0:00 - Initial Struggles and Plans
0:58 - Progress on the Job Front
13:21 - Giving Them One Last Chance
18:26 - Reflections on Family Dynamics
26:42 - Lying in Bed as Observation
31:28 - Testing the Threads of Relationships
39:37 - Existence in the Eyes of Others
42:20 - Uncovering Motivation
45:19 - Encouragement and Support
In this conversation, we discuss personal experiences related to family dynamics, emotions, and relationships. The speaker talks about their struggle with leaving their family, feeling stuck, experiencing conflict, and seeking understanding. They share insights about testing relationships, seeking closure, and exploring motivations behind behavior. The speaker reflects on interactions with friends and family, examining the depth of connections and responses from others. The discussion touches on the significance of relationships, communication, and the importance of self-discovery. The speaker offers sympathy, advice, and encouragement to navigate challenging circumstances and make empowering decisions. The conversation concludes with well-wishes, appreciation, and a sense of progress and self-awareness achieved throughout the dialogue.
[0:00] Okay, you wrote to me, I have an obstacle to leaving my family. You said, I've left once for a short while, but due to financial concerns, went back and came up with a plan of getting a job and saving up until I have enough cash to afford leaving. Things haven't been so hot. I haven't got a job yet, and I left my therapist about a month ago, and I have until April 10th till I can see another one. I stay in my room and my bed all day, every day, only coming out for food or to use the bathroom. My sleeping schedule is out of whack and my motivation to do just about anything is shot, i want to get out of this but i think i must also understand why i'm in this there's a lot of work a lot to work through but i think i want to ask you is it that i have not yet fully explored the emotions from my childhood if so how can i i don't want to admit it but i guess i'm pretty close to the edge or maybe if i was i wouldn't need help jumping off it at any rate i'm stuck, that's what you um uh you wrote to me and that's what you wanted to talk about right Um, yeah.
[0:58] Although I would like to update that I do have a job now. Oh, good. Okay.
[1:04] And I have a referral to a therapist, which, you know, I'll see whenever, whenever that works out. I think that's, uh, that's great. I think that's great. Is there anything else that you wanted to add before we start diving in? Well interestingly what happened um that just before me uh you know going on and getting a job with um my parents called the cops on me um and a lot of dramatic things happened like i mean the one morning i came down and then they came down and they started um just just like kind of making me and putting me down, and assaulting me and all this stuff.
[1:48] And I wrote to the chat to some people who were there, what they were saying to me, and then one person suggested, You know, you're doing all these, you're telling us this stuff, but I mean, you haven't boosted into any practical advice, but you're not doing it.
[2:17] And I'm like, yeah, yeah, that's true. And so, you know, maybe I should take a break or something because maybe I was making other people feel what I should be feeling or something. Um but like they were feeling for me um so i just like i tried that and to see what would happen and then that was that was right when it was either that day or the day after my parents ended up calling the police on me that's what happened um and and then after all that because like on that day i was going i was just going to move out like go to some shelter or something so I could, um, because I just didn't seem safe or anything to be here anymore, even in my room, because they were trying to kick me out.
[3:16] Um, so what happened was, uh, I was just, uh, I packed my bag and, and I was, uh, going to, I decided to go the next day. So I went to sleep. I woke up the next morning. My mom was like, I'm so glad that you decided to stay. And then she said that she scheduled an appointment with a psychiatrist, which would be the next day at such and such a time. And, you know, I'd be glad if you go. So I did. And and I mean it wasn't very comfortable but now I've gotten a therapist not the psychotherapist sorry just to interrupt just so I understand she said I got a psychiatrist appointment but it was only for you it wasn't for her or for the family is that right? Right it was for me right okay and sorry just so I understand you said she ended up calling And of course, I'm so sorry to hear that. That is awful. It happened to me once with my mother, too. And it's just ugly and unpleasant. And you feel like you're completely being dragged through the mud. So I really do, I think, understand. But what was it that led up to your parents calling the cops?
