September 23, 2025 • 51 mins
In this episode, we confront the weight of survivor’s guilt and the haunting question—what does it mean to "end life" at just four years old? We explore the complex emotions tied to trauma, resilience, and the power of rewriting our own stories. No matter where you’ve been, healing and transformation are possible. 🎯 What You'll Discover: How survivor’s guilt shapes identity and mental health The journey of reclaiming your life after early trauma Tools for processing grief, guilt, and self-forgiveness Strategies for turning pain into purpose and resilience 💥 Special Offer: Partnered with Gfuel – Use code RMTS at checkout for 20% off! 👉 Subscribe & Transform: This season is about breaking boundaries, embracing personal growth, and becoming unstoppable. Like, share, and subscribe to join the journey! 💬 Let’s Connect: Have you ever struggled with survivor’s guilt or rewriting your story after trauma? Share your experience in the comments to inspire others. 🔗 Follow for More: Stay motivated and empowered daily @HotloadsZac on X. #MentalHealth #SurvivorsGuilt #HealingJourney #SelfEmpowerment #Resilience #GrowthMindset #TheLonelyRoad #Season2
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Damn you got your drink? I pressed it. No, you can.
Sure you're good because I know you were like, oh shit,
what the hell did I forget? Boys? Welcome back to
the lonely Road. We're here to join you on your
journey to heal and become a better human and honestly
a message. Kje I was like, we're recording today, right,
because this is when we normally record on Tuesdays, And
She's like, yeah, what do we talked about? And I'm like,
(00:24):
this is one that kind of has to happen with
everything that we dealt with yesterday and the topic that
we're about to go into. I want to say one
thing and it's going to come off as kind of cold,
but anybody in this world that has to deal with
this shit or deal with anything, and I deal with
a lot of it myself. Mental health is a fucking illness.
(00:46):
But that mental illness affects millions of people. But those
millions of people that deal with mental illness will then
affect another million people, two million people, three million people,
because every single person has millions of people around me,
and that your mental illness will affect every single day,
not at the same level as you but they're also
dealing with their own shit and everything else. Just because
(01:09):
somebody gives you sympathy, just because somebody understands that you're
going through something, does not fucking mean that we accept
your problem. It doesn't matter what the hell is going
on in your head. It does not change the way
I have to live, the way I have to do things.
I may help you, but that doesn't mean that it
should affect anything past me helping you. Your mental illness
(01:34):
should not affect anything on anybody else's day, anybody else's life,
and it should not have that level of impact when
you turn the corner. So today actually is the day
that my son Joshua was supposed to be born. So
it's kind of a rough day. It's kind of a
(01:55):
weird day to kind of just feel all of this
out and kind of put all this stuff into like
a thought process, especially when I didn't take my meds
this morning. But after dealing with all the trauma, you know,
six months ago, now, you know, I looked at Brion,
I'm like, hey, I want to do this. I want
to help people. I want to change things. I feel
like I've dealt with so much that I kind of
(02:16):
just want to show other people, hey, it's okay, you
can get out of this. But it's also like everybody
has to know the other side of this. It's you
cannot hide behind those letters, that mental illness, that mental anguish,
that mental pain that you're dealing with, whether that's grief
or mental illness, it cannot be the entirety of fucking you.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Yeah, people are multifaceted, and a lot of times they
get pigeonholed into their feelings. And it's interesting when you
you're stuck there, but it's not you. It's not the
total of who you are, for sure.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
But it's like, what when you boil yourself down so
badly to that point it is so hard to just
accept that person. And I know that's kind of an
obtuse way to fucking say it, but at some point,
those people that are so like hell bent on saying
you're this or this person's this, or you're trying to
(03:20):
create that as a part of their identity, you're the
bad person. Because ADHD, autism, depression, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder.
These things do not they're a part of your personality.
They're not every single part of your personality. Or how
(03:40):
you see the world, not every single interaction you have
in the world. If you're suicidal right now, most people
are not going to know. But yet you're gonna wonder
why nobody's reaching out. It's because you actually have to
have the personality and the conversation, the availability to speak
about whatever you feel you need to. But once again, understanding,
(04:04):
and you know, sympathy does not mean acceptance. Just because
you're dealing with something doesn't mean that everybody else around
you has to feel the same thing and accept it.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
And they're not going to. And that's sometimes that's a
hard a hard truth that people have to come to
grips with, is that not everybody feels what you feel,
and so you're pretty much alone when you're feeling the
(04:35):
way you're feeling. But it does not have to affect
your entire life. And I think that's when the sadness
that we were talking last week's sadness is not depression,
it's different. I think that's where the sadness can turn
into depression when people get pigeonholed into that and make
that too much part of their personalities or I mean, sorry,
(04:57):
too much a part of their their put the much
they're worth in.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
That, especially with how big of a buzzword and say
something like depression is or or things like bipolar disorder
are becoming or other personality disorders and things like that.
They're getting such a gas lit fire underneath of them
that's causing them to become such a big fucking thing
in every fucking part of media now, Like back in
(05:22):
the eighties and nineties, was there movies like Split where
you have multiple personality disorder on display in the most
crazy level you possibly could have it, where every single
person's a different voice. Like I know, we both have
dealt with like people with personality disorders. We dealt with
that shit in front of us, like that shit by
itself probably as part of your personality. It's pretty logical
(05:45):
for that to be part of your personality. But the
thing is is, like that doesn't dictate if you're dealing
with something negative and causing other people harm. Just because
I have sympathy for you and your struggle does not
mean I will ever accepts the pain that you want
to cause others. And it's just.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
That's assuming that person wants to cause others pain. Those
always have to be like that.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Yeah, I know, but it seems like a lot of
people just genuinely don't realize that. They say, oh, well,
you you understand what I'm dealing with. Because I understand
doesn't mean that you know you're.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Not going to accept hurt people. Hurt people, and that's
it's true. You know, when I was hurt, that's how
I acted, and I didn't know I was acting that way.
Was it my intention to hurt people? Was it my intention? No,
it wasn't. But when you're in the middle of it,
you don't. You don't see that. It's hard to it's
(06:46):
hard when you're in the middle of that depth of
feeling not to make it your personality for that really hard.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
It's really hard. And that's part of what the diagnosis
of borderline personality disorder is. Unlike a base level it
is when you feel you are being a bandon, you
protect yourself. So the second that you feel off, the
second you feel like something's not fucking right, you put
the fucking walls up and you start kicking in front
of you. Regardless of if that person cares about you
(07:16):
or not, You're gonna fucking kick through them. And it's like,
you don't have to be a punching bag. At some
point it's okay to fucking let go and it. And
I know I'm speaking in fucking metaphors and similes and
everything else, and I can't fucking speak openly, but soon
I will be fucking able to and it will feel fantastic.
(07:38):
But yeah, I want I want everybody to hear this.
Just because you're this or that or a problem, or
you have some mental illness and somebody accepts that you
have it, and they accept and they give you sympathy
and they feel bad for you and they want to
help you, does not mean they're going to accept every
single bit of abuse that you give them. It's not okay. No,
(08:01):
just because you're hurting, just because you can't see what
the fuck's in front of you doesn't mean that person
has to accept.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
No. And that's uh. That's a misconception that a lot
of people that suffer with a mental illness have, is
that a lot of people use that mental illness as
a crutch or an excuse as to why they act
(08:30):
the way they act. And you can't you can't take
that mental illness and say, oh, that's that's just the
way I am, that's my anxiety or that's my because
I have huge high anxiety. And when I am in
(08:52):
high anxiety, my tone of voice goes up, my inflexions
are different, and it sounds like I may be having
an attitude with somebody when really my anxiety is just high.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Yeah, and you get more jumpy, you can calm down,
You're okay for a second, give yourself a second. I
can see it, Yeah, you can see it. And it's
just like I had this beautiful conversation with my oldest
daughter Maddie literally yesterday because we were talking about her
ADHD and her autism. I deal with the same things,
like we're relatively similar in that aspect, and I looked
(09:29):
at her. So I need you to understand that you
know your IEP or five of four. Those things are
not the only answer of how you can get these
things solved and fixed and everything else. It shouldn't be
me having to go to the school and fighting on
your behalf every single time you need two extra minutes
to do something, you being able to stand up and
tell your teacher, hey, this is why I need my
(09:51):
homework at this point. This is why I have this
extra class where I'm available to be in classrooms do
the homework for the week and hand it in. It's
because you know you, I have to actually be able
to be resourceful for yourself and say, hey, this is
my problem. I'm not saying it's a problem, but this
is what I deal with. This is how I can
fix it. Let me fix it. This is what I
(10:14):
need you to do. And I told my I told
Breathe the same thing. I was like, I deal with
emotions and feelings in a very very odd way, and like,
if it's something that is not being said, but I'm
supposed to read it, don't fucking expect me to read it.
