E1 - From the Bottom

Join me as I talk about my early childhood experiences, some mundane and some jaw-dropping. Though traumatic, if nothing else, it makes for a good story.

Transcript

Hey there, my name is Josh and thanks so much for choosing to listen to my podcast. You're probably here because the name caught your eye: From Homeless to Mansion and you want to hear a feel-good, rags-to-riches story. Well, I promise I'll give you a true story that will leave your jaw on the floor, but it won't really be a feel-good story. There's going to be drugs, abuse and some pretty cold nights. However, it does deliver what it promises: going from a homeless child to buying my very own mansion. So, why do you want to listen to me ramble on about my story? Well, you're going to hear some pretty crazy things, like when I was a hacker for the NSA, those times my dad's girlfriend tried to murder me or that time I lost my virginity when I was six years old. I promise I'll take you on the entire, decades-long, wild ride of my life and try to impart some lessons learned and give some good advice I've learned along my journey from homeless to mansion.

So, I originally grew up in Kentucky; Lexington to be specific. So, I'm definitely more of a suburban or city boy than country. I wouldn't know what to do if you just dropped me in the middle of the woods. But so I grew up on this street called Centre Parkway in Lexington and, back in the 90s, it wasn't really the worst part of town; it wasn't great, but it was mostly just a lot of lower income people, you know, lower middle class, for the most part. There were apartments, there were duplexes, there were standalone houses, things like that. Not a lot of crime, but definitely some. Definitely a lot tamer than it is now. You know, there's a police station in the neighborhood; there's constant crime. It's a really different neighborhood now than it was back then. 

Anyway, like a very unfortunately large number of people, I am a product of divorce. I think my parents got divorced when I was about a year old, but I don't even think they were really together before then. My dad worked in concrete for most of his life. Of course his real job was selling drugs. That's only something that's recently stopped, now that he's about 70 years old. My mom was never really able to hold down any kind of job for more than a few months. I think she had a cleaning job at a hotel for about a year once and that's probably the longest I've ever seen her have a job. Most of her jobs throughout her life seemed to be just maid service, things like that. They were definitely all minimum wage jobs. Neither of my parents ever went to college. Well, that's kind of a lie. My dad ended up getting a bachelor's degree from an online school. I don't know, he was probably in his late 50s, early 60s but, you know, for most of my life neither of them had any kind of college degree. My dad has two other kids, so I have a half-brother and a half-sister, my brother's, I don't know, more than a decade older than I am. My sister's a little bit older than he is. I don't have great relations with most people in my family. My relationship with my brother has improved over the years and that's probably the best relationship that I have.

So, I really just grew up being raised by my mom, who was a single mother for probably most of my childhood; actually, I think most of the time I've been alive, even to this day, she's mostly been single all of that time. Honestly, the first few years of my life probably aren't going to be that dramatic and they're probably not the best way to start this podcast to ensure I have listeners for the rest of the story, but you've got to start at the beginning and move forward. I don't think there's really any other way to do it.

So, single mom, raised by her in some very low-income apartments in Kentucky. This wasn't... they weren't like city apartments, you know, in the middle of an urban area. It was definitely the suburbs. The apartments were definitely lower-class people and a lot of much older people who were retired or just living on social security, things like that. No one had any money in any of these apartments. We hadw... what did we have? We probably had a two-bedroom apartment, which to people living in a big city probably sounds like a lot. But you know, again, this was suburbs in Kentucky in the 90s, so I think that was probably pretty standard back then. You know, it wasn't the best apartment: couple bedrooms, a bathroom, kitchen, a living room; that was about it. It was the type of apartments that have individual buildings with a few units in them, a breezeway, some stairs, you know, no elevators, anything like that. We had a park in the center of the apartment complex. You know, nothing fancy, merry-go-round, swing set, some slides, wood chips, you know, things like that. But there were a lot of grassy areas in this apartment for kids to play and I definitely think I played a lot outside in those early years, you know, before I became more of an introvert and kind of kept to myself and you know, I wasn't really the outside type for the most part, although I do need my sunlight or my depression goes up like crazy. 

