Episode 5: Story of my life, episode 1

As promised I am doing a series about the story of my life from as far back as I can remember to now. This first episode touches on as far back as I can remember all the way up to my move from Chula Vista to Moreno Valley California. Be sure to stay tuned for the story as it unfolds. 

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Speaker 1 0:00

Advancements in technology shifting markets and the gig economy are changing the nature of work with this in mind, Harvard business school, executive education is launching a new program on managing the future of work based on the latest research into the forces reshaping workforce demographics. This program is designed to help employers remain competitive by thinking strategically about today's evolving business landscape. Learn more by clicking the banner or visiting hbs.me/future that's hbs.me/future .

Speaker 2 0:33

Thank you for tuning into the AEG Nashville podcast. Here's your host Aja nashville.com. [inaudible]

Speaker 3 0:53

Hey guys, Alex here, Aja nashville.com. Like I said, in my earlier Facebook post , I'm going to start doing a podcast each week talking about my life and kind of some of the things I've been through. Um, basically what I'm going to do is I'm going to start from the early years and kind of wake my work my way up as it sits right now, you don't , I feel like I'm on the path of success. I haven't necessarily achieved it, but I think I'm working towards it. So this is coming from a point of, you know, where I've been to, where I'm going. Um, the reason why I think this is important and it needs to be heard is because there's a lot of people that have been in situations that , uh, maybe they felt have handicapped their life in one way or another. Maybe it's caused issues for them in some way. Maybe they blame their lack of success on that. Or maybe it's just something that bothers them on a day to day basis. And they think they're the only person that's been through it. So my intention here is not to get sympathy. It's not to have people say, Oh my God, it's so great. You turned out this way or any of that, you know, I've heard all that stuff all my life. It's not something that I needed affirmation on. It's simply to share a story in hopes to help other people be inspired to achieve more. So I guess the best starting point is starting with my first memories. Uh, I grew up as I grew up with a single mom, never met my real dad. My mom got pregnant with me when she was 17 years old. Um, you know, I remember seeing pictures of her young at the pool, you know, like any 17 year old should be, but just completely bloated pregnant. Uh, you know, I never got to meet my real dad's story. Has it that my grandpa or grandma basically told him that he was not allowed to be at the hospital when I was born. Uh, I actually never saw a picture of my real dad till I was about 19. So growing up for a small portion of my life, I believe that my sister's dad was my dad. So that's where this, the early part of this story starts from. So my earliest memory that I can put is being in a park. It was dark. I know that the park that we were at was somewhere in national city, California, which is outside of Chila Vista or , or San Diego, and just remembering an altercation had taken place. Uh , my sister's dad had told my mom to take off in the heat of the moment with her leaving. Somebody got ran over. Um, you know, like I said, it was an altercation between my sister's dad at that time. He wasn't my sister's dad , cause my sister wasn't born yet. But of some sort of altercation that occurred from drug deals or something of that nature , um, that's my earliest memory. And then you move forward to around the same time period. Uh , my mom was in a very, very abusive relationship. She got beat up eyes, busted, open face , busted, open, you name it. I remember the cops coming through our window. We lived in an apartment in a national city and I remember it being dark , uh , police showing up and police actually breaking through the living room window because the police had gotten called because my stepdad or sister's dad was in the kitchen, just beating the crap out of my mom. You know, those are things that I saw on a day to day basis. Uh, it became very regular for me to see things like that. Um , in addition to that, you know, there was emotional, there was physical abuse towards me as well. I got called anywhere between stupid , uh , punk bitch, you know, you name it, it's been called , um , you know, but that's something that's formed and strengthened me over the years. You know, words just don't bother you like they did when you were a kid is a right for an adult to say those things to a kid. Absolutely not. But you know , it's kind of given me my thick skin. You can get somebody and they can, they can say whatever they want. It means nothing to me anymore. Um, but seeing those things as a child, obviously those are disturbing and looking at those things as a child, you get to, it almost becomes regular. It's weird, you know, it's