#heartsofstrangers

[heartsofstrangers]

What has been one of the most challenging things you’ve experienced or are currently experiencing?

“One of the most challenging things that I’ve ever experienced . . . As a child I remember being happy, joyous, and free, at least those are the videos I’ve seen of myself, but I don’t remember much about that time. I do remember being pretty outgoing, sociable, and looking to connect with people. When I was around ten or eleven years old, my father was taken out of our house in a straitjacket due to depression and he wasn’t eating or taking care of himself. My dad was gone for most of my life as a young child and then my mom was always working, and I was kind of left to my own devices and trying to find my place in the world. I was always kind of seeking for approval, love, or validation from outside.

“When I was about ten or eleven, I got involved with this gang of kids called Mixed Mafia; it stood for mixed races. They were in their late teens and early twenties, rebel punks, and all these different types of people, and I felt like I had found my tribe. They were accepting and gave you drugs and alcohol. It seemed like a good place to be. My friend, Rob, had invited me to gang parties and I thought it was exciting. I felt cool that I was hanging out with these older kids. They were aware of me and that wasn’t something that I had at my house because my mom was always working and my dad was in the Institute of Living at that time. I continued to take part in this gang. At the beginning, it was just a party kind of thing. I think I was going into sixth or seventh grade around the time, and they were accepting. Slowly, but surely, they told me that they needed to make me into a man and, after the fun parties, me and two of my close friends, my buddies Jim and Jeff, they would tell us that we needed to receive beatings and they would make us into men. I stuck around for them and they would have us do various things like they would put us in a line and they’d have the older girls kick us in the chest or something like that, and they would say that we couldn’t fight back, we had to take it. I remember having some attraction to the girls and it made me feel really, I don’t know. It made me feel like shit, but I felt that I was getting some sort of attention.

“My good friend, Jeff, at the time, he was supposed to have his initiation into what was called One Mafia, which was the younger kids of the Mixed Mafia. First, they burned a WM on his arm with a hanger and then he was supposed to fight a kid. If he won, he would gain the respect of the older individuals. This was my best childhood friend, and he lost the fight. I remember sitting there looking at him, and they took an iron, heated it up, and burned his WM off. I remember seeing the skin bubble. He was about twelve at the time, and I remember seeing him crying and looking at me. Years before it was soccer, playing videogames, and sleepovers. I remember him looking at me, crying, and I didn’t show any emotion and I looked away. I thought I needed to be tough and wanted to be cool in front of the older kids. Jeff faded away from the gang and so did my buddy, Jim. I think I had won a fight against a kid and I was told that I could keep in, but I never wanted to fight. I was always so scared, so scared.

“Slowly but surely, the gang expanded and they would have me fight my closer friends; they told us that we had to knock each other out. I couldn’t fight. I was scared. I remember I was terrified when I was at that person’s house, and these were all friends and older brothers. Most of my friends started to fight back, but I didn’t, and the beatings got worse and worse for me. When they fought back, they got some sort of respect, but it just wasn’t in me. I was scared. At one point, I thought it was the only love I ever knew, this attention that they were giving me and that’s why I kept on going back. Sometimes they would have parties and make me sit in the corner and put piles of trash on me and tell me that I couldn’t leave from this place. I would sit there and they would laugh at me. At this point, my outlook on life started to drastically change. At that time, my mom had just got diagnosed with cancer and my dad was getting out of the Institute of Living. He had had electroshock therapy there and he wasn’t really talking much; he kind of just paced in the house. Our house was kind of a really dark place to be at. So, I didn’t really have anywhere to go. It was either go to this place where you might get a couple of minutes of fun and then the abuse or sit in my house where no one even knew you were there, while my mom was starting her path of surgeries.

“I remember it was about a year or two into the gang, and I was still their main thing to beat up on. I had had all these supposed initiations to make me into a man. I remember most of my childhood friends were gone and I was part of this thing, and they would just beat me up. I remember going over to my close friend Bill’s house, and his older brothers were the main gang members. I remember being so terrified when they came back home. We went up into the attic, and they said, ‘Mike, this is your final initiation. Either we give you two hours of beating or we shave your head.’ I had long hair, and they were going to shave it with a Bic razor, and I didn’t want that to happen. So, about an hour after the beatings happened, I couldn’t take it anymore, I walked outside and tried to run, and one of the kids tackled me down, pulled me into a chair, and duct-taped my arms to the chair. All these kids were walking around, drinking beers, older kids and older girls, my good friend Bill and his older brothers, they took out the Bic razor and when you have long hair, you can’t shave it with a Bic razor, they proceeded to use the Bic razor to shave my head and it gouged my head. I remember tears coming down my face. I remember looking at Bill in the eyes, just like I had looked Jeff in the eyes, like ‘please, please save me’—screaming without words because I couldn’t say a single thing and I was just crying. They had made up this name, Mikaloo, and they said ‘Mikaloo, cuts all over your head’ and they continued to shave my head and walk around and laugh at me. I think I was only thirteen at the time. They walked around and laughed at me, and I just sat there. I remember holding on to Bill’s gaze and I could see his older brother looking at him in the eyes, like that peer pressure that I had felt with Jeff. I wanted Bill to do something so bad, and I could tell that some of the people in the group thought they had had gone too far. As blood and tears are dripping down my forehead, they were gouging my head pretty deep and they were spraying hair spray into the wounds to make the bleeding stop. I remember looking at Bill, still crying, crying pretty hysterically, I don’t think there was much sound coming out. I remember Bill looking away and walking inside. I knew the pressure he felt. I knew it. I had been there. Instantly, in that moment, I remember just shutting off and there wasn’t a tear that fell out of my eye anymore. It felt like Mike was gone. Mike was dead. I basically had that cold, emotionless look in my face, and all joy, curiosity, and everything was taken from me. I remember just sitting there and I had some patches of hair, dried blood, and they continued to laugh at me, and I just sat and there was nothing left. I didn’t feel a thing and didn’t think about anything. It was like I had left Mike. Mike was gone.

“I don’t know how I got home, but when I got home, my mom had just gotten out of a chemo session and she was sick in bed and I don’t know what my dad was doing; he had just gotten a job at Staples to keep the roof over our heads. I remember sitting next to my mom, as she was nauseous in bed. I think it was the last thread of me, holding on to Mike, and I just sat there and I needed her to recognize that clearly I was changed. I had dried blood all over my head and patches of hair. I don’t know what happened, but she wasn’t able to give me any sense of security. She was—I don’t know—a lot had happened with my father. I don’t know how my dad didn’t know. Clearly, I was much different. Obviously, now I had a shaved head and was pretty unresponsive to anything, but my father was pretty unresponsive to anything, as well, and there’s a long story behind my dad. I think when my mom looked away, she thought we couldn’t burden the family like this, my dad was bringing in money, and she didn’t want to send him back to the hospital. I don’t know what the thought process was. I think she was overwhelmed. I don’t know what it was. There was really no love given and I was just shoved off to my room.

“After that, it was pretty much I didn’t care about anything anymore. I had a lot of external anger and the couple of words that I would say were ‘I don’t give a fuck.’ At one point, I thought I was going to kill those kids who had done it, but I took it all on me, it was all on me. I just shut down. From the moment that Bill’s eyes left or the moment when that boy hit my head, I just remember losing everything that was Mike; maybe I didn’t even really know Mike. I had always been seeking outside. I just remember losing that joy. That toxic masculinity—to be a man. Those three words, ‘to be a man’—what does that even mean? I think the definition I had formed has been the most debilitating, shameful experience of my entire life.

“I know that for the next ten years or so, I started to bully kids, but I stopped doing that. I didn’t want that to be a part of my life and I tried to uplift, but there was nothing inside. There were no joy or feelings inside, there was complete emotionless. Any way to turn off the depression and the darkness that was all consuming, so that’s what I did—I drank and I drank and I drank. That worked for a while but, for the most part, it was bouts of depression and any way to escape because I couldn’t escape when they had me all taped down.

“Eventually, I had made some forgiveness to those people. I called up two of them when I was about twenty-three, and one of the guys said that he had nightmares about what he had done and the other individual, the first thing he said when he picked up the phone was, ‘Mikaloo, you little bitch,’ and that was ten years later. At that point, I had a lot of different struggles. I ended up going to jail for selling some weed and different things. That was my first breath of air, a structured environment. It made me feel like a baby. After I got out, I finally found heroin, and that was finally the answer to all my problems. I could shut off everything and I felt okay, and there was no depression attached to it; you just had to do it all day.

“That kid, who had originally invited me to the gang, Rob, ended up dying of an overdose. I would attempt to get sober here and there. The other kid, Bill, who was one of my best friends, called me and said he was so sorry for not doing anything, and this was about fifteen years later. He eventually ended up hanging himself; that was this past Christmas. A lot of that stuff was pretty crazy, but the heroin was definitely the end-all be-all for me. I remember just over two years ago, February 12, 2017, he had called me, and it was this recurring theme of emotionless disconnection and, obviously, it was drug-fueled this time. He had asked me to use some heroin. He got into my car and he overdosed in the car around 2 pm on a Thursday in February, it was kind of a gray day. I didn’t feel anything because of the heroin, and I was looking for a place to dump his body. He was blue, he wasn’t breathing, and ten minutes had passed. I remember feeling so cold. I hadn’t felt anything in years. Something pulled on me, I don’t know what it was, a spirit source, God, angels, whatever you want to call it, told me to go to an urgent care center on Route 44 in Avon. I pulled in, they Narcaned him twice, they said he was dead, they put a tube down his throat, and they finally got his heart beating. He had survived that and the next day, I decided to get clean. That was part of the journey and the many stories.

“These past two years have been me trying to uncover all that. I try to talk to myself as if my parents had been there. I know they did the best they could. During that timeframe, my mom had died, right before I went to jail, my dad lost the house, and there’s been so many different things. These past two years have been Mike again, the story of finding Mike or uncovering Mike. It’s been a painful process, some of the things that I haven’t wanted to look at. 

“This past winter my father had a mental breakdown. He lives in North Carolina where he rented a room. He would call me every day, telling me that he wanted to die. My father is a good soul and wants to make people happy, and he hasn’t been happy himself. He’ll give the shirt off his back to someone. I remember being down in North Carolina with my sister, who lives out west. Since my mom died, we hadn’t seen each other. When we spoke, we decided that we needed to go see our dad. We went out there and he said, ‘Maybe I’ll see you and maybe I won’t.’ He was basically locked in his room, not eating. And then I got the call that Bill had taken his own life, and still I didn’t feel much of anything. I think there was a protective haze over me or cognitive dissonance. I just couldn’t feel.

“I went through a really hard process while in North Carolina. My dad was not doing well. He was living in an unsafe environment. We had to do a lot of crazy stuff, and eventually got him into assisted living, using his disability to help pay for it. He still called me every day, and just wanted to die. I remember going down to North Carolina again about a month later and, as I walked into the assisted living place, my dad was barely eating an ice cube. He looked at me so scared. I knew those eyes. I’ve seen those eyes. Those are the eyes that Jeff gave to me when he was receiving the beatings and the eyes that I gave to Bill during the head shaving. I knew those eyes—so scared. The most scared you could ever see anybody in your life. I saw my dad like that, and I know my dad went through a lot when he was a young kid. I think he lost himself along the way, too. I hugged him and he had lost a lot of weight, and weighed about ninety pounds. I felt like I wanted to cry so much. I never got that love from my dad and I knew that I needed to give it to him, but I didn’t have much in me. I felt like so much wanted to come out, just hugging him while he was so scared. He was so ashamed, ashamed of how he looked, where he was at in life, and one little tear came out, and that was it. We talked and he didn’t say much. He just looked at me really, really scared.

“My mornings were waking up to him, calling and saying those things. I couldn’t sleep, and I know he couldn’t sleep. I ended up writing a letter to Bill. I was writing it as if everyone was going to read it. I like to write, and I thought about writing it from an audience perspective, but I thought fuck that, I’m writing it to Bill, and I just wrote to Bill. I knew he was right there with me, just like Rob because I was close to Rob too. I knew he was right there with me. I just talked to him. I typed and just talked to Bill. He said that he would watch over my dad. I talked to him and I knew that he was healed from all the shame he held in, all that abuse, and that frickin ‘be a man, be tough.’ He grew up with that. We all did. I cried. I really cried. That was this winter and I was just getting back to feeling again. It felt good to let him know I was still there and forgave him. I had forgiven him the minute it happened, but I don’t think he ever knew that. I knew that pressure, I know that pressure.

“There are still other challenges now that I’m facing, that I’m uncovering. I have a little bit of light and starting to feel that people are good and caring. I know that those people who did that to me, I had this epiphany when I was twenty-two or twenty-three years old, that whatever you exert outwards, you exert inwards. So, whatever they had done to me was really their own pain and fears, and I realized they were suffering so much more than I was, to be able to do that to someone else. I had seen that and I tried to send them forgiveness and caring. I realized how much pain they must have been going through and how that manifested and whatever underlying fears and shame manifested in abuse to others. It’s been slow uncovering and sometimes, when I get these glimpses of who Mike is now, the direction of my life, or I find myself trying to figure anyway to not, there’s that most debilitating thing—how I defined being a man. As I uncover myself, I still find that shame and ways to seek outside a lot. I’ve also had the conversations of everything with people who have been loving and caring, and I’ve been able to find people that see me as me, but sometimes I’m still not there yet. There are voices of who you’re supposed to be that still ring in my head and I became my own abuser and victim for so long, for so long.”

Why do you think that is?

“I guess because that was the only love I ever knew, that type of abuse, and that’s what I gave myself. Even when I got into sobriety, I felt like was doing enough or I wasn’t working hard enough. Then I got into the gym and I was doing extensive workouts of beating myself up, saying ‘better, better, better, more, more more,’ then I stopped doing that. I guess, for the most part, it’s what I’ve always known. I’m still ashamed of myself and to some degree that’s changed. I’ve done a lot of telling myself that I love myself. When I get deeper, that root of shame is still there. I believe it’s changing. I have faith. I do. I really do. It’s funny, after I wrote that letter to Bill, my father ended up falling in the bathroom and cracking his back, and he called me and, after cracking his back, he said, ‘Sometimes, Mike, we forget the good things in life.’ Magically, out of nowhere, he started talking regularly and eating food again. Nothing external had changed. It was definitely like some miracle stuff. I don’t know, maybe he was tapped into something greater. It’s trying not to see with the eyes of everyone else because that’s all I looked to define me for so long.”

Yeah, it sounds like your value, sense of worth, and identity were tethered to both your parents, who you felt unseen, unheard, and unvalued by because of their own predicaments and inability to give you their presence, and also the way that the gang, in the beginning, felt like a sense of belonging, community, and brotherhood, maybe the family you didn’t have, became a degrading source of abuse for you that made you feel ‘less than,’ and it sounds like you internalized that for years. You recognize that the roots of shame are deep. What are some of the identifiers of shame? What is it that you’re ashamed of?

“I don’t know. If I was to go back before the gang stuff, I don’t really have any memories before ten or eleven years old—I always wondered about that. Like I said earlier, I remember seeing videos of when I was younger. The videos pretty much stopped when I was about four years old, and I don’t really have any memories until about age ten. I had done some shamanic journeying work with this guy and he was doing some reiki on me towards the end, and he put his hands on me and I remembered a feeling or something that had happened between ages four and ten. I can’t put my finger on the person, but I know that it was some older male figure that made me believe that to please him in some sort of sexual way was the right thing to do. I just remember feeling his hands on me and feeling a lot of anger, an immense amount of anger. Anger is not a word that I tend to identify with that much and usually the lack thereof leaves passion and different things when directed right. I haven’t had that passion for as long as I can remember, maybe little tidbits here and there.

“After that experience with the sexual abuse, I became hypersexualized and oversexualized at a young age. Being told that being pleasing in that manner, at least that’s what I internalized, was the way to acceptance or love or whatever, and also being really, really confused because that was part of me that I didn’t even know at such a young age. So, everything with regard to sex became very convoluted to me. I guess that’s the deeper part where the shame resides at now. Anyway, at such a young age to receive, feel, or give any sort of sexual pleasure or anything in all relationships caused me a lot of shame.”

Do you think your parents had any idea that you had experienced that?

“I don’t know. There wasn’t much intimacy in my family. I know my father had a very rough time growing up and he never understood the word ‘happiness.’ He said that he never understood what that meant. When I was around twelve or thirteen years old, I found out that my father was attracted to men and it really messed me up because I didn’t know if he loved my mother. I didn’t know a lot of things and I don’t think I ever really knew myself because of the abuse earlier. All sexual attraction was just everywhere, to all people. I don’t think my father knew and he did his best to stay away. I know that the abuse didn’t come from him, but I know that, due to his own shame, he grew up in the Bible Belt of Oklahoma, the youngest of five brothers. He was a very sensitive kid growing up. He had polio as a young kid. A lot of different things happened to him. He told me that his first friend was my mom, at thirty-eight years old. He said that he didn’t remember having a friend before that. My father’s story is kind of intertwined in there. I think he was afraid and he kept his distance from me.

“I don’t know if they knew or not. I don’t think at the time or how it was presented to me or how the abuse went on, I don’t know if it was multiple people or not, but it was like ‘this is how it’s supposed to be.’ It wasn’t presented in a way that ‘this is wrong.’”

At what point did you recognize that maybe it wasn’t the way things were supposed to be?

“I think it’s something that’s just coming to fruition because I don’t think I was able to remember that. It was all blocked out. At the time, we were moving a lot. My dad was in and out of hospitals. I was on the road and unable to form any lasting friendships. I think it happened in between one of the moves. I can’t really remember, but I don’t know. I don’t know if I did recognize that it was wrong. I wished it didn’t happen.”

Do you feel responsible for it?

“No, I don’t feel responsible for it. No, no, no. I think the one thing I feel responsible for is probably the amount of shame I carry. Not only because of that, but more with the sexualized feelings towards everyone. When you asked that question at the beginning, ‘what’s the biggest challenge that you face now?’—that’s it. When you asked it, I wasn’t going to answer and I went down the path of the abuse, which I’ve said before in some instances. I’ve never really talked about the sexual stuff or my father too much but, for some reason—I don’t know—that’s been the most shameful parts. It felt like the nail in the coffin type of event to ‘be a man’ type stuff, and then trying to navigate yourself intimately has been a process. Saying those words, that’s only been said, it took me a long time to say those type of things.”

What words? 

“I guess the sexualized feelings towards everyone. I’d have to do a lot of analyzing and a lot of character checking before I said that type of stuff.”

How is the sexualizing everyone manifesting in your life or interfering with it?

“It lets me keep an arm’s distance from building relationships. I used to think I was good at intimacy, but I was always drunk or high. I guess it’s interfered a lot. Recently, I was able to engage in a relationship that was all about talking about everything that came up during everything basically. There was some healing there around physical intimacy because for me most of the time anything that was enjoyable physically would have to be with someone I didn’t know and, if there was some sort of loving connection, physical intimacy was never enjoyable.”

Is sounds like the reverse of what it should be.

“Yep. Luckily, in this past relationship, we were able to dialogue over everything, what came up during intimacy, and I told her everything. So, there was some healing there, but there was still some shame underneath, but I feel that I’m close. There was some healing in that relationship, but I feel like I still have to uncover Mike. I continue to push away from that love because I’m realizing that I need to . . . I’ll slowly but surely tell you everything that’s gone on and then I’ll analyze your frickin’ reactions to everything’s that happened, and see if you’re accepting in the relationship, very slowly, because ultimately I want it to be an open, vulnerable place, like there’s no shadow or anything, but I guess it was still a way of seeking validation. Here are some little pieces of me, let me see how you react, let me see your facial responses to them. Now it’s my own journey to finding that within and finding that joy again. Even most of my sobriety has been about ‘to do’s’ and ‘get this done.’ There’s never been a space where I can just go hiking with a friend and not overanalyze everything, but for the most part, it’s hard for me to tap into that sense of joy. Slowly but surely, it’s coming back. I believe that wholeheartedly.”

I think the process of trying to shut out or repress pain takes so much energy and effort that there’s no capacity for joy. Perhaps, through the releasing of the feeling of pain, you have the contrasting element of the pain to experience the joy, but if you’re not feeling one, it’s hard to feel the other. I’m sure you have years of accumulated pain internalized that is just beginning to surface and make sense to you. It sounds like through that experience of reiki, you came in contact with a part of your life that you had internalized and blocked out and had no memory of until that moment, which is a response the brain and the body have to allow you to survive a traumatic moment. Eventually, your guards come down and it’s safe for you to feel that; it surfaces.

“Yeah, I guess it’s trying to feel safe.”

And still feel loved, heard, and seen. It sounds like you’re at a stage right now where you’re in the slow process of letting a little bit out here and there and seeing how people respond to it in order for you to know whether it’s okay to keep going, but I’m sure that probably brings you face to face with fear often, fear of someone telling you you’re not good enough or showing you that you’re not good enough through their actions.

“At one point, I was going to share all of this, even deeper, in front of a bunch of people just so I could shut down because I thought, inside, that I was going to do it for some sort of cathartic moment. But I think subconsciously what I was doing it for was to find that person in the room who was judging me so that I could say, ‘See, this is why I don’t do this.’ Lately, I’ve been trying to find little pockets where there’s an exchange, and I’ll reach for it sometimes, I’ll give little pieces or breadcrumbs, and if there’s not that exchange back, I step back, but I don’t want to have it like that always. I don’t want to have to analyze the safety of a situation. I just want to be ‘here I am.’ It’s a process.”

It’s a process—that really resonates with me . . . here I am. In short, that’s the definition of authenticity, vulnerability and courage—here I am; showing up and being seen. You’ve talked about losing a sense of connection to Mike, that you may or may not have come to know him at some point in your life, that he exists on some level, somewhere. Where is he? Where do you think he is?

“It feels like he’s stuck inside this shelter, that adult Mike or Mike now, keeps him safe.”

Do you feel that it’s okay to let him out of that shelter?

“Umm. I don’t know. I don’t know if I even really know who he is and who I’m letting out. That’s a tough question. I guess I see him when things are simple. I went on a hike this weekend with a buddy of mine. I knew he didn’t really know all that, and I don’t think he really needed to, so it was just me being able to have fun and laugh. I don’t think I’ve laughed like that in a long time. There were no expectations.”

In that space, it was okay for him to be a part of that experience?

“Yes. I was able to feel free.”

I imagine the shelter that you created for him was designed to protect him and keep him safe, but shelters can also become cages. If someone spends enough time in a cage, the hand that’s trying to feed them or unlock the door gets met with a ferocious beast who’s so deprived of connection, light, and sense of humanity that they almost appear to be a monster, and that can be terrifying to the hand that’s trying to feed them or unlock the door.

“Or, it’s the other way around. Where the one holding the key to the door is the ferocious beast. And the light inside just wants to be integrated. I wrote a story about myself (and made it seem like it wasn’t). It was prison, all black and white, and everyone was told that you’re not allowed to go to the light. Every day, he was told that he was a number, number 6752 or whatever, and everyone’s a number. Every time the number walks outside the prison, he sees this light and everyone tells him that this all-encompassing society tells it, not even him, to stay away from the light, the light will take you off. So, he walks by the prison, he does what he has to do every day, number 6752. One day, he’s walking by the prison, he sees the light, and something inside says, ‘Maybe you should dance, maybe you should play music,’ but he disregards it and keeps walking by the prison. He’s always been told to avoid the light, avoid it, it will take you off line. He walks up to the prison one day, and he’s following the light inside the prison and feels discombobulated and doesn’t know what’s happening. The path outside in the black and white was clear—you do this, you get this, this is how it works. Following this color and light was different and different thoughts were coming in. He approaches the prison and there are these huge prison guards, they’re standing there, stone cold, with huge guns, and he looks at them in the eyes, he tries to get in and shakes them. They’re just sitting there, he takes off a layer, and he tries pulling at them and layers are just falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, and then there’s nothing, no prison guards. There’s a door in front of him, he opens the door and there are all these eyes looking at him, everywhere. They’re so big and overwhelming, and filled with fear. They were just looking and staring at him, and he is just so scared and he can’t move. There are hundreds of eyes everywhere and he says to the eyes, ‘I am you,’ and the eyes disappear. He walks into the next door and ‘ego’ is written on the door. He’s afraid and he can’t get through it. It looks like this big, stainless steel door, unbreakable, unstoppable; he kicks it and it shatters. He walks in and then there’s this light behind this prison door. He’s almost there, he can almost touch it, and all these thoughts are flooding in. Outside the door is this big guard, he stares at him in the eyes and thinks ‘there’s no way I can get through this.’ The guard is so scary, he has so much fear raging in him, and he’s putting it all on number 6752, and It screams, ‘I’ve gotten through all this, I’m almost to the light, I can almost be there, but I can’t face this’ (this fear). He looks at the fear, stares at it, he’s about to walk away, and whenever he trusts the light, it always, leads him to feeling these thoughts again, these feelings again, and he looks at the fear and says ‘I love you’ and the jacket falls off the fear and there’s a little boy curled up outside the light, outside the prison. It is saying to the little boy, ‘I love you,’ and nothing’s happening and the little boy cries and cries and cries and looks up periodically, and cries, and just sits there and It says, ‘I faced the eyes, I faced the masks, I faced the ego, I faced the fear, and I tell you I love you and nothing happens.’ The boy cries and cries and cries. Days pass, months pass, years pass, and It gets mad at the boy, screams at him, ‘All this time I loved you,” and the boy cries and curls up in the corner. It sits with him again for years and says, ‘I love you.’ Eventually the boy lifts up his head and says, ‘I love you, too,’ and the door opens. The light, It—now Him—and the boy all join together. He is scared because he’s been offline for so long. Where does he go now? What does he do? He’s scared for the little boy. Eventually he feels some sort of song come up within him and He flies above the prison. He’s scared that the little boy isn’t safe, but he looks and there is no little boy, the light is gone, and he’s just flying above. Some other It, number 67425, is walking by, sees this bright light flying above the prison, something sparks in him. and he asks to go inside too.”

It’s a full story of integration.

“Yeah.”

What are you learning about yourself through this process of recognizing that there’s still work to do and that you’ve endured a significant amount of trauma, loss, and pain in your life, and that you’re still figuring out who you are?

“That we all experience pain, and one of the biggest revelations is that it doesn’t matter what degree of trauma there necessarily is, maybe mine could look bad from the eyes of someone else who has experienced a different life but, in their eyes, whatever they’ve experienced, whether you shed it from the specific experience to the emotion that it is, fear or sadness, whatever it may be, that they’ve experienced those same things. The heart is behind it all, the one heart. I guess that was a way for me to realize that I wasn’t so alone because, at one point, I did think that no one has ever known this pain, but then I had to realize that everyone has a comfort zone in life and however they were pushed out of it could be the same experience. I guess that’s part of it. While I can say those words, it doesn’t necessarily mean I feel it 100 percent. I think that’s more how I’m able to see others with authenticity, but not as myself, applying that same standard. I think that’s the next point for me. I’m learning about myself, just to be able to say it’s okay. Like I said earlier, the pendulum swinging from faith and fear. Sometimes the fear can be all-encompassing, but I think to just say it’s okay and I don’t need to force myself through anything. Sometimes I push myself and it almost makes me regress. I guess I’m learning to be patient with my own unfolding and know that there’s a lot of layers and I feel, as the more safe places I find myself entering, that I won’t need to necessarily hear the words from other people. I’ll be able to tell myself those words of love and that, hopefully, I’ll feel safe no matter what. That’s the goal. I don’t know what will happen. I guess just don’t rush the process, as much as I want to, but when I start taking hold of that process and pushing it around, it doesn’t tend to do the same type of healing.”

If your nine- or ten-year-old self was sitting next to you, what would you want that self to know or feel?

“I think it would be the other way around. What would the nine- or ten-year-old self want to tell me now?”

Okay, let’s put that spin on it.

“You were never lost. It’s okay. You don’t have to hide. I miss you. I’m still here playing. That’s what I’d say.”

For those who may be reading this or listening to this, and may be able to relate not to your experiences, but to the thoughts or feelings that you’ve expressed, what would you want them to know?

“You’re not lost. You never have been. Deep down I know you love you. Give yourself the space and the time to find that joy again, because it’s not that far away, it’s not as far as you think.”

Is there a piece of advice, a song lyric, a mantra, or a quote that resonates with you that you’d like to share?

“‘Everything is already okay, everything is already all right.’”

What does that mean to you?

“Sometimes my head takes me all over the place and makes me really afraid and lonely, but when I tap back into that, I can feel that inner child playing again. It makes me realize you don’t really need too much, just some laughs and hugs from people you care about. I guess it’s a way for me to come back to that light and not get taken away by the emotional waves, just ride them a little bit and not pulled under. Not to say that I’m the best at it, but even in that, everything is already okay, trusting that wherever I am is where I’m supposed to be.”

How has it felt to share and talk about these thoughts, experiences, and feelings with me today?

“At one point, I felt very naked because I had a plan of the details of what I was going to share and what I wasn’t. I know before we were recording, I was talking about the other side of fear is the greatest growth. I felt that even if it’s a tiptoe of a little shelter, it’s better than nothing because I’ll be safe. It’s taught me a little bit more about what walking into fear really is and the space of forgiveness that falls right after. First, it’s like this naked vulnerability, like fuck, but then there’s this eerie feeling to it. It feels like I can move through the world a little bit easier. Yeah, that’s how it was to say those things.”

Do you think it’s possible that by sharing what you did today, in this format, someone on the receiving end could potentially benefit, gain some hope or inspiration, or even a sense that they’re not alone?

“I think that’s my lifelong purpose. I think our greatest pain is our greatest power. I believe that wholeheartedly. This fire that’s burning within us, it could be shame or fear-based or anything, once we take it outside of ourselves and realize it’s the most beautiful, amazing thing in the world, and we hold it as our torch, then other people begin to see, too. It’s not like this is my torch. No, there’s one right there inside of you, too. Let’s muster up and get that thing lit. The only way to light it is from yourself, but that doesn’t mean there can’t be any encouragement along the way; it doesn’t have to be so hard. I definitely believe that, or I hope. That’s the goal—eventually write my story, being able to make someone not feel so scared or, even if they are scared, recognize that someone else has felt that too and, right outside that immense fear, is really the best space you could ever be in.”

Thank you.

[heartsofstrangers]

What has been one of the most challenging things you’ve experienced or are currently experiencing?

“Probably drug addiction.”

Tell me about that.

“Since I was fourteen years old, the first time I ever tried it, I’ve been intermittently addicted to crystal meth. The past four years, it’s been pretty consecutive other than the four months that I spent in jail two years ago. I guess that’s the gist of it.”

When did you start using it?

“I was about fourteen years old. I used to do it every other weekend with a group of shitty friends that I had made.”

What was going on in your life at that time?

“I had just lost my best friend, who was like my brother; we grew up together. He died from complications due to diabetes. I saw that they were using it and I had taken Adderall before. I thought it was like Adderall, except you could snort it or smoke it, and I thought that’s always fun. I recognized that they were carefree on it, and I wanted to be like that, so I did it.”

What was it like the first time you got high?

“It was sketchy and I was on edge. I don’t know if you’ve done any sort of upper, but it’s intense. It actually made me feel disgusting for a while. I felt really gross the entire time and then coming down was awful, but something inside me wanted to do it again, so I did. It disconnected me from the world. All that really mattered was scribbling on a piece of paper for hours on end. I guess it was really getting lost in reality.”

How did your life unfold—were you in school at that time?

“It kind of caused me to ‘fail out’ of high school; I didn’t drop out, but failed out pretty bad. I had to retake my sophomore year on the computer and graduated at the bottom of my class because of it, or the choices I made while on it. I don’t really know if I was in control or not then.”

You talked about jail—how did you end up there?

“I got arrested leaving a drug deal in June 2015 and then, after my parents bailed me out, I stopped going to court for the probation sentence and a year and a half later, they picked me up at my older brother’s apartment at 11:00 p.m. Six bounty hunters apprehended me and  then I spent the next four months in Montgomery County. I was there for Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, New Year’s, and almost my birthday, all behind bars.”

What was that like?

“Honestly, it wasn’t that bad. It was pretty shitty and I was very confined. I was in a sixteen-man room for the most part. It was me and fifteen other people, all in a big-ass room full of bunk beds, having to stare at each other all day.”

Where did that lead you to mentally? Did you process anything in your mind about where you had been, where you wanted to go, where you were?

“I just wanted out. It kind of made me feel like an animal. In Texas, I don’t know what it’s like anywhere else, but you become state property when you’re incarcerated; you lose all your rights. Basically, you’re a body with a name. You’re not a human in there. It’s weird.”

How long ago was that?

“It was January 2017.”

Where did you end up when you were released?

“Back to my older brother’s, and he does dope too. I went right back to where I started, or stopped at midway.”

So, you were sober and clean in jail?

“Yes, while I was there.”

Did you go through withdrawal?

“I slept for the first four days. I didn’t eat or use the restroom; I just slept.”

So, you get out, move back in with your brother, and get right back into it?

“The night that I got out, I used.”

What’s your relationship like with your family, aside from your brother?

“I don’t talk to them, only whenever they speak to me and, even then, it’s usually just my mom, and it’s like once every two weeks, sometimes twice.”

What are those conversations like?

“I love you, I miss you. I love you too, I miss you too.”

Do they live locally?

“They live about two hours away.”

Do they kind of push you away due to your addiction?

“I alienated myself because I knew I’m not anyone a parent could be proud of—that’s how I feel. Because of my problem, and I don’t want them to see me like this and I won’t let them. So, I pushed myself away from them.”

Have you done that with close friends as well?

“I’ve done it with everyone.”

So, who are you associating with, dealers and other users?

“Yeah. I dated this dude for almost a year and he basically isolated himself away from me recently because of it. That really fucked me up a little bit because I feel like I put so much into it, but really it was just me high as hell, overthinking everything, all the time, slowly dissipating into nothing.”

It’s got to be a pretty lonely feeling to be that isolated.

“Yeah, but you’re never really alone when you’re a drug addict.”

Because you’re connecting with your substance.

“I’m perfectly fine with being alone, but I’m not okay with how lonely I am most times.”

Are you scared at all to continue down this path?

“Yeah, because I don’t know where my life’s going. So, I just get high and it’s like ‘where are you going now?’ to go get high.”

How can you afford to get high?

“My best friend sells it. My only friend just happens to be a drug dealer.”

Are you performing any sort of acts or anything in exchange?

“No, no, no; we’re just really good friends and misery loves company. He’s basically in the same spot I’m in.”

What are some of the things you’ve lost along the way through these years of addiction?

“Honestly, I lost my sanity, a lot of good friends, and a close tie with my family. I lost my car. I lost my license. Somehow I lost my social security card, but I don’t think that had anything to do with drugs. I lost my apartment, but that was at the beginning so that’s not a big deal.”

Where are you living now?

“I live with my friend, Pat, who is also a drug addict, but he’s a more functioning one, I should say. He’s held a job for four years and his addiction is kind of new and, ironically enough, I’m the first one he ever tried it with, which is kind of funny or fucked up.”

Have you ever been in any situations where you felt like your life was being threatened?

“No, not really. Not that I can think of, but I don’t know . . . no.”

How’s your judgment when you’re high?

“You can rationalize just about anything. For the most part, I would say it’s pretty good. There are dumb people who get addicted to drugs and there are people who are addicted to drugs who already have a good grip on reality and are able to make the right decisions or rational ones at least, but I’ve done some pretty stupid stuff.”

What are some of the stupid things that you’ve done?

“Not put the filter on a vacuum cleaner and small things like that. I’ve never done anything really stupid like rob anyone. I did, however, one time throw a brick through a window. I was super pissed off at the person who lived at the apartment and, in a fit of rage due to addiction or substance use, I picked up what was closest to me, which happed to be a chipped piece of concrete by the curb and chucked it threw the window. I don’t know how’s that going to fix it, but it made me feel better. It was really stupid.”

Prior to losing your friend, had you experienced any sort of obstacles early on in your life that taught you some coping skills to deal with grief, pain, or challenging experiences?

“To isolate; that’s all I’ve ever really known. Get over it and, if you can’t, shut up about it. That’s what I was basically taught.”

Do you want to stop?

“Yes and no. Crystal meth is the only thing that’s kept a roof over my head while, at the same time, it’s kept me on the edge of losing that. It’s the only thing that sort of keeps me connected with the real world because I have friends and acquaintances who use and who keep me from going insane living alone. At the same time, those people come and go. Those people aren’t necessarily friends you want to keep around; they’re people who are just going to bring you down because they’re going to keep you high. I’m aware of that but, at the same time, I can’t stop. So, yes and no. I was sober for about a month and moved to New Mexico with my ex. That didn’t turn out well, obviously. He flew me back here on a last-minute, overnight flight and I started using again.”

How old are you now?

“Twenty-four.”

So, you’ve been using for ten years?

“Just about.”

Any issues with your health?

“No, not that I know of. I probably have shaky hands, but so does everybody.”

Do you sleep?

“Yeah, every night, which is kind of an achievement really if you’re a crackhead like me. I’ve kind of plateaued. I���ve reached a level of tolerance that makes me have a normal sleeping schedule, which is something you really don’t want to be but, at the same time, I’m glad I’m there because now I’m normal-ish. I don’t look cracked out.”

What’s your biggest fear?

“Dying—not from drug use, though I guess that would suck too, but just dying in general, because I don’t know what’s going to happen after that. Maybe my biggest fear is actually not knowing and being unaware.”

In contrast, do you feel like you’re living?

“I feel like I’ve been dead since I was about twelve, but I don’t think that had anything to do with drugs, but the realization of how fucked up the world really is. I think I’m living in a way—I get to do shit that not everybody gets to do, like not have to work, I’m able to explore the city, and that’s what I do every day. I go to different parts of the city and sketch around, but I’m probably not really living, not in a way that’s (I guess) savory.”

Did you grow up here?

“No. I grew up two hours northeast, in a little town, Cold Springs, with about 900 people, and that’s consolidated because it’s a bunch of small towns put together.”

What brought you to Houston?

“Drugs. I bounced from circle of users to circle of users to circle of users until I ended up in Kingwood. Kingwood is right on the outskirts of Houston. I just migrated over here, made friends wherever I could, and now I’m here.”

When you agreed to do the interview, did you have any idea that you’d be talking about this?

“No, not at all. I honestly had no idea what it would be about. I was just like ‘an interview, okay, that’s fine.’ I thought maybe it was going to be ‘how do you feel about Houston’ or some sort of typical bullshit interview, but I didn’t think it would make me open my eyes to shit I’ve been closing them to or haven’t said out loud in a while. I’ve said this stuff before, ‘I don’t want to do this.’”

How does it feel to hear yourself expressing these things?

“It kind of pisses me off.”

In what way?  You’re pissed at yourself?

“Yeah, because I know I’m just going to go get high afterwards.”

Are you high now?

“No. I used, but I’m not high. I guess that’s high; I don’t really know. The last time I used was about six hours ago. I get high and then there’s other days where I just get by and, today, is a just a get by day because I didn’t do too much of it.”

What happens if you don’t use?

“I sleep and I’m dead to the world basically, which is probably what I am now, but in a different way because I’m asleep. I’ve slept for thirty-six hours straight before and my friends have asked if I had a bladder infection, and I said that I was good, just tired. When I woke up, I had muscular atrophy, where I couldn’t really feel much, and then I’d just waddle around until I found food, and then I was good.”

Would you say you’re depressed?

“Probably clinically. I used to take Pristiq, but it didn’t mix well with my meth use, so I cold turkey stopped taking it after about six months. It’s a serotonin replacement or something, but I thought it was kind of bullshit. I’ve been told before by friends that I’ve been manic; they would say ‘wow, you’re pretty manic’ and I’d say ‘yeah, I know.’”

Do you think you were like that before the drugs or has that manifested since?

“Half and half. I’ve always been kind of bipolar-ish, but this has really intensified it or brought it to a meniscus versus overflowing. If it was overflowed, I’d probably be in prison, but it’s definitely got to that point.”

What keeps you in that elevated state?

“Being aware that I’d probably go to prison, so to stay at a constant ‘that’s okay.’ It’s not necessarily the way anybody would want to live.”

What were you like as a child?

“I didn’t take ‘no’ as an answer. I wasn’t a spoiled brat or handed everything I wanted, but I didn’t have to ask for much. I never really had to go without anything. My parents weren’t wealthy, but they were comfortable, and have been that way as long as I can remember. For the most part, I’d say I was a pretty happy kid.”

How did you meet your friend who died?

“We were neighbors. He was like my brother. I don’t have close ties or close relationships with anybody like I did with him. He was the first person I could ever really say was my best friend. When you’re a kid, grandparents, aunts, uncles, parents’ and grandparents’ friends die, and  you say ‘oh, that’s sad.’ But, when your fourteen-year-old best friend dies, basically out of the blue, he just wakes up one morning and then he’s dead . . . That shit really happens, people die, people who you know die, people you’re close with die, and it’s hard. It sucks pretty bad, especially when you’re that young and you don’t really know how to take it in. You know how you’re supposed to take it in, you know how people do it, and you see it in movies, but there’s something inside of you that dies too, and you can’t wake it up. Josh was my best friend and was like a brother to me. We did just about everything together.”

What would you say to him if he was here now?

“That I’m sorry. I would tell him that I’m sorry because, at this point, I would have probably alienated myself from him too. I guess given if he had left and came back. Yeah, I would tell him that I was sorry because I’m sure he wouldn’t have wanted to see me like this.”

What do you think he would say to you?

“I don’t know. He’d probably call me an idiot, but I’m not sure.”

If you could go back to your twelve- or fourteen-year-old self in that time in your life, as the adult you are now, what would you say to that child?

“Don’t do it. You’re going to fuck up. Don’t do it, but that twelve- or fourteen-year-old probably wouldn’t listen anyway. He’d probably think that I was stupid because ‘no’ is not an answer and ‘don’t’ is not a reason.”

What were you passionate about at that age?

“I really liked art and liked to draw. I haven’t actually picked up a pen or pencil and drawn anything since I was about seventeen. My senior year of high school was a pretty heavy usage year. I was focused on doing that versus something that made me happy.”

How does it feel when you’re drawing or creating something?

“It’s instant gratification, kind of like vacuuming is to me now. I did it, it’s there, that’s something I did, it’s something I completed on my own, other people get to see it, I get to see it, know that it’s done, know that I did it, and I like it. It’s a successful feeling, but I haven’t felt that in a minute.”

Did you have any other outlets that you felt a connection to?

“I listened to music a lot. Even now, I listen to music all the time. I never played any instruments and I’m not really talented in any other way, but I like music.”

Do you write at all?

“No, not at all. I don’t even remember the last time I wrote something down. My handwriting probably looks like someone trying to write with their left hand. I’m not used to a pencil or pen; it’s unfamiliar.”

What’s the first thing you do in the morning when you wake up?

“I drink coffee sometimes; that or Coke, which is terrible for you. I eat, smoke a cigarette, and then smoke dope (I guess use).”

Have you ever felt hopeless and suicidal?

“Yes, at least twice a week. I feel like I’ve reached a point where there’s no way of turning around. I’m twenty-four years old and I already hold a drug possession felony. No one’s going to want to hire me, so I haven’t tried to look anymore. I have basically no friends, especially if I were to stop. My family and I aren’t really close and they don’t want to help me anyway. I feel like there’s not a good enough reason to want to keep living but, at the same time, I’m kind of too much of a pussy to kill myself.”

So, you’re just kind of slowly and passively doing it through using drugs every day and not taking care of yourself.

“Pretty much.”

Is this what you thought you’d be doing tonight?

“No. I knew I was going to be doing an interview, but didn’t think it would be such a reflective one.”

If there was someone else out there listening to this or reading this who could relate to where you are in your life and where you’ve been, and possibly feeling hopeless or numb, or even just alone, what message would you want them to hear and know?

“That they’re not alone. There are other people just as fucked up as you are. I have a really bad mouth, it’s probably just another side effect of drug use. They’re not the only ones who feel nothing or like they are that.”

Is there any part of you that sees a different future for yourself other than your situation right now?

“Yeah, but it’s all sort of hazy. If I were to try to picture it, I couldn’t put the pieces together. It’s more like an audio clip. I can hear myself ‘all right, you’re sober, you’re good, life’s okay,’ but I can’t actually see it. It’s like there’s someone with my voice telling me that, but I don’t see it with my own eyes or inside my own head. I can’t picture it and to me that just tells me it’s not a thing. If you can see it, you can achieve it, and I can’t see it.”

Is it possible that that’s faith? Do you have faith?

“I have something; I don’t know what it is. I don’t know if I’m pessimistic or I’m realistic, but I don’t think I have faith in myself; that’s what it is.”

Why?

“Why should I? Maybe I just doubt myself more than I have faith in myself.”

All the various skills you’ve developed to sustain what you’re doing today could be used in the opposite direction to sustain you in a way that you might thrive.

“I’ve managed to be able to live without any sort of resources other than the kindness of strangers for the past three years, so that’s good; that makes me something.”

That’s strength.

“I’m probably evil. I don’t think I’m a bad person for it—surviving strictly on the kindness of others. It sounds terrible when you say it like that. I’m just getting by how I can.”

What would give you hope?

“Probably better resources. If I knew there would be something to catch me whenever I fell off this horrible plane ride of whatever it is I’m going through now. If there was a safety net that would give me hope. Now knowing that I would hit rock bottom and fall to my death if I were to stop, I won’t stop because of that. If there was something to catch me, and if I knew it would be okay and there was a better support system other than the people who are constantly throwing dope in my pipe, then I probably would stop.”

It’s hard to see that in any situation. I can only speak for myself, but for me, I could never see what was going to catch me either, whether I continued to perpetuate self-destruction and didn’t want to not feel pain anymore, but didn’t know how to end it without inflicting more pain on myself, or to follow my heart and intuition and move in the other direction. My life started to change when I listened to my heart and moved in the other direction, but it was just as scary because I couldn’t see how I was going to have the resources I needed and somehow (and I’m not a believer in your traditional God or any type of religion) miraculously I had what I needed when I needed it. It didn’t ever come in the way I expected it to, and yet it was there, some sort of ground beneath my feet, and that gave me faith and restored my faith that if I had enough courage to continue to be vulnerable, enough to step out of my old behaviors, to step out of the routine, and step out of the comfort, even if it is perpetuating discomfort—somehow it’s familiar so it’s comfortable—if I had the vulnerability and courage to do that, something would catch me. I remember early on looking for people who were going to save me or thinking that all these various opportunities that presented themselves were going to be the quick fix that would save me. What I continued to learn, and to repeat over and over again through making that mistake of thinking someone else was going to save me, is that I had the power to save myself all the while. All the resources I needed were within me. I had to think them into reality: thought, action, reality. Yet somehow, we train ourselves to think it’s going to come the opposite way, that it comes from the outside in, but that wasn’t my experience. I don’t know if that makes any sense to you.

“It does.”

I can relate to that feeling of being stuck. You know you want to get off that ride, but you don’t know if there will be anything to catch you if you’re to get off. So, you stay stuck.

“I made up this fun little terminology of being plateaued. You’ve reached a level where there’s nothing much around other than the great distance between you and the ground and it’s not high enough to put you up in the clouds where you need to be. So, you’re there, drifting above the surface of rock bottom and normalcy.”

It’s like being in limbo.

“Yeah, or purgatory. I live in purgatory. Actually, it might be hell. I live in gray, very gray, not a whole lot of color there.”

Are there moments where you see or feel color in your life?

“There’s a lot of blue and, when it’s not blue, it’s red but, for the most part, it’s gray. I don’t really feel much but, whenever I do, it’s usually just sadness. I get so sad and I feel like I can’t do much about it, so again, I get angry, then I get so mad that I cry and that makes me even more sad, and then I’m mad that I’m crying, so it’s purple or gray. It’s not really a colorful journey—this life. It’s like an old-school comic book, it’s all grayscale with a little blue and a little red.”

What do you know about the process of grieving?

“I don’t. I know that it sucks. I don’t know how to get over it. You can either sweep it under the rug or you can actually deal with it, and I’ve just been sweeping it under the rug. Anything that I’ve ever lost, I’ve been ‘all right, shut that down, shut that down’ and only ever pick up where I left off, which is having it suck basically, whenever someone lifts that rug up for me ‘thanks.’ So, I guess I don’t know much about the process of grieving.”

I’m not particularly sure about the order, but there are five stages of grief. I think you’ve mentioned a few of them, like the deep sadness, the anger, and there’s a stage of blame, transferring that uncomfortable feeling onto someone else, making them responsible for your suffering. There’s also acceptance, which I think is a hard one to come to; we avoid a lot by repressing. As long as we can keep it stuffed down, we don’t have to look at it or accept that it happened. Until we do that, we’re not truly moving on, whether it’s grief or trauma. I had a woman tell me in an interview, and it’s very profound, she said when she started to heal the trauma, the addictions started to go away, and that really stuck with me. I believe that we continue to connect with whatever our substance is, whether it’s our phones, drugs, alcohol, money, or sex, to avoid looking at the wound, but the only way to heal a wound is to treat it with compassion and kindness.

“Not a big band aid?”

No. I know in our culture and in our families, we’re taught to discharge pain, to move away from it, and stuff it down.

“The sun gives you a sunburn, stay away from it kind of thing.”

Yes, but growth, transformation, awareness, wisdom, empathy, joy, and love are all qualities that are developed through leaning into pain and discomfort, not from running away from it. Everything that we long for—that sense of real meaningful connection, fulfillment, sustenance in our life, and purpose—is on the other side of that pain, and there’s no way to skip over it or go around it.

“You got to go through it and deal with it.”

Yeah. It’s shitty. I don’t know what’s worse, spending your lifetime running away from it or feeling shitty for a period of time, then having some relief, and maybe recognizing that you’re resilient, you do have potential, and there is more to life than this grayscale and constant fear of when is the bottom going to drop out.

“I feel like I’ve hit rock bottom a couple of times, like literally scraping my teeth on its surface is where I’ll probably want to stop but, at the same time, I’ve probably hit that part too. It seems like chilling at the mantle.”

Do you have a favorite song lyric, mantra, or something that someone has said to you, maybe even your friend or your parents, that has stuck with you that you’d like to share?

“There are lyrics to a song that says ‘if you talk me out of my needs and stitch me up at the seams then I can live in my dreams’.”

What’s that mean to you?

“It’s kind of sad, if you think about it. If I didn’t have to do the things I have to do, then I’d be happy. If I didn’t have to wake up and get high, I’d probably be okay or if I didn’t require x amount of blah, blah, blah then I’d be cool, things would be okay, and life would be a dream. But, that’s not how it is and I’m living a nightmare. Yeah, talk me out of my needs and stitch me up at the seams, I can live in my dreams.”

Do you think it’s possible to heal?

“Yeah. You just got to rip off that band aid I was telling you about. I don’t know. I feel like, metaphorically, my band aid is waterproof and I don’t want to pull it off because it really hurts, and I don’t want to deal with it, so I slowly pick at it, but eventually I just stick it back on. Yeah, it’s possible to heal; tons of people do it, right?”

Yes. It’s a matter of surrendering. It’s like showing up and saying ‘I don’t know how this is going to turn out.’

“But doing it anyway.”

Yeah. That’s courage, right?

“Yeah. I don’t think I have much of that. Like I said earlier, the fear of the unknown, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do it, so I don’t try it.”

What’s worse? It seems like you have more to lose by continuing and knowing that the rest of your life may look like it does right now or there’s a risk that you may feel some discomfort for a while, but there’s a chance that things could get better.

“I don’t know. I should probably stop using, because it’s not helping me. I wouldn’t necessarily say that it’s hurting me either, but that’s probably the drugs talking.”

Who would be the first person you would call, if you were to make that choice?

“I’d probably call my mom. Yeah, that’s probably who I’d call. I’d probably tell her to come get me. I’ve done it before. I’ve told her ‘I need you to come get me. I need you to fuckin’ stop what you’re doing and come get me’ and she has; she would do it in a heartbeat. The last time I called her and said that was about three years ago. I’m not too sure how or if she would be okay with it or how she would go about it, but I’d call her. I need to call her actually.

“Not only for that, but I miss my family a little bit, a lot. I haven’t seen them. I spent that one Christmas in jail, but the two after that—I didn’t go, the one before that—I didn’t go. I haven’t been home in so long. I haven’t actually seen my mom in a year—that sucks. For a long time, she was my best friend. She was always a shoulder and an ear. It’s been a while, a long time.”

I hope you do make that phone call.

“We Snapchat sometimes, which is kind of weird. We’re actually Snapchat friends, but I haven’t snapchatted her in about six months. I sent her a text about two weeks ago, and that’s about it. I haven’t heard her voice in a long time. I can still remember what she sounds like, which is kind of surprising. Usually whenever I cut things off like that, I completely disconnect from it. I don’t know what they look like. I don’t know what they feel like. I remember her and her voice; it’s weird.”

Do you think she would answer the phone now if you called?

“She’s probably asleep right now, but yeah she might answer. If not, she would text me ‘what?’, but I think she would answer.”

I hope you make that call after this interview. How has it felt to talk about these thoughts, feelings, and experiences with me tonight?

“Surprisingly, not bad. Like I said, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. At the beginning, I thought it was probably going to be annoying, but I didn’t find it that annoying because there was a level of comfort versus judgment. I didn’t feel very judged at all.”

