[SPEAKER_00]: Well, welcome to Citroes Saturday.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have Citroes Crystal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Crystal, do you?
[SPEAKER_00]: You didn't join through beef to heal, but I feel like you joined around the same time you joined in the spring?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, it feels like it's longer than that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I want to say it was like towards the end of May.
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: In how long had you been listening to the podcast?
[SPEAKER_00]: About nine months, probably.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think I came across your podcast.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was listening to Paul Gilmarton's and Joe Ryan's podcasts.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think your interview with Paul is the first episode I listened to, because I...
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't remember what I was searching, but I'd say that he was on another podcast, and I listened to that one, and it wasn't immediately going back to the beginning.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that Paul.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's a good day to Joe too.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's so wonderful.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so what song do you want to play when you walk into a room?
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, God, I've tortured myself over this.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm gonna have to go with hate me, by pink, because it's like kind of an anthem.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's all about, you know, then making you the bad guy.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, turning you into the scapegoat, all right, so.
[SPEAKER_02]: And she's like, sure, good for it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, have that in.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll be the villain.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, carbohydrate.
[SPEAKER_02]: coconut cake specifically is my all-time favorite.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's really the only one that I can't be like, no, I'll not have any carbs because it's just fantastic.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there like, do you have a spot near you?
[SPEAKER_00]: That is your gym?
[SPEAKER_02]: Not in the town where I live, but there is a place about 35 miles from here and then that has phenomenal a bakery that has phenomenal coconut cake.
[SPEAKER_02]: Have you ever made a best ever?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you a bunch of a baker?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can bake my little heart out, so instead.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I don't like to, I don't like to bake those kinds of things for myself.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I'll bake bread and cookies and brownies and all that kind of stuff, but like cakes.
[SPEAKER_02]: I want some one too.
[SPEAKER_02]: Someone else to do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: But someone to make it for me.
[SPEAKER_02]: I want it to be special.
[SPEAKER_02]: Nice.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's that's my all-time favorite.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's so good.
[SPEAKER_02]: And kind of of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to say wasabi, but I feel like people are going to say that's not a condiment, but you can get it in the condiment aisle at the grocery store.
[SPEAKER_00]: I agree.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's delicious.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's delicious.
[SPEAKER_02]: I like a particularly like the ones that just feel like the inside of your forehead is like melting.
[SPEAKER_02]: It made it.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's my favorite.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you use it on other things other than sushi?
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, something.
[SPEAKER_02]: So if I have a pack of tuna off-road and put it with a pack of tuna, sometimes if I do stir fry or something, I'll throw a little in there.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is your most used condiment, barbecues?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, sorry, I guess.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a vinegar based.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I'm sure in the day I win this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so how did you learn that you were an adult child?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I've stumbled across it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I ignored things for most of my life and would have claimed that I did not have any trauma, because I used to use my sister all the time at the end, like really dramatic and making a big deal out of things and, you know, claiming that we were traumatized.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, whatever, we were not.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I started therapy with an EMDR therapist and realized that there was a whole lot of my childhood that I just kind of not blocked out necessarily I do think there are repressed memories, but I just glossed it over and was like, I mean, yeah, that was no fun, but let's not think about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And she shared with me the traits and the laundry list traits and recommended that I start looking into it or go to 12 step meetings or whatever and I didn't do 12 set meetings at first because I thought it was a religious thing or religious thing and I didn't understand that the higher power and the it's not the same so.
[SPEAKER_02]: Once I, I loosely forced that to start reading about it and listening to podcasts and you know like being present in it, but not participating in it, and then started with ACA meetings and things like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And all of this has been like then like the last three years three years.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what what were the circumstances though that led you into EMDR was it like big T shock trauma and adulthood.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, it was it was knowing as I started with that therapist you started talking about what led you to going to that therapist to begin with.
[SPEAKER_02]: My marriage.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the relationship with him and I recognize that every relationship I've ever had has the same patterns like mega self sabotage or over here.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I was like, I've, I've got to get me, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Cause I just, I didn't, I didn't feel right.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think I've ever felt right, like ever in my eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Was that the first time you had been to therapy?
[SPEAKER_02]: I had been to therapy before, but not seriously.
[SPEAKER_02]: I had gone to a therapist that felt a lot more neat in a friend for coffee than therapy.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I saw her for about a year and was like, you know what, all we do is chit-chat.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like we don't.
[SPEAKER_02]: She didn't push me to go any deeper and I needed someone to make me do this and so when I switched to the other therapist like she was, you know, she pulled took the gloves off and was just like not forgetting in here.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it first I hated her, hated her because every time I left that session, like I felt sick and I was just like, you know, and I was doing it at work.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's like, I'd take my lunch and I do what I'm doing right now.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll go up to an empty office and have this session with her and then go back down like absolutely trash.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, I, so I finally had to tell her I'm like, you're going to bring it down just a little bit, but it took me a long time to even be able to tell you that to do like this is too rough.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm you're going too hard, because I didn't think, you know, what I mean, like it was my right to say that her, and then once I figured that out, then we kind of got it, you know, a little bit smoother, but yeah, she did some IFS stuff to which was extremely helpful along with the NBR, but.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, do you remember I'm curious kind of how as you're going in there to deal with your marriage, how it sort of slowly starts unraveled that this is rooted in childhood?
