SpeakLifeAZ
The testimony of Jesus in, with, and through everyday people like us. A father and son who were addicts for over 20 yrs. You name it, WE DID IT, TOGETHER!!!! we used to use drugs together now we share about what God Has done for us to encourage the body of Christ and anyone else who may listen to this that is feeling hopeless and empty. LISTEN TO OUR STORY...and the testimony of others who feel led to share with you.... GOD BLESS YOU....TODAY WE CHOOSE TO SPEAK LIFE AZ!!!!!!!!!!
SpeakLifeAZ
Isaiah D. Testimony
Embark on a compelling journey of faith and self-discovery with Isaiah, one of the newest camera guys on the "Dream Team" at Life Link Church, as he shares his riveting story from a Russian orphanage to finding purpose in Arizona. From the complexities of his adoption and cultural transition to the unexpected discoveries of a DNA test, Isaiah offers a profound look at identity and belonging. This episode sheds light on the emotional tapestry of his life, weaving through adoption nuances, teenage rebellion, and the resilience required to navigate societal and familial challenges.
Isaiah opens up about the struggles and triumphs that have shaped him, including not just his battle with mental health but also the solace he found in skateboarding and music. As he candidly reflects on the pressures of church upbringing, bullying, and his journey from isolation to connectivity, listeners are granted an intimate look at the transformative power of genuine human connections. His story is a testament to the importance of support, authenticity, and maintaining one's faith journey amidst life's hurdles.
Listeners will be inspired by Isaiah's raw honesty as he recounts his battles with addiction, depression, and the pivotal moments of faith that rescued him from despair. Through his experiences with homelessness, substance use, substance abuse, and finding faith in adversity, Isaiah illustrates the power of storytelling and shared experiences in overcoming life's trials. This episode promises to resonate with anyone who has faced their demons and emerged stronger, highlighting the strength found in vulnerability and the ever-present possibility of hope and healing.
all right, everybody. Welcome back to the speak life az podcast testimony of jesus and everyday people. I'm your host, eddie, and always with me is my son, ratty jesus, what up, dude man dude, how was your day? It was all right, man. Yeah, been hammered at work. Dude, I gotta stop praying for god.
Speaker 2:No, keep praying so that the owner can go somewhere else and you can be the owner.
Speaker 1:No, it's been. It's been nice man to stay busy. I like being busy. I hate sitting around. What about about you, dude?
Speaker 2:Oh it was good. Yeah, it was good. I was able to come in and get the building all ready for Sunday, Sunday ready. We got a lot of stuff going on tomorrow, man. We got kids packing the Operation Christmas box. We've got kids coming in for a rehearsal for the Christmas play.
Speaker 1:Had light the night last night.
Speaker 2:Light. The Christmas play had light the night last night. Glow party cards. Come on buddy. A lot of people were getting Jesus on Halloween.
Speaker 1:Hey, man, I'm excited about this one, bro, man dude, this is awesome. Yeah, man, who'd you bring with you?
Speaker 2:We got our brother dude. We got the newest camera guy at LifeWing Church man dude, isaiah. What's up, bro, hey?
Speaker 3:guys.
Speaker 1:Isaiah what's going on, buddy?
Speaker 3:Not much.
Speaker 1:Love you man.
Speaker 4:Love you guys Super excited to be here. God makes us.
Speaker 1:God asked us to honor his children every time they come on, man. So we just want to thank you for coming on and sharing your story with us, brother, we do life together, so we know a little bit about you already, man, but to sit down with you and do it this, way it's very special bro. So thank you, Radical.
Speaker 2:For you, bro, to be at a place that you are and you're able to share about this stuff, bro, to be trusted, to be trusted. That's only something God can do, buddy.
Speaker 4:Amen, yeah, yes, sir.
Speaker 2:So have you ever actually?
Speaker 4:listened to one of these, bro. Yes sir, you have Okay, Faithful listener, Come on man. Yes sir.
Speaker 2:Um, well then, you kind of know, let me, uh, just pray and we'll kind of get into it, man.
Speaker 2:Jesus man, god. I thank you, lord, for what you're getting ready to do, thank you. I thank you for healing my brother, God, and setting him free. Thank you, lord, for this testimony. Thank you for what's getting ready to be talked about and what's getting ready to be shared, god. I pray that you use this testimony, god, to encourage your people. I pray, god, that if people need to get right with you, that this testimony gets them right with you.
Speaker 2:God, we've all got struggles. We've all got stuff, lord, but your word says, in revelations 12, that we overcome, right with you. God, come on. Yeah, thank you, lord. We've all got struggles. We've all got stuff, lord, but your word says in Revelations 12 that we overcome the enemy by the power of the blood, the word of our testimony, and loving not our life unto death. So I pray, god, that this testimony gives you glory and honor and whoever's going to listen to it or watch it, lord, let their faith be stirred in Jesus' mighty name. Amen, amen, amen, bro, yeah, that was a little different dude, this is going to be good buddy. So you know, man, listening, kind of what this is. Man. When God gave this to us for a while, man, we kind of did what we wanted to do and we weren't listening to God and it was little live videos on Facebook and preaching and messages and God's like. That's not what I told you to do.
Speaker 2:Sometimes we take something from God, but we can make it our own. But when we sat down and started to listen to him and do what he told us to do, it's beautiful, bro. This thing just kind of flourished and, um, it's the speak life az podcast, the testimony of jesus and everyday people. Um, we are all everyday people, man. It don't matter if you're a pastor, if you're in government, if you're working at a church and facilities maintenance, like dad down at the muffler shop man cutting on cars and welding. We've all got a story. Um, we are all one with the father man when we come to jesus.
Speaker 1:Um, it's a beautiful thing, bro we all gotta wake up every day and choose to serve the lord. Come on, buddy.
Speaker 2:Yes sir but, there's just a few different parts of your story, isaiah, that we want to get today. Yeah, um, we want to. Who Isaiah is man? What was life like for you growing up as a kid, doing life with you, bro? You've shared a little bit here and there, but so we kind of want to get into that. What the childhood home was like mom and dad, religion in the home, brothers and sisters. What was school like for you? Sports, you know, and working in recovery.
Speaker 2:We know that a lot of the stuff that messes us up later in life it actually happens to us early in life. So if you want to get any of the stuff that kind of made you veer, off course man. But I think the most important thing we want to capture today, isaiah, is when God became real to you, when you had your encounter with Jesus, man, because that encounter with Jesus it's different for everybody. The way the Lord encountered you. It was different than the way the Lord encountered dad. It was in prison Me, I was in Teen Challenge at 15th Avenue in Grand. So we want to know your encounter when the living God became real to you and you knew it was like wow, god is real, god loves me, god forgives me. And then I think the cool thing, bro, is how your life changed after the encounter, because we know that a true encounter with Jesus brings life change.
Speaker 2:Transformation yes sir, and it may take time, you know, and we might go through our stubborn and rebellious and we may slip and fall back. It's real bro the struggle is real, um, but then I think the very, at the very end, isaiah, we want to get what you're hoping for in the future. Yeah, um, because I know god has more for you, bro. Your, your journey's just getting started, dude. Hopefully it's just getting started, buddy, so so as we need some water or something.
Speaker 1:Bro, your voice is. It sounds different.
Speaker 2:He's excited it's a lot man with today and yeah, it's like you need to clear your throat or something yeah, no, I'm, I'm good, all right, um, just checking, man, yeah, I got two waters right here and a coffee. I'm good, bud, it's a, it's a, it's a fight we're going through, man, um. But so, yeah, dude, we just uh, and at the very end, isaiah, um, what's what you're hoping for? So that we can pray for you and then our listeners that, uh, watch the podcast and listen, they pray for you as well.
Speaker 4:Bro, man, okay, yeah we'll take it step by step and just kind of guide me. I tend to ramble, so just guide me through all along the way we like rabbit holes.
Speaker 1:We like rabbit holes. That's what makes it the last three, four hours get ready for a long one that can happen
Speaker 3:that's a guarantee, that's a guarantee, so um I love our conversation.
Speaker 4:Refreshments I do want to, I do want to start off by saying like I'm super stoked to talk to you guys. I've been thinking about this a lot. Our conversations are always so fruitful, yeah they are. They're impactful. We've all lived quite rich lives in a sense of just dynamic.
Speaker 2:Our experiences, yeah, good and bad.
Speaker 4:So it's really fun to chat with people who have seen the lows of the lows and the goods and the goods and a mixture of everything in between and it's comfortable to share and relate and connect on that level. It's not something you find very often, so I do appreciate this opportunity. I'm going to treat it as best as our regular conversation.
Speaker 1:I get the most out of when we're just comfortable and stuff so I'm really excited for that right now
Speaker 1:literally, it's just us sitting down and having a conversation don't let the mic and the headphones and the phone throw you off. Dude, it's just that's what I love about these, these sitting down and doing these, is it's literally just conversations. Yeah, you know, man? Um, we can tend to make more out of them because of the situation that we find ourselves in, but the reality is it's just conversation I mean. Um, if you were somebody a complete stranger, what a better way to get to know you.
Speaker 4:Man, let's sit down and talk.
Speaker 1:I love those conversations, yeah dude, and with you same thing. We had an amazing conversation on sunday I know for probably good 30 minutes and like I said it was very fruitful man it was. Our conversations are never just for entertainment purpose only or service level. You know what I mean it's literally. It's literally iron on iron. Our conversations are sharpening one another, and that's what I love about our conversations with you, brothers.
Speaker 4:It's, it's iron on iron dude, it really is. You know what I mean. Yeah, yeah, um, I will start off the podcast. I'm learning to memorize this verse but for sake of stimulation, I don't know if I have it memorized, but I want to start off with this verse.
Speaker 2:It's um look at you, bro. Yeah, look at you, I was gonna bring a notebook too, dude. He's got a note card, bro, with the scripture verse and on the back is the address this guy come on buddy, come on bro. Thanks, thanks to Thanks.
Speaker 4:Thanks to our uh, thanks to our relationship, I I do like have an opportunity to think outside of my normal way of maturing and my spiritual growth, and so that's truly good through you.
Speaker 4:Amen, um. So this verse is Psalms 27, 10. I came across it and I was very surprised that this was in the Bible, and as a 29 year old, I am dating myself, but as a 29 year old, I'd never seen this verse before, which was wild as growing up in a Christian household and familiar with scripture to some extent, but not that familiar Anyway. So this verse is going to give us a lot of context of who Isaiah's experience has been, and I don't know what scriptures has to say about it. What I've learned in my diligence in reading scripture is it has something to say about everything we go through, which is wild.
Speaker 2:I still read stuff and I'm like huh, that's in the Bible and it makes so much sense.
Speaker 3:You know it connects.
Speaker 4:Anyway, this is Psalms 2710, and it says Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me. Wow, yeah, it's a powerful verse to me because that was the experience as a child.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and as someone who I've been lucky enough, I guess in some sense, to have two set of parents, but in also those two senses have had experiences of abandonment and lack in both experiences, and so there was a deep resentment to, to the life experience and to God and whoever he was, and you're like well, why twice? You know this isn't once good enough um and instances so but I've read that verse I don't know in the last couple months and I went, wow, that's that's all I need to know.
Speaker 5:Like he receives me. That's it.
Speaker 4:That's like whatever happens with all those other relationships and however they uh corrode or rebuild, um, that's all I have to worry about is he receives me. It's like, okay, cool, amen.
Speaker 2:It ends there like that's so good, that's so good um, which also I had a thought about.
Speaker 4:When you're talking about how everybody has heard god in in different ways and felt or seen him in a real way the first time or a couple times, I'm reminded that nature reflects, um, the beauty of god. Yeah, in the sense of like a snowflake is not designed to, there's never a copy of one right. There's an originality and there's other reflections in nature that have that, but it just reminds me like he expresses his relationships, that same way, like there's a deep sense of uniqueness and originality in every relationship, you think?
Speaker 1:about everything God creates. God never creates duplicates of anything. Tree is not the same as the tree next to it.
Speaker 4:Not even twins. You know what I mean. And there's there's.
Speaker 1:There's nothing that God will ever duplicate. Everything is unique in and of itself. I mean, you go to so far as as seashells rocks. I mean just every aspect that God has created that we see visually.
Speaker 2:There's no two identicals I love that even even in identical twins they've got different fingerprints yeah, you're right, but that's so.
Speaker 4:They may give the appearance of being similar, but they are completely different and despite all that, or in spite of all that, there's a sense of symmetry in it all. Yeah, it's not like chaotic, no, it flows, it flows. Yeah, there's a connection of symmetry in it all.
Speaker 1:It's not like chaotic, no, it flows, it flows.
Speaker 4:Yeah, there's a connection to it. So back to the symmetry.
Speaker 1:For the sake of people who don't know you like we do. Where were you born?
Speaker 4:So the verse proceeds is to give some context to I was born in Russia, 1995.
Speaker 2:Dude, you're our first Russian bro. Yeah, let's go Privyet. Dude, you're our first Russian bro. Yeah, let's go Привет. Yeah, let's go dude. Oh man, I got my puffer jacket on today it's cold in here, nice, and comfortable.
Speaker 4:You made it just like Mother Russia. I love you, bro. The orphanage was a bit colder but that's okay. A little less cold too, but that's okay.
Speaker 5:We made it to.
Speaker 4:Arizona with a blessing.
Speaker 2:So do you actually remember Russia?
Speaker 4:My default response has been a learned response, but it's physically so, not mentally. I don't have any visual memories, but I have all the physical memories, like the trauma and the things that come up when you get sober or when you're in a sober sense and your body reacts to just life and it's like, why did it react like that? Because it'll be something extreme or different than people you see around you and there's no answer to it, and so the search continues. And so it's like you know some of those things like eating habits or sleeping habits or fears and relationships, or how I've seen cycles and the functions of my relationships platonic, romantic, um, family, friends, work, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 4:I I see those, those childhood um experiences, whether traumatic or whether just how it was, uh, reveal a little bit of who my experience was from what I don't remember in the context of my adult life. Or I started as like a really young teenager, even younger, um, but as an adult I've learned to um, search out the answers to maybe what is the context. So why struggle with this or struggle with that? How old were you when you left Russia? So I was adopted at three years old, um, in September, early September, uh so there was a link to three years is a pretty link.
Speaker 4:I think he's not a time to be sure, absolutely, as I heard in school growing up and and uh had a lens of resentfulness because of this. But your most vital part of your how you are going to be, the rest of your life.
Speaker 5:One to five.
Speaker 4:Zero and three was starvation, no parental. The context behind that was I lived in an orphanage, so every six months I was given to a new caretaker to take on the the next age group and so it was just kind of moved on um how did like one year old, two year old, three year old, every six months?
Speaker 4:oh wow yeah, really so, and there was a ton of us, so there was no um connection or bond or intimacy or what it was was broken off every six months how'd you find out that this is what happened to you?
Speaker 4:so um joan and jerry are my adoptive parents, and so they were given a lot of information because they flew. So they're from Arizona and they flew to Russia. We're there for seven days, so, which was also pretty phenomenal to go to Russia for seven days to adopt a child in the mid nineties. Yeah, cause we're.
Speaker 2:We're talking about the historical just out of the cold war in the eight 90s.
Speaker 4:Yeah, because we're we're talking about the historical in our store just out of the cold war in the 80s man. So, um, uh, yeah so so they came over seven days, were able to do that whole process, but they learned a little bit there. I also have a bunch of documents, oh okay, um, that stayed a little bit of what was going on. They don't know if any of it's super truthful or not. So, um, like, even the name of my said to be birth father isn't, isn't rooted in factual information. They're just what she had told them what they were told and they were, they vibed, I guess what.
Speaker 4:What I was told, which is pretty significant to me, um get to later, uh, as I got older, what it became more of significance.
Speaker 4:I actually didn't find this out until I was I think I was like 13 or 14 um, because I begged for information about all this because, I just there's so many missing pieces and I'm a very, um, self-aware person, yeah, and so those missing pieces just, even at a really young age, just really bothered me, so I just uh, begged joan and jerry for that kind of information so they finally ended up telling me that, um, she had aborted, uh, all the kids she's ever had until me, and for whatever reason, um, they're not sure why, but she decided to put me in an orphanage and then she kind of oh, apparently she kept an eye on, but I don't know where that got convoluted, because in the paperwork it says that she had left, abandoned me at the hospital.
Speaker 4:Yeah, um, so I don't know what I maybe have to talk to them about, what they remember right versus what the paperwork says, and kind of compare notes and whatnot. But, um, anyway, so that was significant to me, that there was intentionality to not unalive me in a sense and then put me in an orphanage, which some days it's like that. Was that the better option?
Speaker 4:but most days it's like okay, cool, I appreciate that, not that that's a luck of a draw, but in a worldly sense, the luck of the draw to be able to come to. America and whatnot. Obviously it. It was God's plan. So, yeah, god called them to adopt me. My original name when I was born was Roman Diakite, and then, when they adopted me, God had told them to change my name to Isaiah, which is God of salvation. Roman huh.
Speaker 5:Yeah, Roman Roman.
Speaker 4:To this day. I have a little bit of bitterness, that's a cool name.
Speaker 2:I know exactly Exactly, it means strength. Oh wow, yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah man.
Speaker 1:Do you know what made your adopted parents want to go to Russia and get a kid versus adopting here in America?
Speaker 4:Honestly, I'm not going to make it super spiritual or super beautiful or anything.
Speaker 5:They're friends, adopted kids from Russia, yeah, so it was kind of.
Speaker 4:I don't know if it was like it was more popular at that time to adopt kids from Russia and China, so I don't know if it was just kind of Our last guest that we had on was her family.
Speaker 1:God, they adopted probably 10, 12 kids from like Bulgaria, russia area. Yeah, and from what they were saying was the process to get a kid there is a lot easier than it is to get a kid here in the. United States you have to go through a whole process there they're like oh, you want a kid, all right here you go.
Speaker 4:You know what I mean, you know what I mean. Tells them where they're at, about the value of children. Maybe, right, jesus, maybe that's not true. I don't know. What is your actual earliest memory, my first memory? Um, there's two that I wrestle between. I don't know the timeline, but one is sitting on the couch, uh, watching some tv, and watching, uh, joan, make some food for us, um, for the holidays, or something like that. I can't quite remember, but the one that I actually remember is, um, I was I don't even know how old I was, maybe five or six, but I was sitting in front of. I was sitting in front of my bed and our closet was open and we had all our clothes and I was trying, I wanted to pick out an outfit for the day. I was sitting there just thinking, okay, what do I want to wear, why do I want to wear this, and just kind of going through it.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And I wasn't allowed to but cause we were I. It was just the dynamic was you wear what I tell you to wear? Yeah, but I was very like that was a war until I got my first job. Why I got my first job was literally so I could wear what I want to wear, because it had to be my money. Yeah, yeah, yeah, which I guess I understand. Were you their only adopted child? No, so I have. Joan and Jerry have two birth kids that are two girls Older.
Speaker 5:Yeah, one's 20 years older than me.
Speaker 2:Oh wow, One's a little bit younger than that.
Speaker 4:So they were gone out of the house by the time I was adopted. Their first adopted kid was my sister, and she was adopted in Oklahoma, because they lived in Newark, new York, and they made their way down to Oklahoma, adopted the youngest of the girls, made their way down to Oklahoma, adopted my uh, the youngest of the girls, which, um, she was adopted in Oklahoma and then they moved to Arizona and that's where they adopted my younger brother and he was adopted in Phoenix, and then a year later, I was adopted. Yeah, so I was the, I was the only international adoption, but, uh, I'm not the youngest kid and I was the last adoption as well. Wow. So then they so they kind of they had their first two kids, they grew up, moved out of the house and then they had another, something like that, and then my uh adopted sister somehow fell in the fold and then, um, then me and my brother came pretty at the same around this within the same like year or two, did you?
Speaker 1:have to learn english. When you got here, yes, sir, what did you speak? Did you speak Russian over there A little bit? Yes, yeah, yeah, so they were teaching me English. Was that hard for you?
Speaker 4:No, I figured it out.
Speaker 1:The other kid I mean the other kids spoke English, obviously because they were adopted. They were adopted from America.
Speaker 4:I don't remember, no, no, a lot of that time has blacked out. I just remember turmoil.
Speaker 1:Probably pretty traumatic man going from the situation you were in to another situation where you're like. I don't know these people and they don't speak my language.
Speaker 4:It's a different kind of struggle.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 4:That's really what it was. It wasn't understood that way and it was not empathized that way, but that's how it was in my experience this is a different type of struggle yeah because now I got to deal with all the crap from being in russia and no one, no one knows how, to none of nobody's an orphan, no one's from russia.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know did any of your family? Are any of them look like you?
Speaker 4:so um my joan and jerry are white, the two older kids are white and then my um the adopted sister and younger adopted brother are half black and half white oh, they're okay, like looking at them, they're african, um, american, so they look african-american okay, whereas I look more middle eastern. Yeah, um, and I literally am the shade in between the two for the most part.
Speaker 4:Wow so, growing up, did you feel, did you know, you've always known okay yeah, okay yeah, for sure, that was a that was a blessings to them for making that a familiar experience yeah, because some adoptive kids they don't you, you don't find out until you're a teenager or something. It's like what I'm adopted. Yeah, it's very foolish.
Speaker 1:Especially when you don't look like this.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, no way.
Speaker 2:A family friend you know, A white mom and dad and two brothers and sisters, and they knew how did this happen.
Speaker 4:Deep family treatment no but, as. I got older and telling people because it was treated as a fun fact that I was Russian.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And so it was oh, he's Russian. But the first thing that anyone will ever say is you don't look Russian. And so I was like, what does that mean? And so, the moment I could get my hands on the internet, I, you know, looked up what a Russian looks like, and they're white.
Speaker 2:They're right. I was like yeah.
Speaker 4:I don't look, it doesn't make a lot of sense and yeah.
Speaker 4:So I had to struggle with my identity and understanding the factual side of it, and that took a long time as well, and not just a bunch of assumptions by people, whether it's family or not. It wasn't. It wasn't a unfortunately, it wasn't our, it wasn't a value I experienced of of what you actually are, the, the complexity of it, um, and understanding that it was just kind of assumed you're middle eastern, okay, that's what we know. So I took a dna test when I was 23, okay, and then I found out I was african and so I thought I was middle eastern.
Speaker 4:I didn't even think I was black like I argued with people and told them I'm not black, a because I didn't feel black enough, but b because, well, I don't look like my back black brother and sister, yeah, um, but I'm directly from africa, northern africa and so, but there's some ties to the middle eastern area in northern africa so, if you look up, your last name is predominant right around the middle eastern part of africa?
Speaker 1:yep, yes, and so it's kind of I forget what the uh what's there's molly, there's, yeah, there's, yeah the whole area and then there's.
Speaker 4:Even in my dna test I took. There's elements of Egypt and I think that's it. There's a couple other Middle Eastern countries, like Palestine, but Egypt was a big, strong one and I was trying to look through to see if a lot of people from the Middle East somewhere in the history made their way to Mali. But it's a lot of deep diving but I didn't know that. My, I'm french, yeah, which probably french measure cc you don't think I know that I'm a man of many languages okay, my linguistics it's friday I get a little
Speaker 2:mixed up. I'm sorry, I'm sorry I love you, dude my mom, my mom's, from chateau de rue, france yeah, that sounds.
Speaker 1:I remember we were talking about that and I was like ah, yeah, you were saying some french and I was like that's he knows, he knows what he's saying she wouldn't teach me, man, I tried to get her to teach me french because, like I have a friend, josema, who's whose kids are, I think, his son's 9 or 10 now- they speak fluent Spanish and they speak fluent English and I'm like dude, I love that you held on to that part of your.
Speaker 4:I had a deep resentment because the cultural wasn't valued or carried on or passed on oh that's real. And I was like, wow, I wish I knew it's funny, but I can do a Russian accent great probably because it's my heritage.
Speaker 4:But I always. It's funny but I can do a russian accent great, probably because it's my heritage, but I always wanted to know russian. I know it would have been so much easier to learn it then now, and so now I've been like I go in dabbles and by the time I got old enough to really be interested and want to know it.
Speaker 1:My mom had spoken so much english yeah she forgot most of it. Yeah, you know what I mean, and my mom was a great woman. But the one thing I do have resentment for is why did you not let us learn that? Why, did you not make that something that we shouldn't have known? You know what I mean. Yes, sir, because I would love to have known that. Yeah, I could talk with my cousins right now if I know how to speak french yeah, when I have kids instead of translators, it'll be a requirement that they learn two languages
Speaker 4:come on, man absolutely they're gonna be the smartest kids I was. I'm not a lot.
Speaker 2:The not valuing information and learning is not gonna carry on passing it's good generational curse breaker buddy yeah, so you got you got um man dude just sharing what you've shared so far, but it's like can I tell you a crazy story?
Speaker 4:please so, um, so I get adopted into russia. Uh, from russia and the, the, there. It was a whole thing me adapting to an american lifestyle. Um, like what I was told was the first thing I did for I think it was like six months or so is every time that there was a meal time would come around. I'd be well. At first start, I was by the kitchen. I would stand near the kitchen all day, yeah, and ask are we gonna get a meal like, are we gonna get lunch, are we gonna get dinner?
Speaker 3:wow and stand there all day and wait, just waiting for food yeah, because I was the.
Speaker 4:The food insecurity is so deep that it lasted until outside of my sobriety like the end of my sobriety. It was like, oh, there's some stuff we still got to deal with real bro, um man yeah, it's wild, so uh, and then when we would get fed, then I would eat as fast. I would always use. That's something that took me probably until my early 20s to break to not eat so fast, but it comes from that that, um, survival like a survival mentality and, uh, I would eat as all my food as fast as possible and then steal someone's near me and hide under the table.
Speaker 4:Oh, wow, like actually hide under the table with the food. Wow, really yeah. And then they would take for funsies. They thought it would be fun to take me to Hometown Buffet. Shout out Hometown Buffet. It's for a great childhood. I love that, the only outing we went to.
Speaker 2:Shout out middle class family.
Speaker 4:You can have as many plates as you want, boy. So they did. They let me eat until I was like really sick.
Speaker 2:Until your shoulder hurt.