[4:44] I don't I don't remember I just remember that we went we were we were screaming at each other and, But I don't know. No, so the content, sorry, I just wanted to understand if there was physical violence or if it came out of nowhere. But as you're saying, there was this emotional aggression that was occurring from both you and the rest of your family within the household. That's what was the proximate or at least excuse for calling me hops. Is that right? Yeah. Okay. And the content obviously is not that relevant because there's no content that should ever lead civilized people to behave in that way. So I just wanted to understand what had happened with the cop thing. And sorry, please continue. So what happened with the cop thing? No, I'm comfortable with what happened with the cop thing, unless you want to talk about it more. I'm sort of more concerned about listening to the way you were going before. Okay. Well, so what I ended up... I say ended up, but you know what? It's just a verbal tic.
[5:59] This psychiatrist, I didn't like it because... Well, actually, I'm not going to go into that. I'm going to say... I want to understand what... Why all this stuff happened that... And suddenly, you know, it's like suddenly now, now I'm getting a job. Why couldn't I have done that sooner? Or was it even avoidable? I don't know. So you mean when you were, as you say, in your bed and weren't going out and doing things, is that right? Yeah, and you know what, actually now, I'm even riding my bike outside and, what happened? Why am I why am I now motivated? You know, it was as real before as it is now, you know? Right. And of course, the concern is how to avoid it again, right? Right. Right. Right. Okay. Okay. And do you have thoughts? I mean, obviously, I always have thoughts for better or for worse, for useful or for not. But do you have thoughts about what might have happened? Or do you want me to ask questions? How would you like to approach?
[7:22] Yeah, I don't have any thoughts right now. So, you need to take over if you want. Sure, I will be happy to. And, of course, just interrupt me as always. And if anything I'm saying is amiss or wrong, of course, and everything that I say based on limited knowledge is, of course, entirely conjectural and blah, blah, blah. You've heard all of this before. So, I just thought I'd mention it again. Right. Okay. Okay, so when you woke up in the morning, when you were, I think, safe to say depressed, is that fair to say? Actually, no. You weren't depressed, okay. I was, it was a light feeling. it was.
[8:13] The first thought that I had was oh man now I have to leave now I have to go to the homeless shelter right I don't think it was depression though, okay so when you thought when you woke up in the morning what was your thought about the day to come, My thought was I was going to I was going to go eat breakfast the last breakfast of my health then, call the shelter and schedule a time or just figure out what time they're open so I can be there and then just make sure I'm ready to leave and ride my bike over there and, just start figuring out how to be there Right. And when you would wake up and think about this as your day, what feelings were associated with that for you?
[9:21] I mean, I might have felt sad and nervous. I didn't want to do it. I kind of felt like I was being forced to do it. Okay and so what were the feelings that that came up like the the basic feeling, and i know this is a tough question it sounds easy right what were my feelings but it's a tough question right because if you could really feel them you wouldn't have been in bed all day right so i understand the difficulty of the question and i really do sympathize with it but i'm going going to ask it anyway just to be annoying okay uh i i don't know if i can answer with certainty what i felt really um, I can keep asking questions. I don't want to put you on the spot. I know that you started off nervous, and I know that you've had a hell of a month, if not year, if not decade, so I don't want to put you on the spot. I'm happy to keep asking questions, but I just wondered if you had anything on your mind at the moment about those feelings.
[10:38] No, I don't have anything. Okay. Had it occurred to you in your family before that you had laid in bed this way? Um, when I was a senior, like near the end of school, um, I started just not going to school very often. I started skipping days and I just, um, because I was, uh, working, I was like really had a lot of homework and, and so I would work into the evening and pretty much not sleep. So what happened was I started doing this and I just, I wasn't motivated to do it anymore, more, but I did it anyway. But I, I like adapted a way of just, um, to avoid everything. I slept through the day and, and my mom would come, come in, you know, after a while, she started coming in and like kind of freaking me out, trying to wake me up. Um, so that would be, that would be the one time that this has ever happened, like in a similar way. Only this time, my parents don't actually you know because there's nothing that I have to do that they perceive that I have to do like I don't have to go to school anymore um yeah.
[11:56] Okay. No, no, your thought is perfectly clear to me, so I don't think you lost the train of thought. So this happened when you were a senior in high school and your mother would come in and you said, freak you out and wake you up because you had stuff to do. But in this situation, you didn't have stuff that was pressing to do. And so your parents didn't. Is that right? They didn't come into your room and sort of inquire what was happening or how you were doing? Well, they never inquired what was going on with me. They just told me, listen, you have to go to school. Or, you know, they would even... Sorry, I mean now. Did anyone come in in the week or two that you spent in your room? Oh, no. Right.
