WEBVTT - Bug Dust 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:07.240 Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. We 0:00:07.320 --> 0:00:10.040 start tonight with a man hunt in Tulsa, a murder 0:00:10.080 --> 0:00:13.760 suspect considered armed and dangerous. That victim died this morning, 0:00:13.760 --> 0:00:15.640 and we hear from a witness who says she tried 0:00:15.680 --> 0:00:20.240 to save his life. The tornado warnings have expired, thankfully, 0:00:20.320 --> 0:00:23.079 but left behind plenty of flooding in the area. Look 0:00:23.120 --> 0:00:28.080 at that impact. That's Stephen Romo, a thirty three year 0:00:28.080 --> 0:00:32.240 old TV news anchor based in Houston, Texas. To look 0:00:32.240 --> 0:00:35.559 at Stephen is to see a dapper young man, handsome, 0:00:35.840 --> 0:00:39.280 clean cut, as they say, often wearing a jacket and 0:00:39.320 --> 0:00:44.200 tie or a neatly pressed collared shirt. He's well put together, 0:00:44.680 --> 0:00:50.000 in consummate control. But, as is so often true, what 0:00:50.159 --> 0:00:53.680 we see tells us only part of the story. We 0:00:53.800 --> 0:00:57.520 easily judge others based on appearances are our own fantasies 0:00:57.560 --> 0:01:01.000 of what someone's life must be like. In Steven's case, 0:01:01.440 --> 0:01:05.120 you might think he had a traditional, comfortable, simple childhood, 0:01:05.959 --> 0:01:17.360 and you would be wrong. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this 0:01:17.480 --> 0:01:20.200 is Family Secrets. The secrets that are kept from us, 0:01:20.400 --> 0:01:23.080 the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we 0:01:23.200 --> 0:01:30.440 keep from ourselves. I grew up in the late eighties 0:01:30.640 --> 0:01:34.360 in a suburb just to the south of Dallas, and 0:01:34.400 --> 0:01:36.720 I had an older brothers three years older than me. 0:01:37.560 --> 0:01:41.960 My dad wasn't still is a big rig driver. My 0:01:42.000 --> 0:01:44.520 mom was a stay at home mom at the time. 0:01:45.480 --> 0:01:49.520 And growing up, I hear a lot of people say 0:01:49.960 --> 0:01:54.800 they didn't realize that their family wasn't normal until they 0:01:54.800 --> 0:01:58.720 were older, but that wasn't true for me. I realized 0:01:58.840 --> 0:02:02.960 very early on that my family was not quite typical. 0:02:04.080 --> 0:02:09.800 Through watching TV and just visiting neighbors. I realized that 0:02:09.960 --> 0:02:15.800 my home life was something to hide. It was a secret. 0:02:16.080 --> 0:02:19.920 It was something that I was ashamed of. One of 0:02:19.919 --> 0:02:25.120 my first memories is standing on a kitchen drawer that 0:02:25.120 --> 0:02:27.160 I used to pull out so I could reach the 0:02:27.240 --> 0:02:31.519 counter and grabbing a jar of peanut butter and looking 0:02:31.560 --> 0:02:35.359 inside and just seeing it was full of roaches scurrying 0:02:35.360 --> 0:02:38.919 over each other and dropping it and letting it roll away, 0:02:39.160 --> 0:02:42.760 and that is that's one of my first memories. And 0:02:42.800 --> 0:02:45.400 I knew that wasn't normal. I was disgusted by it 0:02:45.720 --> 0:02:48.560 and angry at my parents for it, but I knew 0:02:48.600 --> 0:02:52.720 it wasn't normal. So that was the situation in our 0:02:52.760 --> 0:02:57.680 home for a long time, but my mom and my 0:02:57.760 --> 0:03:00.440 dad went bankrupt and the bank foreclosed in our house, 0:03:00.440 --> 0:03:05.359 so we had to move into the home of my 0:03:05.440 --> 0:03:10.040 great uncle, my mom's uncle, and it was a duplex. 