Podcast Transcript
welcome to the straight jacket podcast my name is Matt this is Jeff local Treatment Center owner then we have our
guest today Sam who’s going to be talking about her experience with mental health
hi so Sam tell us about uh how mental health has impacted your life I have
dealt with a wide array of it between dating my um Family
friendships um a lot of self um depression
anxiety trauma PTSD borderline um pretty much you name it I’ve been
through it um therapy you know books
meditation um I’ve seen it I’ve been through it kind of across the board for the most part
so uh have you experienced borderline person person Al or is that I’ve dated somebody with borderline wow that’s a
that’s a pretty serious personality disorder um what was that like um the
highs were highs and the lows were lows um they were
on um like antibiotics for it and when they stopped taking them you would
really see the influx of the roller coaster of their mental health you could
have you could wake up having a perfect day and then you you know 12:00 hits
and it’s like a you know like a storm blew over and then you you stand there
kind of questioning like who they are cuz you it’s like they put a mask over
themselves and you don’t really know who’s who because you’re looking at two completely different
personas you met someone you get to know somebody then all of a sudden the next day or the next moment they just a completely different person mhm like a
snap of the finger you don’t know when you don’t know why you don’t know how along and then they snap out of it and
that usually follows with you know the the gaslighting the um the romanticizing
and the love bombing and you kind of get in your own head wondering like who you’re actually like in a relationship
with and even you know in friendships the same way it’s it really uh really
can trigger you mentally not so much dealing with somebody else you end up becoming sick
yourself you kind of start believing uh I don’t know if I don’t know if I
want to call it lies but like you just don’t know which what to believe as far as their personality goes right mhm you
end up building like a fantasy of like what what you think they are like what you want for
yourselves I guess so to speak um and it’s it’s like an internal battle every
day yeah I mean I feel like a lot of people I’m glad that you shared on that
do kind of struggle with toxic relationships um you have any more
insight on that so like for example like an episode I’ll never forget I was in San Francisco when we were driving he
was driving and I was a passenger and we were in the middle of the highway and like rush hour traffic and I said
something it completely set him off he chucked a water bottle at me in the
front seat and mind you we have had like a perfect day going forward it was just like a snap of a finger pulls over
basically kicks me out of the car on the side of an on-ramp of the freeway and
just drives off and I had to climb down the side the freeway and go to a
restaurant and then next thing you know two hours later calls me like nothing ever happened like hey are you okay you
know I want to see you I love you I’m sorry and then it’s like you’re in your
head wondering okay this person that I’m in a relationship with and who says they
love me just literally threw a water bottle and dropped me and didn’t really
care if I was alive or dead and then once he’s out of an episode it’s it’s like believing or it’s what to
believe and then went home and just went around
think about her happy ways like nothing ever happened that day it was like that every single day and it just gets to the
point where like you just kind of just stay quiet and keep your head down just to avoid any sort of conflict just so
because you start to think that you’re the problem and you’re instigating it
or it’s you’re having a bad day you’re in a bad mood it’s all it’s always finger
pointing it’s really not you it’s them but that’s understanding the mental health side of it knowing and
understanding that specific disorder it’s got to be challenging because it’s like you get to know this person you
know who they are when they’re not like yeah you you know how they act when they’re not in an episode and all of a
sudden they’re going through this episode it’s even though you can acknowledge that this is like due to their mental health disorder it’s still
coming from them they’re saying it with their their words you know out of their mouth and even though you can identify
okay this person is not like that’s not really them talking it’s still them saying it so all the feelings that come
from it it still hurts you know it’s still confusing you know it’s like you know
it’s hard to separate that when you see it coming from them I mean I know I’ve had instances where in past
relationships where I was under the influence of stuff and I would act and say things that weren’t right is that
how I act on a normal basis no but those moments you
know it it still came for me so it still affected that person as if I said it
when I was sober or when I wasn’t going through a personal mental health
issue and uh so have you ever been how about personally how have you struggled
with mental health I started going through ptsc like
depression therapy from the time I was probably 14 years old my parents
divorced and growing up in a household of alcoholism and abuse kind of trickled
down to how I was as a kid and then um going through therapy trying to you know
go through with specifically family therapists uh to be able to kind of help
me navigate the divorce and splitting Homes at 14 13 14 years old and then