[SPEAKER_02]: Over the years, Ryder, I had started to admit to myself that yes, these things were bad, these things were overboard.
[SPEAKER_02]: This definitely impacted you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like again, I didn't know at that point in time
[SPEAKER_02]: The one therapist who was like, besties, her, she did point out to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, well, I don't have trauma.
[SPEAKER_02]: And she was like, oh, thank you, too.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, no, no.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so she kind of had to like walk me through that you don't have to be, you know, subjected to these huge,
[SPEAKER_02]: Incidences.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it can be those subtle things and the subtle things are sometimes worse than the one big incident.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's when it started us started trying to tie it back and I knew that of course the versions of reality from my on the middle of three sisters and.
[SPEAKER_02]: All of us have things we've carried forward.
[SPEAKER_02]: Our versions of reality are differ about how things were.
[SPEAKER_02]: My older sister leans in favor of my mother a lot more than my father.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't really lean in favor of either one of them.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not really sure where my younger sister lands, because she just doesn't like to talk about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's just
[SPEAKER_02]: I think I realized that I had intentionally forgotten or misplaced those memories, you know, because it's, I had said a few times that what I remember, I have some very vivid memories and the rest of it is like flipping through a picture book.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like I can see the little pictures, but I have the feelings, but I don't necessarily have the content, the memory content,
[SPEAKER_00]: fun fun yeah okay well there's more to dive in there there but let's go back to the beginning so how okay how would you describe your childhood so my mother's entire family with the exception of her older sister
[SPEAKER_02]: our alcoholics.
[SPEAKER_02]: So naturally she was an alcoholic.
[SPEAKER_02]: As far back as I can remember, when we were younger, I don't know how to put this other than to say she was a little more alive, you know, involved.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, she would still pick a set from school, take us to school, run the errands, you know, be involved in things.
[SPEAKER_02]: We were also to have those witnesses.
[SPEAKER_02]: So there
[SPEAKER_02]: with very controlled, well, everything you did was controlled.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like it, you had to live in these really kind of your little boxes and not be anything different.
[SPEAKER_02]: Don't ask any questions.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we knew from a very young age because they don't separate it out like Sunday school for the kids or whatever.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like from birth, you're in the same room with everybody else.
[SPEAKER_00]: Were your parents raised in it?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, do you know how they got involved?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, so my father's parents, I don't know how they got involved, but they got involved first.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it was my grandmother's family in like Raleigh Durham, North Carolina, got involved and then, because they were living down in that area.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then the congregation that started in this county initially was started by
[SPEAKER_02]: my father's parents and two other couples.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so other families would move to make the congregation grow and all of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we were witnesses my entire life.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think, well, until I left.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think my father shows to get involved when Mom got pregnant with
[SPEAKER_02]: is when he decided, so I believe from her birth up, we, you know, it was always that way.
[SPEAKER_02]: Before that, my dad was a long-haired hippie playing in a rock band whose band broke down on the way to Woodstock.
[SPEAKER_02]: Fala, total 180, total 180.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's everything was just so straight.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can't have any friends.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you don't have birthday parties.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't celebrate birthdays, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: No, holidays.
[SPEAKER_02]: Nothing.
[SPEAKER_02]: No birthdays, no holidays.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can't have friends outside of the religious community.
[SPEAKER_02]: No one can be trusted.
[SPEAKER_02]: Did you go to public school?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, until high school.
[SPEAKER_00]: OK. And so do you have a memory of sort of realizing
[SPEAKER_00]: what you were experiencing was like different or off or do you have memories of like, it being your birthday at school?
[SPEAKER_00]: Having a realization of, I don't get to celebrate my birthday and other kids do?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, like immediately.
[SPEAKER_02]: I would have to leave the room.
[SPEAKER_02]: If they had little birthday parties or holiday parties or anything in the classroom, I had to leave the room.
[SPEAKER_02]: had to go to the library which actually was fine by me because I love books and probably why I'm such book nerd.
[SPEAKER_02]: But yes, so like from I'm literally first grade on and I was absolutely tortured at school and bullied and everything by everybody else because here's this little weirdo who you know can't
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't play any sports.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't be in chorus.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't, you know, I can't even be in the room for birthdays.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't stand up for the pledge of allegiance.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it was just one thing after another.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you remember being instructed to like buy your parents?
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when if they're doing any sort of like a party or birthday, you have to leave.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you remember having those conversations?
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: That expectation was was clear.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I would have I would have been being unfaithful.
[SPEAKER_02]: to God to not have left the room.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and in that fear, it was so enormous.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like, not the idea of,
[SPEAKER_02]: God not letting me anymore, you know, like that's that was the care that got dangled in front of you all the time, which is why I really, really, I'm not okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: What organized religions?
