About

I was 25, my fictional world was crumbling around me, I found myself alone; having just flown to the other side of the world, to be by my ailing father’s bedside. I lived in Florida at the time, and had received a call from a doctor in Germany that I should come because my father may not make it. I was in a hospital, standing on a balcony, overlooking the small picturesque town of Aachen on a cold chilly night; when I finally broke down and cried out and pleaded for help to a God that I wasn’t sure even existed. Up to that point, my life had always been a struggle, I had always felt like an outcast/misfit, always had inner torment that grew more as I got older; nothing ever seemed to go my way or none of my dreams even existed anymore. I was working in a sales job I didn’t like, had a business degree that I had no clue what to do with, and that I had mainly obtained to satisfy my parent’s demand to get a degree. I was heartbroken and jaded over struggling most of my life with same sex attractions and when I finally paid attention to the world to “be myself’; after several years I discovered that living as a gay man wasn’t all I had bargained for. It left me feeling emptier and disillusioned with life.

I was also burnt out after years of hollowing drinking, drug, and sex addictions that only temporarily medicated the pain and stress of my life. (I could never imagine the baggage those would leave.) Career was going nowhere, relationships were going nowhere, I had no will to live or motives for pushing on. I didn’t realize that then, but sadly, I didn’t love myself or have any self-esteem. Up to that point, I had always struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts. Luckily, in my mind, I always reasoned I couldn’t do something that selfish to my parents. Fear and darkness were always a constant companion, but I always pushed forward saying to myself things were going to change and get better. It was quite the opposite, the more I tried controlling my life and getting ‘my shit together”, the worse things got seemingly.

Back to the hospital room in Germany, here was a man I knew I loved and that was my father, but yet at the same time he was almost like a stranger to me. No matter how hard I tried to survive playing the game of life and to be a ‘good person”, I had no control over my father’s tumor growing at a rapid pace right before my eyes as his belly steadily swelled; simultaneously he was struggling to overcome a pneumonia he had come down with while traveling alone in Europe to follow the Formula One races (it was his lifelong passion, he himself was a professional race car driver when he was much younger). He was now in his 70s; he had relapsed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma after being in remission for 5 years and told no one, but figured he could do one last trip to the other side of the Atlantic. It caught up with him.

I grew up on the border of the U.S. and Mexico; two towns (El Paso and Ciudad Juarez) separated by the Rio Grande.  I was an only child: sheltered, painfully shy, sensitive, socially awkward, lonely,  introverted; since my earliest memories, fear and terror reigned in my household where physical violence and emotional abuse where ever present between my parents. I was collateral damage to that at times as well. My mother would pour out all her emotions on me while my father was emotionally absent when he was physically present at home. Otherwise he was gone most of the time traveling in my early years. There were seasons they would separate; but when together, I always felt like I was walking on eggshells, dreading that one day one would murder the other.

Being a sensitive kid since early on and seeing I was quite the opposite from the cold, distant personality of my father; I started believing the lie in my head  that I was not a man, because I thought to be a man I had to be like him. I didn’t have many male role models growing up, those present portrayed the tough never show your emotions, stereotypical macho guy. Heck that’s the image that still prevails today in society, in the media, etc. I didn’t realize this until I was an adult but at some point as a child I unconsciously separated myself from my developing masculinity because I didn’t want to be like my father. That feeling of not identifying with my gender only grew as I felt ignored by members of my same sex as I got older. I just obviously never related; I had no siblings, just the occasional transitional neighborhood friends.  For years I struggled with the feeling of being a “woman trapped in a man’s body”. I associated my passivity, sensitivity, fear, and weakness as a human being as how I perceived the gender of being a female to be. In addition to lack of male affirmation in my life, another contributor was the unhealthy, emotionally dependent type of relationship my mother had with me. My heart always felt too much. I always thought it was a curse that I could feel so much, primarily pain. I wished I could be immune to my surroundings.

