8 Months

A little update on a ruptured life

This week marks 8 months since I was forced to leave my family and home.

A lot has transpired since then, and I thought I’d offer a quick update on things.

First, there was the road trip that helped me hold onto my sanity and get some perspective as my world was imploding. Time to think on the road. Troubles to overcome on the journey. Friends who helped me get a better view of myself from a perspective that isn’t as adversarial as the one I’m used to — and had largely accepted, despite being a harshly self-critical view.

And a lot of searching for God. That quest is still ongoing.

Then, a return to Raleigh, where my soon-to-be-ex and kids live. Where I don’t have a community, or even any close friends or family, leaving me to process all of this alone.

So back in December, I got a little studio apartment, about twice the size of a nice walk-in closet. It’s an OK place, all things considered, but more often than I care to admit, it feels like a solitary confinement cell. I’ve gone days, sometimes over a week, without in-person human contact. And when I do have contact, it’s a cashier at the grocery store register, or a quick conversation with the maintenance guy about the leak in my bathroom. The regulating effects of spending time with people I know and like and am comfortable with, which I thankfully experienced on the road, is just not accessible from here.

The first couple weeks in the apartment were all about getting things set up and trying to see my kids again. I’ve got that first-visit memory locked down in a place where it can’t hurt as much as it should. Subsequent visits have been a mixed bag, emotionally. I just don’t know how to process going from daily fatherhood where I talked to all my kids every day to seeing them once every 1-3 weeks, depending on what’s going on. I don’t think I’m supposed to get into the specifics on custody arrangements in public, so I won’t, but this has been the hardest transition by far. There were moments where I saw how it affected the kids that didn’t just break my heart, they curb stomped it.

I’m learning to keep that stuff locked away. I have no idea if it’s healthy, but it’s the only way to keep going. I cannot tell you how many times thinking about it has snuck up on me and just absolutely taken me out of commission. I don’t know how you can go from being a daily Dad one day to whatever this is, overnight, and not have it gut you.

And I can’t afford that right now.

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January and February were bad. I was barely functional. I could show up for a podcast or write a post here and there, but otherwise, I was just lost. In March, I started taking some supplements that were recommended to me, and some of my energy and mental clarity came back. I started doing gig delivery work again — sporadically at first, because I associate it with humiliation, criticism, and insufficiency — but I found that it helped me to get out of the apartment, have more in-person interactions with people, even if they were purely transactional, and brought in a little cash.

And it’s been great grist for the mill of my ongoing Notes From the Road series, which has been very satisfying to write, and has gotten a lot of positive feedback.

I picked up a bunch of new paid subscribers to this Substack in the beginning of this unwanted journey, but attrition has kicked in, and I’ve lost quite a few since then. Despite the fact that I’ve been doing some of the best writing I’ve ever done, it’s just hard to grow. I’m sure there are strategies I’m missing, but I live in a weird, liminal mental state, and website strategies are so far down the list of things I’m thinking about it’s not even funny. My approach has always been, “Write what’s true, even when it’s hard, and it’ll reach who it needs to.”

Still, it’s been almost impossible to stay ahead. I put in a lot of hours of work each week on stuff that’s not paying much, if anything, in the hopes it will later. Every podcast episode requires about 3 days of effort on my part, but that’s the game if you want to grow. Most of my posts here aren’t paywalled, because I don’t like paywalling things and the gurus always tell you to keep your best content free.

Well, I try not to ever write anything that isn’t my best, so how the hell do I decide?

Delivery work is inconsistent at best, and the cost of gas has skyrocketed, cutting into my take home pay. I like the flexible hours so I can prioritize working on the stuff I really care about and give myself a break on the bad days where I just can’t keep it together, but there are nights when I’m out hustling for hours after a full day at my desk and I only make 50 or 60 bucks for my trouble. (There are nights when I make 160 bucks too. It really just depends. The good nights are the exception, though.)

I got in this bad habit of doing AI therapy sessions while I was driving orders, too, because I was bored. I thought I could zero in on this or that thing that was bugging me, talk it out, make some progress, move on. But instead, it started feeding my hopelessness. Even the smarty-pants AI told me my situation was really bad, and that there were no good answers. And then it obsessively tried to talk me out of driving my car off a bridge, because if you talk at all with a damn clanker about the dark thoughts that come when you’re going through something like this, it goes into full liability-mitigation-mode.

I decided I had to put a stop to that. Ended badly every time.

So basically, life’s been a rollercoaster. The grief comes whenever it wants. It doesn’t ask permission. It doesn’t care if it’s a good time. There was a night I was driving and some thought or song or something struck me a certain way and I started crying so hard I was almost hyperventilating, which is not the optimal condition for operating a motor vehicle. The number of times I’ve had to furiously conceal the telltale sign of tears before I go into a store or a restaurant to pick up an order is a little embarrassing.

Then, last week happened.

For several reasons, not all of which I’m fully conscious of, things got really dark, really fast.

