Sunsets

In the two years from mid-2019 to mid-2021, more than a few things went wrong in my life. While everyone has a story of how the Covid-19 pandemic fucked up their lives, it seemed to simply accelerate the final detonation in the life of chaos I’d made for myself. Though events leading up to this period began some time ago, the end of the line was in sight around the fall of 2019 & only got worse from there, ending up with a breakdown which landed me in a psych ward / detox facility followed by two months of psychiatric treatment.

Sunsets was created with the journals I’d kept during all this time, built around the notes and expanded through a narrative written after I’d been released. It’s part diary, part autobiography, part narrative and part me just trying to create something out of the confusing combinations of extreme emotions I’d just experienced. I needed to make something to come to terms with everything that happened, and this is the result.

People affected by mental health disorders or addiction all have their own tales of experience, and this is mine. Singular and focused on the events that I experienced, from my perspective alone, the resulting book is more a look inside my head than anything else. The subject matter is dark—alcoholism, depression, alienation & suicidal ideation all make appearances—but the writing is styled almost as a textbook, simply staging events & saying, This is how I saw it, and this is what it felt like.