I was constantly teased and picked on at school growing up. In elementary, I  was even sexually molested once by a classmate’s older brother. I never fit in, I wasn’t good at athletics, didn’t have many friends growing up until high school. Even when I finally did have a steady group of people to hang with, I felt like I was never fully able to be myself. The hardest part was dealing, at least consciously since my early teens, with the shame and condemnation of the Catholic religion and Latin culture teaching me I was going straight to hell for having feelings I never chose for myself. I felt like an abomination; less than human, that God made me gay because he obviously hated me. Feelings which I tried repressing and hiding for over a decade; they tormented me no matter how hard I tried to pray them away or ignore them. I felt like I had no one to talk to, that everyone would judge me; friends and family alike.

Drowning in my own glass of water or the pain of just being in my own bubble was the “norm” during my teenage years. External events also started to rattle my world around 18. A cousin passed from a freak car accident which shocked the entire family; she was only 16 at the time. I wasn’t very close to her and I left for a month to Europe with my father, right before she succumbed from her injuries; so I didn’t experience the full ramifications of that as the rest of the family did; but it did affect me. At that point in life my heart was just hardened in my vain attempt to not feel anymore. The entire extended family was never the same since.

My parents were hard working people who with much sacrifice paid for the best education for me; I was raised in private Catholic schools from pre-k to high school. The Bible seemed irrelevant to the reality around me growing up. Religion seemed like a bunch of rituals and rules that nobody would or could follow. All I saw was hypocrisy; go to church for an hour on Sundays and then go back to the chaos of daily life. People spending more time judging others rather than focus on their own defects; then justifying that in the name of a deity who I viewed as an old man on a cloud throwing thunder bolts down if one made mistakes. Once I started forming my own opinions instead of just accepting those imposed on me, I stopped attending church.

There was one person in my life that was different, that didn’t seem fake but genuine; and that just exuded love when she spoke about her faith in God; that was my grandmother. When she tried speaking to me about God I would listen, although in the back of my mind I felt like she couldn’t possibly relate to me or understand my different reality. However, she was a glimmer of light in the darkness of my life, planting seeds of hope and belief that there was a higher power or being in the universe that loved me and had a purpose for my life. Unfortunately, those moments where just occasional rays of light peaking through the dark clouds that permeated my mind for the first quarter century of my life. But they helped me “crawl” forward.

She was tragically murdered in 2004 while I was away in college, further cementing my notion that how could there be a God when bad things happen to good people? Especially her, who actually believed and trusted in him in such a way that differed from all the fakeness of religious people that I grew up around with. She was the family matriarch, ever since her death, the family has been estranged for the most part; past resentments and pride have erected seemingly impenetrable walls amongst her children.

By the time I was 25, I was conformed with the breadcrumbs of life; just wanting to have a partner and live far away, not bother the world, stay invisible and under the radar as I had always been; but just enjoy a little slice of happiness. Was that too much to ask for? Dating females in my young adulthood didn’t work and it didn’t with males either. Having a successful career, getting married, having a family, the ‘normal’ American dream was not to be for me. Although to be honest, that didn’t fully ever appeal to me either. Get a job, pay bills, find a wife, have kids, acquire possessions, buy a house, retire, have grandchildren, then die. Ugh. Something in me felt there had to be more to life and I knew I wanted to help people somehow. I just didn’t understand why I felt like I was born to suffer for no reason; why seemingly that was my token in life.

Back to Germany 2007; I had somehow accepted and was resigned to the life I had led up to that point; all that was somewhat bearable compared to seeing my father dying. I still hadn’t had an opportunity to even get to really know him. Even though I was out of college and working, he still provided financially for my mother and I, what would we do if he were gone? Despite everything I had been through, this was finally the breaking point. I felt like an 80 year old sarcastic, cynical, pessimistic man living in a 25 year old body. I did my best to hide everything I was feeling throughout my life. Cuz you know, you have to look happy to the world all the time regardless. Isn’t that what Myspace and Facebook taught us? (Insert winking emoji)

The one façade that I managed to construct in my early 20s that kind of worked for me was that of an asshole. I was a late bloomer but after removing braces, getting lasik to replace glasses, gaining a few pounds (I was always painfully skinny), and getting over years of bad acne, turns out I wasn’t such a bad looking guy after all a couple of years into college. I started to hit the gym regularly also. Suddenly, I wasn’t so ignored by girls like I had been my entire life. Although at that point I was no longer interested and already moving on to guys. I became narcissistic and condescending; thanks in part to the enablers that I started surrounding myself with. It was my mask to deflect my insecurities onto others. But that wasn’t really me either; inside I was still a scared and lonely boy; even when surrounded by pretty people partying. I suffered several heartbreaks with guys; the ones I was into didn’t like me as much or I was pursued by others I had no interest in.

