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Oct. 22, 2024 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:57:54
MY BOYFRIEND ALMOST KILLED ME! Freedomain Call In
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Time Text
Hello.
How's it going?
It's going well.
How are you?
I am well.
I'm well.
Well, I appreciate the email.
Do you want to just start by reading the email?
We'll take it from there or do you want me to put it in Skype here or something else?
Yeah, I can go ahead and read it.
I am kind of getting a weird signal from you.
It's like cutting in and out a little bit.
Do you mind just testing your mic a little bit more?
Yeah, one process is just ending here, so let me see here.
Testing, testing, one, two, three.
I think the problem's gone.
It sounds great.
Okay, good, good.
All right.
So yeah, if you want to start with the email, we can take it from there.
Absolutely.
All right.
Hi, Stefan.
My name is and I'm a three-year-old woman with an AC score of eight.
I come from a difficult background marked by physical abuse and severe neglect.
My father was an alcoholic and my mother holds extreme religious beliefs.
They separated when I was eight, both remarried within a year, and my dad moved out of state, becoming largely absent from my life.
My stepdad was an alcoholic during my teenage years and was verbally and emotionally abusive to my siblings and me, and occasionally physically abusive towards my mom.
My mom believed in spanking with her hand or household items, but never hit us except for one incident.
She uses shame and fear as control tactics and often told my brothers and me that we were going to hell.
She had a tough upbringing and was a single mother at 16.
She is highly emotional, has fits of rage, and struggles with depression and suicidal tendencies.
She accused me multiple times of being the reason that she wanted to kill herself.
CPS was called on my mom nine times during my childhood, but nothing was ever done because she would clean up quickly for inspections.
I have two older brothers who grew up in the same environment.
One is 30 and in prison for drug-related crimes, and the other is 28 with five children not in his custody and currently in active addiction.
I have a 15-year-old brother, a 14-year-old sister with severe disabilities.
She's nonverbal, non-walking, and fed through a feeding tube.
A 10-year-old sister, a 4-year-old brother, and a 10-year-old niece, and 9-year-old nephew, who are children of my brother that's in prison, and they're all under the care of my mom and my stepdad.
I was exposed to sex at an early age.
I heard or saw my mom and stepdad having sex several times a week for most of my childhood.
And as a result, I was a very promiscuous teenager.
I had sex with multiple men who were 23 and older when I was underage and was raped when I was 17 and sexually assaulted three other times between 18 and 20.
When I was 21, I moved out of state and I met a boyfriend who severely physically abused me and he nearly took my life.
I understand now that it was my choice to date him and I don't blame my parents for that.
However, I do see a correlation between my childhood and my choice in partners until my most recent healthy relationship.
My boyfriend and I visited my mom and stepdad and the kids for the first time in several years.
It was shocking to see the condition of their home.
It looks just as it did when I was younger, but seeing it now, it is clear that something was really wrong then and still is.
The house is filthy and the children are dirty and wear dirty clothes.
The restroom was disgusting.
I couldn't even use it.
It is clear that the kids now know little about personal hygiene.
I didn't learn proper hygiene until I was well into my adult years.
According to the kids, my mom is no longer physically abusive, but it was obvious that she is still mean.
She speaks down on them, yells when she's angry, shows favoritism, and is neglectful.
She works full-time, and when she is home, she is addicted to her phone, only looking up to reprimand the kids.
My stepdad stays home full-time with the kids who are homeschooled, but they take online classes without much supervision.
My stepdad does take good care of my disabled sister.
She's well-groomed and he's very attentive to her needs.
As an adult who knows the horrors of living in that house, I feel like it's my duty to help my younger siblings, but I don't know how.
I listen to many of your call-in shows, and I know I need to have an honest conversation with my mom, but I'm unsure of what to say that would be helpful.
She has shown remorse, but always has excuses.
When I was 20, I tried to express how difficult it was growing up with her, but the conversation ended with her crying and blaming me.
I've seen my older brothers turn into addicts and criminals, and I've struggled greatly by allowing men and friends to abuse and use me.
I've made great changes in my life now, and thanks to you, I have a greater understanding of truth than ever before.
I live about eight hours away from them now, but I want to help end the cycle for my siblings in hopes that they'll have a better chance at life than we did.
Is it possible to help them?
Is it within my power to help?
And if it is, how can I do that?
I would love it if you could guide me on having this conversation with my mom and possibly provide empathy for her struggles while addressing her parenting issues.
I believe that with the right approach, she may be open to change.
I'm afraid of hurting her, which I believe is coming from the fear I had of her as a child, but I don't want that to stop me from helping the kids who have to endure her issues now.
I would love to hear any feedback you have, and I'm open to all of your suggestions.
Thank you.
Well, I appreciate that.
And of course, it's a heartbreaking story.
I'm so incredibly sorry for everything that you had to endure as a child.
Society should be entirely set up and framed with one thing and one thing only as its objective, which is to make sure that children never, ever experience what you had to experience for years and years and years as a child.
And the fact that our society is not set up on that inverted pyramid of making sure these childhoods never happened is enough condemnation of our society to last pretty much for all time.
So I'm just really very, very sorry about everything that you went through, how unnecessary much of it was.
Not that you could do anything about it, but society as a whole didn't seem to have done really anything about it.
You say, was it seven or nine times that CPS was called and nothing happened?
Yeah.
She just easily fooled them and so on.
And of course, you know, as you say, her childhood was doubtless wretched.
And I think it's just...
It's just appalling.
I get mad at your mother, of course.
I get mad at your father.
I get mad at all of the adults.
And I just get mad at society as a whole.
Like, what kind of fracked-up society do we have where this can happen to a child?
In the midst of a society that claims to care about children and claims to be Oh, so civilized.
And yet, this all seems to happen on a fairly regular basis.
So I'm just, I'm really sorry.
Of course, you had teachers.
Thank you so much.
Did you guys go to church when you were younger?
No, of course, you said your mother was very religious, right?
So you got to church, you got family, extended family, teachers, adults all over the place, friends, parents, and nothing happened.
Sorry, go ahead.
No, that's okay.
Yeah, we went to church heavily when I was young.
And then after my mom and dad divorced, my mom kind of like fled from the church.
But then when I was in high school, I became heavily involved in a church on my own.
And just recently, I've been really appalled by the way that I know these people that went to that church knew what was happening in my life.
And yeah, nobody ever stepped in.
Yeah, it's just terrible.
It's almost like if you were to have a society run for the sole purpose of protecting child abusers, I'm not sure how it would look fundamentally different than what we have at the moment, but maybe it's a topic for another time.
So I'm really sorry about that.
So how did you find what I do?
Yeah, so I have a really incredible boyfriend now.
And when we first met, I wasn't doing too well, as you can probably expect from my story.
And he just stepped in and started pointing out all of the things that were wrong with my childhood and helped me find just an understanding of what actually happened.
Because I didn't blame any of the adults in my life for a really long time.
I just blamed myself.
But he's been listening to you for several years, I believe at least four or five.
And so he just told me to start listening to your shows.
He said that they would help probably more than therapy has been helping me.
And they definitely have.
They've just helped me heal in so many ways.
And I appreciate that and do thank him for me.
But did you start listening to call-in shows and so on?
And did they grab you right away?
Or did it take a while to figure out what the heck I was talking about or anything?
Yeah, at first I thought that you hated women and I thought that you, I read like all of the mean things that people have to say about you online and it made me really scared that maybe he was sexist and racist and all of these terrible things.
But I just decided to keep pushing through because he seemed really genuine and caring about me.
And so I listened to maybe like four or five shows before I was like, whoa, okay, wait a second.
This guy actually is saying some really good stuff.
I don't think that you hate women.
I hate women.
I actually, I mean, the funny thing is, is I've spent, you know, I mean, my daughter's almost 16.
I've been married to my wife for 22 years.
I literally spend all day, every day with two delightful females, which is then to say he's a woman hater.
Well, it's just words that they throw around so that people don't get exposure to philosophy.
Because philosophy is the opposite of power.
And most people in this life want power over others, and if philosophy liberates people from that power, then they will misuse the truth in order to keep people away from that which liberates them.
It's sort of like in the ancient world, slaves were not allowed to exercise because, you know, nobody wanted the slaves getting muscles and strength, right?
Plus, if you don't exercise, it keeps your testosterone levels low, which makes you more docile and compliant.
And so, yeah, they don't want to go to the mind gym, right?
Because they want to keep us all under their thumb.
So, I understand it.
It's not particularly pleasant, but it is an inevitable part of the world that is.
So, anyway, I appreciate you pushing through, and I appreciate you not listening to the liars.
Oh, absolutely.
One thing that I think probably made me think about the most is that My boyfriend was saying, you know, a woman should stay home and raise children.
And at the time, I wanted to be a musician and I really just wanted to focus on building a career with that.
And hearing him say that, I was like, well, why do you get to say that?
Like, why don't you stay home with the kids?
I had a really, really strange view on the whole thing.
And I think that that just kind of tainted a lot of what I was hearing you say.
I just had this really big perspective of, I'm a woman and I deserve to be able to build a career for myself and I'm smart and capable and I don't need anyone to take care of me.
And all of that has since changed.
I desperately cannot wait to be a housewife and a stay-at-home mom.
Right, right.
It's a funny thing because it's not me who's saying these things, it's nature.
You know, I mean, if I say that there's gravity, do people say you're making me heavy?
No, I'm just saying there's a thing called gravity.
I mean, I was reading the other day about how When a baby gets an infection, the saliva signals the mother's milk to produce more antibiotics for the baby.
Wow.
I mean, that's wild when you think about it, right?
That the baby is signaling to the mother's immune system to basically give antibiotics to the baby to help fight an infection.
That's how closely wired in together the mother and the baby are.
And, you know, as far as, you know, if you want a career, hey, you know, if you want to be a musician, go be a musician.
But if you want to have kids, then you should stay home with the kids, right?
So it's not to me like women have to be these, you know, broodmares or chattel producers.
And it is really just saying, if I'm going to make decisions to have a child, then my first decision should be what's best for that child.
Because the child's not there by choice, the child has no options, the child is entirely dependent on It's fine, but...
If you then chose to have children and then abandoned those children to go tour or record or whatever it is, then you'd be completing the cycle in a way or repeating the cycle, which is, well, we should not just as a society, which doesn't really exist, but as individuals, we should say, what's best for our children?
And your mother didn't ask that, and if you became a career woman who abandoned her children, then you would not be asking that question either, what's best for my children, and that's how it would continue in a way.
Although yours would be neglect more than abuse, which in some ways can be even worse, so...
Yeah, I sympathize.
But, you know, people, you know, it's like there's this old line from, I guess, a very old show now called Jersey Shore, which followed a bunch of fairly knuckleheaded Italian kids around in New Jersey.
And, you know, one of them disagreed with the other, and the other one was like, why do you got to be such a hater, man?
Why do you got to be such a hater?
It's like, it's literally at that level of discourse, you know?
Well, Steph just hates people.
It's like, Okay, so you can just mind read and with no evidence rather than actually listen to any arguments.
It is just a tragic form of verbal abuse.
It's like the parents who say, fix your attitude, this kind of stuff, right?
Yeah, and if anyone actually listened to even one of your shows, especially call-in shows, they would understand that you have a bigger heart for people than most people do.
Well, yeah, I mean, I seem to have been gifted with this ability to untangle some of these threads of self-knowledge, and I really do try to do my best to do what's best in the world, but I understand that, you know, if people gain a lot of self-knowledge about how they've suffered, then those who cause them to suffer will themselves suffer, and they don't want to suffer, and they're good at verbal abuse, so that's what they do.
Yes.
All right.
Okay, so with regards to your life, I hugely appreciate, of course, your concern for your siblings.
Now, tell me your ideal scenario, my friend.
What would you most want to see happen with your siblings and your mother?
And there's still a man in the environment?
The stepfather, right?
Yes.
Yeah.
The disabled sister.
Okay, so what's your ideal scenario?
What would happen?
Yeah, I would really love to just see these kids have loving parents.
First of all...
No, no, then you could change.
Sorry, I don't mean like, you know, they got Mary Poppins and, you know, what I mean is like, given the situation, how would you best or most like to see it unfold from here?
I'll be honest.
I've asked myself this a few times and I just find myself really stuck.
Like I said, the first thing that I would want is for them to just feel loved.
And I wish that there was something that I could say to my mom to help her see that her kids don't feel loved.
I think that having a conversation with my mom is what I want, but then there's a really big part of me that doesn't ever really want to talk to any of them again.
I'm sorry I don't have a very straightforward answer for that question.
You have a straightforward non-answer to that question, which is actually quite interesting, but that's fine.
Okay, so is not the scenario, and of course I don't want to tell you what your scenario is, but my sense would be something like this.
Is not your scenario something like, I have a conversation with my mother.
She bursts into tears but manages to keep her focus on me.
And she ends up understanding how much wrong she did.
She commits to go to therapy.
She becomes a much better person.
My stepfather joins in, the whole progress of mankind stuff, and everything ends up.
Working out for the best in that the children are now loved and taken care of and they become better people overall.
And again, something like that?
Is it not something along those lines?
Yes, that's exactly it.
Yeah, that's what I wish could happen.
Right.
Okay.
All right.
So...
What is your scenario around which this could happen, right?
Because we have to have some scenario in which things could happen.
I mean, even if people say, I want to win the lottery, what's the scenario?
Well, I have to play the lottery, right?
Nobody says I want to win the lottery without playing the lottery, right?
So there's some scenario by which these dreams are supposed to come true, right?
So you have a conversation, and what is the scenario that you think might occur?
The most likely scenario that'll probably happen?
Is that what you're asking?
Yeah, you have a conversation, and how does it play out that it results in this incredible change?
Ah, yes.
It would definitely be that, first of all, I'm able to keep my composure to talk to my mom logically and kind of keep the emotion out of it.
And also that my mom just Right off the bat, she would have to really stay present and be willing to listen.
Okay, and then what?
What happens then?
And then she admits that she did some really horrible things and she commits herself to not repeat them with these kids.
Okay, and what's the process by which that happens?
So she has admitted in the past that she's done some pretty horrible things, right?
Do I have that right?
No.
No, she's never admitted that.
Well, she plays this weird, I'm a terrible mom card without actually admitting that she made mistakes.
It's like a way that she guilt trips me and my brother's Just saying, like, oh, I guess I'm just a horrible mom then.
I didn't do anything right.
Oh, that stuff.
Yeah, yeah.
So that's just a...
It's called the argument from absurdity, which is, well, I guess I was the most evil mother in the known universe.
And then you have to say, well, no, you weren't that.
Right?
And then you've kind of lost your position, so to speak.
Yes.
Because it's so absurd.
Exactly.
She's never admitted that.
Any of these things that I discussed in my email have actually happened or were actually her fault.
Well, hang on.
So which is it?
Actually happened?
Or were her fault?
Like, they happened, but they weren't her fault?
I guess it's some of them.
Like, she hasn't admitted that her house is terribly disgusting.
She doesn't think that it's that bad.
Oh, so she doesn't admit even to the grossness of the unsanitary conditions in the house, right?
Exactly.
No.
And then as far as like hitting us, like she would never say that she abused us.
She would say she spanked us, but she wouldn't admit that that's abuse.
Okay, so she does admit that she spanked, but she says it's not abuse.
And what else?
What about the, you said you were exposed to sex because you heard your mother and your stepfather?
