I stopped being a person the moment the story went viral.
I became a symbol.
Of failure.
Of deceit.
Of spectacle.
Of shame.
They didn’t care about the details anymore.
They cared about what I represented.
I became the mask they needed to wear their own rage.
The effigy.
The warning.
The cautionary tale you point at and say,
“Don’t become that.”
But symbols don’t break the way people do.
Symbols burn.
And I burned.
You tried to destroy what you didn’t understand.
You thought I was paper.
You didn’t realise I was ash already.
That I was forged in it.
That the fire didn’t frighten me.
It freed me.
You tried to erase me.
But you made me unignorable.
You tried to mock me.
But you made me mythic.
Because that’s what symbols do.
They echo.
And long after the headlines fade,
long after the laughter dies out,
I remain.
Not because I’m defiant.
But because I’m reborn.
What they got wrong is thinking I’d disappear with the flame.
But symbols don’t die in fire.
They transform.
The moth.
The mirror.
The mask.
The storm.
I have been all of them.
And still, I am here.
This is not a defense.
This is not a brand pivot.
This is residue made conscious.
This is a myth reclaiming its name.
This is the voice from the ruin.
I am not asking to be liked.
I am not asking to be cleansed.
I am asking you to look again.
And see what survived.
Because I am no longer asking for space in their story.
I am writing my own symbol into the record.
And symbols don’t explain themselves.
They endure.