Building my own altar from ash and static.
I think it'll make you happy—but it won’t.
I won’t stop until I’m dead.
I won’t quit until I’ve gutted the wreckage I carried in my head.
When I was young, that was the gun I held to my head— and nobody listened to a goddamned word I said.
I’ve been nursing this wound for twenty fucking years...
when some kid made me feel like nothing, and I never got over it.
A choir of shadows keeps singing that same refrain: “You are nothing again.”
But I've built something.
And if something is forged from nothing? So be it, so be it.
If being means static, then I’ll learn to hear music in it.
I’ve got a job. I’ve got a house. No kid. No spouse.
Still, I suck the marrow from a world I barely understand and call it breakfast.
Every Monday I rise from my own ruins and whisper, “You just have to get over it.” And then I do.
A Topography of Becoming
This is my map: I want to stop suffering—not by retreating, but by planting my feet in the burning present. I know I’ve caused some of it.
I know peace lives in presence, not in fantasies or regrets.
In real-time. In my bloodstream. In naming my emotions, in defending my boundaries with both compassion and steel.
I want inner calm—not like a lake, but like a lighthouse in a storm. Still standing. Still shining.
I want to be physically strong— capable, sharp, ready for challenge.
Because I believe challenges are sacred.
And joy? It grows where struggle is invited, not avoided.
So, I’ll structure my days like scaffolding:
intentional, firm, aligned to the shape of my becoming.
Each day a quiet revolution.
Each act of discipline, a hymn.
Curiosity, too—it must be there.
I want to know what's out there.
What's inside people, places, stories.
I want to ask why and write until I understand.
So, this is my creed:
Challenge. Curiosity. Presence. Pilgrimage.
And I’ve walked it.
Down cracked highways of doubt, through towns that didn’t keep their promises and ceilings that didn’t feel like mine.
I’ve wandered—not lost, but searching —learning how to carry the silence, learning when to listen, learning what kind of man I don’t want to be.
I moved to disrupt the pattern, to feel other weathers, to become someone the younger me would believe in.
And somewhere between leaving and arriving, I found a place that feels like home. For now.
Not perfect. Not permanent.
But real enough to grow some roots without forgetting how to run. Quiet enough to say—this is where I begin again.
And I keep riding through country that barely notices my passing, through landscapes like half-forgotten prayers.
This train is both blade and balm— steel slicing through memory, wheels humming the rhythm of forgiveness.
Car by car, I witness my life receding in windows smeared with sunset and soot.
And still, it moves forward. So, do I.
Sometimes my body feels like a dimming cabin light— flickering at stations I never meant to stop in. There are days I feel I’m coasting on fumes, running out of time in the silence between each breath.
But then I remember the temple— the hush of it, the warmth I feel when I’m wrapped in covenant and whisper-light.
And something settles inside me.
I am not done.
I am not only this aching vessel.
I am also what I offer in the dark.
I am the ticket I punched with my own blood.
I am the seat I gave up so someone else could rest.
I am the map I’ve drawn with trembling hands. And I am the voice that says, this is not where the line ends, this is where the light changes.
Then I begin gently— like settling into a quiet train car at dusk, where the light is soft and no one rushes me.
Here’s a space to hold what I’m carrying.
I don’t need to solve anything right now.
Just let the words arrive, like stations coming into view.
Today, I’m sitting in the ache. I feel the holiness of my life— the echo of covenants, the weight of hands on my head, the flicker of revelation in the temple’s stillness.
And I feel the ache.
The ache of loving who I love.
Of being seen as both chosen and questioned.
Of walking into sacred spaces with both reverence and restraint. Of being told there’s room at the table— yet never quite feeling the chair fit.
I know I’m more than a contradiction.
I’m a son.
A disciple. A seeker.
I belong to a gospel that promises healing and to a heart that refuses to shut itself down for the sake of appearing whole.
And so, I sit.
Not to drown in sorrow—but to honor it.
To let the Spirit move through the stillness.
To hear again, in the silence:
“You are mine. I have gravened you upon the palms of my hands.”
JACFSP
