Not because I’m hiding them.

I just don’t know how to put twenty years of becoming someone into a conversation over dinner.

So sometimes I want to put a book in your hands and say:

Read this. There’s a piece of me in there.

Start with Seneca.

A dead Roman writing letters to his friend two thousand years ago about death, money, friendship, fear, wasted time. How much of your life actually belongs to you.

I remember reading him and realizing that almost none of my problems were new.

Two thousand years.

Same shit.

It was strangely comforting.

He wasn’t teaching me philosophy. He was talking to me.

Then Frankl.

I found Man’s Search for Meaning after my best friend died.

Death wasn’t an idea anymore. It had a face. A voice. Memories. Someone who was supposed to still be here.

That’s probably the book I most want you to understand.

Because I think I got it wrong.

I read about man’s ability to endure almost anything and somehow walked away thinking:

Life is short. I can take it. Fuck it.

And years disappeared like that.

Drinks. Drugs. Parties. Mornings I never saw because I hadn’t gone to sleep yet. Another place. Another year.

Some of it gave me things I don’t know if I would’ve found anywhere else.

Some of it gave me nothing but a morning I wanted back.

I can’t call those years wasted.

But I can’t call all of them well spent either.

Other people were building things.

I was very good at burning fuel.

Somewhere along the way, I became interested in why people do what they do.

Then I found Machiavelli.

The Prince made people look a little less mysterious. Money. Status. Sex. Fear. Power. Watch long enough and the same moves start appearing.

Different faces. Same chessboard.

Then there were Wayne Dyer and Alan Watts.

Those two lived in my car.

Their voices did, anyway.

I spent hours driving across the country for work with Watts coming through the speakers, talking about Zen, ego, control, and the absurdity of trying to hold onto a life that’s moving while you’re holding it.

Sometimes I didn’t want music.

I wanted that voice.

Dyer was quieter.

Less chessboard. More room to breathe.

Then Castaneda. Don Juan.

They opened a different kind of door - into a world where experience mattered more than explanation.

You walked into the desert with him. Sat with an old Yaqui teacher. Watched the ordinary become strange without being told what to believe.

Some books give you ideas.

That one gave me another way of looking.

And then Dostoevsky.

I want you to meet the Karamazovs because there are things in those people I recognize before I understand them.

Faith next to doubt. Love next to cruelty. Pride. Shame. Desire. Sacrifice.

People loving each other deeply and still finding ways to destroy each other.

That particular Russian darkness where a man can destroy something he loves and then spend the night asking God why it hurts.

There.

That’s in me too.

Years later, during one of the darker periods of my life, I found the Bhagavad Gita.

I wasn’t looking for religion.

My own head had just become a place I didn’t particularly want to be.

And sometimes you need something outside yourself to believe in.

Faith.

Not much.

Enough.

I don’t actually need you to love any of these books.

You can hate Seneca.

You can think Castaneda was full of shit.

You can fall asleep listening to Watts.

That’s fine.

I just want you to meet them.

Because you met me late.

You never knew the version of me who had just buried his best friend.

You weren’t there for the nights when I thought my body could take anything.

You weren’t in that car while I drove for hours and some Englishman’s voice made the world feel a little less serious.

You didn’t know me when I needed to believe there was something beyond what I could see.

And you weren’t there when, years later, I needed a little faith just to find my way back.

They were.

Not all of them literally, of course.

But their words were.

So when I hand you one of these books, I’m not giving you homework.

I’m giving you someone who knew a version of me you never got to meet.

I want you to know them.

Maybe then you’ll recognize me between the lines.

And now I’m curious.

If I wanted to know you - really know you - what would you put in my hands?

A book. A record. A film. Maybe something that isn’t any of those.

Not just something you love.

Something that might help me understand how you became you.

What would you show me?

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I like saying it.
I like hearing it too.

But sometimes I wonder
if we mean the same thing
when we say it.

Because love, to me,
was never just a feeling.

Feelings change.

They come in the morning
and disappear by dinner.

Love has to be something else.

I think love is a decision
you keep making
when the feeling goes quiet.

It is staying.

It is choosing.

It is knowing there are other bodies,
other faces,
other lives you could walk into-

and not needing to.

Maybe I am old-fashioned.

I still believe some things become more valuable
because you don’t give them to everyone.

Your word.
Your body.
Your loyalty.

Your life.

I know.

The world has moved on.

People come.
People go.

We sleep together.
We separate.
We find someone else.

We call it experience.

And maybe some of my values
need new eyes.

I’m trying to understand that.

I’m trying to move with the world.

But I don’t want to become modern
by learning to care less.

I don’t want to protect myself
by making everything mean less.

Because when I tell you I love you,
there is weight behind those words.

Real weight.

If one day something stood
between you and death,

I know where I would stand.

Not because I want to die.

I fucking love being alive.

I want mornings.

I want coffee when it’s still dark outside.
Stupid conversations in the kitchen.
Your cold feet finding me under the blanket.

I want my life.

That’s exactly why it means something
when I tell you

I would put it between danger and you.

I would stand in front of you.

Not because I am fearless.

Because you are behind me.

And even saying that
doesn’t come lightly.

This life isn’t only mine.

My mother carried it.
My father protected it.

They handed it to me
without asking for it back.

So no-

I don’t speak lightly
when I say I would give it for you.

And that’s the strange part.

I can imagine giving you
the biggest thing I have,

yet what I ask from you
is so small.

A little patience.

Loyalty.

A few ordinary things
that might mean almost nothing to you
and everything to me.

I won’t always know
how to explain why something hurts.

And I don’t want every wound
to require a presentation.

Sometimes,

if it costs you almost nothing
and gives me peace,

I want that to be enough.

Not because I own you.

Not because my way
has to become your way.

But because if I am carrying
the heavy things,

sometimes I need you
to carry something small.

I don’t need you to fight the wolves.

I can do that.

Just don’t open the gate
while I’m standing outside.

I know how that sounds.

An old-fashioned man
in a world that learned
to keep its options open.

And perhaps this is what
I still have to learn -

how to accept that you had a life before me
without pretending the past means nothing.

How to loosen my grip
without loosening my values.

How to love you
without owning you.

Because I do want you to be free.

I do.

I just hope that when you are completely free,
you still choose to stand beside me.

There is something terrifying
and beautiful about that.

No chains.

No promise dragged
from someone’s mouth.

No guarantee.

Just two people
who could leave,

and don’t.

That is stronger
than the old world.

I don’t know yet.

I’m still standing somewhere
between the two.

One hand holding the values
I came here with.

The other reaching for yours.

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I thought I was done with it.

I wasn’t.

The comments made me look at the story again.

Some people recognized themselves in it.

Some saw things I hadn’t seen myself.

And some gave me completely different ways of looking at what happened.

One conversation stayed with me.

made a distinction between wanting someone for who they are and wanting someone for how they make you feel.

Rafa is worth reading, by the way. He has his own point of view and doesn’t shape it around what people want to hear. I respect that.

I understood what he meant.

Later, I brought it up in a conversation with a woman.

She saw those two things as connected.

And I could see her point.

If I like the way a woman thinks, the way she moves, her femininity, the way she looks at me...

if I like that she gives me a straight answer when it would be easier to avoid one...

isn’t who she is exactly what creates how I feel around her?

