March 26, 2025 • 33 mins
Jay Floyd shares the dramatic story of his childhood drowning experience at age five, exploring how this traumatic event shaped his life and psychology.
• Growing up in Cleveland after his parents' bitter divorce
• Living with cousins in a low-income neighborhood where kids roamed freely without supervision
• Visiting a public pool despite not knowing how to swim
• Experiencing drowning and a near-death experience with vivid hallucinations
• Being resuscitated by a lifeguard and feeling immediate shame
• Getting driven home by a neighborhood man who turned out to be a known child predator
• Developing a long-term fear of water and sensory triggers that persist into adulthood
• Processing childhood trauma through storytelling
Tune in next time for part two of this story, where Jay will explore how this experience continued to impact his relationship with water throughout his life.
https://iamjayfloyd.com
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
What's good everybody .
This is Jay Floyd.
I am your host and this is thepodcast they call On Everything
this podcast is about me beingable to explore my mind, being
able to provide some insight,sometimes just some stories.
It's really just me leaninginto my strengths, my strengths
(00:23):
top three Number one isstoryteller, number two is coach
, number three is thinker.
So as I coach all of mycoaching clients, my coachees,
my lions out there, you shouldlean into your strengths, so I
do that here on this podcast.
Thank you for joining me again.
(00:44):
I want to.
I'm definitely going to startposting more regularly.
I'll dig more into I thinkcoaching is a journey.
It starts with transparency.
Most coaching training teachesyou.
(01:09):
First you have to build trust.
I've never had an issuebuilding trust because I'm a
natural storyteller, so I alwayslean on just being who I am and
I have this story.
I used to have a video podcastcalled the Coach Big Bro Show
the Big Bro Show and it's kindof morphed right over the years.
It morphed into an audiopodcast called what's Good,
(01:31):
which then morphed into the showthat you're listening to right
now.
I spoke about this before, butI think I'm in a much more
mature place to speak on thisand I think I'll have a little
bit more control over my ums anderrs so that you won't see that
(01:55):
many breakups in the story.
But I want to talk about the daythat I died.
Yeah, you did hear that, right,I died once.
I was about five years old andI died.
How did I die?
I drowned to death.
(02:17):
Let me tell you about it.
So when I was born it so when Iwas born, my mother and father,
they had a son, my big brother,jay Julius.
They got married when mybrother was probably like three
(02:39):
years old and I was in utero.
I was in my mother's bellyabout three months or two months
away from being born.
My parents decided you knowwhat?
Now we're going to do it, we'llget married, right?
So they get married and thenI'm born a couple months later
(03:03):
and then, literally a couplemonths after that, they split up
.
So I don't really know all thedetails of what was going on and
why they had a child beforethey were married.
I don't know if maybe my dad'searlier divorce hadn't finished,
hadn't been finalized.
I don't know what was going on,but they were co-workers.
(03:23):
And here they are in thissituation, ship that has now
spawned two kids and a quickmarriage I won't say quick, but
a marriage that's quicklycrumbling.
They eventually, over thecourse of the next three years,
(03:43):
three, four years, completelycrumble, get bitterly divorced
and they hate each other for therest of their lives.
There's bitterness for the restof their lives.
Now, in the midst of this, mybrother and I you know my
brother when he was one and twoand three.
You know he's born into thisfamily where there's a mother
(04:06):
and there's a father and they'reliving in the suburbs of
Cleveland, they're living inUniversity Heights and things
are going well.
And then, next thing, you know,there's going to be another
child.
They tell him hey, you're goingto have a little sibling, and
right before that sibling comes,sibling, and right before that
(04:27):
sibling comes, they get married,they lock it in and as soon as
that sibling comes, they divorce, they split up.
The divorce happens a couple ofyears later they split up.
I'm pretty sure and maybe I cantouch on this in another
episode years down the line Iwould have discussions with my
brother to where he explainedthat he blamed me for all of
that.
Understandable, not uncommon,not fair, but not uncommon.
(04:53):
We'll touch on that in anotherepisode.
But the result of this my momgained custody of me and my
brother.
Mom gained custody of me and mybrother.
My mom not being thebreadwinner of the home means
that both of us had to live withless than half of the home
household income that we hadoriginally or that my brother
(05:14):
enjoyed originally.
I never fully enjoyed it.
I was two months old so webecame destitute.
Actually, my mother had very,very poor spending habits and
financial habits.
(05:34):
She grew up poor.
She did not know how to save.
She didn't have the habitsbuilt I won't say know-how,
because she was almost a geniuslevel in her intellect so she
knew better.
She didn't have the behaviorand habits which is more of a
psychological, emotional type ofa thing.
(05:56):
So we became a bit destitute.
We bounced around, we lived anumber of places.
One of those places was wemoved in with some of my mom's
cousins.
Now this cousin, the cousin ofmy mother, had children the same
age as me and my brother.
(06:16):
So there was a son that was thesame age as my brother.
His name was Bubble.
That was the same age as mybrother.
His name was Bubble.
And then there was a youngerson, same age as me.
His name was Coco.
These are nicknames, obviously.
I mean it's black families inthe hood, cleveland, it's the
80s, 70s, 80s Got nicknames.
(06:40):
I know their names but we'llstick with the nicknames today.
They also had a sister.
She was a little bit older butI don't know if she was in
between us or older than mybrother.
She may have been in between usbut either way, me and my
(07:00):
brother bonded well with the twoboys and all of us hung out
together all of us, and therewere some other cousins that
lived around the corner.
This is a whole neighborhood oflow-income Black families in
Cleveland, still down in thePolish district, where,
(07:21):
historically, blacks and Polishpeople are living side by side.
The streets are even namedafter that.
There's like Pulaski, sawinski,kaziosko.
These are the streets we'rehanging out on.
So we get to the day I died.
(07:44):
We're living with these cousinsand we're hanging out every day
.
Obviously, the parents areloving the fact that their kids
are similar ages.
Like any, parents love whenthey have multiple kids that
they can hang with other peoplewho have kids the same age.
