The Day My Life Split in Two

There’s a part of my story I don’t talk about often, but it changed everything about the way I build brands today.

Only Humxn didn’t crack slowly.
It collapsed in a single moment.

August 14, 2021.
The day everything fell out from under me.

The photo on the top is August 13.
I was smiling. I felt grounded. I thought I knew what my life looked like. I thought I knew who loved me. I thought I knew who was standing beside me.

The photo on the bottom is August 14.
I was awake all night because my world had just changed entirely. Like I'm talkin' fully shattered. I lost my best friend. I lost my community. I lost the version of OHX I poured myself into. And I had to face the truth that nothing was ever going to look the same again.

People talk about heartbreak like it is poetic.

It isn’t.

It's the silence between calls that never come.
It's the friends who disappear because your pain is inconvenient.
It's the loneliness of realizing you were not held the way you held others.

And here’s the part that hurts to say out loud.

OHX didn’t survive that day.
And it hasn’t survived the years after it either.

Even after everything I poured into trying to revive it, trying to rebuild it, trying to breathe life back into something I loved so deeply, it is still failing.

And I think 2026 will be the year that the doors close forever.

That truth breaks my heart.
But not as much as the people I lost along the way.

The ones I thought would be there, who weren’t.
The ones I had to learn the hard way were only around when things were easy.

It took me years to understand that the collapse of a brand is one thing.
The collapse of the relationships tied to it is another.

Both leave a mark.

And I want to say something here, because I know how easy it is to scroll past sadness online.

I don’t share photos like this to make anyone feel heavy.
I share them because this is what vulnerability actually looks like.

Because if I can show you the real moments the ones that aren’t polished or pretty or packaged maybe it gives someone else permission to do the same.

Maybe it reminds us that being human is not an aesthetic, it is an experience.

So here’s what I know now…

I survived.
The person in the bottom photo didn’t think they would, but they did.
And even if OHX doesn’t make it into the next chapter, I will.

If you’ve ever had a single moment split your life into a before and after, I hope you know this:

You’re allowed to grieve what didn’t survive.
You’re allowed to cherish what did.
And you’re allowed to move forward even when the ending still hurts.