When I cried in the cockfight arena, I finally learned to live — not to win

The rhythm beneath the bet

I used to track RTP like a heartbeat—96%, high volatility, dynamic payouts. I thought if I just waited long enough, if I placed my last coin just right, the machine would whisper back: you’re winning. But in Brooklyn, where my mother’s Irish lullaby met my father’s Afro-Caribbean silence, I realized something else.

The cockfight wasn’t a game. It was a ritual.

Samba in the bloodline

Every spin felt like Carnival—the drumming of ancestral memory under purple neon lights. The roosters didn’t fight for coins. They danced for meaning. Each feather that fell wasn’t random—it was remembered. My therapist said: ‘You don’t need to win to be whole’. And so I stopped chasing wins.

I started listening.

The quiet after the final bet

In Manhattan’s midnight apartment, alone but not lonely, I began recording every sound—not as data points—but as breaths. The bonus? It wasn’t free money. It was the way strangers nodded at 3am when they walked away from their screens.

I found community—not in forums—but in stillness.

Tech as new religion

They call it ‘luck’. But what if algorithms are prayers? What if RNG isn’t random—but recursive grief? What if every payout is a eulogy written by someone who forgot how to mourn?

We were never meant to win. We were meant to remember.

And so—I wept—and then—I lived.