After decades of isolation and rejected writing dreams, one man discovers unexpected purpose through his daughter—
I’ll start with a warning: not everyone will connect to this post.
Some readers will see it as self-indulgent. A few might find inspiration in it.
As always, I’m laying things out exactly as they are—no filters, no smoothing the edges.
A Life of Loneliness
I’ve been alone my entire life.
No friends. No romantic relationships. Just me with myself—isolated, closed off in my room, disconnected from the outside world.
A realistic and tragic version of the Seinfeld “Bubble Boy.”
The roots of my social anxiety deserve a post of their own.
From an early age, I escaped into imagination.
My refuge was the neighborhood library. Thanks to my mother, who taught me to read at a very young age, I was quickly absorbed into the parallel worlds offered by the countless books I devoured as a child.
Since my social life resembled Tom Hanks’ character in Cast Away, I willingly surrendered to fictional narratives and merged with them completely.
That’s how my personality was shaped: imagination as shelter from reality—and, at the same time, my writing slowly sharpened.
Writing as a Safe Haven
I started writing very young.
Beyond the illusion of creating worlds, I quickly realized this was my advantage—my way of trying to find my voice.
That voice was frightened, hidden even from me, its own owner.
As a child, I wrote short stories.
In high school, when my social situation became unbearable, I was already writing full novels.
Trapped in illusion, I was certain I was on my way to becoming a rich and famous writer.
I even imagined myself driving a Ferrari F40—then the ultimate symbol of success.
Rejection After Rejection
But every book I wrote was unanimously rejected by publishers.
They piled up in a drawer, and I couldn’t understand why.
I consider myself an objective person.
Deep down, I believed my writing was no less—and sometimes even stronger—than that of authors I grew up admiring and who later became legends.
The failures didn’t stop me. I kept writing.
Maybe because I believed I could.
Maybe because I couldn’t do anything else.
Writing was the only way I knew how to express myself and feel useful in some small way.
But the rejections continued.
Slowly, they cracked my confidence and undermined what I thought was my one safe bet: writing.
My home turf. The place where I was supposed to feel like a shark in water.
The Greatest Professional Failure
The failed attempts continued through military service and into my student years.
At 25, I wrote what I was certain was my masterpiece. I was convinced no publisher could ignore it.
I was wrong.
After yet another rejection, I found comfort in a small publishing house—comfort I later deeply regretted.
To escape that contract, I had to pay a significant sum just to reclaim the rights to my own book.
The next two books were self-published—and failed painfully.
Gradually, the conclusion became impossible to ignore:
the world wasn’t interested in my voice,
or in my attempts to find it.
The Necessary Final Defeat
I’ve known many failures in my life, but writing is without a doubt my greatest professional one.
I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember, and for some reason I always believed I had something meaningful to offer.
I gave up countless times—and always came back.
Because writing was my safe place.
The most painful failure came last.
I translated one of my self-published books into English and tried my luck on Amazon, hoping it would finally stabilize me financially just before my daughter’s expected birth.
The investment was huge.
The cover was stunning.
The title unforgettable.
And the failure—absolute.
I probably needed that spectacular defeat to finally understand:
this was not the path.
The Voice That Never Dared to Speak
Maybe I always failed because I never truly found my real voice.
It buried itself deep inside me, wrapped in layers of protection, afraid to be exposed—even to me.
Over time, it became clear:
it wasn’t that the world wasn’t ready for my voice.
I wasn’t ready to reveal it.
Real writing comes from strength, not fear.
And I lived in fear for most of my life.
Fatherhood as a Turning Point
As Sara’s birth approached, I wanted to share my anticipation with the world—the meeting with fate that was drawing near.
But I still wasn’t ready.
I needed first to become a father.
To experience love for the first time.
To feel.
To become whole.
Through this blog, while telling the story of my relationship with my daughter, I’m also telling the story of my life.
After 52 years of searching, I may have finally found myself.
Finding My Voice
Only now, as I write about my life as it truly is, I finally hear my own voice—
not as imagination, but as lived experience.
Sara helped me find it.
My inner strength.
My identity.
I, who spent a lifetime locking my emotions in a bunker even Saddam Hussein would have felt safe in,
now find myself hugging, kissing, saying “I love you”—
spontaneous, primal, pure.
It’s Never Too Late
All the years I spent hiding from the world, I will now make up for through Sara.
I’ve been given a second chance to begin again—and this time, I have no intention of missing it.
It is not good for a person to be alone.
Only when you climb out of the quicksand of loneliness do you realize how deep you were trapped—
and that it’s never too late to start loving.
That lonely child, once so lost,
has finally found his voice.lost,
has finally found his voice.
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Read Next
If you’d like to read more about Sara and our life together, here are two more posts you might enjoy:
Beyond the Blog
Alongside this blog, I also give talks about late fatherhood, surrogacy, and the emotional journey of becoming a parent later in life.
Sara and Me 