I Miss Me Too

Before this all started I was feeling alive as fuck.

I was the dude in the middle of the room who could read the energy without even thinking about it. Atlantis cruises. Kink parties. Dance floors. Locker room banter. Social chaos. Those spaces became a huge part of my social life, work, friendships, hookups, all of it. I basically lived in those environments for years. By day I sold cars. By night I built environments where guys could drop their guard and explore parts of themselves they usually kept hidden.

So much of my confidence, social life, sex life, and identity came from connection. I thrived on chemistry, eye contact, flirting, physicality, tension, honesty, and helping create spaces where guys could relax a little and stop policing themselves so hard. I didn't realize how much of my life revolved around intensity, stimulation, connection, and emotional signal until my nervous system stopped responding the way it used to.

When My Body Hit the Panic Button

It started with fatigue and pain. At first I thought it was just some brutal sinus infection. I took leave from work thinking maybe I needed rest, antibiotics, sleep, whatever. Instead I kept getting worse. Then I went to Burning Man. Part of me honestly thought getting out into the desert and being around people, art, chaos, music, and freedom might shake me out of whatever was happening. Instead my body started feeling even stranger. By September I ended up in the ER. By October I was laid off.

Then the doctors told me I had transverse myelitis. I had never even heard the term before. Transverse myelitis is inflammation of the spinal cord. The inflammation damages the protective covering around nerves and disrupts communication between the brain and body. Depending on where it hits, it can affect movement, sensation, pain regulation, cognition, and emotional processing.

In my case, it felt like my nervous system got stuck in threat mode. I stopped trusting myself faster than I realized. I'd forget a client's name and spiral afterward. I'd miss a text and convince myself I had damaged a friendship. Small disagreements felt way bigger than they actually were. Hypervigilance started masquerading as responsibility. Catastrophizing started feeling weirdly useful. I was living in survival mode long after the actual emergency had passed.

The Meds Shut the Noise Down

Eventually someone handed me a prescription for Prozac. Not because I was "sad" in the traditional sense, but because my nervous system had gotten stuck in a feedback loop. Every thought triggered alarm. Every alarm triggered more thoughts. And to be clear, the medication did help. Within a couple weeks the spirals loosened their grip. Negative thoughts stopped feeling so absolute. The panic softened. The constant internal tension got quieter. For the first time in months, my brain wasn't running at full speed all day.

One of the more common side effects of SSRIs is emotional blunting. Before this experience, I probably would have shrugged at that phrase. The medication finally quieted the panic, but it also made it easier to sit in a metaphorical burning room and think, "eh, whatever." I kept functioning. I kept hosting events. I kept producing content. From the outside, I probably looked more stable than I had in months. Internally I felt like a prop moving through scenes I normally lived inside of.

Feeling Like a Passenger in My Own Body

I knew I should feel excited, horny, happy, connected… but it all felt far away. I could still have sex, but it felt procedural instead of embodied. Chemistry became theoretical. My dick still worked. I just didn't feel fully there. I remember watching attractive men interact with me and recognizing intellectually that they were beautiful, charismatic, funny, sexy. But emotionally it felt like someone had turned the sound off on a movie. That terrified me. Not because I thought sex was disappearing, but because presence was.

The Spark That Made Me "Me" Went Quiet

A lot of my identity was built around energy. Not just sexuality. Not just masculinity. Presence. Humor. Emotional intuition. Hosting. Chemistry. The ability to affect a room and make people feel something. I don't think I realized how much of my self-worth was tied to that until it stopped feeling natural. I still had the beard. The muscles. The jokes. The outfits. The social skills. I could still perform the version of myself people expected to see. But internally something felt disconnected. And the weird part is I missed myself too.

Rebuilding

There's no clean redemption arc here. Healing is less like flipping a switch and more like slowly learning which parts of yourself need repair, rest, regulation, and patience. I'm still intense. I still love connection. I still love humor, tension, sexuality, storytelling, masculinity, absurdity, all of it. But I'm learning there's a difference between feeling deeply and living like your nervous system is constantly sounding the fucking alarm.

I take sleep seriously now. Hydration too. I pay attention to inflammation and overstimulation instead of treating them like personal weakness. I'm rebuilding my identity around more than adrenaline, validation, performance, and emotional chaos. Part of rebuilding has been learning how to reconnect with myself without depending entirely on external reassurance to feel stable again.

Sitting in the Quiet

I'm writing this from the aftermath, not the finish line. I'm still weeks away from what one friend called "homeostasis." My body is still inflamed. My emotions are still inconsistent. My unemployment ran out. My housing situation became unstable. Bills kept showing up while I was falling apart internally.

And honestly, I would not have made it through this period alone. The amount of support people gave me still hits me in the chest when I think about it. Friends checked on me. People helped me financially when I was scared and running out of options. My GoFundMe gave me breathing room at a moment where I genuinely didn't know what I was going to do next. I'm deeply grateful for the people who stayed.

I can feel myself becoming emotionally present again. I tell people today is better than the day before, but I still have a ways to go. None of this is linear. Busting a nut feels different again. Conversations feel different again. I'm laughing differently. Crying differently. Feeling attraction differently. Feeling present differently. Not every day is good yet. Some days still scare the shit out of me. But I'm starting to recognize myself again. And after everything this experience did to my nervous system, my relationships, my identity, my body, and my sense of self… I survived it. But I'm still untangling what it cost me.