Still, Rafa’s point stayed with me.

The older I get, the more patterns I notice.

How someone handles conflict.

What happens when they don’t get what they want.

Whether they say what they mean.

How they talk about people they once loved.

Whether they stay and talk when things get uncomfortable.

You notice these things.

And after a while, you start recognizing them earlier.

That’s useful.

Until there’s an actual woman standing in front of you.

Because then there’s chemistry.

And chemistry makes things less simple.

You like the way she moves.

The way she laughs.

Some small expression on her face.

Something feminine about her that you can’t really explain.

She says something unexpectedly honest when you were expecting an excuse.

Sometimes it’s just one small moment when you look at her and think:

I could be on the same team with this person.

You can’t put that on a list.

I can say I want honesty.

Loyalty.

Stability.

Directness.

Intelligence.

Sexual compatibility.

Someone I could build something with.

And I do.

But if all of that is there and the chemistry isn’t...

I don’t think it’s enough for me.

I need the chemistry too.

That’s where it gets difficult.

What happens when the chemistry is there...

but so are the questions?

What if I see something in her past that bothers me?

A pattern I recognize.

Something that makes me think:

This could become a problem.

The smart thing would be to notice it early.

Before I get too attached.

Because once I do, it’s much easier to make excuses.

I know that now.

But what if months pass and I still want her?

What if the chemistry is still there?

What if by then I’ve also seen things in her that I genuinely admire?

What if I see the risk...

and still want her?

That’s the part I can’t answer with a list.

When should I trust what I’ve learned?

And when am I just walking away because I’m afraid of getting hurt again?

I don’t know.

I know myself well enough to admit that I could see the risk...

close my eyes a little...

and step forward anyway.

Not because I didn’t see it.

Because I did.

The difference now is that I know what getting attached can cost me.

If I really let someone in, I don’t move on easily.

I carry things.

I replay conversations.

I keep going back to what happened, even when I know it’s over.

And now I know that two people can leave the same relationship very differently.

One can still be thinking about it months later.

The other can already be with someone new.

That matters to me.

It tells me something.

How someone leaves matters.

How deeply they attach matters.

Whether they can be alone matters.

What loyalty means to them matters.

None of this tells me what will happen.

But I can’t just ignore it either.

Especially after being on the other side of it.

You remember that feeling.

And the next time someone gets close...

you want to protect yourself a little more.

That’s where I start thinking about the shield.

Last time I showed someone parts of myself that weren’t easy to show.

Things you don’t tell everyone.

Things you say because you trust the person listening.

Now I know what it feels like when that person is gone.

So next time...

how much do I show?

I don’t want to hide.

But I don’t know if I want to take the whole shield off either.

I think some part of me needs to remain mine.

But how much?

At what point am I protecting myself...

and at what point am I stopping someone from really knowing me?

I don’t know.

There’s another thing I’ve been thinking about.

No one is perfect.

That sounds obvious.

But it’s different once you’re actually close to someone.

The closer you get, the more you see.

She’ll have things I don’t like.

I’ll have things she doesn’t like.

So finding someone with no problems can’t really be the goal.

I’m more interested in what happens when our problems meet.

Do we stay at the table?

Can she tell me I’m wrong?

Can I hear it?

Can I tell her she’s wrong without needing to win?

Can one of us simply say:

You’re right.

And move forward?

Can something between us go wrong without one of us immediately thinking the whole relationship is wrong?

I don’t expect perfection.

But I want there to be a real desire to try.

From both sides.

I want to know what that feels like.

And then my brain does what it does.

It wants more information.

How does she attach?

How does she handle conflict?

How does she leave?

Can she be alone?

What does loyalty mean to her?

What happened in her previous relationships?

What patterns does she repeat?

What am I actually seeing?

And what am I filling in myself?

Those are good questions.

I wish I’d asked some of them earlier.

But there has to be a limit.

Because if you keep going...

you stop meeting a woman.

You start performing due diligence.

You’re no longer falling in love.

You’re underwriting risk.

And I can see how easy it would be to become good at that.

Ask better questions.

Notice things earlier.

Leave earlier.

Show less.

Risk less.

Get hurt less.

It makes sense.

Except...

I still want someone to share my life with.

And I don’t know how you get one without risking the other.

You can know more.

You can see more.

You can learn from what happened before.

But eventually there’s still another person in front of you.

And you don’t know what will happen.

At some point, understanding love can stop protecting you from illusion...

and start protecting you from love itself.

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Looking back...

I’m not sure I was.

A few days after I liked one song on SoundCloud, she texted me.

I wasn’t surprised.

I knew she still listened to my SoundCloud Likes playlist from time to time.

Every song I liked appeared there automatically.

Lately, I’d had one track on repeat.

Honey I See You.

Eventually, I pressed “Like.”

I knew she’d see it.

A few days later she asked if we could meet so she could return my things.

We hadn’t seen each other for seven months.

We walked through a park.

At first we talked about ordinary things.

Then, somehow, we found ourselves talking about the things we hadn’t talked about in a very long time.

Relationships.

Psychology.

Why two people can walk away from the same relationship carrying completely different memories.

At one point I told her something I’d been thinking about for months.

That underneath confidence, attraction and chemistry, I think many men are quietly looking for psychological stability.

Not perfection.

Not someone who never struggles.

Just someone whose presence feels safe enough to build a family with.

She listened.

Then she shared her side too.

When we said goodbye, she sent me a message.

“I listen to your music because it lets me feel. You let me feel too, because I struggle to do that myself.”

Then...

silence.

Then came my birthday.

She wished me a happy birthday that morning.

I thanked her.

I thought that was it.

Then, just after one in the morning, my phone lit up again.

“How are you?”

Two messages.

The first one was polite.

The second one wasn’t.

I suggested coffee.

I’d imagined we’d meet during the day.

Instead, we met late.

I’d already thrown a couple of beers and a cider into the car.

That became our coffee.

We drove back to the same park.

Talked for hours.

That’s where I finally asked the questions I’d been carrying for months.

I wanted to know everything.

Because my imagination had already spent seven months filling in the blanks.

I thought the truth might finally quiet it.

Instead...

I heard almost everything I didn’t want to hear.

Not long after our last conversation...

she’d met someone else.

Eventually, it became a relationship.

When she’d answered everything I wanted to know, she looked at me.

“What about you?”

I told her the truth.

I’d had a couple of one-night stands.

Nothing more.

Then I heard myself say something I hadn’t expected.

“I think I’d almost have preferred if you’d had a couple of one-night stands.”

She looked confused.

So I explained.

It wasn’t another man that haunted me.

That hurt too.

It was everything that came after him.

One night ends when the sun comes up.

A relationship doesn’t.

A relationship has breakfasts.

Inside jokes.

Sunday mornings.

Tiny rituals that quietly become a life together.

It wasn’t sex that hurt the most.

It was everything that came after it.

Neither of us spoke for a while...

Then I invited her back to my place.

Looking back...

I think I’d already made that decision before we even left the park.

For months I’d wondered what it would feel like to hold her again.

That night...

I finally found out.

A week later, we met again.

This time there was no pretending we were just catching up.

I’d already heard more than I wanted to hear.

I still had questions.

She answered them.

Honestly.

Sometimes painfully so.

At one point I asked whether they’d used protection.