Don't act like all these people that just want to
be nonverbal. Yeah, there's quite a few things I can
(10:35):
pick up nonverbally. But if we're having a problem right now,
tell me what is written on your fucking forehead, because
I can't fucking read it. I don't know if you're
fucking angry and you want to kill me, you're anxious
and you want to shit yourself, or if you're so
scared about something that you don't know exactly what the
fuck you're doing in twenty minutes, I don't know the difference.
(10:58):
Tell me what you need me to do that way
can help you and let's get through this.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Yeah, take a step back. You can't expect the other
person to know, well, you have to communicate, just to
show for one minute, take the three minutes that it
might take to explain, Hey, I'm feeling a little legy
right now. I'm not really sure why or I know why. Yeah,
can we talk here.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
It's just it's so surreal to me where it's like
everybody has to accept everything now. And we were just
having a very similar conversation to this beforehand. But like,
this whole acceptance thing isn't how we should handle it.
And I know that's a weird way to fuck a
ninety kids, a nineties kid saying hey, you shouldn't just
blindly accept everything. But I don't think acceptance is what
(11:46):
everybody was fighting for. I think they used acceptance because
it was a great buzzword and looked great on a
T shirt. But acceptance isn't what we wanted. Acceptance is
what you know, there's no outcomes, there's no repercussions for
acceptance when we really needed understanding, because no matter what
(12:11):
mental illness you deal with, if you go shoot up
a liquor store, you're still going to jail at some point.
That accountability. You can't just keep taking it off people
because you accept them.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Yeah, it's the same with using your mental illness as
an excuse. So you have to be accountable for your
own bullshit. You know, you can't use your uh your
in my case, my anxiety as a reason to get lippy.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
I have to pull yourself out of all human interaction
because that's what happens with some people with anxiety too.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, I will. I will barricade myself
and and not if when I'm feeling when I'm feeling,
when I'm feeling like I need to isolate, I isolate. Yeah,
I have to for my sanity. If I don't, I
it's kind of like it's kind of like over stimulation
(13:06):
and over stimulation of my emotions, and I sometimes I
just have to put myself in time out. And that's
how I've learned how to deal with my emotions. And
I am learning how to master my own anxiety and
use it for my benefit rather than to my detriment.
I don't want to argue about whether I'm angry or not.
(13:29):
I'm not angry. I'm just anxious. You know, but I
may have been flucked my voice a different way when
I was saying something because I am that anxious. But
I can't use that as an excuse. It's not their problem.
It's not people around me is problem. It's my problem.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
I've had the weirdest occurrence since my neck and everything else,
my anxiety and my fears and stuff like that. I
now feel it in my nervous system. And that might
sound fucking psychotic.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
I feel my anxiety and my nervous system every single day.
That's how I feel my anxiety.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
But those nerve migraines, I have them once a fucking day.
If I take my anxiety medication, it comes down, it
doesn't happen. But it's like, at what point do I
take my anxiety medication every day all day. It's just like, no,
that's not that's not how it needs to be. At
some point I kind of just gotta understand and accept.
But fuck, man, Like the past couple the past couple
(14:27):
of days have been such a high levels of anxiety
that it's just like everything is kind of just fun.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
It is, But take a deep breath. Just take a
second to take a deep breath, you know, because it's
it's it's going the way it's going for a purpose.
There's an express, explicit purpose as to why this is
happening the way it's happening, and it's okay.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
And I have and it's honestly, all of the shit
that I dealt with and looked at it as a
as a child, looking back at it now, it gave
me the ability to actually handle this shit appropriately. Like
I did shut down, I didn't speak. Everybody was confused
(15:13):
why I just sat in my room and play video games.
It's just like it's kind of what I needed to
be able to do. And like looking at what we
wanted to talk about today with it being like a
survivor's guilt and.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Like we're not talking about a lot of that, aren't we.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
No, Actually, like I'll say it this way, I had
with dealing with the trauma that I've dealt with in
the past from a certain person specifically, And I'm so
happy I can speak more openly than I'm used to
being able to. But I'm trying to be protective as well.
(15:51):
I am so fucking fearful that I'm going to be
dealing with this shit not only with myself but everybody
around me in a very very short period of time.
So to me, not only is it a very one
sided thing, but it's a very multicultural, intertwined thing that
I'm dealing with, even in this moment. Like Joshua, who's
right behind me, I would have given my life for
(16:13):
him to make sure that he was okay, every single
fucking day of my life, right, I would have done
the same thing. And I knew that he wouldn't have
made it when he was born either, but I would
have given my life for either of them. I questioned
it every single day in my life until a couple
of years ago. I wondered why me, And it's like
I don't want them to have to deal with the
(16:34):
same feelings that I did. I know that those questions
would come, and it's just like, it's heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking
when you know suicide is such a person's question and
part of their personality and part of their struggle in life,
and you know that it's coming to light, and it hurts.
It hurts that today is this day. It hurts that
(16:57):
all of this stuff is happening all at the same time,
and it's hard to just look at without feeling guilt
because all of it is like why why am I
the one that has to lead out of this? Why
it sucks?
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Sometimes it's not for you to lead. Sometimes it's just
for you to be. Sometimes you don't have to do anything.
Sometimes you just need to let it be. That was
one of my mom's big sayings. You need to let
it be, and you have to know when to let
it be.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
And it's it's been one of the hardest fucking things
that I could ever do in all of this. It's
so hard to just be quiet, sit down, shut up,
continue on what I need to do, and just you know,
push that entire thought forward. Like when we start to
(17:59):
cover this topic and started covering this kind of thought process,
I wrote down this line the idea, like, so when
I was a kid, obviously with Grandma and Grandpa, religion
was a part of everything. So like there was random
conversations about religion and stuff like that. I was baptized,
Kdie was baptized. But after Grandma passed, it kind of
(18:22):
went down, at least from my memory. That could be wrong.
I could be remembering it slightly off. I don't know,
but like I remember hearing about sin and all of
those problems and stuff like that, and it's just like
there's no idea of trauma in like religion. It's just like, oh,
well that's a sin that's going to hurt you, and
(18:43):
like okay, but yeah, I still have to cut I
still have to heal it. It's weird because religion just
pushes past guilt and pushes it onto you and you
have to accept that guilt regardless of if it's death, pain,
or whatever the hell is happening. It's it's weird trying
(19:05):
to look back at it in such a much healthier mindset.
And that's due to so much fucking work and free
and everything that I've done so far. But like, it
is such a weird place to be in such a
better place than what I was before.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Yeah, I'm sure it feels much better. It's a tough
it's tough. It's a tough it's a tough situation. It's
all very tough to deal with all of it, you know,
(19:42):
from the survivors guilt to the the you know, I
mean religion. That's why most people are turned away from
religion is the guilt. I mean, here we are, I
have to talk about the corruption. I have to talk
about the corruption and everything, but they use in religion.
I'm not talking spirituality. I'm a very spiritual person as
(20:04):
far as religion is concerned. I shy away from religion
when they the guilt was used as a tool to
get me to do what the church wanted me to do.
And I don't like to be told what to do,
so guilting somebody into doing something is definitely not it.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
No, it's not. And it's like, it is so hard
to read and think about the notes that I had
before and try and put these pieces together because goddamn,
my ADHD mind is all over the fucking place today.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
It is. It absolutely how you're having having challenges, That's okay, though,
we'll get through it.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
No, And I want to tell everybody this. I fucking
apologize for when my mind goes on rants and all
this shit, because like, there is so much shit going
on that I can't openly speak about yet, and there
will be a time and a place where I am
perfectly able to talk about everything. We have so many
different things on our list of like we need to
(21:07):
talk about this, and we need to talk about this,
and we need to talk about this, but there are
so much actively actively traumatizing things that are going on
right now that are so in the moment that I
have to talk about. And it's like having this mic
in front of me is my therapy. Like I go
to therapy every single week. It's the same fucking thing.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Me.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Being able to openly speak and help people is the
only thing that fucking helps me. But being able to
openly speak about whatever I'm feeling at the precise moment,
you know, the changes on the day and how it
infiltrates our topic for the week or whatever is kind
of different sometimes. But it's just looking back at notes
from eight months ago, six months ago as hell, because
(21:52):
my mind is such in a different place right now.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Yeah, it's actually evolved that quickly for me as well.
And we started this and it's just kind of opened
up the little pockets of healing within me. And every
time every time we get into a subject, I it
just it it heals more. So I completely understand, you know.
And even with the flow of the podcast today going
(22:21):
in a few different directions, that's okay too, because that
shows how things sometimes have to flow.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Yeah, and it is it's so hard because like pre
she's like, are you okay? I'm like, yeah, I'm trying
to focus, but literally nothing. I was laying in bed,
which is something I never do during the day. I
cannot fucking go to my room at all until like
(22:52):
eleven o'clock at night, twelve o'clock at night, because if
I go up there and lay down, my entire day
is fucked. Like the entire fucking thing is absolutely fucked.
