Growing up, I had a loving family and friends, yet I felt like I was living in a different world. Outwardly, I appeared happy, but inside, a storm was brewing—one that only grew stronger with time. As an adult, I found solace in darkness, in shadows, in the spaces others avoided. I didn’t understand why at first. It took real honesty—something I had never allowed myself—to begin to see clearly.

By my 30s, I was in a serious relationship with two young daughters, and I finally understood that you can’t lead from a place of false pretense. I needed a complete reset—to build something that had never been built. But at 30, that felt impossible. So many bad habits and ingrained behaviors stood in the way of becoming someone new.

In my mid-30s, my partner recommended therapy, and I began attending weekly (and still do). Therapy wasn’t a quick fix, and I didn’t approach it the right way at first. I often compare it to trying to build a house in the rain—challenging, exhausting, and discouraging. In the beginning, I only shared surface-level stories, avoiding the truth of the world I had learned to navigate.

As a child, I believed you are what you project, so I gave people what they wanted to see, regardless of how it affected me internally. The more I projected, the less I recognized myself. I became a lost soul inhabiting a foreign body, with anxiety as my constant guide. I didn’t want people to know me, but the truth was, I didn’t know myself either.

This isn’t a story of achievements or milestones—it’s one of survival and self-discovery. For years, I wandered through life unafraid, but untethered. Early on, I realized the immense power of words, that they could unlock anything. But words, when misused, can be just as destructive. I had wielded them for access, power, and financial gain, but like a bounced check, when your words lack foundation, the fallout is catastrophic.

Recovering from that reality required a complete shift—a rebranding of self. But without a foundation, you can’t build something new. I was a blank slate, adrift in an abyss with no name, no direction, nothing to anchor me. I had dug myself into a deep hole, and there was no rope in sight.

I thought a change of environment was the answer. Common sense would have led me to family, but pride and distance kept me from making that call. I had spent my youth waiting for someone to lift me up, but all I received were words—empty encouragement built on values I never knew. I had heard enough words to last a lifetime.

So I sank deeper. I reached the top of the bottom. There, I saw things most would call fantasy, walked through nightmares made real, and stood in places where expiration dates weren’t theoretical. No life raft could save me. Something drastic had to happen.

I had run out of options.

A change in location felt like the only solution. If I could outrun the weight of my past, maybe I could rebuild. But running doesn’t erase what’s inside you. No matter where I went, I carried the same wounds, the same burdens, the same patterns. Survival had taught me to adapt, but I had never learned how to heal.

For years, I had been a master of reinvention, shifting my words and identity to fit whatever situation demanded. I had spoken my way into rooms I had no business being in, built facades sturdy enough to fool anyone—except myself. But no matter how well I crafted my persona, the truth always lurked beneath the surface. I was exhausted from the weight of wearing masks.

Therapy forced me to confront what I had spent a lifetime avoiding. I wasn’t just rebuilding—I was excavating, digging through layers of false identities, misused words, and unspoken pain. It was an ugly process. There was no blueprint, no guide, just me and the discomfort of unlearning everything I thought I knew about myself.

Art became my anchor. It wasn’t something I had planned; it was something I stumbled into, a last-ditch effort to make sense of the chaos. When words failed, I found solace in black and white. No distractions. No illusions. Just raw, unfiltered expression. It was the first time in my life I had created something that wasn’t meant to deceive, impress, or manipulate—it just was.

Through art, I found a way to document the struggle, to translate my internal world into something tangible. It became my therapy, my rebellion, my way of reclaiming a voice that had been distorted for too long. The more I painted, the more I unraveled, and the more I realized I wasn’t alone in these feelings.

I don’t paint to be understood. I paint because I spent too many years hiding behind words, and now I choose truth over illusion. My work reflects the in-between spaces—the tension between survival and self-discovery, darkness and light, pain and resilience.

This isn’t a story with a clean resolution. Healing isn’t linear, and I’m still figuring it out. But for the first time, I’m not running. I’m standing still, creating, breathing.

And that, in itself, is a kind of victory.