I didn't really see a lot of my dad during my childhood or really most of my life, I would say. Like I said, I have two half siblings. They both have the same mom, same dad, and my dad wasn't really around for most of their lives either, so that should give you some kind of indication on the kind of father he was. You know, not to completely tear him down, all his flaws, he's a really good person. You know, the kind that'll give you the shirt off his back. He will give you his last dollar to make sure you have what you need. So, not a bad person; he's just made a lot of very bad decisions and definitely not a good father, anyway.

So, anyway, I didn't see a lot of him. He would come over in those early years when I was probably like five or six years old and we would play Donkey Kong Country together on the Super Nintendo, and I know we would play that for hours. I don't know where my mom was, maybe she was out working or on a date, out partying, I don't know. But I do remember those times and I had fun playing the game. I don't think we ever beat it, but it's one of those stories that my dad tells on repeat. He has like five or six of those and I feel like those are the only things he remembers at all from his entire life. But to hear him tell it, my mom would always get so angry that he and I were playing this game together and I don't have any memory of that. Maybe she did, who knows. It's long in the past now. 

So, speaking of the Super Nintendo, I think that was the first video game system that I ever had, at least the first one I can remember. I know back in the day I loved the Mario Paint game. I don't know if you guys remember that, but you got like this little gray plastic board and like an electronic pen type thing that you could put on it to draw things. And it had this really fun game with the painting game where you had like insects that were flying around the screen and you had to tap on the board to smack them with a fly swatter. And, you know, it got progressively faster and harder and there were like boss insects and stuff. I don't know. I loved that game; I played the hell out of it. I was never any good at it. I'm definitely not a good artist, so the painting part was not something I was any good at, but I had fun playing it. 

I don't remember if it was the Super Nintendo or the Nintendo 64 that I got, but I am fairly certain that my mom slept with some guy and had him buy me whichever system. I have no memory of this guy. I don't really have a memory of any of that happening. I just have this vague memory of some guy that she was maybe seeing bought one of these systems for me and I got it for Christmas or my birthday or something. Yeah, I don't know, it's not like there was a revolving door of guys in the house, definitely not. But I just I feel like that's an interesting memory, that's kind of half-buried there. 

Anyway, moving away from all that, let's get some drama in here, I guess. So,there was this kid who lived in the same apartment complex, a few buildings down at the end of the whole complex. And I think his name was William, I don't know, that sounds about right. So I was still, you know, like five, six years old, and again, this was back in the 90s. So, William was on Ritalin, which, for those of you who are too young to remember that, you know we have that replaced with like Adderall and things like that these days. But Ritalin was the thing to be on for kids who probably had ADHD or behavior issues back in the day before we really called it ADHD. I didn't really hang out with this kid a lot, but I know that the general impression of him in the neighborhood was that him and his mother were definitely trouble and this kid was for sure trouble. He was around my age, so, you know, like six-ish years old I think, maybe a couple years older, I don't really remember. I remember he had like this blue jean jacket he would wear around. I'm pretty sure he had like a rat tail in his hair. You know that was... I remember I had one of those way back then. I don't know, that was the thing to do in Kentucky in the 90s, if you were a boy, I guess. So this kid, he was definitely trouble. I remember specifically there was this one winter we had this giant pond out back of the apartment complex. There were always ducks there, and so this one winter this duck somehow had gotten its leg frozen in this pond. At least that's the way I remember it. And so this kid, William, goes out there to this pond, finds this duck frozen in the ice and he cuts this duck's leg off. I mean, I'm sure you could frame it as like he was saving this thing from the ice, but no, this kid was... You know, there's a very good chance he could be a serial killer these days torturing small animals as he did way back in the day. That's the only real memory I have of this kid. 

I think for the most part I was a good kid. I generally did what I was told. You know, I was like any other kid I'm going to throw a tantrum if I don't get what I want, things like that. But I was really good at listening to instructions. I don't think I really tried to make life hard on my mom or anything. I had some friends. I had this one friend in particular, I think his name was Derek, something like that, and we hung out a lot. You know, we played with toys, played video games together, we ran around outside, did whatever little boys do in Kentucky. What little boys also do in Kentucky, at least from my experience... Derek was the first person to really expose me to anything sexual in my life. Again, I'm like five or six years old at this point and I am certain this kid probably had a pretty rough home life and some things were done to him that were pretty terrible. Of course I didn't know any of this at the time. All I know were the things that he taught me at the time and the things that we did together and I think that kind of informed a lot of things that happened later in my life. Anyway, I was way too young to be doing any of that stuff, but here we are. And I think those things led directly into this next part. 

