Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: This episode contains discussion of suicide. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 1: So many stories half told and half heard, so many
Speaker 1: grim intimations, so many obfuscating euphemisms. We were a classic
Speaker 1: New England family, incapable of discussing such things openly, everything
Speaker 1: enveloped in a haze of mystery and shame. There was
Speaker 1: nothing I could do with the questions that I had,
Speaker 1: the unmanageable anger and fear and nameless other feelings. I
Speaker 1: was having no place to put it all, so I
Speaker 1: kept it inside. When you can't talk about something, you're
Speaker 1: prevented from naming and describing it, from making it real.
Speaker 1: And what you can't name and describe and make real
Speaker 1: becomes infinite and limitless and impossible to decipher or resolve,
Speaker 1: because it can band to fill your whole life and
Speaker 1: self to its tiniest corners, or it can shrink to nothing,
Speaker 1: nothing being the size of things that are not real.
Speaker 1: You are alone with it, with yourself, with this unsolvable problem.
Speaker 2: That's Isaac Fitzgerald, frequent contributor to The Today Show and
Speaker 2: author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Dirt bag, Massachusetts.
Speaker 2: Isaac's is a story about the intricate dance between shame
Speaker 2: and secrecy, and the complex process of putting our burdens down,
Speaker 2: then picking them up again, and onward we go, doing
Speaker 2: our best, trying, failing, failing better. I'm Danny Shapiro and
Speaker 2: this is family secrets, the secrets that are kept from us,
Speaker 2: the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we
Speaker 2: keep from ourselves.
Speaker 1: So my parents were married when they had me, just
Speaker 1: to different people. And that is a line that I've
Speaker 1: used throughout my life, and it is a line that
Speaker 1: I learned very early in my life. As I grew older,
Speaker 1: I did get to know my parents better and I
Speaker 1: did get to hear more of their history. They met
Speaker 1: at Theology School, of all places, to have an affair.
Speaker 1: My mother was married to a Unitarian minister. My father
Speaker 1: was I think, a very smart man, but a bit
Speaker 1: at sea, a bit lost, and had gone to school
Speaker 1: maybe to try and find an anchor of some sort,
Speaker 1: and instead they found each other. My mom's family could
Speaker 1: be a bit harsh, would be one way to put it.
Speaker 1: Is a very common New England family. Could be another
Speaker 1: way to put it, which is to say a little
Speaker 1: withholding a little judgmental. My father came from an Irish family,
Speaker 1: a little more open, a little more joyful, but his
Speaker 1: parents had both been mill workers, my mother's parents farmers,
Speaker 1: and so they both came from little meets. When they met,
Speaker 1: fell in love, had an affair. Eventually, my mother told
Speaker 1: my father that it couldn't go on. She cut it off.
Speaker 1: They both had young children, my half brother and my
Speaker 1: half sister, and not long after that my mom realized
Speaker 1: that she was pregnant with me. So the way that
Speaker 1: I viewed the landscape of my childhood for many years
Speaker 1: was that I was a bomb that blew up my parents' lives,
Speaker 1: and not just their lives, but the lives of their partner,
Speaker 1: the lives of their children, my half siblings. I felt
Speaker 1: like I'd really come in and wrecked a lot of things.
Speaker 1: And it took me a lifetime to recognize that that
Speaker 1: kind of shameful version of the story that I held
Speaker 1: with me for so long was, of course, not the
Speaker 1: full story, and not the way that even my parents
Speaker 1: would describe it, That my siblings would describe it, even
Speaker 1: their partners would describe it. So that was their story,
Speaker 1: and then for me my childhood. The earliest years on
Speaker 1: paper would be the ones you might think were the worst,
Speaker 1: which is both of my parents kind of rejected from
Speaker 1: their families, eventually telling their partners the truth, didn't have
Speaker 1: a home and said they turned to the Catholic Worker.
Speaker 1: If you're unfamiliar with the Catholic Worker started by Dorothy Day,
Speaker 1: it is a socialist, really believing in the Bible, give
Speaker 1: the shirt off your back to help your neighbor. Organization
Speaker 1: much less Vatican, much less you know, opulence, and much more.
Speaker 1: How can we help one another? And that is the situation.
Speaker 1: I was raised and raised in an unhaf shelter, eventually
Speaker 1: making our way to a place called John Larry House,
Speaker 1: which is kind of like a halfway home run by
Speaker 1: the Catholic Worker. You look at that on paper and
Speaker 1: you'd think, oh, those must have been the hard years.
Speaker 1: But in this interesting way, those were the happiest years
Speaker 1: of my life.
Speaker 2: So those years, you know, up until age eight, you're
Speaker 2: living in these facilities that are under the auspices of
Speaker 2: the Catholic Worker. Correct, does it feel like a community? Literally?
Speaker 2: The landscape? What was it like?
Speaker 1: You know? I remember this big sign that I'm pretty sure,
Speaker 1: said like no drugs, no drinking, no violence. There were
Speaker 1: people from of course, all different types of backgrounds, but
Speaker 1: you had altercations. Absolutely difficult place to have a kid.
Speaker 2: Were there other kids around.
