Grand day rising.
September 25th, 2026.
My Conversation with God.
Man, what a difference a day makes.
There is so much moving through me this morning.
I wanted to sit down and write earlier, but Mona, my nurse, was coming over to draw blood.
And even that turned into part of the story.
Last night I took my second dose of the increased antibiotic. The night before, I had only slept three hours and fourteen minutes, so by around 8:15 I was exhausted.
I took my little sleep concoction early, and sometime around 9:00 or 9:30 I started infusing my antibiotic.
I remember being so tired that I put the antibiotic bag across my chest while I sat upright in bed because I was afraid I might fall asleep and somehow roll over or tug on the PICC line again.
Earlier this week, the PICC line stopped giving blood return.
That created an entire emotional roller coaster for me.
So I was being careful.
And sure enough, I fell asleep.
I woke up around 12:30 and thought, Oh shit. I fell asleep.
But I was still sitting in basically the same position.
Nothing had twisted.
Nothing had pulled.
Nothing had changed.
So I flushed the line, put the heparin in, and then I looked over at the second lumen of the dual PICC.
There was blood in it.
I was like, What the hell is that?
Because this line had not been working.
Mona had tried several times earlier in the week to pull blood from it and got nothing.
We thought the line had shifted.
You could actually see that the PICC had moved maybe a quarter inch, maybe half an inch from where it had originally been.
So I started wondering:
Wait. Is this thing working again?
I wanted to flush the other line because I didn’t want it clotting overnight, but the second lumen was too short for me to connect the syringe comfortably.
So I said, fuck it.
Wrapped everything back up.
Went to sleep.
This morning I woke up and there was blood visible in both lines.
Not pouring out.
Nothing dramatic.
The clamps were still closed.
But blood was there.
I got up around 7:45.
Six hours and fifty-eight minutes of sleep.
Sleep score was 67.
Still not stellar.
But almost seven hours?
I’ll fucking take it.
I was grateful.
I decided not to drink my coffee before Mona got here.
Not because the labs necessarily required fasting, but I thought, Let me just wait.
She arrived around 8:30.
I said, “I have something interesting to show you.”
I showed her the blood in the line.
She said, “Oh my God.”
Then immediately started trying to calm the excitement.
“Maybe it’s just backflow.”
Okay, Mona.
😂
She flushed the line.
Then she pulled back.
Blood came.
She said, “Well, maybe that’s just the blood that was sitting inside the tubing.”
I said, “Well hurry the fuck up and take some before it changes its mind.”
She laughed.
And then the blood kept flowing.
A little slower than normal.
But it worked.
She got all the blood she needed directly from the PICC.
No needles in my arms today.
No peripheral blood draw.
The damn thing was working again.
She said, “Well, it looks like you finally got some good luck.”
And my whole body was like:
Yes. Thank you, Jesus.
Because we had already talked about the possibility of me having to go sit in the ER for hours just so they could assess or reposition this thing.
And I was not excited about that.
If it wasn’t an emergency and the only inconvenience was Mona having to draw blood out of my arm once a week, I could live with that until the PICC came out.
But apparently that wasn’t necessary.
At least not today.
Today it worked.
And something else happened that may have helped.
Yesterday I finally took a real shower.
A shower.
That sounds ridiculous until you haven’t been able to take one for weeks.
When I had the wound vac, I couldn’t get into the bath or shower at all.
For almost two weeks, I was sponge bathing.
I fucking hated it.
When the wound vac finally came off and my incision was healed, I could at least sit in the bathtub.
But I still had to be incredibly careful because the PICC line goes deep into my body, very close to my heart, and getting bacteria into that line is obviously the last thing I need.
So yesterday I finally created this whole contraption around my arm with the thick medical tape the nurses had given me at the hospital.
I taped the hell out of it.
And then I got into the shower.
Hot water pouring over my bald head.
Running down my face.
My chest.
My back.
I could scrub myself.
Really scrub myself.
I could lift my arm and wash under it.
Something that ordinary suddenly felt fucking luxurious.
And I wondered today if maybe lifting that arm, moving around, reaching upward in the shower somehow shifted the PICC back into alignment.
I have no idea.
Maybe it did.
Maybe it didn’t.
But it worked.
That was enough for me.
Mona, being Mona, said, “Well, we’ll see if it’s still working Monday.”
And I said, “Nope. Scratch that. No negativity in my positivity world.”
She laughed.
“You’re right. I take it back.”
We joked about it.
But inside my body I felt something simple:
That’s good news.
Let me have the good news.
After Mona left, I finally got my cup of coffee.
I sat down.
JJ came into the room.
She had dinner last night with my stepson Ryan, her biological second child, and his fiancée.
They went out for Ethiopian food.
That’s one of those meals we’ve always enjoyed together as a family.
I asked her how dinner went.
We talked about it for a few minutes.
Then I asked her:
“How are you feeling?”
Because we are basically twenty-four hours away now.
Tomorrow she leaves.