“Yes,” she said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

A few seconds passed.

She looked down.

Then she sighed.

“No.”

Later that evening she told me something I haven’t stopped thinking about since.

She hadn’t spent seven months carrying us around.

She hadn’t lived those months the way I had.

We hadn’t been living the same story.

That hurt more than hearing she’d been with someone else.

I’d quietly assumed we’d been living the same story.

We weren’t.

We’d both been drinking.

Somewhere between flirting, laughing and pretending everything was lighter than it really was, I smiled and said,

“Say you love me.”

I wanted it to sound like part of the game.

It wasn’t.

She smiled.

Then...

nothing.

Not even to play along.

I didn’t ask again.

I already had my answer.

I thought answers would end the questions.

Instead...

they created new ones.

Was I Plan B?

Would she have come back if he’d stayed?

When she told me she wanted a family, was she remembering the conversation we’d had in the park...

or simply telling me what I wanted to hear?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

The more I thought about it...

the less those questions seemed to matter.

Because they were never really about her.

They were about me trying to rescue a story that had already ended.

Your imagination keeps working long after the relationship is over.

Mine certainly did.

It wrote conversations that never happened.

It invented meanings that were never there.

It quietly removed the arguments.

Softened the disappointments.

Kept the smile.

Kept the tenderness.

Kept the hope.

Looking back...

that’s why reality felt so brutal.

It wasn’t because she’d changed.

It was because reality finally caught up with the story I’d been telling myself.

I’m still a romantic.

That hasn’t changed.

I still want one woman.

I still want to build something real.

I still want to know that, out of everyone she could choose...

she chooses me.

For seven months I thought I was missing her.

Looking back...

I’m not sure I was.

I think I was missing the future I’d imagined with her.

That’s why it hurt so much.

Not because I lost her.

Because I finally had to let go of the woman I’d spent seven months rebuilding inside my own head.

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Apparently, I do.

Just not the way I thought I was supposed to.

A few days before my birthday I invited a few friends to my land. We sat outside my caravan, grilled some food, listened to a DJ mix I’d made for the occasion and talked until late.

That was the celebration.

By the time Monday arrived - my actual birthday - I already felt like I’d given the day what it needed.

The rest of it didn’t have to carry anything.

I drove to my father’s grave and lit a candle.

Later I met a friend and spent a few hours in a sauna.

After that I picked up my mum from the train station. We went out for steak and talked about whatever came to mind.

Afterwards I have wandered through the city for a while before I headed home.

At one point I caught myself thinking...

This is enough.

For years I thought I disliked birthdays.

Looking back, I don’t think I disliked the day.

I disliked what it asked from me.

Plan something.

Invite enough people.

Make it memorable.

Make it worth celebrating.

I’ve never been good at that.

Most of the year I don’t really stop to think about who’s in my life.

Then my birthday comes around.

And suddenly I want those same people around.

I don’t really know why.

I just do.

Not because I need a party.

Not because I need presents.

It’s just one of those days when you quietly look around and notice who’s still walking beside you.

This year I wasn’t trying to make my birthday feel special.

I realised the people and places already in my life had quietly done that for me.

A few friends.

My land.

A caravan that has slowly become my favourite place to be.

Time with my mum.

A candle for my father.

I got home that night without feeling like I’d missed anything.

That’s new.

Still walking.

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For years I thought I was getting better at reading women.

Not because I understood them.
Because I had been wrong enough times to start looking for patterns.

After every disappointment the same question kept coming back:
What did I miss?

At some point I stopped listening only to words.
I started watching everything else.
How someone treats a waiter.
How they react when plans change.
Whether they laugh at themselves when something awkward happens.

One of the strangest places where I started looking for answers was intimacy.

Not the act itself.
Not technique.

What fascinated me was everything around it.

Who takes initiative.
Who waits for permission.
Who keeps checking if they’re doing it right.
Who laughs when something goes wrong.
Who freezes.
Who enjoys giving.
Who struggles to receive.

Those small moments told me more than any dinner conversation ever could.

My brain did what it always does.
Opened another hundred tabs.
RAM at 98%.
Fan spinning.
Completely convinced it could predict another human being.

Then one day it hit me.

I wasn’t studying women.

I was studying my own fear.

The fear of getting hurt again.
The fear of choosing wrong.
The fear of wasting time on someone who wasn’t who I thought they were.

Every little observation became a form of insurance.

That’s a heavy thing to admit.

Because it sounds smart when you call it “reading people.”
It sounds much less impressive when you call it what it really is — fear dressed up as intelligence.

I still think intimacy reveals something unique.
Not because sex changes who we are.
Because it’s one of the few places where pretending becomes too tiring to maintain.

Sometimes we become more ourselves.
Sometimes we become more afraid.
Sometimes both at the same time.

These days I trust patterns less.
But I trust curiosity more.

Instead of asking “What kind of woman is she?”
I find myself asking “Why do I need the answer so quickly?”

Maybe that’s been the real lesson all along.

Not learning to read women.
Learning to understand the man who’s trying so hard to read them.

Still figuring that one out.

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Not because nothing happened.
The opposite, actually.

When life gets difficult, the words come easily. Writing becomes useful — a way to sit with myself long enough to see what’s really there.

But when things are good… I go quiet.

Not because I stop thinking.
Because I stop needing to.

I’ve been out of work for almost four months now.

For years I thought I wanted more freedom. More time. More space.
Then I got it.

And for the first few weeks I treated freedom like another job. Wake up. Build something. Improve something. Stay productive. I’m not even sure who I was trying to convince.

Then life made the decision for me.

I got sick. Two weeks in bed. A few more recovering.
At the time it felt like bad luck.
Now I think it was a gift - it broke the rhythm so completely that on the other side, I couldn’t find it again. And I stopped looking.

I bought a Polaroid.
Then a knife.
Then ropes and climbing gear because I wanted to put a wildlife camera high in a pine tree.
One thing led to another.
Somehow I ended up living in a meadow surrounded by forest more than in the city.

Today three cranes walked through the field.
The local cat hunts on my land like we have an agreement.
A deer passed yesterday. An eagle circles above the treeline. I have binoculars now. I use them.

Nothing particularly important happens out here.
And somehow the days disappear.

This afternoon I was lying in the caravan. Rain, then sunlight, then rain again. Wind pushing through the trees. My phone was face-down beside me.

The phone is the first thing that steals the dream away.
It doesn’t let boredom finish its sentence.

I stared out the window. Trees. Grass. Sky. No roads. No obligations visible from that angle.

And somewhere between being awake and asleep, I felt something move through my body.
Slow pulses, one after another.
My jaw was loose. My hands were still.
Nobody needed anything from me.

I’ve never lived this close to freedom before.

The strange thing is - it doesn’t feel the way I expected.
I thought it would feel exciting. Victorious.
Instead it feels quiet. Almost suspiciously quiet.

Like standing in a room after a machine has been running your entire life and somebody suddenly switches it off.

I don’t know how long this chapter will last.
Bills still exist. Responsibilities still exist. The city is still waiting.

But lately I’ve started questioning something I believed for most of my life:

That rest has to be earned.
That stillness is the reward at the end of the work.
We’re trained to believe this. Most of us never question it.

I’m not sure I believe it anymore.

Right now it feels like I’ve accidentally stepped into a life I didn’t know I was looking for.