[12:49] Right, okay. And this was on the... The brink of you taking this terrible, courageous, noble decision to go to a shelter and, you know, escape, right? Right. I mean, I can tell you why I think you did it, and you can tell me if it makes any sense at all. It's just a theory, right? But it may have some value. Okay.
[13:21] Well, you were giving them their last chance.
[13:29] I was about about the homeless shelter thing like going there well it's it's bigger than homeless shelter thing right you were you were giving them their last opportunity, to intervene before you fled, to do the right thing, to sit down and ask and to attempt to repair the family, to create an appointment. That's why I asked whether your mother created an appointment for your family as a whole or just for you, right?
[14:07] Right? If she had made it, I mean, you wanted her to come in and say, your father and I are going to talk to someone.
[14:18] I mean, that would be nice, but that wasn't really my thought. No, I'm not saying you were thinking this consciously, and I'm not saying it's true, right? I'm just saying that it's a possibility. Oh, yeah, it could be possible. possible um because to to go to a homeless shelter is is kind of a one-way ticket right i mean once it's that bad that you'd rather take your chances in a homeless shelter with god knows who you're kind of done right yeah i mean that's that's about it right and if your parents knowing, that you're on the brink which everyone knows everything right knowing that you're on the brink of leaving and that you have no money and you have no job, they would know that if you left, it would be very difficult for you, right? Yeah. Very difficult. Like, homeless difficult, possibly, right? Right. And I'm afraid of that. Of course. My God, absolutely. Absolutely. Completely. It's terrifying. It's terrifying. Terrifying. And again, I'm just asking the question. I'm not saying I have an answer. It's just a possibility. But wasn't a part of you just hoping that this was going to be so close to the brink that your parents would actually do something productive?
[15:41] I mean, because you didn't want to go, right? But the only way you could stay is if they stepped up and did the right thing as parents. I told my mom to leave me alone, right? I mean, that would be a good thing to do, to leave me alone. And I just screamed at her, like, again and again. That's the only thing I can think of. Yeah.
[16:13] Sorry, when you say that's the only thing that you can think of, what do you mean? Like, I mean, that's the only thing I could think of as being true to the theory that I want them to come up and do something. good.
[16:27] Right. I don't have any hope for them. I tried again and again and I've been fighting with them for years. I mean, I don't logically expect anything good to happen. No, I understand that. I really do. I'm not saying that you were you know, gosh, they're going to be transformed into the good fairy parents, right? I don't believe that you were sitting there crossing your fingers saying, I hope they come in and are good or whatever. But what I'm saying is that by giving them the opportunity to see you lying in bed day after day and not do anything. Oh. What happened? I don't know. Sounds like someone pressed a cell phone button. Dan Holding. Oh. No, but by lying there in bed day after day and giving them every opportunity to come in and do the right thing, i.e. Not get into a fight with you and not call the cops and not just say you need to go to therapy because you're the crazy one, basically. By giving them that opportunity, it's possible that giving them that one last chance, which you kind of know isn't going to work out, you do get a kind of closure, I think, out of it.
[17:54] Oh, so it's actually useful to do this. Well, I think it's useful to do it consciously, right? I don't think this was conscious, which doesn't mean that it was bad or wrong or anything like that. But yes, I think that giving, and this is what I always, always, always nag people to do, is keep beating your head against the wall until you just can't anymore. Because that's called certainty and that's called closure, right? Right. Right.
[18:27] So, if you're lying in bed all day, and your parents aren't, or your family, or your extended family, or whoever, are not coming in and saying, you know, what's going on? Talk to us. Are you sick? What can we do? What's happening? And so on. But instead, if you're lying in bed all day, you're not in a good place, right? Right. And if when you're not in a good place, if your family adds stress and conflict and screaming and cops calling and all that, right, that's a pretty grim diagnosis, right? Yeah.
[19:11] So I think it was time well spent, in a way. As long as you get the closure, then it's worth it. Oh, that's so good. Like, I was kind of feeling bad myself. Like, I was just like, well, why am I doing this, you know? Why? Right, but you were probably asking yourself, like, what the hell's wrong with me? Why am I doing this, right? Yeah, kind of. I mean, I'm like, I watch you attack myself, right? So, I'll just try to find out why. Although, I couldn't really answer that question. Right. Well, I would say that when we do dysfunctional things, and we all do, right? I mean, when we do dysfunctional things, generally it's like a test. And I don't mean a manipulative test, right? I don't mean it's manipulative or bad, but it's kind of like the way bats fly when they can't see. They just put sonar out, and the sound that comes back is the shape of the cave or wherever that they're in, right?