Speaker 1: Not many, every once in a while, but for the
Speaker 1: most part is a very adult place. But the other
Speaker 1: aspect of it is it was this incredible community and
Speaker 1: people for the most part. Of course, you had your
Speaker 1: moments of sharpness or violence, but for the most part,
Speaker 1: what you had were people watching out for one another,
Speaker 1: were people taking care of one another. I was a
Speaker 1: very talkative kid. I was a very inquisitive kid. I'm
Speaker 1: sure at times, especially somebody with a hangover or just
Speaker 1: having a really rough day, I'm sure I annoyed the
Speaker 1: heck out of them. But for every one of those moments,
Speaker 1: there were so many people who tried to be charming
Speaker 1: to me, who would tell me stories, who would try
Speaker 1: to entertain me with magic tricks or long tales. There
Speaker 1: was one guy named Albert. He always called me the Captain.
Speaker 1: I don't know why he called me the Captain, but
Speaker 1: I know that I loved it so so much, And
Speaker 1: so it was also this really joyous, wonderful place. I
Speaker 1: mean the food. It wasn't going to win any awards,
Speaker 1: but there was a lot of it, and everybody was
Speaker 1: sharing and everybody lended a hand. And that's what I
Speaker 1: really remember. And I remember my parents very early on
Speaker 1: went from this situation where they were there because they
Speaker 1: didn't have a place to go. But the more they
Speaker 1: became involved with the community, the stronger they got. And
Speaker 1: that was something that I even as a child, I
Speaker 1: could just kind of feel that, and so that place
Speaker 1: was very very special to me.
Speaker 2: And how was your parents' marriage during those years, How
Speaker 2: did that period of time kind of impact them?
Speaker 1: Well, so that's I mean, this is the thing. They
Speaker 1: were trying to get their feet under them. They were
Speaker 1: both in their early to mid thirties, and through the
Speaker 1: Catholic worker they eventually got jobs, and then they eventually
Speaker 1: got better jobs. And so it gets to the point
Speaker 1: where my mother's working at the Cathedral the Holy Cross
Speaker 1: there in Boston and my father gets a job at
Speaker 1: a Catholic school teacher. Incredible. It's an incredible moment and
Speaker 1: something I think they both felt very proud of. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, you know, I'm not blowing anybody
Speaker 1: away by saying being poor is very very hard. Getting
Speaker 1: on your feet is very very hard. Especially you can
Speaker 1: have the support of the Catholic worker. But when you're
Speaker 1: lacking support from family and maybe you're feeling shameful about
Speaker 1: everything that's happened, you know, life can be confusing and
Speaker 1: can be complex. So their marriage was already I would
Speaker 1: argue difficult. I think they were really thrown together in
Speaker 1: all these different ways, and one of those ways was
Speaker 1: me like, they made this commitment to stay together and
Speaker 1: figure it out. And so there are arguments. There were
Speaker 1: difficult times, but for the most part, even with the difficulties,
Speaker 1: those were the good years. And then it's when me
Speaker 1: and my mother moved to north central Massachusetts that things
Speaker 1: really took a turn.
Speaker 2: Right. You're right about this very It's sweet and touching
Speaker 2: and sort of funny and ironic all at once. But
Speaker 2: the place that you were living was not far from
Speaker 2: Fenway Park in Boston, and your father would get the
Speaker 2: you know, the cheapest, cheapest, cheapest seats, you know, way
Speaker 2: high up, and then you'd find your way down to
Speaker 2: the really good seats that people had that were empty.
Speaker 2: And then if an usher came along and checked your tickets,
Speaker 2: your father would say, oh please, it's you know, if
Speaker 2: nobody's using these seats, it's my son's first game. And
Speaker 2: you write, I mean I must have had one hundred
Speaker 2: first games at Fenway Park. And there was something so
Speaker 2: I mean, on the one hand, your father's you know,
Speaker 2: was a man of faith. He's doing something that's like
Speaker 2: not so not so kosher, shall we say, And on
Speaker 2: the other hand, it's this very loving thing to do
Speaker 2: that he just constantly wants to have. You have that experience.
Speaker 1: It's a moment filled of love, and that's why I
Speaker 1: remember it so warmly. But yeah, it was this absolute
Speaker 1: act of love on his part, and that is something
Speaker 1: that I credit both of my parents. They had tough
Speaker 1: decisions to make. They failed in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: I don't want to shy away from that, but they
Speaker 1: also had these moments of brilliance. And I think that's
Speaker 1: what makes families so complex, especially when you want to
Speaker 1: portray it with all its dirty parts, but also all
Speaker 1: its good parts too. You know, these are human beings
Speaker 1: that are doing their best for all their faults and
Speaker 1: all the struggles that they had. When I was young,
Speaker 1: another thing they gave me was just a love of books,
Speaker 1: a love of literature. No matter where we lived. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of the furniture we'd find on the street
Speaker 1: or whatever, but they always made sure that our books
Speaker 1: came with us. They were taking me to the library
Speaker 1: whenever they weren't working, whenever they had the chance to.
Speaker 1: They weren't giving me this cookie cutter, happy suburban childhood,
Speaker 1: but they wanted to make sure that I at least
Speaker 1: felt won the power of education, but to the power
Speaker 1: of imagination. And so you bring up my dad being
Speaker 1: a man of faith, which is absolutely the truth of
Speaker 1: my mother too, a woman of faith. But in that moment,
Speaker 1: I think for he loved a little bit of a story.
Speaker 1: He loved a little bit of an imagination of a
Speaker 1: little bit of a con in a way, especially you know,
Speaker 1: when there was nobody that was actually going to get
Speaker 1: hurt by it. And that was that fun way part story.
