A Morning That Didn’t Feel Like a Morning
Long before his scheduled talk at Dallas ISD’s Student Wellness Summit—an event intended to help young people navigate mental and emotional challenges—Solomon had woken with the heaviness he sometimes carried without warning. For years he’d spoken publicly about losing his sister, Ella, to suicide, transforming personal tragedy into a mission for mental-health advocacy. Yet some mornings, even years later, the grief still arrived as unpredictably as a lightning strike.
On this particular day, he couldn’t breathe in the house.
The walls felt too close.
So he drove.
No destination. No map. Just the Texas backroads and the slightest hope that somewhere between the miles, his mind would settle enough for him to speak to hundreds of children who needed him.
He ended up at a forest he’d never seen on a GPS map. The tree line was thick, the path narrow, the air wet with the scent of cedar and damp soil. Something about the stillness told him to walk—so he did.
Minutes later, he saw it.
The Stranger Between the Trees
At first he thought it was a person. A small figure, back hunched, arms wrapped tightly around its knees. But as he stepped closer, the shape shifted, as if sunlight—or his own perception—couldn’t settle on it. The creature’s skin appeared pale gray in one moment, translucent in the next. Its eyes were large, dark, and too reflective, almost like a pool of water rather than an iris.
It didn’t speak.
It only trembled.
And Solomon felt something impossible: recognition.
He didn’t understand why. But he recognized the fear—the kind that doesn’t need language.
For a moment, NFL games, defensive lines, stadium roars, and media obligations disappeared. It was just him and the trembling figure in the trees.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
The creature didn’t move… until it did. It lifted its head. And in its eyes he saw something he’d seen in his sister’s eyes in the last months before she was gone.
A plea no one had decoded in time.
The creature blinked slowly, as if mimicking a human gesture it had only recently learned. Then it reached a fragile hand toward him, palm open, trembling harder now—like someone begging not to be left alone.
Before he could step closer, a branch cracked in the distance. When he turned his head for just a moment, the creature vanished.
No footprints.
No sound.
Not even the slightest shift of air.
Just absence.
Carrying the Unexplainable
He should have questioned his sanity. Maybe it was exhaustion. Maybe stress. Maybe grief wearing a new mask.
But what unsettled him most was the feeling that the creature hadn’t been a threat—but a mirror. Its trembling was his trembling. Its fear was his fear.
And its disappearance reminded him of something he’d spent years trying to outrun:
People who suffer don’t always ask for help in ways the world understands.
That thought followed him all the way to the hallways of Dallas ISD.
“We’re Not Superheroes. We’re Humans Trying to Make It Through.”
By the time he arrived backstage at the summit, the auditorium buzzed with chatter. Posters with bright colors lined the walls: It’s OK not to be OK. Speak Up. You Matter.
Teachers whispered about last night’s Cowboys win. Students clutched notebooks, hoping for autographs. Administrators rehearsed their introductions.
But Solomon sat quietly in a folding chair, elbows on his knees, staring down at his hands.
He still felt the creature’s trembling inside his chest.
His turn to speak came faster than expected. The principal greeted him with a warm handshake.
“Your message means a lot to these kids,” she said. “Some of them are going through things we can’t imagine.”
Solomon nodded.
Yes, he thought. Some things truly can’t be imagined.
He stepped onto the stage.
“Look,” he said without preamble, “I know you see us NFL guys on TV and think we’re invincible. But I’m here to tell you the truth: We’re not superheroes. We’re humans trying to make it through just like you.”
The room went silent again—this time with purpose.
He shared stories he rarely shared publicly. About Ella. About the nights he didn’t want to get out of bed. About the pressure to stay strong for fans, teammates, coaches—and how that pressure nearly crushed him before therapy helped him rebuild piece by piece.
He didn’t mention the creature.
He wasn’t ready.
Not yet.
Students Who Needed to Hear the Truth
The reactions were immediate.
A sophomore girl wiped tears discreetly with the sleeve of her hoodie. A group of middle-school boys lowered their eyes, suddenly unsure how to hold so many emotions at once. One teacher placed a hand over her heart.
And in the fourth row, by the aisle, sat a boy who hadn’t spoken a word to anyone in weeks. His father had left the family in the middle of the night two months earlier, and he’d been walking the hallways of school like a ghost ever since. Today was the first day he’d attended the summit—because his counselor gently insisted.
Solomon noticed him.
The boy wasn’t crying. Just watching with a kind of desperate intensity.
The same intensity the creature had shown.
After the talk, the boy approached him slowly.
“Do you… ever feel like something’s wrong with you, but you don’t know how to explain it?” he asked.
Solomon crouched to meet his eye level.
“All the time,” he replied. “But that doesn’t mean something’s wrong with you. It means you’re carrying something heavy. And heavy things are meant to be carried together.”
The boy nodded, breathing shakily. For the first time in months, someone finally understood the question behind his silence.
Outside the Spotlight, the Mission Continues
In the lobby after the assembly, parents, counselors, and teachers gathered around Solomon with gratitude. They thanked him for his transparency, for sharing pain instead of hiding behind fame.
But amid the handshakes, one comment caught his attention.
A counselor said, “You have a gift. Not everyone can sense when someone is hurting.”
A chill ran down his spine.
He sensed something hurting hours earlier in the forest.
Something that wasn’t fully human.
Something that still lingered in his mind like a bruise.
He decided he needed to return.