Not happier.
Just more alive.

Still figuring it out.

Have you ever wanted more freedom so badly — only to discover it felt completely different once you got it?

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Then I bought a Polaroid.

Not because I needed it. Because I wanted to hold something.

For years I thought I was a minimalist. Almost nothing. No attachments, no clutter, no desire for things. It felt clean. Light.

But the truth is simpler than that.

I was just high most of the time.

Eight months off weed now. And every time I stay off it long enough, I notice the same thing — I start buying stuff. Small at first. Things I’d wanted for years but never acted on. Like something I turned off years ago starts working again.

I’ve started thinking about what I actually own. The Polaroid films stacked neatly. That knife. A couple of books with folded corners. And underneath all of it, the same question — if I had to leave tomorrow, how long would it take me to decide what stays?

I want that. Not as an escape. As a baseline.

Each Polaroid shot costs something. Eight photos per cartridge. You don’t just snap everything. You pause. You look at the light. You decide if this moment is worth it.

You choose.

There’s something honest about that constraint.

It reminded me of something I read once - how a single photograph exposed a group of outlaws in the old West. One image pinned to a bar wall, and suddenly faces had weight. Before photos, you could disappear into stories. After, you could be found. A photograph made you real.

I’ve been looking at old pictures lately. My parents younger than I am now. My own childhood in faded colors. You can feel the air in those rooms. Back then, going to a studio was a serious occasion. People dressed up. Prepared. They knew the moment was costing something.

Now we document everything. And remember less.

A few days ago I walked through a cemetery. Early morning. Gravel crunching under my shoes. No one else around.

I used to go every morning at one point — it was the only place nearby with trees.

Some of the older graves had ceramic portrait ovals set into the stone. Faces from the 1880s. I’d stand in front of them and feel the distance collapse — that face had a smell, a voice, a favorite chair. Now it was weather-worn ceramic and silence.

You read names. You do the math without wanting to. Twenty-three. Forty-seven. Eighty-nine. All of them had plans. All of them thought they had more time.

After a while, the gray of it started following me home, especially in winter. So I stopped going. Needed more color.

But this time, walking with a photo still drying in my jacket pocket, something landed differently. Not fear. Not sadness. Just a very quiet awareness.

This ends.

And because of that - this matters.

I still don’t want to be tied down. I catch myself staring at something I own and thinking — this isn’t really mine. I’m just holding it for a while.

Tomorrow it could be gone. Stolen. Burned. Lost.

I use a simple test now: would I be okay if this disappeared? If yes - I can have it. If I’d lose sleep over it - I need to look at that more carefully.

I’m not trying to own nothing. I just don’t want to be owned.

Somewhere between owning nothing and being owned by everything — that’s probably where I’m trying to live.

Yesterday I took a photo I didn’t plan. Light hit a wall in a way that made no sense to ignore. I stood there longer than needed, adjusting slightly, waiting.

Clicked once.

That’s it.

Not happier. Just more alive.

Still figuring it out.

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Not loud. Just there. Every few seconds, cutting through.

I was sitting still. No screen. Nothing in my hands. That’s when the question showed up.

What exactly am I afraid of?

Seneca split it clean a long time ago. Three directions the mind runs when things tighten.

Pain. Death. Loss.

Not abstract. You feel it when something narrows — when your options shrink and your body knows it before you do.

He wrote it to a friend who was struggling. He’d been through it himself. And instead of trying to escape, he reduced it. Pain, he said, is either bearable or brief. If it grows past what you can hold, the body steps in - dulls things, breaks it apart, gives you space whether you asked for it or not.

Most of what hits you first isn’t even the thing. It’s the mind getting there early.

I’ve gone back to that letter more times than I can count. Not because it makes anything easier. Because it holds when everything else moves.

There’s another thing he wrote. Different letter.

Men who had everything - wealth, comfort, total control - would step out of it on purpose. A few days each month. Hard surface. Rough clothes. Almost nothing. Not to prove anything. Just to ask one question:

Is this what I was afraid of?

Every time, the answer was smaller than the fear.

We don’t do that anymore. Now discomfort is treated like an error. Head hurts - remove it. Body slows - override it. Anything that interrupts the momentum becomes a problem to solve by Thursday.

I don’t know where you push it when you do that. Somewhere else. Some other time. Usually when you have less say in the matter.

There’s something I keep coming back to. That the wall you hit - the real one - is almost never where you think it is. You’ve stopped before you got there. Every time.

Sometimes through comfort. Sometimes through the screen, the pill, whatever takes the edge off just enough so you don’t have to sit in it.

I’ve done that more times than I can count.

Still do.

And then sometimes you don’t. Sometimes whatever you’re in doesn’t move when you want it to. Doesn’t shrink. Doesn’t respond.

And you’re left with the same three.

Pain. Death. Loss.

Nothing new. Just closer.

I think about: The Game. Michael Douglas. A man with everything mapped, controlled, structured - until it all gets taken apart. And the only question left is simple:

Is this happening to me. Or am I inside something.

Not the same question. One makes you smaller. The other puts you back in the middle of it.

I take it further sometimes. Imagine it’s over — whatever form over takes. You’re somewhere quiet, looking back.

Not what you built. Not what you avoided.

Just: did you actually play.

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No boss. No office. No alarm. A financial cushion that lets me breathe without panic. Real freedom.

And most mornings I wake up with the same quiet tension in my chest.

I stand in the kitchen, coffee going cold in my hand, staring at nothing. The silence is louder than any deadline ever was.

Two months ago I was in the rhythm. Waking at five, working out, drinking tea, putting on one of the fifteen suits I bought deliberately, one by one. I even started enjoying the automation of it. There was a strange comfort in knowing exactly what the day wanted from me.

Then it all collapsed.

Now the calendar is completely clear. No one expects anything. And I don’t know what to do with the time that is finally mine.

I tried keeping the old routine anyway. Same wake-up time. Same tea. Same suit. Except now I was sitting alone at home in a jacket, and something about it felt faintly absurd. Like I was performing for an audience that no longer existed.

Ritual without context is just costume.

I’ve been reading Krishnamurti. One line keeps stopping me:

“The mind becomes restless. It busies itself with escapes. We are trying to fill this extraordinary void with the known.”

And then another:

“The man who escapes through drinking is no different from the one who escapes through the worship of God. Both are escaping.”

Work was my escape. Routine was my escape. Even the exhaustion was my escape — because as long as I was tired, I didn’t have to sit with myself.

When those escapes disappeared, I started noticing what I reached for instead. Content. Planning things I never started. Movement without direction. Anything recognizable. Not because it was meaningful — because it was known.

I have a friend who genuinely cannot be alone for a weekend.

The moment the structure disappears, something in him panics. He needs noise. Someone else’s rhythm. Something to orient around.

I used to judge that.

Now I recognize it in myself. Just in slower, more respectable ways.

Think about a trained dog the moment it receives a command. Not before, not after — that exact second. Focused. Certain. Alive. That’s when it looks happiest. Not because the task is meaningful. Because it knows what to do.

Take away the command. Let the owner leave the room.

The dog paces. Doesn’t understand what it’s waiting for. Just knows something is missing.

I know that feeling now.

