no-transcript. We started working together a little bit.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I want to go ahead and, chris, you want to introduce yourself real quick.
Speaker 2:My name is Chris Langer. I live in Glendive Montana. Now. Introduce yourself real quick. My name's Chris Langer. I live in Glendive Montana now. I'm from Northern Minnesota originally, but I've been out in Western Montana a long time.
Speaker 1:Hell, yes. Well, where were you born? I was born in Grand Forks, north Dakota, Grand Forks, north Dakota. So how long did you live in North Dakota before you made it to your next destination?
Speaker 2:North Dakota? Yeah, not very long man. I was born there and then I lived pretty much from six months old to four years old out here in Montana with my mom. Yeah, and then my dad brought me back to Grand Forks and then to Thief River Falls, minnesota.
Speaker 1:I love it. So have you mostly stayed between, like North Dakota, montana to Minnesota, like that stretch, or have you lived in other places like outside.
Speaker 2:I've stayed in some other places, you know, but for a month or two or three at a time. I lived in Tri-Cities, washington, for a few or two or three at a time. I lived in tri-cities, washington, for a few years. At one point, um, I lived in tucson, arizona, um, I don't know. Besides that, like I kind of just traveled around chasing certain things, yeah, yeah, um, so I'm really excited to do this.
Speaker 1:Uh, chris is one of the last I think the last episode. Sam Ames, I actually was talking to her and Chris was back here chilling on the computer while we were doing that. So, yeah, we're finally getting it done. I'm really excited. How old are you? Right now I'm 42. 42.
Speaker 1:So kind of, with the podcast, uh, it revolves around mental health mostly, um, and you know, giving you a platform to tell your story of where you came from, things you've gone through, because I feel like it kind of lays like a roadmap out for others to not make the same mistakes. And I've gotten a lot of feedback from people telling me, you know, like shit, that like blew my mind, that it was that special and important to them. You know, I had a a girl say, like the earlier episodes, first couple episodes, they're like not like tough to listen to but like the topics are kind of intense. You know what I mean childhood abuse type stuff, not easy stuff to talk about, you know, and uh, and they're like two and a half hours long and, um, what the fuck was I going with that?
Speaker 2:god damn it it meant so much to yes, yes, uh it.
Speaker 1:Uh, you know, and then it meant so much to me to hear, uh, that one gal said, um, I never could get into religion or church when I was younger. I pushed against it. She goes. When I listened to the podcast in my head that is what I think church is. It's something I related to so much and it it kind of helped me realize her own childhood because it was so similar to the girls that you know was on the podcast her story and someone else's story and it's, and she was like that's, I've been waiting to hear that my whole life kind of is what she said.
Speaker 1:And that was like a couple episodes in and I was like damn, like this shit is really actually powerful and like so that like helped me lock in for the. You know, basically two years I've been on this grind you know absolutely 20 episodes.
Speaker 2:I've been on this grind you know, 20 episodes.
Speaker 1:I didn't even know if I was gonna make that in, uh, season three. Right now, the first one on season three, I'm very fucking excited about that, um and then we'll get into some future endeavors that I got going on, you got going on, but I want to start from beginning.
Speaker 1:Early years we talk a little bit about, well, we talk a lot about childhood trauma and stuff, but how much it affects us later on in life and I feel like we have a lot of similarities in kind of the way we grew up in a way. So would you mind kind of going into, like you know, grand Forks, life in the beginning?
Speaker 2:What do you kind of remember into, like, uh, you know, grand forks life in the beginning.
Speaker 2:What do you kind of remember about that? Uh, not too much in the beginning in grand forks, because I was only like six months, I believe, until I moved to montana with with my mom, but that's you know. So just to point out I don't, I don't have like huge, huge memories, but I have flashes of memories in in dreams and nightmares, and you know, yeah, I do remember, though, you know, being chained up in a bathroom when my mom was gone, you know, locked up in a in a dingy old shed. They had this light outside that just buzzed all night super loud, one of them old, like, yeah, you know, outdoor lights, street lights, yeah, really loud to the point where, like in a lot of jail cells later on in life, those lights made that same sound and it just drove me nuts when I was in solitary and stuff. But uh, yeah, I mean, my mom had like a plethora of different boyfriends, husbands, different things like that in those four years and, just, you know, myriad addictions and afflictions.
Speaker 2:Basically, I can see that now I didn't, then I just felt pain yeah, you know, yeah, back then, and and then eventually my dad showed up in in montana and um picked my brother and I up. We were running away from home and um, him and his friend clint, picked us up and my brother was, you know, cigarette and cigar burns all over. I had belt lashings all over and um, he took us to the to the uh law and justice center in Bozeman and got immediate emergency custody and took us back to Grand Forks, to our grandmother, his mom's house, my grandma's house. And then, uh, my mom never even showed up to fight for custody or anything, she just kind of. And I've seen her once since then at my grandma's funeral and when I was shit, I was 20 years old, you know, 20 years ago 22 years ago, yeah, 22 years ago, and I hadn't seen her from four years old until then.
Speaker 2:So and I've talked to her maybe twice. You know that's crazy in the interim, yeah, you know. Is there any?
Speaker 1:like you know, because some people that have like distant social media, checking on people sort of relationships. Do you have anything like that, like do you know whereabouts? Or even, yeah, I know where she's at she's?
Speaker 2:she's somewhere around like decatur pool, pooleville, texas, somewhere by Dallas, fort Worth. Yeah, I know that because I did keep in contact with my youngest sister, half sister that is with her. So she's out there and her last name is Headley. Now, that's all I really know.
Speaker 1:What's your relationship with your sister.
Speaker 2:So when I was in prison years ago, she started writing me when she was like 16. She's what? Three or four years younger than me and she started writing to me like kind of asking me questions that someone might ask a dad, really you know, or someone they looked up to like that Information.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and we started like writing back and forth a little bit. And then when I got out we talked on the information, yeah, and we started like writing back and forth a little bit. And then when I got out we talked on the phone a lot. She'd always hit me up for money, those kinds of things, but she stuck with me in and out of prison there for a little while Like she didn't write me again after that, but every time I got out we talked again. She was cool. But you know, just like a lot of people in my life, just got tired of me saying, hey, I'm going to do good this time. I'm going to get out, I'm going to do it for real. I got all these plans, you know. She got tired of the dream, you know.
Speaker 1:How many siblings do you have altogether?
Speaker 2:Oh, shoot, I got. So I have one full blood brother, same mom, same dad. That's the brother I spoke about earlier. We're running away together very young. And then I have two half brothers in Minnesota, and then I have, let's see, at least two sisters in Texas, or one of them's married and gone now, but yeah, and then two or three more brothers over there too, and I don't, I don't even, I don't know yeah, do you like rock with any of them on a consistent basis at all?
Speaker 2:not anymore, man like I got really close with, like I said, my youngest sister for a bit and then my youngest half brother, um, for several years and I think basically the same thing. Yeah, he's got tired of me getting locked up and and living how I chose to live.
Speaker 1:So you're 42 now. How many years, do you think? A total, maybe even plus juvenile? I don't know if you did that, but like oh yeah full incarceration. What do you think like? Like, how many years Shit it's gotta be. You did what? Five years since, you right, Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:Where was that? That was in Montana Yep in Deer Lodge. Yeah well, between Deer Lodge and Shelby and back to Deer Lodge again. But shit, it's gotta be close to 15, you know, maybe more, maybe slightly under yeah, that's what I think. Absolutely between, you know, maybe more, maybe slightly under. Yeah, absolutely between county jails, you know, juvenile, uh, and and prison, yeah, you know, and you know, in multiple states in the west united states. So so you're just used to it. Unfortunately it's, you know.
Speaker 2:I guess a lot of people are like, oh, it's so much easier in there and people say that it's not man, it's it's familiar yeah but it's painful, it's lonely, it sucks, it's scary at times, you know yeah I definitely have some trauma from in there too, just not like like I got raped, beat up or anything like that, like I thrived in that situation, in that, in that part of life you know, in the prison system and all that, but like you know even certain words, seeing people get their head knocked off for a word or for a look, or you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Watching somebody get their head cut off, like things like that, just you know, yeah, when I mean when you're doing life and you got nothing to lose, like that's epic shit, yeah, I don't care at that point. Yeah, well, the worst ones was in juvie.
Speaker 2:Man, like kids don't have that emotional regulation and they don't. They don't have that. Give a damn. That's true. Don't see that the end of the. They'll see the big picture. Man, yeah, they're doing some brutal stuff in here.
Speaker 1:I can imagine. I can imagine Damn. What do you think of all the things? What's the number one thing you learned in prison? What comes to your head when you think about that Learned in prison that you use out today in life?
Speaker 2:I mean I pick my friends, I don't let them pick me. That's, that's a major one for me. Yeah, I mean when I, when I catch, catch somebody like really trying to be my friend, yeah, I'm thinking like what are you trying? Yeah, what, what are you on, man? You know, and it's helped me a lot. Like you know, I don't, I don't know, I keep my circle real small and really close.
Speaker 1:You know, like I don't know that and just like and when you don't got mom and dad around too, it's like you.
Speaker 2:You kind of like friends, are like family yeah absolutely, I got my street family and that's that is, the biggest part of my family is all the people that I've met over the. I've met some very amazing people, you know, in in the down in the dirty, with a lot of these people and, just you know, in the last 10 years or so, I've seen some absolute transformations and you know, um, yeah, something I've been thriving for or, you know, not thriving, but like I've been driven to do.
Speaker 1:For like the last 10 years yeah, nine or 10 years I've been going hard trying to like get some kind of recovery, get healed, like you know I wanted things that I've seen other people having and and I related to somebody's story that I ran into in one of these rooms somewhere and I stuck around some the most, some of the most important lessons, and Some of the most important lessons and some of the most important conversations that shaped my life were like 4 o'clock in the morning, all blowed out on you know, after part, you know talking to somebody like some random dude who's just been through it from completely different backgrounds, but we kind of grew up the same way, type shit, like we didn't have it easy come up and you kind of had to fend for yourself, type shit.
Speaker 1:And I learned so much of that from so many people that I never forgot, never forgot it. And as I move around in society now, today, I feel like growing up around it, um, I don't know. I just see such a gap, gap between people that I just never had to deal with a lot. You know, especially while they're young. You know, like the way they treat people. I see that like they, they just they didn't face a lot of things. You know a lot of conflict.
