Mah Grove (2016-2020)

Returning to my adolescence.

It was the last carefree time, yet also one of the darkest—
complicated, raw, painful.
I lost a friend... at the hands of another friend.
In Coconut Grove, I found echoes of who I once was,
and glimpses of what I’ve become.

It was that time of rebellion—when you tell your parents to fuck off.
In my case, it was my father.
Love and hate.
Conflict and closeness.
I needed to retrace my steps,
to return to my adolescence,
to truly begin healing.

I’ve reconnected with old friends I’d lost over the past four years—
just as I lost Roberto at 22,
to the hands of someone I once called a friend.
Time does heal.
It stitches the wounds,
but it leaves behind scars you learn to live with.
I am at peace now.

To heal the grief, to stop running, and to find a kind of home—
something familiar, something marginalized.

Adolescence was the peak of my conflict with my father.
To grieve, I had to return to that breaking point.
Losing a friend at 22 marked the end of my youth.
Losing my father at 29 marked the beginning of my adulthood.

That time was a storm of raw emotions and broken dreams.
I lost so many good friends.
To move forward, I had to relive it all—
from an adult’s gaze, not a teenager’s.
To finally close that drawer.
To never open it again.

So why am I talking about it?
I am at peace now.

I had to go back—
to the dreams that felt infinite,
to the rage,
to the generational clash,
to the social margins,
to the wild, restless cry inside me.
I had to confront the enemy within—myself.

In those faces, those places in Coconut Grove,
I rediscovered my story.
The friends I lost.
The youth I buried in the suburbs.
The past I once felt ashamed of—
now, I see its quiet, extraordinary poetry.

I am at peace now.

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