From the ashes.

I was born in San Luis Obispo. By the time I was two, we’d moved down to the South Bay — Torrance, Redondo Beach. That’s where I really grew up. Three siblings. Two parents who were alive in every way that matters. My family owned an Italian restaurant, so when I wasn’t at school or playing sports, I was working there. I held every job in that place. Friends and family worked there too. The South Bay was a beautiful place to be a kid.

Hockey was the through-line. I fell in love with the game young and we became a hockey family — roller, ice, my brother and I, my sisters played, my dad played. It was a big part of everything.

When I was fourteen, fifteen, my parents separated. I took it hard. I felt like a lot of it was on me, for reasons I won’t get into here, and I started acting out. I stopped going to school. I started self-medicating — recreational and what I’d call medicinal, because I’d been pretty OCD and ADD my whole life and substances were a way to quiet my brain.

I got expelled. They sent me to a boarding school in Ensenada, Mexico. They’ve made a Netflix series about that place now. Boys on one side, girls on the other, seminars, lines on the floor — it was a strange, hard chapter. I was there from fifteen to seventeen.

When I got out, I went off the deep end. I started playing hockey again and took it as far as I could go — juniors, tournaments. Looking back I don’t know how I held that level of play given how messed up I was, but the years of the game carried me. Eventually I got into trouble with the law, and the way out was the Navy.

I served as a Hospital Corpsman, HM2, Fleet Marine Force. I got to take care of those Marines and Sailors as best I could. I saw good things and hard things overseas. That’s its own chapter — one I’ll tell properly somewhere else.

When I got out, I was lost. I took an IT sales job. Fitness had always been my reprieve, my sanctuary, even at my worst — the gym was always there. So I coached on the side. Taught little kids to skate. I was searching.

Relationships were up and down. Couldn’t hold a solid one. The drinking just kept getting heavier. A buddy moved out to Texas and told me to come — fresh start. So I went. I ended up finding commercial diving school in the Houston area, and a whole new path opened up. I got out of school and ended up in Houma, Louisiana, working the Gulf of Mexico as a tender, then certified to dive. Made good money. Dangerous work.

I came back to California, to the Long Beach port — union diving job. Paid better, just as dangerous. And I was burning out. Bouncing between jobs. The addiction kept getting worse. I had close calls out at sea. I knew I was running out of room. A long relationship was ending. I wasn’t in my twenties anymore. And I had to face the common denominator.

The drink was the common denominator. The drink was why I wasn’t where I wanted to be.