ESCAPING JAMAICAN VIOLENCE!

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Overcoming challenges with violence and addiction!

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Transcript
00:00:00 Okay, well, actually I became exposed to your material maybe like in 2012-13.
00:00:10 I watched a video from you called "Putting Off Procrastination" and it was
00:00:15 pretty eye-opening for me because it made me realize you know how my parents
00:00:19 were actually treating me in reality versus um you know kind of I guess the
00:00:25 way it was justified to me and the way I had justified it to myself. But uh it was
00:00:33 a bit frightening for me at the time so I wasn't I kind of stopped listening for
00:00:37 a while and then recently I started getting back into it. And so I finally
00:00:45 made the decision unfortunately ten years too late to uh but I guess it's
00:00:50 never too late but I made the decision because I've been living with my parents
00:00:53 for for a long time. I'm 32 now and so I finally made the decision to to leave.
00:01:00 And so I've got an apartment and everything and currently in the process
00:01:04 of finalizing all that. And so I'm just really you know I'm trying to commit my
00:01:09 life to to living more philosophically and and cleaning up my life which is you
00:01:16 know it's not an extreme like mess you know there's there's no terror going on
00:01:21 right now but I'm just trying to live better I guess and so any advice that
00:01:27 you could offer would be helpful. Well I mean that's that's fairly general and I
00:01:32 guess we can sort of narrow it or specify it a little bit to see if we can
00:01:37 provide more value. So can you tell me a little bit about your life as a child
00:01:42 and your life as an adult? Sure I was born in a city in South Florida.
00:01:50 You don't have to do geography? Yeah just roughly. Yeah okay so I was born to two
00:01:56 parents. They were married, they've stayed married for, they've been
00:02:01 married now for about 39 almost 40 years. I have a sister you know growing up
00:02:09 there was you know we grew up in a pretty quiet neighborhood and everything
00:02:14 but my parents are from a immigrants from another country and so some of some
00:02:19 of the values from there kind of seeped in although we live in the United States
00:02:24 so there was there was a bit of like aggression and stuff in the house, a bit
00:02:29 of bit of violence. I was hit enough times for it to be like a problem for me.
00:02:36 I remember noticing that it was a problem like as a kid like yeah this is
00:02:42 this isn't like I don't like being treated this way but I'm just kind of
00:02:44 stuck with these people. I remember when I was five I wanted to leave home. I
00:02:53 wanted to like to like run away from home and I told this to my parents and
00:02:57 they just kind of mocked me and laughed at me you know which was which was
00:03:02 unfortunate. They don't have to be nice to you because they've got control right?
00:03:04 They've got the authority and they're in they've got total control of your
00:03:09 environment so I guess they can laugh at you. I mean I'm sure that if your mom had
00:03:14 said to your dad I want to leave you he might not have laughed at her. Yeah I
00:03:20 guess yeah because that's more of a voluntary relationship. Yeah yeah she can
00:03:24 do that right so yeah the mocking kids you want to run away is just it's just
00:03:28 appalling. It's just straight-up exercise of power but I'm sure you know that so
00:03:31 sorry go ahead. Yeah I actually never thought of it that way but it is kind of
00:03:36 like a power like a power play like them flexing their muscles on me a little bit
00:03:41 you know because it's like what can I do I'm a five-year-old kid I can't drive a car.
00:03:45 I still remember even in like I don't know there was an old cartoon like
00:03:49 comic book strip Calvin and Hobbes and the Calvin was like I'm running away and
00:03:54 it was always for some petty silly whatever reason but his parents were
00:03:57 like oh we'll help you pack and you know it's just like it was so gross rather
00:04:01 than listen to his grievances and his problems it was just like yeah we'll
00:04:05 help you pack and good luck and you know they wave him down the driveway and oh
00:04:09 it's just a straight-up exercise of power because everybody knows the kid
00:04:12 can't go anywhere. Yeah so that's like the other end of the spectrum like
00:04:17 right so like on my on my end of the spectrum it was they just laugh at me on
00:04:21 their end of this on that at that end of the spectrum indicated in Calvin and
00:04:25 Hobbes they say oh yeah sure we'll help you pack but really on either end you're
00:04:29 not getting to the important stuff which is the actual grievances and the reason
00:04:32 why the child actually wants to leave you know which is the most important part. Yeah and in the Calvin and Hobbes one it was of course
00:04:37 portrayed as well you know I'm just not getting what I want and I don't get to
00:04:42 stay up all night and I don't get to eat candy all day so I'm leaving like it was
00:04:46 always just minimized to some foolish vain thing on the part of the kid and
00:04:51 yeah I mean kids don't kids don't want to run away unless they're kind of going
00:04:56 through hell and in many ways. It's kind of funny because like kids don't really
00:05:03 want to eat candy or stay up all night like normally you know I think I think
00:05:07 maybe there are factors that make them want to do that but you know probably on
00:05:13 the part of the parents but I don't think like I remember being a kid I
00:05:16 remember naturally wanting to like stay up all night playing video games the
00:05:20 only reason I played video games which I guess that's part of my childhood too
00:05:24 because I was just miserable as a child and I wanted to drown it out you know.
00:05:27 Yeah so yeah people get addicted to these kinds of highs when they don't
00:05:31 have the natural high of happiness right then it's like well I might as well have
00:05:34 candy because I'm depressed I might as well stay up and play video games because
00:05:38 it's distracting and I'm down right so yeah I think keeping kids down makes
00:05:42 them chase after these dopamine highs. Yeah 100%. So I went to public school of
00:05:51 course elementary. Elementary was rough and like the second grade by then like I
00:05:58 think most of the times I've been hit were like five six seven like somewhere
00:06:03 between six and thirteen so by the time I was in public school I had already
00:06:08 experienced violence at the hands of my parents and so I would go to school and
00:06:15 you know I'm Jamaican so I was I was the only Jamaican kid at the school and all
00:06:21 the other kids were like Hispanic or like something else so I was already a
00:06:27 bit isolated in that way. I remember before I even went to public school I
00:06:33 remember my mother was like she was at the gym or something you know sometimes
00:06:38 at the gyms they have like a little area where you could you can leave your kids
00:06:41 to play or whatever so I was left in that area and like there were a bunch of
00:06:47 like Mexicans kids there or whatever and like one of them like spits in my face I
00:06:50 think I was like four or five years old he spits directly in my face and then I
00:06:54 go to the lady that's in charge of us or whatever the daycare lady and say hey
00:06:59 like that kid just spit in my face are we gonna do something about this? I
00:07:03 probably didn't say it so articulately but she said well and she said in like a
00:07:08 heavy like thick Hispanic accent she said it's just a baby what's the big
00:07:12 deal you know so so that that kind of got stuck in my craw but anyway so going
00:07:17 to public school like a lot of kids would like pick on me and make fun of
00:07:21 me call me unsuitable names and I would like rage out and hit them or or stuff
00:07:27 like this you know be physically violent with them I remember hit I remember
00:07:32 hitting a kid in the head with my lunchbox one time or like throwing it at
00:07:36 him it's one of the two and then another notable thing that I remember was like
00:07:41 two kids were bugging me so I grabbed their heads and bashed them together
00:07:43 which is not nice I shouldn't have done that. So tell me what what your
00:07:49 experience was like transitioning to to I hate to say violence because I mean it
00:07:55 does sound to some degree like self-defense I don't want to put it's a
00:07:58 big negative label on it but how was it for you to sort of transition from being
00:08:03 pushed around to like knocking kids heads together and hitting them with
00:08:07 lunch boxes and so on was that kind of instinctual or was that like a big step
00:08:11 for you or did you like bottle it up and then you know rage back or or how did
00:08:17 that go from like being picked on to fighting back in that sense?
00:08:23 Hmm no it wasn't in those days it wasn't bottled up it was uh it was pretty it
00:08:31 was pretty instant like somebody would say something and the reaction would be
00:08:35 pretty pretty instant like almost like immediately after there was there wasn't
00:08:41 like I don't think there was a whole lot of processing going on it was just um
00:08:44 you know I didn't like being called I think well no because in a way there was
00:08:49 a bottling up because you know I already had experienced ridicule in my in my
00:08:55 family home and so now I go to school and I finally get to be away from my
00:08:59 family but the ridicule has followed me here like it's still there in front of
00:09:04 me and I think that made me very angry too now that I know that I think like
00:09:09 that no escape like I can't get away from it no matter what yeah like like I
00:09:13 just I just can't get away like what can I I know no matter where I go I'm just
00:09:18 gonna be treated in a way that I I know like in in my in my in like my deepest
00:09:24 parts of my my soul I know I'm not supposed to be treated this way and and
00:09:28 no matter where I go like there's just like people waiting there to treat me
00:09:31 this way. It's like that horror movie where the you run from the ghost in the
00:09:35 forest you finally get you know back to your room and then you turn around and
00:09:39 the ghost is like sitting on your bed like it's like wait didn't I just get
00:09:42 away from you why are you here? Yeah yeah exactly it's exactly like that or like
00:09:48 the boogeyman or something you know you go to bed to like try to get some rest
00:09:52 and some sleep from from the day and then he's just there waiting for you to
00:09:57 to cause you more stress you know. Right right okay. So I think I think that's what it
00:10:02 was but so that that was elementary school second grade. In the second grade
00:10:11 we were given journals to write in for for school like you know so you just get
00:10:19 a journal and at the top of the day you write whatever you're thinking about you
00:10:24 know whatever's on your mind just excuse me you just write something and so what
00:10:28 I wrote down was um one day I wrote something about killing my own mother
00:10:32 and like like like hammering a nail into her neck and I even drew like a picture
00:10:39 of this like with stick figures and of course they notified my parents.
00:10:46 It feels like we need a little backstory for this or or I mean did you know that
00:10:51 this was going to result in a huge amount of mayhem and chaos or like
00:10:55 consequences or no? No I didn't even think that they like no there it never
00:11:02 crossed my mind because yeah I know I would have I would have remembered this
00:11:06 if it was like oh yeah I know they're gonna show this to my mom so I'm gonna
00:11:09 write this down but it wasn't like that at all it was just um oh here's a book
00:11:14 and you can write whatever you're thinking or feeling in it I said okay
00:11:17 well this is what's on my mind right now and I just wrote it in there at like seven years old.
00:11:22 Why did you think your mom? I mean as opposed to say your dad or both. Well well a lot of the
00:11:31 the beatings that I had experienced as a kid and it was usually like getting
00:11:35 swatted across the head but when you're like a little tiny kid and like a giant
00:11:39 man swats you across the head like the entire earth shakes like it's very
00:11:44 intense. I say this to people like if someone five times your size was
00:11:48 hitting you I mean you'd wait to wait to meet Jesus right? Yeah yeah it's really
00:11:54 that way. I lost my train of thought there. Okay here we go okay so yeah a lot
00:12:00 of the beatings were at the hands of my of my father but you know my mother would
00:12:05 just kind of I would just see her like kind of stand by and not do anything
00:12:09 about it. You know later years like fast-forwarding like maybe 20 30 years
00:12:16 later well no maybe 20 years later I remember talking to my mom about this
00:12:19 and she would be like well you know when you weren't around like when it was just
00:12:23 me and him I would tell him hey you should stop doing this but you know in
00:12:26 the moment there was no defense. In ways you can't verify I was totally on your side.
00:12:34 Yeah something like that yeah you know and I mean I believe her you know cuz
00:12:38 her dad used to crack her pretty hard too and she said that she felt a
00:12:43 lot of resentment and she's been pretty honest about how that made her feel later
00:12:48 on but you know so I would just kind of see my mom not do anything about it I
00:12:52 would see my sister kind of not do anything about it. My sister's about
00:12:55 seven years older than me and she used to get it too before I was born but
00:13:00 after I was born I just I only saw her get yelled at but I never saw my dad
00:13:04 like actually beat her. Maybe he did it when I wasn't around like at times when
00:13:08 I wasn't around you know maybe my mom my mom used to shout at her. Sorry go ahead.
00:13:12 Yeah my mom has had like fertility issues her cervix was too small so
00:13:17 both of us were c-sections and actually before I came there was a baby that was
00:13:23 a miscarriage so it was it's mainly like a fertility issue. Okay. And after me she
00:13:28 couldn't have any more children because of this so so yeah that's that's the
00:13:34 reason that I understand why but yeah it's a big gap seven years. It made me
00:13:38 feel really lonely too because you know there's a lot of things you can't really
00:13:41 do with a sibling that's seven years older than you. Oh yeah. So it's almost
00:13:45 it's almost like being an only child in a way. Right. And a lot of people would
00:13:50 like would mention this to me like they'd be they would ask me if I'm an
00:13:53 only child based on the way I guess that I behave or something about my character
00:13:58 lends them to think that I'm an only child. But but yeah so so it was mostly
00:14:02 just um just like having this happen to me and like you know seeing like we have
00:14:08 like a family pet like a cat. Nobody beats the cat. I'm not even I used to
00:14:12 throw the cat in the swimming pool and I wasn't allowed to. I got told it for that
00:14:15 you know. I have a sister I never see anybody beat my sister. I have a mom I
00:14:21 never see anyone beat my mom. I never see anybody beat my dad and also I never see
00:14:26 anybody in my family go out and beat anybody else outside the family. So to
00:14:31 me that I read that as like okay I guess I'm like the worst person on planet
00:14:36 earth or something because I'm the only person that gets beaten and that like
00:14:39 it's perfectly legitimate and and justified to beat them to beat me but
00:14:44 but not anybody else. You know and I would even get like in trouble or called
00:14:48 to the office for beating on other kids. You know so it's like oh so this is this
00:14:51 really like so that that damaged my self-esteem a good bit but I'm kind of
00:14:56 going off topic. The question was um why my mom?
00:15:00 Yeah the picture and what happened. Yes my mom screams a lot but she used to
00:15:08 scream a whole lot more you know as parents get older they kind of like chill
00:15:11 out but the you know but the bad stuff is still there. It's just kind of you
00:15:15 know so it's like it's the difference between like a coal and like a burning
00:15:19 like torch or something you know the heat is still there but it's just um
00:15:22 it's just less noticeable or a bit reduced. If it's any consolation one of
00:15:28 my best friends when I was in my early teens was a Jamaican guy. His mom wasn't
00:15:32 too quiet either. It may be a bit of a cultural thing. Oh it is it certainly is.