Speaker 4:More than that they wanted to see how much I would actually eat, because I'm going from an extreme poverty to a good old American excess in the early 2000s, um, and because I, when I came over there they had to do mouth surgery and take. All my teeth were falling out. I had a bald spot on the back of my head. I had a swollen tummy like I was, like I was a class, a orphan looking kid really for sure, yeah, I had skin blemishes and stuff from malnutrition wow yeah, I was I was beat up now.
Speaker 1:Look at you, you beautiful human being yeah god's moving buddy so what? So, uh, what was it like when you started school?
Speaker 4:I mean, so I started school um they held me back a year because I wasn't um matured to at that same age range. Because of what I've been through, yeah so they put me in school.
Speaker 2:at the same year my younger brother was Well, that's cool, you guys kind of got to go together. Yeah, so we were.
Speaker 4:I don't know. Everybody has their own opinion on homeschooling, but I have an opinion.
Speaker 2:Oh, you were homeschooled. I went through it. You didn't go to go to public school.
Speaker 4:No, sir, I was homeschooled until seventh grade.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you were always at home, and Joan and Jerry and your brother and sister yeah.
Speaker 1:Obviously, your parents were Christians. Yes, sir, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:That's our. That was the yeah for sure.
Speaker 2:Well, just what you were saying about the clothes sitting on the bed and thinking about what you want to wear, and then you have to wear what they tell you to wear it was like I was going to say you had a lot of rules, jores, cleaning the house.
Speaker 4:We cleaned all the time and I appreciate that now, but I don't know if it was worth the cost of some of my childhood.
Speaker 1:But it is what it is.
Speaker 4:Would, you say it was healthy, anything's healthy within balance and even looking back, I didn't feel there was a lot of balance. Um, in the sense of the work was fine and I was okay with doing the work and we did that and I understood earn your keep yeah uh, but the the joy. There wasn't too much joy on the other side of it. Okay, that's just the standard of living. Oh, wow, um what were.
Speaker 2:So discipline in the home, oh, yeah, was there just like belts and stuff, and in groundings uh, yes, sir, okay, all right, oh, yeah, yeah. Because they were Christians. They're just old school.
Speaker 4:Okay, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:But were you getting beat or anything like that? Yes, sir.
Speaker 4:Oh, wow, okay, I would never say they were abusive. I mean, if you ask every generation, they're going to have a different opinion on it.
Speaker 1:There's a borderline between discipline and abuse.
Speaker 4:There really, um, there's a borderline between discipline and abuse.
Speaker 2:Yeah there really is a border, yeah, and I, I think, uh, it's, it's harder when the child is more challenging and, um, I think part of it is they rose to the challenge, were you?
Speaker 4:the most challenging child out of the three? I can't. I can't answer that one. That is not my question.
Speaker 2:Well, what do you think?
Speaker 4:in your opinion out of you and your brother and sister.
Speaker 2:Uh, are you the? Are you the black sheep?
Speaker 4:oh, oh, no, no, out of all of them. Definitely not, uh, definitely not. But during, um, I think between 10 and 20 was, uh, not 20. I would say earlier than that, 10, 10 to 18, uh sorry, 12 to 18, definitely the the most challenging at the time.
Speaker 5:For sure.
Speaker 4:But yeah, they definitely. My siblings have definitely higher scores on that one.
Speaker 2:So homeschool, was it a positive for you or negative, looking back on it?
Speaker 4:I don't know, sir, I think Please stop calling, sir. I think um please stop calling me sir. It's not having the contents of a public school.
Speaker 1:You probably don't have an idea. I hated it because I'm social.
Speaker 4:Okay, I'm a very I was, especially as a young kid. I was a very social, I was. I needed stimulation. I was so bored, so I was always getting getting grounded and getting in trouble because I just I wanted to find trouble. Come on, that was it like I had to find trouble? Uh, and there's a complexity to that too.
Speaker 1:I think that ties to the childhood would you say you would look for trouble, or would you say you looked for things that stimulated you, that both were considered, definitely both.
Speaker 4:I I could think of death. Sometimes I just within, looking for something to stimulate me. I found trouble yeah and nobody had the wisdom or the understanding of the complexity between the two.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I understand that and there's no resentment towards that but there are some kids who just look for things to stimulate them that they get in trouble for but not actually doing trouble Right Like Robin still in hit right Kick and you know that came later.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and you know that came later yeah, definitely came later.
Speaker 2:That was 12 to 18.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, probably a little past that too, because you look at modern record, you look at modern society you get a kid who is very uh mentally, uh gifted and and has this high energy.
Speaker 2:They want to dub it like adhd and all this still that kid when in reality he's just really smart and really smart and getting bored and looking for things to stimulate himself.
Speaker 1:But they want to put a label on it because they can't control them, because yeah, but in reality it's just no, he's an intelligent kid and he needs to be, his mind needs to be stimulated, so he's stepping out of your boundaries to be stimulated and you call it trouble and diagnosed and on medication you know I mean yeah, yeah, that's a whole. We're getting a little ahead of ourselves but I'm just curious if that's no, absolutely that was. You know what I mean there was a little.
Speaker 4:It was both. It was yes and yeah. Um, there was I didn't. Again, I had high energy, I needed to be doing something and I didn't want to be doing the things they wanted me to which was play with the dog, jump on the trampoline, it was uh. Well, let me get in all the stuff that I'm not supposed to have access to.
Speaker 2:Let me get a skateboard or a bike and go out and do physical activities and run around and go find people to hang out with like neighborhood kids and whatnot? Were you allowed to watch TV?
Speaker 4:No, oh wow Movies, as long as they were like Christian, Super filtered. Yeah, like Disney, like early Disney stars, Were you?
Speaker 1:guys going to church. Yes, sir, where were you guys going to church at? I don't remember. I hated that, all right.
Speaker 4:Uh, yeah, I think we were going to the first assembly of God. Um, I know we went to Christ life and I know we went to lifelink I don't remember if we of it. My first memory of church was we were, because I think early on I realized I wanted to. There's something inside me that needed to be different than everybody that was around me because I inherently was and so I needed something to tag that and to validate it.
Speaker 4:Um, and I think the first time I saw that was we were on our way to church. I don't remember what church we were going to, but there was these group of kids. One had a skateboard, I don't even remember what their faces look like, but there was a couple of them were wearing all black. This kid had a chain wallet covered in tattoos, and I remember going home and going that's that's me, yeah, that's it, that's it right there, like the tattoos? Yes, sir. Yeah. The piercings, yes, sir, yeah and I fought that to my demise and on many routes.
Speaker 4:But I would stand in front of the mirror, if I remember from like 12, yeah, and just imagine myself manifest what you'd say. But just just, I'm going to literally head to toe with tattoos. It was like committed.
Speaker 1:Were you guys? Were you guys a Wednesday, saturday, sunday, kind of church? Yeah, yeah, yeah, we did.
Speaker 4:I don't know if you guys know what Royal Rangers are.
Speaker 5:If you guys do shout out to the old squad Sorry about that. Yeah, we was.
Speaker 4:I don't know what that was. Honestly, I just remember, yeah, we did Wednesday and we did Sunday, for sure, because we didn't start.
Speaker 2:It's kind of like Boy Scouts, but in the church. Yes sir, you know younger men working with men, a different religion's version of Boy Survival.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, you just don't go to Mormon church. Exactly, I was going to say that. I was going to say that exactly I was gonna say that.
Speaker 1:I was gonna say that that's so funny. Yeah, yes, sir. Now let me ask you this, because obviously you guys were going to church a lot um was. Was that reflected in the house as well?
Speaker 4:no, maybe I said that too fast.
Speaker 1:No, I mean, it's important it's important, okay, so it's really important, so that's another, because he, he was the same way it was church on sunday, church on wednesday church on saturday, but in the home there was no church.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean there was, but the character was it was still cold, it wasn't warm, it was cold and disciplined. So it wasn't. It didn't feel like in my experience there was grace. Yeah, was there the ideals and the rules and the laws and the things set up in the boundaries.
Speaker 5:Absolutely.
Speaker 4:That was there for sure. The morals, yeah, the morals, we we look a certain way but like you guys weren't, you guys weren't praying together.
Speaker 2:You're not reading the Bible together? No, they're not. They're not showing you how to have a relationship. It was very ritualistic religion set up.
Speaker 4:That's what it was. It wasn't a spiritual experience, it wasn't a church. It wasn't a spiritual experience for me in my childhood at all. Zero percent Not not until um like early high school one time. And then when you started having encounters with God, yeah, yeah, out of it was always through a lens of desperation, for sure, because I would, because then the trouble got into escalating to oh yeah like theft, like at uh, at um at stores and whatnot, just purely out of boredom yeah I was not a bad kid.
Speaker 4:I didn't look to hurt anyone, but I remember I would. I used to bmx and I was so bored because I didn't have any friends, because I was homeschooled or I was just going to school and they put us into like a Baptist school or a private school and that's not a good place to start off socially speaking. Me and my brother shared experiences Like the seventh grade. I went from being homeschooled to seventh grade, going to my first school. Super excited I'm like finally seventh grade. I went from being homeschooled to seventh grade, going to my first school Super excited.
Speaker 2:I'm like finally.
Speaker 4:Yeah, friends, yeah, I get to be around people like my age and girls. This is going to be dope and I get to learn new things and see new things.
Speaker 4:Like it's just going to be a cool, viscerally different experience. Open the gate, walk down this outside courtyard and some girl that was sitting on the ground looked at me and said man, I'm so grateful. I can't remember what she said, but she said something so mean that it startled me to the point that I went. I don't even know who she is and she doesn't even know who I am. Oh okay, she doesn't even know who I am and she's being mean. That doesn't mean anything. And for some reason it just kind of glazed over and there was deep-rooted insecurity my whole life. I'm not saying I wasn't insecure or anything, but the bullying didn't have an effect on me like it did my brother or other people.
Speaker 4:I'd see because I was just kind of like yeah, I'm ugly, you know what I mean. Like yeah, so what Like cool. Yeah, so what like cool. Moving on, I don't care maybe people that I respect or looked up to. That was a different experience but for someone who's just being downright mean. I didn't know, but that was my first experience and I went oh, this is gonna be hard did you look at yourself as like an outcast my whole life, to this day?
Speaker 4:yeah, and, and now I see it as an asset, but before I saw it as something that was a depreciating to my experience in life well, seems, of the verbiage around your existence so far was you're different.
Speaker 1:Yes, you're Russian, you're this, you're, you're always different than everybody else yeah so your identity would obviously become I'm just different than everybody else, and that would be yeah, it started.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it started as a survival mechanism, because it was. I don't want to be like the people that I live with, because it sounds like you embraced it eventually uh, yeah, I embraced.
Speaker 1:I embraced different aspects at a young age, like I embraced like I want to get tattoos and I would put in like stuff into my ear to pretend my ears were pierced you began to look at people that were different than what society said and said oh, I must be that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, exactly, I'm gonna embrace it and like fashion wise, I embraced it really early. Um, I didn't embrace it socially and in relationships till much older because at the same time that I longed to be separate, I longed to be connected and I didn't know how to connect the two until maturity came about and a lot of experiences good and bad.
Speaker 4:That taught me. Hey, you can do both, yeah, but you can't be one and um judge the other like yeah, while you want it, like you gotta protect and take care of both. Wow, because I'm different from you guys but, that doesn't mean I'm not going to come here and hang out and chat you know I mean so there's a way to.
Speaker 1:There's a way to and not feel like my identity is lost. It. It's our differences that brings us together.
Speaker 4:Exactly. You know what I mean. Yeah, that wasn't something I learned before I was taught.
Speaker 1:I wish people in the world would understand that man. Our differences is what should bring us together, not keep us apart. It keeps us divided.
Speaker 4:yeah, yeah and it's something we're born with. I feel like that should be a default lesson. We should be taught or understood as really young, because you could just at like one years old, be like. You see your feet, do you see your eyes? Totally different, but if you put them together, yeah right, their value.
Speaker 2:They work together.
Speaker 4:One is one, but one is many as well. Wow, that's good. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:so so you start 7th grade in public school and girls are mean to you.
Speaker 4:It was private school.
Speaker 2:Oh, the Christian one.
Speaker 4:Yeah, the public school, and girls it was private school.
Speaker 2:Oh the christian one, yeah, the christian one, no uh everyone was mean to me, everyone I was.
Speaker 4:I was put in basketball because my brother really wanted to do basketball and they needed me to be in a sport because, you know, I was high energy and just a lot and I needed something to do and get some of that energy out of you yeah, and I did it, and it was not a fun experience at all um experienced a lot of bullying and harassment.
Speaker 1:The principal was also very at the christian school yeah, it was, was rough um, don't let the label pull you man. Yeah, seriously, um I still remember his name.
Speaker 2:It's okay, no names. You know who you are, if it wasn't so.
Speaker 4:If it wasn't a german name, I'd know how to spell it yeah, so anyway, but I had a challenging I also had school was rough dude yeah, but I also had a challenging um mother figure as well, very like, intense, and if it wasn't her way, like dominating yeah, really. So that was hard to watch when something happened and then they came into the picture to talk to the leadership, I didn't see it as peaceful and it was like now I have to deal with this when you're gone. This sucks.
Speaker 1:And people knew about it. So they created conflict.
Speaker 4:Everybody was creating conflict and I was like, yeah, I just want to be around people and go to school, and and that wasn't um, that wasn't the experience. So, anyway, I almost got kicked out of there challenging, so we moved to to um chandler where were you at? We, so we. I. I lived in chandler when I got adopted and then, um, and I think 2008 or a little earlier, we moved. Oh no, it was earlier than that.
Speaker 4:Um, we moved to gilbert, but this is back when gilbert and queen creek were still cow town yeah so it was like pastures and stop signs, like all of like warner and um anything past, like, like maybe even it was like Gilbert Road or all that Sossaman, all that was dirt roads and canals and like you were driving in the dust. This was back then, which isn't that long ago, but it feels like it Anyway.
Speaker 2:I know you're talking about it. I'm like man. It's grown, now it's grown really fast yeah.
Speaker 4:I mean, it's what Santan used to be, santan's morphing to santana guadalupe was the outskirts of town when I was a kid bro yeah, absolutely once you got to there, you were in desert.
Speaker 4:There was no lights. No, yeah, yeah, it was crazy, brother, yep, so, um, so we moved out there, and that's when I went to a private school and then that was seventh grade, almost got kicked out, um, and they're like yeah, you, you're, you're too rambunctious, you're they? I remember them literally telling my parents while we were there yeah, we don't know if he's going to make it next year, we don't want him to put that on his record, or whatever they were saying.
Speaker 4:So my parents were like okay, me and my brother begged them to not go back because it was it was. We had a really terrible experience. So we moved to back to chandler, um, and we went to a baptist school and I had the same experience some bowling, it was just really uh, it was just a lot I let me ask you.
Speaker 1:Let me ask you this because obviously, having you said, your brother and sister looked African.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You look light-skinned.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I know from my experience and stuff that I've seen typically light-skinned African-Americans get made fun of because they don't give the appearance of being black, they don't give the appearance of being white. You're kind of in the middle. What are you really? Was there a lot of that for you?
Speaker 4:I skirted a lot of that um because of socially, I could just figure that out. My brother got a lot of the stuff I didn't even know about until um he would tell me or joan would tell me about his, his experience in school. But he got a lot of bowling for his um, for his color, which was super wild, but um, he ended up especially for that time period that seemed yeah, where it was more. Rather, he got a lot of bullying for his color, which was super wild.
Speaker 1:Especially for that time period. That seemed like a time where it was more rather red and except I also think it was especially him and some me too.
Speaker 4:we were easy targets because of our lack of social experience, and so the fluidity wasn't there when we were in early high school. By the time we were in mid-high school, and later it was all gone.
Speaker 5:We were adapted and we were good.
Speaker 4:He was super popular. He probably grew and became good, yeah exactly. He ended up being like 6'3 and playing basketball, so 6'2 or something like that. So he was a popular kid and played a lot of basketball, had a lot of friends and whatnot. I regressed. I went from being social to I don't want to talk to anybody, be around anyone, and so, like at the Baptist school, I either ate my lunch in the bathroom stall, I think, or would sit with the foreign exchange students.
Speaker 1:So, going from a kid who was wanting to be social social, yeah and finally getting to be in a social environment, you realize this sucks. Yes, I'm just gonna regress and go back to being by myself yeah yeah and uh.
Speaker 4:So I had even joined the chess club like I was trying to do something to connect, and we, they brought a guest in to teach us chess and he bullied me really the adult and I went this sucks. So I went for a walk, so I was so pissed and uh, I went in the into the the boys gym locker room and I saw a cool pair of shoes there and I was like those are cool, I'm gonna take them home everybody here, yeah right, and then I was an idiot and wore them the next day because I was late to school and I got kicked out that same day.
Speaker 2:Those are my shoes, literally exactly what happened.
Speaker 4:I was like hey, those are mine, and they were custom too, so there was no argument. It wasn't like a pair of black and white Vans where you could just argue with anybody, it was like a custom waffle pattern or something. Some sort of like my luck.
Speaker 2:Sin makes you smart? Yeah, it was like my luck. Sin makes you smart? Yeah, no, it doesn't. Sin makes you stupid, it sure does.
Speaker 5:Yes, sir.
Speaker 4:So Joan's mad at me and whatnot, and yeah. So I got homeschooled 10th grade, which was rough because, it was more advanced stuff and Joan had no business trying to teach that. No, Jerry, they weren't.
Speaker 2:They weren't teachers.
Speaker 4:No, they didn't have the capacity for that. Did one of them work, jerry did. Joan was a stay-at-home mom. Oh right, yeah, yeah, yeah, so yeah, it was rough. So that's where I found skateboarding, and so I would skate eight hours a day just all the time I wanted to go pro, I mean I had videos memorized I'd watch the same one every day.
Speaker 4:I was doing everything I could, so that was a ramp, uh. So I started street and then went into park and then did. Then I'm naturally more inclined to street but as I get as I'm where I'm at right now. I went skating with sam on sunday dude, yeah, yeah, no, it wasn't.
Speaker 2:I gotta buy you some elbow pads and a helmet for the where I was landing.
Speaker 4:That wouldn't work I got. I still have a bruise on this.
Speaker 2:Well, because my thing is like, if I'm gonna skate, man like I'm gonna skate like I used to in the old days we'll call it no, sir so you're almost 30, but yes, sir, yes sir, it feels a little different.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and I didn't have the proper shoes and I the last time I had skated I had a really bad injury. So, um, I was trying to, we were, we were just testing the water to see if I could skate again and I could, um, but of course I'm like, let me do all the tricks that I think I can do and really push it and try to do big air stuff and, uh, I felt really hard quite a few times.
Speaker 1:Um, I don't have the balance.
Speaker 4:I used to brother, I tried it and yeah so well, and the other things I'm doing in life right now. I just decided I was like after that turn, I still haven't told sam yet.
Speaker 5:So sam, if you're watching this before, I told you I love you but skating right now does not fit in the schedule.
Speaker 2:He needs to use those ankles to run. Yes, sir, yes sir, you have no idea, I know, buddy, I had to miss a day of running because, of that, but we'll get into that later.
Speaker 4:So backtracking, yeah this is what I so.
Speaker 2:School sounds challenging, bro. Friends are bullying, the home life is frustrating um are you getting any? So you said that you started to.
Speaker 4:You know you had some rebellion oh yeah, yeah, I mean, that was are you using any drugs or drinking as a kid? No in that home. Okay, my, my rebellion came through, uh, avenues of expression. Like I'm not listening to rules, I also, at the same time, was just falling into um, finding out that I had that I had mania. Okay, I didn't find out, but I was looking back.
Speaker 2:I'm like oh, you were high and low yeah.
Speaker 4:Mostly highs at this time. Okay, it wasn't low yet, but it was coming, um, so yeah, so that all started to happen at the same time. So there's a lot of frustration of why are you acting out?
Speaker 2:as like a teenager, yeah, like 13, 14, 15.
Speaker 4:Um so so, anyway. So I did the homeschooling thing. That was terrible.
Speaker 2:It was so bad that after we were done.
Speaker 4:um, it was like we can't do this again. And that was 10th grade. Yeah, it was 10th grade, yes, sir. And so my brother was done with private school because he did private school 10th grade and he was begging not to go back because he hated it. We always wanted to go to public school because A a lot of our friends that we knew from church or wherever they went there. There was a lot more things to do and we just wanted, like, access to new things.
Speaker 2:To be a normal kid man. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4:And it was very spiritual. I prayed about it. You're not supposed to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All this kind of stuff. So I don't know, how truthful or accurate all that kind of stuff is. So he ended up going to a public school.
Speaker 2:Oh, your brother did yeah.
Speaker 4:Phenomenal time and had a great time. Enjoyed it. For me, what?
Speaker 2:did you do?
Speaker 4:Well told that the public schools wouldn't accept me, because I got kicked out of a Baptist school in ninth grade for stealing shoes, which I don't think is true because it doesn't seem like that was quite the, but it is what it is. I sensed it then and the older I get I'm like yeah, that can't they just knew that they put you in public school.
Speaker 1:They were gonna lose you, dude you were gonna go off the deep end? I don't think so because they drugs, alcohol, everything else.
Speaker 5:I'll tell you I don't think so, because they what they did, was they did.
Speaker 4:They didn't understand how they didn't understand this. And I just had a chat with jerry about this uh, about a year, not not even a year ago, it was like six months ago about my experience for those years, for 11th grade, 12th grade, they put me into a different school. I told him about my experience and he's like we had no idea that you went through that.
Speaker 2:Was it another Christian school?
Speaker 4:No, no, no. So I went to a secondary school. Like an alternative school, alternative school, yes, sir, so I went in and Stop calling me, sir.
Speaker 2:Brothers. Okay, but I'm not a sir man. I work for a living.
Speaker 1:That's what the officers in the military say you call them, and we're not grilling you either.
Speaker 2:We love you, buddy god is healing you, bro. Thank god for recovery, dude.
Speaker 4:Yeah I'd love to talk about recovery stuff we'll get there, we'll get there um. So if you need a refill, hurry get your coffee now um. So it was a secondary school, it was. Uh, there was like 30 kids there. They were all kids that um were all the bad kids bad yeah, it would have been better if they let you go to public school.
Speaker 2:It's alternative school Now. They're all the baddest in the name of it.
Speaker 4:It doesn't even exist anymore. It's called blueprint high school. I think it's changed now, but yeah, so I started going there and I got it was the worst of the worst kids. I liked it. It was like it was yeah it was scary at first because there were some scary kids there. I grew up in an environment that was very strict and disciplined, and now I'm in an environment where I was there more times than the teacher was there, yeah, so I struggled, but I went from struggling to ended up becoming a.
Speaker 5:I was valedictorian and then some kid beat me to it, I guess or something like that.
Speaker 4:But I was student of the year at the end of when I graduated, so I spoke at graduation.
Speaker 2:Wow, dude. So you got a brain bud when you apply yourself and pay attention.
Speaker 1:He was at an alternative school with 30 other kids that were probably on drugs bud. I love Rowdy, though.
Speaker 4:You keep it going, brother, Keep it going brother. Oh my gosh. But no, seriously, so going back to the 10th grade thing doing homeschool. The state required to see some evidence I did in 10th grade but I had thrown it all away because I was so pissed off about the whole experience. So I didn't have anything to prove that I did 10th grade. So I had to do 10th grade at the same time I was doing 11th grade.
Speaker 2:It was a rough. It was high school. That's rough, yeah, so doubling up yeah, so got that done.
Speaker 4:Very resentful at them at the time for that.
Speaker 2:Um, for a long time after that to the school or your parents, parents, yeah, um, there's a lot of resentment from.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah yeah, we're, yeah, there's a lot of healing happening, hopefully yeah, um, yeah, so uh, so anyway, so uh, but yeah, I ended up becoming, uh, the student of the year. Got got out better, ended earlier, some. Sometimes something happened clicked in senior year where I looked around I was like I don't want to be here bro I'm gonna apply myself and get done, get the heck out of here as fast as possible.
Speaker 4:I was like dude because my gpa told me that I was like at a one point something because when I redid the 10th grade, all my core classes didn't count towards my gpa, even though I still had to retake them and pass them, wow. So I was gonna have a bad gpa regardless.
Speaker 4:Um, and I didn't do that great 11th grade anyway, like I skirt, I literally skirted my way through that. 12th grade did a little better, but same like I, I was just one of those kids that, like the academic at that time, just didn't grab my attention I didn't care enough like I could tell nobody else cared enough, much less.
Speaker 4:I had one teacher that, one or two teachers that did, but it just was like I don't see the application of my real life this has for me or in the future on a lot of senses. So I was like, okay, let me, I have other stuff at home that I'm dealing with, let me just take care of this and dip out. Um, but that's where I was introduced to marijuana yeah yep first time using drugs uh, yes, sir
Speaker 4:okay yeah, yes, did your parents ever get you on, like you said? You were kind of manic did your.
Speaker 1:did your parents ever get you on? Like you said, you were kind of manic Did your parents? Ever take you to medication.
Speaker 4:So we went to one therapist once, but they sat in on it too.
Speaker 1:Kind of hard to be honest when your parents are in it.
Speaker 5:I don't trust them. Yeah, I didn't trust them.
Speaker 4:So I didn't trust anybody because I didn't trust myself. I didn't know what was going on. This is mania, is a wild, wild thing, and you're trying to survive in a alternative school and deal with mania and identity I was just gonna say and alone like it was and a very creative person, just intensely emotional, like very, very aware of that were your parents like super spiritual and I will pray about it.
Speaker 1:God's got you and you don't need no medication.
Speaker 4:I don't remember, I just remember it. It just wasn't understood and it wasn't addressed, it was kind of like punish you. It was just punish you. We just had that conversation a bit ago.
Speaker 1:My bad.
Speaker 4:I'm not going to do that to my kids.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right, bro. Now you know what not to do.
Speaker 1:Did the smoking marijuana help with your manic at all? I don't remember, yeah, I didn't.
Speaker 4:At first, I didn't smoke enough of it. Yeah, I had two visceral experiences when I first started smoking. That's supposed to deter me from smoking marijuana, but it didn't.
