I love change. Change is good. I know this. New places, new experiences. What I don’t love is the process of change. The “in between.”

You know the feeling. Between leaving and arriving. You’re not where you were. Not where you’re going yet. Just suspended. Holding on to one life while the other one isn’t ready for you.

That’s where I am right now. Standing in my kitchen in Portland. And I can’t stop staring at my KitchenAid.

We moved to Portland a few years ago from Florida. We hated it there. That’s a strong word “hate”, but it’s accurate and I’m not afraid to use it.

We love Portland. The climate. The seasons. The views of Mt. Hood. The diversity! I love our apartment. We have a terrace with raised, self-watering garden beds where I can grow whatever I want.

It’s the exact opposite of Florida in all the right ways. No more oppressively hot summers. No more worrying about living through a hurricane on some billionaire’s yacht.

Instead of constantly being on alert we feel like we belong. I’m not afraid of what might happen if I accidentally act “too gay.”

My dog Chase loves it too. We walk the neighborhood four to five times a day, every day. Not a day goes by we don’t discover something new.

Some kind of flower has just bloomed. Or a plant species I’ve never seen before. Someone has put out a new set of chimes (I love chimes, Cade can’t stand them). Another progress flag appears, or a lawn sign professing someone’s commitment to equality.

In fact, we just returned from a walk and at the same time ended a call with my husband Cade. We’re moving again. The moving isn’t new. We’ve moved a dozen times in the 14 years we’ve been together.

This time it’s different. Harder.

We’re moving to Cade’s home country of Australia. I love it there. Not only that, but Cade’s dad is there. If you could meet him, you would understand why that’s a pretty good reason in itself.

So are Cade’s brother and his girlfriend. And shortly after we arrive, there will be a baby. We will be guncles and we couldn’t be more excited!

But Cade is away on rotation and with the move only a few months away, I need to start selling all the things that can’t go with. That’s what we were talking about.

I told him I don’t know where to start. He said “start with the Kitchenaid.” My big red mixer that I’ve had for as long as I can remember.

It was one of the first big equipment items I purchased back when I was teaching cooking lessons at Cook’s of Crocus Hill in Minneapolis. Not long before my yachting career started.

I don’t really use it anymore. Since I quit yachting, and all but quit cooking as well. But it had survived every move since then.

It lived in storage for the four years we were in Nicaragua. It has had a prominent location in every other place we’ve lived since.

This time, it can’t come with. This is the big move. Across continents and hemispheres. It weighs too much, and would require a power adapter to even plug it in anyway.

But if I never use it, why is it freaking me out to list it? Why does it feel like my heart is going to break? Or that my entire life is going to unravel if I sell it?

It’s because my life IS going to unravel when it’s gone. Along with just about everything else that has its place in our home.

Every piece of furniture. Anything that doesn’t fit into a suitcase. Anything that doesn’t fit the airline weight restrictions.

Whether I use them or not, many of those things are reminders of times and events in my life that hold significant meaning.

You’ve probably said this… “they’re just things.”

It’s true. Maybe it’s silly, I’ve even thought about taking pictures of the “just things.”

But there’s more. When my surroundings change, so do I.

Because a couple of years ago the diagnosis arrived. ADHD. And since then, so have years of small recognitions.

A thought, a memory. Something clicks into place. Oh. That’s why I did that. That’s why it felt so big when it shouldn’t have.

That’s what’s happening right now, standing in my kitchen, looking at this mixer.

I know now why I need my surroundings a certain way. Why I put everything in exactly the same spot when I’m not using it. For most of my life I just didn’t have a name for it.

Where there was no structure, I created it. Because without structure I become overstimulated, anxious, and often unbearable for anyone else to be around.

The funny thing is, I’ve been constantly moving and traveling for years, knowing all of this happens every time.

On a smaller scale, when we travel, it’s getting from one place to the next that I struggle with. Once we arrive at a destination, I immediately put my “things” in the place where they will live until we leave again.

Moving is much harder. When everything we own is in boxes. Not knowing where they are going to be until we finally get to the new place and I’ve put them where they belong.

The truth is, I don’t even know where to start.

When I try to think about packing this apartment up, I don’t see steps. I see what it looks like right now, and I see what it will look like when it’s empty. Nothing in between. No sequence. Just the before and the after, with a blank space where the how is supposed to be.

Cade will be here for a good part of this, once his rotation ends. But right now I’m standing in the middle of it alone. And this time, it’s not boxes. It’s suitcases. And most of it isn’t coming with.

That’s what’s different about this move. It’s not just the fact that it’s a bigger move. Or that the amount of time of feeling like I’m in limbo and don’t belong anywhere is going to last longer.

It’s knowing that none of those things that make my house a home, are going to be there. Ever again.

So as our home starts to become dismantled, and my surroundings begin to change, I’ll be saying goodbye to all of the things that make me feel safe. Whether I use them or not, they will disappear. The corner where my big red KitchenAid sits will be empty.

And until we’re settled, and everything we do still have gets put where it belongs, I’m going to feel lost. Without structure. Without all of the safety nets that keep my brain from feeling “off.”

I’m going to feel anxious, confused, and worst of all like I don’t belong where I am.

Maybe you know that feeling too.

Mine starts the day the KitchenAid goes.

—R. Michael

R. Michael is a former yacht chef, a married gay father, and a late-diagnosed neurodivergent writer. He tells his own stories, but he writes them for you, hoping you found something here to connect with. This is Ungarnished.

A new conversation happens every week, and you’re invited. Come as you are.

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TLDR - The Short Version

• Writing last week’s story took everything out of me. I almost didn’t hit publish. Almost did it again with this one.

• I wear a recording device around my neck all day. The transcripts are worse than you’d imagine.

• An AI debated my life choices using my own words. It didn’t go easy on me.

• Why do I overshare? The answer is at the bottom. So is the audio.

There's an intentional thing I try to do with my stories. Maybe it doesn't always hit the mark. I call it “the window and the mirror.”

Each time I show you a glimpse of my world, I want to give you something back. A reflection of yourself. If you notice it, tell me in the comments.

To say that last week's story "We Did A Good Job" was difficult to write would be a gross understatement. It takes up to three days to finish a story. This one took me an entire week. When I read the first draft from start to finish, I was sobbing. Hard. And I hadn't started editing it yet.

It forced me to look beyond the mechanics of what happened. I know what I did and how it shaped the way I thought about myself for the next twenty years. That's not new.

It's different when you actually sit down and choose the words to describe how your actions made someone else feel. You're just guessing. My guess is likely harsher than the reality of it. It can get dark. And I can get stuck there for a while.

I've carried guilt for a long time. I didn't know how to make it go away. It became my travel companion. Always there, reminding me never to think too highly of myself.

There's something else. I almost didn't publish the story several times, right up till I clicked the button. My inner voice was telling me I was making a mistake. I didn't paint a very flattering picture of myself after all.

I don't know about yours, but my inner voice can be very persuasive. Dismissing it can feel risky. Sometimes it is.

When I started on Substack

I had just been diagnosed with ADHD. I have always been aware of my limitations. Before I had a name for it, I just thought I wasn’t smart.

If I was going to share my stories, I had to figure out a way to make them readable. My thoughts are chaotic and fragmented. You might notice I also don't always know when to stop.

It comes out when I speak. I talk fast. I'll say "um" three or four times in a single sentence. I might start in the middle of a story, then loop back to the beginning. My body language and facial expressions do half the work getting the point across.

Another charming feature of being neurodivergent for me is the constant distraction. When I have a good idea, a dozen random thoughts will quickly follow. If I'm not able to write it down immediately, POOF! It's gone.

I read about this device called Plaud Note Pin, and decided to give it a try. Two very interesting things happened when I started wearing it.

First, I became addicted. I wear it all day every day on a lanyard around my neck. When I'm driving or walking Chase, I press one button and it records everything I say.

When I open the app on my phone, all the recordings transfer automatically. I click a button and it transcribes the whole thing to text.

Not just the part that sounds good, ALL of it. That was the second thing. And it was so much worse than I could have imagined.

But intermingled with all of the random sounds, the "ums" and stutters, was my voice. Word for word. All I needed to do was get rid of the ADHD “extras.”

I wrote a detailed AI prompt explicitly stating that it is prohibited from writing anything.

No correcting my grammar. No smoothing it out so it sounds better. It can only delete the words that don't belong.

The next prompt allows it only to move blocks of sentences around so they are in the right order. The result is still messy, but it has structure.

Then I write the story using the text blocks as my guide, and I end up with my first draft. That version is the equivalent of an eight year old trying to write a business letter, using all the best words they know.

Then I start over and I write it again. But this time with my own words in front of me, I’m able to think about how I would say it out loud.

It’s where my personality (good or bad) shows up. It’s how I would sound if I were having the best, most clear headed day. It's when I add the sarcasm and the eye rolls.

Here's how it starts:

Recently, I started exploring different ways of reframing my essays to make them more digestible for my neurodivergent family.

Condensing them for shorter attention spans. Adding captivating audio that isn't me jabbering incoherently for 20 minutes before you catch up with the point I'm trying to make.

An AI Debate

That's how this audio came about. It was an experiment and it had an extreme outcome.

I made the mistake of listening while I walked Chase and scurried home when the emotions were too strong to be in public.

I wrote a prompt for two AI radio show personas. I gave them opposing perspectives to last week's story and asked them to argue their case.

Basically, one had the opinion that because of the abuse, walls were constructed. The walls protected me from anyone finding out who I was. And that the idea of being gay was buried so deep I didn't believe it myself.

The other one argued that I knew and it was a convenient excuse and used my own words against me.

Writing the story tore me into pieces. The audio obliterated me.

Letting an AI debate your life choices is an interesting experience.

They make some assumptions and use charged language for the purpose of making it more interesting. It’s important to note that I did not give them a script. They were given a a copy of the story and told to debate the two perspectives provided to them.

It's a bit of a gut-punch, but maybe the person who needs it will hear it.

Needless to say my inner voice (which also doubles as my better judgement) didn't succeed in convincing me not to publish "We Did A Good Job", just like it didn't convince me not to share the audio debate.

Maybe I do overshare

It isn't my goal to shock anyone, or make them sad. It's not because I expect anyone to feel sorry for me. I'm not telling stories to feed an inflated ego.

So why do this? I'm not the only person who's had trauma in their life. Why don't I just write it in a journal and keep it to myself? Trust me, I've thought about it.

Sure, the circumstances are mine. I've lived a life of extremes. Most people aren't going to relate to billionaires, superyachts or building a farm in Nicaragua.

But if you set aside the extremes, you're left with an emotional experience. It's there that the reader sees something about themself.

—R. Michael

P.S. I sent last week’s story to Amy on Mother’s Day. I wasn’t sure I should. She wrote back and said she forgave me a long time ago. I wasn’t ready for that either.

I don’t trust anyone who says they wouldn’t change a single thing about their past. And if I could go back and fix mine, instead of carrying around the guilt for the rest of my life... I sure as hell would.

For me, the thing that matters most is the people you hurt. Even if you didn’t mean to. Going through life thinking you haven’t hurt anyone is a lie you tell yourself.

When I pulled up to Luther Crest Bible Camp in northern Minnesota last August, I wasn’t sure what to expect. My daughter Emily was marrying Sara. They chose a beautiful lakeside location, where Emily had worked several summers before she moved to Seattle.

That time of year in Minnesota can be hot. Like humid, sticky, hot. I had my fingers and toes crossed it would be nice. We got lucky. Cool and sunny. It was perfect.

Everything seemed to be running smoothly. Emily had asked me if I wanted to give a speech. For once I hadn’t waited until the last minute. I spoke about it in ‘Because Love Asked Me Too,’ but there’s more to that story.

Leading up to the wedding, there had been something on my mind. It was heavy, and it had been brewing for a long time.

It was bigger than my fear of public speaking. Bigger than worrying about becoming emotional, or embarrassing Emily on her special day. Cade and I would be sitting in the front row, holding hands in front of all those people. Still not as big.

It would be the first time in years that her mom and I had been in the same room for more than a few minutes. At least like this.

We have been divorced for over twenty-five years. We were barely teenagers when Amy and I met. We became boyfriend and girlfriend before we even understood what that meant.

And I was a different person back then.

Growing up is hard, but for me it was more than hard. My earliest memories were filled with fear, hatred and violence. I was too young to make sense out of how I was treated. My mother’s screams coming from outside my bedroom door terrified me.

As I got older, I protected myself by building walls. If I pretended everything was fine, no one would know how fucked up I was. If the walls were high enough, and if I just kept my mouth shut, all of those emotions would stay hidden there forever.

Along with a dirty little secret I had buried so deep, even I didn’t believe it was there.

We were twenty-three when we got married. I had successfully navigated my way into adulthood. All that nonsense had been tucked away safe and sound.

Being a husband and a father had often felt like a dream. I couldn’t believe it, but it was starting to happen. All I had to do was be normal.

Then Emily came along.

Holy shit, I had no idea! Something much bigger was happening. Suddenly I had this new emotion I didn’t recognize and it scared the shit out of me.

It was love. True, unconditional love. This tiny baby girl arrived. She was gorgeous. And she stole my heart.

After Emily came Ashley. Adorable little, full-of-the-dickens Ashley. I had done it. I was 27 years old, had a good job, a wife, and two beautiful daughters. I was flipping the bird to my childhood. Done and dusted. I won!

But normal came with a price. And I was already making the payments. Late, with interest.

