Odyssey of Me - Part 1

My story does not begin with the closing of Sullivan Street, my coffee house, as some might imagine.
In my mind, it begins nine months after, on a frigid snowy night in Colorado. That's when I jumped off a 10,000-foot cliff and ended my life as I knew it.
Don't get me wrong. The fall from the precipice was not deadly, not really. It was cushioned by all that snow. Like a giant down pillow, the feet-upon-feet of cold softness, so silent and powerful, broke my fall and held me like a baby.
At the bottom of that cliff, I was born again.

January 27, 2005

I've been putting this off for several days now and I don't exactly know why. I suppose I need to just jump into it though, tell my story the best I can and go on.
I actually did it. I stepped outside my miserable comfort zone.
I did it.
I left.
I now live in a four-room apartment on the second floor of a 100-year-old building on the main street of Silverton, Colorado.

Except for Easy, my Jack Russell Terrier, I am totally alone.
Brad and I arrived last Wednesday afternoon, he driving his dad's truck full of some furniture and boxes and me driving my SUV full of boxes and junk. We left Roanoke on Tuesday, stopped in Albuquerque about 4 a.m. to sleep for a couple of hours, and then drove into Colorado.
The only way in and out of my apartment is by way of a wrought-iron spiral staircase inside the real estate office on the first floor. Six feet of snow currently covers my backyard and the back staircase that leads to my apartment.

I won't lie to you. It was a bitch carrying boxes and stuff up that spiral staircase. But I really got discouraged when Brad and I tried to haul up my king-sized mattress. One-fourth of the way up the 25 steps, the mattress slipped from my hand and ripped back the fingernail on my left index finger, causing it to bleed like a stuck pig.
That's when I broke down. I was exhausted. I was shell-shocked. I was already homesick. I was disappointed in the apartment, which seemed much more rustic and dingy than I imagined it would be.
Not long before the mattress incident, a next-door neighbor, Steve, had come by and introduced himself to us. Later, he stopped by again and asked if we needed any help moving stuff upstairs.
"Uh....as a matter of fact....." I said, tempering my enthusiasm so as not to scare him away.
He and Brad had very little trouble wrangling the mattress up the stairs (or so it seemed from my position down below), and I gained a sudden spurt of renewed enthusiasm and euphoria that lasted just long enough to carry up a few more boxes.
I slept that night in the coldest room in the apartment. I did not know it was the coldest room, but I soon found out.

To be continued....