2KVYOT3.L0VE
Tukayote Helianthus v2
Walking away from suffering.Walking towards love.With intention.
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Awareness isn’t a step on the road to change. It is the entire 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 they’re getting. This one is about what actually happened instead – the unapologetically 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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People have been continuing to label and stigmatize me. For months. A lot of people. A lot of labels. And it hurts. They all seem to have a name for what I am doing in my life now. They are all wrong. Isolating. Bipolar episode. Avoidant. Lonely. Shutting down. Concerning. Worrying. Arrogant. Self-centered. Narcissist. The unsolicited diagnoses, labels, and opinions have been flying in from every direction, from people who love me, from people who don’t love me, from people who knew the old version of me well enough to notice that this version doesn’t look the same and decided…
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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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Every city has a haunted house. Mine is all of downtown Bellingham. The bars, the alleys, the breakfast tables, the blocked contacts, the empty chairs. I changed my name, got sober, lost almost everyone I knew, and I still have to walk through all of it. Here’s what it looks like when your whole former life becomes a ghost, and you realize you’re the one who got away.
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