She looked at me and said:
“I have profound sadness in my body.”
I asked if there was something specific she was sad about or if it was just an overall sadness.
She said:
“I just have sadness in my body.”
Then she said:
“I’m not excited about this journey.”
And we talked a little bit about how fear and excitement can carry similar energy in the body.
How sometimes it is hard to tell exactly what you are feeling.
Ryan’s fiancée had apparently been excited for JJ.
Excited that she gets to travel.
Excited that she gets to explore.
Excited that she doesn’t have to know exactly where she is going to be from one day to the next.
There is a kind of freedom in that.
No responsibilities except herself.
Feeling into God.
Listening to her own guidance.
“Where do you want me to go?”
“What do you want me to do?”
“What am I supposed to say?”
“To whom?”
“For the highest good of all.”
That has been one of JJ’s mantras for years.
And now she actually gets to live it.
And as we were talking, something in me went all the way back to being nine years old.
I had moved back to the States from Jamaica.
My sister and I had to take the public bus to school.
One day we missed our stop.
We got lost.
We stayed on that bus from about three in the afternoon until something like 7:30 at night.
It was dark.
We were scared.
We got off a couple times.
Got back on.
Didn’t know where the fuck we were.
My sister is about two and a half years older than me.
But whenever something scary happened, she would panic.
She would cry.
And somehow I became the one who held it together.
Even though I was the little brother.
I would tell her:
“We’re going to be okay.”
“We’re going to be okay.”
I would suddenly become the parent.
I would hold.
And hold.
And hold.
Then eventually we made it home.
And only then did my body let go.
That’s when I cried.
That’s when I broke down.
Not physically collapsed.
My nervous system collapsed.
Because I didn’t need to hold it anymore.
I was safe.
And it made me wonder what my body is doing right now.
Tomorrow I am going to take JJ to the airport.
I’m going to hug her.
I’m going to say goodbye.
And then I will no longer be her king.
No longer her protector.
No longer playing the role I have been programmed to play, and frankly, a role I loved playing for twenty-six years.
Maybe I didn’t always play it very well.
Maybe that’s part of the truth too.
Who knows.
But I have absolutely no idea what tomorrow is going to feel like in my body.
I don’t know what my heart is going to do.
I don’t know what my nervous system is going to do.
Maybe my soul is bracing.
Maybe this neutrality I’ve been feeling is a kind of protection.
A way of preparing me for an experience I cannot predict.
Maybe I collapse.
Maybe I grieve.
Maybe I feel free.
Maybe my heart breaks.
Maybe I feel all of those things.
I don’t know.
And the more I sat with that, the more I realized:
I’ve been bracing all my life.
The nine-year-old.
The seventeen-year-old.
The twenty-seven-year-old.
The forty-seven-year-old.
The fifty-seven-year-old.
Always some version of me preparing for what might happen next.
Holding it together.
Waiting until it is safe to feel.
And tomorrow feels like one of those moments.
Because the reality is that JJ and I have barely been apart in twenty-six years.
I’m serious.
Maybe five or six meaningful stretches of time.
She took a trip with girlfriends.
I did an ayahuasca journey for a week.
I did a couple three-day network marketing trips.
There were a handful of times we weren’t together.
That’s it.
We traveled together.
We spoke on stages together.
We worked together.
We lived together.
We were that couple.
And there were times I intentionally stopped traveling alone because I didn’t trust myself.
That is uncomfortable to say.
But it’s true.
I had a history before JJ of stepping outside relationships.
And even during our marriage, I broke trust.
There were times on business trips where I felt uncomfortable with the attention I received.
I knew there were parts of me that could collapse on themselves.
So eventually I told her:
“If you’re not coming, I’m not going.”
At the time maybe I called that devotion.
But looking at it now, some of it was me protecting me from me.
That’s honest.
And maybe spending nearly every day of twenty-six years together sounds romantic.
In some ways, it was.
But I also think it became part of what brought us here.
You cannot make one human being your everything.
Your best friend.
Your business partner.
Your lover.
Your confidant.
Your travel partner.
Your emotional regulator.
Your primary source of companionship.
The person who sees every version of you.
That’s too much weight for one human being.
You need other mirrors.
Different friendships.
Different relationships.
Different perspectives.
You need balance.
I isolated myself from my male friendships over the years.
That was my choice.
I rarely saw my buddies.
And now that I am surrounding myself with men again, I realize how necessary that is.
Men who are searching for their hearts.
Men walking through similar life transitions.
Men who have already gone through it and come out the other side.
We talk.
We laugh.
Sometimes we cry.
Sometimes we bust each other’s balls.
Sometimes we tell each other the truth.
It feels necessary.
And I am seeing more clearly the role I played in putting too much pressure on JJ to be my everything.
Maybe she did some version of that with me too.
I can only speak for myself.
But maybe that was part of what brought us to this moment.
We are not necessarily walking away from one another.
We are walking into the world to find out who the fuck we are.
JJ has already been doing that for years.
