The Sergeants Daughter | Chapter Two

Chapter Two:

Chameleon Skin

I’ve worn so many skins.

The good daughter. The brave girl. The quiet one. The artist. The ghost.

I mastered how to adapt—how to shape-shift into what the moment needed, what the room required, what wouldn’t cause alarm or too many questions. That’s the thing about being a chameleon: you learn to disappear in plain sight.

But what no one tells you is that after a while, you forget your original color.

I left Baltimore because the map was too familiar and the air too thick with memories. I thought Denver, with its mountains and newness, would offer clear skies and clearer answers. I thought maybe a degree—letters next to my name—would become the compass I never had. A north star. Something solid to replace the father-shaped hole in my life.

But even here, Summa Cum Laude, smarty pants, it’s been a path made up of borrowed directions.

Art created because it fit the grant application.

Conversations nodded through even when my spirit had long left the room.

What happens when you follow a map that was never yours to begin with?

You get lost. Beautifully, painfully, quietly lost.

And still… I keep trying.

A few days ago, I broke my foot again. Same one. Same pain. This time, it was while climbing a ladder to hang old art—work I made when I still felt things. When making was prayer. I laughed through the pain at first, like it was some cosmic joke. But the truth is, it wasn’t just the bone. Something else snapped too: the illusion that I could keep going like this. That I could keep pretending this life still fit.

Dad’s birthday is this week.

Five years.

Five years of pretending I was fine.

Five years of picking up pieces and gluing them into something that resembled progress.

Five years of building a world where I could survive, but not fully live.

He was a man of discipline, my father. But he was also a man of vision. He saw the world through a lens, literally—framing moments, catching light. I never told him how much I envied that. His clarity. His steady hands. His focus.

Now I stand here, limping slightly, but more certain than ever:

I don’t want to keep camouflaging.

I want to live in a color I chose.

Not one I adapted to.

So this is the beginning of my transition—not to a new city, but to a more honest version of myself. One who isn’t afraid to abandon the map. One who remembers that her father saw the world differently and taught her, without ever saying it outright, that vision is something you shape from the inside out.

Happy birthday, Dad.

I’m learning to feel again.

Not just to create—but to live what I create.

This time, I won’t need to break something to start over.

This time, I’m walking toward fulfillment—even if I have to limp there.