I got shoot in my leg. While trying to find a creative and unusual way to start this journal I realized sometimes a raw sentence is the best way to describe something awful. Besides, what happened that morning was also a raw situation, harsh, fast, it was a flash!, or so was for me: Bang!, crowd in panic, Bang!, I scream like never before, my thigh is hot, like getting burn, I hold it between my hands and press with all my strenght... all this in less than ten seconds.What happened after -the pain, the bleeding, the hospital, the few hot nurses at the hospital, the hard task of urinate on a jar while layind down on a couch, the couch itself- are not really important. The important is the fact of being here now, two months after all this drama happened, writting about it in an attempt to analyse throughly the huge hurricane of thoughts, whispers and ideas unleashed by this incident*

First of all I came to learn how important is taking the right perspective next to a situation. Watching an endless parade of worse casualties coming to the emergency corridor -broken skulls, fractures, hemorrages- made me think it could've been worse, it could've  been my chest or my hand instead of my leg. Suddenly the phrase "every time you think you are fucked, remember there are people fucked up beyond all repair" made perfect sense. So this is why I didn't feel my life was in danger, I actually spent three hours in the emergency room whithout any kind of pain killer, the wound  wasn't bleeding any more so that calmed me down a bit. I couldn't help bursting out laughing, I was feeling so fucking lucky I wasn't the guy in the couch next to me with his jaw and legs broken. -Now I think my laugh was also a matter of emotional distress- A week later I finally understood the severity of the incident while re-watching a WW2 series; there was this scene in wich a soldier accidentally shot his leg with his own gun and bleed to death in just a few minutes with his fellows around him watching him die with nothing they can do to save him.

I've always been fascinated by stories about people who almost die and change the way of their lifes from that day on. It's hard for me to define if my life was in danger or not in spite of the knowledge of the risk of bleeding to death, so I don't know if I should consider  me as one of those cases. The point of this is the fact that the incident made me wonder if I really need something unpleasent  to happen to change my way of life? Don't misunderstood me, im' not a drug addict, or an alcoholic, but I've been addicted to bad choices for the last ten years, choices whose awful consequences haunt me today and threath to torture me till the last of my days. So stuppidly, I was waiting for something to happen and be the starting point for a new life, well things have happened, the bad ones, the happy ones... but no one so "special" to make me have the balls to smack my face and start doing things differently. How stupid is this?... waiting for something awful or  wonderful to reflect about my life.

There was also this lady in the hospital. She aproached to me while waiting in pain in the corridor, I didn't know her but she asked me what happened. She hold my hand and told me to be strong, to remember god, but specially to remember that "god had not forgot me". This was not the last time I heard something like this. Since I was discharged, almost everybody  -friends, relatives, neighbors- whom have visited me has come with this kind of thoughts about god, universe, and fate. -along with ovbious leg jokes sponsored by House M.D. and that Simpsons episode based on Hitchcock's "Rear Window"- Some other time I would've paid a slightest bit of attention to this thoughts. I've been a man of sience and reason for the last seven years, there was no place for god or any kind of "spiritual bullshit" in my life. But somehow, ignoring this thoughts is not as easy as earlier this time. Some people would say I was softened by this event, maybe they are right but more important is that it triggered my need of redefining seriously my spiritual concepts. I think faith is not like a lost sock, you can't just find it again under your bed behind tons of shit after several years and just put it on and smile because you're back in god's team. You gotta build your own faith, choose the threads you like and sew your own faith-sock through the years so you can wear it little by little as you continue sewing it.**

Through the last two years I came to realize that changing a way of life wasn't always a matter of consequence but also a matter of will. You want things to be different?.. then start doing things differently. Unfortunetly the task is not as easy as it sounds; changing deeply entranched vices and habits is not the easiest thing to do, besides, my will is not as strong as I wish. From the first moment I saw myself lying down in a couch in a hospital corridor, still holding  my thigh and waiting for some doctor's help while dealing with the pain, I started to tell myself "this  is a watershed, everything must be different from now on, otherwise there is no reason for me to survive this shit".

These are just a few of my thoughts from the incident. I did my best to write them down as tidy as possible, removing the most confusing and worrying details to make this journal less boring for you. -Thanks for reading it by the way!- .  Sometimes I wish I was one of those guys who change the way of his life from traumatic events, but I've came to the conclussion that things don't work that way, there must be a precedent, a wish of change, and the traumatic event is nothing but a major boost. As always I have more questions than answers, but that's the nice thing about being constantly looking for thruth and meaning. Besides I'm lucky to be here, upright, healthy, watching how my bullet wounds heal day by day and how my leg start to recover strenght and flexibility it's just a matter of time to be jogging again! Also an interesting story to tell and a cool pair of scars to show off, -let's see if is true that girls like scars- what else can I ask?-

Cory·Ragnarok
Jan-06-2012

*Everybody refers to this as an "accident". I think falling out of tree is an accident, crush a finger is an accident, but... getting shot by an asshole is an incident not an accident, isn't it?
**I'm sorry if you find my analogy stupid but it works for me, I've never been able to handle things completly serious, not even death, not even my relationships, not even this.

-Finally, let me share with you a couple of curious things related:

First: As a WWII fan for the last seven years, there was a point when books, movies and military antiques seemed insufficient next to my obsession; so I started to train myself as a soldier, recreating as many boot camp excercises as I could, eating on a metal lunch box and drinking from a canteen. I wondered how a gun shot would feel more than once during those years but never literally asked for this to happen. Two people suggested that somehow I subconsciously asked for it. I agree.

Second: This one happened a few days ago, a fellow designer was watching at my illustration portafolio and asked me a few questions about some of my self cartoons, specially this one: [link] He thought I painted it after the incident, due to the blood trace on the knee. I was a bit shocked about this because, despite there is no bullet hole in the pants, and the blood trace is in the knee insted of the thigh I somehow gave expression to this prophetic echo seven months earlier. I'm not supersticiuos, I look at this as a curiuous fun thing contrarily to my mother who got scared about this particular situation and asked me not to draw myself again in an awful situation.