fast forward 16 my dad passed away um and then having not only family
counseling but now I’m going through grief counseling and I was put on antibiotics for like CLA and pin and uh
is it uh Z Zofran zof Zoloft uh 16 years old um and then you know going through
and they’re giving me all these different things telling me I have this this this this and just kind of giving
you know medicine and scripts for and again I’m 16 years old um but for so long I kind of just
was use those mental health factors as almost like a not a title but that’s I
would take it almost like a personality trait even though it wasn’t I feel like
they weren’t doing a lot of things to be able to heal that and talk about it they
just kind of say oh well you know what like you lost a parent you’re depressed well here’s this rather than
understanding the nature of how it is and what depression and anxiety and all those things things actually
are but I started being introduced to that world at a very young age which
then led into me using um those and then
moving into opiates and then that’s kind of what started my long history of
Jes I mean there’s a lot there well first off I’m sorry to hear that your father passed away I didn’t know that um
and second uh how do you think
that this I don’t know how to put this really so I feel like nowadays people are getting diagnosed younger and
younger and younger as far as um mental health goes you know you can be
scrolling on your phone and see like so many different things like anxiety like little kids having like you know autism
anxiety like all these different things and I know you’re you’re as well hope
you don’t mind me sharing that but um how do you feel
about things being diagnosed so much younger these days I think it’s wrong for example my I
have a 2-year-old son and he was behind
in a lot of his motor skills and his speech um which was contributed to a a
rough child birth and he was behind and the doctors were always kind of like weary
of him being behind especially speech by two years old a kid should be able to say 200 words and he wasn’t even close
to that and it wasn’t until he had his two and a half month checkup where they
said now that he can talk that he is no longer on this um on the Spectrum to
being autistic and to me he’s 2 and 1 half years old I don’t understand why
the topic of autism is being spread around so loosely you know because kids
are all going to develop it at various ages especially boys develop slower than
girls do uh and you know even with kids getting older five six years old they’re
getting they may have ADD or ADHD they’re getting Ridin and Aderall at such a young age rather than putting
them in into you know maybe more special ed classes or um Hands-On activities
that will be able to like fixate them or or learn what their struggles are and as
they get older then you know those kids that necessarily didn’t get the help and nurture that they need are just being
thrown into these classes that’s when they’re they’re having anger issues or
you know they’re fleeing or you know any of those things are I think are related to kind of just sliding it under the rug
CU they don’t want to do the work to you know fix things they just want to be like okay well here here’s this here’s
the pill mhm like kind of like you said you know when you were 16 and all that stuff was happening they’re giving you
these medications and going to therapy it kind of became this like uh you adapt to that like personality or all this it
was this personality trait that you adapted so those are like the developmental years of your life right
so like your brain’s still developing so being introduced and told oh you have this you have that being given
medications through a time where your brain figuring out and maturing you know especially going through like a tragic
incident like that it’s liable to develop you into that you know and um do
you think like with that being introduced at such a young age and how that’s becoming a thing much it wasn’t a
thing like when like our parents were younger right like I mean I was prescribed Brin since
I was like six years old right I don’t know ADD ADHD that seems like kind of
something that everybody has I don’t think any of our parents for really prescribed like R Le didn’t have a
pushed on them or like weren’t called out for like being like oh you got to have this like they might have had some
behavioral issue which is a normal thing growing up like you know every kid every person is going to develop in their own
in their own way in their own time you know so throwing that at them and putting a label on them at such a young
age during those development M years you know would make sense for you know like you said to feel like you had identif
ifed with that personality that became like a personality treat you know I think there’s two major problems is that
to diagnose somebody’s mental health you get a sheet of paper and you pretty much
have to do like you know are you suicidal 0 to five highly highly unlikely highly likely you know or say
you know any questions they may ask and they’re literally going off of a number you know and like I don’t think there’s
a lot of honesty on those papers I mean like if I wanted to if I was feeling
some type of way in one in my life I don’t know if I would be putting number five on a piece of paper for somebody to
read and kind of give me a scale on you know on a or a sliding scale whether I’m
sick or not um and I think too A lot of those kids that are fleeing and stuff
