October hasn’t always been my least favorite month.

That started in 2010. It was the year I went no contact with Charlie, and the same year I met my friend Taylor in the mountains of Northern California.

Since then, October has felt like collecting miserable merit badges — a betrayal here, a disappointment there — new painful experiences added to the calendar almost every year: Charlie’s birthday, multiple death anniversaries, the day I caught my ex cheating in a hotel room just north of Mexico, the birthday of a little girl I love like my own but don’t get to see anymore. At this point, my October calendar looks like a craps table — hits all over it, just none of them paying.

There’s no other month like it. It seems like every shitty day somehow ends up jam-packed into these thirty-one. Efficient yet brutal. It’s as if the universe saves its hardest hits for when the light starts to change and the year begins to die.

It’s a month dotted with landmines. A time I used to brace for, white-knuckled and holding my breath, just trying to make it through.

And as I write this, it’s the anniversary of my friend Taylor’s suicide.

I feel compelled to share the story — not as a eulogy, but as a way of tracing the shape that loss carves into a life. There’s something about putting it into words that makes the grief less static, more like a current that keeps teaching, even after the worst of the storm has passed.

It took me a long time to find peace around his passing. For years, I blamed myself. I held myself accountable for his death in ways no one else ever did, or ever could. That kind of guilt can take up permanent residence in your body if you let it. It’s heavy, it’s quiet, and it changes how you move through the world.

But I know Taylor wouldn’t have wanted me to stay stuck there.
He would’ve wanted me to use the experience to help others.
So that’s what I’ve done.

I met Taylor in the fall of 2010, in the thick of harvest season, trimming cannabis deep in the mountains of Northern California. Those were wild years — the kind that only make sense in your twenties. We were paid in cash, slept in tents or rundown cabins, and lived outside the law in every sense of the word. The days were long, sticky, and sunburned; the nights smelled like woodsmoke, pine, and weed.

That scene doesn’t really exist anymore, but if you were part of it, you know. It was a magnet for misfits, dreamers, and outlaws — people from Brazil, India, Oregon, France — everyone chasing the same cocktail of freedom, money, and music under open skies. It was magic and it was mayhem.

Taylor and I became fast friends that fall. He introduced me to Brazilian jiu-jitsu; I helped him hit on women — I’m a hell of a wingman. We were both running from something back then, I think. But in that wild world, we found our people quickly, and the ones who stuck stayed in your life for good.

Over the years, we both went from trimmers to landowners, running our own farms. But when legalization hit California, everything started to crack. The system that was supposed to create opportunity ended up wrecking livelihoods instead. People paid thousands for permits and compliance paperwork just to stay legal, and most still had to hustle on the side to survive.

And when you live outside the law, there’s no one to call when things go wrong. You figure it out, or you get swallowed up by it.

Taylor was one of the good ones — bright, funny, athletic, gregarious. But one thing after another started collapsing around him. Fires were ravaging the hills. Business partners screwed him. Regulations were constantly changing. Permits fell through. The woman he loved turned out to be in it for the money and started looking elsewhere. His foundation gave out, and he couldn’t see a way forward.

I tried to be there for him. I was helping him move product, staying on the phone with him, doing everything I could to keep him holding on. I told him,

I sent that message from San Francisco, where I was selling my product to dispensaries. I just needed to get back up to Trinity County, where he was. But when I finally made it back, the farm I shared with my business partner was in total disarray— garbage everywhere, plants neglected, everything messy and dying. I told Taylor I couldn’t make it that day, that I needed to clean up the mess first, and then I’d come.

I didn’t know we didn’t have that kind of time.

The next day I got a call from that same business partner — screaming in my ear that Taylor had killed himself. He did it at the exact time I was supposed to be with him but didn’t show.

That moment split my life open. My heart broke in a way I had never, and HAVE never experienced any other way. I told him I’d be there for him, and I wasn’t. I let outside factors come between me and my word. There was no way to go back and make that not true. It was devastating. For years I blamed myself. I walked away from the farm, from that business partnership, from the county altogether. It was the most devastating experience of my life.

