This is an excerpt from my full-life memoir, Un Fn Myself — my real story of addiction, recovery, fatherhood, and everything in between from 1984 to 2026, including the parts most people would cut out.
February 9, 2026
I am divorced now. The divorce was finalized on December 17, 2025. If you want the full journey from the moment I walked out of that yoga class to where I am now, you can find it in my Daily Autobiography series. It begins with Author in St. Petersburg, with daily diary entries starting on July 31, 2025. One of the things I am most proud of doing as a creator is committing to a ten or twenty minute dictation every single day of my life, with ruthless honesty about what actually happened and what I actually felt. I know I spoiled part of the story for you, but the second book in the Daily Autobiography series is The Kind Divorce, so you were going to get there soon enough anyway. There have been so many other journeys and experiences since then, many of them joyful, many of them painful, that I would love to share with you there.
To tie up a few loose ends, I am still sober and active in Alcoholics Anonymous. I am coming up on twelve years. I have recently unraveled some very deep resentment toward my brother, something I talked about extensively in the first three Daily Autobiography books. I have not seen the girl from yoga again. It has been seven more months and I went to that class for months after seeing her there like it was my job. I still miss her. I still would love to see her again. But I do not go to the yoga studio where we used to see each other anymore. I switched studios because I was done carrying that weight, and you can hear more about that decision in the Daily Autobiography series as well.
What I am most excited to share is that I finally completed a full life story memoir. If you are reading this, I love you as a reader. I am deeply honored that you walked through this journey with me, and I am profoundly grateful. If you enjoyed this story, there is so much more waiting for you, with deeper details and ongoing reflections you can step into next.
That experience of having the thought, now you’re ready to see me, and then seeing her the very next day was absolutely magical. I have had a similar experience recently in calling in my second wife. One of the core reasons I chose to get divorced is that I want more children. I want a marriage that feels loving the way my marriage once did, with passion, connection, and yes, makeup sex after a fight. I want that hot, alive marriage again.
I just dictated a book called I’m Seeking a Wife. It goes deeply into the kind of second marriage I want, what I am actually asking for, and who I need to be to receive it. Somewhere along the way, I stopped talking to the girl I had the crush on at yoga and shifted into a different conversation in my mind. Instead of directing that energy toward a specific person, I started communicating with whoever my second wife is going to be. For months, that voice kept telling me the same thing. You are not ready yet. You need to learn how to be by yourself and be okay being by yourself.
At first, I thought that logic was fucking stupid. I told myself that the more comfortable I got being alone, the less I would need or want a woman in my life. That turned out not to be true at all. The more content I became just being me, the more solid and loving I felt toward myself, the more space I actually created for someone else to join me. Independence did not kill desire. It clarified it.
I dictated I’m Seeking a Wife on a Thursday. As I write this, it is Monday, so that would have been around February 5, 2026. Right after I finished dictating it, I had a massive emotional release. I cried hard, laughed through tears, and felt a whole stack of emotions move through me all at once. The first version I dictated the day before, on Wednesday, left me feeling awful. I remember thinking, this sounds like a bad Tenth Step from Alcoholics Anonymous. Too much resentment. Too much criticism of women. Who would want to be with the version of me that came through in that first draft?
So I dictated it again the next day. The second version was completely different. When I finished, I just sat there and felt it all break open. The release was unmistakable. And immediately after that, I had a thought that felt like it came from my second wife. The thought was simple and clear. Now you’re ready for me. I remember responding internally, laughing. Thank you. I’m glad I’m ready now. I genuinely felt excited for the rest of my life in that moment. Excited not just to live it, but to have it captured honestly as it unfolds.
If there is one thing I wish I had done differently in my life, it is this. I wish I had started a daily autobiography as early as possible. High school. Elementary school. College. When I was a police officer. When I was a content creator. I wish I had started then and never stopped. That is legacy. That is truth. These are the books I already treasure, knowing I will be able to read them ten, twenty, thirty, even fifty years from now and see my life exactly as it was, not edited by memory or ego.
More than that, I treasure knowing my kids will be able to read an honest, complete story of my life. I wish my dad had done this. I wish my grandfather had done this. I wish the people I loved most had left behind something this real. If there is anything I hope this book inspires you to do, it is to write your own story. Put your life down in detail like this. You do not even have to publish it. Print it out. Keep it. Let it exist. If you want to self-publish on Amazon, there is plenty of support out there. Tutorials everywhere. You can almost certainly do it yourself. If you want to talk to me or ask questions, you can find me at jerrybanfield.com and schedule time with me.
Writing this book has been profoundly therapeutic. Since getting divorced, there were days where I spiraled hard. Days where all I wanted was my ex-wife back, my family back, the familiar structure of what I had. Those days will be covered in the sixth diary book. But going through this entire memoir, dictating it honestly from beginning to end, helped me see something clearly. I did not actually want the marriage I had for years. What I really did not want was to do the work required to end it and prepare myself for the next one. Now I have done that work. And for the first time in a long time, I feel ready.
I am deeply grateful today that 2025 was the year I finally did the work. I deleted everything online. All of it. I ended my marriage. I moved out of the house I had been living in. I made the changes my soul had been craving for a long time. I wanted adventure back in my life. I wanted deeper love back in my life. I wanted out of being stuck inside the same personality and the same routines, where all I did was upload videos and have resentful sex with my ex-wife while telling ourselves we were staying together for the kids. I broke out of that. I am profoundly grateful that I found the courage to do it.
What makes it even more meaningful is that I captured the entire process as it happened, day by day, in my Daily Autobiography series. The truth is, that record is messy. In the first six or seven books, I say plenty of critical and unkind things about people. I am embarrassed by some of what I wrote. But that is also the truth of where I was at the time. Going forward, my intention is to conduct my life with as much love as possible, to choose love over fear whenever I can.
I chose divorce because I love my ex-wife and I want her to be able to pursue her own growth and character-building without me standing in the way. I stayed married out of fear of the divorce process, fear of looking like a failure, and fear of what people would think. I am committed to courageously stating what I want, figuring out what is true, and loving the people in my life as fully as I can. That includes loving you, my reader. This book is my heart and my soul. It is me bearing myself honestly, the good, the bad, and the ugly. I love you for reading this. That love is why I keep creating every day.
There is a man I know who was once an incredible, powerful speaker, and listening to him felt magical. Then an injury took much of that ability from him, and he cannot speak the same way anymore. Watching him has taught me something I never want to forget. I treasure having a voice that can clearly express the thoughts I am thinking and the feelings I am experiencing. I treasure being able to put that voice into words that endure, words that someone could theoretically read fifty years from now, or a hundred, or maybe even a thousand. I treasure that ability. And because I treasure it, because I love it, because I am grateful for it, I practice it every day. I also treasure you for supporting me in this, in whatever way you have. Thank you for reading this book. I treasure the time we have spent together here.
There is much more if you want it, in the Daily Autobiography series and on my website at jerrybanfield.com. Thank you for listening. I hope the journey continues with you.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.