Because what the hell else are you doing? Another self-help book dripping with sunshine and delusion? Another Instagram reel posing like your life doesn’t reek of quiet failure? Keep manifesting your perfect little dream while hiding the scabs on your wrist and ignoring that throbbing organ in your gut screaming cirrhosis.
You’re in it. Right now. A slow-motion car crash, and guess what? You’re the goddamn driver. You just haven’t felt the impact yet. But it’s coming.
One day, the job ghosts you, the love turns cold, your body mutinies—and there you are, flat on your back, staring at the ceiling like it owes you answers. Wondering when the hell you stopped living and started rotting.
You’re the thing dangling on the end of a string—disposable, replaceable. We all are. Everything you sweat for, bleed for, swear you’ll protect—it vanishes. One chapter bleeds into the next, and just like that, you’re a ghost in someone else’s rearview.
Yeah, they might cry. Might even post some recycled sorrow with a filtered photo and a sad song. But when the smoke clears, it’s not your career or your mortgage they remember. It’s the blood in the stool. The bruises. The dumb choices. The nights that cut deep and the mornings that never came. That’s the shit you carry. That’s what sticks.
The real stuff. The raw stuff. That’s yours to keep.
That’s why you should read this. Because it’s not cleaned up for polite company. It’s not one of those paperback lies wrapped in fake smiles and affirmations. It’s raw. It limps. It stinks of truth. And if you’re out there thinking everyone else has their shit sorted while you’re choking on yours—newsflash: they’re drowning too. They’re just better at hiding it behind filters and bullshit. You’re not broken. You’re just awake.
Write it down. Every broken thing. Every time the floor gave out from under you. Every lie you swallowed, every night you white-knuckled your way through. Stack the titles—employee, spouse, failure, addict, survivor. Count the times you bet on people who never showed up. Tally the moments the world made it crystal clear: it’s not built for you. It’s rigged. Always has been.
You’re not winning. Not in a culture that worships winners while it grinds the rest of us into powder. And if it hasn’t happened by now—that big break, the miracle, the redemption arc—it’s not coming. That’s not bitterness. That’s math. Cold and simple. And deep down, you already know it.
If you’re still here—alive, reading this, half-broken but upright—congrats. You’ve got the one thing that every real story needs: damage.
Because the stories that matter? They’re not built on LinkedIn profiles or wedding albums. They’re carved out of wreckage. Out of fists thrown and apologies never given. They’re the bruises you hid, the nights you begged the universe for one more fucking chance. They’re motel ceilings, jailhouse walls, barroom floors. They’re the taste of blood in your mouth and the sick pride of getting back up anyway.
If that’s you, then yeah—you’re one of us.
Like it or not, Blood In My Stool is what’s left after life’s had its way with you—not once or twice, but every damn day. It’s two steps forward, three back, face in the dirt, wondering how the hell you’re still crawling.
I tell these stories because if I can make sense of my own wreckage, maybe it reminds you that yours is survivable too. Maybe you see the part where I woke up in a jail cell, lost everything in a courtroom, or stared into the kind of darkness that doesn’t always blink back—and maybe, just maybe, something in it feels familiar. Like your own bruises nodding in recognition.
If you’re still here, reading this—then maybe something in you is cracked wide open too. Maybe you’ve carried a silence so loud it echoed in your gut. Maybe you’ve stood in your own mess—job gone, love gone, future fading like a cheap tattoo—and still found the nerve to keep breathing.
Because these stories? They aren’t memoirs. They’re survival confessions. War-torn letters from the trenches of addiction, divorce, shame, and the quiet 3 a.m. despair that no one claps for. Maybe you laugh. Maybe you flinch. Maybe you feel seen for the first time in months.
This isn’t for the ones posting filtered smiles and pretending healing comes with a yoga mat and a gratitude journal. This is for the ones who’ve eaten shit, buried parts of themselves to keep others comfortable, and still show up to face another day.
So if you’ve ever poured a drink instead of crying, or stayed alive out of sheer spite—welcome. This mess was made for you.