There were moments. Perfect moments where I believed everything was going to turn out just fine. They were the moments to look forward to when everything wasn’t fine.

Because I wasn’t normal. And all that shit I had buried years earlier was festering. That on top of a relationship that had started rocky, and was only getting worse.

After the girls went to bed, I would run as fast as I could to the front steps, or the garage. That’s where I stayed till it was time for bed. Drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. It was safe.

But not really.

Because there was a woman inside, to whom I’d promised to love and cherish till death do us part. And she was wondering what the fuck was happening!

My avoidance and refusal to talk about anything must have been infuriating. When I refused to fight, it only fueled the fire. Amy wasn’t having any of it.

Let me tell you a little something about Amy. At least the one I know. She’s strong. She has a temper. She stands up for the people she cared about. And if you wrong by her, she’ll let you know.

But she had made a mistake. A monumental mistake. And she didn’t even know it yet.

She had married a coward.

How could she know? She had never met me. I had never met me. I was still a scared little confused boy, who buried everything so deep, and built walls so high, that even I believed me.

My dream was about to become a nightmare. I had made a big mess. The dirty little secret was going to come out. There was no stopping it.

Those two little girls that I love more than anything in the world were going to be taken away because I’m disgusting, and I never deserved them in the first place.

There was no way to avoid it. I was going to break Amy’s heart and change the course of her life. She was never going to forgive me, and I had to live with that.

I knew if I walked out that door, I would be losing everything. But by that time, I knew that losing everything was going to happen anyway. Because the alternative was much, much darker. And I couldn’t do that to my girls.

The other part of it was, I had no idea what I was walking towards. I didn’t know how to be gay. In fact, I had been the poster child for homophobic closeted gay men up till then.

I didn’t have any fashion sense, and I didn’t know any show tunes. From what I could tell, those required skills for admittance into the their club. I had no one to teach me.

And I had never been with another man. I was completely clueless. The future was a blank, scary, unknown.

Once I had left, and everything had finished crashing down around me, would there be anything left?

What I did next was despicable, and unimaginable. It was a mistake that I would end up regretting for the rest of my life.

When Amy left with the girls to visit her family in Massachusetts, she had no idea that when she returned, the drawers that once held her husband’s clothes would be empty.

Only the stench of a coward would remain.

The next several months were the darkest time of my life. I didn’t have my own place or a car, and I was staying with a friend who was never around.

There was no furniture. All I had was a mattress on the floor. My clothes in suitcases around me.

When I wasn’t working, I would drink, and listen to my Jagged Little Pill CD on repeat, and I would cry. I think Alanis would be pleased to hear that. At least amused.

Drunk and alone. I didn’t belong anywhere, or to anyone. And I didn’t deserve anything more.

So I decided to take a bunch of pills. A very large handful of anything I could find. I woke up the next morning, alive and with the worst hangover in history. Another failure to add to the list.

Time kept moving anyway.

My relationship with Amy never really improved. She worked her ass off. We were both struggling, neither of us happy.

The worst part was, she was the hero of this story and no one ever told her. She was the one who drove the girls to school, planned the birthday parties, coordinated their sports schedules and took time off work when they were sick.

She was the one who was there to help them with their homework. And she’s the one who disciplined them.

I became a spare parent. A novelty. I’m the one who got to do the fun things, like play Guitar Hero all weekend. Kids listen to the fun parent, because they never make them do anything they don’t want to do.

We spent twenty-five years carrying pain, anger and resentment. I didn't know what to expect that weekend, but I hoped we could be cordial for Emily’s sake.

Toward the end of the reception, as the dance floor started to empty, I was standing watching Emily and Sara, enjoying their day. Feeling thankful they had found each other. It felt like the right time, just to take a breath.

That’s when I felt a hand land on my back. It was Amy. She’d come over on purpose. She looked out at the girls and then at me, and she said “We did a good job.”

I smiled and nodded. Muttered something I don’t remember.

But on the inside, I was screaming. “WAIT WHAT?? Are you fucking kidding me?”

We had been so mean to each other for so long, I had just assumed that’s how it would always be. I’d gotten used to the guilt. It was mine. I’d earned it. And then this.

She wasn’t being sarcastic. She was being sweet. She was putting her hand out and offering something to me. She was sharing credit that belonged entirely to her. Credit I hadn't earned

We turned back toward the dance floor. And for the first time, I didn’t feel like running.

--R. Michael

From The Archives

BECAUSE LOVE ASKED ME TO

A father’s tribute to the woman who inspires him most.

Read it here →

It’s Friday night. Bar’s closing.

A questionable stranger is handing you one last drink with an invitation back to their place.

Out of nowhere, one of your parents materializes: “Make good choices, sweetie!”

Or maybe yours skips the warmth entirely and goes straight to: “This guy reminds me of Jeffrey Dahmer, but hey, you do you!”

That’s your inner voice. Most people have one. If you’re lucky, it mostly shows up when you actually need it.

For some of us, it’s constant. It doesn’t wait for Friday night. It’s running at 6am, and it is not kind.

That’s what mine is like. Twenty-four hours a day.

My ADHD voice announced himself first thing Sunday morning. Like I need a reminder.

He’s the uninvited guest who moved into my head over fifty years ago and never left.

I was nearly done editing a story I was working on. It was due the next day. Perfect time to create some mischief.

“Are you sure you want to run that piece?” he started. “Don’t you think you overshared just a bit too much this time?”

When I ignored him, he only got louder and meaner.

“You’re not smart enough to be a writer. You didn’t even go to college. Maybe you just sit down and let intelligent people tell the stories.”

Chase and I were on our first walk of the day. He’s a rat terrier, and he has more energy than Cade and I combined.

While Cade is on his ten-week rotation in Florida, I get to be single doggy daddy! And long walks are essential if I expect to get any work done.

My phone “ding’d”, so I fished it out of my pocket. I was wearing the same jeans I had on yesterday because I couldn’t be bothered to do laundry.

It was a Substack notification from a publication I follow called The Dopamine Dispatch. The author, Kelly Banks, had just posted an article titled “The ADHD urge to not trust yourself.”

I nearly looked over my shoulder to make sure she wasn’t following us. We’ve never even met. How did she know?

Chase was just getting started hunting for flies, so I clicked the link.

The more I read, the more suspicious I became. Because the truth is, I’ve never trusted myself.

Turning the corner toward the park, the thought pulled me backward. I was suddenly on a superyacht, watching a grown billionaire throw a tantrum because I’d switched the dessert at the last minute.

The chocolate soufflés had collapsed. He was making a scene. And people call me dramatic! I was embarrassed for him.

Rarely does anything good come from extreme wealth, zero accountability, and someone with no respect for the people around them.

It wasn’t just the billionaire owners. There were captains on power trips and stews who were full-on bullies. That my life for twelve years.

Reading Kelly’s article had me remembering just how long that voice had been in my head. Long before it had a name. All of that had made it louder than ever.

My cooking was good. I wasn’t a high-maintenance diva with control issues like most yacht chefs. I was a people pleaser above all. Friendly and accommodating.

But I didn’t trust my instincts. Every compliment went in one ear and out the other.

One tiny suggestion, and my inner voice was whispering, “You suck.”

You probably know that voice. It’s the one that ignores the ten things you did right and sets up a permanent camp on the one thing you didn’t.

And I had a secret. Menu planning and provisioning gave me so much anxiety my heart would race just thinking about it.

I would spend an entire day deciding what I was going to make, and I hadn’t even started my shopping list yet.

Relying on my memory for anything was reckless. Lists were essential. Come provisioning day, they would go missing.

Every single thing around me was a distraction. It’s amazing I lasted as long as I did.

Eventually, I’d had enough, so I left. No more big white boats. No more billionaires. And this time, no second-guessing myself.

Chase and I were finishing up our walk. He’s in charge. I just follow from a leash length behind and do what I’m told.

We went inside and I gave him the three treats he requires, or rather, demands after each walk.

I don’t even know what he’s getting rewarded for. Always three. He can count, so don’t try and pull any funny business!

As I gathered up some laundry, I caught a glimpse of a strange man in the mirror. I actually flinched.

It was me. And of course, the voice had to give his two cents: “You look like shit.”

He wasn’t wrong.

It had been a couple of days since I showered. My hair looked like it was styled with bacon grease. What is typically a tightly trimmed beard had transformed into something tangled and unkempt.

I couldn’t believe Chase let me out of the house looking like that!

It’s not the first time I’ve seen that guy in the mirror. It happens when I’m in the zone. Those rare moments when I feel completely focused.

It’s then that I ignore even my most basic needs. I forget to eat. I’ll go a couple of days without a shower, because that’s ten minutes I can never get back.

If Cade’s on rotation and there’s no one around to notice, taking care of myself doesn’t even cross my mind.

Most days I’m anything but focused. There’s the brain fog. I’m scattered.

For the life of me I can’t remember the simplest of words when I’m trying to speak or write. Sitting in one spot and putting them together to form sentences feels impossible.

Maybe you don’t write. But I bet you know the feeling. The absolute frustration of staring at a simple task and watching your brain refuse to engage.

Sometimes I feel envious of neurotypical people. Especially when it comes to this writing thing.

Even some of the neurodivergent creators seem so switched on compared to me. Consistently posting their Notes. Flawlessly interacting with fellow creators. Mastering the algorithm.

I can’t even remember where my switch is!

For me, it’s a lot of ups and downs. I’ll be beaming for an hour when someone new subscribes. Then someone unsubscribes and for three days you would think the sky was falling.

Having ADHD is challenging. There’s no question. You can see it in everything I do. Even how I talk.

There’s the self-doubt and the days when I can’t figure out why I’ve been so busy yet accomplished nothing.

I’ve been called dramatic. Too much! That I’m overreacting.

Sometimes I interrupt. Not because I’m rude or don’t have manners. It’s because I’m paying attention. I want to contribute so you know I’m engaged, but if I wait, the thought will be gone.

I’m passionate and I feel things deeply. Some people find it to be a lot. Maybe. At least it’s genuine.

When I walk into a room, I can feel the vibe instantly. If you’re sad and you’re trying to hide it, I can tell. If you cry, there’s a very good chance I’ll cry too.

The guy in my head isn’t going anywhere. Some days I want to give him a muzzle.

He’s spent half a century trying to convince me that because I’m too much, I’ll never be enough.

But the truth is, he’s full of it. I’m am too much, and I’m exactly who I’m supposed to be.

There’s not a single other person in the world who sees things exactly the way I do. That makes me an expert by default.

He’ll probably be waiting for me when I finally take that shower, whispering that I should delete this whole piece.

I guess we’ll see who wins tomorrow.

—R. Michael

R. Michael is a gay, married, neurodivergent father who went from cooking for billionaires on yachts to building a farm in Nicaragua. He’s a reliable source of opinions nobody asked for. This is Ungarnished.

“The ADHD urge to not trust yourself.” was written by Kelly Banks

Kelly is the author of The Dopamine Dispatch.

From the Archive

One story pulled from the shelf. These were written under a different name, on a different road. The ink is older, but the voice is the same.

The Night We Met Spartacus

Fresh Off a Yacht Charter, Deep in the Woods: Camping, Courage, and Finding the Right Person

Read the story →

Have you ever made up a story in your head about what’s waiting on the other side of a door? I’ve been doing it since I was a kid. Crafting entire movie scenes before I even grabbed the handle.

If I caught someone looking at me from across the room, I knew something was up. Was it my hair? My clothes? Or maybe they are making fun of how I talk. Or the way I moved my hand that made my wrist look limp. You know what that means!

The only way I knew to keep from getting hurt, was to make up my own version about them first. It was a constant loop, never ending, never quiet.

So there I was, parked in front of a coffee shop in Mitchell, South Dakota, talking myself out of going in.

Chase, my rat terrier co-pilot, and I were headed back to Portland from Minnesota. We’d found a farm to park our trailer for the night through Harvest Host.

The owners were kind, they owned a local bistro called The Bread and Vine, and they’d invited us in for breakfast before we hit the road.

Naturally, I Googled it first. The menu looked great, but then I saw it: “Christian Casual Coffee Shop.”

Seeing that word, you know the one, always makes me stop for a split second. Seeing a business that includes it in their marketing raises flags. Big. Red. “You’re not welcome here” flags.

That’s not coming from a place of ignorance. It’s coming from a place of experience. I was raised Christian. But when I came out in the late 90’s, the church suddenly didn’t seem safe anymore. Instead it felt scary.

The feeling of rejection, of being excluded, it stayed with me for years. So when I see that word, used that way, in a coffee shop description on Google, I notice it. It’s code for “just keep moving buddy.”

But damnit, I was hungry! So instead of closing the tab and writing it off, I kept scrolling… a few more lines down, same listing said: LGBTQ+ friendly.

What, what? A business in Mitchell, South Dakota that leads with their faith, but leaves the light on for the gays? I nearly cried.

It got me to thinking about what I had just done. The story I invented to protect myself. It wasn’t the first time. I didn’t just wake up one day and start doing it.

When I was a young child, I was abused. And here’s the thing that I didn’t figure out until almost 50 years later.

When you’re that small, your parents are your entire world. If one of them hurts you, your brain doesn’t have the capacity to blame them. You need them to survive. So you blame yourself.

It must be me. I must be bad.

I got stuck in that “unworthy of love” cycle, and it stayed on repeat for decades. Eventually, it’s just easier to assume rejection is coming. You beat them to it by creating a reason why you never wanted anything from them anyway.

No rejection. No conflict. You may be a loser in life, but you’re going to win this time!