It’s a beautiful thing, you being vulnerable.

“Is that what this is?”

Yeah, and you being met with empathy. It kind of kills shame, which I think feeds addiction.

“Probably, yeah, needing to hide something.”

It’s a heavy weight.

“It will suffocate you. That’s always good.”

It’s lethal; it really is.  Do you think it’s possible by sharing your thoughts, feelings, and experiences so courageously tonight, as you are, that someone on the receiving end gains some hope, inspiration, or at least a sense that they’re not alone?

“I would hope so, because this wasn’t that easy to do. Yeah, I think they probably could if they aren’t stubborn assholes like me, and listen all the way through. Because if I were handed this to listen to, read, or watch, I’d probably stop paying attention halfway through; depending on my state of mind I might say ‘I don’t want to hear that.’ If I actually listened to it or if someone like me listened to it from A to B, they’d probably like it; they’d probably get it.”

Yeah.  Thank you.

“Thank you. You’re welcome.”

I’m really proud of you. This was a really courageous thing to do and you skipped right into it.

“I ripped the band aid off that time.”

You did. I hope you’ll continue to do that.

“There’s a bunch of open blisters and sores here—this sounds so weird.”

Thanks.

[heartsofstrangers]

What has been one of the most challenging things you’ve experienced or are currently experiencing?

 “I’ve experienced a lot of challenging things, as well as a lot of good challenging things recently. Growing up, I was in an abusive family and my dad was very abusive to my mom. Overcoming that was super hard for me, and being there for my mom, more than anything. Getting older and understanding that this isn’t the way a person should treat somebody, even though that’s all I knew. And then getting into a relationship with somebody, burying myself and thoughts that I experienced because I didn’t want to cause harm on anybody else, even though I wanted to share my experience as more of an outlet for me but, at the same time, let others understand who I am and where I came from. I suppressed that for so long because, again, I didn’t feel it was needed and, it ended up, over time, after a very long relationship of mine ended, that’s when I started to realize that this is something I need to talk about more and get it out because it was suppressing my feelings. Over time, I didn’t know who I was and I was happy with who I was, but I always thought it was other people who weren’t happy with me because, again, my experiences. After my relationship ended, I started seeing a therapist. It was probably the hardest six months of my life because I had to pull out demons and things that were in my past that I suppressed for so long, but I knew they needed to come out and I needed to talk to somebody about them. That, I would say, is probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

 “Fast forward and now I’m doing something as challenging, but not as dark and sad. I made a career change about 2-1/2 years ago. I decided I didn’t want to be a retail manager anymore after working my way up the ladder, going to school for business. I decided to throw in the towel because it wasn’t something I was happy doing. I promised myself I would never do something I wasn’t happy with, and I was continuing to do that. The pay was phenomenal, I always had financial stability, and it was hard to walk away from. I decided to throw in the towel, apply to nursing school, and I moved about 700 miles away from home to start fresh and to start a new career. Right now, I’m trying to maintain that financial stability. I had made very good money and my lifestyle didn’t go away although my salary did. Trying to maintain the lifestyle I created for myself while putting myself back through school at age 30 has been quite challenging, but in a different aspect to where it’s rewarding to me. It’s not something that I need to get out or something that is never going to change. I’m not depressed about it. I don’t wake up in the morning thinking it’s going to be another bad day, I have to go talk to somebody, or I got to go do this. It’s really opened my eyes to the meaning of life itself.

 “Nursing school is probably, again, the hardest thing I’ll ever (hopefully) do because I can’t imagine doing something like that, but it has been extremely rewarding. Even when I’m struggling with work or finances, I understand that, at the end of the day, I’m helping somebody improve their quality of life and I’m helping families that think it’s the end of the world because somebody is sick or somebody has passed. I’m able to share my past experiences, emotionally, by channeling my emotions through them and consoling them, which is probably my favorite part of the job. It’s hard to see people sad, but I find pride in it because I’m able to take that very negative experience in their life and make it a positive one. No matter how bad my day is, I always know that I’ve helped someone in a positive way.

 “Recently I had my first patient pass away on me. I’m a nurse tech now, working my way through nursing school. I had cared for her for three days and she was healthy, not healthy, but she looked healthy. She was speaking like a normal person. She wasn’t sick. She was laughing and joking. My eyes were really opened. I had come in for my fourth shift and she had a rapid decline, which was expected. She was in her 80s and had cancer all throughout her body. To see something change like that - it wasn’t something I was expecting. I’m glad it happened so early in my career because one of my biggest fears was having someone pass away in my care or someone that I had cared for. I took the patient’s vital signs, and they weren’t good. I put some music on the TV and about an hour of me arriving on my shift, she passed away. I felt myself in a very somber and quiet mood for the rest of the night, with no thoughts at all. It was almost like meditating. It was a very weird feeling, and then on my drive home, it hit me that life is so precious. It can go from something good to not being there anymore.

 “Sometimes I’m an introvert, but I’m also extremely extroverted. I love people, but I also harbor myself away sometimes because I feel like my personality is a little overwhelming. My mother constantly calls me and there’s times I look at the phone and say, ‘what the hell does she want now’ and won’t answer it. My mom and I are best friends, but there’s times where I just don’t answer the phone. That night driving home, I picked up the phone, and I don’t ever really call her, and called my mom because I could have gotten to an accident on my way home or something could have happened to her, and I’m 700 miles away. Experiencing that really opened my eyes largely to the fact that no matter how bad things are in life, it’s the most precious thing you’ll ever experience.

 “My life has been a roller coaster but, at the same time, I look back and wouldn’t change a thing. Even though I lived through hell for many years, my mom dealt with a lot of things with four kids on her own. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone else. I wish it didn’t happen, but I wouldn’t change it if I could go back. I feel that every day when I wake up that’s what has made me who I am today. Being able to see the different things in life - going from having financial stability to not, being in an abusive family and seeing different aspects of life to where people can be good. Growing up, I never trusted anybody. I always thought ‘you never know what’s up their sleeve, you never know what’s going on.’ As I’ve progressed through life, I wouldn’t say that I trust too many people, but I don’t care what they’ve done or what their past is, I still give them a chance until they personally affect me or burn that bridge.

 “I actually had a conversation the other day with a friend of mine, who’s extremely religious and, I’m not at all. I find my religion to be waking up, having morals and values and, if I do something wrong, not necessarily repenting, but really understanding that tomorrow, when you wake up, it’s a new day and I can’t continue to do what I was doing. That, to me, is forgiving myself. We had a conversation about how people are viewed whenever they commit a crime or something happens, as largely as sexual abuse. The instant it comes across the news or in the paper that someone was molested, you hear the majority of people shouting ‘hang them’ or do this and that to the person who committed the crime. I had things happen to me, more physical, but I still never think that the person should be killed for it. I immediately start thinking what went wrong in their life and what caused them to do these actions. I’m sure there are some people who are born innately bad; I don’t know—I’m not a scientist. I do believe that 99 percent of people are born good and they experienced bad things that created their behaviors. By lashing out and attacking people who commit crimes and do things like that, I feel like you’re enabling them to continue to do what they’re doing because obviously something went wrong in their life. Again, I think my past experience has enabled me to think that way. I, fortunately enough, was able to have positive people in my life, not all negative people. I could have easily become an abuser or gotten into drugs and alcohol. We all have addictive personalities to something - it could be coffee, cigarettes, or porn. I think it all matters who you situate yourself around. If you’re around negative people, don’t take in their negativity and change your mindset into a positive mindset, and that’s what I did.

 “Going back to what I was said, we’re in a world of very sad times. I think it’s more the fact that things are readily available to us so I think things have gotten worse, but I think it’s because we can see them. Instagram, My Space, Facebook, the news – things are just so more readily available to us. My goal is to, at some point in life, be able to teach people to inspire others. Never judge anybody. No matter what a person did, never think the worst about them until you know what caused it, no matter what it is. People speed to work because they’re running late. People abuse others because typically they’re not happy with themselves or that’s all they know. My goal is to open the eyes of people, although I don’t really know how to do it. Every time I encounter somebody, I try to respect them. If I feel like they’re a negative person, I don’t immediately say I don’t want to be around them. If they’ve done something wrong to me, I don’t immediately say that I hate them or can’t stand that person. It’s more that I want to understand what’s caused their actions. My mom always tells me I should have been a therapist or I should be a therapist, and I say ‘no, I have my own problems.’

 “I would say that my biggest challenge is that my eyes have been opened to the world through nursing, and understanding people at a different level, and it’s challenging to see when others, I don’t expect anybody to have the same beliefs as me, but I also expect everybody to give every single person a chance because they’ve been given a chance once their life, too. So, that to me, is a huge challenge.

 “Two years ago, I moved to the South, and there’s a huge difference. It’s a much faster pace in the North. We don’t really mind others’ businesses as much as the South does. For me, creating friendships with people that grew up totally different lifestyles than me, I never judged them and tried to understand where they come from. I have a very, very good friend and our friendship is extremely strong, but we’re complete opposite. There are some days where I feel it’s going to affect our relationship, and that’s why I’m trying to have a better understanding of where she’s coming from and how her family was raised. I’m not really religious, but I respect those who have religious beliefs because I feel that whatever makes you a good person, do it. Whatever you think is keeping you going or giving you hope, do it. It’s hard because whenever I express myself in a manner that’s not, I guess religiously correct, I feel like I’ve offended her or vice versa; she may feel that she’s offending me. I’m currently trying to understand how our friendship can still be very strong without causing harm or offending each other when a topic comes up. I’m a huge debater but, when it comes to a friends, the debates should be left at the door because they could ruin a friendship. Those are some of the challenges that I’m dealing with right now.”

 Yeah, there’s quite a few. I’d like to go back to some of them and revisit them, starting with your childhood. You talked about witnessing abuse or receiving abuse personally. Tell me more about that.

 “It’s funny, if you had asked me five years ago to talk about it, I would have stormed out the door and drove home because it’s something that I’ve harbored inside me for a very, very long time, and it was more to protect my mother because she had enough things to deal with. My siblings had a lot of problems that came forth during adolescence. At a very young age, I felt that I needed to be the one to help my mom out because my she worked very, very hard just to keep the lights on. About two weeks before Christmas, three or four years after my mom split up with my dad, the lights would go out. It felt like a tradition and we joked about it as a kid. When I looked back at it, I can’t imagine how devastating that was for my mother. It was because she was trying to provide for us for Christmas and the electric bill would be unpaid for a little bit. I bottled everything up that happened to me.

 “Two of my siblings were abused by my father. I was touched by my father, but wouldn’t call it sexual abuse. Seeing others and hearing others’ experiences, sexual abuse to me is a more aggressive behavior, but again, it affects every person differently, every person sees things differently, and every person deals with it differently. I didn’t think it was devastating enough that it was going to cause me harm. I felt like it was going to be more devastating if I shared it with my mother because she had already been through it twice with two of my siblings. As a young child, around 8 years old, I thought that I should probably tell her, but I didn’t want to cause her any harm and I didn’t want her to blame herself . Then I forgot about it, not that it ever went away, but I suppressed it for so long that it was like it wasn’t there, although it reflected in my personality and who I was, but I didn’t know that.

 “When I was about 16 or 17, I would say that I went a good 5 or 6 years without thinking about it; it was in the years of my life where I was pretty much unstoppable. I was a teenager and didn’t want anything to bother me. I felt like I focused a lot on things that I needed to do as a teenager. When I turned 18, I thought that there was something wrong with me, and thought ‘how is this not effecting me?’ You see it on the news, Lifetime stories, and people are distraught for years. Was it something that I did that didn’t cause me much harm, but it was because I bottled up for so long. Then I got into a relationship and, I look back on it now, and my ex used to tell me that I had a problem because I took a bunch of selfies all the time. I took them, but never posted them. My phone was full of selfies and he said to me that he thought I had a problem. I asked him what he meant by ‘a problem.’ They’re just pictures. That was when Facebook was really big and selfies were a big deal. He told me that he thought I had body dysmorphic disorder and I said, ‘no, I don’t think I do’. Our relationship went on and the topic came up a few times.

 “After the relationship ended, I went to see a therapist and that’s when everything from my past came up. It was the first time I had ever talked about it to anybody at the age of 26. I held it in for a very long time. To this day, I haven’t really talked to my mom about it, but I let her know that there are things in my past that I didn’t talk about and I’ve let them go. I never let her know that I didn’t really talk about it because I was keeping her from harm. I felt that it would hurt her more than it would have when I was a kid. I let her know that I was strong enough so that I didn’t have to let it out until later.

 “The therapist asked me about my relationship and I told her he used to say I had a problem, body dysphoric disorder. She asked why and I shared with her about that. It was probably about our tenth therapy session and it hit me when she asked me if I was happy with who I am. I thought that I make bad decisions, like everybody else, but I would think that I’m happy. There were four days between our therapy sessions, and she made me take the normal amount of selfies that I would take in a month, she made me take them in four days. I thought it was extremely weird and I thought how is this going to work. I took my random morning pictures, my car driving pictures. When I went back to therapy, she asked me to look at all of the pictures and pick out the best pictures. I think there were 80-something pictures. She didn’t tell me until after that she wanted me to pick out at least eight pictures; I looked at the pictures and I was only able to pick two. She said ‘you only picked two, that’s less than 5%.’ She asked if I wasn’t happy with them and I said that I didn’t look good, I look bad, I look terrible. She said she wouldn’t say I had body dysmorphic disorder, but she wanted to find out more about what I saw wrong with the pictures, because they were pictures of me and she couldn’t tell the difference between the second and third pictures and she wanted to know what difference I saw. It dawned on me that I had been putting on a fake smile for a long time. The only pictures I could pick out were the pictures that I felt I was actually smiling a real smile. From that moment on, I realized that I can’t hide behind a smile. Everybody can smile. You say ‘cheese’ and somebody can smile. Now, just sitting here today, I can say that nothing has changed with taking pictures of myself. If you look at my Instagram it’s full of pictures of myself and people probably think that I’m full of myself, but now it’s because I can’t get enough of it because I am actually happy.

 “I was able to let go of a lot of things that were bothering me. I would say that I smile now because I’m happy. I’m not smiling for a picture or I’m not smiling because I’m trying to hide something. I’m smiling because I had an opportunity to change other peoples’ lives and I’ve had an opportunity to change my own life. Some people don’t get that opportunity. Some people feel like they’re not strong enough and they take their own life or they take someone else’s life or they end up abusing someone else because that’s all they know how to do. I smile today because I was able to conquer that and get past that.

 “Like I was saying earlier, that’s why I can’t judge a single person. When I was a store manager in retail, customer service was the big thing, and that’s what drives a business. When you talk about surveys, it gets annoying. As a manager, you have to drive that customer service. I don’t know if you’ve seen the Chick-fil-A training video, but it is probably one of the most inspiring two-minute videos I’ve ever watched, and that is how I think and have thought for a very long time. The video has customers walking around the restaurant, ordering food, and a little girl walking to a table with her dad. It has quotes above each person’s head which say something like “this person just found out they had breast cancer, this person just got accept to a college; this person just got her Visa after 15 years; this person, who is 8 years old, her mother died giving birth to her and her father blames her to this day.” There’s some good, but some really sad things in there. That’s my thought process on life: you never know what a person is going through. You can walk past a person who has been through way more than you, and you may not have opened the door for them or you may not have smiled at them. Just those small things could have changed their whole day. To me, wake up and be a good person. You don’t have to go overboard. You don’t have to kill people with kindness. You don’t have to be cheesy; just smile and be a good person. If you have something bothering you, just let it go. In the long run, you’re only hurting yourself and the others around you because we act on things subconsciously. I had for years; I thought I was happy with myself and I wasn’t, and it was affecting relationships around me and it was affecting a lot of things. It was affecting my ability to reach for goals I wanted.

 “To this day, I look back and wish the things that happened to me, didn’t happen, but I look at it now as a blessing because I think that it’s truly made me a better person. The only thing I wish that had changed was that my father got help when he was a kid. I hate him. I really do; but it’s his actions that I hate and it’s the fact that, after all of it came out, I didn’t see any care there at all. That’s the only reason why I hate him, but I still, to this day, wish him the best. Hopefully, some day, he can let go of the things that happened to him and I hope that he’s not continuing to hurt others. Most people would wish death on someone like that or they would say ‘I hate what happened to me or I hate this or that,’ but I can’t ever say that. I just really wish that he had gotten help. Hearing stories about my grandparents, aunts and uncles (his family), before I was around, I believe there was abuse from my grandfather and there were things in that relationship, and I can guarantee that’s where his actions came from. I really wish there had been someone there for him before it turned him into, not a bad person, but resorting to those actions. Again, I think that’s where it comes from. We all act on something for a reason. We don’t just act. We’re not robots. We’re not computers. There’s always a reason for our actions.”

 Many folks who have talked about being abused, sexually in some way, have not only carried that shame for many years for many reasons, because they’re afraid someone isn’t going to believe them, or they’re going to lose connection to their family, or they deserved it in some way or they provoked it somehow. How did that manifest for you?

 “I never thought I deserved it. I never thought I was going to cause harm on somebody. I think my experience was shaped a little differently because I had two siblings who came out about it before I ever did. So, I knew that my mother would have believed me. I really didn’t have a good relationship with my father’s family to begin with, so I didn’t feel like I was going to lose any type of relationships. My main reason for not coming out about it was that I didn’t want to cause any more harm to my mother. It’s not an easy thing when you see someone providing for you, blaming themselves for something, and see or hear them up late at night, either throwing up or crying. I didn’t want to be the reason why that behavior for her continued, and I knew that it would. I knew that if I came out, my mother would have felt that it was another thing that she could have or should have prevented, and she would have thought that it was her fault. Really, the reason was to protect my mother, and I don’t regret it. I don’t regret it at all because my mother tried to take her life when I was 10. I think that if I would have come out about that, she would have because it would have been another stone on her shoulder. I don’t regret not coming out about it until I was in my twenties. I feel like I was strong enough to be able to hold onto it for that long and, had I not been strong enough, I would not have held onto it for that long. I wouldn’t have had any other choice. Knowing what my mother was going through, knowing that she was still making it, waking up every day with a smile on her face, and trying to provide, I knew that I had the genes to be a strong person and I could carry this with me and I didn’t have to come out with it then. That was my reason for not coming out then. My mom is my best friend to this day. Sometimes I don’t think I show her, but I think she knows. When I told my mother, I knew that it was the right time. It was when my mom was stable enough (her life has never been easy to this day), but I felt like she would be able to hear it once we all grew up and she was able to see the good in us, that she did raise good kids, and that she had made good decisions for us. That’s when I felt like I was able to come out with it.

 “My brother went off to the military and ended up with an injury. He has PTSD, but he was a brave man. He did a lot of good things and I have a beautiful niece. My sister went to college and I have another beautiful niece by her. I have a gay brother who’s a little crazy. I looked around and was able to see there’s enough good in our lives at this point that by me telling my mother, after I went to therapy about it, she wasn’t going to blame herself. If you’re a good parent, you typically blame yourself for things, it’s just what you do, but I knew she wouldn’t, and she didn’t. I called her. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to be there with her. I hate texting or talking over the phone when it comes to important things, but it was on my plate, in the forefront with my therapist, and I knew that I needed to make it go away as soon as possible and it wasn’t something that I could drag out. I was also going through a relationship break-up. When I had the conversation with my mom, she cried. She was devastated to know that I had held onto it for so long, but it was almost a cry of joy as though I was letting go of it. She apologized, said that she was sorry that it had happened to me, and she never once said that she blamed herself. The fact that she didn’t, I knew that what I did was right. And, here I am, four years later, I’m very thankful for the way I was able to hold onto it and be there for my mom, when she needed me.

 “My mom was pretty much single for about twenty years, although she dated a guy for a while a few years back. We never thought that she would get married because she got married once to my older brother’s father. It wasn’t really an arrangement, but it was a teenage thing, and he was abusive as well. Then, she ended up with my father, who was extremely abusive. He put her in the hospital and did a lot of crazy things. He broke into her house after she threw him out. He always denied me because my whole family are gingers-all redheads. When I was a kid, I was 100 percent pure blonde. He used to say that I wasn’t his kid, “he’s not my kid, he’s not my kid.” His family pretty much said the same thing and it was because my genes were like my mother’s. We look very similar. As a kid, she had blonde hair which turned into sandy brown. I never thought that my mother would put herself through the pain of a relationship again and thought that she was going to die alone, but she got married in August, and it was a huge shock to all of us. She told me that she was dating a guy for four years and she was completely unhappy. He wasn’t abusive physically, but emotionally, he never wanted to do anything with her, and that’s all my mom ever wanted. It wasn’t hard for me to see my mom because I knew she was a strong enough woman to kick his ass out when she felt like it was too much for her.

 “At the time of my break-up, we were really there for each other. She decided that it was time for Chuck to go. She threw him out, lost a bunch of weight (she was overweight for a long time), and did it in a healthy way. She asked me what she could do, I wouldn’t say I’m the healthiest person, but I try to focus on fitness—it’s a stress reliever for me—and she lost 90 pounds in a year. Right around the time, I came out with my therapist and talked to my mom. My mom had told me that she had been seeing a guy, which was very strange for me because she had just gotten out of a relationship and my mom’s not that type of person. But, I was happy for her and this name ‘Junior’ kept coming up, and I thought it sounded familiar, like she had talked about him before. She had been best friends with him for the past three years, just very good friends, and everyone used to say, after she split up with Chuck, that she should date Junior, and she would say ‘hell no, it’s not going to happen.’ She ended up getting together with this guy, I had never met him for about the first year, although I had seen some pictures of him. I told my mom that he was not a man that I would have ever expected her to be with. He has a biker past and used to be a biker. He has a long ponytail, balding in the front, with a long ponytail of hair in the back. I thought ‘okay, I don’t know about this guy - my mom has two gay sons-this isn’t going to go over well.’ That’s where my judgment came into play and that’s why you never judge a book by its cover.

 “Two and a half years pass and my mom had told him several times that she would not get married again. He proposed to her, even though she said that, and she said yes to him. She called me, told me she was getting married, and I almost fell off my friggin chair. At that moment, I knew that my mom was happy, sincerely happy. I was 28 years old when she told me, and my whole life, my mom had never been happy. So, this was a huge, huge relied to me. The months went by and she picked the worst friggin week to get married. It was the last week of school during my finals and, again, she lives 700 miles away, but I hiked my ass up there to the wedding. I used to play this song, it’s cheesy I know, it’s called ‘I’ll be’ by Reba McEntire, because, again, going back to holding things in, not to cause harm to my mom, that was our song. I believe it came out when I was 8 years old. To me, I was the only man to actually, even though my brothers were there, hold my mom up and be strong for her. That’s basically what the song is about, that no matter what, you’ll be a shoulder for her. Surprisingly, I didn’t cry at the wedding when the song came on, but I played it for my mom because ( it’s hard for me to say this), I told her that this is the last time I’m going to have to play this song because she finally has somebody who cares about her. I don’t think I cried because I was relieved. I try not to get emotional with my mom because she’s freakin sappy as hell, and she’ll make me cry so I don’t get emotional with her.

 “As stressed as I am right now with school and my finances-sometimes I don’t know how I’m going to pay my next bill, I do have people around me that if I ever need anything, I’ll never go without, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in my life. There’s so much good in the world and I believe good things do happen for people. People like my mom, who lived her whole life miserable, and my biggest fear was that she was going to die unhappy, and now I know that won’t happen and I’m at peace. Your past doesn’t always have to be a bad thing. I think that it’s appreciation for life and appreciation for anybody around me. So, that’s pretty much my past.”

 You talked about carrying this for years to protect your mother; you felt that she wasn’t in a space where she could hear that without it having some sort of negative impact. How did that impact your life and your relationship holding onto that? Were you aware that it was having an impact? Did it?

 “I look back, and I don’t think that it affected me in my childhood. I still, to this day, believe that if it would have come out, it would have affected me worse because of my mother. I’m not saying that she wasn’t strong enough to handle it, but I couldn’t see her hurting anymore. I don’t have it in me. I don’t have a mean bone in my body. I felt it was cruel, and I couldn’t do that to my mother. I did have some behavioral issues and was diagnosed with ADHD when I was three, but who isn’t a little hyper. I did have some behavioral issues in high school and I’ve wondered if that caused them, but I don’t really know. I don’t act out like that. I think it was me just trying to get attention. I don’t blame myself for it happening, but as a child you do wonder why it happened; you don’t know why, and the fact that I wasn’t really accepted by my father, he said I wasn’t his, and his family was the same way towards me. It came to the point where Christmas cards would come addressed to Dustin, David (wasn’t his, and he knew that), and Danielle, and my name wasn’t even on the card. I think, maybe in that aspect, my behavioral issues may have come from that, acting out just to get attention.

 “I think where it really came into play was when I was an adult. I was on my own, I was my own person, and what has happened in my past starts to really show on who I am. I was in a very loving, caring relationship. We traveled together, we put each other through college, and we had the time of our lives. Near the end of the relationship, there were some trust issues. I didn’t trust him and then he didn’t trust me, and it was back and forth. We lived together for three months after we split up, and that’s when our communication opened up. He was the first person that I ever told that I had been bottling something up for a very long time. I remember huddling down on the living room and just balling for the first time, in a very long time, about it. I didn’t tell him exactly what had happened, but told him that there were some things that happened to me that I needed to talk about and I think that they really affected our relationship. The reason why I said this is because there would be several months when we wouldn’t have sex, but he would watch porn. Initially, it was that whole childhood thing coming back to me, where I didn’t think I was good enough, I wasn’t worth it, and it was all me. I look back and wonder if I had come out with that, would have our relationship been better. His actions had nothing to do with my past, and I didn’t think that I wasn’t good enough, but I had this feeling that I can’t really describe, but when you lay down at night, you have a person that you love next to you, you try to make love to them, and they just rollover, maybe it’s just because they had a long day. It hurt because I was afraid of rejection and not being wanted. In the past, bad things had happened to me. I think that if I had come out with my past, I wouldn’t have constantly had those thoughts that I wasn’t good enough or this person is going to leave me for somebody else. Those thoughts didn’t really come into play until the last year of our relationship.

 “I had gotten a promotion at work and we moved to a new city, two hours away. It was just the two of us, he didn’t have his family, and my family was even farther away, and we didn’t have friendships around us like we used to. It was just him and I and, when I wasn’t getting attention, it was because of my past that was causing me to think that I wasn’t good enough and it led to actions that I’m not proud of. Some would consider cheating actions. Ultimately, from his actions and my actions, our relationship ended. That was the moment that I knew that I had to let go of this. At this point, my mom was strong enough, we had done very good things as children growing up, we were now well respecting adults, and it was starting to destroy my life. This person may not think this, but I will always love my ex with all of my heart. I said to him that not everyone is the same and not everyone has the same past, so don’t ever carry this with you, thinking that someone else is going to cause you harm or someone else has the same intentions. I told him not to go into another relationship, basing it on our relationship. At the end, it was trust issues, and I didn’t want him to think that he couldn’t trust somebody else. He asked me why I couldn’t or didn’t talk to him about it and why I kept it bottled up. I’m not saying he didn’t have a bad life or things didn’t happen to him, but I don’t think he understood that it’s not something you can just talk about. Basically, he said that he couldn’t trust anyone because I kept this from him for so long and that I destroyed our relationship. All I wanted was for him to go into another relationship, knowing that every person is different. Ultimately, what was important to me was his happiness and not to think that what happened in our relationship. Just because I kept this bottled up in me, he should not think that someone else has the same thing; they may not. I wished that those things went differently because I really think we would still be together. You can’t look at your past and try to change it. You have to look at your future, and realize what your past was and shape it for your future. That’s what I do now.

 “There are times now that I think about what happened to me, but it’s not in the aspect about being sad about it. It’s typically when I’m trying to analyze something else, maybe in a relationship, with school, maybe I’m having a bad day, when I get super depressed, or someone around me has been hurt. That’s when I think back and say I am who I am today because of what happened, could I have been a better person, or could I have not hurt those that I have hurt in the past. Other than that, I take on every new day like it’s the first day of my life. You can’t change what happened yesterday – that’s my motto in life, you just can’t. People say that you see these things, something different inspires everyone. It’s a new year, a new me – that bullshit. I see that and I think ‘why do you have to wait until January 1st to change.’ What goes wrong yesterday, doesn’t have to be tomorrow or today. I don’t know if I would ever think that way if my past wasn’t the way that it was. I don’t think I would have a new appreciation for different things. You would think that I’ve always known what my past was. I carried it with me for many years, but I didn’t start having that outlook until I was able to let go of my past. It’s funny I would think it would go the other way, but I think it’s because it’s rejuvenating for me, like I literally have a second chance at life.

 “It’s funny to stand in the mirror when you’re in your mid-twenties and actually be able to be happy with the person that’s standing there, and not really being like that for a very long time. No one would have ever imagined it because I was a very fun, outgoing person, but it was because I channeled my emotions through other people.

 “When I lost my grandfather (my mom’s dad), it was very hard for me, but I barely even cried. I thought ‘why didn’t I cry and where are my emotions?’ Again, it comes back to the things that happened to me as a child and I got so good at suppressing my emotions. I channeled them through others; me consoling others was how I showed my emotion. I cry now more than I did when I was a kid, but it feels good. It’s nice to actually let my feelings go, instead of constantly consoling others for their feelings.”

 Where did you find yourself at the end of your relationship? You mentioned that you lived together for three months, as he moved on and you were left with you, what did that look and feel like?

 “It was super frickin scary. For the first time in my life, and it’s sad that I have to think about money and finances as being a part of your life but, on an everyday basis, you have to be able to get by. For the first time in my life, I was financially stable. I knew in that manner, I used to say ‘I don’t need no man.’ It was me basically trying to be strong for myself because I knew what I was about to encounter was going to be the hardest thing I ever did. It wasn’t about losing my relationship, but finding who I was. Some people might not understand, but not knowing who you are is a scary, scary thing because tomorrow’s not promised and, if you never find yourself, that’s pretty shitty. That’s not a good way to live. I wasn’t unhappy living that way. I coped and dealt with it. Internally, I wasn’t doing what was right for myself because I constantly put everyone else before me, always, no matter what. At that time, I had no one to put before me. My family was two hours away. I had a career that was basically calling my name as a retail manager, working crazy hours. I only had myself at that time. Obviously, I had my family, but they were away. At that time, I didn’t have anybody else to make me happy.

 “I’ll never forget, the three months that we were living together, but not together, I don’t recommend it for anybody because it was extremely hard. He started seeing this guy, we knew it was just going to be a fling, and he was 20 years old, very young. It was more of a ‘feel good’ guy. He was moving to Raleigh and the guy wasn’t going, so it was going to become a relationship, it was just fun at that point. I think it was a way to deal with his emotions. We had this agreement that it was okay. Obviously, I wasn’t his boss and I wasn’t his boyfriend anymore but, out of respect for me and respect for us, I asked him not to have him in our apartment. That was good for about a month and a half until his friend, who was an asshole, a very good friend of his (I used to call him that all the time because of my first impression of him), he was a very outspoken guy and he told Doug that it was his house too, so he could do whatever the hell he wanted. That’s just a typical thing that Dave would say. Doug took it to heart and, I came home from work one night, and he told me that so and so was coming over and I said ‘no, he’s not coming over.’ We fought and screamed at each other, and this was the first time we had ever had a fight. He threw a punch at me, and he’s not that type of person at all. In that moment, I realized that I created something from my actions and taunting. I realized that something had to change. I had just made this person hit me, and I’m not saying that it was my fault, but my actions were taunting enough that he felt the right to protect himself. At that moment, I knew that we had to get out of there or we would end up really hating each other, and that’s not who I am. I’m not a taunting person. I’m not an aggressive person. I wasn’t physically aggressive, but I was very strongly emotionally aggressive. At that moment, I knew that I needed to find myself. We didn’t talk for about two weeks.

 “For the last three weeks we were living together, we would sit out on the deck every night, drink, smoke, and bullshit. He was the closest person to me. At that time, he was literally still the love of my life, singlehandedly the most important person in my life besides my family, even though we were split up. I knew that if I didn’t talk about something, remotely related to my past or trying to find myself, I don’t think I would have ever been able to open up to a therapist, somebody I didn’t even know. I hate that I left him with that, but it had to come out of me, somehow, someway before we went our separate ways. It was probably a week before we split up that I told him that we needed to talk and I needed to share some things that I had never shared with anybody, and I shared things with him, not in detail because I didn’t want him carrying that with him. I didn’t want him to question himself - how did I not know, how come he didn’t tell me sooner, why wasn’t I there for him? I didn’t want him to think that, while I was holding it in while we were together, that it was his fault. I also wanted him to know that there were a lot of things bothering me, masking who I am as a person. I was able to share those things with him, he was able to console me, and we were able to set aside the fact that we were split up. We were able to talk like we were together, like I was sharing something with my partner, and he was there for me. He even went to therapy with me twice. I’ve thought about it and he probably thought that I was bringing him to therapy to get closer to him but, I let him know a year later, it was for me and that I couldn’t talk without him. He was the closest person in my life and I knew that I couldn’t have my mother there.

 “After my relationship ended, my ex moved to Raleigh. He probably is one of the single most important people in my life. I don’t think he’ll ever realize that, and I don’t ever want a relationship with him again. I think that we had our time in life and we really shaped each other as people. I don’t know that if we were still together today, if I would have come out with it because that person made me happy enough that I was okay with the person that I was being and I was okay putting on that fake smile. The moment that I realized that I didn’t have anybody else there for me was the moment that I knew the only person that I could turn to was the person that I looked at every day, and that was me and I had to make a change there.

 “We split up in May 2015 and in September, I traveled to Colorado, which we almost moved to. I love that state. We used to vacation there all the time. I flew out there all by myself and my mother was worried to death; I don’t know why - I was in my twenties. I landed in Denver, got a rental car, slept for about six hours, and then drove eleven hours to Yellowstone. I spent three nights there and didn’t speak to a single person. I didn’t say a single word. That was after I had finished my therapy sessions and I was literally like a new person. For anyone who has anything going on in their life, I recommend a silent retreat. You may laugh and think it’s funny, but it made me aware. Your other senses are extremely heightened. I heard sounds that were probably not even there or they were three miles away. I was able to meditate for three days and didn’t have any thoughts. I heard birds sing and things that are taken for granted every day.

 “I took a video of the song ‘Beautiful Life’ as I sang it on the side of a mountain in Colorado. I might still have that first video of myself because I was always so self-coconscious; I could pick the best picture and post it or share it. A video really shows your personality and who you are. I realized that from that day forward, the person that you look at in the mirror is the person that you see. I wasn’t going to hide anything anymore. I wasn’t going to put on a fake smile. If I’m pissed off, you’re going to know that I’m pissed off. If I’m happy, you’re going to know I’m happy. There’s no more clouded judgment for emotions. To hit day, I can say that I’ve lived up to that. There’s nothing I hide, no matter how big or how small it is I talk about it and I encourage others to do so, too. It doesn’t matter what it is, if we keep it inside of us, it shouldn’t be there. I make a joke, now that I’m in nursing school, the only things that belong inside of us is our organs. Our emotions should never be inside of us. We should always express our emotions, whether they’re negative or positive. If they’re negative, express them in a setting that accepts negative emotions, where you can get help. Never hold back the person that you truly are because it will haunt you whether you think it or not, or it will cause harm to you or others around you. When I think about my relationship, I don’t think it caused harm, but I regret that I hurt the person who truly loved me. That is what is hardest for me, not that the relationship ended. We all go through things and it could have been a lot worse. I guess hurting somebody because of my past and my suppressed emotions, that they had no right being hurt over. No matter how big or small, hiding your emotions will hurt somebody else. At the end of the day, the most important person is yourself, but you can’t cause harm to others, unintentionally, because you’re keeping your emotions tied in. That’s basically where I’m at.”

 What have you learned about yourself through this process?

 “I’m more fun than I ever thought I could be. I used to not think that I was very fun. I used to think that people just told me I was fun or I just tried to be fun, but I’m actually a fun person. I can fit into any crowd. I think it comes back to just being a human being and being a good person. The one thing that I also realized is that I have very good communication skills, which I never thought I had. Again, I suppressed them for so long and didn’t share my emotions, and I’ve had the opportunity to help others from my past experiences. Some people are probably tired of seeing it on my Instagram. I always talk about loving yourself, being a good person and loving yourself. Those who I grew up with, probably look at it, and think that I’m conceded because when I was a teenager, I was very stuck on myself, but it was because I was trying to find something good about myself. I always saw my imperfections, whether it was a hair out of place, my smile, my teeth, it was always imperfections. I always tried to look my best, I pressed my jeans at age fifteen, put gel in my hair about four times (worse than my mother getting ready), and people used to say that I was conceded.

 “If you judge a book by its cover and look at my Instagram, you may think that I’m full of myself, but it’s because I love who I am and I try to inspire others. I posted something today, and again I don’t believe in new year, new me thing, but whatever works for other people, go for it. If you want to wait until January 1st to change, just make a change. I posted “You are the change that you want to see in the world. It’s a new year, make it a great one.” That’s how I live every day. Every morning when I wake up, no matter how bad the day before was, if I’m scared to death of a test coming up, or my car payment is late and they’re calling me, I never let that effect my day anymore because I have a car, a roof over my head, food, and my health. I guess my senses have been so heightened going through the things that I have, I’m much more aware of myself and people around me. My family and friends are all back home and they don’t get to see me very often. My goal in life now is to make those around me happy as I am with myself because life is a beautiful thing. As corny as it sounds, you see these motivational things, it really is a beautiful and precious thing. Sometimes I think people think we’re just robots and we act on things as bad people. I can’t get it out enough ‘stop for a minute and look around you.’ We’re often in a crowded city like New York, and all we see are people rushing around to get somewhere. Everybody has their own problems and everybody has something in their head, that’s either a challenge or something that’s good that happened for them. We’re so hyper-focused on the moment or ourselves that we don’t realize that there are so many people around us that aren’t happy. I want people to be happy, not fake happy, or to just laugh or smile. I don’t care how big, tall, small, heavy, tiny, or if you have bad teeth, I don’t care what it is about you, you should never wake up and be unhappy with yourself. To me, it’s just a miserable way to live.”

 What would you say to your younger self as the adult you are today?

 “Don’t be so stubborn. I try not to think about my younger self sometimes, but I guess to my younger self, I would probably say ‘It’ll be okay’ because I never thought it would be. I never knew what was going to happen when I was younger. I thought, shit, I’m never going to get a job, I’m never going to go to college, I’m never going to have a car. I’m not going to say that I grew up with nothing, but I didn’t grow up around educated people. Nobody went to school in my family. Nobody really made the best of their potential. I wouldn’t say that I was doomed, but I thought that’s who I was going to be. When I looked around myself, I thought, oh my God, I gotta do something, I gotta get out of here. Looking back at my younger self, I was very judgmental of my family, not my immediate family (my siblings and my mom), but my mom’s family and my dad’s family. I was extremely judgmental of them because I was scared to death that I was going to end up like them. Looking back at my younger self, I would say not to be so judgmental, everything will be okay, you’re an individual person and you make your own decisions. Once you become old enough to think for yourself, that’s when you’re in control of your life. That’s when things will happen out of your control, but your life in general and outlook is solely yours. When I was younger, I never thought that. I thought that I was doomed and that I was never going to make anything of myself and would end up down this road to where I didn’t have the potential that I needed.

 “I’m going to be thirty years old in April and it’s crazy because I look at myself and, physically and mentally, I’m in the best shape of my life minus the balding hair. I feel like I’m the best I have been in my life. I know that some people dread being thirty and a lot of people that I talk to say that it’s all downhill from here, but I don’t think it is for me. I feel like I just started out and I’m excited. I feel like thirty is going to be my forty. I’m in the prime of my life. I’m happy. I have a career that’s on the horizon and I will be a nurse at the end of the summer. A lot of good things are happening right now. I have a very caring partner that has his own issues, not nearly what I have or my past, but everyone’s experience of their past is just as big to the person that’s feeling it, no matter what it is. I guess my challenge that I have in the forefront, is an exciting one, to help my partner work through things he’s been fostering for a long time, not necessarily during childhood, but he lost a partner when they were in college and he blames himself. I’m actually excited. He has a great career and is a great person. He’s been there for me and we have a very good understanding relationship of each other. Right now I feel like I’ve put his problems on hold because I really can’t do that right now while going through nursing school and deal with that at the same time. We’ve talked about his problems and he knows that he needs to get help for the things that bother him. I guess it’s exciting for me, knowing that my career is about to take off and my focus can shift on helping another person that I truly care about and knowing that we’ll get through what’s to come. As hard as it will be for him, I’m excited because I know that he will be a better person at the end of it. That’s where we’re at now.”

 Do you have a favorite quote or song lyric that you’d like to share?

 “Music is my driving force, along with photography. I can’t go to the gym without it. I can’t drive to work without it. I would say that my favorite quote, I don’t even know if it’s a quote, but I remember my mom saying to me as a kid, something along the lines of, and I kind of put it into my own words. I should actually Google it. It may not even be a quote and, if it’s not, maybe I should coin it . . . ‘Everyone is a beating heart on the same journey in life.’ That’s the motto I live by. We’re all seeking happiness. We’re all seeking one thing, and it’s not be unhappy and to just live our lives. My mom used to always say that when I was a kid. She always told me not to judge anybody because you never know what they’re going through. She would say, ‘Everyone is a beating heart on the same journey in life,’ and it’s so true. There’s nothing more true. Nobody’s on a different journey. Everybody is on the same journey and it’s to be happy and they want to be a good person. They don’t want to struggle. They don’t want to financially struggle. They want a good career. At the end of the day, they don’t want to have worries. I have yet to meet a person in my life that doesn’t seek that same dream. I would say that’s my favorite quote.”

 How has it felt to talk about these experiences and emotions with me?

 “I haven’t really talked about my emotions in a very long time. I do share my emotions, in the moment of how I’m feeling with the people around me. I don’t think I’ve ever actually sat back and reflected in a conversation on the progress of the things that I’ve been through in one sitting. I think about things here and there. I’ve posted my New Year’s post and resolutions. Every new year, I sit and think, ‘this wasn’t a bad year, these things have changed, and Facebook reminds you of what you posted several years ago. I am able to see my worries change and how things have gotten better. Honestly, I appreciate it. It was very eye opening for me and it’s a good start to a new year.”

 Do you think it’s possible that, by sharing your experiences and feelings today with me, someone listening or reading it, could potentially benefit from your courage and vulnerability?

 “There are millions of people in the world and I would be happy if it even helped one person. I say that all the time. You’re probably only the third person I’ve ever talked to when it comes to my childhood in depth a little bit, but I do share with those around me that are having issues. I say that my life is like a Lifetime movie; ya’ll wouldn’t imagine the things that I’ve been through. When you think that something is really bad, just think how good it could be if you just talked about it or helped yourself. The Michael Jackson song, Man in the Mirror, I’ve never heard a more true song in my life. It’s cliché, but everyday that’s the only person you’re going to see, even if you don’t leave your house, you’re still only going to see yourself. If you have something that you’re bottling up, whether it’s your past or your childhood, or even if you’re not bottling something up, if you don’t wake up happy, you’re the only person that can change that. Hopefully, that can help somebody.”

 Thank you.

[heartsofstrangers]

What has been one of the most challenging things you’ve experienced or are currently experiencing?

“I’ve had some challenging times, but I think my current challenge is the most challenging in the sense that I’m the most conscious of it, I guess. I know that we’ve talked about this before, but I’m going to reiterate for the sake of the recorder. My youngest sister died in a car crash on Thanksgiving of last year, unexpectedly, obviously, and it was horrible and really tragic. She was super nice. Everyone loved her. She was super cool, a really awesome person. It definitely hit me pretty hard. I wouldn’t say that we were close enough to talk to each other every day, but I’ve known her since she was born and felt very close to her. I wanted to see her thrive and do well. I was happy to see how much she was thriving. She was 21 at the time, living her best life to the fullest, in a very inspirational way. Seeing that and seeing the reaction from her friends and family, and people who knew her, when we did her services. People from all areas of her life—people who knew her from school, from church, from work, or from wherever—everyone adored her, and everyone was so broken up. I’ve never been to a funeral for a tragic, untimely death like that, so it’s hard to compare. I’ve never been to an event like that where everyone was so visibly shaken and upset, everyone was bawling. It’s not like that when someone’s grandparent dies or the typical death events that we go to. In such a short time, she touched so many peoples’ lives and everyone had nothing but good things to say about her and it made me think about my own life. I thought, ‘If I died right now, I wouldn’t get this kind of response and if I died at 21, even less so.’ I didn’t seize my life in the same way she did.

“My sister was very open and genuine with people. I think people like me fine, but I didn’t have the type of bonds that she had with people where they would go to bat for her without even thinking about it. It was especially tragic because she had a pretty tough upbringing. She’s my half-sister and we share a mother who is a drug addict. I feel like she will always be a drug addict. I don’t know what her current status is—I don’t really keep up with her. I don’t think she’s on drugs at the moment, but could be any day, and has been basically my entire life that I can remember. My sister was in and out of foster care when she was younger and had to deal with that and had to deal with our mom’s issues. I think her dad had a drug problem as well early on in her life, but he got clean and has stayed clean, and he became very active in the church and the church sort of helped bring her up.

“At the age of 21, she had her shit together emotionally in a way that was so impressive, considering the life she had to live early on. I feel that I have a lot of unresolved emotional issues because of my own early life. That’s why I say her life was inspirational to me, in the sense that she was the little sister, but she was coping with it and had dealt with it in a way that was impressive. It made me think, ‘Wow, I’m not living my life like that and I haven’t lived my life like that,’ and it made me face a lot of those things head on that I had pushed off for as long as I can remember. I remember when I was younger and dealing with my parents’ divorce. I didn’t really know what was going on with my mom. I don’t know when it became apparent that she was a drug addict, but I eventually figured it out. They tried to hide it from me to some extent. I have weird memories of being places that I know realize were crack houses when I was younger. There were times when my mom said she lost something, but she definitely pawned it for drug money. Things like that. I started to connect the dots later. From a very early age I stopped visiting my mom. Whenever I was able to make the decision to end the court-ordered visitation, I did. I cut that out as best as I could because I was pissed off, but I didn’t understand it at the time that I was pissed off as a little kid.

“I had stability in a sense. I always had a place to live and I wasn’t hungry. My dad and grandma did a pretty good job keeping everything together from that standpoint, but from an emotional support standpoint, they didn’t really. I didn’t really seek it out, but at the same time, I was 10, 11, or 12 years old. I had no idea and I had to deal with something I couldn’t understand. I closed it all off; that was my solution at the time because I didn’t know what I was feeling and no one was helping me understand what I was feeling. That turned me into an angsty teenager, a little trouble-making here and there, but I was always a good student so I never really got into serious trouble. You’ll get a lot of passes when you get good grades, even when you get in trouble with the cops for skateboarding, egging cars, or whatever, shit like that. I was always like, ‘Well, I’m doing good in school, what do you want from me?’ That was how I dealt with it. By closing it off, it impacted not only relationships with my family, but with every friendship/relationship I had, including now. I was never emotionally close with any of my friends. I was always the jokester kind of guy. I never understood the male bonding thing. I never told my friends that I was feeling upset or whatever. Everything was either cool or I would be angry about something, but wouldn’t say anything. I would just say everything is fine or, if it wasn’t fine, I would just pretend that it was fine. I didn’t even understand it at the time; this is all of my understanding in retrospect. That was how I felt about stuff—yeah, dude, my mom is a drug addict, my parents got divorced, I don’t even care. That was how I made it seem.

“Now that I’m a grownup, I realize there’s no way that stuff can happen to you as a kid and just be cool with it. Because I never dealt with it and closed it off, I didn’t even realize until now. I’m starting to realize that I didn’t face any of that stuff. It affected all my friendships, relationships, and my behaviors. It impacted me in super deep ways. My parents got divorced when I was 6 or 7. I don’t really remember; that was the history I was told. I have these random memories of traumatic shit happening. If I can remember something like that and have it stuck in my mind from such a young age, obviously there’s something from that happening. Who knows all of the stuff I don’t remember? It’s in here somewhere affecting me somehow, which is something I started to realize. It’s just not healthy to keep all that stuff inside.

“It’s weird, I had a funny moment; I guess I can say it’s funny now. After my sister died, the family was all getting together. Everyone on my mom’s side was getting together about a month or two after. It was my mom’s step-sister, I guess my aunt, she was around when we were younger. She was telling some story about back in the day. My mom’s family is pretty open about my mom being a fuck-up; they even joke about it to some extent. How else can you handle it? They keep her around, people are nice to her, and they like to see her doing well, but she’s definitely run out of favors from most of that side of the family. They still have her around, but they won’t let her borrow money, but they want to see her doing well. There are jokes here and there about her being the family fuck-up. My aunt was telling some story and she said, ‘I was arguing with your mom one time, and I can’t remember exactly, but I threw a can of soup and hit someone in the head, blah, blah, blah,’ and I said that was me who got hit in the head. I could not have told you that story, but when I heard it, that memory slammed back into my head. Oh shit, that was me. I got hit in the head with a can. I was probably about 10 years old. It made me realize, damn, how many other traumatic events are in there somewhere that I don’t consciously remember, but something can bring them out like that. Who knows how they’ve been guiding me unconsciously my whole life?

“I said I was going to give a brief background, but it wasn’t that brief. I repressed all that stuff and never dealt with it. I never reached out to people. I never sought support from friends. I never did any of that. I wouldn’t say I’m particularly close with any of my friends on an emotional level. It’s like we’re cool, we go out and play video games, crack jokes, or drink beers but it’s never like, ‘How’ve you been, bro?’ I’m like, “Yeah, I’m good, everything’s chill,” or give some bullshit office answer like ‘living the dream, man’—whatever. It now occurs to me that most people don’t operate like that with their friends. A lot of people share stuff with their friends, and it seemed like my take on it was it’s kind of embarrassing to share your shit with people, but then you realize everyone has shit, so there’s nothing embarrassing about it and it actually brings you closer because it shows that vulnerable side of you to tell a friend ‘no, I’m not doing well.’

“Annabelle died on Thanksgiving, and since then, there were definitely some dark times. Like, oh shit, I can’t believe that happened; it’s so horrible. I miss her. I regret not seeing her more and talking to her more. All those feelings wrapped up, and then I turned inward about it. I started going to therapy, which I had tried on and off over the years. It never worked well for me because I was basically lying to the therapist, not telling him how I really felt, or that whole being vulnerable and letting yourself say that you’re not okay was not something that I did, even in the confines of a therapist’s office. I would just give some bullshit like ‘today was tough because I was stressed about work.’ It’s one of those things you can only get out of it what you put into it. A therapist isn’t going to help you if you don’t tell him what’s really going on. So, I told myself this time I’m going to a therapist and I’m not going to lie, which has been my rule and I’ve been doing well with it, I’d say.

“My challenge now is confronting all that stuff. I concluded with my therapist after telling her about how I’ve felt over the past several years, how I used to be really into making music and I stopped doing that because it wasn’t bringing me any joy, really nothing was bringing me any joy, and this was even leading up to Annabelle. I felt like all of that repressed stuff had started to manifest in me being super depressed, but not outwardly or in a way anyone would notice. That’s a whole other question about people don’t really know what depression looks like, I guess. That’s just how I felt inside and nothing really made me happy. I was distracting myself with bullshit stuff like playing videogames, going out partying, and blah, blah, blah, anything to not have to deal with the fact that I was feeling super shitty and not enthused about life at all. Nothing brought me joy and I didn’t really feel like doing anything. I felt like my ideal activity after coming home from work would be to press a button in a videogame and skip to the next day so I didn’t have to live out the next seven or so hours before I went to sleep. I didn’t want to do anything. I’d rather just go to sleep, wake up, and go to work the next day. It was so gradual that it became normal after a while and I didn’t even question it.

“This came at an age, a couple of years ago when I turned 30, and it was like, ‘oh, maybe this is adulthood, you run out of exciting things to look forward to.’ I was done with college, I lived out my twenties, I have a stable career, and now life is just boring. That also kind of threw me off the scent, I guess you could say. I thought that was just part of life. It turns out that a lot of people over thirty are psyched every day to live their life. They do things that make them happy and they get joy from hobbies and friends. I explained this to my therapist and she said, ‘Dude, you’re depressed,’ and I was like, ‘Oh, shit, maybe you’re right.’ It kind of clicked for me. I’ve read a lot about it, you hear about it in music, and I have friends who deal with depression, but I was like ‘no, that’s not me,’ but it turned out that it was me and it wasn’t like it was new or because of Annabelle dying.

“Looking back, I had probably been depressed for years to various degrees, and I finally am doing something about it. My therapist and I were talking about it and she said that I need to make some changes in my life. I need to deal with issues that I have. I need to work on growing my friendships and relationships with my family. I didn’t feel like doing any of that because I just felt like going to sleep. My therapist suggested trying a medication and got me on one. I’m relatively new to the antidepressant game; it’s been about a month or so. I feel some sort of change, but now I have to do the work. She said now I have to do the work, but if I don’t feel like doing the work, then we have to address that first and get into a place where I have enough energy to face this stuff. I’m on the first step of trying to deal with this stuff and it’s not like Step 1 is this and Step 2 is that—who the hell knows? There are so many moving pieces I have to address. Some of the work is internal and some of the work is external in terms of my relationships. I’ve been trying to have more substantial or open conversations with my friends about stuff, saying ‘I’m dealing with this thing right now.’