[20:20] Yeah. So what you did is you put out these actions in your family, or in this case, inaction, right? Lying in bed all day, no job, no future, no hope, no plan, whatever, right?
[20:41] And you're putting something out there into your environment. And what you're doing, I would theorize, again, you can let me know if this makes any sense or not, but what you're doing is trying to get a map of where you are and who you're with, right? And I'm not saying you didn't have any idea or anything, but a real final map, right? Right. No, no, no parent should let his or her child lie in bed all day and not help them. Right. Right. Right. I mean, this is interesting because like last night, Isabella had a few little red spots on her leg. It didn't seem like a rash and we took it to emergency. Right. Right. Right. Because that's what parents do. Right. If they're children, and these can be adult children, because when Isabelle is 20, I'll be like 900 years old. So I'll hopefully still have some useful stuff to tell her about being in her 20s. Right. Yeah. So that's what parents do. Right. That they're older and they know better. Actually, I'm 18 now, and they have nothing to do with me. It doesn't matter what I do. a good luck girlfriend you know they don't care.
[22:02] Right well it's not true that they don't care right because if they they would you don't scream at people you don't care about right.
[22:13] Yeah yeah you just i mean if you don't care you just yeah like there's there's a billion people in india i don't care about and they don't care about me so we don't call each other up and yell at each other right right and and when i say it's not that they don't care they obviously don't care about you you don't scream at people that you really care about there's no love in that there's no tortured attachment there's no caring that's misdirected i mean that's just crappy shitty awful behavior, right? It's just woefully destructive, right? I mean, in intimate relationships, particularly in family relationships, and particularly when there's a power disparity, you need the very lightest touch. A tiny, tiny light touch is all that's needed because when you're close to people, particularly in a family, you have so much power over them.
[23:06] And they have so much power over you because you're so close, right? I mean, I'm completely vulnerable in the face of my wife, right? I mean, if she were to get mad at me, if she even frowns at me, it's like, oh, God, it's huge, right? And if she were to ever yell at me, which I can't imagine, but if she did, I would just completely short circuit because we're so close, right? Right. Families live, we live with our families and with our lovers and to some degree with our closest friends. We live with our lips pressed against each other's ears, right? Yeah. And yelling. Yeah, yelling is a kind of erasure. It's a way of turning somebody into an atomized ghost. And we need such a light, light touch when we're close to people. And a lot of people are heavy-handed, swinging clubs and so on, right? Which is insane given how close you are.
[24:08] So, I would say, as a theory, you didn't want to go, and who would? God, I mean, I have such sympathy. I hope that I can get that across to you. I mean, it is such a horrible, awful, difficult, wretched, wretched decision to have to be faced with at any age, let alone your age. And I just, I hope you understand, I just have huge, huge, huge sympathy for the situation that you're in. It is terrible. It is disastrous. You will get through it. You will be a stronger person. You will find the happiness that you couldn't if you stayed, but it is not how anybody should ever have to grow. And I'm so sorry about the situation that you're in. And you didn't want to leave. You wanted something to change in your family, or you needed confirmation, to put it more accurately, you needed confirmation that it wasn't going to change so that you could leave, because once you left, there's no going back. Right. Does this make any sense at all? Oh, yeah. I didn't even think about this. Thank you. Thank you so much. Well, and this is part about trusting your instincts, right? Yeah. Right? If you're staying in a dangerous situation, it's because you're doing two things. You're gathering the strength to leave, and you're getting closure about the need to.
[25:38] Yeah, I'm getting an idea of just how dangerous it is. Like, you know, if a tiger is running at me, I should realize that it's a tiger or something like that. Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. And, you know, the only way to escape a predator is to bare your throat to it and see what it does. And if it doesn't attack you, but instead becomes kind, then you can fix things. And if it doesn't, then you'd have to get out, right? But that's the terrifying thing that you have to do. And in a way, I would say that given some of the family stuff that you've talked about with me, you sort of lying in your bed every day was not an aggressive thing, right? Because you're screaming and cops and, you know, the violence and so on, right? But you were just lying there and seeing what would happen, right? You've got your finger on the pulse of the whole house when you're lying there in your bed, right?