For the rest of the day. I will never accomplish
anything that second half of the day. If I fall
asleep or what even if I sit in there or a.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Nap sucks, bro, Like, yeah, I wake up so fucked up.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
I was like, fuck it, I'm gonna sit in bed
and give myself twenty minutes. It turned into like forty five.
But I was just I was trying to come into
like just some focus about what I wanted to say
because there's so many things that are going on in
my mind and I'm like, I can't say that. I
can't say those words, can't say those words. This is
what I can say, And that's that's the mental health
(23:36):
thing that I got off at the at the first part.
And she's like, are you okay, I'm like, yeah, I
will be okay. And I know I'll be okay because
soon I'll have a microphone in front of my face
and I'll be able to say every single fucking thing
I want to say, because for some reason, this is
this makes it okay. This brings out some sort of
(23:59):
fucking healing in me for some fucking reason. But it's
just like, even having the restraint and the availability that
I have removed from me now, it is still hard
to try and find the words to talk about things openly.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Oh. Absolutely, And you went through a lot yesterday. I
mean not just the act of going where you went,
but the act of sitting where you were sitting and
being able to hear things so clearly. Yeah, that in
itself was probably very, very difficult, and it's something that
(24:37):
you need to decompress from. So whatever way you need
to decompress from it is the way you need to
decompress from it. We need to do a show about
whatever is on your mind, whatever second it's on your mind.
Is It's what we need to do, because otherwise it's
going to turn in to some I mean, you're still
grieving this relationship, you are, You're not stuck in it,
(25:01):
You're not stuck in any cycle. But there is a
part of you that's still grieving the relationship, in the
break of the family, and that's okay. Yeah, that's okay
for you. That's okay to breathe. It's always been okay
to breathe. She understands that you need the space to
be able to heal that, but you you can't. You
(25:26):
can't not acknowledge the grief that the and and what's
going on. What went on this week is kind of yeah,
the divorce happened, but there's this extra piece that needs resolution.
It's that extra piece. It's that kind of final extra piece,
(25:50):
if you will. And it.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
The weird way life works into a crescendo and just works.
And I don't remember if I said this in our
group chatter. I said it in the video chat. I
know I've said it to Bree multiple times. I'm waiting
for anybody just to look at me and tell me
everything that you've worked for. We've been lying to you
(26:15):
this entire time. And you can see it in my
fucking face. You can see that I'm fucking exhausted. You
can see my anxiety is so fucking high. But it's
just like it's it is surreal how okay everything is.
And I am sitting here. You can tell all of
the trauma that I've dealt with. If you know me,
(26:36):
It's like everything right now is on my shoulders and
it doesn't feel okay because none of it's controllable. It
is all fucking controlled chaos right now, and there is
nothing I really can do to kind of rein it in.
There's nothing I can do.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
No, it's not because just yours, there's a whole other
person or two that are, you know, controlling things on
another side of the coin. And and again, like I said,
maybe it's not for you to control. Maybe it's for
you to just be be in your home with your
family and when the rest of your family comes to
(27:14):
be with you on the weekends in the future, whatever
it may be, be there now. It's all you can do.
You can't control an outcome. As much as you think
about and try to calculate outcomes, Zach, you can't. You
can't control an outcome. There are I understand, but there
are curve balls everywhere. And I think that you calculate
(27:39):
and and that's great, you thinking of outcomes and planning
what it could be, so you're not surprised at any outcome.
But one thing that I think that you fail to
do it is just be and stop trying to figure
out the outcome. It's just gonna right now, the deck
(28:02):
is gonna fall where it's gonna fall.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
To me, it is really hard when I get into
the point of overthinking whether it's this situation, whether it's
you know, YouTube algorithms, whether it does not fucking matter
what it is. Until that puzzle is figured out, my
mind doesn't stop. It doesn't it doesn't matter. Like I
(28:28):
could completely give up on figuring it out, and my
mind's still like, how the fuck does this room work better?
It's an everyday, all day thing, and it's just like
there are some things where it'll just catch and it'll
be like, Okay, this is a eight month problem and
(28:48):
it's the only thing that will be on my mind
for eight fucking months, and it just it just hyper
focuses on it and breaks it down to the point
where I know every single outcome of every single converse
that I will have in this entire thing. I'll have
five or six jokes that are broken down that I
will absolutely throw in at the most inappropriate times, and
(29:08):
it'll be hilarious or you know, it could be a
huge fucking problem. It just it's a weird thing. I
remember trying to tie back to the topic and hopefully
I can fucking stay on at this time. I remember
when I was talking to somebody about the death of
Brett and stuff like that and the survivors built and
(29:31):
everything that I felt afterwards, and he was trying to
help me get a Ted Talk. He works with Ted Talk.
He's like, you write this script, you write the availability,
and I will get this signed off on and it'll happen,
and I will use you as a poster boy for
my fucking my agency that I want to use and
everything else and create. I was like, that's fine, you
(29:52):
don't want to charge me ten thousand dollars to help
me do this. That would be fantastic title of my
entire story. Deciding not to roll out the window at
four years old. There's always just a level of like
dark fucking humor in my mind that I just don't
(30:12):
think everybody genuinely gets. But it's it's so surreal to
look back at that situation specifically and try and use
that as a way to figure all this shit out
and how I feel now and try and keep myself
out of the survivor's guilt.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Yeah. Yeah, it's hard to keep yourself out of that.
I mean, for so many years. I think one of
the biggest reasons why I had a problem moving forward
from my mom's death is that I I was I was.
I felt guilty.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
You're breaking shit, that's how guilty you are.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Yeah, I felt guilty still being here and her not
being here, I mean everybody. I mean, she's a much
better person than I am. Why am I not gone
and you should be here?
Speaker 1 (31:01):
That was the world. That was the exact thought I had.
I wrote it here and it's been to think. I
was suicidal at four years old, Absolutely blatantly and very
very straightforward wise suicidal at four years old. I didn't
(31:21):
understand why I was being punished by God, everybody being
taken from me. Yet I'm telling myself, I want to die, Okay,
take me and let them fucking enjoy their life.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Well, at four years old, you had already lost a
brother which was being idolized in your home, and you
just lost your grandmother. So at four years old, of
course you want to die because you want to go
spend time with Nana. That was your that was your compass.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
Yeah, And it's just even with everything that happened with Joshua,
it's really really hard to kind of just face it
and just be like, how is this not punishment? Like
that's why I look positive. It's like, if I don't
look at this positively, if I don't try and help people,
(32:10):
if I don't try and bring something out of this
to help somebody, even if it's just breathe, even if
it's just the kids, I'm punishing everybody around me if
I don't.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
You you know, you can make something whatever you want
it to be. So if you want something to be
a punishment, it's gonna be a punishment to you. If
you want to be a victim, well for something we
were talking about being victims earlier, you're gonna be a
victim and you're gonna find everything that you can to
pull victim status from. If you want to, uh, to
(32:49):
overcome a certain feeling, that's the thing you hyper focus
on that you can have. You can absolutely.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
You can be changed my entire life. Yeah, and you
said it last last episode. You look at me for
at fourteen fifteen years old, when you look at me now,
I'm a completely different person. And it's not just because
I'm thirty one. Well, that's not the difference.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
I'm dazed.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
I'm a completely different person.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
You absolutely are. But are there days like today that
you wanted to go in your room and just you
had to chill, you had to do something to focus,
and you did something that's now out of your norm.
But it's kind of reverted. It kind of reverted back
to you going in your room to figure things out.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
And people can get stuck in a and it can
be in a positive stuck or a negative stuck. But
when you get stuck in a feeling or a punishment,
like people dying, I don't feel like that's a punishment
to you or to me or whoever feels the death.
(34:09):
It's easy to feel that it's a punishment because it hurts.
It hurts, it's painful, it's taxing, and that's what punishments are.
But in the grand scheme of things there, it's the
(34:30):
circle of life. It's seriously just the way that you
need to the way that you see the world and
handle the world, and it's lessons on how to do
that better. And if you catch on to those lessons
earlier or in life. That you caught onto lessons earlier
(34:53):
than life, then I caught on to lessons in my life.
You caught on to lessons earlier in life. And and
although you isolated yourself for a while in your life,
you learned how to deal with these things better and
better and better every time.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
And oddly enough, and this is where it gets weird
for me because with you know, not using it as
an excuse, but being autistic or ADHD or what if
the fuck causes it, it is so much easier to
internalize and just handle it myself than expecting anybody else
to fucking help me with it.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Well, because really, can anybody help resolve the inner workings
of you?
Speaker 1 (35:36):
No, They're an enigma. I don't even know how they work.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
I mean sometimes we can't even do that for ourselves.