0:03:11.000 --> 0:03:13.520 It's sort of out of nowhere. My mom decided that 0:03:13.560 --> 0:03:17.639 we needed to get dogs. It was like a necessity, 0:03:17.720 --> 0:03:20.240 she mentioned, so we would know if anyone was going 0:03:20.280 --> 0:03:23.200 to break into the home. It started off with to 0:03:23.440 --> 0:03:29.720 Chihuaha's and they had their own family, and it was 0:03:29.800 --> 0:03:32.440 six chihuahuas at one point. It was it was really 0:03:32.560 --> 0:03:35.080 hard to keep up, so we gave them away and 0:03:35.080 --> 0:03:40.760 we collected others we always had heard of, mostly chouaa's. 0:03:41.280 --> 0:03:44.160 It's funny too, because you think about what one might 0:03:44.240 --> 0:03:46.840 think of as a guard dog, and you don't immediate 0:03:46.880 --> 0:03:50.520 You don't immediately go to chihuahua. Yes, I yeah, it 0:03:50.560 --> 0:03:52.880 doesn't make a ton of since they did. I mean, 0:03:52.920 --> 0:03:55.680 we always knew anyone was anywhere close to our house 0:03:55.720 --> 0:03:58.840 because they yapped and I don't even want to call 0:03:58.880 --> 0:04:02.640 it a park. It was just yap NonStop. And I 0:04:02.720 --> 0:04:06.280 love those dogs so much. I feel like my childhood 0:04:06.320 --> 0:04:10.000 would have been much more empty without them. That they 0:04:10.240 --> 0:04:13.160 dogs just accept you and and love you and to 0:04:13.240 --> 0:04:15.880 get excited when you come home. And I didn't necessarily 0:04:15.880 --> 0:04:18.880 get that from my parents. But at the same time, 0:04:19.040 --> 0:04:24.880 they were the source of so much consternation. They never 0:04:25.120 --> 0:04:29.600 went outside. They just the carpet was their bathroom. Eventually 0:04:29.600 --> 0:04:32.040 we had to rip up the carpet because it was 0:04:32.200 --> 0:04:37.000 so you're in stained, and that just made the roaches 0:04:37.040 --> 0:04:39.279 seem like nothing to have to deal with that. The 0:04:39.360 --> 0:04:44.440 roaches were just just a slight distraction compared to them. 0:04:44.560 --> 0:04:47.279 Did your great uncle know what was going on in 0:04:47.320 --> 0:04:49.159 the other part of the duplex? And did did he 0:04:49.200 --> 0:04:53.520 have any response to any of that? Strangely, no, he 0:04:54.080 --> 0:04:58.599 didn't have much of a response. That His presence was 0:04:58.640 --> 0:05:01.640 always a sort of a few for my mom, and 0:05:01.680 --> 0:05:05.320 I didn't understand why. For a long time he had 0:05:05.320 --> 0:05:07.520 a key to the house. Obviously, and sometimes we would 0:05:07.520 --> 0:05:11.120 come home and my mom would tell my dad that 0:05:11.240 --> 0:05:16.599 she could smell my great uncle's cologne and that set 0:05:16.600 --> 0:05:20.800 her off into I don't want to say hysterics. That 0:05:21.200 --> 0:05:28.160 sounds extreme, but she was deeply bothered by it. And 0:05:28.160 --> 0:05:31.400 of course that made sense later on, but at the 0:05:31.440 --> 0:05:33.719 time it didn't. It also didn't make sense why he 0:05:33.800 --> 0:05:37.040 would see the way the house was and not be 0:05:37.680 --> 0:05:42.240 livid that we were destroying that house. My brother Um 0:05:42.480 --> 0:05:46.440 started punching holes in the walls when he was about 0:05:46.480 --> 0:05:52.960 thirteen and ripping the doors. Were cheap plywood or particle 0:05:53.000 --> 0:05:56.159 would doors and he would tear them down. Eventually we 0:05:56.160 --> 0:05:58.960 had no doors in the house and there were giant 0:05:59.040 --> 0:06:01.960 holes in the walls. And my great uncle saw this 0:06:02.720 --> 0:06:06.000 and never said anything about it. We saw him at 0:06:06.040 --> 0:06:10.160 family gatherings, there was never any mention of it, which 0:06:11.120 --> 0:06:15.560 was bizarre to me, and it stood out even though 0:06:16.080 --> 0:06:20.880 I couldn't really put together why until later on. Why 0:06:20.960 --> 0:06:23.640 was your brother Why do you think he was punching 0:06:23.960 --> 0:06:26.760 holes in the walls? I think he was angry at 0:06:26.760 --> 0:06:32.760 our home situation too, and my parents just we just 0:06:32.760 --> 0:06:35.840 sort of were on our own, handling things in our 0:06:35.880 --> 0:06:39.720 own way. And my dad is a is a smaller guy. 0:06:39.880 --> 0:06:46.960 He's about