Growing up in Los Angeles with status, visibility, and access, I carried social pressure long before I had the emotional vocabulary to name it. When my grandfather died — my first real loss — I didn't know what grief was. I only knew how to numb it.

I smoked. I drank. I partied. The behavior escalated until the wake-up calls came hard and fast. A DUI. A brain hemorrhage. Eleven months later, two shots to the leg and one just above the eyebrow. I woke up in a hospital bed on my 22nd birthday with a priest praying over me. My clarity in that moment was simple: I don't want to die.

I stopped smoking. I stopped drinking. Twelve years sober. But sobriety didn't equal healing. I still had anxiety. I still carried unprocessed grief. I survived, but I hadn't yet lived.