Speaker 4:One of them was my, because I skated to school and back. I never took a bus or anything like that. So I'm skating into downtown chandler every morning and, um, one of my buddies was picking up one of our other classmates and he saw me while skating, picked me up. He's like, hey, we're gonna go smoke weed. Actually he didn't even tell me we showed up to his apartment. He's like hey, we're gonna go smoke weed. Now I was like okay, cool, I'm not gonna sit in the car, we're weirdo so I went out there and we uh, they smoked weed.
Speaker 4:Actually I didn't even smoke weed, because I just didn't want to smoke, like with people. I didn't really know I just knew these guys from school and they weren't great people, so I didn't hang her too, tightly to them. Yeah, yeah, because I needed, I needed, um, I need a good relationship with my teachers to get through some stuff and cheat or get around stuff and build a good relationship and they didn't really like them.
Speaker 4:so I was like like, okay, well, the teachers take care of my grade, these kids don't. So you know it is what it is. So, anyway, I don't know how I figured that out then, but it did so. We were on the way back and they were super high and they drove in the opposite lane and we literally almost got a um like head on collision yeah, yes and then they just barely missed it, and I was like bruh, and then we got to the parking lot. I was like now I need the weed.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4:So, that was one, and then the other one was I went to school, teacher didn't show up or it was really late so I had time to kill.
Speaker 4:So I smoked some weed with some classmates and then went to the 7-Eleven that was right down the street. It was like a five-minute walk and to this day I don't know what was happening. So I walk into the gas station, osha's convenience store, and there's this lady with this other lady that you could just sense. I don't know how to tell you, I don't know how to even explain this. I can barely remember myself, except for the visceral feelings that were happening. But they walk into the store and there's no one. Suddenly there's no one in the store, the cashier's, not even up front, who knows where they are. Um, oh, I remember there's this other one dude that was there and he did kind of did the same thing I did. They walked in and the girl that was with the the seemed like the main girl was like screaming and crying like bloody murder, and I'm just like oh what is?
Speaker 4:going on. I'm stoned. Is this me? Am I in reality? I started like I remember. I started touching things to try to figure out if it was like was there shrooms, um so anyway. So I hid behind in the back of the store, so, so scared, and I waited until they got whatever they needed and they were like talking in a foreign language or something crazy was happening. I knew it was like really dark, spiritual, whatever it was. And that was like one of my first like spiritual experiences.
Speaker 1:I was like I got to stop smoking. Weed Bad trip, yeah who knows what happened.
Speaker 4:But I waited, I watched them walk out and leave and behind the decals on the window and and I just they went past my school. I kind of waited, timed it out and then grabbed. I didn't, I don't think I even bought anything, I was just I need to go Swim back to school, yeah. It was rough. That's crazy.
Speaker 2:So you did graduate.
Speaker 4:Yes, sir, yeah.
Speaker 2:Nice dude Spoke at graduation, which was Pretty cool. Yeah, that's cool, that's cool man.
Speaker 1:What'd you do after graduation? Huh, were your parents pleased with your progress? I?
Speaker 4:don't remember, I just remember I was given Like he didn't care, they were, they gave me some cash for For For graduating. And then I got punished for something, so I was taken away, jeez. It was yeah, it was a very punishment law and order type of uh uh relationship.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which was there?
Speaker 4:a lot of that growing up, oh yeah, a lot of the give and then take back.
Speaker 2:Oh, for sure, for sure, yeah, yeah, for sure, as long as you're good, we'll give to you, but once you're bad, we're taking back. Yes, sir, yeah, yeah, as long as you're good for sure, sure, yeah, so it was performance. I was top performance. I got the same stuff when I was a kid.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I was top performance.
Speaker 2:That lets you start to you become wearing those masks at a very young age, bud, and then it was like why are you wearing masks?
Speaker 5:Well you gave them to me Performance. Yeah, god.
Speaker 4:So there's value to extract in everything.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And I remember that's. I read a lot of books being grounded Like a lot of books. Books was a very valued thing. What kind of books? Were you reading Everything I could get my hands on, like CS Lewis, Tom Hardy?
Speaker 2:But it was only stuff in Jerry and Joan's home.
Speaker 4:Well, we could go to the library and get stuff. But it was all like it was all science fiction, or mystery. They ever vet what you read yeah, they vetted everything. Everything was vetted, sir. Everything, eddie, everything, wow, everything the clothes you bought Really when you were going.
Speaker 2:Who you're talking to.
Speaker 4:How long you were going the phone.
Speaker 1:What about your clothes would be perceived as negative.
Speaker 4:Rips. I I mean, we're talking about clothes that need to be appropriate for church. Oh really, yeah, wow, yeah, I was so furious about the whole control on church appropriate clothes.
Speaker 1:Bro, I might be missing out here.
Speaker 2:So stuff without rips stuff that's clean yeah, button-ups, yeah, I don't know stuff with no graphics no sports graphics yeah
Speaker 4:that all close yeah, that all loosened up by the time you know we're in mid high school or whatnot. But by then I was like I need. I need my own clothes. You don't know how to dress me what was your first job? So you're like your parents were rather older than yes, oh yeah, that'd be a good thing to add for texture, yeah, context, yeah, yeah. Uh, joe and jerry were much older because if they had kids, they had 20 when you were there, yeah, that means they were probably 40s, 50 when they got you.
Speaker 1:Wow. Now they're 60s when you're in high school.
Speaker 4:Yeah, now they're yeah, there's a huge gap yeah so that's why I've learned to give grace, because mental health or emotional intelligence, all those things those are things that I was dealing with. That I feel like is common now. Like if I was born in this generation that would have made sense. I would have probably had a little bit easier time, because guys can have emotions. We know how to deal with them or talk about them at least.
Speaker 1:Yeah, back then it was different man yeah, so well, just put in the spiritual context of how your parents were raising you, just made it seem that they were very old school, very church people that good I were raised in. You go to use church in a suit and tie. You go to church in a dress yep, and then you don't.
Speaker 4:Yeah, they started loosening up on that too, because they went pentecost.
Speaker 1:They were pentecostal, I think all of them was very suit and tie and dress, oh wow yeah, yeah, very performance I'm so thankful for modern christianity where it's not so. Yeah, you know I mean yeah, I mean you should still dress nice, don't get me wrong, don't come, you know raggedy.
Speaker 4:But as long as you come, I think that's true, I'm with you but I have to, but so I come in sweats.
Speaker 2:No, I do, I do, I do understand the intention, what you're?
Speaker 4:saying but I think it just depends on where you are at.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree, I agree for sure, like if you're, if you're well off in life and you're coming to church, ma'am, you should probably dress a little nicer. You know what I? Mean maybe but if you're just coming out of addiction or something, man, come as you are Just come.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't care about that, just come. The fact is you're here, praise God.
Speaker 1:Especially for someone like myself who comes out of addiction. How can I tell people who's coming out of addiction that I'm blessed when I still look like they do? Well, that's true. Should they not see me living a blessed life and dressing a little more nicer than they are, Because I've been where you are, but look where I'm at now.
Speaker 4:Then you kind of dabble in performance. You think so A little bit Because at the end of the day, it's not about what you wear, it's not even what you say, it's what you do, yeah, so my clothes don't make me. Right, but they do give perception as reality yeah so I think there's just a balance.
Speaker 1:I don't think the perception is because I, because I bought this very same thing with people in the jail yeah because I wanted to go in there in shorts and t-shirts so they could see my tattoos, so they could see.
Speaker 4:Hey, this is one of me, so I think that goes into. Uh, well, I was thinking about this phrase. I'm glad you brought that up.
Speaker 1:Dress how you want to be addressed, yeah so like in that scenario yeah, that's what you're exactly doing but they would always tell me man, come dress like you, like you're blessed, like that's really changing. I'm like I want them to be relatable, not yeah, exactly, not to be like oh who you think you are. You know what I mean.
Speaker 4:I wanted to be, but I mean if you're covered in tattoos and you come in with a tux, like you're still. That's oh you'd never see me in a tux bro, I love you pretty hard, hey, at my funeral, if you're still alive. You're wearing a tux, really, at my funeral.
Speaker 1:I have a t-shirt. I love you dude, I'm just kidding Tux t-shirt.
Speaker 2:I'm just kidding, bro, you're not going before him, jesus who?
Speaker 3:knows.
Speaker 1:This is an exciting life. We live by a car, bro. We never know. We never know what happens. I am not blanket hit this building right now.
Speaker 4:We could all three be gone. You know what I mean. We don't know freeway out.
Speaker 1:I'm very morbid, but I understand I well, you were talking about your parents. I could see how they were. Yeah, they were kind of raised in that aspect.
Speaker 4:yeah, I mean I'm glad they lightened up a little bit. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:They snagged a challenging they didn't know what they were getting when they went to Russia did they?
Speaker 5:I don't think they still do.
Speaker 2:Have them doubting that decision. Oh, I bet. Oh man. I recently asked why did we go to Russia, honey?
Speaker 4:I recently asked how much it was to adopt me, because I thought it was my previous lover of mine asked how much did it cost to adopt you? And I was like I never thought of that.
Speaker 5:And so.
Speaker 4:I asked and it was a lot, and I was like man, I'm sorry, that's not a return on your investment.
Speaker 1:It was a great return on your investment yeah. Someone's investment.
Speaker 5:You turned out to be a great person man investment.
Speaker 4:You turned out to be a great person.
Speaker 1:Man for someone out there, yeah I love you, I guess I'll pay you back when I'm rich did you and your brother and sister get along growing up?
Speaker 4:no, I didn't have a good relationship with really any siblings no really okay we're just all really different we're all really broken, yeah really broken and it wasn't again. It was a. It was a lot of a performance style family relationship. So the authentic like let's work through all of our crap vulnerably, truthfully, wasn't a thing. It was just all very kind of sweet, but there was a lot of rugs in our yeah, do you think the dynamic of let's move on.
Speaker 1:I mean, I'm sure you appreciate the aspect of you know you're adopted, we're not your real parents, but we're raising you. It kind of has some benefit, but it also probably had some negative benefit too, because well, you're not really my brother so I'm not going to listen to you.
Speaker 4:You're not really my parent so why should I listen to you? You know what I mean. I never thought of it that way. I was always super frustrated with the fact that we're all adopted and we can't like connect.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's what I'm getting at. That's what I'm getting at. So we can't get that why?
Speaker 4:You know, I get like me and my brothers.
Speaker 1:We could fight like dogs and the next day I realized you're still my brother and I love you, and when we go to somewhere together, we're going to protect each other.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I mean, so that was that. Well you're all adopted. We're not really family.
Speaker 4:I think it was deeper than just like the authentic relationship wasn't there. So that's why there wasn't like a real authentic relationship within this wasn't groomed in the siblings, the care bro, the love.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, would you say, there was tension in your house growing up.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Did you feel that?
Speaker 4:Every day.
Speaker 4:I remember I never I had a hard time. I remember I never I had a hard time. I had a hard time because I saw stuff that other people weren't willing to observe or recognize or see. I remember, like watching a home video and going Like I'm being abused. Do you not see that? Like? I remember like re-watching a home video and everybody's having a good time watching and I'm like, do you not see, like why I Don't have this relationship with this sibling? Because what they just did right there, like I've been going through that, why don't you, does anybody? It's not just horseplay, you know I can. You can feel the resentment like there was deep resentment for me that I felt against other siblings from other I was receiving from other siblings, but it wasn't picked up on by the parental figures or anyone that was an adult did your brother and sister get along?
Speaker 4:yeah, uh, from my perspective yeah, yeah, yeah I mean, they had their things, but yeah, yeah, yeah, um, but all my um that's rough yeah, I, I. I would be careful not to get in too much of it, but my sister had gone through a lot of mental health stuff too. It was really scary and really just changed our family dynamic in the wrong direction. Yeah, but yeah, it was really dark.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And some stuff was so dark that we didn't even talk about it until like as adults. Yeah, I think it was last Christmas. I just found out more stuff that my brother didn't know or that I didn't know he knew, and it's like that's something we should know, like why wasn't this ever addressed?
Speaker 2:so nothing was addressed that was the kind of the theme. Trauma, bro, yeah, trauma and families that go through trauma.
Speaker 4:They don't communicate, yeah yeah, which was really hard because I'm born into trauma, so I needed the exact opposite, even just out of pure survival insanity, like I need the hey we're. I need what I needed and I got what I got. So it is what it is, but ideally it would be great to have a. Oh crap, you were an orphan. We're gonna love.
Speaker 2:We're going to help you figure out what your identity is Feel accepted and a part of this family, like the, standard in this family will be set that you are loved and accepted and feel belonged here.
Speaker 4:It's really good, no matter what, and that just wasn't, and that intensity of how. I believe that is just purely from my experience. So again, that will be moving forward.
Speaker 1:Would you say there was a savior complex in your parents as far as the way they dealt with you, as far as, like, I saved you from where you were at. You need to recognize the fact that I saved you and I gave you a good life and you need to acknowledge that kind of thing. A savior complex, bro.
Speaker 4:Oh, absolutely, it was in a lot of stuff. It was how dare you question you?
Speaker 1:know I saved you from that Did they ever bring that up.
Speaker 2:Not like that when you were in trouble were they like throw it in?
Speaker 3:your face You're ungrateful.
Speaker 1:Look what we do.
Speaker 4:No, you know what I mean, but I saw that in a lot of my siblings, yeah, but they were like that, but just not with somebody like that. Yeah, yeah, they were a little they were. They were kinder than that they're good people.
Speaker 1:They're good people. I'm not trying to bash them, I'm just trying to yeah, yeah, absolutely explore, explore, absolutely explore, um yeah, no, it's just I don't know they're just things like that will help me understand you better and my goal here is to understand you better because we do life together right, you know and I want to know how I can love you better you know. So things like that I want to. I'm trying to, yeah, understand and grasp.
Speaker 4:You know what I mean, sometimes it felt like in a world of theirs which was black and white. I was a splash of color that nobody knew what to do with. That's how it really. Generally, even as a child, that felt like that. Uh, because I would ask so many questions and it was stop asking questions, stop talking, you talk too much. Uh, why did you do this? Why can't you control yourself, like have some self-control and all these kind of things?
Speaker 4:and it was you always the, the one that I got a lot, which, which is really funny, is you always have an answer for something which now is like wow, good for him yeah, he was intelligent like he had something, like he saw the nuances in between the layers and picked that apart. Um, I used it to my benefit, of course, and was, you know, being manipulative with it trying to get out of trouble, so I understood where they're coming from, in the sense of like they saw it as a bad thing. Yeah, um, but I also did it. I think I also did it like quietly, like I watched relationships happen and how people were treated and all that fun stuff.
Speaker 1:So we talked about that on sunday with our observation ability to observe people and just to see the dynamics and how things work and yeah, and I think that's a gift sometimes. You know I mean to be able to all the time to be able to observe and to be able to see dynamics unfold just by watching people.
Speaker 4:You know it's cool to guess and be wrong too yeah that's for me the most fun part it's like when you guess something about something and you watch it unfold and it's completely opposite, you're like heck. Yeah, yeah, keeps it interesting, that's cool. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Learn something. So you graduate high school man, start smoking a little bit of weed Chick-fil-A, working at Chick-fil-A.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so I started working at Chick-fil-A, worked there not for very long.
Speaker 1:They didn't day after you graduated yeah, yeah as long as I had a job yeah any girlfriends in high school?
Speaker 4:uh, allegedly one. I blacked out a lot of that period, to be honest with you. So I found out like a little bit later that hey, remember, you had this one person and I was like no, I didn't, yeah, you guys date. I'm like really, yeah, I'm like, oh, I didn't even remember um, yeah, I found that out I think it was like 2019 or something like that, but um no other than that it was.
Speaker 4:It was very you're really just trying to find yourself dude, you're just trying to how you belong, yeah, man just trying to make it in the world make it out yeah, so I just started my uh early do you think your identity became survival mode?
Speaker 1:it was always, it did become, it was always survival.
Speaker 4:It just had a different face in every different facets of my experience.
Speaker 2:Wow, whether food or money or relationships.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah because I was, I was. I was hit with different obscure challenges, rejection yeah, like I experienced like racial rejection at my first job and I was like nobody told me about this.
Speaker 4:You know, yeah, what you know. But I wanted that job because I knew it would be good on my resume at the time, so I just ignored it. I was like, whatever, I need a job. And I got the job, worked there for a while but then it wasn't enough hours to Joan and Jerry, so I was get another job or you're not living here because it's not enough they started like making you pay rent and stuff, no, no, they just wanted you to work more yeah, oh, you had too much free time.
Speaker 4:Probably I don't remember yeah, I don't. I think I gave up skating by then because I only skated um between 10th and oh, no, earlier than that. I think it was like 9th to 11th grade. I quit that, that huge identity crisis, and that's when, that's when I think the bipolar matured. Yeah, like that's when it was like oh, and there's a difference here. Yeah, I was skating and I couldn't land a trick and I was.
Speaker 4:I was that kid that was at the skate park when no one was there yeah going like there was a million people there just at it and I couldn't land the trick. I had my first pro model board like a really nice deck and it was really special to have. And it's just I had this. I was so angry you snapped it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, dude, I snapped I was so, I was so angry.
Speaker 4:It scared me. Like I'm not an angry person, I'm more of a. I tend to be more of a sad, pulled away person than an aggressive, stimulating person and I just felt like the anger was.
Speaker 4:It was weird, it was so deep that it's. I was like I'm not, I can't skate anymore, this is what's gonna happen. I broke it in half and, um, I don't know, I just couldn't, was so overwhelming and I went home and I remember the rest of the summer. I just kept having dreams, like I just felt in my soul there's a longing to know who my birth mom is, what she looks like. I mean, I have dreams over dreams over dreams about it and I just missed her and I was like what the heck is going on? I don't care, I didn't before to what I thought and I didn't, there was going to be no answer to this. So why be tortured? Yeah, so I went into a deep depression, for and that's where, like self-harm came in- the summer of.
Speaker 2:What are you like 18, 19?
Speaker 4:Younger than 17. 17. Probably 17. Yeah, so then I got into like writing and listening to music. That's when I found music. I really got into it and leaned into music hard just isolated and home.
Speaker 2:Joan and Jerry weren't vetting at all at this point.
Speaker 4:There's ways around it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah, there's always ways around it when there's a will, there's a way.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and I wasn't too like I need to listen to the worst music ever you weren't like in your room blaring. No, I had headphones because I learned early on how strict they were with music. I couldn't listen to heavy metal, I couldn't listen to rap, couldn't listen to anything that was really edgy or dark, that is me. That's what I tend to lean towards. That's what attracts me.
Speaker 4:So that was a battle. And then I just kind of figured my way around that and would show them like some of this, like beautiful stuff, is dark.
Speaker 5:Like, have some taste and I was learning myself as well.
Speaker 1:So anyway, yeah, so and all this time, up until this point, church, all this other stuff it was there, I mean, but there was no, like no moment where it was just like okay, god, I, I, I see you, I feel you, I acknowledge you.
Speaker 4:None of the Sunday experience permeated my existence, my being, yeah, but when I was in ninth grade, right before I got oh, eighth grade was eighth grade, ninth grade, eighth grade. I think it was eighth grade, eighth or ninth grade. I was at this Baptist school. I was still stealing a lot from different places and I remember one time and it was like a manic thing and I didn't realize it. Then it just out of the just.
Speaker 5:I gotta go there and gotta have fun and get as much as.
Speaker 4:I can without getting caught. That was the fun part for me it was not like the moment, the hundred feet from the aisle to the exit door. That's where I lived yeah, buddy yeah, door, that's where I lived. Yeah, buddy, yeah, started back to talk about it like sorry, walmart, it wasn't, it wasn't walmart yet mine was.
Speaker 3:Yeah, mine was target it's real buddy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, chandler, what do you expect?
Speaker 4:it was. It was in my backyard too, so I just um, but yeah, I remember being so, but I would be so bummed about it after because I'm not a a bad. I wasn't a bad kid. I wasn't trying to hurt somebody or hurt an organization. I just needed to do it and I would leave and I'd be like dang, I'm a piece of crap, but it was you know way deeper and darker than that.
Speaker 1:But that rush was good.
Speaker 4:It was good until it wasn't, and then a different rush came in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, until it wasn't, and then a different rush came in.
Speaker 3:Yeah, hands behind your back.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I got lucky. I never got caught. Oh wow, uh, I don't know about being luck but, and I stole a lot. It was just wild, I should have. But it is, I learned my lesson in other ways uh so I uh, one time, this one session, I was like man, I can't go home, I can't be alone, like it's dark, like I can't, my mind's dark, my soul's dark what do you mean?
Speaker 2:one session?
Speaker 4:so going to target and stealing or going wherever I will go and steal something. Yeah, it was like a set. It felt like a session. Okay, go in there, do the thing, feel the rush, get out, hate myself to the deepest, darkest bits. Yeah, all by myself.
Speaker 4:No one knew about it, like literally not a soul. And I knew that my school, my Baptist school, had a girls' soccer game. So I was like, okay, well, there's an activity going on at school, it doesn't cost any money, I'll just go there and just hang out. So I went to it and my only friends that I hung around were the foreign exchange students or a couple of the senior girls. That was it Because they were mature enough to like deal with me being around, because I was rambunctious but also I also had a level of depth so I could keep a conversation with them, because I'm like a freshman or eighth grade or something like that.
Speaker 4:But we just had a good friendship. Like it was really cool. A lot of their younger siblings were in my class, so we kind of knew each other. Anyway, it wasn't that big of a school, um, and one of them was there and she was sitting and watching the game and, um, it was somebody I could kind of trust with stuff and she had some depth to her and was like not just a surface level, how you doing, how was school like stupid stuff, like that.
Speaker 4:I think it was written all over my face how just messed up I was oh, you went and told her no, not really, no, okay, um, I just told her I was just not having a good day, that I think I just, you know I'm making decisions that aren't great, you know surface level, but deep enough to know, hey, like I need, I need some help or some reassurance or something and she.
Speaker 4:She suggested that we go to the youth pastor at the school and she was like, do you know jesus? And I was like what do you mean? She asked me a bunch of questions about the gospel and I've been to church so I know about it. She's like, well, do you know him in your soul? And I was like I don't, I don't know. I guess I don't really know, but how I'm feeling sucks right now.
Speaker 4:So if it's gonna help. And she's like let's go talk to the youth pastor. So we went to talk to the youth pastor, the. So we went and talked to the youth pastor. The next day she convinced me to do to talk to him because, um, I would get a class off. I didn't have to go to class to just sit and chat with him. I was like, hell, yeah, I'll do that, I'll go sit, talk to the youth pastor and miss a site planet for the worst class I didn't want to be at.
Speaker 4:Um, I think it was, and then we went and chatted with him and then he shared me with the gospel what it is, yada, yada. So I accepted it. Um and uh, I asked him into my heart and that was when I accepted the gospel, told my parents about it. I got a cool t-shirt. That's kind of our conversation, hey here's a t-shirt, yeah. I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 2:It was yeah, I don't know, I don't know, it was really weird, I don't know what happened but or why the experience happened the way it happened but uh, anyway. So that was your first real in it like almost an encounter dude.
Speaker 1:Yeah, jesus, um, would you say it was encounter. Would you just say you were doing it because you needed something different than what you were feeling, because it was different between having an encounter and just well, I think I need to repeat this what this guy just said. I think there they can be they.
Speaker 4:I think it can be a style of an encounter.
Speaker 3:I think, it was real.
Speaker 4:It was real enough. I've covered the bases after that since, just to make sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because I am not a great guy, none of us.
Speaker 2:Are you just got to make sure you get that? You make sure you got that golden ticket. Am I right? Saved by grace, thank you, jesus.
Speaker 4:Those streets are gold over there right After this game. This isn't the one with the flames right. I've worked at Biles Pizza.
Speaker 1:I don't know if there's any heat back there. I want to know now.
Speaker 2:I love this guy man. Well done, my good and faithful servant.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so you're.
Speaker 4:so you're graduating, you're working, you're doing your thing or are you still smoking?
Speaker 1:weed when you're yeah, yeah, that increased. Um. Now that you have money, you can get yourself and um it didn't increase a lot did your parents ever smell it on you or question you? No, I never got caught, really no, I did one time.
Speaker 4:I got caught, I got kicked out really yeah, and I didn't get caught, because they caught me.
Speaker 2:You wanted to get caught. Oh yeah, I said some things.
Speaker 1:I said some things yeah, yeah, my mom found mine in my pants because she always did my laundry. Oh, and I gave the age-old excuse.
Speaker 2:And my brother it's Christmas.
Speaker 4:I was holding it for a friend.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 4:I mean I was very manic as a like oh, not manic, but I was very much like it was just strict childhood, yeah, so much so that anything that I wanted for me, that I didn't want to get caught with, like whether it was going to the mall and buying clothes that I wasn't supposed to spend my money on because I was supposed to be safe or something, else or whatnot. It was like I had a whole plan to make sure that I didn't get caught. I got good at hiding whole plan to make sure that I didn't get.
Speaker 4:I got good at hiding. I got good at hiding at a young age, first as a really young kid, like really really young, like five, six, seven, eight. It was eating all the sugar in the house, like finding a way to do that without getting caught and like uh, that's that, I learned the art it's an art form and I did um did you tell me one time you used to used to hide food?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, yeah, oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:And then it would get caught later on because it would be dead food or something hidden in the room or something.
Speaker 5:Oh well, I was hungry one night.
Speaker 4:So it came off a lot more innocent and less intense. So yeah, again that hoarding and needing more than I need, like that was a visceral feeling.
Speaker 1:Survivor. I'm sure that needing more than I need, like that, was a visceral survivor.
Speaker 4:Not sure when I'll have it again, so I need to make sure I have yeah, which didn't make sense because, dude, I live in america like upper, middle, upper class, like family like I'm chilling uh you know, I mean, it didn't feel like that on the inside, it looked like that on the outside.
Speaker 2:But the inside it was like super strict you were going through a war, dude. Yeah, my whole life.
Speaker 4:Dang. Now we're finally preparing for one.
Speaker 5:What Come?
Speaker 4:on.
Speaker 2:Jesus.
Speaker 4:It's time. Too much time has passed.
Speaker 2:But yeah. So what are you? 18, 19?
