File Through Next Friend - Eve: Fill & Download for Free

Did this little girl just have a baby? She sure looks young.This is either going to be really good or really bad.It’s actually a little of both. Let me tell you my story.I know I look about 12 however I’d just turned 18.I was a single unwed mother.I named my baby boy Timothy Jason Gordon but he was always just called T.J.I wasn’t going to screw this up. I was going to do whatever it took to give this little boy the best life possible. Plan~Operation Opposite! All I had to do was the exact opposite of what was done to me. I got this!Who knew Osh Kosh were so expensive? I was going to have to get a good job and budget my money wisely. Better find a way to go to college too because I can’t have him get teased and taunted like I did because of his clothes. No old battered hand me downs that stunk like a barn. Not for my son. I got this.Lisa, You need to start focusing and answer the damn question already. Geez Louise! This is about to get really hard. Tissues (check!) A beverage to help swallow the impending snot down and a couple of hits off the vaporizer. (check!)Here we go. The one thing you’ve never been able to talk about to anyone but I think it’s time we get these pent up emotions out before they eat us up completely. Deep breath. In, out. Let’s go!Brush your teeth, my little blue-eyed baby boy. Don’t want to end up like your Momma when you’re old.Hi, My name is Lisa and this is the story of my greatest regret in life. Please bear with me as I relive a very painful and heart-wrenching experience.This has taken me 6 years to even discuss.6 years where every day I have tried to block it from my mind.6 years of agony over a lost moment that I can never reclaim and it has changed me and my life forever.I can still hear Mrs. Whitfield like it was yesterday.I'll never forget the words she spoke or the tone in which she spoke them.I'll never forget the feeling that came over me or the look on my Mother's face.Every moment is frozen in time, from the temperature in the room to the scent in the air to my precious Son laying on that cold steel table covered from head to toe in a dingy blanket.I can still see his face every time I close my eyes.I couldn't imagine how the worst moment in my life could get any worse, after all, I'd just lost my precious boy, my firstborn and only Son and the light and love of my life.He was my world, my everything and he was dead. Taken from me suddenly and tragically as a passenger in an automobile accident.How could this happen again?I need to look into curses. Family curses to be exact. I need to research this.We had such fun together! The best times ever! We make each other laugh and smile.He is the best kid in the world!How did I get so damn lucky?He loves me!!!!! I love him!!!Love is the greatest feeling in the world.Maybe life is going to turn out great after all!The pain I was in was so deep that it rendered me helpless.I was but a shell of the woman who prior, never would have stood for or obeyed those horrifying words that came out of the funeral director's mouth.Words that haunt me to this very dayI had words too.Words I needed to say to that beautiful boy lying on that table.The kinda boy that made you actually believe there might be a god.I was only 18 when I had him.We learned, grew and evolved together.We were a team.Me parenting him, him parenting me.His love, guidance, and support were masterfully adept at keeping me sane, level and happy.As long as I had him, I could bear all of the other pain and losses that I'd endured throughout my life.Somehow, he made everything okay.He was the epitome of love and everything good in my world.I know everyone thinks their kid is special but he really was one in a billion.High school graduation. 4.4 G.P.ACollege Graduation. Dual Major. Computer Science, Robotics. First in his class.4.7 weighted GPAT.J had a genius-level I.Q. Top 1% in the country.We learned this when his private school decided to test the protege they discovered in their midst.He was something special.Everyone knew it and felt it.His soul was so gentle and his heart was full of this deep love and compassion for everyone.Old people, young people, children, the disabled, all colors, creeds, and sexes. Evenanimals flocked to him.He cared about everyone.A giver, not a taker.Never made a single enemy in his life or even had so much as a childhood rough and tumble.Never a fight or a cross word.Just the most peaceful and loving kid you could ever imagine.I never even heard him swear. Not once. (although I’m sure he did when I wasn’t around.) Or maybe not.He would hug and kiss me hello and goodbye every single day, in front of his friends or anyone who happened to be there. Even in public!Sometimes (most of the time) he would give me love throughout the day.A hug in the kitchen. an “I love you” during dinner. Breakfast thank you’s.We just loved each other in such a profound and meaningful way.He didn’t care when he was called a Momma’s boy. He’d just smile and agree that he was. He wasn’t ashamed of it. He was actually quite proud of it!We had our own special language that no one else would understand.They didn’t need to. This was about US and our impenetrable bond.I just needed a few minutes. a moment in time that comes and goes so quickly one barely notices.Words from a Mother to her Son. After all, it would forever be the last time I would ever see him.These words I needed to say to my boy were going to have to sustain me for the remainder of my days on earth.I waited patiently while others filed through. I was trembling both inside and out as