This episode features Torrey Park, a student in Campfire’s Intro to Storytelling class. You can learn more about Torrey Park on the Campfire website, https://cmpfr.com/events/intro-to-storytelling-showcase-spring-2019/.
These episodes of The Campfire Storytelling Podcast showcase students who went through our Intro to Storytelling class. These students take a six-week class to prepare to tell a story about life and how they live it. Students told stories around “unsaid things.”
This episode was originally performed in April 2019, produced by Jeff Allen, and recorded live at The Stage at KDHX.
This episode features Torrey Park, a student in Campfire’s Intro to Storytelling class. You can learn more about Torrey Park on the Campfire website, https://cmpfr.com/events/intro-to-storytelling-showcase-spring-2019/.
These episodes of The Campfire Storytelling Podcast showcase students who went through our Intro to Storytelling class. These students take a six-week class to prepare to tell a story about life and how they live it. Students told stories around “unsaid things.”
This episode was originally performed in April 2019, produced by Jeff Allen, and recorded live at The Stage at KDHX.
Steven Harowitz: 0:12
Hello, Internet. I'm Steven Harowitz, Executive Director of Campfire, and you are listening to Campfire at Home. It's our way of bringing the live experience to you, whether that be listening and reflecting by yourself or experiencing it with friends. Each Campfire invites listeners into life and how we live it. Before we get too deep into Campfire at Home, I want to share a few opportunities for you to get involved beyond our live show. We offer classes and workshops on public speaking, story construction, and group facilitation to answer the big questions in your life or at work. If you or your organization are interested, you can visit cmpfr.com. That's c m p f r dot com. Each Campfire Season poses a life question that's explored by Campfire Fellows together with our audiences. For our Intro to Storytelling showcase students, they take this question and turn into a theme. This season their theme was things left unsaid. Let's go to The Stage at KDHX to listen to these stories.
Molly Pearson:
Please help me welcome Torrey to the Campfire.
Torrey Park: 1:09
A lot of my life I felt like people can take a look at me, um, look at my body and make up their mind about who I am, what I'm capable of before I even open my mouth. So the thing is that this body has carried me over hundreds of miles of dirt trails and asphalt, and it took me a long journey to find out that I had that strength in myself. Um, there was this one crisp October day about six years ago that I found myself at the end of a long, difficult journey and at the starting line of the St Louis Rock n Roll half marathon. So I'd gotten very little sleep, and I was just running off of fumes, but I was so excited to be there. Um, it was kind of cold, and I huddled with my friends and the people that I've been training with up until this point for warmth, and we hugged each other and we took our pictures in a sea of selfies. Um, right around that time, eight o'clock came and the buzzer went off and we all set on our path. The first couple of miles, just pure energy, um, nervous energy. And after a while that started to wear off and I started to think about what I was doing and the multiple voices of self-doubt that I've lived with for a very long time started talking and they said, "Oh my God, what the hell am I doing? What if I can't do this? You know what if I get left behind? What if I have to stop and pee? I'll let everybody who's out there rooting for me, let them down." And that was the beginning of, you know, thinking about, "Why am I like this?" Um, I've not always been like this when I was 6, 7, 8 years old, I remember watching home movies of myself, and I was vivacious. I first when we got our first video camera, I literally leaped in front of it and start singing and dancing. I had my own talk show with Special Guest Empty Chair and and so I had a lot of fun. Um, then when I was about eight years old, my family moved from a suburban house in the San Francisco Bay Area to a small rural town of Brandon, Mississippi. I I left my the rest of my family, all my friends, everything I knew behind, uh, and that was really difficult. Um, just, I was bored. I didn't know what to do. I was sad, and, um, I felt like I didn't fit in. I never did get "y'all" right. I grew up in California, so I'd say "you guys," so was already behind on that. Uh, so, you know, I, uh I started eating, um, for whatever reason, to feel better. That was about the time where, you know, I discovered food is comfort or at least temporarily. So a couple years past, um, and it's like that. And I get to be about 14 years old, and I'm kind of chubby. I'm really not that much, but I'm also shy and insecure. And, uh, I remember a day where I opened up my locker at school and this piece of paper came tumbling out, and I opened it up, and there was this really crude drawing of a pig with a little curly tail and stuff, and it had my name on it, just in case I didn't get it. So that was hard enough, but then I started to hear laughter behind me. And I turned around and, um, it was girls who for the past two years I had known as my friends, but something changed and I couldn't figure out why. I just became their target. Uh, so it got worse from there. Um, my favorite green backpack went missing from the last place that I left it. And, um, three or four girls would come up behind me and start kicking the backs of my feet. And then they started tripping me. And then they started shoving me, and I just I wanted to know what I needed to do to stop it. I just wanted it to stop. And I figured I had to change myself. But it didn't stop for two years. And I spent a lot of time during lunch alone writing stories. And in those stories, I was beautiful and strong and well-loved. So I kind of had a deus ex machina or however you pronounce that. Uh, my my parents moved again. Ah, and that's the only way we got it to stop. We moved from Mississippi to here in Missouri. And that really wasn't though the end of that. That's just it became a belief about myself. Um, and so any time that something would happen, um, I was standing on the corner one time in college and this frat guy yelled out a window and moo-ed at me because that was really original. Uh um, but I would be right back there in junior high and reliving this feeling of just being rejected solely based upon my appearance. So, um, unfortunately, it was kind of like this this cycle. So when I felt bad and and I started to really develop anxiety and depression and I didn't know how to cope with that and I didn't have any medications, so food was the way that I did that. And over a period of time, I became morbidly obese. Ah, and at that time, I stop participating in life. I stopped paying my bills and I stopped going and leaving out of my apartment until it was the middle of the night so I wouldn't run into anybody. And I stopped taking care of myself, and eventually it got to the