Speaker 2: Isaac's parents are indeed bound by their faith, their faith
Speaker 2: in Catholicism as well as their faith in literature. These
Speaker 2: become obsessions for them, and in turn, they become obsessions
Speaker 2: for Isaac too. This can happen when parents are hard
Speaker 2: to hold onto. It's almost as if their obsessions and
Speaker 2: values become proxies for themselves, so Isaac holds on tight.
Speaker 2: Things change for Isaac and his family when, at age eight,
Speaker 2: he is mugged at gunpoint.
Speaker 1: I was taking a shortcut home that of course, I
Speaker 1: was told one hundred times not to take. The person
Speaker 1: who was mugging me apologizes, and at the time, I
Speaker 1: remember feeling like I was being really brave. And then
Speaker 1: I looked down and without even knowing it, I'd wet
Speaker 1: myself and that's that's why the person apologized. I have
Speaker 1: other memories of that time period. There was a Halloween
Speaker 1: where a woman got in the head with a bottle.
Speaker 1: There you know, somebody had been shot on the front steps.
Speaker 1: There was blood on the sidewalk. My parents had been
Speaker 1: working to get their feet under them, and I think
Speaker 1: they were starting to feel My father was becoming more
Speaker 1: secure in his role as an educator. My mother was
Speaker 1: feeling more secure in the role that she'd had at
Speaker 1: the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. She'd learned these skills,
Speaker 1: she knew how she could apply them to other jobs.
Speaker 1: I think they started to realize we want to be
Speaker 1: in a better place. But like everything I'm saying here, right,
Speaker 1: there's the romantic version. They're arguing a lot more. And
Speaker 1: I think my mom maybe needed a break, and so
Speaker 1: we moved to north central mass which is right next
Speaker 1: to her parents.
Speaker 2: Right, and so it being right next to her parents' place,
Speaker 2: you know, in one world, could be a great thing,
Speaker 2: but that in fact comes with a lot of challenges.
Speaker 1: My mother's mother was a very harsh and critical person,
Speaker 1: and my mother had done everything right in my grandmother's
Speaker 1: eyes up until when she didn't. And that was the
Speaker 1: affair that was deciding to leave her first partner trying
Speaker 1: to start this family. She had a notion, which is
Speaker 1: you were cheating. He was cheating. This isn't going to work.
Speaker 1: You should have stuck with your first marriage. And she
Speaker 1: let those criticisms be known. At the same time, I
Speaker 1: think my mother was questioning a lot of where she
Speaker 1: was in life. I think when you're in your again
Speaker 1: it was early thirties to mid thirties to approaching forty,
Speaker 1: you start to wonder, have I made the right decisions?
Speaker 1: What's going on? We have a society that treats women poorly,
Speaker 1: treats mothers poorly, and is very judgmental of them. And
Speaker 1: you want to let's not forget we're talking now about
Speaker 1: the eighties, the early nineties. I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: of pressure that she was feeling, and so we moved
Speaker 1: to this farmhouse that had no heat. There was a
Speaker 1: cast iron wood stove in the middle. And my mother
Speaker 1: doesn't really know anyone in the area, so all she
Speaker 1: hasked is to go over and talk to her parents,
Speaker 1: who basically are telling her all the mistakes that she's
Speaker 1: made over and over and over again and again. I
Speaker 1: was young, I was eight years old. But you can
Speaker 1: feel when the only other person in the house starts
Speaker 1: to go dark.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back. I think absorbs a great deal
Speaker 2: of his grandmother's disapproval. After all, if she's unhappy about
Speaker 2: his mother's choices, which began with his parents, it's a
Speaker 2: fair and culminated in his berth. It would be hard
Speaker 2: not to feel that his grandmother disapproves of his very
Speaker 2: existence alone in that desolate farmhouse. The feeling that all
Speaker 2: this is somehow his fault begins to set in.
Speaker 1: I have this very clear memory. My mom once a
Speaker 1: week would go over to her parents' house. I was
Speaker 1: supposed to stay at the house, but I never would,
Speaker 1: and I would kind of sneak over, and I remember
Speaker 1: like looking through a window and she was crying. And
Speaker 1: very soon after that she would start crying in the
Speaker 1: house all the time as well, she would stop getting
Speaker 1: out of bed. There are very very hard years, but
Speaker 1: I just remember realizing that I'm the reason that she said.
Speaker 1: That's how it sat inside me. So my grandmother would
Speaker 1: look at me as scants. My grandmother would be so
Speaker 1: cold to me, and I realized it was because of
Speaker 1: her her dislike for my father, but really it was
Speaker 1: this feeling that I had ruined her daughter, but just
Speaker 1: by existing, and that wasn't something I couldn't fix. I
Speaker 1: did not like sitting with this feeling of worthlessness, so
Speaker 1: I started turning to books because there that would take
Speaker 1: my mind off of everything that was happening their mound well.
Speaker 2: And also I think with books it's not only the
Speaker 2: distraction or this sort of escape into other worlds, but
Speaker 2: also at times a feeling that there are other people
Speaker 2: out there who have also felt some of these things.
Speaker 1: That is exactly right. One of my favorite quotes comes
Speaker 1: from the play The History Boys, and I'm probably not
Speaker 1: going to say correctly here, so part of it for
Speaker 1: not getting word to word. But it's basically like you
Speaker 1: can be reading a book and you can come across
Speaker 1: a line or a thought that is a thought or
Speaker 1: a feeling that you thought only you had had you
Speaker 1: truly you'd never shared it with anyone, and then you
Speaker 1: see it there on the page, and it's like a
Speaker 1: hand comes out of the book and grabs your own.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, you feel less alone in the world.
