A toast with an empty glass. Bad for me, bad for you.

As a rule, after a tragedy, one’s most likely to crash headfirst into a whirlwind of self-destruction—physical, emotional, the whole shebang—before, who knows, maybe starting to "heal," assuming that pretty little word ever deigns to peek over the horizon. And allow me to clarify, lest you mistake my finesse for a runaway ego, that when it came to self-destruction, ladies and gentlemen, I was, shall we say, spectacularly proficient.

But first, I need you to wrap your heads around the circumstances that dragged me into such a state.
Up until—let’s pin it down to, say, September of last year—my life was dutifully checking off all the boxes of what’s expected of a person. By “what’s expected,” I mean those boxes that frame the most mundane, run-of-the-mill facets of existence. And those boxes, mind you, are like the faces of a die that, no matter how it lands, offers nothing but a vague sense of dissatisfaction for anyone who dares to dream beyond becoming a social statistic. We’re talking “generic vacations in an overly hyped destination”—think a swelteringly overcrowded beach in the summer or some exotic country you’d never even consider if the TV didn’t keep screaming it’s the place to be—cruising through “a sprawling social circle with threads and connections to climb the corporate ladder,” and—last but not least, don’t let its position fool you—“a person to share your days with.”

You might have heard that some folks wax poetic about the purity of growing up in solitude, while others rave about the golden gleam of someone worth bleeding over.
Both points are valid. Or rather, valid and relevant to the tale I’m about to spin.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to torture any of you with my vacation anecdotes or corporate small talk—basically just flashing slides on a projector. Instead, I’m going to tell you about a journey that’s been dragging on for, if my math’s correct, roughly five months now.

Why would a trip last that long?
Well, the answer is public transport and good old-fashioned walking.
How far is this journey?
Not that far, depending on where you’re reading this from.
Why do it?
Because, at the end of the day, when it’s far more tempting to drown a few neurons in alcohol instead of clocking the ideal number of sleep hours, I tend to get a bit—forgive me for this—melodramatic.

As I said, a tragedy is all it takes to kick off a whirlwind of self-destruction. That tragedy, and I’ll accept your condolences, was the death of my wife in an accident that, sorry, I’m not ready to spill the details on.
We’d joked about what to do if one of us kicked the bucket first. Me, I wanted a funeral with two coffins, just so the mourners and their whole theatrical sobbing routine would have to guess which one held my corpse—because, on top of being a cynic, I’m kind of an idiot.
My wife, on the other hand, leaned toward the philosophical, poetic side—probably why she was that four-leaf clover everyone talks about, the one that’s supposedly out there but nobody ever finds. Her wish? Burn her body. Reduce it to ashes and scatter them in the cemetery of Mount Kōyasan.

If you want to point out that it’s irrational to have ditched my job, the corporate mannequins I called friends, and even my house, all to plunge into self-inflicted martyrdom, anguish, and a burning need to keep a promise to someone I loved, go right ahead.
Is it stupid? Maybe.
Is it poetic? That’s for you to decide, just stick around a bit longer.
Is it something a guy whose destination shouldn’t be Mount Kōyasan but a psychiatric ward would do? Probably.

Oh, there’s one thing I forgot to mention. My wife’s body—now ashes—sits in an urn I carry in my backpack at all times. Doesn’t matter where I am, I never take it off. That’s not a problem, just a little weird—okay, “weird” might be an understatement. But the truly irrational, bizarre, hilarious, and, at first, almost terrifying part of this whole situation isn’t what I’m doing. It’s that my wife, though dead, is still here.

I’d bet she can’t move on to the great beyond because she thinks I’m dumb enough to forget the promise—or, worse, get lost on the way. Especially since, as an extra twist, I swore to navigate only by directions from people, no GPS, no maps, no nothing.

This is the part where you all say “idiot,” and I’m the one who turns around.