Sable Parade, Who Are You?

  There is a character I dreamed of. His name is Sable Parade.

And I think, no, in all honestly I know he is the closest thing I have ever created to my inner child. Not in a direct obvious way. Not in the sense that he is simply me rewritten with a different name and a different life. It’s frustratingly deeper than that. More complicated. More unsettling. Because Sable Parade feels like me yet at the same time he feels like someone I will never fully understand and  that is a grief I didn’t expect. Like a genuine full on grief.

When I first created him, I thought I was doing what all writers do, building a character, shaping a narrative, giving life to something I dreamed. Imagined. But somewhere along the way, he stopped feeling like a construction and started feeling like a translation. Not even a complete one, just a translation of something buried, something younger, something I didn’t entirely have the language for. I think thats where the problem began since translation is never perfect. There are always things that get lost between languages, certain words, certain feelings, certain textures of emotion that simply don’t exist in the other form. And Sable Parade, well he feels like that. Like a version of me translated into a language I don’t fully speak. I recognise parts of him. I see myself in him. But there are pieces, entire depths of him that I can feel but never quite reach.

And I catch myself grieving that. Grieving the distance between us. Grieving the fact that no matter how much I dream him, no matter how much I write him, no matter how much I try to understand him, there will always be parts of him that remain just out of reach. I will never fully grasp the truth of how he feels. I will never know the exact weight he carries in his chest, the precise imaging of his thoughts, the way his mind moves when he’s alone. I can estimate it. I can write scenes that feel close, dialogue that echoes something that could be seen as real. But I will never be him. I will never inhabit his world in the way he does. That hurts in a way I don’t know how to explain properly.

Because Sable Parade has lived a life I haven’t. He has felt things I haven’t felt in the same way but with the exact same intensity, with the same consequences. I can imagine his pain but I haven’t bled for it the way he has. I havent fought for survival in the same way. I havent clawed my way out of poverty with the same desperation, the same urgency, the same understanding that failure is not just disappointment, it’s devastation. I will never know how smart he truly is. Not just in the intellectual sense but in the way he navigates the world. The way he reads people. The way he adapts, survives, calculates. There’s a sharpness to him, a type of intelligence that comes from necessity. From having to understand things quickly because there was no room not to. And I can write that. I can describe it. But I will never live it.

And i think that’s maybe that’s why I feel  this  grief. Because even though he is mine, my creation, my character, a being created from my very depths of my mind, he is also not mine at all. He exists in a space that I can access but not fully occupy. Like standing at the edge of a room you built yourself but cannot step into. Sable Parade spent his whole life fighting for something so simple it almost feels cruel: the ability to succeed without it costing him everything. He bled for it. Not realistically but  metaphorically either. He bled for the simple act of trying to become something more and I don’t think I will ever fully understand what that kind of fight feels like.

Because for him, failure wasn’t just failure. It was punishment. It was consequence. It was something that echoed far beyond the moment itself. A missed word, a wrong step, an inability to articulate what he needed, it wasn’t just frustrating, it was dangerous. It was something that could strip him of whatever fragile stability he had managed to build. There’s something deeply heartbreaking about that. About a child learning that success is not celebrated but required to live. That love is not given freely but conditionally. That there is no space to be soft, no room to fail, no safety in simply existing as you are.

Sable Parade spent his life discovering that there is no place for an overachieving child in the hands of love.

Not the kind of love he needed. Because the same hands that were supposed to guide him, to teach him how to walk, how to laugh, how to exist in the world, those were the same hands that rejected him. Not loudly. Not always violently. But consistently enough in every lifetime of his that he learned the pattern. And still, he stayed. Still, he reached. Still, he expected something from those hands. And that’s the tragedy of it.

It’s not that Sable Parade was denied love entirely. It’s that he expected to receive it from the very place that never truly offered it. He kept reaching for warmth from hands that didn’t know how to give it. He kept trying to eat from palms that were never open and I understand that. Too well. Because just like Sable Parade, there is a part of me, of baby Lupin that did the same thing. That stood there, waiting, hoping, adjusting, trying to become something worthy of being held gently. I think that’s where we overlap the most.