“Annabelle’s services were a big step in making me feel this was okay. A couple of my friends went to the wake in Massachusetts. Some of them lived in New York and Connecticut, and they all pulled it together and came. It was super duper nice of them. It was awesome to see them supporting me and I was bawling my eyes out that entire night. Being in that position when I had always been embarrassed about opening up to my friends, but in that moment, embarrassment was not even a thought because I was so consumed with the pain of losing Annabelle. When you have an experience like that where all your good friends travel to support you in a time of need and they saw you crying your eyes out, I feel pretty okay telling them I’m having a bad day at this point because they’ve seen as bad as it can get for me. If you would have told me those people were coming for me, I was surprised honestly because I’ve always kept an emotional distance from my friends. I didn’t think they cared enough about me to come for that. It was surprising and touching. It made me value those relationships more. Part of me always felt that relationships were sort of interchangeable when I was growing up; you could change out one friend for another. They were just people you did activities with. There really wasn’t a bond there because I never made an effort to form those bonds; but I got a little older and this experience made me think, ‘Wow, these people actually care about me.’ I guess a lot of it comes back to my never really wanting to let people care about me because in my mind . . . I had a cynical point of view. I thought that people were self-interested and if I let someone care about me, it’s only a matter of time before they say, ‘Now I need to care about something else’ or ‘I’m going to care about myself.’ It’s almost as if you give someone the power over you to put your trust in them, you’re almost setting yourself up for disappointment. It sounds cliché. But, when one of the main people in your life, like a parent, doesn’t care—I wouldn’t say my mom doesn’t care about me, but she wasn’t there for all those years, so it kind of warped my view of relationships and made me distrustful of people. It was amazing that all those people came, and we went out to dinner afterward. Everything was cool and people were super supportive.

“For the past couple of months I’ve been trying to be more open with people and expand those relationships, add some depth to those relationships, accept that those people are important and they care about me and I care about them. That’s a totally normal thing and it’s fine. That’s one of the many steps I need to take, and it’s one relationship at a time, one conversation at a time. I can’t be ‘oh, hey friend, just so you know, we’re super close now because I feel emotionally vulnerable, so it’s all good.’ You have to build that, and that’s what I’m trying to do. Even with new friends, I’m trying harder to be myself and be open with people. I think over the years, I kind of adapted this sort of chameleon personality where I could be whatever I needed to be in the moment, and I wasn’t always being true to myself. It was uncomfortable for me and it was very emotionally and mentally exhausting for me to live that way. It also gave people a misconception of who I was and it led me to be friends with people I shouldn’t have really been friends with because sometimes I thought, ’I don’t really like that person, but I can act a certain way, so that they would like me, so I’m going to do that.’ Just because I like being liked or I liked being cordial and playing the social game. To some extent, you have to do that, but not when it comes to actual friends. There’s one woman at my last job when I lived in New York, she was a super big Yankees fan. I don’t give a shit about baseball, but I started keeping up with the Yankees just so I could chat with this lady in the office. I couldn’t say why. I could have said I’m not into baseball and we could find something else to connect on. We’re not the type of people who are going to chit chat about baseball because I’m just not into it, but that’s just some shit that I would do, or that’s what I used to do. I would try to figure out what people wanted and would be that. So, now I’m trying harder to be myself, and if people like that, that’s cool. I may have fewer relationships, but the ones I do develop should theoretically be better because it’s the real me, and they’re saying they like the real me. I’m being the real me, everything’s cool, and everyone likes that. Using that same mentality to expand my existing relationships is one of the challenges now. I’m trying to re-establish myself and re-establish my relationships, and figure out a vision for my life, because I’ve sort of been coasting for the past couple of years because I was super depressed.

“Annabelle’s death opened up a whole can of worms in terms of my own personal stuff I had never dealt with. There’s a little bit of embarrassment and shame in being behind the curve. I don’t even know if that’s true or not, but I feel like being 30 and ‘I’m trying to find myself’ is lame. That’s what your younger years are for, to build yourself up like that and figure out who you are, what you want, and what you want to do. So, doing that now is a little embarrassing, but it’s what I need. Some people never do it, or do it later than I am now, so it’s not that bad. The only alternative would be to not do it at all, which would be horrible because I couldn’t imagine another 50 years living in the condition that I’m in now. That would be miserable. Yeah, I think that’s my challenge now.

“Part of the reason I’m doing this is that I feel like I need to, not necessarily to apologize, but to give an explanation. A lot of my friends know my history, but I’ve brushed it off, saying ‘yeah, I’m the one with the drug addict mom, it’s not a big deal,’ but it formed me. It made me the way I am in very deep ways, and not necessarily that, but the fact that I never dealt with it is even more crucial to developing who I am and how I am. I want people who are close to me and who know me to get this information and not to sit everyone down individually and say, ‘I’ve been dealing with some stuff for a real long time, were talking like decades.’ It’s gone through various iterations like denial and whatever, acting out, and all of these things, like distracting myself and everything except dealing with it. I just want people to know I care about the people in my life, and any distance they’ve felt from me over the years wasn’t personal; it was all about me and how I am and how I feel with the discomfort of sharing myself with other people. Hopefully, it helps people get some insight into how I am and who I am, and why are friendships are the way they are, but I promise I’m going to be cool now and we can talk about feelings, and it’s fine.”

Tell me a little bit more about growing up with your mother. You mentioned that, in hindsight, there are probably some traumatic experiences that haven’t surfaced yet, some things that have, and there are probably some obvious signs that she was an addict. I’m curious about what, on a day-to-day basis, that looked and felt like for you as a child.

“I don’t really remember a time where everything was all good in the house. I have vague memories of my mom being around when I was in kindergarten, but I think early on, when I was 7, 8, and 9, a lot of that stuff was hidden from me. I was told that my parents were going through a divorce and I remember arguments and fights, but really never understood why or what was going on.

“I remember going to sketchy places and meeting sketchy people. There’s this one story that I always remember. I was in fifth grade and my elementary school does a trip to Old Sturbridge Village, this little tiny village in Massachusetts. It’s one of our first out-of-state trips and we take the nice bus. I remember I had a Sony Walkman and the cool thing to do was to have your CD and Walkman and listen to it on the bus. I was looking forward to that. I was so psyched about my Sony Walkman, it was red, or Discman, whatever the CD one was. I remember that it was red with gray accent features, and I was super psyched about it. I brought it, however old a fifth grader kid is, wherever I went, whether I was sitting in the car and listening to it. I remember I went to visit my mom (she lived on Edgar Street in New Haven), which is kind of a sus area. I was listening to it there that weekend. I had to visit my mom that weekend and then Monday we were going on the trip. My dad picked me up and Monday rolls around and I remember I couldn’t find my Discman. I was looking for it and I was like ‘what the hell, I need to bring it on the trip.’ All the cool kids are going to be listening to their CD players on the bus, it’s an hour and a half ride. I told my father that I thought I left it at my mom’s house and I made my dad take me there early in the morning before school. He went up to get it and he came back and said that she let her friend borrow it and she doesn’t have it. I told him that I wanted to go to the friend’s house to get it and he said, ‘No, we can’t, we can’t.’ Like I said earlier and alluded to, she pawned it. When you’re a drug addict and happen to find an electronic in your house, that’s the first thing you’re going to do. It’s weird to me. I can’t tell you any other single, individual story from fifth grade, but that story stands out to me.

“There was a lot of stuff like that. She would come over and ask us if we had any birthday or Christmas money that she could borrow, just weird stuff like that. What I remember most is a lot of individual events that happened like that during that time. Some I remember and some I don’t, but what I remember is the way that I felt back then. Once you start going to school and meeting other kids and families, it was clear to me that something was ‘wrong’ with my family. My mom wasn’t around, and especially because, for the most part, it was peoples’ moms who were picking them up from school, going to PTA things, or chaperoning trips, and it was always my dad who did it, which seemed weird at the time. A single dad was uncommon at that time, and still is to some extent. I asked myself why everyone else’s mom was there, but mine wasn’t. I had a feeling that something about my situation was off and I just remember feeling that way. It became more apparent to me the more socialized I got and the more I got out into the world as a child, and realized this isn’t normal.

“Honestly, in retrospect it seems so obvious, but I did not connect the dots on this until literally about five years ago. We had DARE in elementary school—it was the drug education program for kids. The cops would come and teach us why drugs are bad and we had to write an essay about why drugs are bad (something like that) in fifth grade. I wrote about my mom because that was my experience: this is why drugs are bad—it fucks your family up, or whatever my fifth-grade self had to say about it—and I won the essay contest. I got a stuffed DARE lion as my prize, which was pretty cool. I think I still have it. Two years later, my sister who is two years younger than me and went to the same school, presumably wrote about the same thing for the same contest, and she also won it. I thought we must be really great essay writers. At some point when I was in my twenties I realized the reason we won was because the adults reading these essays thought, ‘Oh shit, these two kids have a drug-addicted mom, let’s give them a win.’ It wasn’t just a coincidence that we both won. Not that other families couldn’t have been impacted by drugs, but I feel it wasn’t the norm, and we may have been the only ones who wrote a personal story like that. Other kids might have written about what they learned about in DARE, but I wrote about why drugs are bad and here’s a story about my mom. It literally just connected to me a couple of years ago that we both probably won because people felt bad for us.”

Was that essay something that was shared with your peers?

“I don’t remember, but I don’t think so. I think it was submitted and the teachers read it. I don’t know, but it might have gotten published in a booklet afterward; they may have picked the best ones. If it was, I definitely don’t remember it happening and or remember feeling any type of way about people hearing about it. I never thought about it, actually.”

Even just to write about it for whatever the purpose the contest was around is a pretty courageous thing to do, to expose people to that part of your life, which is often a source of shame and fear for many. If your peers did discover it, that may have garnered more respect for you or brought some awareness to that.

“Fifth-graders can be little assholes, so they would have probably been ‘ha, ha, your mom’s a drug addict!’ Who knows? I don’t remember getting picked on. A lot of my friends who were close to me from my home town, over the years, had come to know about it. If you stick around long enough, something’s going to come up where it’s relevant, but I never told anyone specifically because I wanted them to know. It would just happen to come up the longer people stuck around.

“When I was in high school, my mom was a waitress at Duchess Diner in West Haven, and she said, ‘You and your friends should come in.’ There were various times throughout my younger life when I tried to be cool with my mom here and there; it would be a couple of months, or a year, and then I would pull back for a year. This was one of those times where I gave it a shot, and we would go and she would give us some free food.

“My mom has a history of suicide attempts, and I remember there was a time when I was at the diner with my friends and she was serving our food to us and, as she was handing us our plates with her wrists exposed under her arms, you could see scars. I remember the feeling ‘man, all my friends are clearly noticing this now.’ It’s one thing to say ‘oh, yeah, my mom was a drug addict back in the day’ and they had a vague understanding of that, but now she was serving us food with her suicide scars all up in our faces. I think that was probably the last time I went there with them. That’s another weird random story that I remember too.

“My friends in college where you have those drunken nights, when you meet people later in life, you kind of give them the rundown on where you came from and blah, blah, blah. I told some friends I got close to in college directly about it, when they asked, ‘So, where you from?’ conversations that happened over the years. It’s not like I necessarily hid it from people per say but, to my earlier point, I would tell them about it and then say, ‘She sucks—it’s no big deal.’

Speaking of suicides, someone like you who has experienced depression and not really even recognized it, did you ever find yourself at such low points where you had given up hope that things would get any better or considered taking your own life?

“Thankfully, I haven’t. The farthest I’d say it’s gone is that I didn’t want to live that day, not trying for that day, or I just wanted to skip that day. Like I said earlier, I would come home from work and say, ‘I did my duty for the day. Can I just wake up tomorrow and not have to live these hours?’ There have definitely been experiences of my not wanting to live through a particular span of time, but it never crossed my mind to just totally end it, luckily. I could see how those thoughts could creep in, especially if it happens gradually. You could start thinking those things and not even realize what’s going on, but luckily it has never gotten that bad. I’m thankful for that.”

What were some of your coping skills during the times where you were at some of your lowest points? You mentioned sleeping.

“Sleeping, smoking weed, just kind of distraction, pretty much. I would get stoned, play videogames, or take naps, try to hang out with people. I never wanted to be necessarily be by myself and be sober minded. In those moments, my thoughts would go places that I did not want them to go, and I felt I was pushed to deal with or think about those things. I would just get high, play videogames, and would get so consumed with external stimuli that I wouldn’t have to worry about that stuff. Distraction was definitely my number one coping mechanism for as long as I can remember.

“Even when I was younger, in high school, I was always doing stuff. Every day, I would come home from school and then I’d go skateboarding with my friends. I was surrounded by people all the time. In my college years, I partied a bunch. I lived with roommates all the time. In the summers, between college semesters when I would come back home, my house turned into the hangout spot. I would literally have ten-plus people over every night and we would drink and smoke, hang out, listen to music, and play games. I would constantly surround myself with people. I think, in looking back, when I started to turn a page and actually felt depressed and didn’t want to be around people so much, I told myself, ‘Maybe I’m just an introverted person’ and that’s when I said, ‘Yeah, I’m an introvert, I’ve figured it out.’ But that didn’t really jibe with my history because I like being around people and I like social activities. There were definitely days when I was feeling down and wanted to get together with some people and that would bring my energy up. That’s the opposite of an introverted mentality where you think ‘I need to be by myself to recharge.’

“Now, looking back, I wonder if I realized I was an introvert, or was that when I started to feel the feelings of depression starting to happen because I went from always wanting to be around people, which was bad in its own right because it was my coping mechanism to distract myself, to wanting to be by myself, but now I’m not distracted by people so I need to get high and do other stuff by myself that would occupy my mind.”

Did you have any friends or people who are close to you who reached out in a suggestive way that maybe you’re not okay and they were trying to offer you help?

“No, never ever, and I don’t think it’s anyone’s fault other than my own. I think I did a very good job of hiding it. When I was with people, I would be my normal self. I had some friends, when I said that I didn’t want to hang out, they were a little more pushy. I could be convinced at times, and I don’t know if that’s because they sensed something or if that’s just how they are and they really wanted me to come hang out with them. I don’t know if they necessarily consciously felt that I needed it. I think my persona that I put forth all the time was that everything was always cool and everything’s fine. If I didn’t want to hang out, I would make up a good enough reason where it didn’t seem suspicious. I wouldn’t say, ‘I’m not feeling well’ or ‘I’m not in the mood.’ I would say, ‘I’m doing this or I’m doing that’ so it never set off any alarms for anyone when there was that shift. It also came with college ending too. Relationships and dynamics started to change at the point where you’re not seeing people all the time. People are starting to go their separate ways, and that facilitated my being able to pull back. It was good timing to do it in a way that didn’t seem suspicious to anyone paying attention.”

Now, where you are today? What do your coping skills look like? How are you finding that balance between being social and also honoring your own space and time to yourself?

“That is tough. I’m trying to give myself time by myself to just sit and reflect, and also to kind of dive back into the things I got joy and satisfaction out of, like working on music, playing ultimate Frisbee, riding my bike, things like that. I’m trying to be more active in a way I feel is productive for me as a person, because it’s very easy for me to say I don’t feel like doing anything and I’ll try tomorrow, or just do nothing. I’m trying to get back into the things I feel satisfy me, make me feel fulfilled, and help me grow and learn. Therapy is helping a lot. I also make time to reflect on therapy: What did I say last week? What do I want to talk about next week? How do I feel about this? I feel like it would be very easy to fill up my whole schedule with ‘stuff’ from session to session, with no growth in between.

“When I used to take guitar lessons, my teacher would say that I couldn’t not practice between this lesson and the next, or I’d never get better. So, when you’re not here with me, you need to be doing work on your own and I thought ‘yeah, you’re right’ and that’s what I started to do, and I’m taking the same sort of approach with therapy and making sure I have time to myself to sit and think, even though it’s unbearably boring at times or scary too because what if I sit and think and don’t come up with the answer? I’m thinking through things that are uncomfortable or reaching conclusions that are uncomfortable, but I’m trying to train myself. I guess productivity is my main goal in terms of facilitating my own personal growth. Not to say that I’m perfect—I’m still distracting myself to some extent, but I’m trying to be more conscious of it. I ask myself, ‘Am I doing this activity right now because it brings me joy and because I want to do it, or am I doing it because I’m avoiding having to deal with myself?’ I’m kind of checking myself every step of the way, which has been helping. I’m really investing in time and reflecting on my own growth and getting back into the things I love, and this has been helpful. It’s not like you can just flip a switch, so it’s been tough. Every day, I have to convince myself that I have to try today.”

What has the process of losing Annabelle taught you about grief?

“I’ve never felt anything like it. My grandma died a year before that. She was sick towards the end of her life and she was very old (in her nineties). My primary feeling when she died was relief that she wasn’t suffering anymore. She had had a good run. We all loved and appreciated what she gave to us and her time came to an end.

“The first couple of weeks after Annabelle died, I was consumed; it was all I could think about. All the different things, like I said earlier, regretting not being there for her more, talking to her more, thinking about her last moments, and what were those like. Thinking ‘man, she woke up that day, not knowing that that was going to be her last day.’ That got me to thinking ‘today might be my last day and not even know it.’ All these thoughts I would never think were consuming me for a while. Early on, I got a lot of support from friends and family reaching out, and it was good during that time when all those thoughts were consuming me, but then you realize all that stuff goes away after a while, which is natural. There are still some people who would check in once in a while. That first couple of weeks were a whirlwind, and now it’s sort of something that just sits with me all the time. In some ways, it’s good. I feel that’s my motivation to better myself and I think, ‘I need to be more like Annabelle.’ That’s kind of what I lean back on, and it’s helped me in that sense. I guess I didn’t expect for it to be so long-lasting and so intense early on. I’m not the type of person that cries ever, but I could not help but cry at so many different points; it would just happen. It brought me closer to my family, to some extent, at least on that side. I have another half-sister, who is Annabelle’s whole sister – it made me want to cherish that relationship more in an active way, and be more a part of her life. The intensity and length of time that it stays with you, and then how it has morphed now, it’s sad, but the last gift to me, was to make me a better person in her honor. I didn’t really expect to have it stick with me.

“I still think about Annabelle and how cool she was, and I need to be as cool as she was—the lasting feeling I’m trying to hold onto. I’ve never felt anything as intense as that feeling, whether good or bad. It was an experience and it kind of shocked the system at the right time because I had become numb or indifferent to everything. I didn’t really feel happy or sad about anything that was going on and it made me say, “Wow, there are some things that can happen to you, no matter how down you are, that you can’t help but feel to the fullest.’ I realized that I wasn’t a total robot, I could feel this, and it was horrible. Even during those times that I didn’t try to socialize much, I tried to spend a lot of time in solitude because I didn’t want to distract myself and remember thinking that I felt sad, and I didn’t want to take my mind off it, even when someone would ask me to go out for a drink or do something. I wanted to feel super sad about this because it was something I should feel super sad about, and she deserves to have me feel super sad about it. I didn’t want to distract myself from that feeling. I wanted to own it, understand it, and feel it to the fullest. It was very complex, I’d say. I was not well equipped. I hadn’t dealt with a death in that way before. It was intense.

It sounds like it opened the door for you to feel lots of difficult emotions you had been holding onto for years, and it also prepared you to begin dealing with them.

“Yeah, I think that’s true. Like I said, openly crying and having people see that, people reaching out to me and telling them that I felt awful in a way that I felt was justified or understandable. Prior to this, I felt embarrassed to say I was having a bad day, I felt sad, I’m having doubts about my career, or any normal thing that people associated with negative feelings. But this was one thing—who would judge me for being sad about my sister dying in a car crash? It was something beyond reproach, so I could use it as a springboard to open up about other stuff and understand that people are generally sympathetic to other people’s struggles, and I should use it on a smaller scale, and it’s not something as tragic.”

Have you found that being honest with people they are then open to be vulnerable and open with you?

“I think so. I think I’ve experienced that. I’ve had some conversations with people that I think I was not capable of having a year ago, or even eight or six months ago. I think it does set the tone when you’re able to be that way. When you’re closed off, other people will be closed off with you, because no one wants to be the only person being vulnerable. I think I have experienced that in more than one conversation with friends. That’s been positive reinforcement. It makes me feel like people aren’t going to be, ‘oh, you’re sad, you suck.’ I had this absurd, hypothetical, irrational fear about opening up and that people would be judgmental about it. However, most people say, ‘I totally get it, I also feel that way, or I feel a different way, but it’s also not great for me.’ People feel a lot better about opening up when you open up yourself. I’ve noticed that and it was surprising. It seems obvious in retrospect, and it’s a lesson a lot of people learn at a much earlier age, but I was like, ‘Wow, that’s kind of cool.’”

Out of the years of burying your feelings, distracting yourself from them, locking them away, and having this experience of losing Annabelle opening the floodgates for you to start processing all that and integrating parts of yourself into a more authentic, vulnerable, true self, what’s the takeaway from all this? What’s one of the more valuable things you’re gaining from this?

“I think it’s moving forward, I don’t have to learn how to just deal with my past, I have to learn how to deal with things as they come now. There are going to be more challenging things in my life. There will be things that are emotionally difficult. I’ve seen what happens if you don’t deal with them, and it can affect you in ways you don’t even understand. The lesson here is, step one, I have to reconcile my past for myself, but step two is I have to learn how to develop those skills to deal with things now as they happen. My biggest takeaway is to trust my feelings more and, if I do feel bad about something, I have to say it, deal with it, and, if I need support from people, I need to reach out to them and ask for it. I don’t want to be having this same conversation in ten years and be like, ‘Man, my thirties were real tough, I did that whole thing and dealt with my childhood, but then I didn’t develop the skills to deal with things so now I’m dealing with everything retroactively.’ I need to learn to deal with things as they happen.”

What advice would you offer to someone who could relate to either your experiences or the feelings that you expressed?

“Primarily, don’t be afraid to ask other people for help. I know that sounds obvious and is something repeated often, but I think a lot of my stuff came from my thinking over the years, ‘I can handle it, I can deal with it.’ Either I would be in denial about it or I would convince myself that I was ‘fine’ and I dealt with it myself; however, denying it or repressing it is not dealing with it. Relationships are fundamental to the human experience. So, use them to grow and let people care for you, which is a lot easier said than done. It’s okay to ask people to help you out or just to give an ear to talk through stuff. I used to think that was ridiculous, like ‘why? I don’t want to hear about your problems.’ My not knowing how to let someone be a good friend to me also prevented me from being a good friend to them. I would say you have to learn to understand your own feelings and know when you need help from someone, and that’s tough. You have to get to know yourself, what your baseline is, and what you’re feeling, and there are so many different layers to it.

“If you would have asked me ten years ago how I felt about something, I would have given you an answer, but that would have been a surface answer that I convinced myself of internally, and I didn’t even understand that I had been adding these layers of denial and diffusion on top of my actual core feelings. You have to figure out how to get to your own core feelings about stuff.”

Do you have a favorite quote, mantra, song lyric, or something poignant that someone said to you that sticks with you that you’d like to share?

“Nothing is coming to mind, but let me think on that. I feel like I often get attached to song lyrics in various points or moments in my life and I think ‘I can relate to that’ and that’s my thing for the day, the week, or whatever.

“I have been listening to a lot of depressing music lately. I’ve been diving into it. I like that there’s a movement now to untangle the stigma with mental health and stuff like that, because it has been comforting to me to listening to artists who specifically talk about struggling with depression itself. It’s weird, out of context of the song, it’s not a particularly poignant lyric, but there is this rapper Saba, who has a song, “Care for Me,” which makes sense to what I was saying. One of the lyrics in the first verse of the song says, ‘I don’t know how long I’ve had depression.’ That kind of hit me when I heard it, because my therapist told me I probably have it, and I’ve been taking medication for the past month or two since I came to the conclusion that I had it, but I don’t know how long I’ve had it because it became part of my normal. I don’t know when it happened, and it makes me question how much of my behavior, my decision making, my lifestyle, and other stuff has been impacted by this force within me that I didn’t understand. I never really thought about it that way. It was nice to accept that I’m dealing with it now. In saying I don’t know how long I’ve had it is kind of a scary thought to think about.”

Yeah, I can relate. My mother used to refer to me as a child as I was growing up that I was always kind of Eeyore-ish.

“Wow, that’s harsh.”

I can remember that my sisters and I each got a Care Bear that somehow resembled our personality and character, and I got Cloudy.

“Damn . . . Wow!”

Yeah. Who knows how far back it goes? I think the context of what you’re experiencing at any given point in time in your life says a lot about your depression and it was probably a very normal reaction to the environment you were in and the situations you were dealing with.

“Yeah. All those years I spent distracting myself it could have been there and I wasn’t feeling it because my compulsion to distract myself came from that. It’s scary to think about.”

Do you think that by sharing these thoughts, experiences, and feelings with me today you could potentially help inspire somebody else or give them hope that they’re not alone?

“That’s my hope. When I hear musicians and artists talk about their struggles, it makes me feel that there are other people out there who are experiencing what I’m experiencing, to some extent. We see it in art and media, but in this format, maybe less so. There’s no art behind it; it’s just a conversation. I’ve seen people post about their mental health struggles on social media and I would feel like it was TMI, but part of me was envious, thinking ‘they’re really just putting it all out there.’ Hopefully, it does make someone else maybe realize that they’re dealing with something, or if they already realize it, they’re okay with accepting it and even letting other people know about it. I hope so; I’m doing my small part. I think everyone should be more open about this stuff. I can be one more person throwing my hat in the ring:‘Yep, I’m in this thing, too.’ Maybe it will make someone else feel more comfortable. Who knows? I hope your whole project has that effect.”

I hope so. It’s my way of throwing my hat in the ring, saying this is where I am, this is who I am, and I’m trying to use whatever resources I have to bring other people to the table, as well. How has it felt to talk about these experiences and feelings?

“Relieving, I think. Even accepting that there was something I was dealing with and saying it out loud to myself was a relief. Saying it to someone else is a continuation of that. Yeah, it feels good. I think it may have to do with being a little older, seeing it more prevalent in society, and having this horrible thing happen in my life with Annabelle, the fear of being judged for putting this stuff out has kind of fallen by the wayside. It’s become more important to me to get my authentic self out there. I feel relieved and sort of excited about it. It feels like it’s a first step to a new journey to accept this stuff and put it out there. It feels good.”

Nice. Thank you.

“I appreciate your giving me the opportunity too, because we kind of know each other, but not super well, right? So, it’s sort of like the stranger-on-the-airplane effect going on here where I probably wouldn’t have this conversation with a good friend of mine just yet, but with someone who I kind of know and trust, based on just vibes alone. It was a lot easier to get it all out than with someone where maybe the stakes were higher. I don’t get the impression that you’re particularly judgmental, but even if you are and you never want to talk to me again, no offense, it doesn’t really matter because we’re not great friends. It’s a little easier.”

What did make you feel safe in doing this?

“I think it was the fact that you’re so open on social media about your stuff, which is good because it goes back to our conversation about people being more apt to being vulnerable when someone else is being vulnerable. I know that you kind of shamelessly put yourself out there. Maybe people do judge you, but it seems like you’ve accepted that and dealt with it in your own way. I thought ‘Man, he’s putting his own shit out there, so why would he judge me for telling him my shit?’ I think you’re a good front man for this project. You have that outward persona of openness and vulnerability in sharing. I’m sure a lot of people who you’ve talked to felt comfortable with you for that reason. If you had a guarded personality yourself, I think it would be a lot harder.

I agree. Thanks.

“Thank you, man.”

[heartsofstrangers]

What has been one of the most challenging things you’ve experienced or are currently experiencing?

“Leaving a toxic relationship . . . toxic engagement.”

It sounds like a title to a movie or a book.

“Yeah, sounds like a rock band, doesn’t it? That was tough; that ended October 1st. It was one of those things where I kept trying to leave, but we were just so attached to each other because we were living together. I worked from home and she owned a yoga center. So, whenever she came home, I was home. We always did everything together. It was nice at first, but then she was very insecure and became very controlling. I say this after checking my ego; it wasn’t me. I was never controlling of her, but I was attached to her. The way that I left was kind of cruel, but I had to. She went to visit her family in Brazil for three weeks. We were on thin ice because she would always argue with me and I’m not an arguing person. I got really tired of it, so I said, ‘Victoria, when you go, I will not give you a single reason to argue with me, so please don’t.’ In my head, I said if she finds a way to argue with me, then I have to leave. On day 2, she got mad at me for some reason, so I packed up my stuff and left while she was in another country. I didn’t see her, and that was about two months ago. I just saw her a couple of days ago because I think we both needed some closure. I just had to do it; I had to do it that way, because I knew that if I waited until she came back, I would fall back into the cycle.”

Tell me how you got into that relationship.

“It was beautiful, like a fairy tale. She was the owner of a yoga center and I always viewed her as a goddess, a queen. She owns the yoga center, she’s beautiful, she’s so knowledgeable, and very kind but, also at the same time, very firm, which I like. I like confidence in people and I always thought that she was out of my league so I never tried. Then I did the yoga teacher training, which is six days a week, so I spent six days a week with her and I got really close with her, me and a couple other people in the class. I mustered up the courage to ask her to spend time with me outside of class, and it went really well. She kept saying that she couldn’t break that student-teacher promise that she had with herself, and I was like, ‘Yes you can, it’s okay.’ She was insecure from the beginning, but I felt that I could fix it, ‘I will be the best man she could ever have.’ I said to myself that I’ll be the best version of myself that I could possibly be; I will fulfill her needs and there will be no reason for her to be insecure; that should have been the first red flag.

“Everything happened so fast. I was also in another toxic friendship with my roommates at the time, a lot of drinking, a lot of irresponsibility; it was like a big party house. I was also being disrespected all the time. My roommates were just mean people. Victoria and I had been together for about two months and I had already been staying with her basically every night because I didn’t want to be at my apartment and she was like, ‘Why don’t we just move in together?’ and I was like that sounds fuckin’ great. So, two months in, we moved in together. In hindsight, it probably wasn’t the best idea, but we moved in together and that’s when it started to go downhill.”

What was the first sign that it was going downhill?

“I could never make her happy. At first I could, but then it was can you help me with this, can you do that, and I love helping people that I love. She asked me to help with things for her business, multiple things a day (her responsibilities for her business); instead of receiving a thank you, a hug, or a kiss, it was another demand. When I put my foot down and said, ‘I’m sorry I can’t help you with this,’ that was our first big argument. I said I have my own life and my own responsibilities, and I can’t spend all my time taking care of yours. I told her I would help her when I could, but I couldn’t do multiple things a day to help her business. That was the first sign, really.”

Did that feel uncomfortable for you creating that boundary, living in her space (I’m assuming you moved in with her)?

“Yeah. I was always very respectful and mindful of how I lived with her in the beginning and in the middle too but, towards the end, we resented each other, so it was different. I always made sure the toilet was clean, the bath was clean, and the dishes were done. I respected the fact that she let me stay with her there very, very much. We were in that spot for about two months and she wanted to move. I told her that it didn’t make sense to move out, as it was a nice place and we were both really busy (she was opening a new yoga center). I told her that it wasn’t a good idea to open a new yoga center and move in the same month. She was really adamant about it and went and signed a lease without me knowing about it and told me ‘we’re moving’ and I was like ‘what?’ So, this is where the control started to come in . . . I forget what the question was.”

I was just curious if it was difficult for you to define that boundary with her, knowing that you were in her space, essentially sharing.

“Yes, it was. I was grateful that she allowed me to move into her space and I wanted to help her as much as I could so, of course, it was uncomfortable for me to say no to something she asked me to do. However, it was every day, multiple things, and it started to affect my business and my own well-being. It was hard to put that first boundary down and there was a lot of resistance from her to that boundary; that made it even more difficult.”

Was there ever a time where you felt that she would just toss you out?

“No. We were very attached to each other. She never wanted me to leave the apartment, ever. She always wanted me there. I alienated myself from my friends and family because, if and when she came home and I wasn’t there, it was a big problem, which was cute at first, but it got old fast. I like spending time with somebody I’m with, but she really wanted all of my time. I appreciate how much she loved me but, at the same time, I had other people I wanted to spend time with. However, she took that as I didn’t want to spend any time with her.”

Do you feel there was emotional abuse in the relationship?

“Yes. She was what is called love showering. She would upset me somehow or we would get into an argument and, once she realized that she was in the wrong, she would give me gifts, cook for me, cuddle with me, and spend the whole night doing whatever I would like, and that was definitely emotional abuse. Also, the biggest thing she would say to me was ‘you don’t love me, you hate me, and you’re cheating on me.’ Those are three big emotional abuse tactics, I guess you could say, and then it would inevitably lead to an argument. ‘Yes, I love you,’ ‘no you don’t.’ Of course I love you very much; no you don’t, you did this, this, and that, and then it would move forward. Or, you hate me and I would say, I don’t like the word hate, so don’t say the word hate; well, you hate me or you’re cheating on me, fucking other girls; I spend all of my time here, how could I be cheating on you. I don’t think she really knew what she was doing; I think she was so wildly insecure that that’s all she really knew. That was definitely emotional abuse.”

How did that feel to have her confine your life in such a way that you felt you were isolated?

“I began to resent her very quickly. I began to plot ways of leaving her after we had been together for eight months, but I had such a high image of her in my head for years of being suited, and thought that this must be a phase, there must be something wrong here. What was the question again? I’m sorry, this gets me emotional.”

I was just curious how that felt to be put in a box.

“My parents told me I was like a trophy to hold, dust off, and then go back to work. As a result of that, I would do really irresponsible things to lash out. I’m very energetic, so my energy would be kept in and I would do something crazy. We would have a big blowout argument and then I would go and do a bunch of drugs for a night, or go out and get drunk for a whole night, or do something stupid.”

Had you had an experience like this before in a previous relationship?

“No, never. I’ve only had one serious relationship and one kind of serious relationship, but I’ve never experienced this before. It was very weird. I’m still kind of learning what love is, but I know that wasn’t it.”

At what point did you and she become engaged? When did that happen?

“I will say a lot of tension on the relationship was due to the fact that I would have to leave for three or four weeks at a time. I understood and told her that this is the way it is, and if you can’t handle it, I respect and understand if you want to end the relationship. Somebody very close to me needed help, so I had to go and help him, and she didn’t understand that. I’m sorry, what’s the question again?”

The engagement?

“Honestly, I thought I was losing her, so I did it as a Hail Mary. I flew down to Miami during our one-year anniversary and I proposed to her where we had our first kiss, because I felt the relationship dying, but I was so attached to her. I thought that it was a good idea, and it really wasn’t, and then she held that over my head; ‘propose to me again, I didn’t like the first proposal. I didn’t like it, it wasn’t good enough for me.’ I look back and laugh at it; I laughed at it in the moment too, but only of its absurdity. It’s so stupid; I should have left long ago.”

Why didn’t you? What do you think kept you there?

“The lifestyle. I was very attached to her. I was very attached to Miami. I was very attached to Synergy, the yoga center, and she was kind of my ticket to all of that. I stayed for so long because I thought I could make it work somehow, and that was that.”

You mentioned that she was away, you gave her an opportunity to kind of not initiate a fight with you, like this is it, if you initiate a fight . . .

“I didn’t tell her that I was going to leave, though. All I said was, ‘I beg you, please don’t give me a reason to argue with you or for you to argue with me.’ I didn’t tell her I was going to leave if she did and said to her, ‘I promise I will not give you any reason.’ It was something stupid—I called her late at night, because I forgot about the time difference; it woke up her mom, and she got mad at me for that. I’m like, ‘Let it go, please let it go’; I really didn’t want to leave, I really didn’t want to leave, I really didn’t. I wanted to stay and make it work.”

It’s like you had already decided in your mind that one more straw on the camel’s back is going to break it.

“Right. Another thing was she drove me to a point once where I broke a glass frame, held the glass to my wrist, and then tried leaving her for the first time. She copied that behavior where she broke a wine glass, held it to her wrist, and said that she was going to kill herself. That’s why I left when she wasn’t there; I didn’t want to risk that again or at least be there if she was to do that again. I know that sounds terrible, but I got to the point where I had to look out for myself. It really changed who I was. I view myself as a very bright ball of sun. When you try to put a box on that ball of sun, it bursts forth, eventually it cracks and a beam shoots out. For me, instead of positivity, I would do something fuckin’ crazy; it would drive me to do some crazy shit. The whole glass thing was definitely so out of character for me. I love myself. I would never kill or hurt myself, I never have, and never thought of doing it. It was weird.”

Did it work in getting your message across to her?

“No. She was afraid of me for a couple of days, understandably so. I had something in my head—I had the glass frame, shattered, and I was like, ‘Fuck, I have to clean this up.’ I was so emotionally charged up at the moment, my hand was shaking visibly, and I was having completely irrational emotional thoughts. I was thinking ‘well, she fuckin’ hates me, she must want me to fuckin’ die or kill myself, and I can’t live without her.’ So, that makes sense, it was stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. I found the biggest piece of glass I could find and held it to her face; it was stupid, it was very dumb. Then she did the same thing to me; she copied that behavior when I tried to leave her. When she did that, I slowly made my way to her and then, when I got close enough, I grabbed her wrist and pulled it away. Then we spent the night together so I could make sure that she wouldn’t leave; I stayed up most of the night. I don’t think she meant it. I think she was copying what I did and she didn’t know what she was doing. There was a lot of stress on us because we both had businesses, and both of them were suffering. Combine that with a broken relationship, we were both sane doing insane things, very out of character. It feels good to talk about this; thank you.”

You’re welcome. You were at a place in your life where you were doing some really irrational things and you were probably able to recognize in that moment that they felt out of character. Did it inspire you to do anything, to change anything?

“I would just feel more anger towards her, but now I realize it was anger towards myself for allowing it to happen and allowing myself to stay there for so long. It didn’t really inspire me to do anything because I felt so enraged all the time and couldn’t think clearly. It was so weird because when I was in the apartment, it was hell and when I left the apartment, it was heaven. It was South Beach; I could go skateboarding, go to the beach and go swimming. So, it was really weird. I’m very lucky because I have great parents and they really love me. When I finally mustered up the courage to tell my parents what was really going on, that’s when I said ‘I need to live’. My dad told me that if she hurts herself when you’re there, you’re going to jail, and I was like, fuck, you’re right. My parents really inspired me to leave; my friends, too.

“Previously in my life, in order to make a big decision, I needed to have validation from multiple people. I would get it from my parents and my friends (many of them), and they all said, ‘yes, this is right, leave her.’ Now, I’m working on not needing validation to do things. I’m coming along okay. Back then, I really needed validation, especially with her; my only validation came from her for a long time. It was like, ‘hey, is this a good idea? no,’ then I wouldn’t do it, and most of my ideas were bad anyway. If it didn’t involve her or helping her somehow, it was always a bad idea. My physical self deteriorated; I let my beard get all big (beards look good, but not on me). My hair grew long and my physique shriveled to nothing. I was living in Miami, but I was very pale. I wasn’t flossing and wasn’t regularly showering. I was just a shell of myself. It was weird. To think that was only three to four months ago, it really shows me the power of how long a month really is; a month is a long time. It’s been four months since I left.”

Looking back on the state you were in, would you recognize that as being depressed, suffering from anxiety, abusive relationship . . . how do you see that on looking back at it?

“I don’t know yet. Because it was such high emotional highs and such low emotional lows, I don’t know what the word to describe that is. She meant a lot to me; she showed me a lot; she showed me yoga; she showed me traveling. We went to Peru together. We went to Costa Rica together. I will say that we did a lot for each other. I did a lot for her and she did a lot for me, and that’s really nice and I’m very grateful for that; but we also did the opposite to each other. We did really good things to each other and we did really bad things to each other. So, I don’t think it was depression. I don’t think it was anxiety. The right words were confusion and anger. I don’t know what mental state that is, but confusion and anger combined with a lot of love randomly.”

You finally work up the courage to leave her, but it sounds like you don’t feel good about the way you left.

“No. It was my only option. Looking back on it, I got validation. Here’s the situation and they were like ‘this is the only chance you’re going to have to do it like this.’ Also, to move out of someone’s place it’s not like a two-hour thing, it takes a couple of days. I actually did move out of her place once, and I did the same thing. She went to work and I just packed up all my shit and left, but then I moved back a week later because I missed her so much, and that’s why I knew I had to leave Florida because I moved down the street the first time. If I had moved back to Connecticut at that time, I would not have moved back. That’s why I knew I had to leave the way I did. I wouldn’t say I regret it and I won’t say I like it, but it was the right thing to do for both of us, because now she’s happy with somebody else, and that’s great. I’m happier, much happier, grown so much, and learned a lot about myself. I’m really glad I got closure the other day, because we laid down together and it just didn’t feel right. I went there, she started crying and we laid down on the couch. I just felt bland; I didn’t feel love; I didn’t feel anger. I didn’t feel anything. I think she felt the same way, so it was good to get the closure. As I told you before, even after I broke up with her, she would argue with me every day, calling me and texting me terrible things, so I blocked her on everything—Facebook, Instagram, text messaging, and Whatsapp; everything except for email because I don’t know how to block email. Once I did that, I think she got the message. I had blocked her for a good two months, maybe about six weeks, and I unblocked her, told her that I was in Miami and I wanted to see her; it was good.”

Tell me about those weeks, or months, that you leave her and come back to Connecticut. What does that look like?

“I got to the airport early so I could get really drunk. I almost got sick on my flight because I was drinking so much. I landed with a hangover because I fell asleep and then I went out to go drink again. That whole month was just a blur of alcohol and Adderall, if I could get my hands on it; it’s tough to find. I did it for work so I didn’t feel anything. The first month was bad. I was a regular at a bar; I wasn’t myself. I’m a yoga instructor. I’m a light in people’s life. I can’t be in a dark bar, eating this poison, eating this terrible food all the time.

“I got really plastered one night, woke up with a terrible handover, and said ‘I need to stop this.’ Nobody told me to stop what I was doing because I was pretty good at hiding it. I just knew that I had my fifteenth chance (I’ve been given a lot of chances in my life) to really get myself together and make my own life. I’ve always had roommates and then I was living with her. This was a chance for me to really build myself and do what I want to do, not what other people want me to do. So, it was just like a snap; I’m done. I stopped drinking and then I quit caffeine. Together, that was really hard. Mainly because the alcohol was something to do. I had all of these emotions going through my head, and it got me out of my house. It got me kind of social. Alcohol has a numbing effect so I wouldn’t feel the emotional pain. Then I would reward myself with greasy, terrible food, it was vegan, but it was French fries and whatnot, and it wasn’t good. I just needed to stop and start cooking for myself again because my skin was breaking out all the time. I was pale, had long hair, and a big beard. I didn’t look good and I didn’t feel good.

“I started taking care of myself. I slipped a couple of times. I went out, had a drink or two, and got a little bit drunk. Overall, I massively improved, massively, although the first month was really tough. I think I had sex with somebody, or a couple of people, I’m not sure. I think I just called up an old booty call, just to get it out of my system. Oh, yeah, I remember how it went: I actually drove to Misquamicut and it was unconnected, no meaning, just getting it off for old time’s sake. The connection we had wasn’t there anymore, so it was even more depressing.

“I started taking care of myself for a month steady. Somebody really nice came along, it was an old friend; but then she was emotionally unavailable and that didn’t work out. That was a huge test for me because I was doing so good with not drinking, no caffeine and no sugar; I felt that pull to go to the bar. I felt it in the pit of my stomach, just fuckin’ go, just fuckin’ go; you’ve been so good for so long, just go and get drunk, and I said no, I’m going to do something more crazy; I’m not going to have sex for three months, and I put it on line and not release, and that made it tough. I think social media can be great or it can be terrible, and I try to make it great. Holding yourself socially accountable to something really helps me. So, I put it on line that I’m not having sex for three months or I’m not doing this for a while, and I say to myself, if somebody sees me in a bar, then they know I’m a liar and they’re not going to listen to any of the good things that I say. Instead of going out to bars, I go to another extreme. Now, I just keep doing extremely positive things, which is good. It’s good for me and for others. As a result of this, I read more books, I write a lot more, and I write music now, which is cool. I had never written music before. I’ve played guitar for about ten years, but I had never written a song until that girl went back to her ex-boyfriend.

“Everything’s much, much better now. It was really hard because it was like two break-ups. Even though I wasn’t with the second girl long, there was a really strong emotional connection and we had been friends for eight years. To finally make that work, it was so random, she was spending every day with me, we were having a great time together, and then all of a sudden she said I can’t see you anymore after three weeks of that; so it was like two breakups; but I also jumped in too quickly after the last relationship.”

Looking back on those relationships, it seems like there were some similar behaviors. You had said the last girl you mentioned was emotionally unavailable, and we had chatted earlier and you recognized that also exists within you, that you’re emotionally unavailable, and perhaps that’s a mirror.

“Yes, I see that. Another good thing is that I’ve eliminated anger with her; I let that go. Instead of being angry with that girl, I never was angry with her. You seek your own level, if that makes sense. Whatever you put out, you get back; it’s the law of attraction. These things that she is experiencing, I am. She was emotionally unavailable, and so was I. Another girl I dated four weeks after that, same thing, she was emotionally unavailable, and I’m still trying to figure it out. I always hung out with them and I was always very present when I spent time with them. I was very passionate about Missy and I wore my heart on my sleeve. I was like ‘I like you and let’s spend more time together.’ I don’t know how that’s emotionally unavailable, but there’s probably a part of me that is, but I just don’t recognize it yet. I know that it’s in me because I wouldn’t attract these kinds of people if it wasn’t. Like you were saying before, a big thing for me is understanding that people are near, and I knew that when I was with Victoria, so that made me more angry because I thought why can’t I fix myself and why am I putting her through me, if that makes sense?”

Where are you finding yourself now at this point in your life?

“I’m on the biggest upward spiral that I’ve ever experienced in my life in terms of business, physical self, educating myself, self-care, self-love, the friendships I have, and how I spend my time. Every aspect of my life is doing so good, and I’m so tempted to fuck it up. I’m so tempted to, I don’t know, reward myself and go out and get really drunk, but I know myself, I know that if I do that, it’s going to reverse the upward spiral. It’s just the little villain within myself that’s had control over a lot of my life. I don’t want to say that I have control over it, but I’m eliminating it. I don’t want to control anything, I just want to get rid of things, and I’m trying to get rid of those attachments I’ve had towards self-destruction.

“I’m great now. The last person I dated, the whole thing that happened—I wasn’t upset about it; I was just like ‘okay, whatever.’ Mainly because it’s probably unhealthy in a sense. I’m so busy that I’m putting my energy into my business. I like it because I put energy and time into my business and I get a really good return, whereas I would put energy and love into somebody else and I usually wouldn’t get anything in return, so it’s kind of nice. But I have to watch myself to make sure I don’t shut out people and emotional connections entirely. I’m open to it, but I’m not searching for it. I wasn’t searching for Victoria when I first started dating her. I said to myself I’m in Miami, I’m not going to have a fuckin’ girlfriend in Miami; it’s the worst place to have a girlfriend.

“Now, I’m doing really well and in looking back on it, I should have left about eight months in. I think I was using . . . I definitely was using when I first started dating her. I was using a bunch of amphetamines because my other business was doing really well and I was up for days at a time, and I hid it from her. When things were getting more serious and I left that party household, I stopped using, but then my business started suffering and I thought it was because I wasn’t using. So I started using again, and then I used more because of me and what was happening with her. It was like this: I would use, then I wouldn’t use, then I would use when I was with her. The worse it got and I couldn’t get my hands on the drugs that wanted, I turned to cocaine. I remember once I did it for two weeks, every day in a row, to work, because my brain was telling me that in order to make money, I need to do drugs. Because I was doing so much drugs, I needed to make a lot of money. For two weeks, I was doing a bunch of blow. I would have headaches, I’d always be sniffling, and I would blow out scabs in my nose. My parents asked me what was wrong, am I okay? That’s when I knew that I needed to slow down. I got to the point where I stopped seeking, but if it presented itself to me, I wouldn’t say no. And then sometimes I would seek if I was really overwhelmed, and now I’m still at that phase where if it’s presented to me, I’ll probably do it, but not nearly as bad as it was and I don’t seek anymore, which is good. I’m really learning to value and appreciate myself and know that I don’t need those things to do great things; they actually hinder me from doing great things.”

That’s a really important observation to make.

“Thanks. It’s weird because when I was making a lot of money, I was using, and everybody I knew who was making more money than I was also using. So, it made sense, staying up for three days at time, watching your ads and testing products. If they’re doing it, I want to do it. Then it stopped working for everybody, but everybody kept using, and then I just stopped hanging out with those people, and that helped.”

Who do you find yourself hanging out with now? Do you have a core group of friends?

“Myself and my little sister a lot; she’s the coolest. She’s fourteen and she’s like my best friend. Honestly, I really spend a lot time by myself.”

What’s that feel like?

“Good. It feels good. I feel lonely sometimes, but then I jump into a cold pool and I’m fine. Cold stuff really helped me out a lot, man. It really helped me. It’s like a huge shock. Getting into that water and staying still, meditating in it. It takes so much will power and focus; when I get out, it washes away my anxiety and negativity. I also feel like I need to find a better business/life balance. This has happened to me before where if I’m not working, I get anxious. I don’t get anxious at the gym because I know that I need to go to the gym, but when I’m spending time doing something else and not working (like when I’m at the gym), I get anxious about not working. So, I need to hire somebody basically or something like that.

“Being alone is good, especially after being with somebody who wouldn’t leave me alone for so long. Going back to how I value myself: I really appreciate who I am and I don’t want to be around people who will bring me down. I want to uplift people. I view it like this—there are people who are influenced by other people when they walk into a room and there are people who influence other people when they walk into a room. I am making that shift right now, from being influenced to becoming an influencer. I’m finding it takes a lot of alone time to find myself, to shed a lot of karma and bad habits, and become really comfortable with who I am. That’s why I’m alone right now, and it’s not a bad thing. I’m very busy, and it’s good. Everything is growing so much; I don’t want to ruin it.”

It sounds like you’re growing as well.

“Yeah, thanks. Previously in my life, when I walked into a room, I made it happy and stuff; but, more often than not, I’d be influenced by the energy of the people around me, but I want to change that. I think about an enlightened master; you just sit around and listen. I want people to listen to what I have to say, but I want to make sure that what I’m saying is not coming from the ego. I want to make sure that what I’m saying is beneficial to them, if that makes sense. I’m alone a lot, reading and listening to a lot of masters on YouTube or whatever, educating myself, especially about veganism too; I’m learning more about that.”

If you could catch yourself at another point in your life, maybe before some of these things happened, perhaps even when you were a teenager, knowing what you know now, what message or wisdom would you impart to your younger self?

“Never pick up drugs, never. I was so against drugs my whole life. I had a retainer, after I had my braces that literally said ‘no drugs’ on it. I was soooo against drugs. When I started raving, I was known as a sober raver. I would never take ecstasy or Adderall, nothing. I would just go there and be so high off the energy and the music that I was fine. And then, it was a harmless mistake—I was really tired one night, driving, and my friend had a Vyvanse prescription and he said, ‘Here, take one of these and you’ll stay awake.’ It’s chasing the dragon, I think they call it in China, the opium. It’s been like that ever since. I got that really wicked, fuckin’ awesome high and I was so productive, happy, and talkative when I took my first amphetamine. Like anyone else, I would just take it when I would go to a party and then I would take it when I was tired and needed to work, then I would take it for days at a time. I’d stop for a week, then pick it up again, and then it got to a point where I would use it, at my worst was a three- or four-month period where I would use every day and I would be up for three or four days at a time and then crash for a day and a half. Then, I would wake up and the first thing I would do is take a 30mg instant release Adderall. It was right next to my bed. I would roll over and take it, lay in bed for ten minutes, let it hit, get up and go, and I’d be up for days. I guess if there was one point that I could stop myself, it would be to say no to that one Vyvanse pill, because that’s what really kicked it all off. That’s how all drugs are, really; it’s scary.

“I have a very addictive personality, although I have more control over it now. If I really like something or someone, I spend a lot of my time doing that thing or spending time with that person. I have control over that now, thank God; but, back then, I didn’t, especially when it came to using. I wanted to feel good all the time. It was many things—using with my friends, so that was good, the high felt good, I was making money at the same time, and I was living in a penthouse in Miami Beach. There were all of these really good feelings that I was attached to that got me hooked and, once everything left, I still wanted to use.”

Is it fair to say that Victoria was a drug for you, in a sense?

“Yeah. The emotional highs and lows—that’s a drug for me. When it’s high, it’s great, I thought it could always be like this. When it’s low, I was like ‘fuck it, I don’t want to be here,’ and then something would happen. It was so weird; we would be so mad at each other and then something stupid would happen and we would laugh, kiss and make up, even after a long argument with yelling and screaming. She was definitely a drug for sure. When she was happy, she was the best; she was so cool. She had a really thick accent, it was so cute; I loved it. When we were happy, we were really happy. She is so smart and everything. I was ready to have kids with her at one point. Thank God I didn’t. She was definitely a drug.”

Looking ahead on your life from here, what do you see for yourself? What’s on your map?

