"Faith, After All"

View of Peekskill: A final resting place for Painted People to exhale its last line.

This weekend, I nearly gave up. The apartment—yes, the one I mentioned before, the one that quietly threaded itself into my writing—had become a symbol of something deeper. I was depressed. Angry. Not just at circumstance, but at God. Or at the idea of God. The one I was taught to believe in. The one I still want to believe is real.

Faith is a peculiar thing. It doesn’t always feel holy. Sometimes it feels like a wager. A test. A dare. Will you still trust when everything feels rigged against you? Will you spiral again, punish yourself for wanting too much, for believing too hard?

I’ve been down that road before. I know the signs. The self-abuse. The quiet unraveling. But this time, something held.

The apartment was approved. And I didn’t falter. I didn’t fall. I got back up. Back on track. Not because I was strong, but because I was willing to wait. To ache. To believe, even when belief felt foolish.

Faith, after all, is not the absence of doubt. It’s what survives it.