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, now that they're just, but that they're so fucked up.
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, yeah, I mean, it was absolutely the expectation.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you're told to expect to be persecuted, you know, like this is, it's persecution, expect to be persecuted, expect for your life to be hard.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, and it's like
[SPEAKER_02]: going through those things, and it's really mind-blowing how twisted it is.
[SPEAKER_02]: And these folks, genuine, like, think they're right.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, they're, were there not any, like your siblings were there not any other kids in your grade that were also Jehovah's Witness?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, no.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was really, okay, and I'm assuming you lived in a pretty small
[SPEAKER_02]: The county is huge, but the school that I went to was just my sisters and I the next school over there were a couple because we lived close but not close enough to be in the same school, but you know it's like my older sister.
[SPEAKER_02]: She did not experience these things.
[SPEAKER_02]: My younger sister, but my younger sister was the family mascot.
[SPEAKER_02]: She was the funny one.
[SPEAKER_02]: Everybody loved her.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like, you just couldn't not.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then Heather was the golden child.
[SPEAKER_02]: So she always made really good grades and she was pretty.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like it didn't even sayzer.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, she would just go do the things.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't know how I ended up being
[SPEAKER_02]: that's an awful experience, but I would fake illnesses like so that I didn't have to go to school and it really, really badly in school because I didn't want to draw any attention to myself.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I wouldn't ask questions if I didn't understand anything.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, they're honestly didn't even start considering those things and still I started working through the ACA steps and I was like
[SPEAKER_02]: there's the signs above of, you know, how this was impacting me, even, you know, from just a young young age.
[SPEAKER_00]: On your actual birthday, was there any acknowledgement that it was your birthday?
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you know when your birthday was?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sign me, we knew whenever it was, but there was nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, was there nothing like, oh, today's your birthday?
[SPEAKER_00]: What even be said?
[SPEAKER_00]: And now, what do you think it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Would you even notice?
[SPEAKER_02]: No, no, I mean, I knew.
[SPEAKER_02]: I knew that I'd turned a year.
[SPEAKER_02]: I knew that, oh, today I'm nine.
[SPEAKER_02]: But that was it.
[SPEAKER_02]: That was it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And my birthday is in June.
[SPEAKER_02]: So at least it had to be in school.
[SPEAKER_02]: what member they, but I remember one year my older sisters, her birthday is in November, and I remember send a de brought her a birthday gift.
[SPEAKER_02]: One of her friends brought her a birthday gift to school and she brought a home and hit it and that was like her treasured, her mother, it's treasured item for the longest time because she had never, she'd never gotten what it'd be for.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, but it was the couple of people all the way through elementary school and middle school.
[SPEAKER_02]: I had two friends and not even at the same time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like it was across the whole time.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they would always ask questions.
[SPEAKER_02]: They would be like, that aren't you sad?
[SPEAKER_02]: Don't you wish?
[SPEAKER_02]: And like, I see them having it, but it doesn't resonate with me.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, because I've never experienced it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sometimes we could talk bad until I get Christmas driving around and looking at the Christmas lights at night.
[SPEAKER_02]: Every once in a while, we'd be like, can we please drive down there and look at their Christmas lights?
[SPEAKER_02]: And he would take us to look at the Christmas lights.
[SPEAKER_02]: But that's all it was to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: It didn't mean anything more to me at that point.
[SPEAKER_02]: Then, oh, they're lights are pretty.
[SPEAKER_02]: So alcohol is permitted.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you could have a glass of wine when you went out or drink to beer, when you know what I mean, but alcohol is and does not permit it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, and so she, once she got to the point where it was obvious, and you couldn't really like keep it under the rug anymore, they dispel a shift her from the congregation.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that that happened when I was about 12, really.
[SPEAKER_00]: So tell me about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, first of all, were you aware of like always aware of your mother's drinking?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: As far back as I can remember, originally when I was small, I can remember her drinking was she was making dinner or drinking while we were getting ready for bed or you know, was there an awareness of like when she's like intoxicated or is it just like mom's drinking?
[SPEAKER_02]: Not at first.
[SPEAKER_02]: I would say that awareness probably didn't come into us about six.
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe seven.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was summer and we were out of school and my younger sister and I I don't know where my older sister ended up half the time like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: She's not in the majority of my memories.
[SPEAKER_02]: But she's just off somewhere that my younger sister and I were only two years apart.
[SPEAKER_02]: And how many years older was she?
[SPEAKER_02]: Four.
[SPEAKER_02]: for okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so my younger sister and I would pat a little nap sack of food and stuff and just take off, just leave, just wander off.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we lived on a main highway.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was only too late, but it was a it was a main highway.
[SPEAKER_02]: about three houses down in the cross the street was a gas station feed store daily thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: We would walk down the highway across the road and he would make us sandwiches and give us coats like we're seven and five.
