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Oct. 5, 2021 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:43:33

"FORCED TO WATCH MY MOTHER'S EXORCISM!" Freedomain Call In

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	Alright, so my email starts with, thank you for taking your time to read my email.
	I'm writing this email because I really would like to talk to you.
	I am in a big life-changing situation, but I believe that there are still past ghosts that are holding me back.
	I was raised by my grandmother, who has been abusive to me since the age of three.
	I wasn't alone in the household.
	I lived with my older sister, seven years older.
	My mom has schizophrenia and my dad left me when I was around three years old.
	I met my father once after a lot of convincing from my brother that I found out about when I was 17 years old.
	There is a lot more I could add, but I don't think it's worth writing at all.
	My main question now is that I'm in a relationship with a woman that seems to be ideal for me.
	How do I not mess it up?
	Because my best friend that knows me for seven years and we were closely connected told me that I have anger issues.
	I'm working on it and I believe I made good progress.
	When compared to the past me.
	Also I have my own company but I somehow feel like I don't deserve any of that.
	Now that my sister is pregnant I have a duty to pay my grandmother and my mother every second month.
	There were times I wouldn't have enough food for myself but I would send money to them.
	I understand it sounds absurd to you if If we could have a call, I think I can clarify things better.
	I followed your podcast since 2019.
	It helped a lot.
	One of the main reasons how I managed to cut ties with my grandmother.
	Thank you, Stefan. Hope to talk to you soon.
	I appreciate that. I mean, yes, this is one of these letters.
	I appreciate getting it. The honesty is great, but there's a lot in it that's a little confusing to me.
	And that's not your fault.
	I mean, you know, you can't put your whole life story in an email, so I get all of that.
	So, your 17-year-old brother, is this such brother that you found out after you met your father, or is this, where did he come from?
	So, I was 17 years old when I found out that he existed.
	Okay, okay. So, is this another marriage of your father's?
	Well, it wasn't like an affair.
	A relationship or something, right?
	So is he your half-brother?
	Yeah, from my father's side, yeah.
	My sister is also half-sister from my mother's side.
	And how old was your mother when she seemed to go crazy?
	You said the schizophrenia, right?
	I mean, that's usually a late teens, excuse me, early 20s kind of thing.
	But what age was she and you when this began to really go nuts?
	Well, by what my grandmother told me, my mom started getting, well, the symptoms really kicked in around her early 20s.
	For some reason, they just let it be, meaning that they helped her, they supported her, but they also went through, like, therapists and all that kind of stuff, and by my grandma's words, they said that there's nothing they can do, and she went through a lot of them, which, I don't know, I doubted, but...
	So, yeah.
	I'm sorry if I'm like vague.
	No, no, that's fine. That answers the question.
	And how old were you at that point?
	What do you mean by how old was I? When your mother...
	So you weren't born then, but sorry, I'm just trying to figure out if your mother went crazy, when were you born?
	Like how old was she when you were born?
	Okay, so I don't exactly know, but basically she had my sister that is seven years older than me and she was already...
	With symptoms. So, she had me when she already had it in a full swing, if that's the way of saying it.
	So, your father had sex with a schizophrenic, mentally ill woman, right?
	Unprotected sex with a crazy woman.
	Yeah, yeah. What do you...
	I mean, I assume you're happy to be here, more or less, but, I mean, what do you think of that?
	Well... I mean, what can I say really?
	It's just...
	Well, one word that comes to my head is like really, really messed up.
	I can't even... Well, it is in particular, it is if you then leave...
	I mean, you were with your mom, right?
	So you have unprotected sex with a truly crazy woman.
	And I say crazy, I just, you know, obviously, I'm not saying it's her fault or anything, but nonetheless, I mean, if she had schizophrenia, I think that there's some biological components to that.
	Let's just assume, for the sake of argument, that she didn't drive herself crazy through excessive use of drugs or something like that, but...
	Maybe there were some biological causes or whatever.
	So crazy, I don't mean that as a pejorative, like she was just a nasty person or anything, but crazy is crazy, right?
	So he had unprotected sex with a crazy woman and then ran away when a child emerged, right?
	Or when she was pregnant.
	Did you know, did they spend any time together when you were alive?
	Yeah. They spent maybe like a year or two, like almost two years, more than two years maybe.
	But the thing is that in those two years, she was out somewhere and she was out somewhere and by what my sister told me and what my grandmother and also later neighbors that lived near,
	they told me that I was pretty much just locked up in the room since I was a kid and they would hear me crying, screaming and And, uh, they would, my, my mom would just like leave a salted fish.
	That's like the main thing and some water.
	Hey man, I've been to Ikea.
	I know, I know how you people eat.
	So, so you would just get like, not, you wouldn't even serve that in prison, right?
	Like the salted fish and some water would be left by your door and they'd go out.
	Is that right? It's more like I would mainly stay in the bed.
	I have to say that I'm not from the country that I mentioned.
	I just live in the country where I mentioned.
	Okay, yeah, no problem.
	And, sorry, is there more that you wanted to add to this incredibly horrific part of the story?
	Well, so how I was, in a way, rescued.
	And I guess I could also add things that I... I have one memory...
	From that time. It's weird.
	I don't know how. I thought that kids can't really have, like, memory.
	But I do feel like I remember it strongly that I used to throw toys out to, like, passengers.
	And I sometimes...
	You mean, like, passers-by or pedestrians?
	Yeah, pedestrians. Okay, yeah.
	So, like, throw toys at them.
	I don't know. Maybe I just wanted attention or something.
	Well, you were trying to get help, right?
	I mean, you basically were locked in.
	And how old were you at this point?
	Like a year or two old? I was two to three years.
	Two to three years. So, yeah, you would be throwing toys in an attempt to get help from pedestrians, right?
	And the reason why I... I mean, eventually it would have come up anyways, but how it came up is basically the neighbors called police because the smell was unbearable, apparently.
	Sorry, the smell of you or the apartment as a whole?
	Did you basically have to take peeps and pee in your room because you couldn't get to the bathroom because you were locked in?
	Is it that kind of thing? I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that.
	Was that a yes? Yeah, I said, yeah.
	Okay, sorry, I just missed that.
	Okay, so the smell, because basically you were in your own feces in urine because you couldn't get to the bathroom and you had to go to the bathroom, right?
	So you had to do it in your room? Yeah, and I don't know why it's so embarrassing to talk about it.
	No, listen, it's horrible to talk about.
	It is. This is one of the worst stories I've heard, and I've heard a lot.
	So, yes, it is absolutely horrible.
	It is embarrassing because we are generally judged by our families.
	This is a real tragedy.
	And one of the great injustices of the world is that we are judged by our families.
	Shouldn't be. We shouldn't be judged by our families.
	We didn't choose to get born there.
	But we are. And if you have shitty parents and you either are judged because they're still in your life or you're judged because they're not in your life and you've made some measures of self-protection.
	So we get judged by things vastly beyond our control.
	You know, they say, oh, you can't judge someone by the color of their skin.
	It's like, yeah, yeah, I agree with that.
	But then I didn't choose the color of their skin.
	And it's bigoted to judge someone by the color of their skin.
	It's like, yeah, well, I didn't choose my family either.
	I get judged by that shit all the time.
	All the time. Oh, you don't see your mother?
	Oh, she's your mother. She's old.
	You should forgive her. You're a bad son.
	It's like, I didn't choose her any more than I chose the color of my skin.
	So, I mean, I think that your embarrassment comes out of the basic fact that we are judged by our families, which we did not choose.
	All the time. And it's not even recognized as a sick, sick prejudice in the world.
	That we should never be judged by the families we never chose.
	But we always are.
	And it's not even mentioned.
	Ever. Like there's no such thing.
	There's not even a word for judging someone by their family of origin.
	Fugatry or something like that.
	But there's not even a word for judging someone for something they have absolutely no control over.
	Such as who they were born to.
	So, I'm sorry for the tiny rant there, but I get where you're coming from.
	It does feel shameful, and that's because we're judged by it all the time.
	All the time. Except here.
	Here, that's not the case. Okay.
	Well, I'll say space in here where we can talk it out, right?
	So, yeah.
	And basically...
	So...
	Police was called and they broke into the house because obviously my mom was not at home.
	And by the time when police were called, my father was probably long gone.
	So, yeah.
	You mean sort of, wait, hang on, sorry, but So your neighbor called because of the stench of your horrific imprisoned living conditions as a child.
	And you said that your father was long gone by the time the police come, but that would be pretty quick, right?
	So what do you mean? You mean like gone for the day or gone from the relationship?
	I'm not sure I follow.
	Sorry. Yeah, I'll clarify that.
	So as I mentioned that my father left me around two years, three, something like that.
	So before I reached three years.
	Before I was three years old and I was pretty much, let's put it, rescued when I was around three years old.
	So he was gone already for like, I don't exactly know the timeline but it's less than a year he was already pretty much like gone.
	So a year after you were born he was gone and so then your mother was just gone For whatever reason, I assume it had something to do with drinking or man or something like that.
	So your mom was gone. And two years, so you're born, your dad leaves after a year, and then for another two years until you're rescued by the police, you're in this prison, basically, right?
	He left after two years.
	He left after two years. Okay, sorry. Got it.
	Got it. Okay. Sorry if I'm a little slow to catch up, but there's a lot of balls in the air, so to speak, at the moment.
	Okay, so what happened when the police came home?
	Was your mother charged? Did she go to jail?
	A child, endangerment, neglect, cruelty, what?
	So, yeah, I was taken away, obviously.
	And, well, the police, they were not alone.
	They were with my grandfather at that time because they called.
	At first, they tried to contact my grandparents, Which they lived in the same town, but they used to travel a lot.
	And so here comes my sister in the picture.
	So she basically, they took her in because they absolutely...
	Sorry, was your sister in the same...
	You said she was, what, seven years older?
	Was she in the same house? She wasn't in the same house with my mom, but she would come there sometimes.
	And sometimes she would...
	If I was locked in...
	She would slip.
	Basically, she kind of played a role of a mother.
	She would clean me up sometimes.
	Obviously, she was a kid, but if I was locked in, she would take a plastic bag, fill it with a little bit of water, slide it under, and I would get it, and some tomatoes, and some other things she told me.
	Bread. Wait, so she'd put water on the plastic bag and then push it under the door so you could slurp up the water from the plastic bag?
	In the plastic bag.
	Oh, in the bag. Oh, my God.
	Was this a house or an apartment?
	It was an apartment.
	It was an apartment. Yeah, so basically she lived with my grandparents because they...
	Well, my grandma numerous times mentioned that she loved her way more because of my first child and she absolutely hated me because of my father and blah, blah.
	It doesn't matter, I guess. Oh, so your mother loved your sister but hated you?
	My grandmother and my mother also, I would dare to say.
	Both of them actually mentioned that numerous times to me.
	Oh, that they loved...
	Your sister hated you, both your mother and your grandmother.
	Yeah. Okay.
	So... I'm sorry.
	Don't apologize. You have nothing to apologize for in any part of this conversation, just so you know.
	Okay. I would tear up.
	You can tear up, man.
	This is stuff to tear up over.
	It would be crazy if you weren't feeling strongly at the moment.
	Okay, so did your grandparents live with your mother in this apartment?
	You said in the town?
	It's a separate place, though, right? Yeah, they had a separate apartment.
	Oh, was it in the building?
	Same building or separate apartment somewhere else?
	Completely, maybe like 15 minutes away from the place.
	So it was like a different house.
	It was a small town too, so...
	Do you remember if they checked in on you at all over this three years?
	No, I don't recall.
	They pretty much just...
	Completely cut ties, in a way, with my mom, because of her choosing of a man that was my father.
	Oh no, that's not a choice.
	They have, though. Like, they don't have that choice.
	I mean, just so you know, right?
	If they raised a child, your mother, who went crazy, and we'll get back to that in a sec, because I have some pretty big suspicions about all of that, but let's say, so if they raised the daughter, they didn't put her on birth control, Right?
	They didn't talk about, you know, abortions or whatever it may be.
	And then she has a child and they know that she's insane, right?
	Then they don't have the option or the right to cut contact.
	Because they have created and managed into existence a situation where a child is at risk.
	You. And you were at risk.
	Serious risk. I mean, obviously you could have got just about any kind of disease.
	From living in that kind of filth, vitamin D deficiency, nutritional deficiencies.
	I mean, you would go to jail for keeping a cat like that, let alone a human child.
	So, these grandparents of yours, they did not have that as an option to not check up on you, to not find out what the hell was going on.
	They are in possession of unique knowledge, which is that they have an insane, irresponsible daughter who has a child who Under her care.
	And when you're in possession of that unique moral knowledge, you have no option to disconnect.
	No moral option to disconnect.
	Because you know all of the risk factors involved in the child.
	And they would go, they would see, oh my God, she's keeping this child locked up in his own filth We're going to take the child to our house.
	We're going to clean him off.
	We're going to call child services.
	We're going to do whatever we can to get this child to safety.
	One phone call, one drop by, all done, right?