00:15:37 I was just talking to a guy that I ran into who's Jamaican and his girlfriend
00:15:42 was like pulling the guns on him and stuff. I even talked to another guy who
00:15:46 he was he wasn't Jamaican but he married one and he said that she pulled a gun on
00:15:50 him too. This never happened in my household as far as I know. There was no
00:15:53 guns pulled or anything but yeah Jamaican women can be very um violent
00:16:01 yelling screaming combative argumentative things like this. I mean
00:16:05 being argumentative and combative I guess depending on the circumstances isn't
00:16:09 so bad but but they do yell. They do get violent. Aggressive I guess I should say
00:16:13 aggressive. Jamaican women are known for being aggressive and so like it's stuff
00:16:17 like um you know if I did something that my mom didn't like and it became too
00:16:22 much for her she would like scream at us you know me and my sister you know I've
00:16:25 seen her scream at us. Yeah and like full on veins in the neck like banshee
00:16:30 shrieking like not even just like raising your voice but like top of the
00:16:33 line. Oh yeah yeah yeah not like not like a banshee screaming I mean my mom has a
00:16:38 pretty deep voice like a deeper than than usual voice I guess for a woman so
00:16:44 so it doesn't sound like shrieking or anything. Yeah it wasn't it wasn't
00:16:47 shrieking but it was like very loud like yelling. I wouldn't call it screaming top
00:16:51 of the lungs but I would call it certainly yelling and it was very loud
00:16:55 yelling. I guess when you're a kid it sounds a whole lot louder than it does
00:16:58 when you're when you're older but yeah I remember it being very loud like you
00:17:02 take you take a little bit more food out of the stove than you were supposed to
00:17:05 and it's like you just get this yelling you know but just like sometimes it
00:17:10 would startle me it would frighten me at times you know because you wouldn't you
00:17:13 wouldn't you wouldn't see it coming necessarily you know so things like that
00:17:18 so my mom used to yell at us a lot and she hit us a few times but not not not
00:17:25 as frequently as our dad did. No no but we didn't finish the picture story. Yeah I
00:17:30 don't know why I really you know I remember my mom asked me because the
00:17:33 school like notified her and and then she asked me hey you know I saw you drew
00:17:39 this stuff why did you draw it I said I don't even really know I don't know and
00:17:42 maybe I said I don't know because I was terrified in the moment and I didn't
00:17:47 want to give the wrong answer to get myself in any trouble so I just said I
00:17:52 don't know. I did this again later in like other circumstances where I got in
00:17:56 trouble in school for doing erratic things but which that's some of that's
00:18:02 in high school that's a bit later but um. So nothing ever followed up from the
00:18:07 picture I mean I don't know and that was it? Yeah yeah I don't remember anything
00:18:11 else I think my mom kept it quiet I don't even think she showed it to my dad
00:18:15 if she showed it to my dad he would have lit me up and I would have remembered
00:18:17 that so I think that was just kind of kept on the down low for some reason
00:18:23 yeah I don't know. When I was seven my grandfather on my mom's side I actually
00:18:30 killed somebody too he was schizophrenic so this is around the same time
00:18:35 frame like this was maybe months after the drawing situation and it just kind
00:18:39 of made me think about that because my grandpa was schizophrenic he was very
00:18:42 violent he he did drugs he did marijuana I think he was a longshoreman he married
00:18:51 my grandmother when she was 15 and he was 30 in Jamaica. I'm sorry how do
00:18:57 you know he was schizophrenic I mean if he did drugs and was violent he could
00:19:01 just be like drug addled and you know kind of evil I mean. You know I never
00:19:06 really knew him that well he was always nice to me he drove an ice cream truck
00:19:09 and he would give me free snow cones a couple times you know so I never had any
00:19:13 issues with him personally I remember I saw him when he was in the detention
00:19:17 center after he was convicted or maybe before I don't remember when he was when
00:19:21 he had been in prison and I remember he said oh you know hey it's nice to see
00:19:26 you you're still a crybaby just like before aren't you like you just said
00:19:28 that you know to be kind of funny I don't think he said it to me mean or
00:19:32 anything but he was always nice to me the reason I say that he was
00:19:35 schizophrenic is because he was he was Baker acted to um to a hospital because
00:19:41 he was like confined is that right yeah he was because yeah well I don't know
00:19:49 the details but I know that he he was known for like pulling guns on people
00:19:53 and so he pulled his gun on some neighborhood kids or something because
00:19:56 they were making too much noise and then they took him to a hospital or something
00:20:02 and they determined that he was insane or something like this so it's a Baker
00:20:05 act is like when somebody gets arrested and then they determine that the person
00:20:08 is insane instead of sending him to prison they send him to a hospital for
00:20:14 mental examination I believe that's that's how it works I've never actually
00:20:17 looked into it but for me schizophrenia I'm no expert obviously but
00:20:23 my sort of understanding of there's something like no contact with reality
00:20:27 hearing voices seeing things you know what way out there yeah so if he's
00:20:31 driving an ice cream truck that doesn't seem quite in line again right knowing
00:20:35 much about it he's driving an ice cream truck he could hold the job he was able
00:20:39 to write a will for himself he raised my mother he'd now he didn't do a good job
00:20:46 for a lot of reasons but he raised my mother well enough that she could go
00:20:50 after a lot of my husband yeah I guess he exactly but yeah you know what I
00:20:57 don't really think based on my private personal experience with him I don't
00:21:02 think anything was really that deeply wrong with him if I'm gonna be totally
00:21:05 honest from I mean and he did go to prison right they didn't keep him in the
00:21:10 mental asylum right well because he went to the mental place um it was really
00:21:15 just a hospital but they took him there and I don't think it wasn't a mental
00:21:20 hospital it was just a hospital cuz I ended up working there many years later
00:21:23 doing some construction but yeah he went they took him to the hospital and then
00:21:30 he said to the lady I need to go back home to feed my dogs then he went back
00:21:34 home and got a gun and came back and I think he shot the doctor or something
00:21:39 and I think that is that the murder that's the murder and also but what was
00:21:44 he in there for to begin with oh because he pulled the gun on the neighborhood
00:21:46 kids right yeah cuz he was doing something crazy and quote-unquote crazy
00:21:50 and then he was arrested and then they decided to send him to the hospital for
00:21:54 probably for for mental examination I would assume so the doctor who released
00:21:59 him he came back and murdered the doctor right and murdered her yes and and
00:22:03 according to my mom he had called my mom to be there because he may have wanted
00:22:08 to kill my mom too but I don't know if that's true or not I don't know if he
00:22:12 really wanted to kill my mom but that's what my mom told me so when I was 7 and
00:22:17 I was getting into all these violent altercations and then this news came out
00:22:20 my mom like took me aside I still remember the place under a tree
00:22:23 somewhere and she said hey you know this such-and-such happened with your grandpa
00:22:27 blah blah blah you know so she I I think the reason why she wanted to tell me
00:22:32 that was because you know she saw the violent tendencies in me and she just
00:22:36 wanted to inform me I guess a bit of really our family she really worked to
00:22:41 prevent your violence but not so much your dad's yeah I'm sorry to laugh but
00:22:51 no because you know if a kid's getting beaten by a dad the first person you
00:22:55 want to lecture is the kid obviously don't be violent yeah not not at all
00:23:00 yeah not at all that's I know that sarcasm yeah obviously no yeah yeah
00:23:06 sorry my mom says that she she talked to my dad privately and the beatings did
00:23:12 stop when I was 13 but you know I was real time yeah I was listening to your
00:23:16 book RTR and you kind of talked about the same thing like once you get past a
00:23:20 certain age and I've heard other people say this to you like I talked to a
00:23:23 priest and he said oh yeah you know I used to beat my kids but you know
00:23:26 eventually they get so big they can beat you you know I think it's very common
00:23:30 like yeah we'll stop beating him now cuz no but what that means is sorry what
00:23:34 that means is your dad didn't hit you because he lost his temper because he
00:23:38 was fully like once you got bigger he was fully able to not hit you oh yeah
00:23:42 like you never people say oh he made me so mad or I was under so much stress and
00:23:46 then the moment you come big magically oh no it's all stops right so it could
00:23:50 have stopped any not I remember I asked my dad why he hit me and he said it's
00:23:54 because you're a child oh cuz he's bigger you're smaller and that's the way
00:23:59 it is yeah because you're a child basically and I'm an adult and so I
00:24:03 have this is named Frank in line because he's admirably Frank no but my actually
00:24:08 my grandfather's name was well yeah okay so sorry how old were you when your
00:24:16 grandfather killed the woman seven okay seven years old and he was I guess he
00:24:21 was pretty much gone forever then right yeah um well not gone forever I mean he
00:24:26 was gone physically but he would make phone calls to the house and my mom
00:24:29 would like get really angry and like scream at him and sometimes she would
00:24:33 even make fun of him he would send letters and stuff and she would mock him
00:24:37 a lot and like and also like it really angry with him at times when he was
00:24:43 she angry at him just because like obviously he killed a woman or was this
00:24:46 someone something else things that he would say I guess maybe he said some
00:24:50 things that were hurtful or something and then also his wife his wife came over
00:24:55 to live with us my grandma came to live with us around the same time I think I
00:25:01 was maybe seven or six when he came when she came to live with us and she was
00:25:06 always very normal I guess like she was never abusive when she was with us
00:25:12 although you know if if anything ever happened she would side with my parents
00:25:15 but she never hit me she never screamed at me but um she was apparently horrible
00:25:21 with her kids um she dragged one of my uncles she tied one of my uncles to a
00:25:26 donkey and dragged him through the road and she did this to another one of her
00:25:29 children as well so I'm talking to a cook a donkey yes in Jamaica yeah and
00:25:35 she threw a coconut shell at my uncle's head because of something that somebody
00:25:41 else said that he did she didn't even do an investigation she just threw it at
00:25:45 his head gave him permanent eye damage as a result he has to wear glasses to
00:25:48 this day because of that so she was um she was terrible and so was her husband
00:25:54 my grandpa the one who killed the lady he was known to like be violent with her
00:25:58 she used to beat her and he used to beat my mom and all of his kids and stuff
00:26:03 well not all of his kids my mom was the only one because when they separate I
00:26:06 forgot to add that detail they separated when my mom was about in her early teens
00:26:12 and or maybe even before that but my mom has them oh your grandparents my
00:26:18 grandparents on my mother's side um they separated and basically the story was
00:26:22 that um they were playing tug-of-war with my mom like they were trying to
00:26:27 like they separated but they wanted to have my mom but they couldn't both have
00:26:32 her so she chose to be with my grandpa instead of my grandma which is probably
00:26:35 the right choice because although he was abusive he wasn't nearly as abusive as
00:26:41 my grandma was so she went to live with with my grandpa and he came to the city
00:26:45 where I live now and and so she grew up with him and then soon as she could well
00:26:51 well he kicked her out she was 18 and then she was just kind of on her own
00:26:56 ever since a few years later maybe four or five six years later she met my dad
00:27:01 and they got married and so that's how the family started I guess but uh yeah
00:27:09 we went we went into a whole bunch of different stuff yeah so so yeah you know
00:27:13 there were there were other instances where I showed like um kind of like
00:27:17 violent tendencies like there was a time when I threatened to kill my sister
00:27:22 because my parents made me go to my room for something um you know so I wrote
00:27:28 like a note and slipped it under the door or something so my mom could see
00:27:32 and so I got yelled at for that um like what do you mean what did you say I said
00:27:38 uh let me out of here I will kill my sister that's what I wrote on the note
00:27:42 or something like that you know um because you know they sent me to my room
00:27:47 and obviously I wasn't allowed to leave they didn't lock the door or anything
00:27:50 but I wasn't allowed to leave um let's see what else was there so so that was
00:27:56 about seven or eight years old when that happened um nine ten eleven twelve
00:28:02 elementary school I guess I kind of calmed down after a while I didn't I
00:28:06 didn't really get so violent in school anymore because I think other kids kind
00:28:09 of knew what to expect from me so I didn't really experience that much
00:28:13 violence after like third or fourth grade I didn't experience that much
00:28:19 violence and then I had other outlets too because like at six years old I had
00:28:22 been I'd already been introduced to video games at four but by six or seven
00:28:26 I was playing them quite frequently I had like a console and I would just play
00:28:30 video games and that's kind of like that kind of kept me. What games did you play?
00:28:35 Nintendo 64, used to play Super Mario Bros. 64, Donkey Kong, there was a game
00:28:42 called Banjo-Kazooie that was around in those days. So like platformers and collect the coins and like not like
00:28:50 Yes, platformers yeah three three-dimensional platformers so yeah yeah
00:28:55 no actually we weren't even allowed to play those games like like shooter
00:28:58 games where you like shoot at people with real guns and stuff or like super
00:29:02 violent games Mortal Kombat we were never allowed to play stuff like that in
00:29:05 the house and also video games are restricted to weekends only so Friday
00:29:10 Saturday Sunday and then during the summer you know pretty much whenever you
00:29:14 wanted but on a weeknight couldn't play video games so. Got it. Okay so we move
00:29:21 into your teen years? Teen years um so I go to middle school you know no no
00:29:29 altercations in sixth grade just got picked on by students a little bit but I
00:29:34 just learned how to like you know it wasn't it wasn't as bad as before like
00:29:38 and I just gotten used to it by this point like yeah you know unfortunately
00:29:42 you know apparently this is life kids are gonna pick on you or something so and
00:29:46 I think I think my mom had me to read a book about bullying at some time when I
00:29:51 was in elementary school too although I don't remember too much of it but
00:29:56 basically that the idea was that people who are bullied become bullies I think
00:30:00 that was the basic concept of the book so I get to sixth grade I'm 11 you know
00:30:07 not too much happens then I get to seventh grade like the hormones start
00:30:11 kicking in and I remember like I had this habit of like squeezing girls butts
00:30:16 at school like I would just like sneak up on them and like touch their butts
00:30:20 and only only one girl ever like actually turned around and slapped me
00:30:24 and that was like one out of maybe ten or something like this maybe less but
00:30:31 I do this over and over or just once per girl like once or twice per girl there
00:30:37 were maybe the girls that really didn't like it for some reason I would I would
00:30:40 do it more but the ones that like like there was one girl specifically like I
00:30:45 did that to her and she like smiled and I said you know I'm a 12 year old kid
00:30:49 but like other kids around me were saying stuff to girls like would you go
00:30:51 out with me so I decided I would say it to this girl would you go out with me
00:30:54 and she said no I have a boyfriend and then like the next day I'm waiting
00:30:58 outside for my bus and she like approaches me and she says hey I broke
00:31:02 up with my boyfriend let's go out she's got a big smile on her face and I got
00:31:06 nervous. And she was 12 too? Yeah she was probably younger than me. Wow you're moving pretty fast at the end of late. Yeah I know I know it's you know I don't know I
00:31:18 don't know what what what was going on really I don't know maybe it's just
00:31:22 when you get to be 12 you just start to I really don't know. Was she Hispanic or black or
00:31:28 white? Yeah Hispanic. Hispanic okay. Yeah so she said to me um you know I said she
00:31:36 said this to me and I said uh yeah you know I got really nervous and I was like
00:31:40 you know I have to go catch a bus I have to go now I just kind of ran away from
00:31:44 her not really ran away but I just walked to my bus nervously. Ironic if you get away from your butt on the way out but all right. Yeah yeah probably yeah there's yeah you're absolutely right about that but it never happened nobody ever did anybody ever do that to me?
00:32:03 I think I can remember one time but I don't remember it clearly but that was that
00:32:10 was later in life I think much later but anyway um so so I was doing that and then
00:32:17 uh oh I got exposed to pornography at age 11 or 12 I think I was in the seventh
00:32:23 grade. Was that like a kid at school kind of thing? Eighth grade sorry I was 12 in the
00:32:28 eighth grade um no it was uh at middle school I became a latchkey kid so both
00:32:34 my parents were out of the house when I got home from school so I carried a key
00:32:37 with me and I took the bus home and I was going online a lot you know because we
00:32:42 had a family computer and like looking up videos or whatever. What was I looking up?