Right, they can go, enjoy, stayout of their hair, do what
(08:04):
they're going to do.
So we would go off.
Right, this is 1981.
We would go off maybe 80, maybe81.
We'd be off doing everything,right, we'd just leave the house
.
We'd come back, either when itrains, when it gets dark,
whatever.
This is not uncommon for thattime, that day, that area, that
(08:27):
culture, that a group of cousinsspecifically a group of cousins
would just leave on their ownwith no adult supervision.
And we did that.
So this one day, it wassummertime and the idea that was
kicked around, obviously by mybrother and the older kids, was
(08:47):
that we were going to go to aswimming pool that day.
Now, none of us have swimmingtrunks.
Well, I know, me and my brotherdon't.
There's no way we have swimmingtrunks, right?
We barely have the clothes thatwe have and underwear.
We don't even have pajamas.
Our pajamas are the underwearthat we wear and underwear.
(09:07):
We don't even have pajamas.
Our pajamas are the underwearthat we wear, right?
You wear Fruit of the Loomunderwear and Fruit of the Loom
t-shirt and those are yourpajamas.
So we went swimming and theswimming gear was our underwear.
Take your pants off, hop inthere, do whatever you're going
(09:30):
to do, or just hop in in yourshorts, whatever.
It's a hot day, it's Cleveland.
Think about Cleveland in theMidwest.
By the time it finally gets hotin June, july, all bets are off
and people are going to do whatit takes to have fun loosen up.
So we go to a public pool.
Now, whatever is going on inthis public pool that allowed
(09:54):
this group of kids it had to beabout six of us to come in.
Our ages are ranging from aboutfive to about 10, 11, 12.
Maybe we're all coming in theretogether with no adult
supervision.
I don't know what's going onwith that pool, but obviously,
again, it's the hood, it's the80s.
They let us in Now.
(10:17):
Let me preface this with thefact that I do not know how to
swim.
I have never at this time knownhow to swim.
I have never at this time knownhow to swim.
So swimming and knowing how toswim is not even part of my
(10:41):
mental landscape.
It's not even something I'veever thought about.
I've never been in a pool.
I don't know what my brother'sexperience was, but I had never.
I'd heard about it.
Going swimming sounded like agood idea.
Obviously, groupthink got megoing right.
(11:02):
It's hot, we're having fun.
It's a blast.
We had ice cream from the icecream truck.
We're going around having fun,we're poking fun at each other.
It's summertime, with blackcousins period, right.
So we go to the pool, we get in, we all hop in and listen.
I don't know One thing aboutmemories.
(11:23):
There's no way any memory iscompletely factual.
One thing about memoriesthere's no way any memory is
completely factual.
All memories are fiction.
One, because it's only myperspective, right, it can't be
the entire truth, because it'snot everybody's perspective.
And two, I'm telling it from mybiased view.
A lot of the things thatimpacted me the most are going
to be bigger, okay.
(11:44):
So I say that to say I don'tknow how many people were in
this pool, but it's a publicpool and it is packed.
It is packed, there's peopleeverywhere and everybody is
having a ball.
It was the most fun we've everhad.
Everybody's doing everythingRunning in the pool, throwing
(12:05):
there's like a ball beingbounced where people are like
dunking each other.
It feels great.
And me, I am a very quiet, shykid.
Again, I've never been in apool.
I am literally being draggedalong by the inertia of my big
(12:25):
brother and my cousins and thefun that we're having.
So I'm in this pool and it isfun.
Man, I wasn't much of a kid toloosen up.
I was a little panicky, but Iloosened up that day.
I'm running around the pool andI'm just splashing complete
(12:46):
nonsense.
There's no game.
I'm running around a pool andI'm just splashing Complete
nonsense.
There's no game, I'm playing.
I'm just splashing andscreaming and walking.
I'm not doing any swimming,though, because I don't know how
to swim.
I don't even know what swimmingis.
I'm literally walking In theshallow end of a pool and it's
(13:10):
so much fun.
Never.
Once again, I have noperspective on how a pool, a
swimming pool, is designed.
A lot of y'all out there mayhave been exposed to swimming
early in life, and maybe youunderstand that the bottom of a
pool is built with a grade, andsometimes that grade has a
(13:34):
pretty steep fall off.
I had no idea.
I had no idea, and I don't knowif maybe my brother and my
cousins were kind of likestaying in the shallow, and we
were just kind of like they kindof assumed that we all would
just mill around in circles inthe shallow end, but nobody
(13:58):
explained that to me, and, asthe youngest kid there, my
cousin Coco was two months olderthan me.
As the youngest kid there, Ididn't know, man, I didn't know.
Now I'm having a ball, I'mnoticing that all of a sudden I
(14:20):
got to stay on my tiptoes totouch the floor of the pool, but
I just keep going, I keep goingand I keep going and my foot
reaches that dropping point, thetipping point, the tipping
point, and I slip under.
(14:42):
And I mean, as you wouldimagine for a person who does
not understand the physics ofswimming and human bodies
underwater, I reacted in a waythat a person would react who's
only been on land.
I went all the way under, I wasswept under and in order to
(15:08):
stop it, I just flailed.
I just flailed, that's all Iknew how to do.
I panicked, I flailed andobviously, as you know,
sometimes flailing can make itworse.
It pushes you further under.
And I just remember opening myeyes and you know that sound
when you're underwater and yourears fill up, where you can kind
(15:30):
of hear, it feels almost like asonogram type of.
It's almost like you're goingto hear dolphins talk.
I hear that for the first timein my life and I open my eyes
and I see what underwater lookslike for the first time in my
life and I have zero training inhow to save myself.
(15:56):
So all of the human instinct inmy five-year-old mind kicked in
and after I flailed and flailedand flailed and nothing
happened and it didn't get me tothe surface.
I gave up and I can recallthinking this is where I die.
(16:23):
I wasn't such a.
I wasn't it such a, it was moreof a.
I hadn't led a whole, I hadn'tled much life right.
So it wasn't like clinging onto everything.
I got all this stuff to livefor.
(16:44):
I got wife and kids out here.
