GOING BACK TO MY ROOTS

Carmela is the host of a podcast called "I Survive La Chancla." She shares her story and experiences growing up, hoping to help others who have experienced trauma. She plans to interview people who have overcome challenges and struggles. Carmela is excited about her podcast and has put a lot of effort into it. She also talks about her family, her outspoken personality, and her idea of perfect happiness. She grew up in a small town with close-knit family and played games and had fun with her brothers and cousins. She shares memories of her grandma's house and the plants she had. Hello, and welcome to my podcast, I Survive La Chancla. I am your host, Carmela. Hello, hello, welcome, welcome. I hope everyone is in good spirits and I hope everyone has had a great week and I hope no one has had a chocohole this week. And if you had, I'm sorry, it's one of them weeks. I would like to give a super big thanks for listening in to my episode. This one marks a special one, a very special one, as it's my first one. So wish me luck, don't put fault. I'm really excited about this. I have literally put blood, sweat, and tears into this, so a ver donde me lleva. I made my podcast because I wanted to build a space where I could share my story and my experiences and I believe that at least one person could benefit from it. I believe sometimes we have trauma, whether it be childhood or whatever, you know, death of a parent, anything, that if we don't breathe properly, we don't move past it and it just stays on the back with more and more and more and we just keep carrying it. That has hindered my growth as an adult, so I believe that sharing my story maybe would help me and someone else. So that's what my podcast is going to be about. Along the way, I wanted to interview some cool people, pick their brain a little bit, see what kind of challenges and struggles they had to overcome in order to be successful today. I have some people lined up, so stay tuned for that throughout the episodes. I will be dropping an episode every Friday. Go check me out on the podcast major platforms. I will be putting it on Facebook, Shine Plus Survivor on Facebook and Apple and, you know, the major ones. I'm really excited about this, really excited. I have literally put blood, sweat, and tears, blood when I got a paper cut and I was writing my ideas down and a lot of crying, so close to giving up, but it's not in me. I am really excited, so we'll see where this takes us. A little bit about me, your host with the most. I am very outspoken. I speak on matters that are important to me. I like to bring awareness to issues that need awareness. I have a big heart. I've always tended to help the wrong people, so like half a millimeter of pendejales. I have some kids. Yes, I have a couple of children, they call me mom. I love them. They are the light in my eye and the fire in my butt, the pain in my butt, but I wouldn't have it any other way. They're cool kids. I also am that one bitch that will say what everyone is thinking, but won't say it. Not sure why, just gotta fucking say it, I don't know. I have been told that I have a bad attitude, but I think the attitude depends on the people around you and the mood they put you in. I'm just kidding. I'd rather fly solo because my mood switches so quick. My kids are survivors too. I've never, I mean, I've used a chancla a couple times, you know, to get their attention like when they were little. It worked, you know, because they don't, they didn't do what they were doing when they got the chancla, so. I grew up with a chancla. My mom whipped my ass with a chancla. I always thought that it was just supposed to be thrown because that's usually how my mom did it, but no, I've seen the other videos and stuff, and I'm like, damn, boom, boom. My mom would just chew the chunker, chew a chunk of whatever was close to her. More about her later. So also on every episode, at the end, I wanted to do a segment. It's called Nosy Neighbor. Hi, I'm your nosy neighbor. And I will share a story of one of my neighbors. And I have plenty of them, so stay tuned to the end so you can hear them. Oh, also, on every episode, I have this book that I got, it's 2,000 Questions About Me. I wanted to start off each episode with a question. I will answer it, and you answer it, you don't have to write anything down, it's just in your head. So I'm going to go ahead and do the one for right now, for today, and it says, what is your idea of perfect happiness? Dang, I didn't even think about this one. But I think my idea of perfect happiness is not having to pay bills or be stressing over the bills. As long as I'm not stressing over the bills, I'm happy, or sometimes, because, well, yeah, I'm happy. I'm happy for the most part. Just sometimes, you know, a bitch got to get in her mood or whatever, but my idea of total happiness would be no bills. No bills. Not having to pay bills would make me super happy. That's my ideal happiness. No rent, no bills, but I think that's wrong. It's probably like you're in toward love and people or something like that, right? No, okay, well, I