A Note Before We Begin
This is not an introduction. Not really.
A Fractured Kind of Clarity
I’m not quite sure when I realised I no longer recognised myself. Not in the surface-level, obvious way—like forgetting what you looked like in an old photo—but in that quiet, insidious sense that something had shifted, gradually, without asking for permission. I mean, I saw myself in the mirror most days. But I wasn’t really looking. And what stared back didn’t feel like me.
For years, I moved on autopilot—school, university, work, friendships, fallouts, intimacy, loss. Somewhere along the way, I learned how to perform a version of myself that the world seemed to accept. Efficient. Charming. Measured. I didn't notice when it stopped being a performance and became a habit. Somewhere between heartache, burnout, and nights that refused to end, I stopped being able to see myself clearly. Not metaphorically—literally. I avoided mirrors altogether.
There’s a unique sort of pain that comes from not trusting your own reflection. From being both the subject and the stranger. What began as a quiet misalignment spiralled into grief, depression, anxiety. I lost not just direction, but belief in myself, in my resilience, in my capacity to move through life itself. And I suppose that’s where this really began.
Because when you don’t recognise who you’ve become, the only real choice is to begin again.
The Origin of the Newsletter
So, you see, I found myself at an impasse. If I wanted to recover, I needed to rebuild. And if I wanted to rebuild, I had to be honest—not performative, curated honesty, but the raw, undignified kind. The kind that sits awkwardly in your chest for hours before you say it out loud.
When a close friend, someone who’s seen me stitched together and coming apart, suggested Substack, I dismissed it almost immediately. It felt indulgent. Exposure for exposure’s sake. Who was I to assume my voice mattered? The idea of confronting old wounds—and worse, sharing them—felt like peeling off a scab before it had crusted.
But a week later, in a quiet moment, I told my sister I was struggling to feel like myself—and mentioned, almost offhandedly, that a friend had suggested I try writing on Substack. She looked at me and simply asked, “What do you have to lose?”
Half an hour later, I opened a blank page and started writing. That moment was the beginning of Mirror Image, Distorted.
The title came intuitively. Mirror Image—a reflection of reality, self, or truth. Something that suggests clarity or fidelity. But Distorted—that’s where the truth sits. Warped by experience. Stretched by trauma. Twisted by pressure. What you see isn’t always what’s there. And what’s there doesn’t always want to be seen.
This newsletter, then, isn’t about presenting a polished version of myself. It’s about stepping into the blur, the stretch, the in-between. Writing not as a performance, but as a mirror I’m learning to face—again and again.
What Writing Gives Me (and What It Takes)
Writing saved me. Not in the dramatic, Netflix-monologue kind of way—but in the mundane, necessary kind. Like something essential, I didn’t realise I’d been living without.
It gives me clarity, yes. But also discomfort. Each piece costs something—privacy, pride, certainty. It pulls stories from under the skin and leaves them on the table, twitching. But in doing so, it gives me space. It returns language to experiences I had no words for. It turns ghosts into sentences.
I write because silence is suffocating. Because somewhere between the page and the pain, there’s a kind of freedom. Writing is resistance, yes—but it’s also repair. It’s rage with rhythm. It’s reflection without apology. It’s the only place where all of my selves—angry, joyous, anxious, defiant—are allowed to sit at the same table.
The Things I Keep Returning To
My perspective is grounded on the personal, cultural, structured, political and socio-economic influences that have shaped me—and the ones I haven’t figured out yet.
That includes identity—how it fractures, reforms, and lives in tension with the world around it. How the culture I inherited from my parents sits beside my queerness, not always comfortably. The influence of the church—its hymns, its rules, its walls. How class, migration, inequality, and aspiration have quietly threaded themselves through my choices, my relationships, my anxieties.
I want to explore how I learned to forget I was Black—and when I remembered. What it means to be a gay man today, and the ways joy, risk, safety, and desire co-exist in our bodies. I want to write about the quiet crisis of modern professionalism—the strange ache of ambition in a world that never stops selling. About how late-stage capitalism worms its way into our nervous systems, shaping our sense of worth, our rest, our ability to feel safe—financially, emotionally, spiritually. I want to write about the soft power of friendship. The disorienting romance of falling in love—when the world goes quiet, time bends, and every laugh feels cinematic.
And then the aftermath. When love cracks. When depression sets in. When grief becomes your only language. When the mirror won’t meet your gaze.
The Shape This Might Take
I’m not here to teach you. I’m not here to fix myself in public. And I’m certainly not here to tie everything up with a moral. I’m here to make you feel something.
I want to write the way life feels: messy, layered, contradictory. Some pieces will be narrative essays—snapshots from club nights and childhood homes, from church pews to corporate offices. Others will lean into satire and political critique. Some might blur into poetry. Others might just be a long sigh, dressed up as a paragraph.
There’s a kind of rhythm forming in the themes I want to explore—two interwoven threads. One moves through the personal and cultural terrain: identity, sexuality, faith, race, family, friendship, intimacy. The other navigates the political and structural: capitalism, class, migration, tech, aspiration, and the strange performance of professionalism. They’ll overlap, interrupt, and speak to each other. But they won’t always appear in order. So, if one week I’m exploring the ache of loneliness within the gay community, and the next the politics of productivity—it’s not a detour. It’s all part of the same map.
I’m not a writer by profession. But I care deeply about voice. About rhythm. About texture. So while I might not have the cleanest grammar, you’ll always find intention.
This space isn’t about genre or structure. It’s about truth—told sideways, if necessary.
What I Hope You Find Here
I don’t expect every piece I write to resonate. And that’s okay. We’re not all meant to see ourselves in the same stories. But if, through the mess of my reflection, you find a flicker of yourself—then maybe this is working.
Because distortion isn’t just disfigurement. It’s a lens. It helps us see what we weren’t ready to look at head-on.
By using hindsight, emotion, and language, I hope to nurture a space to make sense of experiences—maybe even a way back to yourself, or at least offer a question worth sitting with.
This Is Where I Pause
This isn’t an introduction, nor is it an instruction manual. Not really. It’s not an “About Me” page dressed in prose. It’s a process. A space for the truths that don’t fit neatly into conversation.
And if something in here makes you pause—maybe laugh, maybe flinch, maybe feel seen—then that’s enough. For now.
Welcome to Mirror Image, Distorted.
P.S. There’s no ask. Just gratitude—for reading, for sitting with this, for being here.
Glad to have you here. Your writing does show you care about the flow and rhythm and the reader’s experience.
I feel many people ended up here for similar reasons.
Initially, I just wanted to write about my art so didn’t think twice before creating it all under my real LinkedIn name. Now, I feel restricted by this slightly.