behind NeverGetBusted and never stopped freeing prisoners even though I could barely answer emails. I kept my divorce and circumstances a secret from the public and will never forget the loneliness I felt. It was easily the hardest moment of my life.
At the time, I had been married twenty-eight years to three different women. My first marriage lasted fifteen years. The second lasted two years and felt like a long bad date. My third ended two years ago after eleven years of side-by- side activism. I loved all three of my wives and still do. None of my marriages failed. They just ended.
According to all the research and data I collected, it wasn't unusual for a man my age to never recover from such a devastating blow. I learned it normally takes three to five years to recover from such a brutal betrayal and only a lucky few made it.
At age 46, I was either going to be remembered as the activist who became homeless and faded away or I would triumph as an extraordinary person by becoming the best version of myself I could be. In a weakened and defeated state, I chose the latter.
While barely being able to walk and feed myself, I set a plan in motion. The strategy worked and changed me forever. I forced myself to perform only four things:
I would only think positive and delete all negative influences from my life.
I would exercise every day.
I would work as a humanitarian to the best of my ability.
I would find another wife.
During the moment, I did the opposite of what most men do during a bad divorce. Instead of increasing my lifelong love for booze and drugs, I went completely sober. I even went cold turkey from the one a day pills an American doctor properly prescribed to treat my diagnoses of severe PTSD.
I used sobriety and a quantum physics theory called "Spiral Dynamics" to fully recover within a year. Science promised if I felt the pain instead of burying it in a blur of intoxicants and soul numbing pills, I could rebirth my life and attract another quality woman. The same theory also cautioned that if I did not deal with the agony, it would resurface one day as an unnoticed character flaw that would repel good women and lower my quality of life.
In another installment of my life series, I will share the details of my divorce and how the scientific theory saved my life. For now, I want you to know I got through it and I got through it fast. Without realizing it, I had prepared myself to meet a knockout Filipina. She would soon become my lover and the woman who remains in my arms today.
Mia was 8400 miles away and only weeks from becoming Vice President of the largest hotel chain in Southeast Asia. She had spent six years in Dubai learning her craft and becoming noticed as a woman of beauty and power. Although she only spent one year as a registered nurse, she graduated with honors from one of the best medical schools in the world. She was moments away from completing her doctorates in Human Behavior.
Next month on our one-year anniversary, I'll share the details of how we met and fell in love. Today I want to share how I nearly missed the opportunity to build a new life with this tremendous person.
The entire world was watching as the monstrous category five hurricane was only one hour away from annihilating Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Being suspicious of news channels, I called my trusted media connection, Stephen Webster. I wanted to know his opinions of the reported doom before I prepared myself to watch my family leave this planet.
Mr. Webster advised the warnings were real and basically told me goodbye as if he would never see me again. He stated Mazatlan, Mexico was predicted to be destroyed by the enormous cyclone. I'll never forget his chilling words when I informed him I no longer lived in Mazatlan and had moved to Puerto Vallarta.
"Dude. Mazatlan is going to be hit by the edge of Patricia. The eye of the hurricane is scheduled to rest over Puerto Vallarta and remain for several hours. Nothing and nobody will survive."
The next words I heard were those stated earlier in this true story of my life, "It's time to go Dad."
This meant I had to abandoned my place of peace and security to huddle in a poor shelter with my kids. I pictured hovering over them as the death storm hit. I planned to speak lying words of encouragement to my darlings as we all died together. I prayed it would happen fast and without pain.
Before I made the walk down the stairs to my family's execution chamber, I sent Mia the words every person wants to hear when they are in love. With huge tears blurring the screen of my phone, I tapped out this message and hit the send button.
"I love you."
It was unbelievable we did not experience the predicted disaster and even more unbelievable we only received a few drops of rain. No record setting hurricane. No wind. No ocean surge and no death.
I still feel like we died that day and passed into an exact copy of our previous life. It was at this moment I decided I was going to fall in love how I wanted to fall in love.
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Photo credit of hurricane Patricia: www.nbcchicago.com
Photo credit of map of Philippines: www.operationworld.org
Photo credit of broken marriage heart: www.theguardian.com