My Early Life

In order to give you some context as to where I am coming from I will essentially give you my backstory. I was born in the mid 1990’s in San Jose California. I only lived there until I was 3 or 4 years old before I moved to the Sacramento northern California area. This is where I grew up and spent the majority of my life.

My early life was pretty standard and I did not experience any type of abuse or extreme trauma. I lived in a middle class 3 bedroom 2 bath home in a suburban city. My parents were not wealthy by any means but we were not struggling financially either. For example, my home had a pool,and we always had food and toys. We were never really in danger of becoming homeless or anything like that. Neither of my parents were involved with drugs and neither drank any more than socially or on weekends. My mom made around $50K per year while my dad made around $100K per year so while we weren't driving around in high class sports cars or anything we did have decently stable finances with reliable cars etc.

My dad was an electronics engineer at a company that was a leader in the development and manufacture of aerospace propulsion systems, precision tactical weapon systems, and armament systems, including warhead and munitions applications. My grandfather also worked at this company as a chemist. My mom grew up in the Philippines until she was in her mid 20’s. She moved to Dubai in order to earn a better life for herself by working as a server at fine dining restaurants and hotels. It was here that she ended up meeting my father who, at the time, was in the US Navy. They met when he stopped there during one of his tours and they ended up getting married and moving to California when he completed his military service. In California, my mother worked at a company that manufactured semiconductors for computer chips.

As a child I was a shy and quiet kid. I remember I used to be very scared to talk to people whom I did not know well. For example, when I was around 5 years old I remember one of my parents' friends coming over to visit our house and I started crying whenever they would try to talk to me. I also remember my mom taking me to parks to play and I would feel scared to play if there were other kids there. In elementary school I did have a few close friends and even had a best friend who lived on the same street as me. School came easy to me and I regularly received awards in academics. I was not good at sports like football or basketball. I would try to play these types of games but I was not good at them and so I felt like I was a detriment to my team which caused me to distance myself from these types of activities. This led to me not being considered “popular” by peers. During this time I spent a lot of time playing video games on the Playstation and computer. My dad was always interested in electronics so we had various computers around the home which I always spent a lot of time playing on. One day I came home from school and found my dad in my room setting up a new desktop PC in my room. This was not standard for the time as it was still the year 2000 and computers were not as prevalent in many people's lives as they are today. I was around 7 or 8 years old and I was very excited to fire it up. At this time I mainly played around with microsoft paint, and pc games like “The Incredible machine” , a game called 3-D Dinosaur adventure, and Dangerous Creatures. I also remember playing Putt Putt and Pajama Sam along with those games like 1st grade, 2nd grade etc. I remember feeling great pride at being able to complete the 5th grade game when I was only in 2nd grade. Besides this I played the playstation 1. I had my own TV set up in my room which I used to play games like Soul Reaver, Gex, and Akuji very often.

During this time my Dad was found to be having an affair with a girl he met while getting an additional certification at a local university. He eventually admitted this to my mother and they ended up getting divorced. This started a long process which involved going to civil court and my parents having a custody battle over me and my younger sister. Eventually, my Dad ended up moving out of the home that they bought together and into his fathers house. We ended up staying with my dad at my grandfather's house on the weekends while staying with my mom at our original house during the weekdays. This was ok with my sister and I as we enjoyed staying at both houses with all family members. Unbeknownst to me, my parents were regularly going to court for child support and alimony. My dad still had a decent salary so my mom ended up getting a sizable portion directed to her through alimony and child support. This could have been one of the reasons for what was to come next.

