
Contents

Prologue

Book 1: Beginnings

Poverty: Hearth and Dirt

Adversity and Satisfaction: Hooah

Book 2: FRAGO

Other Cultures: Argentina

Universidad de Buenos Aires

Iguazu Waterfalls: Memories Unlock

Hatred and the Innocence of Children

The American College Experience

Undergrad, Tucson, and Graduation

Book 3: Close to the Sun

Graduate School: First Year

Larry and Washington, DC

Bond, Mexican Retard shot

Never Surrender: Paradise Lost

Book 4: Spiritual Awakening

Teacher of the Year, Splenectomy

The Human Spiritual Awakening

Shots Fired, Hospitalization

Applause and the Path

A Call to Arms: Union Fight

The End and Conclusion

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******[Prologue] **

I began writing this book in 2006, a time when my career and social life were reaching new heights. I was working for the United States Congress, was doing PhD research for an extraordinary biochemist, and had been on a date with a model. I had just completed the Bataan Memorial Death March with heavy gear. For someone like me, I felt like I was Icarus flying close to the sun.

I come from a deep poverty of dirt floors, born in 1983 in Socorro TX to immigrant parents who don't speak English. That beginning made every new experience up the socioeconomic staircase an exciting adventure. By 2006 alone, I had met many amazing and deeply inspirational people who I never could have imagined meeting as a Mexican-American peasant from an emotionally abusive childhood. Treasuring these people was how this project began. It would morph into a record of grief, joy, loss, and love.

On May 1st 2012, I made the decision that the relentless struggle that was my life was something I could no longer justify. I put a 9-mm weapon to my head and pulled the trigger—a suicide attempt, as it's better known. I lost part of my brain and fractured my skull. I should have bled out, yet somehow, I survived—a miracle that I still don't understand to this day. Lying on my deathbed made me realize just how much I had felt and lived in such a short time. It made me want to share my story and its message: Life is beautiful, for all of us—if we can see past the filter of our mind—and its expectations.

In sharing this book, the risks I take are outweighed by the hope that anyone with a seed of doubt and anger about who they are and what they've accomplished will listen to a message from someone who has been to the edge of the afterlife and back; the message is this: you are enough.

I don't pretend that any of my life has been an adventure, or that it is grand and worthy of retelling. My tale is important to me because I love and care deeply about people and I love and care deeply about this beautiful and unknown experience of life that we all share. My hope is that by reading some—or all—of this book, some person trying to decide what path to take will be inspired to consider college. That someone completely down on her luck, feeling like there is no hope, will take a deep breath, plan a small step forward, and take it; that some wealthy person disconnected from life will remember what it means to value it at its most basic level. Shit, if all you get from this is that you appreciate your coffee a little more the next morning, then I'll have wildly succeeded.

Be kind; first to yourself, then to others. Seek help when you know you need it. Never give up.

I've either omitted the full names of people and locations or have changed them entirely to protect their privacy.

This was never a book. It was a peasant's journal. It was a journal that grew wiser as the years passed. I hope that I've compiled it enough to make you laugh a little; that I've compiled it enough to inspire you to fight the good fight, if only a little.
Book 1:

Beginnings
It wasn't until I made it out to The University of Texas that I started to realize just how poor I was. I had experienced situations of deep poverty for years, but it all seemed normal because I never had access to the rest of the world around me; only to my own little microscopic world of my neighborhood, Campestre, in Socorro TX. I couldn't ever imagine that anyone alive could have a life routine different from my own. Even the imagination needs some experience to feed it.

Being dirt poor allows you to focus on the richness and depth that life has in its bare state, free from wealth and possessions. It allows you to learn that the connections and experiences you have with those around you are the true currency of life. It's the human element that binds us all and it is invaluable.

[Hearth]

I was very small when we came to live in Socorro. My dad had bought a tract of land and started building a house. He had a degree in "la ley de la vida," which translates into "the law of life." There are many people—from many walks of life—who have a similar phrase. It simply means that you do whatever is necessary to bring food to the table. It means that you pick a craft and learn it as best as you can and then improve it through trial and error, never embarrassed, always determined. My father had friends who were "electricians" or "plumbers," but building our home was mostly a learn-as-you-go effort. To avoid calling it a "wreck," I choose the word "shoddy" to describe its completed craftsmanship. When my family moved in, we all slept in the living room. Our house had a hard-packed dirt floor, we didn't have windows, and a plastic sheet served as our roof, covering a cinder block exterior and sheet rock framing for walls. There was no running water. Instead, our family would receive 5-gallon water donations from the local church. To bathe, my mother would heat water for hours until it was mild and then dump it into a large tina (tin tub). We'd get in and then use empty Blue Bunny Ice Cream gallon containers to pour water over ourselves. We didn't have electricity.

My mother would cook on a tiny iron stove fueled by wood. It had a little grate door you had to open to put the wood in. Sopa de repollo (cabbage soup) was often on menu: water, cabbage, spices. Sporadically, people in the neighborhood would donate or barter items like potatoes and vegetables. We would have a piece of chicken once a month. A few times, Mom fed us dirty little catfish she would catch in the canal behind our home. My siblings and I each had one or two pairs of jeans. If we outgrew them, too bad; when clothes got torn up, my mother would sew them back together or put a patch on them. Mom sewed a few dresses for my sister which my sister would recycle and reuse for middle and high school. My shoes were too small for me for many years. This pushed my pinky toe on my left foot over all my other toes and to this day my left pinky overlaps my other toes.

While Dad worked painting and fixing cars mom worked at a sweatshop (maquiladora) full time. There was no baby-sitting except for a few pockets of time when we had neighbors who could come and watch any one of us. When my sister was about 7, she was tasked with taking care of us. I was a good kid but my brother would give her a run for her money by setting fire to things in our home and otherwise just being a pain in the ass. One time, he was so bad that she chased him out of the house with a broom; he went without eating the whole day and when our parents got back from work they found him unconscious at a playground. Haha, pendejo!

If we got sick, we stuck it out—there was no visiting the doctor. Life was surprisingly perilous—barbed wire fences, broken glass bottles glued to walls, dangerous bike stunts, violent loose dogs. My mother and sister told me of a time when my brother got involved in some real shenanigans. He had managed to pierce a hole in his abdomen so large that it revealed his guts; my mother had to get him to calm down and lie down, then poured a ton of hydrogen peroxide on the wound. Splinters gushed out in a bubbly mess, to which she taped a gauze pad. "There, all done." If we ever visited the doctor, we went to Juarez where the care was a lot cheaper but the industry was much more unstable. The "surgery" years later for fixing my overlapped pinky toe was a catastrophe and after we went back to complain to the "doctor," he had vanished. My first legitimate doctor visit came when I was about 16 and only because there was a government insurance I qualified for.

I remember the day when natural gas was finally run into the house. My brother and I were playing outside when suddenly we heard an explosion and a shattering of glass. My brother always had the goofiest look of shock I've ever seen in a kid and I looked at him wide-eyed while he gave me the goofy look. As we ran to the house, we saw that all our windows had shattered and the glass had shot outward. The service man doing the installation was ambling his way towards the door—he looked at us and we saw that all his facial hair had turned to ash as he pawed at his face and coughed. We laughed hysterically. The propane tank was a drastic change in quality of life. It was a pretty common setup with a huge cylindrical tank set outside that provided natural gas for cooking and heating. (It was also a pony or a wild buffalo for poor kids without toys.) And now we could shower with warm water and heat our home during the winter. My mom would eventually get a gas range with knobs to control the flame level, a bit of an upgrade from throwing wood into a piece of iron.

After a few years, our humble home became a decent place to live in. We eventually even got evaporative cooling and electricity! Our home required a lot of maintenance so all of us were tapped early in life for the job. We washed dishes, cooked, cut weeds, and swept and mopped to Mom's obsessive standards The standards were never met. At one point, my sister put it upon herself to grow a vegetable garden for us to help our nutrition. She was about 11 years old.

I remember our home fondly, even if I do not remember too many moments spent with my family. Our home was beautiful. We had a big tree planted square in the middle of our back yard. There was patchy yellow desert grass and dried weeds all around. I remember scaling our roof many times to give our evaporative cooler maintenance. I remember walking in the yard to bring in clothes that had been hung out to dry on metal wires, taut between iron poles, as a howling thunderstorm was approaching. I remember constantly stealing away and sitting at the back steps of the house; the stupid dog would come over to me wagging his tail as I sat in the night, looking at the stars, serenaded by crickets. It was such a beautiful home. It was the only place for me.

We had a ton of pets with some outrageous personalities. We must have cycled through ten cats—affectionate, nimble, powerful strays with great indoor manners who came and went as they pleased. Waffles, Breakfast, Ninja, Mace, Snow. Waffles was a neighborhood boss. I'd spot him a few times just laying into other street cats and sometimes he'd return limping—victorious from showing some scrappy Tabby what's what I imagine. The most terrifying was Bubbles, who was a dear friend to me, but whom I would later find splayed on the roof of a junked-out car next to the house. She had gotten into the roof space to chase pigeons and they must have gotten to her, leaving a clean cut all along her belly and knocking her onto the roof of the car where she died. To this day, Mother thinks it was all the work of a satanic cult.

[Dirt]

To play Quemada ("to get burned"), you need a group of at least 3 people. Each person digs a hole in the dirt about the size of a tennis ball. You then take turns rolling either a tennis ball or a rebote ball (racquetball), trying to land the ball into another person's hole. The game was complicated, but if the ball landed in your hole, it was your job to whack someone with it. If you failed, you get a rock put in your hole. Get 3 rocks and you'd then get fusilado (executed). This meant you'd stand against a wall with your back to the group and your hands behind your head. Each person then got three throws at you. Pain was the objective. Being fusilado sucked ass, man. Sometimes, you would start trembling not knowing when the ball was coming. Sometimes, you would hear the rebound in your ears for a few minutes from the ball striking so hard right next to your head.

Today, Willy was getting executed. He was the youngest one of us all. We had a group of six today and Willie's older brother and bully, Rafa, was with us. He was a ruthless executioner. He kept threatening Willy that if he fucking moved, he was going to get his ass beat. Willy started crying and yelling out, "No, Rafa, no!" The execution continued. Rafa's aim was precise, his throws powerful. Because I was a kid, it was fucking hilarious. Writing it now, I'm still laughing. Rafa was mostly just teasing him and I think overall loved his little brother, maybe. This was one of the biggest games in the neighborhood.

I say that I am from El Paso Texas but really, we were from Socorro Texas, a suburb that to this day El Paso has not annexed. Socorro runs right along the Rio Grande. As a kid I would take bike rides along the many irrigation canals and through dog-filled cotton farms to get to the Grande. I would finally reach a canal created by the US Border Patrol for driving their patrol cars. The canal was the last obstacle for immigrants trying to come in and it was huge. But the dirt road on top was wide and perfect for kids on bikes.

Our home was close enough to the Grande that oftentimes we would have immigrants running through our back yard. The dogs would bark, it was 3 am, and you'd wake up just in time to see them run by. Without touching the politics of illegal immigration, I will say that I have seen—and lived—the conditions people flee from in Juarez, Mexico. There is murder, extreme poverty, lawlessness; there is no opportunity for living even close to what's considered poverty here in the States. People risk their lives to come here and the only reason they are willing to is because it is worth facing an unknown, uncertain, and dangerous future. It is worth the risk of dying to leave. I still have quite a few aunts and cousins that live out there and an uncle that lives in a home made of cardboard. I remember visiting our aunts in Juarez and it strikes me completely that my aunts always offered (and still do to this day) plenty of food and drink to visitors; they offered everything they had to their guests, even if they were strangers that didn't speak their language! During birthday parties and other celebrations, they'd bust out a piñata, beer and tequila, and play some 50's jazz and never stop dancing. The kitchen was always filled with wonderful smells. In sickness and turmoil, they would help one another Their family unity and joy was a beautiful thing to behold.

The neighborhood we lived in was called Campestre. It was a very small neighborhood at the time I was playing Quemada. It's dirt roads were eventually replaced with asphalt. Similar to ours, houses had all been either constructed by amateurs or were trailer homes. The people of Campestre had bought tracts of land to build on and claimed them with a chain link fence. I was good friends with many of our neighbors and I absolutely loved sharing a "Buenos dias" or "Buenas tardes" with them across the chain link fences as they their fed chickens or just sat outside. There was Pipi the carpenter, Esme, the lady who sold Avon and gave injections, Fidel the guitarist at church, Don Elpidio who raised chickens that our cats would constantly ambush. It was a wonderful little community.

Because the original land was all hard dirt, sand, and weeds, this remained what the front and back yards were made of. Desert landscaping didn't exist; everyone fought hard to make green things grow. People would steal water from the irrigation canal running right behind us for our many trees and efforts at grass. To steal water from the canal without a pump, you take a buddy, fill a water hose about half way, plug both ends with your thumbs, then drop the hose simultaneously, one person into the canal, and one into tree or grass. Capillary force does the rest, bringing a continuous stream of water from the canal. Occasionally, a city truck would drive by making sure no one was stealing water, so you had to conceal your hose with dirt really well. Dirt had so many applications, what a commodity! And it was everywhere!

Having a canal right behind you was ideal for a kid. When it was dry, we would jump down and play among the tires and broken bottles. For a time, I would collect broken glass shards and use them as pretend money to barter with my neighbor; we'd eventually get in a fight over who had more "money." Making a sand bridge on the floor of the canal was the best. The dirt was so soft you could dig deep into it and create a hole with a bridge over it, then drive your toy cars over the bridge. The dirt also tasted pretty good. When the canal was full, you could take string and tie it to a nail, then steal a piece of weenie (hot dog) and put it at the end of the nail. Casting it in, sometimes, you would feel a tug at the string and get excited; it'd meant you had nabbed a cangrejo (crawfish), and with care, you could try to bring it out, its mean pincers strongly clinging on to the weenie. The mean kids would pull out two of them and egg them on to fight one another, which they did, both of them menacingly displaying their pincers and going at each other. I always walked away for the gladiatorial games. I felt bad seeing the animals hurt each other.

We had a few other ways to entertain ourselves besides playing in the canal or playing Quemada—from street football games to dangerous bike stunts using make-shift ramps. We'd create powerful slingshots (tiralilas) using a plastic bottle top and a balloon. We'd load up on ammunition: strange, hard, green seeds (lilas). Then, proceed to hunt each other mercilessly throughout the neighborhood. There were desqualabrads (concussions), cuts, and bruises plenty to go around. It was life on the edge at 8.

Most days of the year, dogs would bark or yelp endlessly, but at night, the sun would go down with a beautiful pink transition to the blue sky with a multitude of stars above. There was no smog, no artificial lighting to impede your view. The stars were yours and yours alone. This was still true in 2011, when I returned to say goodbye to our home.

Sometime later on, my buddies and I jumped on our bikes and ventured out to an abandoned sewage facility some 3 miles west from home, just south of Socorro road. Arriving to the sewage plant, there was a long dirt road sloped down about 15 degrees, the left and right ends drop off suddenly to reach the ground level about 8 feet below. Our first discovery was a large fiberglass pipe, about 5 feet tall and 5 feet wide. One end bulged larger than the other. It looked pretty clean and was light blue. Cool! We rolled the pipe up to the top. Anyone want to get in?

Oscar (Kalin) was some kind of South American Indian. We really didn't know a whole lot about him except his dad was the soccer coach, and Kalin had a hell of an accent, of what origin we weren't sure. He had very dark skin, darker than mine, and thick black hair. We coaxed him into it. He fought and fought, but peer pressure is a bitch. He crawled in and, with his back curved on the bottom of the pipe, struck out his feet and hands to the opposite end to hold his position. We started rolling him down. The fiber glass was a pain in the ass; slivers would shed off and dig into our hands. The pipe started rolling a little bit, slowly; you could hear Kalin's muffled voice in his weird accent "Oh man, Oh man". We kept pushing faster and harder and soon the pipe outran us. We hadn't calculated that the bulge on one end of the pipe would cause it to favor rolling to one side, where the steeper drops were. Uh oh, it's starting to roll towards the steeper ends. "Wow, it's really picking up speed". At this point Kalin was yelling out loud "Help guys!" It turned a deep right and for a second, I saw him! He had lost his stance and was being rolled about inside, like South American Indian clothes inside a dryer. The pipe rolled off the deep end in a nasty jump and we saw Kalin fly out one end into a cloud of dust.

"Wow, cool!"

Struggle and adversity can lead to transcendent satisfaction. I initially thought that satisfaction in life was related to how far I had gotten away from poverty, by how much money I was making. How wrong I was. My battle with poverty has been a tiring one and because my mistakes led me away from financial abundance, there is always someone in my family needing more. Fuck fighting for money, it's endless.

No, the gold medals of my life, those transcendent moments of satisfaction, came from pushing my human will and ability to their highest levels. I got my first true taste of it working out with Army cadets. Our workouts were incredibly excessive and painful. Every day I felt like I was about to collapse, completely expended of all my energy, and then I would push more. It was those moments of feeling like I couldn't possibly succeed, like I couldn't go on, because the task was so challenging, that taught me about transcendent satisfaction.

You'll find yourself trudging in those moments, miserable, exhausted. Then, suddenly, you have succeeded, and you feel like you are overlooking a mountain sunrise. You feel relief, safety, calm. THAT satisfaction is the stuff that makes memories that will bring you a smile for the rest of your life. It doesn't have to be a physical feat; anything that challenges your ability to its greatest level is capable of gifting you with transcendent satisfaction.

[Hooah]

We went out to Mount Batel in Texas that day for our morning PT (military Physical Training) run. I had graduated high school in 2001, and by that August I was an undergraduate student at UT. A friend of mine introduced me to the Army ROTC and I naturally leaned towards joining the "elite" platoon detachment they offered, the Ranger Detachment. It was led by a Sergeant B who had spent time with the Rangers; he had an Airborne and Ranger Tab, among other decorations. I'd later learn that training under him would be synonymous with pain.

Daylight somehow broke at 7am without fail. For this morning run, we were all running in the beautiful quietness of 0600 under a blanket of stars and nasty humidity; Our hard breathing and landing footsteps thundering in the stillness.

Mount Batel is a wealthy community built on extremely steep hills. We ran the roads up and up until we hit a structure built as a view point at the top of the hill. It was an endless staircase that stopped at some stone architecture providing a very nice view over a large lake. We'd sprint up that thing a few times towards the end of the run, come down, then do push-ups, flutterkicks, and other tortures to muscle failure. On our run that day, Victor, an older prior-service cadet in his 30's, called out to the cadets, "Hey guys, check these houses out to the right...ol' Herma is going to be living in one of these houses one day." Victor was a mentor to me. My own father was always very absent from my life and so I have adopted mentors throughout my entire life to guide me. Victor was my first. When I first joined the ROTC, he quickly took notice of me, that I stood out from the rest, and he was always quick to point it out to everyone else. "Yo Herma! Those are some nice looking push-ups!", "Shit I'll be happy when I can run as well as ol' Herma." This morning, he believed in my academic ability in biochemistry and that I would make the right choices to lead to success. Victor is respectful, polite, kind, and a badass. The perfect mentor.

The ruck march was the meat and potatoes of our little pretend "Ranger" group. A ruck march is a fast-paced march carrying a back pack (ruck sack) on your back. For our purposes, we'd fill our rucks with at least 40lbs of weight. Our pace made it really more of a fast jog than a march.

