At a very young age, I realized, “Everybody’s got something.” The “something” is the hidden battle, the hard bits, that may or may not be public. A secret, a trauma, a disability, a hardship, a “something.”

When a was, I don’t know, like 10…? Two neighbor kids “played school” and taught me my home phone number. Yes, 10.

I was a conundrum. My family often described me as “7 going on 30.” I was cynical and had an early mastery of dark comedy. I was a thinker. Yet, I struggled with some very