February 22, 2022 • 26 mins
Emmy dates someone who gives her attention, but she realizes that her addiction to attention comes from a very specific place -- and that satisfying it doesn’t constitute love.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This podcast has mature content and language that may not
be appropriate for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised. Episode two,
do you see Me? What are life's most celebratory moments?
Maybe things like graduations or new jobs. They're a little
(00:24):
different for me. I know that the things I celebrate
really do make me happy, but I wonder if they'd
mean the same thing if they happen to other people.
I wonder if there's another life where I could ask
for more, for more to celebrate, or just for more.
(00:46):
The words that Jason told me after we broke up,
you're just a fat training We're just echoing in my
head for weeks. Who's never going to find anyone to
love her? Love her? I felt so low. Yeah, I
was grieving a relationship that it was a big part
of my life. It was my first relationship as a woman,
(01:10):
and I felt I didn't want him back. That was clear.
I didn't want to be in the relationship with Jason,
but I felt lonely, and so what happened next felt
like something major to celebrate. What was it? I'm Emmy
(01:42):
and this is Crumbs my love story. It's a show
about the things we settle for and the bits of
ourselves that make us who we are. Emmy mm hmm
(02:08):
fun carrying Latina seeks a healthy relationship with a nice guy.
It had only been a few weeks since I broke
up with Jason, But even though I was carrying this hurt,
I was also carrying something that was new to me,
(02:31):
even though I didn't realize I was doing it. I
was carrying the confidence that I didn't have at the
beginning of my transition. Actually, I feel like I need
to tell you about this because it was a major
milestone in my life. At the time, I was working
(02:53):
for a T and T major phone company. I was
a customer service representative for the Hispanic Center and I
sat talked in tiped all day taking incoming calls. All
of the calls were in Spanish. It was people who
would have come from all over Hispanic countries, people from Mexico,
(03:14):
people from on Buddha's, from from Cuba, everywhere. So people
had questions about their phone bill. I wanted to establish
news service or wanted to forward their service to a
different location. I'm the person you would get and I
would say, why is my bill so high? Can you
(03:40):
explain the tax? And search arts. So I actually worked
for the phone company for nine years. That was my
first job that I had right after high school. This
company saw me at my worst, right when I was drinking,
when I was using drugs. After I got sober, I
(04:02):
started went to school, taking one class here, three units here,
six units there, night classes, weekend classes, and then I
started my transition. So I went through my entire transition
working at A T and T. We had a huge building,
probably about over two people in our department. Working in
(04:25):
the Hispanic market. There's this machismo, there's this stigma, there's
this homophobia, transphobia, and it was very scary. I started
by talking to a few of my friends and then
I slowly gradually started wearing women's jeans and then wearing
(04:46):
booties with the with a little bit of a heel.
And then I started wearing eyeliner and my hair was
started growing. And then I talked to HR and I said, Hey,
I'm going through this transition. Here's my legal name change.
I had to get a new badge for my picture,
and that was you know, I was so excited about
(05:06):
that because they were going to take my picture with
me presenting as a woman, and my name was going
to be different on the badge, I changed. All of
my systems were changed to my new name. We have
a prerecorded greeting, so I had to make sure that
(05:26):
I had to record my greeting all over again numbers
instead of like what it was before. And I remember
thinking my voice, are they going to call me less?
Are they gonna call me? And so I remember freaking
(05:52):
out about that and being so paranoid and self conscious
about it. I started practicing like what my voice was
gonna sound like? Am I gonna sound more high pitched?
Am I going to put more quiet? Am I going
to be louder? In the end, I was very surprised
at the women who would call or the men who
(06:14):
call it big. The recording just worked. I think it's
huge milestone when people start identifying you as what you
really are. Women or men were speaking to me as Senorita.
