My life was over before it ever began.
Before I learned who I was, I learned who I wasn’t allowed to be.
And before the world had a chance to break me, the people who raised me already had.
I learned to fear before I learned my name.

I was born into a world where obedience was survival and individuality was betrayal.
A world where love wasn’t freely given, it was weaponized, conditional, earned through silence and submission.

Growing up, fear wasn’t a feeling, it was the atmosphere.
Fear of disappointing my parents.
Fear of God killing me if I ever questioned the religion.
Fear of losing my family if the truth about me slipped through a crack.

My childhood wasn’t defined by one traumatic moment, it was an avalanche of them.
A life built on conditions, silence, beatings, shame, and the constant message that who I was would never be enough, from the same people I thought were supposed to love me unconditionally.

And under every tear, every beating, every sermon, I hid the “sin” they said would ruin me, a truth that taught a child to despise his own existence and imagine disappearing forever, before he even had a chance of experiencing what life had to offer in the first place.

As an adolescent, the cracks began to show.
At school, I saw glimpses of the life I wasn’t allowed to see, touch, much less take part in, holidays, friendships, belonging.
My classmates invited me into their world, while mine insisted those same classmates would die at Armageddon, and it would be my fault if I didn’t “save” them.

I couldn’t make friends. I was never allowed to.
The cult always came first, its rules, its authority, its demands, its beliefs.
There was no break from it. No escape.
No childhood outside of it.
No breath that wasn’t monitored. No action that wasn’t inspected.

And beneath it all, I carried a secret that made every day feel like punishment.
I was my parents’ worst nightmare, hiding in plain sight.

By seventeen, the truth was unavoidable:
stay and let the cult finish what it started,
or leave and lose everything I had ever known.
There was no winning, only choosing which version of myself I was willing to bury.

So when my parents abandoned me at Goodwill like some sort of donation drop-off,
it wasn’t just a chapter closed, it was their first death in my life.
I thought that was the end, but it was only just beginning.

I walked out with nothing:
no home, no parents, no brothers, no community, no hope.
Freedom felt good for a moment,
no more indoctrination,
no more preaching beliefs I never believed in,
no more verbal degrading sessions from mom and dad,
no more putting up a mask,
until night came.

Until the silence reminded me I had no one to call.
No support.
No guidance.
No identity.

When night came, reality did too.
I hadn’t just lost my house, my parents, my brothers,
I had lost myself.

The depression shadowed everything.
I missed the people who hurt me.
I missed the structure that abused me.

I cried.
I counted pills.
I drove aimlessly.
I didn’t want to exist.

And even after I escaped, the guilt followed me.
They begged me to return, cursed me when I didn’t, reminding me that in their world, love always came with strings attached.
It was never unconditional.
It was leverage.
Weaponized.

I thought about going back every single day.
I wanted to rewind everything.
I missed my parents so much it hurt to breathe.
I missed my brothers, my friends, my bed, my pillows, my room.
I missed hearing their voices, even if those voices destroyed me.

But going back meant returning to the same abuse, the same fear, the same cult that taught me to hate myself.
It was choosing between dying slowly at home,
or dying quietly somewhere else.
Either way, something in me had to die.

Years later, still crying myself to sleep every night,
still feeling like my legs had anchors attached to them every morning,
with easy tasks becoming daunting chores,
everything shattered again.

My mother was dying. Cancer.
She needed a blood transfusion.
My mother refused.
She had been taught her whole life that accepting it would cost her eternal life.

So she chose the cult’s rule over more time on earth,
and I watched her die, not just from cancer,
but from a doctrine that never loved her the way I did.
Three weeks. From diagnosis to death.

When our eyes locked, my body teleported back to being four years old,
a little boy reaching for the mother he had spent his entire life trying to win,
knowing it was a losing battle.

For years I yearned for one thing:
her love,
her acceptance,
her support.
And in the end, I would never receive it.

My mother died twice.
The first time was years earlier, when she abandoned me.
The second time was in that hospital bed,
and when she died, a part of me died with her,
as did the chance to ever reconcile,
to ever be truly seen or loved by her.

Losing her brought me back into my family’s orbit,
back into my father’s house,
back into the cult,
back into the nightmare I thought I’d escaped.
Not because I wanted to return,
but because my little brother needed me.

My father died twice too.
The first death was the day he abandoned me, with my mother as well.
The second death was the day he left the country to get remarried,
left all his problems behind,
including his underage surviving child,
and never came back.
A different kind of death, but a death all the same.

When he left, he handed me the only thing in my life that ever felt pure:
my little brother.
And in that moment, something inside me shifted.

I felt like a hero.
A savior.
A source of hope.

Because he would not grow up the way I did.
He would not be raised inside the chains that shaped me.
He would not learn fear before he learned his name.

That was the day my story stopped being about survival,
and started becoming about purpose.

Today, I’m building something bigger than myself.
A movement for the ones who are still here,
the ones who survived the unthinkable,
and the ones simply trying to make it through the day.
For anyone who has ever felt alone in their own story.
For anyone carrying more than they can explain.

Because pain is pain.
Struggle is struggle.
And every fight, big or small, deserves a place to be seen,
and a place to be shared when you’re ready.

This is not just my story.
It’s proof that resilience is real.
That hope is real.
That you can lose everything, including yourself,
and still build a life worth living.

I see you.
I hear you.
I feel you.

This is for:
the ones who hold their lives together quietly,
the ones carrying more than they ever say out loud,
the ones who feel the weight of their days a little heavier than most,
the ones who were never sure they’d make it this far,
but did.

These are
The Ones Still Here