[26:42] Yeah. That's an interesting way to put it. Of course it makes sense because if I interact at all, it's not good. Right. So what happens if I'm just sad? If I'm not yelling, if there's no fighting, there's no screaming, there's no conflict, what happens if I'm just sad? What happens if I'm not contributing to the conflict?
[27:11] Yeah. And what they do is they're like, you're not contributing to the family. Why don't you do chores or something, you know? I didn't even do those. But, yeah, I mean, that makes sense. That's it.
[27:36] So I'll just and I'll keep having my pulse on here until I have enough time to leave.
[27:44] Yeah I mean and this is in no way meant to echo your experience right but I just I was reminded of something when, my mom basically dragged us to Canada right when we were sort of hitting I was like 10 or 11 years old and my brother was a little older and she moved us to Canada to start fresh, right? No matter where you go, there you are, right? There's no such thing as starting fresh, right? You can go to Mars and you're still the same person as when you left, right? But for a while, we stayed with my uncle in Whitby. And I slept in like a little room off by the basement. And in the morning, I was just I was not happy to be there. You know, it was a weird household and as a new country, and I didn't know any of the kids. And this was like my, I don't know, seventh school in seven years. I was just, I was just irritated and didn't want to be there and I was unhappy. And I so clearly remember climbing up the stairs, these ratty 70s carpeted stairs from this little basement cubby I was sleeping in up to where people were having breakfast. And I remember just grumbling to myself and I say good morning to everyone. And I don't want to say good morning to everyone, but it's a lot less work to just say good morning to these goddamn people than it is to.
[29:10] Not say it and then have everyone say oh what's the matter with you right why are you so unhappy right and and i just i had this whole grumbling i was like a 90 year old man in a walker you know like i was just grumbling oh god damn government i get suspenders up to my nipples and everything right like i was like this 900 year old man in the body of a 10 year old boy and i was just grumbling and unhappy and i didn't and i would come up and say good morning to everyone but i I wouldn't be effusive and I would be unhappy. My head would be low and I'd eat my cereal staring into the plate and so on. And I still remember they had this – this is irrelevant or whatever. I remember they had this dog, this collie.
[29:50] And I just remember thinking, oh, man, wouldn't it just be great to be a dog? I would so much love to be a dog rather than a human being. You get taken on walks. You get to run outside. You just get to laze around and lie in a pool of sunshine and have a nap and then somebody's filled your food bowl and like what a wonderful life that would be compared to, you know, being dragged all over the world and going to different schools and not knowing anyone and not, you know, because every time you go to a new school, I mean, they're always on some goddamn different lesson plan, right? Going from public school to private. So, I was always like confused and baffled by what was going on, right? And then in Canada, of course, everyone had already taken a couple of years of French and they jammed me in a French class, right? So it was all just exhausting and stupid. And I've thought about this in the years since. And I think the reason that I was saying all of that was I was basically just trying to map out whether anyone gave a living rat shit about me at all.
[30:51] Wow. Like, was I just a piece of fucking luggage to be dragged around in silence and fed? And, you know, well, he's got to have some place to sleep. Let's throw some cushions down in the basement. You know, like, was I just a piece of baggage? Or did anybody have any concern about the fact that I wasn't happy? Now, it's dangerous because if you say, I'm really not happy here, people will say, well, that's your fault. And the reason you're not happy is you have a bad attitude. And by the way, here's a bunch of chores that you should do. And of course, you're not happy. You're lazy. And so then you end up feeling worse, right?
[31:28] Yeah. And there's only so much bad you can feel as a kid, right? There's a limit.
[31:39] And so you can't openly say, I'm not happy, because then you're going to be lectured to and humiliated and insulted and blah, blah, blah, right? And yet at the same time, you can't be happy because that gives them a victory that you don't want to give them, right? Right. So you get stuck in this null zone, right, where you're unhappy, but you can't be openly unhappy.