five six and my brother and I I'm 0:06:47.000 --> 0:06:49.240 six ft tall, and i've been I've been taller than 0:06:49.240 --> 0:06:51.120 my dad. I think I was about fourteen. It was 0:06:51.160 --> 0:06:54.560 the same thing for my brother, so he could control 0:06:54.600 --> 0:06:56.440 us fine when we were smaller than him, but as 0:06:56.440 --> 0:06:59.320 soon as we got bigger, it was just Um you know, 0:06:59.560 --> 0:07:02.040 do whatever you want. You're on your own, So sort 0:07:02.040 --> 0:07:05.480 of like that for my brother, and he expressed his 0:07:05.600 --> 0:07:10.440 anger by destroying our house, destroying our walls. Well, it's 0:07:10.440 --> 0:07:13.400 so interesting because it sounds like your house was sort 0:07:13.440 --> 0:07:16.120 of being destroyed anyway, So you know, how could the 0:07:16.120 --> 0:07:19.320 anti be uped in some way? That's true. One of 0:07:19.360 --> 0:07:21.720 the things that I always find so interesting in thinking 0:07:21.720 --> 0:07:27.400 about family secrets is when it seems like a couple 0:07:27.920 --> 0:07:34.480 develop or conspire to keep something hidden or secret together. 0:07:35.240 --> 0:07:38.160 Does it begin with one of them or is it 0:07:38.280 --> 0:07:41.920 sort of something that grows with both of them. Did 0:07:41.960 --> 0:07:44.960 it start with your mom or your dad or was 0:07:45.000 --> 0:07:47.200 it something that wouldn't have happened if each of them 0:07:47.200 --> 0:07:49.160 had been with somebody else, but it happened because they 0:07:49.160 --> 0:07:52.280 were together. I thought a lot about it, and I 0:07:52.360 --> 0:07:54.800 really do think that it is they were just sort 0:07:54.800 --> 0:07:59.640 of the perfect storm together to make this environment happen. 0:08:00.120 --> 0:08:02.520 I think if either of them had been with another partner, 0:08:02.600 --> 0:08:06.360 I don't see how this it could have happened. My dad, 0:08:06.840 --> 0:08:10.280 he's the eighth of nine children, and his mother died 0:08:10.320 --> 0:08:12.800 when he was twelve years old, so his home life 0:08:12.840 --> 0:08:16.400 was very erratic. He was mostly raised by his older siblings. 0:08:17.600 --> 0:08:21.080 My dad is Hispanic, and some of his older siblings 0:08:21.680 --> 0:08:25.200 and his father spoke Spanish, and he barely speaks Spanish. 0:08:25.520 --> 0:08:28.240 They literally spoke different languages. He was on his own 0:08:28.960 --> 0:08:35.640 a lot as a child. My mother was raised by 0:08:35.679 --> 0:08:39.240 her grandmother and her mother after her parents divorced, and 0:08:40.040 --> 0:08:44.360 she never felt loved. What I was mentioning about the 0:08:44.400 --> 0:08:48.400 great uncle I found out later from my mother and 0:08:48.559 --> 0:08:51.320 she sort of tearfully admitted to me when I was fourteen, 0:08:51.559 --> 0:08:54.000 admitted to me as if it were her something that 0:08:54.040 --> 0:08:57.040 she had done wrong. She told me that that great 0:08:57.120 --> 0:09:01.840 uncle had sexually abused her, starting when she was nine 0:09:01.920 --> 0:09:07.360 years old. While my aunt was watching my mom. He 0:09:07.440 --> 0:09:11.200 would come home on his lunch breaks and she would 0:09:11.200 --> 0:09:14.319 be pretending to be asleep often and he would wake 0:09:14.360 --> 0:09:16.079 her up and take her to a different part of 0:09:16.080 --> 0:09:19.120 the house and abuse her. A lot of stuff clicked 0:09:19.120 --> 0:09:21.840 into place because of that, why she was the way 0:09:21.880 --> 0:09:26.720 she was. Did something precipitate her telling you at this 0:09:26.760 --> 0:09:30.240 point when she told you you had been living in 0:09:30.280 --> 0:09:33.760 that great uncle's house for some period of time, yes, yes, 0:09:33.840 --> 0:09:37.400 for a few years. At that point. What I think 0:09:37.440 --> 0:09:42.440 precipitated it? I was complaining a lot more. I had started. 