We rucked and rucked and rucked—down lonely roads, up campus hills, around parks, and sometimes up stairwells of the tall UT Engineering Buildings. It's a hell of a workout and puts a strain on your whole body. It's not just that your feet and legs hurt, but your ankles, your arms, your shoulders, your abs, back and entire body ache and strain.

It feels at some point like you can't go on because of the pain and tiredness, and everyone who has rucked knows the feeling of helplessness. You just have to look past it. You have to endure the pain, convince yourself that your body is healthy enough to keep going and just be determined to keep moving. I remember my first ruck march. I kept falling behind to the back of the formation, struggling to keep up. Kirby, a bald African American fellow with squooshed eyes kept looking back and breaking formation to walk along my side; "Hey how you feeling man? You alright?" "I'm fine, Kirby." He'd get back in formation.

I kept falling behind, struggling to keep up.

He kept breaking formation and coming back, checking in. He wasn't doubting me, he was encouraging me. He did it many times until I couldn't bare it anymore and retorted "Jesus, Kirby! How the fuck do you think I'm feeling! My feet feel like I've got iron rods through them! Leave me the fuck alone!" We eventually finished the march, I along with them.

We were all exhausted, huddled in a circle, when someone remembered it was my first ruck march ever. "Oh yeah, good job Herma, hooah!" The team replied in synch, "Hooah!" It was so wonderful, I felt so cared for. I learned much later that Kirby would have kept coming back to me and encouraging me until I finished. If I'd collapse he'd fucking carry me. It was a commitment we had all made to each other though it was never spoken, it was demonstrated. I would never be given the opportunity to understand it's full meaning but even having experienced a sample of that type of bond changed my life forever.

Much later in my life I realized that these gestures really motivated me to keep going. Gestures like those became extremely rare in my life and I've missed them sorely. To compensate, I try to offer the same to everyone around me. I check in, I ask how people are, make sure they're okay. If someone succeeds in something, I celebrate with them, even if it's just whooping for joy. If they're struggling, I share their burden, try to encourage them. If they break down, I cry with them. Now, I realize that this is a principle at the core of what good leadership is, you look out for the people around you. You take care of your crew.

I remember workouts at the track where our focus was the Ranger creed. We'd begin with an intense cardio, upper body, and lower body workout. It was always intense, every time. We had a workout called the "about-face" workout where we'd face one squad leader and do whatever they said—pushups, lunges in place, situps, bicycle kicks, jumping jacks, etc...until they told us to stop. Then we'd turn around and do what the other one said. After 30 minutes, it was agonizing; we couldn't even do arm curls (cherry pickers) or stand straight. We looked pathetic. On track days, there was also an extra focus, the Ranger creed.

After we were done with the workout we'd stand in line and each person would call out one "stanza" of the Ranger creed, with the others repeating what the first person called. If one person screwed it up, we'd all have to drop and do push-ups. They were pure agony after a workout. On my turn, I would always stand at extreme attention and fiercely yell out my stanza. My favorite one was the 6th and last one, which went like this:

Readily will I display the intestinal fortitude required to fight on to the Ranger objective and complete the mission, though I be the lone survivor.

It ended with all of us yelling in unison "Rangers lead the way!!" Our workouts were always some form of exaggerated torture, and I loved it. I honed my physical and mental strength to a razor-sharp edge with the ROTC; and I discovered an internal blazing fire within myself from the Detachment. Eventually, I became a beast and have managed to keep some level of the same fitness since then: 2-mile run in 13:30, 3-mile ruck with 40 lbs. in 1 hour, 60 pushups in 2 minutes, and 60 sit-ups in 2 minutes. It was such a beautiful thing, standing in formation in a pool of my own sweat—my whole body sore as hell— walking to my car and grabbing my books and a change of clothes, hitting the nice cool showers, then heading to the dining hall for some hot chow and coffee. Fucking fantastic.

I learned a lot of cool things from the ROTC, like setting up and crossing a one-rope bridge, zip-lining, the basics of laying an ambush, and assembling and firing an M-16. We participated in a couple of competitions and field training exercises that were tons of fun. The entire experience raised my threshold on staying disciplined and on my tolerance for pain. After having done training in a deluge for hours, most rain storms now-a-day feel like light drizzle to me.

I met so many fantastic people and we had a ton of fun adventures: getting lost in orienteering courses, getting our asses handed to us in paintball matches, pissing off teams in intramural football because of our outrageous teammates, farting in our closed sleeping bags during field training exercises and doing drunken battle rolls across campus at midnight.

The Army ROTC breathed life into me. While my childhood and adolescence had taught me that I was a piece of shit person, the ROTC showed me the complete opposite. It taught me that I was a valuable person, that I had talent, and that people respected me.

Campestre; Canal behind home; Home in final stage; ROTC FTX
Book 2:

FRAGO

I am ever so grateful that I had an opportunity to immerse myself in a culture outside of the US and that it was the Argentine culture. Even as a complete stranger from a foreign and despised country, I not only made friends, I was made to feel like family among them.

The time I spent living in Argentina reminded me that there were still societies that practiced the tradition of honoring thy neighbor. It gave me an entirely new perspective on what living in a society could look and sound like; about how fun and friendly it can be; about what it meant to carry yourself with class. It also taught me that life can be really fucking delicious.

[Argentina]

The memories of the day are unremarkably vague but I do recall being summoned to go see Captain Sierra upstairs in the ROTC building. In the Spring of that year I had decided to sign the contract of service with the US Army. I was gung ho about going into infantry and had signed up for Airborne and Air Assault training. I wanted to make Special Forces; I knew that I could. I had drive, was aggressive, clear headed, intelligent, strong, adaptive, and fast. I lived for honor. The way I saw it my life was already forfeit. I had no role in regular life; my childhood and adolescence had taught me that. I was ready to sacrifice my life to help others. I was ready to sacrifice it for my country, fucking hooah.

However, before joining we had to get medically evaluated. I have a heart condition, WPW, Wolf-Parkinson-White Syndrome. It's an extra piece of nerve tissue running between the chambers of my heart and distracts the electrical flow. It can cause palpitations and at worse sudden death. I decided not to lie about it fearing it would bite me in the ass bigtime later on. I couldn't see failure as an option especially with the physical shape I was in. What heart condition? I completed the medical evaluation and was asked to wait to hear back. I was so fucking excited.

In the meantime, I was a biochemistry major. When I wasn't calculating equilibrium concentrations, drawing organic reactions and predicting hybridization orbitals, I was upside-down, pulling myself across a rope suspended between trees on campus. I was kicking ass in all my classes whilst in full Battle Dress Uniform (BDU). It was really really fun. Time flew by.

6 months later it's December and school is wrapping up for the semester. I had been summoned by Captain Sierra to her office. I go to the 3rd floor, walk the hallway, knock on her door, take a few steps in and snap to attention with salute. "You called for me Ma'am?" "Aurelius, there's so many other things you can do with your life...". I had been medically disqualified from serving in the US Army by DODMERB.

I stayed quiet, saluted, faced about, and quietly walked down the hallway, tears welling up in my eyes. She chased after me but I wasn't listening. I didn't know what to do with myself. Everything stopped. I went home that day and packed up all my shit; I was shocked, pissed, incredulous. I turned in my uniform the next day. Said my goodbyes. My life has never been the same.

The ROTC presented me with family, an opportunity to fight for a cause, to defend people who shouldn't be in the business of living in hell. That goal gave my life meaning when I had never felt one before.

And then I lost it all, my only family. The effect was devastating. My last run with the "Ranger" group was at Mount Batel, where Victor declared to our group that he had faith in me. I knew I had to get the hell out of Dodge; I was going to drive myself insane missing my buddies and our excruciating and masochistic workouts. I started looking more closely at my classmates in biochemistry and realized I was way too different from them. I was too fucked up, too fiery, too intense, and they were too soft, sensitive, pampered, and unmotivated. I had tried going with the flow for a while but I couldn't stay focused—this wasn't the direction that I wanted for my life, it didn't feel right at all. Something had to change! Shelving my emotions, I established my new objective: get the fuck out of Dodge.

As I started to develop the situation I discovered that the daughter of a family friend from El Paso was also at UT. Marisol worked in the study abroad office and through her help I got study abroad squared away within 3 months. I don't clearly remember the details of how I chose Argentina or how I came to win the National Security Education Program Scholarship except to say that it involved a lot of planning, a lot of writing, and a lot of persuading. I had proposed researching the impact of bovine Foot and Mouth Disease on the culture and economy of Argentina.

Regardless, my mind was now distracted with something greater than a yearning for the only family I had ever experienced; now, I was distracted with how I was going to survive in a totally foreign environment with absolutely no contacts or know ledge of the area; I was distracted with how the hell I was going to get some productive academia out of my study abroad program (COPA) as it did not offer any science courses in Argentina. I did know that there was a large University in Buenos Aires that offered a science curriculum but COPA did not have an agreement with them. I would be in Argentina 6 months.

I was so clueless about the world, about what other people were out there, how they lived, how they thought, what they ate, what they did. I wasn't fazed at all by this ignorance; I knew I had the tools and determination to survive and adapt to anything. Back then, I felt unstoppable. Hooah.

Over the next months I got my first ever passport then my Visa from the consulate in Houston. Sooner than you know it the big day was finally here. I'd be leaving my country for the first time, entirely on my own, without a single clue of what the future would have in store for me. For months Dad kept telling me that I wouldn't dare leave, that I was making things up. Fast forward and I'm on the bus to the airport. This pattern has never ended: Naysayers nag and mock me constantly then stare with gaping mouths as I make shit happen. "I said I was going to Argentina, and now I'm going. Peace." I had 1 piece of luggage and carried it on my back.

The flight was so much fun. We first flew down to Miami which had a raggedy airport with tons of makeshift wooden walls to guide folks to the right spot as it was under a lot of construction. Our flight to Argentina happened on a huge airplane with what I remember were 4 large aisles of seats. It was pretty damn cold and half way through the flight they provided us with a half decent warm meal. I rode next to an Argentine woman on the flight and we had a great conversation in Spanish. She was exotic to me and incredibly sexy. Her accent was awesome. It had so much personality and flavor. Talking to her on a cold night flight felt like something out of a movie. This all felt like such an incredible experience.

I was to be staying with my host "family". I was so desperate to experience what having a non-hurtful, loving family felt like. I was hoping my host family would provide this experience for me. You know, they'd be a loving couple with a few kids, a nice back yard, and a dog; maybe Clifford the Big Red Dog.

They turned out to be just a middle-aged couple, Emilio and Gloria. Emilio was a fun-loving guy who worked evenings as a DJ at a disquoteca. Gloria was a pretty Barbie doll girl who...well, I'm not sure exactly what she did. They lived in a tiny apartment in a complex some floors tall. The elevator was covered with a metal screen that you had to slide open before entering; it would creak as you compressed it to let yourself in and the elevator itself was darkly lit and felt rusty. It made a ton of noise. I was up on about the 5th level.

The heart of my Argentina experience became the Cafes, the Carnecerias (meat houses) and a Tango place. The Café's were fantastic. They were cozy little diners; normally with unique European looking architecture with polished wooden furniture. They served typical meals like any Argentine restaurant but of course the main menu item was the café. If you just ordered a café you would be given a very strong shot of espresso in a small ceramic and elegant cup, a small glass of carbonated water, and some cookies. This is the equivalent of us Americans ordering a triple venti low fat frappucino caramel super deluxe. I noticed Argentines could sit for an entire hour over conversation, normally very animated with gestures, laughter, and loudness, with these small cups of coffee. My main order became a café con leche, which is pretty much a latte. These cafés were everywhere in Buenos Aires and were the 5am hotspot after a night out. Dinner started around 11 pm daily. The Argentines definitely felt like they were appreciating a different type of life on a different time scale than our busy 8 to 5. God, it was fun.

The carnecerias were so amazing. I never got to see the farmlands that bred the cows, the cows themselves, or the gauchos that tended to them, but clearly there is something distinctly flavorfully-fucking amazing about that area of South America. These carnecerias normally had a central hub that had a lot of fire and heat with a lot of meat hanging around. You'd go up to this area and ask for your cut of meat; there were so many cuts, many I had never even heard of and can't remember anymore. The meat was always delivered perfectly grilled, glistening, and perfectly cooked. It was never dry or stale, never too thick, every bit was soft and perfect. It was damn near heaven. You'd take your plate up and get some meat, walk over to get some sides, come back to the table and ask for champagne or wine from the finely dressed moso (waiter) and at that point be spending 8 US dollars. Man.

The regional specialties were fun. Morcilla is cooked blood wrapped in intestine which is actually pretty delicious, if odd. The Choripan was a "fast-food" staple, being a grilled sausage cut in half and served over French bread then covered with a mild sauce called chimichurri (Argentines thought it was hot, pussies). Another food to note is the milanesa napolitana. It is a thin layer of breaded meat, covered with a thin layer of ham, then a thin layer of melted cheese on top, served with fries. Don't forget the fast-food variant of empanadas, filled with meats and cheeses. Oh my God. Fucking fantastic.

My night spot was a bar type place that had salsa and tango classes called La Viruta. You'd walk in and walk downstairs into an atmosphere that reminded me of something out of "The Cask of Amontillado". There were greeters to take your coat; it felt very classy. The place had an hour of tango lessons followed by an hour of salsa lessons. The sessions were connected with an interlude with Vicentico's rendition of "Los Caminos de La Vida" perfectly blending the two musical genres. I will not talk about the salsa. The tango however; the music is very passionate and slow, with the instruments being a perfect blend of something I can only describe as earthy. There is a lot of accordion and a lot of string and the music moves along slowly and passionately with sudden staccatos. The dance itself is a ballad of lovers. The basic step is a slow stride very much in between the follows (girl's) legs that stops suddenly, then continues. During the stops the lead can dip his follow slowly, caress her, and she can respond in grace and suddenly with what looks like an intercourse of the legs; she'll wrap her leg around the leads and kick and writhe them, like a serpent. With this style of music and dance you can imagine that the lead should be dressed in a powerful and clean suit and the female in a seductive and calculated display of the features. This was always a great retreat for me. I got very good at Tango and often danced with my instructor whenever we could. For sure, dancing with her will be one of my lifetime favorite memories.

Sadly, at least back then, Tango was a dying phenomenon in Argentina. Argentines would look to mainstream America for most of their music and movies. I can't imagine that's changed. **  
**
******[UBA]**

We had a cohort of American students that were all part of the study abroad program. They all had their courses and universities planned out for them. I didn't interact with many of them—they were embarrassing. They were there to demonstrate their wealth and to party and drink with each other and made no effort to appreciate Argentina's culture. Disappointing. Anyway, COPA had agreements with different universities in Argentina for a lot of classes but knew nothing about biochemistry curriculum in Buenos Aires. I was on my own. I started developing the situation, making contacts, asking questions, and figuring out where my options were. Fast forward.

I'm standing in a long line with a bunch of Argentines walking around randomly in this derelict building which was allegedly a prestigious University. It's called UBA (Universidad de Buenos Aires). I come up to the lady at the register and after struggling to communicate with her in Spanish, I explain that I'm from the United States and that I wanted to enroll in science courses; we get the ball rolling; some pesos later and a custom written contract later and I had enrolled myself in my first Argentine Immunology and Biochemistry courses. Yay! Fuck. What did I just get myself into?

UBA is (was?) a public school in Buenos Aires. This education was free, completely free, and you could tell that there were no funds coming into the university by the condition of the buildings. The professors all volunteered their time. There were seemingly no janitors and everything was a bland gray concrete. Once, during a class lecture, a beggar kid went down to the professor and started a funny tirade with her; he proceeded then to beg the class for money before she forced him out. I was shocked; this was nothing like UT with our pristine campuses, overhead projectors, air conditioning, wireless computer networks and dining facilities. Apparently, it was pretty common for these beggar kids to come in.

The trip to UBA was an ordeal. I had to walk downtown first, then jump on a "bus" 30 mins out to the University. This thing reminded me of the buses in Juarez Mexico. They are beat up, creak with every movement, have terrible shocks, and have tattered and torn seats. The entire trip felt like we were hauling ass down some eternally rocky terrain with the driver frequently cursing at drivers he passed or that cut him off. This guy had had one too many cafecitos in his life.

The school had a running track that wasn't made of polyurethane that we have even in our high schools. It was some kind of loose black dirt. Naturally, I kept up with my workout regimen while I was at UBA and so after school I'd head out there and torture myself running and doing pull-ups and the like. After my work outs I'd board the bus back home, just in synch with another gentleman, Alexis, who was too young for the university but would train for track with some city team.

Alexis was something like 16 years old and we hit it off well immediately. He was a gaunt and skinny teen with a light-yellow complexion and short hair. I thought of him as a very young Vladimir Putin. His family had immigrated from Russia and he was happy to be in Buenos Aires. It was extremely curious to hear him speak in the common Argentine accent.

On our many commutes together, he educated me on exactly how bad the country's (Russia) drinking problem was and we were able to share many funny stories about our own unique childhoods. I vaguely recall a story he told me about being asked to sing a solo Christmas Carol in front of his extended family: he got extremely nervous and botched the entire thing. Pendejo. We were both endorphin pumped when we'd ride home and as we walked to our next bus stop after hitting downtown we'd pass by some kind of Galaa with huge windows and some interesting items for sale. In particular there was a huge owl made of some very nice gems; Alexis liked it, a lot. He would tell me about it every single fucking time. "Che Aurelius, mirA ese tecolote...es espectacular!". Yeah dude, I know, you tell me every day.

I would never get to say my farewell to Alexis but I don't think I needed to; he knew I'd get his back in a fist fight. What a cool kid.

[Che Aurelius]

At UBA I was always walking alone in the beginning. I drew a natural curiosity from everyone around me; to begin with, I was rocking the military high and tight haircut and had a Spartan physique. At UBA, every student I knew was a complete hippy (the socialist variety), so the high-and-tight haircut? Yeah.

People wouldn't reply positively when I stated I was a "Yankee" because of their animosity towards the US at the time. Eventually, though, one guy named Leo who had spent a lot of time in the States befriended me. He came up to me while I was eating my lunch alone one day and introduced himself, then his friends; afterward they invited me everywhere. I had never received that treatment Stateside, aside from my ROTC buddies. I got drawn into his crowd and made quite a motley mix of friends. There were the devilish three, Pao, Flopi, and Ceci, then there was Leo and Lau, Euge, and Mariana. Flopi stole my breath every time. She's short, petite with a light complexion, has a gentle voice and beautifully wild blue-green eyes. I was in love with Flopi but had no chance, what experience did I have flirting with and dating girls?

They became my crowd and we had a lot of good times at UBA. Our first outing they took me to a World Cup qualifying match between Uruguay and Argentina. That was a memorable experience: the stadium was completely packed. They were firing official Argentina soccer balls into the stands and to my great luck one was fired in my direction. There was an elderly lady one level beneath me who reached out and touched the ball, but not fast enough, as I snatched it out of her hands! I still don't know how I feel about that moment. Sorry, lady, better luck next time. On our way out, the Uruguayans were spitting down on us from the stands above as we left from the stadium. So cool!

