The year I died twice. No sirens, just a mouse keeping count.

They didn’t know the before version of you.

Only the guy with the head tattoo,

the stare,

and the quiet refusal to quit.

You dropped into Bellingham

with a travel kit and a head full of ghosts.

Didn’t call it Ghostalt yet,

but that’s what it was—

a language built in the blur.

That trip wasn’t the escape.

It was the test.

Of what was left.

And whether the last 5%

was still somewhere inside

waiting to be remembered.

False peaks don’t announce themselves; they wait until you’ve celebrated, then point higher.

I didn’t ask to be called the Mickey King. Someone said it after a tattoo in 2021 and it just… landed. I laughed, but inside, I was slipping.

People thought I was on a roll. They didn’t see I was unraveling. Mickey didn’t just stay, he took over.

My body was unraveling, but my hands wouldn’t stop.

They were trying to create proof.

That I was still here.

That something still made sense.

Before the mouse came back to life—

there was the box.

And the year without magic.

It didn’t start as a tradition.

There was no vision board, no merch, no plan. Just a boy, a dog, and a mouse who kept showing up.

August 2018.

I made a pancake. I wore a shirt. I tattooed Mickey.

And somehow, people came.

By November, the pup had arrived.

The mouse had a birthday.

And I didn’t feel quite so alone.

It had been years since I picked up a pencil. Years since I let the marks come through that way. I’d become a black and grey artist by then—built a career, a name. But outside of tattooing, I was numb. No joy, no surprise. And then I tore my bicep. Lightning jolt. Forced stillness.

With my dominant hand out, I needed to feel the paper again. For proof. That the artist—the one who’d get lost in a drawing without looking at the clock—was still in there.

And she came out of the cloud.

No plan. No sketch. Just an hour before work, high pressure, full heart. Eyes too intense for someone wearing that silly hat. Cheeks like she’s blushing. I thought I’d use gold leaf for the ears—but her eyes stopped me. Nothing should compete with them. She doesn’t just look at you. She dares you to look back.

No anniversary. No occasion.

Just three circles on a skillet,

one big, two small..

like always.

June 12th.

I poured the batter slow.

Watched it bubble and set,

like I’d done a hundred times before.

The plate was the same.

My name in red,

painted by my mother’s hand in 1989.

The coffee steamed.

The dog curled in the corner.

The house was quiet.

And I didn’t know.

Something was closing.

Softly.

Without asking for a name.

I ate the same thing every day.

And I didn’t mind.

Because food wasn’t for pleasure—it was fuel.

It was control.

When you’re dying but look alive, people can’t see past the mirror.

They think you’re showing off—some kind of ego trip.

But this wasn’t about wanting to be seen.

This was about proving I existed.

The mirror selfies weren’t traps.

They were survival.

Proof that in a world where everything was falling apart—

I still had a body.

And maybe that was enough.

For a moment.

That summer, I didn’t know what was coming. I was 14 and free in a way I’d never be again.

I was just a kid with a backpack and a ball.

No weight. No future. No past. Just this moment, alive in a body that didn’t know what it would lose.

Sometimes I think that boy is still out there—on a court that no longer exists,

sinking jumpers, talking shit to no one in particular,

the soundtrack of the world turned down so he can just be.

I used to joke I had a ten-year plan.

It wasn’t a plan to succeed.

It was a plan to die.

And it wasn’t a joke.

She wasn’t created to save me. She was there to watch.

People thought I was fine.

I was tattooing, talking, smiling.

But I wasn’t there.

This photo was taken a few days before I ended up in the ER.

I didn’t know what was happening yet—

just that everything was getting harder to hold onto.

Memories, laughter, my own face.

I looked healthy.

I looked focused.

But I was disappearing.