(06:35):
It just made me happier in my workplace. I was
in the awkward phase where you know, I had just
started hormones. My skin was different, the shape of my
body was different. This was before I even got electrolysis
to have my facial hair removed, and so yes, I
(06:56):
was shaving on a daily basis. But it wasn't the
same as having smooth skin as I have now, So
it was an advantage to only speak to these people
through the phone, were sustaining them in person. So this
thing that I celebrated, this huge milestone, was people calling
me senor It was like acknowledging my existence. It was
(07:21):
validation and I needed it from them. From these strangers,
they have no idea, They probably didn't give a ship,
but it's what I wanted for so long. When I
started hormones, my body lit up like a Christmas tree.
I started getting a curveer waste. My fat was distributing
(07:45):
two different areas of my body, and it just made
my skin softer, a lot softer. I felt more comfortable
in my own skin. And the feeling I got when
people call me Senorita on the phone, it started happening
when I would meet people in person. It's called passing.
(08:10):
At the time, it felt like the only way to
be trans was to pass as a siss woman, and
so when I did, it felt really good. But now
it's different. There's a whole spectrum and it's individual to everyone.
Some people might not want to pass, and that's totally fine.
(08:33):
But if you want to get on hormones or get
electrolysis or see an enarchronologist, it's not always easy for everyone.
So I felt really lucky that I could do those things.
Not everybody wants to pass, but I really did. It's
a little weird for me to look back and see
how important that was to me, but it was m HM.
(09:04):
And so if it was that important for me to
get validation from strangers, you can imagine how much it
meant to me when someone flirted with me a few
years after my transition, after I broke up with Jason.
That happened when I least expected it. I was at
a recovery conference running the registration table. I was in
(09:29):
this big, crowded hotel lobby, sitting on a plastic chair,
sucking around on my phone. I see this guy walk
by and he was about my high, squinty eyes, very
good looking. He had a goatee going on wife beater
basketball shorts, and he turned around, he looked at me,
(09:51):
and he just gave me that look like he was
checking me out. A few minutes later, he can buy
the registration test, and he asked, is this where you register?
You know there was a big sign with big letters
that said registration, so that was a reach. He told
me his name was Ryan, and then he asked me
(10:12):
a bunch of stuff about the conference. He asked, like,
what time is the main meeting? Where can you get
food here? Where is this panel being held? He clearly
just wanted to talk to me because all that information
was in the pamphlet had just handed to him, and
I was kind of flattered by that. I could feel
that he was attracted to me. I was attracted to him,
(10:34):
so I felt this spark between us. And when he
turned around, I noticed he had Hickey's on his neck,
and I'm like, what the fuck. I wasn't particularly drawn
to the higgies. It was kind of a turn off,
like this guy is just a fun boy. Later on
(10:57):
that afternoon, he came up to me. He just started
small conversations, small talk, asking me where I was from,
and how long I've been sober, and how long I'd
be on this planning committee. So I talked to him.
I told him that I was in school, that I
would come down on weekends and be active in my
recovery down here, and he seemed very interested. I was
(11:21):
intrigued by his charm, his good looks, and the fact
that he was giving me attention at a point where
I was in a dark place emotionally from you know,
recovering from this relationship with Jason, have this void inside
right that just feeds off of attention validation. A lot
(11:53):
of our aids consisted going to meetings together and going
to have coffee, going to a taco shop, and just
sharing some food. He was different in the way that
he was very thoughtful with little things. So every time
you'd see him, he would have picked a fresh flower
for me and put it behind my ear, little things
(12:16):
like that. It was affectionate. It was something that I
wasn't used to. He called me a lot, he texted
me a lot, he sent me a lot of pictures.