wrong. You know, it's not something that should take place, you know , uh, that other families don't do it, but it becomes very commonplace as a child. It almost becomes something of the norm. You know, I remember , uh , being young and living in a condo in Chula Vista and knowing that my other friend's parents didn't treat them that way or that they didn't react to each other that way. And knowing I had to hide this and for me, it was embarrassment at that point. It wasn't that I was embarrassed for him. It wasn't that he was doing something wrong. I was simply embarrassed myself because I thought it was something I was doing. You know, there was times where , um, they would get in fights and I would get into the middle of it in one way or another, or the fight would be about me or I would be the grunt of punishment. And a lot of times that punishment included me being locked in my bedroom. You know, I would sit in my bedroom for hours on top of hours, not being able to come out of my room and actually being locked in the room. Um, you know, and just told that you're going to stay in here until I come get you out. You know, my mom and my , my sister's dad at that time were pretty heavy into drugs. Um, they were doing cocaine, weed, drinking, you name it. It pretty much took place. My , my sister's dad was very big into selling weed. Um, you know, I remember seeing a lot of that when I was growing up. The other thing I remember is him being extremely, extremely close to his family. That's something that you see that commonplace in Hispanic families is them being very close to home. You know, so they're in front of his mom. Everything always appeared normal. I was always excited to go there because of the fact that I knew I wasn't going to get beat that day. I knew I wasn't going to get yelled at most of all, I knew I wasn't going to get starved. A lot of the times when I was locked in my room meals would come and go without me getting one. Or in certain cases I would get a meal, but the meal would be, you know, rotten , tuna , uh, old lettuce, you know, something like that. That basically, if I didn't eat it, that was my only meal, but I couldn't couldn't stand to eat it. So a lot of you that know me now know that I'm very strange about the way I eat food. Um, what it is I eat. I always smell my food before I eat. And it seems weird to most people, some people don't even see it, but it simply comes from as a child, not having any other options and having to make sure that what I'm eating was not Rodan , not bad, not something I didn't like something thrown in there, something thrown together, you know , whatever the case might be. I mean, that was my only option as a kid. Um, the other thing is, and , and once again, this is embarrassing, but this is who I was. You know, when you're locked in your room for hours and hours, you gotta relieve yourself. Um, I would open up my window and open up my screen and have to urinate out of the third story. You know, do whatever I could obviously to , um, kind of relieve myself because I wasn't allowed to come out of my room. Basically what my sister's dad would do is set a jar on my door knob. If you turn the door knob, that jar would fall off. If you pulled the door open, the jar would fall off. If he came back and the jar was moved, it led to, he had a big long black leather belt with a big buckle at the end. And it wasn't one smack. It wasn't two smacks. It was as many smacks as he could get in before my mom would come break it up. Um, you know, so there was a lot of fear from that. I didn't want to go out of the room. I didn't want to leave the room. I always wanted to stay in it to make sure that I wasn't gonna get in trouble, you know, and , and basically just being alone , um , not having any other options, you don't challenge somebody. That's 250 pounds, you know, goes to the gym all the time and, and can beat the crap out of you. It's just not something you do. Now at that time, I thought it was something I was doing wrong. As a kid, you don't understand that there's messed up people in the world. You just understand that certain things are your fault. You know, and that's what I always looked at is, okay, this must have been something I did. And that's why I'm being treated this way. You know, the days I would go hungry, it must have been something I did. And that's why I'm being treated this way. I remember sometimes sitting in my bed waiting to go to school and hearing the bell go off at school, knowing that all the kids are at school, I'm stuck in my room because I'm still not able to go out of my room. I mean, there was, there was lots of times where I was locked in my room for a good part of the day and just wasn't allowed out of it. So what that did is that created some emotional problems for me in school. Um, I remember being six, seven years old, somewhere in that ballpark and being suicidal. I remember , uh, putting zip ties around my neck and tightening down on him because I was so I thought it was me doing stuff wrong. And the only way my mom saw that was