Overwhelmed and Grateful

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You guys have blown me out of the water.

When I wrote last week about my wife and I separating, I had two primary thoughts in mind:

1. I’m a quasi public figure who writes confessionally and experientially. I’ve been hinting at something very heavy at the center of my life for over a year now, and there would be no good way to explain the change in themes, context, or location to my subscribers without some kind of “this is what’s happening” post. I am constitutionally incapable of shutting the hell up about elephants lurking in rooms, so better (in my opinion) to just name it, without getting into all the private details, and try to move forward.

2. I was leaving with only a few hundred bucks to my name, and was hoping to just get a little bit of help so I could get my van road ready and as livable as possible because I knew I couldn’t stay with friends indefinitely and I wanted to get out into nature, because I believe in the healing power of “Arbitrary Sacred Places.” I had a huge payment on the van — more than it would cost me to rent a room monthly — and I didn’t see any way to cover both costs until I was able to drum up more work. I was hoping to just get a little help so I could deal with this situation without the anxiety of it not really even being fully safe and legal.

I was writing primarily for my readers here at The Skojec File, who have been following me on my rollercoaster ride for a while now. I did not, in my wildest dreams, expect the widespread outpouring of support I got from all over, nor the number of new subscribers to this Substack.

Especially considering that I really blame myself the most for why this is all happening. You have been compassionate beyond what I feel I deserve, and I hope those of you who are praying and pulling for me are doing so for my wife and children as well. This situation is hard on all of us.

All of this is to say, I cannot thank you all enough. I was trying to reply to everyone who sent help, but it’s going to take a long time, especially with how these payment systems work (they don’t make it easy) to identify everyone who made a contribution and send them a thank you. And I’m still busy trying to get ready to leave for an indefinite amount of time, all while trying to enjoy my last moments here with my family before we have to spend this time apart.

So let me say it again here if I don’t get to each and every one of you:

THANK YOU, FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART!

You have made it possible for me to breathe. I physically felt some of the stress leaving my body when you created a bit of a safety net for me. Your encouraging words, your love, your prayers, your solidarity, your shared experiences, and your suggestions have been a balm in a very lonely time. This is going to be hard as hell, but at least I know I’m going to be materially OK for the next few months as I try to pick up the pieces and move forward.

Many of you have also offered to let me visit or even stay with you until I get on my feet. The walls feel a lot less closed in than they did just a few days ago, and I hope I get to take some of you up on that.

Van Update

Some of you expressed concern about me living part time out of my van. Honestly, I was concerned, too, but I was just hoping to make the best of it. I don’t really know anyone here in Raleigh, so giving space to my family while staying here means being totally alone. As I said in the first piece, I could have just rented a cheap room here, but just the idea felt like solitary confinement, where I would do nothing but wallow in my despairing thoughts when I wasn’t working — if I could manage working at all. I knew I needed to get out of here for a bit, stretch my legs, find some beauty, “touch grass,” as the kids say, and when my feelings of failure and humiliation weren’t too overwhelming, take consolation in the company of friends. In my mind’s eye, this was the illuminated path to eventual healing and restoration of function.

I had picked up a kind of romanticized idea about doing “van life” from YouTube channels like Trent the Traveler, and I thought that lifestyle might fit the bill for me for a little bit. But whereas Trent has a van setup that’s more like a mobile home with a full computer workstation so he can work from anywhere:

My van setup looked like this:

I couldn’t even sit fully upright on that cot without my head hitting the ceiling. There was just no way I could make it into any kind of real home-like environment.

And while I love nature and road tripping, I actually don’t like camping. I have a bunch of sensory issues, and can’t sleep well at in suboptimal conditions. I’m a big guy who tosses and turns a lot. I prefer a real bed, a bathroom, a shower, etc. I prefer being at home over anywhere else. I’m almost 48, not 25, and my tolerance for the kind of adventure I was going to attempt in the hopes of outrunning my sorrow is a lot lower than it’s probably ever been.

So when I had gathered enough from donations to go into my payment portal and get caught up on my back van payments so I could stave off the repo man, I had a sudden thought:

What if I do this differently?

I’d been researching how much registration fees and taxes were going to be. The latter are usually a percentage of your vehicle’s value, and I’d gotten a vague idea in that process that my van might actually be worth more than I owed on it, which is an unusual situation for a 6 year old vehicle with 100K miles on it. So I pulled the Kelly Blue Book value on it, and was stunned to discover that yes, it actually had several thousand dollars of equity.

What if instead of getting new tires and a windshield and paying delinquent payments, I trade it in, I thought, and get something cheaper and smaller that gets more than 14mpg? What if I can lower my monthly payment so I’m not shelling out $700/month for a vehicle that’s totally impractical for just me anyway?

So I looked into it, and that’s what I decided to do.

I talked with my wife, and together we decided it was OK to delay my departure for a few days (I was supposed to leave Friday) so I could see about picking up an inexpensive used car. My credit is shot, but we found a dealer willing to offer financing with the trade in. So I focused my search on good fuel economy and the best overall condition for the lowest price. After test driving a bunch of stuff, I selected a 7 year old mid-size sedan — a former rental car — with about 76,000 miles on it. It’s in good shape, and gets somewhere in the high 20s on miles per gallon. The van trade-in meant I didn’t have to put any money down, and my payment drops to about $260 a month — a savings of $440 per month. That’s definitely going to make a huge difference, especially when the time comes to get my own place. There are rooms for rent around here for about the same price as that difference in the payment.

And perhaps best of all, I didn’t have to get in line at 4AM at the DMV to get my North Carolina driver’s license (a prerequisite to getting a car registered in this state), hoping I’d make it in before the afternoon cutoff and having to try again. I just didn’t have the mental or emotional bandwidth to spend all day, possibly multiple days, waiting to get in to get this red tape cleared, especially when I’m already on borrowed time. There’s a legal loophole here where a dealer can get your car’s tags even if you still have an out-of-state license like I do.