the tears flowed down my face in a never-ending stream.Any second and it would be just the two of us.I would hold his hand for the last time and kiss his cheek, whisper those special words in his ear and say goodbye forever.It was paramount to me and I know to him as well.We got each other on a level few can understand. I don’t even get it. I sure do fucking miss it though and I know I will never find it again in this lifetime.I don’t believe in heaven and hell or even that in the end, good wins out over evil.I’m not convinced it even matters anymore. It’s not like life is fair. It is generally unfair in my opinion.The rich get richer.The poor get poorer.Nice guys finish last.Donald Trump is the president! A horrible human being!Only the good die young.All dogs go to heaven.Back to my living breathing nightmare. My hell on earth.Lots of people wanted to say goodbye to my son before they cremated him.It seemed like everyone was there. Many I didn’t even know.This was a no-frills affair.He’d made his wishes known in that regard long ago during a rather deep discussion on death and dying, the environment, profiteers, landmass, toxins, wasteful spending. You get the picture.He was a very deep and intellectual person and we talked every day.The funeral home director's name was Ernestine Whitfield and she was still fuming mad because we hadn’t bought the big money funeral she tried pushing.That should have been a red flag on what was to come but I was too beaten up to even stand up on my own two feet.I was the epitome of destroyed. But what happened next was unfathomable to me and it kills me to this very day and always will.Mrs. Whitfield, the funeral home owner changed my life forever and I can never and will never forgive her.At first, I thought I heard her wrong.Who would deny a Mother 2 minutes to say goodbye to her child?Certainly not someone whose business it was to help us through this traumatic and catastrophic event.I couldn’t possibly be hearing her right but unfortunately, these are the exact words that came out of her mouth when I asked her for those few moments alone with my dead child."NO. You've taken up too much of my time as it is, you all need to leave now!”I was stunned, shocked, frozen.I tried to speak but nothing came out.Inside I was screaming for my baby boy, outside I was frozen in such shock and grief and complete and utter helplessness that I couldn't move a muscle or utter a single word.She hurriedly closed the door between me and that boy on the table. My boy!I strained for one last glimpse and she was gone, he was gone and that one moment, that one most important moment was gone.Lost to me forever and ever and ever.Two minutes of that funeral home’s time changed the remaining minutes, days, weeks and years of my life.*However many I have left. The way things are looking, it won’t be too long.I am not afraid. It will be welcomed.I still cannot fathom such cruelty, such lack of compassion and humanness.Especially from those whose job and business it is to aid us through tragedy and lossThe callous, cold and uncaring have no business in the funeral trade.Read reviews, feel people out, get a sense of their decency and compassionDon't let anyone steal your voice or take a once in a lifetime moment away from you. Don’t let the bastards win. Keep fighting.I don’t want anyone else to make the mistake I did. If I can prevent even one grieving loved one from this pain and regret. These tears that are rendering me unable to see the computer screen will have been worth itI regret not being stronger and speaking up for my son and myself.I’d give anything to go back and not take NO for an answer.I let the bully win. I didn’t just lose my voice that day.I lost everything.My drive, my goals, my reason for being.I lost a thriving business that I’d put my entire life savings into.I lost my house.My Jaguarmy good credit, my self-respect.Everything I had worked hard for all my life.The reason I tried to do everything to the best of my ability.To be kind to others, to not judge and to give back.Help anyone and everyone.Be a good human being.Be honest, forgiving and helpful.Patient and understanding.Generous with one's time and resources.I did all of those things and it got me nowhere in the end. Unless you consider hell a location.A Life with no purpose. I think I just decided what I’d name my book should I write one.I am all alone, self-medicating to escape the unrelenting pain, loss, grief, and isolation that has plagued me since that day.I have a severe case of agoraphobia that’s rendered me terrified to leave my house.I stopped caring about my appearance and let myself go.I used to be considered beautiful. I always took immaculate care of myself.I don’t even run a brush through my hair most days and I can’t remember the last time I put on makeup or real clothes.I won’t answer my phone or door most of the time and only text with the outside world when I must.I rarely eat anything and just try to drink milk to ease the hunger painsI wait until the middle of the night to check my mail for fear someone will see meI have an aggressive skin cancer growing on my nose but I won’t go to the doctor and get it taken care of.My hair is falling out in droves. I get no nutrition.This was me when my son was alive.This is me now.I'm sick pretty much all the time. I’m In pain 24/7. I have no quality of life. I have no one. I have nothing…Except…Bumbie!She is my emotional support, my baby, my love, my world, the little girl that keeps me living and breathing. I love her right to death!Back…Before I lost it all…I was a self-made millionaire at 30 years