Sending love from Railroad Avenue

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So, I went downtown last night…

On a Saturday, and stayed out until after 1am. 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.

I sat up. Put my feet on the floor. Started my day.

That used to be impossible. Or at least it felt that way. For a very, very long time.

Here is what I know now that I didn’t know then. I don’t do this because I have to. I don’t do this because someone made me. I do this because I love myself. I love my mind. I love my body. I love the life I am building and I love who I am becoming inside it. That love is the reason for all of it. The sobriety. The choices. The slow burn. The whole thing.

I am love.

And I am unrecognizable from the person who didn’t know that yet.

Both of those things are the point.

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The Downtown Grid Remembers Everything You Did There

I pulled into downtown around 7:45pm. Ford. playing in the car. The city was just becoming alive, parking lots filling up. I stepped out of my car and the cold air hit me, crisp and sharp, that specific March night chill that means the bars are warming up and the sidewalks are just starting to fill.

I had some mild anxiety on the drive in. That’s honest. Downtown holds things for me and I knew it before I got there. The walk between bars, the cold air with noise spilling out of every open door, the neon signs throwing light across dry pavement, that particular late night city smell that is equal parts food and booze and cold air and something you can’t name. The way it all looks at closing time when the last stragglers are spilling out onto the sidewalk. I know that world. I lived in it for years. And the geography remembers even when you’re trying to move forward.

There’s the bar I used to close down regularly. The street I’ve walked drunk more times than I can count. The spot tied to a specific person I don’t talk to anymore. The place where something bad happened once that I stopped letting myself think about too hard. The whole grid has residue. Every block is a receipt from a version of me I’ve been working very hard to outgrow.

I usually feel them when I go back. The ghosts. The version of me that would’ve been drunk by 9pm. The memories of who I was in those spots, who I was with, what I was chasing, how those nights ended.

And then I saw her walking toward me on the street.

The anxiety disappeared. Just like that. Gone.

The energy between us was easy from the first second. Immediate. Like no time had passed since we last saw each other even though it had. That is what it feels like to be with someone who is actually safe. The ghosts didn’t stand a chance against that. The city was just a city. The night was just a night. And for the first time in a long time I belonged to it instead of being haunted by it.

That’s what loving yourself does eventually. It starves the ghosts out.

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Nobody Could See What Was Actually Happening Inside My Head

Nobody could see it from the outside. I was fun. I was loud. I was the life of the party, or at least I was performing that so convincingly it looked the same from every angle.

But inside my head on every single one of those nights was a completely different situation.

I was doing a constant running inventory of everyone else’s energy. Monitoring the room. Clocking who was having fun, who was getting weird, who needed more drinks, who I needed to manage. I was managing how I was being perceived at all times, making sure I was landing right, making sure I was entertaining enough, making sure nobody was losing interest. I was physically there but mentally narrating from a distance, watching myself perform and making real time adjustments like a one man production crew.

And the whole operation required fuel. Not just alcohol. Not just weed. Not just kratom or shrooms. Energy drinks on top of all of it, because the performance couldn’t sustain itself on its own and neither could I. Before I even left the house I had to make sure I had enough drugs for the evening. Enough of everything. Enough to last. Because running out mid-night wasn’t an option when the whole performance depended on it. I had to track my intoxication all night, staying in that comfortable window, not too fucked up, not getting sober, riding the line like it was a second job. Keep the energy up. Plan the next bar. Buy rounds. Keep the party going. Crack open another energy drink to bridge the gap between where I was and where the night needed me to be.

Perform. Perform. Perform.

That is exhausting. I didn’t know how exhausting it was because I never stopped long enough to feel the weight of it. I thought that was just what a night out felt like. I thought the monitoring and managing and performing was just the texture of fun.

It wasn’t fun. It was labor. And the reason I kept doing it is because I didn’t love myself enough yet to stop. I needed the crowd to validate what I couldn’t give myself. I needed the substances to feel like I deserved to be there. I needed the performance because without it I didn’t know who I was in a room full of people.

A man who loves himself doesn’t need to prop up an entire evening with energy drinks and drugs just to feel okay in his own skin. I know that now. I didn’t know it then.

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The Shot Ski And The Point Of No Return

Let me paint you a picture of what a night used to look like at Sweet As Waffles, because I think it matters for understanding how different last night actually was.