How can we expect other people to? And that's again
looking outward for some kind of a validation. I mean,
if you like you have a conversation with Bri, I
am a conversation with Sarah. We we we we meet
minds with that person who can understand the inner workings
of our brain. But we innately have to figure things
(36:04):
out on our own. And that's what this path and
journey of grief is, is us walking alone on the path.
Although I have you, you have me, your mom, we have
the family, you know, I have my grandkids and my wife. Yes,
there's people there, but we all walk our own paths,
(36:26):
and that's lonely. That's solitude that you need. I never
understood that, but that's a solitude that people absolutely need,
and they need to learn how to use it correctly
and not like and not the question.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
I think that that mindset when you start teaching that
to kids. And this could be my mind remembering things
skewed or something I don't necessarily know, and I haven't
even fully thought out this entire idea yet, but it
causes you to have like that first player syndrome where
everybody's like an NPC and everybody is just you know,
(37:03):
around or they're there to help you, and it's like,
your mom's not there to help you. Your mom's there
to live her life. And when you fully figure out
exactly the level that everybody else has their own shit
going on, you feel so out of touch with everything
because everybody lives your own life.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
You're right, You're right. Mothers are kind of a little
bit different. My mother was my life absolutely.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Is there's that parent for you. Is what I'm saying
is it doesn't necessarily have to be mom, doesn't have
to be dad. It could be grandma, it doesn't It
doesn't matter. There's always going to be one or two
people that you know't have it. Twenty five percent of
their life is towards you. But even still that person,
if they give everything to you, they're still not doing them.
(37:51):
So there's going to be part of them that is,
you know, bolstered by something that they do as well.
But learning that is a weird fucking thing.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
Yeah, it's interesting that views. My view is very different
on that because I feel I know for a fact
that mothers are mother's. Mother's whole mindsets are different than
that when mothers have children, that most mothers, not all mothers.
(38:25):
Most mothers, their children are their world. And a lot
of times in the first specifically five years of a
child's life, because they're so dependent on another, mothers lose
their identity. They very much can lose their identity to
that toddler, and it very well can go into and
(38:49):
that's a lot of grief that mothers have in losing
that self identity.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
Well, that's why you have things like post partum depression,
postpartum psychosis. More mothers are diagnosed with mental illness after
they get birth instead of before. There's a lot of
stuff that all of that stuff kind of flies under.
And it's like after dealing with what I dealt with
with with Ava, my little baby, when I had her
(39:18):
by myself for two years and she was abandoned and
left here by my and I was by myself right
after next surgery, you know, I had to build up
a life where I was able to do everything that
kid needed but also have my own form of what
I am, because not only am I regrowing myself, but
I'm also taking care of a human that was just
(39:40):
in the nicku.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
That's so.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
It's hard. But if you don't, if you don't cut
out part of your day or cut out what you
need to do as a human to take care of you,
you're not You're not playing the game.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
You're doing yourself a great disservice because then twenty years
down the road, when your kid goes off to college
or goes across country, or you know, gets a family
and has a baby and moves out, you're left there.
That's where you are. And if you put your whole
(40:16):
entire identity. I'm not saying that, you know, you shouldn't
be the best parent you can be, but if you
put your whole entire identity and don't feed something into
you during those years, you're going to end up very
very lonely, very very isolated. When that child.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
Breaks marriages, it breaks relationships, and it's a kind of
survivor's built that you know, maybe under a different name,
And I completely understand that, but it's still you're surviving
once again without that person that you brought so much
life and energy in. Oh yeah, it's a difference in life.
Oh yeah, I'm different in who you are.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
Positive that when I went away to college alone, my
mom had a very hard time with the separation as
well as when I went away. That's grief. I agree
to be it away from her.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
Yeah absolutely, I remember when I moved out, I had
very very similar feelings.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
Yeah, it's nuts.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
I don't know this, this whole idea of like I
remember hearing it all the time. God will only give
you what you what you can handle. It's like, I
don't think at four years old, I was kind of
meant to handle all that. And I know you're not
supposed to question it, but it's really hard to look
(41:41):
back at your life and be like, yeah, I did
handle it. I understand I'm still alive, but like, I
don't understand why that's the sentence. Why is it, Oh,
God will only give you what you can handle.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
Well, that's you know, that's when you need that comfort
of God. And people have the when they use or
or utilize I should say religion as that that higher compass.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
Or that path redemption of like, oh you were you
were a trauma in human being.
Speaker 2 (42:17):
Shit happens and it's not all traumatic. Yeah, bad shit happens,
but we it happens to us when it happens in life,
so that we can learn how to deal with it.
So the way I see it is that when you
were young and you had to go through the death
(42:39):
of your brother and the idolization of that brother and
not having him around and feeling like you were supposed
to be the one to go or not be wanting
to be here, you having to deal with those feelings,
You then having to deal with, you know, the of
(43:01):
your grandmother who who took care of you for the
first four years of your life. You know, your mom
was your mom worked a full time job, and she
also tried to carve out because she was still very young, Yeah,
(43:25):
and figure out how to be that human. So Grandma
was your nana was was was very You and her
were very, very close, and so you know you then
growing up wanting to go to heaven and at four
years old kind of putting together Now you know that, Hey,
(43:46):
you know I was suicidal at four years old, and
that's not normal, but to in a four year old brain,
it's I I want to go see Nana. I'm gonna go.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
Yeah, I just I don't want to do this anymore. Yeah,
there's nothing more in this life that I want.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
I'm gonna go where you are. Yeah, And it's.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
It's so surreal to kind of look back at It's like, fuck.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
Yeah, but you went through those things for a purpose. Now,
I know everything for a reason. Nobody wants to hear
these cliches. But what did you just go through? Yeah, okay,
all the shit in between in your last relationship of
(44:32):
the same subject, how many of those did you go through?
Speaker 1 (44:36):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (44:40):
The build up of the foundation you losing somebody that
gives you it. It sucks, but it gives you a
layer of all, Right, I know I know how to
navigate some of this, so it happens again, and then
you have another layer of Okay, I've navigated that, you know,
(45:02):
and so you get to that level, and then all
the things that happened before led up to this and
you and only you can judge how you've handled it progressively.
But is there something to be said for having those
things have been as shitty of a foundation as it
(45:26):
is a foundation of knowledge to have be able to
get through this Now?
Speaker 1 (45:33):
I have zero idea how I handled any of this,
and I know I won't truly know all of how
I handled this for you down ten years, and I
completely understand and respect that, But at the same time,
it's like, how do you ever actively in a year
know how you handled something, especially as traumatic or extremely
(45:55):
negative as this is. It's like, it is so are
real to try and put the feelings in the words
of like how fucking awful everything feels, and how I'm
trying to insulate every single person, including the mother, every
(46:20):
single way I possibly can, and I can't. So it
feels always like a failure because I can't fucking take
that pain, even though I know in the grand scheme
of things, taking it from her would be the greatest
thing that could happen because she wouldn't feel it every day.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
That's that's a reconciliation that needs to be done because
you just don't. It's tough to be able to to
have to watch somebody suffer, yeah, and not be able
to do anything about it. You know you can, you
can lead by example. But what I see is somebody
(47:08):
who's taken their trauma and put it out there in raw,
unedited format for people to consume due to one of
the hugest tragedies that have ever happened in his life. Now,
(47:28):
if that's not a testament to how you have dealt
with this situation in this past six months, I don't
know what is, because I don't know of one person
if they wouldn't have had as shitty as it is
the foundation of having met grief before, having met death,
(47:49):
before having looked death square in the eyes multiple times before.
If you wouldn't have done that, there would have been
you could be different because you're very focused, But I
think that you would have had a hell of a
lot harder time processing. There still are days that are horrible.
(48:15):
I get it, it is a horrible situation, but I
feel like the sum total of things that you've been
through have helped you handle this, not only in a
positive way for yourself, but the people living in your
household and your children. You're showing them how not to
(48:36):
stay down and how to still be able to have
your feelings but circumvent that to life.
Speaker 1 (48:46):
And I think the big part, especially since this is
part that I wasn't able to say before, not to
have revenge on my heart, not to have anger on
my mind, not that pettiness on my mind. Not to
be like, you murdered my fucking kid and it's completely
your fault. So I'm going to take everything. Not having
(49:08):
those feelings every single day, being every single thing I feel,
not being every single step of everything is a positive
outlook that I think a lot of people genuinely would
wouldn't be able to feel as they dealt with this,
or if they dealt with something similar. If you put
(49:30):
the exact same situation in other people's lives, I don't
think they wouldn't be able to not feel that because
it's so hard not to.
