THE LINE: REACHING THE BOTTOM
A while back, I wrote two entries called The Line, Down and The Line: Further Down.
I was exploring suffering, death, suicide, autonomy, and that line where suffering becomes so great that a person begins to question whether continuing to exist inside of it is something they can—or should have to—do.
At the time, I was exploring a line.
Lately, I've gotten much closer to understanding that line than I ever wanted to.
Not philosophically.
Physically.
There Is Pain. And Then There Is Pain.
I've been in a lot of pain.
And one thing this experience has given me—something I hope I don't lose when this is all behind me—is a much greater sense of empathy for people who live in pain, people who are sick, injured, or debilitated, and people who simply cannot function the way the rest of us take for granted.
When your body works, you don't think much about it.
You get up.
You walk.
You drive.
You turn your head.
You sleep.
You sit somewhere without having to calculate whether sitting there is going to hurt.
You go about your day without your body constantly interrupting your life.
Then something happens, and suddenly your body becomes the loudest thing in the room.
These bodies are fragile.
And when one isn't doing so great, life can get scary very quickly.
I've also learned that there is tolerable pain, and there is intolerable pain.
And then there is a kind of intolerable pain that makes you not even want to be in your own skin anymore.
That is something I understand now.
There were moments during this ordeal when I wanted to exit.
I want to be careful about what I mean by that.
It wasn't necessarily that I didn't love my life. It wasn't that I stopped loving the people around me. It wasn't that I suddenly had no dreams or plans or reasons to be here.
The pain was just that bad.
I wanted it to stop.
And when you're trapped inside your body and your body is the thing producing the suffering, eventually your mind can start looking for an exit.
That's different from the way I used to understand suicidal thinking.
Sure, depression can exist alongside physical suffering. Fear can. Sadness can. Hopelessness can.
But there can also be moments when the thought becomes brutally simple:
I cannot tolerate this sensation anymore.
That realization has changed something in me.
It has made me think differently about people who reach that point.
It has made me more empathetic toward people whose suffering has become debilitating.
And because of my faith, it also brings me back to another question I've wrestled with before.
What does God think about that?
If someone reaches a point of suffering so extreme that they take their own life, does God understand what was happening inside that person?
I've heard Christians say yes. God knows the entirety of the person, their suffering, their heart, and their circumstances.
I've heard other Christians talk about suicide as though it is the ultimate sin.
I'm not going to manufacture an answer here because I don't have one.
But I understand the question differently now.
Looking for Somebody to Help
Things reached a breaking point for me over the last couple of days.
One of the most frightening parts involved my jaw.
My lower jaw wasn't sitting where it normally sat in relation to my upper teeth. My bite was completely wrong. Everything was tight. Everything hurt. And I didn't know what was happening.
Earlier that day, I had seen a chiropractor whom I actually respect and like.
So I went back.
I wasn't demanding an adjustment.
I wasn't telling him what treatment I needed.
I didn't go to chiropractic school. I didn't go to dental school. I didn't go to orthodontic school.
That's why I went to somebody who did have professional training.
I wanted to know what was happening and whether this was something he could help with—or, if it wasn't, where I needed to go.
Instead, the interaction became strangely defensive.
He became very adamant about what he couldn't do, that this was beyond his scope, and that what I was dealing with was an orthodontic issue rather than a chiropractic one.
And maybe that was the correct professional boundary.
That's not really my issue with what happened.
My issue was how it was handled.
I felt like I was being spoken to as though I were demanding that he do something he shouldn't do.
I never demanded an adjustment.
Not once.
And how was I supposed to already know which professional category my problem belonged to?
Even the person at the front desk seemed to think it might be something they could help with.
I still respect the chiropractor. I still like him. I think he's extremely knowledgeable, and I think there are some fascinating things going on inside that brain of his.
But I also think there was an opportunity there for some growth.
When someone comes to you frightened and hurting, sometimes the most important thing isn't what you can do.
It's how you handle the fact that you can't.
I left still hurting and still looking for help.
