As the season approaches I find myself in somewhat of a unique position—at least unique for me, so I thought I’d share with you all.

A quick little backstory: I grew up in a good Mormon household with great parents and a large family. I was loved, went to church and graduated from seminary. The only reason why these things are important to this post is that somewhere along the way I decided the church wasn’t for me, didn’t go on a mission, and stopped going to church entirely in my early 20’s.

As a BYU fan a lot of times I feel like an anomaly, but I can say with knowledge, feeling like an anomaly and being treated like one are two very different things and I've never been treated poorly or felt like another fan is trying to force their opinion (religious no, football scheme yes) down my throat. Sometimes I read 'stories' from visiting fans or ALUF's talking about their negative experiences with BYU fans and I really find myself scratching my head. Maybe I'm lucky and haven't run into the hoards of judgmental bluehairs or perhaps I'm treated a bit better because if I drink and swear and am rough around the edges, at least I'm a BYU fan but I seriously doubt it.

All in all, BYU football—whether it be through Cougarboard, at the stadium or wearing cougar blue on an airplane and seeing another likeminded fan, has become a community that I love very much, and though I’ve never developed a testimony in the church, and haven’t been inside one in over a decade, I am as big a diehard-kool-aid-drinking-blue-goggle-wearing-Detmer-worshipping-4th-and Eighteeningee-George-is-still-running-Harline-is-still-openee BYU football fan that there is.

Not one season since I was 4 have I missed a home game while I’ve actually been home in Utah (I travel a lot for work) and when I’m out of town I will reschedule everything so I can listen to Wrubell or find a broadcast wherever I am in the world.

I have memories of Riley high-fiving a ref while I was watching the TCU game on a particularly difficult night in the slums of Kingston, Jamaica—memories of listening to BYU beating down Boise St. on KLS’s livesteam in the middle of the night while staying in a cruddy hostel in Berlin—I remember screaming with happiness and literally jumping with joy after checking the score of the BYU Houston game the moment my 9 hour flight landed after having to board the flight during the second half of the game, only to discover we won a thriller.

Over the years I’ve never equated the church with BYU football. BYU football has always been my dad, my brothers, 64,000+ screaming yahoos at Lavell Edwards Stadium, the table next to me at IGGY's and so many kind people/strangers we’ve been privileged to sit next to in the stadium all season long.

I look back with nothing but fond memories—even when the inevitable heartaches like Heaps fumble into the endzone on the first drive against Utah pop up, I had my dad and brothers sitting next to me to suffer with as we collectively shook our heads wondering aloud what comes next.

So, what's the point of this post?

This season I’m outta here. I’m gone. I will miss every game for the first time in my waking life and it’s a weird feeling.

Hopefully this isn’t too much of a shift towards the dramatic, but there’s no other way to share this without just saying it: I’m a man who has suffered with schizophrenia for my entire adult life. I’ve never married, never had kids or set down any real roots. Though I struggle with reality from time to time I’ve been blessed to start and grow a successful business in the creative field and have seen that business grow every year.

For those who don’t know what I deal with privately, from the outside my life looks pretty good—lots of traveling and adventuring, a fulfilling job and a growing business. But somewhere along the way life has gotten a little too hard, a little too messy, and so it’s time I step away to discover whatever reality based perspective I can.

With the incredible support of a really great business partner and a very loving family I am taking a leave of absence from my work and unplugging from everything—no internet, no radio, maybe emails once a week. I'm doing this because I've reached a very serious crossroads with my mental health and I can't have any distractions that would make it too easy for me to escape from the current task at hand.

The end goal is to come back a man in balance or at least a man with a plan to become balanced.

I leave this week for Iceland where I’ll be camping for the month of September, followed up with a few weeks each in the Faroe Islands, Norway and Finland respectively. I’ll be back just before Christmas leaving me with the hope of catching a perhaps special Bowl Game—but honestly, any game will do at that point.

I would never in a million years dream to schedule a soul-searching trip during the entire football season, but I suppose that’s a sign of how bad things have gotten.

So, with all this said I wanted to write this up and say just a few things.

There’s nothing out there like BYU football. Nothing. Win or lose, it doesn't matter in the long run. As I mentioned above, BYU football to me is my dad, it’s my brothers, it’s my dear friends who have joined me at games. It's the unwitting smelly Frenchman sharing a room with me at a hostel as I lie awake listening through headphones to a roaring stadium of 64,000 yahoos screaming their lungs out as our boys take the field. BYU football is the memories it creates with the people around us.

I’m really going to miss that this year, truly I will.

I’ll check back with everyone come December. If we end up going undefeated we’ll all know that I was the ‘bad luck guy’ and I'm a big enough fan to move away and never watch another game if that's the case.

Cheers, everyone, and GO COUGARS!