You Will Run Out of Time

A pep talk, of sorts.

Photo by Immo Wegmann on Unsplash

The first thing to go was my dignity. It’s Summer ’16, and I had gotten drunk at a Fourth of July BBQ and embarrassed the hell out of myself and the woman I was dating at the time, and I don’t believe she ever looked at me the same way again. That was a warmup.

Days later, I’d tweeted something that’s only grown more true with time but something I really shouldn’t have. I lost my gig writing for the magazine I’d always wanted to write for.

I’d lose more: My 32" waist, a vast majority of my friends, and then — finally and spectacularly — I lost my partner.

It started gingerly, with her subtle sitdowns saying, “Honey, you’ve changed.” She said it a lot. She watched my mood deteriorate from anxious to depressed, to catatonic, to apoplectic. Then she was gone. April 2017.

I didn’t know what else to do, so I started drinking even more than I already did. A lot. Alone. On weeknights. Just to fall asleep faster and get on to the next day. This wasn’t like me. I lost my self-control, becoming exponentially more unhinged, more hurt, more directionless, more eccentric, more of everything except great.

I spent a long time killing myself. A long time idling in the driveway. These were the dark days; back when the world was a bit more amenable to…