So he was always thinking of me, and I always
wanted to be around me. Ryan was very quiet as
(12:42):
a person, and sometimes we just sit there and to
him that meant everything, Like he just wanted to sit
and have a conversation with me. I wanted to do
other things. A road trip or just going out to
the movie seemed like a big deal. But if he
was so happy just be next me, well that was
nice too, write. I mean, he wasn't exactly what I
(13:05):
had been dreaming of in a partner. I wanted somebody
who had a vision for themselves, who were going somewhere,
who had plans ambition, and he didn't have that. And
I thought, well, maybe I can be a positive influence
in his life, right, maybe I can see him in
(13:26):
the right direction. Ryan had never been with a trans
woman before. I was his first, and he didn't seem
to care. He didn't carry any sort of prejudice or
insecurity about it. He was open to it, and he
was very proud to have me by his side and
(13:49):
call me his girlfriend. It felt very good because I
had a few trans friends who weren't getting that. I
think in a way, it had a lot to do
with me quote unquote passing as female. Right. Ryan really
(14:11):
wanted to be my boyfriend. He wanted to be my
life partner. He said, hey, you know, maybe when you graduated,
we can get married to hear. That was just incredible.
It was really flattering. This week guy wants to marry me,
And of course I said, yes, how many guys do
(14:32):
you find that want to marry a trans woman? And
it's like I saw this perfect ending of my love
story that ended in marriage. But I basically said yes
to a guy that I've only been dating for a
few months. In reality, I wasn't voicing when I really
wanted in a relationship. Here's Ryan giving me all this attention,
(14:56):
showering me with loads of affection, I p d A
and cutting fresh flowers for me and calling me all
the time, wanting to be involved in my life. But
then I started feeling smothered. I have a memory of
(15:29):
being a little kid, eight years old. So I'm at
my grandparents house, my dad's parents, which is where I
had been living because my other grandmother was in prison.
They were the only ones providing civility in my life.
They had a four bedroom house. There was food on
(15:50):
the table. I had my own bedroom. You know, there
were things about it that weren't ideal, things that weren't
great for me. I'll get to those later, But overall,
we had a good home. The TV was on loud,
people were coming in and out. They were happy people.
There was music playing always. We had to go home.
(16:15):
They even enrolled me to school right across the street.
M every Christmas Eve, and we had this tradition on
my dad's side of the family. We'd go to the
Juana to my great grandparents house, where all of my
(16:39):
grandmother's brothers and sisters came to spend Christmas Eve with
their families. Huge family. Christmas Eve was always so much
fun because we got to dress up across the border,
walk into this house where everyone's happy. You walk in
and you can smell at the mals cooking. Oh. All
(17:02):
the kids would be outside playing with fireworks, lighting fireworks.
One of my cousins had an organ and would gather
around and sing along while she played. Right before midnight,
we'd gather around then activity set and they'd passed Baby
(17:25):
Jesus so that everybody can hold them and kiss them.
And at midnight we put them on the nativity set
and then we'd be able to open up one present
from Santa Claus. I loved those days. That year, when
(17:45):
I was eight years old, the day before Christmas Eve,
I was sitting at my grandparents house getting excited to
go to the Kwana. I look out the window and
the strange car pulls up and out of the car, Yeah,
comes my mom. I'm so surprised to see her because
I'm thinking she's supposed to be in jail, but here
(18:07):
she is. She had been arrested a few months earlier,
one of many arrests that I could remember. Knowing she
was in jail was like knowing it was going to
reign for a very long time. It just seemed like
a sad but normal part of life. So I got
used to her being gone, but there she was right outside.
(18:32):
So I ran up to her. She hugs me and
I say, what are you doing here? And she said, well,
I got out. I was supposed to go to a
drug program, but we're gonna do something else. My mom
told me she was staying at a hotel. She tells
me that she's gonna come pick me up in a
couple of days. But I'm so happy to see her
(18:54):
that I want to go with her. And I'm like, Mom,
can I go with you? She said, no, just stay
here with your grandparents, like Chris Smith passed by, and
then we'll leave. But because my mom was free and
out of jail, I didn't want to go to the
Corna that night. I wanted to go stay with my mom,
and she pushed back. She said, are you sure you
want to come with me? I don't have presents. We
(19:15):
are not going to have a nice dinner. We're just
gonna be stuck in a hotel room. You're gonna be
so bored. I didn't care. I wanted to go. I
just wanted to be with her more than anything. We
(19:36):
made a quick stop at this little store. It was
probably an any nine cent store, and she said, you
can pick something, and I gravitated towards this little boombox.
