When you were five, what did you want to be when you grew up?

When I was five, I wanted to be something.

That’s what people expect you to say. Something simple. Something you could draw with a thick crayon and hold up like evidence—see, I’m already becoming this. A clean answer. A future you can pronounce.

Problem is—I don’t remember being five. Not in any way that feels reliable. No clear picture. No moment that holds still long enough to trust it. Just gaps where something should be. Like a room you know you’ve been in, but can’t describe.

There was a theory floating around for a while—picked up just enough traction to be worth repeating—that I was never a child. Just born a grumpy old man. I’ve never done much to argue against it.

In fact… there’s no evidence of me being a child. I made sure it was eliminated.

Not in some dramatic, burn-the-records kind of way. Nothing cinematic. Just time doing what it does—wearing things down, sanding the edges off, letting the unimportant slip through the cracks. Memory isn’t a vault. It’s a leak.

But not everything disappeared.

I remember sitting at a table—cheap wood, uneven, rocking just enough to notice. Paper in front of me, curling at the corners. Markers scattered like tools I didn’t quite understand yet. I drew a self-portrait. Or tried to.

I remember the hesitation more than the lines. The way my hand hovered before committing. The face on the page looking back at me and feeling… wrong. Not broken. Not bad. Just not true. I didn’t have the language for that then. I just knew I didn’t like it.

My family told me it was good. Warm voices. Easy encouragement.

But it didn’t land.

My Madre stood there a little longer. Quiet. She didn’t tear it down. Didn’t dress it up either. Just looked at it like she was measuring something I couldn’t see yet. Her eyes moved slower, sharper—like she wasn’t looking at what it was, but what it wasn’t.

Her opinion mattered the most. So I bore down. Practiced harder. Chased something I couldn’t name yet.

I had a friend who could draw—really draw. His lines made sense. Mine didn’t. Not like that. Not clean. Not confident. I couldn’t figure out how he got from nothing to something that looked right. I didn’t understand the process. Just the distance.

I remember the markers. The sweet ones—the ones that pretended to be fruit. Thick in the air, artificial, almost sticky. And the Sharpies. No disguise. Just raw, chemical bite that sat in the back of your throat. We used to sniff them like it was part of the process.

It didn’t help.

But I kept going.

Writing started creeping in somewhere along the way. Uninvited. Didn’t ask permission. Didn’t care that I was trying to focus on drawing. Stories showed up anyway—half-formed, persistent, sitting just behind whatever I was trying to put on paper.

I wish I could’ve just focused on the art. Would’ve been simpler. But the stories wouldn’t leave.

In high school, sitting at my best friend’s house, his brother said it like it was nothing—you can write and illustrate your own book. Before that moment, it never crossed my mind. Not once.

Even after that… I doubted it.

Even after my first story was published. Even after I stood in front of a room teaching seminars on poetry and short stories. Still didn’t quite believe it. Like the evidence was there, but it didn’t belong to me.

I’m still doing it.

Of course… there were detours. Soldier. Marriage. Kids. Whole chapters written in a different language. Life filled the margins whether I asked it to or not.

But I keep coming back. Blank page. Quiet room. That same friction between what I see and what I can actually put down.

Sometimes it feels like looking in a mirror and not arguing with what’s there anymore. Like the version I kept chasing was already doing the work—I just didn’t trust him yet.

Kids want to be something. Astronaut. Superhero. Firefighter. Clean answers.

I think I missed that part. Or maybe I didn’t.

Maybe this was always it.

Not the title. Not the uniform. Just the work. Trying to get it right. Even when it doesn’t come out that way. Even when you don’t believe it counts.

So no—I don’t remember what I wanted to be when I was five.

But I remember what it felt like to get it wrong.

And I remember not stopping.

That’s close enough.

Most days.