	Your sister came by. She cleaned you up.
	She gave you plastic bagfuls of water with tomatoes under the door.
	So the grandparents here are unbelievable pieces of human garbage, just to be perfectly frank.
	It's their job to know how their grandchild is doing, knowing, as they do, that your mother is unbelievably irresponsible and dangerous.
	There is absolutely no excuse.
	Well, she was a difficult kid.
	Don't care. You don't sign up to be a parent and then stop.
	And if they didn't get her on the correct treatment regimen, if they didn't get her in the correct ways to deal with this, if they didn't get her on the correct medications, and they didn't find out ways to make sure she couldn't have children, then they are the only responsible adults in the situation where a child is living in his own shit.
	You. Oh, they traveled!
	Too fucking bad for your travel plans, boomers.
	You got a kid and you're the only responsible adults in the situation.
	Sorry to be so blunt so early on.
	It really pisses me off.
	I get it.
	I've listened to your shows, quite a lot of them actually, so I understand your good intentions and bluntness is the way that I like it, so Yeah, so...
	Okay.
	One second. Well, I mean, how far...
	I mean, if I'm being unjust to your grandparents, I'd certainly like to hear it.
	That's how it looks to me from the outside.
	But if there's something I've got wrong, I'm certainly happy to hear it.
	Well, unfortunately, I didn't...
	Okay, I'll go finish with that story.
	So, that part of the story.
	So, basically, they took me in.
	I was in... taken into orphanage and my mom was assigned to a psychiatric hospital and basically there was a social worker that tried to connect me to my grandparents so they called my grandmother and Basically my grandmother,
	she told me that she thought that she's just gonna say no and that's it.
	But then she saw me being all scared and then she just felt pity for me so she took me into her household.
	And to her credit, obviously I was in terrible physical condition.
	My legs were like bows.
	Not straight. I couldn't even stand straight.
	And listen, I know that there's an urge to laugh about this stuff.
	I get that. But I gotta be pretty firm with you here.
	Like, this is unbelievable levels of child torture that you're talking about here.
	I know that there's an urge to make light of it or to try and put some light to the gloom.
	I guess it's my reaction to, like, not cry, so I laugh.
	Yeah. Yeah, well, here's where we try to be as honest as possible, and I know that that's an honest reaction, but it's not as honest as it could be, which is you were physically tortured into a ghost of your potential, right?
	Oh, man. So, basically, my physical shape was very bad, and my grandmother and my grandfather were They kind of start taking care of me, meaning that they try to find the best quality of milk from the cows, straight from the cows.
	And I was eating really healthy and a lot of food.
	Well, at the beginning, I was eating a lot of milk.
	That's my original.
	I ate a lot of milk and I ate a lot of...
	Grains. Just everything with milk.
	I started eating a lot of milk and slowly I started looking better.
	My bones were stronger.
	My lungs were underdeveloped.
	It's a good thing the body shovels every available calorie to the brain.
	Because I know kids who've malnutritioned, particularly in the Second World War, well, in North Korea and the Second World War in the Netherlands, kids who were completely malnourished, they still grew up to have normal IQs.
	The brain is just like everything that you've got.
	Forget the bones, forget everything.
	Just get the calories to the brain.
	So it's a good thing that that is how the body works.
	But anyway, so go ahead.
	So yeah, they would take me to the...
	To the sea, to the beach, and I would start running and exercising.
	At first I would run like five steps and I would collapse and I would lose.
	I could not breathe.
	I need to catch. It was a slow and long process of The way I am now, and to my grandmother's credit, I guess, she did pretty good for me.
	Okay, I'll pull back a little of my earlier criticism, although I'm still holding a little bit of an abeyance, which is just my particular perspective.
	It doesn't mean there's anything factual in it, but I'll pull back and apologize for the earlier statements about your grandparents.
	It sounds like they stepped in once they...
	I don't know. I mean, they knew that you were there.
	They knew that you were there. But anyway, I guess when they were really confronted with the horrors of their neglect, they stepped in to do something better, right?
	Yeah, and so I got very tall and everything is okay with me.
	Well, there are obviously some deformities, I guess, in the chest area, but it doesn't matter too much.
	It's all good, actually. So, yeah.
	I don't even know what to say now.
	So they took care of you going forward, right?
	They did.
	Like regular doctor checkups.
	I was a pretty sick kid.
	I would get sick pretty often.
	But fortunately, my grandfather died when I was six years old.
	So my grandmother actually had to take care of me My sister and also on top of it, my mom would make a bunch of troubles.
	Did she get out of the asylum?
	Is that right? Yeah, because they would only keep her for a limited period of time, meaning a year or two, and then they would just let her off because she was getting better with medication.
	But the problem was that after she stopped taking the medication, she would, like, get back into this madness that she was.
	Yeah.
	So, oh, wow.
	Okay.
	So, yeah, after my grandfather died, the weirdest thing was when I was six and my grandfather was laying in a coffin and...
	I didn't really understand the concept of death.
	I didn't have pets.
	I didn't have anyone to understand what is death.
	Everyone is crying.
	I guess I'm crying because everyone is crying, but not because I understand why everyone is crying.
	So, I remember that I was next to my grandfather's body, in a coffin, and I was kind of like shaking it, like, wake up!
	I'm sorry, I don't mean to...
	So I was touching the body, And then there were people around.
	They're looking and like, oh my God, what is she doing?
	And then my sister quickly swooped in and took my hands away.
	And I remember also there was a candy there and I took the candy and I ate it.
	When you're six, you're doing what every six-year-old does at a funeral, which is like, hey, there's candy.
	Hey, wake up. Yeah, that makes sense.
	I don't see that that's too unusual at all.
	Well, I got pretty hard after the funeral at home for that.
	So how were you punished?
	Well, my grandmother, since I was there, at first, when the process of me getting healthier, she didn't really hit me that much.
	Pretty much after my grandfather passed away, she just released all the anger on me whenever something happens.
	So she had this wooden stick and then she would slap.
	So when we came back, obviously she was crying and I I remember asking my sister to like, so when is grandfather coming back?
	And she was, he's not coming back.
	And I was like, why not?
	And I remember her trying to explain her best that, well, Yeah, so she tried to explain what is that, but I guess she couldn't really, like, explain properly to me. So, after maybe, like, four hours of my grandmother going into her room, going to the toilet, going to her room, and going in her toilet, we lived also in an apartment.
	So, she...
	Then she called me in the kitchen, and she was holding that...
	Let's stick. And then she just like whacked me with like three good hits and saying that like how could I do something like that.
	Where did she hit you on your body?
	She hit me in my arm and my back and then my buttocks.
	Was this like a rolling pin?
	Would that be the closest thing or something like that?
	It was like a...
	How do I...
	Okay, so imagine quite a thick pen and multiply it by 3.0.
	That's the thickness of the stick.
	And the length of it was around maybe 70 centimeters.
	A foot and three quarters or something like that.
	Is it like a thick drumstick but longer?
	Yeah. I remember running right under the table and she tried to catch me by the leg and I somehow slipped and I just kept dodging her.
	So she tried to go around the table and I just kept going on another side of the table and then I just kept dodging her.
	And then eventually she just gave up and went to the room and cried.
	Now, I mean, of course, she's 100% responsible for how you behaved at the funeral.
	Because nobody had talked to you about what the funeral was.
	Nobody had talked to you about death.
	Nobody had talked to you about your grandfather.
	So you had no clue what was going on.
	And then you're attacked when you've not been prepared at all.
	Just so you know, right?
	Or you can decide not to tell a kid all that's going on in the funeral.
	Maybe you say, oh, he's too young, he's been through a lot.
	So I'm not going to tell him what's been going on with his dad, his granddad in the funeral and so on.
	Okay, that's fine. But then you can't get mad at the kid when you haven't explained to him the seriousness of the situation.
	You can't get mad at him then for taking a piece of candy and knocking on the side of the coffin.
	Right? So... This is about as brutal a thing as you can do to a child outside of what your mother did, and this is why I was reserving judgment about your grandparents, because to beat a child who behaved as children do at funerals when you hadn't told the child anything about what the funeral was, or death, for that matter, is about as vicious and sadistic a thing as you can possibly do.
	I'm glad she gave you milk.
	You know, and I'm glad they took you to the beach.
	I think that's good. But this shit?
	It's horrible.
	So, so, So... I guess pretty much after my grandfather's death...
	Well...
	We... We had to obviously deal with my mom and make sure that she's taking medications and also my grieving grandmother.
	So me and my sister, we would go pretty often to my mom's to check on her.
	To make sure that she's...
	Sorry, how old would you be when you'd be going to check on your mom?
	So, I started going by myself from like seven to pretty much till I left.
	Hang on, I'm sorry. Just my confusion here.
	I'm sure I've missed something. So, your grandmother knew that your mother had tortured and confined you for years, right?
	And she knew when she beat you with the drumstick that you were just three years out of physical torture and abuse and neglect.
	So your grandmother thinks it's a great idea to send you alone to check up on your mother who tortured, neglected and abused you for years.
	Alone. Well, at first I wasn't going alone, but later on, yeah.
	Sorry if I misunderstood this.
	I thought you said you were seven when you first started going alone.
	Yeah. Okay, seven was my second year in boarding school.
	I remember seven pretty well.
	And seven is not an age that you can rationally and intelligently handle a dangerous and abusive schizophrenic.
	Is that fair to say?
	You know, they don't sit there and say, oh man, you're seven, you've been traumatized and abused by a dangerous and violent schizophrenic, you should go and check on her.
	Wow. Like seriously, what the hell is going on in this family?
	You don't send a seven-year-old to check up on a violent and dangerous schizophrenic who abused and neglected him for years.
	You don't send a seven-year-old to check up on a violent and abusive schizophrenic under any circumstances, let alone one where he was the primary victim.
	And it almost cost him his life.
	Again, if I'm off track, or being unfair in some manner, please let me know.
	But I'm jaw-dropped.
	I remember raising... I mean, I've been a father for almost 13 years.
	I guess almost 14 if you count the womb.
	I, I, I'm going to tell you what this seems like to me.
	What this seems like to me is me saying to my daughter when she's seven, hey, go check on my mom.
	See how she's doing.
	And my daughter wasn't even the victim of my mother's violence.
	Could you imagine? If I did a show sometime and I said, oh yeah, I sent my seven-year-old daughter to go and check on my mother.
	Alone. I mean, what if you'd heard me say that?
	That would be surreal, yeah.
	Well, I guess I just...
	Well, you've normalized it like we all do, and I'm just here to not normalize it.
	I'm here to get you to jump the tracks of history and look at this like the crazy batshit shit that it is.
	Yeah, that's true.
	I actually... Normalize a lot of things.
	Later on, after listening to your podcast, I realized that that was...
	But you didn't get this one, right?
	Go check on the woman who tortured and abused you for years because you're seven and I'm sure you can handle it just fine.
	Did your grandmother work or did she live off the grandfather's, like, whatever, his inheritance, his life insurance or whatever?
	She... We started having a little business.
	So we would go to...
	How old were you when she started having her little business?
	Well, they pretty much had the business together and then she kind of took over by herself.
	But that business wasn't a big deal, and it was really dependent on the seasons, and also it was not bringing a lot of money.
	Was it like a real part-time thing, like a couple of hours a day?
	It was more of a summer thing.
	Okay, so she didn't really work in the winter, right?
	No. Is that right?
	Yeah. Okay. You were in school, right?
	At the age of seven. So this unbelievable horror show of a human being has no job when you're in school because you're off in the summer.
	She has no job. You're in school counting, getting ready, coming back seven or eight hours a day, right?
	So she's home all day.
	Got sweet fuck all to do.
	She's home all day. What's preventing her from going to check on her daughter?
	You're in school. You've got a job called going to school.
	She has no job in the fall, the winter, the spring.
	Three quarters of the year, she's got nothing to do but live off your grandfather.
	So, she sends you...
	Sorry, go ahead. I just wanted to clarify that summer was the main...
	Source of income, but fall and sometimes spring, there would be also a little bit of job.
	Okay, that's fine.
	Let's say she works an hour or two a day.
	So she works an hour or two a day, fall, winter, spring.
	That doesn't make any difference, but I have no problem with the clarification, but it makes no difference to the analysis.
	You still have three to four times the amount of work that she has to do because you're in school.
	So she's got 90% of the day where she's got nothing to do to go and check on her daughter.
	But instead, she waits until you get home at the age of seven when she's been sitting on her thumb on the couch all day and she says, you've got to go check on your mother because you're seven.
	Come on. I mean, it's how it looks from the outside.
	Again, happy to be corrected. Actually, I'd be really happy to be corrected on this one because I'm trying to find some positive things about your grandmother and I'm coming up just a little short.
	To be honest, I wish I could correct.
	But I don't know why I didn't think of it that way.
	You don't send children to do adult jobs.
	You don't. You don't send a seven-year-old boy out to mow the lawn on a power mower.
	You don't give him a glue gun or a nail gun.
	You don't tell him to build a shed.
