After my [divorce? engagement failure? break-up?] in 2018, I sorta had a [personal meltdown] that lasted for five years. I'd call it my Eat, Pray, Love phase, except I did none of those things.

What I did do was: Completely wash out from living my 'best life' in Seattle with a woman I thought I loved, start sleeping in my car, lose/fumble my job/career, put $20,000 of debt on a credit card, travel solo to Europe, go to Burning Man a couple times, and, from there, face the reckoning that I am barely in control of my life. This is how my 30s came to an end.

Maybe it was an early mid-life crisis1, maybe it was a loss of identity that came from suddenly decoupling with someone, maybe it was full on karmic body check that knocked me flat on my ass. I guess what it was, with the benifit of five years of hindsight, was a chance to introspect. 

Why was my life like this? Why is my life like this? 

After a relationship breakdown of significant magnitude, the ground seems to give way underneath your feet. The identity I thought I had firmed up and established to be simply dissolved. What I was is not what I am. Being unable to sustain the lie to someone close was earthshattering, and after the break-up I had nowhere to go and nothing to do but pick up the pieces.

 Maybe it is better to have loved and lost, but holy fuck does losing love ever hurt like hell.