My crew also invited me to many Asados and nights out among other fun things. Back in class I was making tons of noise as usual but would also listen intently to everyone's story. It was wonderful hearing about their lives. I guess I must have earned the respect of the entire class. One day in lecture the students were passing around their Mate' (hot tea poured into a vessel with hot water and drank through a filtered metal spoon). It had made itself through about 10 students in my row. Nobody ever wiped it, they'd just drink from it, refill it with hot water, then pass it on. Eventually the person next to me silently filled the container, put the metal pipe in, and extended it to me. What a gesture. Thank you, people. In a few months I had felt more accepted at UBA than I had in 3 years of being at UT.

[Memories Unlock]

Later, I made a trip to the Iguazu waterfalls. I went with a few very cool American girls from the program. It was beyond majestic; walking out along very long wooden platforms that networked their way near and over the falls. It seemed like an entire ocean was beneath me and falling down to rocks below. Mist was constantly in the air. So cool.

On another day we ordered a horse-back ride up the hills of our hotel. It was raining, a lot. The only horse left for me was a tiny gaunt thing without a saddle. We threw a blanket on him and I jumped on. It was awesome. I had never ridden a horse before but I trusted that the animal was a good spirit. We made our way up in the rain across thick jungle leaves and berry covered plants. Our guide looked like Crocodile Dundee. At one point my horse was walking hurriedly towards a large, low lying branch; it was going to intercept me at my head. I couldn't get him to slow down and thought I would duck low to miss the branch. I ducked low then panicked when the horse started hauling ass, gallop gallop gallop gallop. I guess he thought my shift forward meant for him to go faster. I started losing my balance and tried to sit up again, just in time to get struck by the branch. I put up my arms to shield myself and connected with it. It clotheslined me off the horse in a great flip and landed me on my face straight in the mud, rain bubbling the puddles around me. I could feel myself smiling.

Out there I encountered a solitude I had never experienced before. I was happy to be away from my family, from everything I knew. It was so refreshing to experience life from a lens that wasn't the dirty, smudged, lens that I had become used to. It happens to a majority of us; this life, we perceive it through a lens, a lens colored by our past. It is a great moment when we can perceive life directly, free of the lens. Life is beautiful, people.

After returning to Buenos Aires from Iguazu I started getting a lot of flashbacks, a lot of dreams. Childhood memories of a lot of screaming, a lot of threats, a lot of crying, a lot of pain. I decided to start emailing my sister to ask her what she knew of me as a child and all of a sudden it all started coming out. I always had a suspicion that my soul was fucked up and that I was not a regular happy person, now the pieces started coming together. I had suffered quite a bit as a child. Why? God, I thought, I'm fucking broken, no wonder I don't fit in anywhere, no wonder I'm not the most cheerful person around.

It's amazing to me that up until that point I had never stopped and tried to consider what my family had done to me. I had blocked out my past for the sake of moving forward. Always moving forward. I kept forgiving my parents, kept forgiving my family. My heart would go into knots with anger but I would forgive quickly because it was more important to me to keep driving forward, to help my family out of their mess, than to think about how much hurt my family had inflicted upon me and be helpless about it. But finally, in the remoteness of those jungle waterfalls, I started piecing together what my family had done to me in detail. The sadness is that even though I had acquired that awareness, I still wasn't aware of how much self-hatred it had generated inside of me. All the pain and sadness I had felt since I was born, all the injustice, I had turned into anger and brutal strictness against myself. All of it was a subconscious process that I would never discover until my first therapy session a 10 years later.

And so, I found myself in the jungles of Iguazu, taking in a world through an unfiltered lens, free from stupidity, anger, hatred, and undue responsibility. Back in Buenos Aires I returned to my beloved friends and my classes. Then, suddenly, quickly, my program was wrapping up. I didn't know what to do with myself when it came time to say goodbye. What an incredible journey. I loved all the friends I had made and our relationship was so young. "Goodbye, farewell, take care. Hooah". I hadn't been able to find the best moment or the best words to say goodbye. My friends threw me a going away party. I tried to get a speech ready. I'd tell everyone how much they meant to me, how wonderful and amazing they were. We'd do shots together.

The day of the party came and I became so anxious that I got sick. I didn't give a speech, we didn't even take shots. Flopi was looking gorgeous in a tiny orange dress and I couldn't say a thing to her, I was too nervous and sleep deprived. Next thing I know, I'm on the cab to the airport. The cabbie kept chattering about something but all I could think about was how there wouldn't be a decent goodbye.

Ever since that day I decided I would never say goodbye again. I decided that I would live my life as well as I could with the people who I cared about and that that was the best goodbye there could ever be. Now, I see that it is a philosophy in life, not just the best way to say goodbyes. You don't fear the end because you live the best you can right now. Speak and live your truth, because that formal opportunity may never come.

My time around the majesty of the Iguazu Falls started me on a lifetime investigation into my childhood. I learned that there is nothing quite as tragic as abuse of the human soul, the human spirit. I learned that the human spirit wants to be happy. By natural order it is curious, exploratory, and mirthful. It finds joy in the daily fascinations of the world around it, all of which are simple.

This lesson is most evident in children, who babble happily, stumble towards adventure, are kind to one another, and laugh at nonsense. This human spirit lives within all of us still and it is full blown and alive in those moments that catch us by surprise, that move us, that make us laugh spontaneously, or that make us smile when we look into the eyes of another. This spirit is delicate in our youth. It cannot be insulted, treated with anger, forced, neglected, or abused. It needs to be nourished through love and safety. It needs to be given space to explore and learn. It needs to be praised and quietly reminded that it is worthy of love and acceptance. The potential to imprint a mindset or nature upon a child begins very early, some psychologists argue as young as 2 years of age.

It is a sad state in the world that there are people out there that trample, deject, or manipulate this human spirit in their children, whether intentional or not. I had the luck to experience it in my own upbringing and it has been an extraordinary challenge to undo all the harm that was done. It has haunted and crippled me for the great majority of my life.

[Hatred]

Before I begin with this chapter I need to mention that the suffering I experienced as a child is mild compared to that of many people I have met. The core of my suffering came from being neglected, unappreciated, unloved, and surrounded by anger since birth. I know that others have had it worse, there is always someone who has it worse than us, but that doesn't change the damage and the scars that we carry from such a sensitive and innocent time. Those are real, and it is our real obligation to make an effort to heal those scars.

When I was born into the world there wasn't any love in our family, only anger and hatred. The allegations are that Father cheated on my mother multiple times and his girlfriends often harassed my mom for many years. My parents also had huge disagreements on how to provide the best environment for us and how to best nurture us kids. By the time I was born my mother hated my father passionately and had given up on including him on raising us. There wasn't any harmony between them and each of them just kind of did their own thing and tried to raise us in their own way. I'm told I was a blessing to our family because everyone was just sick of so much fighting, instability, and anger. Everyone looked to me to help cheer them up and would relish in my innocence and joy.

Mom was never around because of work and when she was home she toiled endlessly to cook and clean for us. Dad was often away from home on his shenanigans. That left us kids to fend for ourselves and the only love we could ever receive was from ourselves, our school friends, and our neighbors. That shit didn't turn out well for any of us during our childhoods. Bro turned into a gangster and my sis became a bullied, friendless nerd. Me? I turned into an angry depressed kid that ended up learning that nothing he did mattered.

I never got the complete truth of the past between my mother and father and how we were raised. Father has vehemently denied he ever cheated on Mom or that he ever made any mistakes in raising us his entire life. When I attempted suicide as an adult he denied that it ever had happened. It was then that I gave up on discovering what had truly happened between my parents and our family.

What I know for sure, is that I have very few memories as a child in my family, and that I know for a fact what my own history was from the 5th grade to the end of high school. My parents met in Juarez Mexico at the wedding party of a friend. My mother states she fell completely head over heels for my father. He brought her to the States where they started raising a family.

[Father]

Father loved and loves his children to bits. One memory I have of him is of me sitting on his lap while we were driving to visit cousins out in the middle of nowhere. I was way small and he'd sit me on his lap and let me "drive". I remember the dirt road and his hands steering the car whenever it started to swerve. Sadly, my father didn't have the discipline or responsibility to keep a steady job and to pay the bills. He is a very hard worker, worked his hands to the bone working on cars, but he had this "bad hombre" fantasy of defying the law and shunning authority; he didn't care about paying bills or rent or tickets. "Por que chingados?" (why the fuck [should I?]) He'd leave a job the moment something upset him and for many years kept getting us evicted from one apartment to the next.

The other childhood memory I have of him is of being woken up at 6 am from heavy knocking on our door. There were strangers in suits at the door and when we opened the door they forced themselves in. They handcuffed my father in our living room while he was still in his underwear, his hair a mess. It was law enforcement. They were taking him away for not paying a traffic violation but I didn't, couldn't, understand that. I was just sad and frightened. I remember praying to God for days, weeks: "please let my father come back".

Whenever things in Socorro would get too hard for him he'd jump on a train with a friend of his and together they'd go off and have adventures. He'd leave to another state for months and would allegedly court other women and get them to fall in love with him. Every one of them would eventually come to harass my mother in one way or the other while mom stayed in Socorro working sweatshops and trying to give us kids a proper education and raising. Everyone loved Dad. He's kind and supportive of people and loves socializing and laughing. I remember joining Dad on visiting an old friend of his, Lalo. Lalo had few friends besides my dad and he was a heavy drunk. One day it got so bad that he ended up collapsed on the cement floor of his home. We stayed by Lalo's side while Dad held up an IV bag up for him. Lalo passed away that night. Dad's a very good guy.

He would do anything for us but in his heart, he never wanted us to grow our wings and leave. He wanted us to be his best friend forever and only one of us ever had the patience and love for that. Me.

Dad loved mom in a sense that he needed the sense of security and companionship that she brought. He'd do anything for her, except let her become independent; except help her create a stable environment for his children to grow and succeed; it's to do with classical Mexican culture. Good sons and daughters are never supposed to leave the nest and they're supposed to watch after the parents when the parents grow old. He was also raised in a culture of machismo, which states that a woman is subservient to a man no matter what. Mom wasn't about that, as she shouldn't have been.

[Mother]

I have a couple of happy memories of mom singing in the kitchen. Oftentimes the kitchen would smell wonderful. Mom's meals were always beyond amazing and truly filled with love. Even with bare ingredients, she could create delicious works of art. Enchiladas, tacos, sopa de arroz, frijolitos, tortas de papa, menudo, huevos rancheros, gorditas, albondigas—and on and on. She has an incredible gift of conveying love through her cooking.

I remember going into the kitchen to find her singing loudly. Sometimes so loudly that the dogs outside would wail and complain (or sing?) along with her, it was hilarious. Mom has a hell of story. She was born in Durango along with 12 sisters on a poor ranch. At age 10 they sent her away to Juarez to work as a servant because they couldn't afford to feed her. She suffered long and hard before she ended up in El Paso where she was able to raise a family.

Mom worked even harder than dad. She suffered for many years working at a sweat shop. I very clearly recall her being disciplined and working hard to save money for us kids for everything we needed. She was and is truly a hero. Disciplined, committed, relentless. Sadly, she became poisoned and toxic after years of adultery and frustration. Another of the few childhood memories I have of her is this:

She was cleaning and she was extremely aggressive about it; mopping in one room angrily then pacing the hallway, exasperated at all the unseen dirt and cursing and muttering under breath. Her posture, her demeanor, her voice, her gestures; she was the devil. I was cowering in my sister's room, trying hard to look busy. She comes in and asks me to stop being useless and to help. It was hot as hell outside and I didn't want to work but I knew that if I didn't assign myself a task in helping to clean the house she would insult me and assign one for me; I would fail in this task, no matter how hard I tried, I always did. I was so scared, I was so anxious, I was so pissed but too weak to realize it. I went out and started cutting the weeds outside the house with a hoe. I had been feeling sick that day and I started growing a terribly high temperature and sweating heavily – she noticed it and insulted me for being such an idiot. I yelled at her in anger and "ran away". I ran away along the canal about half a mile away, far for an innocent child. I stayed under a tree a little past sundown, hoping someone would come looking for me; no one did. I waited with my head in my arms, my arms folded around my knees; crying, wishing somebody cared. I remember it so vividly.
[Parents]

One of the only memories I have of the two of my parents together is watching them argue about divorce in the kitchen. They had raised their voices; my father seldom did but this time he was screaming. My sister, a teenager, was caught in the middle of it, sitting at the table, trying to mediate. She has always sided with mother. I walked into the kitchen and suddenly got extremely dizzy, I looked down and saw myself growing in size, towering over the floor, towering over the table; it was so fucking weird, I remember it with crystal clarity. I remember the dark tone of the wood on the table, the glass insert, the height, the size. It was extremely nauseating. Eventually I break down crying and run to my father's lap, yelling "Papi Chuy, Papi Chuy!".

**[5** th **grade to High School]**

Being raised in my family was a shitty state of affairs but what made matters worse was that I loved both of my parents and because I was a smart little bastard I realized that nobody deserved any of the treatment they were getting. From the youngest age I can think of I took it upon myself to try and get everyone justice. I never chose sides, any sides, only the side of fairness and justice.

By fifth grade I had started falling. Where I had been getting perfect attendance and good grades before, now I was failing classes and acting up. I became a pain in the ass to my teachers. I started dressing in baggy clothes and violence started amusing me. I grew my hair out long and I found a solace in heavy metal music that would stay with me forever. I was losing grip. I didn't give a shit about anything, never felt proud or happy about anything I did, and in general just felt like my existence was a bad thing. I would frequently draw violent cartoons with Barney the Dinosaur getting killed. I hated stories about joy and love. I hated them passionately.

In Middle School I would join number sense and excel in competitions and even go to state competitions but things back home would continue to pull me under. Every fucking day it was screaming, every fucking day I never did anything right, every fucking day was a misery. I dropped out of number sense in seventh grade and started contemplating killing myself. I was not flirting with girls even though they would flirt with me; I wasn't even combing my hair. My friend Felix would one day bring this up with his mom and she tried to do something with my black sleek hair but it didn't work out, I didn't give a fuck anyway. In eighth grade we would take a vacation to Chiapas for Christmas. Father was excited about the holiday and was jovial about the family being together that year. Mom knew he was excited and so planned a Christmas away from him to pop his bubble. Take that, Dad.

In Chiapas I met a very distant cousin and she was very kind to me. We'd frolic and play and she'd tell me how handsome I would grow up to be. I fell in love with her. I missed her deeply when I returned to El Paso. I felt utterly and miserably alone. My classmates all loved picking on me save a few. I was a mess.

Going into High School I abandoned all my friends. At lunch time I would grab my food and go eat it under a tree. I started questioning God and started reading philosophy. I was very devout as a child, always praying before meals and constantly in conversation with God. Now it was over. And worse, it was being replaced with bitterness. All my friends were in COSMOS, which was the advanced curriculum offered to students. I should have been in it, I would have rocked it, but I was too busy just surviving each day. I so very deeply wanted to kill myself. There just wasn't anything that I looked forward to. Everything sucked. Some bad things happened to me to add a little flavor, getting struck by a truck while on my bike on a lonely night ride being one of them. I didn't call my parents, I called my best friend, Skater.

My father would leave the house my sophomore year which left my mother and I alone. My father's sister had died and he was in a bad way; my mother was hating on him in spectacular ways. He jumped ship. He grabbed a plastic bag, stuffed some clothes in, and left to Wisconsin. I'm not sure he ever had any direction. He lived in Dallas for a while but then eventually ended up in Wisconsin and its terrible winters. It still shocks me that he did that. He hardly speaks any English, is kind of fat, and terrible with handling money. All he took was a plastic bag. He didn't use Google, or a map, or information on hotels or anything, he just left and played it as it came. That's his vagabond life-style mastery.

I became the man of the house and came in charge of bills, home maintenance, car maintenance and whatever needed to be done. I did a good job and our house remained intact, yard clean, AC working, bills payed, and cars running. Towards the end of sophomore year of High School, I joined band. I was freaking nervous. I didn't want to talk to people, I was dead afraid of them. I didn't want anyone to hate me for helping them. My childhood up to that point had completely indoctrinated me in that fact: Nothing I did mattered and if I wanted to be kind to people I better do it from a distance because I was just a piece of shit. Completely unworthy of love or attention. Of course, it wasn't true, but it had become engrained in me by then.

Band turned out to be a lot of fun but my junior year I would end up taking a job at the plant my mom worked at, you know, to help with the bills, and I ended up quitting band. I would have been disappointed but by that point in my life I was so used to disappointment that it didn't even register. "There's one more thing I love trumped by responsibility, it's probably what I deserve". This was a message that I internalized and would carry for almost two decades until my spiritual awakening.

In the end, my performance in high school was fucking shotty. I came out with a low B and almost failed some classes. I did manage to pass some AP courses with flying colors. Teachers everywhere recognized that I was an intelligent kid and they begged me so much to change but I could not. My sister kept telling me "don't worry, things will get better." In a few years, I would get fired up at those words. I had learned that no, it's not fucking true, things don't get better, you have to make them better.

I graduated High School. I got accepted to UT. Father came back for my graduation and would follow me to college. My behavior in the years to come would lead to my parents calling me their "hero" repeatedly. They would find themselves needing someone to listen to them and advise them and make them feel better. For a long time, I did gladly.

"Hero". I fucking hated being called that by my parents and to anyone that hears me say that they hate me for me it. I can be a "hero" to others, easy, but when my parents call me their "hero" all I can think about is all the pain they made me go through. I didn't want to be your hero, I wanted you to be my parents. Either way, I was set for UT. I was excited that I could finally escape the bullshit I had been living with for 18 years. But, it would turn out that the family drama and abuse would not stop in the future, not for a motherfucking second. 
I think the American college experience can be a powerful and transformative experience. In some circles, it has become synonymous with drinking and partying. Definitely, it has become synonymous with tons of debt. But, for someone like me it was a door that opened my life to so much knowledge about our nation, about the world. I met so many people from so many different places and perspectives. I learned a ton about history, religion, music, food, and more importantly, about how people from different walks of life lived their lives.

The American college experience for me was vastly rich in the way it invited me to think and to expand my mental capabilities. I ended up learning and knowing things I never would have imagined myself capable of: completing calculus based physics, learning organic chemistry with ease and fun, learning how to throw a grenade and plant a claymore mine, indulging in the secrets of Tae Kwon Do and in the cult following of the ancient Greek God Bacchus. My professors seemed like sages atop a stone staircase and I was their pupil, happily taking in tons of knowledge.

All Americans should have the opportunity to expand their academic and world knowledge through the US college experience, regardless of the family they are born into. Too bad it costs so dang much.

[A Peasant at UT]

I returned to UT from my six months in Argentina and nothing was the same. Nothing. The little peasant had made another step, this time getting a small taste for how big the world is. There was no one I could talk to about it who would understand me. I wanted to talk about all the great people I had met, about their accents; about the Mate and the sights and the smells and the Tango. About my own personal discovery that there were bad things that happened to me as a child that had left psychological scars that I was barely beginning to discover. I wanted someone to listen and perhaps even give a shit. But there was no one. All I could do was keep the memories in me and cherish that I'd been given the chance to even make them. Now, a decade later, I realize I should have reached out for help. I should have sought therapy, something. But I had turned into a lonely warrior, fierce in his determination and goals. I could tackle everything on my own, I didn't fucking need anyone—that's what I thought. It wasn't true.

