The Boy Beneath the Man‎

‎ ‎It is not the man I became it is the boy I once was. It was not me — it was the cities whose brightness drained my light. It was the politicians whose policies buried the poor alive. It was the school that decided my future before seeing my potential. It was the teacher who subdued my courage with cold words. It was the family who ate my egg before it could hatch. It was the innocence of a child born in the wilderness. It was the women who hated a boy child simply for being a boy; it was their words that broke my walls. It was the girls who held my hands while I destroyed myself. It was the brothers whose ways became mine. It was the friends whose gestures stripped away my mask. It was the war — the silent war of survival — that taught us to step over the wounded. Somewhere along the journey, the boy slowly disappeared. And the man who survived him was never the same again.