At some point I stopped trying to fix it and sat down with one question. Not a goal. Not a plan. Just a question I couldn’t answer fast enough to escape it:

Ten years from now — what would I want three real people in my life to say about who I became… not what I achieved, but who I actually was?

I thought it would take ten minutes.

It took forty. And most of what I wrote first wasn’t mine. It was inherited — from comparison, from expectation, from the version of myself I’d been performing for so long I forgot it was a performance.

That’s when the problem became clear. It wasn’t that I lacked freedom.

It was that I didn’t know how to stand inside it.

If you’re reading this — you already know.

Not lost in a dramatic way. Just slightly not your own. Still functioning. Still moving. Still living.

But running a version of your life that was built for someone else’s expectations - and somewhere underneath it, you know it.

If that hits something real, there’s more where this came from.

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Two months home, and the chair finds me the same way every morning. I don’t decide to sit down. I just end up there.

The cursor was blinking.

I didn’t type.

Hand on the mouse, fingers loose. The widescreen humming low. Room quiet. Not peaceful.

My phone lit up. I looked at it. Didn’t pick it up. It went dark again.

I clicked into the text field. Pressed one key. A single letter appeared.

I stared at it.

Then deleted it.

I shifted in the chair like the position was the problem.

It wasn’t.

I stood up. Picked up the phone. Unlocked it. My thumb moved across the screen without stopping.

Then it did.

Her name.

I stayed there a second. Then locked the phone. Put it face down.

Walked back to the desk. Sat down.

The widescreen was still on.

Another tab was open.

A knife. Böker Plus AKS-74.

I moved the mouse, zoomed in, watched how the light runs along the edge. No noise there. Just metal.

I scrolled. Weight. Steel. Handle. Read the same line twice. Leaned a little closer without noticing.

My breathing slowed. Not deeper. Just steadier.

I clicked buy.

No hesitation.

The confirmation page loaded. I sat with it longer than needed. Then leaned back, hands on my thighs.

Still.

The cursor was still blinking in the other tab.

I didn’t go back.

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Food shows up at the door. Medicine too. First time I ever ordered medication to my home. A knock. A stranger. I said thanks and shut the door.

The phone stays on my chest. Videos roll into each other. My thumb rests against the edge, not pressing anything.

At some point I caught myself - TV on the big screen, and me on the phone already searching what to watch next.

I ended up deep in what kids watch now. MrBeast, all of it… Something always about to happen, someone always about to win something. Every second pulling you forward so you don’t stop. My teeth were pressed together the whole time…

Then I found Fred Rogers. Old American children’s television. Slow. Real pauses between sentences that don’t ask for anything.

His show, he said, only began after the television turned off. Whatever the child carries into the next room - that was the point.

There’s footage of him in a Senate hearing, 1969. Nixon wanted to cut public broadcasting. Rogers sat down in front of Senator Pastore — a man who opened with “Alright Rogers, you have the floor” in a tone that had already decided. Rogers didn’t argue numbers. He asked if he could read the words of a song.

What do you do with the mad that you feel?
When you feel so mad you could bite?
When the whole wide world seems oh, so wrong…
And nothing you do seems to make it right?

I can stop when I want to, stop when I wish,
Can stop, stop, stop anytime.
And what a good feeling to feel like this
And know that the feeling is really mine.
Know that there’s something deep inside
That helps us become what we can —
For a girl can be someday a lady,
And a boy can be someday a man.

Pastore sat there. A tough guy, he said. First time he’d had goosebumps in a while. Then: “I think it’s wonderful. I think it’s wonderful. Looks like you just earned the twenty million.”

Six minutes. A children’s song. Nothing loud. Nothing fast.

My hands were on my stomach. Something gathered in the corner of my eye and stayed there.

My best friend has been gone thirteen years. We knew each other from age three. The same streets, the same summers, the same nothing that was somehow enough. After he died I was the only one left who remembered any of it.

That’s still true.

When I was a kid I had a stick. Found it in the forest. Carried it home like it mattered. I dipped it in water before going out — didn’t know why, just knew wood was alive. It was a sword. I swung it at branches until they cracked. The sound stayed in the air a second longer than it should. My hands shook after. I stood there breathing through my mouth, holding it in both hands.

One day I came home and it was gone. Found it in a flowerpot - snapped in half, stuck in the soil to hold up a plant...

The fever came back in the evening. My back stuck to the sheet.

Later I got up. Slow. Feet on cold floor. Hand against the wall to the kitchen. Kettle on. Stood there waiting.

Still hungry.

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No drink in my hands yet. That part matters.

I sit at a small round table. Run my hand along the edge - the kind that would shift if you leaned wrong. Cold surface under my palm. Somewhere behind me milk is steaming. Cups touching saucers. Chairs shifting. The low hum of people pretending not to listen to each other.

Then it happens.

“Double espresso.”

My order becomes public information.

I stand. The room opens in front of me. Ten steps. Maybe twelve. Long enough to feel the weight of being seen without anyone actually looking. Every café like this has a runway hidden in plain sight. Everyone gets their second.

The cup is waiting. Small. Black. Heat pushing straight into my fingertips.

On the way back I notice him.

Two tables away. About my age. Sitting like he knows exactly how much space he takes up. He looks once. Then again. Not fast. Not curious.

I know that look.

Two men acknowledging each other without agreement.

Especially when there are women nearby pretending not to register either of us.

Nothing moves. Something tightens.

I sit. The table shifts under my wrist. He crosses one leg. His sneaker taps the floor once. Stops.

Behind the counter the girl calls out:

“Matcha with coconut milk.”

He stands.

Walks like he wants the walk to disappear while it’s happening. Picks up the paper cup. Returns.

One second. Automatic.

Soft.

The thought lands clean. No emotion attached. Just placement.

I take a sip of espresso. Bitterness hits the back of my tongue. That’s the point.

No warm sugar baths for the nervous system.

Still, the label stays longer than it should.

Because I remember being small. Sitting behind my father on the couch. Running my fingers through his hair. I had invented a game - a bomb flying above his head. When it hit, I pressed both palms down and released bursts of pressure like shockwaves. He kept watching the screen. Smiled without turning his head.

On the television animals were circling each other in tall grass. Showing colors. Showing teeth. Showing who steps forward first.

Same ceremonies. Better lighting. Different drinks.

The guy with the matcha presses the lid down on his paper cup. All four sides. Slowly. He picks up his phone. Scrolls something. I notice because I’m sitting here without mine, doing the thing where you watch people instead — like that makes you less addicted and more alive.

I realize I almost decided who he was before he even sat down.

My jaw tightens without permission.

It’s comfortable when the world arranges itself quickly. When people fall into categories that don’t require effort. Comfort like that feels clean. Reliable.

I take another sip instead.

Because I’ve worn every version too. Coconut milk phases. Matcha experiments. Weeks of convincing yourself it’s cleaner, newer, better for you. Eventually I returned to bitter and small cups. Not because it’s superior.

Because it feels closer to something I stopped questioning.

Maybe his stomach burns after coffee. Maybe he didn’t sleep. Maybe he just wanted green.

Maybe he isn’t playing anything at all.

Outside the glass walls, cars slide past in grey lines. Somewhere beyond the parking lot there’s open land. My land. Flat field. A few trees standing too far from each other like they missed instructions.

One I keep coming back to.

Every spring it makes my eyes swell and my throat itch until I curse it out loud.