It was like that was a good run.
That was a good run.
That was a good run and it endsnow.
In my cousin's house my unclebrought a picture.
(17:05):
There was a picture and it wasa picture of a black lady.
There was a picture and it wasa picture of a black lady.
It was like a velvet paintingPicture of a black lady Was
definitely a naked black ladyand like completely naked, right
Like.
(17:31):
So she's got round hips and herbreasts are out and her nibbles
are like humongous and she'sgot like this beautiful afro and
her eyes follow you everywhereyou go and this used to spook me
out.
I used to have dreams aboutthis picture.
I used to have nightmares,right, like I couldn't sleep if
we were seeing this picture.
It would just give me thecreeps, right.
(17:53):
So, as I'm floating there in thewater and I just kind of go
lifeless, I go limp, I'm like,well, I should just give up.
I don't know if, like mythoughts, I wasn't intelligent
enough, I wasn't mentallydeveloped enough to think, let
me just make this easier onmyself, consciously.
(18:14):
But it feels like my body wastired and I felt like, let me
make this easier and get thisover with.
So I remember floating thereand this picture floated through
my mind and I just got likethis overwhelming love sensation
(18:37):
, right, like this feeling ofbeing like almost like held by
your mom.
I just kind of felt like thatand I remember thinking like I
give up and I breathed in thewater.
It's like I you know, if youdon't know how to swim and you,
especially if you're a smallchild, you don't have strong
lungs, you've never been taughthow to swim holding your breath
(18:57):
is hard.
So all of this happened in thecourse of maybe five, maybe ten
seconds max.
I highly doubt I made it to 10seconds before I just gave up
and breathed.
I just breathed the air in LikeI had no other mental options
and I blacked out.
(19:18):
So the last thing I saw wasthis picture.
I know they say when you'reabout to die, your life flashes
before your eyes.
I guess it did.
I didn't have much life toflash, you know, it was a short
movie, but the most impactfulvision I had ever had was that
(19:38):
picture, that portrait, thatvelvet painting, and it
definitely showed up and it kindof it didn't even show up.
Showed up and it kind of itdidn't even show up.
It just kind of like.
It kind of like panoramicallyspanned in my mental vision,
like going from left to right.
It did that.
It did that.
It did that.
So when it did that, I blackedout blackness.
(20:05):
I could still, for a second,hear that sound of what it
sounds like when your ears arefilled with water, and it's a
large body of water.
You can kind of hear likebubbles, yeah.
And then I was out, just gone.
I don't know how long I wasunconscious, but I do know that
(20:30):
I decided to die and Iintentionally breathed in water
in order to die, because mypsyche felt it's the only option
I have right now.
I woke up, laying on my back onthe concrete next to the pool,
(20:54):
surrounded by every kid and Imean I'm pretty sure it wasn't
100, but it sure felt like 100.
Every kid was encircled aroundme, looking down, standing up,
looking down at me in a circle.
You know, it's like theStraight Outta Compton album
(21:17):
cover where NWA is all lookingdown.
That's what it was like.
Everybody was looking down atme and a lifeguard was pumping
what felt like fire out of mybody.
He was pumping fire out of me.
Now, what I now know is thewater coming out of my lungs was
(21:40):
burning.
Oh, it burned so bad, burned sobad.
This was 1,000%.
The most traumatic day of mylife.
I don't know how much.
I mean, I don't even know if Ican quantify how much, qualify,
(22:05):
how much this impacts me as anadult or has impacted my path
and journey to where I am rightnow.
It's been a horrific day andI'm only halfway done telling
you the story.
So they pump water out of me.
(22:27):
I cough, I come back to life, Ilook around.
I see the kids, I see thelifeguard.
Lifeguard's like are you okay?
My first feeling was shame,which is not a foreign.
Worse, because it turns outwhich I found out later in life.
I have panic disorder, but Ifelt ashamed.
(22:55):
I instantly was ugh, so panicgripped my heart.
I'm like I can't believe.
Everybody's looking at me andI'm laying here.
I felt like I did somethingwrong.
And, to add to said, shame, the,you know the, the lifeguards
(23:21):
like, hey, who's with this kid?
And my brother and my cousinsare like, yeah, he's with us,
get him home, get him home.
Where were your parents?
Well, yeah, parents are notwith us.
They're like, yeah, he's withus.
They're like get him home.
Get him home.
Where are your parents?
I'm like, yeah, parents are notwith us.
They're like get him home.
So they send me over to alittle huddle.
We're having a little huddle,family huddle.
My brother is like theringleader.
(23:41):
My cousins Keep in mind again,I repeat, I was the youngest one
there.
I walk over there and they'relike wow, are you okay?
Are you good?
Are you all right?
And let me be clear, this issomething a lot of my loved ones
(24:02):
over the years have done.
I don't know if theyintentionally do it or not.
When they said are you okay, itwas not spoken with love.
It was not spoken with a lovingtone.
It was more spoken with anaccusatory tone like what's
wrong with you, right?
Like, like, like, um, I hopethere's nothing wrong with you.
(24:28):
Like, I hope there's nothingwrong with you.
Like, are you okay?
Like, have you ever like?
You know?
It's almost like if I wasn'tokay, it was an inconvenience
for them.
Have you ever been in thatsituation?
Can you all relate to that?
Like, if you fall or you hityour head or you throw up or
something, the loved ones aroundyou are like are you okay?
(24:52):
Instead of wow, are you allright, it's like are you all
right?
You know?
It's almost like the X-ray.
There's only one answer thatthey want to hear and that
doesn't feel great as the personthat's being asked.
So they say am I all right?
I say, man, I guess.
So I don't know.
I'm lost, right?
(25:13):
I'm completely delirious, I'min shock.
I just died and I came back.
I don't really know.
I don't even understand what tosay.
I don't even know how I'mliving.
So then the next thing they sayis you don't really want to go
(25:37):
home, do you?
You don't really want to gohome, do you?
They didn't want to leave.
They're like we're having fun,man, we're still having fun.
We're not ready to go.
Yet you don't want to go, doyou?