	You don't tell him to repave the driveway because he's a seven-year-old kid.
	You don't ask a child to do an adult's job.
	And checking up on dangerous, violent, abusive, neglectful schizophrenics is not a child's job, particularly when he was her primary victim.
	For years, and it almost killed him.
	Or could have. Like on the holy shit I can't believe that happened spectrum, that's like off the charts.
	Yeah. So you don't have a problem.
	The reason I'm saying, I'm pausing all of this, and the reason I'm allowing my outrage to flow like lava, is because you said you have, oh you said I have a problem with my temper.
	I don't think you do.
	I don't think you have a problem with your temper, and my sole focus in this conversation is to help you with the relationship with the wonderful woman that you have at the moment, right?
	Now, the only reason you have a problem with your temper is you have been trained out of being angry at the right people.
	You get angry at the right people, you'd be amazed at how not a temper you have.
	When I was your age, I had quite the temper.
	Once I got angry at the right people, I'm as gentle as a lamb now, for the most part, right?
	Because once you get angry at the right people, you don't have a problem with your temper.
	Your problem is not with your temper.
	Your problem is with your justice, that you've been trained out of being angry at the right people.
	And so you have a problem with your temper because, you know, like if you ever had an injury from sports or something, right?
	Some injury in it, you know.
	But once you find that right spot and you massage the right spot, the injury literally can go away in 20 minutes.
	I once had, like, for close to eight months, a sore forearm from over curling.
	And until I... It's crazy.
	Like, oh, I'll rest it.
	Oh, what I had to do was gouge the hell out of it in just the right spot with my thumb to the point where, like, tears were running down my face.
	And I solved it in about 20 minutes.
	Same thing happened when I busted up my knee, sprinting after my daughter in an over-slick hotel room in St.
	Louis a couple of years ago. I went to physiotherapists who were useless as tits on a ball and then I finally was just like, ugh, I'm just going to keep grinding around my knee with my thumbs until I find the right spot.
	I did it and it was better in a day.
	Like when you get the right spot and you deal with the right thing, I say, oh, I've got this permanent knee problem because it's not getting better with physio.
	I've got this permanent forearm.
	Nope, just find the right spot and you don't have a problem with your knee or your forearm or whatever the hell else it is that you're dealing with.
	And it's the same thing with your anger.
	When you Point your anger at the right thing, at the right person, at the right circumstances, and the right object.
	It says, ah, thank you, my job is done.
	Like, you know, there's all these horror movies, right?
	I don't know if you like them, but all these horror movies are the same story.
	The same story is a child was killed brutally.
	A terrible thing happened at this location, and the ghost comes and scares everyone.
	But when you find out where the body is, and then you find the murderer, then the ghost can float off to the next life in peace and no longer haunts the blah, blah, blah.
	Once you find the body and you find the murderer, the ghost can...
	It's the same thing, right?
	We're tormented because we haven't found the criminal.
	Our anger scares us and scares others like the ghost near the body.
	The ghost, when the body's down the well or buried in a cistern or...
	Whatever it is, right? Or like The Sixth Sense, if you've ever seen that movie, right?
	I can spoil it now. It's like 20 years or whatever, right?
	But The Sixth Sense, until the criminal is found, until the criminal is found, the ghost haunts and scares people.
	And you're haunted by this thing called anger.
	And it scares you.
	And maybe it scares other people.
	But that's just a ghost.
	That will be at peace when you find the body and you find the criminal.
	Now, I think you found the body, which is you for the first couple of years.
	I don't think you really have the criminal yet.
	We're still working on your mom.
	We didn't see your granddad or your grandmother.
	When you find the body and you find the criminal...
	Your anger can be laid to rest.
	Why? Why? Because.
	Because it's done its job.
	Its job is to find the body and find the criminal.
	The job of anger is justice.
	It's justice.
	Good old testament, old-fashioned, old-school justice.
	No justice, no peace.
	No justice. The anger continues.
	So that's why I'm focusing so much of my, I mean, I think legitimate outrage, but I'm letting my outrage flow a little more than I would, a lot more than I would normally in these conversations, because I'm on the side of your anger.
	And your anger is like, oh, wait, wait, dude, we've got a six-foot-tall, bald, Canadian Sherlock Holmes On the trail of the criminals.
	He's got his dogs that don't bark.
	He's got fingerprints.
	He's got DNA. He's going to find the criminals.
	And I'm on the side of your anger.
	Because when your anger finds the criminals, you will be at peace.
	And you won't scare yourself and you won't scare others.
	You won't be haunted. Because you found the grave and you found the killer.
	Sorry if that makes sense or not, but that's what I wanted to get across.
	No, it's totally fine.
	I take a lot from so-called your rambling.
	Oh, good, good. So...
	So, at seven, you go to check on your crazy mom, and what happens with your grandmother going forward and your sister?
	Well, so I wanted to also add that there would be days when I would go check on her and then there would be like, we would have those kind of like a raids, like me, my grandmother and my sister.
	We would basically like come unannounced and then we would just look through her stuff and you would pretty often find a like notebook written with like nonsense and like I found A few notebooks where it was written off my and my sister's name and how she would like us to be gone.
	You mean like dead?
	Yeah. Yeah, because you already were gone, right?
	I mean, from her life, because you were your grandmother's, right?
	Yeah. So, your grandmother would, like, you were exposed to your mother's rantings.
	Your grandmother was like, oh yeah, sure, you should go through your crazy mother's notebooks.
	That's no problem, right?
	Just for the record, I officially know this woman.
	Like, and you can't talk me out of it now, not that I'm saying you would.
	But you don't let...
	A child, I assume, we were like seven or eight years old and you found out that your mother wanted you dead, is that right?
	Yeah, around that time, yeah.
	Yeah, so you don't let a boy go through the notebooks of the woman who half killed him through neglect and abuse, right?
	You just, you don't, like, I have no idea why the fuck you would do that, like, in what sane universe...
	You would let a kid root around his insane and evil mother's notebooks to find this kind of stuff, right?
	I mean, I have some sympathy for your mother because being raised by a woman like that would drive most people crazy.
	Like, what was her thinking?
	Help me understand. Like, what on earth was she thinking?
	Sending you over alone to a woman who wants you dead.
	Having you root through your mother's notebooks, finding out all of her crazy, evil thoughts.
	Like, what the hell was she thinking?
	Like, help me understand.
	I can't fathom this.
	I don't know.
	Yes, you do. No, no, you do.
	You absolutely do, but you don't know it consciously.
	How long have you known this woman?
	Is she still alive? Who?
	My grandma? Yeah, she's still alive.
	That's too bad. Or maybe not.
	So, you've known her for decades, right?
	So, you know. What is her thinking here?
	What is going on? What's...
	The plan of bringing these children over to the crazy woman's house and letting the kids root through her ramblings and insane, chaotic speech.
	I guess...
	I guess it's kind of like her way of showing us that how good it is at her place instead of at mom's.
	Maybe. Okay, did your grandmother know that your mother wanted you dead?
	No, I don't think so, no.
	Oh, so your grandmother never read these notebooks, or you never told your grandmother what you'd read?
	Well, I usually would just go through and I would just rip it and throw it away, so I don't think I even showed that to her.
	You don't think you did?
	No, I don't. Seems quite important.
	I'm pretty sure I didn't show her.
	Okay. So, and you were seven at this point, right?
	Or eight? No. I was like eight, maybe.
	Okay, so you're eight, and you come across a violent death threat against yourself from your mother, right?
	No. Sorry, is that a yes?
	I didn't quite hear that. Yes.
	Yes, okay. All right, so here's the big question.
	This is nothing negative to you at all.
	If you're having trouble understanding your grandmother...
	Then the most important question you can answer is this.
	Why did you not tell your grandmother what you had seen?
	Because, like, she would also treat my mom very unfairly, too.
	Yeah.
	Not unfairly, maybe, but pretty...
	Let's put it that way, rough.
	You mean she would hit your mother even when your mother was an adult?
	Not really hit, but more like psychological abuse.
	And I think that would really accelerate her if, for example, if she would not be on the meds, meaning that if she would take meds and then my grandmother would abuse her psychologically, I think my thinking was at that time that it would just get worse and then win some repeat for all the horrific things that she would do sometimes.
	Now, is she being your mother or your grandmother?
	The horrific things being done is my mom and my grandmother, if she psychologically abused my mom, that it would accelerate The things that she could do and the things she's done is very messed up.
	No, and we'll get to that in a sec.
	So I'm trying to fathom something here.
	And maybe you can help me out.
	Maybe you know, maybe you don't. Okay.
	So your grandmother made the case that your mother was schizophrenic.
	Is that right? Yeah.
	Now... Schizophrenic comes with it to some degree, I think, or in the general understanding.
	The word schizophrenic comes with some forgiveness for the parents, right?
	You know, like if your child has Down syndrome, we don't say, well, you must have been a really bad parent, right?
	Because that's a genetic phenomenon, right?
	Okay, I have to add one thing that Even though officially she was schizophrenic, my grandmother would say that she's possessed because she would draw like devils and all that kind of stuff.
	So my grandma would say that she's not Actually schizophrenic, but she's possessed and that meds are just calming her down.
	Now, was she religious to the point where she thought that your mother was literally inhabited by a demon or a devil of some kind?
	Well, she would not go to church.
	That's the thing.
	But she would pray...
	She was very religious.
	Sorry, when she said your mother was possessed, it's just a question about her belief system.
	Did she believe that your mother was perhaps genuinely possessed by some sort of demonic force?
	Well, priests were called several times.
	Oh, so she basically tried to get an exorcism performed or something?
	Yeah. And I was there too.
	You were there for the priests who were called to exorcise your mother by your grandmother?
	Yeah. My grandmother didn't come.
	I had to come with the priest and I was there.
	Wait, your grandmother didn't go to your mother's exorcism but they dragged your ass there?
	Yeah. Okay, dude.
	Okay, I'm... You're not trolling me here, are you?
	No, I swear to God I'm not.
	Your grandmother pushed you into the room where your mother was having an exorcism performed on her by the priests.
	One priest. A priest.
	And she herself did not attend.
	No. Was your sister there too?
	No. Holy shit, man.
	But I was... I mean, I obviously didn't believe in it, but when that happened, I was...
	Oh, I believe there was a devil around.
	I just put it on your grandmother's shoulders rather than your mother's.
	But anyway, go on. But at that time, I was around like 10 to 11 when that exorcism thing happened.
	Do you remember much of what happened?
	Well, so we entered and he got the purple, what do you call it, like a scarf on him.
	And then he started praying and then he walked into the room and just started like spraying the holy water.
	First of all around the parkman, my mom was sitting in another room.
	She used to have this like uncontrollable movement when she would like Swing back and forth wherever she's at.
	So when we went into the room, well, he went into one room, toilet, kitchen, hallway.
	And then when we went into the room, he basically was praying and praying a lot and then pretty much like, not spilling, but like throwing holy water at her Around the place.
	She didn't react.
	It wasn't like in the movies or something.
	So I was there and it wasn't like something was shaking or she was lifting.
	No, of course. I mean, it's a silly ritual with water.
	Sorry, you don't have to give me the country, but what was the cultural background of your grandmother?
	Eastern Europe.
	Okay. Okay.
	All right. Okay.
	So, you're 10 and you're in the room with an exorcism being performed on your mother.
	Did your grandmother give you any reason as to why you would be in that room?
	Well, she just said, go there.
	And so I was waiting and then priest came and then I knocked on the door and my mom saw me.
	So she opened the door and then priest walked in.
	So you were kind of like bait in a way, right?
	Like your mother would open the door to you, but maybe not for the priests, right?
	Because there was one incident where she, when she was completely nuts, without not medicating herself, she took a piece of her, I hope it's okay if I talk about, like a piece of thesis of hers, and she went into the church and she'd throw it at the priest.
	So, I guess she kind of had this...
	She's got a bit of a reputation there for being somewhat demonic if she's throwing feces at priests, right?
	That's me. Everyone knew that she was my mom, and that was not easy.
	That was not easy. No, I completely understand that.
	And how long did this...
	I know it's hard to tell sometimes when you're 10, but how long did this ritual go on for?
	Maybe like 20 to 20 minutes, maybe more, a little bit more.
	I was going to say hours for a sec there.
	All right. It was pretty fast.
	And I guess I thanked the priest and then just went home.
	And then every time, you know, Steph, every time I would go home, I can't really explain it.
	I never really felt it anywhere after I left.
	But there would be this, even though the place would be warm, I would feel this cold, like cold atmosphere that if you just make sound or something, like something is just...
	Well, mainly my grandma really, let's not fool anyone.
	My grandma would just, you know, get angry or...
	I would really have to be hush-hush until my sister would come back from school and basically then I would feel more safe and secure.
	And this is when you were at your grandmother's place?
	Pardon me? Sorry, is this when you were at your grandmother's place or your mother's place?
	Yeah, my grandmother's place.
	Right, okay. Okay.
	So, I mean, this is a lot of busy work.