Speaker 4:Yeah, 18, 19. Dealing with the mania, stuff, didn't know it, just a lot of this. I think by then it was starting to be more depressive. So I cleaned down to the weed and that was my identity. A buddy of mine that we went to church together and we were friends together he got kicked out of his dad's house. And so then, right after I got kicked out of mine because my parents were this was before they moved up North way before, but they were dreaming about it- so they would go up North for the weekend.
Speaker 4:So I was like, okay, they're gone for the weekend, we can do whatever we want. And they came home a night early and they were like, if you're not home by this time, like we're done, we're having a sit-down conversation and things need to change. We're done with this because you're being wild. And they called me. It was past midnight, it was right around, right before midnight, and they got home early like hey, where are you? I'm literally, I'm looking down the street and I can see my neighborhood.
Speaker 4:I'm five minutes away, yeah but I'm with my friends I'm high, we're gonna go do some stupid stuff, and that's what I wanted. So I was like screw you, yeah, yeah, yeah, are you high right now?
Speaker 5:yeah, that's, I think, the conversation was like okay, cool you, yeah, yeah, yeah Are you high right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, yeah, that's how I think the conversation pretty much went.
Speaker 4:I was like, okay, cool, your stuff will be in trash bags on the lawn. That was it. So I went there, couldn't really do a lot of stupid stuff, because I was stressed out about the fact of where am I going to live. I was like, don't worry about it, you can live with me next day went to go pick up my stuff.
Speaker 1:They're screaming and yelling and I just just shut off, I just turned everything. Did the weed help with the manic at all? Uh, it never has. No, no, sir, no, never has. Sometimes it can be, uh, medically great official for for some things like that it wasn't for him.
Speaker 4:Nope, it did not agree with me, no no, we can do. You want to talk about, like my uh um experience, or what you would call uh reactions to marijuana? Yeah yeah, so first um, so I'm living with him and smoking a lot of weed. I'm like this is gonna help yeah and I remember that was my first time that I went. That was suicidal. That was the first time I was skateboarding.
Speaker 1:Your lows, your lows were really low yeah it sent me lower.
Speaker 4:Oh wow, Because it's a.
Speaker 1:It's a semi-depressant, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:Wow, I'm forgetting the different types of marijuana. This is weird.
Speaker 1:Indica Stevo yes, so Indica is the chill out.
Speaker 5:Yeah so I weird indica sativa. Yes, so indica is the the chill.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so I didn't know, I couldn't have that at the time. Yeah, this is back when there's no dispensers. Yeah much illegal so I'm getting from buddies and whatnot yeah and I'm on my way to work and I just, oh man, wouldn't it be nice if I just jumped off this bridge? Everything would be over wow and that was the first time. It was literally like almost an impulse to just how old were you? Uh 18 dang dude because I just got kicked out. I was living with him but I was miserable.
Speaker 1:What the hell was there? A bridge and channeler freeways.
Speaker 4:Oh okay, yeah, overpass all right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all right yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm thinking where you gotta buy a bridge and it's a quick ticket on alma school I almost school in the 60 was what I skated over.
Speaker 4:All right, yeah, yeah, I think that's what it was, because I quick ticket on alma school, like alma school in the 60 was what I skated over. All right, yeah, yeah, I think that's what it was, because I was living on alma school.
Speaker 1:Wow, um, so that was the first time yeah but yeah, then off and on did the weed ever give you a, a high high?
Speaker 4:not at that time, not until I found, not until I found california weed. Really, yeah, once I found california weed got a lot better.
Speaker 1:So it took your manic state and made it either really high or really low, just low Really.
Speaker 4:At the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just low.
Speaker 4:So I think, if I remember correctly, I stopped taking it because, oh, I did. Yeah, because he was going to the military, because he wasn't doing anything in his life. I wasn't doing anything in his life, I wasn't doing his life with my life. His, his family didn't want us living there. Yeah, there's a lot of drama, and so I was. I found out less than a month. I had to find a new place to live and I have no money and, uh, this is gonna be great.
Speaker 4:So one of my root childhood fears is to be homeless, is to be homeless again I don't want to go through that again yeah, well, there I was, the the next day I had I needed a place to live, where I was going to be on the street, and I was at my work and it was then I was working a night shift and we're just getting to work early and laying in the in the literal dirt. Just I can't do this. I can't go homeless. I can't. I can't go back to um where I used to jo, joe and Jerry.
Speaker 4:They were not even talking. They don't like me, I don't like them. I've already told everybody on Facebook that I'm atheist and I hate LifeLink and all this kind of stuff. Like I had gone off this ramp, probably it was mania.
Speaker 5:Sorry.
Speaker 3:I don't know. You're good To whoever that was too.
Speaker 4:But yeah, I was like I denounced God. I was like I denounced God. I was like I'm not into this. That was the previous experience shortly thereafter, but then I'm here and now it's like okay, like I'm going to kill myself, because I'd rather kill myself than be homeless. Because of how heavy that my childhood experience was. I was like I'm not doing that, like I can't. I'm a survivor sure, but if I don't have to be, I'm not doing that Like I can't, I'm a survivor Sure, but if I don't have to be, I'm out.
Speaker 5:Yeah, you know.
Speaker 4:Yeah. So I made a plan and uh um, and I was laying there, my manager came out and I'm very bubbly and like extrovert kind of personality most of the time, and I've been working at this job for a couple of years now and so, so they know you, she knows me yeah.
Speaker 4:She's like a very mother figure, like just a beautiful person, and she was like what's going on, what's wrong with you? And I wouldn't tell her. She's like you're not going to work until you tell me. And we went back and forth for like 15 minutes and then I was like, fine, I'll tell you. So I told her and she was like, oh, we'll figure it out, it's fine, somebody, yeah. So then I got a place to live, um, and and I remember washing the dishes and going I hear, like it was like I was like I hear you and I I'm gonna take care of you. Because it was like I went, you know, I'm gonna kill myself. I was like all right, there is a god.
Speaker 4:Like your time to shine yeah so don't step up to the bat oh laying laying in that dirt. Yeah, it was going through both of them.
Speaker 2:Oh, you're like I'm done with this crap dude God if you're real, you got to do something, yeah, and dishonor you regardless, because this is where I'm at.
Speaker 4:This is your fault. Yeah, and it worked out. You showed up. Random people, come on.
Speaker 5:So I moved into a place and he showed up Random people, come on.
Speaker 3:So I moved into a place and it just got worse. Things just got way worse.
Speaker 4:But I was like I'm not atheist, I believe in God. Now, yeah. So I started reading scripture.
Speaker 4:I started worshiping. I started going to church again. How old were you? 18. This all happened in between my 18th year, okay.
Speaker 4:But then that got really bad too, because the guy I was living with, he spoke Spanish and I spoke English and neither of us could speak the other language, and so we had a really difficult time communicating and I would go home and hide in my room so we didn't have to interact or fake asleep. When he would bang on the door or outside banging on the window trying to get my attention, I was like I can't Today I don't have the capacity to try to figure out what you're trying to tell me. Yeah, because he's wants me to do something or do that, and there was no wi-fi so I was using all my internet money to try to. So I was broke, had no food, um, and god would just show up like alma school was the road where I saw A lot of people paid for my phone bill or for food, or I met a cool couple that were trying to mentor me in some Christian stuff and that got weird.
Speaker 4:Anyway, my family I started rebuilding my relationship with my family with Joan and Jerry again, not with my brother or sister, or my family with Joan and Jerry again, not with my brother or sister or anything but with Joan and Jerry, and we would talk, like here a little bit here, a little bit there, and I was like working on my spirituality, because I was like I don't know what else to do, and he showed up and I didn't kill myself.
Speaker 4:So we're going to figure this out. And the first time we had a dinner I think it was Joan- you and Joan and Jerry, yeah they were?
Speaker 4:they were like you are a completely different person. Who are you? Wow, and that was cool. And I remember they would give me rides home because I had. I biked everywhere, skateboarded, and I remember asking like, hey, if jesus manifests into a human or some physical form, and he told you to let me move back in, would you? It was a straight no, it was like a definite no. I knew I felt the truth right. By this time I'd matured enough to go. I understand, like I, I made some mistakes.
Speaker 3:Um, now I'm kind of like yeah, I was a little harsh, but I wasn't that bad.
Speaker 4:It is what it is yeah, um, yeah. So then we were connecting and you know God's kind of moving a little bit. They're going out of town to go back to the cabin that they now live in and they were like, hey, can you watch our house while we're gone? Which was a huge step up. It was like we can't let you out of your sight. We don't trust you. We're going to trust you with the house while we're gone so you can stay there and enjoy the comfort there.
Speaker 4:I remember Joan literally called me and said I feel like Jesus told me to let you stay here for a day or two. Verbatim said I don't want to, but I'm going to go with that and I was like a lot of love here.
Speaker 2:Thanks for being obedient. A lot of love here. Thanks for being obedient.
Speaker 5:I guess, Thanks, sergeant.
Speaker 4:So I did, and thank God I did, and thank God Joan was obedient because the water right before I went to stay there, the water shut off at the place I was staying and I couldn't figure out why. And so I called the city and they're like oh, he hasn't paid any of the bills in six months, so longer than I've stayed there. Wow, like literally every penny I've had. Where has it all went to you?
Speaker 4:know, I'm like, oh man, what a fun situation, yeah. So then I stay with them and they go out of town. Then they come back and while they were out of town I got super sick, just out of nowhere. I just got super sick, and so they were like, okay, you can stay a little longer while you're trying to get healed, but every day we would go back to see if the water got turned on. I knew his schedule.
Speaker 4:So, I would go in at night and check to see if the water's on, and it wasn't. I pray every day that water would stay on.
Speaker 5:I don't want to go back.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:And uh, um, yeah, so it never did. And so they were like, and then my sister had to come into town and I'm like the like, I'm the neutral person between that relationship with the family and her, so they asked me to stay to be, a part to help mitigate things. Keep peace to stay, to be a part to help mitigate things break.
Speaker 5:Keep peace, yeah so I had another function.
Speaker 4:Okay, cool, I'll stay. Yeah, so I stayed, and after that we were still checking and the water was still off, so they sat me down like, hey, well, what about you back here? You obviously need to pay rent and we want to help you get your life back together. You've been really amazing and we appreciate who you are and what you've been so.
Speaker 4:So then we made the go over there and we, in the middle of the night, just took everything and dipped out um, and then I got a new job and started rebuilding my life and then I was like instantly super bored and just didn't feel fulfilled in life yeah paying off bills and stuff.
Speaker 1:But I was so like you quit smoking weed or you still smoking weed uh, I think I quit at the time.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, I think I was done with that. I was really kind of in a in a love jesus phase a little bit now and then, um, yeah, then I found an internship that was happening in florida. Literally two months into living back with joan and jerry, I moved to florida to live with people I never met before really, how'd you, how you meet them? So they were a part of. I'm trying to be careful. They were a part of a summer camp once. That happened with LifeLink.
Speaker 5:Really so I knew of them there.
Speaker 4:I'd seen them there and I bunked with one of them once but this was years back.
Speaker 5:Wow.
Speaker 4:So it was like I found it on Facebook, yeah, and because I knew they knew LifeLink, I was like, okay, maybe this is credible, all right. Then the main youth pastor was like you need to come, you need to come. And I was like, dude, I am screwed up and I have no money, like I don't think I can go. And I was like well, what are you? They were like you need a computer, a way to get there, and I was like I don't even have a way to get there. The guys from Arizona are going to this, so help a ride with them. We'll figure everything else out. And it just fluidly happened so fluidly. I remember the night before I was leaving, I sat in the freezer at my work and called James. This was back when James was James, not.
Speaker 5:Pastor.
Speaker 4:James. But Pastor James and I was like give me any advice. I don't know what I'm doing here. I'm going to go to a church thing to do an internship at a church when, like less than a year ago, I was atheism. I'm gonna kill myself doing drugs yeah whatever. And he was like, just say yes to whatever they say, like just say yes, just say yes, and you know, go from there. And I was like, okay, I'll say yes. And yeah, that was the start of Florida, that's right, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's what I'd say.
Speaker 4:There's value in everything, everybody yeah.
Speaker 1:Even in bad choices, man, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:You'll learn, you'll learn. Yeah so you go to Florida.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 4:Toasty.
Speaker 2:Miami.
Speaker 4:Yes, sir, go to florida. Oh yeah, oh yeah, toasty miami yes, sir, oh wow, yeah south beach, yeah, south dude, hollywood, wow hollywood, wow bro yeah the whole area, north miami. Lived in north miami. I just skate to the beach within like 10 minutes. Nice biscayne boulevard, I would skate up and down it at night dang dude opposite traffic Because it was so congested. Yeah, it was cool. Skate the lights man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a whole life over there.
Speaker 4:The Hollywood. What's the boardwalk? Hollywood boardwalk. You know, I wasn't a tourist anymore. I knew when to go, when no one was there and me and my buddies Would longboard down. It was really cool.
Speaker 3:How we're in florida for 2019.
Speaker 4:No 20 no, so it would have been 2015 to 2019 or 2016 to 2015.
Speaker 1:A few years it was about three and a half, maybe four years really yeah, you were there for a while, a while it doesn't feel like it either I can't even like every year that I'm there, I can't even think of like significant stuff.
Speaker 4:I blacked out a lot of it was a. It was a rough period.
Speaker 1:It was challenging, I think. So I got here in 2014 that's when I graduated high school. Yeah, yeah, trying to think if I remember seeing you around and remembering you dipping out at all.
Speaker 4:Apparently, a lot of people said they remember me dipping out. I don't remember me dipping out, and me dipping out simply was just stop going every Sunday.
Speaker 2:Just leaving, just leaving yeah.
Speaker 4:It wasn't because of anybody there, it was. I'm doing my own thing.
Speaker 1:Florida something you want to talk about.
Speaker 4:What do you want to know?
Speaker 2:What were you doing for work? You were interning in a church. That's quite a minute.
Speaker 1:Years and you're mentoring that church man. I mean, that seems like a pretty unique experience what was the internship?
Speaker 2:creative?
Speaker 4:uh no, it was just.
Speaker 1:It was just an internship, it was not structured specifically and, if I'm not mistaken, this is where some of your church work comes from yeah, yeah so oh, talking about the church, yeah, so I didn't have
Speaker 2:promises and things like that were yeah, expectations weren't met uh yeah people didn't do what they said they were gonna do stopping back and you want to talk about it uh, yeah sure I don't care we don't need details. It's your story brother.
Speaker 4:I think one of the highlights of the experience. Let me see, it was a beautiful. There were some beautiful parts of the experience. The church that I was at for most of that time was a beautiful church. It was like, oh, this is how church is done, differently.
Speaker 2:Community.
Speaker 4:Yeah, than what I've seen before. They were not to go into too much detail, but they were one of the most uh, one of those churches that had the most different ethnicities and backgrounds ever yeah, um, even more than us, because we're pretty diverse, way more they would make this look like oh, because they're in Miami.
Speaker 1:You got Cubans and you got Puerto Ricans.
Speaker 4:Even stuff from across the world. Really, yeah, they had over.
Speaker 3:They were in Port City.
Speaker 4:They had just from their members alone. So if you're a member, your flag would be put up from where you're born and they had over. I think it was between 80 to 90. Wow.
Speaker 5:Different countries 80 to 90 different countries bro, dude, yeah, dude talk about nations.
Speaker 2:That's beautiful. Yeah, that's so cool. So you found your place there because it was.
Speaker 4:It was a bunch of different people maybe on that aspect for sure, but it was all it was like going to, it was like transitioning from homeschool to school, like Like this is a whole different environment. I mean like adult people my age that are doing church or have their own life experiences, that talk a different. This is like a D, a culture shock was enough to just reel you back.
Speaker 5:Really.
Speaker 4:Like I remember the first one of the first nights. They everybody's super connected, so they were like we want you to meet these people, that people relationships. Yeah, I was already kind of notorious because on the application, because again I said I was screwed up and I was like I don't know if I'm supposed to do this. So I'm just going to make it the hardest possible as well to see to to if they say yes, then you guys already know.
Speaker 3:I put on there my addiction to porn. I put on there that I did drugs.
Speaker 2:I was atheist.
Speaker 4:I was like everything.
Speaker 2:There's no way they're going to take me.
Speaker 4:And I didn't even think and they said yes, and I didn't even think, to think that, hey, there's other genders besides males. The application Right. And so when I first get there, the one of the female pastors was like um, female pastors was like um, I loved your application. Like that was very raw. And I was like, oh crap, this is awkward. She's just she, she's a beautiful person, she really meant it.
Speaker 5:But she was inspired.
Speaker 4:Yeah and I didn't mean to inspire anybody. I was just trying to make sure this is where I was supposed to be. Yeah, and apparently no one else put that on it's a church internship.
Speaker 2:Bud didn't get the memo performance.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so, um, no, but I got a lot of experience there. I said, yes, and that was where I started learning about audio sounds, because I'd done that stuff here. Yeah, because my dad's a sound engineer and he did that here so that's kind of where I just production.
Speaker 4:Yeah, keep me out of trouble it's very easy stuff and I learned that here. Not easy, but easy to teach someone with my background, with my family and stuff, because my brother was in the band, all that kind of stuff, so music and production, all that's normal and familiar. So no one else wanted an internship. Each person was going to be assigned a certain area and I kind of smooched my way through my church experience in high school. Like I just set up and tear down and half cared about everything and everybody here is like super serious about like their background in church and I'm just like, oops, I didn't even know I was supposed to be here until a month ago. Like I didn't know I was going to be here until like a month ago. It all happened super fast so I just didn't. I stayed silent because I was like I don't know, I don't want to be in leadership or anything like who am I like? Just give me the grunt work. I guess I was kind of, and it was considered that what do you want me to do?
Speaker 2:I'll do it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it kind of was and nobody wanted to do uh, production, and so I was like, well, I kind of know the area, sure, why not? And so I and I really saw some of my gifts First time I ever see some of my gifts come out.
Speaker 2:That's cool bro.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it was really cool.
Speaker 1:Oh, did you live in a situation like dorm or no, I lived with one of the pastor's family and that kind of that was very.
Speaker 2:Eye-opening.
Speaker 4:It was a struggle.
Speaker 2:Yeah, opening it was a struggle.
Speaker 4:Yeah, shared a room with the first house we shared an apartment with. He was 11 people, so there's like four of us dudes sleeping in the in the living room on the floor and you're all interns yeah, and then some of the like, one of the girls, um, was in there and the girls got the rooms, of course.
Speaker 4:And then, uh, and then actual, the family, and then abuela and the kids, they got a room. So, yeah, it was tight, it was super tight. And then, uh, over time, because it's supposed to be a three-month thing, I was only going to be, I only committed to three months. Three months came by and I was like, oh, this is great, let's do six months, like well you can stay, um, so I stayed and did six months.
Speaker 4:By then we moved and we got a bigger house. Still sleeping on the floor, still a bunch of us in the same room.
Speaker 1:That was the theme of living with them the whole time was it like a start church, that they were starting up, or something?
Speaker 4:no, this church has been around forever this is a mega church. They were a huge church. Wow, like three services translations, really. So I worked with outside of interning. Like three services, wow, translations, really. Yeah, wow, yeah. So I worked with outside of interning. Um, if I didn't have a job somewhere else, I uh, um, I worked as like maintenance there.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And um yeah, so I did maintenance for them for a little bit. I learned. I learned from the main maintenance guy. One of the things he said I'll never forget is there's no such thing as overcommunication. If anything happens, tell me.
Speaker 2:Communicate.
Speaker 4:But he would tell me like my life depended on it. It was weird and I'll never forget it, Isaiah.
Speaker 2:There's no way you can overcommunicate. Tell me there's no such thing as overcommunication.
Speaker 4:Like I learned just as much from him that I did the internship, Wow. And the internship, wasn't that? It was very loosey. It was pretty loosey-goosey, but my brain hurt for the first week or two because I'd never done so much critical thinking.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 4:We were taught, we read books about leadership and ministry and all this stuff, and then I'm learning sound and it was 12, 13-hour days back to back to back to back to back, like our whole life was there for the internship.
Speaker 1:It was provided for you and stuff like that, yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, were you paid at all? No, no, I was never paid for the internship.
Speaker 1:No, I was never accredited for it either it was just free living and food provided for you, sort of yeah, get your butt to work yeah, yeah, well, I would pay rent too.
Speaker 4:I ended up paying rent I'd actually pay rent if you're not paying anything because I got a job like I got, I had to have a job outside of that as well all right, oh, wow that without a car. Wow, wow bro.
Speaker 4:So it's catching rides with people and I was editing videos as well, because I got into then I got to more some of the creative stuff. Um, I literally it was even said you're the first one to get up and you're the last one to go to bed. I never see you asleep because it's like, like that, I learned time management yeah there's no excuse time management is a real thing yeah like you can get stuff done and still get good sleep, because doing that amount of stuff will give you a good sleep.
Speaker 4:So and I had to, because it was like if I needed to get somewhere do something, I had to rely on other people so that taught me how to build relationships and favors and being smart, and uh, it wasn't all bad it really grew you up and matured you.
Speaker 2:It grew me up a lot of ways.
Speaker 4:Okay, yeah, heartbreak that's when I started, uh, so, yeah, it grew me up, um, there's a lot of dark things happened. I um I didn't have any real I don't think I really had any could trust anybody. Yeah, I was flying off the handle as well because I was still dealing with mania and I had no idea about that, but so everybody else was dealing with that too, and you I was one of the dudes that had a lot of work to do, because when you're in production or background stuff like that's- more.
Speaker 4:That's more work than everybody else to some extent heavier work it's all the unseen stuff all I did was unseen stuff and I loved.
Speaker 2:I'd rather do the unseen okay, usually the first one there, the last one, yeah, but there's a lot of work in the unseen, but yeah that's good, keep my hands busy brother you're bored, I get bored.
Speaker 4:I'll be somewhere else.
Speaker 1:JT man.
Speaker 4:He's the first one here and the last one to leave, brother I love you bro.
Speaker 1:When I was doing production man, I had to be here for the For the production meeting at 7 am. Yeah, and he was already here. Oh, I'm like good Lord, dude Hustle.
Speaker 4:Yeah, three years smart people hustle.
Speaker 1:Yeah, don't bump his head up. Don't bump his head up you already testified that God gave me a brain. I just don't know how to use it.
Speaker 4:I just don't know how to use it now it takes longer to learn how to drive a Lamborghini than a bicycle, so it's okay.
Speaker 1:Oh wow, amen. So what made you? What made you leave?
Speaker 4:yeah, what made you leave heartbreak no uh, so leave the church, yeah, yeah well florida.
Speaker 2:Yeah, why'd you leave florida I?
Speaker 4:left florida to leave with the family, um, because they were leaving. What family? The family he was living with, the pastor's family.
Speaker 2:That oh wow, yeah, so I was living with them the whole time.
Speaker 4:All right, um, but I left the church before we left.
Speaker 5:Miami.
Speaker 4:Yeah, um yeah Uh. Had a breakup and toxic ministry stuff.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And so I was ostracized from the church because of this toxic, toxic situation, which was even a part of the family that I lived with.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 4:I experienced that.
Speaker 5:Like it wasn't.
Speaker 4:There was no safe space I didn't. I didn't have any safe space and um the only safe space to me. I remember this is gonna sound really bad, but the only safe place I remember experiencing was in a girlfriend's car really like being with a girl in a car and you could talk you could talk, do fun things, but just privacy because, I shared a room with people like there's no privacy anywhere like the walls were thin, like you know, you were judged.
Speaker 4:It was a harsh environment, verbally abusive and emotionally abusive and manipulative. And I'm also very different so it was like confusion in there and stress and a lot of things, yeah it was a lot of things that, uh, I couldn't even articulate. Uh, so yeah. So anyway, we they. He decided to leave there because he got opportunity in california. They wanted to move to california because that's where their family's from yeah so they want to go back there.
Speaker 4:I had nothing left in california. All I was doing was eos and my job. I was working out in my job.
Speaker 2:I got so jacked you had nothing left in florida? No, absolutely not Okay.
Speaker 4:Absolutely not. I did not, I was done. My whole life just flipped.
Speaker 2:Okay, if y'all are going, I'm going with you.
Speaker 4:Yeah, Everybody chose the side of the ex-lover which makes sense, it is what it is. I literally watched it happen on Instagram.
Speaker 5:I was like, oh, okay.
Speaker 4:Cool Sweet. Oh okay, Cool Sweet. I got a new job.
Speaker 2:Time for me to go.
Speaker 4:I got a gym membership and I was there for hours and one of my roommates who left and lived on his own. We hung out once to go longboarding and he literally like, wow, you've changed, like you're taller. I think my body started to mature because I was starting to physically work, because I'd never been a sports person or outside skateboarding, I'd never been to a gym before up until I was 21 and heartbroken and alone. And I had money because I was working at a restaurant, a high-end restaurant. So I'm going to get the gym membership. The gym was right on the way home, so I would just go to the Go to work and then on the way home 12 am.
Speaker 4:Go to the gym. No one's there, sweet, get a pump in, do my thing. Be there for two hours, I'd be there until I fall asleep. I would fall asleep on the set.
Speaker 5:Wow, really. Yeah, I love working out, bro, I love working out.
Speaker 4:It saved my life. Yeah, yeah, it saved is really good. That's how my body is born.
Speaker 1:It needs that, whether I like it or not. Yeah, most of the time I don't like it clears out the brain, man.
Speaker 4:Yeah yeah, so you, you said so yeah, so we so.
Speaker 2:So anyway they're they leave florida, go to california.
Speaker 4:So they're like hey, we're leaving, I want to probably a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah because you you said something with an ex-lover yeah so obviously you were in a relationship when you were in Florida. Sure absolutely, and it was probably not church approval.
Speaker 2:You didn't go there for the girl, though? No, no, he went there for the internship.
Speaker 1:Well, you said ex-lover, so I'm assuming there was sexual relations that the church probably didn't approve of, and that's kind of what?
Speaker 2:no, and all the church people picked her side, so it's like you were ostracized and outcast again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, did they name you like the grasser or it's?
Speaker 4:because of the roots I think it was more of the roots because her family's been there forever.
Speaker 1:She's been there forever, okay they tie, they pay money, they probably yeah, they corrupt they made some decisions and then I was in the.
Speaker 4:I was in the band Like I played bass. This was one time I played. This is my only public like in front of everyone doing something.
