The First Scar

Every scar has a story.

Not the clean kind — not the ones you frame and hang on the wall and point to at dinner parties. The kind that forms in the dark, when no one is watching, when you’re not even sure you’ll make it through.

This is that kind of story.

I’m not starting at the beginning because the beginning is a lie. We all construct beginnings in retrospect, tidying up the chaos into something that sounds like intention. The truth is messier. You wander into things. You commit before you understand what you’ve committed to. You find yourself halfway up a mountain wondering how you got there and whether the top even exists.

So I’m starting here. In the middle of it.

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A few things you should know before you keep reading:

I don’t write for advice. I write because the alternative — carrying all of it in my head — is worse. If something I write is useful to you, that’s good. If it isn’t, that’s fine too.

I write slowly. These aren’t posts dashed off in an afternoon. They’re earned.

I’ll be honest in ways that make me uncomfortable. That’s the only kind of writing worth reading.

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The title — Scars from the Trenches — isn’t metaphor for glamour. Trenches are ugly. Cold. The opposite of the highlight reel. But that’s where things actually happen. Not on stage. Not in the pitch deck. In the trench, at 2am, with the thing you built breaking and your team looking at you.

That’s where the scar forms.

This is where I write about it.