[SPEAKER_02]: In nobody, but it was the 80s, but like in no point did he think, wow, that's really it.
[SPEAKER_02]: You just make a sandwich and give us a cook and uh, did you roll and we'd leave again.
[SPEAKER_02]: But we would we would go out.
[SPEAKER_02]: There was a big field of big barn on the stuff behind the house and we go out in the barn.
[SPEAKER_02]: We get up on the loft and we jump off the loft into the hay and we'd
[SPEAKER_02]: wander way out through the field, which in reality it's probably only two miles across, but when you're small, that's a long way.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we would be gone all sucking day, and we'd get back, and she would have had no clue.
[SPEAKER_02]: no clue.
[SPEAKER_02]: We had been gone.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that summer is when it started to click that I was like, why am she not mad?
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like why does she not yell for us?
[SPEAKER_02]: Why does she not come looking or anything?
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't have a problem with it.
[SPEAKER_02]: We were asked, you know, exploring and just, you know, having a great time.
[SPEAKER_02]: But we were also after about that age, we spent more time at my aunt's house, or my grandparents' house, or
[SPEAKER_02]: somebody else in the community religious communities house and I think that's when her drinking had started really ramping up and maybe her behaviors were starting to change and so dad would just work at us, work it out for us to be somewhere else and so I feel like I was kind of shielded from some of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: happening, did your parents fight much?
[SPEAKER_02]: Not until after she was distillation.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't remember them fighting much until after that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because when she was distillation, even though we lived in the same house, like we were expected to withdraw from her.
[SPEAKER_00]: Really, so could you, okay, I want to hear kind of like, do you know like what the tale of events was that like led to this?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't.
[SPEAKER_02]: She, and as she had stopped going to some of the congregation meetings and things like that, she had stopped doing that, she had stopped being involved in some things.
[SPEAKER_02]: I vaguely remember us leaving a meeting one time.
[SPEAKER_02]: early and this meeting was only like an hour long.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what they call your services or meetings is like like quick or so.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I remember us leaving that meeting early.
[SPEAKER_02]: And
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't know why we left the meeting early later.
[SPEAKER_02]: I had been talking about that with my older sister.
[SPEAKER_02]: And she was like, oh, she ran out of ear.
[SPEAKER_02]: So apparently she had had beer with her, like hidden in a pop bottle or something.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I don't know if that had anything to do with it because the timing is about right leading up to it.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think it was just, it had just gotten to the point where it was like, this is no longer something that you do.
[SPEAKER_02]: To read unwind in the evening, this is, you know, you are an alcoholic, so I think that's probably where it went, but after that it was like everything deteriorated really quickly, really quickly, what is divorce not a thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, oh, God, only on the grounds of infidelity, okay, which she was later in down the road.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know for a fact multiple instances, but yeah, like I remember.
[SPEAKER_02]: asking begging sometimes because she would just get some hateful and it was so like you never knew she was either in a great mood or she was not and like we would she would I mean scream and yell and throw things and beless and
[SPEAKER_02]: Then it would be like, wait till your dad gets home and then, you know, she'd tell that whatever and then we'd just take in and it's, oh my god, why am I getting this twice?
[SPEAKER_02]: But we got to the point where like we would just leave my, my under sister and I would just leave the house and just go into the woods or get, you know, and just stay for hours.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because we didn't want to be in the house, but because we didn't know it was going to be like, and it was one of those things were like everybody knows, but nobody will talk about it, and nobody was allowed to come over the house of course, because they couldn't be around her, but even before even before she was to fellowship, nobody ever visited us like we always went somewhere else.
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have a lot of feelings mixed feelings about that particular point in time because we didn't know any better than to do what we were told and so we would like not talk to our ignore and like you know she was already.
[SPEAKER_02]: She had some depression issues anyway I think and I can only imagine how you know what I'm saying how that was to be in the home with the people
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there a way to like be reinstated?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, you have to have really bloody knees.
[SPEAKER_02]: You have to get back in.
[SPEAKER_02]: You have to come back and you come back to meetings and no one can speak to you except the elders in the congregation.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you have to wait, I can't remember what the amount of time is it may have changed now, but you have to wait a certain amount of time.
[SPEAKER_02]: and then you have to also be studying again.
[SPEAKER_02]: So like you've never been a witness, you have to start studying again with someone.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then when you're reinstated, you're still on what they call reproof, which means no one can associate with you outside of events in the Cune Hall or with your out and field service or whatever for another amount of time until they finally decide that you are fully worthy again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: OK, so I'll continue.
[SPEAKER_00]: Woo.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's twisted, but fascinating.
[SPEAKER_02]: But so when that happened with Mom, I can remember that the elders come into the house.
[SPEAKER_02]: She didn't even let them sit on the couch.
[SPEAKER_02]: She pulled out the kitchen table chairs and made them sit in them in the living room.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they asked her, we weren't supposed to be listening, but they asked her how regular she drive.
[SPEAKER_02]: She told them.
