Two years later, it’s been a steady ascent up, one that Maxwell likens to being on an airplane. “It’s like taking off at JFK in the storm and we’ve just sort of leveled off at 34,000 feet and the seatbelt sign has come off,” he jokes. But not all has been easy — in fact, Maxwell admits to being overcome with severe anxiety. “I lived the first two years honestly being like ‘What the hell is going on right now?,'” he says. “Once you start reading things and thinking that you are a certain something, it’s a dangerous destructive road to be on.” His aha moment came fortuitously in the shape of a long car ride with his beloved and an ice cream treat: “I was in a dark place and then one morning you wake up and you’re not anymore because you’ve gone to the darkest, deepest, lowest place and there’s nowhere to go but up,” he says. “I woke up and I’m driving down the highway, I’ve got a Dairy Queen blizzard in my hand, and my boyfriend since I’m 19-years-old is asking me to marry him, and all of a sudden I was like, ‘This is what matters in my life.’”