WHERE I COME FROM: A TRUTH UNTOLD.

I wasn’t born into comfort.

I was born into survival — in a cramped Verdun apartment where yelling was louder than laughter, where there was never enough money, and where love felt more like a privilege than a right.

There were days the fridge was empty. Nights I stayed up crying quietly under the covers, scared of what might happen next. My family didn’t talk about dreams. We talked about bills, fights, and who left the door unlocked. No one asked how I was doing. No one noticed when I stopped speaking for days. I was just a kid — hurting quietly, aging too fast.

And yet, somehow, I kept a spark alive inside me.

Dance found me when nothing else did. It was my first escape — the first time I felt like I could breathe. I watched music videos obsessively, learned routines off VHS tapes and YouTube, and mimicked every movement until my body ached. I didn’t have classes. I didn’t have support. But I had a will — and that was enough.

Being bisexual added another weight to carry. There was no space to explore that safely in my world. I learned early how to hide, how to shrink, how to act straight enough to survive. I watched people’s eyes, carefully measuring how much of myself I could show without risking everything. I became a master at code-switching. But inside, I was crumbling.

I carried a deep loneliness. Not just for connection, but for safety. For someone to hold me and mean it. For someone to say, “You matter.” I didn’t hear that much growing up.

My mother’s passing added more silence. More stories I’ll never get to ask about. My father? A ghost I’ve never met. I’ve had to be my own parent more times than I can count. I’ve had to lift myself off the floor — emotionally, financially, spiritually — because there was no one else to do it.

And yet, I never let the darkness win.

I turned pain into passion. I turned nothing into something. I became a coach, a teacher, a leader — not because someone told me I could, but because I refused to settle for the life I was handed.

When people meet me now, they see the talent, the confidence, the energy. What they don’t always see is the kid inside — the one who had to grow up too soon, who still craves safety, who still sometimes feels like he’s proving his worth just to be loved.

But that’s what makes my story powerful. I’m not perfect. I’m real. And I’ve fought for every ounce of joy I have.

If you’re reading this and you come from pain — from silence, from poverty, from shame — I want you to know something:

You’re not alone.
You are not broken.
And you are allowed to rise.

I’m proof that the past doesn’t define the final chapter. It shapes you, yes. But it doesn’t get to decide how the story ends.

I do.
And so do you.