[32:04] Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And the difference here, I think, was that you pulled a Gandhi, right? I what? You pulled a Gandhi, right? Oh, that's how I pulled a Gandhi. Yeah, you just, you know, you shaved your head, you wore a turban on your ass, and you basically just, you know, you put down your tools, right? Yeah. Yeah. To see what would happen. Yeah, that's awesome. I'm going to remember that. And it's good. I mean, the reason we're talking about this, what's done is done, right? But it's for the future, right? That when you feel that, like I get it, it's overwhelming what has to come next. And you're, you know, like all of us, right? If you're in a plane that's going down and you're only going to jump When you're absolutely sure that it's not going to hit the water or it's not going to, I don't know, come coasting down in some snowy field or something, right? Like when it's going straight towards that mountain, then you'll jump, right?
[33:22] And we don't want to jump too soon because then, you know, jumping is risky, right? And we don't want to jump too late because then there's no point, right? So, the timing is tough. And I think that's something else that you needed to get from your family in terms of knowledge, in terms of figuring out who they were and how they would react if you weren't yelling at them or if you weren't doing something that was going to give them an excuse. Like, what if I just sit here? What is going to happen? And you knew, but I don't think you knew knew. Okay.
[33:59] Now, that's all just my crap theories, right? So tell me if this makes any sense or if it's just complete, like, we'll start again or what. No, I like it. I like it a lot. It just makes sense because it's what I was doing. and I don't have any motivation to be sitting around. Like, none that I could figure out. Right, because that was your question. Why do I have motivation now when I didn't back then, like a week or two ago? Right. Well, because you now know, I think. I mean, with the screaming, the cop calling, I mean, you now, right? Right. Yeah, beyond a doubt. Right. And that, I tell you, that is really, really, really smart to do because it means that you're less likely to bring the baggage to the next thing in your life.
[35:03] Gee, this, uh, there's actually, I could apply this to a lot of other things that I've done. Um, do tell, I mean, lecture me. That seems only fair. Okay. Well, I've done this with some friends and even just some strangers. Um, I kind of pull back and, and I don't, I don't know. I would have to observe it a little more, but, um, like, like with, um, a few friends that I've left or my cousin, I just kind of let them, I tell them, okay, look, I want to talk to you. I've been seeing you very often, you know, what's going on? And they'll say, oh, I'm so busy or something like that, right?
[35:49] And after a few months, you know, I'll just like pull back and like, you can call me. I'm always available now. you know I'm not doing anything and they haven't called me and they don't come over my cousin doesn't call me you know, that kind of helped me get the feeling that I'm like well why bother you know, from the one I was calling or whatever yeah that's pulling a gandy right yeah, you know what happens if, I don't call this person back right I mean, I've had friendships of years, you know, just vanish because I didn't call them back one time.
[36:41] And that's, you know, fuck, that's good to know. It's shitty, but it's good to know. So you don't, you know, keep pouring your heart into the ocean, right? Yeah. Yeah.
[36:52] It's sad, but it's good. It is. It's sad, but it's good. And to contrast this, right, I mean, if I said, you know, I want to leave you, I mean, I'd be like ripping my own hair out and what's left in my heart. And, you know, what can I do? I'll do anything. I'll go to therapy. I'll like whatever you need. You know, I'll bend over backwards. I'll become a yogic flyer. You know what, I'll become whatever you need me to do, I will do. And in order to avoid that, right, I mean, that would be, I would do anything, right? If she said, well, that's it, I want us to go and live in a monastery in Tibet, it'd be like, hey, I'll stop packing, because where are you going? I'm going, and we'll work it out somehow. And that devotion to someone whose presence and whose joy and whose intelligence and whose warmth and whose friendship and whose love and whose beauty is as necessary to you as the air you breathe, it's a cliche, but it's true. When you compare that to the bullshit, transient, spiderweb-thin interactions of most people, once you get that.
[38:02] There's no temptation in going back to this just crap thing where everybody's on tiptoes around landmines and if you say one thing wrong, you can be banished forever. I mean, those kinds of tenuous, gossamer, thread-thin relationships, which aren't even really relationships in my opinion.
[38:26] You don't want to have those around. You don't want to have people around who are going to let you lie around in bed all day and end up calling the cops on you. Or people who, you know, something goes mildly awry and they just, they don't call.
[38:43] Yeah, or they just, you know, whenever you're around and they act like everything's awesome. Um but then if you don't put into it then they don't ask hey what's up you know right or if you you know and you know if they ask what's up it's perfunctory and if you say not much but you're sad they don't say well it seems that you're sad tell me more i mean the amount of the amount of oh it's so crazy the amount of emotional energy that people invest in their relationships is in general, in general, I'm painting with a wide brush here, it's really pitiful. You know, like friends should follow you to the end of the earth. Friends should defend you before the hellhounds of Satan. Friends should be bound to you with hoops of steely virtue and courage and regard.