Four of us would walk in around 8 or 9pm on a party night. Usually already a few drinks deep from dinner somewhere else. We would order the tequila shot ski. It is a literal downhill snow ski with four shot glass holders on it. The staff fill the shots with tequila. And then the four of us would simultaneously lift the ski and flip it upside down to pour the shots into our mouths. I am the tall one so I had to squat down to keep the ski level with everyone else.

That shot ski was a declaration. The official start of the party night. The point of no return. Once the tequila went down we were in it, no takebacks, and the performance could officially begin. High energy. Rambunctious. Loud. Big smiles and big laughter and a very exaggerated good time. That tequila was what loosened me up enough to perform more effortlessly. To stop managing my anxiety and start managing the room instead.

The night had a script from that moment forward. Plan the next bar. Track everyone’s intoxication including mine. Keep the energy up. Buy rounds. Keep the party going. Crack open another energy drink to prop up a performance that was already running out of steam.

That was the version of me who didn’t love himself yet. The one who needed tequila to feel loose enough to show up. The one who needed the party to keep going because stopping meant sitting with something he wasn’t ready to sit with.

I am unrecognizable from that guy. And I mean that with my whole chest.

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The City Looks Different When You’re Actually In It

I showed up Saturday night in hiking pants, a performance button up that also happens to look dressy, my Chacos, and a light all weather jacket. Ready for a hike at any moment. Didn’t cross my mind to dress special. Didn’t need to for anyone. I just dressed like myself and walked out the door.

That is new. That is so new.

The old version of me showed up to nights out in something designed to be noticed. LED lights on a crazy hat or shirt. Big bold statements. Something unrecognizably different from everyone else in the room. I showed up to EDM shows alone at The Wild Buffalo and The Happy Place wearing things specifically engineered to make people look at me. Starved for attention. Starved for connection. Performing visibility because I didn’t know how to just exist in a room and trust that was enough.

Last night I wore hiking pants. And it was enough. I was enough.

We improvised the entire evening. Met up, started walking, followed whatever we were drawn to next. No plan. No logistics. No drugs pre-packed in my pocket. No exit strategy. We popped into a music venue, a live band filling the space with sound and a crowd buzzing with that particular energy of people genuinely into what they’re hearing. We stood in it together, took it in, felt it, moved on when we were ready.

The city was different inside all of that.

Cleaner. Sharper. HD where everything used to be slightly smeared. I noticed things on those streets I had genuinely never registered before even though I had walked them dozens of times. The sounds were more layered, more textured, not just a wall of noise I was moving through. Other people around us looked more real, more human, like I was actually seeing them instead of scanning them for whether they needed managing. The cold air was already on my face and I felt it. The physical sensation of being outside in my own body, not numbed or buzzing or bracing for something to go wrong, just alive in the temperature and the hour and the city still going around us.

Time moved differently too. Slower. More mine. Not like I was killing time or white knuckling toward last call. The night just had a shape and we followed it. No planning what bar was next. No checking how much cash I had left. No tracking anyone’s level of fucked up including my own. No performing energy I didn’t have. No energy drinks. No substances I had to pre-pack just to get through it.

We just went where we wanted to go next. That was it. That was the whole plan.

It turns out that is enough. It is more than enough. It is actually everything. And I only get to experience it like this because I love myself enough now to show up to my own life without a chemical buffer between me and it.

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I Used To Walk Home Alone Every Night

I have written on this blog about rebounding. The pattern of reaching for connection in places and people that could never hold the weight of what I was actually looking for. I want to revisit that here because last night was proof in real time that the pattern is actually breaking.

Before I had a long term partner I went to EDM shows alone. The Wild Buffalo. The Happy Place. I wore things designed to be noticed, LED lights, crazy hats, big bold statements, something unrecognizably different from everyone else in the room. I flirted with everyone. Bought drinks for people. Performed being the most magnetic version of myself I could manufacture because I was looking for love. For connection. For someone to see me and choose me and make me feel like I was worth being chosen. Alcohol and drugs gave me something in common with people and dissolved the social anxiety I didn’t have language for yet. They made performing feel effortless. They made me feel like I deserved to take up space in a room full of people who all seemed so much more comfortable in their skin than I was.

I needed the alcohol to feel like I deserved to be there. Let that sink in.

