From the 9mm to 85 feet down.
"I unholstered my 9mm pistol. The cold steel felt familiar. With the barrel pointed at my temple, I saluted myself — a final, ironic gesture of defiance against a life that had become unbearable."
That was rock bottom. Not a metaphor. A storage room on a ship in Norfolk, Virginia, with a loaded weapon and a uniform that didn't feel like mine.
That was the invitation. Not to die — to change course. To dismantle the old, broken structures and rebuild anew.
Years later, I was 85 feet underwater on a single breath, listening to the sounds of the deep — the heartbeat I'd been trying to drown out since I was six, finally too far underwater for any voice to reach. That's where I found what I was looking for. Not peace. Not healing. Capacity. The ability to feel the thing I'd been running from and survive it.