Speaker 2 (49:43):
Some people have the vengeance and the petty in them,
and some people don't. I don't. I don't think of
those things. I go straight to hurt. So for some
people it is very hard. You know, I'm very close
to some people that it's very hard not to get
petty and not get vengeful. The anger comes from somewhere else,
(50:06):
and it comes from being hurt. Yeah, and that's okay
to be hurt. But what it's not okay to do
is turn around and be vengeful in whatever way, because
that's never gonna land right on you, and it's never
a good look because you have three little ones that
are watching you, yep.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
And I'll have those three little kids being the most happiest, healthiest,
most amazing people today possibly can be. Hopefully there's who
knows how many more that are that will be happy
and healthy as well. And just like my beautiful girlfriend,
soon to be fiance and soon to be wife said today,
(50:46):
we couldn't keep him safe and it sucks, but I
will do everything that I possibly fucking can to make
sure every single fucking person around me is I'm not
gonna what this happened.
Speaker 2 (51:03):
So I came down mhm
Damn you got your drink? I pressed it. No, you can.
Sure you're good because I know you were like, oh shit,
what the hell did I forget? Boys? Welcome back to
the lonely Road. We're here to join you on your
journey to heal and become a better human and honestly
a message. Kje I was like, we're recording today, right,
because this is when we normally record on Tuesdays, And
She's like, yeah, what do we talked about? And I'm like,
(00:24):
this is one that kind of has to happen with
everything that we dealt with yesterday and the topic that
we're about to go into. I want to say one
thing and it's going to come off as kind of cold,
but anybody in this world that has to deal with
this shit or deal with anything, and I deal with
a lot of it myself. Mental health is a fucking illness.
(00:46):
But that mental illness affects millions of people. But those
millions of people that deal with mental illness will then
affect another million people, two million people, three million people,
because every single person has millions of people around me,
and that your mental illness will affect every single day,
not at the same level as you but they're also
dealing with their own shit and everything else. Just because
(01:09):
somebody gives you sympathy, just because somebody understands that you're
going through something, does not fucking mean that we accept
your problem. It doesn't matter what the hell is going
on in your head. It does not change the way
I have to live, the way I have to do things.
I may help you, but that doesn't mean that it
should affect anything past me helping you. Your mental illness
(01:34):
should not affect anything on anybody else's day, anybody else's life,
and it should not have that level of impact when
you turn the corner. So today actually is the day
that my son Joshua was supposed to be born. So
it's kind of a rough day. It's kind of a
(01:55):
weird day to kind of just feel all of this
out and kind of put all this stuff into like
a thought process, especially when I didn't take my meds
this morning. But after dealing with all the trauma, you know,
six months ago, now, you know, I looked at Brion,
I'm like, hey, I want to do this. I want
to help people. I want to change things. I feel
like I've dealt with so much that I kind of
(02:16):
just want to show other people, hey, it's okay, you
can get out of this. But it's also like everybody
has to know the other side of this. It's you
cannot hide behind those letters, that mental illness, that mental anguish,
that mental pain that you're dealing with, whether that's grief
or mental illness, it cannot be the entirety of fucking you.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Yeah, people are multifaceted, and a lot of times they
get pigeonholed into their feelings. And it's interesting when you
you're stuck there, but it's not you. It's not the
total of who you are, for sure.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
But it's like, what when you boil yourself down so
badly to that point it is so hard to just
accept that person. And I know that's kind of an
obtuse way to fucking say it, but at some point,
those people that are so like hell bent on saying
you're this or this person's this, or you're trying to
(03:20):
create that as a part of their identity, you're the
bad person. Because ADHD, autism, depression, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder.
These things do not they're a part of your personality.
They're not every single part of your personality. Or how
(03:40):
you see the world, not every single interaction you have
in the world. If you're suicidal right now, most people
are not going to know. But yet you're gonna wonder
why nobody's reaching out. It's because you actually have to
have the personality and the conversation, the availability to speak
about whatever you feel you need to. But once again, understanding,
(04:04):
and you know, sympathy does not mean acceptance. Just because
you're dealing with something doesn't mean that everybody else around
you has to feel the same thing and accept it.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
And they're not going to. And that's sometimes that's a
hard a hard truth that people have to come to
grips with, is that not everybody feels what you feel,
and so you're pretty much alone when you're feeling the
(04:35):
way you're feeling. But it does not have to affect
your entire life. And I think that's when the sadness
that we were talking last week's sadness is not depression,
it's different. I think that's where the sadness can turn
into depression when people get pigeonholed into that and make
that too much part of their personalities or I mean, sorry,
(04:57):
too much a part of their their put the much
they're worth in.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
That, especially with how big of a buzzword and say
something like depression is or or things like bipolar disorder
are becoming or other personality disorders and things like that.
They're getting such a gas lit fire underneath of them
that's causing them to become such a big fucking thing
in every fucking part of media now, Like back in
(05:22):
the eighties and nineties, was there movies like Split where
you have multiple personality disorder on display in the most
crazy level you possibly could have it, where every single
person's a different voice. Like I know, we both have
dealt with like people with personality disorders. We dealt with
that shit in front of us, like that shit by
itself probably as part of your personality. It's pretty logical
(05:45):
for that to be part of your personality. But the
thing is is, like that doesn't dictate if you're dealing
with something negative and causing other people harm. Just because
I have sympathy for you and your struggle does not
mean I will ever accepts the pain that you want
to cause others. And it's just.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
That's assuming that person wants to cause others pain. Those
always have to be like that.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Yeah, I know, but it seems like a lot of
people just genuinely don't realize that. They say, oh, well,
you you understand what I'm dealing with. Because I understand
doesn't mean that you know you're.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Not going to accept hurt people. Hurt people, and that's
it's true. You know, when I was hurt, that's how
I acted, and I didn't know I was acting that way.
Was it my intention to hurt people? Was it my intention? No,
it wasn't. But when you're in the middle of it,
you don't. You don't see that. It's hard to it's
(06:46):
hard when you're in the middle of that depth of
feeling not to make it your personality for that really hard.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
It's really hard. And that's part of what the diagnosis
of borderline personality disorder is. Unlike a base level it
is when you feel you are being a bandon, you
protect yourself. So the second that you feel off, the
second you feel like something's not fucking right, you put
the fucking walls up and you start kicking in front
of you. Regardless of if that person cares about you
(07:16):
or not, You're gonna fucking kick through them. And it's like,
you don't have to be a punching bag. At some
point it's okay to fucking let go and it. And
I know I'm speaking in fucking metaphors and similes and
everything else, and I can't fucking speak openly, but soon
I will be fucking able to and it will feel fantastic.
(07:38):
But yeah, I want I want everybody to hear this.
Just because you're this or that or a problem, or
you have some mental illness and somebody accepts that you
have it, and they accept and they give you sympathy
and they feel bad for you and they want to
help you, does not mean they're going to accept every
single bit of abuse that you give them. It's not okay. No,
(08:01):
just because you're hurting, just because you can't see what
the fuck's in front of you doesn't mean that person
has to accept.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
No. And that's uh. That's a misconception that a lot
of people that suffer with a mental illness have, is
that a lot of people use that mental illness as
a crutch or an excuse as to why they act
(08:30):
the way they act. And you can't you can't take
that mental illness and say, oh, that's that's just the
way I am, that's my anxiety or that's my because
I have huge high anxiety. And when I am in
(08:52):
high anxiety, my tone of voice goes up, my inflexions
are different, and it sounds like I may be having
an attitude with somebody when really my anxiety is just high.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Yeah, and you get more jumpy, you can calm down,
You're okay for a second, give yourself a second. I
can see it, Yeah, you can see it. And it's
just like I had this beautiful conversation with my oldest
daughter Maddie literally yesterday because we were talking about her
ADHD and her autism. I deal with the same things,
like we're relatively similar in that aspect, and I looked
(09:29):
at her. So I need you to understand that you
know your IEP or five of four. Those things are
not the only answer of how you can get these
things solved and fixed and everything else. It shouldn't be
me having to go to the school and fighting on
your behalf every single time you need two extra minutes
to do something, you being able to stand up and
tell your teacher, hey, this is why I need my
(09:51):
homework at this point. This is why I have this
extra class where I'm available to be in classrooms do
the homework for the week and hand it in. It's
because you know you, I have to actually be able
to be resourceful for yourself and say, hey, this is
my problem. I'm not saying it's a problem, but this
is what I deal with. This is how I can
fix it. Let me fix it. This is what I
(10:14):
need you to do. And I told my I told
Breathe the same thing. I was like, I deal with
emotions and feelings in a very very odd way, and like,
if it's something that is not being said, but I'm
supposed to read it, don't fucking expect me to read it.
Don't act like all these people that just want to
be nonverbal. Yeah, there's quite a few things I can
(10:35):
pick up nonverbally. But if we're having a problem right now,
tell me what is written on your fucking forehead, because
I can't fucking read it. I don't know if you're
fucking angry and you want to kill me, you're anxious
and you want to shit yourself, or if you're so
scared about something that you don't know exactly what the
fuck you're doing in twenty minutes, I don't know the difference.