I thought if I was fun enough and visible enough and generous enough the right person would eventually notice. I thought the night was where love lived. I thought the drinking was just the price of admission to the places where connection happened.

I walked home alone every night.

That’s the part I kept not learning. The nights kept ending the same way and I kept showing up the next weekend with the same plan and the same outfit and the same performance and the same desperate invisible hope that this time would be different. Running from something I didn’t have language for yet. Looking for something outside myself I was never going to find at last call.

Here is what I know now. The love I was looking for in every crowded room was mine to give myself first. I couldn’t find it out there because I hadn’t found it in here yet. The substances weren’t loosening me up. They were filling a hole that was always going to be too big for them. The performances weren’t connection. They were a man screaming into a crowd hoping someone would scream back.

Last night I didn’t go looking for anything. I just went out with someone I love. And I came home full.

That is not the person I used to be. That person is gone. I don’t miss him.

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Quietly Saying Goodbye To The Wild Buffalo

Something else happened last night that I am still sitting with this morning.

I realized I am quietly saying goodbye to The Wild Buffalo.

I keep going back there thinking it’s going to be the place I always hoped it would be when I was loaded and chasing connection at EDM shows, you know, 94 times in two years. And every time I go back I find something different than what I’m looking for. A lonely place. Filled with the ghosts of who I used to be. The drunken intoxication of everyone around me. The people no longer in my life. Bad nights with too much residue attached to them. The whole venue has a negative charge for me now and I am finally letting myself name that.

I’m not saying I will never go back for an artist I love. But the grip it used to have on me is gone. I’m not checking the website ten times a week to see who’s playing anymore. When I have tickets to a show I’m not feeling an enthusiastic yes to actually going. It’s more of a take it or leave it. And that is such a strange thing to sit with because that place used to feel like home.

It’s a loss. A quiet one. The kind that doesn’t come with a dramatic ending, just a slow fade and a realization one night that the thing you kept returning to doesn’t actually have what you were looking for and maybe never did.

And here is the thing about that. When you love yourself enough to stop going back to places that drain you, you end up with empty space. Big open spaces once filled with patterns and substances and unhealthy connections and venues that were never going to give you what you actually needed. That empty space can feel uncomfortable. It can feel like loss. It can feel like standing in a room where furniture used to be.

But the empty space is important. It’s where the best things come in.

None of that is a fast process. It is incredibly slow. Fast is often not better. Slow is where the best things emerge. I am okay with the emptiness. I am okay with the aloneness. I am not lonely by any means.

I am just alone. And that is enough.

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A Hug And A Wave Goodbye

From the outside last night looked like a date. I know this because people we bumped into at the music venue were visibly trying to decipher whether we were a thing. You could see them working it out. Two people holding hands, arms around each other, big smiles, completely lit up in each other’s presence. Four months out of a long term relationship. Of course they saw what they saw.

Jokes on them honestly.

My platonic love and I have something those people don’t have a category for. We are completely, ridiculously, almost embarrassingly in love with each other and we are being entirely platonic about it. Intentionally. Consciously. By mutual agreement and ongoing conversation and genuine respect for each other and for what we are building at exactly the pace we have both chosen. We hold hands. We put our arms around each other. We look into each other’s eyes. We have lots of platonic and consensual physical touch and I can enjoy every single second of it for exactly what it is without drugs and alcohol telling me to take it somewhere we haven’t agreed to go.

That is new. That is so new.

The old version of me at the end of that night, at the end of an evening that felt that good with a person who made me feel that seen, would have pulled her in and kissed her. Would have turned the hug into let’s go back to my place. Would have let the alcohol and the drugs and the momentum of the night make the decision because sitting in the feeling and choosing something different required a kind of love for myself I didn’t have yet. The escalation was automatic. The securing of the connection was automatic. I didn’t think about it. I just did it. Every time. And it blew things up. Every time.

We said our goodbyes on Railroad Avenue behind her car, just down from mine. Most of the parking had emptied out by then. It was dark and chilly, that same cold March air still doing its thing. She had a vibrant smile, little glitters from her makeup sparkling, eyes twinkling. All the body language of a person who had genuinely enjoyed herself and was feeling it throughout her entire being.

