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.