I figured we'd have music to play at night, so
she bought me the spoonbox and off we go to
the hotel. Soon as you opened the door to the
(19:58):
hotel room, you can smell all the smoke of previous
smokers who were staying there. The carpets old. It looks
nasty and stiff, cigarette burns on the carpet, old furniture.
It feels like the seventies because everything's brown and orange.
(20:19):
That's right next to the highway, so it's very loud.
The walls are really thin. You can hear noises from
people next door to you. The TVs old with an
antenna that barely works. You only get five channels. So
I have this memory of that night. I'm sitting at
(20:40):
the foot of the bed, my Mom's on the bed,
laying down. I'm looking for something to watch on TV.
I'm looking for a Christmas movie so that we can
get into the Christmas spirit. I'm playing with the boom box,
trying to find Christmas music so that we can see
Christmas carols. And I remember thinking that my mom was
a space out. So in the time since I've learned
(21:05):
that she was also doing Heroin that night, she would
go into the bathroom and get loaded shoot up and
I'm outside just sitting on the bed trying to find
something to watch on TV. Any moment that I had
(21:25):
with my mom just really felt like a gift to me.
And then I think about it, and even though I
was spending time with my mom, I wasn't really getting
any attention from her. She wasn't even playing with me.
She probably wasn't even talking to me. Most likely she
(21:45):
was nodding off from being on Heroin. It's not that
my mom didn't love me as a kid. She did.
She was just in her illness and her disease, and
I equated attention to love, and since I wasn't getting
any attention, I didn't feel loved. And here's my theory.
(22:08):
I think because I had very little attention as a child.
I settled for these crumbs of attention from my mom
or from anybody who would give them to me, even
into my adult life, so I grew up. I'm dating Ryan.
(22:52):
In the beginning of the relationship, all his calls and
text that would come just made me feel so validated,
so wanted right, like somebody actually wanted to spend time
with me. Was that enough? Did it add up to
us loving each other. I'm sitting in my car with
(23:20):
him next to me, and he's making all these plans
of how when I graduate college he wants to do
this and that, and I'm thinking to myself, this fucking sucks.
So this guy wanted to marry me, and I felt
like I was supposed to celebrate that. I was supposed
to say yes. I was used to celebrating things that
(23:42):
I didn't want to have to celebrate. Jason had told
me that I couldn't find love, and here I was.
I found someone who did love me, but it wasn't
making me happy. I didn't want to celebrate this m
and I was so torn. I was so worried I
(24:03):
wouldn't find us again. But I have to listen to myself,
not the fear, the love, about things that are actually
important to me. I was stringing him along, pretending to
(24:24):
be totally fulfilled by our relationship, but I wasn't. Sitting
in the car, I had a wave of guilt and
a big wave of fear. I looked at him and
I said, Ryan, we need a break. I need to
(24:45):
focus on school. I don't have it in me to
continue this relationship. And he just silently cried on the
passenger seat of my car. Ok. But he took it.
He didn't put up a fight, and that's how I
(25:07):
ended it. I know why I'm addicted to attention, addicted
to these little moments when someone texts me or flirts
with me. It makes me feel important. And I was
(25:30):
terrified to lose that. But maybe it's worth the risk.
Can I have someone's attention in a real, deep connection.
Can I have something worth celebrating? Maybe next time when
I meet Adam Crumbs is the production of I Heart
(25:55):
Radios Michael lu podcast Network in association with Trojan Horse.
It's produced by Margaret Catcher and and edited by Jazzmind
Rometto and Alex Gumeto. Original music by Daniel Peter Schmidt
and engineering by Manuel Executive produced by Gisvances and Conno
(26:16):
Burn for i Heeart, Alex Bumeto for Trojan Horse, Joshua
Weinstein Jazzmind, Rometo Camilla and and me Emio LEA special
thanks to Monissa Hendrix, fernand Estrada and Sara Mota. Listen
to Crumbs on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
(26:38):
or wherever you get your podcasts
This podcast has mature content and language that may not
be appropriate for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised. Episode two,
do you see Me? What are life's most celebratory moments?
