I grew up always feeling different, like I was built from pieces no one else could quite recognize. Even as a child, I sensed the quiet distance between who I was and who I was expected to be. I watched the world move in rhythms that never matched my heartbeat, and it made me wonder if I was meant to walk alone for a while. From an early age, I discovered I was not afraid to end relationships that did not help me grow into a better person. That difference followed me like a shadow. It wasn’t cruel at first; it just whispered that I didn’t belong. I was bullied heavily and children can be unkind to what they don’t understand. I lost friendships I thought were forever, left standing in empty playgrounds and silent cafeterias wondering what I’d done wrong. I learned early that loneliness could be both armor and wound. That is where I found my love of books. I was in the sixth grade.
 

In high school, life took a darker turn. The kind that leaves fingerprints on your spirit. Trauma doesn’t just happen once; it echoes, reshaping the way you see yourself and the world. It took me years to find pieces of myself again, years of relearning that I was worth the fight. There were nights when the darkness felt like home and mornings where it refused to let me go. I’m no stranger to the dark. I’ve walked through it, and come out the other side still carrying a flicker of light. That’s what survival really is: learning to build a flame inside yourself when the world gives you none. My scars don’t embarrass me; they remind me that I lived through what tried to silence me.
 

Over time, I began to see that my difference wasn’t a flaw; it was the beginning of empathy. Because I’ve been voiceless before, I make it my mission to help others find their own. I speak up when something is wrong, even if my voice shakes, even if no one else joins in. Silence is complicity, and I refuse to wear it anymore.
 

I’ve learned that truth is not always comfortable, but it’s necessary. When I see harm, I name it. When I make a mistake, I own it and fix it. Accountability is a form of love, and love without accountability is manipulation in disguise. Break the illusion that we are not worthy of all good things. That we are not worth the fight. Break the illusion, that love is only if you do what I say, and be quiet out of sight. That's not love. That is narcissism. When love is conditional vs. unconditional.
 

I have no patience for narcissistic behavior or cruelty disguised as honesty. I’ve met too many people who feed on others’ kindness while calling it weakness. I don’t play those games. My boundaries are sacred now, built from lessons I paid for in tears and silence and ruined family relationships in which I am all for rebuilding in the future as you learn the adult I have become. I believe in compassion, not control. I believe in calling things out and believe me I will and it will be respectful. 
 

Becoming a mother rewrote everything. My daughter became the living proof that the cycle could stop with me. I decided long before she could speak that she would grow up in truth, not fear. That she would learn her worth from love, not from surviving it. I broke the curse that tried to raise me, even if it meant losing those who refused to change.
 

So this is who I am: A voice that once trembled, now steady. A mother, a writer, a fighter for truth in all its messy, luminous forms. I carry the dark with me, but I don’t live there anymore. I live in the garden that grew from it, the twilight between pain and peace, where light finally feels like something I earned. With my ink and bones,  here is where my imagination can be free.