00:32:47 I was because I liked video games so I was looking up videos about video games
00:32:50 or something but the website that had like the little cartoons or whatever I
00:32:54 was watching also just happened to have porn on it too and so I you know I just
00:32:59 stumbled upon it at age 12 just like searching for stuff and and yeah I was
00:33:07 exposed to pornography and I had heard about masturbation before and so I did
00:33:13 that too also and so that's that's when that started for me at age 12 I think it
00:33:20 was in the eighth grade and after that um that was like a big big nail in the
00:33:26 coffin there because you know it just kind of I noticed I had a pretty keen
00:33:32 sense of like yeah this is like um negatively affecting like my social
00:33:37 interactions on this habit because it became a habit and it was negatively
00:33:41 affecting my social interactions. I wasn't as fully expressed as I used to
00:33:47 be I wasn't interested in girls at school like I used to be because you
00:33:52 know now I'm looking at women that are like adults so like you know when you're
00:33:57 when you're caught up in women that are adults why are you gonna look at like
00:34:01 girls at your school you know? There's like a huge difference there like
00:34:06 there's basically no comparison and so I was doing that for a while. Not not good
00:34:13 not good that became a habit for for many many years for me and yeah so that
00:34:19 that was terrible and you know I just used that to like dissociate and you
00:34:22 know because I was on top of that I was miserable as a kid still miserable
00:34:28 about my family situation my house situation just generally not happy and
00:34:32 then I just fall into this habit that um that is so addictive and such like it's
00:34:36 such an easy like access for like quick temporal momentary happiness. Well and it
00:34:42 kind of drains you of energy and ambition it's kind of like like weed in
00:34:45 that way right? Yes because um yeah there's there's there's been some
00:34:51 studies on semen retention that I know about now but yeah that stuff really does
00:34:56 masturbating, pornography, frequent ejaculation whether it's with pornography
00:35:01 or not just doing that frequently does um sap you of your will to live I guess
00:35:05 so and I had a keen sense of that but I just didn't care in those days I just
00:35:12 didn't care. Well I mean you know I hate to say it but you're grabbing whatever
00:35:15 pleasure you can because it's pretty scarce in your environment. Yeah 110% um
00:35:21 I forgot to add that I didn't have friends growing up at all as a kid no
00:35:26 friends. I was pretty embarrassed of my parents and my family situation at five
00:35:31 I already knew it like I didn't I don't like these people I don't want to be
00:35:34 around them I don't want to live here I don't want to be with these people at
00:35:37 five years old I knew this and I was telling my parents I want to run away
00:35:40 from home you know so why would I want to bring kids to my house so they can
00:35:44 watch my dad like veg out in front of the TV for hours and that's what he
00:35:48 would do when he got home he would have a long commute home from work and then
00:35:51 he would just like veg out in front of the TV for hours and like you just hear him
00:35:55 like belch occasionally you know stuff like this and you know. It becomes a
00:36:00 money-making piece of furniture. Yeah yeah and you know it's a shame because
00:36:05 you know I think there's a lot of things kicking around in my dad's head that um
00:36:10 if he was more available you know that stuff would have been kind of useful to
00:36:14 me you know if he was like a little bit more available. Now we'll never know. I mean he'll go to grave with all of the great
00:36:21 things still stuck in his head. Oh yeah what a waste that really sucks yeah
00:36:26 yeah that really sucks it's all the more reason you know to become a parent to
00:36:30 have kids which is what I'm working on now trying to find somebody had a few
00:36:35 bad experiences with a couple women recently but I guess we'll get to that
00:36:39 and still on the childhood but um yeah um so I didn't have friends and you know
00:36:47 there was oh I skipped over something when I was like six six years old I
00:36:53 think there was another kid at our school and our parents our moms had made
00:36:57 friends I guess but I didn't like his mom because she would call kids rats she
00:37:01 would say like oh yeah they're all brats you know and like I really had a pro like
00:37:05 I remember really taking taking an issue with this personally I never voiced my
00:37:09 concern because I knew it kind of wouldn't be listened to but I remember
00:37:12 thinking like yeah this lady's kind of like on evil like why is she calling her
00:37:16 son a brat she's calling me a brat like this isn't this isn't a suitable way to
00:37:20 refer to you to children you know so but anyway they were friends our moms were
00:37:25 friends and so they tried to kind of like put us together as friends me and
00:37:29 this other kid this kid just wasn't really like we were kind of from very
00:37:33 different backgrounds I didn't like him too much but you know he came over to
00:37:37 sleep over one night and you know we had to share a bed and like he showed me his
00:37:43 his penis the following morning which was a not not nice I remember like
00:37:50 telling my mom like hey this kid just showed me his uh you know what she's
00:37:53 like oh you know I don't remember what she said I don't know if she had a talk
00:37:56 with him I don't even remember too clearly what it happened there this is a
00:38:01 lot of detail I'm going into that's kind of an uncomfortable that's a bit of an
00:38:05 uncomfortable memory seeing someone someone's penis actually mention that
00:38:09 since we're on the subject of that particularly when I was around the same
00:38:15 age well maybe younger because I think I was learning how to pee on my own I used
00:38:20 to um pee like all over the place like I wouldn't go directly into the toilet and
00:38:24 so my dad like he volunteered to like show me how to pee by well I guess I
00:38:32 guess I don't have to go any further than that right he volunteered to show
00:38:34 me how to pee by giving me a demonstration and that wasn't really
00:38:40 helpful because I just kept doing it anyway I don't see like now looking back
00:38:44 on it like how would that have helped me traumatized it's like how the heck would
00:38:49 that have helped me like now never want to pee again yeah I mean it I kind of
00:38:55 didn't want to pee too because like you know I would pee on the floor and then I
00:38:58 would get kind of like scolded about it you know like you're peeing on the floor
00:39:01 and it's a problem for us to be able to clean it up and blah blah blah and you
00:39:04 need to clean this up and everything which is understandable you know I
00:39:06 should clean it up but as a kid you know I don't think you fully understand like
00:39:11 yeah like pee is really gross you know or whatever but yeah so I remember that
00:39:16 yeah my dad volunteering himself to demonstrate for me how to pee without
00:39:21 missing the inside of the toilet but yeah I don't know that's not that's not
00:39:27 very normal is it I don't know I don't know how many other I've never asked
00:39:30 around like with other kids and say hey did your dad show you how to do an episode I'm the wrong guy to ask but it doesn't sound too normal. Yeah I'm sorry to hear that you know sometimes I wonder though sometimes I wonder
00:39:40 because with a lot of the fathering that's going around sometimes I wonder if
00:39:43 it's better to go without um that's really harsh to say no no I mean I do
00:39:48 thought about that a lot of times too and you know in another life we'll talk
00:39:51 about that but I want to keep focus on you yeah sorry about that um so yeah so
00:39:59 that happened so yeah those are two instances where I saw someone's penis or
00:40:03 whatever but so back to middle school so in in the eighth grade I got in a couple
00:40:10 of major fights because you know once you get to middle school the penalties
00:40:14 against fighting are a lot more stringent and so stringent the right
00:40:18 word or maybe strict I'm not sure but there was a there was a kid that I had
00:40:23 some bad blood with I didn't like him he didn't like me and so you know things
00:40:30 kept blowing up I would like yell at him in class or whatever or like you know
00:40:35 and it eventually escalated to like hitting and and so one day like close to
00:40:39 the end of the school year he was like saying some some pretty not so nice
00:40:44 things to me and he was like he started throwing food at my face and so I hit
00:40:48 him directly on the nose with my fist and then it seemed like he was waiting
00:40:54 for that because as soon as I hit him he got up behind me and started hitting me
00:40:57 three times in the back of the head and I remember like when he was hitting me I
00:41:02 didn't even really feel it like that hard like I didn't feel any pain when he
00:41:06 was he punched me three times in the back of my head and the whole time I
00:41:10 felt very calm and then it's funny that because you know I was thinking about
00:41:14 this recently because I was listening to your book again about I think his name
00:41:18 was Simon the boxer and how he would he would he had learned to feel very safe
00:41:26 in what do you call it in like violent situations or not safe but in control in
00:41:33 violent situations and so I remember feeling that way when this kid like came
00:41:37 behind and hit me in that back of the head three times and then I engaged him
00:41:42 in a fight I fought him I I didn't hit him that hard I don't think I didn't
00:41:46 beat him that hard but I did fight him I did hit him a few times and so it was
00:41:52 found out by the administration we were taken to the office you know and
00:41:55 everything and we were totally fine after that like we got along just fine
00:41:58 like it wasn't you know it wasn't like a serious thing there was no blood
00:42:04 spilled there were no bruises or anything we just kind of got in a
00:42:07 scuffle and we both got endorsed suspension for three days for that but
00:42:15 yeah that was before this fight where the kid hit me three times in the back
00:42:19 of the head and that one was a bit more serious because it was it was like maybe
00:42:22 a month after and so they said okay you can't keep getting in fights so they
00:42:25 suspended the three of us for the rest of the year and it was like close to the
00:42:28 rest of it to the end of the year I think there were like three days left
00:42:31 of the year so they suspended us both for three days and yeah after that I got
00:42:43 home from school early you know before anybody else as usual and I get a phone
00:42:48 call to the house and it's my dad he's like either at work or he's on his way
00:42:52 home from work and he calls me and he says do you know what I'm gonna do to
00:42:55 you when I get home and I said I don't know I mean I knew but this was the
00:43:01 first time that he had like actually threatened me before it would just be he
00:43:04 would flip out hit me you know but now he's like making a direct threat like
00:43:08 I'm going to hit you or whatever can you still hear me yeah I got you okay good
00:43:17 so so you know I wait for him to get home I'm filled with like anxiety also
00:43:23 another thing I should mention was like I would always have this tremendous fear
00:43:28 of my father that he was going to do such and such to me um you know like hit
00:43:34 me or whatever so I would I would lose sleep at night and so I wouldn't be able
00:43:38 to function cognitively at the level that that I should because I think I'm
00:43:43 pretty smart actually but I didn't really know because my self-esteem was
00:43:46 so low so I didn't know for for many years how smart I actually am so and
00:43:50 then like on top of that like I'd be like doing some yard work with my dad
00:43:54 and I forget something or make a mistake and he'd be like what's wrong with you
00:43:57 it's like I'm thinking to myself like I'm actually way smarter than you but
00:44:01 you know I'm so stressed that I can't actually fully actualize that you know
00:44:06 and so that that always that was always a pain that I had growing up so so he
00:44:11 says this thing to me and like he makes this threat to me and so I'm like
00:44:15 completely freaked out scared anxious waiting for him to get home I mean if
00:44:19 there was ever a better time to run away from home that probably would have been
00:44:22 the best time but so he finally comes home and he doesn't hit me he takes me
00:44:28 out this is when I'm 13 this is when the beating stopped he takes me out to the
00:44:31 back and he says listen you know we can go one way or another I can keep hitting
00:44:35 you or I cannot keep hitting you but if I stop hitting you you have to stop
00:44:38 getting in fights you know I said well I don't want to get hit anymore so I'll
00:44:42 just make him this promise and then we'll be cool and then since since that
00:44:46 day I haven't been in any kind of physical altercation at all I haven't
00:44:49 been in any fights I've never been found with anybody. He kind of reasoned with you in a way and it kind of worked right?
00:44:55 Yeah yeah if only he had done this from the beginning right you know then there
00:45:00 wouldn't be all this baggage that I have now with my father you know which which
00:45:05 is never gonna go away because there's no way he can make restitution on that
00:45:08 you know really so you can't make restitution on breaking somebody's heart
00:45:14 how can you put somebody's heart back together you know so anyway so 13 you
00:45:23 know then I go into high school 14 you know so at this point it's like okay I
00:45:26 got to navigate my life in such a way you know I've already do this as a kid
00:45:30 I have to navigate my life in such a way that that I avoid getting hit as much as
00:45:34 possible so it's like well now I know that if I don't want to get hit I just
00:45:37 have to not hit anybody so if anybody like bugs me or makes fun of me I'll
00:45:42 just like like absorb it I guess and not and not respond like not do anything
00:45:48 about it and so I never really learned how to resolve conflict the right way I
00:45:52 just learned how to like um receive abuse from people and and just accept it
00:45:59 so I became very what's the word you fight you you only know how to fight or
00:46:05 not fight back nothing else yeah and so I became very exactly so there was no
00:46:10 negotiation no reasoning nothing in between and so I just kind of learned to
00:46:15 be complacent and then you know the porn use made me even more complacent because
00:46:21 you know you're using porn and we already went into how it saps you of
00:46:24 your your willpower so I'm basically like nothing happened for me you know in
00:46:29 terms of like friends and stuff for like the first two years of high school there
00:46:33 was one moment where like a kid was like severely like berating me and saying
00:46:38 really mean things to me on the bus in front of like a lot of people I just
00:46:41 kind of sat there and looked at him you know and it hurt it hurt a lot but I just
00:46:45 kind of sat there it's like what am I gonna do if I fight this kid then I have
00:46:49 to you know then then I'm gonna be you know I'm gonna have violence exercised
00:46:54 upon me by someone bigger than me you know so it's even worth it you know so
00:47:02 so yeah so that was that was one instance and then yeah so and kids at
00:47:09 school you know they're just really nasty to each other too which is
00:47:14 something that I kind of noticed like kids it's kids in school like they're
00:47:17 all there because they hate being there and so they're just really nasty to each
00:47:21 other in a lot of ways they kind of use each other a lot and a lot of
00:47:24 friendships that you make in high school aren't really that valid because just
00:47:27 people like using each other to get through the nightmare that they're in I
00:47:31 made one friend who tried to kill himself later actually he was his parents
00:47:38 put him on psych meds oh I forgot to mention I was never put on psych meds
00:47:43 but um when I was in middle school I used to be a bit of a bit of a trouble
00:47:47 maker in ways especially when I was getting into like verbal arguments with
00:47:52 like that other kid that I eventually fought in high in a middle
00:47:58 school but they called like a meeting for me like a parent-teacher conference
00:48:02 you know where they like it was one of these conferences where like the parents
00:48:06 and the teachers conspire against the kid when he's not there and the teachers
00:48:10 were all like trying to make the case that I had ADHD so that they could
00:48:14 prescribe me medication to chill me out but my parents said no we're not gonna
00:48:18 do that that's one of the things that I appreciate yeah that's one of the things
00:48:23 that I appreciate that my parents did you know because those psych
00:48:28 meds I mean they will just ruin you I had a classmate in band I took band in
00:48:33 middle school that's where I started to learn music and stuff was in seventh and
00:48:36 eighth grade I took band and and I remember sitting next to a kid he was
00:48:42 playing trombone my instrument was tenor sax and he was playing trombone and like
00:48:46 he was just like nodding off like he couldn't even really play I'm like hey
00:48:49 kid hey buddy you okay you all right and he said oh you know it's these meds that
00:48:54 my parents put me on they make me like they make me drowsy or whatever I just
00:49:01 remember thinking like holy holy moly manageable they make you manageable yeah
00:49:07 yeah well they make whatever they make him it's not his true self and it's just
00:49:11 it was just really like I was like oh wow your parents put you on meds huh I'd
00:49:15 even realized what kind of meds they were but but um until much later in life
00:49:20 but so in high school they did this with me too because in high school I used to
00:49:23 go after my English teachers a lot because I didn't like the books that
00:49:26 they wanted us to read and so I would just kind of make fun of my English
00:49:29 teachers or like make jokes in class or like you know cut up in class cause
00:49:35 trouble especially in English class English and math I had a math teacher
00:49:42 that I used to I used to be able to like mock his voice like pretty accurately
00:49:46 and so I would do that in class to him and he was kind of like not a good guy
00:49:50 he used to like on ogle like the female students and stuff which I ended up
00:49:57 finding this out later when I came back to that school to substitute as a
00:50:00 substitute teacher but um yeah so so in like a 10th or 11th grade 11th grade I
00:50:07 think it was no 10th it was 10th they all call like another parent-teacher
00:50:10 conference this time in high school and they say the same thing my parents say
00:50:14 no we're not putting our son on any medication so I was a bit of a
00:50:19 troublemaker at times you know I picked my moments I guess I picked the English
00:50:23 teachers because they were a little bit softer than the other teachers that I
00:50:27 had which is not good. Shop teachers and gym teachers not so much right? Yeah I didn't take
00:50:33 shop until 12th grade and I never messed with that guy he was pretty much like
00:50:38 yeah you know mess with the shop teacher the gym teacher was a woman but she you
00:50:42 know she was nice to me so I never had any issues with her she was actually
00:50:45 very nice very nice lady and I liked her a lot I took weight training and swimming
00:50:50 with her although she embarrassed me one time because apparently I had been
00:50:57 diagnosed with exercise induced asthma or whatever and she showed she's like
00:51:01 she brought out the inhaler in front of everybody so I felt like kind of
00:51:04 embarrassed but other than that she was okay I think she didn't really know what
00:51:09 she was doing I don't believe she was like deliberately trying to embarrass
00:51:12 me or anything but I didn't get any sense of that but so in in in in the
00:51:22 11th grade I so yeah I didn't want to get off so I did develop a habit of
00:51:28 antagonizing people that I felt that I could get away with antagonizing
00:51:35 without winding up in a physical altercation so it was around that time
00:51:40 that I got into the habit of like getting inside of people's heads or like
00:51:44 on like noticing things about people and then like you know pushing their buttons
00:51:48 a lot was around like late middle school early high school and that became a
00:51:56 habit for me from for quite a few years I just started getting out of that habit
00:52:01 maybe a few years ago maybe a year ago I just started getting out of that habit
00:52:06 but like being socially uncouth and things like this and just like especially
00:52:13 like if I noticed that a person was indifferent towards me that would like
00:52:17 oh man that would make me even more like antagonistic because I'd already faced
00:52:22 so much indifference in my life already so that would just make me even more
00:52:24 antagonistic towards the person if I noticed that they were indifferent
00:52:28 towards me because I felt that I had good qualities but like just people I
00:52:32 didn't feel like people were treating me the way that I should have been treated
00:52:35 my whole life and so it like that sort of thing kind of compounds you know and
00:52:40 you kind of just it colors the way that you behave with people but um I don't
00:52:47 want to go too far off the topic because now I'm kind of fast-forwarding.
