LOH #265 - Old enough to know exactly where I come from. Young enough to still rewrite the ending.

The Script I Was Born Into

I grew up in a world that handed me instructions before it handed me choices.

Race told me what box to stay in;
Religion told me how softly to speak;
Patriarchy told me who I was allowed to be!

I was a child learning rules, not possibilities. And yet, deep down, there was a quiet part of me that kept asking,
Is this really all I’m meant for?

The Woman Ma Saw

My grandmother never tried to shrink me. Ma didn’t raise her voice: she didn’t need to. Her presence alone made room for me to exist without explanation.

I can’t remember the exact year she passed.

Honestly, I’ve stopped pretending I should.

My trauma never stamped dates - it left sensations.

A heaviness… a, a shift in the air.
A version of me dissolving so another could eventually emerge.

Old Enough to Survive Rejection - Young Enough to Keep Moving

Family rejection is a particular kind of education, right? Cuts deep…
It ages you quickly,
then leaves you to figure out what pieces are worth carrying forward.

It didn’t break me loudly.
It cracked me quietly.
And that kind of hurt doesn’t make you wise;
it makes you alert.
It makes you pay attention to who you become when nobody is clapping.

Young Enough to Fall in Love With New Ideas

Long before any of that pain, in 2013, I read Satoshi’s white paper.And something in me woke up.

Not because of Bitcoin.
Not because of the “future of money.”
But because the architecture felt familiar in a way my real world didn’t.

A system without gatekeepers.
A record that couldn’t be erased.
Rules that didn’t shift according to someone’s mood, title, or ego.

Growing up in rigid hierarchies, decentralisation felt like discovering the escape door I’d always suspected was there - I just didn’t know how to open it.

It wasn’t a career shift.
It was a recognition.
Like blockchain was speaking a truth I had always known intuitively:
control should be earned, not imposed.

Old Enough to Feel the Weight of My Past - Young Enough to Still Choose My Future

Some days I feel exhausted in my bones, like I’ve lived three lives before this one.

Other days, I feel like I’m just getting started - naïve in the best way, hopeful in the reckless way,
curious in a way that keeps me young even when the world tries to age me.

Maybe I’m both.
Old enough to know what shaped me.
Young enough to walk away from it.
Old enough to name my wounds.
Young enough to outgrow them.
Old enough to understand power.
Young enough to rebuild it differently.

And maybe (just maybe) that’s the whole truth:
I’m not ahead or behind.
I’m not too old or too young.
I’m simply in the (exact) chapter where all the versions of me finally meet.