ขอบคุณ

It is 1am on a Monday morning. I am speeding down the winding road that is Lake Wohlford, barely able to make out the speed signs through the haze that has come over my eyes. The effect that occurred from a mixture of not sleeping and the salt from tears. I’ve run out of places to hide in Valley Center.

I’m not going to tell you the whole story from the beginning, that would take to long.
What I will say is that because of the way things happened, I could no longer bear staying in my hometown.
I needed to escape, and I had run out of places to hide at home. I should stand up to my problems right? I guess that would have been the mature thing to do, and I was ridiculously the opposite. Flying around the curves and bends at sketchy speeds, I kept looking down at the flyer in the passenger seat next to me. “Unleashed Fitness Center” was printed in bold red letters across the piece of paper. “Open 24/7” right below it. With no place else to go, and not thinking straight, I figured that maybe if I beat on the doors hard enough, they’d let me in.

I arrived and composed myself. The gym was a well sized, white building right off of Valley Pkwy. I pulled in and parked next to the only other car there. I walked around the corner and to the door, the lights were on and I could see the heavy bags, weights, boxing ring and all of the other various equipment. I pulled on the door handle to find that it was locked. Hanging my head I began walking back to my Jeep, when the man in the other car approached me. He was eating raw peas out of a can with spoon, wearing a cut off hoodie, gym shorts, and had a wiry boxers build. There was no threat from this man, just curiosity as to what a teenager was doing in the parking lot at 1:30am. He introduced himself as Eddie, asked me what my name was, what I was doing there. I told him I was looking for a place to train, and didn’t want to go home.

I found that when all of your friends seem like enemies, a stranger can save your life.
Eddie showed me into the gym, using his key to open the doors. He asked me not to tell anyone about it, being against the rules. He lead me around the building, explaining how everything worked. He even showed me some basic boxing moves. After an hour or two, we left the gym. I slept in the parking lot that night. Later that morning, with money I had saved, and some help from my parents, I signed onto the members list.

To most people a gym simply a place of exercise. Somewhere we go to better our health, a recreation
center, or a way to rid ourselves of stress.

But to a few of us, it’s a sanctuary. A place we go when nothing else makes sense. It becomes an outlet that can save lives. We can plug into the pain we have inside, and unleash it into our training.
All of our emotional problems are made into physical pain when our fists hit the bags.

We could transfer the hurt, the anger, the sadness into our movements, into our combinations, into our repetitions, and for a little while after, we would be okay.


I look around, and I see faces that have been through some of the hardest walks of life, and I feel safe knowing no one will judge me here.

These salty men, with tattoos reading “WANTED” on their shins, spider webs on their elbows, and the name of someone they have lost to violence on their necks. There is something that brings them together. It is unspoken, but it is felt. One of them vents to me after our Muay Thai class.

He lets go to me about how the people he grew up closest with, his three cousins, all like brothers looking out for one another, have been murdered. The last cousin being the most recent death, just weeks before today. That he is the last one of the four, and how he feels like he has failed somehow. I listen to his story. Married at 19, two kids and a wife by 21. We became good friends after that night.

There was a time when things had become so bad, I could hardly find comfort in training anymore.
I beat on the heavy bags for an hour straight. Not stopping to breath. Even the older men, the trainers, the fighters thought I was out of my mind. When it was over, when I had finally had enough, I collapsed.
Now, I’m not bragging, I’m just trying to get across just how horrible this day was. I was trying to hurt myself through training.

Laying there, in self-pity, I noticed a man standing above me. His name was Matt. With a skull tattoo on his rib cage, another on his shin, and a Mohawk for a haircut. He wasn’t a sentimental kind of guy. But that day he told me something that I still think about now. He sat me up and said “Don’t let it eat you up your whole life, kid. Or you’ll end up like me, ugly”.
He wasn’t very handsome.

He told me his story. Maybe he thought it would help me relate. Matt is 32 and is an armature Muay Thai fighter. Explaining how he is an orphan, abandoned by his parents as an infant. He tells me that less than a week ago, he found out who his biological father was. I say was because his father was found in an alley dead, an overdose of heroin caused the death. I was still angry at the things in my life.