I've passed out, coming down the stairs amount of falling down the past few stairs. And she had cut it off by neck because that's something that, to me, it was better than living in the situation that I was living in there . Also having events like that at school , um, which is where this kind of came out. So one day I was in school and the teachers were threatening to send me home because I was acting out. I found out at an early age, at seven years old, I found out that my intelligence level is much higher than those around me. And so it caused me problems in school. I didn't want to concentrate. I didn't want to focus because everything seemed really easy to me. Um, so I was doing my normal thing. I was getting in trouble, got threatened to get sent home. And , um, I didn't want to do that. Obviously getting sent home was the worst thing in the world for me, you know, as a regular child, I believe that people, when someone says, Hey, I'm going to send you home. There's some fear there, but it's not extreme fear. It's not fear for him going to get my ass kicked. You know, it's not fear for dreading what's going to happen when you get there. And that's what happened. I was dreading to go home. So in turn, I went to the principal's office and the principal called the child protective service who called the police. They inspected me, they noticed bruises all up and down my back and my backside and my legs. Um, and so they were sent to my house. So I didn't get sent home from school. But what happened is by the time I got home, the police were there questioning my sister's dad. Um, I didn't get taken out of the home or anything like that. They questioned them . I can't remember what all was said, what all was done. But I do remember the fact that when they left, he was still there. Um, which led to a very, very bad situation, a situation that had been worse than it had ever been before. So the point where , um, my mom had to intervene because it was just too, you know, his reaction to everything else. Imagine somebody being angry, cause you basically just told on him . Um, that's what it came down to. And I think that's when Ron mom started making the decision to separate herself from him , you know, there was, there was way too much violence, too much abuse. Uh, I mean I was throwing around like a ragdoll. I was seven, eight years old, you know, I probably weighed 60, 70 pounds. I was little when I was a kid. That was the thing. It wasn't until high school that I went from five, three to six, one six, two , you know, in a matter of a summer, I mean I shot up like crazy. So I was just a little kid, you know , um, he was able to toss me around quite a bit and I just remember being beaten so bad with that belt that my mom finally came in and you know , it was a bloody messed up situation, but she intervened and had them leave for the night. But I knew he would come back. That was the downside. Every time he left, I knew that he'd be back at some point. Um, my grandma was living in another city that was about two hours from us. And like I said, anytime we got around a parent and an adult, anything like that, the circumstances had changed with everything, looked like it was bright, mighty and PG and everything's going good. And where the Brady bunch having the best family in the world. Um, you know, and so it looked right on the surface. Now around that time, my sister had been born. So my sister at that time was about two years old and naturally, you know, him as a father, she got all the attention. She got showered with gifts, things like that, which was fine. You know, my sister , um, I've always loved my sister. I've always enjoyed having her around. She's always looked up to me as a brother. You know, we've always had that very close bond. And I think that close bond mostly came from a lot of this . She, she was a baby. She had no idea what was going on. Um, but that caused him to pay more attention to her, which caused a , um , anger issue as it pertained to me, you know, he was upset anytime I did anything, he didn't want me to be a part of certain things. Um, you know, and , and that was his baby. So the abuse towards me got worse than worse. Um, to the point where a mom finally decided to take action and move. Um , just like any other time, I figured this was BI the last time and , and he would be back in the picture, but in this case, my grandma had a home in Moreno Valley, California. Um, I still remember the address and everything it's crazy. So we wound up moving to , um, Marino Valley, but let me back up, I forgot about a story that I had, a , there was a time where the beatings and everything had gotten so bad that , um , I had, so our condo was third floor and then we had the second floor that had the balcony. And that was one unit. The first floor was a totally separate unit and had kind of a fenced in backyard area. So what I had done because I was locked in my room as I jumped from the third floor down to the second story bound balcony. And from the second story down to the first floor left, and I still