point where I couldn't live on my own anymore. So I moved back in with my parents, back into my sad, dark teenage bedroom with posters still on the wall and I kind of cocooned there for a while. Um, I just I just couldn't handle life, and, uh, got to be my 35th birthday, and I was sitting there next to my mom on the couch, watching TV, and something came over me. I think it was because it was my birthday, and I kind of had a similar feeling of, you know, I thought I was supposed to be further along in life, and I've just I've lost everything. So I got up and I went into the kitchen and I opened a drawer and I wasn't really thinking very clearly, and I I pulled out this knife and I just pressed down to see if it would make a cut. And I just really couldn't make up my mind whether I wanted to hurt myself or not. But I was scared, and I was so scared that I called to my mom in the other room for help, and she called a suicide hotline, and I talked to someone on the other end, and they got me through that. They helped me calm down, and I promised to get help. And it was that point in time where I figured that I needed to change something or I was going to die. So just a couple months later, um, kind of, you know, did the mother of all New Year's resolutions and started to try again, and what I did was I decided that I would focus on my weight, because, again, my self-image was really wrapped in in that. So I started walking and watching Biggest Loser at night. Um, I got a lot of inspiration watching these bodies that looked like mine. And they were running up hills and they were climbing over hurdles and they were squatting and they were pouring out sweat. But they were doing it, and I said, "If if they can do it, then so can I." So I I ended up going from from walking to running about two years later, um, and down about 80 pounds. Um, I didn't know what to expect, but when I started it, it was Couch to 5K program, and it was with a group and I had the most amazing time. I actually found out that I loved it, and a big part of that was because for anybody who's been around runners, they're some of the most positive, supportive, encouraging people I've ever metnd a you just feel like everybody's in it, in on it together and they're just all about the affirmations. So one of my favorites is they say, "You got this." And I started to believe it. So fast forward a little bit and back to the half marathon, some of these same people that I, uh, started training with were there with me that day of running their first race. And it just felt so good to look around and notice that I was surrounded by moms with strollers and teenagers and muscular senior citizens, supernaturally so. And, uh, I just thought like nobody here is actually judging anybody. It's just we're all here running our own race for our own reasons. And ah, so we got to mile six, and we were actually turning just down, um, North Grand and going past past the Fox Theater, and I started thinking, "You know what? I do got this. I've done this before." Um, I've managed to get through the training where we would go eight miles, 10 miles, on and on. I'd be nervous before, and I would manage to do it every time. And we had just run from the from Tower Grove Park to the Arch and back to make 12 miles right before we started the race. So knowing that I could do that, um, just really, really made me feel like I'm accepting this. Um, then we get to the 10th mile and I start looking around for my family because I'd ask them to come. They, uh, I don't think they really got what I was trying to do, and they didn't realize the enormity of it until they came and saw it for theirselves. So my eye caught my family off to the side, and, uh, my boyfriend, Thomas, now my husband, was there, um, and he was smiling. And ah, my mom, who's like super photographer, she was taking pictures, and my sister, Jenny ah, was waving a a sign that she made with Dori from Finding Nemo. And it was "Just keep running. Just keep running." So I love that. And then I saw my dad, and the thing about my relationship with my dad is, um, it's not something I want to get into, but it's at time's been difficult. I think if it was a Facebook status, I would call it complicated. Uh, but the thing is that he was raised in a household that attached love and acceptance to achievement and the way to help someone improve by, you know, their standards, you know, blunt criticism was on the table. And ah, good example of that was, um, one Christmas when I was a kid, ah, my grandfather, my dad's dad, decided to loudly announce that, uh, if I got any bigger, I wouldn't fit through the school doors. So that there's that. Um so it was, really, you know, difficult to get my dad's approval, but I wanted it so much. And finally I felt like seeing his face there, um, I had never seen pride like that. And the only other time I've seen it is the day that I got married. So I'm coming up on the 12 mile mark, and all of a sudden, I hit a wall. Wall is where your body basically says, "I give up. No more, please." My legs were really heavy, and I was having trouble breathing. And I was like, "This is it. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna finish." But my buddy Megan had come with me. She had volunteered herself to run the race with me. She was a better athlete than me. She had actually done a full marathon, and I was kind of afraid to tell her like, "I'm really struggling here." But I decided to reach out, and when I told her, she said, "Don't worry, Torrey. You've got this. Let's finish strong together." So I actually picked up the pace and I leaned into the discomfort and I get my iPod out, and I switch it to the last song that I wanted to hear when I was gonna be approaching the finish line. And it was Katy Perry's "Roar," which, okay, so that's like a guilty pleasure for me. But but there's this line and there, and I swear to God, you know, it almost brings me to tears because it's it's everything to me. And the line is, "I went from zero to my own hero," and I realized that was true and that I did this. I lost 180 pounds over a four year period, and it was hard and it was long, but I actually just made the commitment over and over again to keep going. So even though I actually gained some of the weight back, um, I I just don't let those voices, when they come back in and they start telling me that I'm unlovable or I can't do something, I basically tell them to shut the hell up and say, "I got this." Thank you.
Steven Harowitz: 20:10
If you want, you can see the answers to this season's question is written by audience members from each Campfire by visiting our Facebook page at facebook.com/campfirestl. That c a m p f i r e s t l. A big thank you to the Campfire team, our photographers and videographers, and a special thanks to KDHX Community Media for being our partners on this journey. If you want to learn more about Campfire in the work we do, you can visit cmpfr.com. That's c m p f r dot com. And if you like what you heard, please leave a review on iTunes or wherever you find your podcasts, because it really helps. Until next time.