Before you enter my innermost thoughts, I will offer three cups of tea, a Balti tradition. With the first cup of tea, we are strangers.

I share why I’ve invited you here, what it is I hope to share. As we share the second cup of tea, you are my honored guest.

I share where I come from; how I’ve come to you. And during the the third cup of tea, we become family.

I share my journal, my deepest fears, dreams, pains, and machinations. These start in 2018, five years before this book was put together.

As you follow my experiences with depression, suicide, love, and purpose – I wonder who you will see. There are five chapters, and with each chapter is a phase of life.

In the first chapter, Chasing Eudaemonia, everything around me started to fall apart, despite my hope and best efforts. In Views from the Styx, the second chapter, my life stopped, arrested by loneliness and hopelessness – for the first time in my life I prepared a suicide attempt, once that road is found it is hard to forget.

In the third chapter, Memories in Mauve, I finally come out on the other side alive, rekindling hope, revisiting a childhood, and finding solace in self. In the fourth chapter, Love Her, I’m given an opportunity to love and hope, the beginning of healing.

During the last chapter, Trust Fall, everything seemed to arise all at once: suicide, the inability to love and hope, loneliness, debt, but I react differently this time. Life did not get easier, it got more difficult – I am learning to endure it better, to be tactful and thrive; to be patient.

I write to satisfy the voice in me. I don’t have any specific intention with this book.

It is raw material for you to use; the playback of my life for you to analyze. .