0:09:43.080 --> 0:09:45.600 I had a younger sister, she's four years younger than me, 0:09:45.880 --> 0:09:51.160 and I started telling my mom that I was going 0:09:51.240 --> 0:09:57.079 to call child protective Services if we didn't move, and 0:09:57.440 --> 0:10:00.800 I was a smartass. Just to be frank about it. 0:10:00.920 --> 0:10:05.240 I couldn't go along with it anymore. I um. I 0:10:05.320 --> 0:10:08.600 would say things like, you feed the roaches better than 0:10:08.640 --> 0:10:11.880 you feed your own kids. And I was just a 0:10:11.960 --> 0:10:16.360 constant critic of my father too. He was gone a lot, 0:10:17.040 --> 0:10:20.960 but when he was there. Name calling was a huge 0:10:21.000 --> 0:10:24.280 issue in my house. My parents called me names, I 0:10:24.320 --> 0:10:27.280 called my parents names. It was just a thing that happened. 0:10:28.120 --> 0:10:30.600 Right before my mom revealed that to me, I decided 0:10:30.640 --> 0:10:34.680 my dad wasn't going to call me names anymore. The 0:10:34.720 --> 0:10:37.800 word at the time was faggot that he kept calling me. 0:10:38.440 --> 0:10:41.040 Excuse the use of the word that I hate, but 0:10:41.200 --> 0:10:43.000 it was that word. I decided it was never going 0:10:43.080 --> 0:10:46.880 to happen again. So I sort of charged at him 0:10:47.080 --> 0:10:50.240 and you know, looked down at him because he was 0:10:50.240 --> 0:10:51.800 so much smaller than me, and told him that he 0:10:51.840 --> 0:10:53.800 was not going to call me that word ever again. 0:10:54.400 --> 0:10:58.000 And he shoved me, and I shoved him back and 0:10:58.160 --> 0:11:01.920 knocked him down and he walked away, and that was 0:11:01.960 --> 0:11:04.360 the end of that. My mom, she would have been 0:11:04.360 --> 0:11:07.880 at a grocery store. She got home and my dad 0:11:07.920 --> 0:11:10.920 told her what happened, and she came into my room crying, 0:11:12.000 --> 0:11:15.240 and instead of talking about that fight at all, she 0:11:16.880 --> 0:11:20.600 sort of abruptly told me about the sexual abuse with 0:11:20.679 --> 0:11:24.240 her uncle. I've got the impression at the time she 0:11:24.320 --> 0:11:27.280 was telling me, sort of to say that she had 0:11:27.400 --> 0:11:30.120 enough going on, that we were living in his house 0:11:30.360 --> 0:11:33.800 and she was going through enough turmoil that she just 0:11:33.880 --> 0:11:40.160 wanted me to just stop being so obstructionist and arguing 0:11:40.240 --> 0:11:44.319 and disagreeing with them. I think that's why she revealed 0:11:44.320 --> 0:11:47.800 it to me. Did she ever draw any kind of 0:11:47.960 --> 0:11:53.280 connection from her having been abused as a child to 0:11:54.120 --> 0:11:57.400 the way that she kept her home as an adult, 0:11:57.920 --> 0:12:00.720 Oh no, not at all. So it was really it 0:12:00.800 --> 0:12:05.320 was unconscious. I definitely think it was unconscious. She my 0:12:05.400 --> 0:12:08.640 parents both would blame us, the kids and the dogs, 0:12:08.679 --> 0:12:11.640 thing we didn't help, and we took food in our 0:12:11.720 --> 0:12:15.680 rooms and in all these sort of lame excuses that 0:12:15.760 --> 0:12:19.280 I never believed. But she, no, it was never conscious. 0:12:19.320 --> 0:12:23.960 I don't think that that's what she was doing. We'll 0:12:24.000 --> 0:12:33.800 be back in a moment with more family secrets. Stephen 0:12:33.840 --> 0:12:37.640 goes to school dressed in mismatched clothes, dirty clothes, and 0:12:37.720 --> 0:12:41.800 sometimes the roaches hitch a ride in his backpack crawl 0:12:41.840 --> 0:12:45.760 out of his lunchbox. Other kids notice, of course, but 0:12:45.840 --> 0:12:52.440 Stephen invents stories around why that's the case. I was 0:12:52.760 --> 0:12:55.640 just a liar, and I thought I was really good 0:12:55.679 --> 0:12:58.120 at it. But now looking back, it just seems ridiculous 0:12:58.200 --> 0:13:01.200 the stuff I would say, But it was anything too 0:13:03.160 --> 0:13:08.080 disconnect me from the way I was growing up. I 0:13:08.360 --> 0:13:12.080 watched so much TV as a kid, uninterrupted hours upon 0:13:12.120 --> 0:13:15.560 hours of TV any and everything. We didn't have cable, 0:13:15.600 --> 0:13:17.400 so it's just what I could get on the antenna. 