mean, they make me happy. My family makes me happy. That's not, that's a given. Yes, I'm not paying bills. So anybody want to pay my bills? Want to make me happy? So that was the question for this week. What is your idea of perfect happiness? Truly, truly, what is your perfect idea of happiness? So answer that. Remember, you ain't got a line. You're only saying it to yourself. You're only answering it to yourself. So next week, we'll do another one. So like I said, on my podcast, I was going to share my story, my experiences growing up in a small town, growing up my family, how I was raised and the traditions that got carried over from my mom. And so we're going to start the story time, so get your tea, get your palomitas. Okay. My name is Maria Sanchez Perez Cruz the third, no, I'm kidding, that's Carmela. I was raised in a itty bitty town. When I say itty bitty, I'm probably over-exaggerating. It was such a small town. There was one way in and one way out with no light. Like the roads were long and dark, no light, or if they did, they were sporadic, but not like where you could, you know, consistently see, that was a scary road. And then it was puro pinche monte, like monte for miles, miles and miles. There was like no houses or nothing until you pass the montes, and then you would get in the little town. When I mean little town, one road for the mainstream. Everybody knew each other. Everybody knew each other's parents. If you, you know, met someone or saw someone, oh, your hija is so-and-so, you usually just had to say the last name of the family, oh, yeah, I am. Everybody knew each other. I had a brother, older brother, four years older than me. We grew up together. He charged me like $2 to borrow his shirt. I was such a tomboy, and a dollar a squirt of preferred stock or Aspen, ah, that shit smells so good. So why was I liking man cologne? Maybe because I wanted to smell it. But I was a big tomboy, and my brother made his money. We always did stupid-ass bets that were guaranteed losing, but my dumb ass would still play. I would have lost bets to dumb shit, and then, like, I had to make up his bed for the rest of his life. I had to do his chores for a week. I don't know. I don't even know how I lost that one or how I even, why. He would get the dishes when it was his week to do the dishes, and they were, like, pots and pans with, you know, food or whatever. He would throw them outside behind my grandma's cuartito so they wouldn't be seen. He didn't have to wash them. Come my week, when it was my turn, the very first day, he would go get the damn cacerolas and go show my mom and tell my mom that, look what I put back there. Man, if I had to wash fucking cacerolas that have food for days outside them, the shit I used to fall for, I used to fall for some dumb shit. I have another little brother, but we weren't raised together. We're 13 years apart, and he was from the Sancho. More on that on another episode. Yeah. Catfight. I had my grandma, you know, we grew up in a, there was tias up the street, tias down the street, my prima up there, prima over there. It was family all around. Back then, we were closer, a closer, you know, not close-knit family. Not so much now. I don't know. Everybody went their own way, I guess. But I grew up with a bunch of primas, like, a shit ton. You know, we'd get into it, and, bitch, you're ugly, you're fat, you're not my cousin, or whatever. And then, next 30 minutes, ya estamos best friends. We grew up playing bubblegum, bubblegum, in a dish to determine who was gonna be the team, the captains for the team. Man, and we honored that shit. Like Playsback. Anybody remember Playsback? Playsback, one, two, three, yeah. That seat was reserved for when you got back. Could nobody get your seat if you said, Playsback, one, two, three. That was honored mostly, and a lot of households, you didn't want your seat taken when you got up to go use the restroom or get a snack, you gotta say, Playsback, one, two, three. If you don't, sit on the floor. I remember we had the Nintendo system, the NES, yeah, the first one. Man, we used to, like, I'm playing the winner, no, I'm playing that winner from that one, and all of us would just be sitting there fucking waiting for that person to lose, so we could play them. It was fun, it was crazy. We would run on top of my grandma's house, drive her crazy, she would be banging with the broom. I'm saying that, yeah. She was so cute. We used to play in her cuartito, you know, where my brother hid the dishes, back there, we played. We'd play back there, we'd mess up her storage, playing, doing shit. She had blackberries back there that we were not allowed to eat, we were told not to. We were told it was forbidden, and what did we do? We were fat asses and ate the fucking blackberries, but did we die? Nay, nay, nay, bitch still here. She had a peach tree. Oh, that peach tree was the shit. That peach tree was, man, it delivered some nice peaches. My grandma had a lot of, like, matas, plants, she loved plants. She was considered, like, a healer, curandera, so she had a lot of, like, different plants, like