After the initial shock of returning to the States had subsided I started realizing that my graduation would be coming soon. It was a year away but knowing that I had no reliable financial safety net I began to feel a great amount of pressure to start planning. I was very clueless about what career to enter. I hadn't had the time to truly think about it much less prepare for it. The thing is, when I came to UT it was a step forward and an escape from a dire situation. To suggest that anything that had happened since I left home was predicted, is as far from the truth as you can get. I never had a plan. When I graduated at 18 I was in an extremely bad place and needed to escape. One good decision was to leave home, another would be to get an education and buy myself time to think; so, there I go to UT. I started off as an undeclared "zoology" major because I liked animals. It's not that I had some profound fascination in their metabolic maps, no, I liked that animals were sometimes nice to me. That was the foundation of my endeavors into a higher education. When I got to college, it was just one shit show after the other. The culture shock I received when I arrived at UT was as devastating as the blow from the ROTC; that in turn, was as devastating as the emotional burden my family placed on me every year.

When I first came to UT I enrolled in a slew of really fun courses. Introduction to Classical Mythology, a history of China, Archery, Taekwondo, European Medieval History. I absolutely loved it, but no one had told me it was a poor decision to enroll in classes that wouldn't count toward your degree. It's not a poor choice per se, but it's a poor financial choice, and for a peasant like me, it was downright stupid. As my "zoology" major progressed I came to take a chemistry course. I relatively enjoyed that. I enrolled in organic chemistry, rocked it, and was hooked. I took a biochemistry course, after tha,t and I knew then I had decided my major. There is a molecule called ATP synthase. I learned about it in my biochemistry class. They know what the thing looks like through X-Ray crystallography and it looks like a damn windmill. I thought to myself, wow, we thought we had mastered our environment when we invented the windmill, but really, nature beat us to the punch! It made microscopic windmills inside us millions of years ago! Fucking fascinating.

I was a soldier in my heart and soul, but biochemistry still came in a close second. I didn't know what kind of career a major in biochemistry could lead to but I thought that it would open more doors than other majors. I never even knew that an education beyond a bachelors existed; it didn't register on the radar at all. There were so many choices that I didn't even know existed: Economics, Business, Engineering, Double Majoring. There was so much I could have done, but even trying to plan or prepare for the future was a bitch. At this point in my life, my mother was absolutely hating on my father every day. I got dragged into it every day. Thing is, when my father returned from Wisconsin after I graduated, he followed me to college. He loves me more than life itself, and I was always loyal to him because I thought he was a good man and because loyalty to my parents burned fervently in my spirit back then. Father is a good man, but is also a dumbass, and sadly, a weak and lonely man. While the entire family was tearing themselves apart and everyone casting blame and hate on everyone else, I was always there by my dad. I've always been his go-to man.

He would follow me to UT and would be there until I left. I never needed him, and I actually didn't want him. He was more of a burden to me and at the worst possible time, but he was there. He always had an excuse for staying and not returning to El Paso. My duty as son was to not abandon him and I wasn't going to turn him away. For 5 years of being at UT our most frequent conversation over breakfast would be me advising him on finances, or consoling him, telling him that my mom was hating on him for some reason that wasn't his fault. She hated him. But, just to make him forget it and feel a little hope I fed him the BS. It only got worse. One Christmas I drove back home to El Paso immediately after having passed my Calculus Based Physics final - to find my mother bawling. Father had returned home for Christmas early that year and had left a few days ahead of me. Driving into El Paso, I felt so relieved. I had finished my Physics final an hour before everyone else and still did fucking great on it. "I got this shit!" Well, I pulled into our drive way. I noticed that the Christmas lights were up and felt happy. I got out of the car and stepped inside the house; only to find mother bawling. Dad was in the kitchen. I calmed her down enough to ask what was wrong. She told me that dad had left two ropes under her pillow and that he had said he was going to hang her with one, and then hang himself.

She was wailing, sobbing hysterically, and clearly extremely frightened. I had to take her word because if he had said that? Yeah, I'd fucking break him. I got fucking pissed, fucking irate that I had to come home to this nonsense. I was fucking fired up and no enemy ever wants to see me that way. I took him by the collar and roughed him outside through the door without turning the knob, nearly shattering the door. I slammed him against the wall outside and threatened to choke him to death. I was ready to beat the fuck out of him. I had endured so much, had had to put up with so much, and I was innocent. I wanted to graduate and I wanted to be present for all the great things I was surrounded by in college. That's all I fucking wanted. Didn't I deserve that, at least?

When was someone going to step up and help me on my journey? So far, I had been putting it all on myself; navigating and fighting hard in uncharted territory while helping my family unfuck themselves. I was so infuriated and ready to strike him. I didn't. I called my best friend BBB to pick me up and he drove me around while I vented. Good grief.

Ever since that day I've felt a mixture of pity and contempt at my father. Pity because he is just a child that wants love and attention, contempt because he never taught me a thing about how to be a man. In middle school, when I should have been flirting, I was severely depressed. In high school, when girls were lining up to be with me, I was suicidal and had no one to talk to about getting a girlfriend. Fuck, I didn't even need to be taught anything; if I could've at least been provided a safe environment free of overwhelming responsibility that would have sufficed.

[Undergraduate Education]

Life at UT was rough. I had won a few scholarships and financial aid had picked up the rest. But, I was still grasping at straws financially. To make ends meet I always had a part time job of at least 20 hours, the majority of the time I was at UT. I was even able to buy my own car; it was a little red Mitsubishi Mirage, 98, and I had to make a custom written contract with the dealership to finance it. My credit didn't pass, so all I could do was give them all the money I had saved and give them my word that I'd pay it off in 2 payments. I was true to my word.

The Mirage was the first car I had ever stepped into that had a fully functional engine. It had a good paint job of a single color, didn't have perforations through the body or heavy chains holding any parts together. It had all of its regular glass windows, annnnd...I'm not sure you're ready, I sure wasn't: AC. Chilled, fucking functional, AC. Thank the heavens. Chicks dig guys with a car with AC, right?

I never owned a bed during undergrad. When I joined the ROTC, they issued us a slim foam mattress for sleeping out in the field. I would sleep on this. It was comfortable enough and I kept it my entire time at UT. I probably could have bought a bed but it would have been a pain in the ass as I was moving frequently. I just didn't need it. It was a soldier's life and I loved it. After I was disqualified, I upgraded to a futon.

My cooking really picked up during my undergrad, since I was on my own with a limited income. I remember cooking lots of horrible shit, burning things multiple times, smoke filling the kitchen, and undercooking them even more. One Thanksgiving, I took some turkey breasts and tried to cook them in the oven. They ended up like jerky, but worse. It was pathetic. I had many meals like that but over time I learned some critical basics and now, well, I can treat you to a tasty meal if you want. I know a few ethnic dishes and basic American cuisine.

I made a handful of friends and mostly felt like a foreign object, which I was. Very slowly, I started finding people that I had something in common with. One girl, Moo, I sat next to in Physics and shared a passion in running. We became running buddies and would run often. I met her sister, Kevray, online, and somehow the three of us became very good friends. We'd be great friends for years afterwards, despite the distances.

I met an African American kid named Willie in a discussion group. We were both vulgar, sarcastic, and funny and came from disparate backgrounds. We spent a lot of time bowling (the sport of Champions!) and out with his country friends, the Block sisters. I made a Korean friend named Ronald and met a girl named Grace when we found each other on a KT Tunstall forum online. Then of course there were my ROTC buddies.

It took me a lot of balls to step into salsa classes, which I did very well in. Then, I met my true love, swing and lindy hop. I have a great talent for it and I love swing/jazz music so much. I also got my fill of classical music by going to a lot of concerts at UT. So far, I was into very heavy metal (Megadeth!) and a lot of our cultural music like Vicente Fernandez and Jose Alfredo Jimenez (think huge sombreros and bullets across the chest). My musical taste took a large sampling of great things just from being surrounded by so many different people.

Beside the swing and salsa, I enjoyed Tae Kwon Do, Archery, and doing anything that was outside. I had a few romances and some foreplay here and there but never had sex. One girl I met in my physics class; Melissa. She was a chemistry major. After I got to know her a bit I was smitten. For an entire week I would fold origami swans with a poem about her and would leave them at her doorstep. Later, I told her they were mine; she was the first girl I ever kissed. Another girl, Ms. Ann, I met online on some forum. I became smitten and one day sold my electric guitar to buy a ticket to go see her in San Francisco. I stayed with her a week and had a blast but never had sex. When I graduated UT, I was still a virgin. I regret that I didn't know much about dating and had a battered self-esteem. I would have loved to have a girlfriend during my time at UT, there were so many intelligent, beautiful women. When was my time going to come? Thankfully the few amounts of friends I made would all turn out to be keepers and I still have a growing relationship with most of them. Love it.

Eventually, the time had come to plan for the question: "What am I going to do with my life after I graduate?" Through stupid luck again, delivered by means of Dr. Andy, a biochemistry genius and professor, I learned about graduate school. Andy encouraged me to apply to graduate school. It meant so much to me that he believed I'd be a great grad school candidate. He had so many students and was so busy with his research and yet had payed attention and noticed that I was a smart and capable kid. He's hilarious. The first day of class he walked in wearing crappy sneakers, mussy hair, and some mundane t-shirt. He told us that day that his intention was to weed 50% of the students out of the class. The entire class grumbled angrily but I secretly agreed and lauded him, even knowing that I could be one of the ones cut. College should challenge your mind to its greatest potential. Pushing that hard in anything should not be easy.

I was 1 out of 100 students. He'd often call on me when I would raise my hand in a silent and focused auditorium packed with students. It was dreadful. He'd say something in class that would pique my curiosity so deeply that I had no choice but to ask a question. The moment I realized that I was going to ask something, my heart would start palpitating. I was frekin'nervous about asking a question while 100 students all turned around and watched me; I asked anyway. I always ask good questions.

He'd listen to my questions, challenge me, and praise me for being insightful. The day he told me I could be a great graduate school candidate I first thought, "what is graduate school?" He told me. It turned out, graduate school would PAY me to continue my education, wow! With financial income now a part of the picture, it was a no brainer. I got to work mapping out my new mission: attend graduate school. I immediately ran into a road block; to be a competitive graduate school candidate I would need lab experience. What?
[Tucson and Graduation]

More plans come along and I land an internship in Tucson, the summer after my return from Argentina. Tucson was REAL rain (monsoon season), more friends, more self-discovery, and my first fine work of biochemistry lab skill. I came out of it with some more friends that are keepers and have to mention that I especially had a great time with one girl, named Vanessa. The most memorable moment was when she and I went to Barnes and Noble for something I can't remember. On the way back, my little Mitsubishi Mirage died in the middle of the street in traffic. Fuck. I asked Vanessa if she knew how to drive so that I could push the car. She said yes with a strange smile, whose meaning I could not interpret (it meant she was lying). I got out to push the car in the midst of cars speeding by on all sides, honking their horns. She kept slamming the brakes, forcing me through bipolar spasms of cussing. "Vanessa, wtf are you doing! Don't push the brakes!" Sorry Gsus, she'd yell out the window, laughing. She confessed later that she really didn't know how to drive and that she had a really good time coming back from Barnes and Noble. I could have been hit Vanessa!

We ended up getting in a huge fight later because she stole my coffee brewer's carafe from the community kitchen. I was in a hurry one morning and turned the machine on, then noticed the carafe was missing. Desperate for my cup of Joe, I pushed the releaser with my hand to let out the stream of coffee into my cup, completely burning my hand in the process. We ended up getting in a huge fight and didn't talk to each other for a month.

One of the last moments Vanessa and I had together took place at a bar. We had joined a bunch of folks and had had some drinks. When things started wrapping up there was some country music that started playing, a slow one. I don't know how I found Vanessa, but we ended up on the dance floor. I held her close and she rested her head on my chest the entire time. Good times. We're great platonic friends to this day.

After that research experience in Tucson, I was set to start applying for grad school. The next year in the Spring I got invitations from 6 schools to go interview for a PhD program. Boston, Philadelphia, Tucson, Colorado, Michigan, Brandeis. The flights were all payed for, the meals were all payed for, and the hotels were all payed for. Holy Jesus, Mother of God. This was huge. It was fucking HUGE. I was going to see our great nation. I was getting treated like something other than a dirty little peasant.

The interviews turned out to be fantastic and fun. I slept like a king and ate like a king. I visited my origami bird lover in NY (she'd already graduated), and tried to kiss her on a rooftop; I had a fantastic serenaded Italian dinner in Boston with my former prom date from high school. The interviews were so much fun. I flew back to UT and graduated at the end of the semester. I chose not to walk for my graduation but I did replace walking with a KT Tunstall concert. I was able to catch KT, after the show and got her to sign Grace's guitar. Good times.

Before I left UT, I yet again made another arrangement, an internship at a retired nuclear site with the Department of Energy at Hanford. I'd do that then start my PhD program. Hanford was more of the same. More stories, more experiences, more people, more love, more heartbreak.

Independence Hall during PhD Interviews; Uruguay Match; Iguazu Stroll (overexposed)
Book 3:

CLOSE TO THE SUN
Graduate school completely skyrocketed my ability to think and, more importantly, to communicate. It introduced me to the only person that could ever convince me that I was an intelligent and gifted person. The level of academia in a biochemistry graduate program is phenomenal and today it still blows my mind that I was holding my own with the academic and scientific rigors of such a program. My time in graduate school took me to the highest point I could get to the sun; a point so high that my wings burned to ash.

Many people are capable of the level of mastery found in a PhD program; it doesn't have to be biochemistry. You can be a master of anything your heart loves. The graduate program simply puts you through the rigor and challenges of making sure to refine your passions ability to its finest edge.

My graduate school experience took me to the point where I felt like I had everything I wanted in my grasp: prestige, respect, romance, culture, fame. However, my legacy of coming from an unsupportive family finally caught up with me. The aftermath of my graduate school disaster absolutely convinced me that a person is at their best, their greatest possible best, only when they are at peace in their soul, working to be at peace in their heart. They could be the most powerful and intelligent person running for goddamn President of the United States and it wouldn't matter. If that person is not whole and not at peace their talent will not shine. It may give sparks and signs that resemble it but it will not give way to its full potential and will eventually falter.

[First Year Graduate Student]

I had little direction coming into my new environment at graduate school. Now, I can reflect and safely say that when I was doing my PhD interviews I really had no idea what scientific research at the PhD level was about and much less knew what my own interests were. I had the mental capability and resolve for a PhD program, no questions asked, but had a shit support system and had many demons and skeletons in my closet. They were the artifacts of my past that I had just began to discover. Little did I know that they would come pouring out in the next few years. I chose Colorado because I was sick of the Texas heat and because I thought it might be nice having my sister nearby. Hell, maybe I'd get to know her and become friends with her! We knew close to nothing about each other at this point.

The program was very intense but I caught on quickly and my mental potential skyrocketed in the first few months. I still had not had my conversation with Larry that would solidify my confidence and so I did not see the transformations that were happening within me. I have a gift of mental ability and slowly I was training my mind to perfect the art of dissecting a problem, thoroughly analyzing it, and coming up with procedures and experiments to bring about a solution; afterwards, writing about it and presenting it to an audience. This process eventually would catapult my analysis on all life – music, art, food, philosophy, religion, love. Everything. I found myself automatically analyzing every experience I encountered. I stopped believing things unless there was plenty of evidence to back them and that changed the way that I even talked. I no longer felt comfortable saying things, about anything, unless I felt confident there was evidence to back them. My brain had found its bliss. Before, my observations and decisions were based more on how I felt about them emotionally and not at all on my understanding of them. Now I'd say my balance between soul and mind was equilibrating. I was striking a beautiful balance, yay.

The first year of graduate school was extremely taxing. Once we started we had a generic schedule of classes and tons of homework. In the beginning we were tasked something like 5 scientific papers to read and provide a full-page review per week. If you have not read a scientific article say, from Nature or PNNAS, be warned that it is a little bit complex. It takes some getting used to the language, the thought processes, the taboos and the accepted methods and procedures. You also learn that scientists are a powerhouse of mental activity but that many cannot translate that energy into signals that the rest of the world can understand. It was a huge challenge doing the reviews and you were always in a rush to get everything completed that was assigned to you. The stress we were under felt like a perpetual year of having an undergraduate final exam every week.

The amount of alcohol we were consuming was amazing. I found it shocking that people in the graduate program drank stronger stuff and for longer than my former military comrades. There was beer at our lab meetings, beer at our house parties, beer at our conferences, and beer out on the town. I learned so much about microbreweries and about craft beers; it was really good stuff. The difficulty of the program made it really easy for our class to connect and help one another out. With alcohol involved, it definitely made for some fun and unique experiences overall.

A few very good friends came out of the experience, mainly HiMe my brother, Squirt my soul mate, and Juliet my angel. HiMe would always come in late to class with huge eyes and a blank expression, like a curious deer run into some people. He's super chill and believes all people are capable of making an academic name for themselves. He is a very compassionate man and we became good friends. Squirt is amazing. He was a rugby jock type guy in college until he made his girlfriend pregnant, married her, then changed his course. He took an incredible amount of course work as an undergraduate to make up for it and ended up at the PhD program at CU along with me. The man is an absolute genius, no exaggeration. He was the first one to publish a paper out of our class and has a voracious appetite for books. Anytime I see him we either end up drinking a lot of coffee or a lot of beer and have some terribly deep conversation. We never ran out of topics, either. The economy, morality, friends, women, animals, bacteria. I need a Squirt in my life always.

Some of us, including myself, were asked to be Teaching Assistants for freshman General Chemistry. We had to make sure the little freshmen had guidance and got relevant meaning out of the chemistry lab courses we presided over. We guided them in conducting experiments and titrations, creating lab reports, and taught them the math and the science involved. I recall many nights being up at 2am having 30 papers to grade from my students' labs and being extremely tired from having written a proposal, a review, or some huge paper. I'd have trouble staying awake and Tequila would continually seduce me. I'd take a shot, get a jolt of energy and buzz, and continue grading. Then I'd wake in 3 hours to drive to campus and TA.

TA'ing was a lot of fun. There were a lot of great personalities among my students but by far the most outstanding was Crystal. Crystal was a model and majoring in Engineering. She is tall, petite, light skinned and has beautiful blue orbs for eyes. I loved teasing her in class and pretend-blaming everything on her; always telling the class that the correct way to do things was just to not do it like Crystal. We had a ton of laughs together and would bring the whole class in on it. One day she surprised me when she showed up panting and wheezing after class; she had a bottle of Advil. She had seen that I had been grabbing at my head from a headache during my lecture and after class ended ran to her dorm to get Advil then ran back to give it to me. So sweet.

She ended up failing the class but only because she had some stuff come up in her personal life and missed like a month of classes.

Crystal and I became pretty decent friends later when I was in DC. I knew her well enough to know that she is an absolute sweet heart and has a desire to do good to others. At this point I was talking about my past to people I liked, retelling a story of pain to try and communicate a positive message of never quitting. Her response to my lecturing was "you're depressing". As we got to know each other a little better she would frequently ask "isn't there anything you can teach me?". I felt like I had a ton of knowledge but none of it was fun and cool things like skiing or hiking or how to make elk stew.

It's then that I realized that I wouldn't be able to connect with everyone like I wanted to. There are large cultural barriers and differences that need to be crossed mutually if I a relationship between different backgrounds is to grow. Race, income, traditions, demeanor; our differences in these things can ultimately strengthen our unity as people but it is very hard work and it takes patience, trust, and communication. It's a very worthwhile investment.