“Short term, I want to grow my business to a multimillion-dollar company annually, which I think I can do this year; I know I can do this year. As a result of that, I want to take care of my parents and move somewhere different. I want to have a really good work environment for my employees. I’ll be remote, but want to make sure they have good pay. I want to travel and see the world. Honestly, within five years, I want to have a couple million dollars in the bank and go off the grid. I want to get some land in South America, grow my own food, have an animal sanctuary, and detach from everything, including Wi-Fi, study yoga and meditation, learn, and have a big library. I’m talking in the mountains, away from everything, and be the way Mother Nature intended us to be and learn from the greatest teacher, which is nature. So, that’s probably in about five years; but before I do that, I want to have money in the bank, just in case. I would like to do that right now, but I would just come crawling back in a couple of months I know, so I want to make sure I’m financially secure before I do that. So that’s it: grow my business, move to the jungle, take care of my family, and maybe find love along the way. I’m not bent on getting into a relationship whatsoever, although I do miss intimacy, but that’s pretty much it.

“Do you know what the Bhagavad Gita is? It’s a well-known Hindu text between Krishna and Pandava prince Arjuna as they are about to go into war. There are a lot of metaphors, and basically one of the metaphors is that the chariot has five horses, which are the five senses. Krishna controls the horses, so he controls his five senses. I understand that touch is a sense, and I’m craving the sense of touch with somebody, but I need to control that and get that under control. So, it’s another test for me right now.”

Through these experiences over the last few years, what have you learned about yourself, anything that stands out?

“I learned that I have an addictive personality. I learned that I let things go for way too long. I learned that I need to be more responsible. All of these things I’m already working on. I’ve made such progress, but I also learned that it’s okay to stop spending time with certain people and people do change, and it’s okay to stop talking to them once they do change, and to move forward in your life. About myself . . . I think that’s pretty much it; I can’t think of anything else right now.”

Okay.

“More self-control and more standing up for myself, in a polite way. Like I said, I let things go for way too long. I lived with Gilla for too long, and she was emotionally abusing me for way too long. The same thing with Victoria. I have to learn to recognize those signs early on and to leave.”

Do you have a favorite mantra, quote, song lyric, or something that someone said to you that resonates with you?

“One that sticks out to me is a John Mayer lyric that says, I think I told you before, ‘fear is a friend that’s misunderstood.’ I was afraid to leave Victoria, I was afraid to leave Gilla, and I was afraid to leave Miami. As soon as I did, it was the best thing I ever did. A lot of really enlightened, smart people say that fear is their best friend, and that really helped me. I was afraid to stop using. I was making money because I was using, and I was afraid to stop using. I was afraid of a lot of things.

“Another mantra that sticks with me is a new mantra, Om Namah Shivaya. It’s a chant to Shiva, who is the God of destruction and change and a couple of other things, but change is the only constant. When I chant that mantra (it utilizes binaural beats), I chant it 108 times. It really helps me channel energy to accept and embrace change. Since I left Florida, there has been massive change. I’m single, I’m not living in the same space, and I’m improving myself. It’s a constant, constant change.

“Those are the two things that stick with me—accept fear and embrace change.”

I think fear is something we spend a lot of our lives trying to run away from.

“Yes, and we should be running towards it. The greatest things in life are found on the opposite side of fear. Someone else told me that.”

How did it feel to talk about these experiences and feelings with me today?

“Really good, because I feel guilty talking to people about it because I don’t want to waste their time. But if I’m going to help other people, I don’t feel guilty talking about it. Thank you very much for listening to me.”

You’re welcome. Do you think it’s possible that by sharing your thoughts, feelings and experiences today like this, someone on the receiving end could potentially benefit from some hope or inspiration?

“Yes. I think so, because I heard something similar when I was with Victoria, and it was a seed. I didn’t take immediate action on it, but it definitely grew over time. So, I think that somebody listening could definitely benefit. It could be that seed for them; it could be that breaking point.”

[heartsofstrangers]

What have been the most challenging things that you have experienced or are currently experiencing?

“With my dad, because he’s an alcoholic. He has done a lot of bad things because of it. He would steal my mom’s money and he would use it for going out to bars and stuff. Then we would end up broke and we wouldn’t be able to pay our rent. Two years ago he cheated on my mom with someone and had a baby with her which was really sad for all of us, and it was a really hard time for all of us.”

Did you know what was going on when all of this was happening?

“I kind of did. I knew about his drinking. Abbey and Ben (my siblings) didn’t really understand.”

How did it make you feel?

“It made me feel really sad and let down. Like my dad didn’t want us anymore, and he just wanted another child.’

What is your relationship now with your father? Is he a part of your life?

“Yes. I am still trying to live with the fact that he is with another woman and they have two babies now. It’s sometimes hard and I just have to deal with it.”

Were there times when you were mad at him, or you just cried and you were so hurt?

“Yes, usually because recently he’s been drinking and he’s been getting the help he needs now. When I found out he was drinking again, it made me really sad, because now he was doing it with another family too, not just us.”

What do you know about alcoholism and addiction?

“I know alcoholism and addiction is a disease. It is curable but you have to stick with it. You can’t just say that you can have a drink. You can’t. You can’t have another drink of beer or anything.”

How have you been able to accept and love him regardless of his addiction?

“He’s my dad and I will always love him. I know he makes mistakes, but he needs to realize that he needs to learn and stuff. He’s my dad and I love him.”

What do you think is the cause of his addiction? Do you think that he is in some sort of pain?

“I am not really sure. Maybe it’s because once he had a sip of that beer it made him do crazy things. He thought it was fine but no one else did. He didn’t realize that he had a problem and that he was doing crazy things that were hurting other people.”

It sounds like his behaviors have had an impact on all of your lives. What do you think was the most difficult part of going through these experiences with your father’s alcoholism, and him creating another family?

“I think the hardest part was him lying. He had to move out because of his drinking and he was just separated for now. We would go over to his apartment sometimes and the woman was there. I asked him if they were together, and he said ‘No, no, we’re just friends.’ He actually lied to me, and he keeps lying, which is the saddest part. He’s lying to his own children.”

Did it ever make you feel bad about yourself? Did you feel like you were doing something wrong?

“No. I have never really felt like it was my fault. I always just felt like it’s him. He thinks that he’s not doing anything wrong. I try to tell him that. He has never really made me feel like it was my fault or anything like that.”

That’s good. How does he respond to you when you talk to him about his behavior, or the impact it’s had on you?

“He’s never really liked to talk about it. He usually changes the subject, which gets me even madder. So I start yelling at him. Lately he’s been trying to talk to me about it. Usually he’s just changing the subject, and he just denies it and lies.”

What are some things that have helped you process these experiences?

“Talking to my mom about it. I like journaling a lot, so I like to write in a journal what is going on. It just calms me down. I also really like listening to music when I’m upset or mad about that, or coloring. It's just stuff that calms me down when I get mad over that kind of stuff.”

Those sound like good outlets to have. Do you ever see a counselor or a therapist?

“Me and my siblings and my mom used to go to a family counselor. His name was Art Highman, but he’s retired. My dad says we are all going to see a counselor soon. I don’t know when.”

Has your mother introduced you to any twelve step programs?

“My mom wants me to join ALATeen She thinks it’s a good idea because I will get to meet people who have gone through the same experience as me.”

Have you met anyone or do you know anyone around your age with a parent who’s an alcoholic or battling addiction?

“Yes. I have a few friends and they are actually my closest friends. I am really glad I have a few people to talk to about my experiences, and they talk to me about their experiences.”

Does it help to know you aren’t alone?

“Yeah.”

I’m sure that they don’t judge you, because they have been in the same shoes themselves, right?

“Yeah.”

That’s a good feeling. What is your relationship like with your mom? Is there a time when you were ever mad at her or blamed her for your father leaving?

“No. Sometimes me and my mom get into fights, but we’re like best friends, sort of. We always talk to each other about things, and we’ve never really ever had a huge problem like with my dad.”

What made you feel comfortable or what inspired you to want to share this with me today?

“Well, I want people to know that they are not alone. I had experiences that hurt me, but I got through it. I am strong now.”

Do you feel like you would recognize the behaviors of an alcoholic or an addict if you were to be in contact with someone else who wasn’t your dad? For instance, when you start dating or maybe later down the road when you get into relationships, would you recognize some of those signs?

“Yeah I think I would.”

What would they look like?

“They would look very drunk. People who have been drinking aren’t always the happiest people. You can actually smell it one them. They’re not nice. They can be rude. They can do crazy things.”

Was your father happy when he was sober?

“Yes. He’s been way better. He’s been three weeks sober, and he’s been better. He’s way happier, and he’s actually doing things for the family.”

It seems like you have probably had to practice forgiveness in your relationship with your father. What has that been like for you?

“It’s been really hard. Forgiveness is such a simple word, but it is hard to use it if you have been hurt. I forgive him for some of the stuff that he has done, but I am still trying work on forgiving him completely. It’s just been really hard.”

It sounds like it’s been an ongoing process.

“Yeah.”

Some days he may be doing well, and other days he may slip and repeat some old patterns. How do you protect yourself from getting hurt?

“What do you mean?”

Maybe you get high hopes when he’s sober, like you said for three weeks. You think “this is going to be the time he gets his life together.” Then something happens and he makes a mistake and goes down that same road again.

“That's what I’m always questioning, because I never really know when he's going to actually be sober and stop. He has done this before and he's like, ‘Oh, I’m going to get sober. I’m going to get the help I need,’ but then he's like, ‘It’s okay, I can have one sip of beer. It's fine.’ Then we go down the same road again. And it's not okay. I’m always questioning every day if he’s going to do the right thing or not.”

You know in sobriety for the person in recovery the motto is “one day at a time.” But it sounds like for people involved in their life, they also have to take it one day at a time. They don’t know where they are going to be from day to day or the choices they are going to make. What have you learned from these experiences?

“I have learned that it's hard to forgive, but once you forgive it is so much easier. You can get on with life easier. You can just try to forget all the mistakes, try to be sorry and try to stay happy. Not be angry with yourself or anything.”

It sounds like you have had to practice accepting things too. Maybe this isn’t how you imagined your home life or family life would be. Sometimes that involves grief, letting things go and accepting things how they are. Is that part of the process as well?

“Yeah.”

Was that difficult to do?

“Yeah. I wasn’t really expecting a new family. I have to learn to accept that this is what it is now. I may not like it, but I have to just go on with being happy and stuff.”

What I’m hearing is part of accepting that this may not be how you wanted things to turn out and moving forward, there are some things that are not in your control. Right?

“Yeah.”

So it sounds like you can focus on things that are in your control. Which is how you respond to it and how you choose to move forward. It sounds like you are doing that in a healthy way. I think that it's good that you have outlets such as writing and listening to music, and being able to openly talk with friends who can relate to your experience. It's important to have those outlets. Otherwise you tend to repress things, and it leads to sadness and feelings of being depressed or being angry. Those sort of seep into other parts of our lives and relationships. How old are you?

“I’m thirteen.”

Have you had any sort of education in addiction or anything in school? Have you learned anything about addiction?

“Yeah. Not a lot. I have health class and we learn a lot about safety, drugs and stuff like that. What to do if we encounter someone like that. Like if you see a drug and someone asks you if you want a drug or alcohol then you say ‘No. It's bad for you. Stuff like that.”

Do you feel like you would be less inclined to put yourself in a position with drugs or alcohol because of what have experienced with your father?

“Yeah. Probably. Because I would know exactly—well not exactly—what to do. I probably have a little more experience because of what I am going through.”

What would you want someone else out there to know? Someone else your age who maybe has a parent dealing with addiction and may or may not be getting help for it.

“That it’s okay. You can be sad, but you have to try to stay on the bright side. Just try to maybe do what I do to calm down. Do something you like, like reading or writing, coloring or music. Stuff like that. If you have someone you can talk to about it, then definitely talk to them and open up.”

Does it feel better to talk to someone about it?

“Yeah. Especially if it’s an adult. They can tell you what's right and what's wrong, and what to do.”

They can help you.

“Yeah.”

Do you think it’s possible that you can change another person? Like you could change your father’s behavior?

“I think it is possible because I think he finally realized. He would make everyone cry because we knew that he would drink. Before when he would leave my mom, everyone was so little, my siblings were so little, I understood. He knew that my other siblings didn’t really understand. He was like, ‘Oh, I can get away with it. They don’t know what this is.’ Ben, my brother, doesn’t really understand, but me and my sister know, so we try to stop. He realizes that ‘this has got to stop. I can’t drink anymore.’”

Sounds like you can influence and support him, but ultimately, I think, that it is his choice. You can’t help somebody who doesn’t want to be helped, right?

“Yeah.”

Is there a quote or some piece of advice, or something that someone has said to you, or a song lyric something that means something to you, that you would like to share?

“There is a quote that I go by. I think it's definitely for alcoholics. I forget who wrote it, but it’s ‘let go or be dragged,’ by Zen something. I forget. But the quote is ‘let go or be dragged.’ I definitely recommend it for people who have alcoholism, because if you don’t let go of that alcohol, you are going to be dragged forever. You are going to lose everything. You are going to lose your family, friends, probably your job, and you are not going to be in a good place.”

How has it felt to talk about these feelings and experiences with me?

“It’s been great, because now people can see what I have gone through and learn from my experience, and my advice.”

I agree. Thank you.

[heartsofstrangers]

What is the most challenging thing you’ve experienced or are currently experiencing?

“Wow, there are so many over the course of my lifetime, from being a single parent to freaking out about successfully navigating through single-parenthood in the face of so many challenges that kids face today, especially little boys. But I will probably say the most recent thing that’s been challenging was the death of my friend Linda. She died January 11, 2015. We went through the fire academy together back in 1997 and we became fast friends. We discovered that our kids played together before we even knew each other, because I lived on one street and her mom lived a little bit further up the block across the street, so the kids would run back and forth and play.

“We were in a class in the academy of 55 people, and we were the only two black women, so we immediately bonded and clicked. Then we bonded and clicked with the other two women in the class. From there, Linda went on to be a paramedic. I thought about that road, but it was just too much. It was like two years of class that I wasn’t willing to, at that point, sacrifice for, so we continued our careers together and separately, on the department, because there were times that we’d work together.

“But man, I mean, 17 years of friendship. When she died, it was like—people pass all the time. It’s an eventuality. You expect people to die at some point, but she was cut down in her prime, and that was devastating, especially because we were so close during the academy and the subsequent years 16 years. That was challenging.

“I remember I found out that she died that Sunday morning, and then I had to go to work the next day, and I was dreading it. I wanted to call out, but I didn’t want to get in trouble for calling out, so I just went. My shift was very sensitive—surprisingly, because firefighters are sort of rough and ‘get over it’—but that was the first challenge.

“The next day, Linda’s father called me and asked me if I would plan her funeral service. When her son passed away in 2008, I was talking to them the day after, because he was only 18—again, cut down in his prime—and I asked her what she was going to do. And she was like, ‘About what?’ And I said, ‘Linda, what are you gonna do about Brendan’s service?’ And she looked at me, and a single tear rolled down her cheek, and that’s when I knew, you know what, I need to help her do something. I ended up doing the entire thing, and her family was so appreciative and so grateful, so when her dad called me and asked me to do hers too, I’m like, tough, but okay.

“So that whole week was such a flurry of activity, it was amazing. I mean, calls from the governor’s office, because Senator Blumenthal wanted to come, and please be sure you have a seat in the dignitary section; the Red Cross called. To this day I still have no idea where they got my number from—they set up like a mobile van outside, out in front of the church, and they were passing out coffee, hot chocolate, and tea to people waiting to come into the service. It was amazing. Linda’s family got a police escort pretty much from the time they got up in the morning until after the repass. AMR shadowed them with an ambulance from, like, seven or eight in the morning until after the repass. It was just amazing. It was amazing to see how many people came together, and how many people offered services, help, food, all kinds of stuff which you couldn’t even imagine. It was just crazy.

“And then dealing with the aftermath, because then the news reports came about what the medical examiner had determined Linda’s cause of death was, which I never accepted, because it just didn’t feel right. It didn’t seem right to me. When you know somebody when you know that you know them, and then to be told that, okay, this is what happened—I just didn’t accept it, and I think that’s part of why I’m still unsettled about her death, because you still feel like you don’t have much of a sense of closure.

“It’s still challenging. My grandmother always teaches me that there’s a silver lining in every cloud, things happen for a reason, so since then, I’ve been trying to figure out what the hell the reason is—why? Because it makes no sense.

“I do know that doing this job for this many years sort of desensitizes you a little bit, because you see so much and you compartmentalize so much and you’re taught to not become emotionally involved, which is hard sometimes. I’ve had women who have had stillborn children, I’ve delivered babies—there’s ups and downs, and you’ve got to take the bitter with the sweet. I’m still struggling with why. So far the only thing I can think of is that after I got past the initial hurt and shock of Linda going, I think I got a great deal of sensitivity back, because if you told me, oh, I met somebody and we’re getting married, the me before that would have been like, ‘Oh that’s great, Corey. Congratulations,’ but now I’m like, ‘Oh my God, that’s incredible for you!’ It’s deeper, or more connected. It’s different. Really, really different.

“Dealing with all of that, and work, and because I work in the firehouse that she worked at before she ended up at her last firehouse, there are memories of her everywhere. There’s this wall in the firehouse where there are 8x10 pictures of everybody who’s retired, and they put one up there of Linda, too, so I see her often. That’s probably the most challenging thing recently that I’ve had to navigate through, and I’m still working on it.”

How have you processed the grief of losing her? Were there different stages?

“Well, I think initially, I was so busy planning her funeral that I had to push all that aside. In the week it happened, it was do or die. I had so many things to organize and plan and execute. The calls never stopped. So, between dealing with her family and having the family meetings to find out what they wanted, versus what was in my ability to do, versus what city agencies were offering to do things—it was busy. I remember putting a post on Facebook that actually came up in my memories not long ago, like, listen, I have given so much of myself in these last two weeks, I’m shutting down. Please don’t call me for anything. Don’t ask me for anything. I just can’t right now.

“I think I probably still haven’t dealt with it all the way. I don’t know why, but I guess I feel like if it don’t fit, don’t force it; let things evolve and unfold as they unfold or evolve. Life is busy, and you just feel like you spent all your life being strong; it’s hard to put that down. It’s very hard to put that down and face your own weakness and your own vulnerability. That’s very hard. Very, very difficult. That’s also a struggle right now, an everyday struggle.”

How do you find balance between keeping yourself detached from the trauma and the things you must see and deal with at work and also being human and letting some of that seep in and processing some of that? Is there a way of burying it to absorb some of it to some extent?

“Yeah, I mean, my job isn’t as sensational, like Ladder 49ish or Backdraft-ish, as people sometimes think it is. I blame the media for that, but that’s a whole other story. Most of the time, it’s routine and mundane. It’s basic stuff like, ‘I’m having chest pains, difficulty breathing,’ which doesn’t really affect you. It’s when you see somebody lose everything that you feel bad, or if you see somebody lose their life, or a really bad car accident. I don’t really know what I do to balance it. I would probably say that I pay more attention to myself, because when bad things happen at work, like really, really bad—I would probably say that children dying tops my list. Easy.

“I remember, years ago, Linda and I were working out of the Howard Avenue firehouse, and one of the calls we got around three o’clock that day came in as a fall victim at a school. So we go, and en route we get an update that whoever fell is now unconscious. We get there and it’s a little kid, like seven or eight years old, and, as it turns out, he’s in cardiac arrest. We have the stress of trying to help this little kid combined with the stress of his mom not speaking English combined with the stress of a whole wall of teachers watching me and Linda, plus school buses full of kids because it was dismissal time, watching us do CPR on this poor little boy.

“As it turned out, he had a congenital heart problem, but we didn’t know that. It wouldn’t have changed our protocols or anything, but it’s just stressful, when little kids die. The elderly, it doesn’t affect you as much, because you feel like they’ve lived a full life, however they went, whether it was intentional or not, they’ve lived a full life. But when it’s children, you feel like they have so much promise and potential. It just sucks. It sucks for the parents. This kid, you never know what they could have been. You really never know.

”Those moments are bad for me because you never know how it’s going to manifest or when; I just know that at some point, I’m going to get angry, and I’m going to retreat into myself, and I’m not going to want to be bothered with anything or anybody, and you just have to wait for it to pass. In a weird way, it’s kind of like PMS: you know it’s coming, but you brace yourself, like, okay, it’s coming, it’s coming. I can feel perfectly normal after a pediatric code and then, the next day, a day later, three days later, I feel it coming. I can’t even describe it. It’s like a cloud, a curtain, this crazy mood where you’re just angry, and I’m not gonna say angry for no reason, because you know what the reason is, but why am I angry about this? Why? Just why?

“It’s crazy. It’s a crazy trip to go on, and I don’t know if the rest of my work family is affected like I am, but I think I’d probably be affected even if I didn’t have kids, just because you’re human and, again, the guys are all yeah, it’s gonna be okay, don’t worry about, but I suspect that they probably feel things deeper than they let on, and I’m just not one of those people who will hide it. I’ve actually been sent home after pediatric calls, because my officer was like, ‘Yeah, nope, you’re not fit to work. Chief, Erika is going home. We just had a bad call. Send somebody else.’ At that point, it was close to shift change. We only had another hour, so I’m like, ‘Don’t worry about it, I can just hang out until it’s time to go home.’ But he was like, ‘No, I don’t want you here. I want you to go home and chill.’

“The worst thing about those calls is that people don’t understand. When you have stuff that you’re trying to get across to people and they don’t understand—that’s one of the things we were taught in the academy, that when emotional things happen at work, and you go to try and talk to your mother, father, spouse, whoever, people aren’t gonna understand. That’s one of the truest things we ever learned, because I’ve tried to talk to my mom or somebody close to me, whom you trust—like, ‘listen, Mom, we had a bad call at work today,’ without revealing details because of HIPAA. In general, people whom I’ve talked to have been like, ‘Oh, it’s okay, it’s just one day. Get over it.’ It’s like, you don’t understand what I just went through, and it’s hard to make people understand, and that’s why, I think, that firefighters have such a unique bond over any other profession, because we go through a lot of emotional stuff together, and nobody understands except for another firefighter, because they’ve been there. And if they haven’t been there, they’re going to be there eventually.

“That’s probably the biggest challenge—who do you talk to when you need to get things off your chest? Because if you don’t, you’re gonna implode. You can’t internalize stuff like this, because you’re gonna end up a freaking mass murderer, or lose your mind. It’s really, really tough. I used to not have stress on the job, but after years and years and years, especially when you can’t say what you really want to say to people, when they call you for like the fourth or fifth time in two days with the same nondescript, non-emergency situations, it’s frustrating. It’s very, very frustrating.

“The sad part is that so many people don’t have primary care doctors. So many people don’t have regular healthcare, so we basically become their HMO. You have people go, ‘Oh, well, can you just give me breathing treatment and leave?’ No! We can’t do that. If you have asthma, you need to go to the hospital. We can’t just treat you and leave. That’s crazy! Or, ‘Oh, well I just wanted my blood pressure taken. Can you take my blood pressure and then go?’ No. Because if it’s high, then we need to do something. We can’t just leave you, because you’re leaving yourself open for a heart attack or stroke or any number of things.

“That’s part of, sadly, the human condition, too—that people feel like they don’t have any other alternative than to call an emergency service with routine issues, which is frustrating because we’re taught to deal with emergencies, deal with emergencies, deal with emergencies, and then we get there, and there’s no emergency, it’s like, ‘Okay, my adrenaline is here. Now what do I do with all of it?’ That’s challenging, but I guess you get used to it over the years.”

Do you have outlets outside of your job that help you to release some of that stress, some of the energy that you take in?

“Sometimes. I have my dogs. I adopted Brody the month after Linda died. I actually drove to Brooklyn to get her, because the family that put her up for adoption was moving someplace where they couldn’t have a dog anymore. I ended up with Esmerelda the August after that. They’ve been great therapy.

“I have had therapists in the past, but I don’t know, I feel like maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t, but to sit there and pay your co-pay just to have somebody agree with everything you say? I don’t want that. Like, provoke me. Make me think. Keep me on my toes. Don’t just sit there and agree with me. I could do that anywhere. I’ve also been told that you have to find a therapist where you have chemistry. That’s exhausting. Who has time for that? That’s like dating. Like, ‘Oh I’m gonna date this person and see if they have chemistry. No, next!’ I don’t have that energy. I’d like to be able to do that, but I don’t have the energy for that. I did do counseling through my job. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it; it’s called EAP. I did it through EAP and, again, I just felt like I was sitting there and he was agreeing with everything I said. I went the required amount of time—I think it was like three times—and I just didn’t feel any better or worse for the experience, so I was like eh, whatever.

“Besides my dogs, music is an outlet. I like to sing. Karaoke is a fun thing for me. I don’t get to go all the time because of my work schedule, but when I do, that’s always fun. Other than that, probably reading, because I have a ton of stuff on my Kindle that I haven’t even gotten to yet, but life is busy. The last thing is probably community service. I like working with kids, and I do a lot of fire safety stuff, career days at high schools, even as little as nursey schools, because they’re a lot of fun. That’s pretty much all that comes immediately to mind as far as outlets.”

Has there been anything in your life that has prepared you somehow for the experience of losing your friend or some of the challenges you’ve faced in your job?

“Yeah. I grew up in church. My grandmother, my mom, we grew up in the Christian faith, so probably relying and thinking back to all of those lessons you were taught when you were a kid—like everything happens for a reason, do unto others as you would have them do unto you—and just feeling that whatever happens, if you have faith and pray about it, whatever it is, is going to be okay. Every time I talk to my mom or grandmother: ‘I’m praying for you, I’m praying for you, I’m praying for you.’ And I’m like, listen, I need all the prayers I can get; keep ’em coming. You never know what’s gonna happen, from day to day, shift to shift, call to call, you never know.

“In my first four years on the job, we had a call in Fairhaven Heights, and we pulled up and there was this young guy laying on the ground. He was shot, through his ear. There was another guy—I guess it was his friend—there, and he literally threatened to shoot us if we let his friend die. Stressful. Stressful. When I glanced back, he did have a gun in his waistband. I think that’s why it’s important for me to do community service, and ��why it’s important that my mom and grandmother pray for me, because a lot of people don’t know why we do what we do, and how we do what we do, because when we first got off the engine, the guy was here, the engine is here, but our equipment is on the opposite side, away from the patient, and he saw us get off the engine and walk away, and he’s cussing and screaming, and we’re like, we have to get our equipment. Give us a second.

“We’re taught in the academy that, if you’re in a rush, you make mistakes faster; if you run, you fall faster. So you take your time and make sure you’re always part of the solution and that you don’t become part of the problem. The community service is big. It’s important because people literally don’t know. I couldn’t even tell you how many times somebody has asked me, ‘Oh, how come there’s an engine and ambulance at so-and-so street?’ After a certain time in the late ’80s, early ’90s, you had to be an EMT, so everybody on the job is either an EMT or a paramedic. It’s a job condition. They help you maintain it over the years with refresher courses and that kind of thing.

“Besides my faith in God and my mother and my grandmother who always pray for me, there are other people who lend their support. It helps to know that people, even though you may not realize it—and that’s the crazy part, you may not realize it—that there are other people who support you, but then you find out in crazy ways. I have a friend who lives in New York, and she’s a paraprofessional, like a teacher. She sent me an inbox on Facebook last week, and she was saying how she had a little boy who was eight years old and he had a bad day. So she pulled him aside and she was trying to get him back to center. She asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, and he said, ‘Oh, I want to be a firefighter.’ So she said, ‘Oh, you do? I know somebody who’s a firefighter, and she’s female.’ And she said his eyes lit up. So she went on Facebook and showed him some pictures of me at work. She inboxed me and it made me feel so good. They live in New York and I’m here, but I can still be a positive influence on some little kid who’s having a bad day, which is awesome. We were actually supposed to video call, because I called her the next day or the day after, and I told her, I said, ‘If you can video call while I’m work, I’ll take him on a virtual tour of the firehouse,’ which would have been awesome except we figured out that her school has interceptors that shut down the wi-fi or interrupt the signal, so nobody at school can go on social media or the web or anything. We’re trying to figure out a way around that. But I was able to talk to him on the phone, and he was excited about that, so we’ll deal with that for now.”

Did 9/11 change your job in any way?

“Absolutely. You know how they say that everybody knows where they were when big things happen? I was actually off that day. All of my kids were in school, and I was talking to somebody on the phone, and I don’t remember who it was, but they were like, ‘Oh my God,’ and they got quiet. So I was like, what? And they said, ‘Erika, turn on the TV.’ So I turn on the TV, and I’m seeing the first plane hit the tower, and I’m like, holy shit, is this real? Is this serious? My first reaction was that I wanted my kids home with me, because nobody knew what was going on or what was going to happen next. Just the uncertainty and the fear of the unknown. So I went to get my kids and brought them home and we talked about it; I made sure they were okay and didn’t have any freakouts or fears, anxiety over what had happened.

“As far as my job, I’m aware that a lot of my coworkers grabbed their gear and went to New York to try to lend their assistance, which is understandable, but eventually all of the area departments got letters from the fire commissioner’s office in New York saying to not come unless we ask for you, because it was hard to keep count of everybody, from an accountability standpoint, when you have random firefighters showing up. It was hard to organize, hard to keep track, hard to delegate and figure out what was what. That was one of the things.

“The other thing was that, after 9/11, we all ended up having identifiers on our gear, because before that, nobody had their name on their coat. From what I understand, one of the problems with 9/11 was that, by the time they found everybody, they were so advanced in decomposition that it was hard to identify who was who, because they didn’t have their names on their coats, either. Accountability is big. We have tags for accountability, so everybody knows these four people are on this engine, these four people are on this truck, these six people are on the squad, these two people are on the emergency unit, that kind of thing.

“We also have continuing education, as far as refresher courses and training. We’re responsible for a certain number of training classes every month. I think those are probably the two biggest ways that 9/11 changed us.”

What about drug overdoses? Is that something that you ever get?

“Absolutely. As a matter of fact, I don’t know if you know this, but the fire department just started a program. We carry Narcan now for heroin/opioid overdoses. I haven’t been aware of a rash of them, recently, but this past summer, it was crazy. There were heroin overdoses everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. It’s really, really unfortunate. It’s sad to see people in that state. I think there’s a news report about a couple who overdosed with a little boy in the back of the car. That stuff is heartbreaking, because the kid didn’t ask for that. Stuff like that is distressing. I’ve had overdoses where the person is literally in traffic, at an intersection, with the car running, in gear, with their foot on the brake. It’s scary. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve opened a door, reached in to put the car in park, and turned the car off, hoping they don’t start beating the crap out of me. It’s kind of like sneaking into the house when you don’t want to wake your parents. First you knock on the window—nothing? Okay. Then you open the door. Hopefully it’s open and you don’t have to break it.

“When people are under the influence, they’re sort of unpredictable. They’re in between conscious and awake, and they see strangers; they don’t know how to react, and that’s not their fault. Everything we do, we try to do with safety in mind. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes people wake up and get violent. Sometimes they don’t regain consciousness until we help them. It’s a crap shoot.”

What would you say the demographic is of calls you’ve responded to for opioid overdoses?

Oh, it’s very varied. All walks of life. Sometimes it comes in forms you don’t expect. I’ve had calls at federal office buildings where an employee was huffing and ended up passing out, so they called 9-1-1, and somebody else pulls me aside and says, ‘Look, they’ve been da-da-da-da,’ and that’s important information, because in order for us to be as effective as we can in treating them, we need to know exactly what happened. If you’re unconscious, we don’t know if it’s just because you fainted, if you had a seizure, if you’re diabetic—there are so many reasons why somebody could be unconscious on the floor. The more information we have, the better it is for them, because then we can target our treatment to the problem rather than guessing and troubleshooting until we figure it out on our own.”

Do you have a hard time shifting from your role as a firefighter to a civilian?

“Yes. But I’ve learned over the years that anonymity, for me, is important. Somebody tagged me in something on Facebook, just last night, and they looked like Chuck Taylors, like runners, and they had this big firefighter emblem on the side—like, I’m a firefighter. No, I don’t want any of that. I don’t wear anything identifying me as a firefighter on my off-time. When you give so much of yourself to the city and to your job—because not only do we do fire stuff, we do EMT stuff, we’re responsible for all of our housekeeping at the firehouse, there are training classes, we’re checking hydrants, there’s all kinds of stuff that’s going on—when I’m in my off time, that’s selfish time for me. You won’t catch me wearing anything. This is the only thing that I’ll wear, my little badge here from the fire department, because other than that, I don’t want to be bothered. I don’t want the questions—except for you, Corey—because people are like, ‘Oh, you’re a firefighter? Do you know this person? Do you know…’ Yeah, I know ’em all, but they still want to name everybody that they know. The unfortunate part of that is that, usually, who they know, ‘oh they’re a good guy,’ but they’re a jerk at work. Then I have to fake it, like, ‘oh, yeah, I know who you’re talking about.’

“But yeah, I enjoy my anonymity because—and I hate to draw this similarity—but it’s almost like being a celebrity, being famous, because when people know what you do, they always want to talk to you. They want to know the worst call you’ve ever been on or the best call, and you feel like you’re under a microscope and you’re being interviewed all the time.

“The other thing is that the transition going from work to a social event—I’m not good at that, at all. It’s very hard for me to leave work after a ten-hour day or fourteen-hour night and transition directly into go home, shower, get dressed in regular clothes, and go out somewhere. That’s extremely difficult for me, and I find that my experience is lessened because of it. I don’t know what has to happen in that time, but there has to be some sort of decompression. I still haven’t figured out what works for me best except for just staying home—not that I have to stay home all night, but going from one to the next to the next to the next with no break doesn’t work for me. I could be more of social introvert or almost have borderline social anxiety just because I need to decompress. I need a few hours. I don’t expect people to understand it, but I do expect people to respect it.”

It sounds like self-care. It’s important maintaining that level of—

“I just feel weird. I feel rushed and weird, and it’s just strange. I don’t even know how to describe it. If you say, ‘Hey, Erika, I have this event at six o’clock,’ I’d say, ‘Listen, Corey, I won’t see you there until eight or nine, if it’s still going on.’ Going at that fast pace, back to back, I can’t. It doesn’t work for me. I tried it. I ended up sitting in the corner, looking around, because people don’t realize how social being a firefighter is. You’re working in your close-knit crew. You’re either working with nine or three people, and my firehouse is not a double house but we do have a paramedic unit, so I’m working with five people. I’m talking to them all day about calls, about work, about whatever, about training, so you’re being so social for ten or fourteen hours, so when you come home, it’s like, I don’t have to be social now; I can just chill.

“Even when I was a 9-1-1 dispatcher, you spend your entire shift talking. Whether you’re talking on the radio to the officers, the firefighters, or you’re talking to administrative staff, or the chiefs are calling in, talking to utility companies, all these different things, when you get home, it’s like, okay cool. When I was a 9-1-1 dispatcher, I wouldn’t talk on the phone when I was home. I didn’t want to be bothered. Texting was awesome. You don’t want to talk. You just want to shut down and be still. It becomes very, very difficult.

“You do become like a family at some point with your coworkers—you fight like family, you make up, you cook together, all that kind of thing—and then you have to be social with the public. Even something as simple as backing the engine into the firehouse—people will come up to you, or honk and wave, or they want to pull over and ask questions, ask to bring their class over. It’s a very, very social job. Sometimes you don’t realize how social it is until you’re home, and it’s quiet. I used to have my children home with me and that was more social, but now that I’m home and living alone—ah, peace and quiet.”

You mentioned in the beginning of this interview that one of your challenges was being a single mom of little boys. What were some of the obstacles, or some of the fears, that you experienced with that?

“Oh wow. Well, when I started the academy, my kids were eight, five, and four, which was tough, because the academy was eight to four, Monday to Friday. We got beat up, big time. We ran five or six miles every morning, and then we did yard work and were climbing ladders; everything was super-duper physical. You come home exhausted, but you still have these three little boys looking at you like, ‘Hey Mom, what’s for dinner?’ That was challenging.

“Balancing them versus the academy, and still making time for my studies, was difficult. We learned hands-on EMT work, hands-on firefighting, but there was also book work. We had tests every week on both so keeping up with studying was tough. I carried my books everywhere. If the boys had a doctor’s appointment, I brought my books with me. I read and studied wherever I was. My mom needed a ride to the grocery store? I’d park and study while she was in the store. That’s how I made it through. That was extremely challenging.

“Doing the best that I could to make sure they grew up to be respectful, productive, and valuable members of society was a stress, but going back to my mom and my grandmother, they helped me a lot. The way they raised me—I passed on to my kids. I was able to raise them to be respectful and polite and gentlemen. When I was a kid, I would look at other little kids in the grocery store, falling out in tantrums and calling their mothers bad words, like, woah, are you kidding me? When my sisters and I grew up, respect and being polite and being dainty little kids were ingrained in us, our entire childhoods. So when I would see little kids acting up and talking back and all that, I was determined; in my mind, I kept saying, ‘When I have kids, that’s never going to be my kids.’

“To this day I get complimented on my sons and how respectful and polite and good they are. That makes me happy, to know that even when I’m not with them, they’re conducting themselves as if I am. That’s the best thing ever. The other thing is that when they’re ready to get married and walk down the aisle, I want to be able to stand there as the mother of the groom and look at them and be like, ‘You know what, she’s marrying a good guy.’ That’s all I want from them. So far, so good.”

What advice would you offer to another mother who may be struggling to juggle her career and her children, or even someone who experiences a lot of stress at their job and is struggling finding balance?

“The first thing I��d probably say is: don’t take yourself too seriously. Those are the people that implode. Those are the people that lose it and can’t handle life at all. Don’t ever take yourself too seriously. You have to learn to laugh at certain situations and move on. Like my aunt used to say, ‘Throw it out of your head.’

“As far as balance, don’t let your life completely, 100% revolve around your kids. You have to do something for you, whether you get a massage once or month, or you get your nails done, or you go out and have wine with the girls, have a girls’ night in, whatever it is, you have to do something just for you, that doesn’t revolve around your kids. I used to be that person where, even when my kids were with my mom or their father or somebody else, and I had free time, I felt guilty about it. My kids were my life. Yeah, they are your life, but they can’t be your entire life. You have to figure out whatever it is that you feel like you want to do. Some people like to rock climb, some people go hiking, some people take personal enrichment classes or whatever it is—you have to find something.

“As far as being a successful parent, I have not cornered the market on that, because nobody’s perfect and everybody makes mistakes, but instill a sense of discipline in your children. If a certain behavior is not okay today, it can’t be okay or allowed or overlooked tomorrow. That’s one thing that was tiring, but, in the end, I got the desired result because it kills me when people say, ‘I can’t make little Johnny go to bed before midnight.’ Wait, what? Are you serious? It grates my nerves, because who’s the parent here? I’m having a nervous breakdown in my mind because my boys had an eight o’clock bedtime, every night, even in the summertime when it was still light out, because that’s the way it is. You’re not going to be in school and be sleepy because I was one of those parents.

“When you raise kids, it comes down to a battle of wills—whose is stronger, yours or theirs? As an adult, yours is always going to be stronger; you just have to be willing to put forth the effort consistently. Effort is nothing without consistency. Eight o’clock bedtime tonight, tonight, tonight. Weekends, you get a little more leeway, but on school nights, eight o’clock bedtime. That’s how I raised them. To this day, I think Taylor and Jared are probably the heaviest sleepers whereas Jeremy likes to sleep but not as much as the other two. They still remember those days fondly—not fondly, but they do.”

Has there been a piece of advice or a quote or something that someone shared with you that resonates with you that you might like to share?

“As far as advice, I would probably say: trust yourself and your instincts. And something I said a few minutes ago: don’t take yourself too seriously. Not everything is that deep.”

Is there anything that your grandmother said to you that stuck with you, that you value a lot?

“Probably the most important thing is something I mentioned before, that she prays for me. She’s one of those people who, when she says she’s praying for you, you know it’s 100% legit. She’s one of those people who know how to get a prayer upstairs. That’s probably the most important thing. She has this saying: lay your heart down. That means that, when you have things that are bothering you, or you have stress, lay your heart down—let it go, set it aside, don’t take it so deeply.

“I tell people all the time that the first rule of life is don’t sweat the small stuff. The second rule is: it’s all small stuff. The addendum to that is you never let them see you sweat. Life is challenging. It’s crazy. It’s up and down. It’s lows and highs, and trauma and happiness. It’s a whole bunch of things, but I feel like it’s how you process it, and how you deal with things, that is ultimately going to make the difference in how you can move forward.

“I’ve had friends who have had bad things happen to them at work, and they hold onto it, and they hold onto it, and they hold onto it, because you’re still hearing about it six months later. Well, what are you doing about it? You can’t complain about x, y, z if you’re not doing anything to change it, fix it, or get rid of it. Otherwise, that’s the definition of insanity—you’re doing the same thing over and over again but you’re expecting a different result. It aggravates me when people complain about the same things, week after week after month after month, and they’re not doing anything to change it. It doesn’t make any sense to me, because I’m not a complainer. If I need to fix something or if something’s bothering me, then I do that and move on. What’s the point otherwise? You’re just talking to hear yourself talk and nobody wants to hear that.”

If you had the opportunity to say something to your dear friend Linda, what would you say to her?

“I would say that she would probably be very proud of her immediate family. Even though she’s not here in the physical, I’m happy that she’s reunited with her son. A handful of our coworkers and I are doing whatever we can to keep her memory alive, up to and including these stickers on all of the apparatuses that she was assigned to that say, ‘In Memory of Linda Cohens’ with her date of birth and death and badge number. All of the apparatuses she was assigned to, even the spare ones, have that sticker on them, just to memorialize her.

“The unfortunate thing with death is that everybody camps around when it first happens, but then you sort of forget—on to the next thing after a month or two. That’s why it’s important to keep in touch with Linda’s family. Either they’ll call me to check on me or I’ll call them to check on them—her mom, her dad, her brother, her nieces and nephews. Her father and her brother refer to me as their guardian angel, which I feel is an extremely lofty, undeserved title, because I didn’t do anything that a friend who loves a friend wouldn’t have done. I graciously and humbly accept it.

“But I really, really miss Linda, when things happen at work. ‘I can’t believe it. I need to—damn, she’s not here.’ Some days it doesn’t even feel real still. Did this really happen? It’s crazy. It’s like a huge mind trip. Other days, you feel the weight of that reality. It varies. Some days it doesn’t feel like it’s real and others it’s like, she’s really not here, especially when I work at her firehouse and work in her place. You look around at where she sat, and where her bed was, and all that kind of thing.

“We have these big gear bags and the last firehouse that she was assigned to was Engine 16 on Lighthouse Road, and they have her gear bag hung up in the wall in memorial. I didn’t know that until the last time I worked there. I glanced up because I saw something out of my sideview, and I stood there for a minute and thought about her and went on about my business. Always challenging. We were supposed to do this career together, get through the academy together—because we both said we’re taking it one time because the national registry is tough. They gave us three hours for 100 questions. It was very tough, but it was doable, and we both passed the first time. And that’s how we said we’d do our careers—one and done. We’re not retaking. We’re not re-mediating. We’re going right through our careers and retiring successfully, as in, no injuries, no anything. It just so happened that she retired a little bit before we were ready, in her own way.”

How did Linda’s presence in your life change you?

“Linda was one of the funniest people ever. Even in the academy we were able to keep each other uplifted, encouraged, that kind of thing, and then, on the fire side, after she became a paramedic, I was more of a support system to her, provided her whatever she needed on-scene, helping her do whatever she needed to do. It was a wild ride. Linda was funny as hell, very passionate, she loved her son. He was her only son, so she loved him so much.

“I remember we were both watching in a Freddy Fixer parade years ago, and we were further down on Dixwell Avenue, way before where the Q House used to be, and the parade ended up stopping. We’re standing there for twenty, thirty minutes, and then we got word from further up in the parade that somebody had been shot. I looked at Linda, she looked at me, and we both snatched out our phones, calling our kids, because my sons used to help their grandfather at the parade because he had a barbecue business, so you always worry that something’s going to happen. You pray that it doesn’t, but somehow you’re semi-prepared for an eventuality, which is sad but true.

“Linda was a great support system. We experienced things on this job with each other that I will definitely take to my grave, and she already has. I have not had a relationship with anybody else on the job like I had with her. It’s not that it’s not possible, but you would have to have been there, 19 years ago when all of this craziness unfolded. You make other friends, good working relationships, but not like that. There was just too much trust. The day that I went home and discovered my sons doing things they shouldn’t have been doing, and Linda was there with me—too much stuff. It almost feels like you’re investing and building a history with somebody, and then they go away. It’s almost like somebody took a great big rubber stamp and voided it—how do you just erase 17 years of friendship?

“Linda and I were so tight that people on the job thought that we were together. I found more about myself through rumors on this job—we were together, and we had this hot steamy love affair, and it didn’t help that she was a lesbian, so that sort of fit, but for me, it’s sad that you can’t show love or affection for somebody of the same gender without people making things up or assuming. Not that it hasn’t happened with men too, whom I’ve been close with, but people are amazing. I can’t plan Linda’s son’s funeral service without people thinking there’s an ulterior motive. She and I couldn’t have been close without an ulterior motive. That part was very unfortunate. I did it because she was my friend. Why is it so hard for people to accept that that’s the only reason? There doesn’t have to be some underhanded, mean, evil, sneaky reason. It was what it was.”

If Linda was here for a moment, if she was sitting here right now, what do you think she would say to you?

“Oh boy, I know what she would say. She would probably say that I gave her a kickass funeral, but she always talked really fast, so she would stutter and I would tease her. I would ask her why she talked so fast, and she’d say I listened too slow. That was our constant argument, so she would probably be happy. Linda was also very hyper, so she would probably be bouncing around telling me what a great job I did, and how proud she was of her family and how everyone came together, and she would probably be very excited about the stickers on the fire apparatus. I also have a jacket that I wear at work. I actually bought it from some store, and I had one of the retired guys do some embroidery on it, so it has the fire department crest, down one arm it has all of my assignments, and then on my left shoulder, in the back, it has her initials and her badge number in her favorite color, orange.

“When people found out that she passed, especially in the EMS world, everyone was wearing the black ribbon, which is customary for EMS and fire and police, but when Linda’s mother found out, she was upset. She was like, ‘No, black isn’t Linda’s spirit. Linda was lively,’ so we actually made 300 orange ribbons for her service to give out. I put a memo on Facebook asking for five or six volunteers, meet me at the firehouse, bring your scissors, and we made them. The problem with ribbons at work is that they come off, they get snagged, so I had her embroidered on my left shoulder because I feel like just like she did in life, she has my back in death, too.

“Somebody actually asked me the other day what the initials meant. It was somebody whom we worked with, who should’ve known, and I think I was probably short with him, or snapped at him: ‘It’s Linda! What are you talking about?’ And I just walked away, because I guess sometimes you just feel like, even though it wasn’t intentional, it was kind of like poking at a sensitive spot. Anybody else who’s seen me knows and understands what it is. Maybe he wasn’t thinking—I don’t hold it against him—but sometimes things just hit you in ways that you don’t expect. The trauma of it all is certain, but you don’t know when it’s going to happen, and it always hits you in ways that you don’t expect.

“I was at the grocery store a couple weeks after Linda died, and I was in the self-checkout line. There was this guy behind me. I was picking up whatever I needed for work, so, unfortunately, I was in my uniform, and this guy behind me goes, ‘Oh, you a New Haven firefighter?’ ‘Yeah.’ I’m still feeling in weird spaces—grief, shock, distress, all these things swelling around. And I’m still checking my stuff out. And he goes, ‘Oh, well, did you know Linda?’ So I say yeah, and he starts telling me about how she was found, and all these things that I already knew, but I was hoping that he would just stop talking, because everything that he was saying was bringing me right back there, and that was some place that I was trying to walk away from. I tried to be as polite as possible, but in my mind, internally, I’m screaming. People, I’m sure, mean well, but they don’t understand how their meaning well is not doing you any good at that moment, for whatever reason.

“One thing I’ve learned is that grief is an entirely personal process. Nobody can tell you or dictate to you how you should grieve. You have to do that and get around it and go through it however you can. And, as a matter of fact, you can’t even get around it because there is no getting around it. That’s one thing that my grandmother does say, is that you have to go through to go through. You can’t crawl under it, you can’t crawl over it, you can’t get around either side; you just have to go through it. Which sucks, but in order to get through to the other side, you just have to go.”

You don’t have to do it alone.

“True story. But you know what? Sometimes it feels like that, and I’ll tell you why. I’m the oldest of four girls, so, as oldest, I got the tag of she’s the dependable one, she’s the strong one, she’s the one that gets things done. When people see that, people pay attention to you more than you realize they do, but when people know that you’re the strong one, the dependable one, the one who gets things done, the one who upholds everybody else, when you need upholding, where do you go? People never think to offer you support because you’re usually the one offering everybody else support. It’s like a tree in the forest—it’s always standing strong—but when the winds are blowing the tree back and forth, who’s there to help that tree?

“I can count on one hand the number of people who actually reached out personally, outside of Facebook, outside of social media, and said hey, if you need anything, let me know—and I really, really appreciate that. You don’t forget that stuff; you really don’t. I think maybe people intend to, but it’s difficult when you’re dealing with somebody suffering a loss of someone who’s close to them, because you feel awkward, you don’t know what to say, whatever you do say sounds stupid or maybe is gonna sound like what everybody else says. How many times have you heard, ‘Oh, so-and-so died? I’m sorry for your loss’ or ‘Condolences’ or ‘Sympathies’—those three basic things? You feel like you want to come up with something more heartfelt, but you don’t want to sound stupid or forced or scripted, so you just don’t say anything, so I think maybe that’s what happened. I don’t know.

“By and large, everybody was pretty good, but when you’re always the strong one, there’s sort of a disconnect when people are like, ‘Oh, well, she’s strong; she’ll be all right.’ I can’t even tell how many days I just felt like throwing up my hands and giving up and saying, ‘You know what? Screw this, I’m done. I’m done with you, I’m done with you, I’m done with you.’ Your tolerance for nonsense disappears, because whenever somebody dies, especially this close to you, it forces you to re-prioritize, and it forces you to look at your own mortality, too, and realize that life is short. The eventuality of death. My grandmother says, ‘The moment that we’re born, we begin to die.’ And she’s right, because that’s ultimately what’s going to happen.

“Linda’s gone. There was so much more she wanted to do in her life, and now that I’m still here, I have a few choices. I can either retreat and not do anything, or I can try to keep her memory honored as much as possible and live. It’s currently January 2017; it probably took me two years to get back to myself. Man, it was hard. I became a recluse. I stayed home—work and home were it for me. Nothing social. I went to the grocery store and I used the self-checkout line so I didn’t have to deal with a cashier, because I recognized that I had social anxiety as a result of Linda dying.

“I don’t even know if how it manifested had to do with her dying, but I guess it was a byproduct of mourning. I knew that I didn’t want to deal with people, especially strangers. Even at the grocery store, it felt somehow inwardly painful. I can’t describe it. You know the feeling of nails on chalkboard? That’s how it felt on the inside, to have to go and deal with people. Oh God, no, I couldn’t do it. So many events that I was invited to that I turned down on Facebook. No. Can’t go. Can’t go. Can’t go. Can’t go. Work and home.

“That’s why it was so great for me to have adopted Brody, my little brat, because she probably was more therapy than therapy was. It gave me focus, something to do other than just be home and looking around the room. Brody’s so funny. She has so much personality for a little, eight-pound dog. She’s my little sweetie. I realized that I worked long hours, it would be nice if I had a sister, and that’s how I ended up with Esmerelda, my little chihuahua. They are great friends, even from the first time they met, because I brought Brody when I went in to adopt Esmerelda to make sure they got along, and it wasn’t like dog cage matches. They got along great.

“They’ve been such great company. Most days I look forward to going home after work because I get to hang out with them. Some days they tire me. Some days it’s a race to see who gets tired first. But, overall, I would probably say that they were the best thing in helping me try to move on and get past Linda’s death. Again, I can’t even explain how something as simple as an animal would help with that, but I don’t even care. All I know is that it worked.”

How has it felt to talk about these feelings and experiences with me today?

“It was an emotional ride through a lot of memories, and a lot of explanation as far as how the last two years have been and how I came to be where I am now, versus where I was then, as far as my sensitivity and all that kind of thing. Not quite as challenging as I’d thought it would be, but not a bad thing.”

Do you think that it’s possible that by sharing your experiences in the way that you have today, you could help someone else out there who may be inspired or touched in some way by what you’ve shared?

“Absolutely. I really, really hope so, because I feel like, when you open yourself up to a certain amount of transparency and vulnerability, there could be somebody who reads it and feels like they’re not alone. Like my grandmother says, when you’re going through your go-through, whatever that is, whether it’s depression or anxiety or alcoholism or whatever, most of the time you feel like you’re alone. It’s only you, in the entire world, and that’s that. I hope that somebody is able to take away this that if you happen to have a really good friend who dies, you are so not alone, and there are so many other people who have probably been through something similar and who share those experiences, and—even beyond that—who would be willing to talk to you or even listen, because sometimes a conversation isn’t about exchanging; sometimes it’s about one person talking and the other person listening.”

[heartsofstrangers]

Aaron, what has been one of the most challenging things that you’ve experienced or are currently experiencing?