Speaker 1:You know empathy and no, no, they hold no space for those that have, it seems sometimes yeah, that and the uh tolerance you look, kind of look down upon you know from from like, kind of like on a high horse, yeah, absolutely, like I've always. I mean that's just been instilled in me that, like man, we all pump the same blood. You know, treat, treat, treat. Treat a man like you want him to treat you and the same type of shit. Like there's a lot of that missing from today and I feel like you know, maybe if some ass bookings got handed out or or something, you know what I mean like then maybe you know that that wouldn't happen type thing. But yeah, um, you grow up quick when living the type of life that you grew up with. Um, uh, your brother and I, uh parents divorced, uh, four corners, bozeman.
Speaker 2:That's what we just talked about. Yep Four corners, Bozeman.
Speaker 1:Uh, your earliest memories. We got that Uh four to five years old. Dad comes, picks you up. Uh, dad gets custody Grandparents.
Speaker 2:What was the? What was it like with your grandparents Grandparents so honestly, culture shock, really, like all that stuff. Like I said, it was a freaking war zone, like you know, eating macaroni and cheese with hot dogs in the three meals a day. If we got three meals a day, you know what I mean. But that's the only thing my mom knew how to cook, I think, and just the way we were living there. And then to go to grandma and grandpa's house, which are like devout Catholic people, got a lot of discipline, you know they work full time, you know, I don't know it was. So what I saw because there was a lot of family around there was, you know, my, my youngest uncle, you know, was still living at the house when me and my brother showed up and all the aunts and uncles still lived in town and they were unmarried and my dad was traveling around all over the United States. That's why we went there first. My dad was traveling around all over the United States. That's why we went there first.
Speaker 2:But all I remember is a lot of weird looks and a lot of whispering and a lot of gifts that I know we didn't deserve. You know, like we didn't. It wasn't my birthday, yeah, it wasn't Christmas. Like, just, I knew there was something. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:And a lot of times I would just hide behind the couch and just like just get away from people and I was already like building that antisocial like Structure around me, that safety zone. Yeah, all I got is me and I know it, I don't trust you people, you're adults, you know what I mean. And yeah, and then we, they got us to see, see this couple of therapists up at the University of North Dakota Scott and Angie were their names and you know my brother, he just like went right in, started talking to them. You know, I don't know what about anymore, but probably our past or whatever. They asked him and I just remember I sat way off on a huge stack of cushions, you know, and just stayed away from them, stayed quiet, kept everything real close to the chest you know, and I just remember I didn't really like going there.
Speaker 2:Again, they were adults. I didn't trust them. I didn't want to be nowhere near them.
Speaker 1:No, I get that. You know it's crazy looking back, like when life is that crazy it's hard to draw those memories out. But I've learned that sometimes things can trigger that to happen. Do you know of anything that kind of makes something come back to you?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, man. My biggest trigger for a lot of years, bro, was, uh, I know it's weird, but and it still happens sometimes today, but and we'll get into this later yeah, what changed it? Yeah, um, uh, like crunching, when somebody's crunching food not that they're smacking their lips, but that crunching grinding sound it used to terrify me to the point that, like instantly, I you know I wouldn't have called it fear before I would call it rage yeah yeah, but I know now that it started with fear and then I went to rage.
Speaker 2:You know I went to to put that down on the ground. Like it got to the point where, like somebody's crunching next to me, I grabbed them by the face and, you know, shoved their head into the freaking window if they were driving you know what I mean or one of my, one of my craziest I just had to shut it up, like grab them by the face and lay them on the ground, like you know well, and I didn't even know why for a long time. Yeah, you know what I mean. It was just a trigger in me that just made me super afraid, yeah, and then super angry.
Speaker 2:You know, yeah, and I came from somebody, a woman in my life, that that, uh, she ate like that and she happened to like say really mean things and throw hot stuff on me and like do crazy shit, and then she'd be walking away eating fucking chips or something like that and just crunching. You know what I mean. So that's, that's a weird trigger, but it's a trigger, man. It was one of my worst for a long time they can be literally anything.
Speaker 1:I had a friend, she, she, she didn't know why she was tripping out whenever there'd be like rain outside her window and stuff and it's because it was buried that like while the abuse was happening. That's what she remember was like looking out the window in the rain, being on the windowsill and stuff. Yeah, and that kind of me up. When I heard it, like you know, come from her, right in that moment I was just like, damn, that's like you can't even just chill and just have a rain like right on the way. Yeah, rain is beautiful too. You know what I mean? It's supposed to be peaceful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the sound of it, yeah, I sleep to that shit and there's no sound right now. But that's, this is what I put on these little uh cabin, uh fireplace, rainy situations like, yeah, that helps me sleep, but that'd be fucked up if I listen to it and I just it's crazy broke out yeah, yeah, um, I think one thing I'm starting to figure out more is if you really dive into it and you try to break it down and you really try to process it which is a very hard thing to do slowly and slowly it'll stop being a thing.
Speaker 1:I mean it's not every case and every case is so different.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I've in my own like healing journey, like that's what I learned is like I, you know, I haven't drank in like two years, type of shit you know, um, yeah, bro, I and I'll just touch on it right now for a half second I, I did something called emdr and that was the thing that freaking.
Speaker 2:That like changed that for me, changed my react, like I don't know if you know anything about it, but, like it, it doesn't change obviously your memory or your past, you know, but it changes the reaction you have to that trigger moment, that memory you know what I mean like it's still going to trigger you, but you, you choose a different way. Yeah, you teach yourself how to react differently, healthier. Um, and now I can tell Sam hey, or she sees it in me before I see it a lot. She'll be sitting next to me in bed or something, crunching on something, and she'll literally look over and see me like I'll just do this because I don't want to say anything to her, you know. And she'll see me cringing and she'll just get up and go, but a lot of times I can just say Step out, here, we eat whatever. No, you know, it's different.
Speaker 1:Have you ever been in a relationship or anything where it wasn't okay to like talk about those things or bring those things up?
Speaker 2:or anything like that. Yeah, I haven't talked about it for a long time, man, but you know it's kind of funny like being locked up all these years. I did a lot of groups. I did PTSD therapies in there too. You know what I mean. So I got a lot of like time in retrospection or introspection and a lot of time to process. I had a lot of downtime. I got the opportunity 99 of the world does not ever get the time to slow down enough to take a look at that shit and really, really delve into it and it took me a lot of years to even want to, to even want to touch any of them. Ghosts, yeah, you know.
Speaker 1:So there's a lot of that in your cell alone, time for that when you're on the outside? How does that go? Are you able to find time to do that and shit Fishing man?
Speaker 2:Yeah, out there on the river, bro, I'm a I'm a fishing freak and that's like if there's god in my life, that's where it's at, where it's tangible in nature, and you know when. That's the only time I can find that quietude out here.
Speaker 2:You know, like, honestly, I still don't like being around people like for the for the most part yeah, you know like I said, I keep it small and trust me, like we get invites a lot to go do things with people around here and stuff, even in this small town, and we're just like we're good at home. Man, we got everything we need here. You know what I mean and we're not trying to be anti-social. We get out and do things from time to time but, man, we pick the things that we do very carefully, like we pick our friends for sure, because we can't afford to get caught up.
Speaker 1:I can't afford to get caught up again in that life man and if you get mixed up with people from the past or the wrong type, you know all it takes is being in the wrong place at the wrong time or anything like that, and it could change the world.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, back, you know what I mean, like you're on paper right now yeah, yeah, hoping to get off here a few years early, you know, because I've been doing for the first time in my life what I'm supposed to be doing yeah and uh. But yeah, I'm on paper right now and and yeah, you know, I've had moments of like, you know, 18 months where I've been doing hella good you know, and then I decided to burn it all down for whatever reason, and literally in less than a month, what I've amassed in two years is gone, completely gone. I'm in the gutter again. You know, I'm a you know.
Speaker 1:You know, sometimes it only takes one night.
Speaker 2:I'm no shit junkie, you know what I mean. Like I'm back in the shed homeless. You know shed homeless in weeks.
Speaker 1:I uh, I grew up in west side, modesto and um, I remember I was like I, like I didn't have the best situation. But if I walked one block away, I had this homie.
Speaker 2:Stanley.
Speaker 1:I want to, maybe I can. I've reached out to him over the years. We kind of just haven't touched base. But we were friends and him, his dad, like in the shed shack. You know what I mean. Type shit in the alley. Electricity. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Type in the alley, you know electricity you know, type and like I didn't, you know, I was in a house in the hood.
Speaker 1:But I had my dad, we had the dog we had you know didn't have yeah, but never cried about it. Yeah, a lot of anger, you beat a lot of up, but it makes sense when that's what your life is. Yeah absolutely, as a child, you really need that care and the protection and like a safety zone, like a place, a place that the world's a crazy place, like you need a door to open up to go home and like, all right, we're safe, like what you got now. Yeah, with the wife.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, man. It's the first time I remember wandering around the streets in bozeman as a young kid. On the streets, I was on the run from the juvenile center of minnesota and, uh, in the wintertime just walking around like watching people at thanksgiving, watching people like not staring through their windows, but then at night you can see in people's houses when their lights are on, especially seeing the christmas trees, seeing the family hugs, the embraces, that all the things that, honestly, I never had and it's kind of was like a Charlie Brown moment, like I just, you know, like I wonder what that would be like. You know what I mean? Yeah, but at the same time I was so busy keeping people out and keeping people away nobody could get that close to you know?
Speaker 2:yeah, my life and my relationships were in a backpack bro, like ready to go at any moment. I live bug out, bag 24 7, you know yeah, period, like streets, yeah, streets man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's I get it um yeah, you've been through a lot um psychologist. You did that with your brother. Um high school.
Speaker 2:You didn't go to high school right, uh, six months or so in bozeman I I took an aptitude test, started 10th grade, did really well. Left, left, left I left. I went and stayed with my grandparents for a short time, right there, got into school, yeah, got bored, went back to the, to the barn in my, in my best friend's, on her property, on high school's property you knownesota group home, or I think it's a group home.
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it wasn't that was the first place I ever got sent to.