Yeah, that's something that I've actually never talked to my mom about.
It's just something that I was like, Kept a big secret forever.
And would she say, look, I'm a woman, I have needs, it's part of life?
I mean, how do you think she would react to that?
Well, one time when I was young, I have a brother that's three years older than me, so when he was a teenager, he made a joke about it or something.
And I remember my mom saying, I haven't had sex before marriage.
When she had three of My siblings out of wedlock with my stepdad.
So she just like straight up denied it because she's a Christian.
Well, have you just completely discounted the possibility of divine impregnation?
I mean, we don't want to be overly cynical in this life, right?
Right.
Just kidding.
All right.
So she will openly just say things that are laughably untrue, right?
Yes.
Okay.
Got it.
Okay, so let me ask from you, when do you think was the first time that you began to develop a conscience or have a conscience as a whole?
I would say, like, my first memory of having my own opinion on something, I think that would kind of suit that, was probably when I was, like, Four years old before starting kindergarten when my mom and dad still live together.
I remember them fighting a lot and screaming at each other.
And I remember specifically one day my dad threw a giant bowl of peas and broke it and I just remember feeling really scared and I would assume that's probably my conscience.
No.
No, I don't think so.
So, I mean, to take a silly example, right?
If you beat a dog with a broomstick, then the dog is going to be scared of the broomstick, but that's not a conscience thing.
Right.
So, the conscience thing would be...
I'm doing wrong based on a standard somewhere within myself rather than...
So, you know, the old thing is you generally know if someone's doing good if they do good when nobody's watching.
Right?
So if there's a bunch of people in the parking lot of the grocery store and you put the grocery cart away, you might be doing it because it's a, you know, reasonably polite thing to do, or you might be doing it just because you don't want to be Frowned upon if you don't, or people think, oh, what a selfish person, and so on.
So when you do the things that nobody knows about, if you're completely alone, will you do it?
So if you're completely alone and there's no social cues and you do the right thing, Then that would be an internal standard of morality, not based upon rewards or punishment from outside, if that makes sense.
Like if you find a wallet on a hiking trail in the middle of nowhere, and obviously it's got $1,000 cash in it, well, obviously you could take the cash and toss the wallet and nobody would ever know, right?
And yet if you don't do that and you say, okay, well, I guess I'll I'll bring the wallet back and I'll try and figure out whose wallet it is and I'll give it back because, you know, that's a reasonably good thing to do and that's, you know, I would like it if someone did that for me.
Then you would have a standard of morality that would not be coming from some external punishment or reward system, but rather it would be because...
Of your own standards of virtue.
And so, when I'm talking about, you know, your first idea that you should have a moral standard independent of rewards and punishments from outside, I think that would be closer, if that makes sense?
Okay.
Yeah.
I'm thinking.
I'm having a really hard time even thinking of a memory.
No, it's a tough one.
It's a tough one.
It's a tough one for sure.
Honestly, especially growing up in my household, there was just so much fear.
So I feel like even when I was young, I would do everything assuming that God was watching me.
And so it wasn't really...
I'm going to make this decision for me.
It's because I don't want to get punished and sent to hell.
Right.
And it's also like with knowledge, too, right?
So the teacher says, read this book, do this math problem, and so on.
Write this book report.
And we do it because we don't want to get punished if we don't.
And yet, at some point, usually, we will find something that interests us that is not a punishment or all a thing.
So I started reading about economics and philosophy and history, and I did that outside of the school system because I found them just fascinating.
Mm-hmm.
For the pursuit of knowledge, I was pursuing it because I really love to acquire knowledge in that way.
So it's when you have, or you say to yourself, intellectual, I guess conscience would be like, what you did with me, right?
So people said, oh, Steph is a bad guy, Steph is a bad guy, right?
And you're like, okay, I guess I'll listen to Steph and hear what he has to say.
So that would be independent of external cues, wanting to get the facts.
Even though, like, one of the reasons why people attack me so much is so that it becomes more difficult for people to listen to me because, heaven forbid, they listen to me and like what I have to say, then what do they do, right?
Then what are they going to do when my name comes up in conversation or something like that, right?
Because they'll be like, okay, so now I have a big sort of social difficulty thing that's going on here, which is I like this guy that a lot of people say is a bad guy, And that makes your social life more complicated.
So people, a lot of times, are just avoiding The difficulty of liking someone that a lot of people say is a bad guy because they're worried about splash reputational damage or something like that.
So there was some part of you, and I guess that some part of that was trust in your boyfriend, but there was a part of you that said, okay, so they say he's a bad guy.
Okay, let's see, right?
As opposed to, well, they say he's a bad guy.
He's got to be a bad guy.
What's my crazy boyfriend doing saying to listen to this misogynist guy, right?
So it is when you have a standard, That is something to do.
And look, it generally doesn't happen very young, but it's when you have a standard of value that is independent of external opinion or punishment or reward, if that makes sense.
Yeah.
Yeah, that definitely makes sense.
I would say probably then...
Would have started happening around middle school age or even closer to high school age.
Yeah, mid-teens is usually the earliest it can possibly come in, as far as what I've seen.
I'm sure there's exceptions, but is it that sort of mid-teens, sort of later on, like 15, 16, 17, that kind of stuff?
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, definitely.
All right.
So do you remember, was there a moment or was it just a sort of slow realization that You had to figure things out for yourself rather than just take what everyone said at face value.
Yeah, whenever I was, I think, 16, I had a friend that was extremely not Christian.
And up until this point, I had only had Christian friends.
So he was on as far as the opposite spectrum as you can get.
Wait, now, do you mean strong atheist or do you mean outright Satanist?
Oh, okay.
He jokingly says that he's a Satanist.
It's actually hard We're good to go.
Well, no, but you should figure out the harm in what raised you, and you should then apply it universally.
Otherwise, it's just bigoted, right?
Right, yeah.
Okay, so anyway, so this guy in your mid-teens who was a maybe Satanist, and it's funny because Satan himself would probably only joke that he was a Satanist, because he would like to tell you the truth.
I mean, what Satan loves is for Satan to tell you the truth, but not to take it seriously.
Mm-hmm.
Hiding it in, like, jokes?
Yeah, the hiding it in plain sight stuff.
Like, you know, when they literally have the four horsemen of the apocalypse and Satan worship at the Paris Olympics.
And then you say, hang on a sec, this is pretty demonic and apocalyptic, and they say, no, no, no, it's just art, it's edgy art, you know?
So they show it to you plainly, and then they say that what you see is not what it is, right?
It's like, wait a minute, that's an upside-down Satan and Lucifer falling from the skies.
It's like, no, it's just edgy art, man!
So they want to tell you the absolute truth about what they believe, and then they just want to tell you that you didn't see what you saw.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's actually a really good way to describe this friend that I had.
We're no longer friends, but...
So probably sick.
Probably, yeah.
Okay.
So, but he started just like, kind of revealing to me the flaws in a lot of my beliefs.
Like, I was so heavily involved at the church that I was in as a teenager.
I was there like six times a week, mostly like for four or five hours a day sometimes.
And...
He just started pointing out that that's really strange and that maybe there should be some kind of compensation for spending all of my time there.
And we would talk a lot about my mom and he would point out how he thought she was crazy.
And I just had never had anybody give me this other perspective.
I just really believed that Everything I was doing at church was proper and good, and I thought that my mom was a good mom.
I would tell people all the time that my mom was such a great mom.
She's like a superhero.
This was all the way up to your mid-teens, right?
Yeah.
I would say even until I was like 18, I still thought my mom was just this wonderful, magic person.
Um, but I would say, yeah, that was about the time that I just started questioning things and saying like, okay, well maybe like none of this is really correct.
Maybe my mom is brainwashed and maybe that's why I'm so confused all the time about this God stuff.
Oh, your mom was brainwashed.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I thought my mom was brainwashed and she passed it down to me.
I thought the people at my church were brainwashed.
That's, I would say, the first time that I really started questioning things.
And then I just deep dived into that where I thought, like, whoa, everybody's really confused.
I don't think that we should be listening to this one pastor who says his opinions on things and we're all just supposed to take that as fact.
And I started thinking my mom was just really, like, confused about everything in life.
Like, there were a lot of times that I would go to her with issues or Like, if I had a crush on a boy at school, I wanted to talk to my mom about it.
But my mom would just say, like, oh, you need to talk to God about that.
You need to pray about that.
And I started realizing...
Oh, so God was like the infinite babysitter, so she didn't have to give you advice?
Because then she'd be on the hook for her advice, right?
Mm-hmm.
A hundred percent.
Yeah.
I hope that answers your question, that that's the first time that I really started questioning things and thinking for myself that everything I believed was actually kind of messed up.
So then, you went into a kind of hedonistic or sexual nihilism, is that right?
Yeah.
Like, if there aren't any rules, just live for the flesh, right?
So that was, I guess, that's almost like, I don't want to use technical terms, but it would be almost like a metaphysical thing for yourself, like, how do you know this stuff is true?
I don't quite understand what he meant about, they should pay you for going to church?
Yeah.
More like I was spending so much time serving in the church.
That's the word that they use for just like volunteering.
Oh, so he says it's free labor, right?
And he says, that's no good.
You should get paid for this stuff because it's exploitive otherwise.
Is that right?
Yeah.
Okay.
Now, help me understand the reasoning behind, and I think I understand why you did it, but the reasoning behind my mom was a great mom.
That went on to your late teens?
Yeah, I think really the reason for it is my mom was just so sad all the time and crying all the time.
She always said she was trying her best.
I just thought that my mom was the superstar who was taking care of all these kids.
She had adopted my niece and nephew and she was already at max capacity.
She didn't have any more to give, but she took them in anyway.
And so I just thought she's really a superhero, doing all of this stuff for her children and making sure her kids are fed and going to school.
And she was always trying to help it.
She started going to the same church that I did, that I originally found as a teenager.
She started attending there and people would always tell me how sweet she was.
She's very good at being nice to strangers.
And so I just had this idea in my head that she struggles so much and she makes so many sacrifices, so she must be a saint.
Okay.
And your stepfather, just remind me sort of when he came in and how that played.
Yeah.
I don't know if this is actual fact, but my hunch is that my mom cheated on my dad with him.
My stepdad is actually my mom's old best friend's ex-boyfriend.
Does that make sense?
Her best friend at the time.
Believe it or not, I think I followed those threads.
Wonderful.
But yeah, so his ex-girlfriend was actually pregnant when he got with my mom.
Pregnant with his baby.
Oh gosh.
And yeah, he started dating my mom and she got pregnant shortly after.
Does nobody in this world know anything about the 18 to 40 methods of different birth control that are available?
I don't quite understand this.
That's been a question that I've been wondering about my mom my whole life because she just kept popping them out.
But yeah, he came around whenever I was about eight years old.
And it was actually really confusing because I used to call him, I won't say his name, but Uncle Blank before he became my stepdad.
And then suddenly he was my new dad figure.
And he was very like, Absent as far as parenting goes.
He didn't want to parent my brother and I. He tried to just be as hands-off with us as possible.
And how old were you when he showed up?
As dad?
About eight years old.
Okay, but you'd known him for years before?
Only about a year or two before.
Got it.
Okay.
And so he didn't try and discipline, is that right?
No.
He would tell my mom on us, like tattle on us, I guess, but he did never try to step in as authority as far as our lives go.
Yeah, I mean, it's tough after the age of five to be some sort of primary, I wouldn't say disciplinarian, but I guess some kind of authority figure, right?
Well, for reasons I'm sure we're all pretty clear on.
So, tell me a little bit about the obviously very sorrowful arc of your older brothers.
Yeah.
So this is actually like Another thread you're going to have to follow.
It gets a little muddy.
All right.
Paper and pencil at the ready.
Also, grab your helmet.
You're going to need it.
Grab my what?
Your helmet.
My helmet, that's right.
And maybe a crash helmet and I'll assume the position.
All right.
Hit me.
Great.
So, my oldest brother, he actually, my grandma took him from my mom.
My mom had him at 16 and So she got pregnant at 15?
Yes.
Okay.
And then around, I want to say maybe he was one or two.
Nobody's ever given me the full story on this.
My mom got with my dad.
So this son isn't my dad's son.
And we don't know what his birth dad was all about, right?
He was into drugs and gang violence.
Yeah, he was somewhat in my brother's life, but not a very good influence and definitely not a good dad.
Right.
So my mom decided to move out of state with my dad after they got together.
And for some reason, I'm confused on the details, but she left my brother with my grandma.
And I believe that she was gone for about a year and a half to two years.
And when she came back...
Are you saying you don't know why she left your brother with your grandmother?
Yeah, I'm not sure.
Oh, I know why.
I would love to hear it.
Oh yeah, no.
Sorry, this one, I wish it were more complicated.
So the reason that she left your brother with your grandmother is because she wanted a higher quality man and so she had to have him experience her as a non-single mother for a certain amount of time.
That makes sense.
Right, so this is sort of an old trope in men's rights communities that when you date a single mother, she will work like crazy and her entire community will work like crazy in order to minimize the impact of the children on the relationship.
Right, so you date a single mom and her mom desperately wants her to get married.
And so her mom, if she says, I have a date with Bob, right, Bob being the new guy and the dad is gone or whatever, right?
So Bob is dating the single mother, and then the single mother says, oh yeah, you know, he might want to marry me.
So then everyone works into overdrive.
So the moms, the friends, the aunts, everyone, oh, we'll take the kid, you know, we'll take him for the weekend, you go have fun with Bob.
And so you have to pretend to Bob that the kid is not...
A significant issue.
And you have to create this odd illusion that she's a single mom, but the kid is just kind of an asterisk or a footnote or somewhere in the background.
And if there's an ex-boyfriend or something around, especially if he's paying, or if he's an ex-husband, I guess then she'd be divorcee, not just a single mother.
But the guy will often want Bob to marry The single mom, because then he's less on the hook for child support.
Wow.
Now, he might still be legally on the hook for child support, but she'd be less likely to pursue him if Bob's giving the income.
So there's a lot of people all around the single moms...
Who will try to work as hard as possible to minimize the impact of her children, her child or children, on the new guy.
So the new guy is like, well, I guess she's a single mom, but, you know, it's not really much of an issue, right?
And then what happens is, boom, right?
He gets married and that entire support system then disintegrates and dissolves.
Wow.
Then he's like, whoa!
Hang on, this is like, this kid's always here.
He's always around.
He's always wanting something.
And he's expensive, but now he's married, right?
So he's locked in.
So that is most likely, of course, we don't know for sure, and we'll never know, I guess, whatever that would mean for sure.
But almost for certain, your mother would have been like, well, if I try to get this guy to marry into a family with a kid always around, he's going to flake out.
So...
She minimizes your brother's impact on your dad's life and then by the time he marries her or commits or something like that, then that support system probably goes away and then he's sort of stuck.
I don't know if that makes sense.
Well, all of that I believe you're 100% right on.
I wouldn't be surprised if that's definitely the case.
The only thing that was a little bit different in my dad and mom's case was they moved out of state and whenever they came back, According to my mom, she tried to get my brother back from my grandma, and my grandma refused.
She just said, I'm already bonded with him.
He's doing really well with me.
You can't have him back.
And my mom doesn't like to talk about this at all.
So your mother or your grandmother or both?
My mom, she doesn't like to talk about it.
But I know that she was really mad at my grandma for a long time, but she never took her to I'm sorry, I don't know if you heard a bit of pinging sound, but that was my brain stretched to the breaking point.