Speaker 4:I was playing the bass. Wow, they had two campuses and I played at the other campus that was more up north, but it was a really small campus, like 10 people, like 15 people. This was like in the hood, and so that was great easy for me. And then once in a while we'd come out there and do it at the mega church, and so they said we were better because the band I was with was everybody that played in a metal band, so we were able to stay tight in sync, and they were a great guy, so we had a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:You guys all play metal together and then go play for churchman church I never played metal with them I didn't know that much okay, good guys, um so you played an instrument brother yeah, I played fantastic.
Speaker 4:I can see you banging on a bass.
Speaker 1:Well, my first instrument was a violin are you a slapper or are you a picker? Oh, slapper for.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it sounds better, oh yeah.
Speaker 5:Come on.
Speaker 4:But yeah, first violin, then I did trumpet, because Jerry is into trumpet and I wanted to find some connections. Yeah, I hated that. I was like, nope, not my thing. I got bullied out of violin.
Speaker 2:unfortunately, you got bullied out of violin, I did.
Speaker 4:My orchestra teacher was like I don't know why Zayn won't stick with violin. He has a lot of talent in it. And I was like dude, everybody makes fun of me for everything, and this, Like I don't want to deal with that. So then I did piano. That's where I found coffee while I was waiting for piano lessons, Because we didn't have coffee at the house like we didn't have soda, we didn't have like it was very dry straight, yeah so uh.
Speaker 4:But I found coffee there so I was like, all right, this is dope, um anyway. So then I played piano for a little bit, but adhd, all that kind of stuff was I was, I could not get myself to focus to play. So then when I was at this internship in florida, they're like we need a bass player for the high school um service. So we're going to give you the bass. You know notes and you know numbers. So here it is, we're going to teach you a couple of worship songs that are not hard at all, very easily structured, and so I literally learned on Wednesday and had to play on Sunday.
Speaker 5:Wow. Yeah, and so that was my career.
Speaker 4:Bass no, anything Guitar Really.
Speaker 1:Ac bass, no anything. Uh, guitar, really acoustic and electric, yeah, a little piano, uh, no, no, no, I want to play cello. That'd be super dope. I can see you banging on a piano, dude. Yeah, it looks fun, it does I love listening to it it's.
Speaker 4:I was listening to some uh orchestra music on the way here I think you on a piano would be rad.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, tattooed piercings banging on a piano.
Speaker 4:There's plenty of them out there that are. I don't watch a lot of. I'll let them do their thing. I'm not going through the work it was in a mike myers uh costume, banging on a piano yeah uh, he started off doing the ding ding ding like the, the scary music. Oh, I was like, oh, that's so good. Yeah, yeah, I enjoy that.
Speaker 1:That's beautiful so anyway, um Y'all like scary stuff, shut up.
Speaker 4:I do too, I do too.
Speaker 2:He just told you shut up. I love Friday the 13th.
Speaker 4:Religious folks get on Shout out Wednesday.
Speaker 1:Beetlejuice.
Speaker 2:Beetlejuice, so you leave Florida. Roll us back in, brother, so you leave Florida to.
Speaker 4:California. So I moved to California.
Speaker 2:How old are you?
Speaker 4:Don't know, and what part of Cali 23. We moved there 2019. Okay, no earlier 2018, in the middle between 2018 and 2019, I believe is when we moved there Is this when you moved to Palm Springs, yeah, around that time.
Speaker 1:I think I turned 23. You're 29 now. That's five years ago.
Speaker 4:six years ago I think I turned 23 when we just moved there, because it was the same summer. We moved there in the summer.
Speaker 1:And you're still with the family right.
Speaker 4:Yes, sir, did you get along with them oh man.
Speaker 1:I mean, obviously you're traveling across the country with you left whether there had to been some kind of relationship we did it was fraudulent, but it was there.
Speaker 4:A lot of it was fraudulent you were just wearing masks both, but insinuated by there because he was the pastor was a narcissist. So those were fun yeah, it did like an intense one too.
Speaker 1:Those were fun.
Speaker 4:I don't know if it was sociopathic, but it was definitely narcissists for sure.
Speaker 1:What is that? When you say family, you're talking wife, kids. Yeah, so they had a wife.
Speaker 2:They had an abuela.
Speaker 4:An abuela was there, and then two kids and then her brother.
Speaker 3:What was?
Speaker 4:abuela Grandma.
Speaker 1:Grandma. Oh yeah, I don't speak Spanish, man, you guys got to stick to English man.
Speaker 4:Sorry, go Dodgers.
Speaker 1:Dodgers suck, it's just sports bud. Let it go.
Speaker 2:No, the Dodgers suck, lakers suck the.
Speaker 5:Dodgers are the best. I'm a Dodgers fan. I hate the Lakers.
Speaker 4:If I'm going to be, any fan it's going to be of the Dodgers. Sorry, that's it. I'm a Dodgers, I got it you go Isaiah. It's just sports but it doesn't matter. Lakers did win. While I was living there, All LA teams suck Statistically not as bad as Shut up, dude.
Speaker 2:That's why I hate them so much, they always beat us.
Speaker 4:Then we love to be hated.
Speaker 1:Hate on, hate on. Do they have a group in CR for sports addiction?
Speaker 4:Addictions no way Sure is bud Michelle's on.
Speaker 3:Kill Tony right now, Just do some ad-lib thing I'm sure there's a thing here we can hit.
Speaker 1:Oh, we have buttons, it might stay going, it might stay going for 30 seconds, so it was.
Speaker 4:Palm Desert, la Quinta Indio, coachella, palm Springs area.
Speaker 2:That big long road that we drove down the whole area All up and down there.
Speaker 4:While we were driving down there with the boys, I literally was like, oh, memory, here, memory there, I won't tell you that way I can see you going through. Yeah, there's some really beautiful ones, though, too. I, that's where I, that's where I found my creativity was in in the desert, for sure in the low desert.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I uh. So we moved there and that's when I found marijuana too. Um, when we first moved down there, they're going out to disneyland. I'm not gonna go. So we moved there and that's when I found marijuana too. Okay, when we first moved down there, they were going out to Disneyland. I'm not going to go. I didn't want to go. I think they were just doing a family thing, so I wasn't going to go anyway. Yeah, so I am just at home, the abuela is home too. And I was like, oh, I wonder where I saw a dispensary they're, maybe you get some weed. And then I look on my um app and there's dispensaries more than there were gas stations. Wow.
Speaker 4:And I was like, wow, this is not florida, that is not florida at the time uh, so went, got some weed, skateboarded to dispensary, I think, or took the bus, who knows, or a bottle car, I don't even remember. Got home, uh, and I was like all right, cool, because now this is like not just bud, this is like wax At.
Speaker 2:California, we yeah.
Speaker 4:And this is like stizzy.
Speaker 2:Hydroponic.
Speaker 4:Electronic stuff. So I was like all right sick, I can get away with this while I'm at home. So I light it up and I go to town. And then that same day we had an earthquake. And same day, uh, we had an earthquake and it was one of the uh bigger earthquakes that they've had in a while. While I'm laying on my bed stoned and I'm like is this?
Speaker 5:part of the experience.
Speaker 4:This is actually happening. And then abuela runs in. We're having an earthquake. Mijo, you didn't run under the door and I'm like crap, I don't want to get caught because she's old school, pentecostal as well. Like just yeah, very, very, um, traditional too yeah and she'll be my. She'll beat me bro ever copy drugs right um. She loves the dodgers too always running a dodgers cap anyway.
Speaker 4:So we get under the, we go under the doors, door frames, and I know my eyes are bloodshot red so I'm just I'll just act normal, don't act high. Yeah, and she's like freaking out because the earthquake's happening and I didn't get caught. But I was like dude, she, I don't know, maybe I did, maybe she knew, and she just do your thing like whatever I have no idea but yeah, that was my uh first experience in california, getting high and and and also experiencing an earthquake too wow yeah, so, and then, uh, I was off and on.
Speaker 4:I was off and on because, again, like I was still interning, I interned at the church. He got a job at, um, this was even a bigger church, huge, like insane. Um, really, really, really crazy.
Speaker 4:But we all were coming from Miami and this is now Palm Desert, Indio. So the climate has changed racially, it's changed financially, Like it's just a whole different world. So I remember we showed up to the church after we moved and some of the pastors were like you guys look like, you're ready to run on a on a running track? Because we're wearing like, because in miami athletic gear is just like what you wear every day and there it's like it was. It's very not church clothes, yeah, like like um, like cafe, coffee shop, clothes button downs.
Speaker 4:Yeah, like golf golf apparel very golf apparel, and so I was like I guess I'm not wearing my my headband anymore. It kind of did look like we straight up, like we're about to run like big old, like Jersey shorts. I had Jersey shorts on. That were super cool and you know we're wearing jerseys and stuff. It was like we look like we're from the East Coast.
Speaker 5:It was really funny.
Speaker 4:So anyway, but acclimated to that, I had a really good time there. It was super hard too. Um, that's where I uh mania got really did you have any tattoos by then? Uh, barely so that's where I start collecting a lot of them yeah I think I got two tattoos in miami, but, um, I had burned them off, so I don't know if it counts them, but uh, but in in california, that's where I started racking them and I was going all the time or I was doing it myself.
Speaker 4:A lot of them I did myself because I was. I was, so I don't know what happened. I think it was the the manic thing, but on the way from florida, because we drove from florida to california, uh, you know where we're living and during that time, um, the mania was off and on bad, and I had remember reaching out to joan, being like because my other one of my siblings has that as well um, and I hated to admit it, but it was like, okay, maybe, maybe that's what it is, maybe not. So we talked and, um, their solution was giving me a book to read. Yeah, so I was resentful for it because I was like this isn't very loving, but whatever, I'll read the book. So I read the book and I was like, oh, yeah, this is what I think. I'm bipolar.
Speaker 4:I didn't even know what bipolar was. I'm 23 and dealing with this stuff and my whole experience. I didn't know that this was manic stuff, not just like addiction to spending money or addiction to eating, or addiction to self harm or like these really intense lows. And then um and so it was like, oh, there's a, there's something that I can't control, like actually can't control that.
Speaker 4:I need to have some professional help with. I didn't get any professional help immediately in California. I started to uh eventually I did, but uh, but then I was like like my self-harming increased like super intensely while you're in california? Yeah, like when I first started getting there, I was, I mean, it was really bad in miami too, um, like really bad are you cutting or just burning?
Speaker 2:so?
Speaker 4:at the in miami I was cutting so I was I was abusing ibuprofen. I was just having a ton of them or snoring them or whatever ibuprofen 800s yeah. Yeah, models of them. Like I couldn't like when I touched my hand, I couldn't feel it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and then I would, you know, cut myself like anywhere that you couldn't see. That was like as deep as possible before it's like. Okay, like you know, this is probably problematic, but it would seep through while I was at church sometimes and someone would ask and I was like, oh, I just got a cut or whatever, and uh, yeah, I almost got outed for that.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, this is what I got.
Speaker 4:That's how I gave myself an ulcer yeah, I almost got an ulcer from it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was over in california walking around fundraising chocolate bars. Man and I'd eat like three.
Speaker 3:Ibuprofen 800 four of them I wouldn't be able to feel the pain, but I'd be able to walk.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, you could function, but you can't feel anything. Yeah, I gave myself a hole in my stomach.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you feel like it's almost like a ghost way of operating through life.
Speaker 2:Really.
Speaker 4:And I could self-harm more efficiently because I can't feel anything.
Speaker 2:Can't feel it yeah.
Speaker 1:So while I was a volunteer in the youth stuff in miami so I was like I was in a really dark place and then I stopped doing the volunteer stuff because I was like dude, I can't, I wouldn't.
Speaker 4:What made you want to? What made you start to self-harm? I have no idea. I mean brokenness. It's always been a glamorous um something to feel? Yeah, it can feel something you learned about and I thought it's, it's, it's, I think, exactly what he was saying. It's something to literally feel Like a tangible feeling.
Speaker 1:How do you know you can even do that? I mean it's not something that somebody's just like oh, I'm just going to do it. I heard a sibling was doing it.
Speaker 4:And like the music I listened to people in that scene. It was just a common thing Really. And yeah, just one day I had a razor blade. I was like, oh, I wonder, and did it. Oh, okay, like yeah, and then you know it got more. Yeah, I'm not going to go too graphic, but it just gets more intense. More intense. Yeah, what did you feel while I was doing it?
Speaker 1:Nothing, I mean, was there any kind of release, Any kind of uh?
Speaker 5:I know some people cut just to feel yeah you know, I mean I don't know, because like pain.
Speaker 1:If you're gonna be full pain, I might as well have something to feel pain for, right. And I was like what?
Speaker 4:I would do too. When I was in miami, I would like punch uh concrete walls until almost breaking my hand, because I needed to feel something but.
Speaker 4:I didn't want to damage anything. I didn't want to. Also, I didn't really want to break my arm, but I didn't't break my knuckles or whatever. But I didn't want to because I didn't want to have to deal with that conversation. So it was all. How can I tell the line of abuse to myself? Because I was feeling it outside of me from other people and experiences. But I can control this abuse and this abuse sometimes is more stimulating and more distracting than the other abuse.
Speaker 1:When you say stimulating and distracting, what do you mean by that?
Speaker 2:Well, at least you're getting something from this when I think of stimulating.
Speaker 1:I think of something that feels good.
Speaker 4:Well, all stimulating really is a visceral feeling whether it's good or bad? So if I got up and punched you in the face. That's stimulating. It's not good, but when I punch you in the face for a moment, your head is clear.
Speaker 5:Yeah, right, because it's just a shock yeah.
Speaker 4:That's what we're, not we, but that's what I was going for. It was the shock of it.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 4:So, yeah, and that's how I was able to stand doing hours of like stick and poking myself. I couldn't really feel anything, and this time I wasn't even abusing ibuprofen, I was just so darkly depressed. Yeah, and I went a whole month with just drinking coffee and cigarettes. That was it really, not drinking cigarettes but smoking cigarettes yeah and I would.
Speaker 4:I would take the cigarettes and burn my skin, like like hundreds of times, yeah, and couldn't really feel it. It wasn't even like, oh wow, it was none of that, it was just. It was just, it was just. Okay, we can focus on this and how terrible this is. Yeah, it's a weird. It's a dark and weird, scary place that I'm sure needs more investigation on and would you say.
Speaker 1:It's a way to get out of your head, because now I got to focus on this, because I'm getting ready to do this and I don't have to be in my my thoughts. I'm glad we're talking about this because that's really important to me, brother, because somebody may know somebody who's struggling with it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, you can understand a little better we can talk about both perspectives the one who's doing and the one who uh has to. Who wants to support someone? Yeah through that, because those are two very like different experiences that are can be really hard to process because they're so foreign.
Speaker 1:I had a friend growing up who was a cutter and I would ask her why are you doing that to yourself? And her explanation was to let her know she's alive.
Speaker 4:Yeah, there is part of that.
Speaker 1:Her situation wasn't good either. There was abuse going on and stuff like that, and this was her way to kind of just feel, to feel something other than what she was feeling, or to the abuse or something you know what.
Speaker 2:I mean. So there was. It's a way that we can kind of take some control. Yeah, for her it was just I think it is.
Speaker 1:It was kind of a release.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know what? I mean because sometimes mental thoughts can be painful that's what I mean, and sometimes they just want to feel something other than what they're feeling. You know what I mean, and that's just a way to feel I just remember just being there's so much.
Speaker 4:It was so dark. It was, it was dark and I could extract value through it in one sense of like creatively. Like I would write a lot of poetry and then I would express it really dark stuff vaguely on instagram yeah, everybody like are you, are we worried?
Speaker 1:about you should we be worried about you?
Speaker 4:yeah, and it was like, yes, like I need help, but I also don't need all the things that come from people thinking you need help because there's a lot of negative. Is there a lot of negative experience in in putting yourself out there when you're, when you're in a place?
Speaker 4:in a dark place, when you're suicidal and self harming to the degree I was and but also, uh, you know, I have a family that I live with, I'm volunteering at a church, I work at a job, so I'm in like outside it should be like yo, everything should be great, but inside it's like dude. I legitimately don't understand how I'm supposed to be Okay Because I'm not. Yeah, and then my job that I was at wouldn't let me work until I went to the to inpatient like psych ward, oh wow, oh wow. Um, because of somebody lied about something that I did and they apologized about it later.
Speaker 4:But that still doesn't make it right, but you made me go, so it was the first time that I went to a psych ward and um the favorite in a straight jacket and uh, okay, I was just on a 24-hour hold, okay giving somebody it was a was one of the first times that I like understood the brokenness of my mental health. Okay, and how alone I was. Yeah, the family didn't really care to get real yeah, yeah, nobody really like super cared after I thought it was like a homecoming.
Speaker 4:Like dang man, such a bummer that you, that you're going through this, we're here. What do you need? Do you need some soup crackers? Do going through this, we're here. What do you need? Do you need some soup crackers? Do you want a hug? Do you need time away? Do you need support? Do you need listening? It was like I don't remember anything. I felt like it was coming home from prison. I was like it's a, it's a the unexplained, you know. I think that's why I'm super chatty and very sorry, jt, but very like invasive in my friendships and stuff because, I don't want things unsaid it's good.
Speaker 4:I know the pain behind that. I know just enough slip can be the end of someone's life for sure what would have helped you in that time?
Speaker 1:I don't know what would you have allowed to help you at that time? Because obviously there's you have control on what you will allow to help you and what you won't.
Speaker 4:Well, what I did allow was marijuana.
Speaker 2:Any drinking.
Speaker 4:No, I wasn't a drinker.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's good.
Speaker 4:I wanted to do pills and uppers and stuff, but I didn't have a connection to that.
Speaker 1:Let me rephrase my question yeah, what healthy way? I don't know, I don't I don't remember what I did after or what I wanted after I don't want someone to hear to think, oh, I know somebody who's in this spot and I'll just go get them some marijuana because, yeah, that's not what I want, you know? I mean absolutely not, I think.
Speaker 4:Uh, I think what I wish would have happened was I would have gotten a text that said I can't wait to see you after and to get my phone back and to read that text. That would have been something. Because it's such a and I'm very self-aware enough to know it's a fragile or it's a hard line to cross to know how to be supportive and not how to be overbearing on something so um invisible as mental health.
Speaker 4:It's not it's not invisible, but it's not. It doesn't feel tangible to most people. It's tangible to me.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Mental is tangible to me. It is depression, anxiety, it is Depression anxiety, bipolar manic schizo All that kind of stuff is tangible Because if you can see it being portrayed it's tangible.
Speaker 1:Somebody asked you this In the time that you were in Florida and now you're in California. It seems the pattern in your life has stayed the same. It's still performance-based. Even in the church it was performance-based. Even in California it was performance-based. What I'm not hearing is genuine, authentic. Hey, isaiah, I love you man.
Speaker 4:So there's trickles. There started to be trickles of that. Some of my friendships were more genuine. I think part of it, too, was the walls were really heavy.
Speaker 4:They were thick, the walls were were were really, really heavy, because I'm dealing with a pastor who's narcissistic, abusive emotionally, physically, not physically yet, but, um, uh, verbally. My home wasn't safe, I didn't feel safe at home, and so how can I trust anyone at all? So, but you have to to some extent, especially when you're in a church experience or living with church people. You gotta be able to, or you're psychopathic, right, um, so I don't know um.
Speaker 1:So I know it's gonna sound like a dumb question. No questions dumb. Why didn't you just come back to arizona?
Speaker 4:so yeah, I couldn't um in my head. Um, because my, my, my parents joined to come, come back, yeah. They were. They moved up North way before then. Yeah, Um, and there was nothing. There was nothing interesting or exciting like there. There was no opportunity for me to do anything. I had no reason to be back there I couldn't even think of one.
Speaker 4:I thought about it, but, um, but that was a really, because I was threatened on me If you don't do this, I'm sending you back home, and you don't even have a home to go to because yada, yada, yada.
Speaker 5:Oh, wow, that's the stuff that was said.
Speaker 4:It was every time I did do something, I was threatened. So there had to be a performance of okay, I believe and listen to everything you're saying, even though in my heart I don't agree with it. I don't agree with it, right or wrong thing you feel stuck yeah, absolutely not safe and stuck.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I was trapped because I didn't have a car I didn't.
Speaker 4:I wasn't saving enough money because I was still spending so much time at the church and the fear of being homeless.
Speaker 1:So you couldn't just like dip and go? Yeah, yeah and I almost.
Speaker 4:I almost did that. I almost stayed outside a friend's house and I stayed there and it was offered you could stay there for a little bit if you need to, because I was like on the verge of committing suicide. And again, it wasn't any church people and it wasn't any family that I lived with, but it was somebody from my work, a coworker. God bless you. You know who you are.
Speaker 2:Found me, did I meet him?
Speaker 4:No, oh, okay, found me and drove up the mountain with me and we sat and changed smoke cigarettes and just didn't really say much, but we just the presence there that's all I needed was presence like authentic. Nothing to get from you, nothing to take from you nothing I need from you presence that's it we can work out all the other stuff on the way, but I just need to know that my presence is enough for you to be around without there being a give or take, and that's it, that's, that's, it's.
Speaker 5:It's as simple as that I got moments of that yeah like my buddy.
Speaker 4:That that uh that you met yeah, was that he also? Was that very like, dude, let's hang out, let's have uh, let's, let's have some noodles and watch anime? Yeah, we have deep conversations about god a lot, but we also just hang in life. Yeah, we dream together about his businesses and whatnot. And he was just a buddy like I was.
Speaker 2:I was still hurting from church stuff and oh, so when you left the pastor, who's narcissistic, you went over to homie I didn't, uh, I didn't leave.
Speaker 4:No, he kicked me out in the middle of covid because, jesus, I was breaking a rule that was made would make the perceive their family as um unethical, even though there I had other roommates doing that um on a on a much more grandiose uh experience, but because it was me, you're gonna make us look bad.
Speaker 1:Yeah, something like that. This guy had other interns. He was had in there too or by this time.
Speaker 4:No, no, no, it was well. Yeah, no, no, no. There's still a couple guys living there and that whole situation. I didn't see how bad it was until my my then girlfriend was like you're paying that much and you're sleeping on the floor and you have no privacy. You only have a closet like this is not. How do you? This is and he's, he's keeping you, he's charging you the same while adding people into the room. Stuff like that. That was starting to eye open. I just needed an outside perspective to help me validate what was bothering me.
Speaker 2:What you were experiencing wasn't right, yeah.
Speaker 4:And so I think that threatened them and I think that. So yeah, I'll try to keep this as general as possible, because I don't even talk to any of these people anymore, so I don't know what to enlighten on and not. But anyway, so I that was a very unjust situation. I ended up leaving. I stayed at the girlfriend's for a little bit. I couldn't stay there and so then I moved into. I found a place on Craigslist, moved into there. They ended up being a child house.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I found a place on Craigslist, moved in there. They ended up being a drug house. Yeah, everything. I'll let you know when we get to Arizona. And this is all during COVID, the height of COVID. So then I move into this house and I found it's a drug house and they're growing six times the legal limit. Again, I didn't have anything against marijuana.
Speaker 5:I enjoyed marijuana.
Speaker 4:I wasn't smoking at the time because the relationship I had it had a child in it as well. So I'm not going to. I don't know, I had enough moral compass to not do that, at least during that time.
Speaker 2:You at least wanted to be a good example for your kid. Yeah, no.
Speaker 4:For sure that grew me a lot too. That relationship with the kid. That was very beautiful, as hard as there were and mistakes we made and and the situation was complex.
Speaker 1:That'll make you mature real quick, though it did yeah.
Speaker 4:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Freaking, terrifying this guy around man. I'm like, oh, I gotta worry about this guy now too, yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, To be completely responsible, um for a fragile life is wild it. It is responsible for their how they're perceiving the world, yeah, how they experience the world, yeah, and you?
Speaker 5:know, but you can't control them at the same time yeah, yeah, it's wild, it is yeah, that's beautiful, I loved it
Speaker 4:yeah, it was that part of the relationship I didn't mess up?
Speaker 1:can I just say that when you told me, you told me at church hurt I. I guess in my own mind I had my own idea of what that was.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And now that I hear the story I'm like damn dude, you had every right to not want to.
Speaker 4:We barely scratched the surface.
Speaker 1:But just the little bit you shared. I'm just like no wonder dude. Yeah, no wonder you were. Just like you guys are nuts. I'm done with you guys. You know what I mean. Yeah, you guys are nuts.
Speaker 4:I'm done with you guys. You know what I mean. Yeah, I got a lot of stories out a lot of people, so I'm just I can't share. We're not here to out people, man, we're here just to. We're talking about Isaiah, yeah, but just a little bit you have shared.
Speaker 1:I want you to know. I can see now why.
Speaker 4:Why you had the mentality that you. I've learned a lot of grace every weekend coming back here, not because of like and I also want to like also clear up too like, even with LifeLink, I never really had any church hurt from LifeLink. I never really did. It was from the other places that I were and that's why, when I came back here and we're at where we're at now, is why I'm at where I'm at right now because. I was like okay, there's certain people, there's people there that sucked for sure, that's the world.
Speaker 1:People suck, people suck, absolutely.
Speaker 4:But my overall experience was like okay this is a safe place.
Speaker 4:Even if it wasn't healthy, it was consistent, healthy, like healthy here, healthy there. It was the same kind, like I knew what I was getting into coming back and that was what I couldn't find anywhere else, wherever else I was at the time, um, so, yeah, so I live with this dude during covid. Um, by this time I am diagnosed with bipolar one. I know I have it. I'm still experiencing the super lows and I'm also experimenting with medication, um, and therapy, and uh, and it was just rough. It was rough.
Speaker 4:I was I have my relationships run stable because I was up and down. Yeah, medication.
Speaker 2:That can be a lot.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it can be as bad as not having medication for a little bit it genuinely sometimes is. And not to discourage anyone to to get out there and find your healing, but just know it's not sunshine and rainbows from the beginning, but you can deal with everything, and the sunshine and rainbows when you figure it out.