Everybody Is Hurting
Then came another problem.
Transportation.
The car I'm currently driving has an alignment issue that makes it scary to drive. My dad now has a scooter, but obviously the two of us weren't going to ride a scooter to an emergency room.
I started calling people.
I called my friend McKinley Darden, who I call Mr. Mack. He's a pastor and somebody I thought might be able to help me get to the hospital.
He didn't answer.
I've since seen that he had been trying to reach me throughout the day. By then, I was basically out of commission and medicated, so I still need to catch up with him.
Then I called my friend Frank.
Frank started out doing mobile mechanic work and eventually built his own auto shop. I called hoping maybe he could take me to the ER.
It turned out Frank was hurt too.
He'd been in San Antonio with his family when he ended up dealing with his own health problems. He had to go to an emergency room himself. His trip was cut short, plans with his family were ruined, and he was home recuperating.
He wanted to help me.
He couldn't.
And there's something about being in pain and calling people for help only to discover that the people you're calling are hurting too.
Mr. Mack had recently been injured himself.
Frank was now hurt.
I was hurt.
Everybody has a body.
And bodies are fragile.
The Emergency Room
Eventually, I drove myself to an emergency room in Portland.
I didn't particularly want to drive that car, but I needed help.
At the hospital, they were willing to give me medication, but because of what they were going to administer, I needed somebody there who could drive me afterward.
So my dad found a way.
I certainly wasn't going to have my 75-year-old father ride a scooter from Aransas Pass to Portland in the middle of the night.
He woke up the neighbors.
They got out of bed and drove him from Aransas Pass to Portland.
They dropped him off at the hospital, the ER was able to medicate me, and eventually my dad drove us home.
The ER didn't want to manipulate my jaw either.
Ultimately, they treated the pain, gave me hydrocodone, and sent me home with a prescription.
I had gone to the emergency room because I was desperate for help.
I came home still needing help.
When I Got Home
When we got home, my jaw still wasn't sitting where it normally did.
And that's when something happened that still seems crazy to me.
I want to make something very clear before I describe it: I'm telling you what I did. I'm not suggesting anybody else try it.
I grabbed my lower jaw with both hands and pulled it forward.
It moved.
And my lower teeth ended up aligning with my upper teeth again.
I didn't know exactly what I had done. I just knew that my jaw had not been sitting where it normally sat, and suddenly it was sitting differently.
My dad and I wondered afterward whether the hydrocodone I'd received at the hospital might have had something to do with why it moved so easily. That possibility also came up in conversations afterward. Maybe because I was in less pain and more relaxed, there was less muscular guarding.
I don't know.
And I'm not going to pretend I know.
What I know is what I experienced.
My jaw moved.
My teeth lined up again.
But the muscles surrounding everything were still incredibly tight.
My jaw wanted to clench.
My body still seemed to be protecting something.
So even though one frightening part of the problem had changed, I wasn't suddenly okay.
So I Went Looking Again
Morning came.
I hadn't slept.
And I got back into that car and drove to Corpus Christi.
At that point, I wasn't married to any particular treatment.
Chiropractic. Massage. Whatever.
I needed somebody to evaluate me and hopefully help me.
There was another complication.
It was Labor Day.
A lot of places seemed to be closed.
I kept searching.
Eventually, I happened to be near Coastal Bend Family Chiropractic, so I called.
Natasha answered.
They were open.
They had availability.
And one of the things that sticks with me is how human she was about the whole thing.
She listened. She could tell I was hurting. When I arrived, instead of simply leaving me sitting there suffering while everything got sorted out, she got my paperwork started and put me on moist heat while communicating with the doctor about what was happening.
Then Dr. Julian Dalton came out personally, introduced himself, and started trying to understand what was going on before we even got into the formal visit.
He examined me.
He explained what he was doing and why he was doing it.
His approach to adjusting me was different from what I was used to, in a good way. He addressed areas that I felt hadn't been adjusted in years—possibly ever.
