Chapter 157

When I started this whole thing, I honestly didn’t know what I was doing. I just needed to get the thoughts out of my head and onto a page somewhere — to make sense of the noise and maybe, in the process, stop it from swallowing me whole. It wasn’t supposed to become anything big. It was just… me trying to breathe.

But as I kept writing, something changed. The blog stopped being a record of everything that went wrong and slowly turned into a record of everything I was learning — about grief, about family, about myself. I didn’t expect that. I didn’t expect to feel lighter, or to see my own thoughts mellow out over time. But here we are.

If you’ve read this far, thank you. You’ve seen the worst of it — the messy, painful, human parts that I didn’t really want to show anyone at first. But you’ve also seen what came after: the quiet days, the slow healing, the moments where I finally let myself just exist again.

I can’t say everything is perfect now. It’s not supposed to be. I still have my bad days, my anxious spirals, my occasional “what if” moments. But I’ve learned that peace doesn’t mean having everything figured out — it just means learning to sit with things as they are. The past is quieter now. The present feels softer. That’s enough.

This whole project started as a way to survive, but I think it ends as a way to say thank you — to the people who stuck around, to my wife for keeping me grounded, and maybe even to the pain itself for teaching me what matters.

So, if there’s one thing I’ll leave you with, it’s this: life doesn’t really owe us anything, but it does keep giving us small chances to keep going. One day at a time. One word at a time.

Thanks for walking with me through all of it.