Strange, this year I find that I can quote Oliver Queen (Arrow).

As much as I love and I remember 2018 being the year that I got to see Nathan and Chyler in Arizona, at the same time it’s also a sad year.

A month later in May I got arrested for a crime I did not commit. I know people always say that, but in my case it’s true.

I bumped into a woman at Walmart by accident and she seemed fine. It was only 2 minutes later that she fell. You’d think after a bump like that she wouldn’t have fallen or she would have sooner, but instead, it took a while.

It was 5 months after the incident that I got arrested (good thing I was home and not in Arizona otherwise that would have been worse).

I shouldn’t have been arrested in the first place. And this was said by my family, by the lawyers my sister worked for, and by my own lawyer (who is the best in the city.)

I still remember everything that day. The night I got arrested. The 10 hours I spent in jail. I honestly did not know a human being could cry as much because it was just nonstop for me.

The part I am grateful for is EOE. He saved my life. The second they took me out of the house and into the cop car, that entire night and that entire morning, I repeated his song lyrics, “Rise or Fall, I’ll Keep Pushing Forth.” They’re what got me through it. And no words can describe how grateful I am.

It ruined my life. I have panic attacks. I can’t go into Walmart without almost freaking out by myself. And if my parents are with me/I’m with my parents, I let them push the shopping cart because I panic. My knuckles get white if I’m holding on to the cart. My heart races any time someone gets close to me with their cart.

And the worst of it all was that I lost my two best friends over it. I could not legally tell them for a year and they got upset. I can say that our friendship ended because they started families, but that’s not true at all. It ended because of this mess. They abandoned me. I’m angry and hurt and betrayed. They weren’t just upset, but they blamed me for the fact that I never told them. You’d think them being who they are, they would have understood and been there for me. Instead, they bailed.

Not long after the incident, we found out that Walmart manager who caused the mess got fired because apparently, he had done stuff like that before.

It’s now been 5 years since then. I try not to think about it, but at the same time I’ve never really dealt with it, accepted what happened.

And to quote Oliver Queen:

“This was five years! Five years where nothing good happened.”