Maybe things like graduations or new jobs. They're a little
(00:24):
different for me. I know that the things I celebrate
really do make me happy, but I wonder if they'd
mean the same thing if they happen to other people.
I wonder if there's another life where I could ask
for more, for more to celebrate, or just for more.
(00:46):
The words that Jason told me after we broke up,
you're just a fat training We're just echoing in my
head for weeks. Who's never going to find anyone to
love her? Love her? I felt so low. Yeah, I
was grieving a relationship that it was a big part
of my life. It was my first relationship as a woman,
(01:10):
and I felt I didn't want him back. That was clear.
I didn't want to be in the relationship with Jason,
but I felt lonely, and so what happened next felt
like something major to celebrate. What was it? I'm Emmy
(01:42):
and this is Crumbs my love story. It's a show
about the things we settle for and the bits of
ourselves that make us who we are. Emmy mm hmm
(02:08):
fun carrying Latina seeks a healthy relationship with a nice guy.
It had only been a few weeks since I broke
up with Jason, But even though I was carrying this hurt,
I was also carrying something that was new to me,
(02:31):
even though I didn't realize I was doing it. I
was carrying the confidence that I didn't have at the
beginning of my transition. Actually, I feel like I need
to tell you about this because it was a major
milestone in my life. At the time, I was working
(02:53):
for a T and T major phone company. I was
a customer service representative for the Hispanic Center and I
sat talked in tiped all day taking incoming calls. All
of the calls were in Spanish. It was people who
would have come from all over Hispanic countries, people from Mexico,
(03:14):
people from on Buddha's, from from Cuba, everywhere. So people
had questions about their phone bill. I wanted to establish
news service or wanted to forward their service to a
different location. I'm the person you would get and I
would say, why is my bill so high? Can you
(03:40):
explain the tax? And search arts. So I actually worked
for the phone company for nine years. That was my
first job that I had right after high school. This
company saw me at my worst, right when I was drinking,
when I was using drugs. After I got sober, I
(04:02):
started went to school, taking one class here, three units here,
six units there, night classes, weekend classes, and then I
started my transition. So I went through my entire transition
working at A T and T. We had a huge building,
probably about over two people in our department. Working in
(04:25):
the Hispanic market. There's this machismo, there's this stigma, there's
this homophobia, transphobia, and it was very scary. I started
by talking to a few of my friends and then
I slowly gradually started wearing women's jeans and then wearing
(04:46):
booties with the with a little bit of a heel.
And then I started wearing eyeliner and my hair was
started growing. And then I talked to HR and I said, Hey,
I'm going through this transition. Here's my legal name change.
I had to get a new badge for my picture,
and that was you know, I was so excited about
(05:06):
that because they were going to take my picture with
me presenting as a woman, and my name was going
to be different on the badge, I changed. All of
my systems were changed to my new name. We have
a prerecorded greeting, so I had to make sure that
(05:26):
I had to record my greeting all over again numbers
instead of like what it was before. And I remember
thinking my voice, are they going to call me less?
Are they gonna call me? And so I remember freaking
(05:52):
out about that and being so paranoid and self conscious
about it. I started practicing like what my voice was
gonna sound like? Am I gonna sound more high pitched?
Am I going to put more quiet? Am I going
to be louder? In the end, I was very surprised
at the women who would call or the men who
(06:14):
call it big. The recording just worked. I think it's
huge milestone when people start identifying you as what you
really are. Women or men were speaking to me as Senorita.
