Until I began making music, until I found music, my life did not make sense to me. I was on a journey, that I didn’t even realize I was on, to find the meaning of things.  When I discovered music, it was the fulfillment of that journey, of a life-long quest to fit in and to make sense of my life.  So, let me tell you about my journey…from the very beginning:

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I was born dead in a hospital in a province known as Montecristi, or, as I like to call it, El Monte de Cristo, in the city of Manzanillo in the Dominican Republic.  Pronounced dead at birth and left on a table with no signs of breathing, I was later resuscitated by my grandmother. 

 

Brought back to life, I entered a world full of instability, as my father decided to move to Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic. Three years later, my mother died in a car accident and my father took me to another home as he decided to move in with a stripper and her 3 kids.  Two years later, Julia, the stripper, decided to move to Miami, Florida.  The plan was that my father would follow her and then we, the kids, would move after that.

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In the meantime, my father couldn’t take care of us because he was too busy working in the USA, before he could get his green card, and we had no one to attend to us.  My father had literally no choice but to give us away to his own mother.  

 

Barely 6 years old, I had no mother and our father practically left us, it felt like he had abandoned us. Years went by and we never heard from him. Days felt like weeks, weeks felt like months, and months felt like years. There was not a place we could call home, and we were always reminded of that fact we were a burden.  Yet crying and asking questions or showing emotions was considered a sign of weakness and not allowed.  We had to be strong because we had no one to turn to and the only way to survive was to stay quiet no matter the situation.

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Having no emotional support in a world where no one would listen to us created a deep scar within my soul. I felt I couldn’t relate to anyone, so I always felt different from other kids my age, I was lonely and left out… I was on the wrong side of the street; surrounded by people that were family but didn’t really show any affection towards me and my sister. It was more like we were a hindrance in their lives.

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I always felt that perhaps I had done something terribly wrong in another life and had to repay for all that I had done. After all, I was a sinner – at least that’s what I believed at the time, since my grandmother followed the teachings of the Catholic Church. I would always question why was my life so hard? Why did I lose my mother at such a young age?  Why did my father leave us?  Why would my own family try to physically hurt us? These were some of the many questions that inundated my mind.  I would also question God and the meaning of life. Why would a person choose to be in a world of so much Darkness and Pain?  It made no sense for me to be here.  I was convinced that my life was a mistake, that I did not belong in this world.

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Since I really didn’t have anyone watching over me, I was free to come and go as I pleased. As long as I cut the grass, fed the chickens and picked the fruits from my grandmother’s small farm, I could do whatever I wanted to do.  Growing up in Manzanillo, I was just minutes away from Manzanillo Port. I would spend long hours either climbing and sliding up and down the hill called El Morro or jumping into the ocean at the ManzanilloPort and then swimming back to shore.

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The nature, the trees and the ocean provided an escape from all my emotional troubles. 

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Years passed and finally one day my mother’s older sister showed up at my grandmother’s house - an angel from the stars.  She had been looking for us for yearsbut was unable to find us until a message came to her in a dream to find my father in the USA. She begged him to allow her to take us with her, but he never really liked my aunt and strongly refused. She was a very determined woman, so she persisted, kept calling and coming to the house, until one day he finally agreed and we moved to Santo Domingo, seven hours away from Manzanillo.  I will never forget that day, it was probably the happiest day of my life. She became the mother that we never had, and life completely changed.

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When I was 12 and my sister was 15, finally the time came for us to reunite with my father in Miami where he had been living for the past six years. There we met our new step-mother. We lived in Miami for about a year before moving to Lawrence, Massachusetts, where I went to high school.

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Few years later, I decided to go to college just to get away from home. Once we finally reunited, my dad was over protective of me and that actually pushed me away from him to the point that we were constantly arguing – imagine going from having no one to care for you for the first twelve years of your life to having someone constantly breathing at your neck. My sister and I felt so suffocated that my sister married the first guy she met and I left for college.

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The University of Massachusetts in Amherst was only two hours away from my father’s house. I was unsure of what subject to study and even though there was a love for art and music simmering within me, it never occurred to me to study art or go to an art school.  I got a Bachelors of Arts Degree in Economics and minored in Spanish. Nevertheless, my curiosity for life and fascination with learning about people and other cultures was so intense for me that at my third semester I had joined a Black fraternity, Iota Phi Theta, and by the end of my sophomore year I was vice president of the organization.  I was involved in some of the most popular and exciting events on campus, including stepping shows, fashion shows, lip sync competition, paddle designing, marketing campaigns, enveloping myself in every creative and artistic project I could experience.

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After graduating from college with my Economics degree, I had been offered an entry-level management position at a CVS Pharmacy store but I declined. I spent the next nine months looking for work until I finally found a part-time job at a Shawmut bank in Lowell, Mass. I also took a second part-time job selling financial services on nights and weekends. For the most part, I enjoyed the work I was doing but I could never shake the feeling that I had another “True Calling.”  I wasn’t sure exactly what that true calling was but something was missing in my life…  So I did what everyone else around me– got married and bought a house. I had a decent life, an amazing Puerto Rican woman, a handful of income-producing properties, and a great sales career in the computer training industry. I was content. But that inner feeling that something was missing never truly went away.Indeed, it grew louder and louder.

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Then I made some mistakes, mistakes that would cost me my marriage. My life so carefully built started crumbling around me in every way– until one day all that I had just vanished right before my eyes. I found myself at the bottom of despair, where I had been so many times before, once again aimless and alone……