plants behind plants, behind plants, behind plants, you know, just her yard full of just plants. We used to play, like, do cartwheels and stuff in her yard. My fat ass could never do a fucking back bend, but I was jealous of the bitches that could. Man, I was like, man, I'm gonna break. My fat ass fucking laid down on the floor, I stayed there. Yeah, it was some fun times. I, to this day, never learned how to do a back bend. That is not what is hindering my growth, though. Fucking back bend. I need to teach my daughter how to do the back bend. I don't want to pass that along. So, we, I remember, like, the family getting together, Christmases, Thanksgiving, like, the Super Bowl, even. It was such a close-knit community, very football-oriented. Football was the talk of the town. When we would have Spirit Week for the homecoming week, like, they would have days designated for certain colors, where this, where that. They had ribbons on Thursdays and Fridays, and you would buy the ribbon, put it on your shirt, show school spirit. Then, on Fridays, they would have the bonfire, where they put a bunch of fucking twigs, look like a tiki, and they just lit that bitch on fire. I don't think anybody ever got hurt doing them, but, like, how this, kids are a little, you know, different. I could see that being a hazard. It should have been a hazard then, but it wasn't. We had, on Saturdays, after that Friday, you would see everybody in their fucking ropers, tight-ass ropers, carrying a flag or an instrument, or you saw them in uniform, football, baseball, all the teams. Or you were on the float, because they had a float for each school. So they had different organizations, different clubs, everybody just marched in the fucking parade. They threw candy, it was the shit, you know? Nobody was hurt. Now, you can't even go to a fucking parade without worrying that someone's going to stomp you with a fucking SUV. Thank God nothing happened then. I had the privilege to walk in the parade playing my clarinet. A bitch didn't know how to play clarinet. All I knew was, da-na-na-na-na-na, da-na-na-na-na-na-na-na. That's because one of my cousins showed it to me. What's up, Juarez? So that's all I knew. Unfortunately, that wasn't the music everyone else was going to be playing, so I had to fake it. I had to fake it until I made it to the end. That was easy, just, do-do-do-do-do, you know? I never learned how to read sheet music. Not the B, the Q, the B, the 4, the 2, nothing, none. G, H, high, clef, mm-mm. No, I couldn't. It was too much. It was too much. I didn't like the clarinet that much. I had to pick an alternative class, so it was either that or, I don't even know, like, some other dumb shit. It did great. We were honored. Since we were the last grade of the school, they allowed the fifth graders to work on the floor and be a part of the floor. So we're like, hey, yeah. Me and one of my homies, we were there at the gym. I'm not sure why we went into the gym office to put up stuff or something, but we were in there. And what do I see in the corner? A big-ass helium tank. A big one. Yeah, I did my dumb ass. So there I go. And what do I do? Oh, my God. And then sass. I fucking passed out. A bitch did too much. And passed out. Hit my fucking head on a chair. And my homie was too busy laughing to help me. Instead, he was just trying to hold himself up from fucking laughing, from falling over laughing. It was fucking crazy. I was like, man. So then from that day on, he fucking teased me about that shit every day. Every time I saw him in the hall at school, he would always do like, like if he was falling back and passing out like I did. Fucker. You know who you are. I had a lot of good memories at school along, you know, as well with the, you know, fucked up ones. Like, just not wanting to be there. Not liking my teachers or the students. A lot of us, we had been going to school with each other since kindergarten. Since kindergarten. So a lot of us knew each other since then. We had the same group of friends, which some of them, like a couple of my cousins, you know, the other ones, some homies. Some that I still talk to today. What's up, homie bitches? So yeah, I remember having this crush on this one guy. I think it was in sixth grade. And he was the shit to me. He was a little skinny, scrawny white boy. I was probably like two times bigger than he was, but he was fine. He was fine to me. And I even got shoes just like his because I liked him so much. Yeah, that's cray cray in the making. And I would, like, follow him. I had his name on my notebook. People would tease me, like, ah, you like, you know, whatever. Like, whatever, shut up. I love him. Well, come the following year, I could not stand that fucker. He was fucking with me all the time. Like, dude, what the fuck? Get away from me. It's crazy how it changed. But he was good. He was a good friend. It was, you know, growing up in a small town, like, you knew everybody. There was, like, the same story. You know, there was no, I remember when Brookshire's first came. It was, like, a big old thing. Because they had little