(06:35):
It just made me happier in my workplace. I was
in the awkward phase where you know, I had just
started hormones. My skin was different, the shape of my
body was different. This was before I even got electrolysis
to have my facial hair removed, and so yes, I
(06:56):
was shaving on a daily basis. But it wasn't the
same as having smooth skin as I have now, So
it was an advantage to only speak to these people
through the phone, were sustaining them in person. So this
thing that I celebrated, this huge milestone, was people calling
me senor It was like acknowledging my existence. It was
(07:21):
validation and I needed it from them. From these strangers,
they have no idea, They probably didn't give a ship,
but it's what I wanted for so long. When I
started hormones, my body lit up like a Christmas tree.
I started getting a curveer waste. My fat was distributing
(07:45):
two different areas of my body, and it just made
my skin softer, a lot softer. I felt more comfortable
in my own skin. And the feeling I got when
people call me Senorita on the phone, it started happening
when I would meet people in person. It's called passing.
(08:10):
At the time, it felt like the only way to
be trans was to pass as a siss woman, and
so when I did, it felt really good. But now
it's different. There's a whole spectrum and it's individual to everyone.
Some people might not want to pass, and that's totally fine.
(08:33):
But if you want to get on hormones or get
electrolysis or see an enarchronologist, it's not always easy for everyone.
So I felt really lucky that I could do those things.
Not everybody wants to pass, but I really did. It's
a little weird for me to look back and see
how important that was to me, but it was m HM.
(09:04):
And so if it was that important for me to
get validation from strangers, you can imagine how much it
meant to me when someone flirted with me a few
years after my transition, after I broke up with Jason.
That happened when I least expected it. I was at
a recovery conference running the registration table. I was in
(09:29):
this big, crowded hotel lobby, sitting on a plastic chair,
sucking around on my phone. I see this guy walk
by and he was about my high, squinty eyes, very
good looking. He had a goatee going on wife beater
basketball shorts, and he turned around, he looked at me,
(09:51):
and he just gave me that look like he was
checking me out. A few minutes later, he can buy
the registration test, and he asked, is this where you register?
You know there was a big sign with big letters
that said registration, so that was a reach. He told
me his name was Ryan, and then he asked me
(10:12):
a bunch of stuff about the conference. He asked, like,
what time is the main meeting? Where can you get
food here? Where is this panel being held? He clearly
just wanted to talk to me because all that information
was in the pamphlet had just handed to him, and
I was kind of flattered by that. I could feel
that he was attracted to me. I was attracted to him,
(10:34):
so I felt this spark between us. And when he
turned around, I noticed he had Hickey's on his neck,
and I'm like, what the fuck. I wasn't particularly drawn
to the higgies. It was kind of a turn off,
like this guy is just a fun boy. Later on
(10:57):
that afternoon, he came up to me. He just started
small conversations, small talk, asking me where I was from,
and how long I've been sober, and how long I'd
be on this planning committee. So I talked to him.
I told him that I was in school, that I
would come down on weekends and be active in my
recovery down here, and he seemed very interested. I was
(11:21):
intrigued by his charm, his good looks, and the fact
that he was giving me attention at a point where
I was in a dark place emotionally from you know,
recovering from this relationship with Jason, have this void inside
right that just feeds off of attention validation. A lot
(11:53):
of our aids consisted going to meetings together and going
to have coffee, going to a taco shop, and just
sharing some food. He was different in the way that
he was very thoughtful with little things. So every time
you'd see him, he would have picked a fresh flower
for me and put it behind my ear, little things
(12:16):
like that. It was affectionate. It was something that I
wasn't used to. He called me a lot, he texted
me a lot, he sent me a lot of pictures.
So he was always thinking of me, and I always
wanted to be around me. Ryan was very quiet as
(12:42):
a person, and sometimes we just sit there and to
him that meant everything, Like he just wanted to sit
and have a conversation with me. I wanted to do
other things. A road trip or just going out to
the movie seemed like a big deal. But if he
was so happy just be next me, well that was
nice too, write. I mean, he wasn't exactly what I
(13:05):
had been dreaming of in a partner. I wanted somebody
who had a vision for themselves, who were going somewhere,
who had plans ambition, and he didn't have that. And
I thought, well, maybe I can be a positive influence
in his life, right, maybe I can see him in
(13:26):
the right direction. Ryan had never been with a trans
woman before. I was his first, and he didn't seem
to care. He didn't carry any sort of prejudice or
insecurity about it. He was open to it, and he
was very proud to have me by his side and
(13:49):
call me his girlfriend. It felt very good because I
had a few trans friends who weren't getting that. I
think in a way, it had a lot to do
with me quote unquote passing as female. Right. Ryan really
(14:11):
wanted to be my boyfriend. He wanted to be my
life partner. He said, hey, you know, maybe when you graduated,
we can get married to hear. That was just incredible.
