What the Fire Didn’t Take
I have written a lot about what I burned down.
The codependency. The enmeshment. The nested partnerships I kept agreeing to out of fear, not love. The version of myself that gave everything away to secure the attachment and then sat in the rubble wondering why he felt so empty. I have written about the drinking, the weed, the kratom, the chaos I kept choosing because stillness felt more dangerous than the fire. I have written about the relationships I stayed in too long, the housing situations I created for people who wouldn’t have done the same for me, the pattern of showing up fully for people who were quietly using me for parts.
I burned all of that down. Intentionally. Methodically. With my own hands and a clear conscience.
But here is the thing nobody really asks about.
What survived?
The Transformation Story Nobody Tells You
There is a version of this transformation story where I come out the other side as someone completely new. Reconstructed from scratch. Unrecognizable in every single way.
That is not what happened.
What actually happened is that I went looking for what was genuinely mine. The parts of me that were real and original and not just adaptations I made to survive other people’s needs. And I held onto them. Fiercely. Because it turns out a lot of what I thought was broken about me was never broken. It was buried. Under decades of other people’s expectations, my own unprocessed fear, and a lot of substances that kept me from having to feel any of it.
The fire was not indiscriminate. I was.
I kept things. Good things. Things that were always mine. And I want to talk about those, because recovery writing tends to fixate on the destruction, and that is only half the story. The other half is what you discover when you stop running from yourself long enough to find out who you actually are underneath all of it.
I am unrecognizable now. But not because I became someone new. Because I finally became someone real.
Here Is What the Fire Actually Took.
Good Fucking Riddance.
Before I tell you what survived, let me be precise about what didn’t.
The avoidance was not mine. It was a survival strategy I built as a kid and never dismantled.
The poor communication was not mine. It was fear of conflict pretending to be peace.
The performative personas were not mine. They were armor I built so nobody could see me well enough to hurt me.
The lack of boundaries was not mine. It was people-pleasing wearing the mask of generosity.
The anxious attachment was not mine. It was a nervous system that learned early that love was conditional and unpredictable and had been white-knuckling every connection since.
The insecurities were not mine. They were decades of being told, directly and indirectly, that I was not enough.
The fear of abandonment was not mine. It was a wound, not a personality.
The fear of rejection was not mine. Same wound, different angle.
The fear of loss of love was not mine. Also the wound.
The trauma responses were not mine. They were my body doing its best with what it had.
The codependency was not mine. It was the wound’s coping mechanism.
The rescuing was not mine. It was me trying to earn a permanent place in people’s lives because I did not believe I could hold one just by being myself.
The rebound relationships were not mine. They were panic dressed up as chemistry.
The self-hatred was not mine. It was borrowed from every person and system that ever told me I was too much or not enough or both at the same time.
The deep internal shame was not mine. It was installed. By life. By other people. By a culture that does not know what to do with someone like me.
The substance use was not mine either. It was the anesthesia I kept reaching for because I did not know I could survive the pain sober.
I know now. I am surviving it sober. Every single day.
All of those things got burned. Good riddance to every last one of them.
What did not burn was me. The me that was always there underneath the wreckage. The me that is love. I just had to clear enough debris to find him.
I Love People in Ways That Break the Rules.
Here Is What That Actually Looks Like.
I want to talk about how I love people, because it is directly relevant to what I kept, and it is one of the most radical and honest things about who I actually am.
I am a relationship anarchist.
If you read my post on the Irish Goodbye, you already know what that means. If you didn’t, here is the short version: relationship anarchy is a way of building connections without forcing them into predefined boxes. No rigid labels. No hierarchy where romantic love sits at the top and everything else is a consolation prize. No assumption that intimacy requires sex, or that love requires cohabitation, or that closeness means ownership. No timers. No finish lines. No rules about what a connection has to become or how long it has to last to matter.
Relationship anarchy says: meet people where they are. Build something real from there based on unconditional love. Let it be whatever it honestly is.
I have always been wired this way. I tried for years to override it because monogamy felt safer. Because nesting felt like proof that someone was staying. Because I thought if I could just conform to what love was supposed to look like, I could finally stop being terrified of losing it.
That did not work. It never works. And every nested partnership I entered into cost me more than it gave me, because I never actually wanted it. I wanted the security I thought it represented. I kept agreeing to move in with partners not because I wanted to share a home but because I was terrified that if I didn’t, they would leave. Or because they had a housing problem and I could fix it. Both of those are codependency. Neither of them is love.