(10:58):
Tell me what you need me to do that way
can help you and let's get through this.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Yeah, take a step back. You can't expect the other
person to know, well, you have to communicate, just to
show for one minute, take the three minutes that it
might take to explain, Hey, I'm feeling a little legy
right now. I'm not really sure why or I know why. Yeah,
can we talk here.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
It's just it's so surreal to me where it's like
everybody has to accept everything now. And we were just
having a very similar conversation to this beforehand. But like,
this whole acceptance thing isn't how we should handle it.
And I know that's a weird way to fuck a
ninety kids, a nineties kid saying hey, you shouldn't just
blindly accept everything. But I don't think acceptance is what
(11:46):
everybody was fighting for. I think they used acceptance because
it was a great buzzword and looked great on a
T shirt. But acceptance isn't what we wanted. Acceptance is
what you know, there's no outcomes, there's no repercussions for
acceptance when we really needed understanding, because no matter what
(12:11):
mental illness you deal with, if you go shoot up
a liquor store, you're still going to jail at some point.
That accountability. You can't just keep taking it off people
because you accept them.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Yeah, it's the same with using your mental illness as
an excuse. So you have to be accountable for your
own bullshit. You know, you can't use your uh your
in my case, my anxiety as a reason to get lippy.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
I have to pull yourself out of all human interaction
because that's what happens with some people with anxiety too.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, I will. I will barricade myself
and and not if when I'm feeling when I'm feeling,
when I'm feeling like I need to isolate, I isolate. Yeah,
I have to for my sanity. If I don't, I
it's kind of like it's kind of like over stimulation
(13:06):
and over stimulation of my emotions, and I sometimes I
just have to put myself in time out. And that's
how I've learned how to deal with my emotions. And
I am learning how to master my own anxiety and
use it for my benefit rather than to my detriment.
I don't want to argue about whether I'm angry or not.
(13:29):
I'm not angry. I'm just anxious. You know, but I
may have been flucked my voice a different way when
I was saying something because I am that anxious. But
I can't use that as an excuse. It's not their problem.
It's not people around me is problem. It's my problem.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
I've had the weirdest occurrence since my neck and everything else,
my anxiety and my fears and stuff like that. I
now feel it in my nervous system. And that might
sound fucking psychotic.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
I feel my anxiety and my nervous system every single day.
That's how I feel my anxiety.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
But those nerve migraines, I have them once a fucking day.
If I take my anxiety medication, it comes down, it
doesn't happen. But it's like, at what point do I
take my anxiety medication every day all day. It's just like, no,
that's not that's not how it needs to be. At
some point I kind of just gotta understand and accept.
But fuck, man, Like the past couple the past couple
(14:27):
of days have been such a high levels of anxiety
that it's just like everything is kind of just fun.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
It is, But take a deep breath. Just take a
second to take a deep breath, you know, because it's
it's it's going the way it's going for a purpose.
There's an express, explicit purpose as to why this is
happening the way it's happening, and it's okay.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
And I have and it's honestly, all of the shit
that I dealt with and looked at it as a
as a child, looking back at it now, it gave
me the ability to actually handle this shit appropriately. Like
I did shut down, I didn't speak. Everybody was confused
(15:13):
why I just sat in my room and play video games.
It's just like it's kind of what I needed to
be able to do. And like looking at what we
wanted to talk about today with it being like a
survivor's guilt and.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Like we're not talking about a lot of that, aren't we.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
No, Actually, like I'll say it this way, I had
with dealing with the trauma that I've dealt with in
the past from a certain person specifically, And I'm so
happy I can speak more openly than I'm used to
being able to. But I'm trying to be protective as well.
(15:51):
I am so fucking fearful that I'm going to be
dealing with this shit not only with myself but everybody
around me in a very very short period of time.
So to me, not only is it a very one
sided thing, but it's a very multicultural, intertwined thing that
I'm dealing with, even in this moment. Like Joshua, who's
right behind me, I would have given my life for
(16:13):
him to make sure that he was okay, every single
fucking day of my life, right, I would have done
the same thing. And I knew that he wouldn't have
made it when he was born either, but I would
have given my life for either of them. I questioned
it every single day in my life until a couple
of years ago. I wondered why me, And it's like
I don't want them to have to deal with the
(16:34):
same feelings that I did. I know that those questions
would come, and it's just like, it's heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking
when you know suicide is such a person's question and
part of their personality and part of their struggle in life,
and you know that it's coming to light, and it hurts.
It hurts that today is this day. It hurts that
(16:57):
all of this stuff is happening all at the same time,
and it's hard to just look at without feeling guilt
because all of it is like why why am I
the one that has to lead out of this? Why
it sucks?
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Sometimes it's not for you to lead. Sometimes it's just
for you to be. Sometimes you don't have to do anything.
Sometimes you just need to let it be. That was
one of my mom's big sayings. You need to let
it be, and you have to know when to let
it be.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
And it's it's been one of the hardest fucking things
that I could ever do in all of this. It's
so hard to just be quiet, sit down, shut up,
continue on what I need to do, and just you know,
push that entire thought forward. Like when we start to
(17:59):
cover this topic and started covering this kind of thought process,
I wrote down this line the idea, like, so when
I was a kid, obviously with Grandma and Grandpa, religion
was a part of everything. So like there was random
conversations about religion and stuff like that. I was baptized,
Kdie was baptized. But after Grandma passed, it kind of
(18:22):
went down, at least from my memory. That could be wrong.
I could be remembering it slightly off. I don't know,
but like I remember hearing about sin and all of
those problems and stuff like that, and it's just like
there's no idea of trauma in like religion. It's just like, oh,
well that's a sin that's going to hurt you, and
(18:43):
like okay, but yeah, I still have to cut I
still have to heal it. It's weird because religion just
pushes past guilt and pushes it onto you and you
have to accept that guilt regardless of if it's death, pain,
or whatever the hell is happening. It's it's weird trying
(19:05):
to look back at it in such a much healthier mindset.
And that's due to so much fucking work and free
and everything that I've done so far. But like, it
is such a weird place to be in such a
better place than what I was before.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Yeah, I'm sure it feels much better. It's a tough
it's tough. It's a tough it's a tough situation. It's
all very tough to deal with all of it, you know,
(19:42):
from the survivors guilt to the the you know, I
mean religion. That's why most people are turned away from
religion is the guilt. I mean, here we are, I
have to talk about the corruption. I have to talk
about the corruption and everything, but they use in religion.
I'm not talking spirituality. I'm a very spiritual person as
(20:04):
far as religion is concerned. I shy away from religion
when they the guilt was used as a tool to
get me to do what the church wanted me to do.
And I don't like to be told what to do,
so guilting somebody into doing something is definitely not it.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
No, it's not. And it's like, it is so hard
to read and think about the notes that I had
before and try and put these pieces together because goddamn,
my ADHD mind is all over the fucking place today.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
It is. It absolutely how you're having having challenges, That's okay, though,
we'll get through it.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
No, And I want to tell everybody this. I fucking
apologize for when my mind goes on rants and all
this shit, because like, there is so much shit going
on that I can't openly speak about yet, and there
will be a time and a place where I am
perfectly able to talk about everything. We have so many
different things on our list of like we need to
(21:07):
talk about this, and we need to talk about this,
and we need to talk about this, but there are
so much actively actively traumatizing things that are going on
right now that are so in the moment that I
have to talk about. And it's like having this mic
in front of me is my therapy. Like I go
to therapy every single week. It's the same fucking thing.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Me.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Being able to openly speak and help people is the
only thing that fucking helps me. But being able to
openly speak about whatever I'm feeling at the precise moment,
you know, the changes on the day and how it
infiltrates our topic for the week or whatever is kind
of different sometimes. But it's just looking back at notes
from eight months ago, six months ago as hell, because
(21:52):
my mind is such in a different place right now.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Yeah, it's actually evolved that quickly for me as well.
And we started this and it's just kind of opened
up the little pockets of healing within me. And every
time every time we get into a subject, I it
just it it heals more. So I completely understand, you know.
And even with the flow of the podcast today going
(22:21):
in a few different directions, that's okay too, because that
shows how things sometimes have to flow.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Yeah, and it is it's so hard because like pre
she's like, are you okay? I'm like, yeah, I'm trying
to focus, but literally nothing. I was laying in bed,
which is something I never do during the day. I
cannot fucking go to my room at all until like
(22:52):
eleven o'clock at night, twelve o'clock at night, because if
I go up there and lay down, my entire day
is fucked. Like the entire fucking thing is absolutely fucked.
For the rest of the day. I will never accomplish
anything that second half of the day. If I fall
asleep or what even if I sit in there or a.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Nap sucks, bro, Like, yeah, I wake up so fucked up.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
I was like, fuck it, I'm gonna sit in bed
and give myself twenty minutes. It turned into like forty five.
But I was just I was trying to come into
like just some focus about what I wanted to say
because there's so many things that are going on in
my mind and I'm like, I can't say that. I
can't say those words, can't say those words. This is
what I can say, And that's that's the mental health
(23:36):
thing that I got off at the at the first part.