It sounds like...
It's like when you tighten the string too much and it just...
Okay, so let me see if I understand this, and I'm sure I've misunderstood something, so I appreciate you setting me straight.
So your mother says that she really wanted your brother, and your mother moved out of state.
Yes.
Okay.
How is that the same?
I mean, if you really want to spend time with your kid, you don't move out of state, do you?
No.
You try to establish a relationship with your kid and so that your kid wants to come and loves you and enjoys your company and knows what he's going to expect and so on, right?
You don't say, I want to spend time with my kid and I want to move out of state.
Right.
I want to make sure that you caught the part where she had moved back.
So they left for about a year and a half, and then they moved back to the city that my grandma and her son lived in.
Okay.
I think I did get that, but she did move out of state for about a year to a year and a half when your oldest brother was young, right?
Yes.
So then she can't say that she really wants to spend time with her kid because she moved out of state for a year to a year and a half, right?
Mm-hmm.
Do I have that right?
You have that right.
Okay.
So that's the part that doesn't make any sense to me.
It doesn't make sense to me either.
And it definitely doesn't make sense to my brother.
He's had a lot of issues because of that.
And also, your grandmother would have looked at this irresponsibility of her.
Was she married to your dad or were they just living together?
I believe that they got married maybe like a couple years later after coming back.
Okay, so from your grandmother's perspective, and I'm not painting her as any kind of heroine because she did raise your mother, but from your grandmother's perspective, wouldn't it be the case that your mother just ran off with some guy and was gone for a year to 18 months?
Mm-hmm.
That's what I believe she thought.
Right.
So then she would want to keep your brother away from your mother because she had run away with some guy for 12 to 18 months.
Mm-hmm.
Do I have that right?
Yep.
Okay.
So, the idea that your mother was just absolutely desperate to have your brother back, but your mean old grandmother refused, I wouldn't bet not one thin dime on that.
Yeah.
If you're desperate for your kid, you don't move out of state.
Right.
If you're desperate for your kid, you maintain that relationship.
Because the other thing, too, it might have been the case that your brother desperately did not want to go with your mother.
Mm-hmm.
I could see that happening, too.
Well, I can totally see that happening because he had his primary relationship with his grandmother, right?
Mm-hmm.
So then it's like, okay, this woman who abandoned you, she now wants you back.
It'd be like, no, no, I'm good for it.
I'm good with the person I know.
Kids tend to be like that, right?
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
All right.
So I just wanted to understand that.
Of course, we don't exactly know what happened, but I personally wouldn't put any money on betting on your mom telling the truth in any way, shape or form.
Right.
Same.
Okay.
Um, okay, yes.
So my brother was living with my grandma.
I only have a few memories of him coming to the house.
So he wasn't there very often.
Oh, the house being your mom and stepdad?
My mom and real dad.
Sorry, your mom and real dad.
My apologies.
Okay, got it.
Yeah, that's okay.
This brother is 10 years older than me, just to help with that.
But then, so I have another brother who's three years older than me, and he was born to my mom and my dad, and then I was born.
And so whenever we were living with my dad, should I explain that part?
Yes.
Okay.
Whenever we were living with my dad, things were just really chaotic all the time.
My dad worked a lot, and I know he had a drinking problem that my mom tried to hide from us.
So I'm under the impression that she told him if he was drunk to just not come home.
So he wasn't home very often.
But when he was home, it was always screaming and throwing things, both he and my mom.
My dad didn't do a lot of disciplining.
Sometimes my mom would grab him and say, I need you to spank them.
I don't want to do it this time.
Or she would threaten us.
If we did something that we weren't supposed to do, she would say, if you do that again, I'm going to tell your dad that he has to spank you.
So she weaponized my dad a lot.
And he would spank us, but usually never by his own decision, I guess you could say.
And then...
He and my mom split when I was eight years old.
And he moved into an apartment by himself where my brother that's three years older than me, we would go and stay with him every other day.
My mom would have us and then he would have us.
And as soon as they broke up, my mom immediately started staying at my stepdad's house, which is why I said I think maybe she cheated on my dad with him because they already had a committed relationship right off the bat.
Yeah.
You say committed relationship.
It sounds to me like relationships and two people who ought to be committed, but all right.
I appreciated that one.
Yes.
So things started getting much more terrifying, honestly, for me at this point.
My dad was still working a lot and As I told you, he had a drinking problem.
So they always hid it from us, but I'm pretty sure that he was never home because he was out drinking.
So even the days that we would stay at his apartment, he was never there.
And he had roommates at the time that he let live there.
And their trade-off for rent was that they would babysit my brother and I. Yeah, it was really horrible.
And actually, as I was preparing for this call, I sat down and wrote a list of things that I thought I should talk about.
And I unlocked this memory that I had suppressed for a long time.
But the roommates were definitely smoking drugs, heavy drugs.
And there was a few times that they locked me in a closet and And told me to stay there.
And that if I told my dad that they locked me in it, that they were going to hurt me or hurt my dad.
And so it was just like a lot of fear around this place.
They were really horrible people.
It's really tragic.
Just down at the bottom of these layers of hell, they're just no good people.
Like, everybody finds each other, everybody reinforces each other, and good people are a million miles away.
They just don't exist down in this sort of trash planet layer.
So, it's really...
You just don't meet any decent, good, kind people.
Exactly.
Yeah, nobody to hold you accountable and tell you to look out for your kids.
Right, right.
And no one to give you a hug and tell you how sorry they are, what's happening to you.
Yeah, just everybody's terrible in this.
It really is like we live in the same planet, different worlds, right?
Anyway, sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, no, exactly.
So that was my life at my dad's apartment.
Meanwhile, we were going to my mom's apartment every other day.
So at my mom's house, we lived in a one-bedroom apartment where my brother and I would sleep on the couches.
And my mom and stepdad would, of course, be in their room.
And they were having sex all the time, like middle of the day, at night, every single night that we were there.
And I'm really confused about why this was happening, but they were insanely loud.
And the apartment that we lived in was really old and rickety.
And the entire building, it was like a garage and on top of the garage was this apartment.
The entire building would shake during.
So I was in maybe third grade at this time.
And things just started getting so confusing for me.
I no longer had my mom and dad at home, and suddenly I have a new set of babysitters and a new stepdad, and also suddenly sex is happening all around me.
And I'm sorry, are you still confused as to why it would be so loud and aggressive?
Yes.
Okay, I mean, I can tell you, but it's not pleasant.
Okay, I have my helmet on.
Yeah, yeah, sorry.
So, it's a kink, which is to inflict sexual activity on other people.
It's part of the sick turn-on.
Oh, my God.
Like, you know how some people, hopefully you don't know personally, but there are some people who find having sex in public where they could be caught to be exciting, right?
Okay.
As opposed to, you know, in the relaxed privacy of your own home, which, you know, seems to be preferable.
And so there are people who enjoy voyeurism, which is to be watched having sex.
And then there are some people who enjoy inflicting their sexual activity on others.
And, you know, the sick kink is obviously that there are children in the house And, you know, any sane, decent person keeps it down to nothing when there are children in the house.
And so I assume that this would be part of the, you know, sort of sick sexual gratification would be to inflict this activity on the building and in a peculiar and horrible manner on the children.
I had never even come close to realizing that.
That's horrible.
Oh, yeah.
Well, you know, I mean, you know the dark layers of twisted sexuality that human beings are capable of, not because of you, but because what was inflicted upon you in your teens.
So it seems that there's almost no particular layer of depravity that human sexuality can't, in some twisted form, manage to access.
And that would be my guess.
I don't know for sure, obviously, but that would be...
My guess.
Wow.
Because it doesn't need to be that loud and you don't need to like thump the whole building foundations and so on.
But I assume that that was just part of the sort of sick turn on.
Wow.
That's crazy.
It is.
I'm sorry to laugh.
I'm like so uncomfortable now.
Yeah, sorry.
I don't mean to make you uncomfortable.
That's okay.
I appreciate you helping me understand that.
It's not an accident.
I mean, it's not an accident.
Yeah.
Wow.
I mean, I had one of the reasons I know about this is that somebody, it wasn't my roommate, but the place that I was living at, there was a roommate.
And his girlfriend did this, you know, operatic yodeling and wall thumping and stuff like that.
And I was talking to her, like, what's up with that?
And she's like, oh, you know, but this sexual assault happened.
And it was just part of an adaptation to extreme sexual intrusion, which is to then sexually intrude upon others through excessive noise.
Wow.
That's so crazy.
Yeah, it is some dark stuff.
Anyway, so I wanted to put that in perspective that it wasn't just an accident and it wasn't just oopsie.
I mean, it's part of the kink.
Thank you for that.
I really appreciate you making sense out of that because it always just baffled me.
But so going back, I remembered like at school, I would have...
The only thing I can really call it is like a hallucination.
I would be in class and I would be hearing these sounds in my mind where I couldn't even pay attention.
And I would get so embarrassed because I knew it was something really dirty and bad and I shouldn't be thinking about it.
But there I was thinking about it at school.
And so pause on that.
Going back to my dad right around the same time.
He surprised us one day, my brother and I, and he told us that he had been talking with his high school sweetheart and they were going to be moving it together.
So he was moving her down from out of state and she had two teenage boys and all of them were going to be moving into the childhood home that we had been living with, with my mom and dad.
So they all moved down and my stepmom tried to Really, like, get us warmed up to her right away.
And she just gave me this horrible vibe instantly.
I don't know what exactly it was, but she just seemed like a liar right off the bat.
Maybe it was just because she wasn't my mom.
Sorry.
Yeah, go ahead.
No, it's not a vibe, a mystery.
Because everyone your dad interacts with is a horrible human being.
Oh, yes.
I mean, there's that slight pattern recognition.
Every roommate, my mother, everyone else in his life is wretched and terrible and horrible.
Oh, here's a woman who wants to be with Dad.
I wonder what she's like.
Maybe she'll break the pattern.
No, she won't.
You know that.
It's not some bizarre psychic instinct.
It's, you know, it's a pattern recognition.
Thank you.
Yeah, so she wasn't great.
She, like, would...
She changed everything.
So we were seeing my mom one day and my dad the next day and she said that she didn't like that so they switched it to where my brother and I would only come to their house.
On every other weekend.
So we were with my mom and stepdad the majority of the week.
So this is the minimizing the effects of kids on the relationship, right?
This is the same thing we were talking about earlier.
So she wants to make sure that your father's resources are more reserved for her children than his own children.
So she makes sure that you are less around, right?
Yes.
Okay, got it.
Yes.
And it even got to the point where like, so they live two streets away from my mom and my stepdad in the same neighborhood.
And there were a couple of times that my brother and I would leave my mom's house because something horrible would happen.
Like there was a time that my mom smacked my brother and he ran away and he ran to my dad's house to go tell my dad.
And my stepmom just threw a fit about it and said, you know, you're not allowed over here on days that are not your days with us.
You need to go back home.
And it just like really threw this huge division into, well, actually, I was going to say a division into my relationship with my dad, but there wasn't much of one to begin with.
Well, and you have the unfortunate reality that your dad would rather choose creepy woman over his own children.
Because he wasn't like, well, no, they're not coming over here every second weekend.
No, this is my kids, right?
How dare you, you know, come in here and try and do that, right?
So, I mean, I assume that he just bowed down before her and gave up his kids because whatever, I don't know, sex or whatever, right?
Probably, yeah.
I think he just didn't want to be alone and he knew that this woman was in love with him.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Because was he alone when he was with his kids?
No.
Right.
So it wasn't that he didn't want to be alone.
Because he had you every other day, right?
Mm-hmm.
Now, it probably has something to do with sex addiction or something like that, that she has the drug he needs, so he'll give up his kids, as addicts will do, right?
They'll just sell everything that isn't nailed down.
They'll burn every relationship just to get their drug, right?
Yeah, definitely.
That makes a lot of sense.
So they only lived in the state that we lived in for about six months before my stepmom was like, I hate it here, I want to go back to my hometown.
So they packed up and they left.
And I assume that's to even further minimize the effects that his kids have on their relationship, as whatever else might have been going on, but that would probably have been part of the equation.
Absolutely.
I'd imagine that definitely was a big factor.
So we were with my mom full-time at this point.
How old were you here?
My dad left when I was nine.
So it was only about a year after the divorce.
And then things ramped up at my mom's house.
Things started getting weirder.
We moved into a bigger house, thankfully.
But then she had My first little brother, and just a couple months later, she was pregnant again.
And so now here's the story of my brother, who's three years older than me.
He started running away from home, skipping school, just trying to get as far away from the circus as he could.
And started at what age?
He's 13 at this time.
Right, okay, that makes sense.
Yeah, puberty hits and get out of crazy town, right?
Definitely.
So sometime in that next year, after he turned 14, he was arrested for possession of methamphetamine.
And he was only 14.
And that led him to being on house arrest.
So he had to start being home permanently.
And things seemed like they were getting better for him.
But then, this is the part I said you needed your helmet for.
So, remember my oldest brother?
He had gotten married and had a baby.
And something happened in that relationship where he cheated on his wife with her little sister and got her pregnant.
Right.
Now, was he a substance abuser as well at this time?
Yes.
And what was his substance?
Meth.
Oh gosh, okay.
So a lot of self-medication for child abuse going on.
And how old was he?
You said he was 10 years older than you, right?
He was about 19 or 20 when he was married and had his first one.
So he cheated on her with her sister and all of them moved in together.
So he was no longer with his wife.
He was now with her little sister.
Had kids with each of them.
And my other brother...
Ran away and moved in with them.
And he got my brother's wife pregnant.
Sorry.
Say again?
Yes.
My brother, who's now the younger one of the two.
Yeah, the one who's three years older.
Yes.
Okay.
And got my brother's wife pregnant.
So my brother had a baby with his wife, had a baby with her younger sister.
And then my other brother came in.
His wife.
Yes.
Okay.
Got it.
Yes.
I'm glad that you followed all of that.
I'm with it.
And then my mom got pregnant again.
So now like all around me, everybody's pregnant.
Everything is like really messy.
I'm so embarrassed about my family and confused about it.
And I had been going to visit my dad in the other state for like a couple of weeks during the summer.
And I think I went for two or three Christmases as well during this whole time.
And during one of the times that I was there, I have a stepbrother who's three years older than me, and he had touched me, molested me.
And I was just terrified of everything.
And I think I was really confused by that happening because I had already known what sex was, and I knew that it's bad, but I knew that my mom was doing it, but saying she wasn't doing it.
And then suddenly, my stepbrother is really interested in it, and he's asking me to Perform oral sex on him with all kinds of things that were not supposed to happen, of course.
And how old were you at this point?
Ten when it happened.
Or I guess nine the first time it happened.
And then it happened one more time.
And how old were you?
Thirteen, fourteen?
My gosh.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So as you can tell, there was no supervision in that household at all.
My dad was still really absent.
And that was around the time that I just decided I didn't want to go see my dad anymore.
Because I was terrified.
And so I never knew how to talk about any of that stuff with anyone.
And so I just didn't ever tell anybody what happened.
Sorry, that stuff.
Not you not wanting to go to your dad, but the molestation from the stepfather.
Yeah, I didn't know how to talk to anybody.
To anybody with anything related to sex at all.
Just by the by, just absolutely appalling and horrible and horrifying and terrifying and terrible and all kinds of yuck.
But anyway, go on.
