2KVYOT3.L0VE
Tukayote Helianthus v2
Walking away from suffering.Walking towards love.With intention.
49206C6F766520796F752E
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Let me tell you a little story about a guy I used to know. Drunk. Psychotic. Angry. Drug fueled. The life of every party and the death of my mental health. In a two-year span of time, he attended 94 shows at the Wild Buffalo House of Music, high on drugs and alcohol every time. And even wilder is that the “Buff” was just one of several venues he frequented. Bartenders knew him by name. So did the drug dealers. So did the police. So did the St. Joe’s ER and psych-ward staff. You could call him a “frequent-flyer” with…
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3.5 years. Two hospitalizations. One note that said “Get help” on an empty bedroom door. This is the story of my estrangement from my daughters, what I had to burn down to become someone worth coming back to, and how I found my way back to them. This is not a highlight reel. This is the whole ugly house.
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Three days of real peace. Then Thursday happened and my nervous system decided to manufacture a full-blown crisis out of thin air. This is what it looks like when your rational mind is miles ahead and your body is still running trauma drills. The view from up here is worth everything it cost.
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I spent months grieving what I lost. Then one Tuesday the grief shifted into something I didn’t have a word for yet: bewilderment, and a deep, almost embarrassing “what was I tolerating?” I had been pouring everything into people, whether or not it ever came back, and calling it love when it was really fear. When I walked away from enough of it, the noise stopped. And in the quiet, I found him. For the first time in 42 years, I said out loud that I was proud of myself. I started crying before I finished the sentence.
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There’s a moment in recovery where you stop making excuses for what you’re seeing. I stopped explaining it away, gave it nothing, and kept living my life out loud. Then I found the light at the end of the tunnel, and it was me.
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February was raw, demanding, and deeply transformative. I faced everything I used to numb, made real amends, held boundaries, and did not repeat a single toxic pattern. At 53 days sober off everything, I am clear, grounded, and learning how to live inside a nervous system I shut down for most of my adult life. The loneliness is intentional, peaceful, and earned. Staying changed everything.
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I woke up crying with grief and confusion I still hadn’t fully untangled. I had believed in something completely and poured everything into it, and then it ended in a way that took months to make sense of. Dancing to Over My Head at high tide became the only honest response. No resolution, no easy answers. Just grief, honesty, and the choice to keep moving forward.
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