There’s a moment in Pac-Man that I keep thinking about lately.
You know the one—when Pac-Man eats the flashing power pellet, and suddenly the ghosts change. They lose their color. They flicker. They become something in-between. Not gone, not fully themselves. Just… suspended.
That’s what I feel like right now.
Not erased. Not lost.
Just temporarily out of phase with everything around me.
I’ve spent most of my life feeling like an “other.”
Not in a dramatic way. Not in a way that screams for attention.
In a quiet, persistent way.
In between states—still here, just not fully rendered.
I was adopted at a very young age—too young to understand it as it happened, but not too young for it to leave an imprint. I grew up in a family where I didn’t look like anyone. Where, even in love and care, there was always a subtle awareness:
You are here… but you are not from here.
And that’s not ingratitude. It’s not a rejection of the life I was given.
It’s simply the truth of the experience.
That quiet sense of difference showed up in other ways, too. I was the only gay sibling. Wired differently. Moving through the same rooms as everyone else, but tuned to a slightly different frequency.
Sometimes it was subtle.
Sometimes it was a flash.
Like standing in a group photo and realizing—just for a second—that your face doesn’t echo back anywhere in the frame.
Over time, I learned how to navigate that feeling.
I built connections. I built relationships. I learned how to belong in ways that were real and meaningful. But even then, there was always a layer underneath—a static. A hum of otherness that never fully went away.
There was only one place where that disappeared completely.
The studio.
When I’m making music—especially when I’m recording—I am not comparing, not adapting, not searching for reflection. I’m not trying to locate myself in anyone else.
I am just… there.
Present. Whole. Undeniably myself.
It’s the closest thing I’ve ever felt to a pure sense of identity.
And I’ve come to realize something about that.
Because I may never have children of my own, those records—those songs—are the closest thing I have to leaving my DNA in the world. They carry my emotional structure, my perspective, my way of experiencing things.
They are proof that I exist in a way that doesn’t require mirroring.
Right now, I’m going through a divorce.
Even writing that feels surreal.
If you had told me seven years ago that I would be here—navigating this, on my own, in a city where I don’t have deep roots—I probably wouldn’t have believed you.
And yet… here I am.
And here’s the strange part:
I’m doing okay.
More than okay, actually.
Living in my current space feels like existing in a kind of grayscale version of my life. The surroundings feel muted. Pixelated; Like the emotional connection to them has already started to dissolve.
But I’m still here.
In color.
That’s the part that matters.
For someone who has always felt like they didn’t fully belong anywhere, you would think this moment would feel like complete disorientation.
But it doesn’t.
It feels like… possibility.
Because if I was never fully rooted in the first place, then maybe this isn’t about losing something.
Maybe it’s about finally building something that actually fits.
Not inherited belonging.
Chosen belonging.
I’m stepping into a new apartment soon.
And once again, I get to decide everything about the space:
the tone, the colors, the energy, the feeling.
It won’t just be a place I live.
It will be a place that reflects me—without translation.
That’s new.
That’s unfamiliar.
And yes… that’s going to take time.
But I’m starting to understand something:
Maybe I was never “other” because I didn’t belong.
Maybe I was “other” because I was never meant to be defined by the spaces I was placed into.
Maybe I’ve always been someone who builds from the inside out.
So if I feel like a flashing ghost right now—caught between versions of myself—I’m okay with that.
Because I know what comes next.
The color comes back.
The shape returns.
And this time, it won’t be something I’m trying to fit into.
It will be something I’ve created.
For myself.
—E.