“One of the most challenging things I am going through right now has actually been ongoing. I came out about two years ago as gay, and the reaction from my family has been strange. It started with my sister asking me and I told her—she asked me why I didn’t say anything before, and I said, ‘Obviously, you know why: because out family would not approve.’ And, of course, they didn’t, as it moved down the line. For some odd reason my aunt told my entire family without my permission. She said they took it well, but I didn’t know what that meant. Then Mom found out and she was heartbroken. She said things in the house were going to change. I said, as opposed to what? The family is still adamant in their beliefs. Pretty Jamaican, Christian home, so it’s somewhat aggressive, very emotional but not very understanding of certain ideals—I guess I am more progressive.

“It’s been a struggle of identity, because I want to be outgoing and fun and friendly, just happen to be gay as well, but I feel like I can’t do that within my own home, I can’t do that around my family, I can’t do that when I am around members of my own community. I was especially worried that if it hit my church, my original church home, then I would probably be crucified or excommunicated or something, because they are very anti-gay. I wanted to walk in that truth, as would say. Well my mom probably said something like that, or Oprah, I don’t know, but something along the lines of ‘walking in your truth.’

“And I wanted to do that, but I felt like there were so many outside factors thrown at me. Even social media played into that, because I befriended many gay archetypes on Facebook, you know ‘club kings,’ ‘party arrangers,’ models and artists, and all these people who happen to be part of the LGBT community. I feel like I got some sort of family going on with them, even though it’s electronically based. I get kind of jealous when I see them doing big things, getting published in magazines, having big parties, meeting celebrities, getting photographed. There’s a bit of jealousy there because it’s like, ‘Oh, why can’t I be doing that? Why can’t I be free enough to express myself like that, or do what they are doing?’ Meanwhile, I’m stuck over here, trying to get through school and this job and looking after my sister every single day. It almost feels like you’re kind of trapped. I feel like, if I hadn’t come out right now, if I hadn’t come out two years ago, I probably would be suicidal or probably in a situation that I don’t want to put myself in, like probably with a girl, breaking her heart or something, you know. I didn’t want to ever put anyone through that, but the main struggle of being gay is that a lot of people see that first and nothing else. Being gay is not the entirety of my identity and I didn’t want it to become that, I don’t think it has. I guess the main thing that has been keeping me from really enjoying myself and being myself is what my family thinks of me and what my church would think of me, because they are all I’ve had from the very beginning. If they turned on me, as much as I feel like, that shouldn’t matter too much, it’s tugging at my heart and telling me I’m nothing without them. That’s the thing that stops me in my tracks most of time.”

What are some of the obstacles that sharing, that piece of yourself with your family or friends with—Have you shared it with you church, at all?

“I have not shared it with my church. I have not attended in a couple of years because of my former job. Thankfully, that was one of the benefits of it, I worked Sundays so I wouldn’t have to go. Granted, I’ve been dragged there every week from day one, so faith has never been something for me to kind of enjoy. It’s been something enforced and latched onto me from day one. Granted, it’s literally my mom’s middle name, so it’s kind of important to our family, but honestly I saw it more as a parenting tool than as a spiritual resource. It was just something to be there and ingratiate me while Mom went off and did her thing in the church, or whatever, but that’s something else.

“I have trouble sharing this with my family and my church, because they don’t see eye-to-eye with me. Mom even told me when I came out, ‘I think you need to seek mental health help. I think you hate women. I think you have some problems going on. I think you need to get fixed. There’s something really wrong with you.’ I knew there was something wrong with me—not that being gay was it—but I just knew that I was very anxious and depressed when I was younger, about middle school, starting end of elementary school into the present day, and a lot of it was because I had to keep this in. I was very anti-gay from fifth grade on. Fifth grade was when I found out in myself, but from that point on, I said, ‘Okay, you need to keep it low-key. You know about this, but you can’t do or say anything, otherwise’—I was ten or eleven at the time, so I am like, ‘I could get kicked out of my house, my mom could like spank me or beat me,’ and I didn’t want that issue. I didn’t want any rifts in the family, any rifts in my house, and I just endured it for a long time. And in that time I kind-of joined them, just to stay safe: I gay bashed, I stayed away from it, I name-called, I tried to do anything to distance myself, to save my own behind. I feel bad that I did that, but at the same time I couldn’t relate myself with that being a good thing, with me being a part of that, or else I would suffer consequences from all sides. Mind you, back then even in school, back in late 2000s, it was not very hip to be gay; you were still a social pariah in that sense, you still got bullied, there were kids killing themselves. I remember seeing them on Ellen. There were kids killing themselves over being bullied, over being harassed, over being cyber-bullied, and I didn’t want to be one of them. I felt awful, but I did not want to be that. As much as I want to explain myself, I’m constantly met with the argument from my family that sin is not supposed to make sense, so they don’t try to understand or figure out or anything like that. There is no retort, there is no conversation. A lot of it is also just frowned upon in the black community as well, to be honest. Like being black and gay don’t go together at all. They are two separate things that aren’t supposed to mesh. And, of course, there is hyper-masculinity, toxic masculinity, and all that other junk I have to deal with. I don’t know how I slid by that when I was younger, but, as you see today, I’m this amalgam of emotions and gayness. For my family and my church, it was always one and the same, to be honest, because they took on that same kind of authoritative spiritual figure. So that was kind-of this weird—I felt like if I was talking to my family, I was also talking to my church, so it was just—nothing was sacred, nothing was safe, ironically nothing’s sacred. I felt like I couldn’t tell them anything, because I was, I like to call myself the white sheep of my family, because it was just a little—it was a little scary releasing that info, and I was always the weird kid. I was always that one they asked, ‘Why aren’t you like the other kids?’ I’m would say, ‘Because I am not. I wish I was, but I don’t know how.’ That translated into, ‘He’s just going to be that weird kid. He’ll probably grow out of it. He’ll be normal one of these days.’ Then I laid this bombshell on them and they’re like, ‘Umm, okay then. We are just not going to talk about that.’ Two years ago, that Thanksgiving and Christmas was, like you could feel the wall, there was no communication from family other than a hello or hi, and I just sat there. Even when we went around the table saying what we were thankful for, everyone was agreeing with each other and it was nice, but when I went up to speak, there was silence. You could hear a pin drop. It kind of hurt. I even asked Mom about it later on that day. I said, ‘Why was the family so averse to me talking?’ She was like, ‘Aaron, look at you. Do you know what you’ve become? Do you know what you are?’ I didn’t know I changed into another creature or anything like that, but it was kind of heartbreaking to look at your family and have them look at you and see you as something else, like you weren’t the same person you were before. I feel like this whole thing makes me separate from everyone honestly, it doesn’t make you black, it doesn’t make you a man, it doesn’t make you part of God’s kingdom, it doesn’t make you a human being. They say they love me, they say they still care about me, it’s just this one major detail that kind-of gets in the way of things. So it’s a little bit strained, and I’ve never really talked to my family much, not so much for this reason, but I have never really been able to relate to them because I was that white sheep of family. I didn’t necessarily separate myself, but it was hard to get into any of that, because a lot of the topics were things that I was averse to, like sports, politics, the gay agenda—that was literally what they would talk about every Sunday dinner, after church.

“It would be a serial thing and I am just sitting on the side, you know what, I am just not going to say anything, because I don’t want to start anything, I don’t want to have a controversial opinion and then be ostracized for it, but it all came to a head that day my sister talked to me and outed me and—well, she didn’t out me, but I told her, after that, when the family found out it was just like—it was as if almost nothing changed, to be honest, because I was not that close to them before, still not that close with them now, but this just gave them a reason too. I have been trying to go with it for a long time. So far, I haven’t hurt anyone and I have made a few new friends, there’s a plus, but otherwise it’s been—it’s a very personal issue that you can only deal with yourself, you can’t really tell anyone about it.”

What impact has this had on how you feel about yourself and how you interact with others?

“In a sense, I feel like this has freed me a little, like I don’t have to hide anymore, though I still feel a little bit separate. Sure, family and church aside, you start going into the world, and you start viewing life outside of that bubble. You start to meet friends, you start to see people, and it feels like I’m like one of the only gay guys within a five- or fifteen-mile radius from my space, so you feel a little alone and you get that electronic relationship through your fancy glowing rectangle, but you don’t get to see guys or contact guys or really get involved with anybody else that’s male and understands where you’re coming from, i.e. gay. It’s slightly empowering to me, to be honest, I mean a few good opportunities have come out of this. A friend of mine got me involved with the Connecticut Gay Men’s Chorus. I met him at the Pride Rally when they legalized marriage equality that day. I was a keynote speaker at the One Big Event in downtown Hartford last year, totally didn’t expect that, but it was an honor and a privilege. That was like an apex to my declaration. To be honest, that was kind of bizarre, when I look back on it. I didn’t think it was a big deal when I did it, but looking back now it’s like, wow! I did that, that’s a little weird. I am trying to assert myself with this identity that, I am still Aaron but a little newer and improved and also gay too, but I want to express that through my outward actions rather than just internally, because the idea is there, the execution isn’t, and I don’t necessarily feel like the look is either. I really want to change my entire life. I want to fix up whatever anxiety and depressions are getting me down, I want to change my wardrobe, get my life in order. It sounds a little bit superficial to fix the outside too, but I know that the heart and the brain are so under construction and they are going to be under construction, but I just want closure, you know. I want to go off and do something.”

Do you feel like the need or the want to change things externally is because you have been doing work internally for so long that now you want the outside to represent what you have done internally?

“Yes. The reason this is such an easy story for me to tell is that I have been harboring this forever, really. Because when you don’t have much of anything else—I go to work, I go to school, I look after my sister, there’s not much extracurricular activity going on, except the chorus. I don’t watch TV, I don’t have cable or anything, so I can’t binge-watch or—that’s another thing too, I can’t relate to anybody in my own generation, that is the weird part, like twenty-somethings, they just don’t get me at all, I vibe a lot—a few friends of mine are in my age range, but I just vibe with mainly older guys, and I have been okay with that. It hasn’t really had any negative impact at all. I feel like you are kind of out there to your family and your church and then you are out there to the rest of the world except this little, not a little niche group, but this other kind of group and it’s—I’m not sure how to take it most of the time because there’s being liked for who you are and then there’s being fetishized. And, I realized that as soon as I came out as well, when some guys would try to come up to me they kind of only want you for one thing and they turn you into a fetish, they turn you into an object, and it was kind of demeaning to me. I really didn’t like it. There are also multiple times where I would overlook it because I never really cared that much about myself to say, you know what, maybe that’s not right, rather it was maybe I deserve that. I’ve done that multiple times with getting insulted, getting hurt, either placing myself in a situation of my own devising or of a situation outside of my control, I just kind of think to myself, you know what, I probably deserved that, it wasn’t a big deal, I was just kind-of, I wasn’t doing the right thing anyway, that’s fine, somebody else can get that or whatever. I kind-of dealt with life lackadaisically and I don’t want to do that. I want to take control and I want to assert myself and have a more aggressive attitude, but I’ve always seen that as kind of cocky and arrogant, and I didn’t want to look like someone I’m not either. There’s a fine line—there are extremities and there’s the middle ground, and I didn’t want to have any vices getting in the way. I just wanted to be normal, I guess, that’s my main concern. I wanted to be normal to everyone, and I’m the farthest thing from that, but I’m okay with it.”

What is your idea of normal? What does that look like to you?

“I want to be kind of a straight male, just one of the dude bros who go around and, you know, I guess, it is a little different than that because I would be kind of a gentleman I guess. If I were to want a woman, I would go after her respectfully and I would treat her nicely. I would be that weird guy who’s into all those other things that regular straight guys aren’t. The more and more I have thought about that, I am like ‘Wait, my idea of normal, is gay.’ I’d be all romantic and everything, and I’m like maybe there wouldn’t be any sex involved if I were a little bit—oh no, no, no, no that would not be the case. I wanted to be someone who was palatable, I wanted to make sure I didn’t rock the boat with anybody, that there were no confrontations, no anger, no misunderstandings. I just wanted to be somebody everyone liked and loved and didn’t have any issues with. And, I tend to be that kind of person. I mean, I will be the one where if mutual friends are in a conflict, one will come up to me with their story, the other will come up to me with their story, while they fight ,and I am just sitting in the back. I am kind of the shoulder to cry on, I’m kind of the voice of reason in a lot of places, so in a way I am kind of a mainstay. But I just don’t want to be the reason for the discord. I don’t want to be the reason for the chaos. I don’t want to make myself out to be a problem for people, so that involved a lot of self-sacrifice and forsaking my own needs for another. I mean, I look after my sister all the time. As I probably told you, she’s my twin. She’s autistic and I’ve been doing this for about a decade or more. I am hoping that one of these days Mom will find something for her that’s more stable, but she goes to her little day program in the morning, which is great, but once I get out of college and eventually move out, what’s going to happen to her? I can’t be looking after her all the time. Mom kind of sees me as—well I finally got the chance, I finally had the realization that I am seen as having a familial obligation rather than being a volunteer, and I didn’t like that. That’s actually the main reason my older sister, who I came out to first, moved out first. She and Mom were having problems, and she didn’t want to deal with it, so she moved out and she is doing great now. They are even repairing their broken relationship that they had as a result of that, but I didn’t want that separation to be the same way between me and Mom. Because she and I are very close.

“Even on my birthday a couple of weeks ago, she called me her only-begotten son, and I am like ‘Oh, dear lord,’ this is—she’s like having a real faith complex going on and it’s made life uncomfortable. That’s another thing: I was never able to see life through an unfiltered lens, because everything was seen through the eyes of religion, through the eyes of faith, so nothing was ever pure, nothing was ever nice, nothing was ever palatable, nothing was ever acceptable, and you get held back from a lot of stuff. I was sheltered, I had no idea that I was being sheltered though. That was one thing I realized a couple of years ago, when I first went to college and guys and girls were around me and they just looked at me and went, ‘Dude, you were pretty sheltered, aren’t you?’ I’m like ‘What? No. What does that even mean?’ ‘You didn’t live much, did you?’ I was like ‘No.’ ‘Have you even been anywhere?’ ‘No, I never left New England. Why?’ ‘Oh, lord.’

“A lot of people knew I was gay before I said anything. Even when I did a little bit of radio, I heard my voice for the first time, on the radio, and I was like ‘Oh my god, how did they not know? I’m literally spouting rainbows out of my mouth, I sound so cringe-worthy.’ But that’s one thing that’s held me back a little bit too. There is a slight issue of transparency with me. When people say, ‘What was your idea of normal?’ I wanted to be the mysterious guy, they guy who people admired, but didn’t really know about. They know of him, but they don’t know who he really is. I felt like that for a little while because of how distant I was from everyone, but coming into my realization and after watching, there was show on last night or the night before called ‘Bull’, with a jury selector who psychoanalyzes everyone so he has the right jury for the right case, and it made me think of all the psych majors I’ve met, all the philosophy majors I’ve met, and a few random friends I’ve met who can read me like a book. Without me even saying anything or doing anything they get a basic idea of who I am, and they can see right through me, and I’ve hated that. It’s a very painful thing for me when someone can see right through me, because I feel inadequate, I feel like I’m having an inaccurate description of who I am based on an outward or an inward thing, like body language or whatever, I feel like people are mis-registering something that isn’t true. ‘Yeah, I’m awkward and shy and skittish at first, but please give me a minute. I swear, the objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.’

“I know I can’t control people’s perception of me, but first impressions are everything, so if I leave with a bad one and then I all of a sudden start acting like someone else, then I might seem two-faced or something like that. I really do want to have the best look for everyone else. I never thought about having a look just for the sake of you looking like something, because I never cared about it. I guess I relate that to all the problems going on in my life—this whole gay thing, and work and school and all that other stuff, I just attributed that to, ‘Well, you got all this going on for you, so might as well put your time and energy into that instead of caring about your appearance, your opinion, how you look, how you relate to others and all that stuff, you don’t really’—I don’t look at myself in the mirror very often. I try to take a little note of my appearance every now and then, but for the longest time I never really liked looking at the mirror. I never really liked seeing myself and seeing myself in relation to other people. A few people have told me if you want to know more about yourself, put yourself in the third person, like ‘Oh god, I could never do that,’ because I always saw everything I did as cringe-worthy or awkward or just kind of too ‘other’ for everyone else, kind of socially unacceptable. And, I guess that translated into my current mindset my routines of not so much caring about how I look or how I view others or how others view me, how others thought I looked. Mom always said I was the man of the house, which was probably a bald-faced lie, but I never really felt like a man. It was just kind-of this—because I thought it was a visual thing and also an action thing, and I never seemed to exude that or perform that, so I just felt less of a guy, less of a person and never really—that’s one thing, I always felt like there was something every other guy on the planet had that I didn’t, and I still didn’t know what that is, but I keep feeling like if I have that then maybe, just maybe, I got a shot in this world. I know it’s all in the head. I want to make sure that I can exude that and maybe help somebody else see that in themselves or something. I don’t know. I want to see that in myself first, whatever it is.”

Tell me about the relationship you have with yourself. It sounds like you are at a crossroads of wanting to improve yourself to be received by others but also wanting to improve yourself just because you recognize that you’re worth it. That’s the place many people could identify with.

“My relationship with myself is kind of love-hate, it’s kind of 70/30, 80/20, 90/10, no, it can be mostly defeatist. I will have some days when I can look in the mirror and go ‘hey,’ but otherwise it’s a lot of ‘oh, you again.’ I guess that has carried over into everything I do: my studies, my social interaction, how I deal with my family, because I never really gave a hoot about myself. I don’t know why, to be honest. I guess I got a few comments from family when I was younger, like my sister, my older sister used to call me ugly a lot, and she was joking, but I kind of felt it and my family would definitely give me the whole ‘Oh, guys don’t. Guys aren’t supposed to do that. Be a man. Act like a man. Why are you into that stuff? Don’t do that.’ It was the shaping and all of that, making me into a malleable personality rather than just being myself. I feel like I have the freedom to do that now, but I need to give myself permission to do that. I keep not giving myself permission because I am worried about, what my family is going to say, what’s your church going to say, what are they going to say. I’ve become so wrapped up in what other people think that I haven’t really developed my own opinion about myself, and that’s carried on into a ton of other things. I don’t even have an opinion on faith anymore or a higher power, or dating too. That’s another thing. I have never had a girlfriend or a boyfriend, and a question that I got a lot of the time before I came out, especially from church too, was ‘When are you going to get a girlfriend? Oh, I just bet they’re just knocking down your door, Janeen! They are just going to be all over him.’ Every time I heard that I cringed internally. After coming out that wasn’t a big issue with those immediately around me, but with my new friends now it’s like, ‘So when are you getting a boyfriend? What are you going to do? When are you going get with someone?’ I’m just like, ‘Ahhhmmm.’ I’ll take unknown answer for $200, Alex, and it was just—you can’t escape that whole cycle of ‘so when are you going to get with someone?’ I’m trying to get right with me first. I know that I’m not going to be a complete and total ready-made person to say, ‘Okay, now I’m ready to go out and get someone.’ That’s should be fun, right? It’s not that someone out there is going to be my other half either, because everyone is a whole person. I’m not fully at terms with myself yet, but I feel like I am getting there. But I also know that if I am looking to go out and meet people and maybe get a potential partner, then I need to have some things in mind, whatever those are, and I need to not be so afraid of love, because I am terrified of love. I guess it is the whole thing, the commitment, the caring, the thinking about someone, the caring about someone—I am terrified of it, because I have not really even cared for myself or looked after myself, so why are you out there trying to do it for somebody else when you don’t even know the first thing about taking care of yourself? And that’s made me wonder if I am even going to make it. Am I going to move out? Am I going to do the things that all my friends are doing, or am I just going to sit here and turn into a depressed lump?”

You mentioned the word depression and experiencing anxiety and awkwardness. Tell me about some of those experiences, and how you cope with those feeling of depression, anxiety (and you mention also becoming suicidal). Had you not come out when you did, had you actually experienced thoughts of suicide before that?

“There was one time when it was a very serious thought, but I never took any action into it. I guess that was when faith did step in, because suicide was a sin or whatever, and it was also—Mom told me that’s no way to try to fix anything. And I never considered it; like the thought came up every now and then, but it was just ‘No, that’s just not a good idea, I probably shouldn’t do that.’ But a few times that was a result of depression, and usually depression, sometimes it was a mood, sometimes it was my whole condition, never really clinically assessed or anything like that, but it was medically assessed. It was something that came about when I did something—I slighted someone in a minor way, or I forgot to do something, or there was a miscommunication, and it would hover for the rest of the day. I guess I was kind of triggered by a lot of little things, because my emotional fortitude isn’t what it is supposed to be. I coped with it, basically, by ruminating and sulking, and sometimes I’ll listen to music too, but it was either facing it by getting sad or distracting myself with music or art or something. It was just sometimes that I thought, once again, maybe I deserve this, maybe I just need to get sad for a little bit and not deal with it. It was constant and even stuff from years ago, like little faults I’ve done to people or in school or at a church or at work or anything, and someone scolded me for it, or anything, I’d still think back on that awkward moment and get all cringed up again. It’s kind-of crippling, because you feel it and it affects how you go about your day, and I want to stop that too. I want to say, ‘Dude, it was a little thing. Just get over it. It’s not even important anymore. It happened ages ago. Why are you still thinking about it?’ but I can’t stop, like it just sits in there and now any time I was feeling all right my memory bank could just flip through its little Rolodex and say, ‘Hey, remember this?’ The cycle would start up again. Same with the anxiety—that was usually brought about all of a sudden by, again, minor situations, probably like talking to someone important or if someone told me, ‘Aaron, can I talk to you for a minute?’ All of a sudden I get a little on guard, because I always felt like I did something wrong and that I was going to get punished for something and it was kind of something that carries on until after the fact that I deal with it or I realize, ‘Okay, maybe it was less of a deal than I thought, so I come down from that,’ but the anxiety comes socially too. If I’m with a bunch of people I don’t know, if I see somebody I like or admire a lot and I start talking to them, I start to get a little freaked out and, you know, with family, with my church, definitely too because I never wanted to—it was like walking on a tightrope or walking on eggshells with certain people, just so I don’t say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing. It might just leave a bad taste in people’s mouths, and I guess I felt like I had to micro-manage everything so that I don’t, you know, get anxious or get depressed or set the other person off in some way, shape, or form.

“I had a time when I was just really good at saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, like I didn’t even mean it either, but I said something that I probably shouldn’t have even, though I thought it was the right thing to say, and it just ends up offending or slighting someone, and I just kind-of recoil and get into that whole mood again.

“I guess I never really have coped with anxiety. I just let it pass until it comes up again. I want to learn to chill, to relax, you know, let things pass, but a few friends have told me, ‘Aaron, all you really need is some weed. You’re getting all worked up over this. Just smoke a blunt and you’ll be fine.’ I’m like, ‘No, no, no, I don’t want to take any of those routes,’ because I’m the kind of guy who’s kind of an all or nothing. If I can’t get everything done at once, then I won’t do it, and it’s super-perfectionistic and it’s very superficial and I know it’s unhealthy, but I haven’t been able to bust out of that. It has been kind of ruining me in some sense—academically it’s been straining, socially it’s been straining, and just mentally too, because it’s like, do this or you’ll let them down, but if you do this you’ll let yourself down, if you do this you’ll end up letting both people down, and you and that other person down. It’s a balancing act, making sure this person is happy, make sure you are doing the right thing, make sure that nothing goes wrong, or else. I don’t know what that ‘or else’ was, but it was just do this right or nothing matters.”

Do you think it’s possible that trying to please other people and not create any conflicts and please yourself, you still may be hurting yourself or hurting someone else or upsetting someone? Perhaps a path you may want to choose at some point is to follow your heart and learn to accept that being who you are and moving forward on your journey may upset people. Some people may not understand it, but ultimately it’s your life, it’s your path, and to be able to accept that, may make some people uncomfortable and some people might not be a part of that journey, and to be okay with that. Sounds like it’s very draining and exhausting to try to manage things that are out of your control, essentially. You don’t have control over how people react or respond. You only have control over the actions that you take and the way that you respond to the way people react to you, or respond to you. Does that make sense?

“Yeah, it does. It’s just this constant feeling of inadequacy, I don’t know where it came from but it is just, I guess I got a lot of ‘you should be doing X, Y and Z by now.’

“So, I’ve always found it a little hypocritical but I still go through it, how others, family will tell me, Oh, you’re supposed to be doing this, or you should be graduating by now, you should be having a career by now,’ like ‘Why aren’t you doing this, why aren’t you getting somewhere, why are you still in my house?’ like it was a lot of that, but at the same time I keep getting the ‘you’re not going to be young forever, you need to go out and do stuff, you need to go out and live, have a life, go do something already.’

“I can’t necessarily do that when I’m here looking after my sister all the time and going to work and school. I can’t have a life. A lot of people are also saying, ‘Oh, you’re young, you’ll have your whole life to do stuff,’ then why are you making me feel like my life is already over?

“You don’t understand what you’re doing to me when you tell me all this junk. I already don’t have much direction in life, and then you’re just giving me a sign, you’re giving me two signs in the opposite direction that are telling me one-way, so I don’t know what you want from me. And, I don’t even know what I want from myself.

“So you kind of have to stay still, you can’t move, otherwise you’ll risk hurting yourself or ruining everything, making a mistake and having the world judge you for it and you not caring about it.

“That’s miraculously how I just gotten through life so far. It’s just been a series of, I made a mistake and deserved it and I’m probably going to make another one. It’s not healthy. I know it’s not healthy.”

Yeah, some things come to mind as I’m listening to you. One of them is to practice forgiveness, forgiving yourself, and that mistakes are signs that you are trying new things. It sounds like the fear of hurting yourself or making mistakes, or making someone else disappointed in you, or not meeting your expectations of what they think you should be doing or how you should be doing it, has immobilized you to the point where you’ve delayed progress in areas that you would like to see more progress in. But it sounds like your awareness of this may bring about more change and hopefully some more confidence in who you are, your potential, and your capabilities. Being gay myself, I’m going to make a reference to a very popular gay film, ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ There’s the moment in the movie when the Good Witch Glinda says to Dorothy, ‘You had the power all along,’ and that’s something I think many of us struggle with. We think that some outside force is going to come and tap us on the shoulder and say ‘here you go,’ or ‘this is the way,’ when really we have ability always, within us, at any point to determine what direction we are going to go in and how we are going to get there.

We talked about the relationship you have with yourself, we talked a little bit about the relationship with your church and the fear you have with that and with your family, and you’ve mentioned your sister, you’ve mentioned your mother and your older sister, but I have not heard you mention your father. What is the relationship with your father?

“Okay, here’s the wild story about my father. When we were born he had a condition called Randolph Syndrome. It’s not that rare; actually, it’s pretty common. Basically, when me and my twin sister were born he ‘Rand’off.’”

Haahaahaaa.

“I know it’s my little dark joke for the situation, but I handle it well. He was never present, until my late teenage years, he started to make a motion towards me through cards, through pictures. I met him on Facebook, I met my half-sister and I met my paternal grandmother. He started to tell me, ‘I want to know about your life, what you’re doing, what you’re up to. I love you. You’re my son. I hope you grow up to be just like me.’ Just like who? Just like who, to be honest. Aside from that, I took it for what it was, and I’m like, ‘You know what, at least he’s trying, so I’ll give him that, whatever.’ Then I talked to him on the phone one time, for the first time, and that was freaky because there’s nothing like talking on the phone and hearing yourself. It’s very jarring, but we talked about life and whatever, it was pretty relaxed, there was no ill will from me towards him. I never had any, but a lot of it came from my mom and my family, because mom always thought he was a scumbag. I even asked her a few years before he made contact with me, ‘Mom, why hasn’t my father talked to me? Do you think I should try to look for him, or something?’ ‘Woah, woah, woah, Aaron,’ she told me, ‘if he cared he would look for you, so don’t get it twisted.’ I’m like okay, all right, fine, just hope he can do that sometime, then a few years later that happens.

“It was still kind of strained because whenever Mom heard from my paternal grandmother or him it was just kind-of—we were on good terms with my paternal grandmother, that was great, but from him it was just animosity and probably border-line hatred coming from them. But the big thing happened three years ago, because, by the way, he had no sense of tact, he kind-of said whatever, whenever. One day he was telling me about, throughout our conversations, he told me he had cancer, but it had in remission, so he’s been pretty clean from it for a while and that’s good. He also was a religion hopper. According to my mom, one day he’s Muslim, one day he’s Christian, one day he’s atheist, it just went around and around, so he was never really stable in that sense. Then three years ago, the big thing happened. I get a message on Facebook from my paternal aunt, his sister, said, ‘Hi, Aaron. I’m your aunt, Jeffrey’s sister. I want to let you know that your father is in the hospital. His non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma came out of remission. He is halfway in a coma and this could be it.’ I said, ‘Oh my god.’ So, after my class was over, I got out, I ran out of the building. I call up the hospital and I get on the phone to his room, his current wife picks up (mind you, he has four different families, and I have about nine half brothers and sisters, but what can I say: ‘Papa was a rolling stone’)—but that’s not important, I get on the phone with his current wife and say, ‘Hey, can I speak to him? This is his son.’ She put the phone up to his ear—I know this sounds so much like a soap opera, but this what went down—I get on the phone with him and I say, ‘Look, Dad,’ and I’ve never called him dad before, but I thought to myself, ‘This is it, so why, why, why harbor anything, why try to make it what it isn’t?’ so I said, ‘Look, Dad, I just want to let you know that I love you, I care about you, and I forgive you for not being there, for doing whatever you had to do for this other family,’ with a special needs daughter, mind you, ‘I just wanted to let you know, I harbor no ill will again you, I don’t want any animosity between you and me,’ not that there ever was, ‘but I just want to let you know that I care about you very much, I hope that you’ve gotten your house in order, I hope you realized—I hope you got all your ducks in a row, and tied every knot, I hope you’re secure and you’re safe and if this is it, goodbye.’ His wife told me he nodded an acknowledgment, I said, Okay, thank you, goodbye.’ Hung up the phone, told Mom what happened that day and she was shocked, because she didn’t think, she’s known this dude for a while too, she’s just like, oh, he’s in the hospital, oh my god, that’s pretty serious. Mind you, that day that happened was the day before Thanksgiving vacation, so Thursday, mind you, this is three years ago, and two years ago I came out, so this is back when the family was on decently good terms with me. We were going around the table saying what were thankful for, and I said, ‘I’m thankful for my father,’ and my family was like, huh? I proceed to tell them the story, and they are all just sitting there with their jaws on the floor, because they all to a degree had some kind-of animosity towards him, and I’d imagine a family would, after something like that. That’s understandable to me, but I didn’t harbor it, and they just looked at me and thought, ‘Oh my god, Aaron. How did you do that? How are you able to do that to someone who hurt you? How are you able to just kind-of just brush it off?’ I told them it was because I didn’t feel anything, I didn’t feel any hurt, I didn’t feel any pain, he was just—sure, he was absent, but I didn’t hold any animosity, for the longest time I actually held him in high regard because I thought, okay maybe he can be the daddy that I wanted, maybe he could do something for me—maybe he could come back and do something like that, I always kind-of held that hope out, and I realized a little time before, way before he died, I’m like maybe he won’t, but that’s okay. At least he made an effort now or whatever and he’s just doing whatever he needs to do, I guess.

“My older sister heard the story and cried because she comes from a different father and she never met him, so she got a little emotional at that point and I comforted her too. My family just told me, Aaron, you just broke a generational curse, you just like cleared all that air. All the junk that we had against him you just kind of threw aside and said, ‘were good.’ I’m like, there was nothing hard about it. It just seemed like the right thing to do. What sense is there to just harping on. The man is at death’s door, basically, it looks like. He could go into remission again, but we don’t know that. The family was very proud of me from that point. We got together again the next day, on black Friday, for leftovers and schmoozing, that day I found out that he passed. I managed to clear the table with him, say goodbye and get closure before that man even died.

“I still didn’t think it was a big deal until my family came up and told me about it because they’re like, ‘Aaron, don’t you realize, not many people get the chance to do that, not many people get to send somebody off like that, no one gets to have that last degree of separation with someone, like that’s just—you clinched it, you really kind-of, you hit it and that was it.’ I was like, well this was a man I never even met, never even got to see face-to-face who apparently fathered me. It just seemed like the right thing to do. In the few weeks after he passed I felt very strange. I had some serious bouts of depression, more so than usual, because a few emotions where coming up. I was like, ‘Okay, why wasn’t he more involved in my life while he was here? Why did he have to go and do that?’ because now that kind of stuff was kind-of coming up in me a little bit. I didn’t act on it, but it was there and it just tore me up inside a little. A lot of it, I felt like I was waving goodbye to a ghost when he died, because it was like—who am I saying goodbye to, who—I still don’t know who you are, you’re supposed to be my father, you’re supposed to be this man and I don’t even know who you are, so it was a very strange feeling of anger, depression, sadness, and regret, to a degree. I kept saying, ‘I wish I got to know him,’ but really, I wish that he got to know me. It was a little heartbreaking because it did affect me in a few areas, but then one day it kind-of cleared up and I was like, ‘Okay, I guess I’m good,’ but that filtering of emotion was definitely what I needed during the time, because I don’t know what was with me, it was just strange, granted my twin sister’s autistic, she doesn’t even know I’m gay, she doesn’t even know our father exists, like she doesn’t have to deal with that.

“My sister has her own battles that she deals with, but otherwise this was something that I was dealing with for myself, and Mom saw I was going through it, and didn’t do much about it, she’s just like, ‘I don’t know why you’re acting like this.’ So I guess there was some degree of animosity even in the death, but still it was something that I felt I had to personally wrestle with myself because this is my father and you guys have no specific connection to him, so this is something that I had to deal with myself, and I’m glad I did. It would have been nice to meet him but Mom always told me no, in the spirit of animosity, of course, that if I, if he were involved in my life, if I met him or gotten some influences from him, I wouldn’t be who I am today. So that’s Jeffrey.

“Are you okay, by the way?”

Yeah. Of course, I just naturally get emotional hearing things like this, because I can empathize and I feel it, and everything has to come out and it comes out in my eyes.

Through some of these experiences, fear of being who you are, and taking control of your life and the issue with your church and religion and faith and your mother and your father and taking care of your sister and just feeling delayed from being where you want to be—what have you learned about yourself? What are some gifts you’ve uncovered in all this?

“I have learned that I can be pretty resilient. In spite of everything that has been going on I can—even in the spirit of, oh well, next time, there’s a degree of perseverance there’s some—I’ve always retained hope that things would get better. I don’t know what that hope was or what that hope was in, but it was there and I always thought, okay, maybe one of these days you’ll get to where you want to be and you’ll have what you’ll need and you’ll make a life for yourself and you’ll be over that hill and things will turn around. I’ve also realized from the job I just left, from two years, it’s been two years that I have worked there, up until this point. I would have been there today, had it not been for me resigning, but I have a very good personality, I’ve realized. I make people smile, I make people laugh, I try to brighten their day whenever they approach me, so it’s not so much a cover for the depression and anxiety but it’s just been the best option there is. It’s helped so many people, because a lot of the time people would come into the place and say, ‘Well, Aaron, the food’s sub-par and your bosses are whatever, but the main reason we come is, honestly, to see you. You’re the only smiling face in the place.’ It’s like, someone has to be. Ironically, I can’t go through life being all mopey and depressed, like everybody around me. I guess that’s one thing that, kind of, it’s like an extrovertedly happy introvertedly blah mood thing. If everyone around me is kind of depressed I try not to be that, and try to bring myself to be that happy person when everyone else is kind of down, and it can spread, it can definitely spread. When I see people who come in who are happy to see me, it’s a very good feeling and I know that they are here to see me, they’re here for me and it’s something, it makes you feel important, it makes you feel like you are doing something right.

“Even before I came out there were people who came up to me and said, ‘Aaron, you know, you’ve got this thing about you,’ I don’t know if they would describe it as je ne sais quoi, but they said there’s this thing about you that I don’t know what it is, but you’ve got it and I like it a lot and I don’t, I can’t put my finger on it. I think someone told me that ‘Aaron, it’s definitely your heart, it is definitely your heart, because not a lot of people possess the attitude that you have or the degree of kindness and niceness from you that you have, you need to share that, and you need to never’—like one guy over there, he’s like eighty years old, he told ‘don’t ever change, Aaron, don’t ever, EVER, ever change. There are not many people like you in the world and they need people like you.’ That did make me feel like I was doing something right, even if internally there was a battle but, externally there’s a smile.

“It’s not so much fake it till you make it, that’s in other areas. But it’s that someone has to be the nice guy, some has to be altruistic, someone has to be an agent of change, an agent of good, you know, someone has to be that, so why not me?”

I love that line, ‘Why not me?’ Is there a cool piece of advice, a song lyric, or something that resonates with you, that you would like to share?

“Yes. A biblical verse that Mom always told me whenever things were going weird in school or at work or a lot of people were bullying me or being nasty to me. I kind-of took it, because I was just that kind of guy. I’d think to myself, ‘I’m okay. Throw it on. I deserve this.’ She told me, first of all, don’t take that, but second of all, the verse was ‘Let your light so shine that they may see your good works and glorify your father which is in heaven.’ Even in the non-biblical sense I’ve heard it from many other people: ‘Let your light shine, dude. They’ll see who you really are and that will give them the permission to shine theirs.’ People will see that, people will be attracted to it, people will be led by it, and it can do a lot, if you let it shine, so I guess I have.”

Why does that resonate with you?

“It showed up when I left my old job. I had been there two years, and it had given people time to warm up to me and really enjoy my presence there. When I told them I was leaving, they suddenly started to get a little emotional, telling me, ‘Oh my god, Aaron, I wish you the best. Thank you for all you have done for us over the two years, even if it’s just giving us breakfast in the morning. You are so happy, you’re so joyful, and we need that. It’s hard to find anybody with it, but you’ve been so nice, and that doesn’t go unnoticed there. We want you to know that, and please come back sometime.’ I’m like, ‘I’ll visit. I’ll be around. I’m not leaving the country.’ It’s good that there a lot of people who can recognize your niceness, recognize your good works and, I guess, give you some credit for it, give you some sort of approval. I don’t necessarily need approval, but it was nice. I figured being nice was enough and they saw it and recognized in anyway, but I didn’t need somebody telling me that I was doing well. It definitely helps, but I guess I didn’t need that. It’s like, have you ever seen ‘The Devil Wears Prada?’ You know that end scene where Anne Hathaway is on the train or the cab and she’s just smiling to herself because she is like, ’Oh god, I got everything done, I didn’t mess up, this is great,’ and meanwhile you see Meryl Streep in her cab smiling for the first time throughout the entire film. It was that scene that made me think, ‘Wow! She did all this and she was fine without any of her bosses’ recognition or a smile or saying you did a good job, thank you. She knew she was doing a good job and she didn’t need that, even though her boss approved of everything that was going on, she didn’t see that, but she didn’t need to see it. I feel that’s kind of what I get most of the time. I feel like, behind the scenes some people are like, wow that was really cool, thanks, Aaron—it’s pretty interesting to see what people are, what people think of you. In a good sense, anyway, because I already think about me as is, but when I see a good outcome from that, it’s like ‘wow, okay, that’s good.’ It’s very relieving and it’s very comforting.”

What advice would you offer to your ten or eleven year old self, having been through what you’ve been through to this day and what you’ve learned?

“Do what you need to, be who you are, don’t sweat the small stuff. Relax, pretty much relax. I was always so tense because I had to watch what I did in front of everyone to keep myself from being perceived as something that I am not, but now I definitely say relax and just be yourself, honestly. Because I always felt like no one liked me for myself. A lot of it was true at the time, I was anxious and awkward and annoying—and thank god I changed over the time—but I was always wishing I was better than myself, that I wasn’t myself, that I wasn’t this or wasn’t that. Now it’s like eventually you’re going to be the best, but right now don’t worry about it.”

Are you doing the best you can with what you have and where you are?

“I am tapping into that, yes.”

I think it’s fair to say that you’re the best, the best you are right now in this moment. Fair enough?

“Thank you.”

More than enough. How has it felt to share these experiences and feelings with me today?

“It felt very good. I’ve always had this story on my heart and I was honestly just waiting for the right person to tell it to, and then you came along. So I am very thankful and grateful for this privilege. I do want others to hear about this too, because it articulates it in a way that may just telling someone upfront wouldn’t understand. I feel like this is the most absolute truth that I can give, without being misconstrued, and if people can see that and take it for what it’s worth and understand me to a degree, then that’s all I really want. It’s like what Oprah said, ‘The three main things people want in life are: do you see me? do you hear me? and does what I am saying make sense to you?’”

Three things that I think are most important in being human and sort of the platform for what Hearts of Strangers is, is ‘I see you, I hear you, and I value you.’ So, it’s very similar to what you just said about Oprah. Do you think it’s possible that by someone else who reads your story may understand themselves a little bit better and know that they are not alone and that there is hope?

“Yes, indeed. That’s another thing I have done throughout my emotional rollercoaster journey: I’ve always come to people when I’ve been that shoulder to cry on, when I’ve been that person to talk to. I always try to boost, I try to bring somebody up, I always try to give them a piece of advice or make them laugh, or try to uplift them in some way, shape, or form. Even though I couldn’t do it for myself, I figured someone else could use this. Rather than remedy my own situation, I always try to remedy else’s situation. I should try that on myself, most likely, but I’ve always been one to inspire or boost another person, so I really hope that seeing my life story will bring about, heck, maybe an epiphany for someone.”

.

[heartsofstrangers]

What has been one of the most challenging things you’ve experienced or currently experiencing?

“I don’t know how to word it. It’s like not being trapped in my head so much, if that makes sense. I would have to say, the bullying that I experienced growing up in middle school and high school and from my father. It was like a never-ending cycle of bullying. Back in the day, when I was in middle school, high school, social media was not as prevalent as it is today. You would expect that when you got back to your own home, it would be a safe place. You might’ve had a rough day at school, but you would expect to go home and feel safe at home with your family. But for me, I’d go to school and get bullied, and then I’d go home and get bullied by my father. It was a never-ending cycle. So actually these past two years I’d consider my recovery from being trapped in my head with my therapist. He really helped me with understanding certain behaviors, such as why I would avoid people. When I would come home on break from college and I would see kids from my high school and middle school, and even though they weren’t the ones that were directly bullying me, they were still associated with that time in my life that I wanted to forget. It’s been a challenge get out of your head, because it can be a safe and also a very dark place. It was a very dark place because I believed everything people were telling me and my father would say, so I had zero self-confidence, about things like my body, my ability to make friends, my ability to find love, my ability to understand myself and accept myself. So I would say in my heart the most challenging thing is bullying, and getting over that.”

How would you say that the bullying impacted you and your later years?

“That’s actually what I would like to do going forward in life. When I get my masters in social work, I would want to work with schools, and educate people on the long-standing effects of bullying. I feel like schools nowadays are getting better at responding appropriately. Where back in the day when I was in middle school and high school it was just like, ‘kids will be kids.’ That was the message I got a lot of the time, and it was just awful. I think people don’t realize the severity of how awful bullying can be, especially now with all those platforms where people can take a quick picture and you don’t even know it and they can post it on the internet.

“Bullying impacted me so that I was afraid to like make friends. I didn’t feel like I could ever make friends. I was very overweight growing up, I had awful acne (like most teenagers), and I was very closeted for most of the time, so I was very socially awkward. I just could not make friends, or I couldn’t keep friends because I was so desperate for friendship. I would do a lot of very embarrassing stuff that people would tell me, ‘oh yeah if you do this, we’ll be friends.’ And I would do it, but then they wouldn’t be my friend, so it was just, the lowest self-esteem I could imagine. I was told I’d never find a guy who will love me or I’d never find someone who will want to be with me, and I was really believing that. Whenever a guy would approach me, I just pushed him away, because I told myself it wouldn’t work, it wouldn’t last. It was the same with people throughout college, where I had my core group that I was able to open up with because I felt safe with them.

“But, even during the entire time I didn’t have any reason to believe that they weren’t my friend, but my mind would get me to think, they’re probably talking bad about me behind my back, because that happened to me a lot growing up. So it was a repeated cycle of self-sabotage. I like really believed what people were saying, especially with my father. He really had an issue around some of my femininity, because he’s really stuck in those ways and that mindset that what makes a man a man, like masculine, the features, the masculine duties that people do, like knowing stuff about cars knowing how to fix stuff with your hands. I don’t know that stuff. But that’s what my dad perceives as what makes a man. I was into theater, into pop music, and Broadway, and that stuff. So I had a really hard time accepting that part of myself, accepting the femininity, and understanding that gender is very fluid. It’s not like you’re just masculine, or you’re just feminine, or you’re just a boy or a girl. It’s understanding those and accepting your whole self, if that makes sense. I think that’s what really impacted me. I have to say these past two years with therapy have really been my recovery. So I struggled until these past two years, and that’s also when I started getting on anxiety meds.”

Were there low points along the way? Low points where you were isolated and depressed or contemplating suicide?

“Yes to pretty much all. I developed an eating disorder back in 2012. It was mainly around my weight, because I was closing on 200 pounds. It was the heaviest I ever was in my life. It was because I was eating my feelings pretty much. I was so sad, I would eat super late, I would eat the worst foods. I was also in college so I was broke. So there were many reasons that I was eating shitty, but most of it was because I was just not happy. Even realizing you have all these friends, you have grown so much, but it’s that mask, you just can’t re-see it. You still see yourself as that low kid you used to be. I think what happened with the eating disorder was just that I wanted to be in control for once. I felt so out of control. All this shit was happening. I think being able to control the eating gave me some sense of control in my life, even though it was not in a healthy way. I don’t regret the eating disorder, because it was something I needed to control even though it was really hurting me. I think everything happens for a reason. And it’s led me to where I am now. This past year has been my recovery from the eating disorder. These two years have been with therapy and understanding my mind and understanding my PTSD, the depression and anxiety aspects to that. This past year has been really concentrating on having a better relationship with food and understanding my body more.

“I never had a suicide attempt, but I’ve definitely contemplated it. I definitely had a lot of suicide ideation growing up, every day in middle school, and it was mainly around if I were to die, no one would miss me. Now I’m able to realize that a lot of people would miss me, and I’ve made that big change. I still think about it sometimes, like when I’m really experiencing my low phases. It’s a cycle still. But it’s improving, and I’m able to get myself out of that mindset a lot quicker than I used to. Now I’m able to quickly make that change. I’ve developed a lot of coping skills to get out of that mindset. I had a lot of depression growing up, and I was told I had generalized anxiety disorder for the longest time, and that’s what led me to go to therapy, because I realized I don’t just have that.

“There’s something else that crept right up on it. And then I was finally able to realize the PTSD was really affecting me. It’s been something that I’ve been trying to really educate my family about. When people hear PTSD they think of soldiers, and they don’t really think that there are so many other ways you can have PTSD. Mine is really around the bullying. I want to educate people on the fact that there are so many factors in these diagnoses, and it’s not just that one thing that you hear in the news all the time

“It’s the same thing with eating disorders; a lot of times you hear about an eating disorder and you think about females, because it’s so prevalent in like the modeling industry and everything, and it’s always in the news. People don’t really think about males having eating disorders. In this society they think that women care more about their bodies than men do, but that’s totally false. I mean women do, but men are still told that they have to be these jacked, big, strong, masculine jewels, and if you’re—people still discriminate around weight with men just as much as they do with women. That’s where a big part of the eating disorder came in because, although I love the fact that I love my community, I love the LGBT community, I love who I am, but it can be a little bit vain at times. I felt like when I was at my heaviest that people weren’t as—I don’t know how to phrase it—I felt more excluded from the community than where I’m at now. I love the body I have now. I’m really developing a positive relationship with my body, where I’m able to be more comfortable with wearing less clothing, or if I want to be at a beach, but I’ll always be that person I was when I was heavy. It’s just that my body looks different now. There were a lot of factors that went into my recovery and my story.”

You mentioned that sort of the anxiety led you to seek therapy. Was there a low point that you realized, ‘Wait a minute, I can’t continue to live like this? I need to something about this.’

“I sought counseling a little bit in my college, in my senior year. It was offered for free for students at my college. And it helped, but I just didn’t feel that good connection with the therapist, so I was talking with my mom, who I’m very close with, and she told me she would be willing to pay the co-pays for me to go to therapy. There were suicide attempts in my family. (I won’t say who.) So I think my mom was really scared when I was telling her I was feeling very low and very depressed, and I needed help. I didn’t know what to do. All I do is come home, I work, I come home and I hibernate in my room pretty much. I was not socializing. I felt very disconnected from my family, particularly my father. I was just so trapped in my head. I was not on meds at that time. So my anxiety was just through the roof. I’d misplace the littlest of things, like maybe I misplaced my iPod, and it would be a crisis for me. I didn’t want to live like that. I wanted to be able to control myself. And I could not. I failed so many job interviews because I would have a panic attack in the interview. I remember I interviewed for a DCF in Springfield. That was my first job interview out of undergrad and the simplest of questions: ‘What do you know about DCF?’ And I was in my mindset ‘stand up, get up, walk out.’ That was just how my mindset was. I was so anxious and I just could not manage a simple question. This is bad, like I need to change.

“My mom actually found my therapist, who ended up being the best therapist I ever met in my life. He is outstanding, and he’s helped me so much with understanding my own mind and realizing that I am just like everyone else. That was the big thing. I just felt so different, because I felt like no one else knew what I was going through, even though a lot of people go through the same thing. A lot of times when people talk about being trapped in their head and what goes on in their head, people are scared to put it out there. They’ll feel crazy, or they’ll feel like, I don’t know, people might think I’m a little nuts, but it’s normal for people to have those kinds of thoughts and go to those really dark places. Being able to be so open with that with my friends has been so amazing, and understanding that other people have that same experience. So I think that being able to open up to that to my mom and my mom being able to be like, ‘Well, I know you’re struggling with money right now, so I’ll co-pay for therapy,’ that was a big tipping point for me, just having my mom on my side and  have someone to back you up.”

Sounds like support plays an important role, would you agree?

“Yeah, and I think just wanting to get better. That was my big breaking point. My weight was also getting really bad. I was also looking at outpatient rehabilitation for eating disorders, and I was looking at a place in Amherst, I forget the name, but that was also a big point because I wanted to get help around my eating disorder. I was like taking in like 1000 calories a day and then I would go to the gym and purposefully burn like 700-plus calories and then I’d go home and ride the stationary bike and then I’d go to bed and you burn calories in your sleep. So I’d wake up in the morning and I’d be in so much pain, to the point where I’d have to be hunched over because it was in my groin area it felt so empty, and I felt a really sharp pain all the time, and I would be scared to even eat a piece of gum. It was just another five calories, I can’t do that. That will make me fat. So it was like, being in that place and just knowing that a lot of my family was getting nervous. It’s like, you don’t look healthy, you look like a rail, pretty much. And I think, just wanting to get better, developing a better nutritional diet, I was able to line up a nutritionist, and I was able to line up a therapist. I ended up not going to the rehabilitation place, because I was able to get that treatment through my therapy. And just my own, resilient self, I guess, I was able to develop that better sense of relationship with food on my own, but also with therapy and friends and everything.”

There are a couple things I want to come back to. You mentioned experiencing panic attacks resulting from your PTSD trauma being bullied. How did you work through panic attacks when they would happen?

“I realized I had panic attacks growing up and didn’t think anything of it, so I was actually just thinking about that recently with my therapist. I thought, ‘Oh my God, I’ve had panic attacks almost like my whole life,’ but I could never put a name to it, so I thought it was me being out of control and weird and all that stuff. When I first realized it was a legit panic attack was recently. Up until a few months ago, they started cutting back, and it was around my break up. We started really going through the trauma narrative in therapy, so I was reliving some of my trauma. So it was a really scary, vulnerable place. There was a time with the body dysmorphia, that I also have on top of my eating disorder, and the mask was lifted like momentarily where I was able to really see myself and see the definition and my body. Normally I would still look at myself and even though all my friends would be like, ‘You’re fit, you’re in shape, you eat healthy. You can treat yourself to ice cream once in a while. You’re not going to gain the weight that quick.’ And I finally reached the place where I was able to see myself in the mirror, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I’m not who I think I am in my head. This is who I am.’ It was scary and I felt myself go to the back of my brain, and then I had my panic attack because I saw my reflection. I basically have been developing my own coping skills around doing deep breathing in those moments. I also call my friend Rosa, who I’m going to be living with. Sometimes, I just say, ‘I’m having a rough night. Could you please talk to me?’ And she talks to me and she’ll stay on the phone for hours. Or I’ll just call her and be like, ‘I’m having a rough night. I can’t talk about it. Can you just distract me?’ And she’ll just talk about random stuff. Really reaching out for that support has been amazing for me, and then also being able to distract myself in those moments. I’ll listen to music. That’s incredibly therapeutic for me. I love to dance, so I’ll dance. I’ll have my own little dance party of one in my room. Or I’ll just watch TV shows and movies; that’s also been very therapeutic for me. Just trying in that moment to remind myself, you have your support group, you have a lot going for you right now. You’re not the same kid you were years ago where you felt so lost. You really put in the work. Trying to remind myself of all that I’ve accomplished. I think sometimes when you get really low, you just completely forget all the good things in your life. You’re just so focused on the bad. I think that’s been really helping me with the panic attacks and understanding what they are now. That was a big help for me, because I thought, ‘Okay, so that’s what it has been my whole life because I didn’t know what they were and I didn’t know how to control them. I felt so out of control in my body when that happened.’ Also working with the demographic that I worked with, working with that population also helped a lot. I would see my kids I worked with have panic attacks and I’d be able to see my kids also who have PTSD. Just seeing their behaviors and understanding them was making me look within myself when I was a kid and think, ‘Oh my God, I did the exact same thing when I was a kid.’ And understanding where their behaviors are coming from and being able to relate that to myself also and share that with them has been very therapeutic.”