Speaker 1: And I think that's absolutely right. That is when I
Speaker 1: had a very difficult conversation with my mother. At that point,
Speaker 1: her mental health is starting to deteriorate. She's leaning on
Speaker 1: me more and more. She started talking to me like
Speaker 1: I was a friend, not like a child. She started
Speaker 1: treating me like somebody she could lean on instead of
Speaker 1: take care of.
Speaker 2: But Isaac needs to be taken care of. He's gone
Speaker 2: from city poor to country poor. He misses his father,
Speaker 2: he has a very disapproving set of grandparents, and he
Speaker 2: feels in some way like he doesn't have any right
Speaker 2: to be here at all. He writes, but he can
Speaker 2: feel the trouble, though he can't at the time put
Speaker 2: words to it. Then if there are before and after
Speaker 2: moments in life when you hear something you can't unhear.
Speaker 2: You learn something you can't unlearn. This is one of
Speaker 2: those moments for Isaac. His mother tells him something that
Speaker 2: perhaps no parent should ever tell a child.
Speaker 1: All then forget, we're driving and it must have been
Speaker 1: a warm day, because I remember there was that shimmer
Speaker 1: on the road, you know, where it almost looks like
Speaker 1: the road is turning into water. And she basically tells
Speaker 1: me the story of when my parents met. And they're
Speaker 1: at school and she decides, I'm gonna cut this affair off,
Speaker 1: and they actually went for one last day, would tell
Speaker 1: their partners they were going on retreats for school with
Speaker 1: other people at the school, but of course it was
Speaker 1: just the two of them, and they would go up
Speaker 1: to the White Mountains in New Hampshire and that is
Speaker 1: where they would conduct their affair. And she shared so
Speaker 1: much that I even know the mountain that I was
Speaker 1: conceived on. I know that they were using birth control
Speaker 1: and clearly it didn't take. And she shared with me
Speaker 1: that because she'd broken up afterwards, she decided kind of
Speaker 1: not to talk to my dad for a little bit,
Speaker 1: and she had to decide. She walked me through every
Speaker 1: decision she thought she was like maybe I could tell
Speaker 1: her partner at the time, maybe we could just this
Speaker 1: is your kid. Maybe okay, maybe I tell the truth,
Speaker 1: but maybe there's forgiveness there and then she can seers
Speaker 1: her maybe I can have an abortion. And she goes
Speaker 1: so far as telling me that she scheduled the abortion,
Speaker 1: and she got to the clinic and she got to
Speaker 1: the front room and that is when she decided not
Speaker 1: to and she walked out. But then she ended it
Speaker 1: the way she started, and she told me all this,
Speaker 1: this wall of words, its wave of words, and she
Speaker 1: just said, but maybe it would have been for the best.
Speaker 1: And that's what rings in my head. And this is
Speaker 1: the difficult thing you want to talk about. Family secrets
Speaker 1: or secrets we don't tell ourselves, the secrets we don't
Speaker 1: share with other people, but we know are in our
Speaker 1: heart at all times. There's a way where I can
Speaker 1: look at my entire life and we can get to
Speaker 1: the complex relationship with my parents now. But maybe it's
Speaker 1: for the best. That's not wrong. There is a world
Speaker 1: where if she had made that choice, her life might
Speaker 1: have been a lot move there. And I know if
Speaker 1: she was here in this room and I said that,
Speaker 1: she would be so angry at me because I know
Speaker 1: she loves me. I know she loves me, but maybe
Speaker 1: for the best. Maybe that's not the right way to
Speaker 1: put it. But if you want to say, maybe it
Speaker 1: would have been easier, she's probably right. And I didn't
Speaker 1: understand that at eight, of course, but I definitely did
Speaker 1: by the time when I was fourteen, and I was
Speaker 1: able to see that for her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which only contributes to that sense of being the bomb.
Speaker 2: Exactly During this time, Isaac's mother's mental health deteriorates. She
Speaker 2: attempts to take her life a number of times.
Speaker 1: It was just me and her with her very critical
Speaker 1: parents next door, and she was grappling with shame, and
Speaker 1: she didn't have anyone to talk to about it. And
Speaker 1: I didn't know what to do. I mean, I knew
Speaker 1: how to cook spaghettio's. I knew how to try and
Speaker 1: get her out of bed so she could get to
Speaker 1: her job. I knew. I started doing a lot of
Speaker 1: the caretaking. We had a washer, we didn't have a dryer,
Speaker 1: hanging clothes on the clothesline. I just watched, as you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't have the words for at the time, but
Speaker 1: as her mental health deteriorated, and eventually that turned into
Speaker 1: basically kind of crying all the time, or being quiet
Speaker 1: all the time, or not being able to get out
Speaker 1: of bed. Manifested in one time. The memory I have,
Speaker 1: which is so this is you know, not every memory
Speaker 1: we have right as crystal clear. But she was wearing
Speaker 1: a green Champion sweatshirt and she had a knife in
Speaker 1: her hand, and she went to stab herself in the stomach,
Speaker 1: and I remember grabbing her and saying no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no no, and crying. Now, I want to be very clear,
Speaker 1: she didn't cut into her skin. She cut that sweatshirt.