That voice was a constant, overlapping conversation. Combine that with my ADHD, which is less of a “distraction” and more like a permanent party in my head where I’m not the DJ, and being a closeted man until 30? I had every reason to assume I was being judged.

Sometimes I was. When the church tells you you’re broken, or you get fired for being gay, the “stories” in your head start to feel like facts.

That worthlessness leads to some dark places. For me, it led to a total mental health collapse.

It took two trips to Peru and sitting with Ayahuasca 24 times to finally hear what “quiet” actually sounds like.

In one of those ceremonies, I was taken back to a specific moment as a child. I was allowed to speak to my father, to finally forgive him, and more importantly, to forgive myself.

The next day was a miracle. It was the first time I can ever remember the negative chatter just... stopping. Sure the ADHD party was still going, but the guy who had been holding me down all those years had finally given me a well deserved break.

After that, I started to see qualities in myself I actually liked. I started to believe that I was someone who could be loved in return.

Which brings me back to the coffee shop.

I did go in. I never felt a single pair of eyes on me. No one was judging. In fact, no one was thinking about me at all. They were just drinking coffee.

The only person doing any judging that day was me, and I almost missed out on a delicious breakfast because of it.

Chase and I were on a walk the other morning and passed a young man going the other way. He looked miserable, angry and heavy. It reminded me of how I used to move through the world.

I see so many people now who seem to be carrying that same weight, obsessing over others who have zero interest in them. The real mean and angry ones seem to have been handed microphones and permission to be loud about it.

I wonder what would happen if, for just one day, their inner voice went quiet? What if they took a break from the labor of judging everyone they passed?

I think they’d be floored by how light they felt. I think they’d realize that the armor they’re wearing is actually what’s crushing them.

The hard part isn’t finding the quiet. It’s believing you finally deserve it.

—R. Michael

R. Michael is a gay, married, neurodivergent father who went from cooking for billionaires on yachts to building a farm in Nicaragua. He’s a reliable source of opinions nobody asked for. This is Ungarnished.

From the Archive

One story pulled from the shelf. These were written under a different name, on a different road. The ink is older, but the voice is the same.

THE BREAKDOWN | THE PERU CHRONICLES | PART 6

I went to Peru hoping Ayahuasca would save my life. The season finale is about the ceremony that showed me how to save it myself.

Read the series →

The Same Room

Two people can live through the exact same experience and come out the other side with a completely different version of what just happened.

Not a different opinion. A different reality.

Most of us know this is true and still can’t quite accept it. We keep asking the people we love why they can’t just understand. Why they can’t just relax. Why they can’t just let it go.

Nobody is inside your head but you. And no matter how well someone knows you, no matter how many years they’ve spent watching you, they are working from the outside. Always. They are making their best guess about what it’s like in there.

A little over a year ago, I was diagnosed with ADHD. Before that, I spent most of my life wondering why I couldn’t seem to stop fixating. Why I was constantly searching for the next thing before I’d finished the current one.

Now I know. It may not change how I am, but at least I can explain it. Sort of.

I can’t explain the mental itch of needing everything to happen at once while simultaneously wanting the entire world to shut the hell up. It’s an exhausting, high-friction way to live.

My husband Cade can sit in a quiet room and just be in it. No phone, no project, no background noise. He doesn’t need anything else going on. That is genuinely foreign to me.

I worry sometimes that he thinks I reach for the phone to get away from him. That if he'd planned it differently, or asked differently, I'd just put it down.

It’s never that. It has never once been that.

But I can’t make him know what it’s like to be inside my head, any more than he can make me know what it’s like not to be. Fourteen years together doesn’t change that. A diagnosis helps. It gives him at least a moderate understanding, and it allows me to forgive myself. Sort of.

It’s not a problem, it’s just two people, in the same room, having a completely different experience of it.

The Trip

We’ve been to Astoria a couple of times before. It’s rugged, rain-slicked, and doesn’t apologize for its edges. So when a window opened up before Cade had to leave for his ten-week rotation, we decided to jump on it.

We’re leaving Oregon at the end of the summer. For the next several months we’ll be busy preparing for the move. After that, getting back here requires a flight and a plan.

So we booked a room at our favorite hotel, loaded Chase into the car, and headed west for a few days.

I was working most of the weekend. As I usually am. Distracted, somewhere else in my head, not fully there.

On our last night, knowing he’d be leaving for Florida just a few days after we got home, Cade decided to do something about it.

He set up one of the barrel saunas outside our door. Then he filled the soaking tub. Then he asked me to put my phone down and come have a drink with him at the bar.

With every single one of those things, I struggled.

Here’s what actually happens in my head when someone I love tries to give me something quiet and beautiful.

My brain says he’s telling me I’ve been doing something wrong. That’s never what Cade is saying. But it’s how my ADHD brain interprets it.

So I get defensive. I push back a little. Then the guilt sets in, because I know it’s not him. So I try my damnedest to be present.

I get in the sauna. I sit in the tub. I put the phone face down at the bar. And while I’m doing all of it, my brain is running completely amuck.

The thing is, I want to sit in the sauna and feel nothing but the heat. I want what Cade has, that ability to just be somewhere, more than I can explain.

But I don’t have an on/off switch. So I do the next best thing. I try. Every time, imperfectly, I try. I just worry that maybe sometimes, he wonders if it’s him. It never is.

A Familiar Place

We stayed at the Bowline the first time we visited Astoria. We enjoyed it so much, it didn’t take long to decide to stay there again. They allow dogs, which is non-negotiable for Chase.

Before we arrived, Cade had been messaging back and forth with the hotel. They’d reached out the day before as a courtesy, just checking in, asking if there was anything they could do. He mentioned the pillows. I’m allergic to feathers.

Someone named Kat called. Confirmed the pillows, handled it, and offered a proactive upgrade to the Ice House Suite at a discounted rate. We hadn’t asked. She was paying attention.

They checked in every day of our stay. Not intrusively. Just to ask if there was anything we needed.

By the time we unpacked, every obstacle between us and just being there had been quietly removed.

What was left was us.

We drove home the next morning. Chase in the back. The coast disappearing behind us.

Cade had spent the whole evening trying to bring me into the present. He does that. Keeps trying, even knowing I’ll struggle to stay there.

I don’t know exactly what I left in Astoria. I’m not sure what I brought home.

But somewhere in that suite on the river, with the sea lions outside the window and the phone face down at the bar, he asked me to be there.

I was there. Every scrambling, distracted, guilty, loving part of me. That’s the only way I know how to show up. After fourteen years, he still sets up the sauna.

–R. Michael

Bowline Hotel is located at 1 9th Street, Astoria, Oregon, on the Columbia River. Dogs welcome. Book direct on their website.

R. Michael is a gay, married, neurodivergent father who went from cooking for billionaires on yachts to building a farm in Nicaragua, and a reliable source of opinions nobody asked for. This is Ungarnished.

From the Archive

One story pulled from the shelf. These were written under a different name, on a different road. The ink is older, but the voice is the same.

TOP 10 REASONS TO LOVE SOMEONE WITH ADHD

For the ones who live with the chaos and still show up with heart.

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Required Reading

There are people in your life who are required to believe in you.

Your spouse. Your kids. The friend who has simply always been there. You trust them. You need them. But somewhere in the back of your mind, you know their belief in you has skin in the game.

They’re not lying. But they’re in. Their investment in your success is tangled up in their investment in you. Which means their opinion, however genuine, can only travel so far before you start discounting it.

Then there’s the person whose only investment is in the truth. Not in your outcome. Not in keeping things comfortable between you. Just in telling you what they actually see.

When that person says yes, that one, keep going, that lands differently.

That’s the voice that actually stops the spinning in your head.

Most of us don’t have many of those. And most of us don’t realize how much we needed one until we finally hear it.

Forty Years to a 'Yes'

Jackie has known me since we were teenagers. Same crowd, same orbit.

But knowing someone for forty years and actually knowing them are two different things.

We found each other properly at a funeral four years ago. My best friend Tracie’s. The kind of loss that reshuffles everything, including who you end up standing next to afterward.

Jackie reached out. I reached back. What started as grief became something I didn’t expect. A friend who actually sees me.

She comes to Portland regularly. When she’s here, we try to get together. This time it was dinner. The three of us. Jackie, Cade, me.

I had things to tell her. A new direction with the writing. Sharper. More honest. Finally pulling the yacht years back into the room instead of treating them like something to apologize for. Cade had been pushing me toward it for months.

I wanted to hear what Jackie thought.

She’s been following my writing for about a year. Always encouraging. But encouraging and excited are different things, and I wanted excited.

I laid it out over dinner. The direction. The name. What I was actually trying to build.

She lit up.

Not politely. Not the way people do when they’re being supportive because that’s what you do. She leaned in. She said she loved it. She said this was where I belonged.

I felt that familiar, annoying sting in my eyes. I’m a sucker for being seen, and I’m too old to lie about it.

Cade, obligated by law and love to think I’m brilliant, has been saying this for months. I believe him. But Jackie doesn’t owe me anything. She’s been around long enough to have earned the right to tell me the truth. And what she told me was: yes.

That’s the validation you can’t manufacture. The one that actually lands.

Side note: The restack button does more than the share button ever will. Substack treats a restack like actual currency. One tap. It’s the digital equivalent of buying the next round. Cheers~

Andina

We went to Andina. Not because it’s the “it” spot, but because they actually give a damn about the details that usually make dining out a minefield for Jackie.

Andina has been in Portland’s Pearl District since 2003. Family-owned, rooted in Peruvian culture, sourcing from organic farmers in Chincha alongside local Pacific Northwest producers. It’s not casual and it’s not fine dining. It earns the space in between.

The menu labeling is specific and clear: gluten-free, dairy-free, called out dish by dish. No guessing, no pulling your server aside, no “I think that should be okay.” Just information, upfront, before you’ve had to make it awkward.

We ordered small plates. These weren’t those dainty, “visualize the calories” portions. These had weight. They had gravity. The sea scallop ceviche. The duck. Each dish complete on its own, its own flavors, its own logic. But together they were harmonious in the way that good shared tables are.

Cade said it best, which I hate to admit because he’ll bring it up forever: the dishes were like the three of us. Each one individual. All of them better together.

Our server was exactly what you want. Warm without being intrusive, present without hovering. Friendly enough that you liked him, professional enough that you forgot he was there.

Somewhere in the second hour I decided to show Jackie my party trick. Twelve years on yachts will teach you things culinary school won’t.

One of them is how to fold a cloth napkin into a very convincing penis. Jackie lost it.

Our server walked up at exactly the wrong moment, saw it, and instead of being horrified asked if I would show him how. He took it back to show the rest of the staff.

I took a photo for social media. Obviously.

The wine service was handled separately, and the sommelier knew what he was doing. Opened the bubbles with a slide rather than a pop. Small thing. Tells you a lot. (If you pop a cork like a frat boy on a yacht I’m running, you’re walking the plank.)

It was a two and a half hour dinner and nobody noticed the time.

I Don’t Know Much.

But I know this.

In twelve years cooking on superyachts, I learned that the most important thing a kitchen can do for a guest with dietary needs is do the work before they arrive.

Not accommodate. Prepare.

There’s a difference.

Accommodation is reactive. Your server disappears to check, the kitchen improvises, the guest spends the meal wondering if they got it right.

Preparation means the menu is labeled. The kitchen has already thought it through. The guest gets to just eat.

When you see clean, specific dietary labeling on a menu. Not a vague “GF available” footnote but actual dish-by-dish clarity. That’s a signal. It means someone in that kitchen cares about the whole table, not just the ones who don’t ask complicated questions.

That level of attention doesn’t stop at dietary labeling. It runs through everything. The sauce that’s balanced instead of loud. The timing that feels effortless because someone worked hard to make it look that way.

Next time you’re taking someone with dietary needs out to eat, look for it before you book. A menu that’s done the work before you arrived is a kitchen that takes the whole table seriously.

Preparation is the tell.

Jackie goes back to Minnesota. She has her life to tend to, the way all of us do.

But she took two and a half hours on a Saturday night and sat across from us and said, I’ve been reading your writing since you started this, and this, right here, is where you belong.

Cade has been saying it. But Cade’s in. He made vows.

Jackie didn’t say it because she loves me. She said it because it’s true. I already knew the direction. But it’s a hell of a lot easier to pull the anchor when you know the wind is actually at your back.

–R. Michael

Andina is located at 1314 NW Glisan Street, Portland, OR in the Pearl District. Average cost is $50 to $70 per person for small plates and drinks. Reservations recommended.

R. Michael is a former luxury yacht chef, a food and travel writer, and a reliable source of opinions nobody asked for. This is Ungarnished.

From the Archive

One story pulled from the shelf. These were written under a different name, on a different road. The ink is older, but the voice is the same.

AMONG LAVENDER AND LOVE

Sometimes the road doesn’t lead you to some grand landmark. Sometimes it brings you to a quiet field of lavender, a tiny Casita, and the kind of time with family you wish you could bottle up and keep forever.

Read the story →

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Reading the Room

There are places in the world where you can be yourself without reading the room first.

Not many. But they exist.

Most of us spend our lives reading rooms. Scanning who’s watching. Adjusting before anyone asks us to.

Some of us learned that reflex young, in a time when being seen was actually dangerous, when holding someone’s hand in public was an act of defiance that could cost you something real.

That reflex doesn’t go away just because the world technically moves on. You carry it. It becomes automatic. A tic. Something you do before you even realize you’re doing it.

