Introduction to Part I – When Love Was Still Unimaginable

I didn’t know how to dream.

Not because I lacked imagination, but because I had never seen joy lived out around me—never seen love, or peace, or a life built on anything other than fear. Fear was the greatest gift my parents gave me: fear of them, fear of failure, fear of the world.

I grew up believing life would only get harder. Responsibilities would mount. Happiness was something other people stumbled into, not something you could reach for.

And so, when I arrived at Georgia Tech at eighteen, I didn’t dream about the future. I didn’t wonder what might make me happy. I chose engineering—not because I loved it, but because it seemed practical, safe, a shield against the unknown.

No teacher ever saw me. No guidance counselor ever asked who I was beneath the grades. In my family, invisibility wasn’t unusual—it was survival. Even among peers, I remained hidden in plain sight: a quiet boy who never raised his hand, never found the words, but who excelled on paper. Math and science scores, gleaming report cards—those were the only reflections I received. They showed me I could achieve, outperform others, endure difficulty. But no one ever asked: Do you enjoy this? Does it light something in you?

I had English classes, of course. I even found some quiet joy in literature. But I overlooked that joy, the way one overlooks a distant star when blinded by a nearer, harsher light. Psychology and social work—the fields that might have pointed to my deeper gifts—weren't even on my radar. No one told me empathy could be cultivated into a calling. No one told me that longing, imagination, and connection mattered.

And so I didn’t choose engineering so much as I accepted it—the way one accepts winter, never knowing that spring is even possible. I wasn’t living toward a vision. I was surviving. I had to pick something!

When I first walked into the Counseling and Career Planning Center that hot August day in Atlanta, it wasn’t because I was chasing a dream. It was because I knew, even then, that I wouldn’t make it without help. College overwhelmed me. Social anxiety suffocated me. Terrified me. I had no idea how to connect, how to belong.

I had never been taught to want. I had only been taught to endure.

If Child Protective Services had ever asked me if I needed help, I would have spoken for hours. I knew things were wrong. I wished someone would see it, name it, rescue me. But no one ever did. And so, survival became my specialty. Dreaming didn’t.

What I was truly searching for—even if I couldn't name it then—was attachment: a safe, mutual, loving connection. I had no model for it. I didn’t even know what I was missing.

But that, too, would slowly begin to change.

This first part of the memoir traces that unlikely transformation—from an invisible, fearful boy to someone who learned to speak, to trust, and ultimately, to love. First through the brief but life-altering connection with Celta. Then more deeply, more enduringly, with Lynn.

It is the story of discovering what I had never known to want. Of building a life where love was not just imaginable, but real.

I didn’t know then that it could all be lost.

That part comes later.

But you cannot grieve what you have never tasted. You cannot mourn the loss of joy if you have never known its fullness. And so this first half of the book is a love story—not only romantic, but transformational. The story of how survival gave way to something bigger: the fierce, breathtaking possibility of living.