I felt cornered with no way out. I felt increasingly certain that there was just no version of the future I could tolerate. I was really grappling with the fact that I will never get real closure on what happened, why it happened the way it did, and how myself and my kids are ever supposed to pretend it’s OK. My autistic sense of justice was in full “I NEED RESOLUTION” mode and my rational mind was like, “but you’re NOT GOING TO GET IT” and they were fighting it out like a couple of toothless street thugs on super-meth.

And then I wrote a couple of dark little notes, culminating with the post entitled, “Annihilation.” And that did something, somehow, that I desperately needed. I’m still not even sure what it was. It felt honest in a way that even I try to avoid. There was catharsis in it, for sure, but somehow even more than that. I felt like I broke through some interior barrier and found a whole sub-basement, a deeper layer of contact with myself, and my ability to utilize the pain as fuel for good art.

It also scared some people.

Some of you reached out to say so. One person told me, “You are so fucking talented. You have so much to give. Hold on.” Another one said they’d get on the next plane and fly out to see me if they had to — and that person is an ocean away. Someone else offered to come into town from hundreds of miles away just to take me out for dinner.

I got a handful of concerned DMs and emails from different folks.

It means a lot. Thank you all.

I wish all my people who cared didn’t live so far away. I miss just hanging out with Fr. Joseph Krupp and his dad watching sports and movies, or having late night conversation sessions over bourbon with Fr. Michael, or sitting with Kale Zelden talking about whatever the theme of the day was over a meal.

That road trip probably helped to save my life.

They say that for most of human history, losing one’s spouse — one’s primary attachment bond — was tantamount to dying. It greatly reduced survival odds, and that was deeply imprinted in our psychology. These days, the physical risk from losing your mate is less, but our nervous systems can’t tell the difference between that and dying any more than they could a thousand years ago.

I was with my wife longer than I lived without her. I believed we’d be together until death. It doesn’t matter that things were hard, or how much we screwed it up, or even if we were a bad match. I just had it in my head that we’d keep going, keep fighting for it, keep trying to get it right until we finally did or died trying.

Getting married, having kids, watching them grow up and have kids of their own and coming home to visit was always the life I wanted, the one I felt like I belonged in, the thing that would anchor everything else. Like most men, I cared a lot about the work I do — sometimes maybe even too much — but none of it matters without the dream. Even to toil at something deeply important feels pointless if you have nobody to share the trials, tribulations, and triumphs with.

A shared life is the only kind that feels real.

Accepting that vision of life is now gone — taken without my consent — and cannot be replaced, has been such a bitter pill. I don’t know why I’m here if that’s not it. I never had a big bucket list even before, but now any goal I might have had seems so trivial in comparison to what was lost that I don’t really care anymore. If I finish a novel, or travel to Japan, or see the Northern Lights in Iceland, or whatever else, what does that restore to me? Those have just become to-do items on a paper that has turned to ash.

Do you ever think about how many times a day you share some triviality with your spouse? A new business you saw being built, the realization that this street turns into that one and runs behind the university in a way you never knew, a sale you saw at the store on something you know they might like? These little moments are the paving stones of a life that is lived in. We see, we process, we relate.

So when you spend every day having to face the fact that nothing you do may ever actually matter again, it’s hard not to think about dying with a certain kind of wistfulness.

It feels, at times, like an eject button from the burning plane that is currently spiraling towards the earth. A way out of the grinding, endless pain of quotidian existence. I’ve talked to other guys who have gone through this who say they think about dying, sometimes yearning for it every day.

It’s one thing to hear people say it. It’s a weird thing to stare at, up close and personal.

It’s like seeing some exotic, terrifying creature you’ve only ever heard about, but with your own eyes in your own room.

So here’s the deal:

I have zero enthusiasm for continuing to live with the level of heartache I have been for the past couple of years since the “divorce” word started making a regular appearance in my vicinity, but for some strange reason I don’t want to die. Sure, I’ve thought about it plenty, I’ve said I want it out loud more than a few times, I’ve even screamed it at the place where God used to be, but whether it’s fear or curiosity or some unkillable seed of hope, something in the back of my mind always shakes its head at me and says, “You know that isn’t really true.”

Sometimes I hate that little voice. Sometimes I wish that it were wrong.

But a lie is a lie, even if you tell it to yourself.

I’ve got this axiom I keep coming back to — something that popped into my head like it should have been an old saying: “grief is an exorcism.”

It’s an analogy, but only barely. You have this awful, ugly, nasty, dark think writhing around inside of you, all claws and teeth and sharp elbows, threatening to tear you apart, and you can’t fight it into submission or it regroups and regains its strength and comes for you again.

You have to purge it. You have to say its name. When you’re on the highway at 70 miles an hour and it comes bursting through you in waves of unmitigated sobs, you have to pull over if that’s what it takes, but you let that sucker out. You do not want it to stay inside you.

Grief is the pain leaving your body to make space for your soul to stay.