[SPEAKER_02]: They asked her if she had any intention to stop and she told them no, and they were like, so do you understand though that you'll be distilled shit?
[SPEAKER_02]: She was like, yes, I do.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they were like, and do you understand this, this, this, this, this, all the things that she was like, yes, I do.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I remember being so horrified hearing her say all those things because I was like, no, because I knew what I knew it, I knew it, distilled a shipping list.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd say, lots of people get disgusted and it was like,
[SPEAKER_02]: So terrifying to think that, I'm like, oh, that's happening to my mom.
[SPEAKER_02]: And she was just so defiant.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was so embarrassed, and now I'm like, we're at all that first.
[SPEAKER_02]: But like, I was so embarrassed at the moment.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, but I think that happening and over the next couple of years, like, it was the way people
[SPEAKER_02]: would talk about her, that bothered me.
[SPEAKER_02]: They either wouldn't talk about her at all.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was like she didn't exist, or they would talk about how much they missed her and how much they loved her.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that hypocrisy is what really started to chip away and make me be like, I don't believe that I belong here.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because everything they say, it has an alternate version, you know?
[SPEAKER_02]: And I remember there being, there was a family friend that he was not a witness.
[SPEAKER_02]: His wife was the children would go to the meetings.
[SPEAKER_02]: He was just an old jobless drunk to you.
[SPEAKER_02]: But he would come to the house and talk to my dad for hours and hours and borrow money.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, and as I was like, so this man is an alcoholic, and here's my dad helping him out every time he comes over and every time he's sobbing about not having money money in my dad.
[SPEAKER_01]: We didn't have any money.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's my dad given him money.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I can't talk to my mom in my own fucking kitchen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, because it's so messed up.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's just like all these little things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you know anyone else who
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, yes, one of my friend's fathers had been this fellowship and I had known other people to I wasn't close to the family, but I knew of them and some of them get this fellowship and they're still just coming right until they get reinstated, you know, but others get this fellowship and you hadn't seen them in six months before that anyway, but you know that it means the door is shut, you know, like you're dead to them, they're dead to you, it's now if I see them out in public like they.
[SPEAKER_02]: They'll recognize me and then immediately turn, put their head down and it's been 20 some no God longer than that 30 years.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they're still to that shit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you still, do you live in the area that you grew up in?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: But what's really fun is sometimes like I see people who have no clue who I am and they'll be like like sometimes they'll, you know, they don't really do feel service since COVID so they don't come to the house that I'll see and they set up on the corners and outside of businesses and stuff now.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'll kind of like smile and wave and they'll be like, oh, how you doing?
[SPEAKER_01]: And they'll start talking to me and I'm like, do you not know who I am?
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're like, no, no, no, no, no, I'm like a bitch down my dad.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're like, yeah, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how I want to tell my dad's name and it's a stem wall.
[SPEAKER_01]: They just, they don't know what the fuck to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: I heard just like, oh shit.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, 30 years later, I still have a reputation, I guess.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what was your journey in leaving?
[SPEAKER_01]: new.
[SPEAKER_02]: I did not want to be a part of that anymore at what age 15.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was 16 when I left.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I knew that I knew what all of it meant.
[SPEAKER_02]: I knew everything I was giving up.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, I thought about it for a long time.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I met an absolutely horrendous person who ended up leaving home with.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like
[SPEAKER_02]: And so he was my first experience with everything, non-witness, and really awful person.
[SPEAKER_02]: But he was an opera, he opened the door, he was the door.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I was on again off again with him for probably 18 months to a year, my oldest son, the one that I did not get the opportunity to raise his.
[SPEAKER_02]: done again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you like run away from home or like you left in your family near your relieving?
[SPEAKER_02]: I left a note.
[SPEAKER_02]: I waited for my dad to get up and go to work and then I put the note in his bedroom and left.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I couldn't, I don't think I could have said it to his face.
[SPEAKER_02]: I really don't.
[SPEAKER_02]: My dad was very
[SPEAKER_02]: But he didn't share his emotions and he wasn't like super affectionate or anything like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I never thought, oh, my dad doesn't love me or wondered if he didn't love me, but he just didn't show it.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, and especially once we got past the age of five, like he wouldn't even hug us anymore.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, oh, it sounds pretty emotionally.
[SPEAKER_02]: I available to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess in reality it is.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I just don't think I don't think I could have.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm the most like my dad.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm all of my sisters.
[SPEAKER_02]: I had the closest relationship with him.
[SPEAKER_02]: Of all of us and it took me the longest to lay any responsibility at his feet of the three of us.
[SPEAKER_02]: I blamed it all on mom for the longest time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Mom and the religion.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I was like, well dad was just
[SPEAKER_02]: which is bullshit, we all got choices to make.
[SPEAKER_00]: But, um, well, it's interesting, too, because it sounds like it's your mom that brought him into it, and then she ends up being the one that gets kicked out.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but I don't think she ever, I don't think art was ever in it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think.
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, I don't think her heart was in anything.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't count the time.