Speaker 1:Well, my wife was diagnosed with depression. Yeah, and so we go to the doctor to get us some medication. Depression isn't real. And the doctor tells me hey, you know, if you see her having really highs let her know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you see her having really low yeah, let her know, and I can remember one time being like uh, babe, hey, you seem to be really one way one. I can't remember which one way it was. I'm like, hey, you know, doctor, doctor told me to bring it to your attention, man, but you seem to be having it.
Speaker 4:It did turn out well for me, yeah because, like there, there is an art form to it too that you probably learned of how to do it in a way that's not um blaming or yeah invasive or defensive or attack, yeah which you're walking on eggshells either way
Speaker 4:so it's just just how, what shoes to wear and when to when to crack the eggs when to crack the eggshells, when you have to pick your battles Cause sometimes you have to like sometimes you have to say, hey, dude, you're not doing good and I care about you. And and then don't leave them. You know, wandering out naked.
Speaker 5:And.
Speaker 4:I I mean by don't tell them they're in a bad place, and then dip Like that's, that's what happens, that's what happened to me, at least it's like, hey, that's bad, Get your crap together. Or else and it's like no, this is like bigger than that.
Speaker 4:This is we're here to support you. You have permission to be in a bad place. That was probably something I needed to Wow, and that's why I was in hiding and my self harm and and uh and whatever else I was doing. It got so bad because I wasn't. It was. There was no safe place for me, but there's also not a safe place for me to hurt.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so my safe place to hurt was hurting myself, unfortunately, yeah, um, and so I would say presence is better than perfection, so you don't need to be perfect, you just need to be present. And then I already forgot what I was going to say but oh yeah, allow a safe place to fail, you know to have low, lows and high highs.
Speaker 4:Don't criminalize it. Yeah, it's maybe not healthy, um, and we'll work on getting you back down or getting you back up, but don't criminalize it, yeah, cause then you're. What you're doing is you're integrating fear, and fear stimulates manias.
Speaker 5:Look what you're doing again Anxiety, depression, fears like the background to all that crap.
Speaker 4:Like when I got sober and like working on my healing, it was like, oh, the roots are all fear. Like it was all. It was different fears but it was fear every time it was like oh, these people did this or I did this. It was like it was both. It was I induced fear into my experience and my beliefs and my values and my perspectives, but so did a lot of other people.
Speaker 4:And it's valid too, because like you know, mental health is a scary thing for everybody. The one going through it the most, which I wish that was talked about more of how scary it is for the person actually going through it, we all want to like. Oh my God, it's so hard for me that I have to be around someone that is dealing with that and I don't know what to do.
Speaker 4:Like okay, cool but, they're not just life for them they go to bed with it and they wake up with it and they go to bed with it and they wake up with it and then they go to bed with it and then they wake up with it and have to deal with you.
Speaker 4:Yeah so that's good and themselves, like mostly themselves. Um, and that's so hard and I long to be on the other side, not so that someone could treat me better, but so that someone could like understand that, hey, it's okay to have a bad day, it's okay to have a bad month, yeah, you know you're trying. Cool, I'm here, I'm gonna stay here, come on that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:It's okay to have a bad day and a bad month and a bad month, but it's not okay to make permanent decisions on temporary feelings and to stay that way.
Speaker 4:What are you doing to growth?
Speaker 2:This too shall pass.
Speaker 4:I think, yeah, learn how to learn, how to learn how to look for growth, like when you're, if you're doing the journey with someone that has, like, dealing with mental health. Look for the growth. We duplicate what we celebrate. Celebrate it, celebrate the growth. Yeah, so we, uh, we duplicate what we celebrate. Let's celebrate it. Yeah, celebrate the growth. Yeah, it could be insignificant to you if you've known it, if you've ever experienced depression, anxiety or any mental health thing. Some days, the simple things are just good are the heaviest things to deal with. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Just getting up and taking a shower and getting dressed, getting out of bed can be the war.
Speaker 4:Yeah, to start all the other wars.
Speaker 1:Being in recovery and being around people who struggle with mental health. Now you hear a lot of the stories of you know it's. I didn't shower for two days because I didn't have the strength, I didn't care.
Speaker 5:I didn't have the strength days because I couldn't get out of bed. I didn't have the strength.
Speaker 1:I didn't care. I didn't have the strength to get up and go get in the shower. It probably would have helped me, but I just didn't have the strength and it's like damn Want is the weakest.
Speaker 4:Will, yeah, want, yeah. People are like, well, don't you want to? Well, yeah, but that's not strong enough. No, yeah, but that's not strong enough With that kind of stuff. It's not strong enough I learned that the hard way, obviously. But I was like, oh, want is not it. Discipline will help, medication helps, relationships help, but want is not enough. There are days when want helps for sure, but there's got to be infrastructure around it. If there's not infrastructure around it, you can want all you want. How many things do you want that?
Speaker 4:you don't get up and do yeah, as someone with a great mental health, you know yeah yeah, that's real buddy, even in sobriety, there's some things that I want don't want it bad enough it's not life or death, but it's the same thing. So yeah once is the weakest, will man?
Speaker 1:that's good dude yeah, wow, so you're in california, man, you're learning about your bipolar disorder yeah.
Speaker 4:So then I'm living at this um house and uh, it's they're, you know, growing a lot of weed and exporting a lot of weed, and uh, and I'm like I gotta get out of here, I can't have a felony, yeah, but at the same time I'm experimenting with medication and I'm actually not even smoking weed. At this time I hadn't gone to, I hadn't gone back to marijuana. I don't remember where it dripped off, but I think it was when I started dating someone in the church and I was like, okay, whatever we can, we have other vices. Now. Relationships were advice, codependency, right, sex like stuff like that was like a very okay cool.
Speaker 4:We don't need weed, we's like whatever at the time, and so I'm living with this guy and then I, my doctor, puts me on like seven different medications yikes um, and one of the ones all at once yeah, I was on seven at one time.
Speaker 4:Wow, dude, yes, sir mental health meds, yeah oh my god, I was, I was screwed up so and they didn't, they, they did a lot, they did a lot of things and not a lot of good um. So I took one. That um, in the same day that I took it, um just triggered me and I literally wanted to kill myself and, uh, it scared my me. My ex at the time were on and off, and at the time we're sort of off and I put, I think I put something on social media that was really dark, and so she was worried, she thought I was gonna kill myself because it was really dark and I was. I was, I wanted to like I was like I can't.
Speaker 4:I can't do this more. It just triggered me like I couldn't even. It scared the crap out of me. I literally remember like grabbing it, like I gotta throw this away, like I can't be on this yeah, it doesn't matter what the side effects are gonna be getting off of it.
Speaker 4:Even if I'm not weaning it like I can't, this, this will kill me, wow. So I. So she calls the cops. Um, and I didn't know that she had called the cops. And then, uh, she, she's being vague and I'm like something's up. And so I reach out to her best friend. I'm like, hey, what's going on? She's like, well, you sound really in a bad place. So she called the cops and I'm like, dude, she can't do that.
Speaker 4:Dude, there's drugs here, like a lot of drugs like a lot, yeah, like not like I hide it in the back room. It's like we have rooms dedicated to growing marijuana. It's like, dude, I'm not gonna live'm going to be homeless after this, even if I make it out.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 4:So I'm wanting to kill myself and super depressed and panicked AF, and so I go outside and literally stand on the lawn until the cops come and wait for them to come, because I'm like they can't get on the property. Yeah, can't let them on the property, whatever happens, like whatever, yeah. So they show up. One of them recognized me. We have a chat.
Speaker 4:They're like hey we heard some good and I was like, ah, whatever, rush it over. You know, it's like you kind of just I don't know how to explain it, but you can sometimes just shut off the, um, the I'm going to kill myself, even though you can feel it in your body with that run back inside and the cops leave. The cops leave. Yeah, I waited, yeah, and while they were there, the, the, the homeowners, uh, one of his kids was there, so he, he or she saw all of it and they went inside um, and then I, then I called my therapist. I've never, ever, outside of office hours or appointment, I've never called a therapist to this day, except that one time, because it was like this is I need to talk to somebody.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I'm gonna this is like, if I have a way, I will do it. Right now I don't have a way yet, but I will do it. And so I called him and we chatted through it a little bit and uh, and helped a little bit.
Speaker 4:And then he came home and he was super inebriated and the neighbors had told him the cops were at his house and so he was so pissed off and so screaming and yelling at me and like I don't care how you feel, I don't care what you put on the internet and your, your bs and whatnot, and uh, you're, you're out, you're done. And I was like, oh crap, I just barely moved here and I'm like dude, now I'm gonna be homeless. I'm like dude, why is my life like it?
Speaker 4:was it was very chaotic right and it's like I don't even deserve to be in this position. It's not like I made bad decisions to get here. It's just one crappy set of people after another, and obviously I had a part to play, but this is the mindset I was in at the time, anyway. So his daughter vouches for me and says, hey, he waited out on the lawn, he made sure the cops didn't come in. Obviously he's going through something, but he still made sure that this place was taken care of, above all that. And so he sobered up a little bit and later that night he came in and he's like look, if you're going to live here, like the only way you're going to still live here is if you help me grow marijuana Wow.
Speaker 5:And I was like oh crap, I was not excited.
Speaker 4:I did not want to deal with this. This dude was chaotic and like he was gonna get himself raided for sure eventually, like the, he didn't, he was not subtle and all that kind of stuff. So anyway, I uh found a new place to live and uh moved out as soon as, as quick as possible, and got out and then I lived with, uh, this older lady in a really nice country club area with lots of golf courses and lakes and stuff, and it was very expensive but it was safe.
Speaker 2:A lot more peaceful.
Speaker 4:Way more peaceful. It was very safe.
Speaker 2:Sometimes that's what someone needs. She's the sweetest lady.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean there's still struggles with that place. I didn't feel comfortable in the kitchen. There was not really a lot of stuff to my own name, like it was her own house, and she was just like I want someone to stay here yeah there's no way we can share a lot of stuff this is all your stuff. I don't want to touch your stuff, so and my fridge was out in the garage and it had its struggles, but it is what it is.
Speaker 4:It was way safer it was the first time that I could have a safe place wow, how old are you at this time?
Speaker 2:I?
Speaker 4:don't know, 25. Wow.
Speaker 5:David.
Speaker 3:Wow.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so then I have my own safe spot.
Speaker 2:This is 2001.
Speaker 4:No, this is still 2020. Oh wow, yeah, this is still 2020. So this all happened in the same. A lot happened between 2019 and 2020.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 4:A lot of. There was a lot of density in that time Like a 20 yeah, a lot of.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of density in that time like a lot happened?
Speaker 4:I still can't even remember. Chaos comes pretty quick, bud huh. Chaos can come pretty quick, yeah, and it leaves a lot of stuff can happen in a short amount of time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it leaves a mark.
Speaker 4:It does so then me and the girl break up and then I'm alone living there and I can barely pay rent because the job I'd spent time studying for to be a personal trainer was not a job that could be done because it was COVID nobody wanted to go to the gym.
Speaker 4:The gyms kept shutting down, I quit a high-paying job to to work at the gym and then couldn't work at the gym because they kept closing, um, so that was stressful and chaotic. And then, uh, and I was alone, didn't, wasn't going to any churches, kind of talked to some church friends a little bit here and there from a new church. It was a very, it's very local there, so you know people from everywhere. Yeah, it was like some of my creative friends and stuff. So we, uh, I would chat with them a little bit here and there. But, um, so I picked up marijuana because, oh, I am living by myself. I can go days without talking to someone. It's inconsequential. So I just picked up marijuana again and then I went to church for a little bit During COVID.
Speaker 2:What's your habit when you're using marijuana?
Speaker 4:What's your? It's pretty.
Speaker 2:You wake up and I have to smoke a joint. Not at that time we fast track to that, but there.
Speaker 4:Not at that time Not at that time, we, we, we, we. Fast track to that, but there were barriers that kept me from doing that, so I worked at a mental health facility. You're living with that lady, yeah, so it was like, okay, I gotta be careful when I'm doing it, but I was still doing that. It's still stealing from stores out of no, not the whole time, just this. It ran back up, yeah, when I was alone.
Speaker 2:Okay, a lot of stuff picked back up when I was alone.
Speaker 4:Um, which is interesting, it's well, it's having to control yourself yeah self-control, the ability to honestly, I think it's just I'm able to feel what I'm feeling and I'm not distracted by other relationships or other people and so what? I'm feeling is what I'm feeling.
Speaker 2:This is how I'm going to deal with it, because this is how I was dealing with it years back in arizona, that's what we do nothing's changed really in some sense, um, so, yeah, uh.
Speaker 4:So I was working on mental health city, which was really cool, honestly, because my mental health had grown a lot during that time. In some senses, I went from being in a psych ward twice to yeah, I had no business working there I was was not in a strong Was your medication working at the time?
Speaker 4:Sort of sort of not, sort of sort of not. And so again I didn't think I had any business working there. It was a. It was a state, state run place. It was like pretty heavy, like really dark stuff was going on there. And a lot of people were going through some really serious to support them and hang out with them and chat.
Speaker 2:So it's cool. It was really heavy so I smoked it.
Speaker 4:Lets you see the other side of the coin, like you were talking about yeah, on stuff that I had, no like, I didn't had no business having self-pity like, like seeing their situations it's like whoa, my stuff's pretty bad, but god, these guys, yeah, by the state, because nobody wants to yeah, exactly, yep, wow, so we um. So anyway, it was during covid. I'm working at that place smoking a little bit of weed.
Speaker 4:Couldn't afford anything like, I could afford barely eating, and that was it like I couldn't do anything else with my money, and so it was like oh crap, this is bad. Um. At the time, um, I also started developing a relationship again with jt. Um, I decided I wanted to be intentional with our friendship because he was still someone I would still talk to from Arizona, which was wild to me because I was not talking to anyone else.
Speaker 4:I didn't have any friendship with anyone else really. And so I was like you know what, maybe I need to steward this. And so, uh, I was like hey, do you want to FaceTime and get Taco Bell once a week, do a Taco Bell date? And he was like sure, why not? So and he was like sure, why not? So we started doing it once a week, amidst all that stuff, and we would just chat. Um, sometimes we wouldn't even really just chat, we were just he's gaming at the time really heavily, so he would just game and I was, you know, driving around doing door dash or something to try to make some extra dough and uh it kind of turned into me.
Speaker 4:Uh, accidentally I just made a joke one time. I was like, so you know, if I moved out, what? If I moved out there as a joke? And he was like, yeah, if you want to move out here, we'll make a spot for you. So then I was more serious. I was like how soon he's like let me talk to John.
Speaker 4:So, he talked to John and they're like yeah, as soon as you want to move out here, do it. I was like so if I quit my job right now and moved out there, you'd you guys would have a spot for me. Like wow, sure, yeah. So I did. Same week I quit my job, uh notified my landlady that was moving at the end of the month. Yeah, and um paid for the rest of my month or whatever. And uh, at the same time I moved, I was moving in, um his other brother was moving out, so I took room.
Speaker 4:So it worked at the same perfect time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like God knows what he's doing.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, yeah, he was already there. I guess we should talk about what God's been doing through all of that. That was all just kind of like my perspective of it. Because God was still moving, like even with California and Florida.
Speaker 3:I saw him moving A lot of that stuff.
Speaker 4:That stuff, though I saw it was like a very delayed, like I learned a lot of stuff from florida, in california or at in arizona looking back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's our 2020. That's a lot of the learning in life. Man is looking back, bro. Yeah, yeah and so.
Speaker 4:So yeah, but I, I think I was willing, or actually sat down and looked at, you know, california and florida. Why? Because for a long time I was like that was a waste of time, that was like when I could have gone to college. You know, because I tried that formidable years, yeah, formidable years it felt like a theme of the self pity perspective was your formidable years are wasted, out of your control.
Speaker 1:The orphan and you know homeschool and this internship at church and like all these kind of things is like like I want, I want, I want crazy part is though man is if they, if, unfortunately, the people that were in that situation with you were not probably the greatest of people my what I'm gathering but that experience could have been wonderful, could have been a huge blessing, if, if the right people were the ones that you went with. You know what I mean. It just seems like it was a lot of it was, uh, it was a mix.
Speaker 4:It was a mix like there were some like the family was, that was a whole thing that was not. It was not healthy. No, my roommates some of them were cool, some of them were not.
Speaker 4:I don't talk to any of them anymore. I don't talk to anybody from Florida except for one person. Once a year, twice a year, california same. I talked to our buddy from the coffee shop. I talked to him and that's about it. So it's just like and there's a couple people that if I need something like for creative stuff, I know who to go to. They've been really, they're really good people. But yeah, it's just like.
Speaker 4:It seems like that time was a lot of growth and learning for you Experiencing, yeah, and the creative side, because that's when I learned that's I'm not a creative or a creative, because creativity is not a personality or a skill set or whatever, but our personality, I guess. But I did see that like someone. Actually it was the first time someone from the, from the, the big mega church that I went to in California first time, sat down and said I believe in your creative, you have like a lot of creativity, like you have that whole thing, like that's your thing, you need to, we need to like pour into that. Yeah, and you have a lot of leadership, we need to pour in that. So they were, like you're going to be the creative director of of the youth. I was like what?
Speaker 2:I don't know.
Speaker 4:You guys really know what I'm doing it was during that time of like self-harm and you know mania, all this kind of stuff, but he was so stubborn like I believe in you and I think he I think there was some in some ways, since he saw me for who I actually was and not for all the stuff that was going on or the perspective of all these other people that that was a lot of my experience too. Other people were louder about who I was than I was about myself, and I just I'm not.
Speaker 4:I'm not a aggressive image person, I need to yell over someone else. I'm just kind of like hey, if you want to say crap about me, go ahead. Whatever, I don't care, I'm just chill. Laid back, piehead dude, you know.
Speaker 1:How would you say your dynamic, your relationship with God was at the time that you were self-harming. Was there still a? Was it just going through the motions and like a job, or was there actual spiritual things that you were experiencing while you were? Yeah, there was a little bit.
Speaker 4:There was a little bit. It was weird because I'll tell it from the perspective of how I think other people saw me at the time. It was weird because, yeah, I had the leadership skills. I spoke into kids, I connected with kids, they trusted me with responsibilities, like on the outside, I was taking care of my stuff and I was doing better than a lot of other people. In some of those areas I was probably uh, what do you call it?
Speaker 1:but were you reading your bible, were you? Praying so a little bit your relationship, your relationship with god, not your position and what you were doing. How was your spiritual so?
Speaker 4:yeah, so it was like um banging on the other side of the plexiglass at god yeah that's what it was.
Speaker 4:It was, you know, I'm in prison and you're working to get a telephone chat because things are really bad right now and what's going on like why is this happening to me? Like what did I do? Who am I? Like I I get, I'm so messed up, but this is like this is like. This is stuff I haven't heard anyone else go through. Like you know, at the time I was like why don't am I dealing with, uh, addiction to self-harm and some marijuana and a narcissist pastor and no growth in my finances, and dealing with manic, depressive stuff that I don't even understand? I'm not even around anyone that understands. So it's a lot of these like difficulties that I had or challenges that I was walking through that were so alone, in the sense that there wasn't someone, that was like, oh yeah, I had a narcissist pastor once and I lived with him for five, six years. Here's how to deal with that, you know. Or oh yeah.
Speaker 2:I know I lived with him for three years. He knows Well right, For real, yeah.
Speaker 4:I know you know, I know, you know, yeah, your heart position tells me that.
Speaker 1:I guess what bothers me about your situation, brother, is that you were in church, you were involved with church you were part of church.
Speaker 4:Yeah, how was all that still going on during?
Speaker 1:No, not even that. The fact that In that setting, you still felt that you had no one you could talk to.
Speaker 4:Well, yeah, who's dealing with it? It was, I think, a lot of our.
Speaker 1:I mean even someone like a pastor that you can go to and say hey, man, I'm really struggling, but there wasn't a pastor who was dealing with addiction. There wasn't a pastor who was bipolar, not that they were dealing with it, but that you felt safe enough to have a conversation with somebody To let them in. You know what I mean.
Speaker 4:And part of it was. I did try to. I did a little bit, but then it was that there's, you know, the wall of where like oh, unrelatability.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Like a lot of people Okay.
Speaker 5:Unrelated.
Speaker 4:Unrelatability isn't a bad thing. People use that as an excuse or justification or fear of okay, I, I can't help you, I'm gonna go refer you, delegate this to someone else. Yeah, yeah, and it just was like if there was someone I could open up to a little bit, either I'm gonna scare them, because what I was going through was really scary.
Speaker 4:That should have been a more of a professional aspect, um, but also like I don't want to get deferred off again. And then now I've shown you a little. I you know I've, I've shown you some of the tread marks on my underwear and now that's all. You see, yeah, you know, what I mean.
Speaker 1:That's what it felt like my bad, I didn't mean to perceive that no no no, that's a real, that's a real thing, that's that's absolutely great.
Speaker 4:That's a great observation or a question or whatever it was like that's.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because if somebody's listening who might be in a similar position that you are. They're working at a church, they're interning at a church, but they're struggling with mental health. I want them to be able to hear this and be like I need to go to somebody and find somebody that I can talk to. Here's the thing, though.
Speaker 4:You've got to be careful too, because for some people it is their place of work. For some people it's their community.
Speaker 2:Sometimes you don't want to be in the same pond that you drink out of. That's where you go to a professional.
Speaker 4:And that's what I was going to say Some of it is going to a professional and some of it's. We'll get into this later or whenever, but radical responsibility is like I got to take care of my own stuff too, Like maybe stop smoking marijuana. Start making good choices.
Speaker 2:Maybe stop being self-pity maybe start doing the 12 steps. Come on bro program. Yeah, maybe up until this point had you ever been into a recovery actually great question.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I did a little bit of cr and um in california, but it was from the experience of the pastor that was.
Speaker 2:The narcissist. Yeah, it was like you need to do this or else. Okay, it was like, oh, okay. So it wasn't your idea, it was something you had been forced into.
Speaker 4:You have a problem with anxiety and my anxiety is because of this person but it's not because of them, because I don't have the safety to say it. Yeah, but I can't keep doing this two face thing too much, cause it's getting really bad, cause I could figure out. I was always figuring out a way of I'll say yes to you to your face, but I'm not doing whatever you're saying because you don't a, you don't know me and.
Speaker 4:B I'm wrong every time. And then C uh, I can't, we can't, I can't trust you like you're right, no matter what. You're right every time and you're wrong every time.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you're right in your own way. Even if you agree with me, it still has to be done your way, or it's wrong. And and then there's all that. Whatever you, whatever you have to deal with the narcissist, like all that followed up, yeah, in a position of authority, my landlord. Followed up in a position of authority, my landlord pastor that I interned at the church at or the whole community. So this person has a very influential hold on most of my whole experience. So there was no safety.
Speaker 1:It's real bro, if there was somebody listening that stumbles across this and they are an intern working at a church or just not even involved with church at all, that are having manic episodes, cutting things like that, what would you? What advice would you give them on finding help, like, what could they do to help their situation?
Speaker 4:out. First of all, you can't help your situation out, so it's not within your self-control, it's not within your own responsibility, despite what you think or beat yourself up about or what other people tell you. It's not within your self-control. You don't have the control, you do not have the capacity to heal yourself Overall big picture. You have to have a higher power. You have to be the director and you can't be the director you don't have. You weren't designed to be the director, you were designed to be the actor. So, honestly, like it was so weird saying this coming from me, I guess you gotta pray, like you gotta. And well, we can talk about my sobriety yeah next, if you want, um, you gotta pray.
Speaker 4:Uh, you gotta give that up to god yeah um, and then second is you gotta enforce yourself with people. Yeah, community. Yeah, gotta have relationships one or two people, at the very least people that you love, you care about you, that you feel safe with yeah but aren't just a couch, that, they're also a coach.
Speaker 4:Yeah that's good, that's good they're pushing you you give, give people the find people that you feel safe with and then give them the platform to coach you, yeah. To challenge you, to be there for you. So accountability yes, but also like sponsor or a leader, and if it has to be someone that's not in any circle that you're connected to, that's great, that's fine. For me personally, that you're connected to, that's great.
Speaker 4:That's fine, that's I for me personally, that's the way to go, Like someone's not connected to anything. You've got going on, man, Just because you know who knows what people are?
Speaker 2:people who knows what's going to happen.
Speaker 4:You know, and that's just planning.
Speaker 2:That's why I love CR, because we have our Monday night CR, but there's Friday nights and Thursday nights that I can just pop into a meeting.
Speaker 3:No one knows who you are, no one knows, right well for me it's a little different, but jesus I just put myself out there.
Speaker 4:Dude, subtlety isn't your flavor, not at all, bro there's a reason I stay in the background, brother. You know what's funny is we're such good friends and we're like the opposite in the sense of like you're like. I'm very subtle and and try to be, and I'm not but, then I can.
Speaker 5:I can flip it though too.
Speaker 4:I cannot be subtle as well um, and I've seen you be subtle too, yeah, yeah, so thank you for thank you for your response, by the way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was beautiful that was really good I didn't want to bypass that moment without you having an opportunity. I appreciate that.
Speaker 4:I I imagine when I'm when I before we started podcast. I imagine like when I was saying this I feel like a radio broadcaster. I imagine the kid in the front seat of a car listening to me.
Speaker 3:Who am I?
Speaker 4:What was that kid look like? What are they going through? What can I do to go and say something that adds value to?
Speaker 3:their experience. You know, that's really good, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, you had to go through your experiences, bro, to be able to speak into them. Now, that's why God allowed you to go through them. You're a leader, you're a champion, dude, you're a mental health champion.
Speaker 1:I think the beauty of this platform that God has given us is that we have a variety of different people that come on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we got a lot.
Speaker 1:Each person has a different experience. Some of them are similar but different. You know what I mean. Uh, there's multiple people that we've had on who've dealt with mental health in their own, their own way. You know what I mean. And for people to be able to hear and to be able to relate to it Well, it's almost 60 now. So you're going to relate to one of them and hear something similar in their story and maybe hear a resolve to something they're dealing with currently. You know what I mean. That's good and be like, oh, I'm struggling with my mental health. I can relate. Oh, this is why. Oh, I want to try that.
Speaker 2:You know I mean, that's the beauty of it, bro or to just hear your story and if them, if they're going through it to, to hear this. And oh, he made it out the other end.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he made it out the other side that's why I think it's important to share our stories, to share our struggles, to share our addictions, to share the things that we went through, because somebody's gonna see and relate and be like they made it through that if they made it through, I'm gonna make it through. Yeah, I'm going to make it through. You know what I mean, and to me that's life-giving, that's powerful.
