Middle Name: Dissent*

Because silence never suited me anyway.

I changed my middle name to Dissent. Not legally—that would be too formal. This one’s more spiritual. A private headline. A whisper I wear like a tattoo under the skin—just visible enough to get questions. Just dangerous enough to make people look twice.

I don’t know exactly when the shift happened.

Maybe it’s age.

Maybe it’s exhaustion.

Maybe it’s because whatever patience I had has officially left the building.

I used to give things the benefit of the doubt. Used to believe people meant well. Now? I’m not so sure. I think a lot of folks are just sleepwalking in shiny shoes.

I’ve always lived near the edge of things. Not quite inside the box, not fully outside. Close enough to the crowd to hear the noise but far enough to still taste the air. For a short time in my late teens/early twenties, I made it out completely—wild-eyed, unfiltered, mouth full of questions and fists full of confidence.

But rebellion at that age is often romantic.

You think it’s a bonfire.

No one tells you how cold it gets when you’re burning alone.

By the early 2000s, I caved.

Not all at once—life creeps in like a leak, not a flood.

I got tired. I needed money. I needed peace.

I needed to not be fighting all the time.

And so, I let life take over.

I trimmed myself down.

Smoothed out the snarls.

Tried to “do the right thing,” even though none of it felt right.

I regret that.

God, I regret that.

I wish I had rebelled harder. Louder.

I wish I hadn’t traded so much for safety.

But back then, I wasn’t ready to pay the cost.

Life was an onion, and I was peeling layers faster than I could grow them back.

Every choice felt like a compromise.

Every dream came with paperwork.

Some days, I’d lie on the floor and feel my chest tighten—not from panic, exactly, just a kind of slow internal clenching. A silent body protest. A coping mechanism.

I grew up in the 70s and 80s when everything was messy and bold.

There was colour and grime, and we were allowed to be ugly and loud.

Art didn’t have to explain itself. It was enough just to be.

Then, the 90s turned rebellion into fashion.

And the 2000s turned fashion into obedience.

We started branding ourselves before we even knew who we were.

If you were an artist, you learned fast:

You could be real, or you could be liked.

You could be bold, or you could be funded.

You could be strange, or you could be successful.

Pick two. Never all three.

So, like so many of us, I performed.

I cleaned up.

I made things people could hang quietly in their living rooms.

I smiled on cue.

I softened my edges so the room wouldn’t get uncomfortable.

But something in me never stopped grinding its teeth.

I still grind my teeth at night—

maybe it’s regret,

maybe it’s that I’m not rebelling hard enough.

I bite the inside of my cheek at family dinners.

Tap my fingers against my thigh in supermarket queues when someone says something casually cruel, and no one flinches.

My left eye twitches when I hear the news playing in the background like it’s entertainment.

I clench my jaw during small talk.

My body’s always known when I’m being asked to shrink—it starts bracing before I can answer.

I’m trying to get over that.

The shrinking, I mean.

But it’s hard work. Exhausting, even.

Why is it me who gets interrogated for being vegan when the interrogator doesn’t flinch at the explanation I didn’t even want to give?

There’s something deeply wrong there.

I can’t explain it anymore. I just say:

“You should do your own research—because you won’t believe anything I tell you.”

And then I add,

“I’m 100% sure you love animals. And yet, you don’t flinch at the cruelty your animal diet inflicts on them."

That’s all.

My art may make people question things.

I hope so.

But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have doubts.

Especially when the people closest to me don’t seem to get it.

It makes me feel like an alien.

Out of place on a planet obsessed with convenience, comfort, and pretending not to see.

Some days, I honestly wonder out loud:

"Am I crazy?"

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*Based on a true story

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Image courtesy: Sergey Vinogradov