grocery stores, nothing chain-wise or nothing. We had, like, one gas station. When the second one opened, it was like, whoa. We had a city pool that we would go to. Probably like $1.25 to get in. We'd swim there all day, come back home, eat, crash out. It was cool because, like, it was a small community. But then as I got older, when I was going to high school is when I left. I went to high school somewhere else. I don't think I had any, like, bad, you know what I'm saying? I think there was one guy that used to call me Weback all the time. Fucking Weback, Weback, Weback. Every time he saw me. And I'm like, I don't care. I really don't care that you call me Weback. But Weback, like, 20 times a day? You got to repeat it? Are you DTD or something? Like, we talked about this this morning. I'm a Weback in the morning. I'm a Weback in the afternoon. So why are you telling me this? Like, this shit happened yesterday. And one of my cousins, I remember, R.I.P. He saw me crying and asked me what happened, you know? I didn't want to tell him at first because they were, like, football buddies and shit. I didn't want to start nothing. And I told him. He went over there and he said something. He brought him back to me and said, what are you going to tell her? And that bullshit. I'm sorry, I'll never call you Weback again. That was the last time he called me Weback. Thanks to my cousins. Another one gone too soon. I remember he caught me and one of my other cousins selling these tacos that my grandma made for us for athletics parties. And we were supposed to take two dozens each. Well, my grandma made us two dozens each. We were just supposed to take one. So on the way to school and when we get to school, people smelling tacos. Hey, who got tacos? So, you know, somebody, hey, I'll give you a dollar for a taco. Bam. There we go. Another dollar. We sold a dozen, like, quick. So the second dozen, you know, that we had extra, we started going the same way. Well, here comes my cousin. And he's like, hey, fool, give me a taco. I was like, where's your dollar? He's like, I'm not paying for the taco that grandma made. I was like, yeah, fool, I'm going to need your dollar. Oh, okay, you're going to be like that? Well, he got mad. He walked with us home and went and told my grandma that we sold her tacos. And I had to give the money back to my grandma for selling her damn tacos. So he snitched on me. He still got his taco. Still came to snitch. He was good people. I grew up, you know, also with my parents. My mom was, well, whenever they were together, because they always split up, whenever they were together, we were always moving to the town where my dad lived in. And I hated that shit. I hated meeting new people. I hated going through that whole new student phase shit. But it happened quite often because my mom, you know, she somehow thought that this time was going to be different. She went back to this man so many times. Really insane if you think about it now. If you do the same thing over and over expecting a different result, then you're insane. That's literally insane, expecting a different result doing the same thing over and over. My mom loved this man. She cherished him. She just adored him. I mean, he was a good-looking man. You know, he made a good-looking kid. He had curly hair, green eyes. You know, I've heard stories. My mom was the one that was married to him, legally married. So my dad, you know, like I said, they would split up and get back together, split up and get back together. But my dad was always there financially. He took care of his part. My mom would get upset because he would give me $50 a week for allowance. And my moms are like, who the hell gives a kid 13 years old $50 a week? But I was daddy's girl. I got pretty much anything that I wanted. I got my car and a quinceanera. Yeah. So, yeah, I was kind of spoiled. My dad was an alcoholic. He drank and drank and drank and drank every day, all day. Functioning alcoholic. Functioning alcoholic. But when it was, yeah, the day had passed, you'd probably find him on the couch, passed out, pissed, drunk. Not only pissed, but drunk. My dad had this thing of fucking pissing whenever he would get drunk on himself. It was so fucking annoying. I hated it. I cannot stand that shit. To me, that looks disgusting. It's embarrassing. And I was embarrassed of my dad whenever he would do that because he would do it everywhere. And he didn't realize, you know, that it was embarrassing to us. Like when we'd go to the lake, back then they used to charge per person. My dad was already drunk by the time we'd get to the lake. So it was so easy for us to just put a blanket over him because he was passed out and probably pissed. And so they wouldn't see him and they wouldn't charge us three fucking dollars. Oh, and we had to hide his beer too. That's the kind of shit we had to do when we went to the fucking lake. We had to hide my dad and his fucking beer because my dad was already fucking drunk. I'm sure my dad had his own issues. But that kind of fucked with me, you know? I became an alcoholic. I fell for a little bit. Like I