Yeah, so another factor in all of this, my dad has a brother who's my uncle and he lived in the same city as me.
And when my dad moved away, my uncle kind of made This unspoken commitment to just being there for me.
So he would take me to church every Sunday and hang out with me on weekends and things like that.
And he just became like a saint to me.
In my eyes, I thought he was an amazing human.
Until recently, when I realized that there's no way he didn't know what was going on as far as the abuse in my mom's home.
My brother had at some point told my dad that My mom was loudly having sex and my dad bought us a stereo and told us to just turn up the volume anytime it happened.
So I know that my uncle knew about this because they all talked about everything.
And my uncle would sometimes ask questions about like how things were at home, but it was always just like really odd.
Like he didn't really want to know.
I felt like he was asking to be nice maybe.
But that's just like a little extra thing I wanted you to know about because I just recently figured out that maybe he's not actually a good person, even though my whole life I thought that he was.
Well, I mean, he may also have felt the kind of helplessness that you're feeling with regards to your siblings.
I mean, what can you do?
He can't get legal custody.
He can't get you to come and live at his house.
And I don't know.
I'm not defending the guy.
I'm just saying that it just struck me a little bit that you're feeling like, my gosh, my siblings, what can I do?
And maybe he was like, well, my nephews and nieces, but what can I do?
Yeah, that would actually make a lot of sense.
I'm so glad that you said that.
Because he didn't turn bad, right?
Like the moment you're saying, oh, I thought he was a saint.
I'm like, and then he set me on fire.
But he didn't turn bad, right?
No.
So, well, in high school, starting high school, my mom lost her house.
They were renting a house and they got evicted.
So my mom and her three kids and my stepdad, or the three little kids, they all moved in with my grandma.
And I begged her to let me move in with this uncle.
So she was like, okay, until we get a house, you can go stay with him.
So I moved in with that uncle and started high school, and everything was wonderful.
This is the happiest I have ever felt as a child.
I felt really at peace.
And only three months later, my uncle said that he was taking a job in another city, and so he would have to move away.
And I remember just begging him not to and desperately asking if I could come with him or if there was anything else that he could do.
And he just said, you know, he has to do what's best for his life.
And so he ended up having me move back in with my mom and my grandma, all of them in one bedroom at my grandma's house.
And he moved to this other city.
So I guess that's the part where I kind of see him as a villain now, because I just don't understand how I do understand because I'm in a similar situation, but it's hurtful to me that he kind of came in as a replacement dad and built this bond with me and tried to help me and then took a job far away and just threw me back to my mom's house, knowing how bad it was over there.
And do you have any idea what the benefit was?
I mean, obviously you were a kid, so it's hard to know, but do you have any idea what the benefit was?
To him for this job?
Was it like triple the pay or like the job of his dreams?
Like what was it that was so enticing?
I don't know how much more pay he was making, but I know it definitely was more.
And he was working for like a branch university, like a university that's not the main campus.
And they were moving him to the main campus, which I think was just exciting for him to be a part of the real thing.
Okay.
But again, we have someone who's choosing something other than you.
Yes.
And I don't know, did you ever have any conversations with him later about this process or what happened?
No, I actually, like, I have this issue with being honest with people about the ways that they've hurt me.
Well, it's not an issue.
I mean, it's something that you would have been brutally punished for as a child.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's something that I haven't really solved as an adult, but I would like to say, I have an issue with jamming my hand in the middle of a hot fire.
It's like, yes, yes you do.
Thank you for that.
No, I mean, you couldn't complain as a kid, because if you complained as a kid, oh, I'm being hurt, then people would just hurt you more, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, I think that actually an important thing I forgot to mention is all through my childhood and into my teenage years, I just had this really big issue with lying.
I would make up crazy lies just I guess it started as covering up what was happening in my home, and then it turned into I wanted attention, so I would tell my mom crazy stories about things that happened at school that never actually happened.
Sorry, and you referred to this as lying.
I'm not sure what you mean.
Just saying that things happened that didn't actually happen.
No, no, but lying is a moral choice.
Let me sort of give you an example.
So, if there's a kid who's not getting enough food at home, and he has to steal, is he a thief?
I wouldn't think so.
No.
You're just doing...
Like, you're in a state of nature.
Society's not protecting you.
Your parents aren't protecting you.
School is not protecting you.
The church is not protecting you.
Right?
You're in a situation of...
You're being...
I mean, already raped or whatever is going on with this horrendous teenage boy when you were 9 or 10, and there are drug addicts locking you in a closet saying they're going to hurt you if you tell your father.
I mean, you're in a complete state of nature, and you're doing whatever you have to do in order to survive.
Wow.
Yeah.
And, you know, we need attention as much as we need food and water.
And we know this because babies who are given all the nutrition and warmth and comfort that they need but aren't interacted with sometimes just die.
Damn.
So we need...
you know, if you and I are scuba diving and your scuba gear stops working and I don't understand what you're saying and then you just rip the regulator from my mouth so you can breathe for a minute or two and then hand it back to me, are you a murderer trying to kill me at the bottom of the ocean? are you a murderer trying to kill me at the No, you're just trying to survive, right?
Right.
So you're not a liar.
You got attention for fantastical stories and you needed attention in order to survive. - Yeah.
You're doing what is necessary.
It's like the Arabian Nazi has to tell the story all night to the Turkish Shah or whoever it was so that her lover doesn't get killed or something.
I can't remember the exact story, but you're just doing what you have to do in order to survive.
You know, like the people who crash.
I read this story called Alive when I was a kid about this soccer team.
I think they crashed in the Andes and they weren't found for months and they ended up having to eat the dead, right?
Well, they're not cannibals.
They're just doing what they have to do in order to survive.
So, liar is like a moral choice.
Wow.
And you didn't have a moral choice.
You just had to do what you had to do in order to survive.
And I applaud you for doing it.
And I would not.
I'd just be very, very careful.
Very, very, very careful about applying moral labels to you when you were in a state of brute survival.
Thank you so much for that.
That's something that I've just felt like so guilty for my entire life.
Well, that's why I wanted to pause on it.
It's like I could sense this like, oh, I turned into such a liar.
I was such a liar.
It's like, what do you mean?
I mean, if you're in a concentration camp and you have to praise the supreme leader in order to get breakfast, but you don't really want to praise the supreme leader, and then you praise the supreme leader to get breakfast...
Otherwise, you're going to starve to death.
Are you a liar?
No.
I mean, let's look at the concentration camp, not at the people trying to survive within it.
Well, yeah, absolutely.
Don't think of yourself as a liar.
Think of yourself as a cunning survivalist.
Sorry, go ahead.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Seriously.
I mean, you made it, didn't you?
Against all odds.
I did.
I mean, you're not in prison.
You're not a drug addict, right?
Absolutely.
You're doing better to your siblings, older and younger.
We can't really count the younger because they're still kids, but of all of the people who grew up in this household, who's doing the best?
Me.
Right.
So be incredibly proud of that, that you survived a situation of great evil and brain-shredding insanity and corruption and lack of loyalty.
And not only the lack of love, but the opposite of love and sexual exploitation.
And you survived all of that.
And I will not have you condemn your younger self in any way, shape or form.
I won't stand by and watch you slander this incredible child who made it through.
Wow.
That's some really powerful stuff.
Good.
Good.
Don't do it.
I won't.
Don't worry.
I'm with you.
You kneel down before that younger self who got you here.
I'm such a liar.
Yes.
Really?
What would you have done, in hindsight?
Nothing different.
Right.
Wow.
I don't even remember where we left off, because that took me somewhere else.
Right.
We were talking about, of course, you had the brother who was at house arrest, 14 methamphetamines, and so on.
Yeah, so he got with my brother's wife and had a baby with her, and then they moved in with my mom and everybody that was already in the house.
So there was just a lot of people in the house, nobody paying attention to me ever.
I was always alone.
And I would usually lock myself in my room.
This is around like age 12.
I guess we went back a little bit because this is before I moved in with my uncle.
But another thing to note about that time period is I started self-harming.
There was a girl in middle school that I knew that self-harmed and I just got curious one day and decided to try it.
And a few months after I had started, you know, nobody noticed for a while.
It was on my arms and I would always wear a lot of long sleeves.
But eventually...
And this was cutting, right?
Yes, cutting.
And what would you get yourself with?
Razor blades, like from the box cutter knives.
Right, okay.
Usually I would find them in my stepdad's tools and stuff.
So there was eventually a time that my mom...
Just asked if I had been self-harming and I immediately told her no.
And she said, let me see your arms.
And I got really defensive and said, no, no, you can't see them.
I knew what was coming.
But eventually she like pinned me down and looked at my arms and she just started screaming at me, just saying like, how could you do this to the temple that God has given you?
Like she never once asked why I was doing it or what was going on.
She was just furious.
Now, do you think she was furious?
I assume because it's a reflection of her.
Yeah.
That's pretty abstract.
I would love to hear it.
Let's look more immediate.
Okay.
How could you self-harming be against her interests?
That's what you always have to do with these kinds of people is say, well, they don't care about abstract rules.
They don't care about me.
The only thing they care about is themselves.
So anytime they get upset, it's because something could negatively impact them.
I guess because if anybody else found out, they would turn to her wondering what was happening in their house.
Yeah, it's evidence.
Yeah.
Right?
It's evidence.
It's evidence of appalling crimes being committed in the home.
And self-harm is often directly related to sexual abuse.
Oh, wow.
Because sexual abuse is unwanted intrusion upon bodily integrity, as is self-harm.
So, she would probably have realized that self-harm would lead to revelations of sexual abuse.
Now, in this case, it would have been in your father's household, right?
But she doesn't want that, right?
No, definitely not.
I could talk a little bit more about that, actually.
So, fast forward back to...
Sorry, that we're referring to is what?
That, as in my mom and her knowing about the...
Sexual abuse.
So she did find out eventually.
And how did you find out?
I'll go back through.
Yeah, so I was attending that church that I had told you about, and I was on the church band.
I played the piano for them.
Ah, that's the musician stuff, right?
Yes.
Okay.
And I was just surrounded by 23-plus-year-olds.
There were no other teenagers in my entire church.
And so everybody just kind of treated me like I was one of them.
They all saw that I was young, but nobody really protected me like I was a teenager.
And so I would hang out with the band members and some of them were, well, there were a lot of men in the band.
And one of them had asked me on a date one day and he was 21.
And you had?
And I was 15.
Oh, God.
Yeah.
And so, of course, I knew my mom wouldn't approve of that, so I kept it secret.
And I started telling her I was at church all the time when I was really with him.
And eventually, he convinced me to have sex with him.
That's the first time that I had had sex with anyone.
And I really didn't want to.
I told him the entire time.
Well, voluntarily.
Right.
Yes.
So, we had sex a few times.
And then...
I just, he broke up with me.
Sorry, now I'm sorry to ask these ugly questions.
And by sex, do you mean like full-on sexual intercourse or other forms of sex?
Yes, full-on sexual intercourse.
And did he wear a condom at least?
Was there no issue with birth control as far as that went?
No, I actually had asked him to put one on and he said no.
Okay.
And I just didn't really know what to do.
I guess I froze up and...
I said, okay then.
And it just happened.
And I really hated it.
Everything about it, I hated.
But for some reason, I felt really intimate with him and I felt really close to him.
And so something went off in my brain that if I have sex, I'm going to feel comfortable with people and I'm going to feel loved and cared for.
So I just...
Started sleeping with several members of this band.
I went through four of them.
I would start somewhat dating them.
They would want to keep it a secret because they knew it was wrong.
Then they would sleep with me and then they would stop talking to me.
Was it illegal?
Yes.
It was definitely illegal.
At some point, I met another guy that was Closely connected to this church, but he wasn't actually a part of the church.
It's actually creepy musicians, whatever next.
Right, and they play for the church.
Oh, I guess that's true.
At least with Steve Tyler, you know what you're getting.
It's a church band.
Yeah, this is a church band.
It's holy.
But yeah, so this guy had I'm assuming he had found out.
Maybe he had been talking to the other guys and somebody told him that I would have sex with him.
And so he invited me on a date one day.
Back then, I thought he just wanted to hang out.
I thought we were going to dinner.
He actually took me to his house.
And he was like, let's just watch a movie.
Watching a movie and eventually he starts trying to put his hands in my pants.
And I just told him I didn't want to do anything like that at this point.
For a little brief period of time, I was like, I'm sinning.
I need to put an end to this.
I was trying not to have sex with people.
And he ended up just telling me like, no, we're gonna have sex.
It's fine.
It's okay.
You don't have to be afraid.
And I just like froze up.
I didn't know what to do.
And I was really scared of him.
So he ended up raping me.
And I like, Things just got really, really dark for me.
I didn't want to talk to anybody at church.
I was really afraid of everybody.
I was probably more moody than usual.
My mom was picking up on it and knowing that something was wrong, but she didn't ask.
And then I confided with one of the girls at church and I told her that I was afraid that I was pregnant because this happened.
And I had been late on my period, and I was really scared, and so she bought me a pregnancy test.
And then she ended up telling another girl I went to church with, and they told a guy that I went to church with.
Basically, they played telephone with this information all the way up to the pastor.
Now, sorry, the information was that you were afraid you were pregnant, or that you had been raped, or both?
Both, yes.
Okay.
And so the pastor knew, so he had called me in with a couple of the female leaders in the church, and they had said that they knew about it, and they wanted to know exactly what happened.
And so I told them, and I was 16 at the time, and I had told them, like, you know, I just really don't want to tell my mom.
I don't want her to know about this, because I just don't want her to know.
I guess I didn't have a reason besides that I was terrified of her.
But I told them that.
You didn't have a reason?
What do you mean you didn't have a reason?
Well, I mean, I didn't have a reason to give them.
I didn't want them to know that I was terrified of them.
Oh, yeah, but you knew why you didn't want to tell your mom, right?
Because I was afraid of her.
Well, because she would attack you.
Yes.
Because when your mother sees symptoms of child abuse, she attacks the victim, as in the cutting, right?
Yeah.
Okay, she attacks the symptoms and the victim, not the cause and the perpetrators.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Right.
So they ended up calling my mom right then after I told them that I didn't want her to know.
And they called her to the church and she came in and in front of me with her, they told her what happened.
And she just like broke down crying and gave me the biggest hug and started speaking in tongues.
Are you familiar with that?
I'm afraid that I am.
Yes.
Yeah.
And then they all started speaking in tongues.
Did any of those speaking in tongues lead to actually calling the police?
No.
Not at all.
So they had direct confession of having been raped on your part.
And how long after the rape was this bizarre talking in tongues stuff?
This was a few weeks later.
Okay.
So they have an accusation of rape and they decide to mouth gibberish into the wind rather than trying to deal with the rapist.
Yes.
Well, so they did somewhat deal with the rapist, but they didn't call the police.
They, of course, prayed for him.
And then they had him come into the church one day and they told him that he was no longer welcome at our church and that he needed to go to therapy.
So they turned him loose on all the other children in the world?
Yes.
I can't believe why the church is failing.
It's a mystery.
Right.
So after that happened, my mom and I left, and as we were driving, I remember I told her I wanted to get tested for STDs because I had already thought that I wanted to get tested, but I had no way of telling my mom that because she didn't know I was having sex.
And so I felt that this was a good way to get her to take me.
And she said, okay.
But then she just didn't say anything else.
She was silent the rest of the drive home.
And around this time, my stepdad, before this night happened, my stepdad had already been, he started calling me a whore.
