This is where it all gets strange. See, I fought 2 wars, Iraq, and Afghanistan, got shot in both, and it possibly made me a bit cocky. This incident was December of last year. So, my wife of 34 years left me last year in March and I moved across the country back to where I started. NC. I’m in a city I’ve never lived before, Greensboro. I immediately found a new girlfriend trying to get over the past, and I kinda rubbed it in my ex’s face over text until I found out she actually died 6 days after she left me and stole near half a million dollars I was nesting away for us to retire on. A friend of ours, in the summer last year, told me that she had put out a hit on me. I asked how did she have time. He said she did it the day she found out I had someone new, which was only 3 days after she’d left. Late summer, a guy tried to jump me when I was getting off the bus from work and I beat the ever living shit out of him and donated a knife to his stomach. Months went by, I keep riding the bus. Coming home from work one night talking to my gf on the phone, guy comes up behind me and starts yelling to give him my phone and money. I heard the gun cock and I immediately passed him everything without turning around. No sooner he takes it, I hear the bang, feel the weird impact to my head, and then start feeling my neck getting wet. I turned around, took every mental note I could off his description, stuck my finger in the hole in the back, licked it and realized it was my own blood, and passed out for like 3 months. When I came to, the cops visited me and started asking questions. I told them everything I could remember and about 3 weeks later, they came back and told me they’d found him. They also told me I was the only person they knew had been shot in the head and lived. I finally got out of the hospital and the cops want me to go testify in court. That day came, and the instant I saw him, I knew it was him. I said “Bitch, I bet you thought you killed me.” Judge threatened contempt and I shut up. Turns out the guy was from Kansas City, where I’d been living for like 10 years. He was a convicted felon as well, and they cannot own a firearm. He got life in prison for attempted murder among other chargers. I started back tracking and dug into my ex’s old Facebook as she’d never changed her password and I knew them all. Turns out, she did know the guy and they started having conversations a month before she left me. Very troubling stuff, but it became obvious she had been cheating on me with him. Now I do believe my friend that said she paid him to do it. I still don’t know what I did so wrong, but when we were young and had kids together, she quit smoking weed and drinking and became very judgemental of me for continuing. That’s a different story. So I don’t know how much she paid him, but I believe he and her were behind the attack in early August last year, and given that it wasn’t a success, he took it a step further and thought a gun was the way. Dumbass shot me sideways. It went in behind my left ear and lodged into my skull in front of my left ear. Doctors say that’s why I lost my hearing. Funny thing, I’d been learning sign language for about 25 years helping in a deaf church, so I was kinda ready not to hear anything anymore. There, that’s a small book.