Looking back, I am humbled by the stories I have heard. Our problems are relative to the pain we feel. But it taught me that there will always be someone who has a story filled with far more pain than our own, and the best thing we can do is listen. Even if we don’t have the words to make the hurt go away. At that point in my life, I have no idea how I would have gotten by without Unleashed Fitness and the people there.. It became my new home before it unfortunately closed down.

This fitness center, this gym, was my place of healing.

Wednesday, June 17th

"Wings won't take me"

Today we visited my aunt.

She is spending her last few months in a care center in Escondido. We arrive and sign in, heading towards her room in the sterile facility. She is sitting outside of her stay in a wheelchair. Covered in blankets on an already hot day, her body is so frail. "Hola Tia" are the first words that come out of my mouth. I glance over at my father, a man who I have never seen cry, standing in the moment with tears in his eyes. He grabs the chair and pushes her into the lobby. Sitting on the plastic covered couches the three of us are silent. What do you say to someone who is dying ?

She stares at me the entire time we are there. All I can do is smile and stare back, but not for long. I constantly drop my head, unable to hold eye contact with this fragile woman. Her blue eyes cutting right through me. My father breaks the silence and asks "Ready to go home?" to which she replies "They won't let me go". The silence makes a return, and every time I look up, there are those eyes. I'm thinking back to all of the days I spent at her mobile home off of Valley Parkway when I was growing up. It seemed like she was as well.

My father tries to make her laugh. It works but it is followed by a coughing spell I was sure she would not survive. Every cough sounds as if her lungs are shattering. Her eyes are shut tight and she is holding her mouth with one hand, and her chest with the other. It lasted maybe 15 seconds, but when you're in that much pain 15 seconds can last a year. We are all silent again, the air in the room is horribly uncomfortable and awkward. My father tells her half jokingly that she needs to come home. Her son Alex isn't taking care of the garden. That the plants are going to die soon. "So will I" she says. She has completely accepted the fact without fear. The smile fades from my fathers lips.

I was reminded of how much I am not invincible that day.


Every time my father asked if my aunt was ready to go home, I never once thought about that trailer off of Valley Parkway with the garden. I kept thinking of a place that was much, much better. Better than anyone truly knows. Somewhere where my aunt wouldn't have to live in pain everyday. A place not far from her now.






She is being called home.

giving tree

Sunday, May 24, 2009 at 10:27pm

Today, at work.

Tania came up to me and asked if I would like to donate, to which I replied, "Donate ?".
She explained that, Luis, one of the hospo team members is graduating from Escondido High School on Wednesday, but he didn't have enough money for his cap and gown, along with other things he needed to walk.

I went to the locker room and checked my bag. My last twenty dollar bill. You know, the one we normally use on gas to get home when we're running low. On food at the end of the day, right after work when we're hungriest. On some new, nice looking ( but cheap ) sunglasses from NYC Sunglasses in the mall. I figured he could use it more than I. I walked back to the front of the house, found Tania, and handed her the twenty. She smiled and said thank you.

Around closing time, Tania gave the envelope to Luis. He had not known about our little fund raiser until that very moment. I was across the room, but I could still see the tears in his eyes, welling up while he was looking down at the envelope, like it was pure gold, shaking his head, speechless. After many tears, hugs, and congratulations were passed around Red Robin, we sent him home, after he clocked out of course.

I figured it would make him happy, but bring him to tears ? That was a little much, I thought at the time. Not that there was anything wrong with it. We proceeded to close shop, sweeping and bussing tables. I was heading back to the kitchen when I heard Yo-Yo ( Joe ) talking about how Luis was the first person in his family to graduate from High School. To receive a high school diploma. Something I definitely take for granted. I was reminded of how relevant happiness can be tonight. Of how some small gesture, can mean so much to a person from a different perspective. From mundane to magnificent.

I couldn't have found a better way to spend twenty dollars if I tried.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009 at 10:49pm

"Come back and shine just like it used to be."