Where You Land

I’m fifty-five years old. I’m still doing it.

This morning I dropped my husband Cade off at the Alaska Airlines gate at Portland International Airport at four forty in the morning. Ten-week rotation.

He’s First Officer on a superyacht. We’ve been doing this for years and we have a system. I pull up, he gets out, we say goodbye, I drive home.

This morning I kissed him goodbye. The same way I have nearly every time since we got here.

That sounds like nothing. For a long time, in a lot of places, it was everything.

Last summer, our dog Chase and I drove from Portland to Dallas to pick up a travel trailer we’d bought. Cade flew in from Florida to meet us, fresh off his rotation.

I pulled up to arrivals at Dallas Fort Worth and before he could even reach for me I said, “I’m not going to kiss you until you get in the car. I’m not going to touch you.”

Not because I didn’t want to. Because I was reading the room.

Cade is fifteen years younger than me and grew up in Australia. He doesn’t have the same wiring. He doesn’t walk into a room and immediately calculate the exits.

He reached for my hand the second he got in the car and I was already checking the rearview mirror. I caught his face when I looked back. I always catch his face.

It makes me feel terrible sometimes, that I can’t just let him. That I’m so conditioned to believe it’s wrong that even when I know it isn’t, the reflex fires anyway.

I’m forever damaged because of that.

Not broken. Just permanently calibrated to a world that has moved on in some places and absolutely has not in others.

And knowing the difference between those places is, depending on the day, either a survival skill or an exhausting way to live.

The Search

We didn’t land in Portland by accident.

We left Florida deliberately. Two people who had traveled everywhere, seen enough of the world to know what it felt like to belong somewhere, and ended up in South Florida because that’s where yacht crew ends up.

It’s a geographic STD you pick up because that’s where the boats are. You don’t choose it, you just wake up one day and realize you’re surrounded by humidity and questionable life choices.

We weren’t hiding exactly. We were just smaller than we actually are.

So we got online and researched. Open, safe places for gay couples in parts of the world that felt like us.

We had a short list. Majorca. Mexico City. Seattle got crossed off immediately because our daughter and her girlfriend (now wife) lives there, and we didn’t want her looking out the window one day thinking we’d followed her.

Portland kept coming up.

A perfect Human Rights Campaign score, which isn’t something most cities can claim. Right sized city. A food scene with a reputation as a mecca for people who actually care about food, and it didn’t disappoint.

We came here the way you choose a berth in a storm. Not for adventure. For safety.

Three years in, I would like to say that I feel completely free here.

I would like to say that. I’m working on it.

Portland International Airport

PDX feels like the city actually gave a damn during the planning phase.

Most airports are just high-ceilinged holding pens for the miserable. You know the feeling. The lighting that makes everyone look slightly unwell. The carpet that hasn’t been updated since 1987. The sense that the whole operation was designed to process you, not welcome you.

PDX doesn’t do that.

The wooden ceilings make you feel like Portland couldn’t wait until you got outside to show you what it has to offer. The living plants. The bleacher seating that actually invites you to stay rather than shuffle toward your gate. Every detail pointing the same direction, saying the same thing.

The food situation is just as intentional. Local options, actual quality, and because there’s no sales tax in Oregon, prices that won’t make you do a double take.

My personal reward for making it through security is Blue Star Donuts. I don’t allow myself to get them anywhere else in the city, which makes the airport the only place they exist for me. That is either discipline or self-deception. Possibly both.

Plus, if you’re lucky enough to be flying during a holiday or peak travel time, you might just catch the therapy llamas walking the concourse.

Someone at this airport decided that stressed, exhausted, anxious travelers deserved a llama. That is quite possibly the most Portland thing I’ve ever heard.

You can feel the intention the second you walk in. Not as a concept. As a physical thing. Like the place was built by people who understood that travelers often arrive already exhausted, and that a ceiling and a plant and a donut can’t fix that but they can say: we thought about you before you got here.

I Don’t Know Much.

But I know this.

When you spend years cooking for billionaires on superyachts, you learn fast that the food isn’t always the thing they remember most.

What they remember is whether the whole experience said the same thing. The lighting, the flowers, the time of day, which port you’re in.

When every element points the same direction, guests don’t notice any of it. They just feel like someone thought about them before they arrived.

That same principle works anywhere.

The next time you walk into a restaurant, a hotel, anywhere, feel first.

Before you’ve noticed the details, something lands. Something settles. Or it doesn’t. Trust that. It’s not atmosphere. It’s information.

Then look around and you’ll see why you felt it.

Every detail in a well-designed space is pointing the same direction. The ceiling, the plants, the seating, the llamas. Nothing is accidental.

Someone made a thousand small decisions and all of them said the same thing: we thought about you before you got here.

That’s the tell. When everything in a space is saying the same thing, someone gave a shit. When it’s just a collection of nice things that don’t add up to anything, nobody did.

You already know how to feel it. You’ve always known. Most of us just stopped trusting the first read.

Start trusting it again.

This morning I drove home in the dark after dropping Cade off. Fifteen minutes, quiet car, still dark at four forty in the morning.

And I thought about the fact that after I kissed him goodbye, I looked back at the car stopped behind me at the curb. I wanted to see if anyone was paying attention.

They weren’t. Or if they were, they didn’t care.

And I needed that.

Still. After three years in the safest city I’ve ever lived in. After choosing this place off a list specifically because it would let us be normal. I still looked back.

That’s not Portland’s failure. That’s what it costs to grow up when and where I did.

You don’t unlearn it because the world moves on. You collect evidence, slowly, one indifferent glance at a time, until the evidence starts to outweigh the fear.

The world outside this city is not getting safer. There are places right now where what I did this morning at that curb would carry a real price.

The bubble is real, and it is specific to geography, and pretending otherwise is a luxury I don’t actually have.

But there are also places, not enough of them, that were built deliberately. Intentionally. With the understanding that some people need somewhere that thought about them before they arrived.

Where the airport has therapy llamas and a perfect HRC score and wooden ceilings that make you feel like Portland couldn’t wait until you got outside to show you what it has to offer.

When you find a place like that, you’ll feel it the second you walk in.

I’m still reading the room. But in Portland, the room keeps saying the same thing. Nobody cares. And after everything, that is the whole point.

–R. Michael

R. Michael is a former luxury yacht chef, a food and travel writer, and a reliable source of opinions nobody asked for. This is Ungarnished.

From the Archive

One story pulled from the shelf. These were written under a different name, on a different road. The ink is older, but the voice is the same.

THE NIGHT WE MET SPARTACUS

Fresh Off a Yacht Charter, Deep in the Woods: Camping, Courage, and Finding the Right Person

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Most people can handle a disaster. A kitchen fire, a relationship ending in a police report, a total career collapse. Those things have a certain dignity to them. They’re final. They provide a clean break and a clear story to tell at the bar.

What’s harder to stomach is the “almost.”

It’s the quiet, nagging realization that something had the potential to be great and simply decided to settle for “fine.”

It’s the job that looks perfect on a business card but leaves you hollow by 4:00 PM.

It’s the partner who is kind, stable, and “correct,” yet you’re still looking for the exit while they’re talking about vacation plans.

We tell ourselves that “good enough” is just being a goddamn adult. It’s a lie.

“Almost” is a slow-motion car wreck. It is a placeholder that eventually becomes a permanent residence if you aren’t careful. I know, because I have spent half my life decorating placeholders instead of looking for the exit.

My own version started by accident.

A culinary school placement. One summer. A yacht on the St. Croix River in Minnesota, where I was the chef’s assistant, not the chef.

I was just a guy who happened into the job and happened to be decent at it.

The morning I woke up in the Gulf of Mexico, I stood on the bow watching flying fish land on the deck, in turquoise water that didn’t look real, and I thought: this is what I’m going to do with my life.

I meant it. Every word of it.

What I didn’t know yet was what it would eventually cost me.

Years in, I’d lie awake at night, exhausted enough to sleep but unable to.

I’d run through every way tomorrow could finally be the day I failed.

I was manufacturing a scenario where someone would look at what I made and tell me it sucked. (Spoilers: They usually didn’t, but my brain was too busy hosting a panic-themed rave to notice.)

The people I cooked for could be mean and ruthless. They didn’t care about feelings, and I have an abundance of those.

Every day, as I prepped for dinner service, that anxious dread would well up.

Even when the final dish went out, I couldn’t feel the relief. I was just waiting for a crash that never happened, wondering if it was scheduled for the next morning instead.

I wasn’t tired of cooking. I was tired of performing. There’s a difference.

The performance had turned my passion into something that no longer belonged to me. That’s not burnout. That’s what “almost” costs when you stay too long.

I’ve done it in my personal life too. Stayed in relationships that were good on paper but lacked the soul because I didn’t want to admit I was settling.

Now, with my husband, I have the “it.” I know the difference between a placeholder and the real thing.

The years that followed the yacht life were their own kind of almost.

I started writing. Memoirs, personal essays, life on the road in our little Casita trailer.

All of it honest, most of it good. But I kept circling around the one thing readers kept responding to: the yacht years. The standards. The stories.

I treated it like a dirty secret. Something too complicated or too painful to explain.

Meanwhile, the readers were quietly telling me that I was hiding the most interesting part of myself.

This is Ungarnished is me deciding to stop doing that. The name is a chef’s term. Nothing added that doesn’t belong. No pretension. Completely honest.

So I stopped hiding. And went to dinner.

Pretty Ugly, in Portland.

They’ve only been open since January, which explains the “new car smell” haze.

The name is a lie.

The place is actually beautiful in that dark, “I hope nobody sees me eating this burger” kind of way. Low light, candles, and a 90s soundtrack that actually had a soul.

Service was clunky at first. We were waved toward the bar like an afterthought.

I know the difference between a staff that doesn’t care and a staff that’s still finding their feet.

These kids cared. They caught the mistake and moved us to a booth in the back, right next to the kitchen door.

Then the food arrived.

The Big Daddy burger cleared the bar. It wasn’t yacht food, but it was executed with the same level of obsession.

Here is the thing about execution: people think “loaded” means better.

In the culinary world, “loaded” is usually code for “we’re hiding something.”

If a chef is serving a dry patty, they’ll bury it in bacon and house sauce. If the fries are old, they’ll dump cheese on them.

At Pretty Ugly, the chili-lime slaw wasn’t decorative confetti. It was balanced acid.

And the Loaded Fries held their crunch. That’s a minor miracle.

If you want to know if a kitchen is actually good, look at the stuff they can’t hide.

If the fries under the toppings aren’t a soggy mess, they’re paying attention. Look at the foundation, not the garnish.

I was genuinely happy. Then I went to the bathroom.

The bathroom was a crime scene. Trash on the floor. A used rubber glove in the corner. In a restaurant, that is a special kind of “fuck you” to the guests. It’s the one space they think nobody’s grading.

What a place does when they think no one’s watching is the most honest thing they’ll ever show you.

At Pretty Ugly, every other signal was right.

That’s why the bathroom landed the way it did.

For a place that had nailed the aesthetic, the food, and the warmth of the staff, it landed like a wrong note at the end of a song you’d been loving.

You almost had it.

I spent twelve years in professional kitchens where the margin for error was zero. The principal on a yacht doesn’t grade on a curve. You learn to read the signals because you have to.

So here’s what I’d suggest: before you order, look around.

Check the staff. Are they moving with intention or killing time?

Are the menus clean?

Does your server know the food or recite it?

Then find the bathroom. Not to be difficult. Because a kitchen that takes pride in the space nobody grades is a kitchen that takes pride in the space everybody does.

Excellence isn’t a department you visit when you have time. It’s the baseline.

It lives in the corners you think nobody’s checking. It dies the moment someone decides a detail is someone else’s problem.

That goes for restaurants. And for the rest of us too.

Pretty Ugly is a good restaurant.

The bones are there. The food is genuinely above average. The team is warm and they showed up when it counted.

Because a place that’s almost there deserves to get there.

Because I know what it’s like to carry a story you aren’t telling.

For a long time, I let the yacht years take the passion out of the room.

I treated the best and worst years of my life like something to be ashamed of instead of the very thing that taught me how to see.

I learned what real standards look like and what it costs to hold them.

I learned to cook with whatever was in front of me, in ports I couldn’t have found on a map a year earlier.

The “almost” was everything I wrote before I finally let that chapter back into the room.

It’s in the room now.

--R. Michael

Pretty Ugly is located at 1317 NW Hoyt Street, Portland, OR. Average cost is $45 to $60 per person for a burger, side, and drink. Reservations via Resy recommended.

R. Michael is a former luxury yacht chef, a food and travel writer, and a reliable source of opinions nobody asked for. This is Ungarnished.

From the Archive

One story pulled from the shelf. These were written under a different name, on a different road. The ink is older, but the voice is the same.

BECAUSE LOVE ASKED ME TO

Some people move through the world with a quiet certainty that makes everyone around them better. Emily is one of those people. This is what I had to say about it.

Read the story →

Recent Google Reviews

NOT SO UGLY

Pretty Ugly, Portland, Oregon - The review I wrote, along with their response. I appreciated the promptness and transparency, it's exactly the kind of accountability this piece argues for. Read the review →

WHEN FRIENDS KNOW THE CITY BETTER THAN THE GUIDEBOOK

Urban Tours, Brisbane, Australia - Some recommendations come with a conflict of interest, and I’m declaring mine upfront. Guy and Cheryl are good friends who once opened their home to us in Brisbane, and their company Urban Tours was just featured as one of the most unique ways to explore the city. Here’s what I wrote about them. Read the review →

THE $48 COLD SHOULDER

The Rusty Cup, Astoria, Oregon - I found a perfectly drinkable flat white, but I never went back for a second. This is the "business math" of why a dismissive vibe is the most expensive mistake a shop can make. Read the review →

By the time you read this, Sofia will be gone.