0:13:17.480 --> 0:13:20.920 But because of that, I invented so many stories that 0:13:20.960 --> 0:13:24.120 were just completely made up about trips to Europe and 0:13:24.160 --> 0:13:26.680 stuff that would have never happened in a million years 0:13:27.000 --> 0:13:30.959 with enough detail. I thought that I was completely tricking 0:13:30.960 --> 0:13:33.480 all these kids to think that I was actually like 0:13:33.600 --> 0:13:37.440 one of them, or just wealthy. And I was made 0:13:37.440 --> 0:13:41.160 to dress poor because my parents wanted to keep me humble. 0:13:41.320 --> 0:13:45.920 Just just ridiculous stories that I made up just to 0:13:46.000 --> 0:13:49.560 try to defend myself, and I was made fun of 0:13:49.160 --> 0:13:51.760 of course, because that's what happens when you're a kid. 0:13:51.840 --> 0:13:55.360 But I really feel like the kids were easier on 0:13:55.440 --> 0:13:56.840 me than they could have been. I could have had 0:13:56.880 --> 0:13:59.480 it much worse than I did. You know, it's interesting 0:13:59.480 --> 0:14:02.280 the whole idea of education through TV, you know, and 0:14:02.280 --> 0:14:05.600 and through reading as well, and the way in which 0:14:05.640 --> 0:14:09.880 I mean so often on this podcast I think about 0:14:10.600 --> 0:14:15.640 my guests stories and the way that if the story 0:14:15.679 --> 0:14:19.200 had been playing out during a time when the Internet existed, 0:14:19.680 --> 0:14:23.840 where there was so much readily available information, you could 0:14:23.840 --> 0:14:26.280 look something up, you could call it by its name, 0:14:26.320 --> 0:14:28.840 you could find out what it was, you could connect 0:14:28.840 --> 0:14:31.040 with other people who might be going through something similar. 0:14:31.720 --> 0:14:34.480 And there are things that are not so great about that, 0:14:34.520 --> 0:14:37.520 but there's so many things that are that really pierced 0:14:37.560 --> 0:14:41.160 people's sense of isolation. Whereas when you were growing up 0:14:41.160 --> 0:14:46.160 that didn't exist, and so your education was Mr. Rogers neighborhood. 0:14:46.800 --> 0:14:52.720 That's such a ordered, gentle kind place, a place where 0:14:52.720 --> 0:14:54.440 there would never be a cockroach, a place where there 0:14:54.480 --> 0:14:58.080 would never be anything out of place or out of order. 0:14:58.600 --> 0:15:00.800 Did you find all of that? It was like sort 0:15:00.800 --> 0:15:04.720 of part of your coming of age. Absolutely, I can't 0:15:04.760 --> 0:15:09.520 imagine what my childhood would have been like without television. 0:15:09.760 --> 0:15:12.360 It's how I knew that the way I was living 0:15:12.480 --> 0:15:17.680 was unacceptable and would made me start as a young 0:15:17.760 --> 0:15:19.840 child trying to fight against it, trying to force my 0:15:19.880 --> 0:15:24.600 parents to allow us to move. Was just from the 0:15:24.680 --> 0:15:27.080 story that I saw on TV. They made me feel 0:15:28.080 --> 0:15:34.440 less lonely. I felt more connected to the characters on TV. Mr. Rogers, 0:15:34.480 --> 0:15:38.760 Neighborhood and even shows that weren't actually geared towards me was. 0:15:38.800 --> 0:15:43.480 I was a super young child watching the Oprah Winfrey 0:15:43.480 --> 0:15:47.920 Show and seeing people who had gone through trauma had 0:15:47.960 --> 0:15:51.720 come out just fine. It was not geared toward nine 0:15:51.800 --> 0:15:54.640 year old boy, but watching it made me realize that 0:15:54.720 --> 0:15:58.840 if these people can overcome horrible things that happened to them, uh, 0:15:59.760 --> 0:16:01.920 this and could be true of me. And then