[39:37] And they just tend to be huffy and offensive and distant and transitory and unreliable and and so on and and anyway i just sort of wanted to put that out there right because you were really testing the threads of this family and finding that the only thread that's there is a whip jeez i'm having so many light bulbs coming on i'm a christmas tree right now go on go on tell me.
[40:05] Oh i think i've done this once like so many in just so many ways i'm trying to figure out if i I exist to other people, pretty much. Right. Right. Yeah.
[40:19] Right. And, you know, if you exist to other people, that's a fantastic way of putting it. And really what you're trying to figure out, I would say, is do they exist for themselves, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because they have to adjust to know that I exist. Yeah. Well, I can't tell you anything. You're racing ahead of me, and that's fantastic, because you have the brain of a 12 craze on steroids. So, yeah, you got it all.
[40:51] Yeah, this helps a lot. Right. So, what we often look at as dysfunction within ourselves is often an incredible breakthrough of a new life, right? And this, you know, this all taking theory and putting it into really gritty, bloody, sometimes practice all started for me when I couldn't sleep. Like, it's almost 10 years ago now. I just never had, I was a very light sleeper as a kid and had a lot of time awake and didn't sleep well and was tired all the way through my teenage years because stupid school start ridiculously early and nobody gives a shit about tired kids, right? But then in my 20s, I was fine, and then, man, I just couldn't sleep. And of course, you say, oh, insomnia, that's terrible, that's bad, that's bad, that's bad. But looking back, that's what happens when you wake up, right? It's hard. But I sure as hell, although it was hell for like 18 months.
[41:53] If I had a religious bone in my body, I would put an altar to that insomnia and pray before it every day. Because now I see where it's led me in life. And we're very quick to judge because we're trained to, most of us, right? We're very quick to judge I did something dysfunctional and that is a dysfunctional thing. But I wouldn't be so sure. I'd say, oh, I lay in bed. Why did I have no motivation and so on? But you did have motivation.
[42:20] It was just not for what you thought, right? Yeah. Yeah.
[42:28] Yeah, yeah, totally. Now, I mean, is there anything else that you wanted to talk about? Do you feel that this is a useful way of perhaps approaching what occurred for you over the week or two? Yeah, this is perfect. This is exactly what I needed. I'm very glad. And I do apologize for taking so long. It's not because I didn't want to talk or anything. Thing i it's it's so ridiculously difficult to plan with with a baby who has no discernible schedule at the moment every time i plan for something it seems almost impossible to to achieve it and i wanted to make sure that i had some real concentrated time so she just went down and uh so i'm glad that we had this chance to talk but i am i'm very sorry that it took so long, oh it's all right i understand um so uh if anybody else wanted to talk like you know dan Dan, if you wanted to say something.
[43:31] Say that you agree with her. That's usually good. Yeah, I agree. Excellent. Excellent. Good job. Okay. I mean, nobody wants to talk about anything. Is there anybody who wanted to add anything about the conversation that we've had? The other people who are listening or anything that came up?
[44:01] I think we've just blown their minds. So, okay, I will stop here then. And thanks so much. Sorry for those who are in the chat room. I just, no, you can't hear this. When you do hear this, I just had a sense that we were ending up. So thanks very much. Do keep us posted, of course. I know that you have the good wishes of the community in this. You certainly have my best wishes and deepest sympathies for what you're going through. It is a very difficult thing. You will get through it with flying colors because you're freaking brilliant and you will be a stronger and better person and you will have the honor, which is not given to every generation. You will have the honor of turning the tide of an extremely dysfunctional family history. Eventually, somebody has to put up their hand and stop the biggest, ugliest, and bloodiest wheel in the world, which is that which runs between the generations and over the souls of the children. And if you are the heroine who stands up and do that, which you are doing, you will take that pride through the rest of your life and there will be nothing that will ever take that away from you. So I think you should just be enormously proud of the work that you're doing. Thank you so much, Jeff. I'm so excited.
[45:19] Thanks, Rachel. all right I will send you a copy of this and you can let me know what you think and we will talk to you soon okay all the best bye.
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