And I'm like the only thingthat, as my wits started to come
back to me, the first thing Ithought I got to be with mama.
I need my mama Right now.
(25:58):
I need my mama, I need her.
So I'm like, yes, I want to gohome.
I got to go see mom and they'relike oh, my goodness, can't
believe, you're making us leave,we're not ready to leave.
Why can't you just sit overthere on the side and wait?
And I'm like, no, I need to gosee my mom right now.
(26:20):
And they were like well, we'renot leaving.
So they look around and they seea man.
This man's name is Cool Breeze.
He is a friend of our family, afriend of my uncle.
I don't know him.
I guess our family knows himenough to where the kids looked
(26:44):
over and they recognized him.
So they're like hey, let's justgo ask Cool Breeze to take him
home.
Now, what this man was doingaround the pool, I have no idea
what was going on.
But they go over to him andthey're like can you take Jason
(27:04):
home?
And he's like, yeah, I'll takehim home.
So I hop in the back seat.
Now, keep in mind, I'm notwearing any clothes, really, I
just got like a t-shirt and myunderwear.
It's like, uh, it's like 100degrees in Cleveland.
Man, it's rough.
I hop in his back seat and thisis like it's probably like a
late model 70s car.
It's like these hot leatherseats.
It's long.
There's no seat belt.
(27:25):
This long bench seat.
I'm super uncomfortable.
I'm laying in there curled upin the fetal position.
He hops in the car and he drives.
I don't even know how to gethome.
So he starts to drive and I'mjust trusting that he's getting
me home and my brother andcousins have entrusted this man
to take me home.
And he doesn't go straight home.
He stops at a building and hegets out and he goes into the
(27:52):
building first and he comes backout of the building with a
brown paper bag.
He throws that in the passengerseat and then he takes me home.
So, yeah, he had to make a stop, he had to make a run, grab
something.
I don't know what it was, Idon't know, but if he was my
uncle's friend, he probably wasa hustler of some sort.
So he probably had to go eitherbuy or sell something, right?
(28:20):
So he gets me home and we pullup in front of the house.
Again, it's hot so there's noair conditioner.
My mom and my aunt they're alloutside.
They're outside sitting downtalking.
They see this car pull up, theysee me in the backseat getting
out and they instantly lose it.
Oh my God, they lost it.
They start screaming, cussing.
They run up to the car.
My mother grabs me and my auntstarts attacking the man,
(28:44):
yelling at him, cussing at him.
I don't even know if they hithim.
I don't know, maybe they did.
I don't know.
What did you do to him?
They're screaming, yelling whatdid you do?
I can't believe what in theworld.
And so I have been this wholetime on the way home preparing
my mind to tell my mother that Ijust died.
(29:06):
I need help.
I need you to hold me, I needyou to nurture me.
I just literally died.
I just went through the mosttraumatic experience of my life,
but I can't get it out becausethey're so busy accusing this
man of doing something to mebecause I'm in the backseat of
(29:27):
his car, I'm half naked andapparently unbeknownst to me and
hopefully unbeknownst to mybrother and cousins.
This man had a track record ofdoing bad stuff to kids and
that's who they sent me homewith.
So it took about five or tenminutes over the yelling where
(29:49):
I'm trying my best and this isprobably the most traumatic part
, definitely the most traumaticconscious part that I remember.
I was conscious and I rememberthe feeling of trying to
communicate over my mother'sscreaming to tell her that the
man did nothing to me and shedidn't fully believe me.
(30:12):
That was hard to experience,because the shame, the guilt of
what just happened me goingthrough a near-death experience
started to mix with this conceptof child molestation that I
(30:32):
didn't fully understand.
Although my mom had explainedit to me, I didn't.
You know, I'm too young tofully understand why a person
would do this to a child.
So to be in the mix of seeingmy mother concerned that that
happened to me, like fullyconcerned, not a worry of
hypothetical but a full concernthat it literally just happened,
(30:55):
that was traumatic, because nownot only am I dealing with the
death things I don't understand,I don't understand death.
I don't understand my life justflashed before my eyes.
I saw this picture that hasbeen bouncing around in my
psyche.
I don't understand.
Why am I looking at it?
Is it a sexual thing?
(31:15):
Why am I looking at thispicture.
What's wrong with me, is it?
I have shame, I have guilt.
And now we're discussing thefact that I literally just rode
in a car with a man who's knownfor child molestation, so I was
vulnerable to a predator.
Thank God he didn't do anythingto me.
(31:38):
But now I have to process thefact that I literally just got
out the backseat of a car whereI was alone with a child
predator and my brother and mycousins put me in the car with
it.
That is a lot to process.
That's a lot.
So my mom finally listened tome.
(31:58):
We finally got everything back.
Okay.
Repercussions of that day arethat I was afraid of swimming in
water for a long time I'll tellyou part two of my swimming
story on the next episode but Iliterally went for the next few
(32:19):
years avoiding water at allcosts, all costs.
And now I even have thiscondition to where I can't
remember what it's called wherewhen somebody says certain words
(32:40):
like anytime I hear the wordwater bill the sensation of
water filling up my mouthhappens.
I can't really explain.
I have looked it up, pumped itthrough ChatGPT a few times.
I understand there's some sortof sensory tie to hearing words
like a trigger.
But yeah, and I was deathly,deathly, deathly afraid of water
(33:05):
and that will come up later inmy life in a very significant
way.
So we'll tap into that nexttime, if you tune in, for part
two of the how I Died story.
Thanks for listening to me.
Y'all.
I enjoy telling these stories.
It's cathartic.
It's not the first time I'vetold these stories on a podcast,
(33:26):
but it's really the first timeI could really walk through not
only the story, therepercussions, the hows and whys
, and really start to understandthem.
Alright, so tune in again nexttime where I'll follow up with
this and start to pull apart thethread of how this wove its way
(33:47):
through my life.
Weaved what does that wordAlright love y'all?
Thanks for tuning in.
What's good everybody .
This is Jay Floyd.