getting 0:16:01.920 --> 0:16:04.680 a library card and reading diary of Anne Frank and 0:16:04.720 --> 0:16:08.040 seeing like this is nothing that I'm going through. This 0:16:08.160 --> 0:16:11.360 is nothing compared to what some people have survived. It 0:16:11.440 --> 0:16:15.800 was invaluable that connection. I feel like stories really did 0:16:15.920 --> 0:16:19.960 save me. I think That's why I'm a a storyteller now. 0:16:20.760 --> 0:16:23.320 It did create dissonance for me as I was growing 0:16:23.400 --> 0:16:27.160 up and moving on in my career that my job 0:16:27.640 --> 0:16:30.520 was to seek out the truth and to tell people's 0:16:30.520 --> 0:16:34.400 stories as truly as I could. While I sort of 0:16:34.440 --> 0:16:38.680 just pretended to be the boy with no history that 0:16:38.920 --> 0:16:42.600 I completely tried to cut myself off from my past. 0:16:43.320 --> 0:16:45.400 There was a dissonance there. And it's only been in 0:16:45.440 --> 0:16:49.320 the last year or so that I've realized the importance 0:16:49.360 --> 0:16:53.000 of being honest about where I came from and sort 0:16:53.000 --> 0:16:57.520 of the power in the telling of the story. So 0:16:58.480 --> 0:17:01.040 how did you get out, Like walk me through you 0:17:01.080 --> 0:17:03.880 graduate from high school? And did you know that you 0:17:03.960 --> 0:17:07.639 wanted to become a journalist? What was your path initially? 0:17:07.680 --> 0:17:12.960 Your path away from that home and that environment. Well, 0:17:13.000 --> 0:17:17.159 eventually I I kept sort of fighting with my parents, 0:17:17.200 --> 0:17:24.320 and I dropped out of high school and I kind 0:17:24.320 --> 0:17:27.480 of fight with my dad. I think it was I 0:17:27.560 --> 0:17:31.080 got a job setting up for a church nearby. Church 0:17:31.160 --> 0:17:32.520 they met in a Y and c a. So I 0:17:32.520 --> 0:17:34.719 had to go and set up chairs and you know, 0:17:34.920 --> 0:17:37.240 gymnasium and make it into a church. And I get paid. 0:17:37.520 --> 0:17:40.280 I think it was fifty dollars a weekend when I 0:17:40.320 --> 0:17:42.320 did that Saturdays and Sundays, and I didn't have a 0:17:42.400 --> 0:17:45.119 checking account because I was sixteen years old. So I 0:17:45.160 --> 0:17:49.840 would give my parents the checks and they were supposed 0:17:49.840 --> 0:17:52.160 to give me the cash, but after they had three 0:17:52.560 --> 0:17:56.600 fifty dollars, they would not give me the money. And 0:17:56.640 --> 0:18:00.760 so that of course caused a fight and I just 0:18:00.840 --> 0:18:05.000 got sofa hit up that After that fight, I moved 0:18:05.000 --> 0:18:07.800 down my great grandmother for a little while, and then 0:18:07.840 --> 0:18:12.160 I started renting a room. And I had been out 0:18:12.200 --> 0:18:14.919 of high school for about a year. I went ahead 0:18:14.920 --> 0:18:18.880 and took some entrance exams and got into community college 0:18:19.960 --> 0:18:22.080 and stayed there for a couple of years and then 0:18:22.119 --> 0:18:25.919 transferred to A and M. And it was it sounds 0:18:25.920 --> 0:18:29.359 crazy to say it's so simply right now, because it 0:18:29.560 --> 0:18:33.359 seemed impossible what I was trying to do to escape, 0:18:33.840 --> 0:18:36.040 and it was very hard, and there was a lot 0:18:36.080 --> 0:18:40.080 of struggle, and just to sum it up to a 0:18:40.080 --> 0:18:46.280 few sentences seems it seems so crazy, But that's what happened. Yeah, 0:18:46.359 --> 0:18:49.879 it's it's always the in between, right. I teach writing, 0:18:49.920 --> 0:18:53.359 and occasionally I give my students this exercise where I 0:18:53.440 --> 0:18:57.920 asked them to write a list. Um, it's a sailing term, 0:18:57.960 --> 0:18:59.960 but like the tacking points in their life, like where 0:19:00.280 --> 0:19:01.879 when you sail from point A to point B. You 0:19:01.880 --> 0:19:03.760 don't go in a straight line. It's like, you know, 