Speaker 1:Yes, 2003 adult uh, lock up, yeah, lock up. Um, the next thing I got is x, three kids, one kid, grandbabies youhmm, break that down. Well, you couldn't get close to anybody for the longest time. No one was the first like breakthrough you had with the person. Well, you felt comfortable and like, oh, I have a safe space. There's a thing I have, borderline personality disorder, and there's a thing it's called a FP favorite person yeah, yeah, my daughter talks about it.
Speaker 2:She has it too. Yeah, she gets. Really she can't. Even if they stop texting or something, she'll quit her job. She won't. She can't get out of bed like it's tough, man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's fucking tough um, yeah, but yeah did you have any? You know something like that, maybe to not that extreme extent, but like uh, well, bro, I was I. When you're in the streets, relationships aren't really the best no, but that's kind of what it's been like.
Speaker 2:I mean, I had I looked at girls way different dude, like they were either for sex or they were like a mom figure or whatever. You know what I mean. Yeah, and like so the girl I ended up first marrying when I was 18 years old. I married her because we had already had a child. You know, I had a child a couple weeks after I turned 18. She was born and we were living in the Tri-Cities by then.
Speaker 1:What were you doing out in Washington? She was born and we were living in Tri-Cities by then, but uh what were you?
Speaker 2:doing out in Washington. Well, her parents got divorced and that's where they're from originally was Tri-Cities in Benton City, right Right outside of there and her mom said hey, you guys want to come out to Washington? I'm moving out there. You guys want to come with, we'll help you get started, whatever. And yeah, we went out there, man, and got married, but like I wasn't like in love with the girl or nothing like that, it was like I felt like almost a duty to like A obligation, yeah, and also the laws were different too. Like she was six months younger than me, so she wasn't quite 18 yet. The laws were different too. She was six months younger than me, so she wasn't quite 18 yet. So in order for her to live with me in Washington, we had to be married. Otherwise I don't know if they would have charged me necessarily. Literally, her birthday is six months. She was turning 18 in six months.
Speaker 1:And the parents? They're the ones that wanted you to come out there. Yeah, yeah, so they're tripping about it, yeah yeah, no, they couldn't for half the year. We're the same age yeah, you know what I mean, yeah but yeah, so I did that.
Speaker 2:And but, dude, I'm gonna be honest with you like, this is the first like solid love relationship I've been in with a woman like yeah like straight up. You know what I mean. I've had some, some close, but no cigars.
Speaker 2:And I've, I've tested it out. I practiced breaking up with girls for a while. They're like, like appropriately, yeah, at the advice of somebody in the recovery circles, like, hey, go out with a few girls and practice breaking up without melting the fuck down. Yeah, you know, or whatever. Yeah, because people tend to do that, not necessarily me, but like a lot of people lose their recovery over it. Yeah, over relationships, it's like one of the biggest things that throw people off course. Yeah, a big what was it?
Speaker 1:Somebody was interviewing something. Oh, it was. Some dude in jail was watching some podcast or something. He was like yeah, any like 80, 70% of these, it's like it's relationships. It was they got into a fight with their lady and then you had to push buttons and just grab yeah, so yeah, and it's fucking relationships.
Speaker 2:Or even just personal relationships with like, like friends, co-workers, stuff like that. Can you know, throw a wrench in things when you're like, when you're like thinking all right, this could be like a friend, you know what I mean. And next thing, you know, they do something to like just cross you, man, and that, that, that freaking. Uh, you know what is that called? Uh, resentment inside you just burning, burning, burning. That's led me more times than not back into this boom. Yeah, you know. Resentments, expectations of other people. Yeah it, it's like a premeditated resentment, basically, when I expect people to be a certain like yeah, you know what I mean, because I'm gonna be that way.
Speaker 2:I expect that from you. Yeah, that's fucking great and that's led me back into this wound too, you know. But yeah, like, as far as the love stuff, I had plenty of girlfriends. You know, like I said, I looked at women a little different because, yeah, I was hurt by women in my life yeah, you know badly.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I, uh I not the exact same situation, but yeah, I do feel like we kind of lived a similar path. Uh, I.
Speaker 1:I will say, though, like I never intentionally, you know because I know like you you talk about too, that there are points where you're just, you're so angry that that's how it would be. But yeah, I've always that I, that I love women so much because, you know, I didn't have my mom and dad around for you know, a lot of portions of my life, yeah, and that's where that, you know, the favorite thing came from. You know it was like well, my, my girlfriend and her parents. You know, like I was always because I was like a poor kid and you know all all my my girlfriend shouts of all them, they, uh, they, they had they came from great families it was always like a, like a class disparity or a gap.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you cast system.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it's because I knew myself and I have to have something better than me or not better than me, but but more stable than me. Yeah, and and like now I'm I'm good, like I'm straight now, you know, but it took a long time to get here. I'm a late bloomer, you know. My dad was the same way. Yeah, like straight up, like once you figure it out, you know, it's like ain't way to knock me off now, you know, but it took so fucking much that I was just like am I ever gonna? Like everyone else is in healthy relationships, and it's like why the fuck can't I do that?
Speaker 2:you know, yeah, yeah, it was really confusing for me, Like no favorite person stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But one thing that sticks out now that you're talking about it is like like I watched my mom do this, you know, like she's been married I don't know maybe eight times now. You know, I've seen it be like. So I basically for the greater part of like 20 years I had one longout, toxic, freaking relationship with several different women. Like as soon as I got out of one I was in the next one and I always had one on the back burner that I was working on. So when I burned this one down, I was in that one and it just didn't end. I never had like any downtime between relationships.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that gets to like messing with your head too, so you're always bringing in all 19 of them other relationships into this new one, and continuing it on and it's just, it's a process anything, no, learned from anything, because you're just throwing another one in now she.
Speaker 2:You know what. After them, first three, probably they're all victims. You know what I mean, not like I was beating the shit out of them or something, but emotionally, like unavailable Chris, like emotionally immature Chris was out there just wrecking girls. You know what I mean, just victimizing. In that respect, if you want to go there like I didn't have girlfriends, I had victims after a while, basically Of my screwed up way of finding love or whatever. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. I mean, I've been on my own for the longest and when you don't have anybody and you're alone, that person that's going to be able to answer, no matter, you know like yeah, that's everything, yeah, and you'll have, you know like I don't know that, I just I and then it's like I wanted that. I didn't want to have more of it.
Speaker 2:It's just like it's like almost like having a safety like what if she does? You know what if?
Speaker 1:something bad, like at least this is here for me, type type thing. You know, um, I'm glad that, uh, I don't look at things, you know, like that anymore. Yeah, absolutely yeah, because because I have a lot of you know. Yeah, I mean people say you know no regrets, but I mean happens and it changes the way things happen in life. But there's a lot of shit I would have done different. You know like I'm, it kills me to see someone else in pain, and especially when I was the one inflicting it, because I felt like my brain was just doing it and I had like almost no control over it.
Speaker 2:You know, like an impulse and I just can't, couldn't say no yeah, we talked about that the other night, that that being like the one thing that hurt a lot. It was like seeing the look in someone else's eyes after I've done something to hurt them, yeah, and knowing that I couldn't stop from like doing it again or leaving that situation and hurting them more, you know because also, like the other person is like they're trying to help you too.
Speaker 1:like, like all the the women in my life that I'm a fixer upper, they're all trying to fix me up you know, but it feels good to be loved when you didn't like have it to the best degree.
Speaker 1:You know and that's not to say my whole life was like that, like my parents love the show, you know, but they got divorced and that that fuck shit up for everyone worst, and that that fucks shit up for everyone. You know absolutely, um, this is gonna be like tough, but, uh, I had something I wanted, uh, uh, so you had three kids and then, yes, there's, there's a bad tragedy that happened.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of them whooping, she got, you know, myself and and she was working either at the college in bozeman in animal and range sciences or she was working maybe even both at the candy shop in the mall too. Uh, so anyway, like we didn't, we didn't have money. Yeah, we were living paycheck to paycheck, you know. So the kid went to daycare right away and I think that's might be where she got that stuff from, like, yeah, because they kept sending her home with other kids, binkies and bottles all the time and stuff, and like, oh, that's crazy. I just in retrospect, as I think that's might where she contracted it, because you know there was other little infants too that probably got vaccinated and their parents didn't keep them away from daycare. I don't know if there's an incubation period or what. I'm not, I'm not a freaking doctor, but that's just what my head is put together, yeah, but yeah, she got that and I thought her into the emergency room.
Speaker 2:I brought her to her pediatrician at first and he prescribed Motrin, which is ibuprofen basically, and like I knew that was wrong, like you know, she was turning different colors, you know blue, when I'd hold her, like like this, when I put her up and down like this she'd be, she'd get her color back. One people was super, super tiny, like a pinhead and one was like blown out, you know, like an owl, and I knew that wasn't right. You know I already have two kids that I spent a lot of time with and there's something a lot more wrong than just giving ibuprofen to this baby. And like I brought her in again like the next day and kind of got yelled at Like I actually got people back here who are sick and like you're getting in the way of them getting their medical attention. And so I brought her into the emergency room the next day and it's right in the call security, because they had gotten a memo from the pediatrician all throughout the hospital to like that was acting pretty erratic the second time already.
Speaker 2:And then this one little old nurse like came in between everybody because it was a big argument with security and everything and you know it was like willing to run a blood culture, like to do something, yeah, do actually. And they they ran that one blood culture and they came back and they're like we need to get her up to intensive care right now. We need to intubate, we need to paralyze and go from there and it was only a few hours before I was on the plane to great falls, to the neonatal over there, and then, um, you know, yeah, she passed away from whooping cough and protest is the first, first person to die from it since like the Early 80s or mid 80s or something.
Speaker 1:So it was pretty, pretty crazy there's like Negligence, that goes on and I feel like in a lot of daycares that not a lot of people get to see, you know. Yeah some of them have like 30, 25 kids and they're like four people working there, right, you know?
Speaker 2:yeah, um yeah, I can't be for sure that that's what happened, but I can be sure that, um, that pediatrician was my mom, my ex-wife's pediatrician when she was a baby actually birthed her, I think he was. He was and her pediatrician, you know, and just old guy like 70 probably by then. You know something. And the doctor when we finally got to neonatal was a young kid and right when we walked in he's like man this sounds like pertussis, you know, like all the signs are there to him, like he knew what it was. And then he told us like if this would have been caught before, antibiotics could have taken care of the situation. That's crazy, but it's too far progressed now yeah, damn it yeah, it's sad, that's terrible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, that led to some crazy shit. I was on paper back then like I was on probation and I called my probation officer from great falls right after she died, like nearly hours after, telling her hey, I want to get fucking high, I need some treatment right now. I want to go away for a little while. And she's, you know, I said I feel like I'm gonna use again. And she's like go ahead and use, you'll get plenty of treatment in prison. You know, basically is what she said.