And he started accusing me of sleeping with the guys in the band and saying that I was a whore because he knew I was a whore.
How does that mean that I was sleeping with them?
Maybe, but I think that he had just put together that I was staying really late at church.
And sometimes I would be sitting outside in a car with a man, and I would tell them that I was just talking to him.
But obviously, that's not what was happening.
But yeah, he just was really judgmental towards me and started saying that I'm not a saint, so I'm definitely just hoeing around.
And my mom had been defending me.
No, she's not having sex.
She knows you can't have sex before marriage.
He was right, but he had never asked me if I was okay.
He knew these men were men, and I was a teenager.
But he just wanted to shame me for it rather than helping.
And so I guess she had gotten home the night that she found out about the rape, and she told him that I had been raped.
And they all just kind of left it alone after that and never really brought it up again.
I wonder if the church leaders consulted with your mother about whether to press charges.
And if your mother had said, I don't want to press charges, I don't know.
I mean, I'm no lawyer, obviously, so I don't know how all of that plays out.
But I wonder if your mother had an influence in them not calling the police.
There's a good chance of that.
I also think my mom and the people of this church all just talk a lot about grace and how people make mistakes and we have to be graceful with them.
We have to give them grace and allow humans to make mistakes.
So I wouldn't be surprised if the church didn't want to press charges either.
Just for the sake of protecting a rapist.
Well, that's not how Christianity works, though.
I mean, I'm no theologian, but I know enough about Christianity to know that is there grace without repentance?
Right.
And so you call this guy and you at least he has to Admit his fault in public.
He has to beg for forgiveness and he has to make restitution.
And if that restitution is, you want his ass thrown in jail, then that's what he has to do.
Yeah.
It's not just, you don't just, there's not a magic whiteboard where you just wipe away everything.
That's not how God operates.
That's not how Jesus operates.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, they don't just snap your fingers.
It's funny because you were terrified of God's retribution, and yet all of God's representatives, who claim to be God's representatives, who taught you all about these divine punishments, refused to punish even a rapist.
Right.
No, that's not Christianity.
No.
That's just cowardice.
I mean, and I assume there may have been some fear of liability.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, even when...
They're a church band, right?
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
So they put a little girl, they put a teenage girl with a bunch of, you know, weird, creepy dudes and, you know, they introduced you and they facilitated the band and so on, right?
Yeah.
They had actually taken me off of the band after that and had me go to these therapy sessions with not an actual therapist.
She was just a 26-year-old woman that worked at a restaurant, but they wanted me to have her as guidance on healing from all of this.
It was very odd.
I did not enjoy that at all.
I didn't really like the woman to begin with, but I felt really embarrassed and everybody knew that this terrible thing had happened to me and I felt like I did something wrong and that people wouldn't believe that it happened to me.
I thought they were just going to think that I had sex with this guy.
And then I also thought that they would find out about all of the other guys too.
So I was just really terrified of everyone in the church and my parents.
So I stopped sleeping with people at the church and I started using Tinder instead.
I made a Tinder account.
I was 17 now, and I said I was 18 on the profile.
So then I continued sleeping with older men, but they thought that I was 18.
And a lot of them...
Older men, what do you mean?
Up to 28 years old.
Okay.
And I dated a couple of them, and then confided in them that I was only 17.
So then they knew they were dating a 17-year-old rather than an 18-year-old.
But really, I was just completely losing all sense of self and happiness and everything.
I just kind of went on this crazy sex rampage, sleeping with anybody that would look at me.
And what was the purpose of this in your mind?
What were you benefiting, or how were you benefiting from this?
I really just enjoyed the feeling of being helped.
I wanted somebody to comfort me and hold me and pay attention to me.
And I knew that I had this thing that all these men wanted.
And so I would give it to them in exchange of just being held.
Right, okay.
Using an almost adult body to fulfill early childhood needs, right?
Yes.
Yeah, exactly.
That continued on all through high school.
I graduated high school.
And then I lost a really close friend of mine.
He was my two brothers that have babies with the two sisters.
This friend of mine was the younger brother of those two sisters.
And so I called him my brother.
We were really, really, really close friends.
And his death was really sudden.
He was murdered by an arsonist.
So it was just like really...
Shocking and intense.
So how did he end up being murdered by an arsonist?
An arsonist set his apartment complex on fire.
So he and five other people died, young students that were all in a college.
And they just deemed it homicide by arson.
And was there any investigation done into why the arsonist chose that particular location?
Yes.
So at the time, I thought that it was somebody that had just come in angrily wanting to kill people.
It took them five years to find out that it was actually somebody in the apartment that was drunk.
And set a mattress on fire because he was angry that his ex-girlfriend left it at his house.
So he set it up against the apartment.
Sorry, he was angry that his ex-girlfriend did what?
Left the mattress in his apartment.
Sorry, so it was not an arsonist in a sense, in that it wasn't somebody whose kink was arson.
It was some guy who was drunk and set fire to a mattress because he was angry his ex-girlfriend left it, and that burnt the place down and killed your friend, right?
Right.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
So for the first, like, four years, we were told that it was an arsonist.
We just found out this past year that it was somebody that accidentally killed the people just out of negligence, I guess.
And did everyone in the house die?
It was an apartment building.
So it displaced like 200 people and only six people were killed.
Right.
And one of the six, was it the six people, were they mostly in the apartment where the fire was set?
Yes.
Yeah, that portion of the building.
So what was your friend doing with people this crazy?
Oh, no, I'm sorry.
It was the apartment building.
The guy that did it was in a separate unit.
Oh, I see.
Sorry, I thought he was at a party where this happened.
Okay, go.
Oh, no, he lived at the apartment.
It was his just building that got burned down.
Okay, got it.
But this is when I, it was right before I started college, and I had gotten a full ride to a university, and I was really excited to start my life I had been really successful in high school and graduated top of my class.
So I was so determined to be a really great student.
But this happened about a month before I started college.
And so about six months in, I was having panic attacks daily and crying daily.
So I just gave up on school.
I decided to drop out and I moved into an apartment on my own where I started hanging out with I started working at a restaurant.
Okay, so hang on, hang on, hang on.
So your friend, let's just call him Bob.
So your friend, Bob, who was killed in this completely freaky accident, what did you take out of that in terms of like existentially about reality or life?
Like what did you take out of that that you end up six months later with panic attacks?
I was really confused about God.
My friend was very religious and really believed that God was good.
And so it really confused me.
There was a three-day period where he hadn't been confirmed dead.
And I spent those three days wide awake for three days straight just praying and begging God to just let him be alive by some miracle.
And so when he was then confirmed dead, it really made me think like, well, God doesn't actually do what we say or what we ask of Him.
And I had always been taught that if you ask God, then you're likely to get whatever it is you need.
Like I said, my mom would always tell me, have you asked God about that?
So that was kind of the revelation that I had that, well, maybe God isn't so good because if He was, why didn't He save my friend?
And that really pushed me to just not Follow Christianity anymore.
I had already been skeptical of the people at my church after the whole incident that happened before.
I mean, the supposedly Christian young men were engaging in sex with an underage girl, and the priest didn't do anything.
They handed you over to this 26-year-old woman who worked in a restaurant for all of your spiritual healing, and she didn't even seem to notice that you were not being spiritually healed in any way, shape, or form.
So they were speaking in tongues rather than actually, you know, being a bit eye for an eye.
And so it was all kind of falling apart, wasn't it?
Yeah, absolutely.
I think my friend dying was just the biggest push that I was like, well, F all of this.
Like, I don't want anything to do with God.
I don't want to be a part of a church.
I don't want any friends that are Christian.
I'm done with all of this.
And so I just cut off everybody that I could.
I stopped talking to my mom as much, and I just...
I moved across town as far as I could, moved in with some new roommates, and I started partying a lot and drinking and doing cocaine often, just trying to escape as much as I could.
And escape what, at this point?
I guess just the pain that I was constantly in.
I felt It's horrible about my life.
I didn't want to be alive, but I didn't want to kill myself.
So the happy medium that I could find was just being drunk as often as I could be.
Okay.
Didn't want to be alive.
Help me understand that.
I'm not criticizing.
I'm genuinely curious.
What do you mean by I didn't want to be alive?
What was the experience of that?
I was just really miserable all the time.
I was miserable with Like feeling alone and feeling just this like huge hole in my heart that my friend died and this hole in my heart that God wasn't real.
At least that's what I started thinking.
So I just didn't want to be me.
I didn't want to exist in the life that I was living.
Okay, the life that you were living.
Tell me a little bit more about your friend because you said you were very close and I want to know what that means.
Yeah.
So he, like I said, is the younger brother of the two sisters that were with my two brothers.
So he went to the same middle school as me.
And we would just often like vent to each other about how crazy our siblings were and how we didn't want to be like them.
We wanted to be successful people.
And we actually made a pact together that we wouldn't drink or But after he died, I didn't care about the pact anymore.
Or maybe I did, but I just didn't want to hold my end of it.
He was somebody who I would call.
I was very suicidal after the rape happened and everything.
I would fantasize about killing myself all the time.
And I would always call him when I felt alone or when I felt like I needed somebody to talk me off the ledge, even though I don't think I was ever actually on the ledge.
If that makes sense.
Right.
So, yeah, he was just somebody that I went to for comfort anytime I could.
And how do you think, given the family that he came from, how do you think he developed this kind of compassion?
It's really hard to say.
I don't know.
I know there's probably a logical answer.
I've never wondered about it, I guess.
He just seemed special and unique.
He just formed this out of himself.
And did you ever date him?
No.
Why not?
I guess because my siblings had already dated their siblings.
There was so much drama.
But I had just decided that would never happen.
And I'm sure he just decided that as well.
Oh, he never wanted to date you as far as you know?
No.
Yeah, he would tell me about his girlfriends and things like that.
We had more of a sibling-like friendship, I guess.
Okay.
Okay, so you start working in a restaurant and you're doing some drugs, you're getting drunk a lot, you're partying a lot, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then I had started dating a bouncer at a bar, and I moved in with him very quickly.
Oh, this is the abusive guy who almost killed you?
No, actually.
Oh, sorry.
Sorry.
I'm going with the bouncer stereotype, so I apologize for that.
It's okay.
Stereotype bias.
My apologies.
You're not far off, Stefan.
He was abusive, but he never hit me.
I moved in with him right off the bat literally a month after I met him because I was in between apartments and he was just like, come move in.
And I only lived with him for about a month when he had just been screaming at me daily.
He was terrifying.
He was a really big guy and I was fed up with it.
So I had a friend that lived...
Am I allowed to say the city that I moved to?
Or should I not?
No, if you could not, that's better.
Yeah.
Okay, so I had a friend that lived in another city.
Thank you for asking, though.
I appreciate that.
Most people just blurt.
No, it's all right.
I had a friend that lived in another city and she told me that if I moved in with her, I would probably have to pay very little in rent.
She was like, I think you should just put everything in your car and just move straight here.
Don't even say anything to the guy.
Why was he screaming at you all the time?
Was he a drug addict or what was wrong with his brain?
I think he had some kind of anger issues.
I think he had a really terrible childhood.
I didn't know very much about it, but He was from another culture as well, like a native culture.
And he would tell me like his parents screamed a lot.
And that's just like how they are, apparently.
So usually he'd be screaming at me because I was drunk.
And he was working as a bouncer.
So I would go and get drunk and wait for him to get off work.
And then he would be mad that I was completely, utterly drunk and Not making good decisions.
And how would you, I mean, just out of curiosity, like, how were you paying for all of this?
I mean, I would have loved to have been more of a partier in some ways when I was younger.
I just, I had too many bills to pay.
I couldn't afford any of this stuff.
Yeah, so I had been paying only like $200 worth of rent living with that guy.
He had a setup where he was only paying like $400 total.
And his bills were included in it.
I worked at a restaurant making between $200 and $300 a night on the weekends and on weekdays, maybe up to $200.
I worked in a very touristy spot, but the tips were good.
But yeah, I moved to X city and decided to start a new life there.
But as soon as I moved there, days later, my My friend, who I thought I was moving in with, told me that she hadn't actually asked the owner of the house if I could move in, and the owner of the house also lived in the house.
So she hadn't asked, and she just told me that I could move in.
So as soon as I got there, the woman who owned the house said, no, you can't live here, and actually both of y'all need to leave.
So she kicked out my friend as well.
And so I had maybe like $600 to my name.
I was in a city thousands of miles away from home and I decided to live in my car and just get another serving job and make it work.
And that's when I met the really abusive person that almost took my life.
He was a bartender with me at the same restaurant.
And the whole segment of his story is really confusing because he had given me a name that's not even his legal name.
And he told me that he was also living in his car.
But later on, I found out that he had been living in a house.
He was just pretending to live in a car.
Was he on the run?
No, I think he was like mirroring me.
Like anything that I said, he would say the same.
Like I told him the date that I moved to that city and he told me that he moved there the same day.
Oh, so he's trying to set up all these series of coincidences that might program you thinking that you're destined for each other.
Yes.
I love that song too.
Yeah, yeah, okay.
Definitely.
That's my favorite movie as well.
Yeah, okay.
Right.
So we had been like sleeping in our cars, sometimes getting hotels, and then eventually...
Sorry, he was so committed to the mirroring that he literally slept in his car when he had a house to sleep in.
He would usually sleep in my car with me.
Like it was his way of...
Yeah.
Okay.
And then eventually he...
Told me like, oh, I'm sorry.
I got injured at work.
And I didn't know anything about workers comp or anything like that.
And so I thought that because I was injured, I just couldn't work and couldn't make money.
And he told me the same thing.
He was like, yeah, you can't work.
You should just quit your job and I'll just take care of you.
We'll use your savings and we'll put a down payment on an apartment.
We had only known each other for about two and a half months at this point.
But I assume the reason that I was so down for that is because I watched my mom go straight from living with my dad to living with a new man.
I didn't know that that was really a terrible choice.
But I decided to go ahead and get an apartment with him and I had not been working anymore.
So while we were in the process of finding an apartment, we blew through my savings really quickly.
And so he ended up putting all of the money down towards the apartment.
Sorry, why did you spend your savings so quickly?
We started staying in hotel rooms because I had an injured knee.
And so he just kept saying, like, instead of sleeping in your car tonight, we should get a hotel.
And then I would use my savings to buy our food or really anything that we needed at all.
And he was super nice.
During this whole time, he didn't really show me any signs that he was a horrible person.
He just, like I said, like mirrored everything that I said, everything that I stood for.
He would say he stood for the same things.
And then we ended up finding an apartment and we put down the deposit and we moved in together.
And the day that we moved in together is the first time that he hit me.
It's really confusing to try to explain what happened, but he...
Like really was convinced that I was sleeping with somebody else and he I was with him all the time or I I got a new job and I started working a new job so he was convinced that while I was at work I was hooking up with somebody at this restaurant and he had access to my phone all the time and he would be upset if anybody any mail texted me he would freak out and immediately think that I was sleeping with them and um So the first time he hit me was because he had already been really angry,
thinking that I had been hooking up with somebody at work.
And he came to pick me up from work.
And I took three extra minutes to come out of the building.
And he left me there.
And he made me walk to the house.
He took my car and drove away and was like, No, you were sleeping with somebody in the restaurant.
So you need to walk home.
And so I walked.
See on drugs too.
Like, I mean, this is some pretty disordered thinking.
I never saw him doing drugs.
He never told me he was doing drugs.