like that it’s coming more so for the way that they’re being nurtured at home oh absolutely abolutely you know I
um I think it’s important for somebody especially a male to be able to share
their emotions and most of the time when a man lashes out it’s that anger is
coming from a dee rooted emotion and if they were able to express themselves and
not have to feel like they they’re supposed to be this m like this masculine dominant personality things
would be a little bit different you know because of a a woman or like you know even like a little girl she cries it’s
it’s okay but if a little boy cries well come on you’re tough don’t you’re not supposed to cry you’re supposed to be
strong that carries on until they’re older as well absolutely and you know
when they grow up in that household that’s going to also affect how they are a partner and a parent you know and an
individual and I think that’s going to that also makes you know somebody’s mental health
Hinder so I wanted to touch a little bit more on your thoughts as far as
relationships mental uh relationships and mental health go in in what way like to me what you
could probably pass on to the youth or like your advice that you would want to to give the
youth I think I think it just is goes back to like almost like Black and White
males are normally providers you know they want to pay the bills and support a
family and be the Working Man well women are more so the nurturers they’re
usually more of the empaths they’re taking care of the home they’re taking care of the their children um and I
think that sometimes the upbringing they’re so molded into a role versus
understanding that they’re could be a shift you know and like it’s okay if you
know the women take on more of a masculine role and like the men take on more of a feminine role I think it
affects them also in the dating style instead of having to be like more of
a cut this part I’m losing train I had like a great train of thought like
basically like uh the RO like like the kind of like family Dynamics right is how I would think about it it’s like so
the man is the provider and then the woman is like the nurturer but it seems like you know your
opinion is that it should be it shouldn’t necessarily be like that 100%
black or white yeah yeah it should be more of to me more of like a fluid like a
fluid H um household and relationships where everyone is kind of pulling each
pulling 50/50 you know even though I guess sometimes no relationship is 50/50 right
somebody’s always going to have to pull a little a little bit more weight and be open to that with certain areas yes um
nothing’s ever going to you know nothing’s ever going to be perfect and being okay with those imperfections so
to speak you know some somebody’s going to have a bad day somebody’s going to you know wake up in a bad mood and not
necessarily letting that trickle in and carrying more weight and damage than it
needs to be how do you think that that uh I guess you could say
we call it old school how do you think that that old school um Family
Dynamic affects the affects the
kids I saw I saw something yesterday and it said when you when you ask normally
when you ask a guy how their day is they say it’s fine I’m good I do and they say
and then if you ask a woman how their day is they’re like well it’s fine but this happened this happened this happened it’s kind of like it’s not
necessarily straight line it’s kind of like a zigzag it goes all over the place
um I think if somebody was able to have more of a safe spot and I think that’s
probably the most important thing that most relationships are missing and maybe a family Dynamic is having a safe place
to express yourselves you know whether it be you know emotionally physically
mentally whatever it may be um and allowing them to be able to express
themselves without necessar being called you know crazy or you’re an
overthinker being looked down on yes 100% like you being feeling validated
for having whatever feelings you may feel um I think there’s a lot of labels now that are being thrown so loosely you
know like I said oh well you know she did so and so she’s crazy you know if I’m expressing my insecurities well
you’re just overthinking it you’re overreacting and those things completely shut down any sort of ability to be able
to be vulnerable and to be open about how somebody’s feeling and then when
you’re being labeled those things you end up kind of repressing everything and
kind of shutting down or you become more of an avoidant and you just run as soon
as you sense some sort of conflict or chaos you’re out and that’s why people
ghost and that whole ghosting culture has come about because people don’t want to face their emotions or don’t want to
face any sort of issue so they just run and they’re going to keep running and running and running until they can’t run
anymore people go through the same toxic relationships because they’re
necessarily they don’t want to change because they’re comfortable and change is more
intimidating than just staying in a toxic Circle where you’re just going
through the same thing over and over and over and if any of you have been in a toxic abusive relationship you know that
you can’t get out until you’re ready to get out you could go to your friends a thousand times and tell them how much
you know you can’t stand so and so or so and so did this but if you’re not ready to leave you’re not going to you know
you’re not going to leave I think it takes a woman I think seven or eight times in an abusive relationship to be
able to leave and to me that’s a lot you know um
and there’s a there’s an article that um that starts off well you know um I
