Introduction

The introduction to No Version Left is where John Theriault begins taking the mask off. This episode goes beyond the idea of the podcast and into the truth behind it — the grief, addiction, silence, identity loss, and survival that brought him here. It is raw, personal, and unfinished in the most honest way: a beginning built from everything he could no longer carry alone.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

The three most important questions in life are why, why, and why. Because by the third why, you usually get the hard truth. My name is John Terrio, and this is my story.

SPEAKER_00 0:14

But this time, I'm not cleaning it up for you. This is no version left. This isn't a highlight reel. It's not a polished version.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

And this certainly is not the version people post when they're trying to convince the world that they're okay. This is what's left when there's nothing left to hide. Welcome to no version left. Only the why remains. And before I say anything else, I need you to sit with something. There are parts of my life I've never said out loud. Not because they didn't matter, not because they were small, but because they didn't fit the version of me people expected. The version that felt acceptable. The version that made other people comfortable. And if I'm being honest, I got really good at protecting that version. I learned how to say just enough. How to smile while falling apart. How to make pain sound manageable, or how to make survival into something that looked successful. From the outside it worked. The life in LA, the rooftop experiences, the VIP treatment, the first-class flights to those perfectly framed photos, or the career, the image. It all looked like someone who had things figured out. But underneath that, there are parts of me I refused to touch. Parts I buried so deeply that eventually I stopped noticing they were buried at all. And the truth is, when you spend enough years editing yourself for other people, eventually forget what's real. But this isn't just about me, because I think a lot of people are doing the same thing. Not with the same story or the same wounds, but the same fear. The fear that if people saw the full truth, those messy parts, the broken parts, the contradictory parts, they'd leave or judge or stop loving you. So instead, what do we do? We perform, we manage perceptions, we protect the image, we become versions. Versions that function, that survive, that makes sense to everyone else, even when they stop making sense to us. And for a long time, I thought survival meant keeping everything controlled, keeping everything presentable, never letting people see how bad things really got. And there are moments where I convinced myself I was fine, or at least fine enough. But eventually something starts happening. The distance between who you are and who you pretend to be gets harder to carry. You feel it in those quiet moments. The moments when the room finally goes silent. You feel it when you're alone with your own thoughts and there's nowhere left to run. And eventually you realize the version you built to protect yourself, it's also the thing that's slowly destroying you. So this podcast is me stopping. Stopping the performance, stopping the editing, stopping the instinct to make everything sound cleaner than it actually was. Not because it's comfortable. Honestly, this is terrifying. Because telling the truth means admitting things that don't sound good out loud. Things people may not understand. Things I barely understood myself. But I also know this. If I keep protecting the version, I lose myself completely.

SPEAKER_00 3:45

And I think a lot of people know exactly what that feels like.