old, have owned 5 restaurants and employed hundreds of people.Here’s a picture of T.J as he played Host for me at one of my restaurants in New Tampa, Fl. It was called Oceans New England Seafood and Grill.Now I’m dirt poor, live off a meager disability payment of less than $800 a month and $40 in food stamps.I’ve rolled pennies to buy milk. Numerous times. That's a far cry from paying cash for a $64,000 automobileI went from being a type-A overachiever to not giving a fuck about my life or myself.I’ve got a myriad of health problems that I ignore, (M.S, C.O.P.D, Basal Cell Carcinoma and Auto-Immune Dysfunction)All brought on by grief. In my opinion..This is me less than a year after losing my boy. I was given only had a 30% chance of survival and wish every day that I’d never come out of my month-long coma and just died then. It would have ended my suffering sooner.I take drugs, any drugs to numb my emptiness, loss and pain.Street drugs, Pharmaceutical drugs…It doesn’t matter.I can’t eat, Can’t sleep. Take terrible care of myself or should I say, I take no care of myself.I am dying by my own hand, by the act of omission. It’s a subtler form of suicide but just as deadly.I am proof that you can die from a broken heart.I’ve been told that without treatment, I have at most 3–5 years to live.PLEASE REMEMBER TO BE KIND.So my biggest regret in life?I have many but not standing up to that funeral director, I’ll regret that till the day I die!Not getting to say goodbye to the most important, most loved, most admired human of my entire tragic filled, success filled, crazy and loss filled life is the greatest.I never even to got to kiss him goodbye.Edit-I was asked about my family and if there was anything that would bring me some happiness and I took some time to ponder that question.I thought you might also be interested as my answer is shockingly getting viewed which pleases me greatly.I have lost my family through one tragedy or anotherMy sister was killed at the age of 15 by a drunk priest while riding her bicycle. Her name was Christine.My brother was killed in a drunk driving accident at the age of 29. He was the one who had been drinking. He was fleeing a group of college students who were harassing him and who wanted to beat him up because of his sexuality. He was gay and oh so handsome. His name was Dean.My mother died 2 years ago. Exactly 7 days following her car accident. I never left her side. She was 84 years old and mean as a junkyard dog and never once told me she loved me. But she was all I had left and I did love her even though she was incapable of reciprocating that love. All she did during those 7 days was express her anger at how unfair it was that she was going to die and that she wasn’t ready. I found that indicative of her as she couldn’t grasp anything outside of herself. Like the fact we’d buried my son at only 28, My sister at only 15, My brother at only 29 and she got 84 years! Yeah, Mom. You got robbed.My father (who died in my arms) had a heart attack and was resuscitated and put on life support. He was brain dead and I had to be the one to make the decision to have it removed. I laid beside him in that hospital bed for the 11 1/2 hours it took him to die as he drowned on his own fluids. I spent that entire time suctioning all the mucus that was pouring out of his nose and mouth. It was the most horrid thing I have ever witnessed. Not once did a nurse or doctor enter that room. He also never told me he loved me.My beloved stepfather (who also died in my arms) 3 months after being diagnosed with esophageal cancer. He was the first person to ever show me love and affection. I took him into my home and cared for him 24/7 as I watched him waste away. He was only 47 years old and I loved that man with all my heart. Here he is pictured with my Mother. His name was Jason. I named my son Timothy Jason in honor of him even though we shared no blood. We shared the much more important element of love.My childhood sweetheart who I’d planned to spend the rest of my life with died 2 weeks before he was set to graduate from law school. He accidentally overdosed on cocaine and it stopped his heart. The only man I ever loved. He was 26.This is me at his graveside. It’s been almost 25 years since I lost him but I still take care of the plot. I painted the piece of slate with his name on it and many of his qualities as a human being are listed. As you can see, his name was Keith.Then my only son was killed 6 years ago while riding as a passenger in his friends BMW. The friend pulled out in front of a large truck at an intersection and it t-boned the passenger side where my son was sitting. Even though T.J was wearing a seatbelt, he was ejected from the vehicle and flew 90+ feet landing in the middle of the interstate. He was still strapped in his seat. Autopsy determined he died instantly from massive head trauma. His “friend” survived yet never so much as apologizedMy boy had just gotten married and his new bride collected 3.7 million dollars and never spoke to me again. The day she received the settlement she dropped my sons' remains off at my house in a ziplock bag. She now travels the world and takes all of her girlfriends along with her. While I struggle just to keep milk in my refrigerator. My son would be so pissed If he could see how she has conducted herself...He never would have married her.This is the last picture I took of him approx 2 weeks prior to his death. That grin is for me. The red Vette was his high school graduation gift and he’d been restoring it for years. He didn’t care much for new Corvettes. Always just wanted a 