I mean, you're with him a lot, so we can assume not, right?
Well, I wouldn't be surprised if he was taking steroids because he was, like, extremely muscular and very into the gym.
But that's, like, the only thing that I could make sense of.
Oh, so it could be the right rate.
The anger and the rage.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so...
I had walked home and he had went and bought us food, like bought some tacos.
And I came in and I was a little shaken up because he had been screaming at me and made me walk home a couple miles to the house.
And I was holding the taco plate and it fell out of my hand because I was shaking.
And so he just, I went down on the floor to pick it up and he started screaming like, I spent my last $10 on this food and started kicking me and punching me.
And I had nobody that I knew in this part of the town.
The city we lived in is massive, and we were living in a sub-city far from any of the friends that I had made.
So I didn't really know who to turn to, and we had just signed a lease.
So I couldn't really kick him out or I didn't think I could.
And our rent was $2,200 a month.
And I knew I couldn't cover that on my own.
So I was just really confused about what to do.
Another thing to add is we lived in an apartment with another person that we didn't know.
But he had been out of town the first couple weeks of us living there.
So this led to me just like trying to not cause any problems and just keep him happy all the time because I was really scared of the next time he would do it.
We lived together for another three weeks and in those three weeks he attacked me three more times and on the final one he had like tried to suffocate me.
And I don't know exactly how I got away.
You mean like choke you or with a pillow?
Yeah.
No, no.
Yeah, he was choking me.
Like on the floor, on top of me.
And somehow I had kicked him in the nuts and got him to break free a little bit.
And I just pushed him off of me and grabbed my keys and ran out of the house.
And went straight to the job that I was working.
And I was working for some foreign people who...
Another thing to note about the guy I was dating is he was from another country and here in the U.S. illegally.
And so he was really...
Which country was he from?
Mexico.
Okay.
Yeah, he was really afraid of getting deported.
And for some reason, I cared a lot about him not getting deported.
And so I went and I talked to the people I worked for were from Australia.
And I asked them, like, what should I do?
Like, I can't go back home.
I can't We've talked about it so many times and he says he has anger issues and he's going to go to counseling, but I don't know what to do.
And I kind of expected them to reassure me that I should call the police, but instead they were like, oh yeah, you know, like deportation is really bad.
If you don't want him to get deported, maybe you should just go home and talk to him again and tell him that you need him to move out.
So I didn't call the police.
I went back to the house where this guy had Tried to kill me, or at least I thought that's what his goal was.
And luckily, the other roommate had just gotten home that day.
And so I talked to this man that I have only met briefly one time, and I told him everything that was happening and He said like, oh yeah, I think we should definitely kick him out.
So he also didn't say that we should go to the police because he said, yeah, he's probably going to get deported.
Also, the roommate was from another country too.
Which other country was the roommate from?
He was from someplace in Africa.
I'm not exactly sure.
Okay.
But yeah, so they had all just kind of recommended that we kick this guy out and just tell him to leave.
And if he leaves, then everything's going to be fine.
So...
That night, my ex-boyfriend came home from work.
Me and the roommate and one of my friends from the other sub-city, I had her drive up and meet me so she could just be there to help.
We all just told him he needed to take his name off the lease the next day and leave.
And so he fought it for a really long time.
And he kept saying he wanted the apartment.
He wanted me to go on the streets.
And the roommate just kept saying, dude, I don't think you could afford to live here.
I think you should just leave.
So the next morning, he took his name off the lease and just disappeared.
And he started sending me texts saying that he was sleeping with a girl that lived in my building that we had been living in for three weeks.
And he's like, if you ever see me there, it's not for you.
I don't want you to freak out.
And so because of that, I was like, you know what, I've had enough.
And I went to the police.
And I just wanted to file a restraining order on him.
I told them that I was afraid of pressing charges because he had said that his family...
Would come and hurt me if he got deported, that he would tell them everything about where I lived.
I just told them I didn't want to press charges.
I just wanted a restraining order.
And the next I heard about him, a detective told me that he doesn't think that he's living in that city anymore, that he moved to another city.
And they asked me again if I wanted to press charges, and I told them no.
And I haven't ever heard another thing from that guy again.
But because of that, I do have PTSD now, and I'm going to therapy, and I go to support group and things like that.
And how long ago was this stuff?
This was almost two years ago.
Okay.
Yeah.
Got it.
And then, just to complete the timeline, I met my now boyfriend about six months later, and I started dating him right away, basically.
And where did you meet?
I met him, I started working at a new place, and he worked next door to me.
And so, yeah, he would just come in sometimes, we would chat, and then eventually we went on several dates before we started officially saying that we were a couple.
But then...
I ended up having some pretty major health issues while we were living in that city that caused me to stop working.
I was having a lot of abdominal pain and sainting randomly because the pain was so bad.
And because I was a server, I wasn't allowed to work shifts because I was fainting and dropping food and things like that.
Was this part of the PTSD or was it something more organic?
No, I actually found out, my boyfriend and I came to visit his family and they took me to a doctor and we found out that I had a cyst the size of a grapefruit on my ovary.
Oh gosh.
And so, yeah, so they operated on that.
And then a couple months, because I had the surgery, his parents said that we should just move out of the city we were in because I was barely making bills work and just move in with them.
And they said they would cover everything as far as...
Medical bills and all of our bills living here.
Sorry, how long had you been going out when this happened?
Only about eight months.
And so his family says, you should move in here and we'll pay all your medical bills.
Yes.
That's quite a lot for a new girlfriend.
They're very wealthy people.
And their son hasn't really dated anybody.
I think he had one other girlfriend.
And he's 26, so they were just excited that he found somebody that he thought was worth even bringing to family vacation.
And when they saw that I was in a lot of pain, they just said, we'll cover everything.
Just move your stuff down here.
So we're living with them now, and they pay for everything.
They bought me a brand new car, and they are paying for me and him to both go to school full-time, and they don't They don't expect us to pay for anything.
They're, like, overly generous with their money, in my opinion.
They don't, like, let us pay for anything.
And I tried getting a job, and they told me that just wasn't necessary and to just focus on school.
Wow.
So that's where we are now.
Okay.
That's interesting.
Trying to sort that one out of my head.
Take your time.
Yeah, I've never quite heard of anything like this.
I'm sort of trying to put myself in the parents' shoes.
Just to let you know, my boyfriend does plan on doing a call with you because they're also not great parents.
He didn't have a good childhood.
They're really just, they have money and they're happy to buy his love with money.
Right, right.
Okay.
Well, yeah, I'll leave that conversation to him.
Okay, so your health is better?
Yeah, yeah.
I ended up having another cyst on the other ovary only three months later, and I had to have that one operated on again.
This was about three months ago, and I haven't had one since.
So they figured out birth control that is supposed to help it.
I'm actually doing the best that I have ever been feeling.
And did they save the ovaries?
Yeah, both of them.
Oh, good.
Okay.
And you did, they were benign.
Is that right?
Right.
They were benign.
Okay.
Well, one of them was, I guess, hemorrhaging.
The one that I had had, I had it for eight months and I had no idea what it was.
I went to the emergency room four times in that other city that I lived in and they never saw it.
Um, But yeah, it had been bleeding internally.
And so the doctor said it's really good that I went when I did because any longer and it most likely would have gone septic.
She said it was like amazing that I hadn't at that point.
Ah, the medical system.
That could be a whole other conversation.
Okay.
Right.
We actually had all of these operations done in Mexico.
My friend boyfriend is also from Mexico.
We don't live in Mexico now.
His parents live in a border town and we're living in the border town, but we cross the border.
Oh, so he's Hispanic too, right?
Yeah.
Okay, got it.
Got it.
Okay.
So, are you planning on marrying, or what is that?
Yeah.
Yeah, we're definitely planning on getting married.
We've been talking about getting married in the next year and a half.
He really wants to finish school first.
Right.
That's his main focus.
Right.
And I agree, that's a good idea.
But we talk about it almost daily, how we plan on getting married, and I plan on being a stay-at-home mom and having his kids, and he plans on taking care of us.
And how comfortable are you with the Hispanic culture as a whole?
I know, I don't want to just say there's this one big blob called Hispanic.
I know there's a lot of variety, but how do you feel about all of that?
Yeah, I grew up in a predominantly Hispanic city.
Uh, It's mostly Hispanic, and so I've just always been around Hispanic people, Mexican people.
I will say I was kind of afraid after my last ex because he was horrible, but I didn't think that it had to do with him being Mexican.
So I actually didn't know that my boyfriend was Hispanic when we first started talking.
He has this Hispanic first name, but I thought it was just a coincidence because he does not look Hispanic at all.
But his parents actually only speak Spanish.
Oh, and I assume you don't, right?
I speak enough to have very broken conversations, but I'm not fluent.
Right.
Okay.
Got it.
Got it.
All right.
Okay.
And you love him?
I do.
Okay.
And...
Do you love his parents or do you have affection for his parents?
I'm very grateful for his parents, for everything that they've done, but I don't have much relationship with them.
Yes, exactly.
Yeah, I mean in terms of their virtues.
I can't say that I do know.
I don't really know them well enough to love them at all.
Well, no.
No, hang on.
Hang on.
Okay.
Okay, hanging on.
So you have...
Here's where I turn on you like a vicious attack dog.
No, I'm kidding.
I'm ready.
But you have known him for 18 months, right?
Mm-hmm.
So what would you not know about his family?
Oh, I think I know everything.
I guess no, if I'm...
I would be straightforward.
I don't love them.
No, but you said you don't really know them well enough.
Yeah, I don't have a relationship with them where I've heard their side of things from them.
Sorry to be annoying again, but your boyfriend is telling you what happened with his family, right?
Yes.
So the only way that they would have a significant side that would matter is if your boyfriend is lying to you.
Right.
And I know he's not.
Okay.
So, what do you think of his parents?
I think that they're pretty crummy people.
Okay.
And what happened with your boyfriend that he's still in school at 26?
Now, maybe he's taken his master's or PhD or something like that, but what happened when he was younger?
No, he's just getting his bachelor's.
His parents were very absent throughout his high school years, and he started using psychedelics a lot when he was 18 to 22-ish.
Sorry, you mean like LSD or what do you mean?
Yeah, LSD, mushrooms, things like that.
And that's like all he really cared about when he was younger, from what I understand.
All right.
And how often or how much did he take?
I can't give you an honest answer.
I don't know enough to know how much.
Yeah, I would say it was at least like every few weeks.
Like once every few weeks.
And I would think he was probably taking large amounts.
Okay.
So he would take them once every few weeks.
And I assume that the effects last for a day or two.
So what else would he do with his time?
He was really into skateboarding.
And he smoked a lot of weed.
And his parents...
He didn't have bills because he lived in his parents' house.
He didn't have what?
Oh, he didn't have bills.
Yeah, no bills.
So he was a multiple drug addict while living with his parents?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I know he had tried going to community college.
No.
Hang on.
Oh, sorry.
Can't just blow past the whole drug addict for four years, can we?
No, we can't.
I mean, we can, but I'd rather we didn't.
It's your call, right?
I mean, I'm not going to obviously force you to talk about anything you don't want to talk about, but it's like, you understand, this is jaw-dropping for me, right?
That your boyfriend was, until quite recently, and then took him, because four years ago, I mean, maybe he used drugs after that, he said 18 to 22, he's 26 now, right?
So up to four years ago, he was a multi-drug drug addict, Right, hallucinogens and weed, and maybe more than one hallucinogen, right?
And he was living at home.
Yes.
Does he have siblings?
He has one younger sister, who's 16 right now.
Okay.
And she lives in the house with us.
So, I guess when he started doing this...
He was 18, right?
So that's eight years ago.
So she would have been eight years old, right?
Mm-hmm.
So did he take care of his sister while he was high on drugs?
No, I don't think so.
So then his parents weren't that absent?
Because I thought you said his parents were absent.
So I'm not really sure, like, who watched her before she was in school.
But I know that his parents worked the entire school day, and then they would pick her up from school and be home the evening.
So what does that mean?
They both worked, right?
Yes.
Okay, so when you say absent, you mean they both had jobs?
Yes.
So they were absent when your boyfriend was little too, is that right?
Like they both had jobs?
Was he in daycare or...
Yeah, so his dad is not really his biological dad.
His dad was murdered when he was really young, I believe before his first birthday.
And then his mom moved to a new city and was working full-time.
That's how she met the stepdad, and so he was in daycare at that time.
And how did his father get murdered?
He was involved in drug gang violence.
Oh, I was really hoping we were going to break some of these stereotypes, but today may not be the day.
All right?
No.
So his father was a drug runner, a criminal?
Yes.
Okay.
And then his father was murdered as part of his participation in the drug trade?
Exactly.
Yeah.
And then he was put into daycare and his mother then married another man who is the stepdad that you know, right?
Okay.
And they both worked?
Is that right?
Yes.
Okay.
And he only started taking drugs when he was 18?
I don't think so.
I think the first times that he was smoking weed were probably around 13, 14.
And he might have even done LSD sooner than 18.
I just know that he was taking it frequently when he was 18.
Okay.
Okay.
So he was a drug user, though maybe not, a full-blown drug addict from his early to mid-teens.
Yes.
And then for four years, it escalated to fairly regular addiction, right?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
And then what happened at 22?
I think that the...
I could be wrong.
He might correct me when he calls you.
But I think that the LSD use declined a lot.
And he...
Got really excited about graphic design, and he started doing graphic design with all of his free time all the time.
And then a year or two later, he decided to move to the big city that I was living in.
And he went there to just do what I did, basically start a new life, do something different.
And he thought that if he went there, he could become a big-time graphic design artist.
And is that what he's doing in school at the moment?
No.
He realized shortly after we started dating that graphic design might not take him where he wants to be.
He wants something stable that is guaranteed pay.
So he's studying accounting and computer science right now.
Okay.
Got it.
And what are you taking?
Computer science.
Okay.
And why are you taking computer science if you want to be a stay-at-home mom?
Um, we don't plan on having kids for maybe five or six years.
And so just in the meantime, I figured that if I got a higher paying job that I could learn online, then I would be able to help build up our savings to prepare for whenever I do go into just being a stay at home mom.
And why wouldn't you want kids before you're in your 30s?
Well, I do.
I would actually love to have kids as soon as possible.
But I know that I still have a lot of healing to do, especially because I have PTSD mixed with my entire past.
So I know I have a lot of therapy that I still need to go to.
I would like to have kids after I stop having panic attacks and I'm just fully sane and able to be present and healthy.
And I also want him to have a full-time paying job before we have kids.
Well, I shouldn't take him.
Oh, is he just at the beginning of his education?
Yes.
Yeah, he's in his first year.
Okay, so he's got another couple of years to go, right?
We're on a fast track, like, online university that you do at your own pace, and right now it's looking like he should be finished in about another year, but it could be a little bit longer.
Yeah.
Okay.
Right.
Right.
Okay.
And do you want your boyfriend's parents to be involved in raising your children?
No.
And why not?
Well, he has told me that his stepdad has physically abused their younger sister.
And I know that he has been violent with my boyfriend as far as like screaming and throwing things at him.
Not in the past several years, but just when they were younger.
And yeah, I would not want them to be around.
My kids just because of that.
So they didn't have the patience to be good parents to their own kids.
And how has your boyfriend dealt with the aspects of his past that have to do with neglect and violence?
Yeah, he honestly like binge listens to your podcasts and that's like how he's found any type of healing.