One weekend morning I woke up at my grandfather’s house to police officers raiding our home. We had to stand outside while the police collected evidence throughout the household. I looked out at one of the police cruisers and saw the profile of my dad in the backseat. I did not find out until later but what had happened was my father entered my moms home and waited for her in the garage to get home from work. He knew her schedule and probably still had a key to the home. My mom drove into the garage in her car and as she got out he rushed her and brandished a handgun. He then closed the garage and told her to lie on the ground. He then began to wrap her up in some kind of industrial plastic wrap. At some point she was said to have started to struggle breathing which he noticed and then produced an air hole in the wrap. He then picked her up and proceeded to carry her to the back yard through a side door in the garage, towards the pool. As they got about halfway to the pool two things happened. First, my mom started to scream and panic and began to fight to be freed. Second, a neighbor who was getting ready for work looked out their window and saw the two in the backyard which they then called the police. At this time my dad started to panic as well and he placed my mom still wrapped up on the ground and he ran away and made his escape back to my grandpa’s house. A few minutes after he left the police showed up at my moms house and entered the backyard and unwrapped her. When they asked her if she knew who could have done this she said that she immediately knew it was her ex husband even though he was wearing a ski mask and all black clothing. She said she could tell because she was married to him for years and she knew the way that he walked and carried himself. Even though he was disguising his voice, she said she knew it was him. The police then made their way to my grandfather's house where they knocked on the door to which he answered and after some questioning he admitted that it was him. In his room they found a bullet proof vest and handgun along with some other various weapons like knives. He was allowed to have all these things and they were not out of the ordinary due to him being in the military and our family owning many firearms for hunting and home defense. This was the first time I interacted with the police, and as I overheard them talking they were joking about the situation and laughing about it while I was in ear shot. I think this was the event that started my distrust of authority. They ended up taking my Dad and he ended up pleading guilty to burglary and was consequently sentenced to 4 years in prison. He was a first time offender and he cooperated with the investigation which led to the district attorney offering him a pretty good plea deal.

While my dad was in prison my mom ended up getting a lawyer who was able to transfer the house to my mom legally. This situation is a long story in and of itself which involved a lawyer who was a family friend of my mother and allegedly forged signatures which occurred without my father being able to have any say in the matter due to his incarceration. In the end my Dad stated that he didn't fight it because he would rather that me and my sister stay in our childhood home. This did end up being a good decision as my mom still owns the home which has accrued around $500K in equity while a few years ago my mom put my sister and I as beneficiaries to inherit the home in the future. My dad going to prison affected my family in many ways but one of the most prominent was financially. My family lost a significant amount of monthly income due to the divorce and before my father was arrested he created a clothing business which meant that he invested a lot of money into sewing machines, materials, and marketing expenses for the business that he started. My mom had a hard time paying for the mortgage with her lower salary and thus meant that we had to cut back on many expenses. It was during this time that I first ever shoplifted from a store.

Shoplifting was one of the first degenerative behaviors that I began to exhibit. The first time I ever did it I was at a grocery store and I asked my mom to buy me a pack of Hubba Bubba bubble gum. She said no as we need to save money. I walked back reluctantly to put it back on the shelf however I looked at the worker and noticed that she did not see me holding the gum. I then kind of hid it behind my hand and walked up and stood behind the cart. My mom paid for everything and we ended up leaving me with gum in hand. At this time I was around 10 years old. A little while later we were at a Hollywood Video. Inside was a Game Crazy which was a store that used to sell video games. My mom used to rent movies and she would let me rent a game. I remember that I ended up choosing Time Splitters 2 which is a great game by the way, then I made my way to the Game Crazy which was connected to the store. Inside, the employee did not pay any attention to me as I was just a kid. They had all the games lined up on shelfs. I saw a game called Alter Echo which I thought looked really cool. Since the worker was not looking at me I picked up the game and put it into the front of my shorts and walked towards my mom. At some point I saw those big sensors by the door which would go off if the magnetized sensor in the game if it was not deactivated with the demagnetizer at the checkout stand. I didn't know this as I was only a child so I tried to walk through the sensor with the activated sensor in the game in shorts and it started beeping. The employee at the checkout immediately looked at me and I quickly walked away which stopped the alarm and I put the game back on the shelf. After this I learned that stores had anti theft devices at least for some items. After all, I knew that candy was able to be stolen without setting off alarms. When we were checking out I saw the lady rub the movies and games along a long metal strip which I then assumed deactivated the sensors. I then came to the unfortunate realization that video games could not be stolen from a store. I would always go with my mom to stores like Wal-Mart which I would go by myself to the toys area where I would pocket toys like rubber lizards and the like. I would also regularly steal Yu-Gi-OH and Magic The Gathering cards or things like Dragon ball z figures. Mainly because these things were somewhat expensive and I knew my mother would not want to buy them for me but I just wanted them. I was never caught for stealing from a store as a child. Because it worked so well I was positively reinforced for these negative social behaviors. I sometimes wonder if my life would have been different if I was caught the first time and apprehended by an employee but it did not happen. I did end up getting caught for stealing once as a child while I was at school. We had a system that would allow us to go to other classrooms for a free period if we were well behaved that week. If we were not well behaved we would have to go to another classroom to do study hall for a period. Once when I was in the free period my friend and I went to another classroom. Since it was a free period there were no assigned seats and we were able to sit at any desk we wanted. The desks in the classroom were assigned to other students who were not in the classroom so we were able to look through their stuff. We would take cool pencils and highlighters and the like and we got away with it every time. The time we got caught was when we were assigned to do the study hall period. At this time the teacher knew which students were at each desk as we were not able to move around freely. The desk that I sat at had this really cool Bionicle mechanical pencil and I knew from the time that I first saw it I needed it. I put it in my pocket and finished the study hall then went back to my classroom when the period was over. After 30 mins or so my teacher called me and my friend up and questioned us about the missing items. We ended up giving the items back and were sent to the principal who gave us detention. This was my first time getting in trouble at school. My mom then picked me up and proceeded to beat my ass when I got home which was well deserved. After reflecting on the event I did not come to the conclusion that stealing never works, but that it only works if no one knows who did it.

