where bullet casings and dreams collide
It’s not the weight of the past that drags you down—it’s how long you hold on to it.
NOTE: This is the 3rd edition of the Live Out Loud series. To view the full series please visit the table of contents. Make sure you never miss an issue, hit the subscribe button below.
As a kid, my universe shrunk to the size of my dad’s cramped apartment.
White walls closed in like a cage.
Outside, the soundtrack was wild—sirens wailing, people yelling, and the constant growl of Hells Angels' bikes tearing up the street.
The air was tainted with the stench of cheap booze, burnt tires, and the sour sting of illicit drugs.
This wasn’t some distant nightmare.
This was home. My playground, my reality.
A world built from chaos.
Despite the wreckage around me, I didn’t question it.
It was my normal.
My friends and I would roam the streets, turning crime scenes into scavenger hunts. Bullet casings scattered like confetti on our walks to the corner store. To us, it wasn’t shocking—it was a twisted game.
A morbid scavenger hunt.
Looking back, I realize we were collecting more than shell casings; we were collecting lessons about the gritty underbelly of the world we called home.
Addiction left its own trail: needles glittering under streetlights like broken stars, condoms lurking in alleyways. I learned to weave through that minefield like it was second nature. A dance I didn’t fully understand, but one I had to perfect.
Survival had its own rhythm.
My first brush with crime was wrapped in candy.
I was six.
I found myself succumbing to the thrill of my schoolmates' mischief, stealing candy from the neighborhood store. They pocketed sweets by the handful. But me, I just took a five-cent piece of gum.
They all laughed at my modest theft—calling me a coward.
But it wasn’t fear, it was guilt that I was feeling.
And it was huge. I couldn’t shake it.
That night, I went back, slapped a quarter on the counter, bought four five cent gums, and told them to keep the change. I remember the confusion in the shopkeeper's eyes, a confusion I shared in feeling towards my skewed morality.
In the storm of crime and madness that defined my world, home was my flickering lighthouse. My father was a puzzle.
A man who worked his bones to dust, but slipped into his own head more often than not. He was paradoxically both a protector and a source of torment.
A walking contradiction.
He'd warn me about the dangers outside, laying out the risks like he had it all figured out. Yet his own demons hovered nearby, their grip on him tighter than anything lurking outside.
His words of caution about our volatile surroundings were punctuated by his own inner demons, casting a hazy, shadowy illumination on our already uncertain path.
And in a place already unpredictable, it wasn’t much of a guide.
One day, my uncle—always the carefree, smiley type—decided to pay us a visit. He had that kind of clueless innocence that worried my dad.
As night fell, he casually mentioned hitting up the local bar. A place he’d never stepped foot in before.
And my dad was not having it. The bar was known for all the wrong reasons, and he wasn’t about to let my uncle walk in blind.
But my uncle just brushed it off.
“I am just gonna grab a drink, I ain’t bothering nobody,” he laughed, like he was invincible or something.
He wasn’t.
Fast forward a few hours.
Our front door slams open. I swear, it rattled the whole apartment.
My uncle stumbles in, and he's a wreck—arms slashed up, blood everywhere. Apparently, some lowlifes followed him from the bar. They jumped him, and he fought back, hands sliced from trying to wrestle a knife away.
Breathless, he spills the whole horror story. He barely made it back.
Fear hit me like a freight train.
Everything my dad warned us about, here it was, alive and in color. My uncle, who had always been the happy-go-lucky guy, was now a broken shell of himself.
It wasn’t just a scare. It was a wake-up call, a sharp slap of reality. The kind of thing that stains your childhood and sticks with you.
Another incident that sticks with me happened when I was maybe eight, maybe nine, hanging out with Matt and Paul behind the school, as usual.
We weren’t looking for trouble. Just messing around, but then, we saw them. Older kids. Teenagers. Messing with stuff they shouldn’t—drugs.
Everything went south, fast.
One of them grabbed Paul, slammed him against the wall. The other dangled a filthy needle, aiming it at Paul’s arm like it was no big deal.
My brain went blank. Followed by a mix of fear and confusion.
But then something flipped. Maybe it was adrenaline. Maybe we were just plain stupid. Whatever it was, Matt and I ran straight at the guy. Hit the back of his knees like we were linebackers.
And he buckled.
Just enough to lose his grip on my friend.
Paul broke free and we took off.
And man, did we ever run. Hearts beating like a bad techno track. Fear fueling every step. We didn’t stop until we were halfway across town.
With chaos all around me. My world was messy. Noisy. Dangerous.
But inside my head is where the quiet lived. Where things made sense.
Nature helped, sure. But the real escape wasn’t in the trees or the breeze. It was right there, in my imagination. My little world of make-believe, full of things that could be.