It was really flattering. This week guy wants to marry me,
And of course I said, yes, how many guys do
(14:32):
you find that want to marry a trans woman? And
it's like I saw this perfect ending of my love
story that ended in marriage. But I basically said yes
to a guy that I've only been dating for a
few months. In reality, I wasn't voicing when I really
wanted in a relationship. Here's Ryan giving me all this attention,
(14:56):
showering me with loads of affection, I p d A
and cutting fresh flowers for me and calling me all
the time, wanting to be involved in my life. But
then I started feeling smothered. I have a memory of
(15:29):
being a little kid, eight years old. So I'm at
my grandparents house, my dad's parents, which is where I
had been living because my other grandmother was in prison.
They were the only ones providing civility in my life.
They had a four bedroom house. There was food on
(15:50):
the table. I had my own bedroom. You know, there
were things about it that weren't ideal, things that weren't
great for me. I'll get to those later, But overall,
we had a good home. The TV was on loud,
people were coming in and out. They were happy people.
There was music playing always. We had to go home.
(16:15):
They even enrolled me to school right across the street.
M every Christmas Eve, and we had this tradition on
my dad's side of the family. We'd go to the
Juana to my great grandparents house, where all of my
(16:39):
grandmother's brothers and sisters came to spend Christmas Eve with
their families. Huge family. Christmas Eve was always so much
fun because we got to dress up across the border,
walk into this house where everyone's happy. You walk in
and you can smell at the mals cooking. Oh. All
(17:02):
the kids would be outside playing with fireworks, lighting fireworks.
One of my cousins had an organ and would gather
around and sing along while she played. Right before midnight,
we'd gather around then activity set and they'd passed Baby
(17:25):
Jesus so that everybody can hold them and kiss them.
And at midnight we put them on the nativity set
and then we'd be able to open up one present
from Santa Claus. I loved those days. That year, when
(17:45):
I was eight years old, the day before Christmas Eve,
I was sitting at my grandparents house getting excited to
go to the Kwana. I look out the window and
the strange car pulls up and out of the car, Yeah,
comes my mom. I'm so surprised to see her because
I'm thinking she's supposed to be in jail, but here
(18:07):
she is. She had been arrested a few months earlier,
one of many arrests that I could remember. Knowing she
was in jail was like knowing it was going to
reign for a very long time. It just seemed like
a sad but normal part of life. So I got
used to her being gone, but there she was right outside.
(18:32):
So I ran up to her. She hugs me and
I say, what are you doing here? And she said, well,
I got out. I was supposed to go to a
drug program, but we're gonna do something else. My mom
told me she was staying at a hotel. She tells
me that she's gonna come pick me up in a
couple of days. But I'm so happy to see her
(18:54):
that I want to go with her. And I'm like, Mom,
can I go with you? She said, no, just stay
here with your grandparents, like Chris Smith passed by, and
then we'll leave. But because my mom was free and
out of jail, I didn't want to go to the
Corna that night. I wanted to go stay with my mom,
and she pushed back. She said, are you sure you
want to come with me? I don't have presents. We
(19:15):
are not going to have a nice dinner. We're just
gonna be stuck in a hotel room. You're gonna be
so bored. I didn't care. I wanted to go. I
just wanted to be with her more than anything. We
(19:36):
made a quick stop at this little store. It was
probably an any nine cent store, and she said, you
can pick something, and I gravitated towards this little boombox.
