The Boy Who Hugged Everyone: A Memoir in Rhythm

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You know that feeling when you love someone so hard it physically hurts, and then they leave, and you're supposed to just... keep going? When your family says they accept you but you can still feel them holding their breath? When you're told you're "too sensitive" so many times you start to believe softness is a design flaw?

This book is for that feeling.

The Boy Who Hugged Everyone is structured like an album—each chapter has its own soundtrack, because sometimes the only way to survive your life is to score it. It follows one story (mine: coming out on a sidewalk in Mesa, a marriage that dissolved on cruise ships, the years of rebuilding through therapy and bad decisions), but it's really about the universal math of loving wrong, losing everything, and learning that survival doesn't look like the movies.

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You'll recognize yourself here if you've ever:

• Apologized for taking up space

• Stayed too long because leaving felt like failing

• Wondered if you'll ever stop explaining yourself

• Needed proof that other people barely make it through too
   

This isn't a book about redemption or finding yourself on a mountaintop. It's about the unglamorous work of waking up and trying again. About staying soft when the world wants you sharp. About making a playlist for your grief because sometimes that's all you can control. If you've ever felt like an exposed nerve in human form, this is your soundtrack.