There was moist heat. There was manual deep-tissue work around my shoulders, shoulder blades, neck, and the base of my neck. There was work around my legs and hips. He used gua sha on my back. He adjusted me and worked on my jaw as well.
Most importantly, I felt like somebody was actually trying to understand the entire situation.
And I finally got some relief.
Not magic.
One visit isn't magic.
I'm still sore.
I'm still dealing with some of the issues that brought me there.
I'm still a little scared that something is going to revert and I'll end up right back where I was.
But I walked out doing a lot better than I was when I walked through that door.
And right now, I'm no longer at the edge.
That's a win.
The Masseter
There was another piece of this that surprised me.
Even after my jaw was sitting in a better position and Dr. Dalton had worked on it, my jaw muscles were still incredibly tight.
They were clenching and guarding, almost like my body had decided everything needed to stay locked down.
So I started looking into ways to relax the masseter muscle, one of the major muscles involved in chewing and clenching.
I did some exercises and manual work to try to get it to relax.
And when it finally started letting go, something strange happened.
My jaw relaxed.
Then I felt relaxation around the back of my head and neck.
Then my neck started releasing.
Then portions of my back started releasing.
At one point, I even felt a small snap or pop somewhere in my back.
It felt like a chain reaction.
One thing let go.
Then another.
Then another.
And suddenly I felt calmer.
That sent me down another rabbit hole.
Getting Off the Hamster Wheel
I've started thinking about how easy it may be to get caught in a cycle.
You're hurt.
You're in pain.
Your body gets scared.
You tense up.
Your muscles guard.
That creates more discomfort.
The additional discomfort creates more fear and stress.
So you tighten more.
And around and around you go.
A hamster wheel.
Maybe you're actually treating whatever started the problem.
Maybe you're getting physical therapy. Maybe you're getting adjustments. Maybe you're receiving whatever treatment is appropriate for whatever is happening with you.
But what happens if your body is still acting like it's under attack?
What happens if you're addressing one part of the problem while the rest of your system hasn't calmed down?
That's one of the things that has gotten me interested in the vagus nerve and the relationship between our nervous system, stress, pain, and muscle tension.
I've been experimenting with things commonly described as "vagus nerve resets," and some of them have helped me feel considerably calmer.
I've also done some EMDR, which I've found can help settle my mind.
And I've noticed something in my own body.
When my mind begins to calm down, some of the physical tightness seems to calm down with it.
That's my experience.
I'm not claiming that doing a few exercises magically "resets" a nerve or fixes an underlying physical problem.
In fact, that's exactly why I want to explore this further.
What does "resetting the vagus nerve" actually mean?
What is established physiology?
What's wellness terminology?
What actually works?
Why did some of these things seem to work for me?
There may be an entire Life Is a Storm entry coming about that.
That's another rabbit hole.
I'll get there.
And Then There's Death
There's another rabbit hole waiting for me too.
Near-death experiences.
NDEs.
Clinical death.
Consciousness.
What happens when somebody gets close enough to death that their heart stops, they're resuscitated, and afterward they report having experienced something while they were gone?
This isn't something I'm pretending I've already researched.
I'm telling you where I'm going next.
And the way I stumbled into it is kind of strange.
For a long time, I've helped my dad with his email, subscriptions, and computer stuff. He's just not particularly computer savvy, so I help him navigate that world.
I kept seeing something called The Epoch Times.
Epoch this. Epoch that.
Sometimes I'd unsubscribe from something, then later see Epoch again.
I didn't really know what it was.
Then recently, advertisements from Epoch started showing up in my own Facebook feed.
One involved a man talking about near-death experiences.
Then I encountered another with a woman discussing people who had clinically died, come back, and reported what they experienced.
And that caught my attention.
Because I've already been down part of this road.
I wrote an entire three-part series called The In-Between, exploring the transition between life and death and the question of what might happen when we leave these bodies.
Now this subject has found its way back in front of me.
I haven't watched everything yet.
I haven't investigated all of the claims.
I don't know what I'm going to conclude.
