#36 Why So Angry? Podcast: The One Time I Started a Business


Setbacks are a part of life, but some resonate longer, and in some sense, define a life afterwards. Alex brings back Jonathan for an examination into what could have been a life changing opportunity to start their own entertainment company in Hollywood. Join our conversation as we dive into chasing a dream and finding the silver lining through adversity.


#35 Why So Angry? Podcast: Fatherhood and Starting a Family

It's not often you can talk the same thoughts and feelings with a close friend about big life events -- not to mention during a historic year. Alex brings on his guest host, Jonathan, to talk about their shared experience of being new fathers. Join us as we navigate what the future looks like for our little ones, as we cope with understanding what starting a family will take and what a "normal" life will soon look like for our children. 

 
 

Walking With Nothing, Hoping for Everything


I don't know how much left I have in me. I'm locked away with barely enough sunlight. I'm a man that didn't experience much of a life and now thrown into complete isolation while becoming a father. 

What are we left with if not the true authentic self? 

Every person needs to have a good shit story just to be able to break ice with people: "I just had to take a hot shit. You know those wet, peanut butter ones -- this shit has stickiness to it. I have to run the water so my wife doesn't have to hear the toilet splash -- It's steaming in there but then I realized there's no fuckin' toilet paper. So I'm trying to be quiet so to not wake the baby. Now I'm walking with nothing but my bare naked ass, stepping over strollers and toys and shit, feeling like I have a hot brownie shoved up my ass!"


Again, what are we left with if not the truest form of humanity?


This is My Story


https://unsplash.com/@faceline?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText


I want to take this opening statement to better articulate what has been troubling me. I felt the need to write this down because my natural reaction to the question "how are you?" is always met with a quick "I'm fine." Now I know in most social settings, divulging all of your emotional weakness is most likely not the best place to do so. But there needs to be times to just lay it out there with no judgement.

First and foremost, my default emotion tends to be anger. One moment in my childhood, during a family visit to my aunt's in New York, I blew up in ferocious anger against one of my younger cousins, then preceded into a shouting match with my grandmother. No harm was done in the aftermath, yet I remember my mom telling me afterwards that my aunt observed in me that I carried around a tremendous amount of anger.

Now, my mother and I never really addressed this episode ever again. We did what we do with almost every other emotionally dynamic episode, we compartmentalized it. We never bothered to follow the breadcrumbs of that incident. Never once inquired in an open and honest conversation about what was the root cause of this anger. 

I love my mother to this day and would never try and take away that love for anything. Growing up she was a strict disciplinarian, and, as well as my father, ruled over their house hold with a belt if we ever got too far out of line. My father is a Pandora's box of emotional trauma to say the least. He immigrated from Mexico in his early 20s with no more than a high school education. I love him very much, but to say that he was emotionally underdeveloped is an understatement. For most of my childhood, he was diagnosed with chronic depression -- prescribed a litany of anti-depressants -- he let the cloud and fog dictate his personality and his ultimate relationship towards his children.

With that, I wish to share probably the most defining moment in my journey into adolescence. I call it defining because I remember this day as the moment my innocence for life died. 

One afternoon after school my father enter by bedroom appearing distraught. He seemed angered and, what I remember distinctly, on the verge of tears. I'm not sure how it happened but I knew that my parents were fighting again (which is strange in hindsight because my mother was still at work). 

I remember I was about 10 or 11 years old and I was in my bed watching tv. Then I remember my father walking in and started apologizing to me and what a failure he had become. He wanted to be more but that he couldn't be around us anymore. 
I remember distinctly my reaction to this and it was cold detachment. I didn't beg or plea or wonder why he was doing what he was doing, just that if he needed to do this then goodbye. I remember shedding a tear but that was it. I was already compartmentalizing the moment while it was happening. 

I don't even know what he said to my brother and sister because I didn't follow him out my bedroom door. My mom came home later that afternoon and I told her what happened. Her response was almost colder and with less emotion than mine. 

And that was it. For that day.

Then the next day came. I arrived home from school when my mother finished a phone call. She told me it was my Dad's sister. She just informed Mom that Tijuana PD had found my father in a park bench, about a mile from his car. Barely breathing, passed out with nothing on him but a few empty bottles of his medication. He was lucky that he only suffered a few days in a clinic in San Yasidro with pneumonia.

Mom that night made the long, lonely drive from our hometown north of Los Angeles to San Diego. And she made this drive without any of her children for support. She came back home and entered the house ahead of Dad. She wanted to warn us about who we were about to see and to be supportive. I did as I was told. When I saw him I remember him still wearing his nightgown and robes from the hospital. He looked so fragile and weak. He went to his bedroom to go immediately to sleep.

Mom then gathered my brother and I in my bedroom (my sister was with the sitter). She broke down in front of us and began criticizing us for not making the drive down to see our dad in the hospital and how terrible she felt making that drive to pick up her husband after what appeared to be a failed suicide.

All I remember of my response was that I was upset that he walked out on us and couldn't make any understanding why he did what he did. My brother started to cry about his fear of death and that this was the closest he'd been to seeing it first hand. I'd like to say that we found catharsis in that conversation but it was most likely boxed away again to never be spoken of. And as far as Dad goes, he's alive today, but the Father that I knew who walked out of that bedroom never returned home.

My final thought is this: I am a father now and I have an opportunity to write a different story for my son. However, in order to do this I have to know myself first; that requires uncovering more of these boxes stored deep in the past; it requires a deeper level of compassion and self love that I don't ever think I allowed myself to feel then and now. The self-loathing and hatred that almost feels as if it stems out of nowhere can all be attributed to this connection towards isolation and abandonment. I had to teach myself then that people will leave you and you will have to protect yourself at all costs. But this only self harms and will continue the destructive cycle onto my own children. 

