He's affectionately named Trouble by friends.

Having a reputation for being a rebel, Chris Wesley's "attitude problem" leaves no question about what's going on in his head or his heart.

It's this candor that infects his writing with such a furious mix of deep thinking and emotional honesty.

"It takes a lot of strength to push past adversity and maintain a sense of compassion and vulnerability." Chris admits. "It is no where near automatic and the process requires a brutal sense of truth about both ourselves and the world we live in."

Chris is not only fine with this, he speaks to it in the upcoming song Roused where he acknowledges "The opinions you seek won't make you a man, it's whether you lie or whether you'll stand". After all, the notion of knowing ourselves and accepting who we are has become so foreign to our culture that it is now the stuff of fiction.

"How this is not a standard part of growing up," Chris laments, "is beyond me." So this is the fight that has chosen him. To help others find their stories in the ones he tells. To hope that those who need it, can use his words as a sledgehammer to break down their own barriers to leading happy lives.

"I know how hard it can be," Wesley admits, "learning how to discover who you are and what good you have to offer the world outside of the circumstances you were born into is something a lot of people would benefit from. In my case, it involved moving past being treated as the abortion that should have happened throughout my pre-adolescent life. It's a complex mix of stages to breaking the cycle and requires a deep sense of responsibility for your actions, because let's face it, there's going to be some bad decisions in there."

This is especially true when you have to figure it out on your own. Chris lived it and reaches out with stories that chronicle the triumphs, pitfalls and intimate telling moments that comes with outliving the hurt. Those who have been there or who can empathize will understand.

Everyone else will only see the rebellion.