They called it running.
Said I disappeared.
Said I went silent because I had something to hide.
But that wasn’t silence.
That was healing.
And healing doesn’t happen on camera.
It doesn’t happen in press statements.
It doesn’t happen on cue for public consumption.
It happens in the quiet.
In the mess.
In the brutal, boring, painful work of pulling yourself out of your own wreckage one truth at a time.
They wanted a statement.
I was trying to breathe.
I didn’t hide.
I shut down.
Because the noise outside had become louder than my own thoughts.
Because the headlines had taken my name and made it a stranger.
Because I couldn’t tell where the shame ended and I began.
I wasn’t hiding.
I was trying not to disappear entirely.
There’s a part of healing no one sees.
The part where you delete everything.
Where you stop answering texts.
Where you sleep too long or not at all.
Where you stare at old photos and wonder how you became someone people feared or mocked.
And then—
slowly—
you begin to rebuild.
One memory.
One apology.
One attempt at truth.
That’s not hiding.
That’s survival.
What they got wrong is thinking I owed the world my healing process.
I don’t.
I owe the people I hurt a reckoning.
I owe the people I love my presence.
I owe the art my honesty.
But I don’t owe my wounds to public debate.
I’ve never pretended to be okay.
What I’ve done—what I still do—is tell the truth when I’m ready.
Not when it’s trending.
Not when it’s convenient.
Not when it might win back some clout.
But when it’s real.
I’m here now.
Not because I was hiding.
But because I finally made it back to myself.
And I’m ready to speak again.
Not for attention.
For alignment.