I am your host and this is thepodcast they call On Everything
this podcast is about me beingable to explore my mind, being
able to provide some insight,sometimes just some stories.
It's really just me leaninginto my strengths, my strengths
(00:23):
top three Number one isstoryteller, number two is coach
, number three is thinker.
So as I coach all of mycoaching clients, my coachees,
my lions out there, you shouldlean into your strengths, so I
do that here on this podcast.
Thank you for joining me again.
(00:44):
I want to.
I'm definitely going to startposting more regularly.
I'll dig more into I thinkcoaching is a journey.
It starts with transparency.
Most coaching training teachesyou.
(01:09):
First you have to build trust.
I've never had an issuebuilding trust because I'm a
natural storyteller, so I alwayslean on just being who I am and
I have this story.
I used to have a video podcastcalled the Coach Big Bro Show
the Big Bro Show and it's kindof morphed right over the years.
It morphed into an audiopodcast called what's Good,
(01:31):
which then morphed into the showthat you're listening to right
now.
I spoke about this before, butI think I'm in a much more
mature place to speak on thisand I think I'll have a little
bit more control over my ums anderrs so that you won't see that
(01:55):
many breakups in the story.
But I want to talk about the daythat I died.
Yeah, you did hear that, right,I died once.
I was about five years old andI died.
How did I die?
I drowned to death.
(02:17):
Let me tell you about it.
So when I was born it so when Iwas born, my mother and father,
they had a son, my big brother,jay Julius.
They got married when mybrother was probably like three
(02:39):
years old and I was in utero.
I was in my mother's bellyabout three months or two months
away from being born.
My parents decided you knowwhat?
Now we're going to do it, we'llget married, right?
So they get married and thenI'm born a couple months later
(03:03):
and then, literally a couplemonths after that, they split up
.
So I don't really know all thedetails of what was going on and
why they had a child beforethey were married.
I don't know if maybe my dad'searlier divorce hadn't finished,
hadn't been finalized.
I don't know what was going on,but they were co-workers.
(03:23):
And here they are in thissituation, ship that has now
spawned two kids and a quickmarriage I won't say quick, but
a marriage that's quicklycrumbling.
They eventually, over thecourse of the next three years,
(03:43):
three, four years, completelycrumble, get bitterly divorced
and they hate each other for therest of their lives.
There's bitterness for the restof their lives.
Now, in the midst of this, mybrother and I you know my
brother when he was one and twoand three.
You know he's born into thisfamily where there's a mother
(04:06):
and there's a father and they'reliving in the suburbs of
Cleveland, they're living inUniversity Heights and things
are going well.
And then, next thing, you know,there's going to be another
child.
They tell him hey, you're goingto have a little sibling, and
right before that sibling comes,sibling, and right before that
(04:27):
sibling comes, they get married,they lock it in and as soon as
that sibling comes, they divorce, they split up.
The divorce happens a couple ofyears later they split up.
I'm pretty sure and maybe I cantouch on this in another
episode years down the line Iwould have discussions with my
brother to where he explainedthat he blamed me for all of
that.
Understandable, not uncommon,not fair, but not uncommon.
(04:53):
We'll touch on that in anotherepisode.
But the result of this my momgained custody of me and my
brother.
Mom gained custody of me and mybrother.
My mom not being thebreadwinner of the home means
that both of us had to live withless than half of the home
household income that we hadoriginally or that my brother
(05:14):
enjoyed originally.
I never fully enjoyed it.
I was two months old so webecame destitute.
Actually, my mother had very,very poor spending habits and
financial habits.
(05:34):
She grew up poor.
She did not know how to save.
She didn't have the habitsbuilt I won't say know-how,
because she was almost a geniuslevel in her intellect so she
knew better.
She didn't have the behaviorand habits which is more of a
psychological, emotional type ofa thing.
(05:56):
So we became a bit destitute.
We bounced around, we lived anumber of places.
One of those places was wemoved in with some of my mom's
cousins.
Now this cousin, the cousin ofmy mother, had children the same
age as me and my brother.
(06:16):
So there was a son that was thesame age as my brother.
His name was Bubble.
That was the same age as mybrother.
His name was Bubble.
And then there was a youngerson, same age as me.
His name was Coco.
These are nicknames, obviously.
I mean it's black families inthe hood, cleveland, it's the
80s, 70s, 80s Got nicknames.
(06:40):
I know their names but we'llstick with the nicknames today.
They also had a sister.
She was a little bit older butI don't know if she was in
between us or older than mybrother.
She may have been in between usbut either way, me and my
(07:00):
brother bonded well with the twoboys and all of us hung out
together all of us, and therewere some other cousins that
lived around the corner.
This is a whole neighborhood oflow-income Black families in
Cleveland, still down in thePolish district, where,
(07:21):
historically, blacks and Polishpeople are living side by side.
The streets are even namedafter that.
There's like Pulaski, sawinski,kaziosko.
These are the streets we'rehanging out on.
So we get to the day I died.
(07:44):
We're living with these cousinsand we're hanging out every day
.
Obviously, the parents areloving the fact that their kids
are similar ages.
Like any, parents love whenthey have multiple kids that
they can hang with other peoplewho have kids the same age.
Right, they can go, enjoy, stayout of their hair, do what
(08:04):
they're going to do.
So we would go off.
Right, this is 1981.
We would go off maybe 80, maybe81.
We'd be off doing everything,right, we'd just leave the house
.
We'd come back, either when itrains, when it gets dark,
whatever.
This is not uncommon for thattime, that day, that area, that
(08:27):
culture, that a group of cousinsspecifically a group of cousins
would just leave on their ownwith no adult supervision.
And we did that.
So this one day, it wassummertime and the idea that was
kicked around, obviously by mybrother and the older kids, was
(08:47):
that we were going to go to aswimming pool that day.
Now, none of us have swimmingtrunks.
Well, I know, me and my brotherdon't.
There's no way we have swimmingtrunks, right?
We barely have the clothes thatwe have and underwear.
We don't even have pajamas.
Our pajamas are the underwearthat we wear and underwear.
(09:07):
We don't even have pajamas.