70’s era Stingray and of course, that’s exactly what I got him. No one could have deserved it more.What am I doing today?I keep to myself. I have few visitors. Actually one would be more precise. He’s a former chef at one of my restaurants who happens to acknowledge that he’s a Psychopath. (What is it about empathetic people that seem to draw the narcs straight to us?) The two of us have been tangling for years. I can’t get rid of him. Nothing but trouble, trouble, trouble.He comes around to terrorize me, steal my medical marijuana cartridges and gaslight me for entertainment while he’s here. I’m too afraid of him to stop him but it really sucks when he steals my weed carts. They help me a lot with my pain and the Multiple Sclerosis.I interact with only one other person. The elderly lady across the street. She is a hoarder who has difficulty getting to her dirty dishes so I go over and climb through the hoard and wash them for her.I honestly can’t wait to get this torture filled life of mine over with.It’s been a nightmare from day one. both of my parents were abusive alcoholics and narcissists with 11 marriages between them.I was told every day of my life, how they wished abortion had been legal in 1966 so they could have gotten rid of me. Also that I was a piece of shit. Worthless and good for nothing. Can u hear this? “Lisa, I wish you were never born!” “Yeah Mom, Yeah Dad, Me too!I was so neglected and abused that I didn’t speak until I was 4 years old. I can’t hear out of my left ear because my Dad hit me so hard that it burst my eardrum. This is the only photo I can find from when I was that little mute girl.Can you see the pain in my eyes? Can you see how badly I just want to be loved and cared for as I did with my son?I don’t know why someone didn’t question why I didn’t speak or why I was kept out of school for extended periods of time.I hope they are a little more vigilant nowadays.I was so bruised and battered that they’d have to keep me home from school so as to not alert authorities. It often took weeks for my bruises to fade enough so I could go back to school but I missed so much that I was kept back and deemed not ready to progress to the next grade. In spite of the fact that I have a tested I.Q of 142.For as far back as I can remember, I would pray to god every single night and I would beg him to please not let me wake up in the morning.Unfortunately, he didn’t listen. I soon came to the conclusion that there was no god because if there was, why would he allow me to suffer so much. I was just an innocent child.This has made me the Atheist I am today.How could this supposedly “loving god” allow such suffering and human atrocities to happen? Not just to me but to millions of others all over this vast planet.Why would a god who supposedly loves us more than any love we’ll ever know, burn us for eternity if we don’t do everything he says? Stupid shit too! Pay our money. Buy that spot in heaven and don’t ask too many questions.I’m sorry but will NEVER fall for the notion of an invisible man in the sky.Believe me, If anyone would like to believe such fairytales, it would be me!Everyone I ever loved is dead!God is my only chance of being reunited with them.After every death, they’d come knocking and tell me that bullshit. Use the tragic losses of my life to gain another parishioner. Tell me it’s the only way I’ll ever see my precious boy again. I tell them to go fuck themselves cause that’s evil.Nothing is right or fair in this world. I’ve seen the best people suffer and the nastiest ones skate through life without a care in the world. If I’m wrong and there is a god then he is one sadistic bastard.So in answer to your question~ My stepfather and my son are all the familial love I ever knew.Its been a very painful life for me and I agree with my parents. I wish abortion had been legal as well.However, I am not a piece of shit. I am a highly sensitive empath who tries to help everyone I see as less fortunate than myself…even though I have nothing.When I was wealthy I gave away the vast majority of my money to the hungry and the homeless. My heart breaks for them and for animals and children that are neglected and abused.Thank you for your thoughts and your comment. LisaIt really is the simple things that mean the most.Also, the cycle of abuse ended with me. I was determined that my child would never know the pain and suffering I endured. That he would never have a hand put on him unless it was with love! That he would know how deeply he was loved and how wonderful he was..and indeed, he was! So I accomplished both of those things.All you have to do is look at my sons' face and you can see the love and joy I poured into him. He brought me the greatest happiness in life and there are no words that express how much I miss him. It kills me a little more each day.The first thought in the morning, the last at night. All-day long since the day he took his last breath. April 25, 2013.He took great care of me while he was alive and when he moved out at the age of 24 it was to the house right next door. Our doors were less than 10 feet apart.I think that says a great deal about our relationship.Thank you so much for taking the time to read my story. It touches me deeply that so many of you wonderful people have sent me messages and comments of love and encouragement. I love you all. Lisa EveI take comfort in one thing and only one thing. My son loved me right to death. This is one of my favorite pictures because he doesn’t need to say a single word.His smile says it all. That is love right there.The most beautiful thing my eyes have ever seen!