I still hug it.

In winter it looks dead. Bare branches like ribs against the sky. But the roots are spreading in directions I’ll never map. It can’t choose where it stands. It just remains.

I can go anywhere and still feel slightly out of place.

He left before me. Picked up his paper cup - takeaway from the start - scrolled a little longer, then walked out with it.

I sat there and finished mine.

Then I stood up.

The chair legs scrape once across the tile. No one looks.

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She’s 77. Another operation ahead. The kind of conversation where the doctor speaks slowly and watches your face.

A few days later that was her birthday. March 11.

One of her children didn’t call. Didn’t write. Nothing.

When health becomes fragile, family silence stops feeling neutral.

The night before, I had printed the first copy of something I’d been working on for a while. So I had a few drinks to mark it. Then a few more.

I knew I had to drive her to the doctor the next morning. I genuinely thought it would be routine. Just show up, wait, bring her back.

Nothing serious.

I sat on a bench outside the office while she was inside.

That hollow hangover feeling - not pain exactly, more like absence. No energy. No edges. Just a body that wants to be horizontal. I wasn’t trying to look normal. I wasn’t trying anything. Head down, eyes half-closed, waiting for it to pass.

Around me old people negotiating movements that used to be automatic. One man missing the edge of the bench when he tried to sit. A woman gripping her crutches like she didn’t trust the floor.

And somewhere in that waiting I caught myself thinking something I didn’t want to admit.

Why am I even here… she could’ve taken a taxi.

The thought stayed.

Then she walked out.

Her face looked rearranged. Not crying. Not dramatic. Just quietly shocked.

I asked how it went.

She said, “He shocked me.”

Pause.

“He said they might have to amputate the leg. Or… if not… I could die like this.”

Inside, something dropped.

Outside I switched on a small smile. That male reflex.

I don’t even remember what I said. Something lighter than the moment deserved. Just enough to change the air in the room.

She nodded and went to the bathroom.

The moment the door closed, I took out my phone and photographed her medical paper. Typed it into ChatGPT. Needed something firm to stand on while my legs felt slightly unsteady.

Driving home, the memory is blurry. But I remember making some half-joke at some point.

The moment it left my mouth, I knew it didn’t land.

Wrong room. Wrong weight. Wrong everything.

And then it hit me.

Even when you show up… someone you love can still feel completely alone.

Not because you don’t care.

Because there are fears you cannot enter with them.

There’s something that sits heavy when a parent becomes physically fragile and part of the family has already gone quiet.

You grow up believing that effort builds something that will hold later.

Sometimes it doesn’t.

And the one who stays doesn’t always feel strong.

Sometimes staying doesn’t feel strong. It just feels like there is nowhere else to stand.

I don’t know how to give someone hope when their future keeps getting smaller.

Lately it feels less about hope and more about presence.

Just not leaving.

That’s where I am right now.

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Poured whiskey. Not to celebrate - to get to morning faster. It didn’t work.

Sat on the edge of the bed.

The thought was simple: I’ve built something I respect. And I’ve been almost reluctant to talk about it.

Not because I doubt it. Because I don’t want to become another account selling speed to people who are tired of being slow.

You know the ones.

They start with something real - the slow feeling that the life you’re living isn’t quite yours, the cost of staying honest when it would be easier not to. Then somewhere around month four, the pivot. “How I got my first thousand subscribers.” “The note formula that converts.” “What’s working right now.”

And it works. The numbers respond. The feedback becomes immediate.

I understand why they do it. Everyone here wants to grow. And whoever convinces you they have a shortcut gets paid.

Most of those accounts grew by selling growth to other people trying to grow. It’s a closed loop. Growth teaching growth until nobody remembers what the work was.

I’m building slower.

Not because I can’t sell. I spent years moving physical products online at volumes most people only ever see in screenshots - millions in revenue, real operations. That kind of work teaches you something fast: sales is alignment plus timing plus visibility. You can’t fake any of the three for long.

What surprised me later is that selling honest words is harder. There’s no packaging to hide behind. You cannot optimise authenticity without losing it.

So I’m not trying to sell you anything here. I’m trying to show you something.

Back in 2013 someone invested serious money in my development. For two years my job was simple: learn what actually changes behaviour under pressure.

One signal kept returning.

Values clarity. Not ten priorities. Two. The ones you feel physically when you go against them - a tightening somewhere inside, a quiet misalignment that doesn’t resolve on its own. When you find those two, decisions stop feeling random. Not easy. Directional. Like walking through unfamiliar terrain with a thin thread in your hand - you can still wander, still make mistakes, but you don’t drift without reference.

That became a book I published on Kindle in 2016. Looking at it now it was unfinished. The bones were right.

These past three weeks I rebuilt it completely. Eight, sometimes ten hours a day. The kind of focus you only find when nothing else is competing for it.

One of the exercises asks a simple question.

Think about last week. One automatic yes you gave someone else - before you even checked if you meant it. One automatic yes you gave yourself - the scroll, the delay, the quiet escape.

What did each one cost you?

It sounds small. Until you start noticing how many of your bigger decisions grow out of moments like that.

I’ve seen it in my own life. A relationship that ended not because love disappeared - but because I kept saying yes long after alignment was gone.

Going back to the workbook didn’t give me an answer. It just slowed things down enough for me to see what I already knew.

The workbook doesn’t give you clarity. It slows your thinking down enough for you to notice what you already know.

That’s all it does. Not motivation. Not a system. Just your own awareness, made harder to ignore.

Last year I met a professor in a library. Brilliant work. No reach. The world noticed him briefly - and moved on.

Value doesn’t automatically become visible. Visibility doesn’t automatically mean value. If you want both, you have to carry that tension without simplifying yourself into someone you no longer recognise.

Charging for the workbook is part of that. Not urgency. Just the reality that attention deepens when something costs you. When I paid for things myself later - courses, coaches, programmes - I showed up differently. That’s not a coincidence.

Yesterday I went out. Not because I wanted to - because I needed to move, clear my head, get back to work faster.

Birds back. First real sun. The city lighter than it’s been all winter.

I noticed all of it. And felt almost none of it.

My head was still at the monitor. Counting what I hadn’t done.

That’s the gap this workbook lives in. Not dramatic. Just - present in your body, absent everywhere else.

Growth slowed. Platforms reward movement. Depth often requires stillness. I’m choosing that.

If you’re working on something invisible right now - if you know what matters but your days don’t fully reflect it yet - then you already understand why I went quieter.

Some work only moves when you stop performing it.

Still walking. With the thread in hand.

The workbook is here. Or read a free sample first.

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It starts with hunger. And hunger makes you do things a full man wouldn’t do.

About a month after my father’s funeral, I was three months into seeing someone. Good sex, real conversations, something that felt alive.

One evening we were supposed to meet. Nothing confirmed. She wasn’t answering.

She’d shared her location with me once - accidentally, I think. Left it running. I never told her. That evening I happened to check. The dot was moving toward a part of the city I didn’t expect.

I told myself I was just curious. I was already reaching for my keys.

It was one of those restaurants. Candles. Dress code. The kind of place where nobody eats alone. I moved fast and kept my head down. I didn’t want to be seen - I wanted to see. Didn’t find her. A young waiter stopped me. I showed him her photo.

