Kevin's Ink & Quill

Growing up in the 80s and 90s, I learned early on how to disappear. I hid behind masks and rehearsed versions of myself because the real me felt dangerous to reveal. It was exhausting—so much so that life itself began to feel like a weight I couldn’t carry.

I buried every honest part of who I was because the world around me made it clear, in sermons and whispers alike, that people like me were wrong. Unnatural. Unworthy. No one said it to my face, but I heard it everywhere, and knowing deep down they were talking about me, even if they didn't know it, was its own kind of lifelong torment. Most of those people weren’t cruel—they were repeating what they’d been taught—but the damage still rooted itself in me.

Eventually you reach a crossroads: accept who you are or lose yourself entirely. I reached that point. I was tired of loneliness, tired of feeling broken, tired of believing I was a mistake. I lived with a constant void, always on the outside looking in, waiting for a place that never opened.

It took decades to realize the parts of me I feared weren’t flaws at all—they were simply me. I learned to stop apologizing for existing. I learned to breathe. I learned that the real me deserved not just to live, but to thrive. 

That’s why I write. As a kid, the page was the only place I felt like myself—my refuge, my escape, the one space where I could build a world that made sense to me. Writing gave me purpose. It gave me a place to go when everything was crashing down around me. It gave me a hope that life can get better. And it did. I realized that nothing was wrong with me no matter who believed otherwise.