At this time I felt angry with my father for doing such a thing. I ended up being put in counseling which did help me with the situation and did help me with other issues that I was feeling at the time. My mom did not allow me to visit my dad in prison because she said that it was unhealthy for us to see him there but we did have regular phone calls with him during his incarceration.

As the internet became more developed I ended up getting a dial up connection to my desktop pc. I was introduced to the site newgrounds.com by a cousin at a family party.This is where I was exposed to the vast variety of flash games and videos. I enjoyed watching the Madness series by Krinkles along with animations like Xiao Xiao. I even downloaded a program called Pivot Stick figure animator with which I used to make my own animations. I frequented funnyjunk.com, ebaumsworld.com, albinoblacksheep.com and early youtube. One year for Christmas my mom bought me a Playstation 2 with Starwars Bounty Hunter. To this day I think this is one of the best star wars games. Eventually when I was 12 or 13 I ended up getting Tony Hawk’s underground 2 which is when I was first introduced to skateboarding culture.

I never skated before I played this game. But my friends and I were into razor scooters. We would build ramps and rails and such while also going to the nearby schools in our suburban neighborhood which had things like stages and stair sets which we would jump and do tricks down. However, after we all started playing THUG2 we started asking our parents for skateboards and thus started our path down skateboarding in real life. Our regular routine would be to meet up at one of our houses and we would go hit up a few of the many skate spots in our town. At times we would be able to have our parents drive us to some skateparks that were in our town. My friend group at this time was made up of other kids who lived in my neighborhood. We would usually hang out at parks and would do stuff like play with airsoft guns, go out to trails and make bike jumps,and skateboard at different schools. This was also during the XBOX 360 and Playstation 3 era so we would play Modern Warfare 2 and Halo 3. I used to go with my mom to the library often to pick up books. Originally I would read a series called Cirque du freak which is a pretty good horror series about a boy who ends up becoming a vampire. I would also frequently read manga and Transworld skateboarding magazines. One day I came across an article about a skate video called Baker 3 which was controversial due to its adult themes. It was considered a great video due to its skateboarding content along with various antics of the Baker team partying and just doing general hood rat stuff. I wanted to watch it so I hopped on Limewire and searched for it. Limewire was a popular p2p file sharing program basically like the precursor to torrents and the pirate bay. Now you could pirate pretty much any movie or song with this software but sometimes you would have a file named, americanidiot.mp3 but it ended up being some random song. Also, I am sure these files were loaded with malware that basically gave your computer AIDS. On this occasion I was getting ready for school in 8th grade and before I left I started the download of baker3.mp4. I had to go to school because the download would take like 8 hours because of the slow upload and download speeds of the early internet. This was like 2008 so the download speed was around 1,000kbps, nothing like the Gigabit download speeds that we have now. At the time my mom paid for high speed but this was the best you could get so I had to start the download before I went to school and I hoped that it would be finished by the time I returned. When I got home I was pleasantly surprised that the download had completed. I fired up windows media player and played the file. It started with a woman in a bikini walking out to a pool. She then took her top off and sat down. I thought it was weird but I thought maybe the skating would start soon and this was just an intro or something. A man appeared from off screen and proceeded to give her oral sex then he proceeded to just have sex with her. At this point I realized that instead of downloading Baker 3 I downloaded some random pornographic video. It was a video with pornstar Briana Banks.This unlocked a new pursuit in my life because previously to this the only time I have seen pornographic material was in a school locker room when a classmate brought a playboy magazine in. I ended up downloading various pornographic videos. The problem was that my mom would regularly check my computer to make sure I was not doing stuff like this. In order to get around this I would change the file name of the video to something like biology_homework or something. I would change the icon as well so it would look like a word document or powerpoint.