00:52:51 High school okay in the 11th grade I got in trouble because I took there was a
00:53:00 guy who shot up a school in Virginia Tech and he he had like a famous picture
00:53:08 that he took of himself where he had like his arm stretched out and a pistol
00:53:12 in either hand and so my teacher saw me it was an intensive read one of these
00:53:16 English teachers actually I was in class like I was getting into computers and I
00:53:20 knew how to use Photoshop so I was photoshopping out the guns and putting
00:53:24 like game controllers in his hand and saying like he learned how to shoot from
00:53:27 playing video games or something like as a joke you know my friend was with me
00:53:31 and he was kind of chuckling like just a high school buddy not anybody that I
00:53:34 take into my house or met my parents or really gotten into my life or anything
00:53:37 but so she she went and reported me and they found something else on my on my
00:53:44 student allocation every student of that school had like an allocated space on
00:53:49 the school servers where they could put files for homework and things like that
00:53:52 and I was getting into coding at like age 15 16 16 and I figured out how to
00:53:59 make a website that would show like this shock image that like you couldn't close
00:54:05 the window until you closed like a prompt maybe like 666 times or you went
00:54:12 into the task manager and close the entire browser manually so I made that
00:54:16 to like play a prank on like another student like a friend you know it was a
00:54:19 friendly prank like we knew each other we were cool and stuff but when they
00:54:25 went into my drive they found the shock image when they went into my allocated
00:54:28 space they found the shock image and so I got called to to the office for that
00:54:33 and they showed the image to like the counselor and everybody and they called
00:54:37 my mom in I said mom maybe you shouldn't go she went and saw it and she didn't
00:54:42 tell my dad she didn't say anything and I told her it was a joke but it was like
00:54:46 it was a shocking image it was like a it was like an image of a man's like anus
00:54:50 spread wide open it was pretty grotesque my mom didn't say anything to my dad
00:54:57 about this at least I don't think so maybe she did but he didn't do anything
00:55:01 you know I don't I don't know the details about that but trouble that I
00:55:09 got in high school and did you also in high school? Nope not at all no well well
00:55:17 technically I did you know by then you should be dating um I had girls that I
00:55:22 liked but I never talked to them because of extenuating circumstances you know
00:55:26 with the with the porn use and everything but there was a girl that
00:55:30 liked me a lot and I liked her and she was showing me like a lot of signs the
00:55:37 biggest sign that she was showing was that she would we used to talk on AIM
00:55:40 and Skype and stuff not Skype AIM there was no Skype back then it wasn't even AI
00:55:45 it was MSN sorry we used to talk on MSN a lot we went to the same school she was
00:55:50 a grade below me and she was Chinese she had like Tiger parents she was really
00:55:56 talented really high IQ talented at drawing and her parents hated her for
00:56:01 that they wanted her to go to Ivy League school and they used to scream at her
00:56:04 and hit her for that and stuff anyway you know she was she had she had eyes
00:56:11 for me and she would invite me to hang out with her group of friends after
00:56:15 school on Wednesdays we would go see them see a movie at like the local like
00:56:20 shopping mall or whatever and every time that she would invite me and I would go
00:56:24 there would be less and less people and then eventually it was just like me and
00:56:28 her and I knew it was going on but I never made a move on her or anything I
00:56:32 never I guess made her mine in any way and I liked this girl you know but she
00:56:37 just got tired and bored of like waiting for me so she got with a guy that looked
00:56:42 exactly like me like almost identical to me which was pretty funny but not funny
00:56:46 it's actually very like extremely sad but it's funny that she sorry this guy
00:56:52 passing with a motorcycle it's funny that she would um that she would make
00:56:57 that choice or whatever but not funny at all it's actually perfectly normal that
00:57:00 she would make that choice because she was getting impatient with me um so she
00:57:04 chose somebody else and so that was the closest I got to dating and she would
00:57:08 like lean on my shoulder and stuff like on the bus for like a little while like
00:57:12 a short while like a few days she was doing that and like at the movies too
00:57:15 like we would watch a scary movie and like when the scary part came up she
00:57:19 would like grab me stuff like that I really liked this girl but nothing
00:57:26 nothing ever happened with that unfortunately and there were several
00:57:30 more instances like this that occurred actually it wasn't until I stopped the
00:57:36 porn which was maybe I think a year ago that like I started talking to girls
00:57:41 again and like getting into relationships and stuff but um yeah yeah
00:57:46 there were a lot of times when like girls would be into me or something and
00:57:49 I would just like um I just wouldn't I was too scared I think I was scared um
00:57:56 partially for the same reason that I wouldn't have friends like I was just
00:57:59 embarrassed of my family and my parents I didn't want to bring people around
00:58:03 them because it was too it was too like a weird for me like oh hey why don't you
00:58:08 come and meet these people that beat me and scream and yell at me and and like
00:58:12 expose me to all these indignities you know um they didn't even notice that I
00:58:17 was addicted to porn either yeah they didn't really care yeah my parents they
00:58:22 didn't really notice they didn't really care um so like all these things like
00:58:26 why would I bring people into my life look look how miserable my life is I
00:58:30 can't bring myself to bring people into my life and then you add to that like
00:58:34 the lack of willpower associated with with the addiction and yeah there was no
00:58:40 there's no real dating um in middle school even there was a girl that liked
00:58:44 me and we sat close to each other like real close like touching on the bus like
00:58:48 on the last day of school and then I never saw her again because I I was in
00:58:51 eighth grade she was in sixth grade so I went on to high school that year and I
00:58:54 never took her contact information because I don't even think I had a
00:58:58 cell phone I didn't get a cell phone till I was like in high school actually
00:59:00 so I never kept her contact information um there was another girl that liked me
00:59:06 too and in middle school we mostly just like argued like we didn't get along but
00:59:12 I had a sense that like this girl just it's one of those situations like where
00:59:17 a girl is like um like she's kind of like acting like she's mad at you but
00:59:22 she kind of likes you at the same time it was one of those with this girl and
00:59:28 she was she was definitely probably my type she was very artsy and I liked the
00:59:31 artsy kind of girls the most but that nothing ever happened with that um
00:59:36 I remember I took a trip to the Bahamas when I was nine since we're talking
00:59:41 about dating now I took a trip to the Bahamas when I was nine and there was a
00:59:44 girl there that was that I really liked a lot the first time I ever like liked a
00:59:49 girl was probably in the sixth grade just just to point that out like that
00:59:55 was when I first like noticed like oh like women are girls are kind of
00:59:58 different and there's like I like such and such about them and I feel kind of
01:00:03 attracted to them was like when I was not sixth grade sorry like first grade
01:00:07 second grade I think it was but anyway um I don't know if that's really early
01:00:12 or not but um I went so so um where was I yeah I go to the Bahamas to visit some
01:00:20 family we all go to the Bahamas on a I guess vacation or a trip and there was a
01:00:27 girl there that I really liked and yeah I didn't really say anything to her
01:00:31 either I remember like um one time she came over like they left me and in my
01:00:35 aunt's house alone I was like sitting there playing video games or something
01:00:39 and she comes over she's like hey is your aunt here and I said no and she
01:00:42 said okay well I said okay well bye and she left you know and that was it I
01:00:48 never tried to talk to her anything yeah yeah exactly that was that's been my
01:00:53 love life for many many years actually um it's like hey I'm making myself
01:00:59 extremely available to you and then I'm like I'm nervous I gotta go you know
01:01:04 it's really bad stuff you know but that's that's how that's how my life
01:01:08 had been for many many years and you don't have to tell me your actual like
01:01:13 your exact age but what sort of age range are you in at the moment 32 sir
01:01:18 32 okay yes 32 so yeah so where are we now where I guess we're in high school
01:01:28 yeah so that was that girl and so after that there were really no other girls
01:01:36 there was a girl who was kind of popular in the when I was in the 11th grade and
01:01:40 she was in 12th she was kind of popular and she um but she also had like a bit
01:01:45 of a reputation for like doing stuff with guys she didn't have a good
01:01:49 reputation and I guess nobody really wanted to go to prom with her or
01:01:53 something because like one day she like sits it so so by 11th grade I had like a
01:01:59 little crew I guess of kids that we would play cards in the morning and
01:02:02 during lunch in the library and we had our little table like our own little
01:02:06 territory and everything sometimes other kids would like come in like pass through
01:02:10 and play some cards or whatever but we had like a pretty solid group of kids
01:02:14 that would show up pretty much every every day maybe three or four kids and
01:02:19 so one day this girl is sitting at our table she just comes and sits at our
01:02:23 table and she's like doing her homework or studying or something and she just
01:02:28 suddenly like busts out and says would you go to I just said my name they well
01:02:33 whatever she said would you go to prom with me she said would you go to prom
01:02:37 with me and I said uh no and she said why and I said uh I don't know because
01:02:43 I'm socially awkward and I like to be away from people or something like that
01:02:47 I think that's what I said she said oh okay and then that was it and I never
01:02:54 went to prom either I just stayed home played video games and by 16 I was
01:03:02 already on the track to go to art school too because the art teacher at our
01:03:07 school he he was the only person that ever like said hey I noticed like you
01:03:12 have something in you let's try to get you into this thing and so he helped me
01:03:17 to build a portfolio and get into art school so so that was that's what I did
01:03:21 after I got out of high school after I graduated high school I didn't like my
01:03:25 graduation I didn't want to be there my parents wanted to take pictures and
01:03:28 stuff I was like let's just go home I didn't stay I was like let's not stay
01:03:32 let's just go home I didn't like I didn't want to go to the graduation at
01:03:35 all actually but my parents saw it as like this big accomplishment but I
01:03:39 didn't feel like I tried that hard I didn't feel like I accomplished anything
01:03:42 but they really wanted me to go so I went to appease them grades grades in
01:03:50 high in high school were like mediocre maybe like I had like a 2.8 GPA or
01:03:57 something when I graduated which is you know it's like a pretty pretty average
01:04:05 and I was smart but I was stressed and I wasn't getting enough sleep at night I
01:04:09 was waking up early to take two buses and a train to get to this school and I
01:04:14 wasn't getting along with like the kids I didn't have a lot of friends I didn't
01:04:17 have any friends really I had kids that I knew in school and like kids that I
01:04:20 would hang with in school but I didn't have anybody that I took home to see my
01:04:23 family or anything and I never saw their families so I was pretty isolated and so
01:04:28 it's hard to be motivated to do good in school when you have all these factors
01:04:31 at play and then you don't even know what your future is like you don't know
01:04:35 what you're gonna do with your life you know I had no idea what I was gonna do
01:04:39 with my life until my art teacher came in and gave me that idea and so I just
01:04:43 went with it so I got I got a bunch of student debt as a result of that my
01:04:49 parents absorbed most of the expenses but I had on I have like $40,000 a
01:04:54 student loan debt right now that I'm enrolled in and forgiven this program to
01:04:59 take care of so and so how long yeah spend in art school for years okay um
01:05:04 was it at all helpful for was it at all helpful for getting you artwork or career
01:05:13 prospects absolutely not um absolutely not if anything it was detrimental
01:05:18 because I lost four years that I could have been using to be an earner or you
01:05:22 know learn a trade or learn a business or learn something so it was a complete
01:05:26 wait complete waste of time I'm not complete because you know the only good
01:05:31 thing was that it was in another city so I was able to get away from my parents a
01:05:35 little bit and that felt good to be away from them a little bit and that was when
01:05:41 I started you know I started learning how to do things like I learned how to
01:05:45 compose music on my own because I wanted to write music for video games you know
01:05:50 so I learned how I taught myself how to do that and I just write music for porn
01:05:57 because that's yeah 70s based disco nonsense but all right so yes yeah I
01:06:02 guess the plus yeah certainly a plus I didn't have an interest in like being
01:06:09 involved in porn at all um it was like you know it's one of those things it's
01:06:16 where you do it and you're abusing yourself and you kind of know but you
01:06:19 just keep doing it because it feels I guess kind of good you know in a way
01:06:23 like it's a little bit of pleasure but you kind of know on some everybody I
01:06:27 think everybody who does this knows on some level that it's it's kind of
01:06:30 self-abusive and it's painful and it's um it's disgusting you know everybody
01:06:35 that consumes porn I should say kind of knows this on some level so I wasn't
01:06:39 really looking to be involved in porn at all um you know but I did really like
01:06:44 video games and I wanted to write music for them and so I just taught myself
01:06:47 like in my second year of college while also doing all my classes and stuff I
01:06:53 would just because I didn't have a social life in college either I didn't
01:06:56 have friends I had people that would try to be my friend and I would just kind of
01:07:00 duck them or shrug them off actually the friend that I made in high school that
01:07:05 tried to kill himself um he went to the same school that I did we both got put
01:07:09 on the same path basically and um he um he ended up leaving after the first year
01:07:15 because he was like yeah this place is stupid it's not for me I don't like it
01:07:17 you know because I was majoring in fine art at an art school and like fine art I
01:07:22 thought I was just gonna learn how to paint really good and be like John
01:07:24 Singer Sargent or Whistler or something and then you know it's like some guys
01:07:29 getting naked so that's the the next time that I see somebody's penis
01:07:32 actually some guys getting naked and like rubbing peanut butter and milk and
01:07:36 bread on himself and like vomiting and he's like and then after he's like his
01:07:41 friends helping him clean up he's like I wish more people would have left and
01:07:44 like that's that's art that's his art you know that's what I was what I was
01:07:48 witnessing like that's probably the worst example but there were like three
01:07:52 or four or five examples where people were just like getting naked for no
01:07:55 friggin reason and then um a lot of the other stuff was just like I guess more
01:07:59 normal like abstract visual art you know but some people were like really weird
01:08:03 about this stuff and I never participated in that I just did my
01:08:08 paintings or whatever and tried to keep my head low and and not get in any
01:08:11 trouble but yeah that was art school yeah I didn't have a social life um
01:08:17 actually I went to see the counselor because I was I was worried about the
01:08:26 fact that I wasn't making friends and I was becoming a bit anti-social as well
01:08:30 like not a social but anti-social like I was becoming antagonistic in ways and it
01:08:35 was it was starting to get me in a bit of trouble so I went to see like the
01:08:38 counselor who was kind of like a therapist and he said to me hey you know
01:08:44 well why don't you if you're if you're having trouble making friends why don't
01:08:47 you come to like the the school cafeteria the college cafeteria and just
01:08:51 sit with some people and talk to them and make some friends I said oh okay I
01:08:56 guess I'll do that but you know the day comes when I go to the cafeteria and I
01:09:00 would always just get my food and go back to my dorm you know and so I'm
01:09:04 getting my food and I I'd be line it for the exit so I can go to the dorm and he
01:09:08 sees me and he yells again you disappoint me again you disappoint me
01:09:11 like in front of like in public and I'm like oh well I guess I can't talk to
01:09:16 this guy again you know like what the heck you know where the boundaries there
