We walk around with a crushing debt we never signed for.
It’s the debt of expectation. We owe our parents a “stable” career. We owe our partners a “consistent” mood. We owe society a “predictable” face. We’ve spent years borrowing from our own authenticity just to keep the folders in our lives balanced and the people around us comfortable.
The High Interest of Hiding
The grit of this existence is the interest rate. Every time you file away a “juicy” truth or a raw emotion to avoid social stigma, the debt grows. You become a shell, a curator of a life that looks good on paper but feels like a hollowed-out tree on the inside. You’re working a 9-to-5 for an identity you don’t even own.
Conditioning tells you that “paying your dues” means staying in the cage until you’ve earned the right to be yourself. But here is the secret: You will never be able to afford your freedom if you keep playing by their rules.
Breaking free is an act of radical honesty. It’s the moment you look at the filing cabinet and realize you’re never going to “fix” those folders because they were never yours to begin with. You have to be willing to lose the “credit” you’ve built with people who only love the version of you that follows the manual.
My work is about that moment of declaration. It’s the grit of standing in your own truth and saying, “I don’t owe you the person I used to be.” It’s messy, it’s terrifying, and it’s the only way to finally own the ground you stand on.