“If it hurts you, it’s about you.”

That’s a line I believe I heard back in 2019, conveniently when my mental health journey really kicked off.

Every year since then, there’s been an example of that from myself and from others. I’ll speak my peace about a person, and they deflect and turn me into a problem. Often it’ll include something they’ve been inspired to say about me since they can’t be the only one being judged for something.

Some only got one chance before I maintained distance. Others, you do that enough times to a person, the person risks what I did for too long. Keep it inside, feeling as if your options are scarce, at best, to talk about them with either a trusted ear, or a steady (and affordable) professional.

You endure the label of being soft by people who are too fragile for even constructive criticism that they’ll treat like a personal insult. A threat on their life, even.

For me, I reached a point where my usual artistic outlets were not enough. Newer ones in costume designs and prop making were enhancements of drawing out my pleasures and pain.

All because whatever I really wanted to say could hurt the people that love my silence, which in turn could get me hurt. Not physically, at least, not since being a minor. But I knew that I could do more than random acts of escapism in a pre-social media world.

There was an attempt to start a consistent blog in 2019, as well. I aired out a few things that were in my heart, but they were nothing more than a blueprint for what I had the time to create in 2022.

This very page.

And so, after hundreds of written posts, an uncalculated amount of videos, and more than a few book ideas related to all of it, I look back and can say that I’m proud that I started this journey.

That, even as personal and public events were happening, this was, and still is a place to decompress and air out what’s come to mind mixed with what’s been on it for decades. This includes topics and events I can’t speak to towards people that would want my 45 year-old self to “stay in a child’s place” about.

At this point, it can and will lead to actions speaking louder than the words I wish they could have internalized, versus doing anything that would have us criminalized. Because it’s one thing to have the intellect for accountability. It’s another to lack it when the allegedly quiet ones like me learn to turn that pain, and our own accountability into purpose.

And if that action hurts them, good. It’s on them to regret it, not for me to nurse it like I have.

K.P.