I don’t know, but maybe that’s the answer. Not knowing. I don’t know your life. I don’t know what you’re going through or what you’ve had to do to survive all your days before this moment. I don’t know. You can tell me, but I’ll never know. I only know me. I know my life, my choices and my mistakes. I know the moments I’ve been through. The sickening cruel thoughts slithering in my head. I know I was tortured and brutalized and I know sometimes I believed I deserved it. And that’s just it. That’s the connection. I’ll never fully know, but I know I deserve the life I have now. And if that’s true, then you must deserve a good life too. The connection is the unapologetic belief that no one deserves to feel how I felt at my lowest. The belief that in this short little life we have, no one deserves to live small and scared. Because if you deserve it, then that 21 year old kid from my past deserves it too.