The whole time in my first year of grad school my identity was still of the soldier. It was the only way I could defend myself and have any kind of confidence in a field where I was a stranger. Everyone else had badass research experience, long research experience, academic histories, wealthy families, a strong support system, something. Even Squirt who grew up in the lower income classes had a jump because the PhD program had become his passion years ago. I had just stumbled into it. I did very well academically but had some habits that others found odd. My academics were superb however, and I definitely added some personality to our class make up.

I had some interesting encounters in the program to add some flavor. In one a fellow student kept interrupting me while I was teaching my general chemistry lab. I had been lax with safety goggles during a lab with water and she kept bugging me in front of my students. She came in to my classroom 3 times. " Aurelius your students need to wear their goggles". I told her that I knew what I was doing and that we were just getting started, that no equipment had been taken out yet. Later, a few of my students had taken out their beakers and poured water into them, but 2 of my students still couldn't find their googles. Allison came in again and we repeated the same exchange; she then goes and tells her best friend in the adjacent room and that friend comes in to tell me to have my students put their goggles on. "Like I told Allison, it's just water, we haven't started yet, 2 of my students can't find their goggles". She goes and cries to Allison and Allison storms back in and raises her voice at me, "WHY AREN'T THEIR GOGGLES ON!!!". I cut her off: "Allison, my students are safe. It's just water and we haven't started. I know what safety is and that's not your concern. You just want to rattle my cage and you're doing a fine fucking job of it. Now get the fuck out of my classroom".

I went back and stood at my desk for a moment and took a deep breathe. I apologized to my students and said I had been unprofessional and that I would go apologize to her. I went into her classroom and apologized to her and her class, then I brought her back in to mine and apologized to her in front of my students. As I did that I heard the students quietly chant "Aurelius Aurelius Aurelius". Fucking a.

At the end of class, the Dean of the department miraculously appeared at my door and asked me to follow her. She asked me if I had been aggressive because Allison was White or because she was a woman. I replied, "no, I told her to get out because she's a fucking idiot". It's funny how that worked; being the minority that was isolated in the incident I was somehow accused of racism AND sexism. Nice.

Another flavorful incident was with another Spanish speaking Hispanic in the program, Jose. Jose is dumb as fuck, but not that dumb. During our acquaintanceship we had been discussing what labs we wanted and I alone wanted Paulson's. Jose promised he was not considering her lab. He ended up getting into trouble in the department due to poor performance and in a desperate gambit he played a race card with the program. Suddenly, Paulsen decided to choose him over me; it fucking sucked. Her lab had the only research that I felt truly excited about.

Oh well. I was pissed, but really, I knew it was not his fault. It was my fault, for having come in to the program half assed and for refusing to use my race as a crutch. I'll never use my race or background as a crutch, I prefer my hard work and actions to speak for themselves.

Jose was a character. 30 something with a family. He tried to have sex with the girl I was dating at the time. He got us kicked out of a bar when he slipped off his wedding ring and started asking all the girls around if they liked to get their pussies licked. Nice. I gotta remember that one. He was a very aggressive drunk too. It got as far as to provoke physical defense from me: during a colleague's drunken birthday bash he kept on and on in an angry rant about some trivial shit, getting more and more violent and finally telling my colleagues that he had a 45 (gun) and wasn't afraid to use it.

Alright you bastard, that's it. I used his own weight to slam him into the floor and put him in a choke hold. I subdued him. As soon as he could gather his breath again he got up and left. Son of a bitch, grief. Well, I always complained that I was the only brown guy everywhere I went, now I had met another.

And thus, concludes the chapter of my first year of grad school. Oh, wait no, there's something I haven't mentioned. A minor detail that changed everything. At this point in life mother had been working at terrible jobs pretty much since 12 years age or something. She decided to quit just as I was going to grad school and she also decided to follow me to live with my sister. My dad returned to the home in El Paso. Hmmm. Fishy. With mom at home it was fighting every day. She kept bringing up the past and egging me on and I kept responding in earnest. She'd talk so much shit about dad, out of nowhere. Most of what I felt from mom in my childhood was anger; we had never been a real loving family, I'd never felt any support and in general I hated my childhood under their watch. I loved my father as much as I loved her and there was no changing that, no matter how much shit she talked. It would especially piss me off when she would lie through her teeth to besmirch my father. I would defend him adamantly and then attack her (verbally of course).

It wasn't that I thought my father was an angel; he wasn't, he was an irresponsible bastard; I knew that. It's just that I never heard him trying to slander my mother. My strongest reactions always come from someone demonstrating unrestrained hatred towards another being – that is how you get on my bad side and boy did my mother do that well. It was terrible. She kept egging me and egging me, talking shit about dad, glorifying herself, then I'd tell her what a bitch she had been to me in my childhood and adolescence; she'd break down and weep and I would go and console her quietly. This happened every single fucking day. It was goddamn frustrating and stressful and such a challenge to balance with wanting to be a dedicated biochemist. My mother was falling apart but she wasn't done. She divorced my dad during my first year of the PhD program, under advisement of my sister.

My sister eventually turned on me and kicked me out of her house; off I go to find an apartment. Sister vehemently favored mom's side for a very long time. I never favored any side; the strongest evidence that exists is that mom is a good person and that dad is a good person. They both made mistakes but neither deserve loathing and hatred. If you chose a side and slandered the other then you enraged me. It was a fantastic time and coupled with the load I was taking from the PhD program I was just a fucking mess. There was no way to do things well. I was moving forward but I was stumbling and crawling. I was losing my internal fire. I started getting a lot of gray hair.

This dark cloud wasn't going away anytime soon. My father was in store for the darkest times of his life (he was 60 or so at the time) but I was by his side, keeping him from saying and doing stupid shit. I can't remember how many times I talked to him on the phone for hours, successfully persuading him to NOT stalk mom in Colorado, to NOT call her to tell her he would kill her, to NOT set fire to our home. He'd act up whenever I'd become distracted and would make things worse. It was unbearable how fucking persistent he was on not forgetting my mother. I slowly and painfully coached and taught him the value of life and how it should not all rely all on one woman. I promised him I'd buy a house in the future and would let him move in. It boosted his morale hearing that, gave him something to look forward to.

Cute. Noble. I heartily retracted those promises when my spiritual awakening came, years later.

[Larry]

It was time to choose which professor I was going to do my research with for the rest of my PhD career. I had had a bit of an illuminating moment that winter. It happened during my training for the Bataan Memorial Death March. The Bataan Death March is a marathon done with a rucksack carrying at least 35 lbs. Training for it was excruciating and wonderful. That night I was out on a ruck march, training, in a fucking blizzard. It was fantastic. It was about 1600 hours when I set out in my BDU's, light winter sweater, baseball cap, and weighed down rucksack. The snow was coming down hard and it was so cold I could see my breath. I set myself a fast pace and set off down the creek. I took up a light jog. It was absolutely beautiful. The stream was still running and I could hear the ripples calmly soothing my soul. There was a light powder on the trail, barely illuminated in the dark, with the snow still falling. The Death March was entirely unrelated to my program but I had to do it, my soul commanded it.

I eventually got back to the Chemistry building where we were watching presentations by various faculty on research they were pursuing. We were supposed to gauge what research interested us most so that we could make a choice about what lab to choose in a few months. We'd work in that lab and do our PhD research there for the rest of the program. It would completely define what our PhD experience would be like. Some research focused on the biochemical mechanisms used by DNA telomeres; others focused on how a protein called SMAD caused downstream reactions inside a cell. Thrilling, right? They always served JJ's pizza, which I describe as a sea of delicious bubbling cheese with toppings floating on it; it hit the spot so perfectly.

But sitting there, exhausted by my march, listening to a professor drone on about research that had little immediate practical impact I thought: "wow, I haven't really been engaged in this program at my highest level; I should probably have been more committed". Advances in science that have a social impact of some kind take years, even decades, to come to fruition. All of this "boring" research is necessary but it is rare to have a research project that has an obvious and immediate impact that could benefit life. I wasn't ready to dive in to a slow, boring, and meaningless project. In my defense, being a poor little Paisa in a PhD program was an experience that I may have been prepared for, maybe, but with the variable of a tumultuous family, a background of poverty, and never having received much guidance, that just could not have happened. I was never fucking ready, I couldn't have been; I'll be ready in the next lifetime, though, for sure!

As the program progressed and we drew closer to choosing our lab I came to learn about an opportunity for a paid internship in Washington, DC. It came through my old family friend from Socorro, Mariela, the same girl that had gotten me started on my study abroad trip in Argentina. My goal quickly shifted to at least plan a little for what I could do after I got my PhD. At UT, when I had neared getting my undergraduate degree, I was very uneducated on how I could use a Bachelor's degree in Biochemistry; I wouldn't repeat the same mistake again with a PhD.

I figured I wouldn't have another opportunity to expand my skillset and career options and through my shenanigans as usual got an offer to intern with the U.S House of Representatives Committee on XXXX. I accepted it; I had to. This opportunity would never come for me again. So that was set; now what about my research? Research with Paulson was out, per Jose. I realized that I had a very limited understanding about how I could best navigate my situation. I had to find a research project somewhere that meant something to me and I wanted to go to DC for a short internship. I asked all the professors I knew but no one had a good idea on how to make it work. I somehow ended up learning about Larry and thought that if anyone could offer an intelligent perspective it would be him. I reached out to him via email and ended up getting in contact with his lab, then with him. He invited me to go chat with him in person. I still remember the day; I was proctoring an exam for some of my general chemistry students when I had to leave for my meeting with Larry. Crystal was there, taking her exam. We locked eyes as I walked away. Such beautiful eyes.

My conversation with Larry that day turned into him offering to take me in as a student. He had not had a graduate student for 10 years; I would be the first in a decade. I could be his protégé. Holy fuck, what an honor. Larry had received major awards world-wide throughout his history and is a decorated scientist. He was the CEO of Symetrix and is a huge pioneer in biochemistry. He discovered a scientific phenomenon that could revolutionize the way we diagnose disease, amongst many other things, making use of short DNA strands as a tool.

Dr. Andy at UT had published a paper around the same time of Larry's discovery on the exact same technique. They shared credit for this breakthrough in biochemistry, Dr. Andy and Larry. Years ago, Dr. Andy had been the professor that convinced me to pursue graduate school in the first place; and here I was, with an offer from Larry, wtf? Needless to say, because he was in biotech and not academic research it was an unideal situation. The situation felt slightly familiar.

We had to stamp out a custom contract with the University and I quickly got to crafting a plan for my graduate career. He let me go on my internship to DC and we agreed to start PhD work when I got back. The project I would be working on thrilled me completely. We were to use his DNA technique to create a more efficient rape kit for City Police Department. It turns out that back then, many cases of rape sat on a backlog because the forensic methods of the time were very inefficient. They couldn't draw out DNA from semen at the crime scene in a timely manner and thus, prosecuting an offender took years. My project would be helping bring people justice!!! I was so fucking stoked.

The variable in this case was that I would be sharing my project with someone else who actually owned it. She was from CPD and had helped write the initial grant. There was no way at all to gauge her intentions or ability. Was she in it for the money? Did she care about the project? Would she be ok sharing or was she power hungry? Was she intelligent? There were so many questions that I had no answers to and could not get an answer to. I met her briefly and was unimpressed, but the project was just too good to pass up, I had to be a part of it. I knew what it would be....it was a gamble. If the gamble payed off I'd have a stellar career in biochemistry. If the gamble failed? Well, I didn't have enough money or support to survive a failed gamble. I'd probably end up on the street.

How in hell did I end up meeting and being influenced by both Andy and Larry? A dirt-ass peasant stumbling his way to UT, to chemistry, to biochemistry, to Andy, to CU Colorado, then to Larry? I am extremely firm now in my belief that the Universe gives you sign posts on your path. All of us have experienced it, coincidences that are just too far-fetched to seem logical. If you ever find yourself in awe about a rare coincidence please examine that moment. When you pursue your heart's passion The Universe will conspire with you; it will put sign posts on your path showing you that your direction is true; some of those sign posts come in the form of seemingly impossible coincidences. Fuck it, let's go to DC.

[DC]

As usual, the framework for my new adventure would be pennies; actually, $500 dollars to make it one month. I had $500 to find a place to stay for two days while I looked for permanent residence. I'd also use the $500 to lay down a deposit to rent a place once I found it.

Every single dollar was fought for, I had stretched all my resources. I brought one gym bag with a week's worth of suit clothes, my backpack with laptop, basic daily items and food, and my running kit. Basically, I would be starting from scratch once I got to DC.

For an entire two weeks before leaving I had called hostels and looked for availability and found none. Booking a hotel was out of the question because I wouldn't have enough then for a deposit to rent a place. I had to save every cent I could. Even taxies were off the list. I'd have to move on foot, via public transit, and hitch-hiking if necessary. I recognized that I might have to be a vagabond for a short time. Soon enough I was on my flight to DC.

I recall landing and making my way to the epic Union Station. It was so huge, so pretty. I stepped outside and began to realize that loading all my clothes into that tiny bag was going to be hell on my shoulders; it was fucking heavy. I ignored the inconvenience, oriented my position on my map, and set out to look for some relatively safe looking parks which would serve as my back up sleeping quarters. If I couldn't find a place to stay I would sleep in a park. I figured it was safe enough. It's not like it was Juarez, right?

I made calls. I walked to hostels. I walked around neighborhoods. No luck, every place was booked solid. Once the sun began setting I freaked. I decided on my fallback park and also decided to try one more hostel as a last shot of desperation. It was a bitch walking all the way out there. I must have walked 5 miles. I eventually found the hostel; it looked like a cute damn picturesque house behind an iron gate. I open the gate, walk up to the door. "Hello".

Success. They had a bed open for that night. I dragged my ass in and payed the lady. I met some cool people that night. The hostess had made tea and cookies and asked us to the living room to socialize. We sat and chatted by a fireplace. My roommate was an Imam and I met an Argentine dude lonely and far from home. He was very excited to speak with me. He thought we were going to be best friends forever. I wish we could be but the world is too big, Dude; how do we choose what souls we connect with? I went upstairs for bed; sweet, I wouldn't have to sleep in the park. I was out like a light.

I was up before sunrise intent on finding a place to stay at least until my first paycheck; then I'd have more options. I found a listing on craigslist that was my only hope but had no success in contacting the person renting it. I decided to figure out the bus routes out to the location and visit the place in person. It would have been nice to have a car and money and contacts so I wouldn't worry about everything. A Uber would have been nice, but it hadn't been invented yet.

No, I had to plan out a bus route to the location, make good use of time by scanning the entire area for rentals in person, and had to make sure I got back to the hostel before nightfall when visibility would drop. I didn't have a GPS enabled phone. It fucking sucked. Fucking gamble. Well, daylight was burning so off I go on a bus. Nearing Tacoma Park I freaked and jumped off the bus too early. Damnit. I trekked up some damn sloped rode. I crossed into some bushes, crossed over a stream with tons of trees everywhere. The whole place was so green, so humid, I liked it.

I ended up in someone's yard, panicked, and hauled ass back onto the street. I found the home and walked up to ring the bell. Some hours later, score, I had found a place to live for the summer and had left a deposit. It was just a room in a two-story house with some other folks in it, one, an Argentine. There was a nice trail I could run on nearby and I had my own restroom, fucking perfection. A few days later I had moved in and had made several trips to the local dollar stores. The area was pretty "ghetto" but at least there was a Mexican chicken place that served fresh tortillas.

In the end, I had found a bucket of cat litter which I would use as a desk chair, a dollar ironing board with flower pattern to iron clothes and serve as my desk, a cheap suit bag to carry my suits in to the cleaners (which fell apart after like 20 days), and a few cheap pots and pans to cook stuff. If you have the will to, a pot, and a pan, you can survive off of very little money. My diet for a long time was eggs, weenie sandwiches, and ramen, mmm. I was set, let's get this show on the road. 
**[** **Bond]**

After a few days I had started working at the Committee. I had been given a badge and had already met my fellow interns and the staff members. They were all super fun. The higher level of education was easily apparent in some staffers but to my surprise jerks and egomaniacs still existed even in our higher levels of government (I was THAT innocent). It's funny, even after that day I somehow manage to get shocked by the behavior of petty people, in all sectors of society. They're everywhere! I've found that it's not smarts, power, wealth, ego, or looks that determine how much you can contribute to life; it's kindness, compassion, dedication. Being smart helps but isn't the greatest contributor by any means.

Soon enough I was answering phones, directing people in, assembling binders for Committee hearings (they are scripted! Wtf!) and doing research for the staff. The Capitol was nearby as well as a good number of bars with 10 cent wing nights. I grew enamored with one of the clerks, Victoria. She was an absolute joy and a sweetheart.

Victoria was young, cute, full of life, intelligent. We'd go out for drinks a couple of times and we started a gag at work where we'd sing salsa songs together; it was a hoot. There were a few routines I developed at DC that were hooty too. Sometimes I would cook breakfast upstairs at home before work when a ratty white cat would come up to me and rub against me, ruining my pants. Following our morning ceremony, I would always take a bus out to the rail station and ride that 45 minutes into DC. It was all so fucking great, walking around in my suit every day, surrounded by females dressed in business professional. My goodness!

The most important value out of DC came however when I started meeting with one of the staffers more. His story was amazing and once I knew him enough he shared it with me; it was fucking unbelievable. He was formerly with *#@ and had helped bust a drug smuggling ring in the #&^%$#$% United States. When they prosecuted the charged, the men swore that the only reason they still lived was to hopefully someday *&^% Bond &^%# and &^%# his family. To play it safe on security I call him Bond. Bond was forced to leave his unit and his undercover life and was taken to DC where he was now a staffer. He was way out of place there. He reminded me of myself. Forced to live a career that was a deviation from what he wanted - his heart in another world; he needed to be out in the field as a detective, butt-kicking for goodness, not in an office space. He took every day in stride. He was never down, always had the best manners, was the kindest guy I met in DC, and could probably maim or kill most any adversary he encountered. He became my mentor.

Bond's story didn't come out in one day. Once we found out that we got along great (he was like 45, I was 24 at the time) we started hitting happy hour more often. His drink was always Kettle One on the rocks and our first time out together he ordered one for me as well. It was fantastic. It felt like we were cops, sharing some hard drinks, cussing like sailors after a hard day's work. One day we brought along the clerk I liked and he ragged on me so much – "you know Victoria, what your problem is that you have this handsome gentleman in front of you that you're into but you won't take a risk with him because you're in a relationship". We both blushed and laughed. It was a great time. Close to the end of my internship Bond brought us interns some *&# plush K-9s. My K-9 would have a part to play with Crystal, my former college student, months later when I'd return to Colorado.

[Mexican retard shot]

One morning I woke up sprawled on the floor of my room, in my suit and tie, dirtied with mud and rain and covered in money; bills of 50 and 100. Lord, what a headache. I stumbled out to my bus ride and then the train ride to work. Thump, thump, thump. I couldn't hear clearly, it sounded like I was hearing through water. "You have to eat something greasy". Lord what a hangover. It had started the afternoon before. We went out for some drinks and I had gotten a happy buzz. There was another very well-connected intern, from CU Colorado too, whom I shared the internship with. His name is Travis. I do not recall our other company at the bar but Travis was there and now we were both buzzing. I have always been fond of alcohol. I choose my drink depending on my mood: Guinness, Corona, Classic Manhattan's, White Russians, etc... I have an extremely analytical mind that has a lock on my discipline, but when booze comes in the mind lets up a bit. I'm a happy drunk personality.