01:09:21 you know so um so that was that was kind of the end of that and that was pretty
01:09:25 painful like it that just made me want to isolate even more it's like oh you
01:09:30 know now people know that I know the counselor so they're like oh this guy
01:09:32 seeking counseling what's wrong with him you know people are probably thinking
01:09:35 this about me and then on top of that like I have this guy yelling at me it's
01:09:38 like it's just the same garbage interactions that I've dealt with since
01:09:44 my childhood it's like this is not good so I'm just gonna isolate myself even
01:09:48 further it got worse and worse the isolation where I would just stay in my
01:09:51 dorm and like watch old anime stuff and like video games it's such a shame
01:09:57 because I have such I said I think I think that I'm fairly intelligent but
01:10:03 then my head is filled with garbage like video games and anime and cartoons and
01:10:07 porn and stuff instead of like the stuff that I guess you you fill your head with
01:10:12 with is like philosophy and self-knowledge and stuff like that and
01:10:15 that's that's really that's really well until you become a dad and then you
01:10:18 watch funny videos until the end of time well I guess but you know the groundwork
01:10:25 is there at least you know the the foundation relayed for you as opposed to
01:10:29 with me now I'm just starting to learn all this stuff now when it's a bit late
01:10:34 but although some of it I think I instinctually knew because like for
01:10:38 example I knew that like you know my parents shouldn't be hitting me and
01:10:41 stuff from a very young age but I just could I couldn't fight against it but
01:10:47 anyway um where was I college yeah counselor didn't work out I used to
01:10:54 ride my bike around like the city at night and just like look at stuff like
01:11:00 look at alleyways talk to homeless people and just like wander around that
01:11:05 became a habit just wandering and stuff you know late at night and that's that's
01:11:10 kind of how I you know dealt with the desolation of college for those four
01:11:14 years actually there was one there was one year where I spent the whole month
01:11:18 didn't go to any classes didn't go to a single class just stayed inside and
01:11:22 played video games and then when I finally came back to class the teacher
01:11:27 for one of my core classes the professor he said um hey you know um you've missed
01:11:32 a lot of days technically we could fail you but I don't know in your paintings
01:11:38 you make such interesting marks so we're gonna keep you it's totally fine and I'm
01:11:43 like okay and so they just they just passed me and I graduated that year and
01:11:48 I remember asking like for job prospects like hey when I graduate what am I gonna
01:11:53 do for a job and they had no end I kid you not they had no no answer for like
01:11:59 how I was gonna make some money when I graduated it was crazy
01:12:02 I don't have any job placement or anything like that they did but it
01:12:07 wasn't um it wasn't very robust you know it wasn't very robust like you know it
01:12:13 was like you know like you get emailed a bunch of jobs and like none of them are
01:12:17 like anything that you're particularly interested in or they're not um they're
01:12:23 not really related to your degree at all or anything that you've learned any of
01:12:26 the skills you picked up in school in college I think that'd be one thing that
01:12:29 you you know you or your parents might check before you drop all that money is
01:12:32 like okay what kind of jobs am I gonna get out of this yeah yeah I wonder about
01:12:37 that and then like later after I graduated I just get clubbed over the
01:12:40 head over this like oh we sent you to college and we spent all this money and
01:12:43 now you can't you know you're not doing anything with your life you know I
01:12:47 remember getting clubbed over the head with that um in the years after I
01:12:50 graduated college and really hating life because of it it's like they trapped me
01:12:54 like they put me in a trap in a way you know they will never characterize it
01:12:59 this way they'll say well well you wanted to do it and so we just did
01:13:02 whatever you wanted to do and it was your idea but it's like also at age 18
01:13:07 when I made the decision to go to this school no one had ever made a decision
01:13:10 I had never made a decision for myself in my entire life so was I ready to make
01:13:14 that kind of a decision certainly not you know but um none of this is taken
01:13:18 into account it's just the fingers pointed at me and so that made me feel
01:13:23 really desolate and then my dad's like screaming at me cursing at me that I
01:13:29 need to get a job and everything and you know just a hostile environment at the
01:13:33 house even more hostile than before because now it's like you're like
01:13:36 sleeping with the enemy because the very people that um that sent you to this to
01:13:42 this school and paid all this money for it and agreed to do it voluntarily are
01:13:46 now like um attacking you you know so I finally got a job somewhere and you know
01:13:55 I worked for a while and then I worked my way up I went back to my art teacher
01:13:59 who told me to go to the school in the first place he couldn't even come up
01:14:03 with a job for me he just said well you could always be a substitute teacher you
01:14:07 know because we could always use substitutes at the school I was like I
01:14:10 guess I'll do that and so I substituted for about four years and then I became a
01:14:17 teacher but I was hating all of it I didn't want to do any of that I didn't
01:14:20 like being a teacher I tried to get a job as an art teacher but there were no
01:14:24 jobs so I just passed a sixth grade math exam or something so that I could teach
01:14:29 sixth grade sixth to eighth grade math or no it was um it was kindergarten
01:14:34 through eighth grade math and so I passed that test and then I got a job as
01:14:38 a math teacher for a year and I hated it and then I talked to somebody who I'd
01:14:42 met at a church and he was doing electrical work and he said it was a
01:14:48 pretty good good deal so I got into that and that's kind of how I got to where I
01:14:53 am now basically. Wow okay so things are going relatively well like financially
01:14:58 you've got an income and all that? Yes enough of an income where I can move out
01:15:02 of my parents house which is very good and then I work another job as a
01:15:05 personal driver as well like on the weekends I drive people around the city
01:15:12 in their cars it's not it's not uber or anything it's different I drive it's a
01:15:17 different company but I drive people in their own personal vehicles and stuff
01:15:20 and so that's yeah I'm doing pretty good money wise better than than ever before
01:15:25 I had some women that I dated one of them was introduced to me by it was it
01:15:34 was two specifically two major ones in the previous year or so one of them was
01:15:40 introduced to me by my aunt and she lives in the Bahamas and basically
01:15:48 that didn't work out because she was like really like deeply religious in
01:15:52 like the Pentecostal faith and so she believed that God was sending her
01:15:57 messages that she should wait on God's time for her romantic relationships and
01:16:02 I kind of ignored that a bit and I just said well you know maybe she'll turn
01:16:06 around she didn't and also she was if I had gotten with her anyway she was going
01:16:11 to beat my kids and then say that the Bible told her to do it so yeah not a
01:16:16 bit out of that - yeah not a plus at all I thought I could convince her out of
01:16:19 that too but she was very on very on firmly held in her position because she
01:16:25 had a bad history and the church I guess did something for her she had some kind
01:16:29 of spiritual experience and so she's not willing to part ways with that and so
01:16:33 that ended and then I you know that lasted about four months I even went to
01:16:39 visit her in the Bahamas for like five days and we had a good time I suppose
01:16:43 but you know she was supposed to come and visit me in July and she just said
01:16:50 no you know we can't do this because God's telling me such and such and you
01:16:55 know it was it was very like um confusing for me because it's like I
01:16:58 know that God doesn't work that way we're like you know why would God give
01:17:02 you a free will and then control you like it doesn't it doesn't make any
01:17:05 sense to me but all it's a way it's a way that she doesn't have to negotiate
01:17:09 it's like hey man yeah I told me what are you gonna tell me that God's wrong
01:17:13 now yeah yeah it really is and I kind of have this problem with with Christians
01:17:20 and I this is come I'm a Christian myself but I have this problem with
01:17:24 Christians where like God just becomes an excuse not to think and it's it's
01:17:29 really it's really annoying because it's like then then like I can't talk to or
01:17:35 like be around like 90% of Christians because most Christians are like this
01:17:38 it's like like I've seen people say like I don't need to study philosophy because
01:17:43 I have Jesus you know and it's like well are you sure about that you know it's I
01:17:48 don't know I don't think that's true because and then like people don't
01:17:52 understand like that the Bible doesn't actually say you should beat your kids
01:17:55 with a rod that they don't understand that they think that a shepherd's rod is
01:17:59 for beating sheep things like this they don't understand the difference and they
01:18:02 don't really it's not even that they don't understand I'm sure they could
01:18:05 understand if you explained it but they just don't care because they need to be
01:18:08 kids or for whatever reason because probably because their parents beat them
01:18:11 but yeah so you know that has me struggling a little bit with like
01:18:17 Christianity and everything you know I I do I do believe in Jesus and I believe
01:18:22 in God and everything but just the way that people in the church are it's it's
01:18:27 like not satisfactory for me like with regards to how a person should conduct
01:18:32 their relationships and things like this it's just not it's not it's not been
01:18:35 satisfactory for me what I've witnessed so far being in the church and I'm
01:18:39 pretty like involved I would say I'm pretty involved in the in the church as
01:18:44 well the Orthodox Church and yeah it's just uh just no good the way people are
01:18:51 I haven't seen much good I've seen a lot of bad not a whole lot of good these
01:18:58 people they join a church to kind of just disappear stop growing they're like
01:19:03 a well I have Christ now so I don't have to grow anymore and so they just kind of
01:19:06 rot away yeah also not ideal yeah not ideal at all and I kind of I've kind of
01:19:14 been noticing this over the past three years and so I'm like spending less and
01:19:19 less time with these people going to church less you know and just taking my
01:19:26 life into my own hands and stuff yeah so the other girl that I dated I met her at
01:19:36 a a burger place
01:19:42 talking to her and we got along really well and she comes from the same
01:19:48 cultural background as me you know first generation you know born in the
01:19:56 country and stuff and her parents are from the same nation and we kind of got
01:20:00 along pretty well so I said oh well you know I'm just gonna ask for her number
01:20:03 and so I asked for a number and she gave it to me and then but but I didn't know
01:20:07 that she was like kind of depressed or something was wrong with her but it was
01:20:12 like really hard to get her out of the house to go on a date and she also like
01:20:19 had a habit of smoking weed every day and like I kind of knew instinctively
01:20:27 like that's not sustainable for like a family situation because I'm looking for
01:20:32 family I'm not looking for just like you know wham bam thank you ma'am or
01:20:36 anything like that but you know I persisted with this girl even though she
01:20:42 was like not a good girl she was married actually she told me she was married at
01:20:48 the second date but that she wasn't seeing her husband or like involved with
01:20:52 him because he cheated on her nine years ago but she's still in the process of
01:20:56 filing for the divorce you know but me I'm like so determined to start a family
01:21:01 that like I kind of ignored all the warning signs that she was giving me and
01:21:06 just kind of persisting with her you know even though she wasn't really right
01:21:11 for me and eventually like we were supposed to go on a date on a certain
01:21:19 holiday and you know I told her hey you know I'll be I'll be there at like
01:21:24 early in the morning so we can go and watch the sunrise and like do a bunch of
01:21:27 other things and so I get there and like she's not there she's not there and like
01:21:32 well she's there but like she's not picking up the phone and I'm waiting
01:21:35 outside her apartment and she's not picking up the phone she turns off her
01:21:39 phone on me I eventually find out and I'm sending text I'm like hey what's
01:21:43 going on I waited there for like four hours maybe five hours I even like
01:21:49 waited a long enough where I could get up walk down the street to a diner and
01:21:53 get a steak and some eggs and stuff and like some hash browns and then come back
01:21:58 and sit in my car and wait some more you know and I waited there so long that uh
01:22:03 it's still no no response from her I waited there so long that like the land
01:22:06 her landlord which she didn't even live like she lived there but she wasn't a
01:22:10 tenant like she wasn't paying rent it was her sister's apartment she was just
01:22:14 kind of sleeping on the floor and her sister and her sister's a homosexual
01:22:18 girlfriend would just torture her all day so she was she was really depressed
01:22:20 you know like they would like run vacuums next to her head like when she
01:22:24 went when she was still sleeping early in the morning and stuff um really bad
01:22:30 stuff and we're the same age she was the same age as me um anyway so eventually
01:22:34 the landlord calls the police on me and so I had like three three or four
01:22:38 sheriffs show up and questioned me and I was very polite well-spoken so they let
01:22:44 me go they took my license ran my license and let me go you know and then
01:22:47 later like I call him like hey you know she finally picks up like hey you know
01:22:51 um like I've been waiting outside your house all this time and and you didn't
01:22:56 uh you know you didn't answer my calls you turned off the phone at me the cop
01:23:00 the cops were called on me you know like what's what's the deal what gives and
01:23:05 she's like oh well um I don't think the cops were called on you they didn't call
01:23:10 the cops on you I said yeah they did she said no they didn't because my sister's
01:23:13 girlfriend went outside and she didn't see any cops I said yeah well um I saw
01:23:18 her come out and I gave her like a description of the woman that I saw come
01:23:22 outside I said that's her right she said yeah I said yeah when she was out there
01:23:25 that was before the cops showed up she's like oh well I don't think it really
01:23:29 happened I don't think you're telling the truth but anyway and like so so then
01:23:34 like she says like I have to go outside and the neighbors don't like me talking
01:23:37 on the phone while standing outside so um we have to go on text I said okay
01:23:43 whatever so I started texting her and she's like hey listen um I've decided to
01:23:47 get back with my ex-boyfriend um and uh oh man he could have been there right
01:23:52 second love yeah he could have been there he could have like come out and
01:23:55 like kick the crap out of me because I don't know which ex-boyfriend that was
01:23:59 she said one of her ex-boyfriends was a drug dealer you know and I'm not I'm not
01:24:03 hard like that you know where I could I could compare it to a drug dealer you
01:24:07 know in terms of like apathy and and and you know an evil or whatever like I
01:24:12 don't have that that in me really so so yeah he could have come on shot me or
01:24:17 something certainly but he wasn't he wasn't yet in the city he hadn't yet
01:24:21 moved back to the city where we live well she actually lives in a different
01:24:25 city she was like an hour away from from from where I'm from where I'm from where
01:24:29 I'm living but yeah so you know she decided to get with her ex-boyfriend and
01:24:37 she said let's just be friends I'm like I'm not gonna be friends with you while
01:24:40 you're having sex with some other guy this is weird I don't like this you know
01:24:43 I'm not I'm sorry I can't do this for you you know you know have a nice life
01:24:46 you know and everything and then like for a week or so after that I was getting
01:24:50 like stress headaches at work I was I wasn't feeling too good about this
01:24:53 because I put I put a lot of energy into this girl like trying to get her out
01:24:56 having long conversations with her trying to get her to like open up to me
01:25:01 more because she was very closed off you know at times which is also very common
01:25:05 with Jamaican people in general are not very good at articulating their feelings
01:25:09 and articulating anything really so they just kind of get washed over by their
01:25:15 circumstances so if you look at the island of Jamaica like they're not in a
01:25:20 good position like other countries just come in and like mine minerals out of
01:25:24 their soil and like they put like a hold of all this dust in the air that makes
01:25:29 the people unhealthy and sick and they just kind of suffer through it and they
01:25:32 don't really do anything about it because because they don't know how to