I was a freshman in high school at this point and still into skating and video games mostly. In school I was doing very well and I was taking AP classes and preparing to get into college. I did well on the SAT but I was unsure of what I wanted to major in college. My Dad also was released from prison at this time and began to re-integrate himself into our lives. He was living at my grandfather's house and we ended up staying with him on the weekends again. At this time our relationship was a little off due to his absence for such a long time. My sister and him were close again very quickly I believe due to her young age. She was around 10 while I was 14. She didn't really remember the incident which led to his arrest, at least not as clearly as I did. Over time, our relationship did improve and today, my father and I have a great relationship. We have completely moved past these events and I would say that we are closer than ever.

In school I was in many classes that my friends were not in due to them not being as academically successful as I was. Many of them were in classes like Algebra 1 while I was in Pre-Cal. Or they were in Biology while I was in AP Chemistry. This led to me feeling very isolated during this time because I was also not accepted by the people in my classes due to being somewhat of an outsider. They were all honor roll kids who did not like to associate with people outside of their social groups. I was affiliated with the degen skater group so they saw me as somewhat less than. It was at this time that I started to experiment with drugs and alcohol.

I was well invested in skating culture and I liked watching skate videos. I watched Enjois bag of suck video which showed a lot of partying footage of skaters drinking and smoking cigarettes. It was at this time that many of my friend group started to smoke as well. One day while we were skating behind one of the local stores at a loading dock another skateboarder lit up a cigarette and asked if I wanted one. He said, “Don't worry it's pretty hard to actually get addicted to these, it's not like they say on TV that's like propaganda.” Ironically I still consume nicotine now on a regular basis some 15 years later. I started to become friends with people who were 18 and could buy cigarettes so I would have them buy me packs. The first cigarettes I would buy would be PrimeTimes watermelon flavor as I did not know what cigarettes were good yet. These were appealing as they had a fruit flavored taste which appealed to my child brain. Eventually I found my cigarette to be the Marlboro red. Cigarettes are an acquired taste as they initially taste disgusting but once you get addicted to the nicotine they can be pretty enjoyable. I remember the first time where I started to like cigarettes. It was before school while my mom was at work. I was sitting in my garage just chiefing a Marlboro red and I started to get that warm light feeling throughout my body. I think I was 15 years old.

I was first offered marijuana by my best friend. He approached me at lunch and asked if I wanted to stop by his house after school the following day and smoke some weed. I did not want to as I was always told that drugs were bad by my family. I told him yes but only because I knew I was going to miss the following day of school because I was going to be going on a snowboarding trip with my dad. The next day I ended up going snowboarding up in the Sierra Nevada’s while he ended up getting high for his first time. When I came back to school on Monday he told me all about how good it was.

The first time I actually got high was one day when we got out of school early. Me and a friend ended up sourcing some weed from a stoner at our school. This kid was like a kid that would go smoke weed in the local wetlands everyday and we came up with some money and bought like $10 of some mid. We didn't know how to roll a joint and we didn't have any glass pipes or anything so we had to use a Gatorade bottle that we made into a bong. For the water we used dirty creek water. All in all, this afternoon was a pretty great experience. I got very high and we had a great time just hanging out and laughing at stupid jokes. When I got home I tried to act normal but my mom instantly knew and was pissed. She sent me to my room where I powered on my computer and listened to Lil Wayne and opened up one of the first steps in social media evolution Myspace.

I really enjoyed smoking weed as I felt like when I was high on THC I felt like life was just more beautiful and enjoyable. Around this same time I turned 16 and I completed my obligations to obtain a drivers license. My dad was nice enough to just straight up buy me a car which now allowed me to finally have access to a vehicle for the first time. Having a car allowed me to make more moves since I was able to get anywhere in a relatively short amount of time. We were now able to do stuff like hotel parties with which I started to meet more people and make more connections until I met someone who had Ecstasy. I won't bore you with the semantics but I eventually did molly, LSD and cocaine. This was a pill and I'm actually not sure what was in it exactly but it was a pretty fun time. I did find all of these substances to feel pretty good with little to no downside at the time. Since it usually was always a good time I felt very open trying different substances to see the effects. and small road trips to nearby cities. One notable event was a trip to a few of the best skateparks in San Francisco. We also tripped on LSD and toured around the city. I also once did LSD at Disneyland which was pretty fun especially at night. I went to space mountain and while I was peaking and I was having crazy visuals.