Everyone loves a good blaze.
The flames. The spectacle.
The moment the scaffolding collapses and the crowd gasps.
They filmed the fire.
They shared the fire.
They judged me by the fire.
But no one asked what led to it.
No one asked what kind of pressure builds when you carry your childhood on your back like a coffin.
What kind of cracks form when every success feels borrowed, and every failure feels final.
What kind of voices echo in your head when you were raised not with comfort, but with conditions.
The fire didn’t start in that warehouse.
It started long before that.
It started in a locked room.
Where I screamed and no one came.
Where silence taught me how to shape stories.
Where shame taught me how to wear a mask.
By the time I was grown, I didn’t know how to separate ambition from validation.
So I built big.
I built wildly.
I built with the belief that if I created something magical enough, the past would stop breathing down my neck.
But trauma doesn’t vanish just because you paint it gold.
And eventually—
it burns through.
They saw the smoke.
But they didn’t smell what had been smouldering for years.
The burnout.
The desperation.
The refusal to ask for help because I didn’t believe I deserved any.
I poured everything I had into a dream that was never supposed to carry that much weight.
And when it collapsed,
I didn’t just lose a show.
I lost the illusion that I could outrun where I came from.
What they got wrong is thinking the fire was the beginning.
It wasn’t.
It was the end of a thousand silent implosions.
And the start of something else.
Something scorched.
Something real.
Because after the fire, you either sit in the ashes and mourn—
or you start to rebuild with hands that still smell like smoke.
I’m still rebuilding.
Not with arrogance.
Not with spectacle.
But with honesty.
Every word I write now is dipped in what burned.
Not to explain.
But to remember.
So when you look at the wreckage,
don’t just stare at the fire.
Ask what lit it.
And you might start to understand the man inside the smoke.
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