Here is what happened every single time I nested. Their way of living did not match mine in a way I could tolerate. I secretly suffered with it and built resentment about my own decision to let them in. The first things that died were my spaces, my pace, my stuff where I put it, my quiet, my schedule, and my sense of self. I became a caretaker, not a partner. I was erased slowly and I let it happen because I was more afraid of losing them than I was committed to keeping myself.
I knew every time it was not right for me. I convinced myself I wanted it anyway. I performed the desire for domesticity while quietly disappearing inside it.
I will always live alone. That is not a compromise or a sad fact or something I am settling for. It is a conscious, joyful, deliberate choice. My home is my sanctuary. I walk in the door and there is silence. Nobody else’s noise. My stuff exactly where I put it. My mess if there is one, my choice if there isn’t. I make my bed every time I get out of it because that is what I like and nobody is there to leave it wrecked after I do. If I want to leave my clothes on the floor I can. If my dishes sit for a week that is between me and the dishes. I go to bed when I want. I wake up when I want. I have the lights exactly as dim or as bright as I want them. I eat whatever I want whenever I want. I listen to music at whatever volume I want at whatever hour I want. I share a bathroom with nobody. I have no dog schedules and messes to deal with. No parking logistics to negotiate. No snoring. No other person’s morning routine colliding with mine. I buy way less toilet paper. I can be weird and naked and loud and nobody cares. The whole place hums at my frequency and it has never once felt lonely.
That is what I kept. That is what I fought for and earned and am never giving up again.
The person who used to agree to nest out of fear, who used to disappear into other people’s schedules and silence and snoring and chaos and call it love, is unrecognizable to me now. Good.
So here is what love actually looks like inside my relationship anarchy right now.
I have a platonic love who used to be my bartender. She is 24. We go on dates about once a month. We share no physical contact. We are emotionally vulnerable with each other in ways most people never get with anyone. We love each other. We are both walking the sobriety road right now, which is its own kind of bond. She is one of the most remarkable people I have ever met and our friendship defies every stupid category society tries to put relationships in.
I have another platonic love who has appeared in several posts on this blog. We are, without any pretense or hedging about it, in love with each other. We have talked openly about romance and intimacy. We have looked at it directly, named it, and made a shared and deliberate choice: we are building a foundation first. Not jumping up into something before the ground beneath us is solid. We co-regulate with physical touch. Cuddles. Holding hands. Holding each other. We are deeply emotionally intimate. That is what it is, exactly as it is, and it does not need a label to be real.
I have a platonic love with whom I have done thousands of fine art nude photographs. I know every square inch of her anatomy. I want to be clear about this because I know how it sounds: we are just really good friends. There is no sexual involvement or attraction at any point. What there is is deep trust, deep knowledge of each other’s lives, and a creative collaboration that has produced some of the most honest photography I have ever made. We love each other. Good hugs. We know the interior details of each other’s lives and we show up for each other.
I have a platonic love who has been in my life for several years. We share similar mental health challenges. We have been through crises together that would make your hair stand up straight. We don’t shame eachother about these embarrassing and awkward moments, we build eachother up by showing with eachother how much each of us has grown and changed. We hang out frequently. We love each other. We know each other’s interior lives in a way most people never get to know another person.
And then there is the angel who called herself Cherish. I have written about her before. We had one hour together on the pier at sunset. One hour of deeply intimate, completely platonic physical connection. I didn’t seek it. Neither did she. It was real. It mattered. It counts. Relationship anarchy does not put timers or finish lines on connections. Some of the most significant moments of my life have lasted an hour. Some have lasted years. The duration is not the measure.
I also have a wider constellation of friendships. People I genuinely like spending time with. Not all of them are emotionally intimate yet. Some might get there. None of us are in a hurry. We meet each other where we are.
Open to everything. Forcing nothing. Labeling nothing that does not want to be labeled. Friends with benefits or without. Cuddle partners. Platonic date partners. Romantic partners. Hugs on the pier. Whatever shows up and is honest and mutual and good.
This is what I kept. This capacity to love broadly and without conditions and without needing it to look a specific way. This is mine. It was always mine. I just buried it under fear for twenty-something years and called the burial responsible.
This is what unrecognizable actually looks like. Not a new person. The same person, finally free.
