I write because disappearing and dying are not always the same thing.

My work begins where the official explanation ends: with the person still breathing—and still breaking—beneath the diagnosis. I have been a Marine, homeless, addicted, positive. I've been praised as an inspiration, dismissed as a problem, trusted as an engineer, and accused by a machine of not being real. I don't write to turn my experiences into literature or myself into a writer. I write to be heard. To be seen. To make a difference, if I'm lucky.

I'm not interested in conveniently incomplete truths or compassion from a comfortable distance. I've spent most of my life becoming the kind of man I was once taught to fear. Compassion can preserve hierarchy. Gratitude can demand payment. Concern can justify surveillance. Trust can outsource moral responsibility. But what if the identity you use to establish your goodness is the mechanism preventing you from seeing what you are doing?