He's not in therapy currently, but we've been talking about him going to therapy soon.
Is that what you mean?
Because obviously he coped in unhealthy ways using drugs, but that's the healthy ways that he's been coping.
Okay, and how do you guys resolve your disagreements?
We always talk about them.
Sometimes our arguments will start with one of us saying something that It annoys the other person.
And then we end up talking in circles for 15 to 20 minutes.
And he's always the one that says like, hey, I think we need to take a break from this and walk away.
Let's talk in a little bit.
Because I am the one who gets like hyper emotional in our arguments.
We don't ever yell or scream.
I did scream at him one time and I cussed him out and I changed therapists after that and have been focusing a lot more on my mental health since then.
But typically an argument And then coming back and just trying to understand the other person's perspective and validating it.
And then we move on.
Okay.
Now, how long were you single before you met your boyfriend?
Six months.
So?
I'm sorry.
Three months before I met him.
And do you think that's enough time to heal from prior relationships before starting a new one?
I don't.
No, it's definitely not enough time before starting another one.
Right.
Okay.
So, he'll be a good father for your children, but his parents would not be good parents-in-law for your family.
Is that right?
Exactly.
Okay.
And is he of the same opinion?
Yes.
Okay.
But you still need to live with them for another couple of years, right?
The history of murder, criminality, violence, abuse and neglect in his family troubles me.
I mean, what if you were to date someone whose family didn't have this history of evil and abuse and neglect?
I'm just concerned that you're not necessarily out.
Right.
I mean, now you're being half paid for by a woman who married a violent drug criminal.
Right.
I don't know that you're out.
How would I know?
You'd be dating someone who didn't come from a family With violence, neglect, abuse, murder, and he wasn't a drug addict for almost 10 years, or a drug user for almost 10 years, and his 10 formative years, 13 to 24.
Oh, sorry, 13 to 22.
So nine of his formative years under the influence of some pretty heavy drugs.
Yeah.
I mean, you must have met some people over the course of your life who didn't have this.
I mean, I know they're restaurants, so they're full of some kind of nutty people, I I worked in a lot of restaurants, too, when I was younger.
Okay, how long into the relationship did you find out that his father was a drug runner who'd been murdered?
A few months and maybe five or six.
Okay, and how long into the relationship did he confess that he'd been a multi-drug abuser and addict for nine formative years?
It was very quick on that we had talked about drug use, like, within the first couple of weeks for sure.
But he hadn't told me that a lot of his youth was spent doing drugs until several months in.
And when did you start, or when did you, if you have, I assume you have, stopped using the cocaine and alcohol and other drugs?
About around the time that I met him, honestly.
So like 18 months, 20 months ago.
Oh, so when you were with the Hispanic bodybuilder, maybe steroid guy, you were still using drugs and alcohol?
No, actually he wouldn't allow that.
I stopped everything because of him.
And then right after we broke up, I went right back into drinking often.
Not so much the cocaine.
Well, not so much.
It killed the cocaine, though, right?
Right.
I just mean I wasn't using heavily every day like I had been in the past.
Oh, so in the past you had used cocaine every day?
Yes, for a few months.
Okay, so then you went back to, after you broke up with a Hispanic bodybuilder guy, you went back to using cocaine on how often a basis?
I would say like two or three times a month.
Okay.
And your drinking, how often would you drink?
Some weeks, it was every day.
Some weeks I would get two or three days off from drinking, but it was very frequent.
And how much would you drink on an average day?
As much as I could to get plastered.
Like, several shots.
Well, unless you're a hobbit, several shots ain't going to get you plastered, are they?
Like, four or five shots.
And, oh, okay, I see what you mean.
Yeah, like, several mixed drinks that were usually double shots.
So I would say, like, upwards of seven or eight shots.
And plastered, does that mean blackout drunk, or what does that mean?
Not blackout, but close.
Okay.
Okay, and I don't know if you've ever done the rough calculation of body count, and you don't have to talk about anything you don't want to, and you can just give me a rough estimate.
No problem.
I don't know the exact number, but it's upwards of 30, less than 40.
Okay.
And so you were still using drugs when you met, using drugs and alcohol when you met, Your current boyfriend, right?
Yes.
And he had stopped a year or two before, is that right?
As far as the frequent use of LSD, yes.
But he was still smoking weed somewhat frequently.
Right around the time that we met.
Well, daily.
And then right around the time that we met, he told me that he was quitting weed.
And so he did quit for a couple of months.
And then...
Started smoking a little bit more again and then quit again.
Right now, we don't smoke.
Okay.
And you quit doing the drugs when you met him?
Yes, except for weed.
That is something that we were still smoking often.
But not anymore, is that right?
Yeah, not anymore.
Okay.
And your exercise?
Yeah, we work out six times a week.
Okay.
Got it.
Got it.
Alright.
Okay.
So...
I would have some caution about this current relationship, because he met you, and how long after you met him and started dating him did you tell him about your trauma history,
the, I don't know, half-attempted murder stuff, the fairly regular drug and cocaine use from your teens and the rape and, like, The level of trauma that you've experienced, which is extraordinarily high, and I'm just sorry that we live on a planet where this can happen to a good woman and good young lady like yourself.
I'm so sorry for all of this.
But how long into the relationship did he find out about the unprocessed trauma, the PTSD, and the drug use?
I was pretty upfront with him in the beginning.
There's things that he didn't know until later, but I was very clear with him about the ex-boyfriend just because it was pretty recent.
I think I told him on maybe the second or third date.
And then as far as All of the other trauma just kind of started coming out within the next couple of months.
And how long was it before you were almost killed by your ex-boyfriend and started dating the new boyfriend?
How much time had passed between the two?
About six months.
So, are you saying that you dated someone after the Hispanic boyfriend who was the bodybuilder and before the Hispanic boyfriend who was the son of the drug runner?
Because, was it three months?
So if it was six months, then you dated somebody in between?
No, earlier you had asked how long had it been before I met him.
So we had known each other for about three months before we were dating.
Okay, got it, got it.
My apologies.
Yeah, that's okay.
Okay.
Okay.
And what is the most challenging situation you faced with your boyfriend?
You mean like, throughout, what is the challenging thing that we are currently facing, or just have we ever experienced?
No, that you have, the toughest thing you've had to face as a couple.
Yeah.
It would definitely be the effects of my PTSD. It got a lot worse when we moved here, I think because I was distracting myself with work.
When I was in the other city and then coming post operation and healing from that here, that's when I really started having intense panic attacks.
And that time that I had told you I screamed at him, it just really caught us both off guard.
I had never treated him that way before and it kind of came out of nowhere.
I know it really traumatized him.
He could barely speak to me for another day.
After it happened.
But I would say that that's been our biggest challenge is just making sure that I feel regulated.
Yeah.
Okay.
So tell me, if you don't mind, tell me about the virtues that you admire most in him.
Yeah.
I think he...
Virtues.
Sorry.
I got really nervous and my mind went blank, but I promise I have things to say.
Thank you.
It's hard for me to say one-worded virtues, but what I really love about him is that he has taken my trauma really seriously and has made it his goal to help me heal.
He's never afraid to point out when I'm saying something that he doesn't agree with.
Why has he done that, do you think?
I think because he wants me to be a good wife and a good mom someday.
Okay, let me ask you the tough questions though, right?
I mean, obviously I'm invested in you being as happy as possible.
I don't know that you've been single long enough to process trauma because you spent a lot of time avoiding trauma, which I completely understand.
This is not a criticism at all.
You spent a lot of time avoiding trauma with sex and drugs and drink and so on, right?
Yeah.
And then you were only single for a couple of months before you got together with this guy, and you still had a lot of unprocessed trauma, which I completely understand.
And I sympathize with, none of this is a criticism, but a relationship with two traumatized people is not the best place to work out trauma, right?
Right.
You can't build the plane while you're flying it.
So, why, if he wants a good wife and mother, and he's in his mid-twenties, if he wants a good wife and mother, why doesn't he choose a woman who's not as traumatized?
And this doesn't mean that it's...
I mean, I sympathize and I understand.
I'm just asking that logical question.
Right.
Right?
Like, if I want a car that's a convertible, why would I buy a car and then, you know, get a hammer and chisel and try and put a hole in the roof?
Why wouldn't I just buy a car that already has a sunroof?
Or a convertible, right?
Like, let's say a sunroof.
If I want to buy a car with a sunroof, I buy a car with a sunroof.
I don't buy a car with a roof and then saw a hole in the top, right?
Right.
So if he wants a woman who's a good wife and mother, and I'm not saying you wouldn't be, right?
But what I'm saying is that if that's what he wants now, why wouldn't he choose a woman who hadn't gone through as much trauma?
Or a woman who'd gone through the trauma and had not avoided it as much with various addictions, for which I'm not blaming you.
I'm just, that's the logical question that I would have.
Right.
That's understandable.
Let me think about that for a second.
That's actually something that I've questioned before.
How pretty are you?
I would say I'm about a 7 out of 10.
Okay.
And how handsome is he?
I'd say he's about the same.
About a 7 out of 10.
7 out of 10.
Okay.
So why does he want a project?
Something that he said to me when we were early in dating.
We actually had this conversation that was like a make or break.
Either you're going to listen to what I have to say or we're not going to be talking anymore.
Sorry, who said that?
This was a conversation that he started where he was saying, I was hanging out with a lot of people that were partying all the time and I was getting drunk all the time.
And he just started pointing out, none of these people care about you.
None of them are your friends and drinking every night, that's not going to take you anywhere.
And you say you want to be a musician, but I don't see you ever putting effort into that.
You're saying it.
Okay, so why does he want a fixer-upper?
Right, so the last part of that was just that he told me that somebody had told him, you don't find a good woman, you make a good woman.
And so then he made this commitment to me that he would help me get my life on track.
You make a good woman.
Yeah.
You make a good woman.
It's got a sort of Frankenstein vibe to it, like assembling limbs in a basement with a 9-volt battery.
So you don't find a good woman, you make a good woman.
So you are a project to be reformed to suit his preferences of wife and mother.
Yeah.
Why?
Now, people say a lot of stuff over the course of your life, so why would he believe this one?
I'm really not sure.
I mean, I would like to think that he just saw good qualities in me, even though I have a lot of trauma.
No, no.
But at the time...
Of course, I completely accept that you have good qualities.
No question that you have good qualities.
There's no question that you have good qualities.
But would he say that he is less traumatized than you?
Yeah.
Okay.
So he's further ahead in health, in a sense, than you are, right?
Yes.
Okay.
So why...
So let's say I want to start a band.
Hey, I'm going to use the musical analogy here.
You're going to love it.
I feel that already.
So, let's say I want to start a band, right?
And I've been playing piano at the expert level for 10 years, right?
Yeah.
So, I want to start a band, and you've been playing piano part-time for a year, right?
Mm-hmm.
Why would I hire you to be in my band?
I don't think you would want to.
Because I'd be further ahead, right?
Right.
Maybe like out of...
No, I might encourage you.
Yeah.
You know, you've got some good instincts there.
You're like a metronome and you're timing.
There's all kinds of good stuff, right?
So I might encourage you for sure, but I wouldn't put you in the band, right?
Mm-hmm.
So he could encourage you in saying, you know, hey, you've got great qualities, but, you know, you're obviously severely traumatized.
You've gone through a lot.
I'm further along in the journey, so obviously I can be your friend.
I can give you some advice, some feedback, you know, maybe listen to this podcast or whatever.
But to date, sleep, have you move in?
Because you're functionally husband and wife, right?
Mm-hmm.
That's the question.
You're in the band.
Now, if an expert musician, if he is an expert musician, if an expert musician puts an amateur musician in the band, there's got to be something that compensates for it, right?
So either he's not as far along as he thinks he is, right?
In which case, you're both in similar situations in terms of personal growth.
Yeah.
But then, he's not in a position to lead you.
To, quote, make a good woman rather than find a good woman.
So, if he's not further along, Then he's deluded about where he is.
And of course, if I have a call in with him, I'll bring this stuff up with him directly, because I'm just looking at it logically.
Okay.
So, if he is not further along, but he thinks that he is, that's an unstable situation.
Because as you grow, his limitations will become clear.
That makes sense.
Now, if he is further along, then why wouldn't he pick someone who's further along?
In the same way that if I'm an expert musician, I would choose for my jazz band another expert musician, not somebody who was an amateur, right?
Yeah.
So why wouldn't he choose someone who was as advanced as he is, or is as advanced as he is?
Why would he choose someone a lot further back, right?
Mm-hmm.
So answer me that.
Why would he?
Can he not get someone who's as mature and advanced as he is?
and if not, why not?
There's a dynamic where he's further ahead and he's bringing you along, right?
Yeah.
So why wouldn't he just choose someone who's further ahead?
And why is there this money stuff?
Hmm.
I mean, with a couple months I can't find them.
They're throwing tens of thousands of dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars into your healthcare, right?
Yeah.
That's weird.
It is.
So I'm trying to sort of figure out what's going on here.
Like I said, he hasn't Dated much outside of me.
He hasn't had like a...
Then how does he know he's further ahead?
I mean, he chose a woman a couple of months out of being half choked out by a kind of murderous boyfriend.
Why?
And please understand, I'm not trying to say That there's something wrong with you and you shouldn't be dated.
I'm not trying to say that at all.
But the question is, from the outside, and I hate to say this is like a father talk or something like that, but we have to try and figure out these motives.
Because the last thing that I'd want is for you to spend another couple of years in a relationship that may or may not work out.
No, absolutely.
Then you'll be mid to late 20s and another trauma and it's going to take you even longer to recover.
I'm trying to guard the eggs.
Apparently, that's my obsession, right?
Guard the eggs, right?
Yes.
It's not a bad obsession to have.
It's strange to me that you'd meet this guy, you would talk to him about having been recently almost murdered, according to what you say, which I'm not disagreeing with, I'm just saying these are your words, right?
Yeah.
So, you've been horribly mistreated and abused, molested as a child, raped as a teenager, half-murdered as an adult, and he's like, move in, And my family's going to spend ungodly amounts of money on your health.
And now, you're there in part because I assume it's a nice place to live.
They bought you a car.
Saved your life, maybe, medically.
Showering money on you, hundreds of thousands of dollars for healthcare, for a car, for Going to school, right?
Yeah.
And you're not married?
No.
You're not family.
Hmm.
you I mean, if you heard this story from someone else, what would you think?
It's always tough to see from the inside, right?
Right.
Well, my first thought is that I would think the parents are really amazing people, but they're not really amazing people.
So that, like, rules that out.
Well, even if all I knew was this, I'd have issues.
Which is, why do they need, in a sense, to half-buy a girlfriend for their son?
What do they know that you might not?
Well, they watched him, like, just rot his early 20s away and not date anyone.
And so I feel like they don't expect him to have what it takes to find a girlfriend.
And so because he brought me to them, suddenly they're like, oh my gosh, you found a good girl.
And that's just what they think of me.
No, I understand that that could be a motivation.
But they don't think that their son, without hundreds of thousands of extra dollars, can get or keep a woman, right?
Right.
So, at some level, he must believe that, too.
Otherwise, he'd say to his parents, No, you don't buy my girlfriend a car.
What are you, crazy?
You don't pay my girlfriend's bills?
If I marry her, then it would be my job to provide...
But I'm not going to get cucked by my own parents showering money at my girlfriend, almost like bribing her to be with me.
Right.
There's something awry about that.
