1 YEAR

Hey Y’all.

I honestly have no words, there’s just this rush, this flood of everything good and everything hard, all colliding at once as I try to understand how this life was extended to me and why it’s finally beginning to make sense. 

One year sober today, and the clarity hits different:

Life is sharpening, I’m growing in ways I never thought I’d get to, and I’m more motivated than ever to carve out a life that’s actually mine. 

I’m grateful, deeply, fiercely, for my friends, my family, for the people who held me steady when I couldn’t see straight, I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for your generosity of spirit, and to the creation of this book that’s becoming its own spiritual experience. 

Ever since my birthday, since that PVRIS concert cracked something open in me, I’ve been closing old doors with intention and writing something powerful enough to scare everyone. 

Sobriety showed me the way through the wreckage, through the lies I was told in my grief, through the life that ended so abruptly when Aaron died, and now the pages are finally telling the truth. 

Somehow, in the middle of all this healing and all this haunting, I’m celebrating, because I’m still here, because I’m choosing myself, because the story isn’t over and I’m finally the one writing it.

xoxo, Jake.

©2026 The Last Text Message / A Mixtape Memoir