Somewhere on I-84, a couple from Wisconsin will be hauling her east toward a life they’ve been dreaming about. I know that feeling. I’ve lived inside it. And honestly, that’s the only reason handing her over doesn’t completely break me.

We didn’t list her as a trailer. We listed her as an idea. Bob and Val read it and drove across the country for it. That tells me everything I need to know about them. I hope she gives them back something they didn’t know they’d lost. That’s what she did for us.

Some things are ending all at once, and Sofia is the easiest one to name.

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She earned her name on the drive back from Texas.

We’d just picked her up from the Casita factory in Rice, and somewhere on that long stretch of highway home, she became Sofia. I designed a decal and ordered it. Small, simple, and exactly right: Sofia. Too Glam to Give a Damn.

Chase was a big part of why we bought her. He’s a six-year-old Jack Russell mix with separation anxiety, strong opinions, and an almost offensive amount of heart.

Travel with him is complicated, and for years that meant we didn’t go anywhere. We are people who need to go somewhere. So we found another way.

At first, it was practical. An escape pod. A way to bring everything we needed and leave everything we didn’t. But it became something else: independence. Proof that our life could still move.

The first solo trip was just me and Chase, heading to Minnesota. A couple thousand miles each way, the two of us figuring it out together. Hitching, leveling, and learning the gag-inducing patience a black water tank demands of you.

Cade is the one who’s good at all that stuff. I never thought I would be.

But somewhere between Portland and the Montana border, I started to figure it out. Not perfectly. Not without frustration. But on my own, which turned out to matter more than I expected.

We stopped at a horse ranch outside Livingston, Montana. Mountains pressing close. Air that made my body feel quieter. The next morning I opened Sofia’s door to mist spilling down from the peaks and realized I’d been carrying a heavy, phantom anxiety for months.

Chase bounded through the grass on his leash, ears flapping, tail loose and easy. Watching him exhale made me exhale.

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Later that summer, parked somewhere quiet with Cade, I stood outside over a cast iron pot and made the simplest stew I’d cooked in years. Onion, carrot, sausage, kale. One pot. No audience. And for the first time in longer than I want to admit, I didn’t feel dread when I picked up a knife.

I spent years cooking professionally: yachts, millionaires, menus that never felt like enough. The pressure slowly turned the thing I loved most into something I couldn’t face. I didn’t realize how much of that I was still carrying until Sofia helped take it away.

A two-burner stove made it impossible to perform. There was nothing to prove. Just food, made with care, for the man I love.

When Cade and I talked about selling her, he said it simply, the way he says most things that matter: “I will miss her. I feel like we didn’t get enough time, but we had a good time.”

That’s the whole of it, really. Right there in two sentences.

And still, I didn’t expect it to happen this fast.

Bob and Val arrived a day early.

We drove out to the storage place in Vancouver, turned on the lights and the heat, and did that last-minute primping you do when you want something you love to look its best.

Before they got there, Cade and I stood beside her under the sign and spoke to her like she was family.

“Thank you. I’m sorry it was so short. We would have kept choosing you if we could.” We told her we were sure Bob and Val were the right people.

The day we picked her up, I took a photo of Cade hugging her. That night, I took another one.

Cade didn’t say much. He just kept his hand on her like you do when you’re saying goodbye without wanting to. Then we hugged each other, which is when it finally hit.

Bob and Val were exactly the right people. Val kept saying, “Thank you for choosing us.” She didn’t say it once. She said it like she was trying to make sure we heard her. Like she couldn’t believe this was actually happening.

When we started walking them through the systems, she paid such close attention I could swear she wasn’t blinking.

It wasn’t just excitement. It was focus. She was taking mental snapshots of every word because she didn’t want to miss a single part of the moment.

We talked for two hours, swapping stories like we were handing over more than keys.

By the time we were done, I didn’t feel like we were losing Sofia. I felt like we were placing her.

Watching them hitch her up to their Honda Pilot and pull away, I didn’t feel loss exactly. It was more like the feeling of a long-haul flight finally touching down: a mix of relief, exhaustion, and not being quite ready to unbuckle yet.

I took a video as they drove out. I haven’t sent it yet. I think it’ll mean more once Sofia starts filling up with their memories instead of ours.

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There’s something else. I’m not ready to talk details, but Portland is in there too. Another goodbye looming quietly in the background, the way big things often do before they become real. I can feel the distance already, like a weather change in my chest.

After a family loss, time started moving differently. Faster. Like the decisions were already made somewhere deeper and we were just catching up.

The grief I feel surprises me a little, because I know it isn’t really about the trailer.

It’s about the version of myself I found inside her: the one who figured it out alone. The one who cooked again without fear. The one who pulled over somewhere beautiful and thought, I have something to say about this.

That person isn’t leaving with Bob and Val. But I’d be lying if I said I won’t miss having somewhere to put all of it.

Sometimes you have to let go of the thing that opened you up, trusting that you’ll stay open without it. That’s what I’m choosing to believe right now.

This is the last story I’ll run under Open Road Adventures.

ORA did its job. It gave me somewhere to put the truth until it stopped feeling like an emergency. I’m not erasing it. I’m keeping it as proof.

Now I’m moving into This is Ungarnished. I’m done sanding the edges just to sound respectable.

If you’ve been here a while, thank you. The voice isn’t changing, I’m just using more of it.

Come with me. The next chapter is going to be good.

Just an open hand.

And a couple from Wisconsin, driving east, toward everything we used to be.

And us, standing here in the aftermath, letting go with one hand and reaching forward with the other.

—R. Michael

R. Michael is a former luxury yacht chef, and a reliable source of opinions nobody asked for. This is Ungarnished.

When I came out, a neighbor pulled me aside not long after and said, very matter-of-factly:

“We all knew. We were just waiting to see when you were going to figure it out.”

I’ve been thinking about that sentence a lot lately.

Because I think some of you might say the same thing about this newsletter.

I spent twelve years as a chef on private superyachts.

Cooking for people who had already bought everything on land, so they took their tantrums to sea.

Guests who asked the crew if we could make the ocean a little quieter.

People whose emotional support labradoodles ate hand-seared Wagyu out of crystal bowls.

The standard was “perfection or unemployment.” There was no middle ground where you could just have a bad Tuesday.

And it taught me how to see things most people miss.

The restaurant bathroom with a layer of dust on the baseboards that tells you exactly how much the chef stopped caring about the walk-in.

The gluten-free menu that’s less about health and more about how much the kitchen staff is currently mocking your “allergy” behind the swinging doors.

The “market price” fish that’s been frozen so long it has freezer burn and a mid-life crisis.

I learned to read a room, a plate, a place, with the kind of precision you only get when someone’s paying you to be perfect and you have no choice but to deliver.

It was demanding. It was often brutal. Some of those people were genuinely unbearable.

But I also saw the world.

I walked into a port in Greece and realized that my grand plans for a “classic American brunch” were dead on arrival because baking soda is a myth in that village and the local produce looks like it was grown in a beautiful, sun-drenched fever dream that doesn’t include iceberg lettuce.

I had to stop shopping like a tourist and start cooking like a local who actually respects the dirt.

I had to sweat through Italian, Greek, and French techniques on a moving target, mostly because a billionaire’s mistress decided she needs a specific brand of Tahitian vanilla while you’re anchored off a cliff in the middle of the Ionian Sea.

It made me better. A better chef. A better observer. A better judge of what actually matters versus what just costs more.

And then I left.

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For years, I let the bad parts bury the good parts.

I started writing. Memoir pieces. Personal essays. Honest stuff about reinvention and ADHD and the long road of figuring out who I was after the yacht.

I was polite. I was serious. I was careful.

I didn’t want anyone to think I thought I was an expert.

So I left out the one thing I actually am an expert at.

The problem with those “earnest” essays? They left out the guy you’d actually want to grab a drink with.

The one who’s funny, energetic, a little dramatic, definitely performative in that gay kitschy way, and absolutely will not pussy-foot around if something isn’t what it claims to be.

I say please and thank you. I’m respectful. I won’t be mean. I’ll be honest.

But if you dare me to break a rule, I probably will.

If you tell me “we couldn’t possibly do that,” I’ll say “fuck that, yes we can”.

And if you hand me a napkin at the end of a good meal, there’s a non-zero chance I’ll teach you how to fold it into a penis.

That guy has been in here the whole time.

I just wasn’t letting him write.

Starting next week, this publication has a new name.

This is Ungarnished.

It’s a chef’s term. Nothing added that doesn’t belong. No pretension. Honest.

It’s food, travel, the destination, and the substance versus the smoke.

Hotels, restaurants, airlines, food trucks. Written by someone who spent twelve years cooking for people who’d eaten everywhere, applied to everything from fine dining to a hole-in-the-wall dive.

The personal writing isn’t going anywhere. The memoir, the ADHD, the marriage, the road, the reinvention. That’s all still here.

What’s changing is that the most interesting thing about me is finally part of the story.

And I’m done being polite about it.

For the next couple of weeks you’ll see both, the overlap, the transition, the settling in.

After that, it’s one publication. One voice.

The one I should have been using all along.

We all knew. I just had to figure it out.

–R. Michael

R. Michael is a former luxury yacht chef, a food and travel writer, and a reliable source of opinions nobody asked for. This is Ungarnished.

People find it confusing. I get that.

I worked as a yacht chef for about twelve years.

Based out of South Florida, summers in New England or the Mediterranean, winters in the Bahamas and the Caribbean.

All my expenses were covered. I was compensated well, especially when tips were involved.

I paid off every debt I had. I could afford the things I wanted.

On paper, it sounds like THE LIFE.

So I understand why it catches people off guard when I tell them I don’t cook anymore.

Not only do I not cook, sometimes I don’t really even like to talk about it.

What I find harder to explain is the feeling that comes over me when someone asks what I’m doing these days.

There’s a pause. A small, internal brace.

I tell them I’ve been writing. Learning graphic design. Building something.

And then I watch their face do a thing. It’s not always a comment. Sometimes it’s just a look. A slight shift.

The kind that says: that’s not real work.

Or the version that stings a little more: so you’re not doing anything.

What I want to say, what I’ve never quite gotten to say out loud, is that cooking was the only thing I was ever really good at.

It was the one thing I could be proud of. The one thing that made me proud of myself.

And that’s exactly why what happened out there hurt as much as it did.

The yacht world has a certain image. The destinations, the boats, the clientele.

What people don’t see is what goes on below deck, or between the crew, or in the quiet moments after an eighteen-hour day when you’re trying to figure out if you can keep doing this.

The guests were a mixed bag. Some of them were genuinely wonderful. Those were the ones I invited into the galley. They were curious and grateful and they made the work feel worthwhile.

Then there were the others. The majority.

People consumed by their money and their power, who couldn’t care less who I was.

All they cared about was being demanding, and they were demanding for sport. They didn’t care that I regularly worked eighteen-hour days, ten days in a row without a break, just to make sure everything was perfect for them.

They didn’t care that I once collapsed on the job, that a doctor had to be called from a nearby hospital to treat me. The diagnosis was exhaustion and dehydration.

They never knew. And if they had, I’m not sure it would have changed anything.

But the guests weren’t the whole story.

I wasn’t like a lot of other chefs onboard. I didn’t run the galley like a restricted zone.

I was friendly. Outgoing. I welcomed people in. I hosted cooking lessons sometimes.

And they responded to that, gravitated toward it, toward me.

I thought that was a good thing. I thought everyone would.

I was wrong.

The Captains and Chief Stews didn’t see it as a perk. They saw it as a problem.

The more time guests spent with me, the more visible I became. For the Captain, that visibility was a threat from below. For the Chief Stew, it was something harder to name, we were equals, but I was getting the attention.

So they made it their mission to make my life difficult. Not dramatically, not all at once, but steadily, surgically.

In small, deliberate ways that are hard to explain but impossible to forget.

I’m not the type to retaliate. So instead, I absorbed it. All of it. Day after day, season after season.

And over time, it basically destroyed me.

These days, when a cooking show comes on, I change the channel.

It’s not a decision exactly, it’s more like a reflex.

There was a time when I could spend an entire afternoon watching the Food Network.

Cooking competitions, chef challenges, anything food related. It didn’t matter.

I was transfixed. Inspired. I’d be reorganizing the next three hours of my life before the episode even ended.

Now my thumb just finds the remote. Automatic. Like muscle memory for avoidance.

And instead of walking into the kitchen, I reach for my phone.

I open a blank note and I start writing.

Whatever I’m feeling, the discomfort, the memory, the flash of something I don’t have a name for yet, I try to put it into words.

Somehow, turning it into a story is the thing that helps.

It’s like the feelings are a messy pile and writing is the way I give them a shape I can actually hold.

I’ve come to understand that I love writing about my life’s experiences.

Including those years. Including the time I’ve spent trying to heal from them.

Not everyone has been understanding about where I am right now.

Some of our friends probably think I’m lazy. That I’m taking advantage.

And I know what they mean by it, even when they don’t say it directly: you can cook, so you should cook. It’s a job. You should be working.

What they don’t know, what I haven’t had the chance to explain, or maybe just haven’t had the right words for until now, is that I’m not trying to rest.