And she's like, are you okay, I'm like, yeah, I
will be okay. And I know I'll be okay because
soon I'll have a microphone in front of my face
and I'll be able to say every single fucking thing
I want to say, because for some reason, this is
this makes it okay. This brings out some sort of
(23:59):
fucking healing in me for some fucking reason. But it's
just like, even having the restraint and the availability that
I have removed from me now, it is still hard
to try and find the words to talk about things openly.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Oh. Absolutely, And you went through a lot yesterday. I
mean not just the act of going where you went,
but the act of sitting where you were sitting and
being able to hear things so clearly. Yeah, that in
itself was probably very, very difficult, and it's something that
(24:37):
you need to decompress from. So whatever way you need
to decompress from it is the way you need to
decompress from it. We need to do a show about
whatever is on your mind, whatever second it's on your mind.
Is It's what we need to do, because otherwise it's
going to turn in to some I mean, you're still
grieving this relationship, you are, You're not stuck in it,
(25:01):
You're not stuck in any cycle. But there is a
part of you that's still grieving the relationship, in the
break of the family, and that's okay. Yeah, that's okay
for you. That's okay to breathe. It's always been okay
to breathe. She understands that you need the space to
be able to heal that, but you you can't. You
(25:26):
can't not acknowledge the grief that the and and what's
going on. What went on this week is kind of yeah,
the divorce happened, but there's this extra piece that needs resolution.
It's that extra piece. It's that kind of final extra piece,
(25:50):
if you will. And it.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
The weird way life works into a crescendo and just works.
And I don't remember if I said this in our
group chatter. I said it in the video chat. I
know I've said it to Bree multiple times. I'm waiting
for anybody just to look at me and tell me
everything that you've worked for. We've been lying to you
(26:15):
this entire time. And you can see it in my
fucking face. You can see that I'm fucking exhausted. You
can see my anxiety is so fucking high. But it's
just like it's it is surreal how okay everything is.
And I am sitting here. You can tell all of
the trauma that I've dealt with. If you know me,
(26:36):
It's like everything right now is on my shoulders and
it doesn't feel okay because none of it's controllable. It
is all fucking controlled chaos right now, and there is
nothing I really can do to kind of rein it in.
There's nothing I can do.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
No, it's not because just yours, there's a whole other
person or two that are, you know, controlling things on
another side of the coin. And and again, like I said,
maybe it's not for you to control. Maybe it's for
you to just be be in your home with your
family and when the rest of your family comes to
(27:14):
be with you on the weekends in the future, whatever
it may be, be there now. It's all you can do.
You can't control an outcome. As much as you think
about and try to calculate outcomes, Zach, you can't. You
can't control an outcome. There are I understand, but there
are curve balls everywhere. And I think that you calculate
(27:39):
and and that's great, you thinking of outcomes and planning
what it could be, so you're not surprised at any outcome.
But one thing that I think that you fail to
do it is just be and stop trying to figure
out the outcome. It's just gonna right now, the deck
(28:02):
is gonna fall where it's gonna fall.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
To me, it is really hard when I get into
the point of overthinking whether it's this situation, whether it's
you know, YouTube algorithms, whether it does not fucking matter
what it is. Until that puzzle is figured out, my
mind doesn't stop. It doesn't it doesn't matter. Like I
(28:28):
could completely give up on figuring it out, and my
mind's still like, how the fuck does this room work better?
It's an everyday, all day thing, and it's just like
there are some things where it'll just catch and it'll
be like, Okay, this is a eight month problem and
(28:48):
it's the only thing that will be on my mind
for eight fucking months, and it just it just hyper
focuses on it and breaks it down to the point
where I know every single outcome of every single converse
that I will have in this entire thing. I'll have
five or six jokes that are broken down that I
will absolutely throw in at the most inappropriate times, and
(29:08):
it'll be hilarious or you know, it could be a
huge fucking problem. It just it's a weird thing. I
remember trying to tie back to the topic and hopefully
I can fucking stay on at this time. I remember
when I was talking to somebody about the death of
Brett and stuff like that and the survivors built and
(29:31):
everything that I felt afterwards, and he was trying to
help me get a Ted Talk. He works with Ted Talk.
He's like, you write this script, you write the availability,
and I will get this signed off on and it'll happen,
and I will use you as a poster boy for
my fucking my agency that I want to use and
everything else and create. I was like, that's fine, you
(29:52):
don't want to charge me ten thousand dollars to help
me do this. That would be fantastic title of my
entire story. Deciding not to roll out the window at
four years old. There's always just a level of like
dark fucking humor in my mind that I just don't
(30:12):
think everybody genuinely gets. But it's it's so surreal to
look back at that situation specifically and try and use
that as a way to figure all this shit out
and how I feel now and try and keep myself
out of the survivor's guilt.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Yeah. Yeah, it's hard to keep yourself out of that.
I mean, for so many years. I think one of
the biggest reasons why I had a problem moving forward
from my mom's death is that I I was I was.
I felt guilty.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
You're breaking shit, that's how guilty you are.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Yeah, I felt guilty still being here and her not
being here, I mean everybody. I mean, she's a much
better person than I am. Why am I not gone
and you should be here?
Speaker 1 (31:01):
That was the world. That was the exact thought I had.
I wrote it here and it's been to think. I
was suicidal at four years old, Absolutely blatantly and very
very straightforward wise suicidal at four years old. I didn't
(31:21):
understand why I was being punished by God, everybody being
taken from me. Yet I'm telling myself, I want to die, Okay,
take me and let them fucking enjoy their life.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Well, at four years old, you had already lost a
brother which was being idolized in your home, and you
just lost your grandmother. So at four years old, of
course you want to die because you want to go
spend time with Nana. That was your that was your compass.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
Yeah, And it's just even with everything that happened with Joshua,
it's really really hard to kind of just face it
and just be like, how is this not punishment? Like
that's why I look positive. It's like, if I don't
look at this positively, if I don't try and help people,
(32:10):
if I don't try and bring something out of this
to help somebody, even if it's just breathe, even if
it's just the kids, I'm punishing everybody around me if
I don't.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
You you know, you can make something whatever you want
it to be. So if you want something to be
a punishment, it's gonna be a punishment to you. If
you want to be a victim, well for something we
were talking about being victims earlier, you're gonna be a
victim and you're gonna find everything that you can to
pull victim status from. If you want to, uh, to
(32:49):
overcome a certain feeling, that's the thing you hyper focus
on that you can have. You can absolutely.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
You can be changed my entire life. Yeah, and you
said it last last episode. You look at me for
at fourteen fifteen years old, when you look at me now,
I'm a completely different person. And it's not just because
I'm thirty one. Well, that's not the difference.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
I'm dazed.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
I'm a completely different person.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
You absolutely are. But are there days like today that
you wanted to go in your room and just you
had to chill, you had to do something to focus,
and you did something that's now out of your norm.
But it's kind of reverted. It kind of reverted back
to you going in your room to figure things out.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
And people can get stuck in a and it can
be in a positive stuck or a negative stuck. But
when you get stuck in a feeling or a punishment,
like people dying, I don't feel like that's a punishment
to you or to me or whoever feels the death.
(34:09):
It's easy to feel that it's a punishment because it hurts.
It hurts, it's painful, it's taxing, and that's what punishments are.
But in the grand scheme of things there, it's the
(34:30):
circle of life. It's seriously just the way that you
need to the way that you see the world and
handle the world, and it's lessons on how to do
that better. And if you catch on to those lessons
earlier or in life. That you caught onto lessons earlier
(34:53):
than life, then I caught on to lessons in my life.
You caught on to lessons earlier in life. And and
although you isolated yourself for a while in your life,
you learned how to deal with these things better and
better and better every time.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
And oddly enough, and this is where it gets weird
for me because with you know, not using it as
an excuse, but being autistic or ADHD or what if
the fuck causes it, it is so much easier to
internalize and just handle it myself than expecting anybody else
to fucking help me with it.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Well, because really, can anybody help resolve the inner workings
of you?
Speaker 1 (35:36):
No, They're an enigma. I don't even know how they work.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
I mean sometimes we can't even do that for ourselves.
How can we expect other people to? And that's again
looking outward for some kind of a validation. I mean,
if you like you have a conversation with Bri, I
am a conversation with Sarah. We we we we meet
minds with that person who can understand the inner workings
of our brain. But we innately have to figure things
(36:04):
out on our own. And that's what this path and
journey of grief is, is us walking alone on the path.