And I'm certainly not treating The Epoch Times as the authority on what happens after death.
It's simply the breadcrumb that put this subject back in front of me.
Now I want to look into the actual research.
Near-death experiences.
Clinical death.
Cardiac arrest and resuscitation.
Consciousness.
What people report.
What scientists have observed.
What science can explain.
What it can't.
And, of course, what any of this means when I put it alongside my faith and the questions I was already asking in The In-Between.
I'm going in.
I just haven't gone in yet.
Creating Through It
There's another part of all of this that I don't want to leave out.
While I've been dealing with some of the worst physical pain I've experienced, I've also been creating.
A lot.
Somehow, within about a week of each other, I wrote two feature screenplays.
And I wrote each of them in less than 24 hours.
The first was El Cachorrero, a survival crime thriller about two brothers who travel from Texas to the lawless gold-mining settlement of La Rinconada, Peru, looking for opportunity. A betrayal leaves them trapped deep inside a mountain, where their survival ultimately depends on each other and a secret escape route.
Then came They Toxic, a much different story—a relationship drama and thriller with some dark comedy mixed in, centered around a man navigating a series of volatile relationships, violence, consequences, and eventually having to confront his own role in the toxicity surrounding him.
Two completely different stories.
Two screenplays.
About a week apart.
Both written in under 24 hours.
And within a couple of days of finishing the second one, I had both of them registered and protected.
Now I have to figure out what the next part of that process looks like—pitching them, getting them in front of the right people, and seeing whether either of these stories can actually find its way onto a screen.
That's new territory for me.
Writing isn't.
I've now published 11 books.
Two of those have made it into paperback, and The Book of Carlos exists in three different formats: digital, paperback, and audiobook through Audible.
And now I can add two feature screenplays to the body of work.
And it hasn't only been books and screenplays.
Somewhere in the middle of all of this, I also wrote a new song for my Los Official music project.
And I think it's a banger.
Now I need to get the music produced and get back into the studio. Hopefully, once I get some of these medical bills out of the way, I'll be able to do exactly that and get the song recorded and released.
I think it could be a hit.
But here's the thing.
If it's not a hit with anybody else, it's already a hit with me.
And that's really what matters.
I've never wanted the value of creating something to depend entirely on whether somebody else validates it. I have to love what I'm creating first. I have to want to hear the song. I have to want to read the story. I have to believe in whatever came out of me.
Everybody else is the byproduct.
If other people connect with it, that's incredible. Of course I want that. I want people to hear the music, read the books, watch the stories, and hopefully find something in them that means something to them.
But the creation itself comes first.
What's interesting to me is when all of this happened.
I didn't wait until I felt good.
I didn't wait until life settled down.
I didn't wait until the pain was gone.
I created while I was going through it.
And when I think about my life, I guess that's pretty normal for me.
Creative outlets have always helped me navigate things.
Hardship.
Grief.
Pain.
Struggle.
Whatever life happens to be throwing at me.
Sometimes it's writing a book. Sometimes it's writing music. Sometimes it's this blog. Now, apparently, sometimes it's sitting down and writing an entire screenplay before I've even had time to fully process where the idea came from.
I don't necessarily sit down and consciously decide, I'm hurting, so I need to create something.
It just seems to happen that way.
Maybe creativity gives my mind somewhere else to go when my body isn't a particularly comfortable place to be.
Maybe it gives difficult experiences somewhere to go too.
Into a book.
Into a song.
Into a screenplay.
Into an article like this one.
I don't know that I've completely figured out the relationship between creativity and everything I've gone through.
But I know it's there.
And through this period of horrendous physical pain, somehow I still created.
Maybe that's just what I do.
Creative outlets.
They help me navigate hardship, grief, pain, and struggle.
And apparently, they always have.
What Comes Next
Feeling better right now doesn't mean I'm done dealing with the physical side of this either.
Dr. Dalton worked on and adjusted my jaw, and I'm doing considerably better than I was.
