Today we’d like to introduce you to Regina Gomez.
Regina, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Neglect. Violence. Escape. Survival. PTSD. It all started from a very dark matter. I began creating at eight. My parents were both drug addicts and heavily involved in gangs, so I spent a lot of time at Grandma’s house. We couldn’t watch T.V. and being a little girl. My Grandfather didn’t want me out with the boys, so I read every book they had on their shelves. I used my mom’s old high school yearbooks as a guide, and I would create these yearbooks of people and create storylines about these people’s lives. It was my own little world. I would spend hours creating. One day, I stumbled across a Thomas Guide map book.
I began studying different regions of California. My grandparents laughed at me. I became obsessed with these map books. What nobody knew at the time was that I was creating these storylines in these map books. One day my grandmother asked what I got out of studying maps, and I told her “Valerie lives in Yorba Linda and she likes to drive her Jeep to the beach on these streets,” as I traced the street lines on the map book. The next day she brought me a stack of wire notebooks and told me to write down the stories I created in my mind. It grew from there. By 12 years old, I was winning awards for essay writing and taking creative writing workshops at Mt. Sac College, but I was bored.
Academically, I was not being challenged, and at home, I was ignored, so I began acting out. By the time I was 13, I was following my parent’s footsteps, hanging out with a bad crowd. My 8th grade English teacher pulled me aside and told me something that would nag me for years before I ever took writing serious again. She told me with tears in her eyes “What you have is not a talent. It is a gift. Whatever conflict is going on in your little heart, please let it fuel your passion for storytelling.”
Later, that same year, me and two of my friends were kidnapped and held captive in an abandoned apartment building by a group of human traffickers. We were beaten and tied up to a bed. I was forced to watch my best friend get raped by multiple men for a whole night before the police rescued us. After that my whole life flipped upside down. Living with PTSD and being unaware of the effects PTSD was when writing became therapeutic. I’d write poems about what I was feeling and began to create stories about the nightmares I was having on a regular basis. By high school, I was depressed, had lost interest in school.
I was completely involved with drugs and gangs at this point and did not see myself using this “gift” of writing ever again. After losing a few friends to gang violence, my grandmother urged me to finish school. I was given a chance to go to Nevada, finish school and possibly go to college, so I left. I excelled and earned my high school diploma in less than four months. I took the college entry exams and placed high. At the time I was taking trade classes in Culinary Arts. I met a guy, fell in love, made some friends and started to see myself creating life in Nevada. Things were turning around for me.
Then, just like that my life flipped upside down again. I was off campus with some friends at a party one afternoon. I was drugged, and when I woke up, I was tied to a bedpost, and a man was on top of my naked body. I fought the man off me and ran out into the snow in a t-shirt, leaving a trail of blood behind me. When I returned to campus, everybody knew what had happened to me. I felt ashamed as I walked the halls, hearing people whisper behind my back. I didn’t want to be there anymore. I left right after high school graduation, with a degree in Culinary Arts and a high school diploma. I never accepted the college offer.
My relationship became abusive and ended shortly after I left Nevada. I did not feel gifted. I felt cursed. Yet again, I turned to write as therapy. At this point, I realized I had evolved as a writer. I was creating these poems that were very visual. I started seeing these scenes in my head. I had never considered filmmaking. After failing to make it as a Culinary Artist in Los Angeles, I was kind of jaded with the idea of returning to school.
These images and scenes kept playing out in my head, and it was like I was eight again. I became obsessed. I enrolled in film and creative writing courses and began my journey as a storyteller. I remembered Mrs. Wilson and “the gift.” After all that I had experienced, I realized it was no longer a gift, it was now a responsibility. It is my responsibility to create art that people can use as therapy, an escape or to have something to relate to. I want to continue to make art that lets people like me, who have been abused, know that they are not alone.
I also want to make art in hopes of encouraging people who have been abused to tell their stories. I was so depressed I never thought I would ever get out of it. I would have never made it out without a pen and a notebook. I want people who are suffering to know that they can use their pain and turn into something beautiful.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It was not a smooth road at all. Writing was very personal and sacred to me for many years because I used writing as therapy. I had a hard time breaking through from notebook to screenwriting. I knew nothing about filmmaking, I didn’t even know how to use a video camera.
I took a screenwriting class at a theater and was discouraged right away because most of the people in my class had degrees in film and theater. All I had was a battered notebook and vivid images in my head of the stories I wanted to tell. My passion smoothed the road for me. I struggled with my confidence a lot, but as a survivor, I was determined to fight past all that.
We’d love to hear more about what you do.
I am a Creative Writer. I’m known for writing and directing anything from short film to music videos to documentaries to webisodes. In 2018 a few works on mine traveled the film festival circuit.
A webisode I wrote for Season 2 of the web series #HIGHLANDPARK won an award for best script at the Official Latino Short Film Festival.
A music video I wrote and directed was a semi-finalist in the NYC Shorts of All Sorts Directed by Women Film Festival. I’ve got a novel in the works. There is a lot going on. It’s exciting.
I see a moral responsibility in everything I write. I can only write from experience, and nobody else has my perspective, so nobody will ever tell a story the same way I can tell it, That’s what sets me apart from the others.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
Meeting Gary Soto at Mt. Sac College. My English teacher Mrs’ Wilson took me to a lecture he was giving on creative writing, and after the lecture, he signed my copy of “Baseball in April.”
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: gina_rok
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/regina.gomez.75641
Image Credit:
Eric Haynes, Genavi Esquivel, Jude Abadi
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