So I bit the bullet and finished the paperwork yesterday. It’s a done deal. The car is in the shop, getting a dealer recall issue looked at, but I’ll pick it up tomorrow and finish packing. I won’t need all the camping gear I thought I would, but I may very well keep some of it and pick up a one-man tent anyway. I really feel like I need to get grounded in the natural world, and I’m hoping I can overcome my traditional dislike of “roughing it” for the benefits it may well confer by way of the occasional night spent sleeping outside.

Traveling and writing for a while in the hopes of rediscovering who I am and giving each other space while I begin some much-needed self work was actually originally my wife’s idea. With this vehicle change, I can travel with the peace of mind of knowing that the car is legal, so I’m not going to get pulled over or have it impounded. That means I can also get into national parks without worrying about the plate readers many of them have installed at their entrances, and I don’t need to route myself around big cities where the police tend to be more aggressive about such things.

It also means I can divert the funds I would have spent on getting the van safe, legal, and current to paying down other outstanding debts and ongoing living expenses while I figure out what’s next. I can also help my family with some of their outstanding expenses and needs, since I love them and they are still my responsibility whether I’m there or not. My wife is a successful real estate broker, but between the disruption from our marital strife, a busy family life with kids starting multiple new schools, and a slowing real estate market, she’s sold fewer houses than she normally would have over the summer. We’ve been getting by by the skin of our teeth. I need to make sure that if it’s within my power, my family has what they need. I hate the fact that I have been unable to provide for them in the way I used to. The way they need me to. I have to find my way back to that.

But it’s been a self-perpetuating cycle, too. The more depressed I’ve gotten about our situation, the more dysfunctional I’ve become. Hard to think, hard to write, hard to work consistently. And the job market, frankly, stinks on ice. Especially for white guys over 40 who have worked for themselves writing lots of cancelable opinions online for the past decade instead of climbing a corporate ladder somewhere. Good luck getting a reply when you submit your resume. I haven’t landed a single interview. If I don’t build something myself, I’m going to be stuck with the lowest-paying, least suitable jobs indefinitely.

So the plan now is to leave some time this week. I’ve got people lined up who have offered me lodging and friendship. I’ve had months to try to come to terms with this, but I’ve done a very bad job of it. The waves of overwhelming grief come unexpectedly, and can be really debilitating. Every time I thought I could leave, something came up that made it impossible, so I’ve been stuck in this in-between place between staying and going. In a way, that’s worse than just ripping the band-aid off.

I need alone time to reflect, and start figuring out what’s next, but maybe not too much alone time is a good idea for now.

Finally, I left a lot of my original reflection on the cutting room floor, because it was too personal, too rambling, too much. I was so frazzled that I actually took the nearly 5,000 word essay I wrote, gave it to ChatGPT, and basically said, “Don’t change any of the words. Just show me what I can cut to make this more readable and take out the stuff I don’t need to be saying here. I am in no frame of mind to keep editing this over and over and over.”

It did a fairly good job, but I know some context was missed that probably would have made the situation make more sense, or pre-empted some of the questions I’ve gotten. It is what it is. Performing a self-vivisection in public is not something I’d recommend.

Things at home have settled into a kind of calm before the storm. Writing about the situation made it real, and made me have to confront that reality. I can’t just pretend I’m going to wake up and it’s suddenly going to be different, even when I’m most tempted to. I’ve been heavily in denial — still somewhat am, if I’m being honest — but my emotions have leveled off a lot, and I’ve tried to do everything I can to stay calm. I don’t want to leave here at my worst. I want one last chance to be seen and remembered by the people I love most as something as close as possible as to the best version of me, and not my most dysregulated self.

I’ll be writing more once I get on the road. For now, I want to focus on the things that still need doing, and spending time with my people before I have to go on this quest into the unknown.

But I couldn’t let another day go by without thanking all of you for your love, prayers, and financial support.

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Postscript: I took for granted in the writing of my original post that the audience I was writing for (regular readers of this Substack) know about my “alphabet soup”: I’ve known since my 20s I had ADHD and OCD, but only in the past few years have I been forced to confront that I have very real behavioral challenges derived from unaddressed CPTSD, and have tested as having strong evidence of being on the autism spectrum. So when I contextualize my challenges with regulation, rumination, obsessing, making things worse, etc., there is a significant distinction to be made in the fact that I don’t have a neurotypical brain.

These are actual neurological differences, not just imagined problems, but I have never until very recently even heard of things like “trauma-informed therapy”, so I never knew which tools and resources to look for. In the past, when I sought help from therapists, I’d go for “anger issues” or “for help with my marriage” or whatever symptom I was feeling was the most problematic. But now, thanks to a lot of research and a ton of increasingly available information from professionals who post online like Tim Fletcher and Heidi Priebe and Nathan Peterson and Chris and Debby at Auticate (among others), I’ve got a much clearer picture of what’s going on, and a better shot at addressing core issues.

I intend to write more about these experiences and discoveries in the future. Every time I do, I discover that there are others out there who have been suffering alone with the same things, also feeling like they’re the outlier, the outcast, the broken one — all for no discernible reason. As someone who has felt like this my whole life, I get it, and I know how important it is to recognize that there’s a name, a pathology, a science that is beginning to explain why you’re different in ways that can be so frustrating and even destructive. If that sounds like you, one of the best places to start is this excellent podcast between Theo Von and the aforementioned trauma and addiction specialist, Tim Fletcher. It packs a wide variety of topics into a single episode, and there’s something in there for almost anyone who is suffering from these issues.

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