Speaker 2:And I went off the grid for two months, got myself a drug evaluation, did all this stuff to get myself into a treatment center and then called my lawyer and turned myself in with my lawyer and the judge actually like freaked out on my parole officer. I'm just like, like are you kidding me? He called and asked for help. That is your job, you know, like you're not only there for punitive measures, you're there as a social worker as well. Yeah, and that's why I'm glad now there's so much prison reform there. They have to have degrees in like behavioral sciences at the least, at the very least. Yeah, you know. No, that's good shit's changing.
Speaker 1:When do you say that shift happened?
Speaker 2:that like the, when they started like looking at it more. Yeah, yeah, I mean montana. They did their biggest prison reform in like 2017, where they made it like I don't even want to say like you get more chances.
Speaker 2:I guess is the way they see it and some offenders or people see it. You know, convicts, felons or whatever see it. But it's legit man. They have to exhaust a bunch of different like you know ways to help to intervene. You know what I mean. They have to go through so many interventions before they can just send you to prison. You know what I mean. They have to go through so many interventions before they can just send you to prison, unless it's new crimes or it's absconding, where you just take off and don't even give a shit. You know those are. Those are the two things I can send you directly back. But they're not there yet by any means, bro. But they're moving in the right direction, as long as, like the voters, us as voters, like wake the fuck up, stop walking up america.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's crazy there's so much like negligence and like dirty shit behind the scene going on too, and everything it's like. That needs to be a system. That needs to be like pristine you're dealing with people's lives.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you know I got locked up at a very young age for running away from home. They you know what's why. Why is an eight-year-old in northern minnesota in the freezing snow running away to live outside rather than living in a warm ass house with his parents? They don't want to look at the parents. They're saying you're fucked up, kid, you have an impulse disorder, you need to be locked up. You know it's crazy and yeah, that's crazy, but it set the stage for my life. Man, like never, never throughout the system, did anybody ever say, hey, what the fuck is going on? What do you think might help you? What do you need to help you? And I think they need to ask that. I mean, I understand, I understand, like severe, like like violent sexual things like that. Lock them up, yeah, whatever. But like drug addicts, like you know, things like that, yeah, recovery.
Speaker 1:It's like asking what the fuck they need you know, yeah, like a lot of these people just suffering straight up and um, it's like jumping ahead a little bit. But we talked about, um, well, we were at at dobbins and we were talking in the morning about uh, you're showing me the messages with that gal in missoula, uh, she's in great falls yeah, um, what was that?
Speaker 2:because basically you're kind of telling me that Peer support basically is what it boils down to Like nobody could. Maybe it's the understanding of like one alcoholic or one addict working with another one. You know out of experience and empathy and compassion you know, and not just any addict or whatever, but an addict or an alcoholic or or an inmate or somebody with PTSD or somebody with multiple personality disorder or whatever it may be. That's been there. I don't know. I forget what the word is, but you know, like role model.
Speaker 1:I've gone to, you know, done a lot of different therapy and stuff and it really clicked once. The person that I talked to. They were actually like in the military and you know they shared similar experiences. So just that alone was such a huge thing, because the other times it was some girl that just graduated college and never did anything. But that there's nothing against that. It's just there's not a relation there. So once I kind of figured that that was like very helpful for me. So I think like the right people in the right positions is so important. You know therapy, you know prison, you know you gotta have the right people for that um, yeah, I mean, that's how you know.
Speaker 2:Alcoholics, anonymous narcotics, none, cocaine anonymous, whatever, all those anonymous groups, they, they help a lot of people. Yeah, you know, and that's where I got my start is through those groups, you know. But that only served me so far, like, yeah, I need so. Like I'm in a place now where, like, okay, I've done that part, I've done that work. You know, I'm not just abstinent, but I feel like I'm recovered from those things. And it says that in their books, but it's so cultish it's hard to even talk to people that have been in those programs for a certain amount of years, because the only thing they can say is things that they've heard out of that book anymore. It's like they're they're in a trance with that shit and like I don't want to be an addict. Once an addict, I was an addict. Once an alcoholic god. Once a comic, I was a comic. No, no man, I can move beyond that and I want to, and I have, and I want to show somebody else and I want to show somebody else and I want to help somebody else.
Speaker 1:It's the number one like thing I kind of go back to, especially on the podcast because I talk to different people that have been through things is oh fuck, I just lost it.
Speaker 2:Oh, that every uh Fuck what were we just talking about? One person has been through it, helping another. Basically is what it comes down to.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, um, there's no, like there's not a lot of mental health resources yeah right, right, especially where we're at too. We're in a small town, we're way out damn near in canada. You know um, it's not popping like that with that stuff out here, uh, and when I got here about a year ago you know, shouts out to dovin first.
Speaker 1:You know, job, I got out here by myself busting my ass with him and uh, on his website, I built it and you know we've been working pretty close. I'm very close with him. Now he's, he's, he's helped me out a lot and yeah and um, me too, yeah, uh, but he, uh, like on the website, uh, what what he wants to do and like the people he hires, people that have gone through you know it's like veterans, guys out of prison because he did time, you know, and he motivates the shit out of me because all the shit he's gone through and what he's been able to build, you know, by himself in a small town.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know me too.
Speaker 2:It's crazy like I and I'm, and I'm learning, that's, that's one thing about is I'm learning every day. And yeah, he's, he's crazy with it, man. Like sometimes I'm like, why do you have these fools working for you? Some of them, you know, like I know I've been, yeah, dude, but like, for the first eight months I was literally the only person he had that showed up every stinking day at the same time every day and stayed until the end of the job every day. You know, but he's got this attitude like, yeah, but I mean, they got family stuff to do. They got, you know, like we work to live. We don't live to work, type shit. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:And also, like he's not gonna let my idea about how he's supposed to be running shit affect his opportunity to help somebody. He's just not and I I give him props for that man. It's just yeah, I, I would be able to deal with that much chaos within my company. It's very admirable, but but it is he's and he's just he does. He has the most. Like I don't care, you know what I mean. Like they got their shit going on. We're still. We're still moving forward. We're still getting the jobs done, it don't matter, and I need to be a little bit more like that sometimes because I have some pretty high expectations of other people again.
Speaker 2:Not even like a romantic relationship but like co-workers, yeah, and that's a bad, that's a sketchy slippery slope for me, because, again, expectations of other humans is a premeditated resentment. I believe that 100, because they will always fail your expectations. You know, always it's hard to live up to all that yeah the standard and it's dishonest because I don't hold myself to that same standard sometimes right, you know, yeah, but I expect everybody else to live that way. I get that, I know.
Speaker 1:Let's see. Oh, I think it was opposition defiant disorder.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was my first diagnosis was opposition defiance, this ODD. They tried to put me on a medication called siler. I was really young and um, but for as young as I was, I already knew that that was a crock of. I knew that I just didn't like adults. I didn't trust them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, going back to that whole, yeah, my beginnings, you know, like I want nothing to do with them. I couldn't stand like these kids that like let so many adults around them, like you know, and were so happy about it. I was like, dude, that you're gonna get hurt. Like probably wasn't thinking exactly that as a kid, but like I knew, like I didn't want nothing to do with them and if they asked me to do something, tell me to do something. I knew there was an ulterior motive. You know what I mean. Watch, yeah, why no, no, just no, it ain't going to happen. You know, I'm more apt to do what some kid younger than me asked me to do than what an adult says, you know, and if they had to find a diagnosis for that and medicate me for that, fine, but I just call it like you just had a rough yeah, motherfucker, that's all it was.
Speaker 2:That makes perfect sense bro, I'm willing to bend for him two good women yeah, I had, I had, uh, two.
Speaker 2:I had two really good examples. And I'm lucky, yep, because and it sounds crazy, it sounds crazy to say this, but, like I always say, like I hated women, you know what I mean, yeah, but I, freaking, was hurt by women, is what it was, you know what I mean. And, again, I didn't want nothing to do with them until I got older and they were good for sex or whatever. But I had. The two really really great women in my life were my granny we call her granny Granny, the whole family does, yeah, and she's actually my godmother. Oh nice, because I was baptized Catholic. Do you still rock with any of that stuff? Do you do any church-type stuff? I was a godmother oh nice, Because I was, you know, baptized Catholic.
Speaker 1:And you still rock with any of that stuff. You do any church type stuff these days. No, man.
Speaker 2:No, I got a whole different setup on that spiritual journey. Yeah, I feel you. But yeah, so I got granny. That's my godmother, also my stepmom's mom, so she's my grandmother. And then right across the street and down two houses, was my dad's mom and my grandmother, barbara, and you know, both amazing, beautiful women that never, ever once, tried to hurt me. Don't get me wrong.
Speaker 2:Grandma she was a devout Catholic and very disciplined, you know what I mean but very empathetic and soft at the same time. You know, yeah, structured, just loved the death out of me. Grandma was. She sent me books and books and books and books. While I was locked up, she didn't want me sitting on my hands in there, she wanted me learning, she wanted me to, you know, have something to show for all that time down, you know, and I did. I read over like 800 books in one stretch, you know. And most Americans don't read a book front to back after high school. Ever again, it's fucking true, you know. Yeah, that's true. Americans don't read a book front to back after high school. Ever again, it's fucking true, you know, yeah that's true, but that's smart.
Speaker 1:I love those books absolutely yeah that's great.
Speaker 2:But yeah, so I I'm. I'm lucky that I had that to fall back on in my subconscious and later on in life, when I realized it was a problem between me and women I had, I said well, I have these two great women in my life. Why can't there be more? You know, I fucking checked myself at some point and you know I no longer hate women.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, you love Sam. Absolutely'll get into that part later.
Speaker 2:How did that change? For me, though, right? Yeah, well, I had a daughter. That's a big one. I had a daughter and I realized I could no longer classify her in one of those two roles the sex figure or the mom figure and I learned women deserve respect. I have a daughter. There's no way I would want anybody treating her the way that I have been towards women my whole life. You know there's absolutely no way, and so you know that experience having her and the experience with my, my granny and my grandma that all together culminated into, like me, looking further into that and just changed completely the way I looked at women.