Our pajamas are the underwearthat we wear, right?
You wear Fruit of the Loomunderwear and Fruit of the Loom
t-shirt and those are yourpajamas.
So we went swimming and theswimming gear was our underwear.
Take your pants off, hop inthere, do whatever you're going
(09:30):
to do, or just hop in in yourshorts, whatever.
It's a hot day, it's Cleveland.
Think about Cleveland in theMidwest.
By the time it finally gets hotin June, july, all bets are off
and people are going to do whatit takes to have fun loosen up.
So we go to a public pool.
Now, whatever is going on inthis public pool that allowed
(09:54):
this group of kids it had to beabout six of us to come in.
Our ages are ranging from aboutfive to about 10, 11, 12.
Maybe we're all coming in theretogether with no adult
supervision.
I don't know what's going onwith that pool, but obviously,
again, it's the hood, it's the80s.
They let us in Now.
(10:17):
Let me preface this with thefact that I do not know how to
swim.
I have never at this time knownhow to swim.
I have never at this time knownhow to swim.
So swimming and knowing how toswim is not even part of my
(10:41):
mental landscape.
It's not even something I'veever thought about.
I've never been in a pool.
I don't know what my brother'sexperience was, but I had never.
I'd heard about it.
Going swimming sounded like agood idea.
Obviously, groupthink got megoing right.
(11:02):
It's hot, we're having fun.
It's a blast.
We had ice cream from the icecream truck.
We're going around having fun,we're poking fun at each other.
It's summertime, with blackcousins period, right.
So we go to the pool, we get in, we all hop in and listen.
I don't know One thing aboutmemories.
(11:23):
There's no way any memory iscompletely factual.
One thing about memoriesthere's no way any memory is
completely factual.
All memories are fiction.
One, because it's only myperspective, right, it can't be
the entire truth, because it'snot everybody's perspective.
And two, I'm telling it from mybiased view.
A lot of the things thatimpacted me the most are going
to be bigger, okay.
(11:44):
So I say that to say I don'tknow how many people were in
this pool, but it's a publicpool and it is packed.
It is packed, there's peopleeverywhere and everybody is
having a ball.
It was the most fun we've everhad.
Everybody's doing everythingRunning in the pool, throwing
(12:05):
there's like a ball beingbounced where people are like
dunking each other.
It feels great.
And me, I am a very quiet, shykid.
Again, I've never been in apool.
I am literally being draggedalong by the inertia of my big
(12:25):
brother and my cousins and thefun that we're having.
So I'm in this pool and it isfun.
Man, I wasn't much of a kid toloosen up.
I was a little panicky, but Iloosened up that day.
I'm running around the pool andI'm just splashing complete
(12:46):
nonsense.
There's no game.
I'm running around a pool andI'm just splashing Complete
nonsense.
There's no game, I'm playing.
I'm just splashing andscreaming and walking.
I'm not doing any swimming,though, because I don't know how
to swim.
I don't even know what swimmingis.
I'm literally walking In theshallow end of a pool and it's
(13:10):
so much fun.
Never.
Once again, I have noperspective on how a pool, a
swimming pool, is designed.
A lot of y'all out there mayhave been exposed to swimming
early in life, and maybe youunderstand that the bottom of a
pool is built with a grade, andsometimes that grade has a
(13:34):
pretty steep fall off.
I had no idea.
I had no idea, and I don't knowif maybe my brother and my
cousins were kind of likestaying in the shallow, and we
were just kind of like they kindof assumed that we all would
just mill around in circles inthe shallow end, but nobody
(13:58):
explained that to me, and, asthe youngest kid there, my
cousin Coco was two months olderthan me.
As the youngest kid there, Ididn't know, man, I didn't know.
Now I'm having a ball, I'mnoticing that all of a sudden I
(14:20):
got to stay on my tiptoes totouch the floor of the pool, but
I just keep going, I keep goingand I keep going and my foot
reaches that dropping point, thetipping point, the tipping
point, and I slip under.
(14:42):
And I mean, as you wouldimagine for a person who does
not understand the physics ofswimming and human bodies
underwater, I reacted in a waythat a person would react who's
only been on land.
I went all the way under, I wasswept under and in order to
(15:08):
stop it, I just flailed.
I just flailed, that's all Iknew how to do.
I panicked, I flailed andobviously, as you know,
sometimes flailing can make itworse.
It pushes you further under.
And I just remember opening myeyes and you know that sound
when you're underwater and yourears fill up, where you can kind
(15:30):
of hear, it feels almost like asonogram type of.
It's almost like you're goingto hear dolphins talk.
I hear that for the first timein my life and I open my eyes
and I see what underwater lookslike for the first time in my
life and I have zero training inhow to save myself.
(15:56):
So all of the human instinct inmy five-year-old mind kicked in
and after I flailed and flailedand flailed and nothing
happened and it didn't get me tothe surface.
I gave up and I can recallthinking this is where I die.
(16:23):
I wasn't such a.
I wasn't it such a, it was moreof a.
I hadn't led a whole, I hadn'tled much life right.
So it wasn't like clinging onto everything.
I got all this stuff to livefor.
(16:44):
I got wife and kids out here.
It was like that was a good run.
That was a good run.
That was a good run and it endsnow.
In my cousin's house my unclebrought a picture.
(17:05):
There was a picture and it wasa picture of a black lady.
There was a picture and it wasa picture of a black lady.
It was like a velvet paintingPicture of a black lady Was
definitely a naked black ladyand like completely naked, right
Like.
(17:31):
So she's got round hips and herbreasts are out and her nibbles
are like humongous and she'sgot like this beautiful afro and
her eyes follow you everywhereyou go and this used to spook me
out.
I used to have dreams aboutthis picture.
I used to have nightmares,right, like I couldn't sleep if
we were seeing this picture.
It would just give me thecreeps, right.
(17:53):
So, as I'm floating there in thewater and I just kind of go
lifeless, I go limp, I'm like,well, I should just give up.