01:25:35 articulate themselves without violence you know and through listening to you
01:25:39 and through listening to um well I guess I can say Steve Franson as well I'm sure
01:25:45 you know you had that going with him recently but through listening to the
01:25:48 two of you I've kind of learned to be more articulate about my feelings which
01:25:51 has been very helpful that's great good for me extremely helpful like um because
01:25:55 now I can stick up for myself like I stuck up for myself with my sister
01:25:58 recently and our relationship has gotten so much better um you know I'm sticking
01:26:04 up to my parents and moving out and everything and I just want to say thank
01:26:08 you to you a lot because I know you're a good influence you you were a good
01:26:13 influence on on Steven and he's been a good influence on me and you have been a
01:26:18 good influence on me too and you know I want to say thank you very much for for
01:26:22 the good work that you've done and I'm gonna be around I'm gonna keep listening
01:26:25 I stopped listening for a while mainly because I got into the church really
01:26:31 deep and they were like oh you know atheism is stupid I was like oh well
01:26:35 Steph's an atheist so I guess I can't listen to him anymore and then I stopped
01:26:39 listening but it was like that was the worst one of the worst decisions I ever
01:26:42 made was to not pay attention to you because the stuff that you espoused
01:26:47 nobody is espousing it and you have more I believe more wisdom than like anybody
01:26:52 that I've met at church or any priest that I've met or even any bishop that
01:26:57 I've met like you just like on a completely different level and the stuff
01:27:00 that that you're espousing like if I just listen to it more my life would be
01:27:07 significantly better if I just apply those principles more that's very great
01:27:12 so listen I really appreciate that I take that to heart thank you but we
01:27:17 got a little bit of time left in in the chat and I want to make sure that we get
01:27:21 to what's most valuable to you my friend so what can I help you with the most
01:27:26 okay um well I guess the biggest thing that I can say and this is um this is
01:27:33 like something that I kind of glossed over which I shouldn't have but uh when
01:27:38 I was like in the years after I graduated from from college and I was
01:27:43 kind of working I was kind of preyed on by somebody who was maybe five or six
01:27:50 years older than me I was I was 23 and he was like 28 or 27 or something like
01:27:56 this and and you know this is really embarrassing stuff like it's really
01:28:01 hard for me to say this but he was like a transgender or whatever and he was
01:28:08 like really like coming on to me because I was the most I guess I was I was a
01:28:13 nice person I wasn't combative I was very complacent I didn't make any
01:28:16 trouble and I had good qualities you know I have good qualities I guess he
01:28:20 took a liking to me and so he kind of like um like tried to befriend me and
01:28:26 stuff and at that time I was feeling like at my worst my most isolated my
01:28:31 most desolate had no friends couldn't get along with my family and here's this
01:28:37 person that's like kind of being nice to me and so I just kind of went with it
01:28:41 and so we had I guess you could say a relationship for for like a few years
01:28:47 well no not for for like a year I think like a year and so I had like
01:28:52 Do you want to unpack that word relationship for me a little bit brother?
01:28:56 Well we we were like going places together and like dating and also like
01:29:02 we had there was some some activity some relations I guess I could say as well
01:29:09 like sexual relations yes and that's how I lost my um my virginity was to this
01:29:13 person and that was the first relationship that I'd been in and I
01:29:17 guess the most difficult thing for me is like any woman that I get with she needs
01:29:21 to know about this you know and the woman from the Bahamas I told her about
01:29:26 this and you know she said she was disgusted by it but she appreciated that
01:29:32 I was courageous enough to tell her and the other woman she was like I'm not
01:29:37 sure about this but then she like kissed me goodnight and I let her I let her out
01:29:42 of my car into her apartment or whatever but that's that's like a hard thing for
01:29:47 me is to because I feel like what I what happened there when I was 23 was a
01:29:51 mistake and I feel guilty and ashamed about it and you know I don't know what
01:29:58 happened with this relationship as a whole well um you know I was already
01:30:06 like looking at a lot of porn by then so it was really it was really just like
01:30:10 this person once this person has made like it because I think he had just
01:30:15 started his transition or whatever this person has like made a significant
01:30:19 change in his life or whatever and so he needs companionship because he feels
01:30:22 isolated by his family and and so he sees me and I guess I'm also seeking
01:30:29 companionship I'm isolated from my family and I also would like to have sex
01:30:33 eventually you know because I'm 23 years old and obviously you know at 23 years
01:30:38 old you want to have sex now with a man you know it's like question like why
01:30:43 would I and I didn't really want to have sex with a man I never wanted to but
01:30:46 this person looked enough I guess feminine enough where I could kind of
01:30:51 like just kind of like ignore it a little bit but I knew it was wrong
01:30:56 every time I would go to his house to visit him or whatever he'd never been to
01:30:59 my house he never met my parents I couldn't because because that would just
01:31:03 be so horrible for me I mean my family's Jamaican and it's pretty well documented
01:31:08 that Jamaicans are on towards these kinds of things they're they're
01:31:11 extremely aggressive and and violent and murderous you know so I couldn't share
01:31:17 this with my family at all but so he had never seen my family but I you know
01:31:23 whenever I would go to his house this voice inside me would be like you can't
01:31:27 go to turn around don't go you know don't go turn your car around and leave
01:31:31 don't go don't go and I had this feeling for the longest time but but I would
01:31:34 always go because I didn't know where else I could find any kind of kindness
01:31:39 from any person anywhere so I just said well you know yeah this is wrong and I
01:31:46 shouldn't do this and all this but and and it goes against my principles but
01:31:52 you know I guess I'll just do it same thing with porn like porn was the same
01:31:56 thing like yeah this is kind of not good I shouldn't be doing this but what else
01:32:00 do I have access to you know that's gonna make me feel better in the moment
01:32:05 you had this relationship for a couple of years and what happened then no year
01:32:09 about a year and he kind of got the sense that like yeah like he was going
01:32:15 full throttle you know like he's he's already taking his hormones or whatever
01:32:18 and he's he's doing all this stuff you know to himself and he's like he's
01:32:23 committed but I'm not committed because like I can't bring this into my life or
01:32:26 into my family just like any other friendship I would have I can't bring
01:32:29 anybody around my family because I'm embarrassed of them I'm not comfortable
01:32:32 with them and I don't want to bring anybody into my misery and it was the
01:32:36 same thing with this but even worse because this is like um a person that's
01:32:41 kind of like would be generally considered to be the dregs of society or
01:32:45 whatever because of his arm his life choices so so I couldn't bring this
01:32:51 person into my life and he kind of got a sense of that like yeah like this isn't
01:32:54 really gonna go too far like this guy's not gonna like move in with me or
01:32:58 anything or like we're not gonna really go that far so he just kind of like
01:33:02 broke up with me just kind of broke it off and then he moves to another another
01:33:07 state and I know what he's up to he's doing music or something and he's got
01:33:11 like a girlfriend now he's dating a woman but he still dresses like a woman
01:33:15 which is very strange but um so that's what they're up to now and I'm kind of
01:33:19 aware of that but I don't I don't contact him um he contacted me once to
01:33:25 say like I'm sorry I like a year after it broke off I was about 24 25 at this
01:33:31 time and I just told him to f off you know and then later like I felt bad
01:33:37 about that so I sent him an email to apologize and then there was no further
01:33:40 contact after that so okay so yeah that's how that's how that sort of ended
01:33:48 now so you haven't had a significant romantic or sexual relationship since
01:33:53 that one is that right not significant I mean these last two girls one of them
01:33:59 lasted four months and the other one lasted a single month so I wouldn't
01:34:03 really call that significant no okay okay so again how can I how can I best
01:34:08 help you oh well what should I do well that's obviously I can't ask you that
01:34:14 question because you don't tell people what to do I don't know it's just you
01:34:18 know how do I broach that with somebody like a romantic partner a potential
01:34:22 romantic partner you know how do I you know what do I do am I just in a hole
01:34:26 and I just have to kind of just deal with this or what what do you think you
01:34:31 mean the relationship that ended almost ten years ago yeah you know I do you
01:34:40 think that it's a significant part of your sort of mental construct or life
01:34:43 now no but you know it I just feel I guess I feel a little bit of guilt about
01:34:50 it um yeah I feel a little bit guilt and I
01:34:54 and I couldn't you know if I'm gonna be an honest person and I'm gonna try to
01:34:58 live philosophically I can't like get in a relationship with a woman and not tell
01:35:03 her about this well I mean I'm I'm sort of happy to hear the case so here the
01:35:12 hello I think I'm gonna hear the argument about it why why would that be
01:35:19 something you would have to talk about why would that be something I would have
01:35:23 to talk about with my wife well no with a woman you were dating um well if I'm
01:35:32 dating somebody I'm dating in the direction of marriage right and so so I
01:35:35 shouldn't we talk about our past relationships if we're dating I'm why
01:35:40 again I'm happy to hear the case but why would you want to talk about your past
01:35:44 relationships if you're dating
01:35:47 because because knowing a person's personal history could isn't that like
01:35:59 vital information for deciding if this person is going to be a long-term
01:36:04 prospect for you well if I mean if you're in your 30s right just about
01:36:12 everyone you meet is gonna have a history right now I think it's obviously
01:36:15 you need to know if the person has any sexually transmitted diseases you need
01:36:19 to know I think it's important if they've maybe had an abortion it's
01:36:23 important you know to know their the number of partners but details about the
01:36:28 relationships I don't see that one in particular like I don't quite really see
01:36:35 why the details would be I mean again if it was like you just broke up with
01:36:39 someone that you were with for five years then that would be important to
01:36:43 know right but I don't know how the details about a ten-year-old
01:36:48 relationship that you have closure with and is not part of your thinking that's
01:36:53 sort of why I asked if they're still a part of your thinking anymore a part of
01:36:57 your sort of emotional makeup anymore if you've had the closure then why would it
01:37:01 need to be something that would be discussed with a future partner
01:37:06 like let me take it let me take a silly example right I mean let's say heaven
01:37:16 forbid you had a sex tape right no I mean no I'm not saying you do yeah so
01:37:24 but you had some kind of sex tape and it had never gone anywhere and I don't know
01:37:30 it was just sitting on some old hard drive and and you start dating some some
01:37:34 new woman would she need to see that sex tape no but I mean she should like if I
01:37:44 mean if you shouldn't right but so when I was dating the girl from the Bahamas
01:37:48 she asked me what was your previous relationship like and then I told her
01:37:53 about this experience that I had when I was 23 but why Tom hang on but why do
01:37:57 you why would you answer that I mean just because someone wants to know
01:38:04 something doesn't mean that they get to know it right I think I think it's fair
01:38:08 to say listen you know I'm my mistake ten years ago I don't really remember
01:38:13 I'm here now I'm living in the present I'm looking to the future I don't really
01:38:17 want to talk about old relationships with a new flame
01:38:22 because if you have this like if you have concerned I guess a little bit that
01:38:28 you have this rule called honesty and openness and so on and so on it's like
01:38:34 no oh no no maybe that's what it is because I have no choice I have been
01:38:41 programmed by philosophy I must reveal all no not even not even philosophy
01:38:46 that's something that I've carried with me for years like don't lie never lie
01:38:50 always tell the truth don't lie well no no it's asking you to lie I didn't say
01:38:54 no I but like um you know you have to answer questions that are asked of you
01:39:00 and stuff oh no no they're not it's not a courtroom situation and even in a
01:39:04 courtroom situation you get to plead the fifth right yeah because my thinking is
01:39:09 along with this girl and you know we have to be open and completely honest
01:39:13 with each other and oh and and all this stuff at all time no no no no absolutely
01:39:17 not oh no oh no that's a nightmare really absolutely I mean my perspective
01:39:24 it's like I don't know let's say you like some girl and it's like I want you
01:39:27 to list the top five positions you liked with your last five boyfriends it's like
01:39:31 shit I don't want to know that oh okay okay I see like holy crap I know you
01:39:38 know you're in your 30s you're probably not gonna be virgins or anything but I
01:39:41 don't want to see a sex tape I don't want to I don't want to know these
01:39:44 things I don't want to be a pirate I mean I don't want to like this not
01:39:48 appropriate to talk about with someone new but but that doesn't mean that I
01:39:56 would never talk about it does it well you tell me tell me how it helps the
01:40:04 relationship it's it was a ten-year-old relationship you regret it sounds like
01:40:12 you've worked on it you've moved on how does it I mean that's going back and
01:40:19 digging up the past when you're trying to build the future you tell me I mean
01:40:23 tell me how does it help it was a particularly lonely and isolated part of
01:40:30 your life you have regrets what does it matter why would it be something that
01:40:38 would define you going forward because here's here's the thing that's that's
01:40:41 weird about telling the truth right is that for you it's ten years in the past
01:40:48 now if you have still a lot of emotions about this kind of stuff then you know
01:40:52 it's probably a good idea as I've always sort of talked about to sort of get get
01:40:55 therapy and talk about it and work through it but you know if it's done
01:40:59 right if it's over past and done and you've had your closure and all that
01:41:03 kind of stuff here's the problem is that for you it's ten years in the past and
01:41:09 you've dealt with it right but for your partner when they suddenly hear about it
01:41:13 does it feel like it's ten years in the past no no it feels very vivid very
01:41:19 right now right yeah so it's not honest in a way because it creates something in
01:41:28 your partner that is not the same for you like there's no way to get your
01:41:33 partner to have worked through it over the last ten years like you have she
01:41:38 gets new information and she's never worked through it so there's no way to
01:41:42 communicate your experience of what happened you know it's funny that you
01:41:47 should say that because when I told that to the to the Bahamian girl I also spent
01:41:52 like 15 minutes explaining to her that I'm not the same person anymore right so
01:41:58 but if you aren't the same person anymore and it's not relevant you can't
01:42:02 like why would I bring it up on this about it yeah you can't be honest about
01:42:07 it because you can't cram into any conversation the ten years like like the
01:42:15 couple of years off the relationship and then the ten years since so whatever you
01:42:20 provide to her is not going to have much if any relevance to what you've actually
01:42:27 experienced so all it does is divide you rather than unite you if that makes
01:42:31 sense. Oh well I never I never thought of it that way I never thought of it this
01:42:42 way that that's so so so actually what I'm doing is I'm giving her a portrayal
01:42:48 of myself that is not that is not accurate to who I am today. It's
01:42:51 impossible for it to be accurate it can't possibly in any way shape or form
01:42:55 be accurate to what you're having today now I mean if if you had some terrible
01:43:01 disease or something like that then yes absolutely you you know she should know
01:43:05 that or if you had some genetic disorder like something that would actually
01:43:07 affect the future yes but I again I'm happy to hear the case and you know
01:43:12 maybe people people will listen to this and be oh my god how can you whatever
01:43:15 right but I I just I can't see how it's possible to recreate for your whoever
01:43:24 you're telling to that the 13 years of experience with this that you've had.