Did you (or do you still) find it difficult to reach out for help when you hit some of those rough patches?

“Not anymore, because I’ve really developed an amazing support group. I know that the people I reach out to are not going to judge me. That’s really the mindset that I’m in now. I used to always worry that they would judge me because of the poor friendships I had growing up. But just knowing that my friends that I reach out to, even aside from my roommates, I mean I’m very grateful to have an amazing group of friends now that I’m not afraid to reach out to. In the past I would not reach out to people, except for my mom. But back then, my mom, just like myself, didn’t know what was wrong with me. We didn’t know what was happening, so my mom tried her best, but she just didn’t know what to say or how to react. But now, my mom asks me questions so she wants to know how to handle it, because there are other relatives in my family who have mental health, mental illness. And also because I’m a social worker now, my mom is always asking questions. But it was very difficult for me in the past, because I really didn’t have many people to reach out to. I did I have my friend Dave, who I have been friends with since sixth grade, but he lived 30 minutes away. So when you were kids, your parents worked, so you couldn’t ask your parents to drive 30 minutes to see my friend. We could only see each other once in a while, like an over-the-phone friendship. And that was enough for me too, just having that companion. You can’t put all your stock in one person. He was my safe place growing up, but we went to different high schools, we went to different middle schools. We didn’t get to hang out as much, so he could only do so much. But now I have a huge network of friends.”

Have you found that sharing who you are and where you’ve been and some of your experiences has created meaningful, deeper connections in your life? It sounds like that may have been what it has cultivated, support . . .

“There was a moment in my senior year in college, when I was home on a break, I was in such a low space—but it was also interesting because though I was still in that low mindset, I had the most friends I’d ever had in my life at that point. And like they were good, healthy friendships so it was interesting look back because I had what I had always wanted. I had a core group—but I was still so low. It wasn’t until I really came back from break and we got all together, that I was able to sit down with them and talk about our break, and I told them I was in a really low place this past break and I was thinking a lot about suicide. And I only said, ‘I don’t think I would ever attempt suicide because I don’t want to not be here. I want to get better.’ But I always had those thoughts in the back of my head, and I felt so vulnerable telling my friends that, and then my friends were like, ‘We’ve been there.’ So that was when I thought, ‘Okay, so I can start telling people a little bit about what goes on in my head and how I really feel,’ because you can put all these happy images of yourself on your social media and you can seem like you have it all together and really deep, deep down you’re like a mess. It was nice to know with those friends that they were really able to relate to me. You can feel that you’re not alone. Two friends I’m going to be living with now are outstanding. We talk openly. We’re freaking nervous as hell about this move to a different state. It’s been great to be able to be more of my authentic self and be more who I really am.”

That takes courage. But it sounds like, by putting yourself out there and sharing who you are and where you’ve been, others are encouraged to do the same. That creates this vibe of authenticity between you and your friends, the people in your life, which I think is such an important space to be in.

“Yeah, my friends are my family. I love my family of blood, but I definitely feel safer with my friends. I think it’s going to be great because they live in Boston. I’m not going to be far from Boston where I’m moving now. So it’s like I’m going to be closer to them. I think building that good, safe place among your friends could open many doors for them. Having that friendship done a lot for me, and I hope it’s done a lot for them too.”

What are some of the things you’ve learned about yourself over the last couple of years and in your recovery?

“I’m a lot stronger than I give myself credit for. A big like wake-up call was this past summer, when I joined the gay men’s volleyball league in Northampton, Dunes Boys. I was so terrified to ever interact with men, especially gay men, because I was so nervous about how to talk to them and how to put myself out there. I didn’t really have much experience interacting with gay men, and I had a very limited amount of gay friends in my life, so it can be scary to walk in on a group of people who have probably been going in to this volleyball for like five, six, or seven years. There were about 45 gay men there and I knew only one person, my friend who got me to join the volleyball team. But I still went every week and pushed myself to go, but I didn’t go the first two weeks because I was terrified. And then my friend was like, ‘You need to freaking go.’

“So I finally went, and it’s been outstanding. It’s been so rewarding, and I’ve met so many great friends. A couple of them are going to help me move tomorrow. So it’s been a really therapeutic big part of my summer and my life, these past three months, and it was what I looked forward to the most every week—just going to play volleyball for three hours, go to the brewery to grab a couple of drinks with people and talk. It’s been amazing because I didn’t really have that outlet to really talk about guys, you know when you get together with a couple of friends and you could just talk about guys. Talk about sex and talk about life in general. You know I have a lot of girlfriends that I love them and I could talk about guys with them, but it’s not the same. It’s been great knowing that I have the confidence that if I want to walk up to a guy and be like, ‘Hey, I’m Cale. How’s your day?’ That kind of stuff. I think how resilient and strong I am, and how I am a likeable person and that I’ll be fine. It’s also great knowing that I always have friends in this area. That was the big thing in the beginning, when I first told my friend I was going to move in with her, I was ready to be like, “Fuck you, Easthampton. I’m done with Western Mass.’ I hate this place because of so many bad memories. Since I’ve been playing volleyball, I’ve been invited to so many parties and gatherings and ‘Hey, I’m going to the mall. You want to come with me?’ I didn’t have that before. I had a couple of friends, my main crew of friends in this area, but they were about three people, and they’ve been my rock for so long. But you can’t rely on the same people all the time because we’re adults. My friends can’t be by my side every second of the day. You have to learn to be by yourself. I can learn to enjoy my ‘me’ time again and that my ‘me’ doesn’t mean I’m lonely. For a long time, I associated being by myself with being lonely and not having friends. I couldn’t be by myself. And the people I’ve made friends with here over the summer at volleyball are still going to be my friends when I’m away. So I think I’m just learning who I am, day by day. And just figuring my life out and knowing I’m going to be okay. I think that’s the main thing I’ve learned.”

What message would you offer to your younger self, say 9 or 12, who’s getting bullied?

“Some of the bullies will eventually message you and apologize. That is what has happened. I think in social work, it really helped me a lot in understanding why people act the way they do when they’re growing up. It taught me so much about my behaviors. Why I acted certain ways to people. I mean, I myself was a bully a little bit growing up too. I had my moments when I was a bully. I never in a million years thought I would be in shape and be physically fit and be confident. That’s what I never thought. I thought I’m just going to be this mess of a person my whole life. And just realizing that you really put in the hard work, which I did—granted, how I lost the weight was not healthy—but I’ve been able to keep my weight these past year and a half. I don’t know how to phrase it. Like basically just don’t give up. Keep pushing. If you really put in the effort you can get what you want. I put in the hard work at the gym and it’s paid off. I’ve put in the hard work in therapy and it’s paid off. I’ve put myself out there by joining clubs in college, by joining volleyball, and putting myself out there with my colleagues at work. I’ve made amazing life-long friendships with people. Just know that middle school and high school is only a portion of life. It sucks. It’s a long eight years, but that’s all it is . . . eight years. It’s a long time, but it’s not your whole life, and that’s why I went to college. Not the ones in this area.

“I went to the ones in North Adams because I wanted to get away, and that was the best decision I ever made. There was no one from my middle school or high school there. It was a fresh clean slate, and it was the most accepting college campus I could ever imagine. And it was the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, so I do want to give them a plug. It’s the most accepting student body I’ve ever met in my life. They were amazing. It gets better. I mean that’s pretty much what it is. It’s one of our Trevor Projects Slogans, but it’s true. This one quote I saw perfectly resonates with me: ‘A bad day is not a bad life.’ So don’t let those eight years, as shitty as they were, define your entire life the way I did. I lived in the past for so long. I could not escape the past. And now when I finally, you know see people from my middle school and high school, Now I can walk up to them and be like, ‘Hey, how are you? Hope everything has been well,’ whereas before, I would dodge them. Easthampton is a very small community, so you can’t really dodge people. But I did it for so long. I didn’t interact with anyone because I didn’t want them to see how low I still was. People will eventually realize who you really are. Because the people, my bullies growing up probably had their own troubles. I wasn’t able to realize that back then, back in the day. I just thought they were assholes. Some of them are just assholes, but everyone has their struggles, and sometimes people just don’t know how to express themselves in a healthy way. It will all work out in the end. That’s pretty much it.”

It sounds like being uncomfortable is part of the process. You mentioned being sort of nervous about joining the volleyball league, and even going to therapy and being willing to confront things you know were painful Would you say that has been part of the process, sort of having to move through what’s uncomfortable?

“Totally. I lost out on a lot of opportunities in college because of my anxiety. I’ve always been a theater kid, I’ve always loved theater. I’ve always loved music, I just love everything about it, but I didn’t allow myself to do it in college. That is one thing I wish I did, because it’s an amazing outlet for me. And ever since I graduated I really wanted to push myself to put myself out there more, to go to more clubs and dance and not care if people see you. Or go out to join this volleyball league and make friends. So it’s putting myself in those positions that make me uncomfortable and make me like me feel vulnerable, as scary as they are, that has really led me to more happiness. I went to Bloke a couple of days before I joined volleyball and I went, you know, I didn’t ‘pregame’ before, you know, I didn’t have my liquid courage before I went to Bloke. I went in totally sober and I immediately thought, ‘It’s bad.’ I went up to the bar, grabbed a drink, and went out to the porch. I had to do deep breathing because it was so scary for me to be there. And thankfully one of my volleyball friends was there, and he walked right up to me and said, ‘Are you okay?’ I said, ‘I just need to calm down. This is huge for me to be going here.’ But I met a couple of guys I eventually saw at volleyball, so it was nice having other people I knew briefly. That’s a perfect example for me. I wouldn’t have met those other guys before I went to volleyball, and I wouldn’t have been able to notice that I can put myself out there and can make more friends, and some guys might be attracted to me. There are some guys talking to me that night, and it felt nice to be noticed. So really just putting myself in those situations. It took a couple of weeks into volleyball, but eventually I was walking up to guys I didn’t know and introducing myself, ‘Hey, I’m Cale. I’m on your team today. How are you?’ Just like knowing now that sometimes you have to make yourself feel vulnerable, as scary as it is. It will lead to better things.”

Vulnerability is huge. It’s something we are often very afraid of because we think being vulnerable means you’re going to be hurt, you’re going to be susceptible to people taking advantage of you, or it somehow means you are weak; but I think being vulnerable gives other people the opportunity to also be vulnerable, and then go to those parties and be open and willing to receive beautiful things.

“I realized that I thought, when I was younger, that being vulnerable meant you are weak, when being vulnerable means you are strong, because you are putting yourself out there. And you’re putting yourself out there to what may come your way. You might get hurt along the way. You might end up finding better things. It’s just scary because it’s the unknown. When you put yourself out there, you don’t know what’s going to happen. And thankfully I would say for the most part, I had a lot of great experiences these past couple of months and this past year by putting myself out there more. In my senior year of college, my group of about ten friends knew how much I loved to dance, and they went to my audition to join, it was a club on my college campus called Dance Company, and you had to perform on a stage. I hadn’t performed on a stage in almost four years, because I was too afraid to. So like all the other people that auditioned for the club, everyone would be accepted, so you just had to go to the audition. And no one else had this big group of people cheering them on. I was approached right after the audition by two girls who said, ‘We want you in our piece.’ And it was ballet and I’d never done ballet and I was super nervous because that’s like the most intense form of dancing. How am I going to do that? And I ended up doing it. It was terrifying, and I almost cried before going on stage because one of my close friends, Michaela, who was in Dance Company with me, was in one of my dances; and just being able to share that with her and her encouraging me the entire time, saying, ‘Don’t give up, don’t give up. You got this.’ I’d never thought I’d ever be on a stage again. And it felt really good. The same group of people who supported me at the audition was there in the crowd too. It led to great things. I’m still nervous on stage, but I’m less nervous now. And I think also with my job that I just ended with the CH New Hampshire Continuum, I had to speak openly in large meetings, and I had to interact with all different kinds of youth and families. Just being able to believe in your abilities to help these kids taught me confidence. And me being more assertive and not being a doormat. I was a doormat growing up. It was being able to realize your worth. I think that’s been huge.”

Would you say that your past has inspired your future? You mention that your social worker was that. Did that inspire you?

“Definitely. I was a sociology major in college and I signed up for a random social work class because I had to fill credits. Within the first day, I realized this is what I need to do. Because I was able to look at myself and see that I was the scapegoat in my family. I was able to really look at my past and put some pieces together. I was finishing the puzzle. And it definitely led me to my current career. After my freshman year, my mom and my middle sister picked me up from school, and they told me that one of my family members attempted suicide. Thankfully, she was found. So she was still alive. I think that was another big wake-up call for me, knowing that I wanted to help people, because it was someone in my own family. I was about eighteen at that point, and I never would’ve thought she was incredibly depressed and feeling alone. So it was just by knowing that, and then by doing my own classes in social work, that I was able to realize that this is what I should be doing.”

Has there been piece of advice or quote or a song lyric that resonated with you that you would like to share?

Beside the ‘it’s just a bad day not a bad life,’ there are so many quotes I love. But that was one that has really resonated with me, because I felt like that’s what I focused on a lot growing up. Just trying to explain to yourself, it’s just a bad day, you’ll have a fresh start tomorrow. That was a big thing for me. There are a couple of artists out there that like Sia, Demi Lovato, who speak very openly about mental health. I think that because I’m so in tuned with music, when those artists make songs that clearly come from personal places for them, you can listen to the music and it could be your own little story too. You could take it into your own. So I don’t have specific lyrics off the top of my head right now, but I know a lot of the music from those artists has really helped me.”

What inspired you to connect with me to do this interview today?

“We have a mutual friend, and he told me about your project. I looked into your project on Facebook, and I really enjoyed the work you did. I reached out to my friend and was like, ‘Is it okay if I reach out to him?’ It’s nice to know, by reading through all your stories and reading through all the work you do, that someone understands, like your story, or could understand your story. You didn’t know my story at that time, but knowing there is someone out there doing good work and bringing more awareness to a population that needs so much more resources. I feel like, with mental health and mental illness, there are so many people out there that are so lost. They need a lot more resources. I really enjoyed the work you did, and my friend spoke great about you, so I think that led me to be less nervous to message and be like, ‘You don’t know me, but can we meet up sometime and share our stories?’ Having someone you can talk to that can understand your story was the biggest selling point for me. It just felt less random than messaging you, even like knowing a mutual friend.”

Sounds like you sensed a capacity for empathy. You feel comfortable?

“Yeah, because when you meet someone for the first time, telling your story is vulnerable. You don’t know how the person is going to react, but the fact that you work in the field made me think there’s a pretty good chance he’s not going to be a judge-y person. I would hope if you’re in the mental health field you’re not judge-y. So just knowing you’re in the same field was a big point, it was more of a secure place.”

And how has it felt to share these thoughts, feelings, and experiences?

“I’m so much more open about it now. So it’s just part of my story. It’s part of my past, and I’ve accepted it. This wasn’t scary at all. It felt personal, and I like that personal connection. And I mean, I’ve shared my story with all my kids, with my friends, and with my therapist, so I think it’s lost a good deal of vulnerability, and in a good way. It’s just me talking about my life, instead of before—when I would first tell my story to people I would shake. I would shake and I’d be so nervous, my heart would be racing. But it’s been a good experience.”

Do you think it’s possible that sharing your story might potentially inspire or bring hope to someone else out there who can relate?

“I would hope so. I think with social media platform that there is today, there are good benefits, but also, as I mentioned earlier, it could lead to you know people getting bullied. I think it’s therapeutic for me to put it out there. But I would hope that if someone were to read it, maybe they would feel more of a desire to put their story out there. It just helps to know you’re not alone. I know that my sharing some of my story with my clients has really helped them develop a trust with me. A lot of my kids have reactive attachment disorder, and a lot them have their own trauma, so opening themselves up to trust a total stranger (which is what I was when I first joined their case) is hard at first; but by using my peer mentor role and my outreach worker role and developing the healthy sense of boundaries, I was able to share parts of my story with them, so they were able to realize that may not be my provider but he’s been through similar things that I’ve been through. We all have our own stories, and that’s how I would always phrase it to them: I have my story and you have your story, I could never take your story away from you. But I can relate to certain aspects of it. I had a couple of kids with PTSD and told them I have PTSD too. And just encouraging them and motivating them to be like, don’t let your diagnosis define your whole existence. I’m not just Cale with PTSD, I have so much more about me. And you know, I went to college, I graduated with honors, I have my degree, I have my job, I’m getting my first apartment; so it’s being able to tell them there is so much more to life than your diagnosis. It doesn’t define you. It doesn’t mean you’re disabled. Sometimes, when they hear ‘disability,’ they think you’re handicapped, so I say, ‘No, you’re not.’ So I hope that I am able to reach out to kids, and that this is a different platform, so I think I would have the same outcome.”

[heartsofstrangers]

What has been one of the most challenging things you have experienced or are currently experiencing?

“Currently experience? That I have experienced? Or currently experienced? Honestly, it is probably just now trying to—I feel like I am really successful in a lot of certain things in my life. It’s now focusing in on those couple of areas of feeling successful, job, and actually love. Because I am trying to figure that out right now too. Pretty much it is really just focusing on trying to be happy in what I am doing and not having to really worry about money. Other than that, that has really been my biggest struggle, so. I can say.”

Is this a recent struggle, or this is something you have been sort of battling with for years?

“Battling since probably right out of college. I graduated in May 2003, and ever since then I knew going into a field I had wanted was not what I really wanted to do. I didn’t feel as passionate about it, so it has always been in the back of my mind; so I should really try to figure out what it is I am passionate about and just go for it. Hence, the struggle. It’s been 13 years maybe. I have been off and on trying to forget about it and trying to distract myself with things. But it always comes down to wanting to feel like I have achieved something. Because friends, family I see are getting married, they have kids, have a house, they have their own businesses, and I feel like I am still that kid in his original life. Even though I am 37, I feel like I am a teenager living in his parents’ house, still trying to figure out what I am going to be when I grow up. So I am still just trying to figure that out.”

What has that journey been like for you since college? Do you want to describe a little bit of that?

“I have always have been around good groups of people. I have a ton of friends. Tons of friends, family just all amazing; they have been very supportive. No matter what I do, everybody has been really good about that. So, I really feel like I am my own worst enemy, when it comes to that. There will be times where I just sit back and I think, ‘Well really, let me look at what is positive in my life. Okay! There is a lot of very positive in it.’ But you know when there is something negative, you tend to focus on that more, while you tend to easily forget all the positives. So, umm, I am sorry; I lost track. What was that original question?”

The journey, like getting out of college to where you are now. What were some of the stops along the way for you?

“When I got my first—scared as hell. Once I got out of school, I got really nervous getting my first job. Luckily, I was fortunate to be somebody who got a job right out of school. Even before I graduated, I got a job secured for me. Because one, it was an internship, but it was a paid internship and that ended up turning into a job but I was just like let me do it. A lot of people that are leaving school right now don’t even get jobs. They just go back to doing either retail or waiting, things like that. I told myself, ‘Let’s just do it. It’s a lot more money than I ever had in my life before. Let’s just do it, continue it.’

“The first day I puked, as soon before I got in the car to drive. My mom was right there. She was looked at me like, what the hell is wrong with you? I literally just puked right outside. It was like, I had this knot in my stomach. This is not what I want to do, but I have to do it because I was trying to do it for my parents, because they helped support me through college. I mean, obviously, I am paying my student loan, but they are doing the parent loan, so I have to at least try. Especially for them, since what was the point of going to school for? If I don’t at least try what I went to school for.

“So I did that. Got there, I was nervous, but then I started fitting right in. I got to see the whole corporate world. Like what people do outside of college. And I realized they are basically just college students—just they have more money. So, going on trips and seeing what they do, I’m like okay, this is not bad. This is pretty awesome! But then after about like two or three years—I noticed this with jobs. I get to that point where what am I doing? Do I continue to advance in this place, or do I just go somewhere else? But then I don’t do anything about it, and then I struggle, and I stay there, and then I get more bitter about it. Which I did. I started hating the job. I started getting into more arguments with people there. Hated commuting back and forth. At the time I didn’t have any bills, so I would try to make myself feel better by spending money. I went to New York a couple times, to buy clothes or eat. Just shut myself away, play video games. At the time I didn’t work out, so I was just doing it with hardly any sleep. Traveling back and forth, hating what I am doing. Trying to distract myself with things. Then I actually ended up putting myself in the hospital one night. It was either out of just being tired or just—I don’t know what it was. I just remember being at the hospital, lying there that night. I was like, what the hell. How did I put myself in the hospital? I think it was fatigue, but something just wasn’t right. Stayed in the hospital overnight. They gave me some meds, this and that. I was like, this is it, I got to be healthier. I got to be. I just have to get my ass to the gym.

“I always thought about doing the gym. Started doing that, I used that as my distraction. So, it’s not so bad. I got a job, like a lot of people are losing their jobs. This is awesome. Okay, but now I am also working out, so I put all my energy into that. And then, after things started going good—it always happens, when I start feeling good, and everything seeming to be falling in place, bam, I got laid off. I started feeling horrible about myself again. What the hell is wrong with me? Using things to distract myself, and shut myself away for a year practically. Not doing anything, not really talking to anybody. Even my mom was worried for me for a while. I went to talk to somebody—which I never was against but I was always afraid—Well, I had a bad experience the first time. I wanted to talk to a therapist. I always think it’s good to go talk to them, but they put me right away on. Something like Paxil, like DRUGS! It wasn’t even a therapist. I guess a psychologist. I said, ‘Can’t we just talk first?’ So they instantly put me on that, and I tried that for two or three months, but I felt even more depressed. It was horrible. I couldn’t even get an erection. It was horrible. I went cold turkey on it. I thought, ‘That’s it, I am done seeing people. I’m done seeing and talking to people. I am just going to figure this out myself.’ And then I got another job and got laid off. Then I got another job after that, and now I am in the same job. Same thing: it wasn’t as bad as first year or two, but now after the second or third year I got into the same pattern of, what am I doing? I should be doing something I like. I should just get out of here, just continue going, and I haven’t. And seven years later I am still in it, and I’m still fighting back and forth, distracting myself with things. So, that’s just my never-ending battle with feeling success. While I look at and see all the friends, family all moving up going their separate ways, getting really successful, getting kinds and having houses, I still feel like I am back to square one again. Just leaving college.”

Is that stuff that your friends are achieving stuff that you want?

“I look at it more like they have achieved stuff and they are successful with it. Not necessarily like I don’t want to, I wonder if they are spending money on their cars, things like that. It’s like materialistic stuff now I look at it like what they have achieved in being successful. I want that feeling of, okay, looking back and feeling like I have done something I can be happy about. You know? Then again, I look at—there is a lot of stuff I have done; I’ve been really focused with obviously fitness and being a good person. I can say that I’m like a really good person. That’s it.”

Is it possible that the people you are comparing yourself to may be in the same rut that you are? Like traveling down that rabbit hole of doing what pays the bills, you know, looks like success on the outside; but maybe they are afraid they are not fulfilling their passions as well.

“Definitely! Definitely! I have a couple friends who have the house, family, kids, and some of them even said, ‘I kind of wish I was in your position,’ because it allows—and their idea is they could still go do things like travel if they want to. They have no tie-me-downs, you know, you can just leave and I know that, I just—I’m just trying to figure out what it is. That is probably a big thing preventing me from actually getting involved with anybody, any sort of relationship. It’s because I don’t want to—it’s not considered a tie-me-down, but I think it is a tie-me-down. Because then it will have me start thinking, ‘Now I can’t really go.’ What if I want to leave tomorrow and move to a different side of the country? I don’t want to have to drag somebody down with me because of that. So I just never got involved with that, or even thought about that. It’s all been, I guess, pretty selfish. Thinking just about myself.”

Or not. You are thinking about the strain it would put on the other person if you were to pick up and leave on a whim.

“I mean—I just—I don’t know. Yeah!”

So what do you think keeps you sort of stuck in this purgatory, if you will?

“Me! I’m my own worst enemy; not taking risks. I should just go and take risks. I am confident on certain things, but a lot of times I am not confident on certain things. Like right now, like me just even applying to another job; I’m not as confident with a job interview. I’m like, ‘Okay, what do I say? I just need a job?’ That’s really it. How do you say like—I know some of them are going to ask you, ‘Well, what brings you to this company?’ This is it. I am pretty real; I’m not going to throw some bullshit at somebody. I’m just going to be like, ‘I need a job. I like food. I like a roof over my head. I like my car. I have to make payments.’ So a lot of the times it has been the interview process that has been making me nervous, but part of it too is why am I going to go into something I just know I am going to hate anyway? It’s just going to be rinse, repeat, rinse repeat. Then I’m going to be at the point where I am 50 or 60 and like ‘oh, what the fuck! What did I do with myself?’ You know? Now I am alone. I still hate my job like it’s just—I don’t know.”

What do you want to do? What is your passion?

“That is what I am still trying to figure out, to be honest. The main hobbies I always do is like I love fitness, I love video games. I love TV, I love film. I would love to be, I love fantasy and stuff like that. Even when I was a kid, I used to pretend like any kid. When you are a kid you watch your cartoons and pretend you are there. Like, ‘what if I was in this situation?’ Watching the Goonies, I’m like, that is what made me think lie I love acting. I would love to try it out, to be on set pretending, because you can always be something different. So I could at least live out my fantasies that way, by pretending, but at least I am getting paid for it. When I was a kid I had very low self-esteem, super-low self-esteem, actually, so I had to always look into like when you see TV, you see magazines, you see people who are—obviously everyone is photoshopped. Everyone looks perfect, so I thought in order for me to be successful or to be happy about myself, that is how I have to be, have to look.

“So then I got obsessed with looking at models and everything. I figured maybe I could try modeling, but never thought I was good enough. No matter what I did I never thought I was good enough. And then it got to the point where maybe if I was good enough, now I am not young enough. I always kept somehow just bringing myself not to, not to just do it. I made an excuse. And I am still making excuses for it instead of just—I guess it’s like confidence. I just need to build up and just do it and not—I’ve worked really hard in not trying to worry about what other people say about me, but a big part of it has been worrying about what people think and say about me. I know I shouldn’t care, but I always cared. I don’t know why. That was just a big thing for me growing up. As I said, I had great friends. I had great family around me. I wasn’t this secluded child, you know, but I’m still trying to figure myself out really.”

Were you picked on in school?

“Oh, yeah. Big time! I mean not so much in grade school. I was the nerd; I had the same glasses from kindergarten all the way up to 8th grade. I remember leaving 8th grade, I told my mom, “I need contacts. Kids are going to beat me up. I really need to change the style of glasses.’ They were like the big wooden frames. I’m the typical dork. So grade school wasn’t so bad, I was just considered the nerd kid; but when I got to high school—I hated high school for the first two years, because I didn’t click really that well with anybody except for a few people. I was hanging out with like mainly the girls. The girls were all my friends. I became friends, I had so many friends who were girls, which was awesome, but it was I tried to connect with guys at the time but nobody. You have your cliques. You have the metal kids, you have the grungy kids, you have athletes, and I never really cliqued really with any of them. But I cliqued with the girls who were in my classes. I don’t know if they liked me or what, but it was just cool. I was just friends with them. I became close to one of my friends, who is still close to me to this day. She is amazing, and she became my first true friend there. But other people I couldn’t like clique with, I couldn’t—especially like the guys. I would get picked on because a lot of them would see me hanging with the girls. A lot of people obviously called me queer, fag, or things like that. And then you have your other like people that just—I don’t know, I didn’t clique really with anybody. Even though how nice I would try to be.

“Because I had a deep voice, a lot of people started calling me ‘slow.’ When a teacher would ask me what my name was, I’d say, ‘L J.’ And they would say, ‘What?’ And I would repeat, ‘L J,’ as if I were spelling it out. And so, for about two years, freshman year and sophomore year, people would call me ‘L J’ (said very slowly in a mocking way). Walking by me doing stuff like that, and it bothered me. I wondered, ‘Are they saying I’m slow or special needs or something?’ That made me feel bad. There is nothing wrong with that—for someone to be that way—but still I thought, ‘What the fuck is wrong with me? I have been nice to people. I don’t know what is going on.’ But after that something changed, I don’t know what, maybe everyone just matured up. In junior/senior year, I became friends with people. I actually started to become friends with more guys. Everybody wanted to be my friend at that point, from junior and senior year. I don’t know what it was. So that got better, but it was a pretty dark place, freshman and sophomore year. I remember crying in my room. I wore black, talking about death a lot. I did the typical like Goth emo kid. Even though I never—well, everyone thinks about suicide—but I knew I would never do something like that. It was very depressing at the time. I knew my way of thinking—that is where I was—why I was thinking that was because I was depressed, but it was nothing I would ever do. But still, the first two years there depressed me, and then I started having more and more friends.

“And then college was just amazing; everybody just cliqued in college. College was the greatest thing. I was so depressed leaving college, because you meet so many people, so many people from different backgrounds. I guess I always cliqued better with people who are considered underdogs. Which I didn’t think we were, I was just like I don’t know. I befriended everyone, no matter what, even the weird creepy people, the super creep kids. I was nice, we were cool. I don’t know, they were my friends. I never really, what’s the word, discriminated against anyone. Really, like just to be friends with. I don’t care if they are considered the creep of the dorm. I became everybody’s friend. Even to this day, and I’m 37, I still have tons of friends. Everyone is amazing. But then you get those people who hate other friends, and those people hate those friends, so you are at the point where, ‘Who do I have to invite?’ because these people don’t get along. So I struggle with trying to fit in at that point. It’s cool but now it’s like, I don’t want to say I am the popular kid or anything, but now I have great people around me. When I get down and think about it, all the different groups of friends I have, it is awesome. It’s like, ‘Well, why ain’t I happy?’

“Then I have great parents; my parents are awesome. They never wanted to kick me out of the house or anything like that. They were always very supportive of me. I mean, it’s really me who is my own enemy. It really is and I know that, and I get. I know that, so probably I should now start talking to someone about it. Maybe having an outside person who doesn’t actually know me. Maybe giving me just, I don’t know, make me think differently. Give me enough—I don’t know what it is that I am looking for. Just an outlet, so, that is really it.”

What makes you feel good? When do you feel like you are most “yourself”?

“What makes me feel good, um, like in what? Just anything?”

Uh huh.

“Makes me feel like myself? I know I did—like when I go to those conventions, even at the time when I would dress up for them. I just felt awesome. Dressing in character, just walking around having a good time. Just being a fucking nerd, it was awesome. I love doing that. When I went to—this past summer, me and a couple of my friends decided to go to this place we always used to go down in Baltimore. There was a Japanese anime convention in Baltimore before it moved to DC. For old times’ sake, I was like, ‘We got to go!’ So we went down there. Even though we hardly stayed and I didn’t dress up this year, it was still fun. I guess just being with a group of your friends and just having a good time. That is when I have the most fun. I don’t know if it makes me feel the best about myself, but it is where I would say I am having the most fun. Normally, I feel good when I am confident about how I look, how in general I feel really. I don’t know, I really don’t know to be honest what it is that makes me 100% feel good. Maybe when I know I am achieving something?

“I know when I do design for somebody and I am feeling, really feeling it. I’m like, ‘This looks awesome.’ I want them to see it and actually like it. I’m like, ‘Yes!’ That makes me feel good. And I am like ‘Okay, maybe I do have some talent.’ I guess that makes me really feel good. Then obviously, there is the downside of it. Like when someone asks me to do something, I sometimes say, ‘I don’t know if I can do that. I don’t know if I could produce that.’ Then when I do something I am not happy about, what are they going to think about it? How do I tell them? Hence, the struggle I have with design is like how do I tell somebody I spent five hours just playing around with colors? How do I bill somebody for that? Things like that, I overthink things. I feel like I am just blurting random things, out so hopefully this will be easy to dissect when you go back and listen to this.

“I am feeling good about myself. Maybe people accepting me for things? Who doesn’t feel good when you post something on Instagram or you post something online? A lot of people either like it or just give feedback. I want to say it is like getting a pat on the back or like maybe acknowledgment. That makes me feel good. It’s not conceit or anything, but maybe knowing that somebody—If I did something knowing somebody looked it at because it is—like I know some people are saying, ‘You are an inspiration for fitness.’ Because some people who knew me before and see me now say, ‘I definitely want to get there,’ and motivating. And that makes me feel good. Just knowing that maybe something I am doing is an inspiration to somebody. So that is pretty much—that obviously . . . Who wouldn’t feel good if somebody actually looked up to you on something. How seeing my little niece telling me, ‘You are the greatest uncle ever!’ Even though I think I am her only uncle—no, she has another uncle—but hearing her even say ‘You are the greatest uncle!’ and her being so excited to come and see me. That makes me feel happy. I’m like, ‘Well, good. I am impacting somebody in their life.’

“That’s why another thing, I looked into doing film and TV. If I can go on air and be an actor people will look at that—a lot of people look at things like that. I always wanted to be in an X-Men movie or something. Everyone likes superheroes, that’s why I like doing the actual cosplay, going there. You have these kids look up to you and thinking you are that character, which is awesome. That made me feel good. At that point I feel like I am my most confident and happy because . . . I don’t know, it feels like I am doing something good. If other people are appreciating it like that, I know doing things. I know it sounds corny but like maybe in 2000, I went to that anime convention and I actually created a music video for it. There is a contest to do a music video. I created it, I shut myself in my room and it took me like a month or two to do it. I actually wanted to refine it so I re-did it and shut myself in my room for a week and did it. I was very happy about it; proud of it. Sent it out and got into the contest. To me, that was the greatest thing, because I got there and about 10,000 people all weekend saw something all weekend I did on the screen. And they were so fucking excited—I would hear someone in front of me say that was awesome, this and that. I would get so excited. Never once did that again, because I didn’t think I could do it again.

“But something like that, having all those people see something that I did. That was a high for me. I’m like, that is why I’m into graphic design. I did a few billboards. Actually driving by and seeing them was cool, but it didn’t have the excitement I had when I was there, and I want to go get back to that type of excitement. So I think if I did see myself on a commercial or something I would feel like, shit! I did it. Feel like I did something, you know. That is where I am at, too. I guess that is where my happy is.”

Are you doing things in your present life to align yourself with those things that? To give you those feelings?

“Recently? No.”

Why?

“Just because I have been focusing on—money has been depressing me a lot. This is the lowest I have ever been with money. I know you can’t equate money with success and happiness. Everyone says, ‘Money doesn’t buy happiness.’ Right now, it has been depressing me because I’ve never been this low and I live at home. I feel like because I am 37 and I live at home—I don’t have kids . . . If I went out on a date, I feel like I don’t have anything of my own that I can be proud of, living at home. That’s something I’ve been struggling with, just like the bills—I am trying to get rid of those. That’s all I have been focusing on, so it’s been a lot of negative. The positive has been I’ve been in the best shape I’ve ever been. I feel like there are ups and downs. I’ll go like, yeah awesome, but then I’m like well . . . I think purposely I feel like well because I am feeling this good, what can I do to bring myself down? I don’t know why.

“Maybe it is just not being confident. I know a lot of it comes from getting picked on, not having the confidence when I was younger. I know where everything originates, like when I was younger and my parents were overprotective of me.  When I was a kid, I looked at it like I want to go and do gymnastics. Because I see that and I want to be a freakin’ ninja. They were like, no, you will break your neck. It was things like that that I made me think I was too sheltered. I didn’t get enough push—which I know right now. I can’t dwell on that, but it is just like—I feel like a lot of things I do still stem from when I was a kid, either getting picked on or being too sheltered and not being told, go take a risk, go do it. Getting pushed to fucking make yourself happy. You know?

“Nowadays, it’s like that when I talk with my mom and dad. She is just like, ‘I just want you to be happy.’ Something, just do it. She is at the point right now like ‘just be happy and do whatever you want!’ Which is cool, but I am trying to figure out what it is I want to do. Do I pursue acting? I tried it at that place that I went to—got too much drama and that put a bad taste in my mouth for it. I know you are going to get that everywhere. I tried doing the modeling, which so far is okay, but with anything in modeling you’ll get your good and bad people. I’ve met some bad people already with it. And you meet really good people with it. So I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

Sounds like what you experienced as a child, you are still doing to yourself. You are sort of protecting yourself from taking risks because of fear of some sort. I don’t know if it is fear of something unfamiliar or something new or fear of success or fear of rejection or failing—which are all real—but it sounds like you are sort of stuck, like you are idling right now.

“I keep telling everybody that I just feel like I am in limbo right now. I felt this way since getting out of college. I mean, come on, it’s 13 years now. Let’s go, let’s do something else like—that’s why, I don’t know. I feel like I started doing more drastic things, like cutting the hair. I felt that was good. It was a good, different. And focusing on a gym, that is good. Picking a show and not actually doing it, just forcing myself to do. Just do it, just do it. So I have been doing that. Now it is just a matter of doing the whole job thing. I have just been struggling with that, because I keep getting to the point where I feel like a loser. I don’t want to feel like a loser. Even though I know I am not, I just feel just like a loser right now. I am almost 40 and I feel like time is ticking. I don’t know why. Time is running out, do something!”

Is there any way you can change that inner dialogue to something more productive? Have you ever tried thinking about the things you have attempted and the things that you have accomplished? And maybe start building yourself up instead of beating yourself up?

“Not recently, to be honest. I feel like it is all just beating myself up. And then I get to the point where, oh God, stop being so fucking pitiful. Just stop! And then I’ll just forget about it. Everything is great for a month or two, but then it goes right back to feeling the same.”

What are you afraid of?

“Being alone and failing are two major things. I normally don’t think I am really scared of anything, but I am definitely scared of being a failure. And ending up eventually at the end, with no friends, no family, no one. Even though, a lot of times, I’m like yeah; I feel very independent. I can handle myself alone in situations, but it is just like not that I have to depend but I just don’t want to be alone. That is my biggest thing. I don’t want to be alone and I just want to feel not like a loser. Like I said, just not like a failure—at anything, you know? Granted I mean, I know you are going to fail at things, but you just pick yourself back up and continue going. I just don’t want to feel like a failure. I don’t have to be first, I just don’t want to feel like a failure. That is where I have been struggling right now, which has discouraged me from doing anything else. I don’t want to focus on anything else.”

What do you think would help you?

“Just taking risks, regardless of what the outcome would be. You never know unless you try. I keep telling myself that; it is just a matter of me doing it. Granted there are things I have done. That’s the thing: I’m just always up and down. There are days where I am super confident; I have no problem acting and getting out on things in front of a stage or trying singing in front of people, which I know would terrify some people. But then it’s now, I have no fear of stage or anything like that, but why am I not focusing on this fitness? Picking a day and going; I think it is the whole feeling like a failure. If I don’t either place or get a win—even though I said it doesn’t really matter if feeling like you are first, but I just feel like I could always be better. What did I do that was wrong? And I would beat myself up. Then I make excuses not to do things. Which I shouldn’t, you know.”

These are all very human characteristics. I think a lot of us struggle with just sort of being willing to surrender to things we can’t control and having the courage to put ourselves in new situations, to take risks and hopefully not to attach the winner/loser labels to them. There is something to gain from every experience, whether it is what you anticipated or not. I mean you still grow and you still learn something from it. I think, in the position that you are describing that you are in now, if you really—the two things you are most afraid of are being alone and not being successful, right? You are sort of creating that reality for yourself now, it seems, by holding onto your fears—which is self-sabotage.

“It so is, and everyone has said that too. My mom and everyone is just like ‘you are your own worst enemy.’ I know this. I know I am my own worst enemy. There is nothing—it’s like that inner monologue; I just want to shut it up so I use whiskey, not all the time, but I just kill it. You know, just stop over-analyzing things and telling myself I am not going to be able to do it. I need to with everything, not just some things. I’m trying to get there right now.”

What has helped you during some of those points where you were sort of climbing the mountain, where you were doing new things and you were having productive self-doubt?

“I just did it. Without even thinking, I just did it. Not even put too much thought into it; I put too much thought into things. Or I try to jump ahead and be like, ‘well, if this doesn’t work out then this will happen.’ You don’t know. No one knows what the future will be, but if I didn’t do it and then I look back and realize what the outcome would have been, then I am shooting myself in the foot. I’m like, fuck, I could have been much more—things could have changed. Because I look back on certain things like that and I . . . Even though I was younger, I was like—you know—I should have—even as stupid as going into grade school where we did the Wizard of Oz play. The director wanted me to try out and sing, but I was so terrified of speaking and singing in front of people that I was like, ‘No, I’ll do stage, I’ll just do stagecraft.” I’ll just build the sets in the back and let the people do the thing. Now, I am looking back—I should have just fucking done it, because that would have probably been—then I would have gone to school for drama. Who knows where I would be now? I know I can’t think like that because everyone wishes they could go back in time and change things. So, is that a music place over there?”

Yeah, it’s the School of Music.

“That’s awesome.”

What have you learned over these years, since coming out of school and pursuing a career that you didn’t want to really be a part of, and feeling like you are still not doing what you would love to do?

“I don’t know if I’ve learned but I’ve always known—I’ve always appreciated youth, my youth. I knew when I was a teenager that it wasn’t going to get better than this. Granted now, you are basically as old as you feel. I still feel young. Like no mater, I could be 30 or in my 40s but I’ll still feel like I am a teenager. Which is awesome, I think. I think everyone should . . . I don’t think it is the end of the world when you have to start paying your own bills and things like that. That is what I learned: life goes on no matter what shit that has happened or however you feel. There is always tomorrow. The sun is going to rise the next day. I mean, things can’t get any—I can’t say that. What I have learned from everything is to keep good people around you. Really positive, because there was a time where I had negative people around me and I tried to get rid of them. Even negative things that have been happening in the last week with Facebook. I’m just like, you know what? I’ll just unfollow people. Your views are your views, cool; but I am just going to see things that I want to see right now. Funny things, all the things that come up are funny things, like memes. It’s good to keep positive, because when you have positive energy around you, good things will happen. If you are too negative about things—I have been a lot better because I haven’t . . . At one point, I was that negative friend. I purposely didn’t want to hang out with people, because I didn’t want to be that negative presence in the room. But now, I have been much better with it. More open to things than I used to be. Just like keep positive people around, family and positive people. I mean, you can’t obviously depend on people, but it is good to have good people around you. Really, that is the main thing. The more I talk about it, the more I realize I should just do risks. Do more risks. It’s really what I have learned.”

Would you talk to your friends the way you talk to yourself internally?

“Yeah, I am very open with my friends.”

No. I mean like when you are beating yourself up, calling yourself a loser kind of self-talk. Would you ever imagine talking to any of your friends like that?

“Oh, like telling them they are? No, I wouldn’t say that ever to them. No way.”

So why then would you say it to yourself?

“I don’t know. I get that question asked by my mom a lot too. I am really close with my mom and she asks me, ‘Do you even like yourself?’ I do like myself. So why do I beat myself up so much? I don’t know. That makes so much sense; I shouldn’t.”

You do like yourself; do you love yourself?

“Yeah, I mean to an extent, yeah. Yes! That I do, but I’m always—you can always do this better or you can always be better at this.”

Can you love yourself as you are in the present moment unconditionally?

“How I am as a person?”

Yes.

“Yes. One hundred percent. Whatever is going or whether I feel successful in things like a job but yes, who I am as a person? One hundred percent. Some people used to think I was very judgmental but I don’t want to come across as that. Even in school, I was always friending people that I guess would be considered—I don’t even want to say that because it sounds like ignorant of me saying like ‘oh, the outcast type people.’ No, I feel I don’t really discriminate when it comes to shit like that. I’ve been learning there are certain things with friends, when I get too close I would be a little too critical of, and I tried to back off on it, because it that person’s life. Everyone is their own person. They may have reasons for doing things like that, so I tried to back off on that. But in general, I am proud of where I am at now. I’m not burning my parents’ house down, I’m not causing their life to be miserable. I have great friends. I love my family. I am an awesome uncle. I just get that about me; that is what I do like about me. And then recently I have been not caring as much what people think of me. About anything in my life, why am I going to hide anything? I have been pretty much an open book, a lot. That is one thing I like about me; maybe I am too open on things, but it is like I have nothing to hide. I really don’t. Why would I hide anything? I don’t. So that is another thing I like about myself.”

You mention love being a challenge for you. Why? Why is that a challenge for you?

“You remember when you were younger and growing up in school, there were those kids who ‘like each other.’ They date; the popular kids dated those girls. I always thought I was the geeky guy and I wouldn’t get anybody. So I was in my own little world, with Hemans and Thunder Cats. Video games were my biggest ally. I think maybe I have been just too distracted all my life with video games, because that was just my like—I don’t know. I was more entertained by that. I think commitment is a big issue for me. I guess it was one of the biggest things that always stop me from trying to find anybody, because is the commitment. I feel like if I am not one hundred percent into it, I don’t want to pull someone who would be one hundred percent into it. So I just avoid it all together. I have tried things here and there just to see, and I still go back to that feeling of, I don’t want to say empty about it, but I don’t know. I know I am a very passionate person; I have been told that. I think a lot of other stuff is crowding my head. Like success; I want to feel that first, I want to be happy about that before committing. I don’t want to bring somebody else down with me with that. If I can’t get past that first. You know? I mean, I never dated, really ever. I only had maybe really one date, maybe for a week. And then we mutually realized we were better as friends. And that was it. I never actually dated. I never really went on a date; just hanging out. You know, things like that. Messing around, making out here and there, but nothing fully. I’ve never really fully fledged had sex with anyone, still to this day. It’s not like I can’t, it’s just . . . I don’t know. I just don’t. A lot of it when I was younger, I grew up first originally with the whole religion thing because my parents were super Catholic, super Catholic. And getting told ‘no sex before marriage.’ The priest coming in and saying you will burn in hell if you masturbate and things like that. I just avoided that whole contact with other people, because when you are young and you are hearing that shit it’s like—what do you do? But obviously when you get older you . . . but still, all through high school I considered myself dorky, not good-looking enough for someone else, so why bother? They are not going to like me. Even though I knew there were girls who liked me and I just didn’t do anything. I just shied away from it. I would put up a wall. I still do that to this day. I’ve been a little more lenient trying things out; hanging out here and there. I’ve tried some dating sites, this and that, I’ll go a day or maybe a week with it and then I don’t put the effort in. That is a thing for me; I feel terrible about it, because I don’t want to lead somebody on about that, so I just don’t want to . . . It’s not like I am this Adonis or anything, but I just don’t want to get somebody’s hopes up of maybe something. I don’t know if they may like me or something like that; I just avoid it altogether. It is too much for me. But then again, I get depressed and think maybe I should find somebody, because it would be nice to have somebody; a shoulder to lean on, who’s not a friend or family member. Then that’s where I know I am really passionate. I could just stare at somebody all day. Not in a creepy way, but like if I really care about somebody, I could definitely see myself just all day being with that person. It depends on if I click with them; I don’t know. But that was always one thing I just never thought a lot of until recently.

“The last like couple of years maybe; I went to New Orleans last year with my friend, and I did a tarot card reading with a lady—and I’m not like into whatever, I just think it is awesome—just like I love all that shit. I was just like, ‘Okay,’ and she did it. She did one thing that actually kind of made me cry where she was like, ‘Love has come and gone, and you know that’—and lie I do. I look back at missed opportunities, and I think about how they are now with their significant others and I think—I’ll see them or see their picture of them with their kids—and I’m just like ‘fuck’, if I was just like—maybe if I did do something, I could be in that position. I look back at them and all the missed opportunities, and I try to put myself into that person’s—like if their significant wasn’t there and it was me there. I think too much about it. How life could probably be differently, you know, or more opportunities. That recently has been bothering me, because I am seeing that a lot.

“I’m still struggling with that. I am pretty open, like I said; I don’t like labels on it. I’m just me! You know, whether it is a male or female or whoever, if I just click with them, good, and if I don’t, then it is obviously not meant to be. Maybe I’ll be a loner; who knows? Friends and family is good, but like I said, I don’t want to be alone. I look at people in my family who are similar—like my aunt. She is not living anywhere near us now, but I can look at her and she is kind of like a loner too. So maybe I just take after her in that way. She is not married, she doesn’t have kids, and that’s her thing. I mean probably, obviously she has had relationships. But then I look back and get all the depression thing and think, fuck, I am 37 and I’ve never been in a relationship. What do I tell someone when I do want to finally get into a relationship? Is that creepy? Are they going to think ‘what the fuck is wrong with this person?’ I don’t know. Then I look into that and I’m like uhhhhhh.”

Sounds like you have been working on a relationship with yourself for the last 37 years.

“Pretty much.”

That is something a lot of people don’t do. They rush into a relationship with someone else before they discover the importance of really cultivating a healthy relationship with themselves. Do you feel like there is still a possibility that you could have a relationship?

“Oh yeah, definitely. Like I said, if it’s just—maybe one day it is just going to fall into place. Or I’ll meet somebody and be like, okay! I think if that is all on your mind, or that person is all on your mind, when you wake up and go to bed, then maybe it is something to pursue. If you can’t stop thinking about the person. I have yet to feel that way. It has come close. A lot of it is my own shyness. I know when I was younger—younger meaning like a few years ago—having missed opportunities—part of me was still struggling with the other side of me, whether or not I am going down the road of strictly only liking women or strictly only liking guys. I’d ask myself, if I start liking this girl, I have to tell her—maybe when I get into it I say, ‘This is not what I want.’ Or the same thing with a guy, maybe if I get into it and say, ‘This is not what I want either.’ Like I said, I have dated or messed around here and there. Not ‘dated’ dated, but like hung out. I guess it is a one-night date. I guess a one-night stand. I’ve experimented, I’m still confused how like I don’t know. Maybe I am, how I am—because there is always a confusion struggling with that. But now I am even more like well, fuck, maybe I really am straight in the middle. I had doubts that maybe I am just saying this because maybe I am suppressing. But now I don’t even know.

“Then I look back and it is really just connecting with someone. You know? Once I get that connection, regardless of who the fuck they are, when I know I don’t give a shit about what anybody else thinks. I just haven’t got there yet. I don’t know if part of me is trying to allow myself to do it or not. I feel the whole love thing technically is secondary to just my patching up about how I feel about myself, successfully and financially. And then I feel like once that is set, I would be more open to the whole love aspect. Maybe it could be the opposite, maybe once I do find it then I’ll be like, yeah, I can do anything now. You know, risk it. I look at my friends and their relationships. I have friends who are in really fantastic relationships and other ones who are in horrible relationships, and so I see the ups and downs of it all. And you know, I just feel like I am the spectator. Yeah, not really trying it out for myself.”

Yeah, maybe it is possible to have those things simultaneously without waiting until you acquire a certain goal or achieve a certain goal to open yourself up for love or for connection.

“When my sisters didn’t have their kids yet and my sister was struggling to have her child, I was just like, fuck, I should really get on the ball of having kids, if they are not going to have kids. I know my parents want grandkids but I’m like—I have like no reason really not to start pursuing. But then once my sister finally, I don’t know what that procedure is, but she had something done and was able to have my beautiful niece who is amazing, I was so happy that she did. Then okay, now both my sisters have kids, so I’m told myself that now my parents have one niece and one nephew, so I’m safe. Now I don’t have to worry about it as much, you know, which is nice. But then the depression comes in when I see missed opportunities. My kids could be growing up with grandkids, with my niece and nephew now, you know. Then that makes me feel like time is ticking. When am I going to decide? I just feel like I’m in this endless loop, in limbo for 13 years. I am trying to make myself feel better, then I feel better and I go back—ups and downs. Then l was like maybe I’ll start seeing a therapist officially and make it clear that, no, I don’t want drugs. Don’t give me Paxil. I don’t need that, I don’t have social anxiety (which they thought I did). No, everyone is fucking nervous. People are nervous. Anyone is going to get nervous. Maybe in big crowds or anything and sometimes just walking into a room with groups of people. The therapist said I had social anxiety, but apparently I have no problem walking onto a stage and acting or singing in front of people. So there is no social anxiety there. Doing the fitness, just trying to get that maybe after doing the actual show that will open up my eyes to other things. I can do this, I can do that; just do it. No ‘what if.’ And I have done things where I look back like if I hadn’t done this, I wouldn’t have met this person, or I wouldn’t have done this, and that was positive. And that was a risk, like the acting. I met some really good friends from that, and if I never actually looked and google searched that one day to do that class, I would have never met these people, or these people wouldn’t be in my life. I can say that is a positive. You never know. It is always good to do things. I am trying to use my other friends and what they are doing as an example and live by that example because I see them take risks. I see them do things. So get up and move. When I see where that has led them, I tell myself I can do that. I’m just trying to use that, not like I am jealous or envious or anything, but using it like if they can do it, so can I.”

And you can always change your mind, you know, if you make a decision and you realize it is something that your heart is not in or you don’t feel good about it. You can always make a decision and do something else. Whether that is a relationship or a job or some goal, whatever it is. Not locked into anything.