While the neighborhood fell apart—drugs, crime, all that—I found a way out.
Not physically, but mentally.
I built houses in my mind. With just a pencil and paper, I designed homes that didn’t exist but should’ve.
I wasn’t playing around either; these places were the opposite of the world I knew. Each line I drew, each floor I planned—it was a little piece of hope. A life that wasn’t, but maybe someday could be.
I drew like my life depended on it.
Maybe it did.
These weren't just houses. They were getaways.
No yelling.
No fistfights.
No needle-stained streets.
Just... peace.
I filled those rooms with a future that didn’t look like my past. A future where everything made sense, where safety wasn’t something you had to chase.
Sometimes, I’d show my dad. Talk about how I’d make a fortune, pull us out of this mess. “One day,” I’d tell him, “you won’t have to bust your back anymore. You’ll have a house with real walls, not just the cockroach infested crap we’re stuck in.”
I could almost see it: his rough, calloused hands, finally at rest. His face without the lines of stress and alcohol. Us, together, not broken by the weight of everything.
I clung to this idea.
That somehow, someday, I’d earn enough to save him.
Pull him out of his own personal hell, the one he drank himself into every night. I’d free him, if only I could. Maybe then, we’d get to be what we never were—a family.
No fights. No guilt. Just... peace.
Those drawings were my anchor in the storm, my only way to keep from getting sucked under like everyone else around me.
I watched my friends get swallowed up by the streets, one by one.
But I wasn’t going there.
No way. I had my houses, my plans. I had something more, and I wasn’t letting go. I was going to change our story, no matter what it took.
Those sketches weren’t just lines on paper. They were my lifeline.
Then adolescence came.
It felt like walking a tightrope with no safety net. Everything was off-balance.
The world in my head, the little hideaway I’d crafted over years of solitude, suddenly smashed into reality like a brick through glass. And I wasn’t ready for that.
The cold isolation I’d grown used to started cracking under the heat of something new—social acceptance, peer pressure.
It was like melting ice, and I found myself slipping.
Fast.
That’s when they showed up.
A group who didn’t just like my graffiti—they got it. They saw the soul behind the spray paint. And, man, that feeling of belonging. I didn’t just want it. I needed it.
It was a rush.
And it scared the hell out of me.
They weren’t just friends; it was like an unspoken pact. But that acceptance came with strings. Strings I didn’t even notice tightening around me until it was too late.
I gave in, folded like paper.
One puff turned into another, and suddenly, I was knee-deep in the fog of cannabis.
Harmless, right?
Wrong.
It was the start of a spiral. A spiral that sucked me down for two years.
Weed became ecstasy, then crystal meth, and before long, I wasn’t just high—I was gone. Shoplifting, fights, dealing drugs—I was numb to it all. Numb to everything. Reality was a blur, and I liked it that way.
Until that night.
The one where everything fell apart, when the lines between fun and destruction blurred beyond recognition.
My best friend and I had been running with the wrong crowd for a while, tangled up in the chaos of the rave scene. But this wasn’t just any scene—it was the scene.
The gritty underworld where the real players thrived.
One of those players was a dealer. Flashy, cocky, the kind of guy who’d scoop us up for wild rides through Toronto, blowing cash like it was water. New clothes, fancy dinners, the whole thing.
We felt invincible, like kings in his twisted game. And we had no idea how deep we were sinking.
That night, though—that was the night everything flipped.
This dealer laid out a plan. A bad one.
He was going to rob another major player at the rave. This wasn’t just a quick grab-and-go. No, this was going to be big deal and he needed my friend’s car.
Not as a ride, but as a stash spot for his gun. Cold steel, waiting in the trunk like a bomb ready to go off.
My friend handed over the keys like it was nothing. And I just stood there, heart pounding, mind racing, realizing how far gone we were. This wasn’t just partying anymore; we were playing with fire, and the flames were getting higher.
Inside the rave, the music was pounding, lights flashing like a strobe nightmare. The air thick with smoke and heat.
I tried to drown it all out, just lose myself in the moment.
That’s when I met her. She seemed like more than just another girl in the crowd. We started talking, her laughter cutting through the chaos like something real, something solid. For a second, I felt grounded.
But it didn’t last. It never does.
In the blink of an eye, that laughter turned into something far darker.
She collapsed. Right there.
Shaking on the floor, her body a twisted wreck. My mind froze.
It didn’t seem real.
One minute we were talking, and the next, they were carrying her out.
Overdosed. Gone. Just like that.
It was an overwhelming shock to my core. Reality slapped me hard, the kind of slap that wakes you up. Youth felt so fragile in that moment, like we were all just teetering on the edge of a cliff, waiting for a bad wind to push us over.
And I was right there, staring into the void, wondering how close I was to falling in.
