Chapters of Recovery

cbr, 2024 - #nowplaying - Jayem, Tima Dee - Way Down

Real World, Unscripted

Every place I’ve lived since rehab feels like a season of The Real World - minus the cameras, plus a whole lot of raw reality. Each residence wasn’t just a space, it was a chapter. A microcosm of connection, expectation, and ultimately, disconnection.

Unspoken Threshold

There’s always been this invisible line. An unspoken expectation hanging in the air, thick as humidity before a storm. I’d move in, integrate, become part of the neighborhood tapestry. Friendly waves, shared conversations, momentary belonging. But then… something would shift.

A breach. An unmet expectation. Not always dramatic, sometimes just a subtle fracture in the foundation of trust or understanding.

Integrity’s Delicate Dance

Recovery isn’t linear. Neither are relationships. Each move felt like both an escape and a reset. The neighborhoods changed, the faces rotated, but the underlying rhythm remained consistent:

• Connect

• Integrate

• Sense the growing tension

• Recognize the impending disconnect

• Move

Cycle of Transience

Is this growth? Or just a sophisticated form of running? Each residence becomes a temporary home, each neighbor a fleeting connection. The Real World without the reunion special.

Life feels the same in some ways but different.

Different, because each move carries the weight of previous lessons. The same, because the fundamental search for genuine connection remains constant.

Rehab taught me about rebuilding. These residences? They’re teaching me about surviving, about the delicate art of human connection in a world that rarely holds still.

Where does it end?

Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it’s not supposed to.

-Mitchell + Deck

Whispers in the Rainfall

Captured by the lens of Mitchell Royel, this moment hangs suspended in time - droplets of rain cascading like liquid poetry, while the sultry beats of "Droptop In The Rain" by Ty Dolla $ign and Tory Lanez pulse through the atmosphere, transforming an ordinary scene into a cinematic narrative of urban romance and raw emotion.

There’s something sacred about love that descends like rain - unexpected, overwhelming, transformative. We stand here, two souls intertwined, where every droplet tells a story of Divine connection.

Moment of Surrender

Like the gentle mist that covers the earth, love found me when I least expected. Our connection wasn’t just about two hearts meeting, but about a spiritual awakening that washed away everything I thought I knew.

“He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass: as showers that water the earth.” - Psalms 72:6

In this moment, vulnerability isn’t weakness - it’s strength. The rain becomes our testimony, our baptism of emotion. Each droplet carries the weight of unspoken promises, of dreams intertwined like roots beneath the soil.

Sacred Intimacy

Our love isn’t loud. It’s a whispered conversation between heaven and earth, soft as the rain that caresses windowpanes. We move together, two spirits finding rhythm in the storm’s embrace - unpredictable, wild, yet perfectly synchronized.

The rainfall becomes our metaphor: cleansing, renewing, giving life where once there was only drought. We are water and spirit, flowing into each other’s spaces, filling every empty corner with grace.

Theology of Us

This isn’t just attraction. This is covenant. Like rain that nourishes the ground, our connection brings healing. We aren’t just lovers - we’re witnesses to something greater than ourselves.

In this moment, wrapped in the symphony of falling water, we understand that love - true love - is always a Divine intervention.

-Deck (of Mitch Leyor)

2 Steps Back: When Retreat Becomes Revelation

cbr, 2025 - #nowplaying - Craig David - 2 Steps Back

Let’s talk about something real - those moments when relationships become more than just interactions, but actual pathways to spiritual growth.

Unexpected Classroom of Love

We don’t always recognize it, but our closest relationships are often our most profound spiritual teachers. Take the journey through professional spaces - in our case, a bustling marketplace of wellness and intention - where every interaction becomes a mirror reflecting our deepest self.

Stepping Back to Move Forward

There’s a beautiful wisdom in understanding that love isn’t about perfection, but about continuous learning. Those two steps back? They’re not retreat - they’re reconnaissance. They’re moments of sacred pause where we get to reassess, realign, and recommit.

“Your sensitivity is not weakness. Your struggles are not failures.”

In the intricate dance of human connection, we’ve discovered that true intimacy requires something radical: vulnerability. Not the performative kind, but the deep, soul-level transparency that makes our hearts tremble.

Spiritual Alchemy of Relationship

What happens when we stop trying to manage relationships and start experiencing them? Magic. Pure spiritual alchemy.