“I know, I feel like I am, but I am not.”

Well, I mean sort of.

“Well, you have to pay your bills.”

Like figuratively too, you are locking yourself in sort of this hypothetical cage, but it is really not locked. The door is open and you know it doesn’t have to be there at all.

“Yeah, I know.”

What message would you as yourself today bring to your younger self before entering college?

“Don’t tell people that you can’t do it. Don’t listen to people who say you shouldn’t do that, you should do that, and just do it. Do what makes you happy. Whatever it is, don’t do it because it is financially awesome. I feel like that is what I did with graphic design. Honestly, if you like something, then just do it—obviously, without putting harm to yourself and people around you. Really, just listen to yourself. Don’t listen to other people around you.”

Trust yourself.

“Basically, I always trusted my instincts. That is one thing I can say about myself; maybe not instincts, but maybe intuition. I think I am very intuitive. I can tell how a person is by just meeting them, instantly. Sometimes you can tell if you like someone right away or you know you are not going to like that person. You can tell what kind of person they are. I feel like I am really good at that. I always trust in myself. I mean, if I am not feeling something, then I am just not feeling it. There is a reason why you are not feeling something; don’t do it. If you are not feeling it because you are just scared, I would tell myself to just be scared and do it. Yeah, that is really what I’d tell myself. Don’t fucking listen to what other people tell you. What makes you not able to do the same thing you see others doing? Because that is what I looked at when I looked at film. Even though I’m saying—Well part of me like, what the fuck? If they can do it, why can’t anybody do it? Hence the inner struggle.”

Do you have a favorite quote or a mantra, a bit of advice that somebody has given to you over the years that you would like to share?

“I am trying to remember what my grandmother said—something amazing. I don’t know exactly what the quote was, but I looked at her and told her, ‘That was just amazing, what you said.’ She said, it’s something about just being you and ignoring all the other assholes. She said something like ‘do what you want to do.’ I wrote it down somewhere; I remember it was an awesome thing, because it was from my grandmother—she is the only grandmother I have left now. And I wish I could see her more, but she—I remember her saying—she called them all assholes. Don’t listen to any of the assholes; just do what you want to do. It was something I didn’t expect that from her at all. It was out of the blue and I thought, ‘That is so true.’ I don’t know if there is a quote for it, I don’t know if it is a cliché quote for it, but ‘know yourself.’ Know who you are; nobody else is going to know. You just got to know yourself, who you are and go from there.”

I like that. Who else would know you better than you know yourself?

“You can’t lie to yourself; don’t lie to yourself. Just be yourself and don’t lie to yourself. I feel like if you lie to yourself, then you are not going to get anywhere because, why? Just be truthful with yourself.”

How has it felt to talk about these feelings and experiences with me today?

“Good. Yeah, it is definitely good to talk to somebody who actually doesn’t know anything about me. It is awesome, it is a good release, good venting. Good insight to hear other people’s opinions.”

Do you think it is possible that by sharing your experiences with me today, someone else reading this could potentially benefit?

“Yeah, definitely, at least know that they are not alone. I’d like to think that there are other people out there who feel this way, on a constant loop of self-doubt and ‘where I am going with myself, where I am going with my life?’ That they are not alone, because a lot of times I did feel alone with that. Especially when I see people around me who are successful and seem to be going on with their life, and I seem to be in this rut. So it would be good to know that there are other people out there other than me who are feeling that way. And the fact that you are not a loser, feeling this way at all, because we are all fucking human. No one is perfect, nobody is. Nobody wrote the book on what you have to do or what you should be doing or what you are going to do. I mean, it’s—”

Up to you.

“Pretty much.”

[heartsofstrangers]

What has been one of the most challenging things you have experienced, or are currently experiencing?

“Let me think about that. I think, sort of dealing with, it’s very broad, but your place in the world. Just trying to understand who you are, and not comparing yourself to other people. To understand that you’re your own special snowflake. I think it’s easy for people—I don’t think it’s unique to artists—to think that ‘Well, that person’s really good at what they do, and that person is better than me, and I’ll never be that good.’ You’re constantly trying to push yourself, and constantly trying to practice, and get better, and there’s always somebody who’s going to be better than you. There’s no point in even thinking about who’s better than you. It’s just about your journey and where you’re going. So that’s one of the most challenging things for me, always trying to remind myself that it doesn’t matter what level someone else is at or where they work or what they do, it’s just about me and understanding myself and what I am trying to do with my work.”

Has that comparing ever beaten you down to a place where you’ve sort of questioned who you are or what you’re doing, or discouraged you in some way?

“Yeah, definitely discouraging. I try not to let it get to the point of beating me down, but the feeling of despair—you hop on the Internet and there’s this 13-year-old prodigy who’s amazing, and what am I doing? Nobody wants to think that way or have that kind of conversation, but it’s this inevitable kind of feeling that creeps in every once in a while. So I think that’s a big challenge. I try not to let it get the best of me.”

What do you do when it does creep in, and how do you get yourself out of that mode?

“I think the best thing to do is focus on my own work, and my own things that I really enjoy doing, instead of staring for hours at the computer screen and someone else and this amazing thing they can produce. Focus inward and just look at what I really like doing, and why I am doing it and why it makes me happy. I create art because I want to transport people to other places. I want to create things they have never seen. I want them to be happy and have emotions pulled from my work, and I think if I can accomplish that then it doesn’t really matter what anyone else is doing.”

How did you find yourself as being an artist? Is that something that came about at an early age?

“Yeah. My older sister, Merideth, was a big artist and did art all the time. I think every kid wants to emulate their older sibling, so I always wanted to do art because she was doing art, and I thought that was really cool. My parents were able to embrace that and encouraged it a lot, and they signed me up for art classes. I got to do all sorts of fun things, and made friends with other people who were artists. We pushed each other and encouraged each other to do art, and I found that community to be very welcoming, a good group of people for the most part. They are very friendly and very happy to share their knowledge and help younger artists develop. It was from a pretty young age.”

Were there times in your life where you felt like people didn’t accept or understand you as an artist? I know for myself growing up, I think there was a mentality that art is an extracurricular activity and you’re never going to make a living of that, so why don’t you do something more realistic? Did you experience that as well?

“Yeah, yeah. I think as much as my parents encouraged me and were very, very helpful, when it came to college time I think my dad would have preferred for me to study something like medicine and do something very reliable. They were right in that they saw college as an investment, like we’re going to put a whole bunch of money into your education, it should bring money out on the other side. But I didn’t really think of it that way. I didn’t ever have a fear that I was going to go hungry as an artist. I always knew that I am a hard worker and I’m a hustler in some ways. I will make money one way or the other, and I’ll make art too. So I wasn’t really concerned about the financial side of stuff. I don’t think there were too many people who ever tried to discourage me from doing art because it was not worthwhile, luckily. There are definitely people out there who don’t see it as a worthy thing to spend your time doing all the time. But luckily I didn’t run into too many of those people.”

What are you doing with your art today?

“Today I do a variety of art, from children’s books to video games, animation, character design, and environment design. I also do interface design, working on overall game design. I try to branch out and do as many different areas of art as I can. I don’t consider myself just one thing. Right now I’m working at Disney, and that’s great. They’re a really cool company, and I always wanted to work for them since I was a kid. That’s fun.”

What brought you to L.A.?

“The people and work in L.A. I had heard so many stories about it. Everybody who’s worked here has their own L.A. story, and I know it can be a rough place for people who maybe don’t have a support network and place and kind of just come on their own trying to make it big. That’s why I avoided it for a really long time. When I was younger I just didn’t feel ready. But now that I’m married and a have a lot of friends here and have a job, it’s all not as scary, which is good. It was the work and the community of people and artists, and the feeling that art is integral to the town here. Everybody is a performer or a musician or an artist or creating something in some way which is a great vibe to be around.”

What would your life look like if you didn’t have access to art, if you didn’t have the freedom and the space to create it? Do you think that would impact you?

“It would be sad. I often think that is one of the worst-case scenarios in my head, like what if I cut off my hands tomorrow or something. I would find a way, I would draw with my toes or my mouth or something. I would find a way. I feel like I had completely no access, nothing to draw on and no computer and no anything, I would be pretty depressed I think. I often say, in my head, if I went to prison or something, I would have a lot of time to draw. If I could get my hands on some paper and a pencil, I feel like I could pass the time pretty well.”

Would it be fair to say that art is a tool to express yourself? It’s a survival tool, it’s something intrinsic inside you? It’s something that you’re born with and you just need to communicate it?

“Yeah. Absolutely. I think the idea that it’s just born with you and a part of you is true, but a lot of people are born with it and then they don’t nurture it. Every kid is an artist, and then at a certain point, around age 10 or something, people start to compare themselves to other kids. So I think it’s really important that kids stick with it and don’t get into that mindset.”

Would you say that we all have something to create here?

“Yeah! Definitely. I think that to some degree, whether you’re an artist or any other kind of creator, everybody has something to add. Give back to the world.”

What other advice would you offer to someone else who is an artist, and sort of finding their niche in the world?

“I would say, stick with it. If you really love it, if you really want to be an artist, there’s not really any other choice. When I meet people that are like ‘Oh well, I might do this other thing,’ then I say, ‘Well, you should just do the other thing.’ Because clearly it’s not going to be an easy road. But if they are truly an artist and in love with it, there’s no question in their mind. They will do it. The advice I would give is to just absolutely stick with it, believe in yourself, and learn as much as you can, because there is so much to learn. If you ever feel like you’ve learned everything, and that you’re done with school because you’ve finished your art class or whatever class you were taking and you don’t have to learn anything else, you’re wrong. There’s way more to learn, always more to learn.

“So just always be open to whatever is coming your way. If you can meet more experienced artists, people who have been through it before, talk to them. Learn from them. Take classes from them. Try to learn on the job. If you don’t have the money for college, there are other ways out there. The Internet is full of amazing information. These days you can find anything on there. Go to YouTube, watch tutorials, and learn how to do anything you want. It’s all there at your fingertips.”

Is it possible that you can be an artist without going to school to get a degree?

"Oh absolutely, yes. I think the degree teaches you a lot of other things like how to work with people and how to handle projects and schedule your time, manage all sorts of things that are really useful when you hit the job market. But the actual process of learning art is very internal. I feel like someone can stand over your shoulder and tell you concepts of art all day long, and if you don’t stop to internalize it and go back to your sketchbook, go back to your canvas and practice and learn it, nothing’s going to happen. You can’t just take in data and not translate it into something else. Going to school and going to class is not the only way to take in data. There are all sorts of other materials out there in the world: books and workshops and apprenticeships and other things you can try.”

How do you feel when you are creating art? Do you feel a sense of connection to something beyond yourself?

"Yeah, that’s actually an interesting way of putting it. I think there’s a feeling that you’re tapping into this larger well of ideas and information. I think you were talking about inspiration earlier. It kind of feels like that. You will often look at other work that inspires you and you will think, ‘why is that great?’ What is it about that? I really like that line or the way colors work in this picture or the shapes or whatever, and all of that seems to be coming from somewhere. You know, everybody is tapped into the same feelings and emotions that come from art. If you can tap into that same reservoir, it’s where the ideas come from, and you feel connected to all the other people who are doing it.”

Is creating art ever an emotional or a vulnerable experience?

“Yeah. Well, definitely in terms of art that you show other people, I think it’s emotional in that I feel the character when I’m drawing it. My expressions will change, my stance will change, I’ll put my shoulders up and I’ll become the character as I’m drawing them. That is emotional, and sometimes I’ll draw something that is so sad or so angry, or whatever, that I’ll get out from my desk feeling like I’ve just been in that for that last hour that I’ve been drawing it, and feeling it. And then it’s emotional on the other side, when you present it to the world. You put it online or you put it in a gallery show, or even just show your mom to put on the refrigerator. All of that’s emotional. You’re looking for some sort of feedback, you’re looking for something that’s going to validate you or make you feel accepted and worthy of the rest of the world’s attention.”

It seems like it would take a fair amount of courage to create something and say to the world, “This is what I’ve made.”

“Yeah, courage a little bit, but also maybe just fearlessness. You can’t worry about what everybody’s going to say because that’s not why you made it. If you’re making art just for other people, then you’re going to be a miserable artist. You will not be very happy.”

Why do you make it? Do you make it for the process or for the other side of the fame or the money?

“It’s certainly not fame and money. That has yet to come! I think there is some, like if you just consider I am going to put this on the Internet and people are going to hit the Like button or something, there’s something mildly satisfying about that. But it doesn’t come close to the satisfaction you bring yourself when you create something that you saw in your head. That is such a satisfying point, and I think most artists will point to the time they got it good enough of what they had envisioned came out on the paper. And that is hard. It is really hard to get to that point. A lot of people will spend their whole lives being like ‘Oh, I saw this really cool thing in my head, and then I went to draw it and it just looked awful, or it was totally not what I wanted it to be.’ And when you actually get to the point where you are either as happy as what you saw in your mind, or even happier, that’s just so satisfying, it’s like you scratched an itch that really needed to be scratched. Of course, you’ll hate it the next day. It’s a very small amount of time that you’ll enjoy that, so be aware. Enjoy it while it lasts, because it doesn’t last long.”

What happens after you have created art? Do you look at it and say, “Well I could have done this better,” or “I could have done that better.” Is that sort of what you do?

“Yeah, yeah. Definitely. You immediately start to pick out the things that are wrong with it. One of the things they tell you to do in art school is to flip your drawing. So you’ll do a drawing and you’ll think it all looks perfect from that one perspective, from left to right, and then you put it in front of a mirror or on the computer you can just flip it and create a mirror image, and suddenly all the imperfections pop out to you. And you think, ‘Oh, the eye is high on the left side and I need to adjust that hand on this side.’ It’s strange because the more you look at something, the more you become used to it and you think it’s all perfect. It’s almost like memories: every time you recall a memory you are actually changing it. Even looking at a drawing, every time you are looking at it you’re mentally verifying that what you did was correct. You’re like, ‘Okay, that line goes there, and that line goes there.’ And then you have a shift in perspective and it’s as if everything was a little off. It’s important to keep looking at everything from another angle.”

Have you been able to apply any of those concepts in art to life?

“Yeah. As I was describing it, I was like that’s a good life lesson. That’s definitely important. I mean, you definitely have to try to look at every situation from another angle, because you’re never right all the time. That’s not going to happen. I do try to bring over some of the lessons from art and from creating art and sharing art and stuff to other aspects of my life.”

Do you have a favorite quote that you’d like to share?

“Oh, something that’s not corny. There was one from John Lennon that I thought was really good along the lines of, ‘Life is what happens while you’re busy doing other things.’”

What does that mean to you personally?

“I think that’s great because it’s so true. It’s as if you have all these plans in your life about what you’re going to do and where you’re going to go and who you’re going to be and what you’re going to accomplish, and meanwhile you’re doing other things. You’re moving your house, or meeting people or having a party, and you have all these strange preconceptions of what you’re going to do. Meanwhile, you have no real control over it. You can’t force your life to be one thing or another, really. Your life is all the things you do on a daily basis. You can’t just sit there thinking about what the future is going to be. You have to think about now.”

So, life is in the present moment, it’s in the daily routine?

“Absolutely, yeah.”

How has it felt to talk about these thoughts and feelings with me?

“Good, good. It became more of a conversation, so it felt good to talk about those things.”

Why did you agree to this interview?

“I don’t know. I don’t really like interviews in general. I did one a while ago and it was fine. I agreed just because I think your project is cool and I think that the questions you ask are not the types of questions I am usually asked. I think it’s good for me to push the comfort zone a little bit and think about things I wouldn’t normally have to think about.”

Do you think it’s possible by opening up and sharing some of these thoughts and ideas with me, you could be benefiting someone else who may be reading this?

“Oh I hope so. Definitely. Yeah, if there are any other creators and artists out there, maybe they’ll get something out of it. Maybe other people who aren’t creators and artists will get something out of it. I don’t know.”

[heartsofstrangers]

What has been one of the most challenging things that you’ve experienced or are currently experiencing?

“I’d say my biggest challenge would have to be my back issues.”

Tell me about those.

“When I was a teenager, I was taking growth hormones, and they did say that one of the side effects might possibly be health issues that would occur a lot sooner than they would to the average person, say at sixty or seventy, I might deal with it around forty or fifty. Being thirty-five, it’s happened a lot sooner than I thought. I have back issues and circulation issues. Mostly with issues that wouldn’t normally occur to someone my age.

“That, I’d have to say, is my biggest challenge, because when I get up and do things like protest, it really challenges me. It makes me want to fight, because even though my back hurts, it’s really rewarding to see that people are seeing the truth. It’s just the biggest inspiration for me, to see that others are being made aware that the establishment and our current government are very crooked. People need to know and stand up and say, “No more.” We need a new government. That doesn’t mean violent revolution. It just means, basically, hiring better, newer people who are more capable of running this government without corruption. That’s how I feel about it.”

I want to go back to your back history. Tell me why you began using growth hormones.

“Physically, I appeared to be eight when I was twelve years old, and when I was thirteen, I didn’t appear much older; I still appeared to be about eight and a half. Physically I was growing much slower than I should have. They said there was a risk with it, but I didn’t mind.

“When I was twelve and looked eight and a half, basically my parents were concerned about my growth issues, so they took me to a doctor, and the doctors told me what the risks were. I was willing to take it, because I was at a time where I couldn’t understand why the females of my same age range were just ignoring me. It was explained to me that they weren’t interested in preteens, and I looked like one, so I was like, ‘Well, I need to do something about that.’

“It ended up being that I took the risk. It’s well worth it though, because the challenges that come with it are quite rewarding. The results if I pass the challenges are rewarding, you know?”

Were you teased because of your size in school?

“All the time.”

So, here you are today, suffering health issues because of, it sounds like, feeling insecure about your size at an early age. Do you have any regrets?

“No.”

No?

“None whatsoever.”

When did you start developing some of the symptoms of your back issues?

“I’d say about twenty-three, twenty-four was when it started happening. It wasn’t too bad back then, but as the lower lumbar disc deterioration disease progressed, it seemed to get to the point where I couldn’t function, and I ended up having to take pain medication to maintain it. But even so, I’m still fully functional and grateful for that. God has blessed me with that.”

It sounds like you may have gone through a period of—I would assume—depression or something, not being able to function as you wanted to. Tell me about that.

“It was quite a struggle. I have to say the biggest thing I struggled with during that time was feeling incapable of doing anything, being in a position where I couldn’t do what everyone else my age was doing, and wanting to. Thinking how horrible it is to be stuck in that place.

“I overcame it, eventually, mostly through a belief system. I practice Messianic Judaism, and that has gotten me through a lot, because there was hope and there is healing. I was in a wheelchair at one time. I was paraplegic for a while. I think that’s the correct term, because it was from the waist down I was having issues, but when I started putting God in my life and practicing Messianic Judaism, that’s really what brought me out of the whole mess that I was in—the emotional mess as well as the physical mess. It doesn’t matter what anybody else says; God does exist, and he shows himself in ways that are so miraculous that it’s mind-blowing. He does heal the blind, makes the blind see. He makes those unable to walk, walk, and I’m living proof of that, and that’s what’s gotten me through to where I am now.”

Was there ever a point where you felt you wanted to give up and couldn’t do this anymore?

“Yeah, a couple of points. There were a couple of points where I just said, ‘Forget about it. Whatever happens, happens. If I lay here, I’ll defecate on myself or starve to death, whatever; I don’t care.’ My brother introduced me to God, and that’s when I started to see that there was something more to life than just misery and pain. My doctor said I should go there and see them one more time even though I had already given up, and I said if not for me, then at least for the family, and so I did. Through his powers of persuasion and lots of prayer, miraculously, the doctor decided that they’d look at it and start giving me physical therapy and pain medications. Things like that actually helped with the healing process. Sure, I still have back pain to this day, but it’s not nearly what it was, when it was crippling and disabling to the point where I couldn’t function.”

At the time when you were struggling, would you say you were focused more on the pain and what you could not do instead of some of the blessings and gifts that were before you?

“Yeah. That’s pretty accurate.”

How have you shifted focus? You mentioned that you brought God into your life in this way. What are some of the other ways that you sort of focus on the good things and the blessings and the gifts, even though there are still things that ail and challenge you?

“The biggest thing that keeps me focused is the reward of what comes after. This may be a struggle—this may be a hell, even, for some—but if we get through it trying to bless as many in our path as possible, the rewards are going to be so massive that we don’t feel any pain. It’s just, man, these mansions here are nothing in comparison to the ones we’ll get.

“And it’s not just getting things, either; it’s more than that. It feels good to serve others, because when I serve myself, there’s a temporary satisfaction, but when I serve others, which is what Messianic Judaism teaches me, it’s a longer-lived satisfaction. I get to see others’ lives get better. You get to improve others’ lives, and sometimes even see the results with a small action, like giving twenty dollars to a hungry man at the bus stop. It makes all the difference in the world when he’s probably sitting there thinking, ‘Nobody cares about me,’ or ‘I’m gonna starve to death. I’m too tired to get up off this bench to beg for money and too ashamed to even try.’

“I’ve been there too, so I know those thoughts. When I saw that hungry man on the bench, give him twenty dollars and know that he doesn’t have to feel that way anymore—when you’re on the receiving end of somebody just giving out of the kindness of their heart for no apparent reason that you know, you know the other person feels that way just by the expression on their face, and that is way more satisfying than any sort of self-satisfaction. That’s the only way I can describe it, and that’s what keeps me going, that drive to make other people’s lives as satisfying as mine was. As mine still is, really.”

Is it fair to say that maybe the darkest hours of your life have brought you to your brightest moments now?

“Yeah. It is definitely fair to say that, because we all have to hit rock bottom to see how good we have it. We really do.”

So it’s made you appreciate life.

“Oh yeah. Life is a beautiful thing, and there are other things that the scripture teaches me. If I am in a moment of pain, and I’m so focused on that pain and worried about myself, all I have to do is work out and it’s everywhere. The trees are breathing out oxygen that we breathe in. The ground is full of living creatures. If we don’t focus on ourselves, and we focus on outward, we begin to see how beautiful life really is.”

Did going through those times strengthen you and give your courage to face others struggles as well?

“Absolutely it has.”

It sounds like it’s also created a sense of empathy and compassion for others.

“Yeah, because when you struggle through the pain and misery yourself, you begin to realize that others are going through the same thing, and you look at the bigger picture. It’s not just about me; it’s about everybody. It’s like that song says, ‘Lean on me when you’re not strong. I’ll be your friend. I’ll help you carry on.’ That’s the way we should all be, because, shoot, if we were all to lean on each other in hard times, I guarantee there wouldn’t be hard times anymore.”

What advice would you offer to somebody else struggling out there, reading this interview?

“I would suggest that they read the book of Matthew in the Bible and Proverbs and Psalms. One of those three, if not all three, because those were the most inspiring for me, because I could most relate to them. Also, they have such excellent advice on life in general, you know? Things that make you not focus on the immediate pain and suffering that we’re going through and even improve our lives and make it so that others don’t have to go through it as well.”

When we started this interview, you were wearing your mask. At a point during this interview, you took it off. What inspired you, what moved you to take it off?

“Well, because this is more personal, and I felt it would be disrespectful to share a personal experience indirectly or impersonally.”

It seemed to me profound. Often when I do these interviews, whether or not a person is physically, literally wearing a mask, figuratively they are removing the mask by opening up and sharing something very vulnerable and personal with me, so it was fitting that a few questions into it, you actually took off your literal mask.

“Yeah, really, I have nothing to hide. The reason I wear this is it’s symbolic; it’s representative of all of us, we the people. That’s what Anonymous is about.”

Do you believe that we’re connected to each other, as human beings to nature?

“Absolutely. Interconnected with everything, even the inanimate, unliving objects, for that matter. I think that energy itself connects everything. It’s so complex and interwoven that our mortal minds couldn’t even comprehend it, but our souls understand it, and that’s why we yearn for it, I think. Even though our physical minds don’t understand, our souls are so much more complex and deep, and they tell our minds and bodies to yearn for it.”

Do you have a favorite quote you’d like to share?

“Hmm, that’s a tough one. I’d really have to think on that one, because there’s a lot of them, but one in particular . . . So many to go through. I read a lot of books. I think it would have to be by Terry Goodkind, but I don’t want to misquote him. I have a bit of a memory issue, so if you’ll pardon me while I look it up . . .

“It’s actually Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Goodkind. I’d have to say that’s my favorite, because it applies to life in general. I believe it’s similar to the statement that the best intentions are the road paved to hell, or something like that. Sorry. And it’s appropriate, considering what I’m doing, too. It says, ‘People are stupid. They will believe a lie because they want to believe it’s true, or because they’re afraid it might be true.’”

What does that mean to you?

“Well, I don’t agree with the statement that people are stupid, because they’re actually quite intelligent. It’s just a lot of them live in denial. I do agree with the part that says, ‘They will believe a lie because they want to believe it’s true, or because they’re afraid it might be true.’

“For example, what it says on my sign here is ‘Child Protective Services kidnaps our children without legal cause or any warrants.’ If anybody else did that to our children, they would be arrested without a moment’s notice, and yet these people go into hospitals and take babies. People believe that CPS is good for society because they want to believe that lie. They want to believe it’s true or are afraid. Fear runs society too much nowadays. We need to live more on love, less on fear, because the more we live on love, the better life will be, and these warmongers, these kidnappers, anybody else causing harm to us can’t have the power they have if we don’t fear. They will end up being the fearful ones, because love is way more powerful than fear ever could be.”

How has it felt to share these experiences and thoughts with me?

“Liberating. It’s good to know that others will be able to be inspired, because that’s what I live for. I live to serve; I live to serve others, and if I can serve others with this and help improve their lives somehow with something that I said, praise God.”

[heartsofstrangers]

What has been one of the most challenging things that you have experienced or are currently experiencing?

“Let’s see. Well, at first I thought the most challenging thing was my childhood. I was born in Liberia, so as a kid I went through a war, which was a civil war that started out between Liberian factions and I didn’t think any kid should have seen what I saw, but I felt that because I got out of it and somehow my family moved to the U.S. and I had a good life that my life wasn’t all that bad.

“Then I met my husband who was my college sweetheart, and we were together for fifteen years and had two beautiful kids. In December of 2015, I got divorced. I think that probably has been my biggest growing point in my life, because it’s happening and hit keeps evolving, and I feel like I started out with a plan of my life. I knew what was going to happen. I had kids and it was time to move on into that plan, and then somewhere it just stopped.

“So every day I feel like I’m figuring out how to live my life from this point on. I think the challenge was there, is there and continues to basically go on in daily life.”

How are you navigating through that? What are some of the obstacles that you are facing?

“At first I thought that it was really hard. I thought I couldn’t get out of it and nothing would ever happen and it’s like this is the end, but right now what I have noticed is I have to do one day at a time. So the first thing is I have to make sure the kids are okay. Once the kids are okay, then I keep myself busy. I went back to school for nursing, so that was my first busy thing to focus on. If I am concentrating on that, I can’t think about if I am hurting. Or I just want to sit in bed and cry. Because I think if I do that, yes it’s good too, but I can’t do it with two kids. If I do it with two kids, I am not helping them get through this, or I am not being strong for them. So my biggest coping is keeping myself busy. I think I have the busiest life I know. I keep moving and moving every second I get, and I keep the kids involved in things so that none of us have to stop and think about what could have been, it’s only about what will be now. That���s how I try to navigate through it.”

Have there been moments where that grief strikes you and you do cry or you have a hard time getting out of bed?

“Oh, all the time. I think I am good at it and I start out saying ‘this is very great,’ then my son starts not coping well, and then I will get a call from the school about it’s the silliest things. He’s seven, so the silliest things that a seven-year-old would not think through to do. Your kid just punched another kid at school. You would think he knows better than that, but then I will step back and say, ‘Well, maybe that’s his coping,” so I’ll get the call while I’m at school and after my quiz I will run downstairs to my car and cry, and afterwards I will run back upstairs and I will do lab. When they ask, ‘Where were you between the lecture ending and lab?’ I say, ‘Oh, it’s okay, I was taking care of my stuff in the car.’

“That’s just how I can do it. I notice that not crying made things worse for me, because I wasn’t dealing with it by talking about it, or going out there. Crying was my only way of getting it out of me, so that I didn’t have to carry it with me all day, so if I can stop for two second and cry, then I can continue to play strong.”

That’s huge.

“Yeah!”

I think our initial instinct is to carry on and to continue to move forward, busying ourselves to not have to feel that pain or to really see the damage and to take inventory of it, but I think you have touched upon something very important. You have to make space for it when you can to let it out, because it is a heavy load to bear.

“Oh, yes it is.”

What are some other ways that you are coping with it?

“I love learning, so a lot of people say I ‘I run to exercise.’ No, I actually run to get out my pain. I run and run and run till I can run no more, and then I stop and I know the pain is … My nephew, who is fourteen, visited me this weekend, and he was surprised, because he is doing track, that I run seven miles every morning when I can. He was like, ‘Wow! You are old and you do seven miles in the morning!’ I had to correct him and tell him I wasn’t old, that’s just what he thinks. I feel like if I can get that out there, I am getting the negative energy out of me also. I am hitting the pavement, as I call it. I am sure that’s what most runners do. By the time I am sore and can run no more, I feel great for my day and I am able to say ‘Hey, let’s see what today is going to bring.’”

I want to go back a little bit and turn a few pages behind. I want to talk about how this relationship and this marriage sort of unraveled and what the context of that was, if you don’t mind.

“See, that was really funny. First it started out with my husband, my ex-husband, telling me wasn’t happy and things weren’t going the way he wanted them to be. The first thing I thought was that it was my fault, so let’s see how we can fix it. So we went to counseling and we did all the things I thought should be done. Little by little he said I was always angry and I always screamed at him and I treated him like a kid. I was acting like his mother, so that hit me hard, because I did scream at him and he was right about that. That was something I wasn’t going to say I didn’t do, and I was angry at him and he was right about that, but what he didn’t know is I had known for about three and a half years that my husband had been cheating on me for eight years of our fifteen-year relationship.

“As I was trying to be strong for the kids and be strong for everyone, it was a little hard for him to come home and lie to me and I knew he was lying. For me to be happy and nice to him and not scream at him because under all of it, it is like, I know you are lying to me, I know what you are saying is not true, I am waiting for you to actually to say this, and I hinted that things are not going well, you could just tell me if you want to see other people. We can talk about it.

“I felt like I would be giving him a segue into, just say what’s happening to me, you know, what’s going on. I already know, just tell me. He was a very good liar, that’s what I learned. For a long time he was a very good liar and I was good at going along with it. I think there is a part of me that just wanted to think I had a fairy tale, so I believed every lie, until one day I was sitting in my living room with my daughter, who was an infant at the time, and she was tired and crying and I messaged my husband and said, ‘Hey, what’s going on? How are you doing?’ He said, ‘I’m very busy at work.’ He is a chef, so he said I have all these cakes to make for an event and we have only one pan, and here I am feeling guilty. I said, ‘I think we have a couple of pans here. Maybe I should run them down to you. Maybe I should see if I can help with this.’ He said, ‘I think I am going to be very late.’ I said, ‘Okay, no problem.’

“I sat there, put the kids to bed, I was still thinking I should call the neighbors to watch them and bring the pan down to him. So I said, ‘I will go pay bills.’ I went to pay bills and checked our credit-card bills, and I noticed a charge in South Lee, Massachusetts, when we lived in Winsted, CT at the time, and he worked in Hartford. So it seemed a little out of place for the charge to be at this point in time, today, while you are supposed to be baking cakes. So I called the restaurant and no one picked up. I told myself, ‘It’s probably no one is there and they had closed because it was a slow night,’ so I went to the living room and noticed that my husband’s broken cellphone was on the table, because he had just gotten a new one. So I picked up the broken cellphone, and the first thing I see are text messages, literally bombarding me in the face, not one, not two, not three, I stopped counting and went horrified. So I messaged him and said, ‘Hi. Where are you? What’s going on? I am waiting, and because I am not so good at lying, I was checking our credit cards and noticed there is a charge in South Lee, Massachusetts. So should I call the credit card company and shut the credit card off, or is there something you are not telling me?’

“Well, that was the beginning of the end. My ex-husband was actually out to dinner with his girlfriend who he now lives with, and he had been seeing that girlfriend along with three others, probably for over a year, two years at that time. That was just the ones he had seen around here. Little by little I found an entire online lifestyle that basically proved that my entire marriage and everything that I thought was real was actually a lie.

“That was a shocker, because I believed everything that was fed to me, everything. Little by little his family tried to talk to him, and he said they were trying to convince him to change his mind. I guess that was where I started to notice that I had to love myself, and realized that if he didn’t love me, that’s just him. So we talked about it, and I asked him if he was going to move out, because I wasn’t going to do—I just couldn’t sit there anymore and lie to the kids. I started to see that I was a different person, I was angry, I was so angry I screamed at my kids for everything. I felt like my son could trip over a chair and I would scream at him for tripping over the chair, when he didn’t know the chair was there. I even realized that there were times my daughter would cry and I would scream at my son just because he was in the room, and that was when I noticed this was my poison: if I stayed there I couldn’t be the mom I wanted to be.

“I always thought my son saved me. I would never be the person I am today if I didn’t have Steven. He is the reason I wanted to live, I wanted to wake up in the morning and smile because of Steven. I love my daughter, but Steven was the first thing that made me see that my life wasn’t only important for me, but it was important for him, and it was important for any other kid that I had. Because of that, I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t sit and let me turn into something that I didn’t know, while my husband enjoyed himself and basically lived the life he wanted to and hindered me from living at all.

“I think right now the hardest part of all of this is how angry he is at me, and I don’t know why, so I think it makes every day harder for me, not knowing what reaction I will get from him. We have to interact, because we have two kids. I can stay strong, but what I have to think about is, what is he going to get mad about this time? Then I feel like I’m sometimes going back. That’s where I have to say, ‘Ernestine, look in the mirror, it’s not happening anymore, it’s over. It’s just you now, so don’t think about that, think about you and the kids.’ Then I get up and do dinner.”

What were the first few months like after making that break?

“It was horrible. I was in our home; we rented a house together with the kids. The kids never slept with me, because I always thought it was important for them to be independent sleepers, but for the first time I found myself making excuses for them to sleep in my bed. It’s actually funny, because my son wets the bed, so I would put a pad on the bed and he said, ‘Mommy aren’t you worried that your bed will get wet and you will have to change all your sheets?’ and I said, ‘No it’s okay. You can sleep in the bed with me.’

“I have great friends. My best friend, she is the best person, she is my person. Kathryn will call me every day to ask, ‘How are you doing? Do we hate him now? Am I supposed to go beat him up for you?’ I think she was basically, along with my kids, the reason I had to wake up, but she was the reason I laughed; that wasn’t because of my kids. She always made herself there for me, she always made me feel that, no matter what I would have her. What was hard for me and her was that I had met Kathryn through my ex-husband. I always thought that there was going to be this problem relating, but it just wasn’t there. Even though he introduced us, we were friends outside of him. When I think about it, I think Kath has been my rock. I probably wouldn’t have been able to do all of this if I didn’t have her.”

Were there ever times when you felt the pain was too much, and you wouldn’t and couldn’t survive it and maybe you didn’t want to even try?

“Definitely. I got sick and hurt my back, and then I had this really horrible … After I had my daughter I was diagnosed with some kind of endometriosis that would have required me to have a hysterectomy, and that was another crazy part. Even though my nephew thinks I am old, I am not ready for a hysterectomy, but I hurt my back and had that issue with the pain, so I had to take pain-killers. I first started taking ibuprofen, which was definitely no problem, but the pain got very bad, to the point where I would crawl on the floor to make breakfast. There was one day when I was crawling on the floor in pain, and my son came into the kitchen and said, ‘Mommy, are you okay?’ I said, ‘Don’t worry. Mommy is fine, I’m just going to get up there to the oatmeal, and once I am done I will put it on the table and I will go lie down.’ He is looking at me and goes, ‘Mommy, why are you down there?’ I wondered how to best explain this, okay so, ‘See, if Mommy gets up here, Mommy can’t stand, because it’s so much ouch right now, so Mommy is going to stay right down here because she can do everything from down here, so you don’t have to worry.’ So my son was like, ‘Okay, Mommy. Can I eat breakfast on the floor down there right next to you then, if you can’t get up here to eat?’ I didn’t expect that from him. I put him on the bus and I had to stay home that day. My daughter was sleeping and I took medicine to alleviate the pain, because I didn’t want my son to come back to me crawling on the floor. Well, I am not used to pain-killers so I took a lot, I would say, thank God, at the time I was still cold sleeping with my daughter, because if she didn’t wake up and cry I wouldn’t have been able to snap out of myself enough. I felt like I was underwater and I couldn’t hear anything or anyone around me, and then I just heard my daughter crying next to me. It didn’t sound like we were in the same room, it sounded like a tunnel, but it sounded more like a cry for help. She was a year and half old, so she could walk, she could move around the house, but she is—I call her my prodigy—she can sit next to me and study without disturbing me, so she will wake up and sit on the bed with me until I wake up. I think Mommy wasn’t waking up for a while, so she felt like she had to wake Mommy up by crying. I felt like the cry sounded so urgent that I opened my eye very groggily, and the next thing I heard was the honking of the school bus, which snapped me to—that meant my son was outside. I just snapped out of it so fast and went running down the stairs, grabbed my son and brought him upstairs, and we all just sat on the couch and I cried. He said, ‘Are you okay, Mommy? Why are you crying?’ I said, ‘It’s okay. I think the best thing I can do right now for me and everyone is to cry, because I feel like I have to,’ so I did.

“After that I would not take pain-killers, anything stronger than ibuprofen, because I noticed there was a part of me that was just sick-and-tired. I shouldn’t have to be crawling on the ground and making breakfast when my kids had two parents, was how I felt. I feel like I should be able to rely on the other parent when I need him and didn’t have that. I set myself to find a reliable source of help or something I could rely on instead of just having to do it all by myself.”

How did you do that?

“My family. I moved back close to home. I hate New Milford, but it was the best thing for me. It was close to my job, I already worked there. I moved close to my parents. Both of my parents live in Milford. I am from a big African family. My mom has twenty-seven brothers and three sisters. Right now she has three of her siblings living with her. It’s back to, ‘it takes a village.’ My uncles pick up my son off the bus, my dad gets my daughter from daycare, I go to school, I make dinner, and I take it to them, and there is food for them, and then I go study. I have a great family.”

You mentioned something: ‘It Takes a Village.’

“Yes.”

I think I recognize more and more how many people are trying to juggle all the responsibilities of life independently and drowning trying to do it. I don’t think you are alone in that, and I don’t think that villages and other cultures are experiencing the same sort of stress that we put on ourselves in our Western culture.

“I know my aunt who came back from Liberia thought all you guys do is work. She was like, ‘We walk around and go to the farm and we relax and we do a lot more relaxing than you do. I feel sorry for you, I see you running in and running out and that is your life.’ That is basically my life. I am running, going, ‘Hi, sorry, I’ll see you guys later, bye, sorry, love you, be back soon.’ I have to. If I don’t keep moving—I don’t want to know what would happen if I don’t keep moving actually. So I keep moving.”

Are you afraid to stop?

“Yes, I am very afraid to stop. Very, very afraid to stop. I feel like if I stop I will crumble. I feel like if I stop I will have no purpose. I feel like if I stop my kids will not be able to depend on me. I don’t know what I will do if I stop. I just have to keep going. That is why I have a list and the list has its own list and that list has another list to go with it, so that I can make sure everything is covered that needs to be covered and done. Then at 3:00 am, when I finally finish my homework, or not, and then 4:00 am comes and maybe I will go to bed. That’s my bedtime, every night. And then I have to wake up at 6:30.”

How do you feel about that?

“The best part about that is I don’t dream at night. And when I don’t dream at night, I can get away from my childhood, because that is where all the problems started.”

I want to start talking about that now, if you don’t mind. Tell me about those years before you moved to the United States.

“Those where crazy years. A lot of them I see in flashes. I was actually diagnosed with long-term memory loss, so that is been one of my biggest things. A lot of people noticed I started taking a lot of pictures, and they could figure out why I take a lot of pictures of my kids’ lives, especially my daughter. My son, we noticed, was under-exposed. My daughter’s life is basically a social media with tons of pictures, and that is because I am scared I am not going to remember their childhood if I don’t document those in pictures.

“I remember our house in Liberia. I remember one day in October, I think, my father decided we were going to run away from the mission house we lived in. My parents lived in a boarding school, as teachers and deans, and we had to get away, so we had this truck, I think it was a pickup truck or it was a van, because it had to fit a lot of people. I have four other siblings, and I remember we were in the house and my dad saw some people approaching and he went outside. Then I heard an argument outside and my mom went out, when she came in we found out they were part of the rebels, and they asked my father for our car. My father didn’t want to give them the car because he had a family to transport in the car, so my mom told him to give them the car. He did, with all our stuff in it. That night we walked, it wasn’t actually far, it was my first time walking long distance, but it was about three miles to the neighbors’ house that was close by and we took refuge there. The next morning my dad was going to go back for the rest of our belongings that he could salvage, if anything was there.

“Our house was burned to ashes when my dad got back there. I don’t have any baby pictures, I think I have one when I was two years old and it came from a friend of mine; her mother took the picture and they had that picture. When I wanted baby pictures of myself, they sent it to me. We never went back home, because there was nothing to go back to. We kept going, and we took refuge in a church. My dad being a minister, I think we thought this was safe ground, and we had so much belief and so much faith. I think this is the only memory that sticks and plays in my head, the memory of what happened in this church. I think it basically crowds my entire childhood, and every time I try to get any other memory from my childhood I get stopped.

“I remember it in a different way, and I am sure my mom and dad and everyone remember their own way. I remember sleeping in the middle of the night and hearing gunshots, I remember waking up to my dad screaming, ‘Everybody needs to get outside.’ But I was stupid, I was seven, you don’t go outside when people are shooting a gun, why would you do that. I heard the loud voice, on a loudspeaker, it must have been saying, ‘We will blow up the church if everyone doesn’t come outside.’ That is when my seven-year-old brain pieced together that we needed to go outside or else. So we all went outside; it wasn’t just my family, it was seven other families taking refuge in this church. We went outside and, hello, there were the people with guns, so they started out by saying everybody line up and empty your pockets and give everything you have, so we did that. As we were doing that I noticed that my mom and my sister were not with us, so I’m starting to freak out here, I am pinching my dad and going, ‘Where are they?’ My dad is like, ‘You can’t talk. There are people with guns.’ Finally one of the guys said, ‘I am about to shoot a grenade, launch or whatever, through the church,’ and I was like what is going on? I see the church blowing up and I see my mom running and throwing herself on the floor holding my sister, because apparently my sister loves to sleep and she didn’t hear anything, she didn’t hear any of the call, she didn’t hear any of what needed to be done, so yeah, she was sleeping and my mom was trying to wake her up, because she wasn’t going to leave without her daughter.

“We stood there in the cold. We were told to take off all our clothes and put them down, because apparently they decided that we were going to be killed. The leader asked his lackeys to shoot everyone, but one of them said, ‘I am not going to shoot people that were in a church. What if they are God-fearing?’ I didn’t think about it then, but thought about it later, after all the things you’ve done that’s what you’re thinking about, what if they were God-fearing. One of the guys says, ‘Well, let’s get all the God-fearing people on the side and the other ones we can kill.’ The people during all of this, towards the end recognized were security officers from our school which was less than three miles down the road and now they were part of the rebels.

“I remember I was afraid of this one guy, and that is how I recognized him. He said, ‘Isn’t that the pastor and his family? So my dad said, ‘Yes, but they are all my family, just not the family you know. Everyone in this church is my family.’

“I don’t understand what happened, but we were left standing in the middle of the street, naked, while these men walked away, arguing among themselves about who was going to shoot us. We didn’t turn back; we left. We put clothes on and walked to the nearest US VOA camp which was a half-US-sponsored camp, so there was security to guard the place. We walked and walked and no one said anything, everybody was just walking in silence, just walking, looking around, and everything around was dead bodies. On the streets were no cars, people were just walking and looking at dead bodies, until someone pointed to a truck that basically had a bunch of dead bodies in it, and it was all of the men from the previous night. We just walked in silence, and no one would say anything. I don’t really think anyone said anything for the whole day, if I can remember right. Everyone was just baffled by what happened or what didn’t happen. Today I know my sister and my father, they all talk about it, with enlightenment. I just say, ‘I have no idea what happened, but I am just grateful that I am alive today, because I thought I was going to die.’ I was seven, and all I could think about is, I never even been to a dance and I am about to die.

“That’s why sometimes I tell my son, ‘You’re lucky, you’re very lucky.’ I will never wish my child, or any kid, ever, and I don’t blame my parents, because I know they couldn’t have done anything, anything to protect me from that, but still, man that was a messed-up childhood.

“I sometimes wake up with sweats in the middle of the night thinking someone has a gun to my head and they are going to shoot me and my mom and my dad and I wouldn’t have my kids, that’s the first thing. It doesn’t register that I am an adult and I already have my kids. I think most of the time, once my son came running into my room, did you hear that, while getting onto the bed, I’m like, ‘It’s okay, honey, it wasn’t anything, it came from outside.’ I think he has actually gone deaf to it now, when I wake up screaming, unless it lasts for more than a couple of minutes, then he will come into the room. He just doesn’t hear it, and I am glad he doesn’t, because I wouldn’t want to wake him up, and I would never tell him why I am screaming, because he shouldn’t have to know. I went through it at his age. No child should have to see the things in life that I did at seven.”

How did you arrive in the United States? How did your escape?

“The United States was actually—we went to Ghana. That was actually another—I see my life as lifetimes, so I say in another lifetime, in this other lifetime. And the lifetime before that, so that was another lifetime ago. We were passengers, I don’t know if we were passengers, but we were on a ship that was a Nigerian oil tanker. It was supposed to take some refuges to Nigeria. They had some rooms, but we didn’t even have a room. I remember sleeping on the side of the boat in a water pit. I remember we had to sit up to sleep because the water would be up to here if you lay down. Apparently Nigeria didn’t want the boat, they refused to dock it, because they didn’t want refugees, so we were at sea for three days. I think the boat was going to sink; I think that was why there was so much water, because I don’t think I thought about it while I was that age, but we were grateful that Ghana decided to take us.  I lived nine years of my childhood into young adulthood in Ghana as a refugee. I lived in a refugee camp. We started out in tents and there were hundreds of tents in a field, with no toilets and no showers, and little by little the government of Ghana, basically, provided some necessities and things for us. Today I have been told by people that the camp still exists, and when you go there, it looks so modern that you wouldn’t even believe that it started from little white tents in a field. We stayed in the camp for just a little bit. My parents being educators didn’t want us there, they didn’t think that was going to be a good place for their kids to get anything and any education, so they somehow figured a way to ship us all off to boarding school.

“I lived my life in boarding school after that. In another lifetime. I like the things I like doing, they are hard, they’re crappy but I told myself when the divorce started, ‘If I didn’t go through a war, if I didn’t go through hunger, if I didn’t go through all of that, how the heck would be able to go through this one?’ Compared to that, this is a piece of cake, because what’s the worst thing that could happen? It already did. I think that’s why I like the life I had, and even though I would never wish it on anyone and as horrible as any life could ever be, even worse, I just—I would not be the person I am today if all those things didn’t happen to me in the way they did.”

What have you learned about yourself, through these lifetimes?

“First thing I think I learned is that I am stronger than I thought I was. I have two older brothers, and I think from growing up with two older brothers, they always made me feel weak. They would trick me and catch me. One would trick and the other would catch, they would pull my shirt and say, ‘You need to fix that’ and kind of like pull things on me. They would climb a tree ahead of me, and I would be at the bottom trying to scramble. People always say, ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,’ and you don’t know that until you actually face something that doesn’t kill you. I think I am stronger than I always thought I was, and that feeling helps me every day when I feel like not waking up. I say, ‘Guess what? You are probably stronger than yesterday, so why don’t you just get up and figure out what’s happening?’ That’s the only way you can deal with it. That is my biggest lesson from this. I am actually stronger than I think I am.”

Also, sounds like to it me, very grateful.

“Yes, it has.”

What sort of role does gratitude play in your life?

“I took a class in the fall semester called the Philosophy of Happiness, and I took it to fill a humanities requirement. I thought this is ridiculous, but I noticed in that class, there was one thing the teacher tried, we had a gratitude journal and we would say what we were grateful for and how we go about being grateful for these things. I noticed I am very grateful for the family I have and I have always told them. I don’t have a lot to give, but whenever my family needs my time I try to give it to them. If someone needs a ride somewhere I try to give it to them. I am always thankful for my mom, to the point that I just call her and say, ‘Thank you, Mom, for being my mom.’ Because when I went through the journal, all my ‘thank you’ entries had to do with thanking my mom, so I know how special, and I think it’s amazing. After that class I keep a regular gratitude journal, and I try my best to say thank you to people for anything they do, even if it’s just picking up a coin on the side of the street that dropped from my purse and handing it to me. I say thank for it, because no-one has to do anything for you. That’s one thing I have learned in life: nobody has any responsibility to you whatsoever. So if someone takes out from their day to share a part of it with you, be grateful, be thankful.”

That sounds like presence and time is one of the most valuable things you can offer someone. It doesn’t necessarily have to be money or gifts.

“Exactly, just being there, it’s always great.”

It sounds like those are very traumatic lifetimes that you experienced, just from hearing the few things that you shared with me, that’s very traumatic. How did you process any of that at such a young age, and how are you processing that even today?

“I didn’t at the young age I was. I actually did not—African culture does not—they look very bad on therapy and counseling, all of that, so I did not actually deal with or face any of this till I moved to the U.S. When I moved to the U.S. and for the first time I spoke to my doctor, which is my pediatrician, who is from India, about some of the things that we went through, he said, ‘Maybe you should seek counseling.’ But the first thing my family said was, They’re going to call you crazy and they are going to give you medicine,’ So I said, ‘I am crazy, I talk to myself in my head. Maybe I do need medicine.’ I have had some good therapists and some good counselors, and comes to the other part where I have a great best friend. My best friend is a psychiatric nurse. Not only is she a best friend, she can sit me down and tell me what’s up; so whenever I need someone, I just call her and just say ‘Okay, this what’s going on, now let’s talk about it.’”

How important do you think it is to give voice to experiences and to talk about things that make us uncomfortable?

“I think it’s very important. I learned a lot from going to a couple of the Hearts of Strangers nights. I learned a lot, because I probably wouldn’t have been able to sit here and do this if I didn’t go to the first one, just to let you know. I was very nervous, but I noticed that when people talk about what they went through, the first thing that happened, other people have similar experiences and their similar experience first thing it does to you is make you know you are not alone. And that feeling of you are not alone, it makes such a difference in a person who is going through something, that they think they are the only person experiencing that and no one understands what I feel because it is just me. Just that you are not alone, made it easier for me to be able. That’s why I think I owed it to the others that I listened to, to let them know that they are not alone. If you have ever have been through what I have been through or something remotely close to, you are not alone, someone else knows how you feel. So that is why I think it is important, very important to tell stories like these.”

What advice could you offer to those people who can relate to any piece or part of what you have shared so far today?

“Talk about it. You don’t want to talk about it, because you think it’s just you. But once you talk about it, not only does it take a weight off your shoulder, you realize that somebody else can connect with you. You just feel so relieved. Talking about it, I feel, is the first step to healing, moving on, and forgiving. Because through all of this, no matter how strong you are, I still think there is a little resentment to self, and that is part of what I try to work on, because I know I am not there yet. If I can start to let go, I can take away the little resentments to myself.”

What are some ways that you practice self-care and self-love in the midst of your busy schedule?

“I have been meditating. I learned that in my class, and I have actually been taking a little bit of time to do some silent meditation and breathing. I read. I like to read books—long, serious books. So that way it goes on for a while, and I can follow story for a very long time, so I will sit in the car and either play the audiobook or flip through the pages and just sit there and read. Yeah, that normally makes it all better.”

Is there a quote or a song, some sort of mantra or something that someone has said to you over the years that resonates with you that you would like to share?

“It actually doesn’t. My oldest sister passed away five years ago from cancer. Her favorite song was a church song, called ‘His Eyes Is on the Sparrow.’ I always feel like I was never the religious one of my siblings. My sister was a minister; all my siblings go to church regularly. I sporadically do, but I think that song ‘His Eyes Is on the Sparrow’ really sits with me and I love it. I actually got a tattoo of a sparrow because of the song, in memory of my sister.”

What does that song mean to you?

“It makes me feel at peace. When I sing it or hear it, I feel like she is with me, and just that feeling makes me stronger, because she always made me feel like I could do anything. So if I am thinking about that and thinking about a fond memory of her, then I am like, ‘You know what, you can do anything, because she said so and she is always believed in you.’ That song, I think, give me strength when I feel down, just knowing that connection between us exists through that song.”

Is it fair to say that through your lifetimes of living these traumatic experiences and pain and the wars, that intense pain has allowed you to also feel the opposite end of the spectrum, the intense joy? Would you say that it has made it possible to experience intense joy?