was needing to drink all the time. But I got myself out of it. It got boring. I didn't like the way it made me feel. Not all the time. Like just sometimes, you know? But not all the time. I couldn't function. And my mom, she had a problem with overeating. My mom weighed like 400 pounds and she was obsessed. Not obsessed. Addicted to food. She would tell me that it was the hardest thing she ever had to do because she could not control something that she needed to survive, which is food. I know my mom had issues with health issues. She was on medication that would make you gain weight. But again, she needed this medicine to be able to function. She had some issues in her past. I know child abuse. One of her uncles molested her. And I remember throughout the years, like she would get flashbacks. Like she would remember bits and pieces. And I think when she finally remembered everything or a lot more, it really broke her. Like she went into a depression. You know, that's the type of shit that fucks with you as an adult if it's not. Not even if you do handle it as a kid. Because as you grow, you know, it's different. When something like that happens to you, you tend to see yourself different, the world different. You know, you feel different. You act different. So I could imagine already that baggage that she was carrying along with her health issues and still raising two badass kids that literally were called children of the corn by their tía. Anytime she was referring to us, we were children of the corn. Children of the corn was like six or seven kids. We're only two. We're that bad. Yeah, so my mom struggled a lot with her weight all the time. She was always on some kind of diet, eat this, don't eat this, eat this in the morning, fart like this, whatever. She tried them all. And she was successful at some of them. Some of them got her to get off of the insulin. Some of them gave her the energy to walk more because at this point, my mom wasn't able to do her basic daily task without struggle. My mother would struggle to just walk to the bathroom. She would have a belly hanging and so all that excessive weight on her back and her knees, it really took a toll on her. I've seen my mom in pain, tears, crying because her health issues were deteriorating. She had diabetes, high blood pressure, enlarged heart. She had every disease in the book. And yet she maintained herself to still go to college, get a college degree. She was a nurse. She didn't fall to the statistics in her era, like for her generation of like you're going to instead of looking for an education, you should be looking how to make your man happy, take care of your home, which is what my grandma did. My grandma was teaching my mom like, okay, you clean your house. You cook. You do this for your man. You do this and this. Good thing I wasn't in the 50s because I would have been single. So my mom kind of broke that generational curse, I guess. Well, not generational curse, but, you know, she went to college. So I'm very proud of her for doing that because, again, on top of all her mental issues, you know, with what happened to her, her weight, her physical, she still went to school, still graduated, still worked. She took care of us whenever her and my dad weren't together. Still took care of me and my brother. And let me tell you, me and my brother did not make it easy. Well, I can't speak on my brother, but I've seen my brother do some crazy shit, like steal the car. Have me go steal the keys from my mom for like $2 so he can steal my mom's car. I want to tell nobody about it. So, yeah, on top of her health, mental, physical, she had two badass kids. You know, she was going through some other stuff that later on in the episode you'll see some relationship issues, especially with my dad, her sister. I saw my mom struggle. You know, she did what she did, but she struggled. But she still did it. And it's so sad that at the end, ultimately, obesity took her life. Sometimes I feel like, what if I did more? What if I did more other than put her through hell? Other than put her in a situation that she wasn't really capable of handling. But it was thrown to her by me. My mom has taught me tough love. She was my best friend. I used to call her my road dog. And she would tell me, I'm not your dog, man. She was no judging. You know, I have been at the bottom of the pits of the pits. And she always helped me get up. Never turned her back on me. And loved me unconditionally. I feel so bad that I did my mom wrong. I caused her stress that she did not need. I disrespected her and her home. And if I could change it, I would. But you can't cry over spilled milk, right? It already happened. I just feel like I didn't do enough for her. When I was going to the hospital, when she was already dying, by then it was too late to make my wrongs right. It was too late. The damage was done. I beat myself up over it for years, for years. I just think that, oh, man. Losing my mom was a big part of my life. Huge part of my life. They say that it gets easier with time. It doesn't. It doesn't. What it ultimately is, is that you