Speaker 1: She cut that sweatshirt, but she was She's having these
Speaker 1: outbursts in these moments. Around this time, my father actually
Speaker 1: does move out, makes the decision to move out. In
Speaker 1: my mind, and things are going to get better, but
Speaker 1: actually they get worse because while he was in the city,
Speaker 1: he had another affair. My mother finds out about it.
Speaker 1: This does not help with the mental health that she's having.
Speaker 1: And even as he comes out, I would argue to
Speaker 1: try and make amends, it's almost like gasoline is added
Speaker 1: to the fire. Now they are fighting constantly. He sees
Speaker 1: what I'm doing with her he sees how I'm trying
Speaker 1: to help her in these ways, but I at one
Speaker 1: point I have to call an ambulance because of the
Speaker 1: suicide attempt. She gets put I get told that she's
Speaker 1: going away for a little while, but she actually gets
Speaker 1: put in a state run facility for a week. It's
Speaker 1: not like we had money or health insurance. This was
Speaker 1: literally the state was just like, all right, we need
Speaker 1: to put this person somewhere else. She gets medication, which
Speaker 1: we think is going to be a good thing. Instead
Speaker 1: at one point, neither of my parents' drink, but I
Speaker 1: find her with an empty bottle of pills and an
Speaker 1: empty bottle of vodka. Now with therapy, I have a
Speaker 1: lot of different ways to look at it, but there's
Speaker 1: one way looking at where I have a lot of
Speaker 1: empathy for her and not do try to hold that.
Speaker 1: But it's also really hard looking back and recognizing that
Speaker 1: the person that was supposed to take care of you
Speaker 1: was not able to take care of themselves. And it's
Speaker 1: hard to know where to put that anger. If you
Speaker 1: put it on the situation, if you put it on
Speaker 1: her parents being so unforgiving or unempathetic, And I just
Speaker 1: remember being very confused.
Speaker 2: Right, because it has to go somewhere, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it starts almost low level, but exactly what you're saying,
Speaker 1: where you know, this question of where do I put
Speaker 1: this anger? And I don't even know how to put
Speaker 1: words to it, and so it's very easy to just
Speaker 1: put it on oneself. And it starts very low level risk.
Speaker 1: Taking my school again, it's a very rural part of
Speaker 1: north central Massachusetts. So what you have is a regional school.
Speaker 1: It's not just a regional high school. It's a regional
Speaker 1: high school in middle school. Because there's just aren't enough
Speaker 1: kids in the area. So these four towns poured into
Speaker 1: this place. So at the age of twelve, I'm all
Speaker 1: of a sudden in the same building with kid two eighteen,
Speaker 1: and of course you're not supposed to go down that hallway,
Speaker 1: but who cares. I immediately make friends with a lot
Speaker 1: of older kids. By the age of twelve, I'm drinking.
Speaker 1: I'm doing drugs, and you know, it's weed was constant.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't just weed. It was mushrooms, it was acid,
Speaker 1: it was anything we could get our hands on. And
Speaker 1: I loved it, almost like books. It was this escape
Speaker 1: and I didn't have the words for it back then.
Speaker 1: But it's very clear that I wanted to hurt myself
Speaker 1: in certain ways. I wanted to be self destructive. All
Speaker 1: of a sudden, I was funnier, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I was quicker, all of a sudden, I was more
Speaker 1: open to talking instead of really curling into myself. So
Speaker 1: it was something I enjoyed as well. But there were
Speaker 1: also Yeah, very early on, there was that is I
Speaker 1: would argue. Around the age of twelve is when I
Speaker 1: start to grapple with the fact that I it's such
Speaker 1: a hard thing for me even say still, but I
Speaker 1: might want to die. The idea of not being around
Speaker 1: sometimes sounds not just pretty but very good. I mean,
Speaker 1: what's interesting is I feel almost embarrassed to say it
Speaker 1: because it's so childlike. But again, I was a child.
Speaker 1: I had a lot of knives. At one point, I
Speaker 1: put them all in a board and I would take
Speaker 1: it under my bed, out from under my bed. I
Speaker 1: kept it under my bed. I'd take it out from
Speaker 1: under my bed. I'd be like, well, if I roll
Speaker 1: out of bed, I'll fall my knives and I'll die.
Speaker 1: So dramatic, but so much like I just didn't know
Speaker 1: what to do. I would drink until blackout, and I
Speaker 1: hope that I didn't wake up the drinking and driving
Speaker 1: that was happening in that area even before I had
Speaker 1: a license, and it wasn't happening just in this bubble.
Speaker 1: Because this happened the area that I lived in, Teenagers
Speaker 1: died from drinking and driving accidents all the time. I
Speaker 1: would know people, I guess. In one way, that's me
Speaker 1: saying it was almost something I was hopeful for. Another
Speaker 1: way to me saying this is something I wasn't the
Speaker 1: only kid in the area that I was having these issues.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, it's kind of it's a perfect storm in
Speaker 2: an area like that because kids are driving at really
Speaker 2: young ages and before they have licenses. Also, the driving
Speaker 2: age is younger, and there's tremendous boredom, and there's also weapons.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's, you know what a mess. But there's
Speaker 2: this other aspect of it too, which is and it
Speaker 2: makes so much sense emotionally. But you have all of
Speaker 2: this body shame, you know, you have this body image shame,
Speaker 2: and you right, we're all in our own personal hells,
Speaker 2: you know when it comes to body shame. But I
Speaker 2: think that that feeling is so sort of fundamental in
Speaker 2: terms of self loathing, Like what else could possibly be
Speaker 2: as absolutely clear as loathing what you see in the mirror,
Speaker 2: you know, when it comes to self loathing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and also just about taking up space. My mother
Speaker 1: had been bigger when she was younger, and it was
Speaker 1: yet another thing that her mother was hyper critical of,
Speaker 1: and I started to inherit that too. We got out
Speaker 1: to this house, I had so much time alone, and
Speaker 1: now I can name it. Now I know what it is.
