What’s happening.

When I was sixteen years old, over the course of five days, I was lost in the desert after a night hike gone wrong. Over those five days I survived, for the first couple days off of Analgin and a bag of quick oats and the company of my best friend. During that time, we faced a lot of trials, conflict… mainly the will to keep going even though you don't know where the end is. Rescue helicopters flew over us and went right past us. Trains would pass. We would try going to people's houses and no one seemed to be home in this vast empty desert. We eventually had to lean on each other, continuing to press forward, trying to find the will to take one more step. Oftentimes we didn't have that will, but thankfully the other did and vice versa. This concept of constantly pushing forward to keep going no matter what because you're not done yet. Because even though we were young, 16 and 18, we didn't know quite where our life was going. We knew that we wanted to do great things, that we wanted to help other people. It was a lesson of friendship, but also how to rely on yourself and to push forward, even though the next day isn't guaranteed.

I guess I'm going to tell the story of how I moved to New York City.

I moved here when I was 15 years old by myself. I'm originally from Texas, and if anyone knows anything about Texas, it's a very small place. Like, big state, small place.

And I came here for dance. I applied to be a part of this dance program, Joffrey Ballet School. And I didn't tell anyone when I applied.

So I remember, I was 15 years old in Austin, Texas. I remember I was actually in my, like world history class in freshman year of high school. And I was like, I have to make the decision to pursue what I want. Like I have to be brave about this. And I cannot think small.

So I applied to Joffrey Ballet School and I got in with a full scholarship, and like I didn't tell my parents. I didn't ask anyone's permission. I just kind of did it. And it was a really adult thing to do at a really young age.

And for some miraculous reason, my parents said yes. And they were like, "We're gonna let you do it."

And so I packed up my stuff, and at 15, I moved here. And it was this weird adult world. Like I had to take care of myself, and I had to make things happen. And I realized that caring about your passions and your dreams does not just mean like, "Oh, I love it, so I'm gonna go do it."

It also means you need to have the passion to support yourself too. And you need to have the passion to take care of yourself. And like the passion for responsibility is also a really big deal when it comes to your creative passions and things you wanna do with your life.

So yeah, I'm now in my—I'm going into my fourth year at Joffrey. And I feel like it's this big full-circle moment of like, I came here not knowing anything, and at least at the end of it, I can say I figured something out. Like I figured out how to live here. And I feel like I've learned so much at such a young age. And I'm so grateful for that knowledge.

I'm from San Francisco and I feel very nostalgic about this house that I have that's about an hour north from there in Sonoma County. We got the house like when I was a baby and it just always felt like a complete like 180, completely different environment from San Francisco, which is where I lived my entire life before moving here. And we have this beautiful huge backyard that's like full of grass like-- which I never had in San Francisco. And my dad bought me and my older sister, Zoe, a trampoline when we were very small. And we put it in the middle of the backyard. And almost every day when we would go up there, we would jump on the trampoline while he took our backyard hose and set it up with this other thing and like made it spray out through the trampoline, so we would like be in the sunshine, but then it would cool us down and it was wonderful.

So when I was younger, I was probably 7 or 8, I was the most nervous person of anyone ever. I saw the Annabelle commercial for the movie and it scared me so bad that I had to sleep on my parents couch in their bedroom for months. I couldn't fall asleep naturally every night. I would lay facing the door. I would wake up with a crick in my neck and I would fall asleep with my eyes open just so that I-- in case anything came in, I would always be prepared. And after a while, my parents were like, you need to move on. Go back to your room. So I did what any six year old would do, 7 years old. And I crashed on my brothers’ bedroom floor for their entire seventh grade year. I just slept on the floor with a blanket and a pillow and my stuffed animal. And they had to wake up at 6am for middle school every morning. And so at 6am their alarm would go off and all three of us would groan and roll around and have to get ready for school. And it was, you know, how alarms get stuck in your head and it's like the most egregious sound ever. And so then a couple years later, my dad made that sound his ringtone for his phone. He's a doctor, so he gets calls every five minutes. And every time it would go off, everybody in the house would, oh my god, just groan cause it's the most PTSD noise ever. And I just think it's beautiful how my family, we all have the same experiences. We grew up in the same house, but the one thing that really gives us the strongest emotional reaction is the sound of a ringtone. And it's just so striking. And I'm still that nervous person, but I think I'm a little less nervous now, so…

So I actually just became a lawyer, but before that I had to take the bar exam not once but twice.

