The worst part of me wasn’t the part that failed. It wasn’t even the part that lied.
It was the part that believed it could get away with it.
Carl Jung called it the Shadow — the repressed, denied, hidden side of the self.
Mine didn’t hide. It led.
A Myth I Told Myself
For a long time, I told myself I was misunderstood. A poet. A visionary. A broken man trying to do good.
But that wasn’t the whole truth.
The whole truth was this: I liked the power. I liked the feeling of being followed, even if it was built on sand. I liked the sound of my own story too much to question if it was still real.
That shadow self — the one that said, “They need you, Billy” — that was the one driving the ship.
The Archetype of the Pretender
I wore the face of the healer, the builder, the mystical leader with ancient answers. I built the Gowanbank Hub like it was a temple, but I was the high priest of an illusion.
And when it started falling apart, I didn’t come clean. I just pivoted the story.
From builder to victim. From victim to artist. From artist to prophet.
Every move was another mask.
I wasn’t integrating my shadow. I was feeding it.
The Turning Point
It wasn’t the police that forced my reckoning.
It wasn’t the news.
It was silence.
It was the moment I ran out of words, out of press releases, out of reinventions. I remember staring at the ceiling of a cold room — alone, broke, ashamed — and thinking, “What happens if you just stop pretending?”
That was the beginning.
Not of healing. Not yet. But of honesty.
I Am Not Free of Him
The shadow is not something you overcome. It walks beside you.
Even now, I still feel him — the part of me that wants to be adored, forgiven, remembered as the misunderstood genius.
But now I see him.
I name him.
And I don’t let him speak for me anymore.