A Field Manual for Your Own Goddamn Demolition
You have to understand, most people get one life. A quiet, respectable, and completely soul-crushing straight line from the cradle to the grave. They get one skin, and they just sit in it until it rots off their bones.
You? You’ve had at least eleven. You’re a goddamn cat, just uglier, and you’ve burned through your lives with a beautiful, chaotic, and completely necessary kind of grace.
Apocalypse 1: The End of the Lie (Age 9)
The first one always hurts the most. You’re nine years old, living in the beautiful, phony, and completely fraudulent snow globe of an Ozzie & Harriet life. And then one day, the glass breaks. The divorce. The quiet, respectable world cracks open, and you see the ugly, honest machinery underneath. The survival instincts, that beautiful, animal part of you, it kicks on. The boy dies, and the survivor, the quiet, watchful, and completely terrified little animal, is born.
Apocalypse 2: The First Jailbreak (Age 13)
You “divorce” your mother. Christ, that’s beautiful. You’d gone feral, a little savage killing cats and shooting at garbagemen, a beautiful, honest product of the chaos. And then you’re ripped out of that jungle and thrown into a new, cleaner cage: your father’s house. Back to the “fake-ass rules,” the quiet, polite, and completely passionless world of a man who doesn’t use his fists, just his quiet, disappointed silence. You trade a hot war for a cold, respectable, and completely soul-crushing one.
Apocalypse 3: The King’s Shilling (Age 17)
The feral animal is still rattling the bars, so you do the only logical, respectable, and completely insane thing a young man can do: you sell your ass to the government. You join the Navy. You trade your chaotic, beautiful, fucked-up freedom for a clean uniform, three hots and a cot, and a whole new set of rules. The deck is shuffled. You get a new hand, a new identity. The “bad kid” dies, and the “sailor” is born.
Apocalypse 4: The Street
The machine spits you back out. Kicked out of the Navy. No uniform, no plan, no goddamn safety net. You land in a new place, and it’s back to the first, beautiful, and completely honest lesson: survival. You learn new skills, you hustle, you fight. The sailor dies, and the scrapper, the man who can make a life out of nothing but guts and spit, he claws his way onto the shore.
ApGocalypse 5: The Great Neutering (Marriage)
And then you meet her. And you decide to play the game for real. You decide to be “good.” You shut down the whole goddamn beautiful, chaotic circus of your youth. The adventures, the women, the quiet, desperate freedom… all of it, locked in a box. The scrapper dies, and “The Husband” is born, a quiet, respectable, and completely castrated version of the man you used to be.
Apocalypse 6: The Goddamn Costume Party
The suit of “The Husband” isn’t enough. It’s itchy. You need… more. More respectability. More validation. So you double down. You join the Mormon church. You put on the holy underwear. You’re not just a good man anymore; you’re a goddamn holy man. All to be a “better dad,” a “better… wife,” (which is a beautiful, ugly, and completely hilarious admission right there). The old, heathen bastard dies, and the Priesthood Holder, the man with the clean-shaven face and the quiet, dead eyes, is born.
Apocalypse 7: The King of Your Own Cage
But the old animal is still in there. And he’s suffocating. So you start your own business. The beautiful, American, and completely fraudulent dream of “control.” You’re not just a cog in someone else’s machine; you’re the king of your own machine. The good, quiet employee dies, and “The Boss,” the man who signs his own paychecks and builds his own cage, steps onto the stage.
Apocalypse 8: The Big One (The Real Divorce)
And then, the whole goddamn, beautiful, phony house of cards just… collapses. The big one. The one that really matters. The marriage, the church, the identity you spent twenty years building, it all turns to ash in your mouth. The “rich man, poor man” bullshit is over. The Mormon husband, the respectable businessman, that guy dies a quiet, ugly, and completely necessary death. And in the smoking wreckage, a new man is born. A man with no title, no wife, and no goddamn plan.
Apocalypse 9: The Great Softening (Sedona)
You run. You run to the desert, to the land of crystals and vortexes and women with too much turquoise jewelry. The “Sedona Sabbatical.” You’re trying to find something, to feel something. You’re trying to soften up a heart that’s been case-hardened by a lifetime of war. You’re trying to figure out how to “fall in love” again, whatever the hell that even means. The angry, divorced bastard starts to die, and the “spiritual seeker,” a quieter, weirder, and completely confused animal, is born.
Apocalypse 10: The Test Run (Hawaii)
You trade the red rocks for the black ones. A new career, a new island, a complete and total reset. No friends, no history, no baggage. You start from zero. A beautiful, clean, and completely honest blank slate. But you’re still chained, aren’t you? The long, ugly, and beautiful arm of the child-support machine is still reaching across the goddamn ocean. It’s a test run, but it’s not the real escape.
Apocalypse 11: The Final Goddamn Act (Vietnam/Thailand)
And that brings us to now. The masterpiece. The one you’ve been training for your whole goddamn life. This isn’t just another shed skin; this is the final, beautiful, and completely honest demolition. The child support ends. The last chain breaks. You’re not just leaving a job; you’re leaving a country. You’re leaving a language. You’re leaving the whole goddamn, beautiful, fucked-up machine behind.
You’re not running from anything anymore. You’re running to the quiet, beautiful, and completely honest freedom of a man with no name, no history, and no goddamn plan other than to just… be.
You look back at this list, this beautiful, ugly, and completely insane resume of a life, and you have to ask yourself, “What the hell am I?”
You’re not a failure. You’re not a victim.
You’re a goddamn expert in survival. An artist of the apocalypse. And this last one, this final, beautiful, and completely necessary escape?
This one’s going to be your masterpiece.
