2KVYOT3.L0VE
Tukayote Helianthus v2
Walking away from suffering.Walking towards love.With intention.
49206C6F766520796F752E
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I’ve been performing again, not for other people this time, but for myself. Selfies, smiles, hand hearts, all real, all covering a grief I haven’t let myself feel. The mask is off.
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A 3,908.7 mile, thirteen day road trip through ten state crossings, two national parks, and one Ministry of Statistical Information Department worth of nerdy data. Also: astrophotography four years in the making, a photo recaptured after twenty two years, and the moment I chose to turn the car around 12 days earlier than originally intended.
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A month ago I found out I am autistic, and every pattern I spent this year naming suddenly had a different shape underneath it. I didn’t have language for any of it when I recorded this piece, so I let my body move through it instead. Kai Wachi said what I couldn’t, and I danced the grief because my mouth hadn’t caught up yet.
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There is no substance left standing between me and whatever I feel now. No drink, no chemical, nothing to soften the edges or buy me a night off. So when this song ripped open the way it does, quiet grief giving way to an explosive drop, I let my body do what it had to do. Weeks of stacked, unfinished grief moved out of my nervous system the only way it could. Not through numbing. Through movement.
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June 2026 was a month of exploration and wonder. Learning about being autistic while exploring dating with 3 different women. 176 days completely sober from drugs and alcohol. 161.4 miles walked on two feet that kept my nervous system regulated. I road tripped through 5 states and slept in 4 of them. I went no-contact with several people I used to be close to.
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A year ago I walked off a 25 year IT career with no plan and no safety net. Since then I have lost nearly everything, including an identity, and people who had been part of my life for years, and found chemical and emotional sobriety, a personal operating system that actually works for how my brain runs, and the truth that I have been autistic and masking my entire life without knowing it. This is the full road from that exit, including the boundary that got tested within days of finally setting it, and the new connection I’m building without…
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May 2026 was a month of feeling everything, protecting everything, and losing nothing that actually mattered. 146 days completely sober. 71 days emotionally clean. 210.3 miles walked. Got hit by a mail truck and walked away. Felt the grief. Honored the nervous system. Held the boundaries. Said goodbye to what wasn’t safe. Said hello to a bison Brotherhood, Lummi elders, new friendships, and a pier I danced off as a free man. This is what healing looks like when it’s actually working.
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