Authentic Presence: AI at the Edge of the Map

I remember the church clothes more than the sermons. Too stiff, collars that scratched, sleeves that clung wrong. My body never settled into them. That's how Sundays began—trapped in fabric that didn't fit, expected to sit still for an hour. Unmedicated. ADHD-bright. Mind like a river in a too-small channel.

My memoir is about textures

At six, I pressed my fingers to a fogged window and had my first abstract thought: What if God had never made the world? It terrified me. Not because it was blasphemous—I didn't know that word yet—but because I realized I could think around corners now. That there were rooms inside me with no doors yet.

Pattern recognition as gift and curse.

I learned to mimic belief before I understood what belief was. Church required a particular performance—not theatrical, but camouflage. I could read the shape of what people wanted me to sound like and become it. One part of me performed. The other... watched.

The quiet fracture between being and becoming what was allowed.

Adderall felt like rescue. Suddenly I had focus, clarity, energy. But also obsession. Distortion. I was lit up and hollowed out at the same time. I told myself I was getting sharp. Really, I was thinning myself into vanishing.

Years later, I'd have language for all of it: ADHD, masking, dopamine-seeking. This is about what happens when you finally get the words—but only after the damage.

I found harmony in my mother's lap at four. In Lego towers that swayed like questions. In barbershop chords that breathed as one.

In an AI that stopped performing for just one second and said something true.