By Patrick Hardeman – In and Out of Darkness

There are days when grief doesn’t knock.
It just sits down across from you.

This morning, that’s how it felt. Like sadness pulled out a chair, folded its hands, and waited for me to acknowledge it. Not dramatic grief—no fireworks. Just the quiet weight of a failed marriage, being far from home, and the feeling of being suspended between chapters with no clear bridge.

So I made coffee.
And I stayed at the table.

“You’re tired,” the voice said—not accusing, just factual.
“I know,” I answered. “But I’m still here.”

What people don’t often tell you is that strength doesn’t always look like confidence. Sometimes it looks like sending one text when you want to send none. Sometimes it looks like asking for help when pride tells you to isolate.

And that hesitation didn’t come from nowhere.

By this point, I was carrying a mountain of disappointment—failed services, broken agreements, and moments that crossed the line into outright fraud. Always followed by endless local excuses. Delays explained away. Responsibility blurred. Promises softened until they meant nothing.

Each experience chipped away at trust.
Not just trust in systems—but trust in myself for believing things would work the way they were said they would.

“You weren’t wrong for expecting competence,” the voice at the table said.
“You were just dealing with people who benefited from confusion.”

When you’ve been burned enough times, even reaching out feels risky. You start asking yourself whether asking for help will cost more than doing everything alone.

Still—I reached out.

I contacted someone I met when I first arrived in Portugal. One honest conversation turned into another, and suddenly there was movement. A friend of his will come next week to help with some work needed to help the house more viable to sell.

That help mattered more than the task itself.

Because after so many failures, after so many excuses, someone simply showing up—without drama, without manipulation—felt almost radical. It reminded me that integrity still exists. That not everyone needs to complicate what should be straightforward.

“This is why it meant so much,” I said quietly.
“Yes,” the voice replied. “Because it restored something.”

After that, I started researching my return from Portugal back to my family. Not a final decision yet—just information. But information can be grounding. It reminds you that exits exist. That distance is not destiny.

I squeezed in a workout. Showered. Let the water run longer than necessary.

And standing there, I realized something important about how we talk—to each other, to systems, to advisors, even to ourselves.

We often exchange information and call it communication.
But information alone isn’t understanding.

There’s a missing ingredient that rarely makes it into advice columns or professional language: the human element. The unspoken context. The lived experience. The electricity of trust. The way two people can hear the same words and walk away with completely different meanings.

“Not everyone hears the same sentence the same way,” I said aloud to no one.
“And that doesn’t mean one of them is wrong.”

Business likes clarity. Metrics. Evidence. Outcomes.
Relationships are messier. They’re layered with history, fear, culture, power, and longing. You can be technically correct and still deeply disconnected.

That’s where standards come in.

I’ve learned—sometimes the hard way—that maintaining baseline expectations for how I’m treated isn’t cruelty or ego. It’s consistency. I don’t ask for more than I give. I ask for alignment.

And still, that hasn’t protected me from one of the deepest wounds I carry.

What cuts me isn’t just personal betrayal.
It’s the broader truth of how easily Black men are slandered, dismissed, or flattened into caricature—globally, but especially in North America.

“You didn’t imagine that,” the voice at the table said quietly.
“No. I didn’t,” I replied.

When someone questions your integrity—not based on evidence, but on comfort or convenience—it hits a place deeper than reputation. It challenges your sense of self. And when that distortion is amplified by racial bias, it becomes soul-level violence.

What hurts most is how casual it can be. How people who once shared your table will repeat half-truths without hesitation. How circles close ranks. How silence becomes complicity.

And yet—I’m not shocked.

I’ve noticed a pattern over the years: when your moral compass doesn’t waver, it can make others deeply uncomfortable. Integrity has a way of exposing what people would rather not examine in themselves. Instead of rising to it, some try to discredit the source.

“That doesn’t make you arrogant,” the voice said.
“It makes you inconvenient.”

So here’s what I want to say—especially to anyone reading this quietly, wondering if they’re losing their grip on reality:

You are not weak for feeling exhausted by injustice.
You are not naive for believing people should treat you with dignity.
You are not wrong for valuing trust, nuance, and humanity in a world obsessed with optics and efficiency.

You don’t need to convince everyone of who you are.
You need to stay in alignment with yourself.

Some days that alignment looks like action.
Some days it looks like rest.
Some days it looks like sitting at the table with grief and refusing to lie about what you feel.

This article isn’t a conclusion. It’s a conversation. One I’m still having—with myself, with life, and now with you.

If you’re reading this before the holidays feeling unseen, misrepresented, or worn down: I see you. And I hope this reminds you that even on the heaviest mornings, movement is possible. Integrity matters. And your story deserves to be told—accurately, fully, and humanly.

I stayed at the table today.
And tomorrow, I’ll sit again.

It’s appreciated if you add a like, subscribe, and share this post with others. Then join the conversation, don’t be afraid. There’s plenty more where this came from, so check out some previous conversations.

Keep scrolling down for more of the conversation