The Revolution Starts in My Nervous System
I woke up anxious as hell today.
Not catastrophic. Not spiraling. Just that low electric hum in my chest like my nervous system had been running simulations all night. Old ghosts. Old arguments. Old versions of me trying to explain themselves.
Another weird fucking dream that I started my day waking up with.
Three months ago that kind of morning would have hijacked the entire fucking day.
Today it didn’t.
I got up anyway.
Went about my business.
Never Again Will I Sell Out
I’ve been listening to “Converting Vegetarians” by Infected Mushroom since my line-cook-buddy Joe introduced it to me one night after a dinner rush at Skylarks Cafe in Fairhaven. The track feels like a manifesto disguised as psytrance.
This is the time of the revolution.
Keeping it in the right track.
Never again will I sell out.
That line hit me like a brick to the chest.
Never again will I sell out.
Not to chaos.
Not to codependency.
Not to rescuing.
Not to performing.
Not to avoiding.
Not to numbing.
Not to fear.
Not to someone else’s dysfunction.
Not to my any of my old fucking patterns.
Three months ago my life detonated. Identity death. Relationship collapse. Nervous system meltdown. The kind of internal earthquake that strips you down to the studs and says, “Okay. Who the hell are you without this?”
Then follows it with, “Good luck buddy, you are going to need all of it, starting right this second!”
I barely recognize that version of me now. It is mind blowing to look at myself in the mirror today.
Thank God.
Exposure Without the Drama
Today was a test I wasn’t anticipating or prepared for.
I moved through spaces that used to spike me. I did exposure therapy without theatrics. I saw something tonight that, a month ago, would have detonated my entire nervous system.
My body registered it.
And then… nothing.
No panic.
No running to my apartment frantically.
No fleeing on a road trip.
No meltdown in my kitchen.
No spiraling.
No compulsive bullshit.
I just kept walking.
A month ago I would have made meaning out of thin air. I would have turned coincidence into prophecy. I would have fed the loop until I was shaking, hopeless, disassociating, and eventually completely destabilized.
Tonight I walked past a BIG trigger like it was just another object in the world. Because it was.
That’s not luck. That’s work.
That’s rewiring.
That’s growth under pressure.
Thirty-Seven Days Sober in the Hardest Season of My Life
Keeping it in the right track.
Feeling it in my mind back.
That’s sobriety right now.
Thirty-seven days off everything. The longest I have ever been sober as an adult. In the hardest fucking season of my life. No anesthesia. No emotional shortcuts. No romantic fantasy to hide inside. No substances to blur the edges. Nothing to take away the pain or make it even a little more tolerable.
Just clarity.
Just choice.
Just waking up every morning and deciding I’m not torching my future for a temporary hit of relief.
I am staying sober when my nervous system would love a shortcut.
That’s revolution.
Boundaries Without Performance
There was another quiet shift today.
I explored boundaries with someone new. No overpromising. No rescuing. No intimacy. No sliding into old roles. Just clear communication about what we both want and what we don’t.
Safe connection. No drama. No emotional entanglement disguised as chemistry.
Old me would have either overattached or armored up.
This version of me just… stayed present.
No performance.
No selling myself.
No contorting to be chosen.
That’s a different fucking man.
Identity Death and the Return of My Dance
Three months ago I felt like I died.
Not physically. Ego death. Performer death. The part of me that shaped himself around other people’s emotional weather collapsed.
And in the rubble, I found something I’d buried.
My dance part.
When the nervous system hums, I dance.
No numbing. No running. Just becoming.
The feral, rhythmic, embodied, unfiltered part of me that doesn’t negotiate for approval. The part that moves because it feels right. The part that doesn’t explain itself.
I wake up! And my mind’s out.
Never again will I sell out.
When I filmed this video today, something locked in.
I wasn’t dancing to prove I’m okay.
I wasn’t dancing to distract myself.
I wasn’t dancing to signal anything.
I was dancing because I’m alive.
It just feels right.
The Revolution Is Internal
The revolution isn’t loud.
It’s quiet as hell.
It’s walking past the thing that used to own you and not flinching.
It’s feeling anxious in the morning and still showing up.
It’s staying sober when you have every excuse not to.
It’s letting people make their own choices without trying to control the outcome.
It’s loving from a distance without self-betrayal.
It’s reclaiming parts of yourself you hid to survive.
Cooking the next step.
This isn’t a comeback arc.
It isn’t revenge.
It isn’t a glow-up for someone else’s attention.
It’s a slow, deliberate reclamation of my fucking self.
I don’t fully recognize myself compared to three months ago.
I’m steadier.
Less reactive.
More embodied.
More sovereign.
The anxiety still visits. The grief still flickers. The loneliness still taps on the glass sometimes.
But it doesn’t run the house anymore.
And it’s happening inside me.
This is the time of the revolution.