[SPEAKER_02]: She told me in my younger sister that she never wanted any more kids.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think she wanted my older sister to be honest, but you know, she was the one that was the most like mom and the closest to mom and all that stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, she's telling me and tear all the time.
[SPEAKER_02]: that she didn't want us.
[SPEAKER_02]: She wish she hadn't had us.
[SPEAKER_02]: She didn't want three kids.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think I probably got the most of her physical anger.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think that's because she
[SPEAKER_02]: chose to take it out on me more so than Tara Heather didn't get much of it at all.
[SPEAKER_02]: I would put myself between her and my younger sister a lot to try to protect my younger sister.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think that you know, when I look back at first when I was looking back, I was like, can I'm the one she beat all the time, but then I
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, started thinking a little more and was like, well, that's because I would get in the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I would start talking shit to her.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that you would just keep coming at me and not come at Tara.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you stop going to school when you left home?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh-huh.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And went in a few years later, went and, you know, got a JD and everything from the community college.
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, the years after I left home were of.
[SPEAKER_02]: Bucking like roller coaster because I knew absolutely nothing about anything how long was it until you spoke or saw your parents again.
[SPEAKER_02]: So at first
[SPEAKER_02]: It's every nail and then we would talk.
[SPEAKER_02]: My dad actually came looking for me.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know how exactly my older sister probably told him where I would say, no, I wouldn't have crossed my mind.
[SPEAKER_02]: Honestly at the time, it was just like, I was like four miles away.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is how far away at all.
[SPEAKER_02]: My world is just so small.
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, like he,
[SPEAKER_02]: He actually showed up at the house I was living at when my boyfriend was there and tried to give him a guilt trip to guilt trip me and to come in back home.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he was like, yeah, man, I mean, I'll tell her.
[SPEAKER_02]: But if I, for the first few years, like if I needed something,
[SPEAKER_02]: be in money or something like if I call them, he'd be like, yeah, you can have some make.
[SPEAKER_02]: But then it's like, I just slowly stop, you know, even communicating with him.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then it would be, you know, like he's that my other two sons, he's not seen since they were.
[SPEAKER_02]: Children like babies maybe four and three or four now and before and newborn.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think he's seen Riley more than That's that true.
[SPEAKER_02]: There was one instance, but when he's not seen them as many years as he's not seen me and
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't even have anything to say really at this point.
[SPEAKER_02]: It used to really bother me and make me like really sad.
[SPEAKER_02]: And now I'm just like, what would I even talk about?
[SPEAKER_02]: What would we even talk about?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because the things that I want to talk about, he would not want to talk about.
[SPEAKER_02]: And Mom's been dead for... You wanted to see him pass away?
[SPEAKER_02]: Hmm, 98, 97 or 98.
[SPEAKER_02]: And were they married until the end?
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Misribley, but married.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then he remarried within probably two years of her dying.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I remember that pissing both of my sisters off.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, he's been an unfulfilling and happy marriage like most of our lives.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I'm blaming for going and being happy, but you know, well, I don't know if my sisters did, but there were a few times that like we would beg him to make her leave and one night he actually made her pack a suitcase and I just knew I was like, oh my god, this is it, this is it, this is it, but then he didn't make her leave.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was so the train, I felt so betrayed.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I really thought we were going to be able to have safety because we've never had any safety.
[SPEAKER_02]: And at that point, I didn't recognize that being in that religion was as unsafe as my mother was.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just knew that my mother was really unsafe.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is your dad still part of Jehovah's Witness?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And are either of your siblings?
[SPEAKER_02]: No.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, both of them are no.
[SPEAKER_00]: And do either of them have much of a relationship with your dad?
[SPEAKER_02]: And if, no, okay, no, I have spoken to my dad since they had spoken to my dad, and it's that's been very long time.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we don't have much of relationship with the three of us.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're very estranged.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a group text that we talk some bullshit in every found in, but like they aren't willing to go here yet.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's really hard for me to tolerate conversations with them sometimes, because I remember having the blinders on,
[SPEAKER_02]: I think they absolutely are aware, but they just refuse to look, which I've been there.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I understand, but it's really hard for me now to engage with them.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I was like, I just want to shake the shit out of them.
[SPEAKER_02]: Today, live near you.
[SPEAKER_02]: One of them it lives about two hours away.
[SPEAKER_02]: The other lives in Pensacola, Florida.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so your marriage brought you into therapy.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when you say that self-savitude showing up in relationships, so what was that pattern?
[SPEAKER_00]: What did that look like?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a way that you're picking on or how you're behaving or no, it was on me?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I can't say on me.
[SPEAKER_02]: Until I got into sobriety, I'd chose people who also drank a lot and yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because that's how we'd meet each other.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that's what most of our relationships were founded around.
[SPEAKER_02]: But my go to method of sabotage was in fidelity.
[SPEAKER_02]: I got to thinking about this the other day, because I've been working on it a little bit in step four, but then also after Anna's share.
[SPEAKER_02]: Last week, it's been me and every relationship except that my marriage is the first one.