And it never comes out in one solid piece. It’s like an iceberg, broken up into tiny chunks, all floating to the surface one at a time on their own schedule. Often at wildly inconvenient times, and never as fast as you would like to be done with them.

Sometimes, I feel like I write excessively about it here. I’ve seen people refer to what I’m doing as “trauma dumping,” or narcissism, or whatever else. They can think whatever they want. This space, these words, this is necessary bloodletting for me. And the piece I wrote about Annihilation last week? Like I said, that did something for me I still don’t understand. I’ve felt different ever since. Calmer. More grounded. More like myself.

It was a ritual of grief. Almost a liturgy. And it accomplished something I don’t even consciously know how to do. It’s early yet, so I’m not sure if I can trust it, but I’ve been off the rollercoaster for days.

The isolation stopped bothering me quite as much. I’m using it to work on things. I’m learning how to relax sometimes. I decided to force myself to take Mondays off (my weekends are usually crazy busy) and just…rest. I still feel like I’m spinning my wheels too much, but I get this feeling (admittedly, it comes and goes) that somehow, maybe my efforts will not be in vain. Even if I can’t see how or why right now.

Maybe God is some cosmic Miyagi, making me wax the car and sand the floor, and it all feels so stupid and disconnected in my mind that I get lippy like Daniel-San, so I can’t see the strategy for what it is until I’m in the middle of some situation I don’t expect and it all comes together and I’m perched there like a land manatee doing whatever the land manatee version of a crane kick looks like.

But to find out, I have to wait. And to wait, I have to endure the cesspool I’m treading water in, hoping to find the shore.

Which brings me to the part of this post where I make a request.

Poor little Evie, my stupid but lovable car, is having issues again. She is my lifeline. The only way I can work, or see my kids, or get out of this damned apartment complex to do anything worthwhile.

She is overheating again, despite me putting about $1800 into getting the radiator fans and their electrical assembly repaired back in February. I was trying to nurse her along until I could afford to get her looked at, but my engine temps spiked to a new high today while I was out working, and I can’t risk blowing the head gasket or warping anything, so I quit for the night, bit the bullet and made an appointment to go back and have them look at it tomorrow.

And I’m not going to lie, I’m freaking out. Because I’m about a month from being totally broke, and I’m still cashflow negative for now.

The robot utopia with all the free stuff we’ve been promised is still years away, I have no career to go back to even if I were not all over the internet as an eminently cancellable conservative, Christian (or Christian-adjacent) middle-aged white male who is rather loud about his opinions, and my small savings buffer is dangerously close to being wiped out while I’m slinging groceries and pizzas and fried chicken for peanuts.

So I’m asking for some help in any of the following ways:

1. If you read this Substack but don’t have a paid subscription, would you consider one? It’s my primary source of income, and I’m sure I’m doing it wrong, but subscriber numbers keep going in the wrong direction, and I’d love to turn that around. If you’re interested, you can hit the little red button below:

2. If you or anyone you know needs voiceover work, I’ve been doing that periodically (thanks to Thomas, one of our readers, who referred me to an agency he worked with) and it’s work I really enjoy. I set up a page for this on my website, with a demo reel. I’d love to do this more, but I have no idea how to break into this market for anything regular.

3. If you or anyone you know needs help setting up a website, I’ve begun working with an old friend on that for a project she’s starting. And come to think of it, I’ve been designing sites like this one and this one and this one and this one for many years. I don’t have a formal business structure nailed down for this, but I work freelance and I can figure it out.

4. If you’re willing to support me/my work here through direct patronage, the usual links are all operative: (Venmo/Paypal/Stripe/BuyACoffee)

5. If all else fails, I will gratefully accept your prayers, and yes, even your positive vibes. (And yes, I know many of you pray for me all the time, and I am so thankful for that.)

If you’re interested in reaching me on any of this, you can hit me at steve at steveskojec dot com.

There’s more work I already want to take on, but I’ve got to pace myself. I have several book projects in mind (including a Notes From the Road essay collection and the Global Storm series I started on TSF), I’m thinking about possible courses I could teach online, and after nearly 10 episodes my podcast with Kale is finally eligible for monetization (I don’t expect much, but we’ll see). And that’s before I get to the collection of artistic endeavors and hobbies I’d finally have time for if I could stop flailing around.

I know I’m supposed to be doing more with my gifts than delivering food or bagging groceries. I never thrived in the 9 to 5 world. Both of those things are honest work, but if you’re not meant for something, it’ll always eat away at you. I believe finding whatever project I’m supposed to be doing next is probably my only path back to any kind of real wellness.

Meaning-making is what I do. Even at the worst of times, my compass is always trying to point north.

Becoming a functional human being again after your life was exploded from the inside out is a process, and not a quick one. Having to try to re-start your whole life at 48 from nothing while going through the worst thing you’ve ever experienced with no local support network and a flatlined faith is not something I would recommend to anyone.

I will be walking wounded until the day I leave this earth. I know that. Some days it feels like I was torn in half, and my body just can’t understand where the rest of me is.

But I’m not quitting, so the only way out is through.

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