The Beginning of the Wreck
Before the addiction. Before the collapse. Before redemption had a name. There was only speed.
Looking back now, I think the warning signs were always there.
Not the dramatic kind people expect in movies. No dark prophecy. No moment where the sky split open and somebody whispered that my life was heading toward wreckage.
It was smaller than that. Faster than that.
It was movement. Constant movement. Noise. Chaos. Speed. Pushing harder every time life told me to slow down. I didn’t know how to sit still long enough to hear myself think, and maybe I didn’t want to. Silence had a way of making things crawl to the surface.
So I kept running.
Through football fields and neighborhood streets. Through fights, bad decisions, broken relationships, addictions, ego, pride, anger, and enough reckless choices to bury myself three times over.
Every line crossed felt temporary when I was young. Consequences belonged to older people. Other people. I thought momentum itself could save me. Keep moving fast enough and maybe nothing catches you. That became my philosophy long before I realized it had a body count attached to it.
“No pause. No plan. Just go.”
There were moments I should have died. Moments I probably deserved to lose everything. Moments where addiction hollowed me out so completely I barely recognized the person staring back from mirrors anymore. But survival has a strange sense of humor. Somehow I kept waking up. Kept moving. Kept crashing through life at full speed while pretending I still had control of the wheel.
And underneath all of it was fear.
Fear of slowing down. Fear of feeling. Fear that if I stopped performing long enough, people might realize I was just a scared Appalachian kid trying to outrun himself. This book is the wreckage from that speed.
I should probably say this upfront too: this book isn’t written like a polished autobiography.
I loved reading The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger when I was younger, and that voice stayed with me for years. Honest. Uncomfortable sometimes. Messy in the way real memory is messy.
So I wrote this the same way I remember life happening, fast, emotional, sarcastic sometimes, reflective other times, and probably a little rough around the edges.
Because life never happened to me in neat little chapters. It happened in collisions.
The chaos. The addiction. The violence. The loneliness. The people I hurt. The people who stayed. The moments that broke me. The moments that rebuilt me.
I used to think redemption arrived like lightning. Instant. Loud. Miraculous. Truth is, redemption usually crawls in through busted doors while your life is still on fire.
This story starts before I understood any of that.
Back when I still believed speed was freedom. Back when I thought surviving and living were the same thing.
Back when I had no brakes.