In some ways, JJ was born out of the revelation of my infidelity.
When I finally told her the truth nineteen years later, she began asking:
“Who is just Janey?”
And out of that came JJ.
Now I’m asking the same thing.
Who is just Colin?
Not the husband.
Not the father.
Not the grandfather.
Not the entrepreneur.
Not the coach.
Not the businessman.
Not the friend.
Who is Colin?
That question birthed this entire journey.
Becoming Colin.
Because I have no fucking idea.
I can see glimpses of him.
I like the version of me that is beginning to emerge.
I really do.
But there are old parts of me still sitting at the table.
Parts that brace.
Parts that protect.
Parts that over-explain.
Parts that fear abandonment.
Parts that still wonder whether they are enough.
Tomorrow may bring some of those parts forward.
I have no idea.
And then there is the gratitude.
So much gratitude.
Gratitude that my PICC line is working.
Gratitude for six hours and fifty-eight minutes of sleep.
Gratitude for a hot shower.
Gratitude for twenty-six years with this beautiful, amazing woman.
Even saying that right now brings emotion into my body.
Because she is amazing.
I used to call her Jamazing.
With a J.
Because regardless of where our relationship lands, nothing can erase what she has been in my life.
She has been one of the most powerful influences I have ever had.
More than two decades beside me.
Our growth.
Our breakdowns.
Our breakthroughs.
The conversations.
The fights.
The healing.
The addiction.
The betrayals.
The recovery.
Her depression.
Her finding herself.
Me losing myself.
Me finding pieces of myself again.
All of it.
It has been an honor.
And I am genuinely excited for her.
I have more excitement for her finding JJ than I have fear of losing JJ.
That sounds crazy even saying it.
But it’s true.
I know her heart.
She deserves everything that heart desires.
She deserves someone who wants to be present with her.
She deserves someone who chooses her.
She deserves a relationship that fills her soul.
We all deserve some version of that.
And maybe we are simply not in the same season.
I still have this desire to build.
To create an empire.
To make a bigger impact.
To reach more people.
Someone could easily ask:
“Why can’t you do both?”
Maybe someday I can.
But apparently I haven’t been able to yet.
Because I haven’t been present enough in my marriage in the way that fills her.
And here is where the mirror comes in.
Whatever I have not been able to give JJ, I have not been able to give myself.
Life is a mirror.
Not a window.
So I don’t look at the lack of connection in our marriage and simply say:
“I failed as a husband.”
I look deeper.
Where have I lacked connection with myself?
Where have I not been present with me?
Where have I withheld tenderness from myself?
Where have I looked to someone else to fill something I refused to fill within my own vessel?
Because whatever I want from another human being, I need to learn how to become the reflection of it myself.
If I want connection, I need to connect with myself.
If I want romance, I need to bring romance into my own life.
If I want affection, kindness, respect, attention, love—
I have to know how to give those things to me.
Otherwise I am constantly drawing energy from somebody else’s vessel.
And that isn’t healthy for either person.
I want to learn how to fill myself from God.
From Source.
From the universe.
From my own relationship with me.
This may be the biggest journey of my life.
Maybe it is the biggest journey of JJ’s life too.
And I want to be clear about something.
Everything I share here is my side.
My experience.
My interpretation.
JJ has her side.
Her truth.
Her experience.
There is my side.
There is her side.
And then somewhere in the middle is the truth.
I think both of us are doing the best we can to move as close to that truth as possible.
Maybe that is how we got here.
By finally being honest enough to ask ourselves:
What do I truly desire from this life?
What does my heart actually want?
And are we both equipped to be part of what the other desires?
I don’t know the answer.
Neither does she.
Maybe only God knows.
And for the first time, I’m not waiting for the answer before I live.
I’m moving toward it.
I trust it will reveal itself when it is supposed to.
My job is not to solve the future.
My job is me.
My health.
My faith.
My body.
My business.
My friendships.
My children.
My family.
My relationship with myself.
That is my job right now.
And something funny just happened while I’m walking and narrating this into my phone.
A squirrel ran right across my feet and jumped up a tree.
Then I looked ahead and another squirrel was playing in the grass, searching for nuts before running up another tree.
Then I could hear another one moving through the leaves.
I’ve always associated squirrels with joy.
Playfulness.
Lightness.
Maybe that’s just the meaning I give them.
That’s okay.
I’m taking it.
Because maybe this next chapter isn’t only about healing.
Maybe it isn’t only about grief.
Maybe it isn’t only about becoming stronger or wiser or more conscious.
Maybe I get to play too.
Maybe the nine-year-old who learned to hold everything together gets to put some of it down.
Maybe tomorrow I don’t have to know what comes after the hug.
Maybe I just get to feel the hug.
And then walk into whatever comes next.
I am becoming Colin.
And maybe part of becoming Colin is finally learning that I don’t have to brace for every moment of my life.
Some moments I may actually get to enjoy.
Peace out.
Colin F. Watson