Who is John?

Who is John? I am not sure I know the answer to that question anymore. I lost myself on September 26, 2006. I lost everything that night.

It all started in September 6, 2000 when I met the love of my life, Abby Murphy. I was 18-years-old and lost, living in random parking lots, in my blue 92′ Chevy Cavalier. Abby was 18 too and we met at a grocery store that we were both working at.

A month later she finds out my situation but doesn’t let me know that I know. She then invites me over for Thanksgiving dinner and never lets me leave. So we started “us” and she was my first - everything. 

“if heaven’s forever”

if heaven’s forever
it’s forever with you
if you aren’t there
it won’t be heaven
it’s forever without you
if heaven’s forever

On January 28, 2001, Abby decides to give me a surprise party on my 19th birthday. I definitely got surprised when her ex-boyfriend Zig showed up to beat me up. I didn’t see it coming as he smashed a liquor bottle over my head from behind. 

All I thought about as I was getting twelve stitches in my head was revenge on this guy. But I let those thoughts simmer. They returned to a boiling point when I found out that Abby had been stringing me and Zig along. I was crushed. I had never been in a situation like this before. All these new feelings overwhelmed me.

This Zig guy was relentless in trying to provoke me, he even went as far as loosening the lug nuts on my car, but Abby was driving when the tires fell off. This is where I lost it.

I decided to fight back. One night, I went to Zig’s house and knocked on the door and told him I was here to finish what he started. He cowered and closed the door on me. I fist-size rock through his front window to get him to come out. That didn’t work so I left. That was when I got my first criminal charge, misdemeanor trespassing. 

I decided I had enough so I left Abby. I couldn’t get her off of my mind so I figured I would force her out of my mind and myself out of town by joining the Army. So in May 2001 I did just that. I told Staff Seargent Layne, my recruiter my story. He said that the Army was the best place for me and promised me the world. He helped me get the trespassing case dismissed and expunged off of my record. He even put me in the Delayed Entry Program and I made the rank of Private First Class before I got enlisted. 

The day came when I had to take the ASVAB tests and I passed. SSgt. Layne asked me what job I wanted. I told him that I wanted to be a fire fighter and he said he would get me the job. He printed out a pieced of paper with the MOS of 13F which was a Fire Support Specialist. This was real now.

One day as I’m leaving the recruiting station, I find Abby and Zig standing outside in the parking lot. Zig confronts me and we fight. SSGT Layne breaks it up and sends me back into the office. A few minutes later he comes in and asks me if I know the girl. I tell him how I know her and he tells me that she just joined the Army Reserves a few days ago as a medic. 

June 2001 comes around and Abby decides to get back together with me. I tell her that it is too late. I am government property now and so is she. We spend a month together nearly inseparable then we get shipped out to basic training, I go to Fort Sill, and she goes to Fort Jackson.

Basic training was probably one of the most crazy, fun, and hardest experiences of my life. Then I go to AIT. There I learn my job and find out I won’t be putting out fires but instead I will be driving around a tank and giving grid coordinates for artillery missions. I had mixed emotions but with it. Then the towers fell. I was going to war.

October 2001 comes around and I am back in Ohio for leave before I get shipped to my duty station at Fort Hood, Texas. Abby arrives too and we spend time together. I even proposed to her and it was one of the best days of my life. I bought her two rings, one in Oklahoma for $2000, and another one from a twenty-five cent gumball machine. I take the plastic ring  out and exchanged it with the real one that I bought with my Army bonus. She says “you really paid a quarter for this?” and I told her I did. I gave her a poem too.

“for her father”
  …the man i never knew

she begins to cry
i’ve always wondered
but never knew why
and her father
what was he like
i’ve always wondered
and never knew why
for her father
a man who lived his life
for her father
the man i never knew
i’m asking permission
to take your daughter’s hand

In Texas, on May 2002, you find me living on Hell On Wheels Road, firing an M249 and driving a FISTV day after day. That was when the calls and texts from some guy named Josh Brown started. This guy claimed that he was with Abby who I assumed I was still with at the time. I get a chance to go visit Ohio on Memorial Day Weekend and I pull up to her house in my new 2002 Pontiac Grand AM GT to surprise her but I get the surprise instead. As I’m walking up to her house, from across the street, I see Abby and Josh kissing. I walk back unoticed to my car. I was crushed again.

