David Izor

Exploring the Humor and Absurdity of Life

Category: New Life

  • Amnesia and the Art of Forgetting the Come Down

    It’s remarkable, really, how quickly I can forget the come down. One minute I’m swearing off everything stronger than herbal tea, and the next I’m fondly reminiscing about the “good times” like some unreliable narrator in a Netflix docuseries titled How Did We Get Here Again?

    Recovery amnesia is sneaky. It doesn’t just erase the carnage—it crops it. It edits out the shakes, the shame, the hospital visits, the texts I shouldn’t have sent (all 42 of them), and replaces it with a gauzy montage of euphoric nonsense. Wasn’t I fun? Didn’t that run end with a sunrise and poetry? No. It ended in the ER with my pants inside out and a half-eaten granola bar stuck to my forehead.

    But still, the forgetting happens. Like emotional dry rot. You remember the glitter but not the cleanup. The rush but not the crash. You forget the way the silence felt afterward—how cold it was, how alone you were, how your soul felt like it had been evicted from your own body.

    That’s why recovery needs anchors: meetings, journals, awkward honesty, and people who will lovingly remind you how incredibly horrible you treated yourself.

    So today, when the highlight reel plays, I’ll hit pause. I’ll remember the full story. Not to punish myself, but to stay free.

    Because the come down wasn’t just a bad night. It was the thing that nearly ended me. And I didn’t crawl out of that pit just to jump back in because nostalgia suddenly showed up in a leather jacket.

    No thanks. I’ll keep the herbal tea—and my dignity.

  • The Coyote Mindset

    Mark Twain’s description of the coyote in his book Roughing It is possibly the best metaphor for the feelings of isolation that often accompany personal growth. He calls the coyote a “long, slim, sick and sorry-looking skeleton, with a gray wolf-skin stretched over it.” Which, coincidentally, is exactly how I feel when in this season of growth. Like some awkward, half-starved creature stumbling through recovery, unsure whether I’m progressing or just making a fool of myself.

    When you start to grow, you leave behind your old ways, but you haven’t quite found solid footing in the new. Often you can feel stuck in this uncomfortable in-between, much like Twain’s coyote. Alienated, twitchy, and deeply uncool. The coyote doesn’t command the respect of the noble wolf, nor does it have the carefree charm of a house dog. It just slinks around, judged by everyone often family, including (and especially) itself. And if you think about it, that’s what happens when we abandon our old identities and try to become something more. There’s a deep loneliness in realizing that personal growth often means standing apart, and insecurity loves to feast on the fear of not belonging.

    Jordan Peterson writes that we need to push forward anyway, and consciously carry the “burden of transformation” even when I feel ridiculous or out of place. Today, I will embrace my awkward growth phase, knowing that discomfort is not a sign of failure but of progress. i will guard against the mental isolation that I use to operate in, I will embrace and employ what I am learning in this phase of my growth, despite the expectations and judgements of others. I may not be a wolf at this point, but I sure as hell don’t have to stay a starving coyote.