	With one goal on the part of your grandmother.
	I don't know if you know what that goal is.
	A lot of busy work on the goal of my grandmother.
	What do you mean by that? Well, so your grandmother with, oh, she's schizophrenic or she's demonically possessed.
	Let's get priests in here.
	Let's have an exorcism. So a lot of this is busy work to hide one basic fact, which is you raised a woman who tortures children and throws shit at priests.
	I wasn't sure that was a sentence I was going to say today, but it turns out it is a sentence I'm going to say today.
	But there's big questions, right?
	So when you see a child who's that disturbed and that wrecked, right, that broken, what's the first place any sane person looks?
	The parents?
	The parents, yeah, of course.
	You see a woman that disturbed, that broken, that messed up, and you say, oh my God, what happened to her as a child, right?
	I mean, it's like there's a pretty bad movie called Ted with some talking teddy bear, and the teddy bear is sitting with a bunch of strippers or hookers or something like that, and he's saying, oh, I just want to thank all of the absent fathers out there, right, for producing the women who were that needy and desperate, right?
	So you look at a stripper or you look at a hooker and you say, well, there's an absent or abusive father probably and all that, right?
	So you just look at these kind of roots, right?
	Now, a lot of society is devoted to obscuring all of this stuff, right?
	Because when a child like that, like your mother, right, grows up and goes out into the world, is that completely and unbelievably screwed up?
	The first thing that people do deep in their hearts is they say, oh my God, what happened to him, to her as a kid, right?
	And they look at the parents, right?
	Now, a whole lot of society is set up to make sure that the blame doesn't land on the parents.
	Now, in this case, your grandmother had two explanations.
	One, schizophrenia.
	Right? Okay, so let's say that that explanation has some merit.
	Okay, so schizophrenia. Wow, that's really unfortunate.
	That's, you know, bad luck, man.
	You got some tricky genes there and your kid ended up with schizophrenia.
	Okay, so then the parents may be Is off the hook, right?
	The parent is not blamed because, like the Downs example, it's just a genetic thing, right?
	So then you say, wow, that's really tough, right?
	But the problem is, if you say, my kid is crazy and abusive and neglectful because she has schizophrenia, there's a cost to that in a sane universe.
	And the cost to saying that your child is mentally ill is you better not be fucking abusing your kid.
	Even as an adult, right?
	Like you don't, if you have a kid with Down syndrome, you don't yell at your kid for being slow or short or whatever it is, right?
	Because you say, well, this is genetic, so it's not my fault as a parent, but you don't abuse the kid, right?
	I mean, if your mother, if your grandmother genuinely thought that your mother was schizophrenic, she wouldn't be screaming or yelling or abusing her verbally or otherwise, right?
	I guess that makes sense, yeah.
	Well, that's the price you pay.
	So you get off the hook.
	But you can't be abusing your kid for what you claim is genetic.
	Does that make sense? Yeah.
	Okay. But she didn't do that, right?
	Because as you said, when she went over there, she would still continue to abuse her child, right?
	Your mother. Yeah.
	And what would she say to your mother that was abusive if you could remember?
	Well, my mom had a I had a problem of, I guess, just simply cleaning herself up, meaning that the apartment would be stinky and she would be stinky herself.
	So those were the main things.
	And also that she just looks like a...
	Well, one of the things that I kind of remember, that she looks like a prostitute.
	What is she doing?
	Aren't you ashamed?
	Look, your kids are here.
	So she would shame and blame your mother for a genetic problem called schizophrenia, right?
	No. I mean, you understand.
	That makes no sense, right?
	I mean, I get it.
	Now, also, if you genuinely believe that your daughter is schizophrenic and unstable and it's not your parenting, it's just bad genes...
	Then the last thing in the world that you would ever do is verbally abuse her.
	Because verbally abusing someone who's fragile through no fault of her own is only going to make your mother, her daughter, more unstable, more volatile.
	It's like pushing your thumb, oh, you've got a really sore knee because of arthritis, and then taking that drumstick and hitting someone on the knee.
	It's like, what?
	You don't hit people where it hurts.
	And if your mother is...
	Unable to organize her thoughts because of biological schizophrenia, then verbally abusing her for the inevitable consequences of this disorganized thinking is being a complete asshole.
	It literally is like yelling at somebody with Down syndrome for being slow and short, right?
	That's just being unbelievably horrible, right?
	And then she came up with another explanation, right?
	Demonic possession, right?
	Now, these two explanations have one thing in common.
	Don't blame me! It's not my fault!
	It's not me! It wasn't my parenting!
	It's Satan! It's schizophrenia!
	it's genes so she won't take any responsibility for the wreck of a human being that she has produced right then the worst things that my mom has done when she didn't then consume her meds was There were two things.
	The less worse was when she came into my school and she talked with my teacher and she had a bag full of just nonsense.
	That would not make sense, like random screws.
	No, just like the stuff that crazy people have in their shopping carts, right?
	Yeah, exactly.
	And she wanted to give it to me, but I was hiding.
	And I remember kids, just my classmates at that time, they were asking, why are you hiding?
	Who is she? And I was just telling them...
	Well, here's an impossible situation.
	I can't say anything, right?
	I was just saying them to hush.
	Don't say anything.
	I remember hiding at the back of the class.
	So anyways, later on my teacher just gave me the bag full of things.
	So that was the last thing.
	But the worst thing that she has done unfortunately was to my sister.
	She Walked into the high school that later on I attended, and the same teachers were there that taught my sister, and later on they taught me, so they knew that.
	That she walked into the school, and it was like a busy break period, the main break that they had, and she just undressed, And start screaming that she was raped.
	And everyone knew that it was my sister's mom.
	And she experienced a lot, a lot of humiliation from kids and all that kind of stuff.
	Obviously she was like my mom, meaning my mom was like taken away from the teacher.
	Probably in a totally psychotic state at this point, right?
	Yeah, so...
	Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, I just wanted to add that, well, my sister wanted to commit a few times suicide and so did I. I think my first attempt was actually when I was like nine.
	What happened? What did you do?
	Well, I was at home after my grandma shouted and beat me up and she took my sister to the shop.
	And I just, I thought I was just, because she would always say that I'm the reason the worst things happening to her.
	And in my mind, I was like, okay.
	Your mother would say that to you?
	No, my grandmother would say that.
	Your grandmother would say that you're the reason why bad things are happening to your mother?
	To everyone. To everyone?
	What do you mean? Like you're the focal of negative things in the world?
	What do you mean? What would she say?
	That's... Well, it makes no sense because she would never factually clarify it.
	But when you're a kid, I guess you just believe everything what adults are telling you until you understand that it's nonsense.
	But at that time, I truly believed her, that I was the core of the evil that is happening around us.
	And the reason why, for example, my...
	I was a bad luck for my grandma, the reason that's why the business is not going well, the reason, like, whatever bad thing would happen, it's my fault, even though I was not...
	And of course, she would have said the same shit, the same evil shit she would have said to your mom when your mom was a little girl, too.
	I suppose, yeah.
	Oh, guaranteed. Guaranteed.
	And probably way worse.
	But anyway, go on. I guess at that time, there was my grandfather, so maybe there would be, like, a little clash.
	I don't know. I remember in the kitchen there was a big knife and I closed my eyes, I took this knife and I hold it straight and I tried to lay on it as hard as I could to just pierce myself and just be gone.
	But I guess logic or survival instantly kicked in and I was like, what am I doing?
	Well, I mean, you've got a mother who writes that she wants you dead.
	You've got a grandmother basically saying the same thing, that if you die, the world will be a much brighter and happier and sunnier place because you're responsible for all the evils and ill luck that happened to the planet.
	So, yeah, she's trying to talk you into death, right?
	Like, I mean, like Hannibal. This is Hannibal Lecter style.
	Then Hannibal Lecter in the movie actually talked one of his cellmates or cell whatever, next door cellmate into committing suicide or something.
	I mean, you really are getting the sickest and most vile levels of verbal abuse really that are possible in this world.
	I guess the only bright side would be that I had my sister that was always there.
	Like, after I would obviously come home earlier, so when she would beat me up and my sister would come back from school, because she would come back late.
	Obviously she didn't want to be at home as well, just like me.
	But when she would come back home, meaning around 4 or 5 p.m., and she would see what happened, she would like She always tried to cheer me up.
	She would hug me. She's like, we can watch a movie tonight.
	She would take me sometimes whatever pocket money she would have.
	She would buy me some things.
	She was the bright thing, really, in that whole situation.
	Yeah, but you said she also got suicidal, right?
	Yeah, because it wasn't just me getting abused after my sister would get abused too.
	But mainly, there would be scenarios that I would be like, okay, just hit me, but don't touch my sister.
	But she would get abused too.
	Wow.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	No, I just wanted to, I guess, to add that what was really hard after I was 12, 11 to 12 pretty much, my sister just, she left to go to university, so she left the town.
	Right. And so all of that was just on me.
	Well, yeah, I mean, your comfort is gone, and any kind of protector you have is gone, and now you're alone with this demonic grandmother.
	Yeah, I distinctly remember the day my sister left for the first time, and I was in my, I guess, we lived in the same room, but by that time, I guess it was my room now, and it just felt so cold.
	It just felt...
	No words saying.
	We never, by the way, said good morning to each other.
	It was always just, when we wake up in the morning, it's just gloomy, dark aura, and I just try to not anger her because she would just hit me with a pan in the head or something.
	I would try to just pretty much complete all the tasks as best as I can.
	And I mean, eventually, obviously, she couldn't really abuse me physically that much.
	She loved her stick, I can tell you that much.
	She loved to hit me with the stick.
	But around the age of 14, when I became bigger and almost taller than she was, I guess she would still hit me, but it wouldn't be as bad that I would lay on the floor and just lay on the floor and try not to move.
	Kind of bad. But then she completely switched on the...
	Yeah, she goes to verbal abuse then, right?
	Yeah, and call me like a piece of shit and all that.
	Whatever you really can imagine, I... I was cold, really.
	She several times said, oh, your mom should have had an abortion.
	Very much like, you shouldn't be here.
	I want you dead. I wish you were dead.
	That was the usual stuff, right?
	Yeah. And obviously, I didn't do good at school.
	Well, not obviously. I just didn't do good at school.
	Yeah, you're just trying to survive your life, right?
	And sometimes I would skip classes.
	I would go next to the river.
	I remember in fifth grade, it was wintertime, dark after school.
	I just skipped class and I just went to the river.
	And I was just looking at the river.
	And it was...
	No one. It was just like me and just nature.
	And I guess I kind of associated nature with my grandfather because my grandfather was like a fisherman.
	He loved nature and all that kind of stuff.
	So indirectly, I kind of felt like I was spending time with my grandfather.
	He might have loved nature, but he also probably liked getting away from his wife.
	Yeah. It's a lot of male hobbies that are...
	Not female-inclusive for pretty obvious reasons.
	Yeah, so...
	Yeah, so I had bad grades, and I pretty much...
	And then she'd start tutoring me, which you can probably only imagine how that went.
	So when she was tutoring me, I remember being in the kitchen, and...
	Doing simple math right now, it seems so simple, but back then it was so stressful and I couldn't do the simplest multiplication or dividing.
	Well, you can't reason or think or be creative when you've got a violent, crazy, psycho grandmother looking over your shoulder, right?
	You can't do it. I guess so, yeah.
	And... Yeah, so she tried to tutor me, but I would still perform bad at school.
	And yeah, I don't know where I'm going with the school thing.
	Okay, so I want to make sure we get to the sort of present stuff.
	And look, I appreciate the deep background, and I'm obviously incredibly sorry for...
	Everything that you have gone through.
	This is about as bad as it gets, and yay, you win.
	You win worst childhood of the year.
	I mean, that's just unbelievably horrible, and I'm so sorry for what you went through.
	My sort of momentary flash of, well, I guess they took you in, didn't last particularly long.
	So I got a couple of questions.
	When you would go to your mother's place, sort of seven or eight, you'd go through her stuff and clean up the place, did you find drugs?
	No. Okay, so she was not a drinker, she was not a drug user?
	Sometimes I would find alcohol and cigarettes, but she was really into that.
	At the age of 11, 12, I took over completely, meaning that I would go to her place, I would check for medication, check the data of her medication, because she liked to show old medication where she stored, because old medication obviously didn't work.
	So I would have to check the data and then go with her to the nurse and make sure she gets injections and make sure that she shows me the broken ampoules and where the medication was stored.
	And yeah, I pretty much just took over to make sure that she was fully medicated from the age of like 12, let's put it that way, like fully.
	Yeah, so... Okay, so I guess...
	Sorry, did you want to add something else?
	I just wanted to say that she got better and she would spend time sometimes in our place and she just got better and she seemed okay when she was on medication.
	But it wouldn't last, right?
	Well, the moment it stopped, obviously.
	I saw her in the handcuffs.
	I saw her...
	Doing things. Yeah, I saw some things.
	Right. Now, do you know...
	I guess she was in her mid to late...
	No, she was in her late 20s when she had you, right?
