THE FRACTURING

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Love And Madness At The End of The Century​

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During the COVID lockdown, I began writing The Fracturing: Love And Madness At The End of The Century, 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—stability, security, truth, and a lifetime together. I wanted that life with her more than anything.

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But another story had already taken root.

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The private battle that would eventually push me out of our home had already begun. 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 choosing between the life unfolding before me and the life my childhood had taught me was not possible.

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I left believing, somewhere deep inside, that our story wasn't over—that one day we would find our way back to each other. Whether that was hope, intuition, or simply the story I needed to survive, I still cannot say. 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 shaping 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. Rebuilding from those memories—became 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 we inherit 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.

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Ultimately, The Fracturing asks what becomes possible when we discover that the story governing our lives was written long before we had the power to question it.