3M

There are forces that shape you long before you know their names. I’m only now beginning to recognize mine.

This isn’t something I’ve fully worked through, but I guess writing is how I process. I’m circling around a presence in my life—something formative, reflective. A kind of mirror I’ve been staring into my whole life. Sometimes for approval. Sometimes just trying to escape the reflection altogether.

Being home these past three weeks, surrounded by family, has made that reflection brighter. Even today, when I got a call from my people lead telling me I’d been promoted, I wasn’t looking for a cake or celebration. I just wanted some acknowledgment. A spark of belief in me. But it didn’t come. It rarely does. And still, I wait.

That’s part of the problem—the waiting.

I do this a lot in relationships too. I wait for people to want me, I build these walls and expect you to climb. Those walls are enormous, part of the kid inside me that still wants a nod of approval. That kind of protection is old. I know it’s a hard thing to talk about because it’s tied to parts of me I haven’t fully unpacked yet. But the truth is, I’ve shaped my entire personality around that missing piece—chasing validation, even as I pretend not to need it.

What’s wild is how much of that reflection I carry with me. The original mirror. The work ethic, the perfectionism, the control. I move through life with that same edge, that same engine. I’ve inherited the fire and especially the ice. My reflection burns if you get too close. Maybe that’s why the recognition is so hard to come by—because to give it would be to see my cold self clearly.

A recent conversation with someone I’ve known since birth—my lifelong confidant—helped me realize that what I experienced growing up wasn’t necessarily normal. I was just taught it was. And only with distance could I see how tightly wound the whole thing was. I don’t even blame them. They were wired that way, and they passed down what they got. We joke sometimes and I can tell those jokes hit something real. That insecurity. That inheritance.

And then there was someone I hurt—someone I cared about deeply. I treated her unfairly, lashed out like she was someone else entirely. I think they call that projection. I saw her through a haze—of my past, of my wounds, of my mania. It wasn’t fair. No matter what evidence or justification I could cling to, none of it matters. She didn’t deserve that. It was childish, and I know it.

But the thing is, that same mania also drove me to create. This blog, my writing, the intensity behind my work ethic—it all came from that surge. That rush of needing to become something. It gave me speed and direction. And somewhere in all that movement, I lost myself.

I got caught up in the glow of my own ego. The highs, the praise, the illusion of being “on track.” And, yeah, I got lost to my vices too. I told myself it helped me—made me more creative, got me out of my head. But those were lies. Excuses. For someone who talks a lot about accountability, I was full of shit. I leaned on it way too hard. Preached accountability but dodged it myself.

Back in October, I wrote a blog titled Distance Gives You Perspective. And man, I didn’t even realize how true that would become. Sitting here now in my old stomping ground coffee shop, it’s clear to me—I was lost. In the thralls of my own story. Drunk on my own momentum.

But here’s the silver lining. The magic.

Life, or fate, or the universe—whatever you want to call it—keeps handing you the same lesson until you finally learn it. And I don’t think I’ve fully learned mine yet, but I’ve cracked the door open. There’s a little light coming through. There’s beauty in that. There’s power in turning pain into gold. That’s what I mean by magic. Alchemy. Taking what’s broken and making something sacred from it.

We all have that ability. To be alchemists of our own lives. But that kind of power requires one brutal truth: You have to stop blaming everyone else. You have to own it. Your story, your pain, your choices. The moment you realize that you’re not a victim of your life—but its creator—is the moment everything starts to shift.

And maybe that’s what I’m trying to do now. To throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. Even the hurt. Especially the hurt.

I think of my life like a painting held up by a cheap Command strip. It sticks to the wall, sure, but only for a while. Then the weight gets too heavy, and the whole thing crashes down. Most people give up at that point. Say it’s ruined. But I think you can rehang it. You can repaint it. Every day is a new brushstroke. Just because it fell off the wall today doesn’t mean it won’t hold tomorrow.

Hang it up again. And go.

Because the only way you lose in life is if you stop painting.