Anyway, Travis and I were buzzing and he had told me several times about this great shot he knew called a Mexican Retard. It is a standard tequila shot with salt on the brim and a sliced lime. You put the salt on the web of your thumb, inhale the salt through your nose, then you take the tequila shot and finish by squeezing the lime into your eye. I told Travis that I thought he was useless and that I'd never do anything that stupid.

A few drinks later, I'm squeezing lime juice in my eye. What a fantastic shot! Really! It is a stimulation of the senses that is eventually very satisfying. Travis disappeared somewhere and I got distracted by some ladies. Soon I was on the train trip home but the whole train was moving, as if on an ocean. "Hmm. I might be intoxicated.... yup...gotta hurl..." The doors opened at a stop and I thought I'd get out to vomit outside and not in the train. I stumbled out and leaned over the edge of the center platform to hurl onto the tracks. Off to my right, I notice a sparkle and find myself looking directly into the lights of the opposite train. It's speeding my way. Oh fuck. I roll out of the way. I pick myself up and continue my stumbling decline which included hugging a trash can for a little while.

The train trip never took me directly home and I had to take a bus in combination; but now it was 2am and there were no buses. It's ok, I knew the route well from previous experiences and it was just a small march through some thick trees, right? How hard could it be to get home? I'm not drunk! It started raining, heavily. I found myself on an unmarked road I did not recognize. Ok. I'm drunk. This is not good.

I called my best friend and my brother Zuli at home in El Paso and relayed my location based on an intersection I was at. He eventually finds me on Google Maps and directs me the rest of the way. "Dude, what does the sign say?" "Dude, I don't know which way your right is and which way your left is, just move away from the stream bro." It's like I was in the fucking jungle.

I slipped a number of times, falling into leaves and bushes. I tripped over a road railing when I tried to jump over it, fucking landing face first. I had mud on my suit, branches and twigs in my hair. When I finally got home I passed by one of my house mates in the living room. I was dripping wet; he was still awake. "Hey man". I continue walking.

Why the fuck is he still awake? Weird, Moving on.

He decides to take the opportunity to return some money he owed me. He knocks on my door. I open it. He stammers something and starts counting out bills. What the fuck is going on? Focus Aurelius! Yes, it is the right amount, thanks man. I woke up sprawled on the floor, in my suit, with money thrown all over me and a splitting headache to suit. Ugh.

[DC End]

While I was in DC I invited myself to a chat with Juan Viska, who was the director of the science department at Homeland Security. Again, this was all in the aim of trying to discover ways to use my PhD when I got it. We had a great conversation about possible career paths for scientists. I met many other staffers whom I had these great conversations with but my mentality was never set on making career connections. I feel like maybe it should have been. I could have probably secured a high paying job in DC if I had just made that my task, but it wasn't. My mission was to get a feel for what the stage was like for when I would get my PhD. Not getting a PhD was never an option.

And, like all experiences, my time at DC came to an end as well. Before I left I put in a good word for Victoria and managed to get her a new position. A decade later we'd meet again – turns out that job move catapulted her growth with the Committee and she went on to do some really cool shit.

Man, DC. I loved it so much. It felt so rich with culture and full of nerds and geeks. I have not found a 10c wing night comparable to DC's. I loved running down the National Mall with Thomas Jefferson and George Washington watching over me. I loved running past embassies that displayed their national colors on great flags outside their buildings. I visited the Vietnam Wall and Arlington Cemetery. There was so much wisdom there; so many amazing people immortalized in stone and history. We worship these monuments and long for the people that carried out our most cherished values. It's important to be inspired by heroes of our past. There are old values and traditions that can still be relevant today and that are critically missing in our society today.

When I returned to Colorado, Crystal came for me at the airport. I treated her to ice cream. I asked her out on a date a few days later and gave her the K9 plush dog Bond had given me. I told her his story. She loved it. We hugged in the parking lot and when I noticed she wouldn't let go I gently grabbed her hips, pushed her back a bit, and kissed her.

My intention in giving the K9 to her was that the memory of that good man and his deeds would continue on in her benevolence; it's just a plush dog but symbolically, to me, that was all I could do. I loved meeting Bond so much, I wanted to transfer that energy to her.

Deeply in my core I believe that positive energies from gestures like that make this world go round; you just never know what downstream effect being kind to someone will have in the future.

Today, years later, I'm occasionally compelled to raise a toast to Bond when I'm out at the bar: Single Kettle One on the rocks please. God's speed Bond, cheers.

Never surrender, no matter how poorly you think you're doing. I learned that mostly clearly in my time spent doing PT with the Battalion, carrying a damn 45lb ruck sack around. The lesson of never giving up was so easy to see then. With the ruck march you knew that it would eventually end. You had an idea when it might end, you just had to keep going! The pain was so easy to identify – my back hurts, my legs hurt, my shins are swollen, I'm out of breath, I'm exhausted. You can get hit with inclement weather. "Fucking rain". Scaling a mountain side or endless stair wells is a bitch but it's predictable.

In life, it's not as easy to identify what's hurting. It's not as easy to identify where the finish line is or when it's coming or if it's coming. When times are hard it's not predictable how long it will last or what may come next. No, the obstacles are harder in the path of our daily lives. To finish the ruck march, you can never give up. You keep going, no matter how poorly you think you're doing. Keep going, keep moving forward, no matter how small your steps are. Just don't quit.

That lesson was drilled into my core through training for the military but please believe me: the lesson is just as applicable in life. Don't give up. Keep moving forward, no matter how small your steps feel!

[Paradise Lost]

I came back from DC fully ready to engage the PhD program. Things did not turn out as I had hoped. I was unable to work with the person who was the owner of the project; I knew this was going to be the variable that turned my decision into a gamble. It turned out she was completely inept as a scientist. She had found a sweet little project and wanted to just sit on it to secure a living for a while but was clueless about how to execute it. She knew how to milk it. She would become extremely defensive and angry whenever I tried to take any idea forward with the project. She would immediately shut down any ideas I had about how to secure the supplies we needed, how to use them, how to report our progress, everything. I was given advice to just plow ahead and dismiss her but I could not. That would've been combative and it's not my style to crush someone to climb up to the top. I finally emailed Larry pleading for help; stating I could not work with her, that she was a moron and was blocking everything I tried to do.

On the family front matters continued to deteriorate. I had had many conversations with my father now keeping him calm, keeping him from his irrational ideas about hurting my mother, keeping him uplifted even in his greatest pain. He was totally attached to my mother and it devastated him when she left him. Now, the conversations were turning into me scolding him for childish things like sleeping on the floor of our house and not buying a bed. He told me he could not keep the tears away in the house; he couldn't keep away from the memories of all the poverty we had endured there. I was busy keeping things afloat with the PhD program and I couldn't keep an eye on him every moment. One day he called me to tell me he had sold our home...for less than ten thousand dollars. It was some sort of act against my mom...or us...or something. I still don't get it. At least if he had sold it for a real price. Fucking blind-sided.

My home. So much sweat, blood, pain, joy, so much history. The only place that understood who I was, the only place I could ever fall back to, the place that had been my only anchor in this entire fucking world. Our home was beautiful. Built by hands of passionate people and nestled out away from the city, in crisp view of a million stars every night. It was gone. Why? I was devastated; I couldn't make heads or tails of myself. I felt so much hatred for my parents for being fucking idiots. I spent that Christmas alone; it was the most peaceful Christmas I had in my entire life.

As a child my father and I would always set up the Christmas tree in our home while my mother constantly nagged about how she hated it. Father and I would set up lights all around the outside fence, around our pine trees in the front. We'd set up a Nativity set and a train set around the Christmas tree inside. Up until my 20's I had valued the memories of these lights so much. My most particular cozy memory was being a loving child lost in a family full of hatred: the family was yelling and screaming but at least during Christmas we would set up the tree, then at night I would crawl out of bed while everyone was asleep and just lie on the sofa and watch the tree. Watch all the little lights flashing and chasing each other around the tree and the ornaments. Somehow, they made me feel safe, these lights, it was one of the few places that was for me. My home was gone. Oh God, please, no.

It completely fell apart the next year. My PhD orals were coming up soon. I was drilling for it like I know how to: constantly going through theory and calculations on a white board, always testing myself to check that I knew everything I needed to know about crystallography, binding, DNA bases, affinity constants, and tons of other things. I had blind spots, I knew that I did, but I didn't know what they were. I was not at the University and being separated from the academic environment would cost me, I knew that. I tried to get help from Larry and from my colleagues but that was lacking. Larry was just too busy and too far from his years as a true PI to really help and organizing with my comrades from the distance of Symetrix turned out to be unrealistic.

The day of my orals came and I defended some very intense questions well but had some severe and very basic blind spots. I had never visited kinetics in their most basic form and in equation. It was simple, easy and basic stuff, and I just had failed to realize I had not gone over it. I failed my orals. I was the only student to fail; even the most unintelligent students had gotten away with a conditional. I had a fucking 3.5 GPA. I failed. I was completely shocked. How did this happen?

I realized that the variables that did me in were dealing with extreme emotional grief without support, being separated from my academic environment, and having a PI who hadn't been in that role for years. My natural talent and will power were not enough to stand up to these variables, and I failed, and the direction my life took was changed completely because of it. Fucking, again.

Things got worse, much worse, with some very poor personal choices that ended in self destruction. I'll mention the basics: I was in a car wreck that left my head smashed against the windshield, breaking it; the car was done for. I was done for. I had fought as hard as I could. I needed some time to think, to recover from the pain I was in, to map out my options and form a new strategy. I couldn't hold on even a moment longer. I left the PhD program. I needed some space. I needed time. I needed a fucking hug. I needed money so I wouldn't get evicted from my apartment. I needed employment, NOW.

[Larry as Mentor and Savior]

I cannot continue without mentioning how much Larry meant in my life. At some point in my life I realized that I have a fervent spirit. I will not fucking quit. If I get stuck, it's time to recompose myself, break down the situation, build a new plan, and attack again. You make use of whatever you can and get input from whomever you can. You just never fucking quit. I did not know it until later but this recipe and my love for life was the blessing that got this peasant through so many unimaginable opportunities. However, that was the only thing that I could have confidence in: my undeterred will. I had run into very few people who believed in my methods, or believed in me. I ran into skeptics everywhere along the way and since I only knew that and my own thoughts, I always kept an open mind. Maybe they were right? Maybe I was just some stupid kid and blind luck had gotten me to the places I had been. Not so.

Larry became a mentor to me more than a Principle Investigator. Our discussions were about my research but also about life, fear, love, ambition; everything. He noticed that there was something darkened in my soul and pointed it out very honestly. He told me that he thought that I was intelligent, resourceful, dedicated, and above all honest and true, but that I had a lot of baggage from my past that I needed to come to terms with. "Do the work" he told me.

It meant so much to hear these things from him. Larry finally convinced me that I was a brilliant young man, smart as hell, with tons of potential. Luck hadn't gotten me where I'd been, I had!! I finally began to see a bit of a different perspective: my entire life I had been only a dim light of the shining star I could have been. There's some fun habits that were engrained in me from being around Larry. From my time spent with Army studs I had developed a habit of cursing. Being around Larry didn't help.

The first time I turned in my thesis proposal to Larry he skimmed through it quietly as we sat together. "This is fucking garbage". That was my first real experience with him and I loved it. Of course, he continued with great feedback and I turned the paper around but his bluntness left me giddy as a schoolgirl. As I spent time with him I noticed that he was dreadfully blunt and that he loved to curse. During a presentation he was giving once, somebody asked him some dumbass rudimentary question about biochemistry. He answered: "I don't fucking know". I loved it.

I loved it because he was past the bullshit of explaining himself. The man is a genius and clearly knows his chemistry but he doesn't dedicate his day to memorizing factoids that are only relevant in freshman textbooks. "I don't fucking know". It taught me that true wisdom is seldom what it seems; it taught me that I should learn my craft and learn it well and not pay any mind to whether it seems like I'm intelligent or not. People who know their stuff will know what your wisdom is, everyone else might think you're a dumbass. Fuck 'em.

Larry saved me from my sinking ship, God bless him. As I left the PhD program he payed me 3 months' worth so that I could find a job. I did, as a contractor at an IT Help Desk.

2 Travel bags for DC; Apartment at DC; Bataan; DC Majority Hearing; Symetrix Photo
Book 4:

SPIRITUAL AWAKENING

Mosh Pit Teacher of the Year; Athena; Ocean Visit (End); Me as a child -This is who I would have killed had things played out differently
[Second Wind]

I'd fallen from grace. I'd been forced to desperately look for a job, any job. I needed an income so I could afford a place to stay while I "rested" and tried to sort myself out. I'd found a low paying job at an IT call center. It was awful. During the next 2 years I would lose sick days, vacation days, would work like a dog and would lose my sense of self and accomplishment. I overheard coworkers talk about playing ping pong with a crack (cocaine) rock during lunch. Truly, a place of champions. That environment paled in comparison to being surrounded by academics, by DC staffers; it paled in comparison to carrying the banner of a great scientist. "How the fuck did I end up here?". I feared not coming out so much, everything was beginning to feel impossible.

A few months after work started I got my pay cut due to a recession the country was experiencing. This was the straw that broke the camel's back. I decided to start trying to maneuver my life again. Returning to grad school wasn't an option at the moment and actually never would be again on account that I couldn't afford any more student debt. I applied to some biotech companies but they were looking for a full-fledged chemist, not a drop-out student. No Bueno. I couldn't stay at this place anymore, financially or mentally. It was time to dust myself off and improve my situation.

I analyzed my most valuable skill sets and started prodding at opportunities for a new career. I had some great excitement pursuing an FBI position that eventually didn't amount to anything. Somewhere along the way I stumbled on the idea of teaching at the high school level. I remembered that I had really loved my experience as a TA and that passion guided me. I started pursuing this new possibility even though it felt like a long shot. I had never taught besides my TA'ing and didn't have a teacher's license. Education is a great career, especially if you prepare for it early on. For me, pursuing education was an island I swam onto on when my ship had caught fire, exploded, and sank.

I started working toward my new goal: to become a teacher. It took me 2 months to prepare for the teaching exam (PLACE, in Colorado) and I smoked the test on my first try. I started applying for positions. Later, I would be invited to an interview only to find that my resume looked terrible for a teaching position; I didn't get the job. Back to the drawing board; how can I improve my chances?

I decided to try and supplement my candidacy with some volunteer work. I started emailing schools seeing if they would take an after-school tutor or aide of some sort. I found a school that was excited to have me as a volunteer teacher assistant and I did that for a few months every day after work. I was good at it. I really enjoyed it and the staff and students enjoyed having me. With that experience under my belt I started applying to teaching positions again. This path felt right, trying to become a teacher. I had a few interviews start to come in. When I was finally given an offer the circumstances and situation felt ridiculously perfect. It was a sign post.

I had gotten an interview at a brand-new school that was opening, Sierra High School. It was going to be the first of a few charter schools created to try to curb the dropout rate by offering credit recovery and a career-focused curriculum. We would be opening the school. After the interview at Sierra I was told to expect a call that very evening, a call I never got. I was devastated. The next morning however I got a call for the final group interview in 3 weeks. Hell yeah!! Fast forward to a day before that interview; I got an offer of employment from another school, Bellomont. It felt great to have an offer but I wanted Sierra more so I held off on accepting Bellomont's offer. I don't even remember what I told them but I imagine it was lame: "no it's cuz I have to take my cat to the vet and so I can't decide on your offer for the next days".

I nervously phoned the Sierra principal to ask her if she would hire me, otherwise I would take the offer from Bellomont. She promised me I was one of the top candidates but said nothing more. The next day I rocked the group interview but they didn't call me back all day; I was sweating bullets. I hadn't accepted the standing offer from Bellomont or even called them. Saturday passed, Sunday passed; I was really sweating bullets, I couldn't let the offer go, I had to call. Why won't you just call and secure it damn it!? By Monday however I got the call from the Sierra and it was a go.

Amazingly, everything that I was at the time had prepared me for that position. The school was brand new, was a project, and had a high probability of failing. Back then, that was my cup of tea. The kids it served are all kids who had had a bad hand drawn to them; bad luck, bad circumstances, bad decisions. Most of them had already dropped out once. Many of them had criminal records. Few of them had ever had a positive family environment. It turns out that adversity doesn't discriminate against race. We had students who were Asians, Caucasians, Latinos, African-Americans, and more. All of them had already had to fight multiple painful struggles throughout their lives.

They had been abandoned in life and now had one last chance to set a better direction for their life. I knew all too well what it was like to struggle from lack of support, from challenging circumstances, from being dealt an unfair hand. I felt the fire and fury rise inside of me. I didn't want anyone to have to struggle how I had struggled. I was going to give everything I had to help these kids have the best shot at making a good life; equipped with problem-solving skills and a regiment of honesty, respect, and hard work. I had their backs and would continue to even after our time together would end.

[Teacher of The Year]

Teaching was way fun. The first night before school started I was so nervous I couldn't get any sleep. I vomited a number of times up until it was time to get up and go. The first days of class I introduced myself and talked a bit about my past, with pictures, and it appeared to be really well received. Many of my students had never had mentors; someone they could look up to that could realistically tell them that success was possible, even if it felt daunting. I knew their struggle, I understood it, and I knew the details of how hard it was to break away.

As a science teacher I was allowed to teach without a license but had to take classes and go through a separate program to get licensed. The Monday classes I attended from 5 to 8 pm to make me a better teacher were pretty agonizing, but thankfully, I met a few guys in there with my same mix of funny sarcasm and professionalism.

My first couple of months as a teacher were a huge challenge. I had to develop the curriculum for 2 different classes entirely on my own. I had to map out all my lessons for the trimester, create worksheets and book assignments for the lessons, and develop two types of assessments (tests) to make sure my kids were learning correctly as we progressed. I always had 2 types of tests – one was multiple choice and the other was either a presentation, an oral Q&A, or some kinds of hands on test. I gave tests 3 times throughout the course to make sure we were learning in the right direction and then gave a final exam at the end of the course to prove they had learned the State-mandated concepts and skills. My tests were all relevant to modern day scenarios and were designed to be challenging.

I was having a lot of fun developing this stuff. In my astronomy unit for Earth Science 2 I began by reading excerpts of the Bible, the Koran, and some mythologies; it was an introduction of what realm of life the Big Bang Theory was trying to address: our beginnings. It really sunk in with the kids. Even scientists wonder about where we come from and we can't really prove anything, just theorize. We're all alone in this vast endless Universe and no one truly knows for sure where it all came from. We do have each other, though. Good stuff.

I was a pretty wild personality for a science teacher. I was rocking out to Megadeth and getting my ass beat in mosh pits on my free time, coming into class limping afterwards. I'd mess with my students(high school) and would ask them to draw animals as part of an assignment, then would make fun of their drawings. If they ever made me really upset I'd tell them "I have something to tell you when you graduate"; "Why Mister?"; "Because, then the student/teacher bond will have been broken" It was all in great fun of course; my students loved me and I them.

