Julian Reyes and Kayla Rossi
Overview
Julian Reyes and Kayla Rossi were longtime friends and romantic partners whose relationship was grounded in mutual care, close observation, and a daily choice to remain present through Julian’s seizures, vomiting episodes, and deep self-doubt. Each regarded the other as a safe person. Julian looked for Kayla whenever he recovered from a seizure, and she did not flinch from the realities of his body. She reassured him, “you are enough.” That mattered most when he struggled to believe it himself.
They began dating a few months before filming 《我还是我》/ I Am Still Me: A Minjae Lee Story, though their closeness had been apparent for years, particularly to Kayla’s older sister Izzy. Julian and Kayla lived together in a small Los Angeles apartment, co-founded Resonance Films, and built a life around storytelling, survival, and an openness about the costs of care.
How They Met
Julian and Kayla met in high school, although the circumstances of their first encounter were not documented. They formed an immediate, deep friendship. Kayla learned to read Julian’s unspoken signals: the way his hands hovered before he touched equipment, the breath that caught when he was overwhelmed, and his quiet flinch when someone raised a voice. She noticed these responses and remained close to him.
Throughout high school, their bond was apparent enough that Izzy predicted they would end up together. She pointed it out at holidays, birthdays, and whenever Julian so much as breathed in Kayla’s direction. “The boy looked at you like you were the entire damn sun,” she later told Kayla. “You think I missed that?”
Relationship Development
From Friendship to Romance
The transition from friendship to romance happened quietly, a few months before filming began on the Minjae Lee documentary. By then, Julian and Kayla had been each other’s closest people for years. The change felt less like a beginning than an acknowledgment of what had long been true between them. When Izzy learned they were together, she felt vindicated and promised never to let them forget that she had predicted it.
Building Resonance Films
Their romantic relationship became inseparable from their professional partnership at Resonance Films. Julian brought the creative vision, storytelling instinct, camera work, and ethical perfectionism that drove him to tell each subject’s story accurately. Kayla managed scheduling, family outreach, finances, social media strategy, and the daily work that kept the company operating when Julian’s health limited him.
They understood each other’s roles without competition or resentment. Julian knew that without Kayla, emails would go unanswered, shoots would go unscheduled, and public communication would lack direction. Kayla believed that without Julian’s camera work and quiet voice, their films would not exist. Their personal and professional lives were built around that mutual reliance.
Dynamics
Mutual Care
“I love her the most” was a familiar phrase between Julian and Kayla. Julian said it often, including when fully awake. His drowsy use of it after the documentary premiere repeated an established expression of love.
Their mutual care often took the form of quiet observation and thoughtful action. Despite limited money, Julian treated Kayla to small things: he replaced her favorite Lush Montalbano shampoo and citrus body scrub when she ran out, made sure she had clothes she felt confident in, and noticed details others missed. Once, when he told Kayla he was going to the pharmacy for Zofran, he also stopped at the Lush store on Melrose Avenue. He had noticed that she had switched to drugstore shampoo that week and had barely touched her curls.
Kayla cared for Julian with equal attention. She stocked teas that eased his nausea, found scents that calmed his migraines, and once brought him a weighted hoodie he had not known he needed. She knew which foods his stomach tolerated, which restaurants were safe for him, and which fabrics accommodated his sensory sensitivities. During difficult periods, she followed a familiar sequence: food, then a bath with salts for his joints, then a nap. She knew his preferences well enough to act without asking each time.
The Camera and the Anchor
Behind the camera, Julian became focused and grounded in ways his body rarely allowed in daily life. Kayla understood and protected the space he needed to work. She also recognized when filming or editing had taken too much from him; she sometimes closed his laptop after he had edited for hours without eating or taking medication.
Their working relationship reflected their life at home: Julian led with vision and emotion, while Kayla brought pragmatism and forceful advocacy. Kayla built trust with documentary subjects before filming began. When Julian was too overwhelmed to answer press questions at the premiere, she stepped in and explained Resonance Films’ mission with the same conviction he brought to his work.
Crisis and Care
Kayla had seen Julian through tonic-clonic seizures, severe CVS episodes that left him trembling and feverish for days, and postictal states in which he was foggy, slurred in speech, and haunted by the experience. She did not flinch. She stayed with him, using steady hands and her voice to help him orient himself.
Julian’s smaller focal seizures could occur as he fell asleep or woke, and some of his seizures began while he was fully asleep. Abrupt waking posed a particular risk. If an alarm or another sudden sound startled him awake, Kayla quieted it, spoke softly, and gave him time to become fully alert and functional before asking him to move or answer questions. She could distinguish this neurological transition from the slower waking that sometimes came with ordinary exhaustion, even when the two initially looked similar.