We hugged close and long. Held each other’s sides. Looked each other in the eyes from about a foot apart. Said some final words of appreciation for the evening. A love you bunches. A can’t wait to hang out later this week. And released each other. One last wave. Big smiles. And walked away.

I could feel everything the night was and I still chose the hug. Not because I was suppressing something. Not because I was white knuckling it. Because it felt genuinely right. Because I love myself enough now to want the real thing more than I want the fast thing. Because enjoying the coregulation of her touch without treating it as foreplay is something I am actually capable of now. Because secure attachment is not a concept I am studying anymore. It is something I am living.

The old me would have kissed her and called it connection. The new me hugged her and knew it was.

That’s what I am love looks like in practice. Not a bumper sticker. A choice made at the end of a really good night when everything in the old playbook said do something else.

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She’s 7 Days Alcohol Free.
I’m 26 Months.
We Were On The Same Page.

My platonic love is 7 days sober from alcohol. I am 26 months sober from alcohol and 67 days free from everything else. On paper that is an enormous distance. In the waffle shop at 1am on a Saturday it didn’t feel like one at all.

She kept naming it throughout the night. That we were hanging out unfiltered. That there was no layer between us and the evening, between us and each other. She said it more than once and every time she did I felt it land a little differently, a little deeper, like she was handing me a mirror I didn’t know I needed.

I already felt it. I knew something was different about how the night felt from inside it. But hearing her name it made it real in a way I couldn’t manufacture on my own. It made me think about how filtered I used to be. Every night out was a performance and I didn’t even know I was performing. I thought that was just what being out felt like. I thought the monitoring and managing and narrating was just the texture of a social evening.

I didn’t know there was another option.

There was no performance between us last night. None. Not a single second of it. I wasn’t managing her energy or mine. I wasn’t tracking anything. I wasn’t hoping she was having fun. I could just tell she was because I was actually paying attention instead of running a parallel track of self monitoring in the background.

She is at day 7. I remember day 7. It’s terrifying and electric in equal measure. Everything is too bright and too real and you are holding something massive with both hands and also feeling things you forgot you could feel. I wanted her to see that the other side of this is real and good. Not in a preachy way. Not in a way that made it a Moment with a capital M. Just by being in it with her. Just by having a night that proved the thing without having to say the thing.

It felt like passing something forward without making a big deal of it. Like sobriety handing both of us something that drinking never could have.

Drinking never did this for me. Not once. Not ever. Because drinking was never about love. It was about escape. And I am done escaping from myself.

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The Only Ghost Worth Nodding At

There was one ghost last night. Just one.

Sweet As Waffles at 1am.

We walked in together, found a table in the back where it was warmer, and I sat down and let myself feel it for a second because it deserved that. I have been in that restaurant so many versions of wrong. The shot ski at 9pm on party nights. The declaration of the performance officially starting. The point of no return. Loud and rambunctious and exaggerated and high and performing a good time for everyone around me including myself.

Last night we ordered a blueberry lemon curd waffle on gluten free batter with oat sprinkles and split it between us. We were the last ones there. The sober ones closed down the waffle shop while the rest of the partiers ran out of steam. I sat with that for a moment and let it be exactly as good as it was.

I gave the ghost a nod. Acknowledged it. Let it exist in the room with me without letting it take the room. That’s new. Genuinely new. There was a time when a place like that would have pulled me under just by existing. Last night it was just a warm spot at the back of a waffle shop staying open late, and the waffle was good, and I was present for every single bite.

That is what loving yourself looks like when you walk back into the places that used to own you. You nod. You sit down. You order the waffle. You stay.

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What Sunday Morning Actually Felt Like

I want to be specific about this because the specificity is the whole point.

No headache. No hangxiety. No lethargy. No brain fog. No icky stomach. No lying there doing the slow horrifying inventory of what I might not remember from the night before. No scrolling through texts to see who I drunk texted. No wondering what stupid shit I did or said or started. No checking my bank account to see the damage from all the drinks I bought myself and everyone else. No embarrassment. No heaviness. No trying to figure out how to recover. No wasted Sunday.

I slept all night without waking up once. Not the fake sleep of someone sedated by alcohol, that unconscious but not actually restful thing where you wake up feeling worse than when you went under. A real sleep. Deep and restorative and full of dreams and a calm awakening. I opened my eyes and the morning was just there. Clear and easy and waiting for me without any dread attached to it.