Speaker 2:That's inspiration.
Speaker 1:They may never encounter you whatsoever, but they'll hear your story and be like I can relate to that and I'm at that point oh, I've got to listen to see where the next point is oh, he made it, oh yeah. And oh, I got to listen to see where the next point is. Oh, he made it, oh yeah. And then hope begins to rise and faith begins to rise. That, okay, I may be struggling right now, but there's something coming if I just stay the course and do my part. You know what I mean, and that's the beauty of it, bro. You know what I mean.
Speaker 4:I think it's beautiful that we can hear other stories. That gives us tools, that lets us know there's other tools around us. Yeah, because for me, like listening to someone's positive story, the energy from it. It only lasts for so long, for me. It's like if you let air out of a balloon it just only gets you kind of so far, but maybe something that was written on the balloon or something that comes out of that balloon is a tool that I can use.
Speaker 4:It was oh okay, I can do this for myself when the podcast turns off.
Speaker 5:Yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4:So, I can when I turn the phone off, I have tools to go when I'm dealing with this situation, when I'm doing that, and then then, when you get to that point, you start using the tools. Now you're growing enough to where now you can teach other people in your proximity with those tools who'll never watch that podcast. Yeah, but they're in europe. They were watching you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, amen so you're in the, you're in the low desert and I remember you come here to john's. Yeah, he was just you landed here? Yeah, and I remember some of your instagram poetry. Oh yeah, I liked it because I could feel an expression. Yeah, you're expressing yourself.
Speaker 4:Yeah, very one of the things I get most is it's very raw. It's dark, but it's very raw. Yeah, absolutely yeah, that didn't. Yeah, I've been doing that for a long time, yeah since I was like 17 or 16. I was writing nice. I had a fan base for love on instagram back when tumblr was a thing. I still have one on there, but no one's gonna find it hopefully there's no way you can find. I can barely remember it, but um so how'd you get here so?
Speaker 1:yeah, I was just telling eddie, yeah you went to the bathroom for the third time. Yeah, so we're going on three hours?
Speaker 2:oh, that's it.
Speaker 4:I got a small bladder bro, stop drinking all that water. I need water.
Speaker 1:Got a whole cafe over there. You're not a camel, you don't start, but it flows through you man, when I was in addiction I had three cups.
Speaker 2:I leave, leave with dude.
Speaker 3:Oh, my God.
Speaker 5:Remember those Sounds like that was your addiction.
Speaker 2:I didn't know if I was getting any water. Yeah, no, I get it.
Speaker 4:I'm a very like coffee, water and then something to balance the two out.
Speaker 1:He still has cups. He still has cup issues bud.
Speaker 4:I would in a different financial position.
Speaker 1:The taller the better, the taller, the better. I had my San Paolo Greeno my cold brew and then my water Can't tell you how many times I knocked his big old cups off the table. I'm like you don't need a cup, that's a foot tall bud.
Speaker 4:Bottle's perfectly fine, you know, I feel like he had an ulcer to heal.
Speaker 3:so I'm a big guy.
Speaker 4:I got to drink a lot when I stopped doing that. The water, helped heal my ulcer when they're like such because I had a doctor appointment when I was getting diagnosed for the bipolar and they're like your ulcer is pretty effed up and I'm like, trust me, I know I drink more water they drink water and they did and it's. I haven't had any it helps waterfalls.
Speaker 3:a beautiful thing, buddy, buddy yeah some learn that I used to not drink water, bro yeah.
Speaker 1:No, we had a life group one time. They were asking everybody how much water I'm like you can keep it. I don't need it. I got soda. I'm getting water in my coffee. I'm getting water in my tea. I don't need water. Yeah, I drink. Yeah, that's my friend.
Speaker 4:Yes, it's, it's, it's, it's helpful.
Speaker 1:High blood pressure will wake you up a little bit to some water.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, a lot more than that If you don't drink water, but yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, kidney stones, yeah, all that good stuff. Brain fog, fatigue, what no?
Speaker 4:I'm just kidding and uh, john, um, and I don't really know what the what was that?
Speaker 2:21?
Speaker 4:just yeah, 21, yeah, 20, 21, right at the end of covid yeah yeah, so I moved down there, um on the I guess, on the on the addiction stuff, um, I was dabbling in weed while I was there. I was doing like more edibles and stuff because I I didn't want to disgrace living there. I was doing like more edibles and stuff Cause I I didn't want to disgrace living there.
Speaker 5:I was like.
Speaker 4:I shouldn't be, and like cigarettes I was like at night or like you know, not there.
Speaker 4:Um cause again respect in his trying to yeah, that deteriorated a little bit, but definitely I did my best to some extent Um and um and yeah. So I started living there and then I had a um, I had a psychotic break and that was fun, so I couldn't, I just I was. So I was so scared, like I had a job, uh, I worked at a job and then I got fired there because, uh, I slept in one night one morning and I slept in because my medication, because one of the medications I take, will knock you out and it's like not, it's like stronger than Xanax and all that kind of stuff, like it'll, if you're not body's not used to it, it'll knock you out for days. Like the amount I was taking will knock a regular person out for at least three or four days. Wow, easy, straight, wow. And so I guess sometimes it'll just have a fart.
Speaker 2:You were out.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and I lost the job and I was like, dude, I'm taking medications, it didn't matter which is illegal. But I didn't understand that concept as much. I didn't pick up on that because I wasn't as familiar with medication yet and the legalities behind mental health and all that kind of stuff. So then I had no job and I was applying to a job. I would get the job and then I would have this like panic attack and I just would turn around and go home, get another job, show up for training, couldn't go back, show up for the first day, left during lunch. Like I was so scared, like I was terrified, like genuinely terrified, to be outside. And so then I was at home and then I couldn't go to the bathroom, like I couldn't go outside of my room, I couldn't shop for anything. Like I was so scared to leave my room and I was like, oh, I think I'm having like a psychotic break and I didn't know what to do. Like it was going on.
Speaker 1:Ever experienced that before? No.
Speaker 4:No, and so it's that fear. Yeah, it was a lot more than that, but that was one yeah for sure. But so I called Joan and Jerry and I'm like I can't afford to live, I need to pay rent and I'm too scared to get a job. Drive up to them, because that was a conversation I need to have with them in person, because if I'm gonna ask them to help support me, like that's good, but they're very much.
Speaker 4:They need to know, they need to see what's going on, yeah yeah, and so that was one of the first time I ever seen them be really receptive to mental health I don't know why it was jt being there or what it was.
Speaker 4:But they're like do you want to go on a walk? Like, let's go on a walk. So we went on a walk and that was wild. Uh, so they, they, they were going to support me a little bit until I could get stuff figured out. And then I they were like, well, what are you doing with medication? I'm like, well, I'm on this, this, this, and this is seven. Never mind, that's not normal. I'm like, yeah, I don't think it is, but that's what the?
Speaker 4:doctor prescribed me, so then I was getting a new psychiatrist. I got a new psychiatrist because I moved to arizona. So I got a new psychiatrist and yeah, yeah, you were cutting you. She cut off almost half of them and then just increased the half that was left and that almost immediately, like I started seeing difference. But it was like a month.
Speaker 5:It was like a month.
Speaker 4:It was a month of living in my room. I watched every TV show. You can imagine it sucked, I hated it, I couldn't do anything.
Speaker 4:I physically couldn't do anything. I physically couldn't do anything. And so I started smoking a little bit too, to help with that, and I don't think I smoked a lot, I think it was kind of like inconsequential in the bigger picture. And then I tried shrooms and that helped a lot. I only did it once, but that still helped a lot, actually, because by the time I tried shrooms the medication was we did this. This was the first psychiatrist I ever had that actually cared about me and wasn't trying to push pills and not listen to what was going on. She was the best doctor I've ever had, and so my meds are working and I'm feeling a lot more stable. I think by this time I had gotten a job, but still one of the things that was lingering was I couldn't drive and I love driving and I love being dumb about driving Like it's just I'm an adrenaline junkie.
Speaker 5:It is what it is.
Speaker 4:So not being too scared to drive was just a weird thing. So yeah, I took shrooms and that healed it. The next day I was able to drive. So yeah, I took shrooms and that healed it. The next day I was able to drive. Which is why I think there is some real, real connection to some psychedelics and responsibility.
Speaker 2:Joe Rogan Psychedelics for healing man.
Speaker 3:I think there's a balance to it.
Speaker 4:I think, there is, to the non-addictive stuff, and that goes to whom to hit to whom to which it may apply. Yeah, um uh ayahuasca yeah I've always wanted to. I don't think I'm going to.
Speaker 2:I don't think I'm ever. Have you ever licked the?
Speaker 3:frog, that's the one that'll kill you I learned that from pirates of the caribbean yeah okay, so, so, so, anyway, yeah, I uh go ahead.
Speaker 4:What were you?
Speaker 2:saying I was trying to because you're, you're, you're back, yeah, and because I remember, bro, you come in and you bring in sam and we're at the life group in 21 cr and no, it was the life group and you well, that's because of cr, okay, but you guys showed up, but then it was like you were gone. Yeah, so this, and there was a church over in phoenix uh, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4:And the girl and it was just. You were here one day and then you were gone. Dude, that's pretty light, so we can breeze through it pretty quickly. Um, I was working at toyota the time. Everything was going great.
Speaker 1:Oh, I remember that it was a lot really really dope. Oh, that was when we first started the step study. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, okay. So again, I experienced CR a little bit in California in a healthy experience, but still, okay, cool, I get what this is. What's going on here? I'm totally unfamiliar with it. Um, I am, I met a girl and on a dating app and she was a church girl and at this time I was working like a pack a day and you know weed and not a lot of weed, but weed and drinking. I was doing a lot of crossfade driving and stuff with the boys when we'd go work on cars and stuff.
Speaker 4:So not a healthy lifestyle yeah um and uh, and we were really connecting and I went oh crap, like she loves jesus, I'm gonna have to clean my act up because I think I like her. And so I was like I need to do this because I want to do this or not, because, hello, she, she, she wants me to yeah, so I.
Speaker 2:It don't work. If we do it for somebody else, it's to be for us.
Speaker 4:So I was like, okay, I'm going to do this, I'm going to get sober. So I got sober and I cut off nicotine and drinking, which was really hard because nicotine was a consistent thing for years. It's always been a consistent thing. If the environment is appropriate, yeah. And after that was interesting. Um, once I I saw I got sober from that started dating her. Um, then we broke up and her church kicked me out and because we weren't dating anymore, um, wait a minute what?
Speaker 4:oh yeah, yeah, that's the second second time I got kicked out of a church.
Speaker 2:Yeah, second or third.
Speaker 4:Three times.
Speaker 2:You're not seeing her anymore. You're not welcome here, dude.
Speaker 1:Basically, really Yep, what the hell kind of church.
Speaker 4:is that Not the one I'm supposed to be at?
Speaker 2:So and.
Speaker 5:I will say to my fault, I went on social media and trashed the pastors and stuff.
Speaker 4:But they were going after me too, so it was kind of a back and forth. Take this it was actually really exciting.
Speaker 3:I'll stop being fun with it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so I stayed sober from the nicotine but I stopped working the program NCR. But that's where I met Sam. That's where I met Wade. Wade was my sponsor and then, um, but he wanted me to to to quit everything. It was like, hey, I think you need to quit marijuana. And I was like I think it's working for me, like I think. I need this he's like all right give. So I got out of that and went and I still knew Sam.
Speaker 3:When did you start your AA?
Speaker 4:thing yeah, we'll get to that. All right, we'll get to that.
Speaker 1:I'm getting ahead of you in my bed A little bit, and so then Sam was wanting a new church.
Speaker 4:So we were still friends, we were still chatting. I was still sober from nicotineotine. I stayed sober from nicotine for two years cr cr uh yeah yeah so um we stayed in contact because we skated so that's that was how we were connected. Yeah, um, so we, we still skated together. And then he was looking for a new church, and so I recommended leveling why not wow? And so I showed him that sunday.
Speaker 2:You guys showed up and you walked. I don't remember that. You walked him across the worship center and introduced me to him literally don't remember, yeah, so, and then it was like you never came back and he kept coming.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it was, yeah it was for him I didn't, I had no interest in going back because I got kicked out of another church like screw screw all this Wow.
Speaker 5:Yeah, churches never really agree with you.
Speaker 4:They never really agree with me, which is phenomenal. So yeah, so, and then I met another girl.
Speaker 2:Are you still living at John's?
Speaker 4:So by this yes, so I was still living at John's. So by this, yes, so I was still living at John's. And then, by the time I met this, the next girl, me and JT, move in with his brother. They have a house in Mesa, and so we started living there.
Speaker 1:That's after his little place burned down. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's way after that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, because that burned down in 2021. Oh right, yeah, so there, wine, all right, yeah, that was so, that was that. Uh, so we, um, so we were living there. Then me and the girl got close and we decided we wanted to move in together. And we moved in together and, um, I still still sober from the nicotine, um, but we smoked weed together a lot, um, and so I started my codependency started coming out as well, a lot more, because once it's a stable relationship, especially romantic relationships, if it goes on long enough, that's when the codependency start coming out as well, a lot more, because once it's a stable relationship, like especially romantic relationships, if it goes on long enough, that's when the codependency pops out.
Speaker 2:Um, what does it look like for you? Uh control text message where are you?
Speaker 4:yeah, or I think you're gonna leave me, or are you? Cheating on me. Uh, look that. I mean those intrusive thoughts were there for sure. But it was kind of. It wasn't really, it was just more. I don't feel safe here and I think it's your fault in the relationship basically.
Speaker 4:That's basically what it was for me and she got the brunt of it, unfortunately. And then we ended up breaking up. I moved in with JT at the same time. Right before we broke up, I moved in with JT, we got our own apartment. I was working at Starbucks, I was going to school there and I had another job I was working at. So two jobs going to school, smoking a lot of weed and a decoding what is it called? Decoding? Corroding, corroding relationship. It was out, which was really heavy for me because I was in love with this girl, really serious, and I lived with her. So there was a lot of deep connections. And then it dissipated and then I was alone in a new apartment and went from like me with a girl and a dog and like a little family style and then to living quietly in a room, a new foreign room, and I was like yo, I'm so depressed so I just picked up my marijuana. A lot. My my medication also was kind of in and out. I'm not really working. I was having a hard time getting to work on time, probably because of everything that was going through Also it was still the same sleeping one and it was doing the thing where it
Speaker 4:would just be really intense and like I would sleep on the floor next to my alarm clock so that I could wake up in time. And I was still not waking up. So I got fired from that job and then so I lost my schooling because it was through the job, and then I worked at this one job. That was all the way back in Phoenix and I'm living in Tempe now and it's just right past everything that reminds me of the last year of my life because I did this girl for a year or more or something like that, maybe even more more, I can't think right now.
Speaker 4:um anyway, uh, so I was losing everything and I was super depressed, and so that's when I started really ramping up the marijuana because I could do it at work and get away with it um, and do my job pretty good with with it, for whatever reason.
Speaker 4:And so, yeah it was, I would go to the, I would go to the dispensary to get weed to have in the car for on my way home. Yeah, so make sure that I wasn't. There wasn't a moment where I wasn't high. Edibles, all that kind of stuff, flour, all of it. All day, constantly. I was super depressed, so the suicidal ideations were getting really strong and and I thought it was because of the relationship and it was getting darker and I was like, oh, it's bigger than that and life wasn't getting that great. The job that I was at kind of screwed me over a little bit and I was barely affording to stay alive. And I couldn't afford to stay alive because most of my money went to marijuana and so I was getting behind on bills.
Speaker 1:Was it still having the effect of being really low, low, oh, it didn't even matter, even with the medication.
Speaker 4:It didn't even matter at this point. It definitely did for sure but, it didn't even matter. I was as dark as I've ever been, as sad as I've ever been, as defeated as I've ever been, as sad as I've ever been, as defeated as I've ever been, as hopeless as I've ever been. Like that was like the suicidal ideations got as close as you can get to um unaliving yourself every day Wow. That was so. So blur it was not even blurry is the right word, but it was so clear how unclear it was.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Um it was so unclear how clear.
Speaker 5:It was yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:Uh, it was so unclear how clear it was I should say yeah, uh. So yeah, it was like every day. Like every day I was experiencing like uh, like this. I don't you know what this makes sense this makes sense to do yeah every day, day after day after day still smoking a lot, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I thought about getting sober, um, because j was worried I think he had said something and also, like I was smoking a copious amount, that I still wasn't getting high, like it was actually hard to get high.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And I was like ah, maybe yeah.
Speaker 2:You know your tolerance is high, then yeah, when you have 140 milligrams of marijuana, and you're not that high.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And you're like dang it of marijuana and you're not that high. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and you're like dang it. This isn't fun. You know what I mean?
Speaker 1:this is expensive, yeah yeah, you're getting to concentrate, concentrated stuff and it's still not touching you at all it is, but it's not not enough to keep the dark thoughts away yeah, just keep the monster at bay, right?
Speaker 4:um, so, yeah. So then, uh, um, one day, this was my first spiritual experience into sobriety. So one day I'm, you know, toking and smoking my day away and I hear this loud voice in my room out of nowhere, and it was. It was like someone was there and said if you keep smoking marijuana, oh, you're gonna lose everything. Why don't I lost everything? What the heck is this? You know I've. I felt like I lost everything. What the heck is this? You know I've. I felt like I lost everything. I lost the relationship.
Speaker 4:You know being a tool bag to everyone, to myself, and it was just it was like, okay, what more is there to lose?
Speaker 3:It was so dramatic, you know.
Speaker 4:And uh, then, about a month later, um, I woke up. You know same stuff Suicide allegations, super depressed, very dark, ready to off myself. All the music I listened to was ready to off yourself. All the stuff I was writing was ready to off yourself. And I woke up one morning and was like okay, this is it, I was ready to off myself. Like this is I need to kill myself, or something dramatically different needs to change or happen and it's not like Isaiah, does it Like no quick fix, or maybe?
Speaker 4:a little less marijuana today. It was the most truthful experience I've ever had with myself. Wow, I need to kill myself or something dramatically needs to change. I was like, ah man, it would be a little messy to kill myself. I like to say in the rooms I say I was too much of a b to kill myself yeah, uh because I I have, I care about my roommate.
Speaker 4:I was like I don't want to, I don't want to have to deal with him, to have to deal with that, yeah I understand this is still a people pleaser and uh so I cried out to this, this voice I heard two weeks before or a month before, something like that, and I said is if, if this is gonna, something has to change and or I'm gonna, like I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this. And oh man, what were the? I can't remember the exact words, but the overall experience was I'm gonna do 90 meetings in 90 days. Like that was the only thing I could think of at the moment. Like what, what could I do to like, save myself right?
Speaker 4:now, if I'm not going to kill myself, cause there's no. I physically, mentally, my soul, just felt in a corner and there was no more wiggle room. I've done all the all these years, I've done all the room I can to survive and there's no. There's nothing I could do to survive. That was it. I was like this is.
Speaker 4:Now you're back in the corner, Yep. So I was like I'm going to do 90-90. I'm going to go to 90 meetings in 90 days. Don't even know where that came from, to be honest with you, and I don't even recommend this to people. But I gave God an ultimatum or at the time I didn't even believe he was God, it was just like a higher power.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 4:You need an ultimatum in 90 meetings, nine days. If this doesn't work, something doesn't change. I'm going to go and I'm gonna go as hard and fast as possible till I die, and I don't care. Yeah, I will, I turn, I'll turn it off, it will be turned. That was a real, there was a real moment.
Speaker 4:And so I think later that day I searched up, cause it happened in the morning. It was like, right, when I woke up, it was like straight to work, straight, straight up, like, okay, kill yourself or do this. That was my first experience. When I woke up, yeah, how dark things were, uh. And so I looked up meetings, cause I was like, well, if I'm going to, I need to find a meeting somewhere. And there was a Marijuana Anonymous meeting seven minutes down the road in the afternoon. I was like, ah man, so this is it, this is the road I'm supposed to go, dang it. So now I got to do it so, as any good drug addict would do, did not throw away any of my drugs. I took them all. Went to the meeting, zooted, so zooted. Went to the meeting, zooted, so zooted. Yeah, went to my meeting, went there a little late, left a little early. Um, and I remember walking out in the parking lot going.
Speaker 4:I may not have to be sober for the rest of my life and I still wasn't even super sober I was still a little high yeah uh, I was like I can't, I can't, I can't go get marijuana. I remember seeing like oh I just on my way home, I'll go to the dispensary.
Speaker 5:Yeah, cause.
Speaker 4:I have three dispensaries next to my house.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And I was like I can't do that. Dang, I don't know how I'm going to do this. Um well, I gotta be here tomorrow. So, and somebody chased me down at the parking lot after that meeting.
Speaker 4:So they liked my share and wanted to give me meetings to go to that were outside of just the place that I was going to, to the pigeon coop, and it was like in that moment I was like, oh dang, this is, this. Has got to be God or something, some higher power Cause like I, I made myself as unwelcoming as possible. I'm not there late, leave early like don't talk to nobody don't look at nobody, but I do share.
Speaker 4:I did share in the meeting because I was like I might as well, might as well hear them me complain a little for my three, four minute speech and, uh, yeah, and I was like, oh, this is god, like this is this has to be because somebody chased you out of the meeting yeah, with a list of meetings for you to go to every day yeah, any day of the week, at any time.
Speaker 4:Yeah, a bunch of meetings, because I, I was gonna just go to that place every day if I had to. I needed to do it and fulfill what I committed to. Um, but yeah, uh. Then after that day, I didn't have any suicidal ideations ever again. Um, so, even on day day two, I got more than what I asked for. Wow, which was wild.
Speaker 1:So yeah, and then you know not.
Speaker 4:The rest is history, because there's a lot more to share. Did you make the 90? Oh, yes, sir, I did. Wow, I did the 90 meeting day and every day, like people, are you sure? Because you know there's opportunities to not go. How hard was that? Not hard at all, really. No, because I knew what was on the other end.
Speaker 4:I was gonna kill myself that was it so you were like do you need to go to another meeting like today? Like why don't we do? And I was like I will kill myself if I don't go to this meeting that's a little dramatic, I'm like nope not in my I know me because you know, like they say in the meetings, they say you're gonna, you usually pick up where you left off. Yeah, and where I left off, there was no more picking up.
Speaker 3:Come on, buddy a very short road, wow it was a couple steps to that's it, wow so that's very real, like it was.
Speaker 4:It was very it's as real as you sitting in front of me that that experience and that truth to me was if I pick up marijuana that's where we're going. Wow, and that's. It is what it is that's very real. I hope there's never anything I experience in the world that fogs that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yep, that's beautiful, yeah, that is beautiful yeah.
Speaker 4:Isn't that wild. It is Sobriety. That was my first experience into sobriety Wow, miracles. After that, I mean it got harder. I mean I lost everything. Yeah, I had a vision two weeks into my sobriety. I had a vision that I was in this forest and there was a time lapse and all the trees died. Everything died Really. Yeah, winter, summer, fall, spring all of them went through time lapse. Everything died, died really. Yeah, winter, summer, fall, spring all of them went through time lapse. Everything died. And then these little small trees that were like pink for some reason, um, but colorful uh, started popping up slowly, like very slowly, what? And then I did lose everything I lost my jobs.
Speaker 4:I lost relationships with people that were had nothing to do with my addiction. They literally came out of the waterworks hey, you suck Bye. I'm like all right, and I literally watched myself lose everything and I was like dang, that was rough. This is what sobriety is supposed to be.
Speaker 2:I'm doing what I'm supposed to do, and then I even lost my sponsor.
Speaker 4:That's real buddy.
Speaker 4:I even lost my first sponsor, I lost everything and then I thought I lost everything and then I kept losing stuff and I realized probably part of my uh, like my testimony, or or what my, my life experience is to to share with people like this, uh, this, this dying yourself, like literally, except for dying, except for physically dying, he's, he's, it feels like god's, like I'm not gonna let you die, or that's not in my plan right now for you to die, but I need you to lose everything else and if you're, if you, let me but watch what happens still watching but no, I've, I've literally still in process, but yeah, but like my journey isn't one that I feel like is one of those on stage champion, super uplifting, like it was like, yeah, I don't feel like I need to kill myself anymore, but I had to learn how to you know work without.
Speaker 4:I had to learn how to do sobriety without money, learn sobriety without female relationships, without friends, without a job, without feeling like there's purpose sometimes. And I grasped for all of those, throughout most of my sobriety, because sobriety isn't working if you don't have a girlfriend, or if your finances aren't working, or if you don't have a job or you're being a productive member of society. Your sobriety must not be working. Well, I'm putting in so much time and so much work into my sobriety I saw you should it should it should, so maybe I'm doing something wrong.
Speaker 4:So and then god was like kind of sit me down and go submit to me are you sober buddy? Yes, sir, that's working yeah, I mean really right. That's as simple as it is. It really does that. Are you thinking about killing yourself? Are you sober? Yes, sir, then it's working. Yeah, I mean Really right. That's as simple as it is.
Speaker 2:Are you thinking about killing yourself? Nope, no, it's working. It's working yeah.
Speaker 4:Little by little. No, and I'm not saying that.
Speaker 1:Everything, everything that you named Is things that the world says, yeah, right, exactly.
Speaker 4:Yep and I and these are, and what the thing is, though, is these are some of my biggest fears. I have been, I've had to face in my sobriety to be alone, to not have money, yep, homeless. Yeah, and I'm not homeless thing, but, but I'm not supporting that. That is, that area isn't in my control and having to go.
Speaker 4:Okay, god, I'm trusting my roommates with this or my roommate with this, and I'm trusting you and I'm trusting that you are asking me to do this and that's not going to corrode our relationship. It's just a time and space and things will change. We're going to get that Cybertrucks one day, buddy.
Speaker 3:Yeah you are.
Speaker 2:Coffee business is going through the roof, yeah, and our podcast in. Secure Milk.
Speaker 4:But yeah, so it's like all coming, but I still have peace. I don't, I don't have these things, but I have peace. I can be alone in my room. I can have nothing and be peace.