SPEAKER_01 3:49

So if you're trying to figure out who I am, my name's John. And the honest answer is I've been a lot of different people. Some versions of me looked strong. Some looked successful, some looked confident. Some versions were built from grief, from fear, from survival, some from loneliness. There's a version of me caring for my mother. The version of me chasing success. The version of me trying to outrun pain. The version of me coping in ways I never thought I would. And for a long time, I thought those versions defined me. But they don't. They're fragments, defense mechanisms, adaptations, pieces created to survive different moments in my life. And the parts I hid the most, they're actually the parts that explain everything. There's a question that's followed me for years. Quietly, constantly, consistently there. Why? Not the quick version. Not the easy version. Not the version people use to ask it and then move on to something else. I'm talking about the kind that stays with you. The kind that follows you into silence. The kind that, you know, is sitting on your chest at 3 a.m. as you're wide awake staring at the ceiling. Kind that forces you to look at yourself when you don't want to. Why did I move to LA or why was I afraid to come home? Why did I work myself into the ground? Why did I stay in situations that were destroying me and I knew it? Why did I keep accepting pain like it was normal? Why did I spend much of my life trying to earn love instead of believing I deserved it? And there are so many other times I've asked why. And if I'm honest, there's years where I didn't want the answers. Because finding the truth, or at least looking for it, meant confronting things I wasn't ready to see. So instead I kept moving, kept functioning, kept distracting myself, kept building versions of myself strong enough to avoid the deeper question. But eventually, avoidance stops working. The noise fades, the image cracks. Eventually you're left staring at yourself with nowhere else to look. And that's where this begins. This podcast is not me arriving at some perfect understanding. This isn't a here's my story and here's the lesson. This is me inside of it, still untangling it, still trying to understand it, still trying to be honest about it. Which means some of this it will be uncomfortable. Some of it may contradict itself. Some of it won't have a clean answer. But life rarely does. You're going to hear things most people don't say out loud. The moments I wasn't okay. The choices I made just to survive something. The ways I coped. The thoughts I carried, the shame, the grief, the anger, the loneliness, the parts that don't fit neatly into the version people know. And I'm not cutting those parts out anymore. But this also isn't hopeless. And that matters too. Because somewhere inside all of this, there's clarity, there's growth, there's understanding. There are moments where things finally start making sense in ways they never did before. Not perfectly, but honestly. And a lot of that came from one question. Why? Ironically, that question was planted in me a long time ago. My father passed away almost 20 years ago, but some lessons outlive people. And one of the few conversations I remembered so vividly happened after an early morning hockey practice, one of those freezing Canadian mornings where you know the world still feels half asleep. During that drive home, he shared with me the three most important questions in life are why, why, and why. That was it. Because by the third why, you usually stop getting the easy answer. You get the truth. I didn't understand how important that lesson would become, but my dad's view, that perspective, that question has changed me. It stopped letting me live only on the surface. It forced me to look underneath the decisions, underneath the coping, the patterns, the pain, and understand far more than I ever would have. And once you truly see the why behind something, you can't unsee it. But maybe that's where change finally starts. So that's what this is really about. Not just a story about what happened, but a search for why it happened. Why I became who I became, why certain patterns repeated, why some wounds stayed open, why I kept running from things that eventually demanded to be faced. Because I don't think people are missing information anymore. I think we're missing honesty. The kind that doesn't perform, the kind that doesn't try to sound inspirational, the kind that doesn't clean itself up before being seen. Just truth. Even when it's uncomfortable. And maybe in hearing mine and me sharing my story, others will start hearing their own life differently too. Maybe you stop judging yourself so harshly. Maybe you stop judging someone else before understanding their why. Maybe if you finally recognize parts of yourself you've spent years trying to outrun, things will make a little more sense. Because I don't think most people are evil. I think most people are hurt, confused, surviving, trying to cope with things they never learned how to carry. And sometimes the worst decisions of our lives make a lot more sense when we finally understand the pain underneath them. So if you're here, you don't need to have your life figured out. I don't. You don't need to be healed. You don't need to be perfect. You just need to be willing to not look away. Because in these next episodes, it's time to go deeper. The versions I created, why I needed them, the moments that changed me before I even realized they had. The coping, the consequences, the grief, the survival, the understanding that came after, or the understanding that I'm still trying to find. Nothing is off limits. If it's part of the story, it belongs here. This is where I stop editing, where I stop protecting the image. This is where I stop trying to make my life sound cleaner than it actually was. Because the truth is, I'm tired. Tired of carrying versions of myself that were built just to survive. Tired of pretending pain didn't affect me. Tired of making things look okay while quietly falling apart underneath. And maybe the hardest part to admit, there were moments I didn't recognize myself anymore. Moments where I looked in my own life and wondered how I got so far away from who I was supposed to be. Moments where I felt completely disconnected from myself, while everyone around me still thought I was fine. But underneath all of that, underneath those mistakes, the coping, grief, anger, shame, there was still something human left in me asking one question.

SPEAKER_00 11:33

Why? Why did this hurt so much? Why did I keep running?

SPEAKER_01 11:40

Why did I spend so much of my life trying to become someone easier to love?

SPEAKER_00 11:46

Maybe this podcast is the first time I've stopped running long enough to actually listen to the answer. Not the polished answer. Not the inspirational answer. The real one. Even if it breaks me open. Because surviving.

SPEAKER_01 12:08

Well, I can't keep surviving inside this version of myself. Inside the versions that were only created to survive pain. And maybe that's the most terrifying part of all of this. Realizing I don't actually want the old version of me back anymore. Not the successful one, not the strong one, not the composed one, not the version that knew how to smile while quietly disappearing underneath. Because every version I created to protect myself cost me pieces of who I really was. And I think somewhere along the way, I disappeared too. If telling the truth costs me every version of myself I use to survive, then maybe that's not losing myself.

SPEAKER_00 12:57

Maybe it's finally being me. This is no version left. Only the Y remains.