Becoming Is Being: The Alchemy of S. Unknown

Black Twitter was never just a hashtag. It was a cultural force, a space where humor, grief, politics, and genius existed in the same breath. Blacksky is, in many ways, its most intentional successor. And within it, voices are finding each other again. One of those voices is S. Unknown. I came across her posts the way you come across most things worth reading online; I wasn’t looking, just scrolling, and then I suddenly stopped.

There was a clarity to the way she wrote, a philosophical sharpness dressed in everyday language that made you feel like you were overhearing someone think out loud in the best possible way. I sent a DM. She responded. And what started as a message became the conversation below. At 33, S. Unknown is a poet, a pontificator, and a philosophy lover who moves through the world slightly out of phase with it; not broken, not lost, just tuned to a different frequency than most. Her debut digital anthology is almost here. A collection of pretty verses, yes, but also a document of transformation, forged from the ruins of a marriage, the intensity of what came after, and the long, quiet work of learning to see herself clearly.

“Becoming is being. You already are who you dream to be. Wake up.“

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S. Unknown was raised by her grandmother during her preteen and teenage years. She offers this as a foundation. The generational gap was real, she admits, but looking back she’s grateful for it. It gave her an older soul, a perspective that often left her peers confused and left her feeling, from an early age, like she was operating on different terrain than everyone around her. She wasn’t the quiet kid. She was the talkative one, the observant one, the one who asked too many questions, specifically why and how. It got on people’s nerves, but it didn’t stop her. Even now, more introverted as an adult, she is still a talker, still watching, and still asking. What her upbringing gave her, beyond the early maturity, was an acute sensitivity to the gap between who people actually are and who others need them to be. She would spend years living inside that gap, performing a version of herself built from the expectations of the people around her. It would take a divorce to finally dissolve that performance entirely…

If there is a before and after in S. Unknown’s life, the divorce is the dividing line. But it’s not something she discusses with bitterness or melodrama. She talks about it the same way a chemist might discuss a reaction. With precision. Curiosity. A kind of reverent respect for what the process actually did. “I felt like salt dissolving in water,” she says. “Breaking down to fundamental parts to create a new substance. A new way of being.” She calls the divorce alchemy. And she means it literally, not in a pseudo-spiritual kind of way or the soft Instagram version of transformation, where everything happens for a reason and the universe has a plan. Her honesty transcends that.

While most would describe divorce as a traumatic event of grief, anger, and suffering, S. Unknown is quietly skeptical of the idea that suffering is a cosmic force at all. She suspects most of it comes from the hands of other humans and isn’t sure everything happens for a reason, although she almost never says that part out loud. At any rate, the divorce, whatever its causes, whatever its cost, broke her down into something more essential. Poetry, which she had written in grade school and then abandoned somewhere in the blur of growing up, came back.

This time, it was more than a hobby. It became an emergency raft, a lifeline, as the only way to express the things she couldn’t put into speech. “I did not become a poet,” she says. “I’ve always been one. I just stopped practicing and writing.” The return to the page was also a return to herself. And she didn’t return alone.

After the divorce came a relationship she describes only as intense. Intense, she clarifies, means revealing, overwhelming, and welcomed. She knows she probably should approach intensity with more caution, but she also knows it fuels her. She isn’t particularly interested in pretending otherwise. That relationship, brief as it was, gave her something she never had before. For the first time in her life, she felt genuinely seen. Not performing or managing someone else’s perception of her. Just present, flawed, a mess by her own admission, and met there without condition.

It’s a striking thing to hear from someone who grew up as the talkative, observant, question-asking kid. All that outward energy, and still she spent years invisible to the people closest to her, or more precisely, visible only as the projection they needed her to be. The men (and women) she encountered in that post-divorce period won’t be named, but she credits them all. They held up a mirror she never knew she needed. They pushed her toward the projects she’s working to complete now. And they weren’t famous or historically significant. Just people who showed up at the right time and refused to let her hide.

This is central to how she thinks about influence. Everyday people, she insists, have shaped her more than any historical figure. Life experience has been her true philosophy. She borrows pieces from various schools of thought, but she doesn’t pledge allegiance to any of them. She’s too interested in the actual texture of living to commit fully to any single framework.

One of the most quietly devastating things S. Unknown says, almost in passing, is this: “Sometimes letting go of someone is not about death. It’s about two people ending up on different planes of reality, still alive, just no longer able to reach each other.” She calls it grieving the living. And she’s been on both sides of it. She’s had to let people go. People have had to let her go. She describes it as devastating because this type of grief defies the usual comfort structures.

There is no funeral, no closure ritual. The person is just living their life somewhere else now, shaped differently than you, moving in a direction you can’t follow. This is the idea she feels most strongly about and believes most people misunderstand. We encounter someone at a specific point in time and we freeze them there in our minds. We relate to the person they were when we first knew them, not the person they’re becoming. S. Unknown thinks this is one of the great failures of how we love each other. People change. The only honest options are to change alongside them or to let them go. Clinging to a fixed version of someone is not loyalty. It’s a kind of slow suffocation. She explores this extensively in her writing.

The debut collection is structured in three parts. The first deals with the divorce and the relationship that followed. The second explores photography, specifically the phenomenon of it, the way a lens freezes a moment permanently while everything outside the frame remains infinite and imagined. The third is a gathering of poems that resist categorization. She worked with an illustrator who she says has effortlessly captured the meaning and emotion of the work, and a narrator she describes simply as an orator in every sense. The anthology is a complete sensory experience, built to be felt just as much as read. Photography, she explains, moves her because of the dual nature of what it captures and what it leaves out.