He looked at the screen. Then at me. That quiet bro-code moment men don’t talk about. He said - looks like she’s on a date right now. Older guy. Beard.

My jaw locked so hard it started to ache.

I didn’t go upstairs. I drove home.

Then she texted. Said she was at the restaurant. With her mother.

And this is where the doubt started pushing in. I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. Not really. So I decided to close the question properly.

I checked the location again. Still there.

I was back in the car before I fully decided to be.

I ran a red light across the old town. Stopped for gas and bought cigarillos with hands that wouldn’t stay still - I’d quit some time before, didn’t matter. Paid for the cigarillos. Forgot to pay for the gas entirely. Just drove off.

Then she texted - she was heading to her car. Said we could meet nearby. I wrote back - funny, I’m just around the corner. Two minutes later I pulled up.

Cold under the skin, palms damp, that deep internal vibration you can’t switch off once it starts. I kept my voice level and asked what she’d eaten. She told me. Calm. Detailed. Even her mother’s order.

Then I said - I was just passing by. Saw you. With your mother. Interesting woman. The beard suits her.

She laughed. Didn’t flinch. Said she doesn’t even like beards.

That was the moment something in my chest went very still.

I stepped closer and took her face in my hands. Not aggressive. Not gentle either. Just steady. Said quietly - stop playing. I was there. I saw you. Just say it.

Her eyes didn’t move. Nothing.

For a second I genuinely questioned what I thought I knew.

I let go. Walked back to my car. Lit the cigarillo. She thought I was leaving.

Then she said it - okay, it was a male friend.

She lit one too. (We had both quit before.) She continued - we were organizing donations... I just didn’t want to explain it.

Three months. A fancy restaurant. A lie delivered without a single crack in her voice.

I told her she could have just said that from the start. That everything would have been fine. She stepped closer - said please don’t leave, she’d agree to anything, any condition.

I sat in the car and closed the door. She moved nearer.

I said through the open window - No. Careful.

And drove away.

Ten minutes later my phone rang. Police. I’d left the gas station without paying.

I turned around, paid, and sat in the parking lot with the engine on. Cigarillo half-finished.

And sitting there, quietly, everything started connecting. The trips to Paris. The designer handbags she’d brought back from nowhere. The things she’d said early on that I’d chosen not to hear. All of it suddenly made sense - the way puzzle pieces do when you finally stop forcing them.

I sat there for a while. Not angry. Just very, very quiet.

Then I drove home. And a few weeks later I was already seeing someone else.

That’s also what hunger looks like.

Sometimes it’s not about men changing after they have you. Sometimes two people meet already running low. Two nervous systems looking for warmth in the same dark room.

That’s a lot of pressure for something that only just started.

I used to think the danger was choosing the wrong person. Now I think the real danger is choosing while you’re empty.

Still figuring that part out.

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This started with Mary's post - [Men change after you love them] :

Mary

Men change after you love them

I have had a very uneventful dating life. I started late. I am not someone who has been in ten relationships and burned through men like cigarettes. And even though I started dating late and do not have some wild romantic resume, I have seen it too. Enough to recognise the pattern. I have listened. Closely. To girlfriends. To women I love. To women who …

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7 months ago · 836 likes · 109 comments · Mary

It feels like another lifetime. It also feels like yesterday. Both things are true at the same time - and I still don’t fully know what to do with that.

I’m writing this down before my memory cleans it up. Because I’ve noticed something about my operating system… the harder the experience, the faster the sharp edges fade. Not the facts. The facts stay. But the weight of the moment - the cold, the hospital smell, the silence on the other end of the phone - that part starts dissolving.

And some part of me doesn’t want this one to go quiet.

Those last weeks, I was driving to the hospital after work every day. Berries in one bag. Newspaper under the arm. Quietly slipping "Merci" chocolates to the nurses, sometimes with folded bills inside. Nobody asked me to do that. I just needed to feel like I was doing something. Anything.

My sister had flown back from abroad when things got serious. She was around more in those final days - and I won't pretend I didn't feel relief when she did. I'd been carrying it for a while. I thought there was still time.

This was a man who used to move so fast the air changed when he entered a room. That’s how he lives in my memory - constant motion, quiet confidence.

And now he lay there with a newspaper in his hands, glasses on, eyes locked on one single spot on the front page. Not reading. Just… somewhere else.

I never fully knew if he recognized me in those last visits.

And I never asked.

I’d just sit beside him and tell myself it was enough. Maybe it was a mirage. But it was a warm one.

That part still sits somewhere in the back of my throat.

The Sunday before he died, I took my mom out to the lake.

Real winter outside. Proper cold. The water was completely frozen, forest on all sides, and we just walked across the ice like two people pretending life was still normal.

Then the sun came out.

Soft. Low. Unexpected.

I even pulled out my phone and took a selfie, half blinded by the light. Automatic. Didn’t think much about it at the time.

I remember that moment very clearly now.

Because a few hours later, everything shifted.

That evening I was at home, slightly detached from the world.
I’d had a drink. Smoked a bit.

Not proud of it. Not hiding it either.

Then the phone rang.

Unknown landline number.

And my body already knew before my mind caught up.

I picked up.

They told me.

I thanked them. Asked for the exact time. There was this awkward pause on their end - like they were waiting for me to break.

I didn’t.

I hung up and for a second this strange thought flashed through my head:

I think I’m supposed to cry now.

But nothing came.

Instead, something else switched on. Quiet. Heavy. Practical. Because I understood - there’s a process now. People to call. Steps to take.

And I wouldn’t be doing it alone. My sister was already back in the country, closer than we’d been in a long time, even if nothing between us had magically healed.

Moments like that don’t fix old distance.

But they do put you on the same side of the table.

I called my closest friend first. Told him straight - I had just smoked and got the call. He didn’t overtalk it. Just said one thing:

“Cold shower first. Then everything else.”

So I stood under freezing water until I felt my feet back on the ground.

Then I called my sister. She broke down. I told her the plan - I’m coming to pick you up, we’ll go tell mom together.

Step by step.

Moving.

Carrying.

I once heard a sentence that stayed with me:

As long as your father is alive, there’s still one man in the world quietly rooting for you.

I don’t know if that’s true for everyone.

But that night… it felt very real.

The real moment came later.

I woke up drenched in sweat. Heart hammering. Body shaking like something inside me was trying to tear its way out. I lay there in the dark not knowing what to do with it. Nothing was helping.

Then I remembered something a friend told me a few years earlier, after he buried his mother.

I asked him how he was holding up.

He just said:

“I let her go.”

Three simple words. I didn’t think much about them back then.

But at 3AM, shaking in the dark… they came back.

So I tried it.

Quietly, in my own way, I spoke to my father. Thanked him. For everything - the good, the hard, the things we never fully said out loud. I apologized where I needed to.

And then… I let him go.

The shaking stopped almost instantly.

Like something inside my body had been waiting for exactly that.

I just sat there in the dark.

huh.

A year later, something is different.

I’m less desperate to control what I can’t control. Less afraid of heavy moments.

Not calmer all the time. Not happier either.

Just more able to stand inside something uncomfortable without immediately reaching for the exit.

Still figuring it out.

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That was the experiment. Writing live, not knowing the next sentence while typing the current one.
I’ve seen deep work sessions on YouTube. This isn’t that.
This is raw.

So here we are.