I would like him to find out who Lori Erica Kennedy really was.On Christmas Eve, 2010, Lori drove to her ex-husband’s parents house, stopping her car in their driveway.Then she shot herself in the head.In her house her ex-husband found a strongbox, hidden in a closet: during their marriage, Lori had designated several places around the house she had forbidden him to go. The back of that closet was one of those places.Inside the box, there was a birth and death certificate of a small girl named Becky Sue Turner, a fraudulent application for a Social Security number in the name of Lori Kennedy; documentation related to a name change, from ‘Becky Sue Turner’ to ‘Lori Kennedy’; strange messages, a fake recommendation letter in behalf of Lori from a man who doesn’t exist, and more.Lori ... Becky Sue ... [Social Security Administration investigator Joe] Velling just calls her Jane Doe. He’s paged through the clues to her life over and over.“The reason I can’t find anything prior to 1988 is because she’s very good,” he said.He pulls out a timeline. On one side is Jane Doe’s life as Lori and, briefly, Becky Sue. On the other side is nothing.It took Jane Doe two months to take over the identity of someone she wasn’t. First, she got a copy of Becky Sue’s birth certificate from Bakersfield, Calif. In those days, many counties would just mail a copy to whoever asked.Notably, Becky Sue was born in one state but died in another — it says so in a news clipping. That suggests Jane Doe knew what she was doing, because this kind of separation reduces the chances of being tripped up by some state database.She got an Idaho ID card in Becky Sue’s name in Boise, claiming she was 18 years old.“What this tells me is that Jane Doe was in Idaho in 1988,” Velling said. This tidbit, discovered just last week, strengthens the hypothesis that she was from the Northwest. She also kept a mail drop in Boulder City, Nev., which forwarded her mail to Dallas.After getting the ID, she went to court in Dallas to change her name, legally, from Becky Sue Turner to Lori Erika Kennedy.Next came the most important step: getting a Social Security card, the holy grail of identity theft.Today, most children get Social Security numbers at birth. Back then, you could easily get your card as a teen. That’s what Jane Doe did. She became Lori Kennedy, a blank slate, with government ID.“Once I have that name change and the Social Security number, I’m really a whole new person,” Velling said.The whole process took less than two months.As Lori, she got into college without providing any high-school transcripts. “She took the GED,” Velling said. “No clue there.” She graduated from the University of Texas in Arlington with a degree in business.He tracked down a few friends and colleagues from years ago. One said she had been working as a dancer at a “gentleman’s club” in the early 1990s, according to Velling. A clue, perhaps. But no one he found knew anything about Lori before 1988.In the strongbox there also were letters of reference from an employer and a landlord. And the scribbles: North Hollywood police. 402 months. Ben Perkins, an attorney.Was she in legal trouble? Facing 402 months in prison? Velling chased the leads.The job reference appears to be bogus, signed by someone who never existed.Lawyer Ben Perkins? He had no recollection of her.Velling ran photos of Jane Doe through every facial-recognition database he knew. Nothing. He sent her fingerprints to the FBI. They didn’t match anyone in their criminal files.“If she was facing prison time,” he thought, “you would have thought there would be fingerprints.”He had the fingerprints compared with those on file with the Department of Homeland Security. Nothing.He learned from medical records that she had breast implants. And for a moment, Velling thought he had a solid lead — implants, he learned, have serial numbers, and serial numbers lead to doctors’ records. But it appeared she got them after she had become Lori. And besides, she was cremated.“This case is so difficult,” he said, “because the trail’s dead.”[1]Pictures of the contents of the strongbox can be seen in this gallery of the Seattle Times.Who was she?Footnotes[1] She stole another’s identity, and took her secret to the grave. Who was she?