	Yeah. Okay.
	So, she already would be well known to the Authorities, right?
	As somebody, because I assume she'd had, you said that she started to go nuts in her early 20s.
	So she would be six or seven years in the area of the mental health system, right?
	She lived in a different country at that time.
	And then they moved.
	And how old were you or were you born when they moved?
	No, I wasn't born when they moved.
	They moved when she was like around 12, something like that, 13, maybe.
	No, no, I'm sorry. So your mom goes crazy in her early 20s.
	Six or seven years later, she has you, right?
	Yeah. This was all in the same country?
	Yeah. Okay.
	Different cities. I'm sorry?
	Different cities. Okay, so you said that they moved to 12.
	When did they move cities? So she was studying in a bigger city.
	She went to uni, college.
	She went to a few colleges and she quit.
	And then she found my...
	My sister's father, and they got her, and so on.
	And then they moved to the city where I was mainly raised, and things happened.
	And how long before you were born did they move to that city?
	Pretty much at the end of the pregnancy, they moved to the city where I lived, so yeah.
	Okay. So...
	When you get to the new city, she needs medication, right?
	Your mother, right? Yeah, I think she wasn't really medicated at that time.
	But she needs medication, right?
	Yeah. Okay, so she has to go to a doctor to get the medication.
	Even if she's not taking it, you might need it in case things go badly, right?
	I guess my question is, If your mother was well-known to the mental health care system, how is it possible that you were so brutally neglected for three years straight or more?
	Because if you're in the health care system, if you're in the mental health care system, if you're getting medication for schizophrenia, it's well-known in mental health circles.
	One of the big problems, of course, It's that crazy people get pregnant, right?
	And not just crazy people.
	I mean, I won't get into details, but there's a family member in my family of origin who is significantly developmentally handicapped, and she wants a boyfriend.
	And she wants to have sex, of course.
	I mean, the body is not handicapped, it's just the mind, right?
	And so it is a significant problem, or challenge, I suppose you could say, When treating with people who are mentally ill or cognitively deficient, that they get pregnant and they want to have sex, but they don't really understand the consequences and they may have babies, right? And so, if your mother is well known to the country's mental health care system and she's getting medication, if she's got doctors, and then she's pregnant, right?
	So then on her chart it says, oh, by the way, she's schizophrenic.
	You see where I'm going with this?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.
	And it's not like if you move from one city to another, those records all get erased, right?
	It's usually, it's a national healthcare system, right?
	So, your mom goes in and she's like, oh, I'm pregnant.
	And they're like, oh, Andrew's schizophrenic.
	Okay. You're going to need healthcare and you're going to need a social worker to check up on your child because you're schizophrenic, right?
	Yeah. And I assume that by the time she was in her late 20s, she'd already been hospitalized at least once for mental health issues, right?
	So, this is my question.
	If all of this is the case, how is it even remotely possible that no one checked up on you for over three years from the mental health care system or the health care system as a whole?
	Why didn't she have a social worker?
	Why didn't she have people come by?
	Why didn't she have a psychiatrist come and visit?
	Why didn't she, right?
	Yeah. This is something, I don't have some big answer to this, but that's the question that's been sort of sitting in my brain like a turning worm in a tequila bottle for like the last hour and a half.
	How on earth did this happen?
	How did a known psychotic schizophrenic Hide in the country with a child for over three years.
	I'm actually...
	That's a really good point.
	I really...
	I mean, there's a couple of possibilities, but I'm just wondering if you have any hints in the past that are coming to light.
	I'm trying to think of something that would have...
	that I know, but I... I don't know, but it totally makes sense what you're saying.
	I mean, I have a little bit of experience with this as...
	Like when I was 11, my mother was institutionalized.
	It was just myself and her living together.
	My brother had gone back to England for many years and was gone.
	And nobody ever called me to find out from this lovely side of my father's side of the family.
	Nobody ever called me to find out how things were.
	But my mother was institutionalized.
	Now, I came to visit her.
	In the institute that she was in.
	I would come to visit her.
	And I remember having a really nice game of ping pong with a woman who then said she couldn't handle losing and threw down the ping pong paddle and stormed out of the room after I won the ping pong game.
	Neither here nor there. So I know that the mental health care system is woefully deficient because I, at the age of 11 or 12 or something like that, I was going to visit my mother.
	So they knew that she had a child.
	She knew there was no father in the picture.
	She knew that we had recently moved to the country.
	And they just let me leave.
	No follow-up.
	No social worker. No, are you eating?
	Do you have money?
	Can you pay your rent? But that's still a little different from a baby.
	Coincidentally, I got a job.
	Gets you going, right? But that's different from a baby.
	I was 11 or 12. I could take steps.
	I could go to friends' places for dinner.
	I could borrow money. I could get a job.
	Two, in fact. But you're a baby.
	How is it possible?
	Well, two things, right?
	How is it possible that your mother, if she went nuts in her early 20s, was able to raise a child with some degree of empathy, which is your sister?
	I'm not saying you don't have empathy.
	I'm just talking about with regards to your sister and how she treated you.
	It was pretty nice, all things considered, right?
	So if your mother was truly nuts in her early 20s, I don't see how she could have raised your sister to have empathy.
	but given that your mother would be completely red flagged in the system for pregnancy because she's crazy how is it possible you languish in your own filth in a prison in your mother's apartment for over three years nobody came by nobody thought to check up on you no social worker was assigned I mean this is such a red flag Mentally ill,
	schizophrenic, psychotic, institutionalized woman is having a child, right?
	I mean, you could have been taken from her at the hospital.
	So I don't know the answer to it.
	Well, there's a couple of possibilities.
	One possibility is that they completely hit the pregnancy and the authorities weren't even aware that she'd had a child.
	She was giving birth in the same town.
	Well, maybe she gave birth at home.
	I don't know. People do.
	I know that I was in a hospital when that happened.
	Okay. All right. So that theory is off the table, right?
	She gave birth in a hospital.
	So something doesn't add up here.
	I mean, we could say maybe the authorities were just unbelievably woefully deficient.
	And let a known basket case walk out of a hospital with a baby.
	With no follow-up.
	Whatsoever. Maybe.
	That seems a little unlikely, but could be.
	Another possibility is your mother did go crazy earlier.
	My dad was there, I guess, when she gave birth to me.
	Your dad was there, right. Okay.
	But your dad must have had significant mental health issues if he's having a child with a woman who's this crazy, right?
	So I'm not sure that that's like, oh, don't worry, the guy who had the kid with the schizophrenic is there, so I'm sure it'll be fine, right?
	They weren't married, right?
	No. Right.
	So, I mean, that's another problem, too, is that if there were divorce proceedings, this is one of the reasons why marriage is kind of important.
	Because your dad could just fuck off to nowhere and the authorities had no idea, right?
	Right? Because if you go through a divorce, then there are lawyers involved, the government's involved, there are family courts involved, and then somebody's noticing that there's a kid here, right?
	A baby, a toddler. Yeah.
	But your dad just bailed.
	The authorities had no idea.
	Maybe they thought your dad was going to be the stabilizing influence.
	I don't know. Maybe they thought your grandmother was going to be the stabilizing influence, but she wasn't, right?
	But I just... The reason that this is so important is that your first experience of society in the world was they'll let you wallow in your own shit and drink water in a plastic bag, put under the door, and eat a couple of tomatoes while getting bow-legged and rickets and whatever else was going on.
	And society doesn't seem to give a shit.
	Now, either society knew and didn't give a shit or society didn't even know for some reason.
	Or maybe your mom wasn't as crazy as people say.
	Well, I've...
	I mean, I'm sorry, she was as crazy as people say, but maybe it happened later.
	Because, of course, you don't know what was going on.
	I mean, I assume your sister has talked about her early childhood.
	Does she remember things being as bad for her as they were?
	If they can't be, right? Because she couldn't have been as nice to you if she'd been raised the way that you were.
	I can't imagine. I mean, she wasn't locked in her own crap for three years, right?
	No, no. And on top of that, my grandmother and my grandfather were visiting pretty regularly.
	So, I guess, I don't know, maybe...
	Yeah, they... So they just hate males?
	Your mother and your grandmother just hate males, right?
	Maybe just specifically...
	Well, she would always compare me to my father and even though I would ask her a million times to not do it, she would do it anyways because she would say, like, I can't do it because you're just like your father.
	Well, he did a smart thing and left.
	Although terrible for you, right?
	I mean, he's an unbelievable asshole too for leaving...
	A child in the tender care of a schizophrenic and her evil mother.
	I wanted to add that I did meet him once in completely other country.
	And when I found out actually about that I have a half-brother, my grandmother just accidentally slipped by saying that there was a conversation about my father and she was just like comparing me to him again.
	And it slipped that I, something about probably that his other son looks just like him, like a piece of shit and all that kind of stuff.
	And then I looked at her pretty confused because it just clicked to me.
	Yeah, you didn't know about the other son, right?
	Yeah, I didn't know.
	And then I googled him.
	And then I, not Facebook, like we contacted through Facebook.
	And I don't know why I didn't search.
	I guess I just really resented my last name and I just didn't want to even have any idea.
	But when I actually, I searched, yeah.
	So I found him and we talked and we talked for like three to four hours and we were having pretty good, he seemed like a pretty okay person.
	Until this day, we're actually talking.
	In fact, I had a conversation with him just a week ago on a call, and I even lived at his place, and we talked, and he actually kind of asked me to just do me a solid.
	You can just meet him once.
	You don't want to continue.
	You don't have to just meet him once.
	So I met with my father, with him, and he was The first thing I noticed, he was a giant.
	He was taller than me.
	I'm pretty tall, like 6'1", and he was taller than me.
	And then we sat down, and I was obviously...
	I kind of felt uncomfortable being there, first of all.
	And then I was pretty angry.
	And I wanted to talk, but I kind of hold myself because my brother was there.
	And then after I looked at him, that he poured shots, drank one after another and another and another.
	And he took maybe seven shots right in front of me.
	And I just thought, like, no, I don't want to have anything in common with this.
	This is just a bad atmosphere.
	This is just a bad idea to be involved with this person in any way, shape, or form.
	Yeah, and I just met him once, and that's it.
	I didn't really continue any conversation or anything like that, and my brother never bothered me about it ever again, and we never talked about it.
	Was your brother a surprise that your father was doing shots when he met you?
	He did warn me that he likes to drink, but I didn't expect, I thought like a beer or two or something like that, but not like proper vodka shots.
	So... It's very Eastern European, if I don't.
	Right? Very, very cliched, right?
	Eastern European. Potato vodka!
	No, okay. All right.
	Okay, so...
	I don't drink myself.
	I just wanted to add, I guess.
	I don't drink myself completely.
	Oh, good for you. Good for you.
	Good for you. All right, so...
	What's the biggest thing that I can help you with before we close the convo?
	Well, okay, so finally getting to the main point...
	I'm really appreciating, by the way.
	No, you're absolutely welcome. I'm not saying I've got to go right now or anything.
	I just want to make sure that we use the remaining time wisely.
	Yeah, okay. So, right now, my friend noticed that I always have a...
	I kind of get angry when someone tries to teach me something, which is one.
	And two, I never take Compliments good in any way, shape, or form.
	And also, now that I got a girlfriend, it seems like this relationship is pretty good.
	Although it's just a beginning, but she seems sweet and caring.
	She seems like a good human being.
	And she clicked all the boxes that what I'm looking for in the woman.
	And also now that I own the business, I... Well, rather a company, not a business.
	I own a company and I always have, like, self-doubt that I can't do it even though, like, I reach the step and logically thinking it makes no sense, but there's always, as I mentioned in the email, that there are past ghosts following me and I still have doubts whenever I make any big decision.
	Always doubting myself.
	Also, the other thing would be that I guess those are the main things right now.
	And what do you want to focus on?
	What I would like to focus on is the anger thing, which I just fully understand I kind of have an idea why I'm getting angry when someone tries to teach me or I never take compliments or blah blah.
	But the main thing I guess is like why am I doubting myself on every bigger step and how do I how do I because right now we're in a relationship and we kind of just jokingly talked about like kids you know and like marriage and although I would like that I'm genuinely terrified,
	and I'm obviously not telling her that I'm terrified of it, but I do understand it's kind of unfair because I didn't open up fully to her, and I will at some point, I guess later on into relationship.
	We did talk about my past a bit, but not to the extent that I'm talking with you.
	Yeah, and you didn't even buy me dinner.
	Yeah, that's true.
	Okay, so is it the compliments thing or the anger thing or what would you like to focus on?
	The anger and how to stop doubting myself, I guess, those are the main.
	Okay, so give me an example.
	I like it. Which one do you want?
	Well, both. Okay, all right.
	We can do both. Give me an example of a situation where you get angry.
	I know you said trying to be taught something.
	That probably comes back to the tutoring and stuff.
	But I think there's a deeper reason why you resist being instructed on anything.
	But tell me any situation where you would get angry.
	I tend to not, but when I do, I get...
	So, for example, when something is being explained to me, when it's really obvious...