Speaker 1: I was anxious. I was crawling out of my skin
Speaker 1: with anxiety. And so I turned, of course, like we're
Speaker 1: talking about to drugs, to alcohol, but also to eat.
Speaker 1: I would pour sugar on top of bowls of cheerios
Speaker 1: and just scarf them down. I became an anxious eater.
Speaker 1: And we're also, like we were just talking about you
Speaker 1: set a perfect store in the area. We're talking about
Speaker 1: the lowest income county and all of Massachusetts, and we're
Speaker 1: talking about a rural area where a lot of the
Speaker 1: food is not healthy. It's just a lot of starches
Speaker 1: and a lot of let's just buy the cheapest thing
Speaker 1: that we can afford, and I hope that gets us through.
Speaker 1: And so I started to grow. But again, there was
Speaker 1: already so much resentment for myself, and now that they're
Speaker 1: there was more of me. I wanted to be small,
Speaker 1: I wanted to disappear. I was thinking that I didn't
Speaker 1: maybe want to exist, so to actually be this bigger body.
Speaker 1: I started to resent myself for it so so much,
Speaker 1: not even knowing that I was doing the exact same
Speaker 1: thing that my mother had done years and years before.
Speaker 1: And of course that was part of her anxiety too,
Speaker 1: is she had spent her whole life getting away from
Speaker 1: this area, and I think she felt like such a
Speaker 1: such a tremendous sadness about finding herself back there and
Speaker 1: watching me be a child in that same.
Speaker 2: Area, which of course never gets spoken about.
Speaker 1: No, that's I mean, that's so much of this comes
Speaker 1: down to people not communicating with one another.
Speaker 2: Will be back in a moment with more family secrets.
Speaker 2: When New Year's Eve of nineteen ninety nine comes along,
Speaker 2: many of us are scared the world as we know
Speaker 2: it might end at midnight when we enter as the
Speaker 2: new Millennium. But not Isaac and his friends. They're not scared.
Speaker 2: They're psyched.
Speaker 1: We were excited. Yeah, Clean Slate, and we couldn't wait
Speaker 1: for it, because why not restart look at all the
Speaker 1: things that were going wrong. And one of the movies
Speaker 1: that were very drawn to, which was that same kind
Speaker 1: of time period, was Fight Club, and it was this
Speaker 1: idea and let's we don't even talk about it, like
Speaker 1: the surprise surprise, A bunch of boys got together and
Speaker 1: beat each other up and have us quite a bit.
Speaker 1: But what we really loved about that film we probably
Speaker 1: couldn't have articulated at the time, was it ends with
Speaker 1: this wiping of the debt, this idea that maybe society
Speaker 1: could restart. And we thought that would be tremendous, because
Speaker 1: when you're on the bottom, that's what you're always hoping for,
Speaker 1: a reshuffling. You want to see if you can get
Speaker 1: delta better hand This hand sucks. What happens even let's
Speaker 1: say all these other these things that we've gotten used to,
Speaker 1: but we were used to it that they weren't helping us.
Speaker 1: What if they got wiped away.
Speaker 2: In the midst of this teenage nihilism, something extraordinary happens.
Speaker 2: Isaac gets into trouble at school for hitting another kid
Speaker 2: in the face with a math book, and he's suspended,
Speaker 2: but he can't stay home alone, so he rides out
Speaker 2: his suspension in the school library. He starts helping out
Speaker 2: the librarians and they notice that he's suffering. They step
Speaker 2: in and try to help. They tell him about a
Speaker 2: nearby boarding school that sometimes has scholarships and financial aid
Speaker 2: available for local kids. Isaac applies and sure enough, he
Speaker 2: gets a free ride.
Speaker 1: There was many people at the school who kind of
Speaker 1: rallied around me and could tell maybe things were not
Speaker 1: great at home, because at that point my parents were
Speaker 1: constantly fighting. The violence had spread. My mother and I
Speaker 1: had been in altercations. My father and I had been
Speaker 1: in altercations. What had been this simmering resentment and attacks
Speaker 1: and there have been a lot of yelling and violence
Speaker 1: in the household. But then we started getting physical with
Speaker 1: each other. It wasn't just suicide attempts, it was violence.
Speaker 1: I was lucky enough to have some people at this
Speaker 1: school take notice to know that that school was not
Speaker 1: going to be able to help me enough, and they
Speaker 1: encouraged me to apply to a boarding school that was
Speaker 1: very nearby. And I think a lot of the people
Speaker 1: took notice and to recognize that because they maybe had
Speaker 1: stories like that themselves. And I just think that's what
Speaker 1: happened in that moment. I had certain teachers, librarians, secretaries,
Speaker 1: people took notice that I was hurting, and they helped
Speaker 1: me make this transition into a boarding school. I was
Speaker 1: no longer at my house and things changed.
Speaker 2: So would you describe that as another sort of full
Speaker 2: crumb moment, like another before and after a moment? Was
Speaker 2: that a big shift?