I Burned It Down and Took It Back.
Every Glorious Piece of It.
Some of what I kept had to find its way back to me.
Hiking found me in 2020 after a marriage ended. It started as a solo thing and it was everything. In two months that first summer I bagged ten peaks. Ten. I was out there alone with a pack and a purpose and I felt more like myself on those summits than I had in years.
Then I made a mistake I have made in almost every area of my life. I opened it up to everyone. I started inviting people. And slowly, steadily, I started hating something I had loved.
I could not hike at my pace. I had to take breaks I did not want. I regularly did not make the destination because someone else tired out before we got there. Dogs appeared and brought their own entire category of complications. The strenuous peak bagging I had fallen in love with became impossible. In the five years after those first two months, I bagged exactly one peak.
One. In five years.
Miss Dragonhawk was for show. For hauling people around. For performing the version of me that included everyone and went everywhere and never said no. My Subie is just for me. It is almost always empty except for me and I love it that way. There is something profoundly clarifying about a vehicle that has never had to compromise its destination.
I still hike with people sometimes. Easy stuff. Local trails. That is fine. But the big backcountry monsters, the 5000-plus foot gain days, the remote routes where your Garmin InReach is the only thing that knows where you are? Mine. Just mine. Nobody’s pace but mine. Nobody’s comfort level but mine. Nobody’s dog shit bags smelling up the trail.
The guy who bagged one peak in five years because he kept handing his favorite thing to people who couldn’t hold it? Unrecognizable to me now.
Photography has nearly died in every relationship I have been in.
People love my work. They want to come watch. They want to learn. They want to see me in action. And then they start directing. Telling me what to take pictures of. Asking me to explain aperture and depth of field and converging lines and negative space and ISO while I am standing in the middle of a scene that is actively unfolding around me. And it bleeds the life right out of something I love completely.
I am at my absolute creative best alone. When I am at the pier with my Ricoh and there are people all around me who have no idea what I am doing, that is exactly what I want. Leave me the fuck alone. Let me notice the shadow in the lower left corner. Let me flip the camera upside down and take eight shots to get the one I came for.
I do go out with a couple of photographer friends sometimes. That is different because we are not teaching each other. We are hanging out. Each of us doing our own thing. Sharing ideas and building each other up. That works because nobody is trying to direct anyone else’s eye.
The fine art nude work I mentioned is its own category. That collaboration has never felt like an intrusion because it was built on deep mutual trust from the start. But outside of that, I am solo. Completely. And I am not apologizing for it.
Photography is one of the clearest ways I know I am love now. Because love includes this: protecting the things that make you alive. Not handing them over to whoever asks.
Dancing is something I have been doing on my own since I was single years ago. I do not want an audience. I do not want to perform it for a partner. I want to move because a song hit something in my chest and my body needs to respond to it, and I want to do that privately. Sometimes I record it and share it on here. Every song I dance to is an expression of something happening inside me. Not random. These are my favorite songs because they resonate with something real. When I share a dance on this blog it is not content. It is documentation.
Big raves still call to me. Thousands of people in a dark room with a sound system that you feel in your sternum. I love that environment sober in a way I never appreciated when I was drunk and high and only half present for it. Now I can show up when I want, find my spot in the crowd, dance exactly as hard and as long as I want, take a break when I want, and leave when I want. When I go with people, none of that is possible. My pace. My agenda. My night.
I am done with smaller alcohol and drug soaked shows. You already know why if you read what I wrote about the Wild Buffalo. Today, I cancelled ten future shows I bought tickets for. And I could fucking care less about ever walking into that place again.
The version of me who stood in a crowded bar half-remembering the night and calling it a good time? Unrecognizable. I am attending 10,000 person raves now, fully present, feeling everything, remembering all of it. That is not a small thing.
Road trips have been mine my whole life. Every significant one I have taken has been solo. A 15,000 mile trip through 43 states in 2022. 5,000 miles in 2024. Nearly 3,000 miles in two trips since I became single again in November. All of them magical. All of them memorable. None of them compromised by someone else’s timeline or bathroom schedule or food preferences or tolerance for how many consecutive hours of driving I consider a good day.
Earlier this year I drove 768 miles in 15.5 hours. Eureka, California to Bellingham, Washington. Straight through. Fuel stops and food and nothing else. My music at whatever volume I wanted. My temperature. My thoughts at whatever depth I wanted. My ass was sore by the time I crossed the border into Washington and I was the only one I had to hear complain about it.
