My life right now feels like an abstract painting.
Not the kind you hang in a gallery and pretend to understand—but the kind where pieces overlap, blur, and refuse to stay in one place. Some of it is new. Most of it is relived.
And strangely, that’s not entirely a bad thing.
I was married for 27 years. When everything fell apart, I didn’t just lose a relationship—I lost half my life. And, if I’m being honest, parts of myself along with it.
That doesn’t mean those 27 years were all bad. They weren’t. There were real highs. Moments that mattered. Things I’m still proud of. Experiences I wouldn’t trade.
But trauma has a way of editing memory. It highlights the ending and lets it bleed backward into everything that came before it.
So yes—lately, I’ve focused on that ending. Probably more than I should.
And that’s where my therapist has been pushing me.
Forward.
Here’s the strange reality I’ve come to accept:
I have lived longer than I likely have left.
That’s not despair. That’s math.
I have no desire to leave this life early. None. But I also don’t feel the need to pretend I’m building toward some endless future either. Somewhere in the middle of those two truths is where I’m trying to exist.
And part of moving forward… is reclaiming pieces of the past.
Not reliving them.
Reclaiming them.
There’s a difference.
Take the van, for example.
I don’t want it because I’ve suddenly fallen in love with the idea of “van life.” Honestly, most of the influencers I’ve seen make that lifestyle look more like a performance than a life. That’s not me.
The van is something I didn’t finish.
That’s it.
It’s a project that got interrupted. A thread that got cut. And there’s something in me now that wants to pick that thread back up and see it through.
If I buy it, build it, finish it—and six months later it just sits there? That’s fine.
The point isn’t the van.
The point is finishing something I started.
Maybe one day someone else uses it. Maybe a friend. Maybe family. Maybe it just exists as proof that I could still build something with my own hands.
That’s enough.
Working on the Scars of Service series has done something similar.
It’s taken me down memory lane—but not in the way people usually mean that.
Not nostalgic.
Not painful.
Just… factual.
These things happened. They shaped me. They exist.
And that’s led me back to a question I get a lot:
Why did you join the Army?
The honest answer?
Because I thought it would make me straight.
Yeah.
That one doesn’t age particularly well.
I had this idea—like a lot of us did back then—that if I just became “more of a man,” whatever that meant, it would fix something in me. That I could outrun who I was.
There was also my mother. After everything she went through, I know she hoped I’d follow a very traditional path—marriage, kids, stability.
Unless you count the furry ones… I didn’t quite deliver on the grandkids.
But that wasn’t the only reason.
I was in Junior ROTC. I liked the structure. I liked the idea of service. And honestly?
My friend Chris joined.
He made it look like something worth doing.
So I did it.
At 17, I joined the Montana Army National Guard while I was still in high school. Back then, you could go to basic training between your junior and senior year, come back, graduate, and then head to AIT.
On paper, it sounds manageable.
In reality?
It’s one hell of a shock to go from being a high school junior to having a drill sergeant screaming in your face.
The first time, you don’t know what you’re walking into. It’s chaos.
The second time—when you go back for AIT—you know exactly what’s coming.
And somehow, that’s worse.
But I made it through.
More than that—I adapted.
Basic training is designed to break the civilian out of you. That’s not subtle. That’s the point. And like a lot of people, I developed coping mechanisms to survive that environment.
Some of them… a little strange in hindsight.
But they worked.
And beyond the stress, there were things I genuinely valued. Experiences I never would have had otherwise. People I never would have met.
For a kid from Montana, the Army opened doors to a much bigger world.
There was always another layer for me, though.
I was gay.
And at that time, that wasn’t just frowned upon—it was disqualifying.
Even under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the reality was simple: serve quietly, or don’t serve at all.
So I learned to stay off the radar.
I worked harder. Pushed further. Tried to be the one nobody had a reason to question.
Excellence wasn’t just pride.
It was camouflage.
And despite all of that… I don’t regret it.
Not even close.
The Army gave me structure when I needed it. It gave me perspective. It gave me experiences that shaped everything that came after.
It also came with a cost.
Physically. Mentally. In ways I’m still sorting through.
But overall?
I think I did alright.
And maybe that’s where all of this is landing lately.
Not in regret.
Not in nostalgia.
But in something quieter:
Taking the pieces of my past—good, bad, unfinished—and deciding which ones are still worth carrying forward.
No matter what my dog and my mom push, pull, shove, coax me forward, because that is the best way to move.