Tag: breakups


  • You Label Me While I Am Doing The Work.

    Everyone has had a name for it. Isolating. Manic. Avoidant. Lonely. Shutting down. The diagnoses have been flying in from every direction, from people who love me, from people who used to, from people who saw something unfamiliar and decided that must mean something is wrong. I understand the impulse. I don’t accept the label.…

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  • Ghosts

    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…

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  • The Note in the Empty Bedroom

    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…

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  • Over My Head: I Can’t Undo This

    I woke up crying with unrelenting grief and the kind of guilt that doesn’t fade with insight or healing. Some choices can’t be undone. Some love breaks beyond repair. Dancing to Over My Head at high tide became the only honest response. No rescue. No repair. Just pressure, accountability, and the choice to live differently…

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  • Ego Death is Torture Nobody Sees

    Ego death isn’t a breakthrough. It’s not enlightenment. It’s not a glow-up. It’s the violent collapse of an identity that was keeping you alive while quietly killing you. I ended patterns that were destroying me and detonated my nervous system in the process. I stopped avoiding. I stopped numbing. I stopped performing stability for other…

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