Saturday mornings I don’t wake at 5. That’s weekdays now. Weekends are slower. I spent New Year’s alone this year. Those who’ve been reading know why. I broke up with my partner before Christmas. At first I was angry. Then I started watching myself - noticing how deeply we’re programmed to celebrate, to be cheerful, to be with people. I asked myself: why? Why should I force joy because the calendar says so? I don’t want to betray myself just to fit the environment. I wrote about this before - I don’t plan my evenings anymore. Planning them too tightly feels like betrayal.

And then - after weeks of silence - she wrote.

Not one message. Two.

Will we not speak again? Were your words to me your very last? Was this truly the ending that I am still unable to accept?

The second was quieter. A suggestion to meet. Tomorrow, or next weekend - whatever works.

I read them at my dad’s grave. Something heavy settled in my chest. A stone-like feeling.

But I didn’t reply.

Not that day. Not the next. A week passed. I couldn’t find the right words. Not because I didn’t care - because I didn’t know what I’d say if we actually met. That uncertainty created pressure. So I delayed. And in that delay, I started talking to someone new. For a few days I felt fine. Like the weight had lifted.

But that’s the thing about new - it tricks you. Nothing had actually changed. I just stopped looking at the wound for a moment.

Then Friday evening I finally wrote to her:

I’ve been thinking openly about everything. I don’t know if meeting right now would be right. I feel like it could mean more to you than to me, and I don’t want to hurt you or send wrong signals. A lot is still unclear for me, and out of respect for that - I didn’t write sooner.

The next day, her reply came.

She’d done something I’d asked for months ago - back when we were still together. Something small. And now, after everything ended, she sent me the result. Quietly. Without asking anything in return.

It pulled me back instantly.

So that evening I threw the ball back. But this time, actually catchable.

If you want to say something - we could meet briefly. Tonight would work. A specific place, a specific time. If it doesn’t work - that’s okay too. We’ll just leave it.

After sending it... relief.

Not because I expected anything. Because for the first time I wasn’t the one holding everything. I just offered. And let go.

But then the waiting started. And the relief turned into something else - a need. The kind that crawls under your skin. You don’t want to check the phone. But you do. And again. And again.

And I saw it clearly:

I’m not dependent on her. I’m dependent on the dynamic. On someone who might choose me - or might not. The uncertainty itself became the thing I needed. Not the answer. The waiting.

She replied.

Right now I just want to live.

Five words.

And the weight lifted - relief, not because it was rejection, but because it was the first honest answer that had nothing to do with me.

That freed me more than any “yes” could have.

Those who read the last post know what happened. The first time. What I said after: if it happens again, that’s it.

The second time - before Christmas - it happened again.

I kept my word. I walked away.

But here’s what nobody knows - not even her.

Something inside me left an invisible third chance. Not a way back. Not forgiveness. Just... space to see whether she’d fight. Whether she’d show real effort. Real energy. The kind you can’t fake.

She hasn’t.

And somewhere in all this waiting, I saw something I didn’t expect:

I’m not waiting for her to come back. I’m waiting to see if someone will fight for me. The dynamic itself became what I needed - not the person, but the watching. The uncertainty. The moment when someone might choose me - or might not.

We’re trained to hide this. But it’s there - that quiet addiction to being chosen. We don’t talk about it. We pretend we’re above it. We’re not.

And with every day that passes, that invisible chance drifts a little further.

I can’t pull her back. I can only watch.

Still figuring it out.

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This was written live - on substack live:

Put it on in the background — we can work together.

My office. Lunch break. Door closed.

I was sitting in meditation - something I’d been practicing for a couple of years by then. Not because I was spiritual. Because I was curious. And because Alan Watts and Wayne Dyer kept showing up in my audiobook rotation while I drove across the country selling products nobody asked for.

Somewhere along the way, I built a theory. Probably borrowed. Maybe invented.

The idea was simple: we feel lost here because we’re far from home.

The Big Bang scattered everything. Whatever came after - call it soul, consciousness, energy - got flung outward. And ever since, something in us has been pulling back. Toward the center. Toward whatever “home” was before all this.

So I built a meditation around that.

I’d close my eyes, focus on the top of my head, and launch.

Straight up. Fast. Through the ceiling. Through the sky. Past the sun. Past anything familiar.

Until all that was left were streaks of light - like the opening of Star Wars. Just speed. Just distance. Just letting go.

That day, I went further than usual.

About an hour in, I forgot I had a body.

And then - I wasn’t in it anymore.

I was everywhere.

Darkness. But not empty. Not scary. It was everything. The vastness itself.

No eyes, but I could see. No body, but I could move - instantly, just by thinking.

I felt whole. Calm. Complete.

And then… suddenly… I was somewhere else.

Next to my body. Sitting in that chair.

I saw myself from the side. Then from behind. My profile, my hair, the way my shoulders slouched.

It wasn’t like looking in a mirror. It was like seeing another person - except it was me.

More vivid. More real. Stranger because I was seeing myself.

For a second, I felt it.

Excitement. Awe.

Holy shit.

Then a different thought appeared.

What if I can’t get back?

That’s when everything changed.

Panic.

Immediate.

I tried to move my hand. Couldn’t. Tried to breathe. Nothing. I was out there - and my body wasn’t responding.

I fought my way back.

It took a few seconds. Felt longer.

When my eyes opened, everything was exactly the same.

And the first thing I felt wasn’t relief.

It was regret.

I should’ve stayed longer.

I’m a skeptic by trade.

I spent years in sales. Learned NLP, body language, persuasion systems - how to listen, how to frame, how to notice what people don’t say. It rewires how you see the world.

I see selling everywhere now. In religion. In conversations. In dating. In friendship. We sell ourselves constantly - trying to look better, sound stronger, seem more certain than we are.

So when something doesn’t fit a model, I don’t rush to believe it. I pick it apart.

But this?

I can’t explain it away.

I wasn’t high. Wasn’t drunk. Wasn’t dissociating or half-asleep. I’d worked to get there - months of practice, focus, repetition.

And when it happened, it was the most vivid experience of my life. More real than most memories I trust.

And my mind filed it away like it was nothing.

Ten years later, it feels distant - like it happened to someone else. But the feeling stayed. The fear. The hesitation. The moment I pulled back.

I never got there again.

I had other strange moments later. Interesting ones. But nothing like that.

Still, it left me with something.

A quiet reminder that not everything meaningful can be measured. That some things don’t need to be understood to be real.

Humans are the only species that build temples. Altars in forests. Cathedrals in cities. We’ve always sensed something beyond the edges.

Maybe we just stopped trusting ourselves with it.

I don’t know what that experience was.

Out-of-body travel. A neurological glitch. A door that opened for a second.

Doesn’t matter.

What matters is this:

I had the chance to stay. To explore. To go further.

And I let fear pull me back.

Not because I was in danger.

Because I didn’t trust the unknown.

That part still sits with me.

Because it doesn’t stop at meditation.

We do this everywhere.

At the edge of relationships. At the edge of change. At the edge of something that could rearrange our lives.

We step back the moment it feels too real.

Not out of wisdom.

Out of panic.

That’s where I am right now.

Still figuring out what I interrupted that day. Still wondering what I would’ve found if I’d stayed.

Your turn - when did you last feel something you couldn’t explain?

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