I don't know if, like mythoughts, I wasn't intelligent
enough, I wasn't mentallydeveloped enough to think, let
me just make this easier onmyself, consciously.
(18:14):
But it feels like my body wastired and I felt like, let me
make this easier and get thisover with.
So I remember floating thereand this picture floated through
my mind and I just got likethis overwhelming love sensation
(18:37):
, right, like this feeling ofbeing like almost like held by
your mom.
I just kind of felt like thatand I remember thinking like I
give up and I breathed in thewater.
It's like I you know, if youdon't know how to swim and you,
especially if you're a smallchild, you don't have strong
lungs, you've never been taughthow to swim holding your breath
(18:57):
is hard.
So all of this happened in thecourse of maybe five, maybe ten
seconds max.
I highly doubt I made it to 10seconds before I just gave up
and breathed.
I just breathed the air in LikeI had no other mental options
and I blacked out.
(19:18):
So the last thing I saw wasthis picture.
I know they say when you'reabout to die, your life flashes
before your eyes.
I guess it did.
I didn't have much life toflash, you know, it was a short
movie, but the most impactfulvision I had ever had was that
(19:38):
picture, that portrait, thatvelvet painting, and it
definitely showed up and it kindof it didn't even show up.
Showed up and it kind of itdidn't even show up.
It just kind of like.
It kind of like panoramicallyspanned in my mental vision,
like going from left to right.
It did that.
It did that.
It did that.
So when it did that, I blackedout blackness.
(20:05):
I could still, for a second,hear that sound of what it
sounds like when your ears arefilled with water, and it's a
large body of water.
You can kind of hear likebubbles, yeah.
And then I was out, just gone.
I don't know how long I wasunconscious, but I do know that
(20:30):
I decided to die and Iintentionally breathed in water
in order to die, because mypsyche felt it's the only option
I have right now.
I woke up, laying on my back onthe concrete next to the pool,
(20:54):
surrounded by every kid and Imean I'm pretty sure it wasn't
100, but it sure felt like 100.
Every kid was encircled aroundme, looking down, standing up,
looking down at me in a circle.
You know, it's like theStraight Outta Compton album
(21:17):
cover where NWA is all lookingdown.
That's what it was like.
Everybody was looking down atme and a lifeguard was pumping
what felt like fire out of mybody.
He was pumping fire out of me.
Now, what I now know is thewater coming out of my lungs was
(21:40):
burning.
Oh, it burned so bad, burned sobad.
This was 1,000%.
The most traumatic day of mylife.
I don't know how much.
I mean, I don't even know if Ican quantify how much, qualify,
(22:05):
how much this impacts me as anadult or has impacted my path
and journey to where I am rightnow.
It's been a horrific day andI'm only halfway done telling
you the story.
So they pump water out of me.
(22:27):
I cough, I come back to life, Ilook around.
I see the kids, I see thelifeguard.
Lifeguard's like are you okay?
My first feeling was shame,which is not a foreign.
Worse, because it turns outwhich I found out later in life.
I have panic disorder, but Ifelt ashamed.
(22:55):
I instantly was ugh, so panicgripped my heart.
I'm like I can't believe.
Everybody's looking at me andI'm laying here.
I felt like I did somethingwrong.
And, to add to said, shame, the,you know the, the lifeguards
(23:21):
like, hey, who's with this kid?
And my brother and my cousinsare like, yeah, he's with us,
get him home, get him home.
Where were your parents?
Well, yeah, parents are notwith us.
They're like, yeah, he's withus.
They're like get him home.
Get him home.
Where are your parents?
I'm like, yeah, parents are notwith us.
They're like get him home.
So they send me over to alittle huddle.
We're having a little huddle,family huddle.
My brother is like theringleader.
(23:41):
My cousins Keep in mind again,I repeat, I was the youngest one
there.
I walk over there and they'relike wow, are you okay?
Are you good?
Are you all right?
And let me be clear, this issomething a lot of my loved ones
(24:02):
over the years have done.
I don't know if theyintentionally do it or not.
When they said are you okay, itwas not spoken with love.
It was not spoken with a lovingtone.
It was more spoken with anaccusatory tone like what's
wrong with you, right?
Like, like, like, um, I hopethere's nothing wrong with you.
(24:28):
Like, I hope there's nothingwrong with you.
Like, are you okay?
Like, have you ever like?
You know?
It's almost like if I wasn'tokay, it was an inconvenience
for them.
Have you ever been in thatsituation?
Can you all relate to that?
Like, if you fall or you hityour head or you throw up or
something, the loved ones aroundyou are like are you okay?
(24:52):
Instead of wow, are you allright, it's like are you all
right?
You know?
It's almost like the X-ray.
There's only one answer thatthey want to hear and that
doesn't feel great as the personthat's being asked.
So they say am I all right?
I say, man, I guess.
So I don't know.
I'm lost, right?
(25:13):
I'm completely delirious, I'min shock.
I just died and I came back.
I don't really know.
I don't even understand what tosay.
I don't even know how I'mliving.
So then the next thing they sayis you don't really want to go
(25:37):
home, do you?
You don't really want to gohome, do you?
They didn't want to leave.
They're like we're having fun,man, we're still having fun.
We're not ready to go.
Yet you don't want to go, doyou?
And I'm like the only thingthat, as my wits started to come
back to me, the first thing Ithought I got to be with mama.
I need my mama Right now.
(25:58):
I need my mama, I need her.
So I'm like, yes, I want to gohome.
I got to go see mom and they'relike oh, my goodness, can't
believe, you're making us leave,we're not ready to leave.
Why can't you just sit overthere on the side and wait?
And I'm like, no, I need to gosee my mom right now.
(26:20):
And they were like well, we'renot leaving.
So they look around and they seea man.
This man's name is Cool Breeze.
He is a friend of our family, afriend of my uncle.
I don't know him.
I guess our family knows himenough to where the kids looked
(26:44):
over and they recognized him.
So they're like hey, let's justgo ask Cool Breeze to take him
home.
Now, what this man was doingaround the pool, I have no idea
what was going on.
But they go over to him andthey're like can you take Jason
(27:04):
home?
