Welcome to the Era After the End
Welcome to The Last Text Message, A Mixtape Blog. (Memoir)
I’m Jake. It’s very nice to meet you!
I hope you’ll join me on this journey as I carve out a simple, authentic, sober, artistic, truthful, and love-fueled life for myself after grief.
“Healing isn’t pretty. It’s jagged, messy, and loud. But it’s real. And if I can begin to do it, you can too.”
- The Last Text Message
The Beginning of Whatever Comes Next:
Chicago’s wind cuts like a blade lately, and honestly, it feels right. New beginnings never arrive gently, they claw, they scrape, they demand to be noticed. I’m sitting here with my usual iced soy latte beside me. My headphones are blasting something loud enough to drown out my heartbeat, and I can’t help but think:
Fine. Let this be it. The first page of the new era. The era that comes after everything burned down.
Three years ago, my husband died by suicide. Twenty minutes without oxygen, that’s all it took to shatter my world into a million jagged pieces. Addiction and mental illness stole him, and for a long time, I let grief steal me too. I drowned myself in alcohol, anger and guilt, convinced that if I stayed numb, I could outrun the ache.
Spoiler: you can’t outrun grief. It moves faster than you. It moves inside you.
Grief is not a linear process with a set timeline. It’s a journey that never truly ends. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. While it’s true that grief is a lifelong process, I’m finally finding the strength to believe that it was possible to move forward.
First, I had to take some radical action in my life.
A Brick to the Skull:
Sobriety didn’t arrive like some holy revelation. It came like a brick to the skull, a necessity, not a choice. Recovery felt like crawling through broken glass with no promise of light at the end. But little by little, breath by breath, I scraped myself up from the bottom. I’m celebrating my one-year sobriety anniversary tomorrow:
01/05/24.
A few months ago, I left my hometown for the second time in 20 years, with a scar tattooed down my eye, a ritual cut, a visible battle wound that says:
I survived a chapter that tried to kill me.
Now I live in Chicago. I’m an artist, a writer, a designer, a witch, a goth kid grown up but still haunted, still craving beauty, still obsessed with style, sustainability, couture, Y2K chaos, early-2000s Hot Topic vibes, and the kind of music that could resurrect the dead if you played it loud enough. Collecting memories is now my religion. I style outfits like they are armor. I collage, I write, and I illustrate like I’m stitching myself back together with every piece.
This Blog Is My Open Wound and My Open Door:
It’s mental health. It’s sobriety. It’s recovery. It’s art and mess and honesty.
It’s Chicago streets and late-night coffee with witchy energy and outfits pulled from my collected treasures.
It’s for anyone who’s ever stood on the edge of themselves and wondered if they could take one more step.
Life has been a lot better, not in a sunshine-and-rainbows way, but in an I’m still here, bitch, type of way. In a way that says healing isn’t pretty but it’s real. These obsessions, collecting memories, writing about love, crafting, lyrics, thrifting, subculture aesthetics, they’re more than hobbies;
They’re life preservers. They keep the darkness from swallowing everything whole.
Love, Loss, and Haunted Hope:
I’m writing this book about Aaron, about love and loss, about the last text message that detonated my life, and about the brutal, beautiful work of rebuilding when the story feels unfinished. That book is shaping me in ways I never expected. It’s teaching me that grief doesn’t end, but it can transform. It’s teaching me that scars aren’t shame, they’re proof you survived.
It is my truth, unfolding, unfiltered, untamed.
Haunted by Love:
Aaron’s death didn’t just rearrange my life, it has rewired me. It has made me examine the places where I’ve been split open, the patterns I’ve repeated, the ways I’ve tried to outrun myself. Loss has a way of forcing you to look at the parts of your story you’d rather skip over, the chapters you never meant to write.
