NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI + THE UNIVERSE

Captured in the heart of the fashion district by Mitchell Royel, where the volume is turned up to "SOS" by Alyssa. Burn it to the ground, rebuild with purpose, and rise anew.

So here's the thing nobody tells you about being that girl — the one everyone thinks has it figured out. The one whose feed looks perfect, whose parties get talked about for weeks, whose name floats around hallways like she invented cool. Everybody assumed I'd cruise straight into some prestigious school, keep the crown, keep the aesthetic. And honestly? For a while, I let them think it. Because that's what you do when the whole town's watching. You perform.

The last day of high school felt like the finale of a show I was tired of starring in. Everyone was crying, hugging, signing yearbooks like their whole identity depended on it. Meanwhile I stood there in my little main-character moment feeling absolutely nothing. No fireworks. No relief. Just this low hum in my chest, like a phone buzzing in another room. Everyone kept saying, "This is the best chapter of your life!" and I kept thinking, is it though? Because it feels like I'm reading someone else's script.

College was supposed to be the plot twist that fixed everything. Spoiler: it didn't. I lasted a year. One long, beige, soul-sucking year of pretending to care about lecture halls and networking events and people who peaked at pre-orientation. I felt caged. Boxed in by expectations that were never even mine to begin with. I'd sit in these giant rooms full of ambitious strangers and feel more alone than I'd ever felt in my life. So I did the thing you're not supposed to do. The thing that makes moms clutch their chests and aunts start whispering.

I dropped out.

Explaining that to my family was its own genre of chaos. The disappointed stares. The "we just don't understand" speeches. The way my dad wouldn't look at me for like a week. But real talk? It was the first decision I ever made that was actually mine. Not for the aesthetic. Not for the crowd. For me. And that felt dangerous in the best way — like finally deleting an app that was ruining your mental health.

I needed somewhere to put all that restless energy, so I found a hot yoga studio a few blocks from home and basically moved in. Three sessions a day. Yeah, you read that right — three. I was sweating out an entire era of my life on a rubber mat while some instructor whispered about breath and intention. People thought I was being extra. Maybe I was. But there's something about being folded in half in a 105-degree room, dripping and shaking, that strips away all the fake. No filter survives that heat. For the first time, I could actually hear myself think. It was less "wellness girlie" and more "quiet breakdown with better lighting," and honestly, I needed it.

Then the universe did its little thing.

A friend — the kind who's always chasing the next weird experience — casually dropped, "You have to come to this new age event with me." My first instinct was hard no. But something about that low hum in my chest said go. So I went. Reluctantly. Eye-roll fully loaded.

The place was in DTLA, tucked between crumbling buildings and parking lots that gave very "you might get your car stolen." Sketchy from the outside. But then I walked in and — okay, wow. It was like stepping through a portal. Vintage rugs layered over each other, lighting so low and warm it made everyone look like a Renaissance painting, and this thick, buzzing air of people who were all searching for something. Crystals everywhere. Fairy lights strung across the walls. A rainbow LED strip glowing along the ceiling like the room itself was breathing color. It smelled like sage and possibility.

And then there was him. The leader.

Tall. Black. Long dreads. This calm that filled the entire room before he even opened his mouth. He wore this tan tee that said "I AM / WE ARE" and somehow it didn't feel corny — it felt like a dare. When he spoke about energy, alignment, radical honesty, the whole room leaned in like plants tilting toward the sun. I've been around charisma my whole life. I am charisma, let's be honest. But this was different. This was hypnotic. He didn't perform for the room the way I always did. The room performed for him.

And me being me — because I physically cannot sit still in a moment — I heard myself blurt out, "Hey, if you need help with your social media, I know a thing or two." Bold? Absolutely. On-brand? Extremely. Half the room turned. I didn't even flinch.

But the person who actually clocked it wasn't the leader. It was the guy running marketing. Quiet the whole night. Barely said a word. The kind of still that makes you nervous because you know he's absorbing everything. During the break, he walked up to me — reserved, unbothered, this intentional look in his eyes like he'd already decided something about me. We swapped numbers. No flirting. No games. Just... intent. I remember thinking, okay, this one's not like the others.

Two weeks later, coffee.

I walked in expecting the usual spiel — chakras, manifesting, "the universe has a plan for you," blah blah crystal girlie starter pack. Instead, before I even sat down properly, he goes:

"What are your thoughts on Machiavellianism?"

Excuse me? I nearly choked on my oat milk. But I'm not one to fold, so I told him the truth — that I'd actually been reading about it, and that as a Christian, parts of it made my skin crawl. He just nodded, slow, like he already knew. Then he hit me with, "Do you know who wrote the Bible?"

And that was the beginning of the most unhinged, brilliant conversation I'd had in years. We bounced between theology and philosophy and this brutal breakdown of how fake everyone online really is. He started calling out the new age influencers — the exact ones I'd seen my friends worship. "You're not actually buying it, are you? That one's on coke. The sex guru? Same." Zero hesitation. No PR-safe softening. Just raw, surgical honesty. It should've been jarring. Instead it was the most refreshing thing I'd heard in forever — like someone finally opened a window in a room I didn't realize was suffocating me.

I walked out of that coffee shop changed. Buzzing. My head spinning in the best, most dangerous way. Something in me had cracked open, and I couldn't un-crack it. His whole unapologetic thing — the way he refused to pretend, refused to perform — it held up a mirror to the girl I'd been playing my entire life. The popular one. The perfect one. The performance.

That coffee marked the start of my three-year break from the church.

Three years of questioning everything I'd been handed. Three years of getting messy, getting honest, getting lost on purpose just to see what I'd find. It wasn't clean. It wasn't cute. It didn't fit in a caption. But it was mine — every raw, complicated, flame-lit second of it. And somewhere in all that burning, the girl everyone thought they knew finally started becoming someone I actually recognized.

Turns out rebirth doesn't come with good lighting. It comes with fire.

Epilogue: And here's the thing about the fire—it doesn't ask for permission. It doesn't wait until you're ready. It simply finds you, consumes you, strips you down until all that's left is what was real all along. And while the heat makes you want to run, to douse the flames, to beg for the comfort of what you used to know—you realize, eventually, that the burning isn't punishment. It's preparation.

We grow in the wild spaces, the unruly moments when nothing feels certain, and yet everything becomes clear. Growth isn’t about knowing the answers—it’s about letting yourself step into the questions without shame. It’s about realizing that the messy work of unbecoming gives shape to who you were made to be. Leaning into it doesn’t mean you’ve lost; it means you’re willing to find what truly matters.

When the edges of time press close and the noise of the world recedes, there’s a pull—gentle but unrelenting—back to the source. Back to the love that waited for you, patient and unwavering, through every stumble and spark. And in that return, you don’t bring a perfect version of yourself. You bring the fire-forged, truth-grasping you that was hidden beneath layers of doubt and expectation.

Christ sees the ashes, not as failure, but as proof. Proof of your willingness to grow, to trust the heat of transformation without making yourself wrong for needing it.

And when you finally find your way home, it’s not to be the same. It’s to be new.
Always new.

-Mitch, Ryder, GG Collective