Speaker 1:Can you think of a time or a moment that, uh, that maybe spent with grammy or barbara? Um, that stick out to you, that, as like a good memory or something you know? Look back and remember type thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I was really young when I spent time with them, actual time face to face.
Speaker 2:Like I said after I went away to juvie, yeah, I haven't seen those people, except for just I can count on one hand how many times I've I've actually seen them again, which one time was just this last summer I went back home with sam. We took a trip because I told her it'd been like 15 years since I've seen any of them and they're all like old and shit now and like not doing that well, so we went back and and reconnected. But uh, I mean, just the way granny would stick up for me against my stepmom a long time ago when she was being brutal back in the day, you know like you tell her to just shut up and leave me alone and and then she would like always tell me good things about myself, you know and positive reinforcement yeah, absolutely, and just, you know, just love me man, period like, and never freaking, hurt me nothing, like no one event really stuck out, just their lives in general, you know, would be that, I guess, yeah, the thing that sticks out, that's important.
Speaker 1:This is a random question. So you're 42 now, mm-hmm, would you say overall, have you lived a lonely life Like? Has it felt like you were alone most of it? I know you don't feel that at all now because you've got Sam and the kids and you have structure and stability and I've got family and stuff.
Speaker 2:Now too, I'm reconnected with a lot of them. It's still like over the phone, and if I don't call I don't hear from them. Still type deal, you know, which I wish was different, but at least now the conversations are different. But, yeah, overall extremely lonely.
Speaker 2:Antisocial behaviors and lifestyles are extremely lonely, extremely safe, yeah, you know, for as long as they were, but lonely as hell, yeah, absolutely um od experiment, od experiment oh, I, um, od, oh, oh, that was, uh, I think we were talking about the time I went to salt lake and like was just, you know, and that's when this whole like recovery journey started too was like like I was just over it. I was tired of fucking being at the bottom. I was tired of like building myself up in the prison, like having this dream, having this plan, and like you know one little thing, I'd burn it down, and next thing, you know, I'm getting back out of prison with nothing again Starting over, starting over, starting over, you know, and I'm like, oh, I just fucking disappoint people. I just point myself, all I do is hurt people and I'm tired of it. I'm fucking tired of it. And it was like, you know, the one time. You know that like I was just done, dude, and I fucking went over to Salt Lake and like parked this car. I had left the keys in it, just left it, with no intention to ever getting back in it again. And I didn't, you know, know, but because I end up getting arrested, you know, several weeks later.
Speaker 2:But I walked around and and used as much, you know, heroin as I could for days and days and days, and at one point I had like called my grandma, which didn't answer, you know, because it was probably late or she was, you know, at some church service or bringing community to the elderly or something you know, things that she did within the church, you know, and I like yelled at her for praying for me. She tells me every single time. I talked to her like I pray for you three times a day by name from you and your brother, and did it, it up, you know, I mean, and I was upset because I thought that, like women's prayers were so strong that that had to be the reason I was still alive. And she brought it up to me, you know, after I'd sobered up, cleaned up for a year's time or so and was like what was up with that phone call.
Speaker 2:And then I told, I apologized, I said, grandma, I'm sorry I'm even telling you this because I know how much you love me, but this, this was the scenario. And she's like you know, basically she, I would just say, huh, christopher, you know what I mean. And like she's like, are you testing my courage? And you know, like upset, yeah, how could you?
Speaker 1:you, you know which when you're in that spot, man, you don't want to be here anymore. It's like.
Speaker 2:It's like you're saying your goodbyes, you know yeah, I used to tell people I'm a narcissist, so there's no way I'd ever kill myself. Why would I kill the best thing that ever happened to this world? But I'm not, you know, and yeah, anyway, that's funny.
Speaker 1:Uh, last 10 months, the last 10 months before that when was the last time you got locked up like you haven't been, oh that's.
Speaker 2:That's what that 10 months is about was the last time I was incarcerated, 10 months I had. I had 10 months left on on my active time and a five-year probation tail, which is what I'm on now. So you had asked how much time I did the last time I went in. It was just that 10 months. During that time, the only thing they had there was AA meeting. You know what I mean. As far as recovery stuff, yeah, I tried to get into treatment but I and I did kind of I got on onto uh, suboxone in the prison, like that's tough the prison the prison freaking just started this program.
Speaker 2:You know it's called the the map program. It's uh, medicine, medicine, assisted treatment. So I got on on you. Give me some boxing strips for five days, which is a drug they commonly use in there to get high yeah, it gets smuggled in all the same off her own, but it's just like a form of heroin, right?
Speaker 1:no, it's kind of man it like.
Speaker 2:It hits the same receptors, obviously, and gives you a little euphoria still addicted, but it has like the blocker to and it's really addictive yeah but so they, they give you that for five days to see if your body can handle it, and then they put you on the shot.
Speaker 2:Um, it's once a month shot. It lasts for a month. It blocks opiates, so it gives you like that time to even, like you know, maybe I had a resentment, maybe I had a relationship go bad, maybe, like, maybe I had a really fucking good day and I want to get high over. You know, maybe I had a resentment, maybe I had a relationship go bad, maybe, like, maybe I had a really fucking good day and I want to get high over it, you know, and burn my life down, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's what we do. Yeah, let's celebrate, motherfucker.
Speaker 2:I did great at work, I got a promotion, my life's going great. Why wouldn't I burn it down? Yeah, that's the crazy shit. We do that. But so I got on that blocker and so it gives you that time to like fucking play the tape all the way through. Like really, if I get hired right now, I'm probably going to go back to prison, probably going to get more felonies. I'm back in touch with my kids now. Like I'm going to fucking destroy them. You know what I mean. But it gives me that time to play that tape all the way through. And I've been on I was on that up until recently Like I can't afford it. Now it's like $1,400 or $1,700 a shot and I just I mean I could, yeah, but do you need it?
Speaker 2:That's it, I don't. You know, there's part of me that wants to be on it another year just to keep this going, like, keep this foundation. But it's been fucking three years now since I fucking use any drugs, you know, like, yeah, it's like heroin, man, you know any of that shit, you know. So I got a pretty good little foundation going, you know, and Sam was on it for a few years too, and her mom's on it, and, like Sam, she just did her last shot today. And I shouldn't even it's probably not even my place to share this, but like she's getting off of it now too and like I think I'm okay. I think I'm okay, and if I'm not, if I start having those fucking, you know, I'm gonna get back on this shit because it's worth it.
Speaker 2:But so here's the part it's not addictive. So, yeah, if people want to get off of the Suboxone, don't just don't even do a step down on that shit, because you're still going to feel it. And if I know anything about opiate addicts, they're scared to death of withdrawals, even though they last only this much long. In the grand scheme of things, most opiate acts won't do it. They just won't do it.
Speaker 2:They're not going to do it, they're going to go find heroin now to get rid of the fucking suboxone withdrawals you know, so I recommend the shot to get off of it because at the end of that shot, once it stays, it can stay in your system for up to 18 months after you get that shot. So it's really just a slow, slow, slow. That's pretty dope and you do not go through any withdrawals, so it's amazing yeah, um your foundation, your lady, your kids.
Speaker 2:You got a house first house like my first house I ever like rented ever in my life was when I was 27 in Missoula. Like the first time I ever had my own place. I was on the freaking paperwork. Nobody could kick me out. I was in there by myself. I didn't have a girlfriend living there. I didn't live with some girl that could kick me out. I was in there by myself. I didn't have a girlfriend living there. I didn't live with some girl that could kick me out over a freaking argument. Like first time ever had my own shit. 26 or I was 33. 27 was my first driver's license ever. But this is the first house for sam and I both that were able to actually purchase you know, like and we got a good deal on it four percent interest, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Like you can't even get that from a bank. Um, it ain't the biggest house or anything like that. You know it's. It's a four-bedroom house and on just a close to an acre, you know, outside of town, so we can have chickens and stuff like, ride our little dirt bikes and whatever, and, dude, it's a place where when we shut the door, it's safe, like I said, like we have everything we need out there.
Speaker 2:I love that man. That's the first time I've ever, ever, ever, ever had that man, you know. I mean, I had it home when I was a kid. Yeah, yeah, my dad. There was craziness within the walls, but my dad was a good man. He worked, he went to school, he owned a handyman service on the side or a business on the side or worked multiple jobs. The downside of that was he just wasn't there and he never saw what was going on in the house with his wife. He never saw what was going on in the house with his wife. Yeah, fortunately, like that relationship has changed now too. Yeah, like you know, I tell her I love her all the time and she says this I call her mom. You know what I mean. Like never in a million years did I think I'd ever call that lady mom Really when I was a kid absolutely not. It was horrible. Yeah, it was horrible.
Speaker 2:But when I was like 15 I wrote her like a 30 page letter and named like everything she'd ever fucking said to me. That, just you know, reverberated in my fucking soul every day, all the things that drove me down as a man, even you know all the things that I used for so long to hurt everybody else. And I wrote that down and sent it to her. And it's crazy because I talked to her mom several years later, in 2006, when I went back there, and that was one thing that granny said.
Speaker 2:She's like, hey, I want you to know that when you wrote that letter to laura when you were a kid, she drove all the way from deep river here ball and like freaked out that you hated her and that she hurt you so badly and like she's, like I was fucking life changing for her, like and you know it was crazy because I named all those. I got it all out on paper. All that angsty shit, all the pain, all the fucking sadness, all the disappointment, all the fears, everything. And then, but by the end of it I had written to her I said but I love you. I love you because you make my dad happy and you make my two brothers happy and somewhere in you there's got to be something good, basically so like and then after that, anytime I'd call and talk to my dad, I'd ask to talk to her.
Speaker 2:And I would say I love you mom. She fucking didn't respond the first couple of times, it was like just silent. She's like, yeah, yeah, me too, you know. Yeah. But eventually, like there was some fucking serious healing in here. You know, through that, like that ability to like I feeling in here, you know, through that, like that ability to like I don't know, just overcome that and say hey, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna carry this anymore. Yeah, you know that. And she was young when, when all that happened, you know, she didn't know how to deal with me and my brother coming from the craziness we came from and then just dumped in her fucking lap with her new husband yeah, who, she was pregnant, you know with their first kid together. Yeah, and I'm sure me and Jeremy were a fucking handful after coming out of that war zone we were living in, yeah, for the last four or five years, you know so. But these days there's like we're great man, we're great, it's crazy. It's fucking changed Time heals.
