The Man of the Future...

It wasn’t that long ago that I became Destin, and if you would’ve met me just a few years ago, you would’ve met someone else entirely. Someone I don’t talk about often, but someone I know all too well…
His name was T.
He wasn’t evil. He wasn’t a monster.
He was just a boy molded by pain.
T was angry, bitter, and weighed down by sadness that he didn’t ask for.
He was just trying to survive.
And let me tell you… surviving is not the same as living.

Because when you wake up every day surrounded by darkness, it becomes part of you. It becomes your normal.
You start to believe that the world is against you, that love is a trick, and that peace is a lie people sell to feel better about themselves.
Eventually, you stop trusting.
You stop hoping.
And worst of all, you stop believing in yourself.

And I carried that version of me for a long time.
He still lives in my shadows.
I hear him in the back of my mind when life gets hard again, whispering for me to let him free.
That I’m still him.
That I’ll always be him.
But I’m not.
And that’s the thing I had to come to terms with.

T was not the villain.
He was a shield. He was protection.
He was built out of pain, and silence, and nights crying in a room where no one checked in.
But I realized that if I ever wanted to actually live—if I ever wanted to build something better, not just for myself, but for my kids, for my wife, for the people who actually stayed—then I had to transform.

I had to let go of T, and lock him up in the prison of my soul.
And create someone totally new.
A battle-hardened disciple man.
The man of the future, not a prisoner of the past.
A man named Destin.
Someone that can look at me straight in the eyes in the mirror and not blink at the mistakes of my past.

You might be wondering, why does this all matter?
For the past three weeks, I’ve been dreaming about my deceased grandparents almost every night, and I have been wondering, what does all this mean?
And yesterday it finally hit me… I am now alone without the wings that helped carry me through life, the safety net that I always took for granted.
I am now living a raw and real life.

Because the people who made me feel safe, the ones who gave me peace without asking anything back, the ones who gave me love without conditions—they’re gone now.
And that silence they left behind?
It’s loud. It echoes.

Don’t take me wrong. I do still have people that love me here.
My beautiful grandmother, who is slowly being taken away from Alzheimer’s.
That hurts in a way I can’t even explain with words.

And then there’s my wife.
She’s the only one who sees me fully.
She knows my past. She’s seen the damage.
And she has always stayed rooted with me, bracing me against all incoming obstacles that life throws at me.

And then there’s the gems and most valuable things that life has given me.
My children.

Today, I stared at my child’s eyes, and I see him staring back at me, and in that moment I envision a bright future for them.
And I must remind myself once again—
Whatever path I take or wherever my life’s direction goes, my main and most important job in this life is to be the great father that I never had.

I must be to them what I never got, and I must work diligently to find out a way to teach them what I have learned, so that they grow up to be the wonderful human beings that they will be, and I must do all in my power to do this.

So you see, T was trying to use this moment of pain to come back.
For I am grateful to have him, because without him, there wouldn’t be Destin.
But I am no longer him.

I am no longer the pains of my past, but the joy and happiness of the future.
Those cold nights being locked alone in the basement.
The breakdowns accompanied by pure sadness.
The losses I have endured in these last several years.
The long nights and short tempers.
It was all building me into someone with a purpose.
A reason to be here on this spinning blue planet.

T was survival, but Destin will be legacy.
T walked through fire… so that Destin can build something out of the ashes.

And if you're reading this, and you're carrying your own scars, your own silence, your own heavy past…
I want you to hear me when I say this:

“You are not what happened to you. But what you choose to become.” – Carl Jung

You are not broken.
You are not a product of your past.
You are only becoming.
Becoming what is needed to thrive in the environments of the future.
You are evolving.
And your pain—yeah, it might be part of your story, but it is no way your final chapter.
Your past does not get to write your ending.
That job is only qualified for your future, and that future is what you make it to be.

And me?

I’m still writing mine.

This isn’t the end.
This is the beginning.
This is the shift.

As my beautiful wife says it best:
T was a beautiful boy from the past that had to give way… to Destin— the man of the future.