There was this girl in the apartment complex. Again, you know, she was about the same age as I was back in the day. I don't remember her name at all. I think it started with a C. And the little girl, she was black and you know, there were... It was a very mixed-race apartment complex and area in general. But I remember we had this neighbor and she was always playing Super Mario World and so I'd always want to go over to her place to watch her play Super Mario World or to play it with her. To be clear, this was an adult woman, not some little kid. But you know her and my mom were friends or neighbors or something. And so this woman had a mixed-race baby boy. But my mom... I remember... you know, it was a scandal that this woman had a mixed-race baby and, I don't know, it was the early 90s and I guess that was still taboo. I mean, it's very much still very taboo in a lot of places in Kentucky, so I guess that's not really out of the norm for there. But I remember my mom just, you know, whispering and talking in hushed tones about, you know, you're supposed to only stay with your own race; you shouldn't be dating someone outside of your race and like... I mean, that didn't... It definitely didn't form any of my opinions as an adult because I certainly don't believe that, and I remember thinking it was dumb at the time, even as young as I was. 

But yeah, so anyway. So, this little girl, name started with a C, she and I would play together. I remember one night in particular we were out playing at the park that was in the middle of the neighborhood. I don't know, it was late, you know, it was getting dark or it was already dark and we were sitting in a really dark corner of this park behind a fence, you know, no one could really see us. For some reason, she and I started kissing each other. And again, you know, we're like five or six years old, way too young to really be doing any of this stuff. But I have found throughout the course of my life that it tends to be a lot of lower income brackets where the children like experiment sexually with a lot of these things and do these things that are way too mature for them to know anything about or for them to be doing, and I think there's likely more abuse of that nature in those economic classes. I don't have any data to back that up currently. That's just very anecdotal evidence based on my experiences. But anyway, so she and I, you know, we're fooling around, doing stuff we shouldn't have been doing. And then we like walked over to this area, there's like an area in between all of the apartment buildings that, you know, it's like a grassy hill. They've got the electrical boxes, some bushes, trees and stuff like that. So, we go over into one of these areas and hide behind some of the trees, one of the electrical boxes, and at that point we... I mean, again, we had no idea what we were doing. We were kissing each other and I definitely got down on top of her and at some point our clothes were off and we were doing things that we absolutely should not have been doing at this young age. And yeah, so that's the story of how I kind of lost my virginity when I was six. Did I really? Do I really consider that to be the first time that I had sex? Like no, not really. I mean, I don't think you can really count that, but stuff definitely happened and it shouldn't have. But, you know, I don't have any memories of being abused as a kid. Maybe they're in there and they're just locked down, right? 

But, I had a friend; his name was Clifford. I met him when we were about four years old, living in this apartment complex. He lived in a different building, but we would play outside together and the first memory that I have of Clifford and I together is arguing about which Power Ranger was better: the red one or the white one. And obviously you know the answer to that, so I don't feel the need to explain it here. But my friend Clifford did not agree with what I thought and so I hit him in the face with a Power Rangers' toy. So, that's the first memory that I have of him, and we've been best friends ever since then. You know, going over 30 years now. He's still my best friend and I think I'm his. We hang out as much as we can, but he still lives in Kentucky and I do not. 

There was also this Vietnamese family that lived in one of the buildings close to me and I was really good friends with one of the kids who was around my age there. I would always go over to his place and, you know, we'd do whatever boys do: play video games, play outside, stuff like that. I remember he had this little brother and, I don't know, his little brother was probably two or three years old. His little brother would just like walk around and like whip out his penis and he would like try to stick it in my friend's ear. And like, I remember this very vividly and it was the weirdest thing. But yeah, so it was always like this game of "dodge the toddler's penis so he doesn't stick it in your ear when you're sitting in the floor". Like wh... what the hell is that? I don't know. That's... That's a thing that happened. Um, yeah, god, that's so weird to think about. 

