I built the body.
Then I lost myself inside it.
For years I lived two lives. One was the life I wanted — movement practice, deep reading, showing up fully. The other I kept hidden: drinking, using, cycling through guilt and shame by morning. From the outside it looked like discipline. From the inside I was coming apart.
During the pandemic, the hiding stopped working. My weight climbed fifty pounds. My wife asked me to leave. I went to my brother's house. A week later I fell off again. He gave me one choice: rehab or AA, or lose the family.
I chose the group.
What saved me wasn't a method. It was people. My family, who stayed. My sponsor, who showed up. My movement teacher and community, who held the door open even when I'd stopped walking through it.
My circumstances may not be yours. But I know this pattern: performing at a high level in the places people can see, while quietly coming apart in the places they can't. Knowing something is wrong and being unable to name it, let alone fix it alone. Living at a fraction of your actual capacity — not from lack of effort, but from lack of the right support.
That's what I work with. Not the surface. The structure underneath it.