Gaby called tonight. She sounded so happy. She was speaking like a child would to describe a vacation to her friends back home. She has spent the last several months in a women's correctional facility.

Beginning her story, she explains how, due to an error in the computer system, she was placed in a high security, long-term prison. The good news is that her friend Diana, who she has grown very close to, calling her sister, is in this place with her. Diana is serving a long-term sentence and is currently fighting for a shot at parole. The entire time she is explaining her experience there, I can almost hear the smile in her voice, and I am curious as to why. She tells me about the things she has seen and done since she has been there, and her voice begins to tremble. My sister explains that her and Diana were put in the same cell, and how it had saved her life. They were standing up for each other. Praying for each other.

This is where she begins to cry. Professing to me, as if I couldn't believe her, that she is so sorry for all of the things she has done. To my family, to her friends, to strangers, to me. She tells me how she reacquainted with Faith in this place.

Growing up my sister was my best friend. She tried to look after me. She would spend so much time with me. When she became pregnant as a teenager, I became jealous that there would be somebody else that she would have to share her love with. Shortly after that time, she started making more and more bad choices. We fell out of touch as the years went on.

Before my sisters incarceration, I tried to reach out to her. The first time anyone in my family had made an attempt. Everyone had either shunned her, or pushed her to the back of their thoughts. As if she would just disappear. Her trailer sat on the far end of our property, like a bad memory my family would try to forget, they'd avoid remembering she was there. We had found stolen items and narcotics in her bedroom before, but we didn't know how to deal with it. I was never home. My mother bore the worst of it, from my father, constantly trying to get rid of Gaby, and from Gaby herself. Finally, one day when my mother was broken down, again in tears with a look of surrender in her eyes. I was told by my nephew that my mother had found that Gaby had been sneaking bad company into the trailer, and had stolen things from people we knew personally. It was now or never.

He trailer is surrounded by weeds and trash bags. The earth around it is dry, with cactus rising up through the dirt. There is a feeling of sadness in the air. As if the atmosphere was lonely. After two knocks I can hear people scrambling inside. Voices in quick, low whispers. Gaby is not alone. She comes to the door and asks "Who's there ?", I reply "Peter, your little brother".
After a few more whispers, she opens the inner door. I can make out her silhouette through the screen door in the evening light. I ask her if she has a minute to spend with her brother. She is reluctant. We have not spoken more than two words to each other in a few years.

She steps out into the light. Dark circles surround her heavy brown eyes. Her shoulders slumped, as if the burden she is carrying has taken over her posture. She is strung out. We begin. I ask her how she has been, "Fine". Every superficial question I ask gets an equally terse answer.

I try to dig deeper, asking her what's she's doing with herself, if she needs anything, how can I help her ? She is so guarded. I feel helpless. Her words are so heavy. Every single one has pain in them. I try so hard to understand the pain she has been through. Abuse, abandonment, addiction, and so much anger. Most of this is the result of how badly her stepfather treated her. The way my father treated her. I tell her she can talk to me about her problems, that it doesn't hurt. She says it does, that it hurts her. That she hates remembering. She has spent her entire life running from the past. As if when she stopped running, all of the ghosts would catch up with her. Hiding herself in her addictions, in bad relationships. Anything to escape the past, temporarily. She stops, says she's glad I came bye. That's my cue to leave.

By the end of our conversation, I feel as if I did nothing to help. I feel weak. I am so ashamed of myself for not being strong enough, for whatever it was that I didn't have to help her.

Now, back to the present day. Over the phone, through her crying voice, she tells me that she keeps thinking back to the day that I came over to her trailer. That I helped saved her life. I let her know that she never has to say sorry. That we were forgiven far before she ever did any of those things. She has always been saved. That all she had to do, was ask for it, with all of her heart, ask for it. We laugh about some inside jokes and say our goodbyes. I can't stop smiling. I silently thank God while still on the phone with her.

"What's taken away is the price they pay.

For goodness sake let it fade away.

Let go of the past, that tore you apart.

Embrace this chance for a brand new start".

Renovatio.