The shoes were polished enough to see your own disappointed reflection, and the collars were so starched they felt like armor. Sundays had a way of sneaking up on you, like a wave that looks innocent until it knocks you over. I once believed those silent corrections—the unspoken ‘fix this’—were simply part of the air I breathed.
There was a boy beneath all that fabric and formality, a child who thought he had to wait for permission to be himself. The boy who sat quietly, watching the world through eyes that were told to be humble. He was already enough, but nobody told him that. Not out loud, anyway.
Those Sundays taught him to be polished and proper, but they also whispered that freedom wasn’t waiting for him at the end of somebody else’s script. It was sitting inside him, quiet and alive, waiting for its own cue. It took years for him to trust it. Years and a few wrong turns, which, honestly, were the right ones.
Now, when I look back at those shoes and collars, I see them for what they were: a dress rehearsal for a role I never needed to play. The boy beneath the suit was enough, even when the world tried to mold him into something easier to bless.