Speaker 1:Honestly it's, it's. It's crazy Like my, my, my mom and dad divorced a bunch of years, completely like just traumatic shit for everybody involved, you know. And uh, but now, like my, mom, want to come to Portugal. She's always got a spot for you know, I mean that they chop it up on the internet.
Speaker 1:You know, my dad's in Portugal, she's in the US, you know. Yeah, sometimes hard to get a hold of me and my brother, you know. So they go to each other for information. But I think maybe just the time spent and the commonality, and when you go from that and it was traumatic well, shit still isn't good, like you still get fucked over by other people. It's like, I don't know, we spent 20 years together or whatever it was you know. So I don't know, it's just it's crazy seeing that now, but it makes me happy. Yeah, you know, like my mom's not remarried, my dad's not remarried, my dad's out there playing the field in thailand every other month oh no, living in trouble, living his dream?
Speaker 1:yeah, absolutely. But I, you know there's so much gnarliness, but to see them like that, like at peace, you know, like it's it's nice to see fucking peace, you know, because it's like I've never seen it for so long, yeah, but I think it's made me a peaceful person, like I'm not.
Speaker 1:You know, we haven't been around each other for a long time, but it really does take a lot for me to like jump up another level. You know, like I feel like I stay pretty even keel, even when I was younger. It's like I never was like a hothead or nothing. Even when I was younger, I never was like a hothead or nothing. I was just an emotional. I partied because I was good at that and it helps you forget shit. So that's why I got good at it.
Speaker 1:So good at partying, yeah absolutely, but you never that shit saved my life for a long time, bro.
Speaker 2:I'm not even gonna lie. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for Aravind and even booze. Back in the day that was like my major beginnings, just drinking from sunup to sundown and then some, you know, and I believe it saved my life. And then there was a point in my life where it fucking just switched and it started to kill me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it started to just fucking devastate my life Like literally kill me. I guess that's kind of what it took. That was, you know. Turns out, my bottom has a foot, my rock bottom has a fucking basement. You know what I mean Like. And you know it got to the point where, like the pain and disparity of going one more fucking step in that life um was stronger than the fear of doing something different and it fucking switched came on.
Speaker 1:What do you think? The fear of doing something different? Where does that come from?
Speaker 2:I don't know. I've just done this. I mean, when you put 30 years into something, it's just like getting a fucking occupation, getting a career for 30 years, and then just saying, well, fuck, I'm no longer into this. It's gotta be scary to fucking go and try some new venture that you've never done before. Yeah, you know what I mean. So and I was afraid to get off the drugs because, like, they're fucking saving my life. Yeah, I know they're hurting me now, but they can't be all bad. It's gonna go. It's gonna be good again someday. Like it's gonna feel good again someday.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, like yeah, so, but escaping the pain, and.
Speaker 2:But the pain got too unbearable, like it was killing me too fast, too fan, hurting everybody around me too much, and so that outweighed the fear and, you know, change started to happen. There was a desperation too with that pain, you know.
Speaker 1:You're 42. I feel like you definitely live like a rough ass. You know hardcore life, but you look pretty young. You look like you're not 42. Thank you, I just thought I'd throw that out there.
Speaker 2:I got grand babies. Oh yeah, grand babies. Yeah, I just thought I'd throw that out there. Oh, you got grandbabies. Oh yeah, that's right, grandbabies. Yeah, I got two grandbabies, my oldest daughter. She's, you know, little Basil. She's two years old, she's had a birthday not too long ago and now I have Ivory, who's a couple months old now, and I got to see Ivory for the first time a few weeks ago.
Speaker 2:My daughter called me and in despair, and it was like eight o'clock at night. We'd both just gotten off work. Sam had just worked a 12-hour shift and sam could hear the despair in my daughter's voice over the phone and, without even asking me, she ran downstairs and told her mom hey, can you take care of the boys? I think we're going to drive to bozeman tonight and it was fucking snow and it was blizzarding now and we fucking jumped in the car and we drove over there even just to be able to fucking give her a hug, man, and be there for her. You know a little bit and those are. Those are some of the fucking priceless things that I get the opportunity to do today. Yeah, to just fucking show up in their lives, you know, whether it's family, friends, my kids. Yeah, I get the opportunity to fucking show up. You don't get it either. And that is such a blessing, dude, that's huge. It fucking fills my heart. My heart is full. I love that. My life is full, and I don't I wouldn't change it, I wouldn't trade it for the world anymore, you know. But yeah, I got, I got grandbabies now. It's fucking awesome. I wish I could see him more. But so ivory, the new one, you have to meet her.
Speaker 2:Finally, but unfortunately, I didn't get to hold her because I'd spent like three or four weeks previous to that he sick. I mean that sickness that went around, yeah, and I fucking freaked a little bit about holding her because they hate, oh yeah, you know, like that's like some PTSD shit. Yeah, they're like I didn't want to get near, like I didn't want to touch her and I felt bad. I even wrote to my daughter. I'm like I'm so sorry that I didn't want to touch her and I felt bad. I even wrote to my daughter. I'm like I'm so sorry that I didn't hold Ivory or anything, you know, but like I was sick and she's like actually I knew that and I'm glad you chose not to. She's like I didn't really want you to hold her. Yeah, you know. So that worked out. Yup, six years recovery have you been in recovery.
Speaker 2:No, um, no. So when I talked to you I thought it was like six you know that I've been chasing it, but it's more like nine now, since I had like that first fucking, like I'm gonna fucking, you know, yeah, start figuring this out. And I started really getting involved in different recovery groups and, yeah, service positions and different things like that, like trying to figure out what mixture it was going to take. And I'm still like I'm finally pretty solid. You know it's been a few years now and I, you know I don't go to a lot of like those meetings that I just feels really cultish to me and I'm not, I'm not knocking a and a like it got me a long ways. It it really did. It held me for a long time. I wouldn't be here without it.
Speaker 2:But like I think, and maybe I'll go again sometime, but like right now, you know, I've got like other things that I do actively to like I don't know they say, you know I say now, now, like if you're not doing something to fucking recover, then you're doing something to stay sick that day. And it's a day-to-day thing, like every day, and I do things you know, mind, body, spirit, oh yeah, every day. Every day, you know, and it ain't in front of everybody and it ain't fucking great it, it ain't something big. But you know, I make sure, like I pray to whoever whatever, you know what I mean, it's nobody's business.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But I make sure I pray, I make sure like if I fucking offended anybody, if I hurt anybody, I fucking make those amends pretty god damn quick these days, straight up, don't let it sit here and burn. If somebody's offended me, I try to figure out and this is stuff I learned from AA I figure out what my part was in it so I can stop fucking burning. They don't know, I'm still fucked up about it and they don't care. They're living their life. It's me over here just brewing about it and I'm fucking my own life up and they're living doing their own shit.
Speaker 2:So I make sure and do that and I every day, you know, at night, reflect on like all the things I'm grateful for and that puts me in check. That's good. Um, there's just a few things, but anyway, what's it? No matter what club, huh, no matter what, I ain't fucking getting high, no matter what, I don't care what happens. That's another fucking, you know. I don't know which recovery group that's from, or whatever, but it's something I learned along the way.
Speaker 2:Like I don't have to get high today. I don't have to get high, I don't have to fucking commit crimes, I, you know what I mean. I don't have to fucking attempt suicide, you know all those things. Like I don't have to do that shit. Today I have a choice now, yep, and for the longest time I didn't feel like there was a choice, you know, and even if there was, at times I didn't want. Like there was a choice, you know, and even if there was, at times I didn't want the other choice. It's like your brain makes the choice, but at least I have one now. Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. Like I started doing drugs, you know, and then the drugs started doing me, you know, yeah.
Speaker 1:I've been doing dialectical behavior therapy, oh yeah, DBT. I spend a lot of time alone these days, but I've been able to grow and heal and conquer and get through things that I usually. There's always someone there to help or lift me up or something like that. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Yeah there to help or lift me up or something like that. You know what I mean. Yeah, and it truly is a thing to face it completely alone. You know, even if it's so hard to do, and it's like something you've never even thought like that's the way to do it, it's like I'd always want, like well, someone will care, you know, somebody will make this pain go away or feel yeah, but it will never go away if you don't face it yourself yeah, no, absolutely dude.
Speaker 1:Face that shit, have to face that shit I have to, or or it'll be the cycle of hurting others or whatever. Yeah, cycle maybe, but breaking the cycle is possible. Uh, in a lot of the podcasts I write it in the description that it's never too late for anyone to make a change, and I 1000% believe that you know, I agree to a point.
Speaker 2:Somebody asked me that question when's it too late to get sober, when's it too late to get fucking clean? And I'm like, of course, when you're dead, you know. And he's like, well, I'll tell you something. He's like, when I first got sober, the guy that I got sober with made me go to the mental hospital on the floor where they keep all the people that are incontinent. Basically, they drank so much, they got water, brain, oh shit, and they can no longer choose to be sober. At that point they're just stuck in bed pissing shit, and you know, getting bed sores, and at that point it is too fucking late to get sober. Yeah, you know what I mean. To make that choice and to live that good life. You know, period, you can't do it ever so. But no, I got.
Speaker 1:That's an extreme, but yeah, at the same time, yeah, dude like yeah, there's a point, I guess, a boiling point for everyone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, some people don't make it out of rock bottom well, no, dude, I've lost so many people in this last 10 years, bro, like people that I fucking love and care about, to suicide, to overdoses, and like just that lifestyle man Like I'm not even joking. Probably in the last 10 years it's got to be over 50 people that I've known and been close with. You know, like in somewhere in our doings, like they're fucking dead now over this shit. Isn't that fucking nuts? They rode it till the wheels fell off, for real, you know, yeah, and some of them I'd seen in in a fight to recover. You know, to get away from that and doing pretty decent, you know.
Speaker 2:And then what bad relationship relapse, chronic relapse. You know, relapse like Chronic relapse that's one thing a lot of people always did. I've been told so many times relapse is part of recovery and I'm like the fuck it is. It's part of the disease. Dude, you don't have to fucking relapse. You don't ever have to do that. I did. It's part of my fucking story story, but it doesn't have to be, it's not. You know, you don't have to do.
