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It was in high school where everything tilted.

That’s where my love for writing, art, and music took a turn—sharp enough to leave a mark. I started writing horror stories, the kind that didn’t rely on monsters jumping out of closets, but the kind that sat with you long after the lights were off. Psychological. Quiet. Unsettling in a way I didn’t fully understand yet.

I drew what I wrote. Faces caught between something human and something else. Shadows doing most of the talking.

And somewhere in the middle of all that, I found heavy metal.

That’s when the rules showed up.

It was like there was a rulebook I was never given.

I asked Madre about it once. She stared at me like I should’ve already known, then shook her head.

Classic Madre.

She kept that look well into my adulthood.

My kids laugh about it now—because I catch myself giving them that same look.

It was fine—acceptable even—to write strange stories. Fine to draw the things I was drawing. People could box that up and call it “creative.” But metal? That crossed a line I didn’t know existed until someone told me I needed to turn in my black card.

I remember just sitting there, letting that hang in the air longer than it should have.

For a second, my mind went to guys like Jimi Hendrix… and Jaimoe Johanson.

Nobody handed them a rulebook.

I didn’t say anything.

Then it hit me—

I was aware that being Black wasn’t just identity—it was visibility.
The world saw me before it heard me.
I guess that’s a step up from being invisible. — Invisible Man

Around the same time, I made another decision that didn’t sit well with the people who thought they knew better. I moved away from the college track and into the electronics lab.

“You’re throwing your future,” my guidance counselor said.

They believed in standards. Fixed lines. Clear limits.

Problem was—I didn’t fit where they said I should.

And no matter what I did, they kept looking past me.

I’m right here. Can’t you hear me?

This was the same woman who told me it was impossible to learn microcomputer math without a foundation in Algebra.

I aced the class.

High school wasn’t about figuring out who you were.

It was about learning who you were allowed to be.

I felt the pressure to stay Black while trying to be an individual.
The problem was never my identity. It was that other people kept confusing identity with compliance.

Some of the same kids I played in the sandbox with started looking at me like I was from somewhere else. Like I had crossed into something unfamiliar.

So I learned to perform.

Say the right things. Like the right things. Stay close enough to the script to avoid the questions.

Like an actor hitting marks just to stay in the scene.

But that kind of survival comes with a cost.

You start confusing who you are with who you need to be to get through the day.

And somewhere in all that, nobody teaches you the part that matters most—

how to accept yourself without the audience.

I used to think people saw me for what I was in that moment. That once I fit the category, the story was done.

But it doesn’t work like that.

They don’t see two people.

The one you are… and the one you’re becoming.

I ran into one of my sixth-grade teachers years later. When I told her I was a writer, I dressed it up with a little self-deprecation.

“You probably never thought I’d become that.”

She looked me dead in the eyes, same way she did back then.

“You said that. I didn’t.”

Then she invited me to lunch with some of the old group.

Popularity is a currency that devalues overnight. I watched people spend themselves trying to keep up with it.

Not me.

“You can go your own way.” — Fleetwood Mac

Costly lesson. Worth every bit of it.

What I learned in high school wasn’t how to fit in.

It was how to stop asking for permission to be who I already was.

And once you see it…

the mask never quite fits the same again.

Doesn’t mean the world stopped asking me to wear it.