stayed but he never hit me and understanding that you know when you’re
in an abusive relationship it doesn’t always have to be physical it can be you know verbal it can be emotional it can
be psychological and I don’t think that’s talked about
enough at all um you know you could somebody might not you know I
might not get hit in the face but I could be completely bered you know on a
verbal level well you’re not doing this enough or you’re not good enough or you did this wrong um and those emotional
heals and those verbal scars I feel like take longer to heal than the physical
ones physical ones leave a bruise and they’ll go away but the emotional ones stay you know even if you’ve been in
like a bad relationship 10 years ago they say one thing that really gets to
you you’re still going to remember that thing it’s going to carry on with you and if you don’t heal those things and
be able to like understand the root of them and know that maybe you’re not you’re not actually at fault it’s
them it will help your healing process and where your head you know mentally to
be able to heal and go forward what are um some things that you’ve done
to you well like I said I’ve gone through a lot of therapy you know both um with
grief therapy family therapy um uh like PTSD therapy
strictly focus on not only drug and alcohol but also sexual abuse um but
also I think you know therapy could be labeled at multiple things right you know I’ve done
reading I’ve done writing I’ve done I’ve had like um kind of like a self-help coach um across I mean across the board
I think it’s it’s a case by case basis everyone’s going to be able to speak on their feelings a little bit differently
you know what’s going to work for me might not work for you and might not work for you um just kind of depends on
how you cope and how you grieve grieving has multiple processes it’s not just a a
textbook way to go through it not everybody gets the opportunity or like mental health is just not talked about a
lot these days so you go through these things you’re not taught these like coping mechanisms and if you didn’t develop develop them when you were a kid
it’s like how do you deal with this stuff like you were saying how like in those past relationships where you’re
getting braided with all these things being told what you did wrong all this stuff it’s stuff you kind of become you
start to believe almost at least you know from what I’ve heard and what I’ve seen in other people people um you know
the more you start to believe it the more it becomes kind of your personality or you identify with it and if you don’t
get help for that you kind of get stuck in that mindset you know and I think that’s why a lot of people get stuck in
those same types of relationships because they never truly heal from them like you said that bruise that that’ll
go away you know that heals naturally but the stuff on the inside like it takes actual work you know whether it be
with a therapist or any other type of ity like the self-help books and all
different kinds of things I mean I know I’ve dealt with certain things in life and like I’m you know as a guy I don’t
like to deal with my emotions so I’m big at shoving them down and just trying to pretend they’re not there but when I do
that they’re still there you know it pops up later on in life in different circumstances you know but
um yeah that’s why mental health goes so hand inand with addiction because people are always like looking at a temporary
fix to fix permanent problems MH and a lot of those things you know just like
you said like they’re going to start to seep up through the like through the cracks doesn’t matter how many times you
try to push them back down they’re going to come back up until you you know face them um there’s a saying that you don’t
you can’t you can’t bleed on people who didn’t cut you uh I think that that goes a long way
cuz I I personally have done it multiple times you know know um and it’s
something that I’ve had to learn that it’s not just because somebody did something doesn’t mean that not everyone
not everyone’s going to do it but I do think that you know like I said mental health and addiction goes hand inand
because people are going to try to find temporary fixes to not necessarily feel
or face the things that they’ve gone through something to numb them out or make them kind of escape from reality
which I’ve done for sure and I think we all we all have
yeah I mean I almost think that it kind of seems like Society conditions us or
at least the society that we live in conditions us to um want that quick fix it’s like you
know you go to the doctor and then you tell them these symptoms and it’s like okay here’s a pill um and then I think as we get
older um we start to think okay you know
I’m having these problems there must be some type of pill basically I mean that pill can come
in all sorts of different forms like drugs alcohol whatever but just like
whatever the the temporary relief could be is what we’re typically looking
for um so as far as you I I wanted to touch
a little bit about your experience with addiction as well
um from what you’ve told us so far you’re an OP you did opiates right M how
did that start um I started using pills at a
young age when I got them from the doctor from after my dad before my dad
had passed away and kind of right after that um and I was kind of abusing the
clopin and um I remember I was selling the you know
little things in in high school just to get a few bucks not really knowing what I could and couldn’t do but I started
kind of experiencing more with opiates uh my mom had a surgery and she had her
