This week’s Substack is about unbecoming.
If you’re scratching your head at “unbecoming,” plainly put, it’s the deliberate choice to release an old identity so that something more honest can live. It’s the heartbeat of my first short film, The UNBecoming, where that internal shift is brought to life through metaphor & imagery.
We’ll unpack that more in a moment.
But first, let me tell you about the last 48 hours I spent in Gary, Indiana.
When I pulled into the frigid city of Gary, the sky felt heavy & low. The kind of gray that flattens everything. Wind cutting across open lots. Empty buildings standing like quiet witnesses to a different era. I remember gripping the steering wheel just a little tighter, scanning my surroundings without meaning to. Not scared. Just alert.
The only thing I knew about Gary before arriving was that I had been selected for the Bill Johnson Film Festival. That & a passing mention of a song called Scary Gary by Freddie Gibbs. Transparently, I don’t even know the song. A friend said it when I told them where I was headed. That was my entire reference point.
Driving through the city, I could see how it earned its reputation.
There were blocks that felt abandoned. Windows boarded. Paint peeled. Infrastructure that looked tired. Gary has been through something. You can feel it in the stillness. It is a city that needs revitalization—a power up.
And yet.
The first night of the festival, we were welcomed with a dinner reception that felt less like procedural programming & more like familial hospitality. Sparkling grape juice poured into plastic flutes like it was champagne. A delectable charcuterie spread. Tender barbecued rib tips, sticky & smoky, falling apart with the slightest pressure. Pizza-on pizza-on pizza. A table of desserts that felt like someone’s aunt insisted on making sure there was more than enough.
There was laughter. Handshakes that lingered. People asking where I was from & actually listening to the answer. It felt like being folded into a family you didn’t know you had.
The next day, Dr. Vernon G. Smith (Dr. Smith), the organizer of the festival & one of the kindest-most thoughtful-most selfless men I’ve ever met, gathered the filmmakers & took us to lunch. Good old Southern soul food. Plates HEAVY with flavor. The kind of meal that slows your speech. That makes you sit back in your chair & close your eyes for a second just to register it.
If you know, you know.
I remember thinking, this is care. This is intention.
Gary-ians—we’re running with it—radiated warmth that completely disrupted the narrative I had quietly carried in with me.
And then came the final night.
The UNBecoming screened.
I was steady at first. Until I wasn’t.
There’s a scene where I hold a gun to another version of myself, a metaphorical death of the identity I could no longer carry forward. When the trigger was pulled, there were gasps in the room. Audible reactions. A woman behind me said loudly, “OH HOLD ON. WAIT A MINUTE NOW.”
I felt myself shrink. Shoulders up. Spine *tight*. I stared straight ahead, bracing lololol. Preparing for misunderstanding. For rejection. For someone to tell me I had gone too far… I was ready for it.
But when the screenings ended & the awards were handed out, something unexpected happened. One person approached me. Then two. Then five. Then ten.
They weren’t critiquing the scene. They were telling me their stories. About the versions of themselves they had to let die. The identities they had to shed. The behaviors they had to outgrow. The quiet deaths no one applauds but everyone survives.
They said the film felt like clarity. Like seeing something they had only ever felt.
And in that moment, standing in a city I almost underestimated, I remembered why I chose this work.
Not to be rich. Not for fame. But to offer language to what people are already living through.
To give shape to the internal shifts that feel lonely. To make the invisible visible.
Gary is unbecoming. You can see it in the boarded windows & empty lots. But beneath that shedding is warmth. Community. Care. Life that refuses to disappear.
Sometimes what looks like decline is transition.
Sometimes what feels like falling apart is actually the honest beginning of something new.
And maybe that is true for you, too.
Dear You,
There are seasons when everything you thought you were begins to fall away…
Old identities no longer fit. Masks you once wore for survival feel suffocating. Roles you performed so well no longer bring you peace. It can feel terrifying to shed what once defined you. To watch pieces of yourself unravel without knowing what will remain.
But unbecoming is not destruction.
It is the sacred work of release.
It is clearing the soil so that something truer can grow. Every unraveling makes space for new threads to be woven. Every ending is the quiet seed of a beginning.
You are not failing by letting go.
You are becoming by unbecoming.
Ask yourself:
Where can I trust that loss might be clearing the way for renewal?
How might unbecoming actually be the most honest form of becoming?
If you’re looking for ease, really sit with these questions.
This moment may feel like falling apart, but it is also the threshold of something new. You are not less for shedding. You are more for daring to.
Remember that.
With you in the shedding,
Kasim