Kayla also understood Julian’s distinction between the relatively static nausea he experienced frequently and nausea that continued building before some seizures. She did not treat nausea alone as a seizure warning; she followed its progression and watched for his other established auras or early focal signs.
During the production of ‘’I Am Still Me’‘, an unidentified person left a large unmarked package at Julian and Kayla’s Los Angeles apartment while they were in Baltimore. The discovery, combined with an increasingly accusatory online thread about the documentary, triggered a panic attack in Julian. While Kayla held his hands, she felt his grip weaken and saw his face lose color before he could explain that he felt faint. He briefly lost consciousness and fell backward onto the bed. Kayla initially considered both a seizure and syncope, then treated the episode as probable autonomic syncope because his pulse remained fast and she saw no established aura, stiffening, or rhythmic movement. She laid him flat, elevated his legs, monitored his breathing and responsiveness, and continued watching for seizure activity after he regained consciousness. Julian’s recurrent syncope was a separate clinical problem that could not be attributed automatically to POTS; a possible cardiac contributor also remained unresolved.
Julian resisted admitting fatigue even to Kayla. His paternal family’s attacks on his masculinity had taught him to treat the need for rest as evidence that he was not man enough, which made a direct admission that he was tired unusually vulnerable. Kayla understood the fear beneath that resistance and tried to receive the admission without requiring him to defend or minimize it.
Kayla also recognized the emotional impact of Julian’s quieter reflux episodes, when food returned without forceful vomiting or significant pain. She handled emesis bags, cleanup, and changes of clothing without spectacle while understanding that the apparent physical mildness did not lessen Julian’s humiliation or the effect on his sense of adult competence.
Julian frequently talked in his sleep, giving Kayla an intimate view of feelings he did not always express while awake. This was particularly true when he fought sleep and began to lose alertness; his speech became slurred, emotional, and sometimes heartbreakingly earnest. After the documentary premiere, barely conscious in the car, he mumbled, “Did good, right? For him?” Later, already mostly asleep, he said, “Tell Kayla I love her the most.” Kayla, sitting beside him, whispered back, “I’m right here, genius.”
Kayla’s care during Julian’s crises was an expression of love and competence rather than martyrdom. She knew when to call for help, give him space, insist that he eat, or hold him without speaking. She carried the effects of his conditions alongside him because she considered him worth that effort, not because he asked her to do so.
Self-Doubt and Fierce Belief
Julian feared being both too much and not enough: too ill, fragile, or broken to deserve love and success. On many nights, he broke down in Kayla’s lap and asked whether he should give up the filmmaking dream he had carried since he was six years old.
Kayla held him through those nights and told him fiercely: “No. Don’t you dare let it go. You’ve wanted this since you were six. This dream has teeth, Jules. Let it bite the world and make them listen.”
Her support was one of the reasons he kept going. His own stubbornness and conviction also mattered, but on nights when everything else felt impossible, her belief in him mattered most.
Grief for Zeek
Kayla was one of the few people who understood the depth of Julian’s love for his father because she was the only person to whom he had fully disclosed those feelings. His experiences of emotional and sexual abuse within his paternal family contributed to his reluctance to share this part of his life with others.
Kayla sometimes found Julian sobbing over a photograph of himself with his father, Ezekiel “Zeek” Reyes, who had died when Julian was nearly three. Julian retained only vague memories of Zeek and struggled to explain why the photographs prompted such intense grief. When he called himself stupid for missing someone he believed he had barely known, Kayla firmly rejected that judgment. She supported his grief without requiring a detailed recollection or a coherent explanation of what he missed.
Family and Cultural Context
Julian’s Puerto Rican heritage and Kayla’s Italian-Brazilian American background were both present in their relationship. Their families valued closeness, shared food, and continued involvement in one another’s lives, although those habits belonged to the families rather than defining either culture as a whole. Izzy’s years of predicting the relationship showed how closely she watched Kayla and Julian. Her teasing about Julian’s feelings made their possible romance a recurring subject of family conversation, rather than a purely private development.
Julian’s epilepsy and chronic illness complicated his sense of masculine competence. His paternal relatives had attacked both his and Zeek’s masculinity, and Julian feared that needing rest would confirm their judgment. His exacting filmmaking gave him a way to demonstrate competence through work even when his body could not reliably meet his demands. Kayla’s caregiving was similarly specific to her choices and their relationship. Her family shared meals and stayed involved in one another’s lives; Kayla herself fed Julian, watched for changes in his health, and intervened when he struggled to admit that he needed help. She understood that care as love rather than self-sacrifice.
At Resonance Films, Julian and Kayla combined their personal and professional lives in a shared enterprise. His creative vision and her operational management were both essential, although outside observers could more easily see the filmmaker behind the camera than the producer coordinating the work. Kayla’s public social media work, family outreach, and financial management made that labor visible and gave her direct credit rather than leaving her contribution behind the scenes. Their partnership challenged the tendency to value visible creative work more highly than the organizational labor that made it possible.