I’ve always been accident-prone, the kind of person who collects stitches and bruises like postcards. My body is a testament to survival, marked by moments like the time I cracked my head on a ceiling and needed nine staples. But the deeper scars, the ones carved by grief, by addiction, by loving people who were fighting battles I couldn’t see, those are the ones that have rewritten me.
Aaron’s death wasn’t about weakness. It wasn’t about giving up. It was the end of a long, brutal struggle with addiction, mental health, and a body that had been fighting since birth. I loved him fiercely, and I know he loved me too, but love alone isn’t armor.
Sometimes the battle is bigger than the body that’s fighting it.
The Last Text Message:
The last text Aaron ever sent me read:
“Should I just do it?”
Do you know what it feels like to read that? Like someone hands you a loaded gun and asks which way to point it. I called, I begged, I bargained, I yelled at him, again. I tried to be the antidote. I tried to cure a disease that didn’t want to be cured.
Every addict knows that impossible equation:
If you love them hard enough, fiercely enough, self-destructively enough, maybe they’ll choose life. Maybe they’ll choose you.
But addiction doesn’t give a damn about love. It laughs in your face and hands you a front-row ticket to your own undoing. And still, I stayed. Through the cheating. Through the lies. Through the glassy-eyed promises. Through the nights he reached out and nobody was there except me, the idiot artist who kept believing I could pull him back with the strength of my heart.
Like salvation was waiting on the other side of one more chance.
Resurrection Isn’t Glamorous:
Recovery began as all resurrection stories do, ugly. I trembled, doubted my worth, and was paralyzed with inaction.
Tears streamed down my face, and I couldn’t muster the strength to get out of bed. I was dependent on others for care, grateful for their support, but without them, I wouldn’t be here, in this moment. The world seemed overwhelming, too loud, too bright, and too cruel, while mine had been reduced to rubble. The storm of his suicide had shattered everything I held dear. Grief consumed me, and I couldn’t handle it, so I became cruel to myself and, most of all, others.
Truly Cruel. I’m Sorry.
But somewhere in the wreckage, like a faint aftershock, I started remembering who I was before the emergency became my personality.
A friend said it best:
“You’re an artist first.”
And they said it like a truth I had forgotten, like a lifeline thrown into black water. Because art was the one thing that didn’t ask me to fix it. Didn’t beg for life. Didn’t scream in the middle of the night. It just waited. Quiet. Patient. Wanting me alive.
Love Again, But Different:
I’ve found some new people, a very sweet man, an amazing family, and I’m learning how to love without losing myself. I’m volunteering. I’m creating. I’m sober. I’m writing. I’m trying new things. I’m reconnecting. I’m finding a new kind of self-love that feels like rebellion. And if I can do it, if I can start to claw my way out of the wreckage, you can too.
“Hope isn’t soft. Hope is gritty. Hope is rebellious. Hope is a middle finger to everything that tried to erase you.”
- The Last Text Message
What You’ll Find Here at The Last Text Message - The Mixtape Blog:
Music that feels like a séance for the soul.
Art that bleeds honesty and shadow.
Writing & Poetry that wrestles with grief, love, and the messy miracle of being alive.
Photography that turns scars into stories.
Sobriety & Mental Health the raw truth, no filters.
Love & Loss because both haunt us, and both can save us.
Community for anyone who’s ever felt alone in the dark.
Resources for Anyone Struggling:
If you’re reading this and you’re in the dark, please know this: you are not alone.
Here are some lifelines that can help:
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (U.S.): Call or text 988 for immediate support.
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA): https://www.aa.org/find-aa.
The Trevor Project (LGBTQ+ support): Call 1-866-488-7386 or visit https://www.thetrevorproject.org.
SAMHSA Helpline: 1-800-662-HELP (4357) for substance abuse and mental health resources.
If you’re outside the U.S., check local crisis hotlines or visit https://findahelpline.com.
+ more to come.
Welcome to the era after the end. Welcome to the beginning of whatever the hell comes next.
xoxo, Jake.
©2026 The Last Text Message / A Mixtape Memoir