	And it seems really obvious, but it's actually not.
	And to me it seems obvious, so I'm already making pre-decision and I'm being like...
	Okay, let me put it again.
	When I don't understand something and...
	And my closest friend, that only gets when it's my closest friend, not when someone else I don't really know that much.
	I guess it goes back to the idea that to the closer people you can be more honest.
	But when my closest friend tries to explain me something and I don't understand, I'm getting mad on him.
	And I really would like not that happen to my girlfriend when we'll be like...
	Deeper into a relationship.
	Because I really would not want to rage or shout or yell on her because she doesn't know where it's coming from.
	She has no idea. And that's, I guess, one of the main fears that I have.
	And I hope that I will, God forbid, hit a kid if we ever had it or have it.
	Those are quite a big fears because I was exposed to it, and I'm fearing that what if I repeat it, although I understand it, it's wrong.
	But how do I prevent it?
	Okay, so we've really widened the scope here, which is fine.
	I just want to sort of be aware of it.
	Like, you know, how do I avoid hitting kids?
	How do I avoid hitting my girlfriend?
	How do I avoid doubting myself?
	How do I avoid getting angry when people tell me, you know, to try to instruct me?
	So I really do need you to narrow something down.
	What is it we're going to work on at this next part of the conversation?
	What's most important to you? And I know you want to say everything, but I can't do everything, right?
	I'm just a man.
	So what is it that you would like to focus on first?
	Okay. So first thing, when I will get closer to my girlfriend, how to make sure that I don't lash out or start being violent and physical or Like, for example, that my best friend has experienced.
	Your best friend has experienced you being violent and physical?
	Not physical, but...
	No, no, you said that word.
	I mean, I'm not sure what you mean by it, but you said violent and physical.
	Oh, physical? Well, not physical.
	Okay, but what do you mean then?
	Well, it's more like, since we are guys, it's kind of like, okay, if I like slap, meaning on the shoulder, or like, or, yeah, it's not really like physical, physical, like not a punch or, or anything like that.
	But more like, I would raise my voice, even though it makes no sense when, yeah, if that makes any sense.
	Would you say aggressive more than physical?
	Yeah, aggressive. Aggressive.
	Okay, good, good. I just want to make sure that we're on the same.
	Yeah. Okay, so as far as taking criticism goes, that's the major issue, is that right?
	Or at least that's the one you want to work on first?
	Yeah, we could work on that, yeah.
	No, no, now you sound uncertain.
	I'm happy to change it, but you've got to give me something to start.
	Okay, well... As I mentioned before, the main fear is that when I will get close to my girlfriend, that I don't get maybe comfortable, or maybe not comfortable, but don't get aggressive as I have gotten before with my best friend.
	Okay. Aggression. Got it.
	Okay. Now, let me ask you this, though, with regards to being instructed.
	You've been listening to this show for a couple of years.
	You think you said 2019?
	Yeah. Okay.
	Do I nag and instruct people all the time?
	A little bit. No, but I'm sort of a teacher in a way.
	I try to instruct people on the values of philosophy and so on, right?
	Now, do you feel aggression towards me when I'm instructing?
	No. Ah, so you don't mind being instructed at all, right?
	I guess so, yeah. So the question is, what's the difference, right?
	If you say, I hate all seafood, it's like, do you like halibut?
	Oh, I love that. It's like, okay, well, it's not all seafood, it's something else, right?
	Yeah. Okay.
	So, why do you think it doesn't bother you or make you feel aggressive and angry when I am the one instructing?
	Because I think your instructions are more valid than meaning that you have more experience in where you are, what you're instructing rather than maybe my peers or something like that.
	I don't know. Okay.
	I can tell you why.
	Sorry to be annoying. I'm going to instruct you on something here.
	So I'm going to tell you why you don't mind at all be instructing you.
	And that's because I have credibility.
	Okay, yeah.
	So the question is, why do I have credibility with you and other people don't?
	And you could say, well, it's just because it's online.
	It's like, well, no, because you and I are talking directly here now, right?
	I got really angry at your Grandparents, in a way that I knew was kind of startling to you, but you didn't get too angry at me, did you?
	I mean, you corrected me on some things, which was fine, and I accepted that, but I have credibility with you, or as a whole, which other people don't have.
	Is that a fair way to put it?
	Yeah. Right.
	Yeah. So why?
	Why? What's the difference? Because if you can figure that out, if you can figure out why you can take instruction from some people but not others, you won't get as angry, because you'll know what the cause is, if that makes sense.
	Could it be just because of the...
	Just respect, meaning that I... Well, respect is just another way of saying credibility, though, right?
	That doesn't add much to the comprehension level, if that makes sense?
	so what is it do you think why do I respect you more than I would respect my best friend or potentially in the future my girlfriend Right. Big question, right?
	Yeah. I... I guess just because I don't know you that much.
	No, that's... No, no.
	If you didn't know me, I'd have no credibility at all.
	I guarantee you that's not it.
	I guess I'm not a...
	Well, I am comfortable with you, but however, I'm still...
	No, I don't know.
	I'm really trying here, Stefan.
	No, no, listen. It's a tough call.
	It's a tough... It's a tough thing to ask.
	So I'm not expecting this to be obvious at all.
	But you kind of feel what I'm talking about here, right?
	Like in terms of credibility, right?
	There is something. There is something, I think, that is giving credibility...
	To me, that you don't find from other people.
	So I'll give you an example, right?
	Okay. So let's say that you and I were in a brutal war for 10 years.
	And we survived against all odds.
	And almost nobody else in that war survived.
	But we, through cunning, wit, luck, skill, dedication, work, we made it through.
	Now, you understand that we will forever be, in a sense, brothers.
	Brothers in arms, right?
	Now, if somebody else wants to come and talk to you and tell you all about war, and...
	They've never really been to war.
	Are you going to feel anger or impatience or annoyance when they start lecturing you about what war is really like?
	I guess if they've never been in war, I would be annoyed, impatient, and I would not respect their opinion because they never went through that.
	Right. Now, of course, if you had been to war for 10 years and somebody were to start lecturing you about what it's like to be in war, you'd say, listen, I appreciate where you're coming from, but, I mean, you've never really been to war.
	I was in the most brutal war that there is for 10 years straight.
	I, you know, I'm not going to listen to any lectures.
	Like, no disrespect, I mean, but, you know...
	I lived it for 10 years.
	You've not gone through it at all.
	You know, don't try and explain this stuff to me.
	It's not going to go well.
	It's not going to work, right? And you can say that without rage or anything, but as long as you understand why you're annoyed, then you wouldn't blame yourself for being annoyed.
	Like, you wouldn't say, oh, I should be really patient with these weekend warriors who took part in one Civil War reconstruction event and played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons telling me all about war and what it's like, right?
	Yeah. You wouldn't be mad at yourself, right?
	You'd be like, yeah, I know.
	I know why I'm annoyed, because this guy's kind of explained to me about war.
	He's not been, and I've been for 10 years, right?
	Mm-hmm. So, you see where I'm going with this, right?
	Yeah, that as long as I know the reason, I wouldn't be angry.
	Yeah. I mean, you might be mildly annoyed, but you wouldn't be tense about it.
	If we know why we're angry, we don't get tense about it.
	If we don't know why we're angry, then it's like if a dog you know is barking at you and you know it's a friendly dog, then you don't get scared.
	But if some strange dog is barking at you and you're in the middle of nowhere, you're kind of nervous because you don't know the dog.
	So if you know your anger, when it starts barking and you know what it is and why, it's not that alarming.
	The other day I was doing a really great monologue and this guy kept interrupting me and I was like, even after I asked him to stop, so I knew why I was annoyed.
	That's not complicated, right?
	So, if you would like, I will tell you why you tend to get annoyed when being instructed.
	Because society and people who have not suffered as you have suffered Don't have any fucking credibility with you at all.
	They have no credibility with you at all.
	Now I, I don't think I've suffered as much as you've suffered, but I have been pretty frank about my own suffering as a child.
	And you've heard me, I think, speak with great empathy and clarity to people who've suffered in a similar way to you and I and how we suffered as children.
	So I think because you and I were at war...
	For 15 years, we can speak to each other with credibility about the battle.
	That makes sense.
	Other people, it's not that they've not been to war.
	That's okay. I'm glad that people haven't suffered as much as you have suffered or as much as I have suffered as a child.
	And you've suffered more than me.
	I've suffered more than most.
	I'm glad. I'm glad that most people haven't suffered as much as we have.
	I genuinely am.
	But here's the problem.
	The problem is that we still have to lie about it.
	That's the problem.
	That's the tension.
	If you've been to war for 10 years and someone tries to lecture you about war, you say, no, no, listen, I was in war for 10 years.
	You don't need to tell me anything about this, right?
	But you can't even say that you were in a war!
	You've got to hide it from people.
	You have hidden it from your girlfriend to some degree, to a large degree, right?
	You said, I've talked to her a little bit, but not as much as I've talked to you, right?
	Yeah. Why?
	Because you can't even say it to people.
	Yeah. Because they don't look at you the same.
	They think it's weird.
	They think it's disturbing.
	They think it's troubling. They think it makes you strange.
	They kind of step away from it.
	It shatters the world that they know.
	It shatters the world that they know.
	And it's not because you and I did anything wrong.
	And it's not because we were in the presence of great evil as children and were victimized by it endlessly.
	That is not what screws people up about our abused childhoods.
	The simple thing that fucks people up, that rips them right out of this comfortable amniotic womb sack of their lives is that they live in a society that let this shit happen and blames The victims and blames the victims.
	Speaking honestly about child abuse reveals the moral shitstorm of our society.
	Completely and utterly.
	And people don't like to hear stories of childhood victimization.
	Because you and I sailed all the way through society.
	Hundreds of people knew us.
	I lived in three different countries.
	You went from city to city and country to country.
	And you're in your 20s now.
	And I'm in my 50s.
	Nobody did anything.
	Nobody lifted a finger, except your grandmother, who then tortured and abused you even further.
	And when we bring it up, That we sail through society, getting torn apart every day by virtual demons in human form, and society let it happen, and if we talk about it, society will generally turn on us and conform with the wishes of the abusers.
	And you saw this happen to me in the media, right?
	I mean, everyone in the media knows that I was abused as a child, and what did they do?
	They side with the abusers by abusing me further.
	For daring to speak up about child abuse.
	This is the shitstorm of the society that we live in.
	So, you can't even say that you went to war.
	We have to treat it like we were criminals.
	Like, if your war was you were in some horrifying Mexican drug cartel and you beheaded pregnant women as lessons to their families or something like that, right?
	If that was your war, you wouldn't be talking about it, right?
	You'd have to keep that quiet, you'd have to keep that silent, at least in general society, because you'd be a criminal, right?
	And we have to keep quiet about our war like we were criminals, rather than innocent child victims of abuse.
	So I'll tell you this, when society comes forward to lecture me about ethics, it's like, you've got to be fucking kidding me.
	You've got to be kidding me.
	I've said this before, but it was a long time ago, so I'll just mention it again here, because it's very relevant to what we're talking about.
	So, when I got first attacked by the media, I could not, for the life of me, figure it out.
	Couldn't. I was dumbstruck.
	I was like, what the hell is going on?
	And it took me a little while to figure it out, and then I finally realized, oh, right!
	Right! My mother is wiser than I am.
	My mother understands society way better than I do.
	My mother, and your grandmother, and your mother to some degree, they understand society better than we do.
	Reason being, my mother, I grew up in these apartments, as did you, with, you know, Paper-thin walls and everyone knows everyone else's business.
	You know what they're frying for dinner.
	You can smell the food.
	You know what TV show they're watching.
	You know what music they like.
	You know, all the sound mixes together, right?
	So my mother, on three different continents, could beat the shit out of me with hundreds of people able to hear it.
	And she knew that she was totally safe.
	Totally safe. She knew no one was going to call the cops.
	She knew no one was going to knock on the door.
	She knew no one was going to confront her.
	She knew that she could commit literal crimes with an earshot of hundreds of people, really thousands in all the different places we lived in.
	She could commit crimes against a child.
	In literal earshot of thousands of people on three different continents and be as safe as a baby egg in a nest.
	She was going to be perfectly safe in doing that.
	Now she understood that.
	Oh yeah, I could belt this kid.
	Oh, I could scream at him.
	Oh yeah, I could beat his head against the door.
	I can pound the shit out of him.
	And nobody of the thousands of people who heard it.
	And I knew at least some of them were in law enforcement because I knew what they did.
	And she could do all of that.
	And it didn't matter where she did it.
	She could do it in London.
	She could do it in Ireland. She could do it in Scotland.
	She could do it in Africa. She could do it in Canada.
	She could do it anywhere. It didn't matter where.
	And not only... Was she perfectly safe?
	But if 40 years later her son tried to help someone who was being abused, the media and the world would turn on her son for trying to help a child, or an adult child at this point, right?
	So we all know this deep down, which is why we carry around our victimhood as some kind of guilty secret.