gallbladder removed and she was prescribed oxycodone
and she didn’t she didn’t think anything of it you know she left him in her medicine cabinet and at that time I was
I started drinking at probably 13 years old my dad was an alcoholic and he would
make me a drink just like he’d make himself a drink I’d be sitting sitting in the office doing you know homework
and I’d be drinking a screwdriver you know as a teenager it’s just something that I just
thought was normal and so as my drinking had progressed that’s I started experimenting with pills and you know
for my the oxies and uh you know I kind of like the the way I was feeling you
know especially mixing the two I didn’t know any different and then things started getting bad I um I overdosed I
ended up taking five 80 mg oxycodone what age I was 17 years old I was 2
weeks uh after graduating high school um and that was after you know
after losing my dad we were placed in I had not talked to my mom in seven months my dad was uh taking full custody of me
just because he could um and so my whole life pretty much just changed overnight
um I was bullied in school for losing my dad I lost my virginity right after um
he passed away so a lot of the kids in school pretty much said that you know they call me a slot and a [ __ ] because
that they said that I was using it as a crutch and I think that kind of shaped me into the person I kind of
became then um you know that was an tail end of 17 um and then I had
overdosed my mom found me in my bed and I remember very vaguely they worked on
me in my bed and the paramedics carried me down the stairs took me in the
hospital I was in the ICU for 2 days on machines and they told me they told my
mom that I wasn’t going to make it um from there they were able to stabilize me and then immediately moved me into a
psych ward because they considered it since it was such a lethal amount that I had tried to kill myself and since I was
17 years old I wasn’t a legal adult in the state of New York which is where I’m
from um so I was 5150 and I remember that I stayed in a
room and I it was two twin beds couldn’t even have a pen couldn’t have any personal belongings of mine and that’s
how I lived and I ended up having to come out about a
lot of things I wasn’t allowed to see anybody except my mom and again I was two weeks out of
high school ended up getting out and telling my mom I was going to like stay sober and everything I was prescribed uh
subutex and um ended up going into
college that in that the next month this would have been in July at that point went to school and then my I just kept
using drugs um I had early I was introduced to cocaine and was using that
pretty relentlessly and I ended up getting to the point where I just didn’t
really care at all felt like I was just trying to heal from you know losing a
father figure and understanding who I was you know as a 18-year-old old kid um
I ended up dating somebody and I started kind of seeing the light and things and then in a matter of weeks um he ended up
dying overseas he was in the Army and he died by an IED oh man and he was
21 so after that that pretty much threw me into a rabit hole of just I wasn’t coming home to school and
mind you I was living at school at this point so the dean of the school sat me down and pretty much told me that you
either need to go into treatment or you’re getting kicked out of school so I went into treatment and cleaned up my
ACT I was sober for about 2 years at that point up until about
2012 um for the length that I was still in school dropped out and then um I had
been dating somebody else at that point and he uh ended up being murdered he
overdosed it was an accidental overdose and instead of his roommates taking him to the hospital a mile away they took
his body dumped him on a park bench shipped him naked and left him with an empty open wallet and he left behind a
three-year-old daughter and so that is
uh really really like screwed me up for a long long time moved out west wanted
to start something new um again found myself in another abusive relationship
we had lived together at that time I was still sober at this point and then at
the tail end of things when I was trying to leave him he uh held a loaded shotgun to my head
on his 21st birthday and it took three people to get the gun away from him and
that was like pretty much my Tipping Point and after that I relapsed un
alcohol and cocaine at this point um I was using to the point where I was
selling uh locally in town um I was going back and forth to Vegas to pick up
I started prostituting myself just to be able to get pills and drugs and you know
and cocaine at this time ended up um getting away from him I was homeless for
2 months and then I kind of hit like a Rock Bottom moved to Colorado picked up
all my stuff and just lived out of a hotel out there again was sober for about 5 months trying to get my life
together met the wrong person I suffered a knee injury at this time and then
after having the knee injury went to the doctor and then that’s when they prescribed me
hydrocodone um and Oxycodone again and I relapsed and I was just a zombie at this
point um relapse on coke as well and I was just using the three of them
couldn’t even I couldn’t even function I had no job um I was fired on as soon as
I walked into my job on crutches they let me go in the spot so I had no job lost my place to live I was literally
like a vegetable on the couch just high all day got to the point where I just I
called my mom one day and I was like I need to come home I like I can’t live my life like this anymore and I’ve been
