Essays I write in the early mornings, usually in longhand first. They circle around shadow, masculinity, the nervous system, and the parts of psychology that don't fit into clean takes. Nothing viral, nothing rushed. Written to be read once carefully, not skimmed on a commute.
The man who is always easy, always agreeable, always the last to want anything in particular is rarely at peace. Underneath his niceness is a strategy, and underneath the strategy is a small, angry boy who learned that wanting was dangerous.
Read essayThat constant inner commentary, the one that critiques, compares, second-guesses, isn't you. Jung called the autonomous psyche exactly what it is: a cast of characters who learned to speak when you were too young to notice.
Read essayOn projection, the oldest and most reliable mirror we have. The people who most reliably activate your judgment are not in your life by accident, they are carrying pieces you sent away long ago and would like back.
Read essayShadow isn't only what you've rejected as bad. It's also what you've rejected as too much, the brightness, the gift, the version of you your family couldn't quite handle. Reclaiming that light is its own kind of grief work.
Read essayYour body is always running a parallel conversation to your thoughts, and it is almost always a better informed one. A short field guide to the forgotten language of sensation, and why trying to think your way out of old patterns keeps almost working.
Read essayIn cultures that are afraid of rage, we mistake the flatness of people who don't feel anything for maturity. But under every chronically "chill" person is a whole animal that hasn't been allowed to be an animal in years.
Read essayYou don't get free of your father by becoming his opposite. You get free of him by meeting him, as he was, with what he carried, with what he could not give you. Often this is not a conversation with a living person. Often it is a letter, read aloud, in a quiet room.
Read essayHe has the job, the relationship, the vocabulary, the therapist. From the outside nothing is wrong. But somewhere in his chest, something has been dimmed for so long he no longer knows what colour it used to be. This essay is for him.
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