	See, this is the way it works in society.
	You can be a woman with your tits hanging out, wearing a skirt so short it might as well be a bandana.
	You can get drunk, you can rip off your top, you can dance naked on a frat table, and no one is supposed to touch you without your consent, which I completely agree with, by the way.
	No one should be. And if you say, well, boy, you know, That's not wise behavior.
	Suddenly you're slut-shaming and you're blaming the victim and you're a bad person, right?
	And we see all of that in society.
	But when you and I, as helpless, innocent, utterly dependent victims of relentless systemic child abuse during our formative and developing years, if we go forward and say this is what happened, And society let it happen.
	And society continues to let it happen.
	And, by the way, when we speak out about it, we ourselves are blamed in a way that we would never even think of blaming a woman dancing topless at a party if she was touched against her consent.
	So the standards are insane.
	The victim blaming is utterly pathological.
	And society basically operates to protect child abusers and silence the shit out of people like you and I. And that's the fundamental reason that we have a society, so to speak, at the moment, is to make sure that victims don't get a voice and that society will protect abusers from here to eternity.
	Now, I'm trying not to confuse the two of us like make us the same person.
	Yeah. You've been listening to this show for a while.
	What is your feeling?
	Let's say that you've got to sit down tonight right after this call.
	I'm not saying you should or shouldn't.
	I'm just saying, what is your thoughts if you say, you know what, I'm going to call my girlfriend, I'm going to tell her everything I told Steph.
	What would your feeling be about that?
	I mean, well, first of all, she's sleeping.
	But second of all, if I did this, I... I don't know if I... Yeah, as you mentioned, I don't know if she would feel like...
	What's your feeling? No, no. Don't give me your intellectual analysis, which you can do from here to eternity, and that's a great thing.
	What's your feeling? Where does it hit you in your body if you say, you know what, I'm just going to unburden myself of everything that happened to me?
	I would be afraid to lose her.
	You'd be afraid to lose her. You'd be afraid to be negatively judged by her, right?
	Yeah. What is the phrase women use?
	Spoiled goods. I mentioned this in the email, actually, and I don't know why I forgot to mention this when you asked me about what do I want to talk about.
	So, I mentioned in the email that my sister now is pregnant and she has a loving guy that she's with and good for her.
	But me and her, we took the duty of sending money to my grandma and my mom.
	Yeah, that's on my list of things to talk about before the end of the chat, but go ahead.
	Okay. Well, so I wanted to say that right now that my sister is pregnant, I have Before, I used to just send the money even though I knew that I would have to live on $100 for food for the month.
	Just because, I don't know, I used to talk to my grandma as well.
	And after listening to your podcast, I decided to completely cut all the ties with her.
	Meaning, except the money-sending part.
	But other than that, that talking or...
	Everything is gone. The only way she's communicated with me is through my sister.
	When she wants to thank me for money and act as a victim, as she always does.
	How poor, how bad it is for her.
	Anyway, so now that my sister is pregnant, I took the duty of supporting my grandma and my mom.
	It's not a lot.
	It's three to four hundred dollars, I guess.
	That would be, yeah, three to four hundred dollars every second, or if I can, every third month.
	But I just, I don't think it's, if I want to cut all the ties, I want to cut that too.
	It's not because, oh, money or something like that.
	It's just more of that I don't want to be associated with them in any way whatsoever, but I can't do it because my sister would feel guilty and she would have to send it, but she can't because now she's expecting.
	I'm kind of in a tricky situation because I don't want to ruin my relationship with my sister.
	I already barely talked to her, in fact.
	Maybe once or twice.
	Why does your grandmother not have any money?
	I mean, she had your grandfather.
	She had an inheritance. She's got, I'm sure, some sort of government pension.
	I mean, she had her business.
	Why doesn't she have any money? Yeah, well, apparently she...
	I don't know how much of that is true because she lied to me so many times and that could be one of her lies.
	But throughout her...
	Well, working period and all that kind of stuff.
	I guess the...
	What do you call it in English?
	The place where they decide the size of your pension and...
	Yeah, whatever it is, yeah.
	Yeah, so apparently because she moved countries, they cut off the big proportion of her years and she's getting very little pension.
	Although my mom is getting her disabled pension, I guess.
	But it's just not enough, I guess, for their comfort, although it's a pretty reasonable amount.
	She can just move back to her country, right?
	Then she gets her pension, right?
	She's comfortable here.
	Not if she doesn't have any money, she's not.
	Well, she's getting from us, so that's how she's comfortable.
	No, no, but that's a choice, right?
	I'm just saying that she's not going to starve to death if you don't give her money, and if you're Sister doesn't give her money.
	She'll just go back to the country she came from, right?
	Where she can get her full pension. Well, the thing is that that country is not in European Union.
	Don't care. She can still get her full pension, right?
	Half of it, I guess.
	No, if she goes home, doesn't she get her full pension?
	I don't know how it works, Steph.
	Well, no, she's got a pension, right?
	But if she's not in the country, they don't pay much of it, right?
	But if she's in the country, then they pay it.
	I think the pension she's getting now there is more than she would be getting in the country where she lived before.
	And even the amount that she's getting now is apparently very low.
	So, yeah, she doesn't have a lot of money.
	Okay. I don't know what to say.
	I mean, there's an old saying in business, right?
	It says, a failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.
	She had her whole life to prepare for her old age, right?
	She chose to have a job that didn't make much money.
	She chose to spend the money she got from your grandfather.
	She chose to spend the money that she got from his life insurance, or they chose to save money by not buying life insurance, in which case she should have all that money.
	But if she spent all her money and she doesn't have any money, that's tough.
	But she's a creative person.
	She's a willful person, right?
	She can organize an exorcism.
	She can get things done, right?
	Yeah. And look, there may be people out there.
	There's charities too that will help her.
	And there may be people out there who will help her.
	I'm just not sure it should be the people that she abused and wished death upon them and dragged them to exorcisms with the mother and did all kinds of terrible things and hit them with giant wooden implements.
	You know, those people shouldn't help, right?
	Right.
	Like, I mean, if there's some guy who beats up his wife and then he ends up broke, then maybe some people can help that guy.
	But it shouldn't be the wife, right?
	No.
	Makes sense.
	And your anger...
	Does your anger want to give your grandmother money?
	I... No.
	No? I don't think she deserves that, yeah.
	Oh, I think she deserves some stuff, but it's not money.
	Deserves a seat at Satan's table, I suppose, and a lake of everlasting fire, as the saying goes, but I don't think that she deserves money from you.
	So your anger is saying, look, I don't want to have any connection with this woman, Because it's not just the overt abuse.
	It's what I talked about at the beginning of the conversation.
	It's the abuse that happened over the three years when she was the only...
	She and your grandfather were the only sane, responsible people in the environment.
	I guess not particularly sane and not particularly responsible, but certainly saner and more responsible than your mother.
	And they let you sit in your own shit for three plus years.
	Yeah. Do you want to give her a dime?
	I don't, but I feel pressured from the idea of my sister because, well, from my sister's side because she doesn't look at the situation the same way that I do.
	She looks at her like, oh, she's...
	Okay, do you want to be a leader or a follower in this life?
	I want to be a leader.
	Okay, then be a leader.
	Lead your sister through your example.
	You say, no, I don't pay money to people who viciously abused both of us.
	I'm not paying my abuser.
	Oh, but she's old, she's poor.
	Yes, and that's why you shouldn't abuse people.
	And the reason you would say this to your sister and the reason why I'm focusing hard on this point is not because I give a shit about your grandmother, my friend, but for one reason and one reason only.
	I give a shit about your future children and I give a shit about the baby that your sister is pregnant with right now.
	If you subsidize child abuse, do you know how much more likely that's going to be that you end up as a child abuser?
	You want to know how to stop it?
	Don't fund it. Don't appease it.
	Don't obey it. Don't be twisted into rank sentimentality by evildoers.
	Show her infinitely more mercy than she ever showed you.
	You're not going over there to beat her when she's old and helpless with a stick, are you?
	So you're showing her infinitely more mercy than she ever showed you.
	But you draw that line in the sand.
	Line in the sand.
	I do not fund evildoers.
	I do not give money, time, and attention to child abusers.
	They don't get off scot-free.
	They don't get my resources.
	They don't get my attention. They don't get my value.
	They don't get my love.
	They don't get my hatred.
	They don't get my vengeance.
	Because... It's a long answer to that, but let's skip over that for now.
	But... If you continue to appease child abusers, what you're saying is, oh, wait a minute.
	Oh, wow, deep down, you can abuse the shit out of your children and they'll still do really great stuff for you 30 years down the road.
	That's going to make you much softer when it comes to resisting any aggressive impulses you have towards your own children.
	Whereas if you say child abusers who are unrepentant, right?
	It's not like she's had this big apology session, gone to therapy, figured out her issues, right?
	She always denied that.
	Of course she did, right?
	And why wouldn't she? Because you're paying her anyway!
	Yeah. Like, if you have a job you hate and they pay you whether you show up or not, of course you're not going to show up.
	And they're going to say, well, he's just lazy.
	It's like, well, you're paying her whether he shows up or not.
	You're paying her whether she apologizes or not.
	Why the hell would she apologize?
	You pay her either way.
	And if you want to draw that intergenerational line in the sand and you say, nope!
	It stops right here.
	Right here. Then anger, remember I said anger is justice.
	You pay people what they have earned.
	You give to people what you owe.
	Unrepentant. Vicious.
	I want you dead, beating children, child abusers.
	What does justice, not sentimentality, not society, what does raw animal justice, or raw godly justice, if you prefer, or raw philosophical justice, should the innocent victims fund should the innocent victims fund and appease the guilty abusers?
	The same raw justice, I suppose, would be treating the same that they treated would be treating the same that they treated the other.
	Yeah.
	Well, yeah, except that I don't think you want to get...
	It's not self-defense anymore, right?
	You're an adult, you're independent, so going back and beating her up would be a violation of the non-aggression principle.
	But you don't give her money.
	I was thinking that now is probably...
	I paid enough for her to, let's say, stabilize my body to the way it is now.
	And I think that's all I owed her.
	No, you didn't owe her even that.
	Because your body was fucked up to begin with because of her.
	Not paying attention and taking care of you when she knew that her daughter was insane.
	She broke you. Like, if a guy busts my car, he's got to fix it.
	If he fixes it, I don't sit there and say, oh, here's another $10,000 for being nice enough to fix it.
	It's like, you broke it! Your grandmother broke you by leaving you alone with her obviously insane daughter to wallow in your own shit for over three years.
	You didn't owe her anything!
	Now, if she had been wonderful, and let's say she'd been out of the country, let's say she'd been in a coma, whatever, right?
	None of these things make any sense, because she knew.
	I don't know how it's possible, but No.
	Let me tell you a story.
	Okay. When I was maybe five or six or seven years old, I was at my apartment complex in England and a friend of mine and I found a wasp's nest behind a garage and we poured sand into the wasp's nest just to see what would happen.
	And the wasps...
	Clouded up, and we hightailed it out of there.
	Now, later that day, I had saved a sunflower.
	You know, there's the bags of sunflower seeds that you get.
	And I thought, wouldn't it be lovely to grow a sunflower?
	And I was planting a sunflower in the grass beside the four-story little apartment building that we lived in.
	And a wasp came and stung the shit out of me.
	Like, you know what wasps can do, right?
	They don't, like, they don't stab and die like bees do, right?
	They can do five, six shots, right?
	Yeah. And it was on my left wrist.
	Stung the shit out of me.
	Now, when you're little, like, that's a lot of venom, right?
	Yeah. And I sort of staggered up to my apartment.
	Nobody was there. And I remember I was rolling around on the ground, grabbing my wrist.
	It felt like my entire body was on fire with the level of venom.
	Do you know why I'm telling you this story?
	I'm trying.
	I'm trying to follow, but not really yet.
	Were the wasps angry at me for pouring sand in their hole, in their home, destroying their work?
	I guess they were, but how would they remember specifically you?
	I have no idea. But it wasn't like, you know, sometimes you sit on a wasp or a bee.
	It wasn't too long after.
	I think that they followed me, or I think that they recognized me, or maybe they knew the scent.
	Because I almost never get stung by any animals.
	Like mosquitoes, yeah, of course, right?
	But I mean, like wasps and bees have been stung maybe three or four times in my entire life.
	Why on earth would a wasp just come and sting the living shit out of me?
	After I poured sand in a wasp nest.
	I guess revenge kind of thing.
	Yeah. Now, as a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, otherwise known as a wasp, I can appreciate that.
	It is common in all of the creatures that have flourished, and wasps have been very successful, that they are angry And they punish.
	You try getting between a mother grizzly and her cubs.
	You try going to get a bird egg from a bird's nest.
	What are the birds going to do?
	You ever see these things where some hawk is trying to come up to some starling or sparrow's nest?
	You know what all the starlings and the sparrows do?
	Is they go and peck the shit out of that hawk.
	They defend! And attack!