My wife has been instrumental in teaching me a new way of viewing my own personal turmoil, my erratic emotions, and most importantly, my purpose in life. She has introduced me to the concept of grief and how it takes many forms (not just the literal death & loss of a loved one). I expressed how I felt as if on that fateful day I lost the only dad I ever knew, and through that experience, I have been grieving ever since and just never knew it. 

Here's to grounding myself in a new path towards freedom and happiness, and the ability to finally allow myself to heal again. Because it is not in the highs of life that we find meaning and worth, but in the deepest, most painful memories. It is in these Pandora boxes that the whole self is truly discovered.



BONUS Check In: When Mental Health Becomes a Crime



The recent footage of Daniel Prude is considerably chilling to watch as it displays the slow, methodical torture and eventual murder of someone suffering Mental Illness. This is a reoccurring narrative. People who suffer are left to navigate the justice system alone, without special care, and in worse cases, end up dead. This episode is the little I can do to share his story.

The Face of Death and a Single Life


My Story of Two Different Americas


Twitter/IG: @AlexAntonio0
Instagram: @WhySoAngryPod


Associated Press reporting the footage of Daniel Prude's detainment and arrest.



Kansas City Barbecue

Today. 

It's a weird day. 

Lunchtime.

Monday.

No energy, no thought, no expression.

No care in the world

Know hopelessness, guilt, train tracks.

Hot. Hot. Hot. 

Loud. 

Walking down 12th & Imperial — along the green lines. 

Vending machine broken.

This machine does not store cash. 

Please do not vandalize.

Kansas City Barbecue & 

A blue umbrella outside.

Everything looks flat to me. 

It's like I'm walking through space 

but nothing's happening. 

When those phone calls 

And inbox gets started, shining, blinking 

SafeTran Systems Corp. & murals

Decorate the boulevard.

And I'm safe from the tracks. 

Meditation blocks my rage. 

The afternoon.



Freedom, Oppression, Distraction

What are my thoughts now?

Stream of consciousness. 

What makes me happy?

What makes me sad now?


The heart, mind, and soul

are but a concept

that exists in mind.


Those who try and squelch

the mind are the opposition.


My greatest fear is to

be in a position,

or a circle,

or job,

or marriage

that would rather see

me quiet then express

my thoughts. 


Pure freedom is the

ability of expression

and the opportunity

to push the boundary.               


Oppression is a 

real danger, but it

is never swift.


Distraction is what

allows the guard down.

When we appeal to

this societal concept

--of happiness

--we lose our notion

of what constitutes

expression.


Sometimes, the homeless

man screaming on the 

corner

is not so crazy,

after all.


Though random are his

thoughts,

it is his pure

expression

— and he is absolutely 

free.



-2014

#34 Why So Angry? Podcast: Positive Thinking & Anger Management

 

Eric and Alex continue their conversation series of mental & emotional wellness awareness. The mind is a powerful thing, one at which can shape your reality and experience. Positive thinking as a way to manage our anger is a practice that sometimes seems more the destination rather than the journey. We go into what it takes and our experience trying to navigate the stresses of life.

Twitter/IG: @AlexAntonio0
Instagram: @WhySoAngryPod

The Face of Death and a Single Life

 



What we forget is almost certainly what we will regret. The lessons of the past cannot leave us. Everything exists in a cycle -- and to ignore this truth is subhuman. Do not forget those who have turned you to who you are. The good and the bad. Those who forgot you. Those who did not choose you. Those who rejected you for something better will soon come to realize your strength and how your influence upon life is far greater than could have ever imagined.


A message to those who use others for self-indulgence or self-importance: they all will soon become victims of their own selfishness. Do not toil in other's emotions or less become lost in spirit in wandering a wasteland searching for meaning -- unable to understand the love of others. To be cast aside and written off is the best motivation anyone could ask for. For it can only fortify one's own emotional structure. Only the walls that have withstood the heat of battle can truly deem itself worthy; hang in the pocket; weather the storm; keep moving, for the story does not end. It is the beginning. The part of the story where legend begins.


Old souls remember the darkest moments and the times that truly define their character. We see true achievement. Greatness is not an entitlement but a testament of overcoming. We will always be tested. It's a matter of remembering.


The cause. The end. The passion.


Not everyone is privileged to understand this. You are special and possess a gift that few will take the courage to seek out and pursue. The only guarantee is that tomorrow is not guaranteed. In the face of death and a single life, nothing else can compare in importance, except meaning. Meaning to one's true life and true calling -- where want and need become the same. Just as the Moon is set to light the darkness, we are in balance. We are tasked to understand where that balance lies.


#33 Why So Angry? Podcast: The American Dream and Cancel Culture

 



Alex and Jonathan discuss Noam Chomsky's feature documentary about the concentration of wealth in Requiem for the American Dream. Also, the beloved Ellen DeGeneres is now the target of the new Era Rage. Will she be the next to get cancelled?

Twitter: @AlexAntonio0
Instagram: @AlexAntonio0

#32 Why So Angry? Podcast: Mental Health and the Battlefield of the Mind




This podcast is ultimately about mental health and this week we take it head on. Eric joins the channel as we delve into the mental challenges of managing the day. The journey continues as we break the stigma and try to break through these glass chambers and put a spotlight on those who are suffering in broad daylight.  

 Twitter: @AlexAntonio0
Instagram: @AlexAntonio0
www.captivatedmind.com
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