learn to accept it. And that's because you have no other choice. Grieving has a process. It's a process. And if you don't grieve through, like, the process, I mean, you can do it. Nobody's going to tell you how to grieve. But there's, like, a process, different steps. And you'll realize the steps. But you've got to go through the whole process. I'm scared to go through that process because I don't want to forget my mom. I keep her memory alive. I go to the cemetery when I can. I mean, on her birthday, take my kids. I talk to my kids about her. She was awesome, man. She was awesome. She would help anybody. She, like, she was such a positive influence in my life. If I could be anything like her, just an ounce, an ounce, would be awesome. She was a great mother, you know, unfortunately taken too soon. Her death has made me, has woken me up that I'm scared to get those diseases. I try to watch, you know, I'm also following her footsteps, always on a diet. My kids, you know, see me always on something or whatever, some form of diet. But also realize one day I was putting my shoes on to go for a run, and my little one asked me a question that I would have never in a million years somebody would have asked me. He said, he goes, why are you always going for a run when somebody else said it out loud? I was like, what? I do go for a run. Because of her health, I mean, her death, it's opened my eyes, and I try to avoid developing some of those diseases. I know they run in the blood, and I'm probably going to get one. This is the end of my first episode, talking about my mom, my dad, you know, growing up in a small town. That's just the beginning. Thank you, if you're still listening, I really appreciate it. Really, really appreciate it. So now, it is time for the nosy neighbor. I'm your nosy neighbor. My neighbor lives in front of me, right? They have a dog. The dog comes out and takes a shit. Three, four times a day. Two or three times each time. Right by my stairs, and nobody picks it up. There's three motherfuckers that live there, and not one comes outside to pick up the dog's shit. Who's going to pick it up? I'm not. Like, what the fuck? Why do I have to pick it up? It's not my dog. That's why I don't have a dog. Because I don't want to pick up dog shit. If my kid were to go outside and take a shit, one, we'd have a problem because my son went outside and took a shit. Two, I would have to go out there and pick up the shit. Because what? It's my kid's shit. I'm responsible for my kid. Just like the dog owner is responsible for their dog. Pick up your dog's shit. So I had asked one of the girls one time. It was nighttime. And I saw the dog's shit twice. This bitch started tippy-toeing around the shit because she didn't want to step in there. Bitch, I don't want to step in there either. What the fuck? Pick that shit up. Because ain't nobody coming behind there and picking that shit up. So these motherfuckers think that if they just let the dog out through the front that I'm not going to know and see their dog take a shit. They let it out through the front, the fucking dog comes right back by my stairs and takes a shit. They still don't pick it up. So I was like, okay. The vijita caught me on a bad day. Dog was taking two shits by me. The heat, fucking Texas, 185 degrees? With dog shit? On top of dog shit? Yeah, that shit's dumb. I was mad at Apple, Cash App, Chime, all of them. That bitch got the raw end of the deal. But I asked her. I said, who's going to pick up your dog shit? Because it really stinks. She said, my dog didn't take a shit. Bitch, I just saw your dog take a shit. Come pick it up. She goes, my dog didn't take a shit. Got up, fucking pick up the dog and took him inside. And the dog shit's still out there. Oh my God. If you're going to have a dog, fucking pick up your dog shit. Especially if you got neighbors. If you ain't got neighbors, fucking have the dog shit all over. But if you have neighbors that walk, that's not right. My kids went out there. They got todos embarados de caca. I cleaned them up. Los limpie todo, right? Ya no huelia. No, ya no se miraba. Pero todavía se huelia. You could smell that lingering shit. And I was like, fuck no. I was looking everywhere. Pinche McGruff. Fucking trying to smell it. La pinche embaradita that got off of the shoe to the carpet. But it took me like 30 minutes to find that shit. I cannot stand lingering dog shit. So, moral of the story, if you have a dog, pick up your dog shit. If it shit in public. Neighbor, do better. Do better, neighbor. Do better. That's my segment of Nosy Neighbor. Hi, I'm your nosy neighbor. So thank you so much if you're still listening for joining my first episode of I Survived La Chancla. Don't forget you can follow me on Chancla Survivor on Facebook. Drop me a message. Leave me some feedback. Let me know how I did, what you'd like to hear. Yeah, so we'll see you next week. Next week. Next week we're going to get into some cheese mess. Some fucking cheese mess. Drama of my family. So y'all have a wonderful week. Don't choke too many hoes. Se bañan, se tallan, y se toman el agua. Peace.