It took a long time to understand that it wasn’t my fault — that we are never responsible for the choices other people make. But even now, it’s heartbreaking to think about how someone so full of life could end up in a hole he couldn’t imagine climbing out of.

It was in the wake of his passing that I became introduced to EFT—Emotional Freedom Technique. Someone showed me how to tap through the ache when it got too heavy, and for the first time, I felt a flicker of relief, even if just for a moment. But I wasn’t ready to dive deep enough into the work for the medicine to reach the core of the wound. I wasn’t ready to let myself off the hook—not completely, not yet.

For years I carried that day like a stone in my chest, until last year when I decided I couldn’t just keep surviving October. I needed to do something with the pain.

So I took action and became a crisis counselor on the National Suicide Hotline.

Working those lines has taught me more about being human than almost anything else I’ve done. Hundreds of hours, hundreds of calls — and while every story is different, the pain underneath them all sounds eerily familiar.

People usually reach out because they believe one of three things:
they think they’re a burden,
they think they’re alone,
or they think things will never get better.

That’s it. Strip everything else away and those are the roots.

Most people don’t actually want to die — they just can’t see another way to stop hurting. They’re trying to find a way out of pain that doesn’t seem to exist.

And when you’re in that place, you don’t need a lecture. You just need someone to be with you in the dark. A person to witness the truth of your humanity without judgement. Someone to hold the light until you find the strength and the courage to reach for it for yourself. Until you find a reason to believe that tomorrow is worth seeing and that it wants and it needs you too.

Here’s what I’ve learned about how to do that — how to show up when someone you care about is in crisis:

Don’t try to fix it. When someone’s breaking, logic and pep talks don’t land. Don’t tell them it’s going to be okay if it clearly isn’t. You don’t have to fix it — you just have to stay. Listening is medicine. Presence is everything.

Reflect what’s real. If they say, “I can’t do this anymore,” don’t argue. Mirror it back gently: “You’ve been carrying a lot. That sounds exhausting.” People need to feel seen before they can believe they’re savable.

Bring them back to the moment. Ask where they are. What they can see. If they can take a breath with you. You’re reminding them they’re still here, in a body, in a world that’s still holding them.

Close the distance. Say their name. Use yours. Remind them they’re not alone. When you’re in that kind of pain, you don’t need perfection — you just need proof that someone is right there, and that you matter enough for them to stay.

Find the next thread. The goal isn’t to solve everything — it’s to help them get to the next moment, the next call, the next breath. If there’s someone they trust, help them reach out. If not, connect them with someone who can. And if all you can do is stay on the line, then stay. Sometimes that’s the miracle.

After a while, you start to see the pattern. All that pain people carry — so much of it comes down to disconnection. Disconnection from others, from purpose, from themselves.

The antidote isn’t inspiration or advice.
It’s connection. Simple, human connection.

Every call I take reminds me of Taylor.
Every voice I hear is a chance to do what I couldn’t do that day — to stay on the line.

And this October feels different.

Maybe it’s facing the Charlie situation and coming out on top.
Maybe it’s the hours I’ve spent on the hotline, turning heartbreak into purpose instead of letting it rot inside me.
Maybe it’s being surrounded by people who have loved me through my own dark nights, now cheering me on while I work miracles in real time.
Maybe it’s all of that and more.

But something has shifted. The air feels clearer. The weight isn’t gone, but it’s lighter. For the first time in a long time, I’m not white-knuckling my way through October.

I’ve never put a gun in my mouth or a noose around my neck, but I’ve driven 101 at 100+ miles an hour around blind curves, daring death to take me. I’ve drunk myself sick and used whatever I could get my hands on with zero care for consequences. I surrounded myself with monsters and called it love — people who matched the chaos I felt inside. I wasn’t suicidal in the traditional sense, but I was absolutely trying to disappear.

That’s no longer the case.

And if that kind of turnaround is possible for me — if someone like me can come back from grief, guilt, addiction, and self-destruction — then it’s possible for anyone.

If you’re reading this and you’re lost in your own dark night, please reach out for help. It’s available. It’s real. And it’s worth it.

You don’t have to face the darkness alone.

If you or someone you love is in crisis, call or text 988 (U.S.) or visit 988lifeline.org

-Sunny