THE FRACTURING

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During the COVID lockdown, I began writing The Fracturing, a 55,000-word work of narrative nonfiction that begins with a single decision I made in 1997 and follows its consequences across nearly three decades.

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In 1997, I walked away from June, the woman I loved deeply, repeating a pattern I could not yet see. I wasn't rejecting the life we both wanted, but another story had already taken root, its grip formed in a fatherless childhood where instability was the only constant.

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The private battle that emerged would eventually push me out of the door. Raised in chaos, I had learned that love disappeared without warning, that leaving was inevitable, and that independence was safer than trust. Those beliefs had become so deeply woven into me that I mistook them for truth.

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What I could not see then was that I wasn't choosing between staying and leaving. I was battling narratives between the life unfolding before me and the life my early  years had taught me was the only possible path. It had nothing to do with the societal narrative of being gay, and everything to do with a childhood story shaped by circumstance. 

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I left believing, somewhere deep inside, our story wasn't over—that one day we would find our way back. Whether that was hope, intuition, or simply the story I needed to survive, I don’t know. What I do know is that I could not have lived with the loss without believing something.

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In the years that followed, I built new stories to make sense of what had happened: that she would be happier without me, that I had done the right thing, and that some loves simply become part of who we are. Those stories quietly shaped every relationship that followed.

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After more than three decades in journalism—spent reporting, producing, and trying to separate fact from fiction—I realized the most consequential false narrative was the one I had been telling myself. As the country's public narratives began to fracture, I found myself confronting the private ones I had spent a lifetime protecting.

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What remained was the woman June had seen beneath the inherited beliefs, and myths I had mistaken for identity. That blueprint gave me the architecture of my heart.

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At its core, The Fracturing is a love story haunted by class, memory, and the stories that become embedded in us to survive before we're old enough to question them. It explores the distance between who we believe ourselves to be and who we might become once those stories lose their hold.