This is going to be a long answer, but it is a real stress test Elon Musk went though. There was a time in his career where either SpaceX or Tesla could have died but this answer describes the way Elon Musk made both companies survive and the way he dealt with the stress he faced which could've killed any other person, if he/she were in Elon's shoes.SpaceX, like Musk’s other company, Tesla, was facing a major cash shortage. SpaceX had the Falcon 9 efforts to support and had also green-lighted the construction of the Dragon capsule, which would take supplies and, one day, humans, to the International Space Station.Historically, either project would have cost more than $1 billion to complete, but SpaceX would have to find a way to build both machines simultaneously for a fraction of the cost. The company had dramatically increased the rate at which it hired employees and moved into a much larger headquarters. SpaceX had a commercial flight booked to carry a satellite into orbit for the Malaysian government, but that launch and the payment for it would not arrive until the middle of 2009. In the meantime, SpaceX simply struggled to make its payroll. Just when it figured out how to fly a rocket, SpaceX was going broke.As bad as they were, the financial problems did not compare to the collapse of Musk’s personal life. Not long after moving to Los Angeles, Musk had lost his 10-week-old son, Nevada Alexander, to sudden infant death syndrome. “I’m not sure why I’d want to talk about extremely sad events,” Musk told me. “It does no good for the future. If you’ve got other kids and obligations, then wallowing in sadness does no good for anyone around you. I’m not sure what should be done in such situations.” Musk went on to have five more sons with Justine—twins and triplets—but their relationship broke apart in 2008, and Musk filed for divorce. Justine soon began documenting the divorce on a blog, and the press was all too happy to merge the personal details into stories of Musk’s financial woes.Reporters seemed to take a special pleasure in attacking Tesla. The electric car maker had suffered through numerous product delays, management changes, and cost overruns. After five years and tens of millions of dollars, there was still no Tesla available to buy. A website called the Truth About Cars began a “Tesla Death Watch” in May 2008 and followed up with dozens of entries throughout the year. The blog captured Tesla’s engineering issues and Musk’s feud with Tesla co-founder Martin Eberhard, who’d been forced out of the company.“I was just getting pistol-whipped,” Musk said. “There was a lot of schadenfreude at the time, and it was bad on so many levels. Justine was torturing me in the press. ... It hurt really bad. You have these huge doubts that your life is not working, your car is not working, you’re going through a divorce and all of those things. I felt like a pile of s---. I didn’t think we would overcome it. I thought things were probably f---ing doomed.”When Musk looked at the numbers, it looked like only one company would survive. “I could either pick SpaceX or Tesla or split the money I had left between them,” Musk said. “That was a tough decision. If I split the money, maybe both of them would die. If I gave the money to just one company, the probability of it surviving was greater, but then it would mean certain death for the other company. I debated that over and over.” In the meantime, the economy was worsening, and spacecraft and sports cars seemed out of place in a time of near-record unemployment.The brightest light in Musk’s life at the time was Talulah Riley, a 22-year-old British actress he had started dating and would later marry. She viewed Musk’s life as Shakespearean tragedy. Sometimes Musk would open up to her, and other times he retreated into himself. Riley spied on Musk while he read e-mail and watched him grimace as bad news poured in. “You’d witness him having these conversations in his head,” she said. “It’s really hard to watch someone you love struggle like that.” Because of the long hours that he worked and his eating habits, bags formed under his eyes. “He looked like death itself,” Riley said. “I remember thinking this guy would have a heart attack and die. He seemed like a man on the brink.”Burning through about $4 million a month, Tesla needed to close another major round of funding to get through 2008 and stay alive. Musk had to lean on friends just to make payroll from week to week as he negotiated with investors. He sent impassioned pleas to anyone he could think of who might be able to spare some money. Bill Lee, a wealthy friend, invested $2 million in Tesla, and Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, invested $500,000. Kimbal had lost most of his money during the recession but sold what investments he had left and put it into Tesla as well. The company had set the prepayments that customers