A Journey From Chaos To Stillness

For anyone new here, I’m Matt Raynor — and I’m building a new life, one keystroke at a time.

I’m a C5–C6 tetraplegic, paralyzed from the collarbone down. My hands don’t work — but my mind and imagination are sharper than ever. I’m a self-taught software engineer, writer, and photographer. Here on my Substack, I try to build worlds through my words for anyone struggling with their own version of paralysis — physical, emotional, or spiritual. By serving others, I best serve myself.

Two years ago, I arrived at a nursing facility after burning down what was left of my life. After my diving accident, I lost the use of my body and the career I loved as a commercial fisherman. Most of my friends drifted away during COVID, and what little family I had was strained and dysfunctional at best. I was depleted — hopeless and exhausted. To escape, I became addicted to five different prescription pills.

If you’re disabled enough, they’ll hand you pills like candy. Before I ever learned to build an app, I learned how to score drugs off the dark web — and trust me, that’s no easy task when your hands don’t work. But that’s where I was: brilliant enough to destroy myself, and too lost to see another way.

Eventually, I came to believe the universe uses pain as a catalyst for transformation — a kind of universal teacher. The events that shake your foundation are often exactly the ones that shape you. They were for me.

Lying in that nursing-home bed, too embarrassed and depressed to leave, I made a quiet resolution: I don’t want to suffer anymore. I’m going to stop being the biggest obstacle to my own happiness.

I asked myself a question I had asked many times before — but this time, I meant it: What could I accomplish if I stopped sabotaging myself?

I needed purpose. I needed a skill. Photography wasn’t it — I needed something I could do entirely on my own, something that would give me independence and allow me to build again. That was the hardest loss: not being able to use my hands to create.

So I turned to programming. It was brutal at first. I had to figure out how to master a computer like someone who could still move their hands. I started with one key at a time, experimenting with workflows, slowly reimagining how learning even worked for me.

For a year, I studied every single day — through frustration, exhaustion, and doubt. I couldn’t go outside. I didn’t have friends to talk to. But I had persistence. I took the same wild willpower that once fueled my addiction and redirected it toward something that could save me.

Then something changed. I started to feel alive again. I’d cry in the middle of a Netflix series — not out of sadness, but because I could finally feel something again. As the distance between me and my last pill grew, I began to heal — mentally, spiritually, emotionally.

Negativity had always run deep in me. It felt like a curse. But I decided to quiet the self-doubt and reframe my thinking. I learned to become my own friend. It was the first real act of love I’d shown myself in years.

After about a year and a half of studying, a friend asked if I could build an app for his art-moving business. I told him no — more than once — but he refused to give up.

“I think you can do it, Matt,” he said. “I really do.”

So I tried. Before I knew it, I was addicted to the problem — and I solved it. That app became my first real-world project and the first time faith returned to me. His belief in me sparked my own.

Not long after, I became severely sick. For months, I couldn’t eat or sleep. My stomach swelled, I was nauseous constantly, and I genuinely thought I was losing my mind. A gastroenterologist did an endoscopy and told me it was “just gas.” I looked pregnant and felt like death. Thanks, doc.

Around that time, I rediscovered Buddhism and Taoism. I needed something to keep me sane. I joined a Buddhist community. Chanting and meditation became my lifeline. Eventually, a sonogram revealed the truth: my gallbladder had failed. I couldn’t digest fat at all.

That illness nearly unraveled me. I remember thinking: this is how people lose their minds. But that suffering became the turning point. In the middle of that chaos, I touched something sacred — stillness, self-love, a serenity I had been chasing my entire life.

By almost losing my mind, I reconnected with something I had glimpsed once before — during my near-death experience. But this time, it didn’t fade. I built a daily practice around it. I return to that stillness every day — the place from which clarity flows.

Call it God, the Tao, the universe. It doesn’t matter.

My second major project came out of necessity. I’d found a place to live but needed $20,000 for an accessible bathroom. So I built a donation platform from scratch and ran my own campaign. I raised the money. The renovation is done. I tested the ramp last week. It works perfectly. If all goes well, I’ll be out soon.

As my mind cleared, my work expanded. Every project doubled in complexity — 7,000 lines, 15,000, 30,000. I mastered the backend, the frontend, and multiple languages. I built a business platform for Tote Taxi, a luxury baggage delivery service and a smart-capture AI system for a multinational printing company in Rhode Island.

And it all started with someone who believed in me when I didn’t.

Stillness, presence, and serenity are now more important to me than any external success. They are success. When we meet the moment with acceptance and patience, even failure becomes a form of progress.

Negativity still shows up — fear, doubt, insecurity — but I no longer let them obscure the sky.

I finally feel like the person I was meant to be. I can sit with myself, generate gratitude, and meet each day with purpose.

Soon, I’ll be moving out of the nursing home — starting my career, going outside, listening to birds under the open sky. Things I haven’t been able to do in a long time.

If you’d like to support me during this final stretch, I’ve put up a fundraiser at www.mattsfreedomfundraiser.com. I’m raising money for out of pocket caretaking costs while my PA’s navigate the lengthy registration process for the agency. I'm not sure why it takes so long but funds will go to covering gaps and enable me to leave the facility in a timely manner.

Thank you for reading, sharing, and being part of this next chapter.

www.matthewraynor.com
www.totetaxi.com