Yeah, anyway, the school that I went to, the elementary school, was pretty much directly behind the apartments that I lived in. Well, not really directly, but it was very, very close. It was probably like a 10 or 15 minute walk from the apartments to school. Not that I ever really walked to school because I was kind of a very fearful child. You can't see it through the microphone, but as an adult right now, 36 years old, I'm about 5'3". I didn't hit a hundred pounds until I was in my twenties. So you can imagine, I was a very, very small child and I was honestly just very fearful of everything. So my mom drove me to school every day. She would always pack me a lunch because I never wanted to try anything new. I was that kind of kid, very picky eater. I wouldn't eat anything that I wasn't familiar with. I actually hated pizza until I was about 16 years old. My mom also hated pizza until she was about 18 years old, and she swears that the only reason I didn't like pizza is because she said that she didn't until she was older, too. But I don't know, I mean, I just didn't like pizza until I was like 16. Crazy, right? Anyway, so she would pack my lunch and, honestly, she was a decent mother throughout those early elementary years until about fourth grade. She was always volunteering at school, she would help out in the classroom, she would chaperone the field trips. You know, she was always trying to be around when she could. I remember she worked in the school cafeteria for a little bit and, you know, at the time I'm sure I thought that she was just trying to be around more and I loved it as a kid, right? Having my mom in the cafeteria, like she'd give me extra chicken nuggets, things like that it was great. But I'm sure it was because she got fired from whatever job she was at and she needed a job and that was the only one that was hiring. 

I was always a very good student, you know, I was always in the advanced classes. I remember they put me in... I think we called it like the STAR program at my elementary school. You know, it was for the gifted kids and so I was in that for a little bit. And, I don't know why I left it, like maybe I wasn't smart enough for it, but, in my mind, I got kicked out of the STAR program. Because I remember very specifically we had to take a Scantron test. I think this is probably the first time I'd ever been exposed to a Scantron test because, you know it was like second, third grade maybe. So, I'm filling out the bubbles for the answers and then, while I'm bored, waiting to be given instructions to move on to the next page, like I'm doodling all over this Scantron sheet, like I mean everywhere. All over this page just has these heavy pencil marks. Like, we get towards the end of this test and the teacher announces to the class like make sure you're not... there are no stray marks on the page, right? Because the Scantron machines have trouble reading the stuff if there are stray marks everywhere. And like I started freaking out, right? Because I've got these marks all over the page everywhere. And like, so I'm like you know, you have a few minutes to answer this page before you move on to the next one. You're not supposed to go back. So I'm like furiously trying to answer these questions while at the same time going back through the booklet and erasing as much of my stray marks as I possibly can. I'm like... oh man, I was so stressed out about that. To this day I'm convinced that I got dropped from the gifted program because of all those doodles I had on the Scantron sheet. You know, probably not, but like that's the story that's in my head and that's how it's going to stay. 

In first grade, I loved my teacher. I think I had her for the Head Start program, too, which is like the program that they put the poor people into before you go to Kindergarten to make sure you have skills to actually make it through school, because you probably aren't getting those skills at home. But anyway, so I had the same teacher for the Head Start program and for first grade and I loved her, I loved her to death. She was a wonderful teacher. She really knew how to connect with, you know, the kindergarten/first grade age kids. You know, she was always silly and, yeah, she was a very good teacher from what I remember.

I missed out on a lot of common knowledge and skills... I promise I'm not jumping around; this ties into the teacher. But so I missed out on a lot of these things that other kids knew how to do, right? I remember one time, you know, this was like fifth grade, the teacher had us play Heads-Up, Seven-Up where you like put your head down and you hold your thumb up or something and someone like touches it, or... I don't really remember the game, but so we were playing this game and I was so nervous because I had no idea what was going on. I had never heard of this game, I didn't know what to do and, like, every other student in the classroom seemed to know what to do. I had no idea what was happening. And so, like, I remember, I was putting my head down and I kept raising it up to see if, like, everyone else's head was up, because I was convinced that everyone was playing a prank on me and, like, I was the only one with my head down and they were going to be laughing at me and, I don't know. You know, there's a lot of little things like that that I just didn't know as a kid. I never picked them up, like I was absent that day from school when they taught, like, all this common knowledge.