made for the Roadsters aside, but Musk now needed to use that money to keep the company going. Soon those funds were gone, too. These maneuvers worried Kimbal. “I’m sure Elon would have found a way to make things right, but he definitely took risks,” he said.In December 2008, Musk heard a rumor that NASA was on the verge of awarding a contract to resupply the space station. SpaceX’s fourth launch had put it in a position to receive some of this money, which was said to be in excess of $1 billion. Musk reached out through back channels in Washington and found out that SpaceX might even be a front-runner for the deal.As for Tesla, Musk made a last-ditch effort to raise all the personal funds he could. He took out a loan from SpaceX, which NASA approved—Musk did not want to mess up his chance for a contract—and earmarked the money for Tesla. He went to the secondary markets to try to sell some of his shares inSolarCity, a solar panel installer where he served as chairman. He lucked into about $15 million that came through when Dell acquired a data center software startup called Everdream, founded by Musk’s cousins, in which he had invested.Musk finally put together about $20 million and asked Tesla’s existing investors—since no new investors materialized—to match that figure. The investors agreed, and on Dec. 3, 2008, they were in the process of finalizing the paperwork for the funding round when Musk noticed a problem. VantagePoint Capital Partners had signed all of the paperwork except for one crucial page. Musk phoned Alan Salzman, VantagePoint’s co-founder and managing partner, to ask about the situation. Salzman told Musk that the firm had a problem with the investment round because it undervalued Tesla.Salzman asked Musk to come in the following week at 7 a.m. to present to VantagePoint’s top brass and explain the deal. Not having a week of time to work with, Musk demanded to come in the next day, and Salzman refused, forcing Musk to continue taking on loans. “The only reason he wanted the meeting at his office was for me to come on bended knee begging for money so he could say, ‘No,’ ” Musk theorized. “What a f---head.”VantagePoint declined to speak about this period, but Musk believed that Salzman’s tactics were part of a mission to bankrupt Tesla. Musk feared that VantagePoint would oust him as CEO, recapitalize Tesla, and emerge as the major owner of the carmaker. It could then sell Tesla to a Detroit automaker or focus on selling electric drivetrains and battery packs instead of making cars.In response, Musk took another huge risk. Tesla recharacterized the funding as a debt round, knowing that VantagePoint could not interfere with a debt deal. The tricky part of this strategy was that venture capital investors, such as Draper Fisher Jurvetson, are not structured to do debt deals. Persuading their backers to alter their rules of engagement for a company that could very well go bankrupt in a matter of days would be tough. So Musk bluffed. He told the investors that he would take another loan from SpaceX and fund the entire round—all $40 million—himself. The tactic worked: The investors handed over $20 million. “When you have scarcity, it naturally reinforces greed and leads to more interest,” Steve Jurvetson said. “It was also easier for us to go back to our firms and say, ‘Here is the deal. Go or no go?’ ”In the meantime, at SpaceX, Musk and top executives had spent most of December in a state of fear, but on Dec. 23, 2008, SpaceX received a wonderful shock. The company won a $1.6 billion contract for 12 NASA resupply flights to the space station. Then the Tesla deal ended up closing successfully, on Christmas Eve, hours before Tesla would have gone bankrupt. Musk had just a few hundred thousand dollars left and could not have made payroll the next day.Staying with Kimbal in Boulder, Colo., for the holidays, Musk broke down in tears as the SpaceX and Tesla transactions processed. “I hadn’t had an opportunity to buy a Christmas present for Talulah or anything,” he said. “I went running down the f---ing street in Boulder, and the only place that was open sold these s----- trinkets, and they were about to close. The best thing I could find were these plastic monkeys with coconuts—those ‘see no evil, hear no evil’ monkeys.”Antonio Gracias, a Tesla and SpaceX investor and one of Musk’s closest friends, had watched all of this transpire; 2008 told him everything he would ever need to know about Musk’s character. “He has the ability to work harder and endure more stress than anyone I’ve ever met,” Gracias said. “What he went through in 2008 would have broken anyone else. Most people who are under that sort of pressure fray. Their decisions go bad. Elon gets hyperrational. He’s still able to make very clear, long-term decisions. The harder it gets, the better he gets.”Source: Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future (book)