The label that made me listen harder

When I was twenty-three, I overheard a colleague whisper "addict" about me at a work function. Not to me — about me. That single word, spoken behind a cupped hand, changed the trajectory of my career.

Not because it crushed me, though it did at first. Because it made me hyper-aware of how people form judgments in the space of a syllable. I became a student of perception, of the gap between what people assume and what's actually true.