Self Reflection

I’ve always kept most of my thoughts trapped in my own mind. Not out of fear, but out of habit—maybe even resignation. Writing has always interested me, not for expression, but for preservation. There’s something sacred about words that stay. Writing resists time. It defies silence. It lasts in ways the spoken word never can. Oral stories vanish with breath. But writing—writing can outlive us. It’s one of the few ways anything we are might be remembered.

None of us arrived in this world with a map. We were born to people who were just guessing—figuring things out as they stumbled forward. Our parents were no different. They made choices based on what they had, what they knew, or what they feared. Some are still lost, though they wear masks of certainty. There’s something haunting and beautiful about that. All of us alive at once, each walking a path at a different pace, all uncertain in our own quiet ways.

I’ve doubted myself for as long as I can remember. My thoughts, my abilities, my right to take up space. I don’t know if that will ever change. What I do know is that despite the label I was given as a child—Asperger’s—I feel everything. I feel too much, if anything. I carry empathy that burdens me, anger that chokes me, and sadness that sits beneath my skin like cold water. I feel shame, confusion, longing, guilt. These emotions move through me like a tide I can’t hold back.

Still, I was raised in love. My mother’s family surrounded me with it, even when I couldn’t understand why. They embraced me when I felt unworthy. My mother, especially—her love was open, constant. She gave me more than I ever gave back. I remember the small things: the words we shared, the little games of who loved who more. I’d tell her I loved her to the moon and back. That meant everything to me once. It still does.

My father was different. He was serious, distant, emotionally unreachable. But I never hated him for it. I loved him in a way I don’t know how to explain—quietly, deeply, painfully. I knew he carried damage he never spoke of. His own father was an abusive drunk who sacrificed his dreams to care for too many siblings. His mother came from money but showed none of the warmth it might have afforded her. My father grew up in a home shaped by trauma, and he carried that weight into adulthood. He never learned how to express love. I don’t think he knew how. But I still knew he loved me—somewhere beneath the silence.

My grandmother—his mother—was another story. I still feel a sickness when I think of her. She was cruel in ways that carved into me. She’d sit beside me at the kitchen table and feed me lies wrapped in pain: how I would grow up to be nothing, how I was a burden, how my parents were failures. She whispered poison into my ears under the guise of care. And part of me believed her. Maybe I still do. Maybe I always will.

I don’t remember many tender moments with my father. I wish I did. Maybe they happened, but time blurred them. He never said “I love you,” and that’s something I’ve had to learn to live with. But I understood him. I am him. We were both haunted by silence and held together by restraint. He died, and I was expected to step into the role of “the man.” But I’m not a man. I’m just a grieving son. I lost the only person I ever saw as indestructible. And there are nights I’d give up my life without question if it meant he could return. He would’ve been better at this. He would’ve known what to do.

There’s so much more I could write. But if I start, I may never stop. Maybe one day I will. Maybe that’s why this blog exists. To let the pain spill, one quiet entry at a time.