Another one of these things that I didn't learn how to do until I was way too old to have been learning it, was how to wipe my own butt. So, here I am, in first grade and my mom had told the teacher that I didn't know how to wipe my own butt. So, when I would inevitably have to go to the bathroom, the teacher would have to come in and I'd be on all fours in the bathroom stall and she'd have to come wipe my butt for me like I was a toddler. Yeah, that's a pretty embarrassing story, but I mean, I was a kid, I had no control over that. Like, why didn't my mom teach me how to do that? I don't know. That's... It's crazy. Like, an elementary school teacher isn't making enough money to wipe a kid's butt. But there she was doing it because she was a wonderful person and a wonderful teacher and, you know, I kind of miss her.

You know, she knew that we were poor. I'm sure a lot of the kids in the school were poor. Again, it wasn't... I don't know. It was an odd... Lexington's a weird place. It's, you know, a lot of the nice suburbs go to the same place that a lot of lower income places do, because Lexington's not a huge city, I guess, and there weren't really any private schools back in the day; maybe like one. I remember they would like draw a student every week who got to take the class hamster home. We got to take the class hamster home one week and I was so excited and, you know, that's all I wanted was to get to play with this hamster. And I don't remember how I found out, but I know for a fact that my mom, like, I didn't get drawn to take the hamster home, right? Like my mom helped out in the classroom and the teacher like let me take it home. 

But we had this girl in class and her grandfather died and she brought in a picture of her grandfather and, like, you know, it was in a frame and everything and she would sit it on her desk and she would look at it during class and she would like start crying sometimes. And I remember being so confused about this as a kid. Like why... why is this girl getting so emotional that her grandfather died? Like I didn't even know. I knew, like, one of my grandfathers a little bit, but the other one I had never even met and I wasn't close to really anyone in my family and so, like I was just so confused about why this girl was upset that her grandfather had died and why she needed a picture on her desk of him.

The point of that story: It's not just some story about a random girl in my class, the point is: to this day I have a big problem identifying with people who are close to their families. It's, you know, it's just not something I ever learned or that was enforced or encouraged when I was a child. Like my girlfriend or any of my friends who are, like, really close with their families and they spend time with them, hey go on like trips together and stuff like that, they have dinner together... It's, to this day, still hard for me to really wrap my head around. Like, logically, I understand it, right? They have a good relationship with their family, they want to spend time with them, they love each other. But emotionally, honestly, sometimes I feel a little betrayed when people choose to spend time with their family over me and, yep, something I'm working on in therapy, don't worry about it. It's something I have a lot of trouble with to this day. It's just understanding that from other people. I mean, I think it causes some issues in some of my personal relationships because the people who didn't grow up the way I grew up, right, the ones who grew up with good families... They are constantly trying to push you to fix your relationship with your family, because family is all you have and blood and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But like they don't have this frame of reference to understand how terrible it is when you have a bad family and they're nothing but a bad influence on you. Like if you had really shitty friends, people wouldn't be telling you to try to fix those relationships because they matter, right? They'd be telling you to cut that person out of your life and get a better friend. But family, it doesn't matter how terrible they are, it doesn't matter if they ruined your credit, used your social security number to buy things that they couldn't afford and then it screws you over for life. It doesn't matter how many drug dens they took you to, how much abuse you saw, they want you to fix these relationships with your family. 

I don't know who out there needs to hear this, but it's okay to cut your family out of your life. Those toxic people that just want to bring you down and they don't want to see you succeed, like it is okay. It doesn't matter that they're family. You make your own family as you get older and those are the people who you want to keep around you, the ones who stick by you, the ones who encourage you, the ones who build you up. Not the ones who constantly tear you down. The blood does not matter. Like that is all an accident of birth. You had no control over that and there's no reason those people should be closer to you than the family that you've chosen throughout your life. For those of you who have great families, I am so happy for you and definitely keep those connections and make sure they're strong over the course of your life. But don't preach to people who have bad families about how they need to fix those relationships, because sometimes those relationships don't need to be fixed, they just need to disappear.

That's my soapbox for that topic. This is about the point in the story where things really just spiral downhill and everything is pretty dark from here on out. So, you have that to look forward to and I honestly really, truly hope that you've enjoyed a peek into my life so far. Thank you so much for listening and I really hope that you tune back in for the next episode. Thanks so much.