Not in the details of our lives but in the shape of our longing. Because both of us learned to look down when we walked. To stare at our feet instead of lifting our heads. Because god forbid we look up and catch someone staring at us, really seeing us. Because what if we look back? What if we hold that gaze just a second too long? What if, in that moment, they see us the way we see ourselves? And that fear, sure it can be quiet but it’s constant. It lives in the body. It’s in the way you carry yourself. The way you shrink slightly without realising it. The way you avoid eye contact, not out of shyness but out of something deeper. Something more protective. Because being seen is dangerous when you don’t believe what’s being seen is enough.

Sable Parade was born kind. So was I.

He was born seeking softness, seeking warmth, seeking approval, seeking something that wasn’t readily given to him. There’s something  fragile about that kind of beginning. Because when you are born soft in a world that doesn’t handle softness well, you learn very quickly that your nature is both your greatest strength and your greatest vulnerability. The little things make you the happiest but the small things can really hurt you.

Just like me, Sable Parade felt like a scared animal at times. Not hunted, not necessarily targeted but exposed. Like the world was something larger, something unpredictable, something that could turn at any moment. He wasn’t food for monsters, not literally. But he felt bare. He felt visible in the wrong ways. He felt like something that could be taken apart if the wrong eyes landed on him. And I understand that feeling too. That sense of being too there. Too open. Too readable.

And yet, despite all of that, despite the fear and the sensitivity and the constant awareness of how fragile everything feels, Sable Parade is light. Just like me. Because when you grow up knowing what it feels like to have the light taken away, you become very intentional about giving it to others. You become the person who softens rooms, who makes people feel seen, who offers warmth even when you are still learning how to hold it for yourself. We know what it’s like to have the light forcibly ripped away and that darkness is scary, it’s a type of fear words can’t ever describe, so knowing that type of fear, you give it to all.

Sable Parade is innocent in a way that feels almost painful to witness. Not naive, not unaware but hopeful. Still believing even after everything that there is something good to reach for. That there is someone worth chasing. For him, that person was Tyler, The Creator. A rapper. A figure. A lightpost. Someone distant, untouchable, larger than life.

And Sable chased that light the way moths chase flames, not because it’s safe but because it’s bright. Because it represents something more. Something beyond the world he knows.

For me, it was Ryan Coogler. A real man. A filmmaker. Someone whose work felt like proof that the thing I wanted was possible. And just like Sable, I chased that light too. Not because they knew me. I don’t think I’ll ever know the man who lit a fire inspire of me. Not because they ever would. But because sometimes, as a child, you need to place your hope somewhere. You need to believe that someone out there represents the life you’re trying to reach. Some could say that’s heart breaking, Two children, one fictional, one real both looking up at grown men who have no idea they exist, placing all this silent admiration, this quiet devotion, this hope into something that will never look back at them.

And yet… it mattered. It still matters. Because sometimes the people who shape you the most are the ones who never knew you were watching. For that reason, those people are the most genuine role models. That’s the final truth of it.

Sable Parade is me and he isn’t. He is my inner child, translated into something sharper, something harsher, something more extreme. He is a version of me that bled more, fought harder, endured differently. He is what happens when certain parts of me are pushed further, stretched thinner, placed in a world that demanded more from him than mine did from me and for that I will never fully understand him. I will never completely close the gap between us. There will always be a distance. A quiet space where his truth exists just beyond my reach. I think I’m learning to accept that. Maybe he’s not meant to be fully understood. Maybe he’s meant to be felt. Remembered. Respected. Maybe he exists not as something I can completely know but as something I can honour. A reflection. A distortion in the mirror. A translation of something deeply real.

Sable Parade is not just a character. He’s a human being I can never  ever meet and for that I grieve. Every day.