And he's like, yeah, I'll takehim home.
So I hop in the back seat.
Now, keep in mind, I'm notwearing any clothes, really, I
just got like a t-shirt and myunderwear.
It's like, uh, it's like 100degrees in Cleveland.
Man, it's rough.
I hop in his back seat and thisis like it's probably like a
late model 70s car.
It's like these hot leatherseats.
It's long.
There's no seat belt.
(27:25):
This long bench seat.
I'm super uncomfortable.
I'm laying in there curled upin the fetal position.
He hops in the car and he drives.
I don't even know how to gethome.
So he starts to drive and I'mjust trusting that he's getting
me home and my brother andcousins have entrusted this man
to take me home.
And he doesn't go straight home.
He stops at a building and hegets out and he goes into the
(27:52):
building first and he comes backout of the building with a
brown paper bag.
He throws that in the passengerseat and then he takes me home.
So, yeah, he had to make a stop, he had to make a run, grab
something.
I don't know what it was, Idon't know, but if he was my
uncle's friend, he probably wasa hustler of some sort.
So he probably had to go eitherbuy or sell something, right?
(28:20):
So he gets me home and we pullup in front of the house.
Again, it's hot so there's noair conditioner.
My mom and my aunt they're alloutside.
They're outside sitting downtalking.
They see this car pull up, theysee me in the backseat getting
out and they instantly lose it.
Oh my God, they lost it.
They start screaming, cussing.
They run up to the car.
My mother grabs me and my auntstarts attacking the man,
(28:44):
yelling at him, cussing at him.
I don't even know if they hithim.
I don't know, maybe they did.
I don't know.
What did you do to him?
They're screaming, yelling whatdid you do?
I can't believe what in theworld.
And so I have been this wholetime on the way home preparing
my mind to tell my mother that Ijust died.
(29:06):
I need help.
I need you to hold me, I needyou to nurture me.
I just literally died.
I just went through the mosttraumatic experience of my life,
but I can't get it out becausethey're so busy accusing this
man of doing something to mebecause I'm in the backseat of
(29:27):
his car, I'm half naked andapparently unbeknownst to me and
hopefully unbeknownst to mybrother and cousins.
This man had a track record ofdoing bad stuff to kids and
that's who they sent me homewith.
So it took about five or tenminutes over the yelling where
(29:49):
I'm trying my best and this isprobably the most traumatic part
, definitely the most traumaticconscious part that I remember.
I was conscious and I rememberthe feeling of trying to
communicate over my mother'sscreaming to tell her that the
man did nothing to me and shedidn't fully believe me.
(30:12):
That was hard to experience,because the shame, the guilt of
what just happened me goingthrough a near-death experience
started to mix with this conceptof child molestation that I
(30:32):
didn't fully understand.
Although my mom had explainedit to me, I didn't.
You know, I'm too young tofully understand why a person
would do this to a child.
So to be in the mix of seeingmy mother concerned that that
happened to me, like fullyconcerned, not a worry of
hypothetical but a full concernthat it literally just happened,
(30:55):
that was traumatic, because nownot only am I dealing with the
death things I don't understand,I don't understand death.
I don't understand my life justflashed before my eyes.
I saw this picture that hasbeen bouncing around in my
psyche.
I don't understand.
Why am I looking at it?
Is it a sexual thing?
(31:15):
Why am I looking at thispicture.
What's wrong with me, is it?
I have shame, I have guilt.
And now we're discussing thefact that I literally just rode
in a car with a man who's knownfor child molestation, so I was
vulnerable to a predator.
Thank God he didn't do anythingto me.
(31:38):
But now I have to process thefact that I literally just got
out the backseat of a car whereI was alone with a child
predator and my brother and mycousins put me in the car with
it.
That is a lot to process.
That's a lot.
So my mom finally listened tome.
(31:58):
We finally got everything back.
Okay.
Repercussions of that day arethat I was afraid of swimming in
water for a long time I'll tellyou part two of my swimming
story on the next episode but Iliterally went for the next few
(32:19):
years avoiding water at allcosts, all costs.
And now I even have thiscondition to where I can't
remember what it's called wherewhen somebody says certain words
(32:40):
like anytime I hear the wordwater bill the sensation of
water filling up my mouthhappens.
I can't really explain.
I have looked it up, pumped itthrough ChatGPT a few times.
I understand there's some sortof sensory tie to hearing words
like a trigger.
But yeah, and I was deathly,deathly, deathly afraid of water
(33:05):
and that will come up later inmy life in a very significant
way.
So we'll tap into that nexttime, if you tune in, for part
two of the how I Died story.
Thanks for listening to me.
Y'all.
I enjoy telling these stories.
It's cathartic.
It's not the first time I'vetold these stories on a podcast,
(33:26):
but it's really the first timeI could really walk through not
only the story, therepercussions, the hows and whys
, and really start to understandthem.
Alright, so tune in again nexttime where I'll follow up with
this and start to pull apart thethread of how this wove its way
(33:47):
through my life.
Weaved what does that wordAlright love y'all?
Thanks for tuning in.
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Introducing… Aubrey O’Day Diddy’s former protege, television personality, platinum selling music artist, Danity Kane alum Aubrey O’Day joins veteran journalists Amy Robach and TJ Holmes to provide a unique perspective on the trial that has captivated the attention of the nation. Join them throughout the trial as they discuss, debate, and dissect every detail, every aspect of the proceedings. Aubrey will offer her opinions and expertise, as only she is qualified to do given her first-hand knowledge. From her days on Making the Band, as she emerged as the breakout star, the truth of the situation would be the opposite of the glitz and glamour. Listen throughout every minute of the trial, for this exclusive coverage. Amy Robach and TJ Holmes present Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial, an iHeartRadio podcast.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Come hang with Amy Poehler. Each week on her podcast, she'll welcome celebrities and fun people to her studio. They'll share stories about their careers, mutual friends, shared enthusiasms, and most importantly, what's been making them laugh. This podcast is not about trying to make you better or giving advice. Amy just wants to have a good time.