[SPEAKER_02]: I felt remorse over and I don't want to say but I don't want to make an excuse.
[SPEAKER_02]: I will say that I had zero.
[SPEAKER_02]: ERA, you know, what's the word?
[SPEAKER_02]: I had no one ever in my life to give me an example of what, you know, a safe and healthy relationship was.
[SPEAKER_02]: But then my first boyfriend was, I mean, we could talk for hours, not that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So all of my men, not to just forget all the trauma and shame and everything that you learned about yourself is worth it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I really, truly, I don't even enjoy sex that much.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I don't know that I ever have.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've probably had sex that I wanted to have maybe 10 times an entire life.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I didn't think that no was an option a lot of times I thought like a somebody wanted to.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was just a student.
[SPEAKER_02]: I also thought that that was going to be the only way I got connect.
[SPEAKER_02]: I could connect with somebody.
[SPEAKER_02]: I thought it was the only I thought it meant that somebody loved me.
[SPEAKER_02]: I thought it meant, you know, all these things.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was using it or things that it was not.
[SPEAKER_02]: And and I knew that somebody would leave you if you cheated on them.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I got to the point in a relationship where.
[SPEAKER_02]: I felt like I was, because I'm avoiding in the first place, end-code opinion, which is a weird thing to be.
[SPEAKER_02]: But once I got to the point where I was like, oh my god, I'm drowning.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm snuttering, they won't go away.
[SPEAKER_02]: And people who were too nice, I didn't like people who were too nice to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: But like, I'd get to the point in a relationship where I was like, okay, I need out.
[SPEAKER_02]: And instead of just saying, hey, I don't want to be in this relationship anymore, I would give sleep to somebody else and then tell them let them find out about it, whatever.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I honest to God cannot think of a single, I've tried, I've been trying for a couple of weeks now to think of a single relationship.
[SPEAKER_02]: that I did not sleep or someone else and I can't think of a single one.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I thought I would say that until, and that I feel was my ACA button was cheating on my husband because it was only one time.
[SPEAKER_02]: I had no intention of it happening at all, you know, had not premeditated it like I'd premeditated it and they retone before.
[SPEAKER_02]: But we were at a really shitty place in our relationship.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think those of us wanted to be out of it, but neither of us wanted to be out of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: It like those of us were very, very codependent with each other.
[SPEAKER_02]: There was one night we had been out to eat.
[SPEAKER_02]: We had been drinking heavily, coming back home.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't remember much of the argument, but I remember him telling me that he didn't really give a shit if I, if we were together or not.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't think he had ever really said anything like that to me before.
[SPEAKER_02]: And
[SPEAKER_02]: Even though part of me agreed, like it still is just I just felt so hurt and it just so happened that that same evening this old friend of mine who we had never had a romantic relationship but it was any tie any kind.
[SPEAKER_02]: He had been at your head this witness to we just not each other forever and he had reached out to me and I was like I'm coming to your house and he was like okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I drove two and a half hours away, drunk as shit, Andrea, drove two and a half hours down to his house.
[SPEAKER_02]: I still had no intention of anything like that happening.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just knew I needed somewhere to land and I was hoping it would piss him off that I went and hung out with this dude friend of mine.
[SPEAKER_02]: Dude friend.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, this dude friend of mine because he was very kind of
[SPEAKER_02]: I get down there in the first thing, dude friend does is offer me ecstasy.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, I don't fucking want that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like what?
[SPEAKER_02]: Want that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, I can't even down to your to bitch about my husband, not, you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm 40 some years old, what do you even do with that shit?
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm just an alcoholic these days.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's all I do.
[SPEAKER_02]: But so he, I turned that down and it's still never crossed my mind that he's going to try to sleep with me.
[SPEAKER_02]: Then eventually, I don't remember the point where I was like, you know what, fuck it?
[SPEAKER_02]: But I know that's what happened.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know in my mind I was like, he said he didn't care if you were to either or not, fuck it.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is your door, this is the door you always walk through, walk through it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I did, and immediately hated myself for it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not gonna say I don't think, oh man, that was really shitty, I shouldn't have done that in the past, but I have never felt deep remorse like this before, like guilt, and I was like, I have to go.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he was like, what the fuck just happened?
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, what the fuck did just happen?
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, I have to go.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have to go tell my husband that this just happened.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I did, and he was of course really, really angry at first.
[SPEAKER_02]: And within hours was like super forgiving and understanding and trying to sleep with me, which I think was just, I think is just like a way of reclaiming your property.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, that's what it felt like.
[SPEAKER_02]: And all of that was just such a minefuck to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that I had been living an ACA bottom for probably years and just didn't know
[SPEAKER_02]: When I said to myself, I can't fucking do any of this anymore.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have got to stop.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was still a year before I quit drinking, but like, I was like, you're killing yourself.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're killing yourself and every relationship you have ever fucking had because you won't handle your shit.