Speaker 1: One hundred percent for moment? I said, with this one especially,
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where you're like, and now
Speaker 1: everything will be fixed. And part of life, as I
Speaker 1: know you know, is you just recognize weight. It's never fixed,
Speaker 1: it's never perfect. Now things are different, things have shifted,
Speaker 1: and you can walk towards the light, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean all of a sudden everything is wrapped up in
Speaker 1: a bow.
Speaker 2: Well, and it also means you know, wherever you go,
Speaker 2: there you are. You're still you in those new circumstances.
Speaker 1: You know, that's exactly right.
Speaker 2: Maybe a bit bolstered, maybe with some more opportunities and
Speaker 2: more light in the distance, but you're still you.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: After boarding school, Isaac doesn't plan on going to college,
Speaker 2: but he gets a scholarship and to college he goes,
Speaker 2: but the scholarship money is just for tuition. Of course,
Speaker 2: he needs spending money too. He gets a job as
Speaker 2: soon as he gets on campus, painting houses in New Hampshire.
Speaker 2: When he turns twenty three, he moves across the country
Speaker 2: with some friends to San Francisco. He doesn't go back
Speaker 2: home for the first Thanksgiving or Christmas. Then he doesn't
Speaker 2: go back at all. He's estranged from his parents for
Speaker 2: a decade. He moves through life, taking one step forward,
Speaker 2: two steps back. He's drawn to the bar scene. He
Speaker 2: buys a motorcycle. Bars and motorcycles can be a dangerous combination,
Speaker 2: so Isaac sets up rules for himself. He's not going
Speaker 2: to drink and ride this bike. Then he's not going
Speaker 2: to ride it very far. Then only one drink if
Speaker 2: he's going to ride it. But one morning, Isaac wakes
Speaker 2: up in his apartment wearing all his clothes. He's not hurt,
Speaker 2: as far as he can tell, but he has no
Speaker 2: recollection of how or when he got home from the
Speaker 2: night before. It turned out that he had ridden to
Speaker 2: Santa Cruz seventy miles away, drank himself into a blackout,
Speaker 2: drove all the way home parked perfectly, headed upstairs and
Speaker 2: fell asleep without any memory of this. He clocks it
Speaker 2: as the moment he should stop drinking, but it's not
Speaker 2: and he doesn't. Years later, when Isaac seeks therapy, is
Speaker 2: therapist helps him understand and unpack this rhythm he's repeatedly
Speaker 2: found himself in one step forward, two steps back after
Speaker 2: a sessional, your therapist going to a barn in her
Speaker 2: neighborhood and having a drink. And when you say to
Speaker 2: your therapist, this is what I do, she asks you
Speaker 2: why it's such a great question.
Speaker 1: Well, I think you absolutely said it as no matter
Speaker 1: where I go, there I am and we can keep
Speaker 1: trying to grow. And that is what one step forward,
Speaker 1: two steps back is all about. Is that is how
Speaker 1: it gets done, just like you said, because it's better
Speaker 1: than just seven steps back. You have to walk a
Speaker 1: little forward, slide a little back, walk a little forward,
Speaker 1: slide a little back. And for me, it was my
Speaker 1: therapist that pointed it out to me. That came to
Speaker 1: therapy very late in life, and I'm still trying to
Speaker 1: figure it out because I'm only three years into therapy.
Speaker 1: But she was the one that said, do you notice
Speaker 1: that your home, a place you should have felt safe,
Speaker 1: was not safe. Do you notice that the church, a
Speaker 1: place you're supposed to feel safe, a biker bar, the
Speaker 1: work you did at the armory, these other places where
Speaker 1: most people would say, oh well, you know, even the
Speaker 1: Catholic work or homeless shelter, that's not a safe place
Speaker 1: for a child. And that's where you felt the most loved.
Speaker 1: That's where you felt the most safe. And it was
Speaker 1: my therapist that pointed that out to me. It was
Speaker 1: my therapist that said, look, you were seeking out danger.
Speaker 1: You went to work with this group in Southeast Asia
Speaker 1: who smuggled medical supplies because you were looking for something
Speaker 1: to punish yourself with. But what you found in those
Speaker 1: places was real community and real love and real tenderness.
Speaker 1: And the places where you're supposed to feel the most
Speaker 1: safe is where you, not to use a strong word,
Speaker 1: but where you were portrayed.
Speaker 2: Therapy not only enables Isaac to confront his past, but
Speaker 2: it also empowers him to write about it. And writing
Speaker 2: his stories allows Isaac to have the conversations he's never
Speaker 2: had with his parents. His therapist said to him, all
Speaker 2: this could have been a conversation. Everything you write about
Speaker 2: could have been a conversation, but you clearly didn't know
Speaker 2: how to talk to one another. When his book comes out,
Speaker 2: his mom reads it in one night. She writes him
Speaker 2: a note the next day. In the note, she writes,
Speaker 2: I am so sorry. I had no idea you were
Speaker 2: carrying this.
Speaker 1: And that, to me, is the biggest secret in all
Speaker 1: of this. You can say that maybe she had rose
Speaker 1: colored glasses on to not see some of the mistakes
Speaker 1: I was making. You can obviously argue that if a
Speaker 1: kid puts an entire country between you and the family
Speaker 1: and does to come back for ten years, there's obviously
Speaker 1: some issues. I think she wasn't a fool. She was
Speaker 1: aware that something was going on, but she didn't really
Speaker 1: understand how much of what happened in those years I
Speaker 1: was still carrying with me and I had a respect
Speaker 1: for her. She wrote a lot of other stuff that
Speaker 1: I can't go over every single thing of it, But
Speaker 1: what became clear to me was that when I would
Speaker 1: see her, I always tried to put on a smiling face.
