#ItGetsBetter: A Tale of Healing and Success

Just a few days ago, I felt like the most blessed man on earth, on top of the world. In fact, on more than one occasion this year, I've become overwhelmed with happiness as I reflected on everything going on in my life. I am blessed with an incredible husband, a fantastic career, two crazy puppies, a beautiful home, a sense of warmth and security, and a community that has welcomed me with open arms, showing me what love in action can look like.

Many people can attest that I didn't come from very much to begin with. I grew up well below the poverty line in a "working-class" immigrant home on the Southwest Side of Chicago, where the best examples of living one's best life at the time revolved around not simply dying young and not winding up behind bars. Despite all of this, I managed to change the entire trajectory of my life over a decade ago—at the age of 14, right before moving out of my family's home—when I experienced one of the most transformative moments of my life.

It had gotten pretty bad.

After surviving various trials and tribulations and gaining my share of physical and emotional scars, every experience in my young life culminated in a frantic and crippling Thursday night in the autumn of 2005. It was an evening in which I found myself at a crossroads and felt prepared to take the shortest and easiest path. I was ready to take my own life.

As I moved closer to the path I was so certain would relieve my pain, a force stopped me in my tracks. I suddenly became frozen. My senses completely shut down. I had been crying so forcefully that I could no longer see, taste, smell, or even hear anything. I was numb. One moment, I found myself defeated on the floor of my bedroom with what felt like the weight of a thousand tons crushing me down, and the next, I found myself extremely still.

It was the most intense form of stillness I have ever felt and would ever feel again. All that existed was my voice asking me, "What if?" and, even as I heard myself ask the question, I had to ask back, "What if what?" Without skipping a beat, I was answered.

What if you don't do this? What if you are on the path to a remarkable life, and you end it all now? What if there is so much more in store for you? More than you can even imagine. What if your future is bright and fruitful?

What if?

In that frozen moment, amid all those questions, I had a vision. For a short moment, I saw what maybe, just maybe, may have been a glimpse of what my future had the potential to look like. I saw myself leading a remarkable life. Up until that moment, I had only ever dreamed of what a remarkable life could look like, but I had never actually pictured myself as the person leading one.

Still confused and overwhelmed, I found the ability to take back control. In one fell swoop, I managed to make an extreme decision that would impact the rest of my life, mostly for the better but also, as I would learn later, a little bit for the worse.

I told myself that I had a sacrifice to make: my youth. I decided to commit myself to a life of no fun, no friendships, no play, no youthful indiscretions, no love, and no distractions. Priority number one would be to transform my vision into a reality for myself. I became convinced that if I did nothing else but work tirelessly and forgo my youth, I could achieve this remarkable life by the age of 40. I just had to make it until then. And from there on out, all I ever really wanted to do was be 40 years old and happy. I'm still not sure what made 40 the magic number, but the mission was set.

The following morning, I had an emergency session with my high school counselor, a man whom I had confided in for a couple of months. After informing him about the day before and revealing the fresh cuts I had inflicted on myself just to make it through the night, he took it upon himself to reach for a brochure and inform me about a place called Mercy Home for Boys and Girls. Mercy Home was a group home for at-risk youth in Chicago. In that one hour, we concluded that it was time for me to move out. Without skipping a beat, Fr. Sean O'Sullivan picked up the phone, dialed the group home, left a referral message, and told me that I had the weekend to inform my family I was leaving. And so began the next 15 years of my life.

It got better.

The truth is, I've done a whole lot in the past 15 years. During that time, I moved to a group home, attended a prestigious arts high school in Chicago, and moved to New York City shortly thereafter, where I earned my BFA in Graphic Design from one of the country's top design schools, launching my career.

I've worked with top brands and A-list celebrities in New York and Los Angeles and met my "impossible" goal of becoming the Creative Director of a national magazine by the age of 25. Somewhere along the way, I even managed to meet my husband, and co-build the foundation of our marriage, which has, in turn, led to the powerful partnership that has given light to our first business and others to come and has also guided me down a path where I've learned to understand, accept, and embrace love.

You can't get to your "best life" without healing.

Despite all of that, I still panic. I panic a lot. It would appear that whenever one single thing goes wrong or whenever one person or thing gets me upset, I spiral into a dark overthinking abyss where I suddenly have no sight of all the amazing things in my life. On the contrary, all the things I may be lacking in my life become front and center, almost as if to taunt me. It's as if a voice in my mind is asking, "What's wrong with you? Why does your life not look like this? Why don't you feel this way? Why aren't you good enough?"

Last night, I felt my breathing become irregular, and my chest tightened. The all-too-familiar symptoms of an anxiety attack were beginning to overcome me yet again.

Admittedly, I had been stuck in a dark mental state for a few days. I had returned to New York City for a four-month contract at a leading telecommunication company, but the biggest difference on this trip was that I had to leave my husband behind, so, for the first time in a few years, I was alone with my thoughts for a prolonged period. You could say I mentally reverted to a different time in my life, and the fact that I couldn't figure out what was wrong made it all the more frustrating.

After a few days of sulking in my melodramatic misery and relinquishing power to my inner thoughts, however, I was able to recognize what was causing my breakdown.

Started from the bottom, now I'm healing.

I realized that, for the past 15 years of my life, the passion of a troubled teenage boy fighting for his life is what's fueled every ounce of the ambition and fortitude I've utilized