sober now for nine years congratulations thank you my sobriety day is uh
conveniently my um my ex’s anniversary of when he passed away so I just try to
I stay sober now for my son cuz I can’t I can’t go back to that life when I moved home my skin was yellow my eyes
were black and I was about 80 lbs wow and seeing the look in my mom’s face I
don’t ever want to see that again cuz it’s like looking death in the face
but now I’m here I’m I’m healthy and but you know it was a rough rough time in my
life for many many years yeah you definitely I mean you definitely touched
on a lot of topics there that I think could help a lot of different
people um what what do you think helped you get
through all of that cuz I mean most people would not
most people would honestly fold that’s a lot of things to deal with it wasn’t just like I mean even just dealing with
one of those incidents by itself is a lot for one person but one after another I mean it’s
I can’t even imagine you get exhausted honestly I feel like you hit a point where you just can’t can’t keep
running from things that’s kind of why I was saying the the I used to flee from everything
and I used to constantly you know like run from couch to couch and and person
to person and like you just get so broken down and there’s like little glimpses of When You’re Sober and you
feel like the guilt and the doubt and like it just gets to be so overbearing
where like you don’t want to feel that anymore you know I never wanted to die I just wanted to feel numb I didn’t want
to feel the feelings I felt but I realize that when I was sober and like
when things were like okay for like a few hours then I’d start to feel everything it got to the point where
like I couldn’t no matter how much I put in my body I couldn’t hide the things anymore it wasn’t working so I had to I
had to kind of switch things up um you know it was really hard for me when I
was at Dave’s Funeral and they there was a bunch of us when we after the funeral
it was an open casket and seeing his girl his daughter there and mind you she’s three years old you know I have
almost a three-year-old now I can’t even imagine and they when we had to go bury
the casket um I don’t even want to get emotional but they were lowering the
casket and she ran and jumped on at the
casket like it’s so hard to see that and she just kept screaming daddy
daddy and like how do you you can’t like help it like you can’t hide when you see
stuff like that um and like I didn’t I just didn’t want that for myself
anymore after that that was really powerful um I did not mean to start
crying see if we got any tissues or anything I mean it seems like you kind
of like used says something positive for
your you know kids for your kid
like I’m good I’m good I swear um it seems like that you’re
turning this into something positive though but it sounds like that you’ve been through a
really tough I hate saying like a tough life but like you’ve been through a lot of
really tough situations um that not a lot of people would be
able to get to the other other side of um is there
anything that you would want to pass on as far as like hope goes
or what would you want to pass on to I don’t
know what message would you want to pass on to like your kid or like somebody
that is is potentially going to go or maybe
potentially going through the same thing I think it’s cliche but like it does get better and it’s hard it’s hard to see
the light when everything’s so dark around you you know and like there’s they say that there’s always a light at
the end of the tunnel and I do believe that’s the truth it may take time but
kind of to trust the process because so many times I’ve been through stuff and like I I grew up in a you know middle
class upper class upbringing you know I I had a good life I didn’t I didn’t grow
up on the streets I didn’t grow up a lot of the way a lot of the kids do nowadays I was very fortunate you know and like I
still went through the things I went through um I
think I think people need to be more patient and kind to themselves and give
them more grace that even you know like even on the bad days there’s good days to follow and even on the good days
there’s going to be bad days to follow and understanding you know
not you kind of have to just I said you just need to be patient with
yourself I wanted to touch a little bit about I wanted to touch a little bit on the bullying that you talked about um I
guess after your father passed away um I think it’s a really big topic right now especially with all these
different forms of social media you know you really can’t escape people these days anymore right like you can go home
from school but like you know you’re still going to have access to your phone and like with access to your phone like
there’s still potential for bullying um did you want to touch a little bit
about that how you overcame it and everything like
that it’s it makes me sad that you know like growing up I mean
I graduated when we didn’t really have phones you know like we didn’t have the social media access that people have
nowadays and now I feel like people just are keyboard Warriors and they just hide
behind their phones and they say horrible horrible things but if they were in the same room right now with us
they wouldn’t say anything um I think understanding that the people that are saying those things it’s not you it’s
them you know they’re unhappy with them Elves and the only way that somebody’s
going to tear you down is projecting their own feelings about themselves and I think it’s important to realize that