	And are robust. But we twist ourselves into these weird pretzels where we hand over money to people who abused us for years.
	We give them time.
	We give them energy. We give them affection and Christmas cards and pumpkin spice lattes or whatever the hell happens these days, right?
	Are we not men? Can we at least be wasps?
	Can we at least, like, we're a lot bigger than wasps, can we at least have the courage and integrity of wasps?
	Yeah. We say, well, we have to be bigger than wasps, right?
	It's like, no, no, listen, I am absolutely take the high road with people, but not when they abused me for 15 years.
	You don't take a higher road with people who ride the backs of devils.
	Your anger is there because you and I have been inducted into the secret guilty society of people who know exactly what society is all about.
	Okay.
	Which is the Protection of abusers and the crippling of truth-tellers.
	The destruction of the victims and the exaltation of the abusers.
	The defense of the terrorizers of children and the attack on any children who dare point it out.
	People don't want to see the cesspool and sewer of modern morality.
	They don't want to see it, man.
	They don't want to see what their society actually is.
	They don't want to see it. And that's why we feel this immense pressure to shut up.
	And they don't want to see how they react to a genuine victim's story.
	A genuine victim's story.
	Because they like to think in their heads, oh my gosh, if a friend of mine was really badly abused, I would be so sympathetic, I'd really...
	But they're not. Usually.
	What happens? You talk about your victimization, they get really uncomfortable.
	They don't like to hear it. They don't want to talk about it.
	And again, it's not personal to you.
	It's just that they don't want to see that they're part of this machinery.
	They don't want to look in the mirror and see that they're part of the machinery that oppresses children by silencing us when we're adults.
	Particularly the boys. Particularly the boys.
	Particularly the men. I was pretty brainwashed after I left because the only thing that I could think of is For the last two years, 17, 18, she really focused on brainwashing me, meaning that, oh, will you take care of me when I'm old?
	Because she was so good when I was 18, before I left.
	She was so nice, so good.
	She cooked me the nicest dinner.
	She was so nice. Yeah, because you're about to get out.
	And you understand that makes her even worse, though, because it means she knows exactly how to be good.
	Yeah. She didn't want to do it.
	Yeah. Right.
	Right. I guess after listening to your podcast, it took me at least two years to just cut it completely.
	But the money thing was always there and it's always kind of bothered me, the idea of like, why am I doing this?
	I know it's wrong. And you're saying to your anger and you're saying to your wasp, fuck you, you mean nothing to me.
	I'm siding with the abuser.
	And then you wonder why your anger is not going away.
	You're insulting it.
	And I'm not saying you, like, made this choice.
	It's until you know, right?
	You're not responsible. But you're saying to your anger, which is desperate to protect you, you're saying to your anger, screw you, man.
	I'm not going to let you keep me safe.
	I'm not going to let you protect me.
	I'm not going to let you be clear.
	I'm not going to let you keep my money.
	We're going to take all of this hard-earned money.
	We're going to shovel it across the table at the woman who mentally tortured us and physically beat the shit out of us and forced us to let priests into our mother's house so they could have an exorcism she refused to attend.
	Let's give her the money.
	Don't save it for your future children.
	Don't buy Bitcoin and end up with a hundred times the money.
	So that we can have a great wedding and a wonderful world tour and buy a castle in Romania or whatever you want to do.
	No, no. Give the money to the woman who broke our mother and tried her very best to break us.
	No. Reward the abusers.
	Reward the abusers. Reward the abusers.
	And then we say, gosh, I wonder why there's so much abuse in the world.
	I wonder why children are treated so badly.
	No. To be able to tell the tale and horror of the abuse that happened to you without feeling one single shred of guilt is just about the most powerful thing on this planet.
	What you suffered, you were a complete and total victim.
	Of course you were. You were one, you were two, you were three, you were seven, eight, ten, twelve, seventeen.
	All of the touch points that we've talked on in every single second and day in between, you were a complete and total victim.
	And you, none of that touches you and your essence.
	None of that smears your soul.
	None of that spoils who you are.
	That you survived is heroic.
	That you still reason.
	That you love philosophy.
	That you love virtue. That you care about your sister.
	That is testament to a truly, to me, God-like amount of strength and conviction.
	To be proud of surviving a war we were born into and had to survive with the guts of our wits.
	Thanks.
	Thanks.
	Yeah, I was abused.
	And look at me now, I'm fucking glorious.
	I was taught to hate, yet I love.
	I was taught to fear, yet I am brave.
	I was taught to hide, yet I show myself.
	I was taught to appease, yet I am just.
	I was taught to cower, yet I am angry.
	I was taught to live in silence, yet I speak.
	Not in whispers, not in secret, not in silence, but to the entire fucking planet for all time.
	And you are here with me, my brother.
	You are here with me.
	Wow. And that's glorious.
	You are going to tell the truth.
	You are not going to appease.
	You are not going to bow down to those who abused you.
	And you are going to take not one single shred of guilt or shame or blame for what society forced you to go through.
	No. You stand up and you condemn society.
	So society, unfortunately, is full of shitty people who let children be abused.
	And then, after they let children be abused, and because of that, when the children speak up as adults, they shame them and attack them and bully them.
	And that's the world we live in.
	It's not the world we want, it's the world we live in.
	But I'm not going to take any blame for that.
	It's not me who made society shitty, right?
	It's not me who made people cowards.
	It's not me who made people appease and collude with abusers to silence anybody who tells the truth about abuse.
	It's not me. I didn't make that.
	I didn't do that. I didn't make the world.
	I'm just trying to make it better. And if that hurts the world, well, maybe you should have done it before I was born or before I got a podcast or before I got a voice.
	Maybe you shouldn't have waited until it became too painful or so painful.
	That's not my fault either.
	It's not my fault either.
	I mean, 2,000 years ago, Jesus said, whatever you do to the least among you, so do you also do to me.
	Very clearly said, protect the children like the children of Jesus.
	2,000 years society has had to listen to that shit and do it.
	And society as a whole says all the time, oh, the children.
	We love the children.
	We care about the children.
	We want to educate the children.
	I do anything for my kids.
	The children are the future. The children are innocent and perfect and pure and wonderful.
	So everybody knows exactly what they have to do.
	Everybody knows exactly what they're supposed to do.
	Everybody has been told for thousands of years exactly the right thing to do.
	The fact that they're not doing it, it's not my fault.
	I got a little impatient, to be honest with me.
	To be honest with you, I got a little impatient about this shit.
	About people thumping their chest and talking about how they care about children.
	And I say, oh, I was abused as a child.
	Oh, yeah, fuck you, you're a cult leader.
	Okay, that's how it's going to be, right?
	Is that how it's going to be? Okay, that's how it's going to be.
	But I'm not fucking backing down.
	Because we had enough of this shit in the world.
	So don't you take one shred of guilt or shame or blame for the fact that society was shitty and let you lie in your own shit for three years.
	That's not on you. You're just a child born into this hellscape of an asylum of a society.
	That's not on you at all.
	You should be Thumping your chest like a Marvel hero at having survived this and strengthened because of this.
	You know what you say?
	Not, oh, I was abused and it's bad or I'm abused and it's shameful.
	You know what you say?
	I tell you what you say to your girlfriend, to the world, to yourself.
	You say, I was abused and I fucking won.
	I won! Yeah.
	Why? Because fuck them, that's why.
	And fuck society for letting it happen, and fuck all the people who try to shame us for being innocent victims of abuse.
	Fuck them all. If that makes them uncomfortable, too bad.
	Don't be a shitty person. When people tell you they were abused as children, listen.
	Open your heart. Be a decent fucking human being.
	Don't shame them. Don't guilt them.
	Don't say, oh, but she was your mother.
	Until anybody says to a woman who voluntarily chose to get married to a shitty and abusive husband, oh, you can't divorce him, oh, it's your husband.
	Bullshit. No.
	And I'm sorry that it lands more on women than on men at the moment, right?
	In this story and in general, because women are more responsible for the raising of children than men.
	Sorry about that, ladies. You wanted equality.
	That's all I heard about growing up.
	Want equality. Want to be equal to men.
	Okay. Okay, I hear you.
	Loud and clear, ladies. You want to be equal to men.
	Great. You get this lovely little thing called moral responsibility.
	And if you're responsible for most of the mistreatment that children go through, both directly, indirectly through daycare, directly through parenting, and even more indirectly but more viscerally by the men you choose to have children with.
	Okay. You want this moral responsibility?
	You want this equality? Great.
	Great. Let's do it.
	Oh, don't like it. Sorry, it's too late.
	Sorry, it's too late. You want to be treated as adults?
	Be adults. Women held me morally responsible for what I did when I was 8 years old.
	Now I'm 55 and holding 30-year-old women morally responsible for what they do and apparently I'm a misogynist.
	No, the real misogyny is pretending that they're children at any other time except when they vote and want a raise.
	No, no. I don't want that world for my daughter.
	I don't want that world for your girlfriend or your daughters to come.
	So you don't take anything as shameful.
	The shame is on your grandmother, your mother, your father, your grandfather, your school, your priests, your society, your extended family, everybody who came in contact with you, everyone who hurt you, How long did you have to lie in your own shit before somebody called the cops?
	And why did they call the cops?
	They called the cops, why?
	Because they were inconvenienced by the smell.
	That's how selfish the world is.
	They didn't say, you know what, I hear a kid in there.
	I hear a kid in there, but I never see him.
	What's up with that? Where's this kid?
	No! They wait for years until the stench gets so bad and then it's like, oh, it smells bad.
	That's bad for me. I'm going to call the cops now.
	You know? Apparently, screw you for three years, but the moment you inconvenience them, oh, well, we've got to change this now, haven't we?
	I normalized it so much in my head.
	I guess, again, it goes back to survival.
	Because people don't want to see the society they live in.
	They don't want to see how much has to change in their own hearts, and they don't want to see what they've normalized either.
	Like the moment you stop normalizing this shit, other people go like, oh my God, that's a clear-eyed view of the world.
	What am I lying to myself about?
	What have I been forced to lie about?
	What have I been propagandized about?
	I'm sorry to end up with such a long speech, but To me, you've got to get off the shame stuff.
	Man, that's toxic and that only serves the abusers and harms you.
	If you don't feel ashamed about how you were treated and abused as an innocent little boy or as an innocent little girl for everyone else listening to this, if you don't feel ashamed about this, if you don't take a shred of guilt or shame or blame for any of this stuff, you won't abuse your children because you will have so completely denormalized it.
	It'd be like if you were so used to eating spicy food, right, that everything required a crazy amount of spice, and then you stopped eating spicy food for 20 years, you wouldn't be able to go back to it.
	If you denormalize stuff, it doesn't return.
	I know that the abuse that I suffered as a child is entirely on the evil side of the spectrum.
	And whatever we define as evil, we will simply avoid.
	And by having it not defined as evil, that's how it reproduces.
	Like if, you know, you eat some yogurt and it tastes bad, you spit it out.
	If you can't even taste that it's bad, you'll keep eating and get really sick.
	I'm just here to sensitize your taste buds, so to speak.
	Right? And if something tastes like shit, you won't eat it.
	But if you think it tastes great, you might.
	So I'm just here to denormalize that and tell you this is what actually was.
	And if you read about this story...
	In the newspaper, the boy who lived in his own filth and was forced to attend an exorcism of his own mother and was encouraged to read his mother's journals wishing him dead and was told that he wished that the grandmother wished he'd been aborted, wished he was dead, wished he was not there and was responsible for all the terrible things in the environment.
	Would you say to that kid, well, you know, be sure to fund that woman when you get old.
	Give her lots of money. Every month.
	That would sound absurd, yeah.
	But that's, right? Have at least as much empathy for yourself as you would for someone you read about.
	Some little boy you'd read about.
	You said, you'd say, well, the boy would say when he got older, he'd get into his late 20s.
	He said, oh, but I feel guilty for not sending her money.
	I'm like, well, she should be lucky she's not getting a letter bomb.
	I knew that this call would actually open up some things.
	Well, maybe fairly obvious, but...
	No, no, not obvious. Please don't do that to yourself.
	Not obvious at all. I can't even tell you how long it took for me to figure this stuff out, but I was a lot older than you when I did, so this is not obvious at all.
	Otherwise, we're both idiots. Maybe that's true, but I don't think so.
	Yeah. I mean, there are a lot of other things, but I understand that You don't have time.
	And I really appreciate your time that you already spent with me.
	And I think that this call definitely changed things.
	Will you keep me posted about how it's going, my friend?
	Yeah, I will definitely email you or send here.
	Yeah, please do, please do.
	Dude, you're a hero. Please, please take pride in what you have survived.
	You are magnificent.
	And you should take that and wear it like a sunbeam on your chest to blind vampires from your sight.
	This is something that you should be enormously proud of.
	And you are a magnificent bastard and you should hold that pride with you until the day you die and have it put on your fucking tombstone.
	Yeah. Thank you.
	You're welcome, man. Keep me posted and thank you so much for the chat.
	It was very helpful, I think.
	It's my pleasure. Take care.

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