When the rave ended, we stepped outside, hoping to catch our breath.
But what waited for us wasn’t any relief.
My friend’s car was gone.
Well, not gone.
Worse.
Shattered windows, slashed tires, flames that had reduced the inside to ashes and twisted metal. It was a message, a violent reminder of how deep we were in this mess.
The car wasn’t just a pile of burnt wreckage. It was the embodiment of how far we’d strayed. How much we’d lost.
Standing there, smelling the smoke, looking at what was left—it hit me.
Hard.
The dreams I used to have, the ones where I’d build something real, something good were gone. Burnt to nothing, just like that car. I was building a life of destruction, not creation.
That night is seared into me.
The girl, the car, the fire, the chaos. It was a wake-up call, one I couldn’t ignore anymore. I couldn’t keep dancing this close to the flames.
It was either step back or get burned.
Those old dreams, the ones I buried under all the madness were still there, faint but alive. And I knew, right then, I had to turn things around. Fast. Before the fire consumed everything.
I looked around at the people who once made everything feel alive—my crew.
But something had shifted.
The spark that used to define us was gone.
All that was left were hollow eyes, faces worn down by the grind of addiction. Drugs had taken more than just their energy. They’d stripped away their fire, left them husks of who they used to be.
That hit me hard. But it was clear. I couldn’t keep walking the same road as them.
So I cut ties. Just like that. Brutal but necessary.
We’d shared so much, but it was over. My sanctuary was no longer safe. The things that used to bind us now felt like chains, and I wasn’t about to let myself get dragged down any further.
With a heavy heart, I let go.
It wasn’t easy. But I pulled myself out of the mess.
The haze of ecstasy and meth was now gone. Tossed aside like an old coat I didn’t need anymore. It was freeing, honestly. Like that first breath of spring after a brutal winter.
I walked away from it all—raves, late nights, the chaos.
Sure, I left behind the noise—the pounding music, the reckless rebellion. But what hit me hard after the rush faded was solitude.
Not the cozy, creative kind I’d known as a kid.
This was cold. A price for choosing the right path.
Lonely, yeah. But necessary.
In the quiet of my self-imposed isolation, something clicked.
Clarity.
That elusive thing I’d been chasing, lost somewhere in the noise and wreckage of my old life, finally caught up to me. Dreams I’d buried under all the chaos started to resurface.
I could see them again. The blueprints of future homes, the ones I used to sketch when I was a kid, came back like a flash. They weren’t just scribbles. They were promises. A future, untangled from the mess I’d left behind.
I realized something then. No matter how rough it gets—how much life tries to sink you—those dreams are still there. My personal lighthouse. Always standing. Always pointing me toward somewhere better.
Now, as I write these words, I’m not that scared kid anymore. The one dodging bullets in the streets, trying to make sense of a world that didn’t care.
I’m not even the reckless teenager, high on stupidity and bad decisions.
I’ve survived. I’m an artist. I feel things deeply.
I’ve become a guide, even. A little light for anyone stumbling down those same crooked paths, whispering, “Hey, you can make it out.”
My story is still unfolding.
Every day’s got its own battles, its own moments of reflection. Some days hit harder than others, but here’s the thing—I’m not just a byproduct of where I came from.
I’m calling the shots now.
I’m building something new. Not perfect. Messy, sometimes.
But mine.
That road to recovery isn’t straight. It’s bumpy, full of backslides, sharp turns, moments where you think you’ll never get it right.
But I’m moving forward.
Armed with lessons, bruises, a bit of wisdom, and a lot of stubbornness.
If I’m proof of anything, it’s that no matter how deep you go, no matter how pitch-black it feels, you can crawl back to the surface.
There’s always a way back to the light.
—Ryan Puusaari
P.S. Your time and engagement with this edition mean a lot. Every reader adds value to our journey together. Thank you for being here!
P.P.S. "Life might burn your blueprints, but you can always grab a pencil and start sketching again."
Healing Thoughts — A Journey of Reflection, Poetry, and Healing, Made Possible by You
Healing Thoughts isn’t just another book—it’s a living, breathing collection of reflections, inspiring quotes, and poetry, all pulled from the heart of this community.
Through the highs and lows, the moments of growth and vulnerability, your support made this book a reality.
Each page is a step toward healing, filled with wisdom, introspection, and emotional insight to guide you on your personal journey.
This book is more than just words—it’s our story.
Before You Go
Dive into the latest posts in the archives.
Learn more about me, this newsletter, or my daily texts.
Explore my journals and books over at Wood Island Books.
Follow me on social media for daily inspiration and updates.
Check out my recommended reading list for must-read books and authors.
View my exclusive merch collection—designed to inspire and uplift.
Have questions or thoughts? I am just an email away—reach out anytime.