You can’t move on to the future without dealing with the past, otherwise it’ll haunt you forever and sabotage everything you do. Psychology says the first five years in one’s life are the most formative years for your personality and influence the paths one takes when one becomes an adult.(Hence, when you see full grown adults acting like emotional teenagers. They’ve never dealt with their past wounding. But honestly, we all have our junk) The good news is that it doesn’t have to stay that way. (Especially if you had a traumatic past like me) When I finally got to my wit’s end and crumbled that night on the hospital balcony in Germany and cried out that plea for help to the universe; my life changed.

As I start this blog, I’m 33 now, I’m in a much happier place in my life. I’m far from perfect, but I feel much freer and at ease to be myself. In fact, I’ve come out of my shell. I’m pretty outgoing, social (when I want to be), and funny. Traits I never saw in myself a decade ago. People that meet me now can’t believe me when I describe my old self. It took me a long time to realize it but yea, I’ve definitely changed for the better. My essence is still the same, just improved. The walls of shame and guilt that weren’t even mine to own in the first place have slowly started coming down in the last 8 years of my life; although they’ve been the hardest years, even more so than the first 25. I wouldn’t change them for anything, they’ve been the most life-giving and alive that I’ve ever felt; immersed with the familiar pain, but even more so, with real joy! Not artificial one only felt before while high or drunk!

There was never any villains in my life, nobody is perfect, we are all broken to one extent or the other. People who’ve been hurt tend to hurt others eventually. It’s the world we live in. I have nothing to forgive my parents for, as an adult I now see that they loved me very much, their own upbringing and situations in their lives led them to deal with life as best as they could. Sure maybe they made some bad decisions, who doesn’t? I’m no one to judge them. Reality is, maybe they didn’t know how to express it, but they always loved me; even though I couldn’t see that through the eyes of a child.

I now have a hope for the future, for a family perhaps one day, for a career I enjoy; I’ve made significant progress in improving my relationship with my mother. I’m not completely yet where I want to be, but I’m much better than ever as far as my self-esteem and confidence go. I haven’t dated anybody in a decade; in fact I’ve never been in a long term relationship all of my life. And it’s ok. I have peace for the most part now; compared to the constant stress and anxiety that I used to live in. The old cliché phrase is true, until you find happiness within yourself; you can’t possibly love someone else. The last few years I’ve been trying things I never did before because of fear; from martial arts, to dancing, to DJing, horseback riding, snorkeling with whales, whitewater rafting, starting a blog (lol)etc,etc…. I’m starting to tap into the masculine, adventurous side of my soul and I no longer feel weak and passive; or like the false feeling of being a “woman trapped inside a man’s body”. I have a ways to go with that too, but for the most part I feel like the man that I am. I’m also comfortable with embracing my feminine side and have realized that I have gifts that I can teach to others; especially to men of how to fully embrace one’s heart and love others well. Ultimately, that’s what really makes you a man, living according to your heart’s fullest potential and leading others through love.

It’s June of 2015, gay marriage was just approved by the Supreme Court for all of the United States this past weekend. A historic moment and period of time; very different from the climate I grew up in. I feel gay couples should have the same rights as heterosexual couples. The plot twist pertaining to my life, contrary to what is now considered a norm, is that I made a decision years ago to no longer pursue a relationship with a man nor do I identify as being a gay male. My sexual orientation is not my identity. There’s so much more to me than that. If anything, my identity is rooted in being a child of God. I am physically still attracted to males; but the emotional desire to be with a man or needing a male to affirm that former passivity or masculine void in my soul is gone. My lustful desires where exacerbated by sex addiction that I developed since my late teens, thanks to the oversexualization present in the culture we live in today. Since my sex life was practically inactive (by choice mainly in my 20s), except for the random hookup once in a blue moon; I was in denial for a long time about my issue. Addiction is actually a disease. But chatting on line, fantasizing, sexting, the adrenaline and thrill of flirting with someone all created synapses(pathways) in my brain due to the chemical release given; I became dependent on this high(similar to drug or alcohol addictions or many others that exist). It became a coping mechanism for dealing with the stressors of life; it allowed me to detach from reality. This vicious cycle kept me in chains, as it involved seeking highs through at times risky behavior and then afterwards dealing with the shame and regret of acting out. The majority of the time it didn’t lead to a physical hookup, but even masturbation brought that self loathing. This addiction has interfered with my life every time I have any forward momentum going. I now am in recovery and seeking help with Sex Addicts Anonymous. ( I guess I’m not that anonymous now right? hehe) It took me years to realize it, but I’m not alone in that struggle. Nor can I get out of it alone. 

