Growing up, I always told myself that once I made it, I could relax. Bouncing around the care system, working throughout high school, getting my first full time job as a valet at the Biao Casino—all those years, that’s what I kept telling myself.

Push on, get through this, and one day, West, one day you can sleep through a whole damn night.

All that fighting and striving. Living off beans and rice; fixing my own bike chain for the millionth time; living in a shoebox apartment with four other roommates. Working all those hours, and studying in the gaps in between.

All of it was meant to build to...