The mind fills the missing parts from experience, from fantasy, from a collage of what you have seen and what you wish into being. There’s something in that dynamic, between the fixed image and the infinite imagination surrounding it, that mirrors how she thinks about people in regard to identity, and about the way we are always only partly known to each other. She admires Nikki Giovanni and Orion Carloto. Her work, though, isn’t confined to a template. She rhymes naturally and uses personification, but she doesn’t build toward a predetermined shape. The poems arrive from feeling, so there’s no inherent formula.

Ask S. Unknown what shape she is right now, in this specific season of her life, and she will tell you the shape is not yet rendered. She’s bending and stretching in ways she hasn’t before. She doesn’t know what it will look like when it settles. And she doesn’t think five years ahead anymore. The most she can say about the future is that she wants to be happy and writing. She means that simply; she means it definitely.

What she’s waking up to, she says, are new versions of herself. And she embraces them all. Her tagline: Becoming is being. You already are who you dream to be. Wake up. It isn’t a motivational poster. Try, lived philosophy from a woman who had to dissolve entirely before she could figure out what she was actually made of. She found out she was made of poetry. She found out she had always been.

The following is an edited transcript of my interview with S. Unknown.

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Let’s go back to the beginning. Where did you grow up, and what was that environment like for you? Did it shape the way you see the world, or did you feel like you were always seeing things differently than the people around you? My grandmother raised me during my preteen and teenage years. The generational gap made things hard but looking back, I am glad she raised me. Because of that, I can come off as much older than I am. I am okay with that. For most of my life I have felt different and I have come to love that about myself.

You mentioned feeling different from your peers at a young age. What did that actually look like day to day? Were you the quiet kid, the observer, the one who asked too many questions? I was the talkative, observant, question asker. Which got on people’s nerves but that did not deter me. I am more introverted as an adult but I am still a talker. I observe myself and things around me. I still ask a lot of questions. Especially why and how.

Who were the first people in your life who made you feel seen? And on the flip side, who or what made you feel most invisible? I think the first person in my life to make me feel seen was someone I dated after my divorce. It was a short relationship but I met myself in a way I had not before. I did not have to hide any part of myself. I was flawed. A mess. And that was okay. I felt most invisible growing up and even into adulthood. I was the person everyone expected me to be and I thought that was “me”. It was just a projection of their expectations.

When did writing enter your life? Was there a specific moment, a specific feeling you were trying to get out, or did it just kind of always been there quietly? I remember writing poems in grade school. Then I stopped. Not sure why. Probably my laser focus on school. After my divorce, it became an outlet. A way to say things I couldn’t yet verbalize. I did not become a poet, I’ve always been one. I just stopped practicing and writing.

Your anthology opens with your divorce. That’s a bold choice, leading with that. What was that period of your life actually like, and what made you decide that it deserved to be the first thing people encounter when they open your book? This is interesting. I do not see it as a bold choice. It is a pivotal moment in my life and has shaped how I write. It’s a part of my story. During the process, I felt like salt dissolving in water. Breaking down to fundamental parts to create a new substance. A new way of being. The divorce was alchemy.

You described the relationship that followed as intense. What does intense mean to you? Is that a word you use with tenderness, with caution, or both? Intense means revealing, overwhelming, but welcomed. I probably should be more cautious with intensity but it fuels me.

You write about love, grief, sex, death, and religion. Which of those is the hardest for you to write about honestly, and why? All are equally as hard and easy to write about. Depends on the feeling I am releasing while writing or the feeling I want to focus on. They are hard because they reveal parts we usually hide from others and easy because the words are finally out my head and on the page.

You said poetry takes the shape of the writer like water in a container. What shape do you think you are right now, in this season of your life? The shape is to be defined. Not yet rendered. I am bending and stretching in ways I have not before.

Photography shows up in the second part of your anthology. What is it about a photograph that moves you? Is it about capturing something, or is it about what gets left out of the frame? The phenomenon of photography as a whole. The lens captures a moment in time as it is. Forever. What gets left out can be just as intriguing. The mind can add the missing parts based on experience or fantasy. A collage of what you have seen and what you wish to be.

You said everyday people have influenced you more than historical figures. Who is one everyday person, someone most people would never know, who genuinely changed how you think or how you move through the world? I won’t name them but the men I met after my divorce forced me to confront myself in ways I was not ready to. They held up a mirror. One I needed to look in. I also met women who made me step into who I am as well. I credit them all for the push to take on these projects.

You talked about seeing people as whole and the idea that we have to either change with the people we love or let them go. Have you had to let someone go because you couldn’t grow in the same direction? What was that like? Yes, I have had to let go and people have had to let me go. It is devastating. You think that person will always be there and one day they aren’t. Not because they are dead. They are just living on a different plane of reality. Grieving the living.

What does a regular day look like for you? Not the curated version, the real one, morning to night. What are you doing, thinking about, listening to? My days are not structured so I do not have a clear answer for this but most days are work, eating, social media, YouTube essays, films, music, writing, and reading. I am working on getting back in the gym.

What is something you believe that you almost never say out loud? I am not sure suffering is a cosmic force. Most suffering comes from the hands of other humans. I don’t know if everything happens for a “reason.”

Where do you want to be, not just as a writer, but as a person, five years from now? What does the life you’re building actually look like? I do not think that far ahead these days. The most I can say is, happy and writing.

Your tagline is “becoming is being, you already are who you dream to be, wake up.” What are you still waking up to? I am waking up to new versions of myself. Embracing them all.

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S. Unknown’s debut digital anthology is forthcoming. Follow her journey at her 👉🏾 social channels.

Artwork: Elijah Saddiq
Website: www.artbysaddiq.com
IG: @artbyelisaddiq
Email: [email protected]