I’m trying to rebuild something.

I want to do something great. I want to create something I can look at and think: I made that. I’m really proud of myself.

Getting back to that feeling has been harder than I expected.

Being proud of myself used to come through the food. Through the craft of it.

And now that door is, if not closed, then at least not open in the same way.

So I’m looking for a new one. I’m trying to build something I can stand behind again.

That’s what the writing is. That’s what all of this is.

It’s not nothing.

And one day I hope the look on people’s faces will reflect that.

–R. Michael

If any of this hit close to home, I’d love to hear about it in the comments. And if you have questions, about the yachting world, about starting over, about any of it, ask away. That’s what this space is for.

“Calm down” are the two words most guaranteed to make me lose my mind.

Not because I’m being difficult. Not because I’m performing. Because when my ADHD is redlining and someone says calm down, it’s like throwing a bucket of gasoline on a fire and being surprised when things get worse.

I’ve been called dramatic my whole life. And honestly, fair.

There’s a gay dramatic flair I’ve fully embraced and can turn on like a light switch when the moment calls for it. That version of dramatic is a choice. It’s fun. It belongs to me.

But there’s another kind.

The kind where I’m not performing anything. Where my brain is just... full. Overloaded. Where the noise inside my head has gotten so loud I can’t find the exit.

That’s not drama. That’s just ADHD doing what ADHD does.

And for most of my life, I didn’t have a way to say that out loud before it was already too late.

A Joke That Became Something Real

My husband Cade and I were somewhere in the middle of a very long travel day when we stumbled onto the solution entirely by accident.

We were being ridiculous with each other the way you get when you’re too tired to be serious.

Cade, being caddish in the best possible way, brought up Queen Elizabeth… how she used to move her handbag from one arm to the other as a signal to her staff that she was ready to leave a situation.

Discreet. Elegant. Completely understood by the people who needed to understand it.

We laughed. And then we thought: wait.

What if I had something like that?

I went down a rabbit hole of famous signals. The kind you only fall into when you're exhausted and slightly punchy. Googling famous secret gestures used by historical figures. Looking for something cheeky.

Something that felt like us. A little theatrical. Nothing that would read as distress to a stranger in the room.

What I landed on was simple. I rest my chin in my hand, two fingers along my cheek. The Thinker. When Cade catches it, I tap my cheek twice.

That’s it. That’s the whole system.

We started using it almost immediately, half joking at first. But something happened that I didn’t expect.

It felt like relief.

What It Actually Means

When I tap my cheek, I’m not saying I’m broken. I’m not saying fix this. I’m saying: I’m approaching my limit, and I trust you to help me before I get there.

It means different things depending on where we are.

In a group conversation where three people are talking at once and I’ve lost the thread entirely, it means: take over. I’ll just nod and breathe.

In a restaurant where the menu has somehow become an unsolvable problem, it means: give me two choices and let me pick one.

When someone has cornered me in a conversation my brain has completely checked out of, it means: I need an exit. Create one.

When we’re navigating a transition, packing up, moving on, figuring out the next step, and the sequence of tasks has collapsed into one big wall of overwhelming, it means: just tell me the one next thing to do.

And at home, when I feel a sharp response rising that has nothing to do with Cade and everything to do with the fact that my brain is already full, it means: I’m not mad at you. I’m at capacity. Give me five minutes.

That last one might be the most important use of all.

The Part That Surprised Me

I’ve spent a long time feeling like I owe people an explanation when my ADHD gets loud.

Like I need to justify why I’m struggling with something that looks simple from the outside.

Like if I don’t explain fast enough, I become the difficult one. The dramatic one.

The signal changed that.

I don’t have to find the words when I don’t have the words.

I don’t have to manage how I look while also managing what’s happening inside my head. I don’t have to perform okayness for the room while quietly drowning.

I just put my chin in my hand. And the person who knows me best does the rest.

That’s not a small thing.

For anyone who has ever felt like too much, like you’re asking for too much, explaining too much, needing too much, having one person who just gets it without the explanation is everything.

You don’t need a diagnosis for that feeling. You just need someone paying attention.

—R. Michael

R. Michael is a gay, married, neurodivergent father who went from cooking for billionaires on yachts to building a farm in Nicaragua. He’s a reliable source of opinions nobody asked for. This is Ungarnished.

The morning started with San Pedro. I drank the medicine around 11:45, and for a while, everything felt fine. Light. Manageable.

Then the director gathered everyone for a talk. He was saying something about children. How until the age of sixteen, they think everything that happens to them is their fault. How they carry that belief into adulthood.

Something inside me broke open. The walls started crumbling.

I had to leave. I walked out of the maloca, down to the lake, and let myself cry. When I was composed enough, I came back.

But the medicine wasn’t done with me yet.

The breaking point didn’t happen in the dark. It happened in the middle of the afternoon, under the roof of the main hall, while the sun was still high.

I’d been feeling off all day. Shaking. Freezing cold despite the jungle heat. My stomach churning. I tried to eat some soup but I was too weak to lift the spoon. I was exhausted. My body had been holding onto 40 years of tension, and it finally decided it was time to let go.

I collapsed into a hammock in the common area, shivering. And then, without warning, the floor dropped out.

The Denim

It wasn’t a visual hallucination like the others. It was a physical memory.

I felt the distinct, rough texture of denim wrapped around my neck. The sensation was so real I clawed at my throat.

And then I wasn’t a 40-something man in Peru anymore. I was standing there, watching a little boy. He was beautiful. He was innocent. And he was terrified.

I recognized him immediately. He was me.

I started to cry. Not the polite crying of a therapy session, this was guttural, animal. I sobbed for him.

I saw the abuse, the confusion, the shame. All the things I’d buried under layers of addiction and toughness.

Then a surge of protective anger rose up. The kind of anger I should have felt decades ago but was too small to express.

I looked at the phantom figure of the abuser, the man with the denim, and I screamed at him.

“Shame on you!” I yelled, my voice cracking. “Shame on you for doing that to him! You don’t even realize the pain you caused him!”

I was exorcising a ghost that had been living in my marrow. The shame I’d carried, the belief that I was bad, that I deserved the pain, was finally being ripped out by the root.

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The Lemonade

I was a mess. Shaking, sobbing, curled in a ball in the hammock.

That’s when the director appeared.

He went to the kitchen and came back with a glass of lemonade. Real sugar in it.

I took a sip. It tasted like Christmas. It tasted like safety.

He sat there while I drank it, letting the sugar crash into my system, grounding me back into the present.

In that glass of lemonade, I felt a profound sense of gratitude. In my darkest moment, he handed me a lifeline.

The Bliss

The breakdown lasted a while, but eventually the waves subsided. I felt hollowed out, but lighter. The ceremony was scheduled for that night, and part of me wanted to skip it. I felt like I’d already run a marathon.

I asked Daniel what he thought. “I feel like going for selfish reasons,” I told him, meaning I wanted more healing.

“That’s exactly why you should go,” he said.

So I went. I walked to the maloca, Daniel lending me his moonstone for strength.

I lay down on my mat. Part of me was still worried my energy would affect everyone else’s experience. That I’d brought too much heaviness into the room.

But as the ceremony started, I could feel it. Love, coming from every direction. The group was holding me.

I was tired of fighting. Tired of the toilet paper, the armor, the fear. When the medicine came on, I didn’t beg for it to stop. I didn’t negotiate.

“I can feel your love, guys,” I whispered. “I get it.”

I relaxed my body completely. Okay, I said to the medicine. Fine. Bring it on.

And she did.

But she didn’t bring monsters. She didn’t bring denim. I was instantly catapulted into a space of pure, unadulterated bliss. I was floating in gold.

Wait, I asked, confused. This is what I’ve been resisting?

Yes, Love answered.

The shaman was singing. I sat up and felt such joy, such peace, that my body couldn’t stay still. I started to move on my mat, shaking love out of my hands like I was flinging water.

I thought about each person in the room. Daniel. The group. The director. How each one had given me a gift.

It was like I had all the energy in the world. Okay, I said. Now it’s time for me to give back. I sent pure, unconditional love. The kind I’d never known before. Now I knew what it felt like.

When the shaman came around with prayers, I felt every note he played, every sound he made, as if it were being sung directly to my spirit. More tears. Happiness. Gratitude.

I lay back down, exhausted. I put my hand on my stomach, where the discomfort had been for days. The pain drifted away.

I wanted to stay there forever. “I don’t ever want to leave here,” I said.

You don’t have to, Love replied.

And I realized the bliss wasn’t somewhere I visited. It was something I was returning to.

I rolled over on my mat, tears of joy streaming down my face. I sent love to Daniel, to the group, to the director, and finally, to the little boy who didn’t have to be afraid of the denim anymore.

— R. Michael

If you have thoughts or questions, I’d really love to hear from you in the comments. I read every one.

Want to keep going? The Peru Chronicles.

Author’s note: The next morning, I realized I hadn’t had a single negative thought about myself since the breakdown. Not one. For the first time in my life, I felt at peace.

A few years back, I was with a friend at breakfast.

I started telling him about a dream I’d had the night before.

He cut me off fast: “Dreams don’t mean anything. It’s stupid to talk about them.”

Now, to be fair, I’d been a bit much the night before. We’d been drinking, I’d been extra, and I’m sure he was tired of my chaos by breakfast time. So he had reasons to be short with me.

And honestly? He’s one of my favorite people. We’ve been friends for 20 years. This isn’t about him.

But that moment stuck with me. I’ve heard versions of it my entire life.
Different people. Same dismissive energy.

Someone shuts down a story about a dream. Someone rolls their eyes when you share something that moved you. Someone treats your curiosity like it’s embarrassing. Someone needs you to justify why you care about something soft or weird or unmeasurable.

And over time, I started noticing a pattern:

People who shut down the weird stuff aren’t being rational. They’re being controlling.

And once you notice that move, you start seeing it everywhere.

It’s not just about dreams. It’s about anyone who introduces tenderness, magic, or the unmeasurable into a conversation and gets immediately dismissed.

The opinion wasn’t the part that stuck. The delivery was.

Because it wasn’t really about dreams.

It was about control.

The ‘Logic Bully’ Effect

There are people who bully with logic.

They act like they’re being smart, but really they’re just being dismissive.

They hide behind “facts” because feelings make them nervous. They confuse curiosity with credibility. They think being unmoved is the same thing as being mature.

Meanwhile, some of us are out here just trying to have a human moment before breakfast.

I have ADHD. Soft, weird, and unmeasurable is kind of my whole operating system.

This isn’t a debate about whether dreams “mean” anything. (They might. They might not. I honestly don’t care.)

It’s about what happens when someone treats your inner world like it needs their permission to exist.

That’s not intellectual rigor. That’s a little power move.

It’s a way of saying: “Don’t bring that part of you over here.”

What I Wish I’d Known That Morning

You don’t have to over-explain your inner world to someone who’s committed to misunderstanding it.

You don’t have to justify your own experience like you’re presenting evidence in court.

You don’t need to build a PowerPoint called Why My Dream Matters for a person who has already decided it doesn’t.

You just take note.

Because not everyone deserves a front-row seat to the trailer of your mind.

Some people are simply not invited to the good parties.

They can sit outside with their clipboard ranking sunsets and calling it depth.

The Architecture of a Night Movie

For me, dreams are like little movies.

I’m usually the star. The casting is questionable. The plot holes are aggressive. But every once in a while, it’s a blockbuster.

If I could sell tickets, a few of them would have done numbers.

I don’t need my dreams to be prophetic for them to matter.

I don’t need a hidden message. I don’t need a sign from the universe. I don’t need a therapist’s interpretation.

Sometimes it’s just an experience.

My brain builds entire worlds out of old feelings and half-remembered details. It drags in people I haven’t thought about in years, puts them in a grocery store, and then we’re suddenly skydiving through the produce aisle with no explanation.

It’s unhinged. It’s creative. It’s occasionally terrifying. It’s also kind of intimate.

It’s my mind showing me what it’s carrying.

So when someone shuts that down with “that’s stupid,” it’s not a commentary on neuroscience.

It’s a little power move.

How to Protect Your Inner Weirdness

If a friend starts telling you about a dream, they aren’t pitching a Netflix documentary.

They’re letting you see what their brain cooked up when the lights were off.

They’re handing you a tiny piece of their inner world and saying, “This hit me. I don’t fully know why, but it did.”

That’s not stupid.

That’s trust.

So here’s what I’m doing differently now:

I notice who treats curiosity like a gift instead of a liability.

I notice who doesn’t need everything to be productive or provable to let it exist.

And if someone tries to swat that out of the air?

They don’t get access to the blockbusters. They can stay in their gray, logical world.

My brain throws better parties.

The guest list is smaller. The vibe is better.

And nobody talks through the trailer.

-R. Michael

R. Michael is a gay, married, neurodivergent father who went from cooking for billionaires on yachts to building a farm in Nicaragua. He’s a reliable source of opinions nobody asked for. This is Ungarnished.

Cade proposed right before I left for Peru.

Initially, I was elated. Like jump-on-the-bed elated. I’d love to tell you I was just happy. I was happy. I also didn’t believe it.

I already loved him. I knew that. But it wasn’t the same as how I loved him after Peru, or how I love him to this day.

Back then, “in love” felt like a phrase people said in movies. I didn’t really know what it meant. Certainly not as something you can trust.

So when he asked me to marry me, it didn’t take long before my brain started doing what it always did.