That is freedom. Not the Instagram version of freedom where you post a sunset from a scenic overlook. The actual version. Where you are exactly where you want to be, going exactly as fast as you want to go, and the only person you are accountable to for any of it is yourself.
I am love enough now to give myself that without guilt. That used to be impossible.
Long distance walking only exists in my life when I am single. That is not a coincidence. That is data.
When I was in relationships I did not want to walk alone and felt guilty leaving partners at home, so I stopped doing it. That is codependency in one of its quieter, more insidious forms. I went from 40 to 50 miles a week down to 10 or 15. From over 2,000 miles a year to fewer than 500. I settled for one-mile walks and told myself that was fine.
This year I have already logged 530 miles. In under three months. And that includes almost a full month where an injury forced me to barely walk at all. I am on pace for over 2,000 miles this year. Four-plus miles per hour through Bellingham streets and waterfront paths and wherever else my feet decide to go. Nobody is waiting for me at home. Nobody needs me to be back by a certain time. Nobody is disappointed that I chose the long way.
Nobody and nothing is taking my long distance walking away from me again.
530 miles in under three months. A man who used to settle for 10 miles a week because he was too codependent to walk alone. Unrecognizable.
Fatherhood I reclaimed about a year ago and I handle it differently now than I ever have. Before the estrangement I took access for granted, the way you take anything for granted when you think it is permanent. I know now that it is not. That nothing is.
So when I have the opportunity to see my daughters, even if it is five minutes, even if it is just a hug in a parking lot, I take it. Every single time. Without hesitation. I contact them every day. Every day. I never know if the next time is the last time and I refuse to live as though it isn’t possible. That is not being dramatic. That is being honest about reality in a way the old version of me was never willing to be.
I get to be the father they never had. I am grateful for that every single morning. That is what it means to be love. Not a feeling. A practice. A daily decision to show the hell up.
Everything That Is Brand Fucking New
Here is something transformation writing almost never talks about: sometimes the fire does not just clear the ground. Sometimes it makes room for things that were never there before. This is where unrecognizable gets interesting. Not just what came back. What arrived for the first time.
I have friends now. My own friends. Not friends I inherited from a partnership or shared with a partner or had to renegotiate custody of after a breakup. People who showed up in my life because of who I am right now, not who I used to be. That is new. It turns out that when you stop performing and start actually being yourself, the people who show up are ones who actually like you.
I go to comedy shows. Almost always solo. I love all of it, dark and dumb and raunchy and offensive and everything in between. I respect the art form deeply. There is something about a person standing alone on a stage saying exactly what they think with no filter and no apology that I find genuinely inspiring. I am actually studying it. Observing structure and timing and the specific mechanics of what makes something land. I can see myself doing it at some point. Not as a fantasy. As a direction.
I am going back to improv. Not the curriculum-heavy structured version I did before. A different venue, different style, different people entirely. Just play. Celebrating wins and failures equally. No shame. Pure acceptance. That environment is new to me in the way that feels like it was always supposed to exist.
I play trivia now. I never win. I don’t care. I accumulate random useless knowledge that I will probably never deploy in any practical way and I love it. A few weeks ago I got invited to sit with a table of 24-year-old guys I had never met before. I listened to how the world looks through their eyes. It was genuinely eye-opening. Different frameworks. Different fears. Different everything. That kind of diversity matters to me, especially in peer support work. Nobody thinks the same way. Nobody’s experience is the same. Trivia reminds me of that every week.
I blog differently now. I used to filter everything through a lens of “how does this help the reader.” Always ending on some kind of reach-out-if-you-need-support note. Performing helpfulness. Look at me, look at how much I am contributing. That version of blogging was just another performance, just another way of earning my place by being useful to everyone except myself. Now this is just my story. A book in progress, written in public, for no one’s benefit but my own and maybe the person out there who needs to hear that someone else is in the same trenches they are. If it helps people, great. If it sends them running, also great. I am not adjusting the story for anyone.
I leave stone mosaics on beaches. Large ones, sometimes. I build them from whatever materials the shoreline gives me and then the tide comes in and destroys them in a few hours. Sometimes people find them first and repair them. Some have lasted weeks somehow. But I build them knowing they are going to disappear, and that is the entire point. It is one of the most mindful things I do. My whole brain gets quiet. I am completely present. No past, no future, just the stone in my hand and the next stone and what the whole thing might become. I walk away and leave it for whoever finds it. No signature. No record. Just something I made that brought joy to a beach for a little while.
