Luis Cruz

He made his story public for one reason: the honesty is the part that reaches people. I didn't start a clothing brand. I started looking for a reason to stay, and the brand is what came out of it. The loss came first — the kind that rearranges a person, that splits your life into before and after and leaves you standing in the after with no instructions. For a long stretch I did what most people do: I got very good at looking fine. I answered messages. I showed up. I said the word "tired" when I meant something much heavier, because "tired" doesn't make anybody uncomfortable. If you're reading this and you know exactly what that performance costs, then you already understand who this brand is for.

The bottom is not a metaphor. It has a floor, and I found it. I won't dress up the worst of it, and I won't make a spectacle of it either. What matters is what happened after: I told one person the truth. Not a beautiful, healed version of the truth — the ugly, unfinished one. And nothing about my circumstances changed that night, but something about the weight did. Saying it out loud made it a thing that existed outside my own head, where it could be looked at.

Getting up wasn't one decision. It was hundreds of small, unimpressive ones. Eating. Walking outside. Sitting in a room with people. Faith came back to me slowly and not in the way I expected — less like an answer, more like a hand under my ribs on the days I couldn't hold myself up. I still have hard weeks. That's not a failure of the climb; that's the climb.

Rise of the Abyss isn't about escaping the dark. It's about what you carry out of it. I started printing shirts because clothing goes with you. It's on you at school, on the train, at the job you don't want, on the day nobody asks how you're doing. A mark on your chest can be a private message to yourself: I've been lower than this, and I'm still here.

So this is the deal. I'm not going to tell you to stay positive — that phrase has never once helped anybody at 3am. I'm going to tell you the truth as I know it: it can be unbearable and still not be permanent. You are allowed to need help. And the version of you on the other side of this is worth the ugly work it takes to get there. - Luis Cruz