Speaker 1: As we started this new relationship. Since I've moved back,
Speaker 1: since we're no longer strange, I was the one that
Speaker 1: wanted to be like it's fine, I forgive you. It's
Speaker 1: we're good. We're good, We're good. I was the one
Speaker 1: that was never interested in getting into it or talking
Speaker 1: about it. So what this book has done is it
Speaker 1: started some of the best conversations I've ever had with
Speaker 1: my mother. My father's hilarious, he had his own he
Speaker 1: wrote his home letters about it, et cetera. But also, again,
Speaker 1: just want to say, I can't share any of that. Really,
Speaker 1: it'sot to know that, he said, and we'll see a thanksgiving,
Speaker 1: which is his way of saying, Hey, this is hard,
Speaker 1: this is tough, but you're still here, You're still part
Speaker 1: of the family. But that was the biggest secret I
Speaker 1: never shared with them. I was never able to I
Speaker 1: was never able to communicate to them how hurt I was.
Speaker 1: My therapist literally was like you. Instead of talking to them,
Speaker 1: decided to figure out how to write a book and
Speaker 1: then wrote about it in hopes that they might see
Speaker 1: you for the hurt kid that you are.
Speaker 2: So where does forgiveness reside in all this?
Speaker 1: For you? That is the lie that I told myself
Speaker 1: for a long time. The thing that I said was
Speaker 1: as I got a little older, not as old as
Speaker 1: I am now, but as I got a little older,
Speaker 1: I recognized that they too had been dealt a hard hand.
Speaker 1: And who knows, if I'd written this book when I
Speaker 1: was twenty five, it would have just been my parents
Speaker 1: are the worst people that ever lived. I had the
Speaker 1: hardest childhood. It would have been so angry. At thirty five,
Speaker 1: I'm able to be empathetic to them, I'm able to
Speaker 1: see how they also were struggling. I was so quick
Speaker 1: to try and forgive because I was raised Catholic, so
Speaker 1: I had all this anger, but I didn't want to
Speaker 1: accept it. I didn't want to acknowledge it. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to sit with it. I just wanted to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: that was all bad, But I forgive my parents. Look,
Speaker 1: I went to a boarding school. I got a scholarship
Speaker 1: to go there. I got a scholarship to go to college.
Speaker 1: I'm living a kind of normal life. Now, It'll be okay.
Speaker 1: I don't need to worry about that too much. I
Speaker 1: don't need to be too hard on them for that.
Speaker 1: And that's the lie I told myself for a very
Speaker 1: long time, is that forgiveness is something you can just choose.
Speaker 1: Forgiveness for me now, when I see it as what
Speaker 1: I recognize it as. What true forgiveness is is you
Speaker 1: need to look at your life. You need to decide
Speaker 1: who you want to keep in it and who you don't.
Speaker 1: And it's okay, it's okay to cut people out. I
Speaker 1: want to be very clear. This book is a story
Speaker 1: about how my family blew apart, but it's also how
Speaker 1: my family came back together. But that doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be everybody's story. If you have somebody that hurts you
Speaker 1: and you want to cut them out of your life,
Speaker 1: that's okay. But for me, I had been saying I'd
Speaker 1: forgiven them for so long. I realized I had to
Speaker 1: look at my life. Who do I want to keep
Speaker 1: in it? I realized because of my nieces and nephews,
Speaker 1: because of my siblings, because of myself, I can admit
Speaker 1: that I want this family unit to be a unit again.
Speaker 1: And that was going to take real forgiveness. And what
Speaker 1: real forgiveness is is you actually look at the things
Speaker 1: and you actually acknowledge what happened, and you talk about them,
Speaker 1: and the person maybe doesn't just say everything you want
Speaker 1: to hear. They're going to have their own views on it,
Speaker 1: but you can grapple with it, and that's how you
Speaker 1: can make steps forward together. That is where real forgiveness
Speaker 1: comes from. When I was a kid, I just had
Speaker 1: this concept of it from the church. You pray, you
Speaker 1: go to confession, you can confess your forgiven acknowledging it
Speaker 1: is just the first step. You really got to work
Speaker 1: with people and talk with people and hope, you know,
Speaker 1: because again I'm not some angel. I've also heard other
Speaker 1: people hope that they can find it within themselves to
Speaker 1: forgive you. And so that's the aspect of all this
Speaker 1: that I'm still in with my parents. But what's so
Speaker 1: incredible to me is that they're willing to have those conversations,
Speaker 1: and in a way, I can feel the relief. We
Speaker 1: talk more than we've ever talked. I visit them more
Speaker 1: than I've ever visited even after we were strange and
Speaker 1: I came back. I'm visiting them more now than I
Speaker 1: ever had before. And they could have told me to
Speaker 1: take a hike, but instead they've embraced me more than
Speaker 1: ever before, and that's been a really incredible experience.
Speaker 2: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly Zacour is
Speaker 2: the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.
Speaker 2: If you have a family secret you'd like to share,
Speaker 2: please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear
Speaker 2: on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight
Speaker 2: eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also
Speaker 2: find me on Instagram at Danny Ryder. And if you'd
Speaker 2: like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,
Speaker 2: check out my memoir Inheritance.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.