Chapter 7: The Collapse

By November 2022, my world began to unravel.

It started with my body. A cough that wouldn't quit. A foul taste in my mouth. Weight falling off without effort. A thirst I couldn't quench. I was up every fifteen minutes—day and night—running to the bathroom. My mouth stayed dry. My body stayed tired. Fatigue settled deep into my bones.

Eating became painful. Sleeping became impossible. Living became exhausting.

I knew that something was wrong. I just didn't know what it was.

Work added pressure instead of relief. Driving a special needs school bus had once felt meaningful. Now it felt like exile. Silent routes. Non-verbal preschoolers. 4:00 AM alarms. No social life. No ministry. No outlet. I felt invisible, useful only for the task at hand.

My finances began to unravel as well. Overtime threatened my Social Security benefits, but I was afraid to confront my supervisor—afraid to lose the fragile stability I had left. Every decision felt like a risk. Every risk felt unbearable.

By then, social withdrawal was complete.

In 2018, I had finally admitted that I was an addict. I started counseling for myself. I attended three 12-step groups each week. I immediately began experiencing freedom from the spiral. For the first time in my life, I could see the world without the lens of repeated sexual sin. And I had time. Time for life.

Since 2018, I had focused everything on my family, trying to repair what addiction had broken. But as a result of that focus, outside of them, I had no close friends. No lifeline. No one to talk to. Fear, exhaustion, and isolation closed in together.

And exhaustion does what it always does. It drives us back to whatever once worked.

So I returned to the only coping mechanism I knew.

The addiction came roaring back—stronger, more insidious, demanding more and giving less. It happened multiple times a day, hidden carefully from my family and buried beneath layers of guilt. I had promised myself I would never alienate them again, so I didn't bring the habit home.

I moved it.

Out of my house.

Onto my school bus.

It felt safe. Solitary. Concealed. And for a brief moment, it worked.

But the spiral had grown tighter.

Job

Job didn’t lose one thing. He lost everything.

His health failed. His body broke down. His livelihood vanished. His sense of normal life disappeared overnight.

What had once been stable became unrecognizable.

And when he called out to God, what he received was silence.

No answers. No explanation. No clear cause he could point to and say, “This is why.”

Only pain, exhaustion, and confusion.

Scripture says he sat in ashes, scraping his skin—trying to find relief from a body that had turned against him.

And eventually, he spoke.

Not with faith. Not with clarity. But with honesty.

“Why did I not perish at birth?” —Job 3:11

It wasn’t rebellion. It was collapse. Job wasn’t shaking his fist at God. He was trying to understand how a life could unravel so completely, so quickly, and with no clear way back. Everything that once held him together was gone. And all he had left… was breath.

Collapse Doesn’t Ask Permission

Collapse doesn’t come neatly. It doesn’t warn you. It doesn’t wait until you’re ready.

It comes when the body is tired… when the mind is overwhelmed… when the support systems are already thin.

And when it comes, it doesn’t just touch one part of your life. It touches everything.

What started as physical weakness became emotional exhaustion. What felt like pressure became isolation. What had once been managed quietly came roaring back louder than ever.