Between Chaos and Calm
Inside the womb, every fetus is formed with an inclination toward chaos and calm.
My story begins in the spiral of the double helix, DNA passed down through generations, carrying a predisposition toward a life shaped by chaos, interrupted only by moments of calm.
Stitch by stitch, something took shape within me, an entity that grew louder as my environment fed it, until it became a monster I could no longer ignore. The sixth of six, I entered this world with innocence.
I was seventeen when I first met The Noise, a presence that had always been there, waiting, shaped by the chaos around me until it finally found its voice.
It started as a whisper.
Then a pattern.
Then a certainty.
I wasn’t just thinking anymore, I was being shown.
I was going to change the world.
The Noise made itself known to me after a trip to Haiti.
It didn’t let me sleep.
It fed me visions of greatness—whispering that the world was mine to take.
It led me to a mountaintop and told me that all the kingdoms of the world could be mine… if I gave myself to it.
It grew louder.
And it wasn’t alone.
One of its companions—Paranoia—followed close behind.
Suddenly, everyone was watching me.
The CIA was tracking me.
Facebook was monitoring me.
I wasn’t just living anymore.
I was being watched.
Another companion followed, The Weight, an anvil on my chest, heavy with the certainty that I was never enough.
It took my convictions, my sense of who I could become, and turned every failure into something that pressed against my soul.
It started young, an imprint I didn’t choose. As I grew, The Noise, Paranoia, and The Weight turned it into leverage.
Leverage my teenage mind could not escape.
It was during that time that I was placed in a mental hospital, where doctors knew all too well of The Noise, Paranoia, and The Weight.
A cluster of symptoms they called schizoaffective—somewhere between psychosis and mania.
The doctors saw something in me. They told me I could live a functional life—that I could quiet it, manage it, survive it—with medication.
Even with the chaos these forces brought, I had grown used to their game—their promises, their lies, the illusion that I could become everything under their spell.
The Noise thrashed, along with its companions, at the thought of losing its vessel.
It wouldn’t disappear.
Only fade.
Quieter.
Waiting in the background.
I weighed the options before me.
Should I hold onto what The Noise promised, keep its companions close, or step into something quieter, something stable… something unknown?
I chose the unknown.
Day by day, I made it a habit.
I took the medication.
My mind began to clear, like a sea finally settling after a storm.
But the calm came with a cost.
The man I was becoming felt slower. Heavier.
The weight settled into my body.
And something else slipped away with it, my passion.
The fire that once burned through me dimmed into something quieter, something harder to recognize.
And still…
The Noise remained. Not gone. Just quieter.
Waiting in the background, promising that its version of life was better.
Years passed.
And in a way, the doctors were right.
I built something that looked like a life.
I found success.
I learned how to live within the boundaries of medication, how to function, how to show up, how to exist without being consumed.
Slowly, things began to shift again.
The weight didn’t hold me the same way it once did.
My body followed.
And somewhere along the way, pieces of me started to return.
Not all at once.
Not like before.
But enough to notice.
Enough to remember what it felt like to care again.
The passion didn’t come back as a fire.
It came back as embers.
Small.
Quiet.
But alive.