I sat up. Put my feet on the soft rug next to my bed. Asked Alexa to bring the lamps up to 25%, just enough light to read by without shocking my eyes into the day. Light coming through the blinds from outside. Still on the bed, just upright, feet on the floor, connected to the earth right below me.

And before I stood up, before I went to the bathroom, before I did a single other thing, I did what I do every morning without exception. I opened two books.

The first is The Pivot Year by Brianna Wiest. That book came to me in a way I still think about. A few years ago I found these little cards in a shop with quotes on them. Bought ten of them. Gave most of them away when the timing felt right. Was down to my last one. It says not all storms come to disrupt your life, some come to clear your path. I cannot tell you how many times that has been exactly right.

I went back to that shop at the end of December to get more cards. Walked in, looked left, saw books for sale. I hate reading books. I have stacks of unread books I have never touched. But I felt pulled toward that shelf and I picked up The Pivot Year by Brianna Wiest, flipped to a random page in the middle, and it described my life at that exact moment so precisely it felt like the universe leaning over my shoulder. I did the same thing with the next two books on the shelf. Random page. Profound message. Written for me specifically, apparently. I bought all three.

I read two of them cover to cover. Twice. In the following week. I have been reading books ever since and it still blows my mind because I am a person who does not read books and yet here I am, having read more in the last four months than in the last twenty years.

The Pivot Year is a daily meditation. I haven’t finished it because it is not meant to be finished. It is meant to be lived one day at a time. Every entry is about major life transformation. The unknowns. The path you have to walk without being able to see where it goes. Trusting what is coming even when you can’t see it yet.

The second meditation is about codependency recovery in the book The Language of Letting Go by Melanie Beattie. The patterns. How we lose ourselves in other people. How we choose differently when we finally understand what we have been doing and why.

These are the first words in my brain every morning before my day has any shape. Before I stand up. Before I decide who I am going to be today. They set the framework. They remind me that I love myself enough to keep choosing this. That the day ahead is one of choosing differently, growing, pivoting from the old ways into the new.

Then I stood up. And I had a Sunday. A real one.

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The $20 Sunday That A Hangover Would Have Stolen

I got dressed and drove to La Conner to go to a bookstore.

Just because I wanted to. Just because I could. Just because it sounded good and nothing was stopping me and I had a full tank of gas and a clear head and nowhere I had to be. Because I love myself enough to spend a Sunday doing exactly what I want to do.

La Conner is a quaint little town on a channel fed by Puget Sound, affected by the tides, little boutique shops lining a narrow one way street. It’s not really touristy but kind of is. Not uppity and rich vibes but kind of is. Hard to put a clean label on. It just has its own particular thing going on and it’s genuinely lovely on a Sunday in March.

Ford. was in my headphones the whole time. If you don’t know ford., he sits at the intersection of lo-fi indie, electronic, and hip-hop. Piano driven. Warm. Downtempo. The kind of music that feels like a memory even the first time you hear it. I describe it as very chill piano filled low key house music that fits every mood. Happy. Sad. Peace. Grief. Crying. Uplifting. Everything. Walking around alone with it in my headphones gives a peaceful and beautiful vibe to everything going on around me. Ford. has been the soundtrack of my transformation in more ways than I can count.

The song that means the most to me right now is called The Color of Nothing. Ford. describes it as representing a pivotal point, the blank canvas that comes with turning over a new leaf, where all preconceived ideas are left behind and you can create without boundaries or expectations. He calls it an anchor. I totally agree.

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I spent several hours moving at my own pace through La Conner’s shops. Going into whatever I wanted. Taking all the time I wanted with things that interested me and moving on the instant something didn’t without having to manage anyone else’s boredom or patience. Being alone felt like a gift. Not a punishment. Not a consolation prize. An actual gift I gave myself.

I walked past a brew pub in La Conner. There’s a ghost there from a relationship. I felt it. I kept walking. That’s the whole story and it’s enough of one. The ghosts are losing their grip and that is what happens when you stop needing what they were attached to.

I drove from La Conner to Mount Vernon through flat Skagit County farmland, daffodil fields blazing vivid yellow on both sides of the road. Tulip fields not quite yet, still a little early for those. Just miles of yellow and sky and ford. in my ears and nowhere I had to be.

