Life Before the Walk

The morning I decided to live, I had done nothing to deserve it. I had gone to sleep the night before having made my peace. I woke up confused. Looked at the bottle. Natural. I have always found that funny: the universe declining my resignation on a technicality. In the silence of that morning, I made a deal with myself. If I have one life and I was willing to throw it away, then I owe it something. I owe it a real attempt. That was the first decision. Everything since has been a consequence of it. I was 125 kilograms, directionless, and so deep in my own fog I could barely think. I left Manchester for university in Swansea just to escape. For the first time, I was genuinely alone. Everything fell to me: money, food, survival. Mine to figure out or fail at. The weight of it caught me on an ordinary Tuesday. Walking into a lecture, something rose up I couldn't name and couldn't stop. I turned around, took the bus home, held myself together until I was through the door, then cried into my pillow until I slept. I woke up the next morning and did the only thing available: picked up the pieces. Got a move on. Over the years that followed, I tried to build an armor from the outside in. I became obsessed with optimization. I hunted down mentors in books, buried myself in complex code, and fought the iron until my physical frame changed. I chased the tokens of success because I thought they would protect me from that room in Swansea. I got the computer science degree, the visible markers of discipline, and finally, an offer from one of the largest financial institutions in the world. I thought I had won. The apartment in Manchester city centre was everything I had worked for, and it felt like absolutely nothing. Full fridge, any gym, the title, the salary. And yet I was miserably numb with no explanation. My friends had scattered. The people around me knew who I had been, but I had stopped being that person and hadn't told them. I stopped caring about the corporate machine. Boxing, books, internal survival. Those were the only things that felt real. I became intolerant of comfort in others, and they became intolerant of me. My work relationships fell first. My output fell next. Before I could leave on my own terms, I was handed a redundancy letter. It wasn't the leaving that broke me. It was that it wasn't mine to decide. I spent the following year throwing ideas at the wall, watching nothing stick. Another breakup added to the list of unprocessed. I was stuck in my room, looking at plans I had written twelve months before that hadn't moved an inch. I thought: if it’s in my head, it’s there for a reason. And if anyone is going to save me, it has to be me. I sold what I owned, gathered what money I could, and headed for the door. The last book I finished before leaving was Broken Wings by Kahlil Gibran. I wondered about my own, whether I had let them be clipped, or whether walking out that door was the only way to find out if I could still fly. Today I write from Istanbul. 220 days on the asphalt. Broke in my pocket, rich in mind and heart. I have met more people from more places than most will in a lifetime. I have felt my life in jeopardy often enough that the superficial noise has finally burned away. Something has clarified: I have gone from the person who didn't want to live to the person who wants nothing more than to. Will I make it to Kenya? I couldn't tell you. Do I have to? No. Kenya is just a waypoint, somewhere to walk toward while I work out the rest of this existence. The road is waiting. Türkiye is waiting, forty-five degree summers await me. I know my way. And that's all that keeps one foot following the other. I have intentionally backdated this further than it would be, I do not want this to be the first piece read. A reader must find this. Not stumble upon it.