Wait. How can this be? Knowing what he knows. Knowing all the ways I’ve sabotaged myself and our relationship, he still wants to commit his whole life to me?

Part of me even went to a dark, ridiculous place. I thought for sure there must be something wrong with him. It just didn’t seem possible.

That was the pattern I had lived with my entire life. Something good happens and I start pulling it apart. Not because I want to ruin it, but because disbelief feels safer than hope.

A few days later, in Peru, I heard something inside me that didn’t match the usual running commentary.

You are worthy of his love.

My first reaction was almost sarcastic. Okay. That sounds like something a preacher would say in a sermon.

Except it didn’t feel like an idea. It felt like a straight answer. Like someone had finally said the sentence I never let myself say out loud.

Around that same time, I started reading The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. The first agreement hit me hard: Be impeccable with your word.

Impeccable means without sin, it said. Do not use negative words to plant the seed of sin against yourself or others. Our word casts spells. Do not gossip. It is black magic.

It wasn’t the gossip part that got me. It was the spell part.

Because if words cast spells, I’ve spent years putting one on myself. Quietly. Constantly. Not even out loud. Just the low-level commentary that runs in the background until it starts to feel like truth.

I’d been assuming something about myself for a very long time. If I couldn’t love me, then nobody else could either. And if they said they did, it meant they didn’t know the whole story yet.

That’s what made that line feel so disruptive.

You are worthy of his love.

Because if that was true, then I had to at least consider the other possibility. That maybe Cade wasn’t confused. Maybe he wasn’t broken. Maybe he saw me more clearly than I saw myself.

After lunch one afternoon, I met with the director and the shaman to set my dieta, which would start the next day. Strict rules. No perfumes. Only natural soaps. No one can touch me. No electronics.

It was a commitment, and it made everything feel more serious. Less like I was visiting Peru, and more like I was stepping into something I couldn’t half-do.

Before ceremony that night, I set an intention like I was making a deal with something bigger than my fear.

Surrender. I’m available for your healing. Show me how to see the light. Heal me and teach me. Teach me to love myself the way I am right now.

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I only took a small dose, but it didn’t matter.

It was extremely powerful. Physically painful. I cried. I asked if the pain was mine, and it was.

Then the medicine went quiet, quite suddenly.

The maloca was pitch dark. I could hear other people breathing, shifting on their mats. The shaman’s icaros had stopped. There was just silence and the hum of the jungle outside.

I don’t know why I did it. But I brought my arms around myself. Like I was holding someone I cared about.

It felt ridiculous at first. I was alone in the dark, hugging myself like a child. But when I started to pull away, I heard it again, clear and unmistakable.

Yes. Love yourself.

So I did. I kept my arms around myself like I meant it.

Then I laughed, because I could see my belly sticking out. Not with my eyes, it was more like an image placed right in front of me, from my own point of view. I squished it and said, out loud, I love you.

I know how that sounds. But it was a first for me. Not the idea of self-love. The experience of it. A moment that didn’t ask me to earn anything. A moment that didn’t come with a punishment attached.

I stayed there for a long time, holding myself in the dark.

Afterward, everything outside looked calm again. The lake went still. The paths went quiet.

But inside me, something was shifting. Like a warning system that had been stuck in the “on” position for decades was finally starting to loosen.

I didn’t know what was coming next. I just knew I wasn’t done yet.

Because the jungle was patient. And it wasn’t finished with me.

—R. Michael

If you have thoughts or questions, I’d really love to hear from you in the comments. I read every one.

Want to keep going? The Peru Chronicles.

Now, let’s talk about wedges.

And I don’t mean the kind you’d wear to a garden party (though we could certainly have a conversation about those, too). I’m talking about the kind designed to split a community right down the middle...

I started reading a post here on a Substack a few days ago and I felt it almost immediately.

That internal eye-roll that says, “Oh, honey, absolutely not.”

Not because it was challenging. Not because it was about LGBTQ stuff. I can handle disagreement. I can handle nuance. I can even handle someone being wrong.

What I have a harder time with is when something is written like it’s a report, but it’s really a pitch.

For me, this is where ADHD matters. I don’t get to skim something unsettling and set it down like nothing happened.

My brain takes it as a puzzle and a threat at the same time.

I’ll still be contemplating it while I’m trying to focus on my skincare regimen tomorrow morning.

And trust me, a distracted man with a bottle of high-percentage retinol is a recipe for a chemical disaster.

That’s why I pay attention to the tone of a piece, not just the topic.

This one was pushing the idea that we should separate the letters. That “LGB” should peel away from “TQI.” Like it’s a clean, logical update. Like it’s just people “realizing” they don’t belong together.

And since I think aloud, I say to no one, “Where are you even getting this?”

Because that’s a huge claim. Not a personal newsletter claim, it’s a “this is what’s happening in the world” claim. The kind of claim that needs numbers, context, definitions, and something sturdier than a confident tone.

Instead, it had that familiar shape. The one that’s hard to unsee once you’ve been through a few cycles of chaos online.

The Shape of the Pitch

STEP ONE: tell you the coalition is falling apart.

STEP TWO: suggest it’s not the people in power doing the damage. It’s the people next to you.

STEP THREE: offer you “safety” if you’ll just agree to stand further away from someone else.

That’s the wedge.

I’m not saying there aren’t real conversations inside LGBTQ communities. Of course there are. We’re people, not a logo. We’re messy and human, and we have different needs and experiences. We disagree. Sometimes loudly.

But this wasn’t written like “here’s something complicated I’m struggling with.”

It was written like:

“Here’s the problem. Here’s the culprit. Here’s the solution. Now choose a side.”

That’s when I start paying attention, because I’ve seen this move outside of LGBTQ spaces too.

It’s not just “LGB vs TQI.”

It’s women pitted against women.

Immigrants pitted against immigrants.

“The good ones” versus “the ones making it worse.”

It’s working class people blaming the working class person next door instead of the systems that keep everyone exhausted.

It’s disabled people being treated like they’re asking for special treatment instead of basic access.

It’s “stop making it political” said to the people whose bodies and lives are already political whether they want them to be or not.

The World Doesn’t Care About Your Labels

And the thing is, the outside world does not make the neat distinctions the article pretends exist.

People who hate queer people do not pause to ask whether you are the “acceptable letter.” They don’t go “Oh wait, you’re LGB, sorry! Our bad. Carry on.”

They see a bucket. They see a target. They see a way to shrink what counts as human.

So when I read something that says, in effect, “we should separate ourselves,” I don’t read it as a harmless identity debate. I read it as the first cut in a pattern that keeps cutting until everyone is standing alone.

The “Third Place” Fantasy

Also, and I need to say this plainly, blaming trans people for shifts in gay and lesbian public life feels like utter bullshit (sorry mom).

Gay bars didn’t start changing because trans people exist. The world changed.

Apps changed how people meet. COVID changed how people gather. The cost of living changed where people spend their nights. Social life moved into group chats, living rooms, and private spaces.

Lots of people, gay or straight, stopped doing “third places” the way we used to. I don’t need a villain to explain that. I just need to look outside.

This is personal for me because I watched the “third place” fade long before anyone started blaming trans people for everything.

I’m from Minnesota. I came out in Minneapolis in the late 1990s.

In my thirties, I was going out two or three nights a week because I was making up for lost time.

My two best friends and I were essentially running a marathon of bad decisions, and if you asked the bartenders, we were just three middle-aged gay men refusing to accept that the sun was coming up.

It was all very professional, I assure you. (Shut up, boys, you were there too.)

Back then, one of my favorite clubs downtown had blacked-out windows. They didn’t want people driving by to see a room full of gay men. And they had a reason. We were targeted.

Cade and I got married in late 2019, before COVID.

After our reception, we went back to one of my old stomping grounds. It was a Saturday night. Ten or eleven.

This used to be wall-to-wall. Shirts off, music up, everybody celebrating each other in the way gay bars do. But, it was dead. Where there used to be hundreds of people, there were maybe a couple dozen.

So when someone points at trans people and says, “That’s why your community is different now,” it feels less like truth and more like convenience.

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The Cost of Commentary

I used to post a lot of heavy, constant commentary on social media. And although it helped me stay informed, it came at a cost I couldn’t afford anymore. It was eroding my own mental health, and I could see it activating others in a way that didn’t feel helpful. So, I stopped, and I removed myself from the platforms that were feeding that cycle.

Activated vs. Brave

I’ve learned the hard way that being activated all the time doesn’t make you brave. It makes you tired. It makes you reactive. It makes you easier to steer.

That’s part of why this stuff lands like a small dose of fear. It’s not just an article. It’s one more reminder that the world can turn. That progress can reverse. That scapegoats get chosen. That people in power love it when the rest of us start arguing about who deserves protection more.

I’m not saying we can’t talk about hard things. I’m saying I don’t trust anyone selling simple solutions that require a smaller group to be sacrificed.

Especially now.

Because right now, the vibe out there is not “live and let live.” It’s “who can we blame.”

And in that kind of environment, the worst possible move is to help the blame find a clean path.

I’m not interested in standing in judgment of another marginalized group because they’re different than me, then acting surprised when that same logic circles back around.

If you want acceptance from the world, you don’t get there by practicing exclusion at home.

That doesn’t mean we all have to agree on everything. It does mean we should be careful about who benefits when we split.

So I’m filing this under a very simple personal rule…

My Simple Personal Rule

When someone tries to sell me safety by asking me to step away from someone else, I slow down.

I look for the missing measurements.

I check who I’m being invited to fear.

I ask myself whether this is actually about truth, or whether it’s about control.

And then I try, as best I can, to choose the thing that doesn’t leave me standing alone.

–R. Michael

As I mentioned on Friday, I’m moving the Stories to Friday mornings. According to my sources, it’s a better time to enjoy with your coffee over the weekend.

But because my brain doesn’t move in straight lines, I’m adding this Tuesday newsletter called THE BACKROADS.

If Fridays are for the deep-dives, Tuesdays are honest field notes on mental health, community, and the road ahead. It’s a bit faster, a bit sharper, and a lot more like the version of me you’d get in a real conversation

The Consent Clause: If you’re only here for the Friday memoirs and find my Tuesday observations “a bit much,” I won’t be offended.

You can go to your Substack Settings, click Open Road Adventures, and toggle off “The Backroads.”

We can still be friends on Fridays.

While you’re here... Since I’m just getting the tires warm on this Tuesday thing, I’ve already dropped a couple of other field notes for you to explore.

• Trying Harder Could Be Sabotaging Your Focus

  A Galley Rule I Keep Forgetting

• Top 10 Reasons to Love Someone with ADHD

  For the ones who live with the chaos and still show up with heart.

Quick heads-up: I’m moving things around a bit. Check the P.S. at the bottom for a new schedule and a first look at a new project I’m launching this Tuesday.

September 13, 2019

If ayahuasca felt like the grandmother who drags me into the dark to show me my demons, San Pedro felt like the grandfather who takes my hand and walks me into the light.

Two days later, the rhythm changed. We didn’t gather in the dark maloca. Instead, we took the medicine around 8:00 AM and were sent out into the world.

I’d heard there are a couple ways people take San Pedro. A thick liquid that gets reduced down. Or what we had.

Ours was powder mixed into water, and it didn’t dissolve so much as turn into grit. Like dipping a cup into mud.

And it wasn’t a polite little sip. It was a tall cup. Eight to twelve ounces. Empty stomach.

The next part is just as cute. You have to keep it down long enough for that wave of nausea to pass. Some people couldn’t.

San Pedro isn’t about sitting still. It’s about being out in the world. It’s about presence. It’s about the kind of connection that happens when you’re alone with the grass under your legs and the sky above your head.

I found a spot on the lawn, opened my book Whose Stuff Is This?, and let the medicine begin to work.

I read a sentence, and then I read it again. It said something like “Just because you feel it doesn’t mean it’s yours.”

Suddenly I had a better understanding of something I’d been doing my whole life.

I’ve always been sensitive, and have always felt things deeply. I used to think it meant there was something wrong with me. Like I was thin-skinned. Like I couldn’t handle life the way other people could.

But sitting there in the grass, I started to see it differently.

Maybe I wasn’t weak. Maybe I was porous.

I didn’t have the ADHD lens yet. I just knew I’d spent decades absorbing the emotional runoff of everyone around me. Sometimes it felt like I couldn’t tell the difference between what was mine and what was theirs.

I put the book down. The medicine was humming now. I stood up to walk.

That’s when I saw him.

Daniel was walking toward me across the lawn. I didn’t know him well yet, just a few words exchanged here and there, but something in my gut told me we were going to be friends.

As he got closer, I noticed the shift. In the heightened sunlight of the San Pedro, his skin seemed to shimmer, clear, multifaceted, and brilliant. It reminded me of that scene in Twilight where Edward steps into the sunlight and he looks as if he is covered with tiny little diamonds.

We stopped and exchanged a few friendly words.

I couldn’t stop staring.

Not in a weird way. I was mesmerized. It was ike the medicine had turned the contrast up on everything, and my brain was trying to make sense of what it was seeing.

In that light, Daniel looked like he was lit from the inside. Like something in him was catching the sun and reflecting it back.

I was envious of that shimmer. Daniel, in that moment, possessed a goodness that felt angelic. I wanted to stand near him. I wanted to hug him to see if some of that brilliance would rub off on me.

He smiled as we parted ways. I didn’t know it then, but that image would stay with me for years.

After that, I ended up alone in one of the hammocks overlooking the lake.

There was a bush or a small tree right next to me. When I turned my head, I saw the branch and the leaves were vibrating and humming.

