There are certain kinds of adversity that do not arrive in one dramatic moment. They accumulate. They seep. They become the air you breathe long before you realize the air is poisoned. My story is not one of a single catastrophe that defined me, but of a thousand small ones that shaped me before I understood what shaping even meant.

I grew up around addiction in all its forms. The kind that hollows out people you love while they are still standing right in front of you. The kind that makes you learn to scan a room for danger before you have even reached adolescence. The kind that teaches you to brace, to tighten, to flinch, to stay two steps ahead of a blow (not a physical one, but worse, an emotional one) that may never come but feels possible at any moment. Addiction does not just take prisoners. It creates them. In my case, addiction was not in my immediate caretakers. (Though one could argue that self-abandonment, co-dependency and need for total control are, in their own right, also addictions). It lived one degree away from me, close enough to shape the ground beneath us, but not coming from the people who raised me directly. It was the extended family, the men orbiting my childhood with unpredictability. Their chaos seeped inward and taught me survival long before I understood the cost of it.

Woven into all of that was my mother, (raising me as a single parent, while my father in a very typical and predictable Latino-man-way, was an absent, runaway figure - quick to display his peacock feathers, but always short when it came time to put them into play in every way that mattered) trying to hold back a tidal wave with her bare hands. She lived her life balancing on a fault line that never stopped trembling. She was the caretaker by inheritance and by obligation. She carried the emotional weight of an entire family, a burden handed to her by generations who refused to put down their own. She worked a million jobs, sometimes three at a time, always in motion, always hustling, always bailing someone out of a crisis they created.

She was somehow responsible for everybody's well-being. Sometimes that took precedence over her own. Mine. Ours. It was a monster that seemed to take giant bites out of whatever level of peace we tried to build. The bites came in the form of screaming matches at three in the morning. Public arguments at parties where everyone pretended not to stare. Police cars showing up without warning. A rotating cast of strangers, disposable friends from late-night bar outings, who were suddenly treated like family and given the same emotional weight as blood. None of it was stable. All of it was loud. (If there ever was a reason behind my need for minimalism, I would say it is the need to find quiet and peace, even in the visual.)

She was in constant triage mode, holding together a world built on unstable foundations, and because of that her sense of self slowly eroded. I grew up watching her try to mend problems she didn’t create while sacrificing the parts of her that should have been hers to keep. In that process, we both learned the language of survival long before we learned the language of safety.

Then there was the other side of my childhood. The male role models who taught me nothing about manhood except what not to become. Their metrics of success were how much they drank the night before, how many women they were talking to, and how many fistfights they had survived. They strutted through life puffing their chests like roosters guarding empty yards. All of them carried failed marriages behind them like broken trophies. Most of them had children they barely knew how to love. Yet somehow they moved with a deranged sense of pride, a constant demand for admiration, and an entitlement to respect they had never earned. That was the blueprint handed to me. That was the example I was supposed to follow. No wonder I struggled to figure out how to start my own life.

Scarcity came from immigration. From displacement. From starting over in a country that demanded everything and gave nothing back unless you earned it twice over. It came from watching my family stretch every dollar until it begged for mercy. It came from experiencing the constant pressure of assimilation, of belonging nowhere completely, of knowing that stability could disappear with a single broken-down car, missed shift, or medical bill. We were not simply living. We were surviving. Clawing. Stretching. Hoping this month would be less brutal than the last. I learned that nothing was guaranteed and that anything could be taken away without warning.

My nervous system grew up in fight or flight. Not occasionally. Every day. Every conversation. Every unfamiliar silence. Every moment that felt slightly off. My body learned to anticipate disaster even when nothing was wrong.

If survival was the foundation, adulthood added its own set of emotional landmines. It turns out you need more than grit and vigilance to build a life. You need connection. You need communication. You need stability. You need emotional tools I simply did not have.

Interpersonal relationships, platonic, romantic, professional, became battlegrounds I walked into unarmed. Not because I did not want the connection, but because I had no idea how to hold it. I had never been shown. I grew up around narcissists and self-important people who disguised domination as confidence and control as love. That became my blueprint. That became my model.

So when I tried to love, to collaborate, to trust, I did it with a broken compass. Reactivism disguised itself as passion. Impulsivity pretended to be courage. Pride covered up fear. Avoidance passed for independence. Ambition served as a mask for a bottomless need for validation.

Beneath it all sat abandonment wounds so old and deep they felt prehistoric. Wounds that whispered, “They will leave,” even when nothing had happened yet. Wounds that braced for impact before there was any impact to brace for and the inevitable mantra of “you gotta kill the relationship before it has a chance to hurt you”.

