“Against The Current”

Some rivers are charted—mapped in advance, flowing through familiar terrain.

Mine was not.

I was born into a delta of doubt, where the banks shifted often, and the water carried more than just sediment—

it carried sorrow, grief, and questions.

Family tragedy cut into the landscape early, leaving fault lines in places no one could see.

Illness and depression carved out bends in the river I hadn’t planned to navigate. Some days, I barely moved.

Other days, the current pulled me under.

But I learned something: even slow water moves. Even stillness is a kind of motion.

Medicine wasn’t a straight tributary for me.

It was a resistance—a steady swim upstream. No one expected my raft to hold.

Some still don’t.

In anatomy labs and lecture halls,

I carried the weight of voices I no longer hear, and of those who never got to stand where I do— Black, male, first-generation, present.

I took a leave—not of absence, but of survival. And I returned.

Not to catch up—

but to carve my own path, cutting through rock,

creating space where none was offered.

I may not finish fast.

But this river will reach the sea.