PORTALS

This past weekend I chauffeured my brother Blake and his wife Heather, along with their friends Ally and Tanner, to Lawrence, Kansas to attend a University of Kansas basketball game. They are all parents, and I was happy to help DD while they explored and celebrated a day together for themselves.

I went to KU. My freshman year was in 2007. I was supposed to graduate in 2011, but never officially graduated until 2015.

I never really knew how to get myself to fully participate in school. My whole life I relied on test scores to get by and had no real sense of what it meant to try, and I loathed being inside of a class room. I maybe did like 10% of all homework I had ever received in my lifetime. 

Growing up I had a strong sense of nihilism and allowed most pressures of depression and sorrow to pull me absently into my head instead of being present. The only refuge or space I found myself feeling comfortable and where I wanted to put my energy into, was amidst my friends and the social worlds I found myself a part of.

I was in a fraternity while I attended KU, but I never was particularly a “frat” kind of guy. 

What’s funny, is my first semester of college, when I was a pledge and getting hazed (rather intensely at times), was maybe my most fond period of college looking back. 

While we were there this past weekend, I went with them to a place called “The Hawk” in Lawrence. It is one of KU’s main staple bars, and a place I frequented weekly as a student there.

What I noticed while I was there, was feeling back into how uncomfortable I always felt whenever I was there. Drinking in order to match whatever energy everyone else was on, trying to fit in, and desperate to meet a girl to take home.  

I’ve been a full time artist for three years next month, successful in my pursuit to live a life using the talent, spirit and purpose God gave me. But I still felt anxiety as I drove past the old art and design building.

Cringing at all the memories of how much I ignored while I was there, how little I made true on what I had intended, wincing at all the excuses I made for one thing or another, all the lies I told my teachers and fellow classmates.  I had very little sense and sovereignty over my own authenticity at that time. Always buried within me though, a feeling one day I’ll figure it out.

I was also, and am, pretty extremely ADD.

The second semester of my freshman year, I took a Concerta for the first time. Concerta is an ADD medication mostly known as Ritalin. 

I remember almost inhaling an art history book, locked into an almost supernatural state of focus and fervor, loving everything I was reading and storing it all perfectly into memory.

I got an A on every test that year in my art history class. The class consisted of a lecture portion and a discussion portion.

When it came to the end of the semester. I dropped into my discussion class teacher’s office hours to find out where my grade was at. She told me that I had a C in discussion and since I had A’s on every test for the lecture portion, I assumed I would get a B average for the class, but she told me I wasn’t going to pass- because I never signed the sign in sheet.

When I got the syllabus to the class I noticed it said, that in order to pass you must have a certain attendance record for the lecture portion of the class. What they did back then was pass around a sign in sheet, to write your name into it when you were at the lecture.

My rational was, well, if I never signed the sign in sheet, I can claim ignorance to having known I was supposed to sign it, and then I can skip class. So I never signed it, even when I did attend the lectures.

I was furious when they said I wasn’t going to pass the class, but mostly I felt dumb and defeated. I felt sorry for myself, like some victim of the system, but I knew I screwed myself over on a technicality, with no one to blame but me. It hurt and I didn’t know how to really process or deal with things like that back then. I mostly wanted my Dad to save me using whatever he could do, as he had done in most other similar situations of my life.

I reached out the to the dean of the art history department and told her what was happening. I lied and said I never knew that I was supposed to sign the sheet. It was the night before the final exam, and she said not to worry and just take the final exam and it will get figured out.

I scored over a 100% on the final with extra credit.

But in the end, they still failed me.

They thought I may have cheated too, because my test scores were too high for someone who didn’t go to the lectures.

I was an illustration major, and the most important class of college, was my illustration course, second semester of my senior year.

I had been in love with / infatuated with / had crush on a girl named Margo, basically ever since my sophomore year, but that spring, after a very embarrassing experience in her home town of St. Louis during a Mardi Gras celebration, I swore I was done with putting my attention into her. 

That same weekend, I met a girl who I instantly really liked named Morgan, and when I got back to Lawrence, I saw I had a Facebook request from her.

The following weekend we ended up at the same place and I proceeded to very much fall head over heels for her. 

She would send me texts like “waking up to you is amazing”, and I felt like for the first time in my life, I found someone to have a genuine relationship with. 

I was going to the art and design building every night to finish my senior project. I was so happy to work hard on it, and when I left, I knew I had her to go see. I remember feeling this feeling, thinking “omg this is what I’ve been seeking my whole entire life.”

And after a couple months, she ghosted me.

It was a few days before the big senior show, and I got so sick from heartbreak, I  had a fever and flu like symptoms. I barely finished my project and I showed up late to the very important senior show which was being held in Downtown KC. 

Parents, teachers, staff, business owners, many people were there gathered to look at all of the work of the Design Departments graduating seniors.

When I showed up I had no place to go, and a women named Andrea who ran the department scolded me before showing me an empty table that was essentially away from everybody in a closet area.

I felt like crying and leaving, but my friend Lindsey Nichols gave me a spot on her table.

She gave me half her table space so I could show my portfolio, which really was a demonstration of my digital illustration skills using photoshop at that time.

Andrea told Lindsey that she was going to regret that decision to share space with me. 

Lindsey told me that it seemed like Andrea said that to say she wouldn’t be able to properly demonstrate or show her talents, making it harder for her to get a potential job from one of the attendees to the show.