Speaker 1:do more fucking investigating you know, I think, uh, being able to like say no to shit is like a big one, like I had the hardest time doing that for the longest yeah um, and then like, because that comes with the party lifestyle, you know Like nobody wants to go to sleep at this time because it's still a party, you know. So it's like, well, I know I should, you've been missing out on all this shit. Yeah, when you know, like I love that you guys still try to make an effort to go do things.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But you understand how important it is for to get the right place with the right people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, man, absolutely, we do, dude I. I showed you that book that she had made and that's just our adventures in the last year. Like I know, you guys go wild like I've.
Speaker 2:You know, I've gone on road trips before, but for one fucking reason and one reason only, and that was because I heard they had some good shit in this state, in this particular area, and that's it. Like I went to Seattle several times and never saw the ocean. You know, yeah, I finally saw the ocean when I got to I remember what part of California on the 101 when I got on it. But I rode that thing from Ventura Basically all the way to san luis obispo, cal poly. Yep, you know, yeah, because that's a secret, I took a little beach and yeah, all that shit, I did that same fucking train actually. No, I was driving. Oh, you're driving, okay, yeah, on the 101, the highway right there oh yeah, I was, uh, yeah, dude.
Speaker 2:When I got to santa barbara, I fucking well, I lost my shit right outside of ventura. That's when I first seen the ocean. It was like two o'clock in the morning, it was a full moon. I could see it in the ocean and I could see it in the sky. It was january. I had my windows rolled down, it was like 65 degrees. I could smell the ocean and I was driving hella slow compared to everyone else. People were getting pissed going around me, flip me off and everything, and I was fucking crying dude, because I I was like I've never, never, never experienced this, bro, and I spent like I was. At the time, I had this girlfriend just driving nuts and I told her I was going out for a pack of cigarettes, gassed up my vehicle and I drove all the way to california to pick up another friend of mine, yeah, and I ended up staying out there for like a month. You know, yeah, just like not ever wanting to leave.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but anyway, yeah, yeah, how about I miss so much? You and Sam, you and Sam, yeah, you and Sam. She's a huge positive yeah.
Speaker 2:She's like you know, we met in one of the recovery groups years ago, quite a long time ago, and I think she was several years, clean and sober, and you know whatever was going on in her life. And I met her in there and then the next time I ran into her was in a dope house. Man, we were both fucking back on the shit. We were both, you know, selling, and we collaborated a little bit on all that and went through crazy shit. And then she fucking got arrested, over in Idaho, I think, and she spent 10 days in jail and she came back to Missoula and started working for this excavating company and she hadn't fucking looked back since, man.
Speaker 2:But when I finally ended up in jail, we had been kind of estranged for like a year and I ran into this dude that knew her and I was like do you have her phone number by chance? And he's like, well, I'll call my brother and get it. And he gave it to me and he called her first and like she really wasn't that excited to talk to him, I guess, or whatever. But I called her and as soon as I said, hey, this is crazy. And she's like oh my god, I've been worried about you for the last year because I blocked her from everything you know. Yeah, um, but damn man, like she, she didn't let me in right away. I'll tell you that much it was. And I knew, like she was my best friend man, like I knew she was such a beautiful, like solid person and just my kind of person. Yeah, we can laugh all the time. We have so much fun I love that.
Speaker 2:But like, and she told me she's's like I ain't dating no dude, that's in prison, fuck that, whatever, whatever. But when I got out, like you know, I started like putting in the work and being consistent, and that's what she tells me now. That's what got her was the consistency and the you know doing it. Like everything that I was saying was matching what I was doing yeah, you know what I mean. And it came to the point where we're like let's just put her fucking lives together, man. Like we've both been through some shit in our life and like and I trust her shit.
Speaker 2:Like, honestly, this is the first like girlfriend, like that I've ever fucking believed. When she said I love you because she doesn't have to say it. Like her fucking the way she cooks for it, the way she cares for us, like me and the kids and grandma and like all of us. Like she is so amazing man and like she, like I said, she doesn't have to tell you she loves you, like she fucking shows you, man, and I've learned a lot from her in that respect and I'm learning how to like, do that myself. Like, fuck that. You know, I love you, love you, love you. So what, what are you going to do about it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. How are you going to love me for real, honestly?
Speaker 1:Like me, for real, honestly, like I'm learning how to do it. She's, she's an angel. She showed. She's showing you how to do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, now you're implementing what I'm saying. Yeah, exactly a. You don't want to marry that girl? Um, in fact, I'm married to her, like like yeah, you know what it means. Spiritual way, indian way, like however you want to put it. Like, between me, her and the spirits, the universe, we're already united. Yeah, I love that. You know, I feel like we're already married yeah uh, a lot of people. I'm gonna give her that down on one knee like the real deal.
Speaker 1:I can't have that in her first marriage either. So you guys are gonna do it right, I know it, um, you know, because love is thrown around like a motherfucker these days, you know. And to actually have the consistent actions, yeah, that's fucking me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean she, she. We've been through some things too since we've been together. Like not not the type of like crazy shit we went through. Like yeah, yeah, in that other life, but like we've we butted heads sometimes and like it's never a fucking blowout fight, it's never crazy. Yeah, um, by the next morning it's fucking. One of us is like that's how you know what I mean. Like get over here, yeah, yeah, you know what I mean. Like get over here, yeah, yeah, you know what I mean, and it usually doesn't even take that long. Like dude, yeah, we've been through some shit, and even through that, like we still show each other love. That's important.
Speaker 1:And you guys work your ass off, do your thing, you got wrestling now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we got the boys in the sports. You know we're like all right, you guys went all the way for that. Yeah, it's been great man, we've done a lot. Now we got him in baseball. And then comes soccer and I'm looking for Greco Roman in freestyle wrestling for at least max in the off season. The sharpening skills. He loves it. Like no way did. I think if you would've asked me, you know, years ago if I thought I'd be fucking settling down doing the deal, yeah, no way. Anytime a girl even made space in a drawer for me, I was like see, ya Jumped on my horse and rode out, rode out. But no, we're great man, I love that man, yeah um, really it's raining, it's raining it's raining.
Speaker 2:That's crazy. I just opened up a huge ass building like, took the roof off, the rafters off and everything. Well, it was a pool under there anyway, so yeah, um there anyway.
Speaker 1:So yeah, um yeah, I'm doing my my thing, you know you kind of know my plans. Yeah what I got going on the shit.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, you know, I hope I want to be involved in that somehow. Yeah, I'm some. Yeah, however, however, right now, like I just want to see it, yeah, I want to see it. Yeah, I want to see your shit flourish too, bro, and it sounds like it is. You know, it's fucking. It's when you haven't had I haven't had like a lot of good Right, a lot of wins.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, but a lot of it are my own fault Losses, just cycles, you know. And so it's like I don't got nobody else to blame but myself in a lot of the situations um, a lot of. But most of the good came from, like, the love I received, you know, from from others. Uh, but like this is like legit. I put my heart, sweat, tears, energy. All I do is fucking grind at this shit every day, and then my other job shit and being a dad, and that literally takes up the everything of time. But they're all positive things so that shit changed everything for me.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, I want you to come check it out, come do all that I'm actually. I got asked to do my next public speaking event in Grand Junction, colorado. I'm going to go talk to I'm not even sure what the group is, but my homie Jorge on the podcast. He asked me to go speak to a group of people about, I guess, guess mental health and my journey and my story and things that I've learned along the way. Oh yeah, and just what I've learned from people just doing this. That shit has, yeah, turned me into the best version of myself.
Speaker 2:Mine is a great platform man. I'm glad y'all are doing this honestly, like it's like. It's like a. It's like kind of a. It's like a long little therapy session you know what I mean. Like for both of us, straight up 100 man, I get so much out of this yeah, I really do.
Speaker 2:I do too. It's draining. You know like I'm drained right now, emotionally. I feel it. Yeah, you know, living back there again, like even just in my head, living back there again, like even just in my head, but it's not not as, not as drained as like all that bullshit used to make me you know, still out here thriving when it when it releases, though over time it gets lighter.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, yeah yeah, it loses power, that's a damn sure. Yeah, and heaviness, that's, that's kind of like. I know a lot of people like you know one thing I want to say to if people are listening, you know like, like, don't think you have to come out here and just like spill the beans to everybody the first time you meet them, or whatever, overshare all that stuff. It's kind of unattractive actually sometimes. But like, just find, find a safe person place thing, get it out, man, get it out, face it down, get it out, get rid of it somehow. Like, whatever you gotta do, man, because there is no moving on, well, it's just weighing you down. They don't keep coming out. You know like I literally am one of them. People that didn't even like to shave because I couldn't look myself in the fucking face. You know Like that. And today, like I fucking I love myself. You know I love, like how I love myself.
Speaker 1:You know I love like hello. That's fucking outlive, you know that's everything honestly, until somebody can learn how to do that, the world will be not as it should be yeah you know, and maybe it's because we're missing that love early on in life.
Speaker 1:You know most likely, but it's never too late for anyone to make that change, just like yourself, just like many others. And now I'm at this point, and you're at this point where you're going to be able to help others because of your story and your journey. So we're definitely going to have some plans yeah, that's, that's definitely on my mine.
Speaker 2:It's a passion that I just don't. I'm excited to see, like where. You know this higher power and my work. You know, prayer effort, prayer effort, prayer action, prayer action. You know where that takes me, because I have no idea. I have ideas of what I want to do and how I want to help people, but that's not exactly how it's going to turn out. I know that. But I'm excited to see what I can get into and I'm excited to see miracles in other people's lives, you know, because of the hard work that they put in. You know, and if I can help in any way, like holler, you know, straight up, my name's gonna be on this podcast. Look me up, whatever. Yeah, oh, look RJ up, you got shot.
Speaker 2:You know, oh, yeah, that was we gotta throw that story out there real quick. Oh, it's just a story, man, it's just. You know, in that drug life, you know, ended up. You know, ended up. You know, in a situation that wasn't even my fault, man, but somebody said it was so, somebody else that was a kid man. A kid, young kid, 17 year old kid, and some older guys kicked in my door at like three o'clock in the morning or something. Yeah, one day and he's pointing, screaming, yelling, pointing the gun in my face. I was sitting up on the end of my height of bed in my living room like just looking up at him and he's like going crazy with this pistol and finally he's like it, I'm gonna kill you, racks one back and goes to shove it in my face and I grabbed it and he discharged right through my hand and out my wrist here and through the wall behind me.