01:43:32 So then I just don't really need to bring it up at all ever. If you have
01:43:37 closure if you have closure with it why would you like what what value is there
01:43:46 in bringing it up if it's not a big deal to you then saying is going to make it a
01:43:52 big deal to her which doesn't match your experience at all. Okay okay I understand.
01:44:03 You are free you are free to close your mouth. You don't have to tell everyone
01:44:15 everything. That's not the definition of honesty. That's the definition of not
01:44:21 having any boundaries which of course you were raised to not have boundaries
01:44:24 right you couldn't have any boundaries you couldn't have any any distance or
01:44:29 anything like that so I don't think that's I don't think that's the
01:44:35 definition of honesty I think that's the definition of no boundaries. Oh how does
01:44:46 how does one have healthy boundaries? Well that's obviously a very big
01:44:54 question but you are not an open book to be thumbed through by everyone on their
01:45:00 dock everyone on the planet right and there's things which you can keep
01:45:09 private. I mean and in particular things which will shock other people which no
01:45:14 longer shock you. So even me bringing this up now in this call-in was
01:45:23 kind of unnecessary and kind of. No I think it was very necessary because you
01:45:29 needed to find out whether this fell into the category of honesty. Like I
01:45:35 think it when you meet someone you want to be honest about the present you want
01:45:38 to be honest about who you are and you want to be honest about your goals and
01:45:45 ideals for the future I think all of that's great but do you want to go and
01:45:52 dig up every problematic thing that you ever did like okay so when I was a kid I
01:45:57 shoplifted a couple of things right now imagine I meet the woman of my dreams I
01:46:03 mean I already have but let's imagine I'm in the process of meeting the woman
01:46:06 of my dreams right and she says oh tell me a little bit about yourself and you
01:46:10 and I say oh I'm a thief I steal things now is that technically true yes I stole
01:46:19 some things when I was a kid I mean most people have you know I don't know you
01:46:23 when I was a kid I'd sneak a quarter or two out of my mom's purse to go play a
01:46:27 video game or whatever right I didn't grow up with all your privileges of
01:46:30 having them in the house right so so you know if I said oh and and once or twice
01:46:35 in my life I've gotten drunk right so if I meet I meet the girl of my dreams and
01:46:41 I say and she says oh tell me a little bit about yourself you say oh I'm a thief
01:46:45 and a drunkard I have stolen and I've gotten drunk now is that true no I mean
01:46:57 you can say it's technically true in that it is a factual statement but it's
01:47:02 not true because these things don't define me like if someone if you meet
01:47:12 the girl of your dreams and she says don't tell me a little bit about
01:47:14 yourself and you say I like assaulting I liked assaulting children that would
01:47:21 give her an impression of you that would not be accurate right did you yeah
01:47:26 because when I assaulted children you were a child and you were a digressed
01:47:29 against and you were in a violent situation there right right right well
01:47:37 so I could I could very easily carry this this thing to my grave and not tell
01:47:42 anybody about it and it wouldn't be wrong in any way there would be nothing
01:47:47 immoral about about that so yeah so so the thing is if it defines you to
01:47:53 someone else but it doesn't define you to yourself then telling them about it
01:47:59 is actually kind of deceptive in the same way that if I said oh I got drunk
01:48:04 and stole things I mean if I say that whoever I'm talking to do they think
01:48:10 that's an important and vivid element of my life yes because it's the first thing
01:48:15 I'm telling them so that must be a big deal and if I say oh man I am a thief
01:48:23 and and and a drunkard and then she says oh my gosh what did you steal and I said
01:48:28 well I stole the candy bar when I was 11 and she's like what this doesn't make
01:48:35 it like why are you telling me that you're a thief oh and and I took some
01:48:39 quarters out of my mom's purse when I wanted to play a video game when I was
01:48:42 12 I'm a thief you understand that would be kind of bizarre wouldn't it yeah
01:48:49 absolutely I'm a drunkard when did you last get
01:48:53 drunk I was 17 it's like dude that was 40 years ago what do you like it would
01:49:00 be bizarre for me to define myself by things long in the past that I don't do
01:49:04 anymore that I haven't done forever that I have closure with if that makes sense
01:49:09 like it none like you understand I'm defining myself in a way that is not me
01:49:14 and puts myself in a light that is inaccurate to my current life and my
01:49:20 current circumstances and who I am now so could you say that that could it be
01:49:26 said that if I feel guilt like a certain amount of guilt about this coming up
01:49:31 could it be that I um wait what do you mean coming up I don't know what this
01:49:36 means not coming not not coming up now I mean if at a moment I feel like guilty
01:49:40 about what I did which honestly I don't even really think about it at all right
01:49:44 except when I think about like women that I'm going to date and like do I
01:49:49 have to tell them and stuff which obviously I know now that I don't but
01:49:53 so it could it could it be possible even that I might be defining myself to
01:49:58 myself in this way even though it doesn't really define me now well I mean
01:50:03 that's the important thing so yeah if it defines you for you then you got to work
01:50:08 on it yeah right like if you say I am now defined you 13 years later by
01:50:14 deciding to get into this relationship right okay then you have to work on that
01:50:19 and say okay well does what I did when I was 20 does it define me forever and
01:50:25 ever amen no I mean you're a Christian right you know that you get forgiven for
01:50:30 stuff right yeah if you have regrets I mean do they define you until the end of
01:50:36 time but I mean you know I know that I'm forgiven in all this but you know
01:50:44 if you do something even though you're you're forgiven or whatever you know you
01:50:48 still did it right I'm sorry do I not understand the concept of forgiveness
01:50:54 I'm sorry I didn't know I don't okay so let's say you did something that you
01:51:00 regret right I mean you didn't do anything immoral right you had a
01:51:03 consensual relationship with an adult right so it wasn't like you you're not
01:51:09 like your grandfather you didn't shoot a doctor right right so you had a
01:51:14 consensual relationship with adult you look at it back now and you see it maybe
01:51:18 came out of loneliness or dysfunction or something like that right so so you have
01:51:22 regrets that that about a decision you made when you were highly traumatized an
01:51:26 isolated young man who'd had a near decade-long pornography addiction and
01:51:32 couldn't talk to girls and had been beaten you know regularly and screamed
01:51:37 at and you were highly traumatized young man and you made as you say looking back
01:51:41 now a bad decision when you were 20 right
01:51:45 so 23 but yeah no but didn't sorry I thought it ended when you were 23 did I
01:51:52 get that wrong no it started when I was 23 it ended when I was 24 it was a year
01:51:57 long okay sorry sorry I apologize for that okay so 23 to 24 so you made a
01:52:03 mistake and you again it was not immoral you didn't violate you PP you
01:52:07 didn't do anything evil you had a consensual relationship with somebody
01:52:10 and then you ended up regretting it which is again I mean not quite a decade
01:52:16 ago but but a long time ago and certainly it was almost a decade ago
01:52:19 when you started okay so you were a young man and you were isolated and you
01:52:25 had this other addiction and so on and you made a decision that you regretted
01:52:30 you kept it up for about a year and it ended eight years ago is that right yes
01:52:38 okay yeah 24 32 yeah eight years okay so it ended eight years ago and can you
01:52:45 forgive yourself for thanks no thank you made when you were highly traumatized I
01:52:56 think I can but I don't but what is what is that how does that feel what does
01:53:01 that look like to forgive yourself
01:53:05 what does it look like to forgive yourself yeah what is that what does that
01:53:12 mean I mean do I just say to myself I forgive you and that's it I mean what
01:53:18 you know what's the what's the process of forgiving oneself what is that
01:53:22 exactly well I think it's recognizing your motivation you weren't acting out
01:53:27 of malevolence you were acting out of loneliness and desperation is that right
01:53:31 that is correct right did you I mean to take a sort of ridiculous example if if
01:53:36 if you're if you eat someone for fun then you know you're kind of an evil
01:53:41 cannibal right but if you if you have to eat someone because you crashed it in a
01:53:46 plane in the in the mountains and you were stuck for a month alone right
01:53:49 that's that's a different matter right yeah I think I remember seeing that
01:53:54 movie yeah yeah live I think it's called right yeah so you acted out of
01:53:59 desperation and isolation and you you have regrets and I think you've worked
01:54:04 it sounds like you've worked to deal with some of that isolation and that
01:54:08 desperation and so and you haven't repeated getting into a relationship
01:54:12 that you regret out of desperation and isolation so if you've if you've dealt
01:54:17 with the issues you obviously it's a ridiculous thing to say but you you
01:54:23 forgiveness doesn't mean that it didn't happen because it did happen you can't
01:54:26 go back in a race time right right I think I kind of did though I think I
01:54:31 kind of did because because with these last two relationships that I've been in
01:54:35 the girl was like giving me signs that she wasn't for me or like this you know
01:54:40 signs that like if I continue this relationship it's not going to be good
01:54:43 for me it's not gonna end well if it continues you know and I just kept
01:54:46 going on with these like stretching it out for as long as I could with both of
01:54:51 these women I mean it's not quite the same as as eight years ago sorry but
01:54:55 both of these women both of these women you told about this relationship in your
01:55:00 early 20s right yes I did okay and so you're punishing yourself right you're
01:55:10 punishing yourself by putting information forward that most women you
01:55:14 know it's especially as you say in the Jamaican community right that most women
01:55:17 will recoil from right right right okay so you're setting yourself up for
01:55:25 another situation where you're going to make a decision out of desperation and
01:55:29 loneliness right because you're driving these women away with this old
01:55:33 information which means you're going to get involved with someone else because
01:55:37 of desperation and loneliness and then you're going to have another thing that
01:55:43 you're gonna have to forgive yourself for this like forgiveness is designed to
01:55:49 have you stop repeating this stuff yeah oh nine years ago I entered into a
01:55:57 relationship that's gonna shock and appall you oh where are you going oh
01:56:00 gosh I guess I'm lonely and isolated again okay I'll go find someone else
01:56:05 nine years ago I got involved in a relationship that will shock and appall
01:56:09 you oh where are you going oh gosh I guess I'm lonely again right oh yeah
01:56:14 yeah yeah I see it this you're punishing yourself for a decision you can't change
01:56:20 so I just need to let it go well I mean that's one of these one of these
01:56:26 statements that's easiest it's easier said than done right of course
01:56:30 easier said than done but the first thing you need to do is stop repeating
01:56:33 the behavior that's for sure yeah you absolutely need to stop repeating the
01:56:38 behavior and not repeating the behavior means stop doing things that for sure
01:56:43 are gonna end up with you isolated and desperate right because aren't you you
01:56:46 know I mean you said you wanted to you want to have a family you want to get
01:56:50 married and kids and all that and this is not going to be this approach is not
01:56:57 going to be doing it for you right no not at all so yeah I would I would say
01:57:05 that forgiving yourself is just saying I know I did why I did what I did I know
01:57:13 why I did what I did and I also know that it won't happen again because
01:57:23 forgiveness like if you've done everything you can to avoid reproducing
01:57:29 a situation that you don't like or want I mean what else can you ask for what
01:57:34 else can you do you can't erase time you can't change the past so if you have
01:57:44 learned as much as you can learn from it and you haven't reproduced the thing you
01:57:50 regret what else can you do I mean you're a Christian what does God require
01:57:59 of you to be forgiven right if you've done something wrong he requires that
01:58:06 you admit that you did something wrong and and that you work for restitution if
01:58:13 possible and you commit to not doing it again and you know after a certain amount
01:58:18 of time and not doing it again you're forgiven you're washed clean you're born
01:58:22 again it's like it never happened do I mean I'm no theologian but is that not
01:58:29 something close to what happens yeah don't you get to be washed clean of sin
01:58:38 yes true I mean there's some people that believe that you have to like punish
01:58:42 yourself in a lot of ways to okay so let's say those people are absolutely
01:58:48 right right let's say those people are I don't think they are but let's say that
01:58:52 they're absolutely right yeah let's say that they're 100% right okay you've been
01:58:56 in penance now for eight years aren't you done yeah I mean even when I spoke
01:59:03 to my priest and I told him about that he said um or I told him about this
01:59:07 thing I'm telling you about he said that um yeah we just need to forget about
01:59:12 these things because we're gonna baptize you now it's all gonna be forgiven right
01:59:16 and I guess I I didn't I didn't fully um I didn't fully uh listen to it not
01:59:25 listen to but I didn't fully I guess internalize his words that day you
01:59:29 didn't fully internalize his words well not I mean I don't know right we're
01:59:33 like in self-immolating confession mode yeah oh you know what other bad thing I
01:59:41 did like where are you going well I don't want to go off topic but
01:59:45 something I've noticed that is that people will sometimes confess things to
01:59:49 me like I've had people that I've that I work with will be like on a construction
01:59:53 site like just working together me and him and he'll start telling me about
01:59:57 like the time he he like for example convinced a girl to have an abortion or
02:00:03 or things like this you know like when we're just sitting privately I've had
02:00:07 people like kind of many times like start telling me about all that I know
02:00:12 but that's the boundary thing right that that's because they detect that you have
02:00:17 no boundaries oh no yes so someone if someone starts telling you this kind of
02:00:25 stuff and you don't want to hear it you're like whoa whoa whoa just just
02:00:29 working a job here man yesterday I was at work and like there was a group of us
02:00:33 in a room working and like this guy's like I'm about to go home and beat the
02:00:36 shit out of my son because he did something at school today I'm like man I
02:00:40 don't want to I don't want to hear that why are you telling us all this stuff
02:00:43 you know yeah but now you told me don't do it yeah yeah right yeah and that's
02:00:50 probably what I should have said like hey you know I don't want to hear about
02:00:52 what you how you're gonna go beat the crap out of your kids we're working here
02:00:55 you know now you have don't do it yeah because that's probably what he was
02:01:01 telling you for was to you to tell him not to oh man so I have I have really
02:01:08 bad boundaries well no it's not that you have really basically that's another
02:01:12 self-attack you were right okay no you don't speak Japanese because you didn't
02:01:18 grow up learning Japanese right so I don't speak Japanese either so you were
02:01:22 attacked for having boundaries as a kid right right you but you mean your
02:01:27 physical boundaries were violated with physical violence your emotional
02:01:31 boundaries were violated with verbal abuse so you were attacked and punished
02:01:36 and got kind of halfway to death threats because that's what we all experience it
02:01:40 like as a kid for having boundaries so of course you don't have boundaries
02:01:46 because you wanted to live and not die and not be assaulted or maybe get a
02:01:50 brain injury or fall down the stairs and break your leg or whatever right so you
02:01:55 you don't have boundaries because boundaries would probably have gotten
02:01:58 you severely attacked maimed and/or possibly killed so yeah I mean we tend
02:02:05 not to do things we'll get killed for or maimed for or attacked for or ostracized
02:02:09 for or abandoned for which is the death sentence to a kid right so it's not like you don't have bad boundaries
02:02:16 it's like you were punished it's one thing to not grow up learning Japanese
02:02:20 it's another thing that even if your parents even catch you thinking about
02:02:24 Japanese they'll beat the crap out of you it's like well then you're sure not
02:02:26 gonna learn Japanese does that make sense yes of course I kind of interrupted you a
02:02:32 little bit there but I was gonna what do I do to work on my boundaries?
