They told us punk was freedom. They didn’t tell us about the shadows it would cast.

In the dark city, punk wasn’t just music—it was a doorway that never closed again.

We learned early that noise could hide pain, that speed could outrun loneliness, that leather and safety pins could armor a trembling heart.

On stage, everyone looked dangerous. Off stage, everyone was breaking.

Some vanished into heroin, some into prison, some into normal lives that felt worse than death. Some stayed long enough to become ghosts in their own scene.

We thought we were burning the system. Sometimes we were just burning ourselves.

Nobody printed flyers for the nights spent on strangers’ floors, for the friendships that turned into knives, for the quiet terror of realizing you couldn’t go back to whom you were before.

The shadow side of punk was never about rebellion. It was about survival.

And maybe that’s why I don’t romanticize it, don’t package it, don’t celebrate it in daylight.

Because punk, in its purest form, was not a festival. It was a descent.

And somehow, I’m still here—carrying the music like a dark inheritance.

The city refuses to forget.