Lately, God has been convicting me to change that.

I’ve been quietly working on a book — not as a project, but as a way to make sense of things I survived and didn’t fully understand at the time.

What follows is an unpublished excerpt from I Shouldn’t Be Alive.

It isn’t polished.
It isn’t heroic.
It’s honest.

If it resonates, I’m glad you’re here.

— Connor
Alpha Before It Prints

The night I should’ve died didn’t start with an accident.

It started with a fight.

A stupid, pointless, drug-soaked fight with a girl I shouldn’t have been with in a life I shouldn’t have been living.

We’ll call her Alyssa.

I was barred out on Xanax — the kind of dose that makes the world feel underwater — and drinking on top of it. A combination that doesn’t care whether you wake up or not.

I shouldn’t have been behind a wheel.

I knew that.

I also knew I didn’t care.

I got in the car sometime after midnight and left Orlando, telling myself I was driving back to Jacksonville. Telling myself a lot of things that weren’t true.

I was living in a sober house back then.

If you can even call what I was doing living.

I’d been shooting heroin every day. Lying to everyone. Wasting away quietly. Doing just enough to look functional while everything inside me rotted.

I wasn’t crashing.

I was eroding.

Alyssa and I argued about nothing — which is what happens when there’s too much poison in the room and nowhere left for it to go. I left her apartment shaking, angry, numb, and so high I could barely tell where my hands ended and the steering wheel began.

The car smelled like stale clothes and that faint chemical burn that never really leaves when heroin has been part of your life. The radio was on, but it sounded like it was coming from inside my head instead of the speakers.

I got onto I-4.

Construction everywhere.

Concrete barriers pressed in on both sides, lanes narrowed until it felt like the road was squeezing me forward whether I wanted it to or not.

It felt like driving through something meant to close behind you.

At some point, the thought surfaced — not dramatic, not emotional, just clear:

I could drive off the road right now and it wouldn’t matter.

It wasn’t a threat.

It wasn’t a cry for help.

It felt like a fact.

My vision blurred. Tears came fast and ugly. I kept swerving, correcting at the last second, my hands reacting before my brain could decide whether it even wanted to.

There were moments where I swear the car moved on its own.

Moments where I wasn’t sure if I was steering or just holding on.

Then the radio said something about Kansas City.

One word.

That was all it took.

Kansas City meant Nick.

The closest thing I’d ever had to a real friend in recovery. The kind of person who answered the phone even when you didn’t deserve it.

Nick, who had picked me up from a halfway house after I’d been kicked out for using fake urine.

Nick, who didn’t know I’d been lying for months.

Nick, who kept showing up even when I disappeared.

I hadn’t told him the truth.

I hadn’t told anyone the truth.

But something inside me said: call him.

Not because it would fix anything.

Just because silence felt more dangerous than whatever would happen if he answered.

It was around two in the morning.

The phone rang.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

“Yo?”

That single word hit like oxygen.

I tried to sound normal. I didn’t make it past the first sentence.

Everything spilled out at once — the sobbing, the choking, the years of pressure finally breaking through whatever barrier I’d built.

Nick didn’t interrupt. Didn’t lecture. Didn’t ask where I was or what I’d taken.

He just kept me talking.

Kept me awake.

Kept me alive.

When we hung up, the road curved in a way I didn’t expect. Or maybe I drifted. Or maybe my body did something my mind had already given up on.

The car slammed into a guardrail.

Metal screamed. The impact rattled my teeth. My head snapped forward.

The driver’s side door crumpled inward just enough to break the latch. It wouldn’t close. Wouldn’t seal. It hung there, half-open, like something already giving up.

I kept driving.

Because once you’ve crossed that line, stopping feels harder than continuing.

By the time I reached Jacksonville, I had no gas, no money, no dope left in my system, no plan, and no desire to see anyone who might recognize me.

I pulled into the Winn-Dixie parking lot near my mom’s house.

It was December.

Cold for Florida — the kind of cold that feels wrong, like it doesn’t belong here.

The door wouldn’t close. Cold air poured in relentlessly, needling my skin, settling deep into my bones.

I emptied my backpack and piled dirty clothes over myself, trying to make a barrier between my body and the night.

It didn’t work.

I shook until my teeth hurt. My hands went numb. My thoughts slowed down to something almost mechanical.

There was no panic left.

No emotion.

Just logic.

I’m not even a person anymore.

I’m not worth saving.

Dying would simplify this.

Not dramatically.

Not emotionally.

Just practically.

The sky started to lighten.

Not all at once.

Slowly.

Cruelly.

The sunrise didn’t feel like hope. It felt like exposure — like being caught alive when you weren’t supposed to be.

Light filled the car inch by inch, revealing the blood spots, the bruises on my arms, the clothes I’d used as insulation, the broken door, the cold pavement visible through the gap.

I sat there, watching morning arrive, and felt nothing but resentment that it had.

And the first clear thought I had wasn’t regret or resolve.

It was need.

I need heroin.

Not to feel good.

Just to get through the next few hours without collapsing under the weight of being awake.

So I sat up, exhausted, hollowed out, already planning my next fix.

Not because I wanted to die.

Because living like this felt harder.

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