“You know what? That is probably true. I am very emotional as far as expressing joy and stuff. I remember when my son went to preschool, I was standing there, and he’s going into preschool and all the moms are taking pictures and I am bawling. I am sitting there crying, and he comes and hugs me and goes, ‘It’s okay, Mommy. I’ll be back’. I’m like, ‘I’m sorry my baby is in preschool,’ and then the kindergarten bus came and he gets on the bus and the bus is driving away and turn the camera around on me and my face is pouring water. After that I had a mind to get in my car and following the bus, to every stop till the bus got to the school, because that was the only way I was going to feel better, because I was just over-excited. It wasn’t sad. I thought about that at every time of those ‘overcrying moments,’ as I call them, I was never sad. I guess that is my happiness to the point that I cry.”

How has it felt to talk about these experiences with me today?

“I was very nervous to start. You are very easy to talk to. Anyone who knows me knows I love to talk, but I never get personal. But when I start talking, I think it’s probably the same way with personal, once I enter there, I can’t stop. It just worked well with my loving to talk. It was coming with the flow.”

Do you think it’s possible that by sharing what you have with me today, you may be able to bring someone else a sense that they are not alone, give them some hope or inspire them to?

“Definitely. I know there are a lot of girls in Liberia who went through what I went through, and I know a lot of them are sitting and not dealing with this, because that is what our culture calls for. I know there are a lot of people out there going through divorces from cheating, and thinking their lives are over, and a lot of them sit and cry about it. I am hoping that someone can look at this today and say, maybe I am stronger than I think I am. That is one thing that could take them forward, if just that. I am hoping if a girl from Liberia saw this they could say, maybe if I talk about what I went through it will make me deal with what I am going through a lot better. I have a couple of friends from Liberia who still just stay in the rut and don’t deal with that they are going through and don’t deal with anything in the past and the past was just the past. But the past made us today, so that is why we have to deal with all of those, so that we can be able to deal with today.

[heartsofstrangers]

What is one of the most challenging things that you have experienced or are currently experiencing?

“Probably the last relationship I had. I’ve been very picky about my relationships, and I’ve only had a few, and they’ve been meaningful and long-term with someone I felt I would open myself up to. I think I’ve always been a guarded person, and my last relationship was the first one where I didn’t have any reservations. It was an amazing feeling, because I think every other relationship I’ve been in, even if I was for the most part happy, there was always that little voice in the back of my head telling me that there was something missing. In this relationship I felt as if there was everything I wanted. There were certainly ups and downs, and the other person wasn’t perfect, but neither am I, and it felt like I was finally seeing what it meant to really be in love. I thought I was in love on previous occasions, but that experience gave me a completely different feeling, and it was something that I really cherished. It was short and intense. Unfortunately, it just ended in a bad way. There were some things that just happened that weren’t really anybody’s fault. We were just too different in the way we handled it, and we couldn’t really reconcile. I think afterwards was when I really realized how meaningful and impactful it was, because I had this hurt and this void that I still feel. It’s sad, but I’m also happy to know I can feel that way and that I can find someone to make me feel like she did—hopefully, sooner rather than later, but it’s been challenging to understand the feelings I’ve been feeling, since it’s relatively new for me. I never felt heartbreak like this before, and it’s always there. Some days it’s really present, and other days it’s just a small little ache.”

How are you navigating through some of these waves of heartbreak and emotion and other feelings that you’re having?

“I try to remind myself that if it was a bad thing then it wouldn’t feel like I need to feel this way. I think it’s a good thing to feel this way, because it just makes me know that I can connect with somebody on that level. So I just try to remind myself that that is a strength, not a weakness. I try to remind myself that we weren’t meant to be. I don’t know if we were meant to be or not. But if it was, we would still be together. I can be pretty confident that I can find somebody else in the world who will make me feel similarly or better. It’s not like she was the only person who was right for me. I don’t believe there is only one person in the world for you. I think there are a lot of people who will bring different experiences and emotion and fit in your life in different ways. That was very important, but it was just one chapter. Now I’m onto the next one, and I remind myself that it’s going to be hard, but I’m moving forward towards something, and that something will be whatever it’s supposed to be.”

Has this heartbreak opened you up to anything? Has it made space in your heart, in your mind, for something else to grow?

“I think so. When I started the relationship, I didn’t think I was ready to fall deeply in love with somebody, and I know now that I am. Not that I will with just anybody, but that I can and I will embrace that when the time is right.”

It sounds like you allowed yourself to be very vulnerable with this person. Was there any fear with opening yourself up on that level?

“Yeah, there was a lot. I didn’t know her for that long, but it just felt right for me to be vulnerable with her and she with me and, I don’t know, it was unexpected but I felt like I wanted to be vulnerable. To let her in, I had to allow myself to open up, to have that relationship and let her into my heart. Which was worth it even though it hurts now.”

How has the relationship ending changed your life?

“I look back on it and I think of the things I did and didn’t do, and I think I value myself a little more now knowing that there was somebody who felt as strongly about me as I did about them. I hate to say that somebody isn’t good enough, because I don’t think that’s really unfair. I don’t think that it’s a level where you’re either good enough or you aren’t. I think there are different types of fits, and the right fit and the wrong fit. I found that she was the first person I felt was the right fit, who also thought I was the right fit. That’s a good feeling, and it’s something I can take with me and know I can find somebody that’s ‘worthy’ of me. Not that I’m something spectacular, but what I want to have, what I think I need out of a relationship or a partner, I can find that. That’s just a little light at the end of the tunnel.”

Have you learned anything about yourself?

“I think I learned about the way I express emotion, which I think can be a difficult thing. I think we had different ways of expressing emotion. I wasn’t the type to buy roses or jewelry or what-not. It was the little things, the little funny inside jokes, and getting her little objects that maybe don’t have a lot of physical value but mean a lot. And there are things I can improve about myself. I can be more open and more vocal about my feelings, and that will be hard for me, but it will help me in my relationships moving forward. I need to realize that I’m the only one in my head, and nobody else is going to know what I’m thinking, even if I think it’s obvious. I just need to speak clearly about what I want and how I’m feeling and what I’m thinking. and that will be for the best.”

It sounds like it’s taught you how to communicate your feelings in a better way. So where has this left you now? Where are you in your path, on your journey of life?

“It’s taken me to a point where I actually want to find love. I think lots of people do, but I think many don’t necessarily do it for the right reasons. They’re sort of willing to make a number of compromises, and I’ve never been one to compromise. Now I’m at the point where I want to find somebody to spend time with and become close with emotionally, physically, who can make me better as a person, who can challenge me. Because I don’t think there is any value in being with somebody who doesn’t challenge you, and so I want to take this trip I’m on, this journey, and both find ways to challenge myself and find somebody else hopefully who can also challenge me and help me grow and become a better person.”

What advice would you offer to someone who is reading this who may be able to relate to heartbreak, someone learning from a failed relationship, what love looks like, what vulnerability feels like?

“That it’s good to have pain. Having pain means that you are able to feel strongly and have a human connection. You shouldn’t succumb to it, but you shouldn’t ignore it either. Realize that it’s there for a reason, and it means that there was something that was valuable. It may not have been everything about the person or the relationship, but there are aspects of whatever it was that were good enough that your heart knows those things were good for you and that you’ll be able to find it again. There’s no person who will go through heartbreak and never be able to find that feeling that caused the heartbreak again. It just might take a while. .It might be in somewhere unexpected, and you kind of have to be open to the pain to let it heal and figure out what it means.”

It sounds like it’s important to move through it and remain open so that you don’t miss the opportunity to love again. I think sometimes as human beings, when we get hurt, we sort of want to shut ourselves off, put up that wall to protect ourselves. Sometimes we end up preventing the love that we need from actually entering our lives.

“Yeah, and if you just ignore it that’s not going to make it go away. That’s not going to help you heal. It won’t disappear when you encounter the next person who’s right for you. It will still be there, and you will have to deal with it one way or the other.”

That’s a good point. It essentially becomes the baggage you carry into the next relationship. When you were in the times of feeling heartbroken, I don’t know if you allowed yourself to cry or not, or if you got depressed, but how did you express those emotions and move through them in a productive way? Are you an artist, do you write, do you play music? What sort of outlet did you use?

“I would try to write. I think it was the easiest way for me to get my thoughts out of my head. It wasn’t something I was explicitly trying to do. There would just be these times when I would feel very overwhelmed. Running circles in my head. I felt like I needed to write down the thoughts that were brewing there to really be able to see them. I think getting them out of my head in physical form and being able to read them as sort of an observer helped me deal with them. I think writing is great, because you can do it anywhere, anytime; and it doesn’t matter if what you wrote yesterday was terrible, if it didn’t make any sense, because they’re just words, and you can always just keep writing them until they resonate with you and you get something out of them.”

Sounds like writing helps to gain another perspective on your feelings or emotions.

“Yeah, you think when you’re having these thoughts in your head that you understand them, but you really don’t. And writing them gives them their own voice, and lets you get a little perspective and a little distance, which helps to see what they actually are.”

Helping to identify them. Do you have a favorite quote or something that someone has said to you over the years that sticks with you that you would like to share?

“Yeah. I’m trying to remember the wording. It’s something along the lines of, ‘If you don’t change your direction, you’ll head up where you’re going.’”

What does that mean to you personally?

“It means it’s very easy to just let life happen to you, and just be sort of passive in the choices you make. And you’ll end up in a place where you won’t really understand how you got there. It just sort of happened. You’ll wake up one day and maybe you’ll be happy, maybe you won’t, but you’re there because you didn’t do anything to put yourself anywhere else. If in ten, twenty years you want to be somewhere else, then you have to change your direction to get there.”

Sounds like what you’re saying is you have to make choices in your life and take action to deliberately steer the course of direction you want your life to go in, whatever goals you aspire to reach.

“Right. And you can’t always control where you will end up, but you can sort of control where you won’t end up. Like I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next few years, but if I stop doing something that wasn’t working for me, I know it won’t be that. It won’t be there. If the next thing that happens to me is something that I’m not happy with, I can choose to move myself to somewhere else until I find that place that, experience the life, whatever it is, that feels like it’s where I’m supposed to be.”

Do you feel like you always have a choice in any situation to decide, yes or no, what direction to go in?

“I think for the most part you always have a choice. There are times when the choice isn’t obvious, it might not be a choice between something happening or not happening. Then the choice becomes how you interpret it, how you internalize it, and what you take from it. Things happen by chance all the time, and you can’t control that; but you can control your reaction to it, and whether you view it as a road block or an opportunity is completely up to you.”

How has it felt to share these experiences, thoughts, and feelings with me?

“It’s felt good. It’s nice to be able to talk about how you view the world in kind of an abstract way, but also in a way that kind of helps me reflect on my own life, my own choices, and again verbalizing those thoughts that go through my head. They sound one way in my head, and when I say them out loud, I can hear myself saying them, and I can hear them as their own entities and decide, ‘yeah, that’s a good idea,’ or ‘that’s a bad idea,’ or ‘that thought makes sense,’ or ‘that thought doesn’t make sense.’”

Do you think it’s possible that by sharing your experiences and feelings, you could be bringing someone else some hope or inspiration to continue to move forward on their own path?

“I hope so. I think anybody who is listening or reading, it’s not so important really what I have to say, but why or not what I’m doing by why I’m doing it. They might have a different perspective, and they’ll have a different path; but if they can take the idea that they’re in control of their future, then I hope that that gives them something useful for them.”

[heartsofstrangers]

What has been one of the most challenging things you’ve experienced or are currently experiencing?

“Coming out.”

Tell me about that.

“I always knew I was gay, or I always knew I was different, or something, I don’t know what. I didn’t really know gay was a thing for a while. And then once I learned it was a thing, I was like that’s definitely me, but it was always something that was never talked about. So I still always felt different, which is the case for a lot of people. I don’t know why I had a tough time with it. My family never said anything bad about gay people or anything like that.”

Did you grow up in a religious family?

“We weren’t really religious. My mom’s family was all Catholic, and we grew up going to CCD. I’m a confirmed Catholic, but I don’t believe in anything. It was just because that what we were supposed to do. I don’t think that’s what gave me a hard time. I’ve just always been a closed-off person, so I felt like I needed to keep that to myself.”

Was there a point when keeping it in started to have a negative impact on your life?

“Yeah, high school. I definitely began to shut everyone out. Most of my family because I was embarrassed or I didn’t want to embarrass them, even though I knew they wouldn’t be. I think I was more embarrassed. Probably still am. That’s why I blame everybody else.”

What do you mean by blame everybody else?

“For whenever I am angry or why I don’t necessarily feel comfortable.”

You mean comfortable in your own skin?

“Yeah. And then in high school I really shut people out. College, did a lot of drugs. Smoked a lot of weed. Probably still smoke too much weed. Anything to not have to think.”

Where does your mind go to when you’re thinking?

“Just loneliness, I guess. Yeah, just feeling alone.”

How long have you felt alone?

“As long as I can remember, really. It’s just always been something I’ve had to hide.”

The fact that you feel alone?

“I think the fact that I felt I had to hide that I was gay forced me to keep everything in, which now that I keep everything in makes me feel alone, or lonely.”

Is there a fear attached to letting it out? What would happen if you let it out?

“I don’t know. I have a fear of people leaving me. That probably makes little sense. If I do share something, then maybe it’ll force someone to not want to be in my life.”

Has that been something you’ve experience at some point in your life, where you’ve shared something personal or vulnerable and the person has left?

“I definitely had people just walk for what seems to be no reason. Growing up, I was always moving around, so I never really had a lot of friends until I met the friends I have now, and they’ve been my friends ever since. I just have a fear of people leaving, I don’t know why.”

It’s ironic, because it seems like your fear of people leaving is the very thing that is isolating you and making you feel lonely.

“Yeah, definitely keeps me from making too many new friends, because my mind says what’s the point? It’s just going to end eventually.”

You mentioned you moved around a lot, was that in your childhood?

“Yeah. We moved nine times before I was in first grade, because of my dad’s job. He’s retired now, but he worked for a big corporation. They would buy a smaller company and he would go in, basically rip it apart, and then we would move onto the next place.”

It must have been difficult to start at so many new schools and try to make friends.

“Definitely making friends, because it’s already not easy. Especially for a kid—or maybe it’s easier for a kid.”

What was high school like for you?

“It was pretty normal. I tried my best to seem straight. Trying to talk differently, dress how I thought you were supposed to dress. How a straight person was supposed to dress. Pretend to like girls and talk about girls. Stuff I never really cared about. I just forced myself to be fake, and I think that’s why I have no interest in it now.”

When did you recognize that you were attracted to guys?

“I want to say probably middle school, late middle school. When people started talking about crushes or actually dating, middle school dating, whatever that is. I thought guys would just pick a girl and that’s who their crush was.”

Did you feel pressure from your parents to have a girlfriend and to be involved with someone?

“No, never really. I mean, they’ve always asked, ‘Are you dating anybody?’ that type of thing. But never why aren’t you dating anybody or stuff like that. No, they never really forced any opinions on me, which is why it baffles me that I just have such a hard time with it. I didn’t come from a house where that should have been the case.”

Sounds like you must have had some expectation of yourself that you felt like weren’t meeting.

“I guess I set higher standards, higher bars for myself.”

Did you think you could be straight if you wanted to, or if you tried hard enough?

“Yeah, I thought I could fake it. I feel that it’s that thought that drove me more into depression and separating myself from everybody.”

Do you remember what that depression felt like?

“Miserable. You don’t want to talk to anybody, you don’t want to move, like get up or leave. It was just ‘I’m going to be at home and I’m going to smoke this weed and I’m just going to sit here and watch TV because that’s what’s comfortable right now.’ Then that just became all the time.”

Did your parents show any concern that you were kind of slipping into the shadows?

“Yeah, they did, and then whenever someone asked me if I needed help, I tend to just push them away, and go farther into my corner, which I am working on. They definitely noticed and even that was painful for me, because I knew they were wanting to help, but I wouldn’t let them or I didn’t want them to. My mom still, it’s kind of painful to see her, because she knows I am still depressed and she doesn’t know how to help. It kills me that I make her feel that way.”

So even though you’re trying to hide something she can see it.

“Yeah, and even now that I am not even hiding anything, she still knows whenever I am depressed, and that’s not what I am trying to hide.”

How are you coping with it these days? Any differently?

“I am definitely better with the whole gay thing. Just time helped. I would say I am still depressed, but not like how I was in the past. Just time and learning how to be comfortable with myself, or trying to learn. Every day helps a little bit.”

So you’re depressed, you’re isolating, you’re kind of comforting yourself in the privacy of your bedroom, numbing yourself with TV, in high school smoking pot, parents are concerned you’re not really letting them get involved. You go on to college. What does that look like?

“Pretty much a continuation of what that was in high school. I do more drugs, probably harder drugs than just weed. Coke. Molly. Acid. Shrooms. Anything to get my mind off of whatever. Ativan. Xanax. Stuff like that. When I felt like I needed something to be around people and have fun, or for people to see me as fun, because I am a pretty quiet person. I felt like people saw me as boring, so I needed that extra whatever. And then when I was on that stuff, I would talk to anybody and have a great time, but then the next day I would be in my room again.”

That must have been quite a roller coaster.

Yeah, I guess. At the same time, I was like every gay guy goes through this, so I just felt like an idiot for being so down about it, and that’s what got me more depressed. There’s so many other people that go through it too, why would I feel sorry for myself on that?”

So on top of being depressed, you’re shaming yourself and judging yourself for feeling the way you did? Did that help?

“No, not at all.”

Were you able to get through college?

“I did, and I even graduated #1 within my college/school.”

How’d you get through it?

“Just alone, for the most part.

Were the any moments where you felt like giving up? Were you able to let someone in?

“Thought about giving up, but I felt like at the same time, while I would have wanted to, I just always went back to my mom. I could never do that to my mom, so I guess that’s what kept me.”

Sounds like you have a connection with your mother.

“Well, growing up with my dad’s work he traveled a lot. He was a great father when he was around and provided everything. We had everything in the world, but for the most part it was me, my sister, and my mom.

So at what point did you reveal that you were gay or felt you were gay?

“I was a senior in college when I told my parents. I was home. We had just had dinner and I just felt like I had to say it right then. When I was saying it I cried and then they cried. Then they were like yeah we had an idea and all that, and it was fine obviously. I was pissed at myself afterwards for not coming out sooner. I was just pissed at myself for that.”

Sounds like you’re pretty hard on yourself.

“Yeah, definitely.”

How did it feel to let that out and to cry and have to your parents cry?

“It was huge.”

Must have felt like quite a release.

“Definitely. And even building up to that, I came out to my sister beforehand, before them, about a year before. She had a gay roommate. I knew she’d be fine with it. So that was kind of like my first sense of feeling comfortable with it was when I came out to her.”

Had you had experiences with men leading up to that?

“Just like Grindr hookups or something like that. No real dating or stuff like that.”

Sounds like a lot of physical transactions.

“Mostly.”

Did you find any sort of emotional connection with anyone at any point?

“At one point, with one person and then at the time I wasn’t out, so I pulled away before it went too far.”

How about friends-wise? Did you have any friends that you could be emotionally vulnerable with?

“I’m sure that I could have, but I wasn’t. It’s just not ever who I was. I mean the type to open up, then if I did that secret, if it is a secret that’s out there and then if they were to disappear then who knows. It’s that type of thing too, I guess.”

So you’re a senior in college, you have already come out to your sister a year prior, you’ve had some experience with men, you had a history of using drugs and alcohol to make yourself feel more comfortable to not get trapped in your thoughts and to feel accepted. What happens next?

“I don’t know. Trying to figure it out. I just need to be more open to talking to people. I think that’ll help me. Trying to say yes to more experiences. Leave my apartment every now and then.”

Is that your safe place?

“Yeah, definitely.”

How did you make the friends that you have today?

“Most of them have been my friends for 20 years. I don’t really know. Just over time they’ve come into my life and the good ones have stayed.”

Do you feel like they see you and accept you for who you are? Can you tell them if you feel like you’re drowning, or if there is something weighing on your heart?

“Yeah. I could definitely tell them that, not sure I do but they are that type of people.”

So at this point if your life, now, how are you coping with still feeling depressed and uncomfortable in your own skin sometimes?

“Well there are still days when I feel like when I feel like I need a . . . I don’t do hard drugs anymore, but I still smoke and kind of curl up in my room and do nothing. Separate myself but in a healthier way. I do try to see a therapist as much as I can, although it’s usually just a staring contest.”

Really?

“I need someone to ask me questions. I can’t just talk.”

Did you choose to see a therapist, or was that something that was encouraged?

“It was encouraged, but it’s a choice now.”

Who encouraged it?

“My parents, mostly. Doctors. I think trying not to separate myself is the biggest thing going forward: like stay in the group, go out on Friday, talk to people. I guess even if it is small talk.”

Sometimes it can be helpful when it comes to talking to new people to try engaging yourself in things you find interesting so that you’re around people that you, hopefully, have a shared interest with—something in common—and that can often create some equanimity. Even the feelings of loneliness are a commonality that every human being has: experiencing loneliness, that kind of hot aching loneliness. You never know when looking at our social media feeds.

“I know, it doesn’t help anything. Yeah, I’m surprised more people don’t talk about loneliness.”

It’s a driving factor in addiction, depression. Even diseases, they say there are studies that show people who are lonely are more sick and die earlier. The same is true for people who are isolated, because you can be lonely and still be surrounded by people.

“Right.”

But also there are people who are isolated, who are not around people, who are experiencing loneliness as well on top of it. Do you feel like the age we live today, with social media and all these different ways we can connect with people in the blink of an eye from all over the world, are helpful as tools to connect with people and to create relationships?

“I think being able to connect with people is a good thing. Where I think it has a negative impact is the pictures. You only see the perfect picture, so that’s what you think their life is and that’s what you try and get your life to be, which never works, so it’s only cause for disappointment. It has its good and bad.”

Have you learned anything about yourself over the years through this process?

“Probably. I don’t know what. I wish I could say that I was a stronger person.”

Why can’t you say that?

“I don’t know, I just don’t think I am. I feel like I let my depression defeat me a lot or I let it win rather than working through it, and talking to somebody or going out, or occupying my time. I just get lost in a bad thought and crawl up into a ball. I think strength would be being able to move past that.”

I consider strength the willingness to lean into it and to acknowledge it. Strength isn’t necessarily that we just pull up our boot straps and carry on. Strength is developed through acknowledging that there is a wound or there is pain to begin with, to be with it and to feel it.

“That makes sense.”

It takes strength. Does it comfort you at all to know that there are others who share the same feelings and emotions, even though they may have different reasons?

“Yeah, definitely. It just goes back to . . . it would be nice if people were just upfront about it.”

When I asked if I could interview you, you really didn’t hesitate at all to say yes. Knowing what I know now, it’s a pretty brave thing for you to do, to communicate on this level when you’re inclined to keep things to yourself.

“I was trying to say yes to more.”

How is that changing your life, if at all?

“Well, I am just starting. I would love to see, but so far I’m happy when I say yes. I think it’s a good thing.”

Is there any advice you would offer to your younger self, maybe if your self today could have a sit and chat with your 10-year-old self, some words of wisdom, comfort, or support that you would might offer your 10-year-old self?

“It’s perfectly okay to be yourself. Just be who you are, because every time I do something embarrassing, I’m embarrassed, but nobody else notices. That’s the biggest lesson: just stop being so embarrassed to do anything, or worried about being embarrassed, or what other people think.”

At the end of the day, the most important thing is what you think of yourself. You’re the one who has to live with you, and there’s no way to know what other people think of you. It’s actually not really any of our business to know what other people think of us. And the truth is everyone is worrying that the same thing: how they are being perceived or what someone else is thinking about them. It’s really not even about us. Is there a piece of advice or a word of wisdom, or a song lyric, or a quote from a book, or a meme, or something that someone has said to you that sticks with you that you would like to share?

“Can I think about it and go back to it? I don’t know off the top of my head.”

We can come back to that. How has it felt to talk about these feelings and experiences with me today?

“Nerve-racking but good. It’s not something I ever really do. It’s good to say it out loud. I think it’s something I should do more. Yeah, definitely nervous, even though I didn’t hesitate to say yes.”

Do you think it’s possible that by sharing your feelings and experiences with me today, someone listening to this or reading this may be able to benefit and know that they are not alone, gain some hope and inspiration?

“Maybe a little bit. I didn’t really offer any solutions but, I guess knowing that you’re not alone in that sense of the word.”

[heartsofstrangers]

What has been one of the most challenging things that you’ve experienced or are currently experiencing?

“Currently I’m reexamining myself as an artist, as a photographer, and trying to gain the confidence to show my work and to feel that it’s valid, and to sort of revisit, or visit for the first time, why I do what I do as a portrait photographer.”

What inspired you to get into photography?

“My dad had a darkroom when I was growing up, so I was exposed to photography. My parents bought me cameras as I was growing up. I was an oil painter and a printmaker, and I always took art classes. I always took pictures. My senior year of college, the photography department started up where I was going to school, and I took the class and liked it—I loved it. I just needed more formal training, so I continued my education at New England School of Photography. That was almost thirty years ago. That was my foray into photography.”

How did you come across your niche, so to speak, of doing portraits?

“When I was younger, I always took pictures of my younger cousins, so I was always taking pictures of children, even as a child—I was a child myself—and they were always good. As I got older, I dated an actor who liked having his picture taking, and then I lived with a bunch of actors, so they needed tons of pictures taken. I was really good in portrait class when I went to school, so I went with it.

“It was always people I knew, but in recent years—not recent years—in this tech age, I’ve explored photographing people I don’t know, and it’s been a way for me to get to know people without really having to go through the traditional channels, like going to a bar, meeting at a party, or having to actually sit over coffee and talk. It’s a way for me to get to know people fairly intimately, and it’s definitely been a way for me to have a piece of people—which is a little embarrassing, but it’s true, whether it be a portrait or . . . Sometimes I’ll go to parties and I’ll hide behind my camera and just take pictures all night. It’s a way for me to have a piece of people.”

What do you mean by “a piece of people”?

“I have a representation of who they were at the time we were together. That’s sort of proof that we were together—see, we’re friends—and . . . I don’t know. Each person is different. Some people I enjoy having a part of them, a portrait of them; others, I couldn’t care less. The experience isn’t always great, but the time that we spent together is documented for me. I know, for them, it’s different, because I’ve run into models who don’t remember me as much because they were with me for an hour, whereas I have their face embedded in my brain because I’m editing, I’m studying anyway. It’s an interesting experience. In the world of social media, where there’s so much proof of the people that I’ve worked with . . . I don’t know.”

You mentioned at parties, sometimes, hiding behind a camera. Do you experience social anxiety?

“Oh yeah. Yeah.”

How does the camera help you with that?

“It’s sort of the same thing: It’s an excuse to approach people versus actual conversation, having to answer questions or having to listen to people talk about their children—no, scratch that, that’s off the record—talk about their lives—no. I guess it’s more me talking about myself. I sometimes will look at a restaurant, and look around at people and hear them talking, and I’ll say to my husband, ‘What on earth are they talking about?’ When you see people that are just blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, and I’ve always wondered: How do people do that? It’s the same way at a party, even though it can be a bunch of people I know. I don’t have the gift of gab in that situation. One-on-one I do, but not at a party; I get too tense. The camera is definitely something where the conversation is brief, and rather than saying, ‘Oh, if you’ll excuse me, I need another drink’, ‘I need to use the restroom,’ it’s ‘Oh, if you’ll excuse me, I see someone else over there to look at who’s more interesting than you.’ I don’t know. It’s during a wedding.”

So it gives you an opportunity to float freely around social situations with a purpose, it sounds like.

“Right. Yeah. And I end up leaving with the documentation that everyone’s gonna want to see, so I get even more attention. Let’s see Paul’s pictures from the party; post them on Facebook and tag me; all that stuff. But I do enjoy it.”

You mentioned growing up with your father and the darkroom. What was your childhood experience like?

“Oh boy. I had a wonderful family. My siblings are fantastic and we’re good friends. I did, however, have problems making friends outside of my house. I wasn’t sporty; I was a gay child, and I got picked on for it, and even the people I was growing up with in my own neighborhood—once you hit a certain age, I was shunned. The neighborhood kids didn’t want to hang out anymore, so I was a loner. It’s hard.

“It’d be difficult in this world of Facebook and Snapchat. I can’t imagine what it’s like for a child who’s lonely to live in this sort of climate. I would be devastated to see things that were going on and not be included. So it was hard, but, you know, I managed.”

What sort of impact did it have on you?

“I think it made me a person who has difficulty talking to people at a party. I’m paranoid. There are a lot of things, actually, that I notice that I do that are reactions to certain parts of the way I was treated as a kid. I always assume the worst in people. I always assume that people aren’t going to like me. I’m very uncomfortable around men, straight men especially, assuming that they’re going to make fun of me.

“It’s very strange as a 47-year-old, but I definitely noticed it recently, this summer after the class that I took that I’m sort of revisiting. I just am very aware of people and my fear of people, which is unfortunate, but I assume exploring it is the first step to helping get over it or accepting it. I don’t know. What was the question?”

How has it impacted you?

“I think a lot. I think too much. I worry. I worry what people think.”

How do you navigate your way through that, your paranoia or assuming people are going to hurt you or not accept you in some way?

“Sometimes I catch myself. This is an awful example, but this happened yesterday, while I was here. I was leaving the swimming area to go to the highway to walk to where I was parked. As I was walking down the highway, which isn’t incredibly safe, a big truck was coming towards me, and my immediate fear was that someone in the truck was going to yell out something derogatory, or anything: ‘Faggot! Get out of the road’, knowing where I had just come from: a gay swimming hall. I caught myself and thought, ‘Oh my God,’ because that would happen as a child: A school bus would go by, and I’d get spat on, or ‘Faggot’, ‘Fairy’, and it fascinates me a little bit because I’m seeing it, I recognize it, versus maybe two months ago or in the past, I would have just felt afraid but not really acknowledged it, just waiting for the truck to go by, but now I’m like, ‘This stuff did impact me.’ I think it’s good that I recognize it.

“When I’m driving, I’m a very defensive driver, and I think that also stems from when I was younger. I learned to just calm down. People aren’t tailgating you because you’re gay, or because you’re someone they dislike; they’re just bad drivers. Stuff like that. So I, hopefully, am giving people the benefit of the doubt and opening myself up a little bit more, and not being afraid, because it’s a waste of time.”

Were there times when that anxiety was unmanageable or overwhelming?

“When I was in college, I didn’t sleep, I was on medication. This was the early ’90’s. I had panic attacks every night, and it was horrible. Horrible. The medication at the time—I don’t feel I need medication now, nor do I want it—I think at the time it was sort of a beginning. Doctors were testing out different types of drugs, and at the time it was Xanax, and I just remember having a panic attack on Xanax and it felt like it was a panic attack but in slow motion, and it’s like, this is not helping at all, because it just made it last longer. So honestly, the panic attacks ended when I was—I don’t know, I guess I was out of the relationship I was in. I don’t know if it had anything to do with him personally, but they subsided. I’ll still get one occasionally, but nothing like that. Ugh, it was awful. Awful.”

What does a panic attack feel like?

“To me, it feels like I’m in real life and things start to get faster and faster, and then keep going, and get faster and faster and faster. Nothing is really changing, but in my mind, everything is sped up. I also feel like my brain—or my mind, not my brain—is being held by this thread to my sanity, and at any second, that thread could snap and I could just sort of go into a black hole. When I did have the panic attacks, I was in therapy, and one of the things was breathing exercises, breath in, all that stuff. It felt like things got fast and fast and fast, when there was a side of me that could see that everything was still. Nothing was moving or going fast.”

What are some of the techniques that helped you? You mentioned breathing. You mentioned Xanax didn’t really help, just slowed it down.

“I don’t remember. It’s sort of thing I felt like I just had to go through, and little by little, it went away. Maybe I got used to it. It was probably just breathing. Especially at night, I would wake up and gasp, in complete panic. I don’t want to say I outgrew them, but I managed them. I don’t remember. I just remember, little by little, it subsided. I felt fine.

“I still get them occasionally. I noticed I get them when I’m hungover. I hated that. Especially if I was driving on the highway the next day after drinking too much. It wasn’t like I was—I don’t think—drinking more than anyone else, but it was a symptom, it was something my body chemistry was just like, ‘No.’ You’re dehydrated. Whatever alcohol does. It’s a depressant. It would make me depressed, it would make me dehydrated, and it would give me a panic attack. So that definitely changed, because I don’t want to have those anymore, where I can place what the cause was, especially alcohol. Beyond that, I guess I kind of grew out of it.”

Did people in your life know you were experiencing these attacks, and how did they respond to them, or to you?

“The first one I had, I felt like I had no sense of control. I was with my partner at the time, and I just flung out of bed. I felt like the whole world was spinning. He was a very nurturing partner, at the time: ‘What can I do?’ But it was the kind of thing where any sort of talking, ‘You need to shut up. I can’t talk.’ Or, ‘What does it feel like? Tell me what you’re going through.’ And you can’t. It’s sort of beyond that. Describing it made it worse; it sort of validated it. I think my parents knew. I mean, I was in college, and I did see a therapist who prescribed the drugs, so he knew. I don’t remember. It was a long time ago.

It sounds like your peers who picked on you in school had a very traumatizing effect on you that has carried on into your adult years. It’s funny, because—well, it’s actually not funny—there’s a saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me,” but names and words do hurt, and they do last. They become part of that audio tape that plays in our brains long after we’ve removed ourselves from those situations. What were some of the events that stand out in your brain that really had an impact on you? You mentioned being spat on from the bus and being called names.

“There were periods with every school year. Once I hit fourth grade is when it all started, because I feel like, at that age, little boys have to start becoming little men, and I was not. In junior high, changing in the locker room, eighth grade, there would be a group of boys on the other side of the lockers that would spit over and I’d be covered in spit. It was disgusting, absolutely disgusting. They’d pee on me. It was awful. It was so ridiculous.

“I used to always get sick during gym class, and I’d end up at the nurse, and then finally the gym teacher, Mr. Hill, pulled me in his office and asked me what was going on. I couldn’t tell him. I remember saying, ‘I don’t feel good.’ I think he was trying to get it out of me, but I just did not feel safe. Who would want to go into a locker room when they’re getting pissed on, and spat on? Just horrible, horrible kids. Really. Those were problematic, and that was when I made the decision that I didn’t want to go to the public school anymore. I just wanted to start over, and I knew I had the option. I went to private school, even though I told everyone my parents were making me. I needed out.”

Was private school any better?

“The physical abuse was gone. I didn’t get pushed into lockers, I didn’t get peed on. Actually, once I did, Freddy Wallace, this little shit, he knew it was wrong. I got picked on like twice, and I remember this one time, this woman who is still a friend to this day, thirty years after the fact, a guy picked on me, and she told him to knock him off, and she was a cheerleader, so he kind of looked at her and went, ‘All right.’

”But yeah, it stopped. I was unable to talk. I couldn’t socialize. I was too afraid, too damaged by this point. I did join the drama club, and I was on the swim team, but socially, every weekend I was alone. It was hard. I knew it wasn’t healthy. I knew I wanted to be around people but was afraid, but it was better than the alternative of being in the public schools in my hometown and dealing with the bullshit that happened there. I felt safe. Safer.”

Did you parents know what was happening?

“Yeah. My mother taught at the junior high I went to, and they didn’t know what to do. They didn’t know the full extent, no; I didn’t tell them I was peed on, that I was basically gay-bashed. How do you admit that to your parents? Which was why when I said I wanted to go into another school, they were like, ‘Okay, let’s get you out of here.’ My parents were very non-confrontational back then, and I think it was just easier to say a prayer. I’m sure that’s what my mother would do, say a prayer for me that I would be okay. I don’t know. I don’t believe in that, so whatever.”

Were things better when you got to college? Had you come out?

“I went to college for a year before I came out of the closet, but I did make friends. I drank way too much. I pretended to be straight, but who the fuck believed that? I would hang out with this woman who lived in a different living area, and I would come home to my dorm room and the people on my floor thought I was hooking up, and I just went with it. I drank a lot, which was not good.

“The summer after my freshman year, I fell into a group of people, and we all worked at the mall together. Three of them came out of the closet, and it was sort of my wake-up call that okay, this can be done, and I’m gonna do—plus I was completely in love with one of the guys, and I couldn’t hold it. I had to tell someone. I was 19.”

What was that experience like for you, coming out?

“Overall, good. I had good friends. There were people who let it be humorous because I was flamboyant and, quote-unquote, ‘obviously gay,’ which doesn’t bother me, but they made me laugh at myself. ‘Oh really, Paul, you’re gay? Glad you finally found out.’ They were good friends, a few from high school, a few from college.

“I was in the art department, and I started hanging out with the guy I had the big crush on ’cause he was coming out, and he wanted to just go full-force. He wanted to date. He wanted to have sex. Not with me, unfortunately. I still was paralyzed by stuff that had already happened, thinking that people would like me, but it certainly was easier to not have the element of being gay-bashed by other gays. Now it’s just being judged for my haircut, stuff like that. Or music I listen to—that’s always a big thing when you’re 19.

“My parents didn’t take it well. My sister came out of the closet about a year before I did, and that was very damaging for my mother. It was an angry period as far as my relationship goes with my mom.

“I dated. I was pretty much married, my first relationship. Had I had more fun the way the guy did, I don’t think I would be what I am today, obviously not, sleeping around, or dating a lot. I had one person who made a beeline for me. I was flattered, thrilled, and I went for it. I said, ‘Okay, you like me? Then we should date. You like me? We should move in together.’ And then that unraveled. And then I did it again for 12 years. ‘You like me?’

“But my parents came around. I had my sister as an ally.”

Were your parents religious? You mentioned your mother praying.

“Catholic.”

Catholic, okay.

“My coming out was ’88, so being gay back then was AIDS. The two were synonymous, and it was scary. We weren’t educated. So for my mom, when she did finally acknowledge it, she said, ‘Does AIDS mean anything to you?’ To us, 25 or 30 years later, it seems so foolish, because AIDS should mean something to everybody, but back then, that’s what it meant to be gay: You would die of AIDS. So that was difficult, but it was an education.”

Have your parents since turned around?

“Oh yeah. Yeah.”

What was the catalyst for that? Was there one?

“I remember when my mom—I don’t know what year it was—there were two events that I saw in my mom. She was a hospice volunteer, and she was with this one guy for a long time as far as hospice care goes, Herbie. I really feel that her experiencing the deaths—I mean, she lost parents, but I think—she’s never talked about it—it was such a hands-on thing that she kind of kept her religion to herself, respected me and my sister. I started dating someone new who was sort of welcomed into our family, more so than the first boyfriend. David was sort of —he made money. He lived by the books, so I think my mother was relieved: ‘Oh, he’ll be taken care of.’

“But then also my sister, who was in a relationship, adopted three children, and I definitely think that changed my mom, because those kids are just as much her grandchildren as my biological nieces and nephews. They were the first grandchildren, and I really think it was a wake-up—I mean, my mother didn’t need to be woken up at that point, but it kept her going on the path of loving her children and not giving a shit anymore about the whole gay thing. Yeah, it would be nice, but I think she finally saw us as just normal people.

“Since then, I went through a divorce and I started seeing someone new, and when my new partner and I got married—I’d never been officially married before because it wasn’t legal—but this was it. This was the real deal. My parents were there, and I think they’re thrilled with my partner and my husband. My mom is one of my best friends. She’s come around, and I think she’s lucky to have two gay children, because I think her life would be somewhat limited, not as exposed to people and lifestyles. I hate that word, but by her having two gay children, her life has opened up. Again, at the end of the day, there are three children that my sister is raising, and those kids were meant to be in my mom’s life, and my mom, I think, knows that too.”

You mentioned a class or something that you took this summer that helped you sort of reflect on some of the trauma, maybe, that you still carry. Talk about that.

“Having to examine my work as portrait photographer is what the class has forced me to do. I was afraid before the class that the reasoning, which I do believe has to do with my childhood and the stuff I went through. Now my portraiture is a means to get to know people; it is connected. I felt that, as a 47-year-old, it was somewhat trivial, that there are more important things in life. Get over it. Live your life. Move on.

“But I’ve accepted, or I’m beginning to accept, the idea that my artwork is an important part of who I am, and that where it came from is important as well. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, and it’s fascinating to realize—I mean, I’m not obsessed by it or anything, but I do find it important to, as an artist, and to understand other artists, revisit the things that made you who you are.

“So that’s what the class has done, and it was very important for me to talk about it and be validated by the other students but also the teacher, who is someone I have so much respect for and I admire. He said, and I knew this about him, that his work has a similar path. His work is about his relationship with his dad and growing up gay, and exploring that for himself. It really made me realize that it’s okay, and it’s necessary.

“The bullshit of the world, the Donald Trumps or whoever, is still going to exist, and there are going to be horrible things that happen, but maybe, maybe, my work will help someone who either is experiencing similar stuff, and maybe it will change my interaction with the people I work with. I don’t know; I haven’t gotten there yet. Or who I choose to work with. I think sometimes I choose people and think, ‘Well, this will get me on the popularity path for sure,’ but then I realize that it’s such a boring road. It’s been fun and unnerving, but necessary, and I’m glad I did it.”

So where do you find yourself now in your life and your career of photography and your relationships?

“I think I’m still going to keep working the way I work, because I enjoy it. I like the way I work, I like the way I approach people. I definitely like trusting my gut. Sometimes I’m wrong about people I choose to have in my life forever, but sometimes I’m right, and the experience is wonderful.

“What I want to do is focus on those, though, because a lot of times I look at my portfolio and body of work and think, ‘I have a fantastic picture of this gentleman I photographed, but I know that it doesn’t really mean anything to him.’ Versus a year ago, I brought a gentleman here and we did this series of photos. It was such a nice experience. It was definitely give-and-take, whereas the other model was more about, ‘You’re going to make me look good, right?’ What the fuck does that mean?

“So I want to focus on the people who give me something, too, who are part of the whole experience versus just being a model. It’s tough, because there are certain people that you photograph, and they create good exposure. They’re hot, or they’re sexy, and people like that, but I really want to focus on people who might not necessarily feel that way about themselves. Let them experience a photoshoot, or let them be the center of attention, not worrying about how they look.

“It’s a tough call, because one side is business and the other is personal. Social media, if I post a picture of a hot guy in the ocean with a nice ass sticking out versus a slightly overweight woman whom I find fascinating and beautiful, the attention goes to the hot ass. I know that, but I don’t always want to have to go there. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s fun, but it’s been done before. Where does it lead? What’s the point?”

So what makes your photography of males, or anyone, different than what has been done before? What do you think makes your work different from someone else’s?

“I don’t know if I can be the one to answer that. I know for me, it’s different because it’s me, I’m the one creating it, I’m the one looking, I’m the one sort of immortalizing this person who’s in front of me. The feedback I get sometimes from people, like in this class I took this summer, this woman said to me, ‘There’s something about your portraits that you capture the spirit of the subject. And I’m like, ‘Ah, wow, great.’ I’m trying to think, off the top of my head, of a contemporary who works the way I do, but I don’t know anyone who works the way I do, who will hit people up on Scruff and meet for a photoshoot. That’s how we sort of connected. But using social media as a way to meet people for subjects. I certainly know of other photographers who photograph people, but I just think my work is a little more personal, a little more intimate. I hope collaborative.

“I’m thinking of one photographer in particular whom I met in P-Town last year. His work is lovely, and it’s sexy. We’ve definitely photographed the same people, but there’s something sort of generic. It’s all about the sex with his pictures, whereas mine, I’m more drawn to eyes and what a person’s thinking. There’s sex in my pictures. If it’s there, it’s there. There’s no escaping it, but I want more than that. I want the viewer to have an opinion of the subject beyond, ‘Oh, he’s hot.’ And I think I do that. I hope.”

Sounds like you’re looking for more depth than just a hot subject.

“Yeah. I’ve found that I would sometimes pursue certain subjects because they were hot, because it’s fun, but some of them have just been the biggest disappointment. No substance. I mean, good exposure online, because of their hotness, but recently I did a photoshoot of the guy out at Herring Cove, this gentleman Eric. He’s adorable. He’s so sexy, but so nice. I felt so comfortable with him and we worked so well together. When that happens, it’s like, ‘Wow, this is fun.’ But it doesn’t work with everyone. Same with any job I have. Some brides I click with, others I don’t.”

It sounds like photography is a lot about connecting with the subject and connecting with your audience as well.

“Mhmm.”

What are some of the most valuable things you’ve learned over the years, having grown up repressed or bullied in a lot of ways, having found a way to communicate your message through photography?

“I’ve learned to make photography my own. When I used to interview for weddings, I would tell the story of when I was younger, I would go into my grandmother’s basement and see her old photographs and be really entranced by seeing my grandmother as a nine-year-old in Dorchester, or to see my mom receiving her First Communion, just old pictures. I loved it, loved it, loved it. I would say to potential wedding clients, if they would ask me why I was a wedding photographer, why I’m a photographer in general now, is the idea that someday, fifty years from now, no matter what the picture is, or if it’s a wedding album, that some kid fifty years from now could come across a series of my pictures and be so fascinated by the people in them, whether it be, ‘Wow, they look so 2010,’ through the fashion, or . . .

“I don’t think I’ll be around to fully understand what my photography could do. I’m hopeful it brings people, when I’m gone, a sense of people who are here now—not that everyone is a fan of that, but I was. I know there are other people who are as well. So I know that I am creating that sort of legacy for other people to enjoy, whether it be my nieces and nephews now, or their children.

“I guess I just keep learning to accept that my true feelings toward my art are valid. That was one thing I used to say all the time, and I didn’t always believe it; it got me jobs, though. I remember one bride was really touched by it, and just thought that was beautiful. I agreed; it is beautiful, but not everyone sees it, but I still say it, to this day, because it’s true.”

What have you learned about yourself through these experiences?

“I believe I have a good instinct with photography, especially in this day and age, when kids can have an iPhone and you can take pictures of anything and have it recorded. I believe I have an internal instinct as to what works—lighting, compositionally—the stuff that art is looked at for. I’ve learned that about myself, and I’ve learned to let my instinct take over. A lot of shoots, I’ll say, ‘I’m overthinking; I’m overthinking,’ and as soon as I do that, I let it go.

“I’ve learned I’m funny, that I can get along with people, that I’m helpful for people. Growing up, I don’t know if it was the gay thing; I don’t want to say I was asexual, but I wasn’t super sexual, and I was afraid of that side of me. I’ve definitely embraced sexuality and had fun with it. It’s different. It’s such a spectrum of what that means. Certain things I’ll take pictures of, I’m like, ‘I’d do that,’ whereas even fifteen years ago, ‘I’m not doing that.’ Now I’m just like, ‘Fuck it, I’ll do it.’ I’ve learned to have fun with my work, and it has been fun, almost every time. It’s always fun. We as photographers are lucky that we have this medium. It’s an accessible medium, and it’s a fun medium.”

How is your self-esteem today, many years, many decades after having that damaged and crushed by being bullied and picked on?

It’s always in need of repair. I’m still not there completely. I try not to care as much. I embrace my solitude. I think as, someone who was younger, teenagers, twenties, even thirties, there are expectations of what you’re supposed to do socially, how many friends you’re supposed to have, and that is what defines you, but now as someone in my late forties, I very much enjoy being alone, and it’s okay. My second partner David once said, ‘I always had this panic because there’s always a big party going on somewhere in the world, and I was afraid because I wasn’t invited.’ That was sort of this air that I had about myself, but then my new husband basically pointed out, ‘But if you were invited, you wouldn’t go.’ I’m like, ‘You’re right. I wouldn’t go.’ I realized that just because you’re invited to the party doesn’t mean anything.

“I learned to embrace my own company, and I like it. I have tons of JPEG files to edit. I’m happy being alone and not to quote Marilyn Monroe, but she once said, to paraphrase, I don’t mind being alone; I just hate being lonely. When I was younger, I was definitely alone and I was lonely. Now I’m alone lot, but I’m never lonely, ever. There are people in my life I can call upon, and it’s a different life.”

What advice would you have offered to yourself as an adolescent? If the adult Paul now could somehow whisper some message of hope or advice into that child’s ear, what would it be?

“Not to worry so much. Being alone doesn’t have to mean that you’re lonely, or that you will be lonely. Through most of my childhood and, again, in my twenties, I remember this sense of panic over certain situations, and I don’t think I’m the only one who lives this way, but we sort of make life out to be like a movie: There’s a beginning, there’s a middle, and there’s an end. I think my junior high years, the beginning, the getting picked on; the middle, getting spat on and beaten on; but in the end, it was me being free and going off to a new school, but there was no end. Life keeps going, and I think when I realized that the idea of, not to sound cliché or quote Dan Savage, but it gets better, and it does get better if you believe it can. I would tell myself, ‘It will get better.’ Don’t take things so seriously. Embrace yourself as an artist, which I wish I had done at a younger age, not just someone who’s blessed by God. I think that’s what I’d say.”

You’ve already mentioned a couple of quotes, Marilyn Monroe and Dan Savage. Is there a particular quote that resonates with you, or a bit of advice someone has given to you over the years that you reflect on often?

“I’m trying to think of something profound, like the speaker at my graduation or something, but no, I think I just gather stuff over the years. The older I get, words like that mean so much more than they did when I was younger; they didn’t quite resonate. Having Marilyn Monroe as someone you quote is a little tragic, because you know . . . but yeah, nothing in particular.”

Is there any other quote that you’d like to share in this interview that you like?

“No. No, I don’t know.”

How about a song lyric?

“A song lyric? Oh goodness. I don’t know. The songs I’ve been listening to since the class . . . A lot of times, I’ll create slideshows in my head of my work, sort of like a music video, so I’ve been thinking about stuff from when I was younger, so the songs I’m listening to are from that era. I’ve created music videos to one song, the Cars, Drive: ‘Who’s gonna drive you home tonight?’ Always thought that was a cheesy song, but I listen to it and I think, oh my God, I remember it was released in ’86. That was a very difficult junior year of high school.

“No, I don’t know. I don’t really.”

What does that song mean to you, besides the nostalgia of the year?

“Well, the lyrics I think are about: ‘You can’t go on thinking nothing’s wrong. Who’s gonna drive you home tonight?’ For me, it was about who I was going to be with. Back then, I would stay after school, and I lived so far from the school, and I had to find someone to drive me home, but that’s a little too literal, but now that I’m older: ‘Who’s gonna pick you up when you fall?’ ‘Who’s gonna hold you down when you shake?’ And in my head, I have a slideshow of images I’ve taken and especially with the self-portrait series, just me chasing after people. Who’s gonna comfort me? Again, very literal. But I think it’s okay to take art and enhance the drama, a little bit. So, the point being, these are lyrics I’ve been listening to.

“I’m really into the song, which I really love but don’t want to use in the slideshows, Oh Father by Madonna. The song is definitely about the relationship she has with her father, but for me, it’s about my relationship with God and men in general. In men, period. ‘You can’t hurt me now. I got away from you.’ There are lyrics I’d love to incorporate, but I’d never want anyone to think that—my father was great. So again, these are lyrics I’m listening to.”

Would you consider yourself a spiritual person? It sounds like you’ve removed yourself from your religious background or upbringing.

“I don’t know if I always practice it, but I do believe in putting good energy out into the world. It sends forth good energy. If you do something nice for someone, then that person will do something nice, guaranteed. That’s what I believe. I can’t say I always practice it, but that’s sort of the core of my religion.

“I don’t really believe in heaven or hell or afterlife. This is it, and when you’re gone, you’re gone, but I believe while you’re here, there’s so much anger that it’s our job, whether it be driving a car and not tailgating, or just smiling at someone, it’s simple things, saying hello to the person at the grocery store. Stuff like that. Again, I don’t always practice it, but I hope that I will. Just doing simple good things for people is the best way to go.

“Do I believe that God punishes people in Italy and therefore throws an earthquake at them? Absolutely not. There’s no rhyme or reason to any of it, to nothing, there really isn’t, so while you’re here, why not put out good energy? There’s no guarantee that you’re not gonna walk out and get hit by a bus.

“There’s this photographer who, although I love his work. I would call him a contemporary, even though I think, business-wise, he’s a little bit more successful. I don’t know the full story, but while he was on a photoshoot, he slipped and fell. He was high up, and he broke his back and he’s paralyzed. This has been documented on social media. I haven’t been able to look. The point is not to say that he deserved that, but to look at that person and say, for me, be nice now. Enjoy life, because it could have been me. And how would I handle that? How would I handle being paralyzed? And as a photographer, I certainly wouldn’t be here in a wheelchair, so appreciate things that are happening now, and try to make other people feel good. That’s my spirituality.”

You touched upon a lot of important things that I think are a part of anyone’s faith, spiritual, or religious practice, hopefully, which are being in the present moment, practicing gratitude, and kindness. Love and kindness. How has it felt to share these thoughts and experiences with me today?

“Great! You’re so easy to talk to. I knew that the first time I met you. I don’t feel like I’m in therapy; I feel like I’m sharing myself as an artist with someone who I feel is an artist, so it feels great. I feel great.”

Do you think it’s possible, by sharing a little bit of yourself today in this interview, that you might inspire or give hope to someone else out there who can relate to any piece of your story?

“I hope so. Someone could hear the story and appreciate my work a little bit, so that could affect them somehow, or they could be in a similar situation and feel the same way about themselves as an artist, and that can help them. There are so many ways that people help, that I view people—I hope so. Again, what’s the point?”