Speaker 2:And the funny thing is that this whole deal came full circle too, bro. So his buddies that were with him straight up told on him, went to the police station, scared to death, you know what I mean. But so he ends up locked up over the deal and um, um, this is around the time that so my daughter passes away and then a few weeks later you know my wife sleeping with my best friend. You know what I mean. I fucking lose it Off the deep end. I get in trouble. Behind that situation that was one of the big things that sent me to prison was the violence behind that relationship that they had together. And then, you know, I did a bunch of forgeries, anyway. So I'm in jail like facing prison time with several like six felonies and victim services. Comes and pulls me out of my cell to ask me to testify against this kid that shot me, oh shit.
Speaker 2:And I'm like, absolutely not.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to do it, I'm not going to fucking fucking do it. And they're like, well, he's trying to get out on bond, like we don't want him back out on the streets. Like you need to say something, you need to write a letter to the judge and like, keep it. You know what I mean. Whatever you're the victim in this situation and we're here to, like you know, talk you into testifying basically or saying something negative about this kid. Yeah, so I, like you know, talk you into testifying basically or saying something negative about this kid. So I was like you know what I'm done talking to you. First of all, I shouldn't even came out here to talk to you without somebody else listening to what I'm saying to you right now, because that's kind of a rule. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Well, no, like somebody from the block like no, I'm not out there talking to the police snitching on you. Yeah, yeah, yeah snitching or something you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:I mean because that's.
Speaker 2:That's kind of like you're not allowed to go talk to them in a room by yourself without somebody else.
Speaker 2:They're gonna think you're right, yeah, right, so I'm telling them I've already been over here too long, like, yeah, I'm out of here, yeah, yeah. So I get back to my cell and I'm thinking like, all right, well, I got to write a letter to the judge, right? So I sit down and I'm I'm I'm a writer man. Yeah, I'm a reader and my very like best subject in school when I went to school and writing, yeah, yeah, arts and literature. Absolutely, I love words. You should write a fucking book Crazy.
Speaker 1:About your life.
Speaker 2:Not my life. I'll write about someone else's life maybe, but uh, yeah, but uh.
Speaker 2:So I sit down and write this letter, you know, and there was never any intention to like to like, you know, oh, this piece of shit, he needs to be locked up. He fucking shot me, and you know none of that. And I didn't know what my intention was. I was just gonna, you know, sit there and put pen to paper. I didn't know what my intention was. I was just gonna, you know, sit there and put pen to paper. I didn't know what was gonna happen.
Speaker 2:But I wrote this fucking letter to the judge about the injustice that I faced as a young kid getting locked up for running away from home, for all this crazy shit happening in my life, and every time I ran from one of them, places getting locked up and more secure, more secure, more secure. Pretty soon I'm in a fucking juvenile prison and I got nobody coming to see me, no one talking to me, and I'm learning from all these fucking kids in there that are straight fucking gangsters Kids how to be a freaking you know what I mean, how to be a convict. Eventually, basically, you know, and I'm like the fucking system ruined my life. You know, I'm like this kid's 17 years old. I said I can't for surely tell you if it was him or not. It was dark, it was fast, it was scary. I said so I'm never going to fucking say it was. I said, hey, listen, if you want to help this kid, really want to help this kid and keep your community safe. I said it says right in the paper it was over drugs or something. He's got drug problems, whatever. Get him some help for that. I said also make him finish high school, not gd, make him finish fucking high school, get his goddamn diploma, yeah. And then, uh, I don't know.
Speaker 2:I said some other things. Like I said, you know, if you want justice done to this community and for me as a victim of the system also, you're not going to lock this fucking kid up for the rest of his life, yeah, over 30 seconds of his fucking life. Make him fuck. And so the judge read this fucking letter and ended up dropping all the charges to a deferred prosecution. So anybody who knows anything about that, like deferred sentence is different. Deferred imposition of sentence is way different. Like that means like if you don't up, we'll, we'll expunge it. You're charged, you're a felon. Well, a deferred process is we're not even gonna charge you unless you up yeah in this next three years.
Speaker 2:Well, this kid ends up fucking like I think he got in trouble years, years after this. But like he owns uh, I don't know, I don't know exactly what the business alpine customs or something like that, or alpine construction or something like that, over in bozeman. Yeah, yeah, he does these big concrete jobs like he turned his life around too. You know what I mean, based on like yeah, and I ran into people after getting out of prison and once they realized I was the kid that joe shot. You know what I mean. You're like, oh man, fucking, that letter you wrote for him. I wouldn't even have my nieces and nephews today if you wouldn't have wrote that letter. And like all this shit.
Speaker 2:Like it was crazy that at 20 years old, I had enough fucking, like, yeah, empathy, and for somebody that just shot me bro, yeah, yeah, yeah to to like, and I, I still knew that the system would do more damage to that kid than than I ever could, you know, and and I didn't want that for him, I didn't want that for anybody, and I still don.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's why you're so passionate about what you want to do, Absolutely man, that's kind of crazy.
Speaker 1:It has to be crazy, you know turn of events. On top of all that, I want to salute you and give you one of these real quick, because there's a fucking, there's a code and nobody sticks with it anymore in these days. Yeah, absolutely not. This shit has changed so much, and if you would have thrown me in that same position, I mean first of all, it'd be the same. I ain't saying nothing to nobody. There's no reason to do that and you were part of the system. You've seen what it did to you and others and you know what his future could have been like.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, that's just the human code right there. Yeah, I mean, that's not even convict shit either. That's like fuck that. I don't want nobody behind bars. Yeah, I mean, hey, he's snitching on nobody. Yeah, no, I don't need to gonna do, they're gonna get caught on their own. Man. The police have a job to do. Man, nobody comes and pounds my fucking nails for me, right?
Speaker 1:I am not doing your job for you. Whatever energy doesn't lie, you know, whatever you put out into the universe, you know, yeah, I'm, I feel like I've been doing nothing, but try my hardest to put good out there and I think that's why is working for me now and I I firmly believe that you know, and probably same for you, like you, oh yeah, you're doing your thing now yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:It's slow and steady, that's all I know. I'm not like that's one thing too. I'm gonna say don't shut up. I talk a lot sometimes, but I'm very passionate about it. It's like like, don't expect all this one day, man. Don't put that much pressure on yourself. I mean, anything worth having is worth waiting for and working for and like, oh man, just if you find yourself in a position to where you're having to force to happen, then it ain't right. It ain't right at all, man, because that's what we did when we were out there in that other life, man, we, we forced everybody, like I needed to say this, so I know you'll say this so that I have the opportunity to get in there and hustle you for this and get over and do that and like forcing every fucking day to happen. Yeah, not letting you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:I I would like you know like god, pulling strings everywhere and forcing everything, everybody else, to my will, man, and that cost me a lot of fucking like mental pain, dude. Like you, can't, you can't, you can't control life, like that man, but it like I, like I check my motherfucking motives If I find myself in that position where, like I want something so bad, I'm going to fucking do anything to get it. Now I'm going to force this to happen. Yeah, fuck that. Uh-uh, it ain't meant to be, not right now. It might be down the road. It'll come to you if it is. And 10 times, 10 times out of 10. Now it turns out better when I take a step back and stop forcing it than I ever imagined in the first place. That's crazy. You know what I mean. Yeah, like the doors that get opened because I allowed that one to shut 10 times better If you let it go if it comes back then it's meant to be.
Speaker 1:You know, yeah, absolutely, man, stop forcing shit. We got a lot of fucking really good shit. Man, this is probably, like no cap, one of my favorite fucking conversations I've had. I really appreciate you doing this and you're busy as fuck and we've tried a couple times.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we did. I'm sorry, I felt like man it doesn't feel like we pulled him off. I just can't fuck him. You got mad shit going on.
Speaker 1:You got wrestling at State yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm going to State Maximus. Shout out to Maximus Try just working your ass off out there. Shout out to fucking Matt Devils.
Speaker 1:Glendive Matt Devils. Glendive Matt Devils, it's been a great season. I want you to shout out, I want you to your final monologue on your journey on mental health, on addiction recovery, changes, fatherhood, whatever you want you know, family, whatever you think is important for you to get out there to people that you would like them to hear before you go on to the next chapter of your life.
Speaker 2:I mean it's kind of cliche, but at the same time, like, dude, just keep walking, no matter what. Like this too shall pass, right, like if, if, if you're going through hell, it's gonna pass, if everything's fucking great in your life, that's gonna pass too. And it's gonna get shitty again, yeah, but just keep going. Yeah, keep fucking going. Man, don't don't sit on your hands in time of peace, you know, because when war comes they ain't gonna be ready, basically ready, basically Like, just keep walking, yeah, and that's. I mean, that is like the like action, action, action, action. I don't know, I can't stress enough, like if you ain't working against it, like you're working for it. You know what I mean For that sickness.
Speaker 1:For that sickness. Hell yeah, straight up, bro. Yeah, this has been really helpful for me. I'm getting ready to embark on another chapter of my life when I'm just closing the door on the fucking gnarliest one of pain, growth and perseverance yeah, but I only know a little bit about, about your story, man, but like, yeah, that's fucking awesome, dude, I see it, it's great.
Speaker 2:I want to see more. You know what I mean. If there's anything we can do, sam and I know I'm speaking for her right now, but it's anything we can do to help in any way.
Speaker 1:Like you know, you know you're, you know we're homies, bro, I, I Don't have a lot of that anymore. Yeah, um, I see why. I understand man now, but I just I commend you for going through hell and fighting through it, not giving up, keeping on walking like you're doing, and now the flowers are fucking coming out. You know, and you're fucking young 42. You got so much shit to Grandpa's young. Still, I love that, bro. Well, yeah, man, man, I just want to say Thank you so much For doing this, absolutely Thank you and thanks. Thanks for keeping this solid. I appreciate you. We're going to be homies Till the day they put us in, drop us in that casket, yeah, whenever that may be. But yeah, I want to say Thank you, man, and peace out everybody. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening. I'm taking a break because I got a lot going on right now, but I'm probably just going to put this one out and let it chill while I get to it.