CHAPTER ONE: Born in the Fire by Multi®

Some people are born into love.

I was born into war.

Not the kind with bullets or bombs. Not the kind you see on the evening news.

This war was quieter. Slower. More suffocating.

A war of silence, shame, and secrets — the kind where no one bleeds on the outside, but everyone walks away with scars on the soul.

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From my earliest memory, the air in our house felt heavy. You could taste tension before you even knew the word.

Whole conversations carried out in glances — most of them sharp enough to cut.

The house was always tidy. The prayers were loud. The Sunday smiles could blind you. But underneath it all was something dark and untouchable. Something no one dared name.

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I didn’t know the word dysfunction yet, but I knew the feeling.

From a young age, I saw things differently. Not just because I thought differently — but because I noticed patterns other people ignored. Where they saw “tradition,” I saw a loop. The same fights in different years. The same fake peace after every blow-up.

Where they saw “family,” I saw a cage wrapped in ribbons.

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The older I got, the more I realized: I wasn’t just in the family.

I was outside of it.

The black sheep.

The truth-teller.

The mirror they didn’t want to look into.

And the thing about mirrors?

They don’t lie.

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This was the war I was born into.

And I was about to learn how much it would cost to survive it.