Despite my best efforts at self-sabotage, I began to turn my life around not long after moving from upstate New York to Austin, Texas. I secured steady employment as a copywriter at a Fortune 500 global technology conglomerate. I’d always loved to write, yet never studied it in school, nor held a writing job. I still work there — seven years later and counting — and after nine raises and three true promotions, I’ve climbed as high as any writer can in my position. I only half-jokingly call myself their “Chief Storytelling Officer.” This is not only the longest-tenured, most lucrative job I’ve ever held, it is my favorite place I’ve ever worked, and the friends I work with are as radiant and compassionate as anyone I’ve ever met.

In the summer of 2014, I started (infrequently, for the first three years) writing for Medium. In the spring of 2017, to process a particularly swift, harsh, and unexpected relationship termination via move-out ghosting, I began examining and exploring my life in ruthless and filter-less detail. I wrote my findings here. I began to do the emotional labor and deep self-reflection I’d been neglecting for so long. I grew by leaps and bounds as a writer and person. I found new levels of joy, developed my first-ever moral compass and value system, and cultivated a self that was true. Much of it by accident, as a means to exploring other horizons.

By the end of 2017, 50 followers became 5,000. Since then, 5,000’s become — literally, as of this very moment — 40,000. The opportunities and experiences this site has offered me are incalculable. I’d spent over a decade blogging for absolutely no one; I assumed I always would. I even met my current adventure partner here. And, yes, my co-workers are some of my biggest champions and most fervent readers.

I dug my way out of debt, started running and biking long-distance races, carved out a serviceable side-career as a singer-songwriter, started a podcast, became secretary of the board for a local non-profit preschool, and since early 2018, I’ve had the unique and unparalleled honor of occasionally writing policy, copy, and communications for the campaign and congressional office of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I have a nest egg now that, assuming an 8% rate of return until age 70, will make me a millionaire — even if I never contribute again. For an anonymous nobody, I sure seem to have one of the world’s most global, diverse, witty, and eclectic friend Rolodexes. I’m in great health. Last year, I spent a month in Europe — in what I termed my “victory lap.” I’d made it out of the darkness and built a life I could be proud of. This was the proof. This was the end-zone celebration.

And yet, just a week after returning, at the zenith (or, more accurately, the indefensible depths) of the Kavanaugh hearings, and just two weeks after appearing on a local Austin television station to talk about my first suicide attempt, I set out a stainless steel knife and an entire bottle of Xanax with the intention of trying again. I almost did. Yet that gave me pause: How could I be so sad, lonely, and angry? This life I have now is such a blessing. What gives me the right — nay, the audacity — to give it up? How ungrateful can one man be? If I can’t be un-depressed now, then when? And how?