I’ve been feeling like there is a post in me that’s been wanting to get out for about a month now, but has been waiting for lightning to strike and set inspiration alight.

Instead, lightning struck me and I nearly died. Very nearly died. And simultaneously, my grandpa did die, which, coincidentally, is the only reason I’m alive.

It’s not kismet. There is no reason. I just spent this summer stochastically learning that there were newer, darker, deeper lows to which I was capable of sinking.

And then, I very nearly slipped into the realm of forever darkness.

Fuck. Forever darkness.

I’ve never been through anything so uniquely and powerfully terrifying, painful, and awful in my entire life.

I was on a path that ended with an epitaph.

And now….

Now I have to aspire, risk, and commit to new obligations. And it’s like…. I’m scared to make the investment, because every time I have done so, my spirit has lost all of the verve keeping it inflated, like a tire with a nail in it slowly losing air.

I left my last two jobs feeling like a wacky inflatable balloon man after the power’s been cut. A sullen heap of defeat and resignation.

And yet I know the longer I go without getting a job, the more I will sit around aimlessly and open myself up to rumination, listlessness, and ultimately, depression. The more I stall the more I stand to fall as summer fades to fall.

I’m genuinely scared of the season changing, actually. More darkness, more rain, more cold. More fertile grounds for pain.

I lose sight of it now, having gone through such an extreme event just over two weeks ago. But I’m still raw. I’m still suffering from the pain of a breakup, the trauma of losing my livelihood, and the trauma of the livelihood itself.

The breakup is worse. But the feeling, the deep, gut feeling of having reached a zenith and then lost it all…. I was so content and excited when August started last year, and then almost exactly a year later I was in a medically induced coma for days while doctors worked to save my life.

That’s how much losing my job and my girlfriend back-to-back hurt. How much it rattled me and roiled my demons. The sadness was like steroids for them, and it made the depths to which I could fall deep enough to finally really kill me.

I must doggedly stay above ground. And I must climb. And I must not squander time.