I walked out the door of every single shop empty handed. Didn’t find a single thing to buy. And here is what I noticed on the drive home. In the past I would have been buying things for whoever was with me the whole time. A reflex. See something they’d like, buy it, watch them light up, feel the warmth of being the person who did that. Generosity as performance. Securing connection through purchases. That is not love. That is a transaction dressed up as love. And I don’t do that anymore because I don’t need to. I already have what I was trying to buy.

Then I went home and took a two hour nap. It was amazing. The whole day cost me $20 in fuel.

Twenty dollars. For hours of bookstores and boutique shops and daffodil fields and ford. in my headphones and a nap that actually restored something in me.

Compare that to what I was spending when I was drinking and smoking cigarettes and using kratom and shrooming and smoking weed. I was spending upwards of $20,000 a year on substances. Twenty thousand dollars. Not a typo. And that is not counting the drinks and drugs I bought for other people, which I did constantly, because buying belonging was one of my moves.

I spent a fraction of that on this entire weekend Friday through Sunday combined.

But the money is almost the least of it.

If I was spending 5 to 6 hours managing a performance on Friday and Saturday nights, and then 8 hours or more recovering from it on Saturday and Sunday, that is 832 hours a year spent in recovery alone. 832 hours of lying in bed with a hangover, feeling like garbage, white knuckling through brain fog, trying to piece myself back together so I could do it all again next weekend. And for every hour of performing there was at least 1.5 hours of recovering from it.

832 hours in one year is 10% of the year. A tenth of my life during my partying years was recovering from partying. A tenth of a finite and completely non-renewable resource that I spent horizontal and miserable paying off a debt I kept voluntarily taking on. If I partied more than twice a week, that number gets even bigger.

What a fucking waste.

If I had been out drinking the night before I would not have driven to Skagit County looking for books. I would have spent Sunday the same way I spent every Sunday back then. Recovering from poisoning my body. Slogging through it. Watching it go by from inside a hangover and telling myself next weekend I’d take it easy. Then doing it again the next weekend, knowing the consequences (also known as habitual alcohol abuse).

Instead I drove through daffodil fields with ford. in my ears, wandered through bookstores at my own pace, came home empty handed and completely satisfied, and slept for two hours because my body wanted rest and not because it was trying to survive something I did to it.

That is what loving your mind and your body looks like on a Sunday in March. It looks like La Conner. It looks like yellow fields and ford. in your headphones. It looks like a nap that actually works. It looks like $20 and a full day and coming home to yourself.

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I Am Unrecognizable.
That Is The Point.

I keep using that word. Unrecognizable.

I use it on purpose. I use it because it’s accurate.

The man who used to squat under a shot ski at 9pm and spend the next several hours managing a performance he needed energy drinks and drugs just to sustain is not a man I recognize in myself anymore. The man who showed up to EDM shows alone in LED lit hats and bold statement shirts, starved for attention and connection, walking home alone every night from a crowd he was desperately trying to belong to, that man is not someone I see when I look in the mirror. The man who blew things up at the finish line every time, who bought rounds for strangers to feel chosen, who needed a substance just to feel like he deserved to be in the room. That man is gone.

And I did not lose him. I loved myself until I outgrew him. There is a difference.

The city looked sharper last night. The sounds were more layered. The cold air hit my face on Railroad Avenue and I felt it. I was at a table at 1am splitting a blueberry lemon curd waffle with someone I love and I was there, completely there, not narrating from a distance or managing a room or riding a chemical line between too fucked up and too sober. I drove through Skagit County the next day past fields of yellow daffodils with ford. in my ears and came home with nothing and felt full. I sat up this morning, put my feet on the soft rug, asked Alexa for 25% light, and opened a book about transformation before I did a single other thing.

I don’t drink because I love my mind. I don’t use because I love my body. I don’t rebound because I love myself too much to blow up something real for something fast. I don’t perform because I love who I actually am when nobody is watching. I choose the hug because I love what we are building. I drive to La Conner alone because I love my own company. I read meditations the second my feet hit the floor because I love the person I am becoming and I want to keep becoming him.

This is what I am love means. Not a closing line. A reason. The reason. For all of it.

Not a storm anymore. Just a path. Clear and mine and going somewhere I actually want to go.

I am unrecognizable.

I am love.

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