Sophia Bush is still processing the death of Google programming executive Dan Fredinburg, whom she dated from April 2013 to February 2014. Fredinburg, 33, was killed in April by a massive earthquake in Nepal while climbing Mount Everest.
"Losing one of my best friends a few months ago shattered me," the Chicago P.D. actress, 33, says in Health magazine's September issue. "There were days I felt like my body had been turned inside out. I felt like my heart was on the outside of my body and everyone who came near me was stabbing me."
Since then, Fredingburg's tragic death has inspired the actress to live in the moment. "The crazy thing is that since Dan died, the lessons have come like Mack trucks," Bush reveals. "There is no next time. There is no excuse to wait a day to do what you want to do and to change the way that you want to change."
Bush used to live in constant fear of never measuring up. "The word 'enough' is a monster for me," she says. "I don't know how anyone ever feels that they are enough: successful enough, smart enough, pretty enough, healthy enough." What changed? "I got so scared the first time I decided to say, 'I am terrified of not being enough.' And what came back tenfold—women who identify, women who sympathize and women who experience all of that—was mind-boggling to me. We are so in this together. And that helps" she explains. "A friend said to me, 'Let it be enough, whatever you did today. You went on a two-mile run and you didn't do a circuit-training workout? Who cares? Let it be enough.'"
(Bush's One Tree Hill character Brooke Davis shared the same fear. In one episode from the show's fourth season, she confessed: "That's what I'm afraid of. Not being enough: not good enough, not smart enough, not pretty enough.")
As a kid, the Chicago-based actress recalls, "I always wanted to save the world." That may sound naïve, but as she now tells Health, "My parents thought it was sweet and that I'd outgrow it—and I never did!"
Make no mistake, though: Bush understands that the world isn't all sunshine and rainbows. "I don't think I just trust every single person anymore. I'm really coming into myself. There's something about 33. You know, it's one of those sort of sacred years. Thirty was amazing, and 33 is really only getting better. I feel much more rooted. I've learned how to listen to my intuition," she tells the magazine. "My heart still feels open and I'm still madly in love with the world, but I understand very quickly how to read a person's energy and how to better protect my own."