I read books now. I read maybe five in the last twenty years. In the last four months, about ten. Currently in the middle of five more. Something opened up in early sobriety that made it possible to sit still long enough to actually follow a page. I am making up for lost time.
I do not read the news. City, national, any of it. I have made peace with being the person at the table who did not know about whatever happened. Sometimes I catch wind of things through other people and it is slightly jarring to realize the world keeps generating crises while I am busy building stone mosaics and logging miles and making my bed every morning. But here is the honest truth: nothing going on out there has stopped me from enjoying my life. And until it does, blissful ignorance is a form of mental health protection, not a character flaw.
I do real internal work now. Not just one hour a week in a therapy room. It is my ongoing emotional language. I ask myself questions before I make decisions. I check in with my body. I notice what my nervous system is doing and I ask it whether we are actually in danger or just remembering one. When I master something I cement it by teaching it to others. That is new. That is completely new. The old version of me would have hoarded the insight or performed it for an audience. This version shares it because sharing it makes it more real.
This is what it looks like to be love in practice. Not the performance of it. The actual living of it. I am unrecognizable to the man who used to white-knuckle his way through a day and call it fine.
The Night a Suspicious State Trooper Accidentally Confirmed Everything
A few months ago I got pulled over. Accused of speeding. The case was dismissed in court but that night, pulled over on the shoulder of I-5 with a state trooper shining a flashlight in my window, he asked me the question he probably asks every driver he pulls over at that hour.
“How much have you been drinking tonight?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I’m sober.”
He looked at me the way people look when they are not sure whether to believe something, and in an accusatory tone said, “Really? Then what’s your sobriety date?”
“January 13th, 2024.”
Not a second of hesitation. Because I know that date the way I know my name.
He had a shocked look on his face and didn’t say another word about it. He turned and walked away to his rig, returning a few moments later with a ticket and a “have a nice night” and went on about his business.
Here is what complete sobriety is as a new thing in my life: I have never once, since that date, had to think about whether I am okay to drive. I do not have to calculate hours or drinks or food consumed. There is not a molecule of alcohol in my body. There is nothing to sober up from. I get in my car and I drive. That is it. That is the whole thing. I go to raves and I feel everything and I remember all of it. I drive 768 miles in a day and I am tired in an honest way, not a chemically blurred way. I stand on a beach building something that will be destroyed by the tide and I am completely present for all of it.
Sobriety is the thread running through everything on this list. The hiking at my own pace. The photography where I can actually see the frame. The dancing that lives inside my body instead of somewhere outside it. The conversations where I am fully there. The daughters I am showing up for every single day. The internal work that requires me to actually be awake inside my own life.
All of it is better. All of it is more. All of it is mine in a way it never fully was before.
The man who used to calculate whether he was sober enough to drive, who used to wake up in a blur and piece the night back together, who used to numb everything that hurt and then wonder why nothing felt real? He is gone. I am love now. And love does not need a chemical buffer between itself and its own life.
The Fire Was Precise.
And So Am I.
The destruction gets all the attention because destruction is dramatic. But what I have found is that the fire was actually clarifying. It took the things that were never really mine. It cleared the ground. And what grew back, or came back, or appeared for the first time in the cleared space, was the real stuff.
The capacity to love broadly and without conditions.
The body that needs to move through landscapes and dance floors and city streets at its own pace.
The eye that sees the frame nobody else in the crowd is looking for.
The daughters I show up for every single day no matter what.
The home that hums at my frequency.
The stone mosaics that belong to the tide.
The 530 miles I have already walked this year and the 2,000 I am going to walk before it’s over.
The sobriety date I said without a second of hesitation to a state trooper on the shoulder of a dark road.
None of that burned. None of that was ever going to burn. It was always there. Waiting for me to stop drowning it out long enough to find it.
I found it.
I am keeping it.
And when that state trooper looked at me on the side of a dark road and I said my sobriety date without a second of hesitation, what he was actually looking at was someone who had walked through the fire and come out the other side holding everything that mattered. Not rebuilt. Recovered. Not brand new. Finally real.
I am Tukayote.
I am unrecognizable.
I am love.