0:19:03.800 --> 0:19:06.720 you the boat, you know, sails into the wind or 0:19:06.760 --> 0:19:09.480 away from the wind. And then after they've done that, 0:19:10.080 --> 0:19:13.480 I asked them to take two of these attacking points 0:19:13.520 --> 0:19:16.119 that are side by side and fill in the middle 0:19:16.520 --> 0:19:19.119 because it's always the middle, right, Like what you're describing 0:19:19.240 --> 0:19:22.440 is like, yes, you're summing it up, but you did. 0:19:22.920 --> 0:19:25.920 I mean, ultimately you went from having dropped out of 0:19:25.960 --> 0:19:30.160 college and being this really tough position two finding your feet. 0:19:30.760 --> 0:19:33.240 You know, that's it's it's it's a messy process, but 0:19:33.280 --> 0:19:36.520 you found your feet. Yeah, i'd like to think so 0:19:37.720 --> 0:19:41.120 when I was in college, my mom because my mom 0:19:41.200 --> 0:19:44.800 died and so that was definitely another attacking point. It's 0:19:45.800 --> 0:19:48.560 it's hard, and we didn't have a resolution. Really she 0:19:48.680 --> 0:19:53.600 died sort of it I wouldn't. I guess it's it's hard. 0:19:53.600 --> 0:19:56.600 I mean, it's always it always feels sudden when someone dies, 0:19:56.640 --> 0:19:59.840 if feel like but she had asthma and several health 0:20:00.000 --> 0:20:02.320 problems from just the way she sort of lived her life. 0:20:03.160 --> 0:20:07.160 She was I think she was addicted to prescription painkillers. 0:20:07.520 --> 0:20:11.159 She would argue otherwise they were prescribed to her by 0:20:11.160 --> 0:20:14.520 a doctor, she would say, so they're not. She wasn't addicted, 0:20:14.560 --> 0:20:17.840 but basically her organs started shutting down. And I drove 0:20:17.920 --> 0:20:20.400 up from Texas A and M It's like a three 0:20:20.400 --> 0:20:24.919 hour drive to the hospital, and really wanted to to 0:20:25.000 --> 0:20:28.800 talk to her. And she had a breathing tube. She 0:20:28.880 --> 0:20:32.359 was conscious when I went in there and aware, but 0:20:32.440 --> 0:20:35.639 she couldn't speak, so and the the doctors had told us 0:20:35.680 --> 0:20:37.919 that things didn't look good. It was really hard for 0:20:37.960 --> 0:20:40.200 me to believe that she could actually die. She was 0:20:40.240 --> 0:20:44.159 forty three, but I tried to push myself to be 0:20:44.280 --> 0:20:48.520 more sincere I have the habit of trying to make 0:20:48.560 --> 0:20:50.840 jokes or being sarcastic, but I really tried to have 0:20:51.400 --> 0:20:55.400 a moment with her and speak to her and tell 0:20:55.400 --> 0:20:57.920 her that I wanted her to get better, and that 0:20:58.560 --> 0:21:02.399 no matter what had happened between us, that she was 0:21:02.760 --> 0:21:05.280 a part of us and that she belonged to us. 0:21:05.520 --> 0:21:11.879 And she couldn't say anything, but she grabbed my arm 0:21:12.080 --> 0:21:15.760 almost like she thought she could sort of compel her 0:21:15.880 --> 0:21:19.040 whatever she was trying to say into me, and she 0:21:19.200 --> 0:21:24.560 just stared at me h and cried. And then visiting 0:21:24.560 --> 0:21:27.440 hours were over, and so I sort of got pulled 0:21:27.440 --> 0:21:32.000 out of there. But having to to face that, having 0:21:32.040 --> 0:21:35.080 to sort of realized that there would never be the 0:21:35.119 --> 0:21:38.560 reconciliation that I always thought would happen with her sort 0:21:38.560 --> 0:21:41.359 of made me confronted. I had to sort of find 0:21:41.400 --> 0:21:43.680 my own reconciliation. So I think that's sort of made 0:21:43.720 --> 0:21:48.399 me more aware of it too. Now Stephen's working in 0:21:48.400 --> 0:21:52.480 a TV station in Houston. He's embarked on his successful 0:21:52.520 --> 0:21:55.840 adult life, and what he does is push his past away. 0:21:56.720 --> 0:22:01.200 He doesn't lie about it. Lying making up fantastical stories 0:22:01.560 --> 0:22:06.080 is a thing of his past. He simply omits. He 0:22:06.119 --> 0:22:09.040 doesn't talk about his family history, not with his friends, 0:22:09.160 --> 0:22:12.520 not with anyone. And then one day he's in the 0:22:12.560 --> 0:22:15.040 newsroom on a break when he gets a text from 0:22:15.040 --> 0:22:18.399 his sister was a link to a news story. So 0:22:18.440 --> 0:22:20.400 my sister and I talked about the way we grew 0:22:20.480 --> 0:22:26.359 up a lot, and um, she sent me a story. 