The next trimester I was asked to teach Chemistry semesters 1 and 2. Good grief, it was so much work! It was not my style to have a boring and inaccessible classroom. From the start every curriculum I created had a ton of passion put into it. I'd make PowerPoint presentations to pace my classroom, to get them used to a college lecture. I'd include images, videos, humor, and cues for interaction. I'd create worksheets that allowed opportunities for group interaction, art, and reading opportunities; my worksheets had visual aids and opportunities for collaboration as well as individual work. I used a mixture of learning styles to make sure all my students could access the information. I made resources available online and put lectures on YouTube in case they missed class. My curriculums were a masterpiece and my assessments consistently showed that I was effectively teaching some complex science at a high level. I was so proud of my students. For a few trimesters I even had 2 different classes going on in one classroom at the same time–Earth Science 1 and Earth Science 2. I would give students a list of necessary concepts with the activities for them to learn them. I would start off the class with a general science question and then let everyone get to their list of activities. I'd walk around and answer questions and encouraged group work and the focus was that every student could work at their own pace. The entire school would eventually follow in that model that I spearheaded (thanklessly). It was really badass to see that.

I indirectly taught hard work, patience, forgiveness, emotional stability, kindness, frivolity, and respect. You can't break out of a rut without those things and it has to be part of the package if anyone is to have a chance at moving forward. I taught those things through action and occasionally by talking about my own life lessons. My classrooms have always been among the top favorites of students.

I enjoyed the challenge of creating and managing my own classroom but man, it was so much work. I spent evenings, weekends, and holidays working on curriculum, grading papers, and filling out district forms. Tending to 100 students a day who come in on every range of the emotional scale, who come in on every possible range of ability, intelligence, and personality and who are then forced into a classroom together now, _that_ is challenging! District hoops to jump through and excessive oversight are what really break a teacher, if not the low salary. Teachers should get the fame and fortune that celebrity rappers and pop artists get; let alone nurses, firefighters, military, and ethical police officers.

After some time of putting in 150% constantly, I became so exhausted that I started doubting whether I was really digging my job. Then, one day, they removed a student who had struggled so much to adjust and was finally beginning to come around; it broke my heart. I was upset because it was so unfair to him, the kid deserved a chance! Let him have a chance, damn it! But, it was also a sign to me that I was conducting my job with passion. That's one of my only requirements for satisfaction in a career; that I be passionate about it in some way. I got my first Christmas card from a student. I was getting gestures from them every day. The students loved me and I loved them. It was a good gig man, I didn't think I would mind chilling out in it for a while.

[Splenectomy]

I had been fighting an unexplainable anemia all year. It had been building since my PhD days and we had discovered that it was an autoimmune disorder. While at the call center, without insurance, I was only able to afford a few visits to the doctor but I did learn that my body had turned against me. I never had enough money to get it treated so I was satisfied that I at least knew what it was and that I was still young.

Well, it came back in 2010. I started my new career in teaching and it and I totally forgot about my health until one day my eyes had turned yellow. I had become jaundiced. I had no clue until I startled a coworker and she exclaimed "Aurelius, your eyes are yellow!". Fuck.

Now that I had insurance, I hauled ass to choose a primary care doctor I was excited about, started the bloodwork again, got re-assigned a hematologist, and then found out I had been walking around work with blood levels that demanded an immediate transfusion: the anemia was back with a vengeance. They rushed to put me on Prednisone to buy me some time; "time for what?", I thought. The doctors kept asking me what I wanted to do.

It was about December and I had been doing research on my own affliction. I was convinced. My spleen had to go. I had this conversation with the doctors in December and I was able to square away a date for a splenectomy that very month, in 2 short weeks. December was perfect because we had 2 weeks for Christmas Break at the end of it. Removing my spleen was no promise that I would be cured, we just hoped it would help; to me, the science made sense, it SHOULD help at LEAST a little. I could have waited to try out a few more things, get different opinions; no thanks. I hate making appointments and waiting in clinics and getting blood drawn. Fuck it, let's cut out my spleen.

The weeks flew by with a slew of blood draws, my pre-op date, and scheduling for receiving 4 vaccinations to help what would be my newly immunocompromised body to fight disease. I kept reflecting and looking back at everything I had done. I had never ever paid attention to my health, had never had the money for it. To be at this stage, on the verge of a surgery with my health in a shitty state, it definitely humbled me.

The last Friday of school came in December, flew by, and exhausted me. We had our staff holiday party and I was ready to get fucking wasted; I couldn't do that at our staff party so I stayed maybe an hour, tired, filled with anxiety, then went out to a bar, took some shots, and it was downhill but fun from there.

Next Tuesday came and I was on the operating table; my blood was violently reacting against all the transfusion blood the hospital had available. I couldn't go into surgery. I stayed in pre-operation for 24 hours with 3 IV's and an arterial line stuck in me while they tried to find a good match for transfusion; good start. The surgery finally came and I get put out. I woke up in a little pain. I shared a room with a dude who had his appendix removed before it burst, we buddied it up, I was determined to walk as much as I could and did laps in the hallways every moment I felt well enough to. I was released from the hospital a little prematurely, in 2 days. The next days were painful as my stomach started to wake again. Every day I went out to walk 30 mins, despite the abdominal and back pains. It was annoying. Hurry up Aurelius, you go back to teach in a week. Not exactly how I had hoped to spend my Christmas break.

My sister let me stay at her place during recovery and my mom came over as well. They really took care of me. Up until that time, I had never allowed myself to be so helpless. I always soldiered on, on my own. I never asked for help, for sympathy. I would fucking soldier on to the verge of collapse, praying for the Universe to cut me some slack in the future–I just fucking couldn't this time. I would even ask my mom to help me put my socks on, to bring me water, to make soups. I had never felt close to my mother or sister my entire life until that moment. As for the surgery, my jaundice disappeared and the data kept looking slightly better.

[A New Chapter]

I survived the splenectomy and was ok after it. The blood data wasn't that great–I still had a mild anemia. Fuck. Still, I was determined to keep moving forward. The whole anemia experience had scared the shit out of me. This book began as a series of essays that were an attempt to never forget all the amazing people I had met. The essays were now turning into an attempt to try and make sense of what my life had been and what I had experienced–trying to see how it all added up in my identity and history. All of it came snapping into place with the splenectomy.

There were lessons that I had learned from the past and those stories had made me who I was. They had shaped who I would be in the future. I was an intelligent person capable of PhD-level work, I loved science, I was an athlete, fiery, loyal, friendly, and strong. I was on a mission to try to bring justice to a world filled with injustice. The extreme side of poverty was behind me; I had a career, a nice apartment downtown, a car with A/C, health insurance, friends and family.

I rested. I cleared my head, typed up my lessons learned, and was ready. Ready and geared up for the next mission, whatever it may be! Or so I thought.

It is my belief that every single one of us will have a spiritual awakening, if not many, in our lives. It hits us all the same, regardless of race and income, and it happens through circumstances and events that are mostly out of our control. The spiritual awakening for us is a moment in our life when something we hold sacred and untouchable becomes challenged in such a way that it completely makes us change perspective on a life we had clearly defined.

It is a trying time because it requires so much willingness to change. Our natural reaction is to want to hold on to the ways of our past. We become obsessed with a picture of what our life "should" be and refuse to budge.

It's easy to stay in that mindset but our hearts yell at us that we must change. That change will take us beyond our comfort zone. It may put us in a place where we will likely fail and others may be watching. It may put us on a lonely road full of doubt and uncertainty. It could seem like a goddamn catastrophe, but, if we heed the lessons of the spiritual awakening, it is a great gift. The spiritual awakening forces us to make changes in the way we think, feel, and live that lead to a life of greater harmony. It is undoubtedly a good thing. But man, it can be hell.

[New Mission]

My new path began to unfold before me. At work, I was asked to help represent our school at a conference of Colorado Education Executives. The administration team and a few other staff were asked to present. We were doing some amazing things at our school, delivering really quality content to students from really challenging backgrounds. We offered a GED track alongside our Diploma. We had a college focus as a requirement to graduation. We taught at a level that met students' needs. We didn't just package a one size fits all approach and force feed it to them. The program behind the philosophy was called Diploma 2.0 and we were to present it to a group of executives in Colorado education. Our team traveled to Breckenridge for the conference; I was told I'd just be there for basic support as the principal was going to do the presentation.

At the last possible moment, our principal bailed and just a few of us were left to present. She didn't have an excuse; maybe– she never wanted to do it and just pretended to. It didn't matter, we had 3 hours to get our presentation together. My role changed from being a cheerleader to being the presenter on competency-based education. Me, not even a first-year teacher! I was nervous as shit. I agreed to do it, quickly prepared my part of the presentation, recited a creed I have that helps calm me, then went up there and kicked ass. I got a ton of positive written notes of feedback from our audience and got praised verbally in the Q&A. Hooah. I've got this. I've got this!

[Life "Perfected"}

Towards the end of the summer I got a call to go see the principal; she sounded dead fucking serious–I thought, "damn, I'm probably getting fired". Turns out our Student Advisor was having trouble with her Visa and wouldn't be available for another year, so I was offered the Student Advisor position (Dean). It is traditionally a step towards administration and meant I would be in charge of getting all our students in shape in terms of behavior, tardiness, uniform, and attendance. I had the power to remove students. When I was offered the Student Advisor position I didn't even have a clue what it was. I reached out to some of my mentors, did some research, laid out some of the basic principles I wanted to hold to, and when the time came opened the Dean's office as best as I could.

As a Dean the values I held to were respect, consistency, and team. A violation of respect between anyone, either teacher to-student or vice-versa, was a greater violation then any break in policy. Standards and decisions had to be communicated by everyone in the staff and students had to be held to them. It wouldn't do any good to only apply the rules occasionally. Consequences would come only after a thorough effort to understand the student and the circumstance except in clearly unacceptable behavior.

I made it my role to support the staff and students, listening and responding to their concerns; we were all a team. I had my little students in line and my office became a place to be feared and respected. I helped bring a lot of order and structure to our school and all in my first year as a Dean. Never mind you that I was still teaching 2 classes at the same time I was Dean'ing. I absolutely loved it. I remember when I decided to crack down on uniform. I sent a heads up and let the students digest it for a week. Then, on the day of the policy change I took our security guard, a big guy I called Tonio, and we went door to door, every classroom, and pulled kids out who were violating uniform policy. That first day we sent them home. After the first day I took a mustard yellow shirt that was embarrassing as all hell to wear and would make them wear that. Wear the mustard or wear the uniform. Our kids started wearing their uniform and it eventually got turned into a really cool system by some of the other teachers. Cool stuff, man.

Later, I applied to a Principal training program and was accepted. I got my own personal mentor who worked in administration in the district with the sole aim of helping me get into Admin. I was decided. I wanted to become a principal and I didn't want to stop there. I was going to bring big change to education.

However, giving everything I had to my students and to my job left me completely drained. There was nothing left of me to give. I was so fucking tired I couldn't even think. I didn't know why I was so tired but looking back I realized this poor peasant just needed a breather, man. 6 months without responsibility out on a beach somewhere would have been nice. Not once in my life had I stopped and processed any of what had happened. I just kept going and going. I couldn't afford to stop!!

The exhaustion really started allowing my buried demons to emerge in a second, stronger wave. I knew that I was doing a lot of good for a lot of people, that I was executing a challenging job well, that I was "successful". However, I felt empty inside. I couldn't take any joy from it. I felt satisfaction in that I was working very hard but deep inside I was unhappy. I felt it. When I focused in on the feeling and identified it, I realized that I was just very worn out. I felt lonely and scared.

You can't ignore the demons of your past I've learned. You better turn around and face them or they will find you. Even as a scientist I will say that these negative energies play themselves out by design of the Universe. You could be in control all you want, you can think that, but if your soul is not at peace, the Universe will sense it and will intervene. This is the fate of every human being I believe: each and every single one of us will be challenged at one point or another, no matter how privileged, wealthy, or famous we are. We all experience this shattering moment that becomes our test: to make changes in our life that help bring our souls peace. It's easy to label this moment as "bad" and is tempting to, but it's important to realize that our label is actually "pain". The label of "good" or "bad" should be left to the Universe or to God. We can't know. And really, it is our own actions, our own decisions, and most importantly, our own perspective that decide whether the spiritual awakening brings us joy or whether it brings us suffering.

[Shots Fired]

Life brought to me at that this time my spiritual awakening. I've lost full memory of the events and recall only fragments. One night I get home from work, pour myself a glass of Scotch, light a cigar. Next fragment, I'm sitting in my bathtub, I look at my hands, they are covered in blood, my hand gun lying next to me. I had shot myself. My head is pulsing with pressure. I check it, there is a deluge of blood flooding out, I can feel my pulse through it. I take my shirt off and apply it to the wound as an attempt to slow the bleeding. It's not enough, I can feel the blood pulsing out in waves. I stumble out of my apartment, collapse. I'm being half carried as I walk and am thrown into an SUV. Fuck I hope I don't get blood all over this person's car. I lose consciousness.

I wake up screaming. The pain is excruciating. I'm on an operating table. It feels dark. I'm hooked up to many IV's. I scream in agony; the pain is eternal. It lasts for hours. Any movement I make shakes me completely. I scream at the nurses. I'd rather die than be in this agony. They had informed my sister and mother at that point that I likely would not make it, that I would bleed to death.

I had fractured and broken my skull, lost a part of the parietal lobe of my brain, and had shrapnel and bone fragments in my brain. I was taken to the ER and had brain surgery. I survived.

I had a piece of my skull replaced with titanium plates and a wire mesh. I am told that the first two nights I was still joking around and being a dumbass, then, suddenly, I would stop and cry out in agonizing pain for hours. I made friends with a chaplain those first nights and he grew to care for me, though later I would not remember him. I am told that my eyes were swollen shut and that every night for those first 3 nights it was the same; I would joke around and be a dumbass then suffer incredible amounts. My mother would tell me later that when she heard my cries all she could see was me when I was a cute little kid and that it would tear her apart to think that that her little boy was suffering so much. She told me that a grown man enduring pain was tolerable to her, but she couldn't see me that way, she could only see me as her little baby.

I was moved to a hospital room. The greatest issue was my neck, it was in stupid amounts of pain. They had me on very strong pain medicines and strong neurological drugs. Morphine, Neurontin, Vicodin, Percocet. It was all being fed to me intravenously. It wasn't enough. My bed had to be elevated always and I would sleep that way. I remember them bringing me food–I would order stuff off a menu, kicking myself every time I ordered something because I knew it was costing money.

My mother never left my bedside and my sister stopped her work for a week to drive mom around and do whatever needed to be done. My sister negotiated with Sierra High School and got me a short-term leave. Father was there, somewhere.

Days later my best friend BBB would drive up to Colorado from El Paso to see me, which is an incredible gesture considering how lazy he is. When we had time to talk at the hospital, he told me that mom looked like shit. With that in mind I could care less about my own neck pain I was dealing with. "What did I do?"

I had many occupational and physical therapists visit me. They first had me do crosswords. One day they asked me to do logic exercises. Using a pencil, I had to map my route in a pretend neighborhood to go buy groceries. I was asked to figure out if I had enough money to buy the groceries.

All these exercises were simple and God was I scared. If they were testing me at this level it was because there was a real possibility that I may not be functional in some very basic things. I remember the day it was time to go for a walk. Fucking frightening. I went with an occupational therapist. She wheeled me to the ground floor, took me outside. Sunlight. Fresh Air. God, it felt so good. "How could I possibly have wanted to leave this?"

The therapist told me she was going to leave me there and that I had to find my way to my room best I could, it was my test. The fighter in me appeared. I went up to the front desk, asked a few questions, not caring how ridiculous I looked in my gown, how drugged up I was. I boldly made my way to the elevators, to my room. I stumbled my way back onto my bed.

After a few days, I began to feel at home at the hospital, despite the pain. I had not been able to rest like this, to breathe, to relax, to just focus on me, for many years now. God, I was exhausted from life. It felt so wonderful to just focus on me, to have kind people taking care of me. There was a strawberry shake that had started appearing magically. I never ordered the fucking thing. God, it was delicious. God, just let me be here forever.

During the time my father was also there but I couldn't stand to see him. One night he was caught looking through a nurse's purse thinking it was my mom's. Later he started a fight with the staff that resulted in visitors no longer being allowed to stay with me after night hours. I couldn't bear the sight of him; he looked so weak; he needed to man the fuck up and be strong for his son but instead he was just speechless, intrusive, disruptive. I couldn't stand having him by me. He denied that anything had happened and would do so for 5 years.

[Good Times at The Hospital]

During my stay at the hospital I developed pancreatitis and had my gallbladder removed. More pain. My lung capacity was horrendous and my neck was still in tremendous pain. I couldn't move it and I couldn't sleep. I was still good enough to talk a lot of shit to the nurses and doctors, of course, all in jest. "Hey so, is this like a parking lot surgery?". It was funny, you had to be there.

I fell in love with every single nurse and one night took one by the hand on a romantic walk through the halls of the hospital, in my yellow hospital gown barely tied in the back and my yellow hospital socks. One night one of them, Coral, gave me a hand lotion massage that felt like a blessing. Another night, a nurse and I stayed up all night on my bed laughing our asses off at funny YouTube videos–something about a flamboyant gay guy voice casting animals in nature. Those nurses were angels, all of them.

I also started having delusions. One night I asked mom to grab my hand. When she asked why and what was wrong I told her that I wasn't ready to leave yet and that I needed her hand to ground me to reality so I could fight. One day I commented on what a beautiful mural of kaleidoscope colors had been painted on the wall across from my bed when in fact there was nothing. I also recall seeing an image of a woman dressed as a nun, holding on to another woman who was weeping and in distress, amongst the folds of the sheets of my bed. It was extremely powerful.

One delusion was totally drug induced: I saw an important man come to me and tell me that if I didn't go to bed with one of the flowers my friend Juliet had sent me that it would be disastrous to mankind. I snuck out of bed that night as to not wake mom and took one of the flowers into bed with me; I had to, to save mankind, you're welcome. When I woke up it was all wrinkled and dead. My mom put it in some water and it revived.

I have no fucking clue how I survived. By all measurements of science, I should have died. I could have lost my ability to reason, to speak, to walk. It was terrifying. I had no clue, neither did any other member of the hospital, how the hell I had not died; how I still had full brain function. My students and coworkers sent tons of messages of encouragement. I received flowers and letters from very close friends. For the first time in my life I spoke the words "I love you" to my sister and to my mother, neither who ever left my side. It made me realize how many people loved me and how much of an impact I had made on so many people.

[Applause]

I went to the hospital, I suffered, I came out. I went to my sister's house and mom also would stay with me. I was still in tons of pain. One day, father had visited me back at my place and frustrated the shit out of me. He frustrated me to the point where I jumped out of our moving car and passed out in a park. My sis had to come pick me up.

I lost track of my healing that day and forgot to take my Neurontin. I'll never forget that night. I was back at my apartment and fell off the sofa and couldn't stand up. I was confused, disoriented, couldn't form a single thought. It was so frightening, I've never felt so much fear, never felt so small, never felt so alone. At that moment of weakness, I finally dropped my guard enough to consider getting a pet. I used to love cats as a child but with my responsibilities as an adult I never felt comfortable in committing to take care of a little animal.

We visited a shelter one day, for kicks, and as I walked away from one lonely little shattered stray it started meowing, begging for me to return to her. I broke at that point and adopted her. Athena. Goddess of State and Wisdom who kept the God of War a little composed. Athena was so critical to my healing. For a while, she was my only motivation;" if anything good comes out of this clusterfuck, it will be that you're living a better life Little Bird", I'd constantly tell her. She's my buddy now. I'll never leave her.