remember the kid's name, obviously I don't want to share it, but it was a friend of mine that I had a friend at school. And what I did is I wound up going to his house , um, and hanging out. It started to get late. I asked if I could spend the night they approved during this time, my parents had no idea where I was at. I was hoping to run away and just get away. I remember at some point, my mom showing up to the house that I was at my buddy and I had jumped out the window and took off because he kinda knew what the scenario was. We had a big thing where we used to go down to the recreation center in the backside we'd catch lizards. And then we would catch crickets in order to feed the lizards. So one day we had taken off, we went down there and we were coming out. And I remember my stepdad at that time drove a blue Malibu. And this wasn't the new pansy look in Malibu because this was old school, you know, big muscly car, Malibu , or muscle cars of Malibu could be GM power. I still remember the GM door seals and everything else. And all of a sudden he saw me coming out. So he swerved, picked me up. I had a bag full of crickets and he asked me what was in the bag. And I said, don't open it. He didn't listen. He opened it. And what happens when you put a hundred bags in or a hundred crickets in a bag, they tend to jump. And they jumped all over the place. And trust me, I got the ass open from hell and the face smashed and everything else from that. Um, you know, I dreaded being back home. I dreaded being there. I begged to leave. So that's when I believe it was after that point. If I remember correctly that my mom decided to pack up and make our new journey to Marina Valley, you know , my grandma was the type that she would help, but it was on her terms. You did what she wanted you to do for her to help where else you want to know part of it. It was unfortunate, but it makes sense. Now looking back, it makes sense that she would do that because she wanted action to be taken, not just empty promises and get back into the same old situation like we did before. So the move was made , um, you know, and that's where I'm going to kind of cut things off for this episode. You know, I went through my childhood relatively quick for the most part. That was the beginning of things. You know, there's other pieces that fall into play there, but the moral to the story is, you know, the , the physical abuse, the mental abuse, all that, that's all something that I feel now has strengthened me, but I couldn't imagine another person going through that same thing. You know, I couldn't imagine another person having to deal with those things that I dealt with for the simple fact that I think it would have crushed. Most people not saying I'm stronger by any means or anything like that, but it takes a strong person to be able to go through something like that and make it through , um , was I as a child? No. Did I enjoy my childhood now ? Um, I grew into an angry, violent type person, which led to a lot of trouble in the future, led to a lot of issues in school, led to a lot of issues with the law. You know, it, it didn't pan out to be anything good at all, which those things I'll share , uh , in the upcoming podcasts. I appreciate you guys taking time to listen to this. If you know, somebody that's, that would benefit from hearing , um, this portion of my life, share it with them. You know, my idea here is not to gain any type of popularity or have people say, Oh my God, I've heard what you went through, you know, blah, blah, blah, this, that, and another. And I'm also not looking for negative or positive attention. The biggest thing I want to do is share my story, hope that it influences and inspires somebody else and let you people out there and know that there is a better way, a better method. And there is light at the end of the tunnel. And it's not always a train on the other side. So thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you guys have a great evening. We'll see you on the next episode.

Speaker 1 18:54

Advancements in technology shifting markets and the gig economy are changing the nature of work with this in mind, Harvard business school, executive education is on chain , a new program on managing the future of work based on the latest research into the forces reshaping workforce demographics. This program is designed to help employers remain competitive by thinking strategically about today's evolving business landscape, learn more by clicking the banner or visiting hbs.me/future that's hbs.me/future summer is coming time to turn off the TV and turn on a clever little app called audible with audible. You can listen to the stories you love while doing the things you love outside. You know, that place you're supposed to be in the summertime for just 1,495 a month. You've got a credit good for any audio book, if you don't like it, exchange at any time or roll your credits over to the next month, if you don't use them. So get up and get outside with audible. Start a 30 day trial. And your first audio book is free@audible.com.