“the answer is love”

and risking it all
i came all this way
giving up everything
and wanting to stay
and stumbling around
i couldn’t find you
and then what happened
what have i gotten into
the answer is love

I decide to write Abby a note and let her know I am here so I go over her to place and drop a note in an open window of her car. 

“leaving a note . . .”
   this is what he wrote . . .

meet him at midnight
not a minute late
he’ll be by the falls
near the fountain
and by midnight
if you aren’t there
he’ll be gone
if you haven’t guessed already
this is a note . . .
a note from john

So I am sitting there and she shows up. I didn’t think she would. She doesn’t bring up Josh and neither do I. We go back to her place and I spend the night. As she is getting into bed I notice a note on her backside written with a black marker. It says “MINE” with an arrow pointing down. I was crushed. I became furious.

The following morning I am sitting on my mom’s porch getting ready to head up to Michigan to get my buddy Cross so we can head back to Fort Hood when a Dodge pick-up truck pulls up with some guy waving a handgun and yelling. I run up to the truck and he speeds away. A few hours later Abby calls because someone told her I was still here and asks why I haven’t left yet.

I hop on the highway but then I make a U-turn and head over to Josh’s to confront him first. We fight. I get charged with so many felonies I can’t even remember what they are. I do a few months in the Summit County Jail then the Army gets me out and decides to punish me by sending me to the Fort Knox brig before sending me to Iraq to rejoin my unit.

Fast forward to 1 pm on December 13, 2004, Abby and I are still together and our daughter Lucy is born. I am in Connecticut because she refused to let me come home because I was on a 30-day training program to learn how to drive 18-wheelers. Although I insisted on taking a flight home a few nights before, she refused to allow me because I would lose my career opurtunity and as a felon, this is a great career path. It was one of the biggest mistakes I have ever made and it came up in every argument we had for years.

Let’s get back to the worst night of my life, September 26, 2006. I get home a day early from a New York City dedicated load and I find a strange car parked in front of our new house (Abby’s house, it was in her name). I unlock the back door and walk into the living room and find Abby and some guy on the couch naked with my 1-year-old daughter lying asleep on a nearby loveseat. I grabbed the guy and took him outside in the front yard and punched him a few times, I wanted to this guy. Abby comes outside with a butter knife and a cordless phone screaming about calling cops. I am crushed again. I leave.

I don’t drink and I don’t do drugs, and to ease the pain of not seeing my daughter I find myself obsessed and I eventually get lost in two crazy hobbies, one of which was (and still is) ghost hunting that I started to do in 2001, the other was filming police breaking the law. I even try to learn everything. That helps.

While filming a pilot for a television show in 2008, I get stopped by the police near Austin, Texas and they inform me that I have a warrant for various charges for that September 2006 incident so I get arrested. Ohio has a 30-day limit plus a 60-day extension limit to get me, but 106 days pass and they never show, so the Texas governor releases me and says that Ohio is dropping all of the charges. I go to Phoenix, Arizona.

In Phoenix life is good, I start my own business. Do to the nature of my marketing business I get questioned by the police almost weekly and they inform me that I still have a warrant out of Ohio but when they call Ohio doesn’t want to come get me so nothing becomes of it. I eventually meet this red head named Kaila Grady. We get involved and she talks me into moving back to Ohio to try and get rights to see my daughter and get that warrant cleared. We go back in March 2009.

I decide to head in to the police station to straighten things out and that was when I lose nearly two years of my life, then one day I wake up and it is suddenly 2011.

Fast forward to today, and you’ll find me in Phoenix, alone, focusing mainly on my business and two of my hobbies. Since I can’t be with the two people that I love most in this world, I try to not think of them and I get lost in the two hobbies that I am now obsessed with. 

I now have people threatening me because they can’t use me as a weapon to fight their enemies. Well, I have no friends and I only have one enemy. I am my own worst enemy so if you want to hurt me and be my enemy, you’ll have to try really hard to find some new ammunition because I have already beat you to it. I have one weakness and she is 9-years-old.

My name is John Albrecht. I am not violent, I am not a criminal, I am a lemon. This is me.

Just remember, life is so fast, don’t stop to catch your breath because it will pass you by.