Although I have you, you have me, your mom, we have
the family, you know, I have my grandkids and my wife. Yes,
there's people there, but we all walk our own paths,
(36:26):
and that's lonely. That's solitude that you need. I never
understood that, but that's a solitude that people absolutely need,
and they need to learn how to use it correctly
and not like and not the question.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
I think that that mindset when you start teaching that
to kids. And this could be my mind remembering things
skewed or something I don't necessarily know, and I haven't
even fully thought out this entire idea yet, but it
causes you to have like that first player syndrome where
everybody's like an NPC and everybody is just you know,
(37:03):
around or they're there to help you, and it's like,
your mom's not there to help you. Your mom's there
to live her life. And when you fully figure out
exactly the level that everybody else has their own shit
going on, you feel so out of touch with everything
because everybody lives your own life.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
You're right, You're right. Mothers are kind of a little
bit different. My mother was my life absolutely.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Is there's that parent for you. Is what I'm saying
is it doesn't necessarily have to be mom, doesn't have
to be dad. It could be grandma, it doesn't It
doesn't matter. There's always going to be one or two
people that you know't have it. Twenty five percent of
their life is towards you. But even still that person,
if they give everything to you, they're still not doing them.
(37:51):
So there's going to be part of them that is,
you know, bolstered by something that they do as well.
But learning that is a weird fucking thing.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
Yeah, it's interesting that views. My view is very different
on that because I feel I know for a fact
that mothers are mother's. Mother's whole mindsets are different than
that when mothers have children, that most mothers, not all mothers.
(38:25):
Most mothers, their children are their world. And a lot
of times in the first specifically five years of a
child's life, because they're so dependent on another, mothers lose
their identity. They very much can lose their identity to
that toddler, and it very well can go into and
(38:49):
that's a lot of grief that mothers have in losing
that self identity.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
Well, that's why you have things like post partum depression,
postpartum psychosis. More mothers are diagnosed with mental illness after
they get birth instead of before. There's a lot of
stuff that all of that stuff kind of flies under.
And it's like after dealing with what I dealt with
with with Ava, my little baby, when I had her
(39:18):
by myself for two years and she was abandoned and
left here by my and I was by myself right
after next surgery, you know, I had to build up
a life where I was able to do everything that
kid needed but also have my own form of what
I am, because not only am I regrowing myself, but
I'm also taking care of a human that was just
(39:40):
in the nicku.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
That's so.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
It's hard. But if you don't, if you don't cut
out part of your day or cut out what you
need to do as a human to take care of you,
you're not You're not playing the game.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
You're doing yourself a great disservice because then twenty years
down the road, when your kid goes off to college
or goes across country, or you know, gets a family
and has a baby and moves out, you're left there.
That's where you are. And if you put your whole
(40:16):
entire identity. I'm not saying that, you know, you shouldn't
be the best parent you can be, but if you
put your whole entire identity and don't feed something into
you during those years, you're going to end up very
very lonely, very very isolated. When that child.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
Breaks marriages, it breaks relationships, and it's a kind of
survivor's built that you know, maybe under a different name,
And I completely understand that, but it's still you're surviving
once again without that person that you brought so much
life and energy in. Oh yeah, it's a difference in life.
Oh yeah, I'm different in who you are.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
Positive that when I went away to college alone, my
mom had a very hard time with the separation as
well as when I went away. That's grief. I agree
to be it away from her.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
Yeah absolutely, I remember when I moved out, I had
very very similar feelings.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
Yeah, it's nuts.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
I don't know this, this whole idea of like I
remember hearing it all the time. God will only give
you what you what you can handle. It's like, I
don't think at four years old, I was kind of
meant to handle all that. And I know you're not
supposed to question it, but it's really hard to look
(41:41):
back at your life and be like, yeah, I did
handle it. I understand I'm still alive, but like, I
don't understand why that's the sentence. Why is it, Oh,
God will only give you what you can handle.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
Well, that's you know, that's when you need that comfort
of God. And people have the when they use or
or utilize I should say religion as that that higher compass.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
Or that path redemption of like, oh you were you
were a trauma in human being.
Speaker 2 (42:17):
Shit happens and it's not all traumatic. Yeah, bad shit happens,
but we it happens to us when it happens in life,
so that we can learn how to deal with it.
So the way I see it is that when you
were young and you had to go through the death
(42:39):
of your brother and the idolization of that brother and
not having him around and feeling like you were supposed
to be the one to go or not be wanting
to be here, you having to deal with those feelings,
You then having to deal with, you know, the of
(43:01):
your grandmother who who took care of you for the
first four years of your life. You know, your mom
was your mom worked a full time job, and she
also tried to carve out because she was still very young, Yeah,
(43:25):
and figure out how to be that human. So Grandma
was your nana was was was very You and her
were very, very close, and so you know you then
growing up wanting to go to heaven and at four
years old kind of putting together Now you know that, Hey,
(43:46):
you know I was suicidal at four years old, and
that's not normal, but to in a four year old brain,
it's I I want to go see Nana. I'm gonna go.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
Yeah, I just I don't want to do this anymore. Yeah,
there's nothing more in this life that I want.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
I'm gonna go where you are. Yeah, And it's.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
It's so surreal to kind of look back at It's like, fuck.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
Yeah, but you went through those things for a purpose. Now,
I know everything for a reason. Nobody wants to hear
these cliches. But what did you just go through? Yeah, okay,
all the shit in between in your last relationship of
(44:32):
the same subject, how many of those did you go through?
Speaker 1 (44:36):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (44:40):
The build up of the foundation you losing somebody that
gives you it. It sucks, but it gives you a
layer of all, Right, I know I know how to
navigate some of this, so it happens again, and then
you have another layer of Okay, I've navigated that, you know,
(45:02):
and so you get to that level, and then all
the things that happened before led up to this and
you and only you can judge how you've handled it progressively.
But is there something to be said for having those
things have been as shitty of a foundation as it
(45:26):
is a foundation of knowledge to have be able to
get through this Now?
Speaker 1 (45:33):
I have zero idea how I handled any of this,
and I know I won't truly know all of how
I handled this for you down ten years, and I
completely understand and respect that, But at the same time,
it's like, how do you ever actively in a year
know how you handled something, especially as traumatic or extremely
(45:55):
negative as this is. It's like, it is so are
real to try and put the feelings in the words
of like how fucking awful everything feels, and how I'm
trying to insulate every single person, including the mother, every
(46:20):
single way I possibly can, and I can't. So it
feels always like a failure because I can't fucking take
that pain, even though I know in the grand scheme
of things, taking it from her would be the greatest
thing that could happen because she wouldn't feel it every day.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
That's that's a reconciliation that needs to be done because
you just don't. It's tough to be able to to
have to watch somebody suffer, yeah, and not be able
to do anything about it. You know you can, you
can lead by example. But what I see is somebody
(47:08):
who's taken their trauma and put it out there in raw,
unedited format for people to consume due to one of
the hugest tragedies that have ever happened in his life. Now,
(47:28):
if that's not a testament to how you have dealt
with this situation in this past six months, I don't
know what is, because I don't know of one person
if they wouldn't have had as shitty as it is
the foundation of having met grief before, having met death,
(47:49):
before having looked death square in the eyes multiple times before.
If you wouldn't have done that, there would have been
you could be different because you're very focused, But I
think that you would have had a hell of a
lot harder time processing. There still are days that are horrible.
(48:15):
I get it, it is a horrible situation, but I
feel like the sum total of things that you've been
through have helped you handle this, not only in a
positive way for yourself, but the people living in your
household and your children. You're showing them how not to
(48:36):
stay down and how to still be able to have
your feelings but circumvent that to life.
Speaker 1 (48:46):
And I think the big part, especially since this is
part that I wasn't able to say before, not to
have revenge on my heart, not to have anger on
my mind, not that pettiness on my mind. Not to
be like, you murdered my fucking kid and it's completely
your fault. So I'm going to take everything. Not having
(49:08):
those feelings every single day, being every single thing I feel,
not being every single step of everything is a positive
outlook that I think a lot of people genuinely would
wouldn't be able to feel as they dealt with this,
or if they dealt with something similar. If you put
(49:30):
the exact same situation in other people's lives, I don't
think they wouldn't be able to not feel that because
it's so hard not to.
Speaker 2 (49:43):
Some people have the vengeance and the petty in them,
and some people don't. I don't. I don't think of
those things. I go straight to hurt. So for some
people it is very hard. You know, I'm very close
to some people that it's very hard not to get
petty and not get vengeful. The anger comes from somewhere else,
(50:06):
and it comes from being hurt. Yeah, and that's okay
to be hurt. But what it's not okay to do
is turn around and be vengeful in whatever way, because
that's never gonna land right on you, and it's never
a good look because you have three little ones that
are watching you, yep.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
And I'll have those three little kids being the most happiest, healthiest,
most amazing people today possibly can be. Hopefully there's who
knows how many more that are that will be happy
and healthy as well. And just like my beautiful girlfriend,
soon to be fiance and soon to be wife said today,
(50:46):
we couldn't keep him safe and it sucks, but I
will do everything that I possibly fucking can to make
sure every single fucking person around me is I'm not
gonna what this happened.
Speaker 2 (51:03):
So I came down mhm
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