After that Neurontin nightmare I decided to just stay at my sisters. After a few days I started forcing myself to go for small walks. I repeated the same thing 3 times a day, then I would walk for a slightly longer time. My breathing was shit! I did lots of lung exercises. Farther. Farther. Farther. I developed a fascination with glazed donuts. I started being able to drink coffee again. I'd stay up long nights, drinking coffee, eating donuts, playing video games on my PC. It was good times.

I was able to attend my students' graduation just a few days later, still barely able to walk. When my coworkers saw me amble into our preparation room the entire room erupted in cheering and applause. During the graduation ceremony I was given the teacher of the year award and my students and coworkers went crazy with cheer as a fellow coworker basically carried my broken body up to receive the award. My mother broke into tears as she heard students behind her yelling out my name" Aurelius! Aurelius! Aurelius!". This was the only time she'd been able to share any of my "successful" moments with her. I had never walked at any of my graduations, never spoke about any of my awards or recognitions or achievements. I had always been taught that none of it mattered and so all of my life I had just soldiered on, never stopping to celebrate things that did matter with friends and family; only with a glass of whiskey and a cigar.

Summer break started. Gracias a Dios. 
[The Path]

I finally decided to seek professional help. Through that I met my Muse, Kate. She would guide me in my journey to begin healing my self. Even after starting my therapy I was an emotional fortress for a while, completely untrusting, completely locked down. There is only one person who could see and open my door; Kate. God am I happy I met Kate.

Kate taught me to value myself as a person. I always knew that being alive was a privilege and Kate taught me to see that I deserved that privilege. She taught me to accept myself as I was. I started working on not obsessing about controlling my situations and not obsessing over controlling my emotions. I learned to let go and let things come as they are.

I read a lot of books and watched a few inspirational videos as part of my healing. My greatest take-away was this: pressures of society on a daily basis lead every person to have a network of expectations for themselves. We create expectations about everything, in every waking moment. I slowly started observing myself and watching for moments of self-expectation. Holy shit I had a lot of expectations and they were all sky fucking high! Every moment I experienced in my life I was constantly judging based on those expectations.

I tried to shatter the expectations, to avoid them, to allow myself to fail and to be ok with whatever the moment gave me. It was a ton of work but I could see and feel the changes. It all came out in watercolor art I had started practicing through help from Kate. For the first time in my life I started chilling the fuck out. I stopped trying to control every element of my life, I started allowing myself to be "weak", to "fuck up"; to grieve, to be sad, to be happy, to love myself, to know that I had an internal child desperately crying out for attention and love. I spent a long time connecting with my inner child through art and therapy.

I had many days that felt like complete perfection. I started focusing on how I breathed, how my body responded to emotion, to how much I disconnected from actually living by the torrential flood of thoughts and expectations constantly going through my mind. My dreams were vivid; A terrifyingly real dream in which I plummeted to earth from a plane torn in half by a terrible storm. I knew I would die, but I feared more than anything to be stuck in the moment of impact; to be stuck in the pain of death. In my dream I was able to visualize that; the pain of death was pure white light.

The entire experience completely changed me. I learned to breathe easier, to smile more, to accept things and love people and life completely, even on days when I was down and losing the fight against my mind's expectations. My finances sucked but I no longer beat myself up about it. I'd work as hard and smart as I could and that would have to be enough _._ My mother and father were challenging and I wished things were different but I'd work with it. I tried to tend to me as much as felt right and then would offer them energy that I knew I had leftover.

One extremely important fact to mention is that after I had put in some hard work to bring peace to my soul my anemia went away on its own. A few years ago, having my spleen removed had helped only a tiny bit. After a couple of months of therapy and a new outlook on life, the anemia went away on its own entirely, and has stayed away since. There's no voodoo there, a peaceful soul is the best thing you can do for the health of your body.
[A Call to Arms]

Well, regardless of whether I was ready or not, school started back up again. I was so fucking nervous. Through all the months prior I had been in complete recovery mode, working hard to heal and going to a lot of doctor's appointments. I needed to see if I was going to be able to continue a regular life. My left hand had gone numb for two months and I was scared that I would lose my ability to use it.

By the time school started I was in pretty decent shape, despite how difficult my summer had been. I figured that in my condition, having just left the hospital, barely being able to drag my feet, the administration was going to cut me some slack. It would not be so.

Once we got into the swing of things I started noticing all the same little pains that had plagued me since I had started at that school. I loved my students and what our school was doing but as time passed I began noticing a lot of unfair and irresponsible behavior from the principal, Annie. To put it plainly, later, we would discover that she was an unethical, hateful, irresponsible, egoistic, delusional– truly, she challenged my resistance to ever call anyone a piece of shit and put it in writing. The fact that she was behaving the way she was in a place that was trying to help innocent youth was outrageous.

Eventually, she tried to exercise her tyranny on me. It all began with rumors throughout the school about a science teacher that had left our school, Francine. She had left because she was smart and realized early on that our principal was corrupt and misleading the school.

Francine was brilliant, I actually had a huge crush on her. The kids adored her because she has such a warm and open heart. Well, rumor had it she was returning. I was excited but knew that there was always something political that came with any news from Annie. Soon she was rubbing it in my face every day. "The science department will be great once Francine gets here". She was coming in to my classroom simply to criticize and be passive-aggressive with me every day – always comparing me to Francine. She started telling me that when Francine returned she would be assuming a higher role of curriculum coordinator for the science department. Right, there are 2 members of the science department, one, with 20 years of field experience, 10 in teaching, then me, with a graduate school experience, tons of relevant field work, and proven ability as a Dean and as an instructor. Not choosing either of us for that position was just crap. I decided to have lunch with Francine one weekend and we talked...Annie was full of shit, Francine had never agreed to that position and wasn't even considering coming back. WTF. Why was Annie feeding me all the lies?

One day, Annie gave me some passive-aggressive comment and I couldn't take her little games anymore. I decided to go talk to her about her belittling behavior toward me. I went to the Assistant Principal, who had become a close friend and mentor, and asked him to accompany me; my hair I imagine, was probably on fire. I was ready. You want you some you petty bitch, you'll get you some. The AP begged me not to go speak with her, to avoid it and sleep on it instead. I normally do for big decisions but I told him this was what made me, me. I couldn't live with it anymore, I had to say something. It was a gamble and would likely not work out in any way in my favor, but I couldn't stand around anymore and watch this idiot mistreat everyone she didn't like, granting title and privilege only to her favorite people and inventing stories for no other purpose than to rattle cages.

I went up with the AP. Annie was moving GED books from a cart onto a shelf. She had 5 secretaries, all whom had overlapping responsibility of serving her. The main secretary, Bennie, was Annie's best friend, and she treated the rest of the secretaries like garbage. She would spy on them and then blackmail them, threatening to report petty issues to Annie. Anyway, here she was, moving GED books, when she had 5 secretaries that could be doing it. She had sent us a million emails when she got those books as a testament to her genius. "You can use these GED books in your classrooms!". It was fucking stupid, they were useless; we constantly found stellar tools and shared them as a staff and she had never been a part of that.

I spoke. "Annie, can I speak with you. It's really important."

"I'm really busy right now Aurelius."

"Annie, from what I can see, you are just moving books onto a shelf, this is really important and it will take less than 10 minutes".

"I can't Aurelius!!"

"Annie, this is really important, it's about my future at this school."

I don't remember the words but she sent me away. I had pissed her off. I had also initiated what she saw as a major power struggle. It was a delusion, but at least a probable one. I had the respect of all the students, of all the staff, and was more visible to them than she was. I also loved them and they loved me. If she should fear anyone dethroning her it should be me.

But I wasn't looking for power. I just wanted to give those kids the best shot they could have in a world where the odds had already stacked against them. Weren't we all there for that reason?

I went and vented with the AP and a school counselor for a while. We all agreed that Annie had been presenting some real problems to the health of our school environment. We were worried about her. I went back to my room–the students were gone as it was only a half day. Then the AP came in, telling me that Annie had given me permission to not attend the staff meeting that afternoon.

Ok, sure. I went home but before I did I sent Annie an apology email. I didn't feel sorry, I didn't do anything wrong. I didn't even elevate my voice. But I would be generous and tell her I was just stressed and apologized for being so pushy.

When I got home I relaxed a bit and logged in to my school email to see what I had missed in the meeting. Annie had sent me an email. I opened it. It stated that I was on administrative leave as of the moment and that she wanted my letter of resignation by the next day.

I have never been fired from a job, ever. My income and therefor safety were threatened. My pride was insulted. My dignity. My honor. By this point I was equipped with new tools in mental health and in Buddhism. I allowed the emotions to come, accepted them, then let them leave. I meditated. I breathed. I sat in it. Sat in that mud and nastiness that I knew was a crap situation I had just gotten into. It's become my go to reaction to stress or adversity and I highly recommend that you try it. Don't run from the feeling. Allow yourself to feel it, honor it, treat it as a sacred guest; then when it's time, let it go. 
[Union Fight]

I joined the Union that day and coordinated a meet with a rep that very day at 7pm. We agreed to meet downtown. I drove down and parked and made my way to a dark building; it felt like a scene out of some spy drama. The next day I didn't turn in a letter of resignation. Instead, I met the executive of the Union. I started developing the situation, making contacts, creating a network. I started digging through all my emails, sending them to my personal email so I could have them should I need them: emails that reflected my character and my huge contribution at that school, emails where Annie had harassed me and the staff. My battery on my work laptop ran out. I texted a coworker to meet me in an area nearby so that I could retrieve my computer cord. Through texting with staff, I discovered that one of my students was having daily anxiety attacks and was asking where I was. Annie told everyone to not say a word and to ignore him. I was fucking infuriated by that, but I kept my cool and kept steady. My student needed me and I wasn't about to abandon him.

I had many meetings with the Union. I started writing down every trespass that woman had ever committed. I started telling the Union about all the horrible things she had done not only to me, but to the rest of the staff. This wasn't Mickey-Mouse stuff, this was legit. She played favorites with staff and students and hired and fired them accordingly. She mismanaged drug and alcohol violations from students, she completely misused funds and made inappropriate racial and sexual comments about staff and students across the board. Among other things.

One day, Annie asked me to come speak with her at Sierra. I agreed. The Union said they would send someone to represent me.

I was waiting outside Annie's office. The staff and students that saw me shed tears. I shed tears. We didn't speak a word, just looked at each other. The Union rep didn't show. I had been advised to not attend the meeting without the Union rep, fuck that. I went in. The District had sent someone from Human Resources. Annie spit bile at me and I stayed calm and collected. She accused me of mutiny, of slander, of being irresponsible. I took every single thing she said calmly, broke down her logic, then turned it against her. Eventually, she broke – "Aurelius, I asked Norma and Chris to tell me what you've been saying about me! They didn't want to so I told them I would fire them if they didn't!!!" She was fuming...in front of HR. I took down notes. I told HR that I had done nothing wrong and asked if the investigation into my behavior had revealed anything...HR said nothing. The meeting ended. I had to be escorted outside of the building by the AP. I reported back to the Union.

Later I was reinstated to secret cheers and applause. The staff was scared shitless though. Annie threatened everyone to not talk about what happened so I never brought up the subject with my colleagues. I did however, tell them how wonderful the Union was, and that it was within our legal and professional right to have a healthy work environment and to have legitimate concerns listened to. A few of them decided to go to the Union of their own accord. Later, the Union started having a greater and greater presence at our school.

Soon, every staff member was interviewed, and man, did they have things to say. I started looking for other work. I went to interview after interview after interview. By the end of it, I had 3 active teaching offers, awaiting my decision. God, I was exhausted. The conversations with the Union started drifting towards "what if Annie was gone, would you still quit?".

One day I heard that something was going down. Then, within a week, they took our AP and Annie; they were on administrative leave. An investigation started at work, this time, from HR. We were all pulled into second interviews, really, interrogations. Me bringing the Union to Sierra opened up a floodgate of concerns from the staff. They had been holding in their feelings for a long time. Holy shit.

We had some interim leaders from the District fill the void of our missing leaders. The school year was wrapping up. I had picked a new school.

In the end they fired our principal and banned her from the district but her reach still extended into our school. She had her best friend the secretary bring in chocolates to us as a gift. That was illegal. Some-fucking-how, the secretary also secured a place for Annie at our students' graduation. None of the staff wanted her there at all.

Shockingly, the District allowed her to be there though she would be under escort. At the graduation her escort left her. Annie appeared at the reception later, interrupted a student's speech, took the stage, and talked trash about the staff; how if we couldn't have an open heart and mind then we should get out of the profession. I saw her that day. She walked past me, ignored me. I called her name, stopped her, walked up to her, shook her hand and said "It's good to see you". 
[Goodbyes]

May came around, the anniversary of my spiritual awakening. The day I was reborn. I was emotional. I had suffered so much. Oh my God. I owed so much to myself. Poor me. I love you, I'll take care of you. I don't care if we fucking fail miserably, I'll always be by your side. This was revolutionary. Never before had I known what it truly meant to love myself. Now I knew. My time with Kate was coming to a close; she was leaving.

My last day with Kate I drove around town to 3 flower shops looking for flowers specifically for her. I mostly wanted forget-me-nots for her. I know she loved the color blue, in the range of sky to azure. She loved the flowers I brought her. We embraced. I love her so much. Bye Kate.

School wrapped up. I said my goodbyes a week ahead of time. So many wonderful students. Goodbye! Give 'em hell! Good luck! I didn't attend the final staff get together. I was so done with that fucking place. Besides, I had been asked to teach a summer program at my new school. Fucking a. Fuck. Ing. A. I couldn't believe how much I had endured, especially considering where I had been last May. Good times.

[The End]

My book ends here but it is not the end of my story. I regret that I could not include every single person or event that has been important to me in my life. To be honest the entire thing was very much refined but to include the detail of all the people and all the events that have shaped my life would have been too detailed and too specific to provide much more entertainment or lessons.

I went on to teach middle school science for a year which changed my life entirely - seeing the innocent and raw joy of someone at that age. I coached a teacher who was later hired at Colorado's #1 performing school. I myself got hired at a prestigious charter school. I thought my career and life were set. That summer, of 2014, I visited Vanessa and saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time and fell in love. "I don't want to spend beautiful evenings writing curriculum, grading papers, and filling out bullshit forms from the District" my body said to me. I climbed a 14er in pure snow and fell in love. "Give me more of this Aurelius, please" my body said to me. Those events changed me and when I came back to teach I realized I was too tired and beat up to continue giving of myself like I had before. I felt fucking washed up, spent.

One evening my body had had enough. I stopped working on a PowerPoint I was creating for next day's class; it was 7pm. I called my sister and asked her to join me at Wash Park for a walk. It was a beautiful evening for a walk. I was so fucking done with working on my evenings. The next day I went in to my school and informed my principal that I couldn't do it anymore. My body and mind refused to work as hard as I had pushed them the last 10 years. I couldn't be a teacher anymore.

He told me to take a week off and rest and come to a decision. That alone made me admire the man thoroughly.

I quit teaching right in the middle of the year, 5 months shy of a $20,000 grant towards my student loans. I quit and I chose not to work for 3 months, just enough to survive off my teaching retirement savings. Those 3 months were a hard-earned reprieve and I pray so much for the day when I can relax like that again.

I've returned to a career in IT now. It's so much easier and the money is already better. I still have regrets, every day, about what I could have been. I like to pretend that it isn't a big deal to me but it is. Where could I have ended up? What could I have been doing? Who could I have had by my side? I try to diffuse that regret as often as I can and working on this book has definitely helped. I'm entirely limited in what I can do by my finances and I've accepted that; I'll just need to keep building them until I have enough freedom to follow my passion again.

In the meantime, my free time is sacred to me. In the first 5 months of working IT I did more hiking, biking, running, dancing, and dating than I have my entire life. I don't know what's next. My former students (from years ago) still look up to me and reach out to me. Some still need me and I want to be there for them. I feel like I still have a part to play in helping people find peace of mind and like they have someone in their corner. I know that I can play a large role in helping organizations become successful, in any sector, but I predict that mostly I will remain invisible; I'm not power hungry or loud enough nor am I willing to be.

I fantasize of a day that I'll meet someone that sees my potential and puts me in a position where it can be fulfilled. I fantasize an equal amount about fading from society and living out on some isolated ranch. It's all good.

As it is, it's been a hard fight to try and stay peaceful. I have lost that battle as much as I have won it but I am getting better and I will continue to fight and evolve. I love myself now and I've got myself in my own corner for the first time since, well, all of my life.
[Conclusion]

In completing what would be the final drafts of this book I've discovered that I feel more and more disconnected from the stories as time goes by. Stories that once stirred me and meant a great deal to me no longer do that. I can't immediately relive them and I have even began forgetting some of them. I'm ok with that now. Before, thinking about my past would just make me frustrated on what I'd been through, on how close I'd been to being "successful". Now, I can look at it and every single memory I have makes me smile.

"Why'd you do it?". Asking that question addresses the concept of mental health entirely. Part of our mental health is a series of habits and thought patterns that become engrained in us through our experiences; it's our "inner talk". My pattern became to constantly think that I had no worth, that I didn't deserve to be loved, that I didn't deserve to live. The pattern was engrained in me when I was a child, even though it was never either of my parents' intention. When I pulled the trigger, my mind was a chaotic disarray of subconscious desperation, hopelessness, and unfulfilled expectations, despite all the "success" I had seen.

I never believed in therapy before. I thought that the best way through things was to just push on with brute force. I've discovered that I was incredibly wrong and I hope that I've made a good case to you for how important mental health is. It has to be a priority. You have to discover your subconscious reactions and you have to discover what your inner talk sounds like. Your experience of what your life "is" relies entirely on it.

The mind is a powerful foe. On a daily basis it tries to convince us that life is only beautiful if a certain outcome is met: "I am completely secure financially, he smiles at me, she agrees with me, people notice I have wealth; I have a child, my child obeys me, I weigh this much, I can bench this much, I am powerful, I am famous". The list goes on and on. It's important to have goals and ambitions, absolutely; but, your perception on the value of this life, on the value of YOU, should not be measured on superficial expectations. If you pay attention to the moment, you'll find that you are surrounded by beauty. You might find it in the light of the sun, in the smile of a person, in the taste of water, in the thrill of a hobby, or in the sound of a friend's voice.

Self-love can only begin once you wake up to the unreasonable and subconscious demands of your mind. After you love yourself, you can learn to love others, and love life.

You do have obligations: you do have an obligation to pursue your passion. You have to work hard and be willing to break out of your comfort zone. You must be open to experience and be willing to embrace whatever a moment is giving you, both the "good" and the "bad". You must contribute your honest share. You must respect the inner spirit of others and refrain from violent behavior. Be ok with being kind to yourself. Once you are, be kind to others.

But, that being said, today, right now, you have at least one person who thinks that you are enough. Stop the shouting in your mind. If you don't think you are deserving of "good" things in life then I highly recommend you seek out professional help, – therapy; you might be perfectly fine. But, everyone can benefit and gain greater joy from addressing their mental health, even if it's reading a book or watching an inspirational video. Look to your mental health. You're worth it.

Never give up. If a certain approach isn't working, go back to the drawing board, identify a small step that might lead in the right direction and try it. Talk to people involved in what you want, create connections. Keep moving forward, just don't give up.

And, remember that being a kind person in this world is often the harder path to take. I believe in you, though, and if you promise to get my back, I promise to get yours.
