I keep going. Even after three hundred doors slammed in my face. People call that failure. I call it persistence.
I notice things. Too much maybe. Shadows in the corners, the quiet rage in me, the little betrayals no one else bothers to see. I watch, I think, I weigh. Self-awareness, they might call it.
I’m curious. Cambodia, Vietnam, Hemingway, Elliot Smith. I dig. I wander. I try to feel something bigger than my own noise.
I care. Maybe too much. The dog, the food my mother put back at the checkout, the injustice I can’t walk past — it hurts because I notice. That’s empathy, I suppose.
I don’t lie to myself. Brutal maybe, but I don’t sugarcoat. Honesty is all I’ve got sometimes.
I make stories. I write. I sketch. I fold my chaos into sentences and drawings, and call it art, call it survival. That’s my creativity, or whatever it is.
So yeah, I’m flawed. But I own it. All of it. The noise, the rage, the curiosity, the grief, the small victories no one sees. It’s mine.