The first time I studied for the bar exam, I spent all summer studying basically like waking up super early and then going to bed at like unreasonable times to do my best to get a passing score.

Unfortunately, the first time I took it I only missed by a couple points, which was really frustrating.

It was also additionally weird because I took the California bar exam as did a celebrity you may or may not know, Kim Kardashian. So, I kind of went on this whole mental spiral about like my own self-worth in the process.

No shade to Kim Kardashian. I hope that she does eventually pass the bar sooner than later.

But yeah, the second time I took the bar, the stakes were higher because I was already employed and I was scared about, you know, I felt like my job was riding on this and I had a lot less time to study. But, I made it work.

I got up early, stayed up late, tried to focus on the things that confused me the last time.

And through a combo of good luck and a lot of other things, I did end up passing the February one. And I'm now a lawyer, which is a very strange sentence to say to people when they ask me what I do now. But, yeah, the California Bar is harder than the New York State Bar, so I was kind of nervous because in law school I wasn't always like the best student. But I really wanted to work in California and wanted to do something different. And I think this was my sign to keep pushing forward, even if like it was a harder road to get there.

Alright, so last summer my lease was ending in my apartment, and I needed to find a place to live quickly, and I didn't have a job, so I subleased from a friend.

It was a fifth-floor walk-up on the Upper East Side. And I was moving from Brooklyn.

The day before, I went to the apartment, got to see everything. It was empty. All the windows were open. I closed all the windows, and she left behind a fan for me because there was no AC.

The movers came the next day to my old apartment in Brooklyn. We made it all the way to the Upper East Side.

I got there first, and I made it all the way up the stairs, and there was a window open, and the fan was gone. And I immediately panicked because I was like, well, the movers are on the way with every item that I own right now, and I don't know what to do.

So I texted her, and I was like, "Were you at the apartment?" And she said, "Nope, I gave you the keys and I haven't been back."

And so I was like, "It's a fifth-floor walk-up. I don't know who would have gotten up here." The fire escape wasn't by the window that was open—the other window was open. I made sure to lock all of them.

Then the movers came.

She and her boyfriend came to try to figure out what was going on. They talked to the super, who's the only person to have a key, and he said, "I have no idea what you're talking about. I haven't even been here."

So then I, again, was in a panic. We called a locksmith to come and change the locks, and I had a nice conversation with him about how to make sure I'm not broken into during the month that I'm here.

Then we called the police.

The police investigated. They did the whole fingerprinting thing. At one point they were like, "There's fingerprints on the window." And I was like, "Those are my fingerprints on the window because I was closing it, trying to make sure that no one else would get in here."

We filed a police report and never found out what happened.

She said that something went missing while she was moving, and she just wasn't able to find it.

But I got a security system and a bunch of different locks and stuff to put in that apartment for the month that I was there, and nothing else went missing, so…

September 10th, 2021. My supernatural experience. I was shot in the chest by a coworker at my job. As I retreated, I happened to, I fell, I passed-- I basically passed out. I was on the floor and all of a sudden in my head I hear “GET UPPPPP!” in my ear spook me that I scared, and I rose. I looked around, there was no one there. I kept on walking, stumbling as I walk, I fell again, a block over, and I heard the voice come again. I got up. I kept on going. I made it in front of El Dorado bumper cars in Coney Island, and I fell again, and the voice came again.

About seven months before that, I had a dream that I got shot. And in that dream I saw a billboard and I was laying on the floor and I saw the ambulance coming.

Back to the day of me getting shot, after I rose the third time, I walked and I made it to Stillwell Avenue where I saw the billboard and I laid down. And that's where my help came. That's my supernatural story.