Every breakup in my life was not just the end of a relationship. It was a confrontation with the parts of myself I had not healed. Breakups did not simply hurt. They confirmed what I feared: that I was unlovable in ways I could not yet name.

It took years to understand that trauma wires your brain to misinterpret the world. It teaches you to treat kindness with suspicion. It convinces you that peace is dangerous. It tells you that attachment is a liability.

Yet somewhere along this crooked path, resilience grew anyway. Not loudly. Not beautifully. But stubbornly. It grew in the cracks. It grew in the failures. It grew in the moments I thought I was breaking but was actually shedding.

My life changed when I admitted something simple but liberating. My survival instincts were no longer protecting me, they were holding me hostage.

No mentor could change that. No partner could fix it. No amount of 14-hour shifts could outrun it.

The transformation had to come from me.

I learned to build the emotional tools I was never given, to sit in discomfort instead of reacting to it, to speak instead of swallow, to stay instead of flee. I learned to receive instead of brace. (Though I would be lying if I said I don’t still at time struggle with these).

I am still learning, still becoming, still dismantling old survival modes and replacing them with something that resembles peace.

I also carry a deep awareness that my mother did and does the very best she could with the tools she had in her bucket. She inherited her own cycle of emotional chaos from the people who came before her. She was forged inside the same storms that shaped me, only with less room to fall apart, less grace, and fewer chances to choose differently. She gave me everything she could, sometimes more than she had, and the opportunities I’ve had in my life often came directly from her sacrifices. Other times, when scarcity swallowed us whole, I learned to fend for myself. I learned to be resourceful, self-reliant, adaptive, and hard to kill. For all of that, and for her, I am forever grateful.

As I’ve worked (and continue to, it seems endless some days) through all of this in therapy, slowly unwinding the knots I carried for decades, I can feel the immense shift. I can feel the difference between the boy I was and the man I am becoming. The road ahead is still long, but it is no longer dark. Where I am now is night and day from where I began.

The truth is, I know how close it could have been. I know how thin the line is between who I am and who I could have become. Every bone in my body has the capacity to turn into them. Every instinct in me knows the pathways to self-destruction by heart. I carry that awareness like a compass, not a curse. It keeps me swimming in the opposite direction, even when the current is violent and unforgiving. Especially then. Because I know exactly what waits downstream and no matter how hard the upstream may be, I refuse to drift back into the people, patterns, and legacies I fought so hard to outgrow.

I am not perfect, but I am conscious, I am awake and for the first time in my life, I am choosing who I become, not surviving who I was taught to be.

La Ofrenda: Arroz con Leche

A bowl of warmth. A bowl of memory. A bowl of survival softened into sweetness.

There is a reason arroz con leche appears across countries, generations, neighborhoods, and kitchens. It is the food of mothers and grandmothers, the dish of “we don’t have much but we’ll make something beautiful anyway.”

It is the offering you make to yourself when you are ready to soften and you eat it cold, because Chihuahua is forever burning.

Ingredients

For the rice base

• 1 cup medium or short-grain white rice
• 4 cups whole milk
• 1 cup water
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 1 strip orange peel or lemon peel
• Pinch of kosher salt

For the finish

• 1 cup sweetened condensed milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ¼ cup golden raisins (optional)
• 2 tablespoons butter (optional, richer finish)

For serving

Chill it well first. Then hit it with some ground cinnamon, lime zest and a drizzle of cajeta.

Instructions

1. Rinse the rice. Wash the rice under cold water until the water turns mostly clear. This prevents gumminess and creates a creamier texture later.

2. Cook the rice gently. In a heavy pot, combine rice, milk, water, cinnamon stick, citrus peel, and a pinch of salt. Bring to a soft simmer over medium heat. Stir occasionally to prevent sticking. Cook for twenty to twenty-five minutes until the rice is tender and the mixture thickens slightly.

3. Add the sweetness. Reduce heat to low. Stir in sweetened condensed milk, vanilla, ground cinnamon, and raisins if using. Continue to cook until creamy, about ten minutes more.

For extra richness, stir in butter at the end.

4. Rest. Let the arroz con leche sit for five minutes off heat. It will thicken as it cools, becoming velvety and lush.

5. Serve. Spoon into bowls. Dust with cinnamon and grate fresh orange zest over the top. Add a drizzle of cajeta for depth and nostalgia.

Chef’s Note

Arroz con leche is an immigrant dish, a survival dish, a dish that transforms scarcity into comfort. This version honors the lineage of women, like my mother, and her mother,  who knew how to turn almost nothing into something warm enough to keep a family alive.

This is not just dessert, this is resilience served warm.