The Voice in Your Head Isn’t Alone

My brother took his own life when he was still so young.
And I carry that sentence with me the way some people carry prayers—quietly, daily, without ever quite knowing where to put it down.

I was taught early on that certain things are allowed, and certain things… absolutely are not.
As if life came with a rulebook, highlighted in fear, annotated by people who were just as unsure as the rest of us—but spoke with impressive confidence.

And I think of him.
Of boys, of girls, of anyone who ever found themselves on the wrong side of someone else’s certainty.

He loved music—the kind that rattled the walls and made adults nervous.
Rush, Jane’s Addiction, Pink Floyd—and before that, Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath, and all those ‘80s bands with hair so large it felt like rebellion had a dress code.

He didn’t just listen—he became.
Bass in hand, heart wide open, he translated the chaos of being alive into something that made sense.

But to some, that wasn’t expression.
It was danger.
A warning sign. A slippery slope.

It’s strange, the way people talk about evil.
As if it’s obvious. As if it announces itself politely.

But evil rarely introduces itself.
It doesn’t knock on the door and say, “Hello, I’m here to destroy something.”

It whispers instead.
It compares.
It divides.

It tells you that you are less than—or that you must prove you are more.
It builds a quiet courtroom in your mind where everything is judged, labeled, and sentenced before it’s ever understood.

And sometimes, it wears very nice clothes.
Sometimes, it sits in pews.
Sometimes, it speaks softly about love while quietly planting fear.

Not because faith itself is broken—but because people, trying to make sense of the infinite, often reach for control instead of compassion.

And fear… fear is easy to teach.
“You are small.”
“You are flawed.”
“You should be careful.”

And maybe we are small, in the grandness of everything.
But small doesn’t have to mean afraid.

Because when judgment softens—when the constant measuring, comparing, condemning finally grows tired—something else begins to breathe.

You notice your body.
Your life.
The quiet, steady fact that you are here.

And in that space, fear loses its grip.
Not all at once, not forever—but enough to let something truer speak.

I think of him every day.
And of all the people who were told they were wrong for the very things that made them feel alive.

They were never the danger.

The real danger was the absence of understanding.
The quickness to label.
The urgency to fix what was never broken.

What they needed—what we all need—is not correction dressed up as care.

It is love.

Not the kind that asks you to shrink.
Not the kind that trembles at difference.

But the kind that comes from someone who has sat with themselves long enough to stop being afraid of what they find.

The kind that says:
You are allowed to be here.
Fully. Loudly. Strangely.

Even if the world doesn’t understand you yet.