You Have to Learn to Build Your Own Track

There’s a pressure many of us feel—to be the tough one, the reliable one, the one who has it all under control. For a long time, I thought that was my job. I learned the hard way that the mask of the "tough guy" doesn't protect you; it just isolates you. And while you’re busy pretending to be fine, your own body can be staging a full-blown rebellion.

It started simply enough. A feeling in my eyes like sandpaper. After a big outdoor music gig, I chalked it up to sunburn. It was a simple, logical explanation for a terrifying problem, and it allowed me to keep my mask on. But the problem didn't go away. It got worse. The moment the mask first cracked was when the mother of my son took one look at me and asked, "Are you sick?" She saw what I was trying to ignore: my skin and eyes had a striking jaundice. The floor dropped out from under me.

What do you do when the problem is real? You go for help. I was taken to a clinic, then to the hospital. They did the blood work and confirmed it: my liver was in distress. Then came the moment I’ll never forget: they sent me home. The very system designed to save me looked at my crisis and sent me back out the door.

That dismissal was a psychological break. The fear I had been trying to suppress had nowhere else to go. After I was dropped off at home, alone, everything fell apart. The hallucinations, the paranoia… it all went nuclear. My mind completely disconnected from anything I knew.

I'm told it was only two or three days, but I spent what felt like two months in an alternate reality. Police were called on me, I called them on myself, and I even thought a new family had moved in while I still lived here.. here in this same house I'm still living in.

The next thing I knew, I was waking up in the ICU.

It wasn’t the machines, nurse staff, or tubes leading to my body I noticed first. The room was full of people from every chapter of my life—family I hadn’t seen in years, friends I’d graduated high school with. And as I slowly pieced it together, I realized they weren't there for a welcome-back party. The doctors had told them to come and say goodbye.

Waking up to that, I knew two things: I was alive, and I was on my own. There wasn't going to be a 28-day program or a fancy rehab facility for me. This was going to be a street fight, just me against my own demons, from the inside of a hospital bed.

After I was finally released, the last of my external support systems vanished. My significant other left.

And here’s the part no one knows. I wasn't just left in a broken body, unable to drive, and completely isolated. I was left with her alcohol still in the house. A six-pack of some cheap "ranch water" stuff that sat there in the fridge. For three years, it has sat there. A silent dare, every single day. A constant, quiet reminder of the "easy way out" for a man whose body is so damaged that one drink could be the end.

Every glass of water, every trip to the kitchen for a meal, I had to walk past it. Every single time was a choice. Every choice was a victory nobody saw.

I’ve learned, in the harshest way possible, that people will get close to you to benefit themselves, but they will not stay to help you heal. I’ve never had a hand reach down to help me up. I have never asked for a handout. All I’ve ever wanted was someone in my camp.

So I learned to be the man who got me here. I couldn't drive, but I had to eat. So I walked. In the Texas heat, still weak, still jaundiced, I walked to the grocery store. I walked to help friends who called, still trying to be the reliable one even when I had nothing left in the tank.

This is the reality of doing it on your own. It's a painful process. It's working so hard for a life that often feels like it's giving nothing back.

Except for one thing. The time I still get with my son.

He is the reason I walk past the fridge and not toward it. He is the reason I get out of bed on the days I feel I have nothing left. He is the reason I fight.

We all want someone to ride the train with us through the darkest parts of the journey. But if you put all your hope in that, you have no idea when the tracks might run out. The ultimate goal isn't to find the perfect passenger. It's to become the person who can build his own damn track, even when he has to do it one painful step at a time.