On Lemons, Nothingness, and Writing

A Story by Abraham Luna

Just a 'little' story I wrote for my creative writing class. I tried experimenting with connections and some use of metaphors...

On Nothing, Lemons, Writing

Nothingness is a thing that happens before and after life that is if you do believe in “God”. We’re supposed to be living in the time of Jesus Christs return or you can say the book of revelations. I was baptized catholic as a baby and I was raised Mormon. There is this push and pull from both religions. The Mormons say you can’t drink coffee, tea, smoke, or drink. The Catholics worship the Virgin Mary but, in the Bible, says something like we can’t worship idols other than Jesus Christ… or was that the book of Mormon? I don’t recall it seems like a waste of time because I’m the type of person to be ‘seeing is believing.’ So, if the devil is real and Catholics perform exorcisms does that make god real? Or is it all an act? Or is God the devil himself? I’m not a Satanist but what if we’re experiments from aliens in outer space I mean try to explain the pyramids around the world from the Azteca’s, Mayans, and Egyptians. I like to say that I embrace that I’m part Azteca or I would like to think but I embrace my heritage I believe that it adds more character to me and that it makes me more unique. I like to stand out. I feel important to myself… knowing your self-worth is important.

In life the saying goes “when life give you lemons make lemonade” I’m a stressed out 19-year-old so I’ll stick to a margarita. It’s okay to relax once in a while to get a break from reality. There are bad effects of stress that could be weight loss, weight gain, and the best one sleep loss. I lose most of my sleep because I’m on twitter with the cell phone screen pressed to my face looking at how life was in the 2000’s. Wow the 2000’s wasn’t that long ago yet I was so young 10 years ago I was 9. I wasn’t caring about anything in the world and here I am now digging through my piggy bank to find enough change for that burger that I want. I guess times don’t change when it comes to finances and food. Unless the minimum wage goes up and now I’m paying 3 more dollars for a burger that was 1 dollar 2 years ago. I do remember those times sitting in church during mass for 3 hours listening to people talk about how God is great and what the great things he did for their family. I didn’t care about what they had to say but I did wonder why they never talked about how he allows bad things to happen like people dying. As a 9-year-old I thought this sometimes. I also didn’t really care because I just wanted enough change for the ice cream the ice cream man would give out on the block that I lived on. It’s funny how they never spoke about how God was going to return and how we’re all going to die. They never prepared us in church for his return they just sugar-coated s**t kind of like what a margarita does it sugar coats the pain until we come back to a rude awakening learning that the problem is still there. What else could I expect from a white washed church they acted like they knew me but in reality, they never will because they’re white. The 9-year-old me didn’t know about white-privilege. I now learn to hate the white privilege because they do this silent racism. Some liberals say they’re with us but when s**t gets down and dirty they’re the first to run away while we’re still here dealing with racism and inequality because of our skin color in 2018.

Writing something everyone does but very few can be good at it. You and I can write and speak through a pen but how many of us can touch a person soul with the pen we have in our hand. Writing usually can help another individual power through something hard because it sympathizes for the reader. Writing is the single thing that prevented me from turning into nothingness. I could have met the Virgin Mary or Jesus Christ but I’m not ready to go to hell for not believing in them. I’m 19 with a pen not a bullet. That single saying “I’m 18 with a bullet”

That quote brings me back to specific memory when I was 14 years old. The person who said that was my sparring partner Anthony Marquez. I was a 14-year-old teenager who believed that I could go pro and make it in the boxing world. I remember the blows we used to exchange during sparring. I would always over power him with the natural power that I possess. I specifically remember into the wars we would get into in the ring. He and I would go back and forth exchanging punches. I got my style from Mike Tyson I’m a forward fighter and Anthony fights more like Tomas Hearns throwing a lot of jabs. Anyways I remember when he was throwing a lot of jabs and it was round 4 and we were both tired. I bobbed and weaved from left to right and he threw a jab again! I caught his jab with my right glove and threw a counter over hand right stunning him and from there I moved my head side to side like Mike and came in with a short-left hook. I didn’t knock him out but I dazed him. After that left hook connected went back into my stance and he came with a barrage of punches. He put me against the ropes and I covered up. The 30 second warning goes off and I can’t get him off me. Keep in mind Anthony is taller than me. Then I remember a defensive move I learned off of Floyd Mayweather. I waited till he threw that hook to the body. Anthony throws a left hook to the right side of my body. That hook hit my right elbow. As soon as that hook touched my arm it was a signal for me to throw that counter uppercut and move out. So, the uppercut connected and the round ended. That was the last time I remember Anthony and I sparring. It’s crazy because you can’t play boxing it’s not a game. All it takes is one good left hook to the jaw and then you become nothingness. The soul could leave the body and your corpse can hit the canvas and that’s how you die. I used to say to myself if I were to die I would want it to happen in the ring because at least I died doing what I loved. Boxing was my obsession for a good full year then it dissipated like the relationship with my mother and father. It just wasn’t there anymore. Well I actually had to stop because I’m a product of a broken home. After the divorce happened when I was 10 the Grim Reaper came. Everything started out good like the start of a good movie for a kid. He was a positive influence in some ways but like how the saying goes the bad will always outweigh the good. One thing that does stand out that he did for me was to put me into boxing. I looked up to Mike Tyson while I was doing boxing because I was short so a lot of my style I got from him because of me being short. The bad was Satan’s wrath emanating from his actions when his fists penetrated the house walls. The hell that he saw in Iraq was brought back to the house. Just as he fought I did fight to I fought in that ring to win. He fought to live. At any time, a projectile could have hit him and then he would have become that nothingness. Then BOOM butterfly effect I probably would have never done boxing. Don’t even get me started on when I saw him relapse for the second time in my father’s home. It was with a lime-A-Rita a cheap a*s canned version of a margarita. He bought a 12 pack of those things and I tried one myself that was my first “margarita” and I was 14 when that happened. Just like how life can be sweet it can be bitter. That margarita tasted like s**t. It was sweet in the begging but more bitter at the end once it sets in. It’s kind of metaphorical for the relationship that I had with Adrian he was sweet to my mother but in the end, he was bitter as f**k and broke our family apart with his bad habits all starting with a margarita. He was a good guy. He had the potential too just as I had or still have the potential to go pro. He left because I thought I called the cops on him because what he did. I called them to protect him from nothingness and then soon after that he was nothingness hours later. That’s when I knew I would never see him again I was 15 when he left. After that I would jump in and out of boxing until I stopped when I got a job then I was 17 with a job living with my actual father whom I didn’t have a strong relationship with but at least he came back but at the expense of leaving everything behind in LA. Now I’m 19 and he might return to LA because life has given him lemons and he can no longer make lemonade because of his age with no education. Now I have to stay here and the Lemons are being given to me and I have to produce blood money or a margarita.