Key Moments
The Lush Run
One evening in Los Angeles, Julian told Kayla he was going to the pharmacy for Zofran and electrolyte drinks. His voice was half-hoarse from reflux, and he needed the medication and drinks. On the way, he stopped at the Lush store on Melrose Avenue just before closing and bought two bottles of the citrus shampoo she loved and the body scrub that made her skin smell like oranges and honey. When he placed the bag on the coffee table, her eyes filled with tears. She told him he was not allowed to make her cry with citrus-scented soap. He held her close and laughed into her hair.
Premiere Night
At the documentary premiere on March 20, 2037, Kayla and Julian arrived together. She wore a flowing garnet dress; he wore a simple navy button-down and dark slacks and was pale and visibly unwell but determined to attend. Kayla opened his car door herself, looped her arm around his waist, and steadied him throughout the evening. During the standing ovation, when Julian could barely stand, she held him upright, kissed his temple, and whispered that he had done it. When he was too exhausted to answer press questions, she stepped in and spoke about Resonance Films’ mission with eloquence and conviction. When he fell asleep mid-sentence later that evening, she declared “triage coffee” and began getting him home.
Public photographs showed Kayla handling paparazzi who tried to crowd Julian. She placed herself between him and the cameras, kept a hand at his back, and refused to let photographers separate or overwhelm him. Before the premiere screening, when the crowd and overlapping requests in the lobby overwhelmed Julian, Kayla declined further photographs and guided him toward the green room. When he had to stop at a single-use restroom to vomit, she stayed with him, locked the door, and reassured him that it was closed. She accompanied him to the green room once he felt ready to leave.
In the green room, Julian asked Kayla to wake him before they needed to enter the theater. Her agreement allowed him to stop checking the time and doze while she and the Lee family continued talking nearby.
The Car Ride Home
In the car after the premiere, Julian was barely conscious and talking in his sleep. “D’you see him, Kay?” he mumbled. “He was smilin’. He saw me.” Later, with a child’s vulnerability, he asked, “Did good, right? For him?” Kayla held his hand and told him he had done so good. Just before falling fully asleep, he whispered, “Tell Kayla I love her the most.” Beside him, Kayla cried and laughed at the same time, then whispered back, “I’m right here, genius. And I love you the most.”
At Home After the Premiere
When their Uber reached home, Kayla gently woke Julian and helped him out of the car and into their apartment. He remained profoundly sleepy and stumbled on the short walk to their door. Kayla found his drowsy affection endearing despite the practical difficulty of getting them both inside.
Kayla expected Julian to fall asleep from exhaustion after the premiere. The preceding weeks and months had been demanding, and the final production workload had left him with very little sleep; his nap at home before the event was his first substantial one in days. He was already nodding off in the Uber on the way home. That exhaustion shaped Kayla’s initial interpretation of his later distress. His anxiety medication and rest had helped him manage the screening and celebrations, and his grief about his father’s absence did not surface until they were home.
Julian said he wanted his soft pajamas and went to change while Kayla took out the trash. When she returned to the apartment, she heard him sobbing from the bedroom doorway and found him clutching a program and struggling to catch his breath. At first, she did not know what had prompted his distress and considered several possibilities, including the evening’s overwhelm and a migraine. She held back her questions instead of requiring an immediate explanation. She had anticipated exhaustion but not this episode of grief; her later belief that she should have expected it was her own retrospective judgment.
The Post-Premiere PBS Approval Email
After the premiere, PBS acquired the film for streaming distribution. When the network approved its final cut for that release, Julian was asleep on the couch, recovering from a CVS episode. Kayla found the email and sat in the quiet morning light, overwhelmed by what it represented: the nights Julian had almost quit, the times she had told him his dream mattered, and the hours of footage he had reviewed with trembling hands. She curled up beside him, pressed a hand to his chest, and whispered, “You did it, Jules.” She later forwarded the email to him with the subject line: “You did it, Jules. You told his story. And yours. And I’ve never been prouder of anything.”
Impact on Each Other
Their work at Resonance Films gave Kayla a purpose that matched her convictions. It allowed her to bring empathy, organizational skill, and a refusal to look away from suffering into work intended to change how others saw disabled people. She found a career and a calling in the company she built with Julian.
Kayla gave Julian a sense of safety that his trauma had made difficult to believe possible. With her, he could feel less at war with his body and more certain that someone would choose to stay beside him. She repeatedly affirmed that he was enough, that his filmmaking dream mattered, and that his body’s limits did not determine his worth. Those assurances helped sustain both their relationship and his work.