it’s even though they could say the most hurtful things those things aren’t true and it takes a lot of work and
self-confidence to understand that but it it really makes me sad that
people that that’s like their first Resort you know like I I don’t know I
wasn’t I was never raised to understand how people can like just completely just tear down somebody else with like No
Remorse no nothing and you see these kids that are you know 12 13 years old
committing suicide it like it blows my mind cuz it it could have been completely preventable and I wonder like
where are these kids parents you know like to me you’re not you’re born to
love but you learn to hate so like where where did it go wrong I think
understanding also love languages is very big it also affects how people
handle relationships and friendships um you know how you perceive
love versus How You Give Love It kind of it’s kind of tricky I guess but
uh for I kind of know what you mean though cuz like I was reading something the other day and it was like uh I do love
it was like I think maybe it was attached Love Languages like the opposite of something
was love was like what your love language is kind of like how you’re describing so like the things that
affect me that I don’t know yeah I was going SM with that I don’t
know I think the biggest thing I struggled with is having like a father figure right um and or you could say
like daddy issues right I always used and I I still find myself doing it to
this day I accept love from men because I never received it um that usually goes
for anybody that works in the sex industry you know like I said I’ve done
prostitution I’ve escorted um you know I’ve never I’ve never been a a dancer
but I mean I’ve solicited myself for sure you know you become completely numb
to the fact that you have have something offered than more than just your body
and unfortunately when you you know they G guys gamble or they have you
know sex addictions usually underlying you know the other things that follow um
but I think it’s a lot more common than people make it out to be um you know
nowadays everyone has only fans it’s way more acceptable Now versus
10 years ago if you were working in the porn industry or um you were es
escorting or anything like that I mean everyone pretty much does it and it’s a lot more normalized but before people
don’t talk about it um you know STDs STI stuff like that there’s a lot
of shame that goes behind that stuff and to me there wouldn’t be so much shame if people were just open and honest about
it it creates a it creates a very nasty stigma uh it’s that too also you know
goes back to the bullying you know men are going to call women [ __ ] and [ __ ]
but there’s no different than a man sleeping with 20 women and being you
know kind of made to look like some hero amongst his friends but if a if a woman
sleeps with 20 guys you know she’s a [ __ ] it’s it’s really sad to see The Divide that’s like the first thing you
know somebody will throw shame at even though there there’s there’s nothing to me there’s nothing that should be shameful about it it’s just it’s a
natural thing that two adults do there’s a lot of men that will throw shade at it but given the opportunity probably would
have done it themselves know or supporting it you know it’s you know doesn’t make any sense but you know it
just comes down to that’s just a personal issue within themselves you know or you know how they were raised
you know having that like more of a bully mentality where you maybe weren’t treated best growing
up so now you don’t treat other people the best so you see something you can give somebody a hard time about and you
know like you in school like you know sometimes you make fun of a kid right or you know and that person there’s a group
that’s going to be laughing behind the scenes like you know it almost becomes a thing it’s like you know a way for them
to feel validation like oh yeah you know made fun of this kid now you know so and
so and so and so or giving me validation for you know being that guy and it’s just a sad
world so just in a few short words um would you explain what brought you here
today I wanted to kind of not only make changes in my own life but as a not only
as a victim of domestic violence and um you know sexual abuse um but I’m also a
survivor of that and so many men and women don’t necessarily
have the ability to have Define their voice and I have and so I want to be on
the flip side of things and be able to give others a voice that I didn’t have when I was going through it um and like
when I didn’t see that there was necessarily a way out I can tell you that there is because I’m standing
here proof that you know there is um and
it makes me sad when people don’t think that there is there are options out there there’s Outlets there’s people you
can talk to there’s resources there’s places you can go there’s so many different
um options uh and I think it’s important to speak on those things because it’s
you know when you’re in it you don’t see any way out but being able to hear other people’s
stories I think it allows somebody to be empathetic be like Hey listen you she did it I can do it too and I want to be
able to do that for other people especially you know being a single mom um you know and I want to be an example
for my kid as well you know if I’m doing those things and I’m not going to be a mom and I
don’t want him to grow up without a parent like I did but I want to make sure it’s you know he doesn’t I didn’t
have a choice you know I want him to be a to know that I have a choice if that
makes sense empowerment
