Six strings and a second chance: How music helped Justin Aguayo heal

How music and steady support reshaped a life

Army Veteran Justin Aguayo, the son of a Marine, grew up the way a lot of military kids do — new schools, new towns, new faces, over and over. Home was never a place. It was whoever was in the room with him.

So maybe it makes sense that when he needed something steady to hold onto during his own military deployment to Iraq in the early 2000s, he found it in six strings and a few chords, sitting around with fellow soldiers, playing guitar for whoever would listen.

He didn’t know it yet, but that guitar was going to save his life.

The war that followed him home

Aguayo came home from his service in Iraq carrying things that didn’t show up in any duffel bag. PTSD. Anxiety. And agoraphobia, a fear of the outside world so consuming that for years, simply walking out his front door felt like an impossible task.

“There were times I’d get up the nerve to go somewhere, get there and turn right back around,” he said, remembering how something as ordinary as going to the gym could feel like too much. He’d get to the parking lot, feel the walls closing in before he’d even opened the car door, and go home.

Finding the right help

Everything started to shift a couple of years ago when Aguayo sought care at the Houston VA. It’s there that he met the person he now calls one of his biggest cheerleaders: his VA psychiatrist, Dr. Gurtej Mann. 

The relationship wasn’t a single conversation that fixed everything. It was a slow, steady partnership and someone who helped him manage his medications, who pushed him gently toward the world he’d been avoiding, and who celebrated every small win along the way.

Going to the gym was one of those wins, and it didn’t come easy. The first few times, Aguayo made it into the building before turning around and driving home, overwhelmed before he’d lifted a single weight. But he kept trying. And slowly it started to work.

Today, he trains five days a week. What once felt insurmountable is now a regular part of his life, and he’s on a mission to stay strong, inside and out. His psychiatrist didn’t stop at the gym, either. Show by show, conversation by conversation, he helped him build the confidence to talk to people after his performances, to stand in a room full of strangers and simply exist there, present and unafraid.

“Every step of the way, I had help,” Aguayo said.

A voice for others

These days, Aguayo, whose friends call him Fuz, channels his energy into music, performing in two bands, working in the symphonic metal and goth genres. Both bands are gaining real momentum, drawing solid crowds, and taking him on the road.

He’s also going back to school, working toward an audio engineering degree at San Jacinto College to go along with the master’s degree in public health he already holds. It’s a fitting combination for someone whose life now runs on two parallel tracks: helping people heal and creating the music that helps him do the same.

Aguayo’s drive to give back led him to Stay Tuned for Vets, an organization that connects Veterans with music as a form of healing. Through the group, Aguayo now teaches fellow Veterans how to play guitar, passing along the very thing that once pulled him through his darkest times.

This week, that mission brought him somewhere personal: the lobby of the Houston VA Medical Center, guitar in hand, ready to play for the Veterans there.

Pushing through the fear, one more time

Aguayo almost talked himself out of playing his guitar at VA. He worried people would be annoyed by the music. He worried about being seen, being watched, being too much in a space that wasn’t his own. The anxiety that still visits him showed up right on schedule. But he pushed through anyway.

What he found on the other side was worth every uncomfortable minute it took to get there. He watched Veteran after Veteran stop, listen, smile. He saw the kind of quiet joy on their faces. And in that lobby, playing music for Veterans who understood exactly where he’d come from, Aguayo found something he didn’t expect: He wasn’t just healing anymore. He was helping his fellow Veterans heal, too.

“Music speaks where words can’t,” he said. “It’ll help you get out anger, frustration, joy or whatever it is you’re carrying.”

The message he wants others to hear

Aguayo is honest about the fact that his story isn’t finished. He still lives with agoraphobic tendencies. PTSD and anxiety haven’t disappeared. Some days are still hard, and some doors are still harder to walk through than others. But he wants other Veterans to know that none of that has to be the end of the story.

“Don’t be afraid to put your hand out and accept help,” he said. “There are a lot of reasons not to get it. But if you do, the sky is the limit to what you can accomplish.”

His own life is proof. A kid who grew up without a fixed address found one anyway…not in a building, but in a psychiatrist who never gave up on him, in a gym he learned to walk into without turning back, and on a stage where his joy, once nearly silenced, now reaches the people who need to hear it most though his music.

He hopes to keep coming back to the Houston VA to play for Veterans on a regular basis. His bands may be filling venues across the country, but there’s a room in that VA lobby that holds a different kind of significance…one built on shared experience, mutual understanding, and the belief that healing doesn’t happen alone.

“Focusing on others is where it’s at for me,” he said. “I want other Veterans to know that treatment works. You can fight your way through this and have a happy life.”

For Justin “Fuz” Aguayo, that fight looks like a guitar, a stage, and a room full of Veterans who, for a few songs, aren’t fighting anything at all.