All this may not make sense to you, but that’s where I am on the sexual spectrum right now at 33. It’s much different than where it was 8 years ago. One evolves as a human being over the course of life, in many facets; or should at least; otherwise you feel stuck, miserable and bitter as you age. Society likes to place people in a box, you’re either black or white. That’s not true, there’s always a gray area. I feel like I can fall in love with a woman in the future. If that’s meant to be, it’ll happen organically. Or maybe I’ll be single and celibate for the rest of my life. I’m on the quest to continue growing my spirit; everything else will fall into place and show up in my life at the right time. I’ll never be with someone just so I won’t be “alone”; I’d have to be truly in love. I saw the consequences of that in my parent’s marriage; staying together when they where no longer in love. It saddens me to see so many unhappy people today constantly in and out of codependent relationships over and over just because they’re afraid to be on their own for a while. It’s even harder for women as they age. Only time will tell where my journey will take me. All this being said, I support and love my gay friends in the decisions they make for their life. My choice and path I’m going down is different from the mainstream, but has been based on the numerous signs of the direction the universe is continually pointing me towards. I plan to be forthright and discuss all the aforementioned issues in more depth in this blog. 

So you’re probably wondering, well what the heck has happened from the time you were 25 to 33? I’m glad you asked, that will be the premise for this blog, at least initially, and then we’ll see what happens.  For one, you’ll have to read more to find out what happened with my father. I will say, through that experience the God of the universe showed up by pouring out grace and love in my life; I experienced miracles that opened my eyes up to a different reality. (The beard wielding, judgmental old man in the sky that man-made religion tried shoving down my throat is so erroneous.) I am not attempting to convince anybody of anything in this blog. It’s just my journey, everyone’s is unique, but I feel my mission is to share mine. That’s part of my purpose; that one that I’ve sought out my whole life. However, if you keep an open mind, once you hear what I have to say then maybe perhaps you’ll see things you’ve gone through in your life in a different way. I know I’m constantly learning from stories of the people that I cross paths with in this life. And guess what? You can form your own opinions and are allowed to disagree with mine. What a novelty concept right? Ha. You can be friends with someone and not necessarily agree with them on everything. We all have a mind of our own, we’re not robots.

Don’t believe in God? That’s ok! Like I said, neither did I! I feel that the world is so desperately in need of people who are willing to learn to authentically love one another despite having different beliefs, sexual preferences, social statuses, or skin color. Not just to tolerate, but to authentically love. Paranoia spreads and more invisible walls get raised up as hate, fear, and judgment permeates throughout our society; people spend too much time pointing out the differences in one another as opposed to discovering what they have in common.

To close, let me interview myself. Ricardo (yes that’s my name), why would you share all these painful things about your life and family?

My hope with being vulnerable and sharing what I’ve been through is to give hope to those who have ever felt marginalized, rejected, or like they had no purpose in the world. You do. Even if you can’t relate to anything that I plan to share in this blog; which unless you’re not human, I think you’ll find some common ground. Or perhaps you can merely better learn to empathize and relate to people in your life that are different from you. We need community, relationships for people to thrive. We need to share our giftings that others lack and receive those from others that we don’t have, to evolve and be built up as people. Trust me , it’s taken 30 some years of experiences for my self-reliance and only child mentality to finally break, as life keeps teaching me you can’t go at it alone. The truth is; the only way to affect others on a larger scale is that it takes a village. But it only takes one person to affect another’s life. I’m finally learning what my role is in this big vast universe and hope you join me along this journey called life; this is truly just the beginning! When you learn that you have no control of your life and fully surrender, that’s when the adventure begins!

Don’t try putting me in a box, ain’t happening anymore!