Epilogue

I used to think “core memories” were like museum pieces—sealed behind glass, labeled, safely preserved. The older I get, the more I realize they’re more like live wires.

They don’t sit still.

They hum.

They rearrange themselves depending on what season of life I’m standing in, what I’m afraid of, what I’m brave enough to admit, and what I’m still pretending I don’t feel. A memory I once called “funny” becomes “sad” when I finally understand what was happening offstage. A memory I labeled “trauma” becomes “origin” when I stop trying to erase it and start learning from it.

That’s the strange grace of time: it doesn’t delete anything. It just keeps handing you new angles.

When I was younger, I wanted a clean storyline. Beginning, middle, end. A satisfying arc where the pain is neatly resolved, the villain is clearly identified, and the hero gets his reward.

But life isn’t a screenplay.

Life is a collection of moments that refuse to stay in their original shape.

Some of these chapters are bright. They feel like the electric certainty of discovery—those moments where I touched something bigger than myself: curiosity, music, mischief, tattoos, code, the magic trick of learning. There are scenes in here that still feel like oxygen.

And some of these chapters are heavy. They live in the body more than the mind. Those are the ones that taught me what grief really is: not a storm you survive once, but weather you learn to live in.

I’ve told these stories because I’m done pretending they didn’t shape me.

I’ve told them because I’ve spent too much of my life trying to be invincible—trying to “win” the past by outrunning it. That’s a losing strategy, by the way. The past has endurance. The past is patient. It doesn’t chase you; it waits at the finish line with a clipboard.

So I stopped running.

Or at least, I started running in a different direction: toward meaning.

Somewhere along the way, a teacher handed me Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, and something inside me clicked—not because I suddenly believed I was a hero, but because I recognized the pattern.

A call.

A loss.

A threshold.

Tests.

Allies.

A descent.

A return.

Not as fantasy—more like a blueprint for surviving the parts of life that don’t come with instructions.

I didn’t understand it all then. I understand a little more now.

Here’s what I know: the “ordinary world” is not something you leave behind once. It’s something you keep losing and finding and rebuilding. Over and over again. Sometimes you return to it. Sometimes you create a new one. Sometimes you realize the world was never ordinary at all—you were just too young to see how fragile it was.

And if you’ve read this far, you know the moment my ordinary world ended.

I carry my mother’s absence the way you carry a scar: it’s proof something happened, and proof you made it through. A scar isn’t pretty, but it’s honest. It’s the body’s way of saying: there was damage here—then there was healing.

There’s a temptation, when you write about grief, to tie it up in a bow. To offer a tidy lesson. To make it inspirational.

I’m not interested in tidy.

The truth is: I miss her. I miss the idea of her. I miss what could have been. I miss what I needed and didn’t get, and what I got and didn’t recognize until it was gone. I miss the version of me that might have existed if the universe hadn’t made that cut.

And at the same time—this is also true—I am who I am because of what happened.

Not in a romantic way. Not in a “everything happens for a reason” way. In the simplest, hardest way: you adapt or you break.

After she died, something in me flipped. The part of me that had drifted, disengaged, checked out—vanished. In its place came a fierce, almost desperate devotion to mastery. I learned how to be excellent like I was clinging to a lifeboat. Straight As weren’t about trophies; they were about control. They were about building a world where effort had predictable outcomes—because grief is the place where you learn outcomes don’t always care how hard you tried.

That’s a complicated thing to admit.

It’s also a complicated thing to live with.

Because that kind of drive can build a career and also build a cage. It can create competence and also create armor. It can make you “the one who handles things” until you forget how to be the one who feels things.

So I’m writing this epilogue as a small act of disarmament.

A way of saying: yes, I’m strong—and yes, I’m still tender in places people don’t see but I am hardly “invincible”.

A way of saying: the work I do in the world matters to me because I’ve watched what happens when the world fails a kid. When adults choose status over love. When the system becomes another storm.

And if you know me in real life—if you know the suit-and-tie version, the courtroom version, the “let’s do our best” version—then you should know this too: underneath that is a boy who learned early that love can disappear without warning.

That boy still lives in me.

He’s not in charge anymore, but he’s on the board.

And honestly? I’m glad he is. He keeps me human.

These memories—every weird, hilarious, painful, magical shard—are not just a scrapbook. They are my compass.

They point to what I value:

Wonder. Loyalty. Truth-telling. The protection of the vulnerable. The refusal to numb out. The insistence that stories matter.

Because stories are how we make sense of chaos.

And chaos has always been part of my mythology.

I used to think chaos was something to overcome. Now I think chaos is something to curate. Not because it’s cute or trendy, but because life is chaotic whether we approve or not. The question isn’t whether chaos exists. The question is whether you turn it into something useful—or let it turn you into someone you don’t recognize.

So I collect artifacts. I collect songs. I collect moments. I collect the strange little scenes that form a life. Not because I’m stuck in the past, but because I’ve learned this: the past is not dead weight. It’s raw material.

And you can build with it.

There’s another thing I’ve learned: your core memories aren’t only the big tragedies and the big triumphs. They’re also the small pivots.

A sentence someone said to you once that you never forgot.

A look on someone’s face when you realized you mattered.

A room you walked into and left as a different person.

A moment you chose love when it would’ve been easier to choose numbness.

Sometimes the most important memory isn’t dramatic. Sometimes it’s the first time you did the right thing without applause. The first time you told the truth even though it cost you. The first time you forgave someone—not to excuse them, but to free yourself.

Those are quiet core memories.

They don’t glow until years later.

Which brings me to the real point of this epilogue: this collection isn’t finished.

It can’t be.

Because as long as I’m alive, the story is still unfolding. The meaning is still developing. The wounds are still healing. The love is still finding new ways to express itself. The old chapters keep echoing into the new ones.

And maybe that’s the best possible ending: not closure, but continuity.

A life isn’t a solved equation. It’s a living draft.

So here’s what I want—what I’m choosing—going forward:

I want to be a man who uses his sharpness to protect, not to perform.

I want to be a man who can be intense without being inaccessible.

I want to be a man who remembers that achievement is not the same thing as peace.

I want to be a man who tells the truth about his story, not because it’s flattering, but because it’s his.

And if you’re reading this, I hope you’ll do the same with yours.

Not because your pain needs to become content.

But because your pain deserves to be witnessed—by you, at minimum.

Because the moment you stop lying to yourself about what happened is the moment you start getting your life back.

I don’t know what your core memories are. I don’t know what you’ve survived. I don’t know what you’ve lost.

But I know this: you’re not just the worst thing that happened to you.

You’re also the way you responded.

You’re the choices you made next.

You’re the love you gave anyway.

You’re the meaning you built from the wreckage.

If these chapters did anything—if they sparked recognition, or softened something, or made you feel less alone—then the telling was worth it.

And if nothing else, let this stand as my small declaration to the universe:

I am still here.

I am still becoming.

And the ordinary world—though it ended once—has been remade.

Not perfectly. Not without scars.

But with intention.

With story.

With heart.

And with the stubborn, defiant belief that even the darkest chapters can be part of a life that matters.