“I was the life of every party, and the death of every relationship.”
This is My Recovery.
No Anesthesia.
No Bullshit.
All love.
🥰
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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. But here is the thing nobody really asks about: what survived? This is the inventory I never saw anyone else do. What the fire actually took. What it didn’t. What came back better than before. What showed up brand new. And what a state trooper on the side of a dark road at 11pm accidentally confirmed about all of it.
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Awareness isn’t a step on the road to change. It is the entire goddamn road. Without it, you’re not on the road at all. You’re just in a field somewhere doing donuts in the dark. From peer support work to IFS parts work to a stormy Tuesday in Bellingham where I’m still processing a decision that cost me sixteen days of hard-won peace, this post is about the one thing that changes everything, and the one thing nobody can hand you. You have to earn the silence first. And then you have to let the silence show you the truth.
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I spent three hours at the pier today. Pacing. Measuring. Flipping my camera completely upside down and taking eight shots to get one frame right. Deleting half of what I made and starting over without drama. And somewhere on that gravel beach with the tide out and the clouds doing their whole Pacific Northwest thing, I realized I was watching myself do exactly what I’ve been writing about for months. Same camera. Same pier. Completely different photographer. This is what it looks like when you stop shooting from the hip and actually do the work.
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I took the Ricoh GR IIIx down to the Little Squalicum waterfront and spent a midday with the BNSF trestle, the tidal flats, and my favorite pier. Multiple exposure, 40mm, and the particular kind of thinking that only happens when you’re far enough out over the water that the shore stops mattering.
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I need to tell you something about what healing actually looks like. Not the version people post about. Not the aesthetic. The real thing. The quiet, unglamorous, nobody-is-watching, random-Tuesday version of it. My last post was a big unnecessary explanation I should have never written. It’s the last one you’re getting. This one is about what actually happened instead – the clean conscience, the cockroach energy, the freedom, and the completely unrecognizable human being who woke up one day and couldn’t believe his own life.
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I thought I was done beating this dead horse and here we are again. This is today’s brand-new fun-filled episode of Tukayote Helianthus Explains Dumbass Shit, at a Kindergarten Level, to Grown-Ass Adults Who Should Know Better. Welcome, and have a seat. Or run away being defensive. I don’t really care at this point. You see, people have been labeling me. For months. A lot of people. A lot of labels. Everyone has a name for what I am doing in my life now. Everyone is wrong. “Opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one, and they all stink.”
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I went downtown last night. On a Saturday and stayed out until 1am with a platonic love. Not a drop of alcohol. Not a hit of anything. 26 months sober from alcohol. 67 days clean from cannabis and everything else. I woke up this morning with a clear head, a healthy body, zero hangxiety, and absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about. This is what unfiltered looks like. This is what “I am love” looks like in practice.
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