But after everything that's happened, I want to make sure my jaw is actually aligned properly.
So I have three orthodontic appointments coming up.
Two of them are local, later today.
It's already five in the morning as I'm writing this, so I suppose "later today" has already arrived.
I'm hoping one of those offices can take a good look at everything and tell me what my options are.
If I can get financing locally and make the numbers work, that would obviously be the easiest option.
If not, I have an orthodontic appointment in Mexico on Thursday.
Financially, that may end up being the most realistic option for me right now.
And I'm not only looking at orthodontics because of what happened over the last couple of days.
If I'm going to deal with my jaw and my bite, maybe this is also the time to straighten my teeth and make sure I'm doing everything I can for my overall oral health.
Which means I may be getting braces.
As an adult.
That's going to be strange.
But if it takes something like a year to get everything where it needs to be, why not?
I'm going to look into it.
I'm also curious about whether correcting anything that's actually wrong with my jaw or bite could have any effect on my sleep apnea or nighttime breathing.
Maybe it will.
Maybe it won't.
That's something I need to ask the professionals rather than assuming there's a connection.
And while I'm in Mexico, I'm planning to get another consultation.
This one is about my nose.
I broke my nose somewhere around 2004 or 2005. I honestly can't remember the exact year anymore.
But it healed broken.
I've lived with it that way ever since.
So I'm going to look into a rhinoplasty procedure.
Part of that is aesthetic.
If I'm going to correct a nose that was broken more than twenty years ago, I wouldn't mind it looking better too.
But I'm also interested in the functional side of it.
Is there something structurally obstructing my breathing?
Did the way my nose healed affect my airway?
Could correcting something there potentially help with breathing at night?
I don't know.
I guess I'm going to find out.
Between the orthodontic consultations and the rhinoplasty consultation, I'm hoping to get a better understanding of the whole picture—my jaw, my bite, my teeth, my nose, my breathing, and my overall oral and airway health.
Maybe some of these things connect.
Maybe some of them don't.
That's what consultations are for.
So that's where I'm headed next.
Hopefully I can find something workable locally.
If not, Thursday I'm headed to Mexico.
Wish me luck.
Tonight
Right now, I'm ending this experience somewhere very different from where I was when it started.
I'm sore.
I'm tired.
I'm apprehensive.
Part of me is scared that I'll wake up and something will have tightened again or shifted, or I'll find myself right back inside that intolerable pain.
But right now, I'm not thinking about exiting this existence because I can't stand being inside my body.
Right now, I have some peace.
I want to catch up with Mr. Mack.
I want to check on Frank and see how he's doing.
I want to spend some time with my dad.
Maybe when we wake up, we can go do something cool.
Because that man has been there for me through all of this.
And I'm grateful.
I'm grateful for the neighbors who got out of bed in the middle of the night.
I'm grateful for the people who answered phones.
I'm grateful for the people who tried to help.
I'm grateful for Natasha and Dr. Dalton.
I'm grateful that I kept looking.
And above everything else, I'm grateful to God.
Because I prayed through this.
Consistently.
I asked Him for healing.
It didn't happen immediately.
It didn't happen according to whatever timeline I would have preferred.
I went looking for help and hit walls.
I ended up in an emergency room.
I came home still hurting.
I kept looking.
And eventually, I found some relief.
That's how I see it.
I believe God put people in my path.
I believe He guided me where I needed to go.
I believe there were lessons and tests throughout all of this—for me and maybe for some of the people I encountered along the way.
And I don't know that the test is over.
I don't know what tomorrow is going to feel like.
I don't know what these orthodontists are going to tell me.
I don't know what I'll learn in Mexico.
I don't know where the vagus nerve rabbit hole is going to take me.
I don't know what I'm going to discover when I start seriously looking into near-death experiences and clinical death.
And I certainly don't know that this physical problem is permanently resolved.
I'm still living the story.
But right now, I'm grateful.
I'm thankful.
I'm still here.
Connect.
Pray.
Have faith.
And when you don't have any other words left:
Jesus.
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