I know how that sounds, but something in me changed just then.

I started to cry. Softly, like my body was letting something go.

And in that moment, I learned what God is.

Not some bearded guy looking down through the clouds. Not someone pulling strings like we’re marionettes.

That leaf was God. The branch, the grass.

Then I looked at my own arm. Same vibration. Same hum.

And I thought, I am God too.

I am as much God as this tree, or the grass, or a rock, or one of those turtles sunning themselves on the log.

Everyone and everything is God. Equally.

No one has more of it than anyone else. Not a person. Not a plant. Not a turtle. Not a rock. Just different forms of the same thing, vibrating.

It felt like a good thing to finally be able to believe in something again, and know it was true. Not because someone told me to. Because I could feel it.

After the encounter, I went down to the small lake. A wooden bridge arched over the water.

I waded in. Swimming on San Pedro was dreamy. The water didn’t feel like water. It felt like cool silk sliding over my skin. I floated there, weightless, looking up at the Amazon sky. I thought about the diamond light I had seen in Daniel, and I thought about the sponge I had been for so long.

Floating in the silk, I felt like I was finally being rinsed clean.

By the afternoon, the hunger returned with a vengeance. We hadn’t been allowed to eat all day, so my body was screaming for fuel.

When we finally broke the fast, I picked up a carrot.

I held it in my hand and I could feel it humming. The vibration was intense, a physical pulse of energy radiating into my fingers.

It wasn’t just the carrot, it was the whole exchange.

The earth becomes the carrot. The carrot becomes me. I become whatever comes next.

Even when we’re gone, we don’t disappear. We go back. Back to the ground, back to where we came from.

Same vibration. Different shape.

It wasn’t a hallucination. It was a realization that everything in this jungle, from the turtles on the log to Daniel shimmering like a diamond, to the carrot in my hand, to my own skin, was made of the same electricity.

I wrote something that day that still makes me laugh. I wrote it exactly like this: “Feeling amazing that my light is so bright. I hope the world is ready for it, LOL!”

And then, a voice drifted through my mind. It was clear and kind. Sweet, like a loving hand on my cheek. Like, you might not have believed this before, but now you will.

“Stop hurting yourself,” it said. “Be good to yourself. You are good.”

I took a bite. And for the first time since that night in Costa Rica, I didn’t feel afraid. I felt part of the pulse.

— R. Michael

If you have thoughts or questions, I’d really love to hear from you in the comments. I read every one.

Want to keep going? The Peru Chronicles.

P.S. A quick shift in the manifest!

You’re used to seeing these dispatches on Thursday nights, but I’ve realized that’s a terrible time to ask you to go deep into the jungle.

Starting now, I’m moving these memoirs to Friday mornings, better for the stories, and better for your weekend coffee.

However, because my brain is a restless place, I’m also launching a Tuesday newsletter called THE BACKROADS.

If these Friday stories are the deep-dives, Tuesdays are the field notes on mental health, community, and the road ahead.

It’s the side of me that you don'tget to see in the stories. A bit faster, a bit sharper, and a lot more like the guy you’d actually talk to in real life.

They’re observations on life from a brain that doesn’t move in straight lines.

Keep an eye out this coming Tuesday. I’ve already dropped a few “seed” posts in the new section [HERE] if you want to see how the other half of my brain lives.

See you Tuesday.

The other day I blurted out, “Sometimes I love my brain, but sometimes I hate my brain.”

I’d been staring at the same paragraph for too long, and I could feel myself getting agitated.

My father-in-law watched me spiral for a minute and then said, “When you stay frustrated, you’re robbing your brain of time. You’re not giving it what it needs to sort out the solution. Take a break. Let it catch up.”

When he said that, I stopped what I was doing and listened intently, because what he said made complete sense and described something I’ve been dealing with for as long as I can remember.

For me, this is the ADHD version of getting stuck. You lock onto the problem, and instead of making progress, you start grinding. Same sentence. Same thought. Same mistake. Over and over. It feels like effort. It’s actually a loop.

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The Part of My Brain That Works in the Shower

Here’s what I learned when I went looking for the “why.”

There’s a difference between the part of your brain that’s good at focused effort, and the part that solves things in the background when you’re walking, showering, or loading the dishwasher.

That’s the part of my brain that shows up when I stop trying to choke the solution out of the page.

And frustration is the accelerant. Once I’m keyed up, my thinking gets narrow. My patience drops. Everything feels personal. The more I push, the hotter it gets.

The View From the Galley

This is the best metaphor I can think of:

“My brain is like a small yacht galley during a 10-person dinner service. If I drop a tray of appetizers, I can’t just keep screaming at the stove to cook faster. I have to step out of the kitchen for sixty seconds, breathe, and reset the line, or the whole service is going into the weeds.”

So now I’m treating “stepping away” as part of the work, not a failure of discipline.

HOW I RESET THE LINE

Here’s what I’m trying.

Stop talking about the problem.

Explaining it to someone else feels good at first, but then it’s like I just re-loaded the frustration back into my head.

Change my scenery.

I stand up and change rooms, or better yet, I go outside for a minute. ADHD is weirdly attached to context. If I stay in the same seat, I stay in the same loop.

Do something physical.

Not a self-care ritual. Just a reset.

Water my husband’s plant (it was starting to die, oops). Grab a snack. Ideally not sugar. Realistically, we’ll see. Touch something cold like the countertop. Notice the texture of Chase’s leash in my hand.

Anything that moves my attention out of my head and back into the room.

Half the time, when I come back, the “solution” isn’t some genius breakthrough. It’s just obvious again. I can see the next sentence. I can see the next step. The line has reset.

I’m not an expert. I’m just paying attention and writing it down, like a recipe I don’t want to forget.

And like cooking, the moment you get tense and start forcing it, things usually get worse.

Sometimes the ‘try harder’ move is exactly what sinks the service. Stepping out of the galley for a minute is what saves it.

-R. Michael

I’m looking for more reliable ideas that will help me pull me out of my spiral. If you have any, I would love to hear them. I have a feeling I’m not the only one.

Leave a comment

Nothing about me felt ready for what came next.

Read the series in order here: The Peru Chronicles.

I arrived in Peru weighing about 140 pounds. I’m nearly six feet tall. My body told the story before I ever did. I was depleted, worn thin, and carrying more than I could have described at the time. Whatever I thought I was coming for, I wasn’t arriving from a place of strength.

September 11, 2019

A week or two earlier, Cade and I had talked about Peru. Now I was here.

The center itself was calm and intentional. The main area, where the dining space and the maloca were located, felt thoughtful and cared for. There were paths, places to sit, a sense of order.

Inside the dining space were comfortable couches and a small library. Outside, several hammocks overlooked a lake just down a small hill, and a small bridge led across to a covered dock on the other side. It was all quaint, lovely, and quiet.

But once we passed the maloca, that stopped.

The staff walked me farther out, showing me to my accommodation located beyond the areas that had been cleared or maintained. The path narrowed. The ground changed. The jungle didn’t ease in gradually. It began all at once.

This was different from Nicaragua. I was used to the jungle there. This felt like something else entirely. Like I’d gone from the shallow end straight into the deep.

My tambo sat at the edge of the property. A small, screened-in hut on stilts, surrounded by trees. When the guide turned and walked back toward the main area, the distance felt enormous.

I wasn’t just in Peru. I was alone in Peru.

I was hungry in a way that went deeper than food. A kind of cellular hunger I’d been carrying for months. And I missed Cade immediately. The jungle wasn’t quiet. It was a wall of sound, layered and constant, and I didn’t feel part of it yet.

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That afternoon, I met the man who ran the center. We sat and talked, and the conversation moved easily toward why I was there.

“Trauma shapes how we see and treat ourselves,” he said. “It’s not our fault what causes it, but we’re often left to deal with it, or heal it, without the tools to do it on our own.”

Something in my chest loosened. He was speaking directly to what I’d been living inside.

After Costa Rica, after the lights and the seizure and the noise, this felt grounding. He felt steady and safe. He named the unfairness of what I’d been living with, without making it my fault.

I walked away from that conversation believing I had finally found the right place. A place that understood what I needed.

I didn’t yet see what I was walking into.

The ceremony was scheduled for later that evening.

As it got darker, the jungle grew louder. I went to the showers and got ready. I used only fragrance-free soap and shampoo, toothpaste without additives. I’d learned later how much that mattered, how certain scents could interfere with the experience.

Back in my tambo, I removed my watch and the ring Cade had given me just weeks earlier. Wearing it made me feel less alone, like he was there with me. Taking it off felt wrong. It also felt necessary. Like stepping into something that existed before we knew each other.

I’d learn later why removing jewelry mattered. How wearing certain things could become physically uncomfortable, even painful.

Once, I’d tried to keep a crystal wrapped in string around my neck and had to remove it when it started to feel like fire against my skin. After that, I learned to keep it close instead of wearing it.

As I stood there in the dim light, the memory of the Costa Rica floor came rushing back. The warm dampness. The shame. The man handing me the pants.

I looked at the roll of toilet paper sitting on the shelf. I wasn’t going to let it happen again. I tore off a long strip of paper, folded it into a thick pad, and shoved it into my pocket. I hesitated. The pocket felt too far away. If I lost control, I wouldn’t have time to reach for it.

I took the paper out of my pocket and stuffed it directly into my underwear. It was ridiculous and uncomfortable.

It was a diaper made of Charmin. But as I walked from my distant Tambo toward the maloca, that wad of paper was the only control I had left.

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The maloca was lit only by a few candles. This was what I had read and heard about, and the opposite of Costa Rica.

One by one, each of us stood, walked up to the shaman, and kneeled before him. He was older, weathered. A lifetime of experience and generations of ancestors before him showed on his face and in his gentle mannerisms.

As I sat there waiting my turn, I realized I hadn’t prepared an intention, which I’d been told was important. I didn’t really understand what that meant yet. And even if I had, I wouldn’t have known where to begin. Whatever had brought me there felt too large to name, let alone shape into something tidy.

When I was presented with the cup, the smell hit me. A reminder of the nausea I’d felt shortly after drinking the first time. That sensory memory made it even harder to keep it down this time. But keeping it down was exactly what I needed to do. And I did.

I returned to my mat and waited. And waited. It seemed to take ages for her to arrive. I lay there, feeling the paper in my pants, listening to the shaman sing.

And then, without a knock, she kicked the door in.

The intensity was immediate and overwhelming. There was no slow build, no gentle introduction. Suddenly, there were hundreds of images firing at me. It was a machine-gun assault of visuals, flashing so fast I couldn’t retain a single one.

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think.

My body went into revolt. I was freezing cold, then burning hot. I thrashed from side to side on the mat, trying to find a position that didn’t feel like dying.

“Stop,” I said. “I want this to stop. I need this to stop!”

I begged the medicine. I bargained with her. “I promise I will come back,” I told the darkness. “I promise. Just please, leave me with one good thing. One image. One moment I can hold onto, so I know this isn’t just happening to me.”

It felt like everything I’d ever lived through was being pulled apart at once. Not gently. Not in order. Just exposed and sorted at a speed I couldn’t follow. Like my entire life was being emptied out and filed into a system I didn’t yet understand. There was too much. It was all happening too fast. I wasn’t asking for answers. I just needed proof that something healing was actually taking place.

I was negotiating for my sanity. I didn’t purge physically, I kept checking my pants, terrified that the armor I’d stuffed down there would fail me, but my mind was being emptied out.

Eventually, the machine-gun fire of images slowed. The chaos began to recede, leaving me lying on the mat, exhausted, sweating, and raw. I was still in it, the medicine hummed in my blood, but the storm had passed.

That’s when the director appeared.

He moved through the dark maloca, checking on us one by one. He came to my mat and crouched down to ask how I felt.

By the small light he carried, maybe a candle, maybe a tiny flashlight cupped in his hand, his face stood out against the dark, which made what I noticed feel even sharper.

In that light, the “wise guide” from the afternoon was gone. The man in front of me was vibrating. He seemed speedy. Electric. Like someone who had been up all night on something far stronger than caffeine.

He was smoking something I didn’t recognize. The smoke drifted over me, sharp and unfamiliar, mixing with the mapacho and the damp jungle air.

My background involves a lot of rooms with a lot of people on a lot of substances.

I know what “high” looks like. I know what “manic” feels like.

Watching him twitch and pace in the shadows, that familiar alarm bell began to ring. It bothered me.

“You might be sensitive to the medicine,” he said, his energy jittery and fast. He suggested I take less next time.

“Dialing it back is a good idea,” I managed to say.

But as I lay there, watching his silhouette buzz with that frantic energy, a question formed in the back of my mind. Was this him? Was I seeing the “real” him, stripped of his daytime mask? Or was the medicine doing exactly what I had asked her to do?

I had come here to heal my own trauma, my own history with addiction and chaos. Perhaps she wasn’t showing me what I feared. Perhaps she was holding up a mirror. She was showing me the energy I had run away from.

She was showing me ME!

After the ceremony ended, I made my way back to my tambo alone. The path was frightening in the dark, even with my small flashlight.

I didn’t sleep that night.

I curled up in the hammock inside my tambo because it felt like the safest place, the hardest for anything to reach me. I lay there, maybe dozing in and out a bit, until the sun came up.

Then I finally slept until I heard the bell ring to indicate breakfast was being served.

-R. Michael

If you have thoughts or questions, I’d really love to hear from you in the comments. I read every one.

Want to keep going? The Peru Chronicles.