Who Will Save Alex

A Reflection on Lost Sons, Fading Fathers, and the Fight for Worthiness

I. The Boy with No Inheritance

Alex was never handed over to the world…
He was discarded into it.

At sixteen, the ones who were supposed to anchor him let go.
And he drifted – first through liquor, then through smoke, then through everything else that numbed the ache of being unchosen.

He doesn’t say this out loud.
But it echoes in the way he walks, in the way he laughs like it costs nothing,
in the way he looks surprised every time someone stays.

And when you ask who Alex is, you might hear a name.
But what you’re seeing is a question:

“If the world throws you away young,
what parts of you grow up… and what parts rot?”

II. The Minister’s Second Sermon

Far across the sea, in the fading light of his calling,
a father bends his back once more…
not at the pulpit this time, but in a silent, private prayer over Alex.

He says it’s for the boy.
But I know it’s for the echoes in his own chest.
The words he never said to me.
The boy he never quite understood; Until perhaps now, when it’s too late to redo,
but not too late to try again… with someone else.

He fights for Alex with scripture and support.
He casts nets of hope into the waters Alex is drowning in.
Not out of blindness. But out of something more complicated than love:

A strange alchemy of guilt, grace, ego, empathy, and the ache of unfinished fatherhood.

III. My Part in This

I watch from across realms.
Not as a preacher, not as a boy, not even as a rescuer,
but as a witness.

I, too, know the taste of exile
The rawness of being misread.
The fury of being shaped by a father I didn’t always choose to resemble.
Yet here I am. In voice, in fire, in resolve…
His son still.

And I look at Alex and I wonder…
Who saves a boy like that?

Not the preacher.
Not the warrior.
Not the handout or the rehab pamphlet.

No, if he is to be saved at all,
it will be because something inside him finally believes he’s still worth the fight.

IV. Sons of the Silent Storm

Alex is not alone.

He is one among thousands…
Young men with calloused hearts and shaking hands,
trying to build themselves from the ashes of absent parents,
confused morals, and a society that calls them privileged while offering no passage into manhood.

We used to have rites.
Now we have algorithms.
We used to have uncles and elders.
Now we have influencers and addictions.

No map.
No mirror.
No forge.

And yet they are told to “man up”…
without being shown what that means when your soul is fractured, your worth undefined, and your pain unspeakable.

These are the sons of a silent storm.
They cry inward.
They burn quietly.
They fail loudly.

And we, as a culture, are only now waking up to the truth:

That the cost of neglecting young men is not just their ruin…
but the ruin of everything they would have protected, built, or fathered.

V. The Moment He Showed Up

There was a time my father did show up.

Not perfectly.
Not with all the right words.
But with presence…
And in that moment, it was enough.

He stood in the wreckage of my becoming and didn’t try to fix it; He simply stood.
And for a son long lost in shadow,
that was the first warmth I’d felt in years.

That moment did not heal me.
But it held me.
And sometimes, that’s what gives a man the strength to heal himself.

The truth is, he’ll never believe it was enough.
He will carry that ache to his grave.
And maybe, one day, when my own son looks at me with wounded eyes,
I’ll feel it too.

Because every good father lives with a question mark where certainty once stood.
Every father worth his name doubts whether he gave enough,
was enough,
loved enough.

But here I am – shaped by that moment, strengthened by it, walking taller not because I was saved…
But because I was seen.

And that is what I now carry forward.
Not perfection,
but the resolve to show up,
especially when I fear it’s already too late.

VI. The Real Question

The title is wrong.
Not “Who will save Alex?”
But rather:

“What will awaken him?”
What moment will reach in deep enough to unfreeze the boy beneath the scars?

A letter from his mother?
A song from his childhood?
A stranger who looks him in the eye and says: “You are still someone.”
Or maybe… just maybe… the echo of a father’s redemption not meant for him, but borrowed nonetheless.

VII. The End That Isn’t

He may never come home.
Or he might arrive broken and blinking, barefoot across the threshold,
half a man, but wholly trying.

And maybe that’s enough.

Because not all wanderers want to be found…
But all deserve to know they can be.

And that’s what this is, in the end:
Not a rescue.

But a reminder.

“The gods did not always send warriors.
Sometimes, they sent ravens –
to whisper in the ears of the lost.”

~Odin Marcusson