A memoir by Chase Treadway
I Love You
But Damn
A memoir about the life after the accident: love under pressure, care without a halo, and the stubborn work of building something honest inside rules nobody asked for.
At twenty-four, during the July 3 night that carried into July 4, Chase Treadway dove into a swimming pool and sustained a C6-C7 spinal cord injury. The emergency was immediate. The reckoning took years. This book follows the life that came after: Beka, love under pressure, care without a halo, work rebuilt around new limits, faith with teeth, money, humor, and the long job of telling the truth without making pain perform for applause.
- 34chapters
- 99kwords drafted
- Editorialpass
- Privatemanuscript
“You don't appreciate something — usually — until it's gone. I'm here to talk to you about how to appreciate things before regret finds you.”
Book-jacket note
The title carries the whole argument: love can be real and still ask more than anyone planned to give.
I Love You But Damn is a disability memoir, but it is not built like a comeback speech. It is candid, funny when it has to be, and honest about the private cost of surviving. The manuscript has a complete working draft and is in editorial review. The full draft stays private while Chase sharpens the sequence, pressure-tests the facts, and works reader feedback into a publishable final shape.
About the book
A life can split in a second. The harder story is what happens after.
I Love You But Damn follows Chase through the years after his injury: learning how to be helped without disappearing, how to love Beka without turning her into proof, how to build work from a body that no longer obeyed, and how to stop confusing endurance with healing.
Not a recovery speech.
The book looks past survival into dependence, anger, humor, work, money, faith, and the daily negotiations that rarely make it into inspirational stories.
A love story with weight.
Beka is central because love is not abstract here. It has to lift, wait, forgive, adapt, keep its sense of humor, and show up again the next morning.
Built by memory, then checked against the record.
The chapters move by emotional weight more than chronology, with the private studio keeping dates, names, and reader notes close enough to stop memory from freelancing.
Manuscript status
- Full manuscript access is limited to invited readers
- Reader notes stay tied to the current editorial draft
- Public excerpts are withheld while the manuscript is still changing
- Publishing conversations can begin from the premise, status, and author context here
- The public page keeps the book findable without turning private chapters into bait
If Chase sent you access, log in to open the private reader studio: current chapter order, manuscript notes, paragraph-level feedback, and fact-check tools. For publishers, editors, and curious readers, this page is the front porch: enough context to understand the book, not enough private draft to flatten it into web copy.
What opens after login
Invited readers enter the working room for the book. Notes, flags, and review tools stay attached to the current draft instead of drifting through email threads.
- current chapter order and draft status
- reader notes tied to the passage that needs attention
- paragraph-level fact flags for names, dates, and places
- review and export tools for the working manuscript
About Chase
Chase Treadway
Chase is a Covington, Louisiana founder and writer. He has lived with a C6-C7 spinal cord injury since the late July 3, 2009 pool dive that carried into July 4. He writes about the life that followed with Beka, work, family, faith, and the humor that kept showing up when easy answers did not.
Why the manuscript is private
This page gives the premise, status, and access boundary for the book. The lock is editorial, not theatrical: invited readers see the working draft and can leave notes; everyone else gets the honest public front door until the manuscript is ready for a wider audience.
There is a sentence hidden in this book
Chase builds software for a living, and developers bury Easter eggs in everything they ship. Somewhere in these chapters is one hidden sentence — his whole philosophy, the secret to a fulfilled life, compressed small enough to carry. Every chapter hands you one piece. The piece always comes first. Invited readers can hunt for it now at /cipher; everyone else gets the chance when the book does. And for the people who find it, there's a door the sentence unlocks — the Living Edition, where this book never ends: family and friends keep writing the pages after the last page.
“I password-protected my own legacy with the meaning of life. Developers, man.”