Snow day.
Kid’s blasting music somewhere down the hall, doing whatever she wants, and I let myself sleep past 4:30 because it’s my day off and I’m practicing something I keep having to relearn: the word get.
Not have to. Get to.
I get to do all of this, whatever is.
The dreams. They’re back. The ones I thought I buried years ago and I hate but fucking love it.
Carl Jung said the dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul, which opens to that primeval cosmic night.
So what you’re telling me, Doc, is I’m still fucked up.
I’m here for it.
So back to the dreams. My body, goes from high states of arousal, to panick, to extreme exhadtion in a matter of minutes and I don’t know if I’m alive or dead, but the sweat stays alive.
For years, I maintained this perfect version. ( this is a modified rewrite from Nowhere To Go)
I got up at 3:30 every morning and built the story in my head before I built anything else: The marriage is fine. Business is crushing it. Parenthood is a lot.
9,437 ways to drive into a median.
I kept a running list in my head, organized, indexed, updated daily like a training log.
Monday: the overpass. Tuesday: the concrete divider at mile marker 47.Wednesday: I stopped the car three times. Scouted the angles. Decided the lighting was wrong.
Meanwhile I won a bodybuilding show.
Meanwhile I had eight clients before noon.
Meanwhile everyone agreed I was doing great.
Shame is a wild fucking beast. Feeds on your insecurities like a black widow. Spins you. Spits you out. Same web every time.
I had a three-year-old daughter. I had an wife who believed in me.I had every reason to be grateful and I used every one of them to prove I didn’t deserve them.
So I sat there high as fuck in cocaine and hungover in an empty parking lot with a photo of my daughter and a gun. And I put the gun in my mouth. ( I was so afraid of sayifnt that back then it didn’t go inside the book) My fingers wouldn’t move. Something in me , you know some dumb animal part that hadn’t gotten the memo, refused.
A three-year-old girl saved my life.
I didn’t deserve that. I took it anyway.
