The story of Tory Sanl begins in Nigeria, where he was born into a place of constant motion, but little direction. Life there was not easy. Work was scarce, opportunities limited, and each day seemed like a test of survival. For Tory, art was always a quiet refuge—a way to sketch meaning into the chaos.

Yet, even with a pencil in his hand or melodies in his head, he felt trapped.He made the choice so many before him had made: to leave home in search of something greater. He boarded a plane toward Europe, toward Cyprus, on a scholarship that had once promised him a future—only for it to collapse later due to insufficient funds, forcing him to seek a new beginning.

The stories he had once heard of a better life across the waters were quickly balanced by the darker stories—the ones of lives lost at sea, and dreams crushed at borders. Tory was grateful he had crossed safely, but the reality of immigrant life was far from what he imagined.Language became his first barrier. Greek words twisted in his ears like an unsolvable riddle.

Each encounter at the grocery store, on the bus, or in the street reminded him of how foreign he was. And then there were the papers—the endless negotiations with immigration officers who seemed determined to push him out rather than let him in. Every letter, every stamped rejection carried the weight of erasure.

In their eyes, he was disposable.In his second year, depression and anxiety set in. Days blended together, and nights brought no peace. He questioned what lesson life was trying to teach him. What was the point of starting over if everything was harder than before? Yet, somewhere in the silence of those long nights, he found a spark.

He remembered his purpose: his music. It called to him like an old friend, whispering that he had not traveled this far for nothing.But not all his struggles came from the outside world. Tory found himself distracted by love—or what he thought was love. He gave away trust he could not afford to lose. What began as comfort became a chain, each tear corroding his hope. “I took the blame,” he would later write, “because why not?” At twenty-one, his art became a mirror of this pain: the heartbreak, the loss, the self-questioning. He wrestled with lust, betrayal, and the weight of misplaced devotion.Yet, it was in those very moments of being broken that he began to sharpen his vision.

By twenty-two, Tory found clarity. His lens shifted. He saw not only the struggles but also the tools at his disposal—the voice he carried, the pen in his hand, the rhythm in his heart. He fell in love again, but this time with his music. And from that love came oxytocin, a joy that pulsed through his veins, a movement that carried him forward.Music became both shield and weapon. It was where he spoke the truth immigration papers could never capture. It was where he fought back against the systems trying to erase him. It was where he found belonging, not in a nation’s approval, but in the universal language of sound. Tory Sanl’s story is not one of simple victory.

His life in Cyprus remains a fight—a fight for papers, for recognition, for a space to breathe. But his music transforms that fight into something beautiful. From Nigeria to Europe, from despair to rediscovery, he writes the life of an immigrant not in ink alone, but in sound, in voice, in resilience.

He once wrote: “I fell in love with my passion once again Made love with it and now I feel the oxytocin I feel the motion, I feel well within.” And that is where his story, for now, rests—not in finality, but in motion. A life still being written, one note at a time.