I figured we'd have music to play at night, so
she bought me the spoonbox and off we go to
the hotel. Soon as you opened the door to the
(19:58):
hotel room, you can smell all the smoke of previous
smokers who were staying there. The carpets old. It looks
nasty and stiff, cigarette burns on the carpet, old furniture.
It feels like the seventies because everything's brown and orange.
(20:19):
That's right next to the highway, so it's very loud.
The walls are really thin. You can hear noises from
people next door to you. The TVs old with an
antenna that barely works. You only get five channels. So
I have this memory of that night. I'm sitting at
(20:40):
the foot of the bed, my Mom's on the bed,
laying down. I'm looking for something to watch on TV.
I'm looking for a Christmas movie so that we can
get into the Christmas spirit. I'm playing with the boom box,
trying to find Christmas music so that we can see
Christmas carols. And I remember thinking that my mom was
a space out. So in the time since I've learned
(21:05):
that she was also doing Heroin that night, she would
go into the bathroom and get loaded shoot up and
I'm outside just sitting on the bed trying to find
something to watch on TV. Any moment that I had
(21:25):
with my mom just really felt like a gift to me.
And then I think about it, and even though I
was spending time with my mom, I wasn't really getting
any attention from her. She wasn't even playing with me.
She probably wasn't even talking to me. Most likely she
(21:45):
was nodding off from being on Heroin. It's not that
my mom didn't love me as a kid. She did.
She was just in her illness and her disease, and
I equated attention to love, and since I wasn't getting
any attention, I didn't feel loved. And here's my theory.
(22:08):
I think because I had very little attention as a child.
I settled for these crumbs of attention from my mom
or from anybody who would give them to me, even
into my adult life, so I grew up. I'm dating Ryan.
(22:52):
In the beginning of the relationship, all his calls and
text that would come just made me feel so validated,
so wanted right, like somebody actually wanted to spend time
with me. Was that enough? Did it add up to
us loving each other. I'm sitting in my car with
(23:20):
him next to me, and he's making all these plans
of how when I graduate college he wants to do
this and that, and I'm thinking to myself, this fucking sucks.
So this guy wanted to marry me, and I felt
like I was supposed to celebrate that. I was supposed
to say yes. I was used to celebrating things that
(23:42):
I didn't want to have to celebrate. Jason had told
me that I couldn't find love, and here I was.
I found someone who did love me, but it wasn't
making me happy. I didn't want to celebrate this m
and I was so torn. I was so worried I
(24:03):
wouldn't find us again. But I have to listen to myself,
not the fear, the love, about things that are actually
important to me. I was stringing him along, pretending to
(24:24):
be totally fulfilled by our relationship, but I wasn't. Sitting
in the car, I had a wave of guilt and
a big wave of fear. I looked at him and
I said, Ryan, we need a break. I need to
(24:45):
focus on school. I don't have it in me to
continue this relationship. And he just silently cried on the
passenger seat of my car. Ok. But he took it.
He didn't put up a fight, and that's how I
(25:07):
ended it. I know why I'm addicted to attention, addicted
to these little moments when someone texts me or flirts
with me. It makes me feel important. And I was
(25:30):
terrified to lose that. But maybe it's worth the risk.
Can I have someone's attention in a real, deep connection.
Can I have something worth celebrating? Maybe next time when
I meet Adam Crumbs is the production of I Heart
(25:55):
Radios Michael lu podcast Network in association with Trojan Horse.
It's produced by Margaret Catcher and and edited by Jazzmind
Rometto and Alex Gumeto. Original music by Daniel Peter Schmidt
and engineering by Manuel Executive produced by Gisvances and Conno
(26:16):
Burn for i Heeart, Alex Bumeto for Trojan Horse, Joshua
Weinstein Jazzmind, Rometo Camilla and and me Emio LEA special
thanks to Monissa Hendrix, fernand Estrada and Sara Mota. Listen
to Crumbs on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
(26:38):
or wherever you get your podcasts
Host
Emmy Olea
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