Speaker 3:That's so good.
Speaker 4:And not only be at peace. I can strive to better myself alone. No one's watching, there's no one needs like and people are appreciate that I'm bettering myself. It does help the relationships that I do have, but I mean no one's relying on me to go, you know, do the do the habits that I'm doing every day. No one's relying on me like I'm doing it alone and no one needs to know that I'm doing them like it wouldn't.
Speaker 4:It wouldn't change you're doing it for yourself I'm doing it to to grow because a because god was like hey, you need to do a couple of these things. Okay, cool, I'm gonna do them. But man, sometimes waking up and having to go do those things like nobody cares, you know, and I don't even understand sometimes why I need to do these things, they're not direct to anything that I'm doing like an instrument, I'm not in a band, not none of that. And he's like I need you to practice the instrument every day for a certain amount of time. It's like, okay, I've got to be obedient to that.
Speaker 4:Come on, buddy, for who knows why, it might be just it might be, for it, might you know, like it might not be something you understand, to the other side of life, who knows?
Speaker 2:You're learning to be obedient to God, bro. Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:I saw this thing today. I'm trying to look for it, man, but it said something along the lines of there's no peace for the soul without being obedient to the voice of God, and you were just talking right now. It reminded me of that that you said you have peace now, being by yourself, you have peace not having a job, you have peace and all this other stuff, but you're also being obedient to the voice of god yeah, it's like I have peace in the storm all right, my, my sobriety has been nothing but storms.
Speaker 4:It really has in a lot, of, a lot of different ways, but I still have peace and that's. That's what's wild to me. It's like I don't think peace is the absence of storms. I think peace is the calmness in the storm.
Speaker 1:It's that direction of trust. Yeah, for sure. How'd you get back to us here, man?
Speaker 4:Yeah, so I had been sober about six months or so going to every meeting you go to primarily marijuana, anonymous at Pigeon Coop. But yeah, I've gone to all these other meetings as well anyway, so there's a job.
Speaker 4:I was like really need to get a job because, again, like I've been through everything sobriety, robbed, and jobs and stuff. So it's crazy, there's a job. I really wanted, had the interview, did everything I could to get that job and they were like, okay, by this time we'll call you. If we don't call you by this time, you don't get the job. That time had passed and I was stressing out. I was like, dude, I need a job, I can't afford to live without a job. Um, and so I was like I need someone to pray for me. For whatever reason, I don't know why. I just like I need someone to pray for me, someone that I trust. And so I thought of rowdy, so I called him um, because when I stress out, I walk, I go on is this someone you've been having conversations with?
Speaker 4:before that yeah, no, called you out of the blue. Um, wow, yeah, I usually stress walk and so, on my stress walk and I was like I need, I need prayer, and so I called rowdy and we talked for like three hours or so and uh, that was all the Lord.
Speaker 4:And basically, long story short, I felt bad, uh, that I kept on the phone for three or so hours crying about my life, and so you know. Of course, he invited me to CR during our conversation, invited me to life link and all that stuff, and I was not going to church, not ready for that.
Speaker 4:But I was like you know what? I'll go to a one CR. I feel bad, um, you know, truthfully, actually I just thought about this too Truthfully. It was that and another scenario I had when I first went to CR with Sam and a couple other people Actually, it was the last CR I went to before I dipped out and there was this group we were sitting in and there was this rug, this carpet. It was an orange circle and, like for me, the orange circle has a lot of significance. It basically just means like wholeness.
Speaker 4:You got one tattooed under your eye. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I remember walking away from that, that little circle and god, literally I remember I didn't know it was, I didn't know if it was god or not. But, um, at the time he said there's, that's where life is. And I was kind of mad because I was like I don't want to go here, I don't want to be at church, like I don't want anything to do with this stuff. Like I get, groups are where I get life, at like in any meeting anywhere.
Speaker 4:But yeah, he had said that and that always stuck with me and so that was part of like when you said, hey, come back to see her, I was like anything to get this job? No, but that was not part of it. But yeah, that that, that moment that was has permeated time. And then our conversation was like, okay, why not? So I went to one no promise of going anymore. I told him that too. Yeah, I was like. I'll go to one. I was like I'm going to go late.
Speaker 5:I think I did go late for a while.
Speaker 2:He did, while actually he did bud, yeah, but you kept coming back dude a sign of individuality.
Speaker 4:It's a way of saying I care without without with saying I don't care uh yeah so I started coming and, uh, I started working, and uh, I got a lot from it and, um, I talked you into the steps.
Speaker 2:So he was like he didn't know. It was 10 months.
Speaker 3:Well, I did well I did, uh, I did my 12-step program and I'll let you know.
Speaker 4:I did that thoroughly and quickly and my sponsor was impressed and uh, so that's all I need to do, oh yeah, because I was like I'm gonna kill myself if I don't like do my program right because I'm gonna go right back out there I watch people go right back out there, right, it's just I going to work it. It's a thin line, brother. Sobriety is a thin line. It's a lot of work to walk that thin line, but it's. It's no work to not walk that thin line.
Speaker 3:You know what I mean.
Speaker 4:You know you're working on it or you're working against it.
Speaker 2:You're either in working your way back to active addiction, dude you're active addiction isn't working towards it, you just are.
Speaker 4:Whether you like to see it or not, it's, it's straight up, you are, yes, you know that moment when you're like nah, oh yeah, going missing one meeting isn't missing a meeting. It's intentionally saying I don't want to go to that meeting. It's intentionally now saying you're not going to work on your recovery, intentionally saying you're working on your addiction? Yeah, yeah, clear that's real.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they told me one time you can't bs that stuff they told me one time you need to take a monday off. You're the only person who doesn't miss the monday. I'm like I'm not I'm not here because I have to be yeah, that's poison. I'm here because I need to be even even me missing. One is just like yeah, if you just feel I'm not served one monday, but I'm definitely going to show up. You know what?
Speaker 4:I mean, it's like missing a meal.
Speaker 3:For me it's like missing a meal.
Speaker 4:And when you're putting in the work, you're putting in missing a meal is different than when you weren't putting in the work.
Speaker 1:My sponsor made it very clear to me, brother, and I've come to accept it now that recovery is now my lifestyle. You know, what I mean. That means attending meetings, that means doing whatever it takes that means doing whatever it takes. Yeah, so to me, missing a meeting is not an option.
Speaker 4:I don't have that I'll miss.
Speaker 1:I'll miss the church service, yeah I don't mind missing a church service, but I mean I'm not missing a meeting, dude, you know, I mean, and it just that's my life now. I accept that because if I want to stay the way God is leading me to stay, then that is a requirement. There's no lack of that.
Speaker 3:Recovery's done you good buddy, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:His life has gotten a lot better. Yeah, yeah, it has.
Speaker 1:I've laid a lot of stuff down, brother man dude. A lot of stuff, bro.
Speaker 4:I kind of wish I knew you before. Oh, a lot of stuff, bro.
Speaker 1:I kind of wish. I knew you before. Oh, no, you didn't.
Speaker 4:No, I know, I know.
Speaker 3:That guy was scary buddy. I've heard you say that before. That dude was scary. But, sometimes he wasn't that bad, oh my.
Speaker 2:God.
Speaker 3:He wasn't that bad. Is that what your record says?
Speaker 1:He didn't drink water. Is that what your record says?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right, one dude let's go look at the felony.
Speaker 1:He put on a good front man, oh you know, what's funny is that we got to play the part bro he was great at that, you know, I got my criminal.
Speaker 4:I got my first criminal record in sobriety, really driving too fast.
Speaker 2:Hit and run from driving too fast no, I'll sit up.
Speaker 4:it was a black friday last year. Last year, yeah, I was. I was stuck in the parking lot for over a half hour, yeah, and I just getting out of the parking lot I just grayed someone and fear just kicked in and it was a weird thing because I've never I've been in accidents before and like, just deal with it.
Speaker 5:It's not a big deal. There's not a lot to you know, it is what it is Like everybody's cool.
Speaker 4:There's nothing about that situation. That was like flight or fight mode, but for some reason it triggered and you took off, I took off.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I got just boom like that, and I planned.
Speaker 2:You got your license plate.
Speaker 4:And I planned yeah, we were sitting. He was sitting behind me for like 20 minutes and I saw an opportunity to dip out and, for some, some reason, boom and I left and I called myself on on my way out, like as I was dipping out.
Speaker 4:I'm stressing I was a cop. Or am I getting in trouble? I call my sponsor. I'm like I can't believe I did this, like I don't know why I did it, but I did it. Yeah. Why the heck did you do that? I'm like this is so out of character. I'm in sobriety too, like I'm a different person now and he's like and I was like well you know, if it bites me in the butt later, I'm going to eat it.
Speaker 4:It is what it is. I'm going to accept it and move on with it and own it. And I got a misdemeanor. Yeah, the one right below a felony.
Speaker 1:I've seen my brother got pulled over one time and it was my brother, me, Mike and this girl and he took off and run, left us in the car. It was his car, you.
Speaker 2:He took off and run, left us in the car. It was his car. He takes off running, sin makes you stupid?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it does, so the cops are right there and, of course, the cops find you stupid.
Speaker 2:He dips out the driver's seat and leaves them. And they found him.
Speaker 1:I mean, they caught him a couple blocks away because he wasn't a fast runner. You know what I mean, but I was probably 19 at the time, 18, 19.
Speaker 5:And I just remember.
Speaker 1:I am never running, they catch you.
Speaker 4:They catch you all the time I'm like, so why?
Speaker 1:why 2024 people? Why spend that energy to run? You know what I mean. So ever since then, like I kind of just it was like busted, I got caught. You know what I mean. Yeah, not running. I'm right here, dude, we're good. You know what I mean. Don't slam me to the ground, don't punch me, don't hit me, don't stick me Don't add time, don't add time.
Speaker 4:Whatever did I add time? Never ran, bro yeah.
Speaker 2:Dude. So, man bro, this is good dog. You talked about a lot you talked about a lot. Bro, I need to do with adoption and russia and the family and religion we're gonna have a whole running church.
Speaker 3:I mean bro, yeah, this is.
Speaker 2:This is really good. Um, now you're in recovery, you're sober, you're leading. What are you hoping for in the future, man? Man, what's God put in your heart ahead? Why did he get you sober? Why did he save your life?
Speaker 4:That's a good question yeah because the fruit isn't for me to pick yeah yeah, amen, that's good bro.
Speaker 2:For those people who are coming, so they can see.
Speaker 4:I can't tell you what the fruit's going to look like. I can't tell you how long it's going to be ripe or what it's going to do. I had a vision while I was door dashing, while I was in CR for the first time, and I was a tree and an apple fell from my tree. And that's where isaac newton thought about gravity, or right theory of gravity, and I was like that's what I want to be.
Speaker 4:I want to be the conduit or the atmosphere that someone was sitting out hanging out, chilling. I don't know if that story is real or not, but for the sake of the scenario, let's say it's relatively accurate. Yeah, I want to be that place where someone is safe and can discover something that's going to change the world. I used to long to be the person that's changing the world, or in front of the world or whatever, and I, after all this that we've talked about, I don't think I have it in me to carry that burden or that weight.
Speaker 4:Um cause you know there's two sides to that right, um, but I've there's two sides to that right, yes, sir, but I long to be the tree that my fruit causes someone to change the world.
Speaker 4:Not even something I did, but just something connected to them, whether it was something I did or said or facilitated. That inspires someone to change the world. Something that they discover or do change the world, said or facilitated. That inspires someone, you know, to change the world. Something that they discover or do change the world. That's it, I think. Ever since then, I have a lot of tree analogies. Um, I used to rest amongst a huge tree at the cemetery I used to go to every week and God would just talk to me. I felt like the tree was talking to me. I have a folder for it. Even on my run, I'll still think of stuff. What I just said right there while I was running two days ago Fruit's not for you to pick. You can go really in depth into that.
Speaker 4:About that that phrase right there is so dense with whatever you know, like scripture you could tie into it, or just philosophically.
Speaker 2:You're the tree, bro, you produce the fruit.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and I'm the tree by the river. The living river, that's good. What did you say? You said you're the tree that produces the fruit. Yeah, the living river, that's good. What did you say?
Speaker 1:You said you're the tree that produces the fruit. Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah. So it's not mine to pick? No, it's not, because if it, was.
Speaker 5:That's where self-pity comes in.
Speaker 4:Wow man Self-consciousness.
Speaker 2:Selfishness, self yeah, self, self, that's what we got to deny. Is this fruit big enough?
Speaker 4:Why is?
Speaker 2:this face here. Is this going to make me?
Speaker 4:happy Apples. I wanted oranges Scott.
Speaker 3:We'll even complain about the fruit in our lives. Dude, jesus, that's real. Buddy, oh man, that's real.
Speaker 2:Man. That's why it's not for us.
Speaker 4:Yeah, there's a lot of reasons, but I think that's what I've been able to dig at in the last couple days. Yeah, running for me will I run every day. Good, except for sundays, um, but every day at all how long do you run?
Speaker 4:uh, I do an 8k, wow bro. I started at four and I hate my body but it's just kind of built more towards long distance. So by like 3K or 4K it feels like it starts to warm up. Wow, but my run's about done, and I'm not saying that I enjoy it, because I hate getting up in the morning knowing that I have to run. I hate when I'm putting on my shoes. I hate when I'm stretching for an hour before I have to run. I hate when I'm putting on my shoes. I hate when I'm stretching for an hour before I have to run. I hate running.
Speaker 2:What time do you do all that?
Speaker 4:As soon as I can. I want to be better about the time, but it's kind of right now. It's just mornings, afternoons. I used to do night, but I don't like running at night in Tempe. Okay, cause I run in the street area like a lot of street, really ghetto areas, stuff like that, not super ghetto, but you have to be alert At night people be.
Speaker 5:Over there by Guadalupe, ain't you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh yeah, buddy, not a good area. We used to sell dope over there, buddy.
Speaker 4:Someone replaced you guys to work. Business is good as usual.
Speaker 2:Business is booming. Oh my God dude.
Speaker 4:Thank God. Thank god, our apartment just got raided by swat today on my way to run wow, but um, yeah, so it's. I just started 8k today. I was doing four miles and then I, I don't know like the I like uh metric system and when I looked at what four miles was in the metric system, it's like 5.6 kilometers and I was like that's a weird, that's an ugly number. I hate that number. I was like, well, what could I do?
Speaker 4:I was like, well, I was like, yeah, why not eight? Because eight is about five miles, so it's only a mile more. Um, and I need. I felt my body wanted. I think my body wanted to go a little bit longer because again it would warm up and then I'm just cooling down, I'm just like all right time to go home. So today I tried an 8K and that felt a lot better.
Speaker 5:It's still longer Love that. No, I don't love that.
Speaker 2:The only part I like about the running.
Speaker 4:is the walk home after?
Speaker 2:Do you think you're a marathoner? Did you see a? Marathon or a half marathon in your future.
Speaker 4:I could do a marathon. I trained for one once. I got up to like 15 mile days, but I wasn't preparing myself right, so I just got an injury and stopped running, and I was doing it with a girl that I liked, and by that time we broke up, sam and Josh were preparing for a run.
Speaker 2:Yeah Okay, in January the rock and roll. Oh okay, half marathon, that's cute.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's cute. Doing that every day boys, I love this guy dude.
Speaker 4:No, I'm doing it, but it's something that I'm learning is my default sin, and my default error is my pride.
Speaker 4:So when I wake up, I need to humble my body, I need to humble my mind, I need to humble myself, and so meditation and prayer is the humbleness there which is effective, right, and, and you know, reading scripture and my a book every day, and then, okay, I need to humble my body, and then the run humbles stretching, and the run humbles my body, which in turn also humbles my mind. But, okay, we get back home. Now we need to, you know, humble ourselves in the sense of you learn something. So I'm reading a book every day, Like not a whole book, but like a for a certain amount of time I read a book.
Speaker 2:You're learning an instrument again.
Speaker 4:Yeah a creative arts thing.
Speaker 5:I don't know, there's that's what I'm getting from it right now.
Speaker 4:It's just like you know, I'm, I'm, not, I'm, I'm. I haven't been allowed to get back to work yet, so we're gonna make use of our time, yeah you're learning.
Speaker 2:You're learning self-control you're learning how to discipline yourself, how to take care of yourself if I break my body down enough.
Speaker 4:Self-control is a little easier because my body's tired, it is mine's tired yeah, I just read that heavy ass book and ran yeah and stretched and played an instrument and I'm still dealing with life, because there's still life happening that I have to do yeah, so I'm trying to fit it in around that I gotta go do some of this stuff when I uh go home but I left the easy stuff for at night enjoy and realize it's not the run I did that this morning.
Speaker 3:It's good.
Speaker 4:I want to get to a point where I get up early and can get all that stuff done.
Speaker 2:And then have your day. Yeah, that's good, it's good and see if that works. You got to get up at like five for that.
Speaker 4:Well, it's about a four-hour session for all that stuff. So probably a little. Yeah, even earlier, yeah, so part of it's like okay, well, feel out the day I need to read tonight, I don't need to read right now.
Speaker 5:That's good, I need to do other stuff.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and if my heart is just rushed through it to check it off, then I'm just wasting my time, yep.
Speaker 2:Yep, yeah, checking off boxes bud, yeah, so checking off boxes, but it's a waste. There ain't no fruit in that, nothing. There ain't no life in that, nowhere Nothing.
Speaker 4:Cause your relationships. I've grew up with relationships that were just I was a check in the box. Yeah, buddy, and I did the same thing, and it's just, it's a, it's it's it's fertile soil for addiction and relapse.
Speaker 2:Checking out boxes yeah, that's good. At least start checking out the wrong boxes.
Speaker 3:There'll be no boxes to check outside the box.
Speaker 1:Today's the day bro I think I can speak for both me and rowdy man that we are just so thankful to have you in our lives so thankful and uh so thankful, isaiah I know we say it all the time. It's probably become kind of deafening in your ear, man. Oh no, it doesn't. The life I've lived, I pay attention. We just love you to death. I'll tell you what?
Speaker 4:every time you guys do say that I pay attention.
Speaker 1:I'm proud of you.
Speaker 4:It's not a ah, you know, especially you two. Like the only reason I'm in this building is because of you two or CR is because of you two. Yeah, like it literally was a physical choice. Sometimes those two dudes are there. I'll go today.
Speaker 1:God made it very clear to us both just to love you, bro, yeah. You know what I mean, and it's not our job to to do anything else. Love them, it's to love you.
Speaker 4:It's all I needed. You know what?
Speaker 1:I mean.
Speaker 2:Presence and uh it's real simple, man. It's so simple. I gotta be honest with you, man.
Speaker 1:Loving you is probably one of the most beautiful things I've ever done. Brother, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4:It's just good, you know it's dynamic too Well, I mean maybe even challenging Sometimes, To be honest with you, brother.
Speaker 1:you're probably the first person that I've selflessly loved Ooh, that's good With expecting nothing in return. You know what I mean.
Speaker 4:And his actions have showed that too.
Speaker 1:You know my children. I love my children with the expectation to love me in return. You know what I mean, my wife. There's this expectation of love me in return With you. There's no expectation of all that. Whether you love me in return with you. There's no expectation of all that. Whether you love me in return or not is irrelevant. God told me to love you, so I'm gonna love you, in spite of how you respond to it. You know what I mean and for me that's been huge, bro, because love for me has always been something that's been. What am I getting in return?
Speaker 4:transactional. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:So I saw it for just I don't know. For me it's. It's the first time I've ever been able to love somebody without expecting anything in return. Thank you, and it's been fruitful. Yeah, your term, it's been very fruitful.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you guys are some of the first people that I've trusted without anything in return.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's uh, it's been a blessing man. Our conversations are like we said earlier, we don't just not much different than this. Oh, and they're probably deeper too. Yeah, no, because like when it's just me and you having conversations, man, we go into some pretty deep things, brother, and I cherish those conversations. I don't have those conversations with many people, brother.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean yeah, I don't spend three hours on the phone with people, yeah so for us it's just it's, it's, it's, yeah, it's a special brother.
Speaker 1:Hope you know that man. Yeah, and when we tell you we love you, it's just genuine really mean that, it's just I love you. You know my brother dude, yeah, family and uh told you the other day that you're colorful and you are in a black and white world.
Speaker 2:You're a dash of color baby. I love that. When you say that you bring an aspect to our lives.
Speaker 1:Brother, that was lacking somewhere. I can't pinpoint it. I can't say what it was or what it is, it's just Isaiah.
Speaker 2:I was just missing, isaiah.
Speaker 1:It's just something that when we see you, it's like.
Speaker 2:That's right. There he is dude.
Speaker 4:Every time it's real though bro, it's real.
Speaker 2:bro, it's real. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Like there's my dude bro. There was a time where we saw you and then you were gone, gone. You know what I mean Mm-hmm, and not knowing that we'd ever see you again. Yep, so to see you again, and to see you again, and to see you again and to see you again and to see you again. It's like hell yeah.
Speaker 2:Now I see you on Sunday mornings and now you got a camera on you. It's like wow.
Speaker 1:This is great, Because we know a little bit of your story, brother.
Speaker 2:So to see you it's a miracle bud, it's genuine bro, he made it. You know what I mean.
Speaker 3:He made it through another day he's here again.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean it's, it really is just that, bro.
Speaker 2:It's we get to see you again yeah, I mean that's real and uh, and that's enough.
Speaker 1:It is brother, that's enough bud, we don't want nothing from you just you being here just you showing up. That makes makes it different makes it better, better makes it better, and when you don't show up like you did on monday, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Dude. Where's my dude? He's supposed to be reading.
Speaker 1:That's right. I'm even like where the hell is, isaiah, dude, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:It's like let's give him another 10 minutes well, he's still in here. All right, let me reach out to him. And then it's like is everything, everything.
Speaker 1:okay, you know what I mean, so we care. You know what? I mean that's what you do when you're not that was to touch on that.
Speaker 4:I'd love to. We don't have to, but I'd love to. It was a self-leadership moment for me, because the experience I was having going on outside of there was every reason to not be there. Yeah, I really wanted to be there and I I made it a point that I wanted to be there, but everything else was going on. I was like, uh, let's be more, let's be responsible. What we're doing over here, instead amen and alluded all day that hey, you know, we have a responsibility.
Speaker 4:Like we don't, we don't need to go if we're focusing on this responsibility and I was like, ah, like I. And then, and then the self-leadership of oh, I know, I'm scheduled for something.
Speaker 5:I think it's this week, but I think it could be next week, instead of just like writing in my calendar when I get it in the text message I'm not downloading.
Speaker 4:Play me center that one was for robbie.
Speaker 2:I gotta start sending his dates in the text message oh, you keep telling me to get a calendar and I'm like it ain't happening, dude, but yeah, no.
Speaker 4:After that it was like it did it almost like this is. I didn't realize how much I longed to be here.
Speaker 4:It felt like a little bit of a relapse the next morning. Yeah, like, ah, that's for you, you know. Yeah, you know. It's almost like you knew better, even though you might have not known better in some sense. Like it wasn't you know, like you knew everything was going to be okay. But if you just took the extra diligence and cared about this thing, like this thing has cared about you, maybe you would have been there, man, you know, and whatever else that was pulling your attention, it would have been fine yeah and um, it's good buddy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I followed, like you said, self-leadership it's not something that I do.
Speaker 4:I don't, I don't like to. I don't, I don't like to be someone who is flaky or bails out. You've seen my consistency yeah, in life and that's just, yeah. It really bothered me too, for sure not even on a just uh. Sorry guys, I know you're my leader and you gave me responsibility and I just said no to the responsibility, like it's beyond. It's deeper than that. It's like this affected my sobriety. Like it just kind of roughed it up a little bit, like, oh, like, this is important.
Speaker 2:Come on, man, god, just showing you things yeah.
Speaker 4:Oh, real self-leadership thing Come on. Because now? Because now when stuff? Because that responsibility was a gift that I got and I was like okay, are you going to, are you going to be consistent with everything else and delegate, and you know, self-leadership I mean that's good. That's why I don't have a lot of stuff.
Speaker 5:I need to be diligent, you know, because you'll add stuff.
Speaker 2:God sees it Faithful with little. Yeah, it's like what we always say we get to do this.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 2:We get to do the podcast, we get to do CR. You're just doing phenomenal.
Speaker 5:It's not a have to yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's a, it's truly a blessing man. You're praying for him buddy. Oh yeah, dude.
Speaker 4:Thank you, bro Appreciate you, bro Holler.
Speaker 2:Love you too, love you both, I don't think we're going to have to separate this into two episodes, but Buzzsprout might. We're almost at four hours, baby.
Speaker 4:We didn't do five hours. We can talk about Florida.
Speaker 2:He's got to get up and go to work tomorrow.
Speaker 4:He'll have something to think about on his way to work Florida. What happened? Thank you, God. Okay, sorry, sorry, sorry.
Speaker 1:No you're good dude, let's get this going.
Speaker 2:Jesus.
Speaker 1:Oh man man Father, I just man.
Speaker 1:And you just know what you're doing, don't you? God, man, lord, I thank you, lord. There was not a moment of Isaiah's life that was a waste of time. God, every pain, every self-cut, every letdown, it was for a purpose. God and Lord, I thank you just for the man that you created him to be God. And I thank you, Lord, that every circumstance, every challenge, every facet of life that he came across up until this point made him who he is today. And I see a beautiful man, god. I see a man who's very expressive with his words, a man who lacks no character at all. God, lord, I thank you for the prophetic, prophetic voice that he has thank you, god thank you, lord, that he has.
Speaker 1:Thank you, god, thank you, lord, that he has ears to hear you, god, that he has the strength and the courage to speak the things that you show him To speak, the things that you speak to him, god. So I thank you, lord, that in this season where he seems to be lacking in things that the world says is important, he is rich in the things of the kingdom, god, because in your world, god, obedience is greater than sacrifice. So I thank you, lord, for an obedient spirit, an obedient heart and obedient heart. Lord, I thank you that he is rich beyond his imagination. God, because he is your son, he is the prince to the kingdom of heaven. Heaven lacks nothing, lord, thank you that his father owns a cattle on a thousand hills, vineyards he didn't plant. So I thank you, lord, that he lacks nothing. In the meantime, god, your word does say that a man has to work to eat. God,