[SPEAKER_02]: You've got to go handle your shit.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that's when immediately tried to start sweeping it under the rug and then we made a trip to Florida and the guy had been emailing me here and they are and I answered one of the emails drunk as hell again answered one of the emails and that's set off another chain of events like nothing like prior but between me and my husband and
[SPEAKER_02]: There's just so much, I would, I guess, another way that I would act out a lot as I would say things that were just awful.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, really hurtful things that maybe weren't true or I didn't even mean, and it wasn't even that it made me feel good.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was just like, I have to cut you some way.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have to make you bleed too, because I'm over here in all this pain that I don't know how to process.
[SPEAKER_02]: Don't remember the original question.
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you ever thought about this and you probably have, but like, you grew up in a religion where the only way you could get a divorce was infidelity.
[SPEAKER_02]: I hadn't really ever thought about it that way, but I mean, it makes sense that it would tie back.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like your parents were in a relationship like in a loveless marriage that should have ended and you grew up in an in a religion where that is the only way that a relationship could end was if you cheated on somebody so it makes sense that that's how you ended all of your relationships.
[SPEAKER_02]: Still, it's still, interestingly, not that it has anything to do with me, but like it's still only that has been that can terminate the marriage in those situations the wife can't.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I'm just saying like that's kind of what a message that was in the end, you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I mean, the idea of just staying no matter what and and the fact that you're not supposed to love the person you're with, it's a very painful realization
[SPEAKER_02]: You've operated in that way for so long because it's and I hate that I miss the meeting yesterday.
[SPEAKER_02]: It probably made me cry, but I hate that I missed it because when I read the reading after I go off work last night, I was like me and that is one of the things that I really mourn is that I
[SPEAKER_02]: I had so many years that I'm asked with drugs or alcohol or relationships or name it, you name it, that I could have been healthy, you know, and I'm past carrying shame and regret about choices that I made at well, I can't say I'm past it that I'm much better about it than it really is just it feels like set to loss.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's a deep grief.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't get it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, we're doing a girl.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, years.
[SPEAKER_02]: I had doing it, damn it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then what about the relationship with your kids as a result of starting this healing?
[SPEAKER_02]: I never had what I would have thought was a bad relationship with my children, but they definitely have some stories.
[SPEAKER_02]: When I had decided I was going to stop drinking, there was like a 24 pack of crannies or something that I'd drink in six out of and the rest were on the counter and they were there for like months and months and months and months and months and months.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just hadn't gotten rid of them and I remember my youngest son looking at me one day and he was like,
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you not drinking more?
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm lying down, but I had been slowing down for the year before I didn't drink nearly as much for the year before I quit drinking.
[SPEAKER_02]: And here's like, D, D, not drinking more.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's like, now, and he's okay, okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: I thought you were different, but I wasn't sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then my middle child was like, oh, she's different for sure, but yeah, they have some interesting stories.
[SPEAKER_02]: When I finally got brave enough to ask them,
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, what do you remember?
[SPEAKER_02]: But how did you think about me like to drink, but they didn't, you know, they didn't have anything bad or damage to say that I've also been the parent to them that has always handled everything?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I'm the one that gets into the doctor pace for their stuff, takes care, you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_02]: So I've always been that parent.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I guess the,
[SPEAKER_02]: high-functioning part of it may as masks a little bit of how serious it was.
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe that for a while.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I would stay up until three or four in the morning drinking straight liquor and then go to bed for three hours and get up and just do my life the next day.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like how we're able to function, it's kind of like mind-blowing, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: It is.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is.
[SPEAKER_02]: But now I'm like, oh God, what's my liver going to do in five years?
[SPEAKER_02]: But you wait for that surprise.
[SPEAKER_02]: You remember that, I'll remember all that drinking you did?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, here you go.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's, I will say that I enjoy sobriety, though.
[SPEAKER_02]: I enjoyed it immediately.
[SPEAKER_02]: I haven't.
[SPEAKER_02]: I haven't been tempted to drink again.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think I was just so done, so so done that I don't have any interest at all.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I'm not going to tint it and have a drink.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't even know if I could.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think smelling it would make me just slow at this point, but I think the thing for me would be like the massive amount of guilt I would feel immediately.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Mine has been so much more
[SPEAKER_02]: Like the stopping the substances hasn't been the hard part for me.
[SPEAKER_02]: It, I mean, it took me a very long time to be brave enough to do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: But like once I did it, it was over.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's the emotional sobriety that is the big work I think for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, give me three things that you like about yourself.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I like that I am kind now, I am kind now.
[SPEAKER_02]: I like that I am able to willing to do the work I need to do to heal.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I like that I'm funny.
[SPEAKER_03]: Hmm.
[SPEAKER_02]: I, oh gosh.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I try to have weighed dreams, but I would really love to retire in Portugal.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've always been that that's where I would get.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have not been.
[SPEAKER_02]: I need to guess I should go before.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I might want to check it out first.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I've always been like, I'm going to retire in Portugal.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I love it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's the top to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I need to hear all about your story.