Champagne Confessions

There is a specific kind of intellectual peace that comes with being a wreck. When you have already accepted that you are the villain, the coward, the disappearing act, the world loses its power to disappoint you. For years, I moved through life like a ghost with a heavy pulse, calculating every move, every lie, and every half commitment with the precision of a high-stakes gambler who knows the house is rigged but plays anyway just to feel the friction. I was comfortable in the dark. The dark is honest. The dark doesn’t ask you to be a “good person” or a “nurturer.” It just asks you to survive. And I was brilliant at surviving. I turned “nothing” into “thousands,” turned homelessness into a strategic secret, and turned my own trauma into a weaponized armor that kept everyone at arm’s length. I was safe in my own ruin. I was okay with the idea of a car crash, a bottle of gin, or a flight to a country where no one knew my name being the final period at the end of my sentence.

But then came the hijacking.
Now, there is this thing growing inside me this biological clock that I never asked for and actively resented, and it has stripped me of my only defense: my numbness. To be sober is to be flayed alive. It is a constant, vibrating mind-fuck. I spend my days navigating a landscape of intrusive thoughts where I am simultaneously mourning the woman who could disappear and loathing the woman I am forced to become. There are moments, sharp as a razor, where I look at a bridge or watch the traffic hum by and think about how easy it would be to just… stop. To set the whole world on fire, to punch through the polite facade of everyone asking me how I “feel,” and to scream that I hate this. I hate the weight, I hate the loss of my autonomy, and I hate the fact that I am no longer the most important person in my own narrative.

Yet, in the same breath that I contemplate the fire, I find myself shielding my belly when I trip. That is the true horror of this transformation: the involuntary emergence of a love that I am not even sure I am qualified to carry.

I have spent my life half assing everything that required a soul. I half assed marriages that were nothing more than convenient distractions; I half-assed therapy because I was smarter than the person sitting across from me; I half-assed “being okay” because the lie was more sustainable than the truth. And now, I am terrified that I will half-ass her. I am scared that I will look into Ellie’s eyes and instead of a flood of maternal warmth, I will feel a cold, hollow resentment for the life she stole from me. I worry that my capacity to love has been so eroded by years of being “disposable” that I am trying to pour from a glass that was shattered a decade ago.
It is a profound irony that the only thing that finally forced me to be honest is the one thing I never wanted. I am standing in the wreckage of my old identity, watching the smoke rise, and I am making a promise to a person I haven’t met, a person who is currently the architect of my misery. I am promising to be better before I even hold her. I am promising to stay sober when every cell in my body wants to drown the depression in something 80-proof. I am promising to be “normal,” even though I don’t know what that word means, because the thought of her feeling as temporary as I did is the only thing more painful than the thought of staying.

I miss the “openings.” I miss the exits. I miss the dark path where I could be the bad guy and sleep soundly because I didn’t owe anyone a version of myself that was “whole.” But now, for Ellie, I am performing a daily exorcism. I am casting out the liar, the coward, and the ghost, trying to find a woman underneath who is capable of standing still. I am weeping for the girl who wanted to die, while fighting like a god to make sure this baby lives a life that doesn’t require a fortress.
Is it possible to be a monster and a mother at the same time? Maybe that’s the dark secret we don’t tell. Maybe we are all just fucked-up versions of who we used to be, trying to trick our children into believing we are solid ground. I will cry. I will want to run. I will look at the horizon and remember the freedom of being nothing. But then I will feel that kick, that internal reminder that I am no longer allowed to be disposable.

So here is the truth, cold and jagged as a broken window: I am staying in this skin, not because I am redeemed, but because I am finally cornered by a reality I can’t bullshit. I will sit in this depression, I will look at the bridges I didn’t jump off, and I will swallow the resentment of my own survival until it tastes like blood. I am broken, I am flawed, and I am deeply, darkly exhausted, but I am still standing here, staring back at you.

Now, tell me:

if you had to trade the freedom of your own destruction for a life you never wanted, would you have the courage to stay, or are you just another coward waiting for the lights to go out?

Burn or build?