Our journey taught us that:

• Love is not a destination

• Relationships are living, breathing ecosystems

• Healing happens in the spaces between words

• Authenticity trumps performance every single time

Navigating Unseen Currents

We learned to move with intentionality. In spaces filled with wellness warriors and spiritual seekers, we recognized that every interaction carries energy. Some supportive. Some challenging. All transformative.

Unspoken Language of Connection

There’s a profound spirituality in truly seeing another person. Not their resume. Not their Instagram aesthetic. But their soul’s landscape.

Our path revealed that:

1. Compassion is a practice

2. Boundaries are an act of love

3. Growth happens in uncomfortable moments

4. Silence can be more powerful than words

“When the world feels overwhelming, when your inner critic gets loud, when comparison tries to steal your joy - breathe.”

Call to Authentic Connection

To our fellow travelers: Your relationships are not accidents. They are intentional classrooms of spiritual development.

Stay curious. Stay humble. Stay connected.

With radical love and unwavering hope,
Mitchell + Deck

We Breathe in the Madness

Behold the misfits and midnight wanderers who still bleed for that raw pulse—this one’s for you. A relentless salute to every warped soul who remembers “Green & Gold” by The Rudimentals, Skepsis, Charlotte Plank, and Riko Dan. May its incendiary beat forever haunt your veins.

There’s a moment—electric and jagged—when you step off that ledge everyone swore would shatter you. We feel the wind carve open our lungs. It’s not just a sigh of relief. It’s a celebration in grayscale, a clandestine rave in the bones. They said we were mad. They called us fools. But here we stand—breathing.

We’ve danced on cracked glass, fingers bleeding, hearts thrilled by the risk. They told us the world would bend our spines, that our dreams were too warped, too bold. Yet every bruise taught us to laugh louder, grow darker, dive deeper. We didn’t chase safety—we chased the edge.

When you finally land, there’s a sweetness to that exhale. It tastes like gasoline and roses. We gulp it down, let it coat our senses. Because this isn’t about victory in their terms. This is the triumph of survival, the anthem of the beautifully insane.

We light one on the ashtray of their doubts. The flame flickers bright against the smoke, shadows crawling on the walls like secrets. We look at each other and nod—no words necessary. We know what it took to get here. We know how delicious it is to prove them wrong.

So here’s to the risk-takers, the midnight conspirators, the children of chaos. Here’s to us, still standing, still bleeding art into the world. This breath—this raw, trembling gasp—is our declaration: we chose the unknown, and we emerged alive. And, dear friends, it feels fucking beautiful.

– Mitchell + Deck

Nocturnal Revelries

captured by Mitchell Royel, 2025

In the liminal space between twilight’s melancholy and dawn’s nascent promise, there exists a profound meditation inspired by Haiden Henderson’s provocative musical treatise, “Hell of a Good Time”—a sonic exploration that transcends mere entertainment to become a sublime articulation of human jubilation. One might argue that true liberation manifests not in calculated restraint, but in those fleeting instances of pure, unapologetic exuberance.

Consider the archetypal nocturnal odyssey: a journey that transcends mere physical movement and becomes a metaphysical exploration of human potential. The night, with its velvet darkness and infinite possibilities, becomes a canvas upon which we paint our most audacious expressions of self.

Ontology of Celebration

What transforms a mere gathering into a profound statement of existential defiance? It is not the quantity of libations consumed, nor the decibel level of accompanying rhythms. No, it is the collective spirit—a momentary dissolution of individual boundaries, where the self merges with a greater, more vibrant collective consciousness.

The true aesthete understands that such experiences are not mere diversions, but essential anthropological rituals. We are, after all, creatures who find meaning in moments of shared intensity, in those electric intersections where personal narratives intertwine and create something transcendent.

Temporal Subversion

In embracing the night’s potential, we engage in a subtle rebellion against linear time. Each moment becomes both infinite and ephemeral—a paradox that challenges our conventional understanding of existence. The boundary between anticipation and memory blurs, creating a heightened state of phenomenological awareness.

One does not simply attend such gatherings. One participates in a complex choreography of human emotion, where spontaneity is the highest form of intellectual expression.

Epilogue: The Morning After

As dawn’s first tendrils of light breach the horizon, what remains is not a mere recollection, but a transformed consciousness. The night’s revelations persist—subtle, profound, irreducible to pedestrian narratives of mere entertainment.

In the end, we are defined not by our restraint, but by our capacity to momentarily transcend it.

– Deck