02:02:41 Boy you're giving me all the tough questions at the end so to work on boundaries you have
02:02:49 to get in touch with your feelings right so feelings and boundaries are kind of
02:02:52 the same thing so what did you feel when the guy said I'm gonna home and beat my kid?
02:02:57 I felt like I was getting beaten. I remember when I was getting beaten as a kid
02:03:06 yeah and I started you know yeah I just didn't really like it yeah. So you didn't like it?
02:03:09 I should have told him hey you know. Well or if somebody says yeah if somebody's
02:03:15 saying to you hey man I gotta tell you about this time when I convinced my
02:03:18 girlfriend to kill her kid right no no no no no thanks not my thing I don't
02:03:25 want to know. Yeah because I guess hearing stuff like that it's probably not good
02:03:30 for you right? Well you're trying to work your way from the morals inwards and
02:03:36 boundaries are not about fundamentally they're not about morals right they're
02:03:42 they're they're about what you like and don't like I mean one boundary is
02:03:47 somebody says hey man eat these Brussels sprouts and you don't like Brussels
02:03:52 sprouts and you say I don't want to eat the Brussels sprouts that's boundaries
02:03:56 if somebody wants to tell you something about their life that you don't want to
02:04:00 hear you say I don't want to hear it it's just that now you see that
02:04:03 boundaries are just honesty because it's funny like you're so you're so concerned
02:04:14 with honesty but you won't be honest about what you do and don't want to hear
02:04:19 from people somebody starts telling you something you don't want to hear you say
02:04:24 no I don't want to hear that no I don't want to hear that because that's honest
02:04:28 you don't want to hear it I don't want to hear that you're gonna go beat your
02:04:30 kid that's honest isn't it? Yeah. So boundaries is just about honesty. Now if
02:04:44 you're married to some woman and she says hey man I'm having some pretty
02:04:48 violent impulses towards our kid and I feel kind of disturbed about it you'd
02:04:52 want to know that because you'd want to help her on that right you want to you
02:04:55 want to help that help her out with that right yeah so in that situation you'd be
02:05:00 like yeah tell me more I want to know more right so it's the boundaries are
02:05:07 just honesty someone's telling you something you don't want to hear you say
02:05:10 whoa don't want to hear don't want to hear and if somebody is telling you
02:05:15 something that you do want to hear you know you tell me more right be
02:05:19 honest about about what you feel. But a work colleague should not be telling you
02:05:27 about his abortion that's not a business relationship and you're not friends
02:05:34 right? No. Right so that's not it's not even remotely appropriate to talk about
02:05:40 that. I mean if I was I don't know meeting with some investor about
02:05:52 investing in something I was doing with and I said oh yeah let me tell you about
02:05:56 this time when I was like that's not a venue that's not a thing. Yeah it's
02:06:01 construction so it's kind of blue-collar and you know people. No I mean
02:06:06 I've worked my blue-collar jobs in my life so yeah it's not
02:06:10 appropriate to a workplace and it's not appropriate to somebody who's not your
02:06:14 friend. Yeah I don't know what that was all about but I guess it's right you're
02:06:21 right they just noticed. It's about him dumping his trauma on you. Yeah. Tell me if I'm wrong I'm
02:06:27 happy to hear that I'm wrong but it's about him trying to normalize some
02:06:32 terrible thing that he did by dumping it on you. No you're not wrong you're not
02:06:43 wrong about that. And so when you get when you get those boundaries then what
02:06:53 happens is when a woman comes to you and says tell me about your past
02:06:57 relationships what do you say if you don't want to talk about them? I just
02:07:04 say I don't want to talk about it. Well you say yeah look I would tell you if
02:07:08 there was something relevant but I haven't I mean I've been in a couple of
02:07:12 short relationships I was in one slightly longer one in my early 20s but
02:07:16 like it's water under the bridge you know I want to talk about you I want to
02:07:20 talk about any potential future we have together I mean you don't just sort of
02:07:23 clam up right but you know like I don't want to talk about past
02:07:28 relationships you know like if there's something hanging over you I don't know
02:07:32 if you're in the middle of some custody battle with a mass murderer or something
02:07:35 that yeah I kind of want to know about your relationships but I don't want to
02:07:39 know about your past relationships because I'm here to try and build a
02:07:42 future together and the last thing I want to do is start looking oh you dated
02:07:45 this guy oh my gosh you dated this guy let me see a picture let me see a
02:07:48 picture of him naked look you know more penises the better right I mean that's
02:07:52 not a thing that you do when you meet someone new right actually the last girl
02:07:56 I dated on a second date she showed me a picture of her of her ex-boyfriend
02:08:02 naked that she had taken well see now that's somebody with no boundaries and
02:08:06 that's someone to get the hell away from yeah right cuz that's it that's an
02:08:11 insane thing to do why on earth what was the justification for doing that I don't
02:08:16 know she was like scrolling through her phone to show me pictures of her family
02:08:19 and stuff and she said I'm gonna scroll I'm gonna scroll past those cuz they're
02:08:22 kind of raunchy I said well what's raunchy and I kind of I kind of asked
02:08:26 her to see it in a way I didn't know it was gonna be that I didn't I didn't know
02:08:29 but I was just curious like what is raunchy mean let's let's see what let's
02:08:32 see what that is for you I'm just curious so I kind of eggs her on and
02:08:36 then she showed me that and I was like oh geez I think like I said to her my
02:08:41 eyes are my eyes red right now because I think they're burning from what I just
02:08:45 saw like it was that bad I did not want to see that at all right and so I don't
02:08:49 know if she's keeping that in the spank bank or something like that but yeah
02:08:52 that would be like no I don't want to like if you've got if you've got I don't
02:08:56 know if you've got nude pictures of your ex-boyfriend on your phone I'm just
02:08:59 gonna use your phone to dial an uber and get the hell out yeah yeah but I just I
02:09:06 just dealt with it right because um I didn't have boundaries I guess so
02:09:13 yeah well how did you feel looking at a naked picture of this woman's ex-boyfriend?
02:09:18 I didn't like it at all. So why are you lying to people?
02:09:22 Just brushing it off. Did you not hear thou shalt not bear false
02:09:26 witness today? Has that been changed since I was last in church? And I think I
02:09:32 know when that habit came up for me because I was or when that habit started
02:09:35 for me because you know when I was going through my childhood earlier like after
02:09:40 my dad said he was gonna hit me anymore if I didn't get in any fights with
02:09:44 anybody else I quickly decided that the quickest way to avoid getting in a fight
02:09:48 with somebody is to not express my displeasure about any experiences any
02:09:54 personal experiences that I have with anybody so as to avoid conflict. Yeah like
02:09:58 that kid on the bus who was making fun of you in front of everyone else and you
02:10:01 just take it right so yeah you're punished for having boundaries and of
02:10:06 course you tried to set up a boundary when you were very little and you got
02:10:09 beat on by the kid oh no the kids spat at you the Hispanic kids spat at you
02:10:13 right and you went as you did rightly you went to the teacher you went to the
02:10:17 daycare teacher and you said hey you know this terrible things happened and I
02:10:21 really do need you to deal with it and they're like no. So I mean who helped you
02:10:27 with boundaries? Nobody right? But what did being honest do for you? Just got you
02:10:31 all punished. So yeah you got I mean this is the real-time relationships thing it's
02:10:38 like you know hey man I don't I don't I don't like that you have pictures of
02:10:43 your ex-boyfriend on your phone. Oh what are you some kind of prude? Hey I'm not
02:10:48 telling you you're wrong I'm just telling you I don't like it. I don't like
02:10:53 that you would still have that right like the woman who's like she's in the
02:10:57 apartment you're waiting outside for four hours right? Why are you waiting for
02:11:01 four hours? You wait for four hours if somebody doesn't show up for a date
02:11:07 they're inside they're not answering the phone you leave. Don't you? No you're
02:11:17 absolutely right you're absolutely right. Because you didn't want to stay and then
02:11:22 you call her like you call her like there's something that can be explained
02:11:28 we had a date you're in the apartment you're not answering my calls I'm
02:11:32 waiting like there's no answer for that right there's no explanation for that
02:11:37 right? But you know that right? You know that. And I didn't like it.
02:11:44 No you didn't like it and so you were calling her because you were
02:11:48 angry at her and you wanted to engage with somebody who was that rude and that
02:11:53 callous. And my guess is that her boyfriend was actually in her bedroom
02:12:03 which is why she didn't answer the phone or come out. If that's true that hurts
02:12:13 even more. Well it's the most likely explanation because otherwise she would
02:12:16 just come out and said I've got a headache or I feel unwell or I'm sorry
02:12:19 but I can't or whatever it is right? Yeah that makes a lot of sense. So and you
02:12:27 know so yeah you managed to dodge a woman who was real keen to get back
02:12:31 together with some drug dealing boyfriend. Oh no what a terrible thing
02:12:35 you've missed out on. Yeah. So yeah. I got it. So once you have
02:12:41 see once you have boundaries then you don't need to exercise them that much
02:12:46 because people are always sniffing to see if you have boundaries and if you
02:12:49 actually do have boundaries they'll just keep moving they won't even try to
02:12:53 violate them because they'll know they can't and so they'll just move on to
02:12:57 somebody else who doesn't have boundaries. Like the good thing about
02:12:58 having boundaries is it doesn't turn into a lifelong battle of trying to
02:13:03 exercise boundaries like it doesn't work that way. Once you have boundaries then
02:13:08 you don't need to exercise them because the boundary violators can sniff that
02:13:13 and they just keep moving they just move on. They don't they don't get involved in
02:13:17 your business. Okay well I know we don't have time for you to explain to me and
02:13:24 give me a lesson on boundaries and stuff but do you know any books? No just honesty
02:13:29 that's all it is. Just focus on the honesty. Just focus on the honesty.
02:13:33 Somebody asks you somebody asks you about your old relationships and say you
02:13:38 know what's the most honest thing you can say? I don't want to talk about them.
02:13:41 It's a long time ago it's not relevant to my life at the moment and I want to
02:13:45 look forward to the future I want to get to know you. And then if she's like well
02:13:49 I have to know about your past relationships. I'm like well you don't.
02:13:55 You don't. No no no but and then if she gets all kinds of weird then it's like
02:14:00 okay this is not someone who listens they don't have boundaries because if you
02:14:03 say you don't want to talk about something other people should respect
02:14:06 that right? Now it doesn't mean they have to keep dating you or anything but if
02:14:10 you say I don't want to talk about it I mean you can ask once or twice but if
02:14:14 somebody doesn't want to talk about something and you just keep insisting
02:14:18 and you escalate and you you have to tell me about to say okay then yeah you
02:14:22 don't you're not respecting my boundaries so we can't have this
02:14:26 conversation. I told you I don't want to talk about it. I told you it's not
02:14:29 important. It's not relevant. If there was something important and relevant I'd tell
02:14:32 you but there's nothing important or relevant. I don't want to talk about it
02:14:37 and I give you the same thing like if you have past I mean you have past
02:14:42 relationships if they're not important and relevant I don't want to hear about
02:14:45 them either. That's totally fine with me. No no no I have to hear about your
02:14:48 past. Okay like I'm not having this conversation because you're not
02:14:51 listening to what I'm saying. You know that's the equivalent of into some
02:14:57 degree it's the equivalent of if a woman says I don't want to have sex and you're
02:15:01 like no no no we have to have like that would be rude right? That would be that
02:15:04 would be terrible. That would be an awful thing to do. So yeah respecting boundaries
02:15:09 is really important. If somebody doesn't want to talk about something it's
02:15:12 perfectly within their right to not talk about it. Now you definitely mean you got
02:15:15 to date them and you right? If the woman says I just got out of prison and you
02:15:19 say oh what happened and she says I don't want to talk about it hey she's
02:15:22 free to not talk about it and you're free to not date her right? Because she
02:15:25 just got out of prison and you don't know why. But yeah just respect respect
02:15:29 people's preferences that way and be honest about what you don't like and
02:15:34 what you do like. Does that make sense? Yes 100%. Good good good all right all
02:15:40 righty-righty. Listen I really really appreciate the call. Really quite a
02:15:45 quite a wild ride of a life you've had my friend and I appreciate the honesty
02:15:51 and the openness and I think you get this boundary thing down and this
02:15:54 honesty thing down and you'd be amazed at who shows up in your life and how
02:15:57 healthy they tend to be. Because unhealthy people will always try and
02:16:02 walk over your boundaries right? And and if they can then the relationship is
02:16:07 kind of doomed over time so I'm sure it will work out once you have the
02:16:11 boundaries it will it will help a lot to to end up with healthier people in your
02:16:15 life if that makes sense. Yes absolutely. All right can you post it about how it's going?
02:16:23 Sure how do you want to do this through Skype or email? You can just send me an email
02:16:28 callinitfreedomain.com just let me know how things are going because I always like to
02:16:31 know what what happens after the calls. Okay sure. All right well thanks man I
02:16:35 appreciate it have yourself a great evening and thanks for your time today.
02:16:38 You too. Thank you Steph. Bye.