I used to walk into a room and act like I knew who I was.
Like I had it figured out. Like I had something to prove.
A producer.
A visionary.
A man on the edge of something big.
And maybe I believed it.
Or maybe I needed to believe it—because the truth underneath was too fragile to carry.
The truth is, I was performing long before the cameras came out.
Before the memes.
Before the headlines.
Before the viral collapse.
I was pretending.
Pretending to be confident.
Pretending to be strong.
Pretending I wasn’t still grieving parts of me I’d never had the space to mourn.
There’s a particular type of exhaustion that comes from constantly shaping yourself into someone you think people will admire.
It’s not acting.
It’s surviving.
You start with good intentions.
You want to create something. Build something. Matter.
But the cracks form fast.
When your worth is tied to how people see you, you forget how to see yourself.
I put on smiles.
I played the charismatic one.
I created fantasy worlds for families and told myself I was doing something magical.
Even when the foundations were made of debt, doubt, and desperation.
And when it all collapsed, the mask didn’t fall off.
It shattered.
And I shattered with it.
After the headlines, I had nothing left to hide behind.
No brand. No name.
No version of myself I could safely retreat into.
I had to meet the man beneath it all.
Not the one I wanted to be.
Not the one I pretended to be.
But the one who remained when everything was stripped bare.
He wasn’t impressive.
He wasn’t polished.
But he was honest.
And that’s who I’m learning to be now.
Not because it’s heroic.
Not because it fixes the damage.
But because pretending got me lost.
And this—this raw, quiet, unfinished man—is the only one I trust to find his way back.