0:22:26.720 --> 0:22:29.600 She knew I was on the newscast, so she she 0:22:29.760 --> 0:22:32.399 sent it, and I assumed we would talk about it 0:22:32.480 --> 0:22:34.600 later and I wouldn't read it right then. But as 0:22:34.640 --> 0:22:38.320 soon as I saw what the headline was about children 0:22:38.400 --> 0:22:42.639 living in the roach infested at home, I couldn't help it. 0:22:42.680 --> 0:22:45.080 I mean, there's two minutes left in our commercial break. 0:22:45.119 --> 0:22:49.000 But I clicked on it and um started reading it, 0:22:49.160 --> 0:22:54.119 and UM, I didn't just read the article. I violated 0:22:54.119 --> 0:22:57.440 my own rule of not reading the comments and read 0:22:57.480 --> 0:23:03.439 the comments and people just expressing their disgust at the situation, 0:23:04.000 --> 0:23:09.199 but they're also just their hatred for these parents who 0:23:10.280 --> 0:23:14.679 clearly had to been going through something for them just themselves, 0:23:15.560 --> 0:23:20.879 and more than anything, it was just the sense of 0:23:20.880 --> 0:23:22.919 of shame that I remember, and I thought about it. 0:23:22.920 --> 0:23:25.320 It was their young girls in this home. I was 0:23:25.359 --> 0:23:28.840 just thinking about those girls. The oldest was thirteen, and 0:23:28.880 --> 0:23:30.199 I was remembering what it was like to be a 0:23:30.240 --> 0:23:33.680 thirteen year old in a house like that, and imagining 0:23:33.760 --> 0:23:36.880 if there had been a news article about it, how 0:23:37.880 --> 0:23:42.399 mortified I would have been. It just something hit me 0:23:42.520 --> 0:23:49.320 that by omitting where I came from, I was perpetuating 0:23:49.320 --> 0:23:52.800 that same secret that I had been carrying since childhood. 0:23:53.320 --> 0:23:57.480 And also, of course, with secrets is often shamed, so 0:23:57.520 --> 0:24:00.159 I was also just experiencing that same shame. And if 0:24:00.280 --> 0:24:03.960 if I could just to that one family in Idaho, 0:24:04.080 --> 0:24:06.199 that was those girls who were going through this, but 0:24:06.600 --> 0:24:09.159 I could just make them feel better or less alone, 0:24:09.200 --> 0:24:13.080 it seemed worth it just to share some of what 0:24:13.200 --> 0:24:17.119 I went through. So then one thing that struck me 0:24:17.200 --> 0:24:19.760 is the break is over and you've got to go 0:24:19.800 --> 0:24:23.720 back on the news. The cameras are rolling and your 0:24:24.200 --> 0:24:26.800 co newscasters looking at you like are you okay? And 0:24:26.840 --> 0:24:29.760 the camera start rolling and you know your your teeth 0:24:29.800 --> 0:24:32.600 up to go, and you do, which is something that 0:24:32.680 --> 0:24:35.680 I I see again and again and I also really 0:24:35.680 --> 0:24:41.440 relate to, because you have sort of metabolized that trauma 0:24:41.600 --> 0:24:44.280 for all those years and just packed it away and 0:24:44.320 --> 0:24:48.199 put it somewhere, and it wasn't even particularly conscious for 0:24:48.280 --> 0:24:51.480 you or visible to you, so it was possible to 0:24:51.720 --> 0:24:54.399 function at this really high level and just finish up 0:24:54.440 --> 0:24:57.199 the news. No one looking at you would ever have 0:24:57.280 --> 0:25:00.160 known what was going on inside of you right at 0:25:00.359 --> 0:25:04.159 sort of the story of my life, right no one 0:25:04.200 --> 0:25:08.760 could even tell if there's anything wrong. I think that's 0:25:08.800 --> 0:25:11.159