I took it like, this woman hates me lol.

And luckily, Lindsey not only got a job that night from the premier design firm everyone was applying for, but years later she would help me build this website your reading this on. 

Back then after the show though, I was a mess, and I was so depressed, I chose not to go to the last class of my college career, which was a bbq at my teachers house. 

And because I didn’t go to it, well, that was my 4th absence, and I was only allowed three, so my teacher failed me. 

I was the first person in the history of the department to fail. And I failed the most important class of my college career.

I had to wait until the following spring semester a year later to re take it.

And so I retook it. I was also officially diagnosed with ADD and was prescribed aderall at the time.

I had grandiose plans like I always do, to finish something epic that I wanted to put together, but settled into my normal behavior and did just enough to get a D in the class. 

But, I still wasn’t going to graduate because I was two hours short of the credits I needed, because I had failed that art history class my freshman year.

I remember talking to my father on the phone, letting him know I still wasn’t going to graduate. He was furious, but what happened next I’ll never forget.

I’ve always had various sorts of mystical experiences and on this day, it was as if the sky opened up and a being clearly assured me, I was going to be okay, things were going to work out. Though I had no idea what I was going to do after school, nor had any desire to find a job, no real skills and my entire family was mad at me and thought I was a failure and a liar.

I was so ashamed, I left KC to go live in Denver with my friend Tom. And after a few days there I wrote this at the time.

“the dream is gone, im sitting her shaking, maybe its the caffeine but most likely its because im nervous. I dont really know what is coming next, Im watching the hills on netflix while the sound of my phone vibrating echoes in my ears. I dont want to answer it. I know my dad and brother are calling me, endlessly trying to get intouch just to degrade and criticize my behavior. I suppose its out of habit. Constantly avoiding the holes i dig by never acknowledging their existence. I guess i think if i dig far enough ill come out the otherside. Its ignorance really, but dont they say that i should be in bliss then. Not me. Not now. Heidi is bitching at some bartender cause her boyfreind told her to dance on the bar. She still looks good here, before she reconstructed her face and body to mimic some grotesque cartoon version she must have sculpted in photoshop. Damn, I dont know why she did that. I dont know why anyone would do that. Its quite depressing. Knowing that at a certain point there is no more edit undo. Etching your destiny. No return. She can never look like that again. But whatever, why do I care. Why does anyone care. ITs just sad. My hands are shaking. I feel like i may be on the verge of having another panic attack. I wonder If i would feel better or worse by answering my phone. I know I should, but willing myself to do something is harder than it sounds in my head. Cognizant of the right choices, but almost paralyzed to execute them. Maybe its some decease, or atleast something to blame it on other than self realizing that it all rests inside my own disabilities I have built and efficiently designed within my own soul. Imaginary machines that chain the locks from breaking open. Im kind hungry, the last thing I ate was a southwestern chicken chop salad from an overpriced restaurant adjacent to the building im staying at. It was my last 30 dollars. I should have spent in on something else, but fuck it. Was that what heidi was thinking when she destroyed her beauty, maybe. but what was she thinking that, why was i thinkiung that. I feel like sleeping, pilling on a few more hours of rest to the 12 ive already gotten today. WHere does the time go, this is my fifth episode ive watched, and the 3rd cup of iced coffee ive drank.  I think i should shower, I can smell myslef from the chair im sitting in. Crunchy. Someone should invent a shirt that perpetually applies deodorant. or some patch you could put on your skin that emits strong fine smells. Spencer is drinking tequilla with his buddies talking to the same bartender. Shes fucking sexxy though. I wonder if shed hook up with me. I bet i could do it. Tell her lies about my life to try and persuade her to come home with me. June 2012 

Needless to say, I wasn’t in a great place, but somehow, that vision, that reassurance I felt so thoroughly that particular day talking to my father, well, it came true.

I ended up getting a call from a man named Bryant.

“Hey Alessandro says your good dude and smart would you like to come work for us?”

Alessandro was one of my pledge brothers, and his older brother Lorenzo, who was also in our fraternity, had started an oil company, and Bryant was hiring me and two of my closest friends to work for them.

I got a plane ticket home with the remaining money I had.

1000$ my step dad gave me for graduating, though I hadn’t yet.

I went to fly out the next day, and tried to wake up Tom to take me, but he refused.

I found a cab and went to the airport.

The fare was for $55, and I knew I didn’t have that much. I had the cabbie swipe my card anyway. It was declined

I then asked him if he could run it one more time, and he accidentally typed in 55 cents, and it went through. On the clock it was 11:11 and I knew I was okay.

It was a miracle

And the rest of what happened with the oil company is a story for another time. But I can explain it like this. I basically entered into a flow state for years, having money, freedom, friends, time, support, autonomy. Living away from home and the nest of the past, I was able to find presence in myself as an individual in the world. 

This flow state peaked in 2015, when I had an artistic and spiritual awakening that led me back home to explore my subconscious waters and take the real journey to be the artist as I was always meant to be. 

I haven’t taken an aderall since last June 2025

And I’m learning how to lock in without it in a way I have never known at all. 

And so here’s the thing

All that stuff I faced back then

I still face it, but I have made it to a place where I have more discernment and capability. And everyday I ask for the strength to show up and focus, like I have never done before.

Ive got homework to do.