Why does he have to be himself, or why do his parents think that he has to be himself plus hundreds of thousands of dollars?
Right?
Okay, if it was just him, no money, no car, no nice house to live in, no free healthcare, so to speak, right?
If it was just him, no money.
Yeah.
What are your thoughts?
I would definitely still be with him, if that's the question.
Okay.
Yeah, whenever we lived in the other states, Not a little bit, not at all.
So he was like, he'd gone no contact with his parents?
Yeah.
Of what change?
I think, well, his mom had a birthday party where she had reached out to him and said, like, it's my 50th birthday, I really want you to come.
And he said something like, well, I can't because I have my girlfriend here.
And she said, well, bring her.
And so then they flew us both out here.
So why had he gone no contact with his parents?
He just thought that they were not good people, that they had failed him.
He really holds a big grudge against his mom for picking his dad that ended up getting murdered.
So if he feels that his parents have failed him, what has changed that he now will accept hundreds of thousands of dollars in benefits and charity from them?
Yeah.
Well, really, I think it is just that he didn't want me to be suffering and he wanted to use their money to get me the help that I needed.
Come on, come on.
Okay, I can understand maybe the healthcare, right?
And I can understand, Mom and Dad, lend me the money because my girlfriend is sick and I'll pay you back.
Right.
Well, the reason we didn't do that is because they wanted to have our healthcare done in Mexico and we were living somewhere far I understand that.
What does that have to do with paying them back?
Now, it's one thing to say, my girlfriend's life is threatened by a giant grapefruit-sized cyst on her ovaries that is bleeding and could go septic.
And that's, you know, I want to save my girlfriend's life potentially.
It's so wild, eh?
Like one boyfriend almost kills you, the other one half saves your life, right?
Talk about a roller coaster, right?
I stay up at night thinking about that sometimes.
Yeah, yeah.
The Hispanic doth give and the Hispanic doth take away, right?
So, but what about buying you a car?
That's a whole different thing than saving your life.
Definitely.
Yeah, it's I mean, both of us have been really confused by it since we moved here.
Even, like, we thought that we were going to come here and get jobs and kind of just be, like, roommates to them.
But, like, I wonder if maybe this is just his mom's way of making sure he doesn't run away again.
Like, she really wants it to be solidified.
They had me sell my car that was, like, an 08 Honda.
Wait, you already had a car?
They bought you another car?
Yeah, I had my car.
So why would you take a car?
From people you don't know very briefly.
Yeah, my car registration was bad on my car and I had gotten a lot of tickets for it in the city that I lived in before.
And I had told his parents about that and they were like, well, you might as well just get rid of the whole thing.
And then they said that I could have this brand new car instead.
And I didn't, like, There's definitely a part of me that was like, well, I don't know if this is a good idea, because what happens if we break up?
Like, do I just not have a car then?
And his mom said, even if we broke up, I could just have the car.
They didn't care.
Hmm.
I mean, this really does sound like the beginning of a movie about organized crime.
So then they gave us the car, and she thought it was free.
No, it comes with the weight of obligation.
Mm-hmm.
Right?
As you said, the first chord is, well, what if we break up, right?
Mm-hmm.
All right.
Well, I just wanted to get some thoughts out there.
I have concern.
Free gifts from family with a criminal past.
Concern.
Right.
Yeah.
All right.
But let's, I know, and we've talked for a long time, so I just want to spend the last little bit, because I know that you had talked about your siblings, right?
Mm-hmm.
Now, what are the odds that your mother is going to grow a conscience?
I would say they're fairly low, extremely low.
Okay.
So if your mother does not grow a conscience, what can you do to help your siblings that doesn't further traumatize yourself?
I don't know.
I guess I expected that I could sit down with her and explain everything that I've been through in a way that would make her understand that it's her fault.
And maybe that would help her know that, like, I'm here to help.
I'm here to, like, point out what she needs to do.
Okay, no, no.
Because we have to say without her growing a conscience, since we put that down as a very low probability.
And personally, I think that people are about as likely, this is just my opinion, right?
I think there's some science behind it.
But I think people are about as likely to grow a conscience as they are to regrow an arm that's been removed.
Wow.
So let's just go with, as you said, the low odds.
So let's say if your mother does not take responsibility and does not grow a conscience, then what can you do to help your siblings that won't further traumatize or re-traumatize yourself?
I've been thinking that really all I can do is just wait until they're 18 and be there to talk to them about the truth.
Yeah, I mean, you don't have any authority in this situation, and the only authority you could have is if you were to align yourself with your mother's conscience, but the odds that your mother is going to grow a conscience this late in the game, and by this I mean, I know she was a young mother, but by this late in the game it means she's got You know, one kid in prison, another kid with a bunch of different kids, and a daughter who was sexually abused and raped, and right?
The odds that she's going to grow a conscience at this phase in her life are vanishingly small, in my humble and obviously amateur opinion.
But, you know, I've got some data to work with.
Mm-hmm.
So...
I'm not going to lie, Stephanie.
Wrangling crazy people cannot be part of your future.
Because crazy people can't be controlled.
That's kind of how you know they're crazy.
So you've had enough of that.
You've done enough of that.
Which is partly my concern with this current family that you're living with.
But that's neither here nor there.
Let's just focus on your family of origin.
Have you ever had any success controlling the behaviors of disturbed people?
Never.
What about the indigenous guy?
What about the Hispanic bodybuilder?
What about the guys in the band?
What about the teenage boy who was molesting you, right?
Have you ever had any luck whatsoever controlling the behaviors of disturbed and immoral people?
No.
It doesn't work.
You can't control the behaviors of other people.
All you can do is try to get them to wake up to the possibility of controlling themselves.
But without a conscience, people have neither the inclination nor perhaps even the ability to control themselves.
Wow.
You can ally with someone's conscience, right?
So if someone says, well, I want to do what's best for my kids, right?
And they say, well, I just want to do what's best for my kids.
And they genuinely mean it.
It's not just something they're saying to get out of trouble or to get self-pity.
So if someone says, well, I really, really want to do what's best for my kids.
And then you forward them the data, and let's say they spank their kids because they think that's what's best for their kids.
And then you forward them the data that points out how bad spanking is for children.
And then they say, oh my gosh, well, I want to do what's best for my kids.
Spanking is bad for my kids, so I'm going to stop spanking, right?
Or if somebody puts their kids in daycare saying, well, they need to be socialized, and then you say, well, here's the data about how bad daycare is, and they review it, and they say, oh my gosh, I've got to get my kids out of daycare because, right?
So you can't change someone's behavior.
All you can do is ally with their conscience and give them the information they need to make better decisions.
Right.
Now, without the conscience, there's nothing to ally with.
Like you're trying to speak to someone in a language they don't speak.
I don't have a lot of people who love my podcast who don't speak English.
Right?
Because we don't speak the same language, I can't communicate with them.
So the only possibility of having influence on other people is by appealing to values that they are willing to subjugate their will to.
Now, if nobody has values that they're willing to subjugate their will to, you can't control their behavior.
I mean, because the only way to control someone's behavior Is to ally with values they're willing to subjugate their will to.
What's best for my kids?
Tell the truth, be honest, have integrity, whatever, right?
Like if somebody says, I want to steal money, and then you say, wait, I thought you believe in a respect for property rights.
And then they're like, oh, yeah, you're right, I do.
Okay, I won't steal the money.
So then you're allying with values they're willing to subjugate their will to.
But if people don't have values...
That they're willing to surrender their will to, you cannot ever control their behavior.
All that will ever happen is varying degrees of mutual manipulation.
That makes sense.
Now, the best thing you can do, if you're getting out of a forest and there are people behind, there's no light behind you, but the dawn is breaking ahead, The best thing you can do is use the light of the dawn to get to the highest place you can and then call everyone else up out of the forest.
That's a slightly labored analogy to say that if you focus on your own happiness, mental health, virtue and stability, then you can get to a place where you can provide guidance to those kids when they get older.
I'm just reframing in a sense what you were saying earlier.
Yeah.
That you have to focus on your own mental health, your own happiness, and dealing with the trauma that you've experienced in order to be a guide to those children when they get older.
But I don't know that you're going back now with no authority.
And authority could mean legal power, which you don't have.
Or at least it could be, well, my mother has these virtues and values and I just need to remind her of them and then she'll shake her head and say, yes, I have to do that, right?
Yeah.
But you don't have moral authority because your mother doesn't seem to have values that she's willing to subjugate her will to that you can call upon.
So...
You have no authority from a legal standpoint.
You have no authority from a moral standpoint because she doesn't recognize morality because morality is universal standards we're willing to subject our will to.
She does what she wants.
She does whatever she feels like in the moment.
She does whatever she can justify, whatever she can get away with.
She's an amoral, pragmatic, hedonist in many ways.
And hedonists are immune to moral exhortations because hedonism is about feeling good in the moment and morality is about feeling good down the road at the massive expense of the present.
This is why hedonists and moralists are in opposite camps.
I'm sorry, can you define exhortation?
Uh, exhortation?
Yeah.
Exhortation is when you work really hard to try and convince someone of something.
Okay.
Now, life has taught your mother nothing, as far as I can tell.
Her son going to prison has taught her nothing.
Her daughter being molested, cutting herself, and being raped has taught her nothing.
The fact that she's had endless screaming matches with various dysfunctional husbands, boyfriends, and lovers has taught her nothing, right?
Yeah.
So, if a man looks down who's 300 pounds and says, I look fantastic, and I'm not a single pound overweight, what can the nutritionist say to him?
Nothing.
If life has taught her nothing, and she now has decades of experience of dysfunctionality from when she had a kid at 16 years of age, if life has taught her nothing, what are your words going to do?
I don't think they would do anything.
Well, all they will do is, and they're dangerous too, because what will happen is you will then end up back in the orbit of someone who's kind of cruel, and you will have a great desire to change her.
Now, when you are around cruel people with a great desire for something, they will automatically deny you that desire.
Now, they might tease you a little bit and say, tell me more, or maybe I could change, or I want to change.
They'll keep you hanging around, but they won't actually listen to you and change.
That makes sense.
It's like the girls who keep the beta orbiter around, like the guy who takes them out for dinner from time to time, that they'll cry about the alcoholic leather jacket-wearing guy who broke their heart, but they'll never date him.
They'll keep them around.
They're flashing some interest.
Oh, you're the great guy.
You'd be a wonderful husband.
Maybe someday.
They're never going to date him, but they just keep them around to feed their ego and buy them dinner.
So to have desires around cruel people is a form of self-harm.
Your mother didn't learn anything when you flashed her your mutilated forearm.
It did not give her a pause.
It did not make her change.
It did not make her say, oh my gosh, things have gotten so out of hand, you're cutting yourself.
I absolutely have to get to therapy.
I have to figure out what's going on in this family.
I have to change.
Nope.
It just screamed at you for possibly outing her as an abusive mother.
Well...
So your words have no power here.
It's like me in politics these days, right?
My words have no power here.
And knowing when your words have no power is one of the most essential aspects of wisdom.
You can't talk your mother into regrowing a conscience or having values or becoming philosophical or good.
I mean, if she were to spontaneously grow a conscience, she'd probably jump off a bridge.
I'm not kidding about that.
Oh, I think you're right.
So, I think with great tragedy, you have to say...
When I try to rescue the people in this lifeboat, when I try to rescue the kids in the lifeboat, the adults shoot at me, but there's no point being gunned down and dying in the water.
I'll just get to shore and hope to welcome them there.
And what matters most is not your parents' choices, but yours.
What matters most is not the past family you didn't choose, but the future family you do choose.
What matters not is not your parents' children, but your children.
That's what matters.
That's what you have control over.
And staying in a state of trauma without being able to help the children around, but at the expense of your future children, because it's going to delay you having children and you'll be less happy when you have them, is not a rational course of action.
I understand it emotionally.
Of course, you want to help these kids.
But, you know, hey, I want the world to listen to reason to be sane too, but it's not up to me whether they do that, right?
And I certainly don't have any power to compel anyone, neither would I want that power, neither if I had it would I exercise it to compel anyone to think or do anything.
I really appreciate your perspective on this because this is something I've been wrestling so much with and I was starting to feel really guilty for thinking maybe I should just focus on myself.
Well, it's not maybe you should or maybe you shouldn't.
It's what is possible and what is not.
I mean, if I wake up every day with the tortured thought that I should be 26 again, people would say to me, you can't be 26 again.
So you've got to stop thinking about it.
You're torturing yourself with the impossible.
You are choosing unhappiness.
And I think that I would imagine that as your life has become saner and more secure, your thoughts about your siblings have emerged stronger.
Is that right?
Yes.
So as the inadvertent stress in your life diminishes, you are choosing to focus on your siblings in order to create a continued situation of stress and instability.
Wow.
Yeah.
Because you're used to managing anxiety.
You're used to managing fear.
You're used to managing impotence and helplessness and hopelessness.
So as your life improves, you feel out of control.
Without fear to control, you have no control.
So fear is an essential ingredient for you, I think, to feel a sense of control.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
So as your life becomes less fearful, you are now gravitating towards other situations of fear and helplessness, which is your siblings.
But it is out of a need to manage fear rather than a genuine desire to help your siblings that this is occurring because you cannot help them.
Wow.
But what you can do is continue to feel guilty, frustrated, helpless, that you're doing something wrong, all the stuff that's from your early childhood.
You have to let them go.
You have to let them go because right now they're a mechanism by which you are managing anxiety.
Because you can't help them.
And it's a sad truth.
It is an absolutely sad truth of the world that you cannot help them.
Plus, of course, you want to break the cycle.
Of people didn't help you as a kid, and you want to help people as a kid, when they're kids, right?
You want to break that cycle.
And the best way to break that cycle is not with your crazy mother's kids, but with your own kids in the future.
That's the place to break the cycle, because that's where you have control and authority.
That's what breaks the helplessness.
I mean, and I say this with some, you know, fairly bitter and deep experience that I've had to leave people behind, even children behind.
But my responsibility is not to the children of others, but to the children I choose to bring into the world, and I choose to parent.
Wow.
Thank you so much for all of that.
Take a silly example.
There are lots of men in the world who'd like to get laid, but it's not women's job to do it.
You've got to take your pleasures and your connection with your boyfriend and the man you love, not with random strangers just because they want it or even people closer.
That example is very applicable for me.
Well, I thought it was not exactly out of nowhere.
So, yeah, those would be my thoughts about it, if that makes sense.
Absolutely.
All right.
Well, of course, I appreciate the chat.
Sorry, go ahead.
I just said I'm so grateful for all of your perspective that you just gave.
I was very quiet, but I was absorbing all of it.
And I'm just so grateful for you.
Thank you.
I'm fairly aware at this point when people are going to SpongeBob SquarePants.
Okay, so obviously keep me, if you can, do me a favor, keep me posted about how things are going.
I obviously would be very happy to chat with your boyfriend, maybe not so much his parents, but so he's welcome to...
They don't speak English, so...
Oh, right, right.
Yeah, that's true.
Well, then I'd be very happy to chat with them because they wouldn't be too offended.
All right.
So, yeah, keep me posted.
I appreciate the call.
And again, massive sympathies for what you experienced as a child.
It's just wretched.
And I'm glad that we're all doing our little bit in the world to try and prevent this from happening to even more children.
And I look forward to the updates and I appreciate your time today.
Thank you so much, Stefan.
Thank you.
Take care.
Bye.
All right.
You too.
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