Speaker 1: I mean, I could have been a dancer if I
Speaker 1: had just had that person in my life who told
Speaker 1: me that it wasn't the most important thing in the
Speaker 1: world to represent this idea of manliness. Welcome to the
Speaker 1: one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the
Speaker 1: importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think ring true,
Speaker 1: and yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Brian Broom, a poet, screenwriter,
Speaker 1: and instructor in the writing program at the University of Pittsburgh.
Speaker 1: He has been a finalist in the Moth Storytelling Competition
Speaker 1: and won the Grand prize in Carnegie Mellon University's Martin
Speaker 1: Luther King Writing Awards. Today, Brian and Eric discuss his
Speaker 1: book Punched Me Up to the Gods, a Memoir. Hi, Brian,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. Thank you, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: I am excited to talk with you about your book
Speaker 1: called Punch Me Up to the Gods, a Memoir, which
Speaker 1: is just a beautifully written, devastating and wise book. So
Speaker 1: we'll get to that in a minute, but we'll start,
Speaker 1: like we always do, with a parable. In the parable,
Speaker 1: there's a grandfather who's talking to his grandson. He says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he
Speaker 1: thinks about it for a second, and he looks up
Speaker 1: at his grandfather. He says, well, grandfather, which wolf wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do well. Most definitely, I think for the
Speaker 1: first several years of my life, I said, the anxiety wolf,
Speaker 1: you know, the one that kept me from reaching I
Speaker 1: don't want to say my full potential, because I don't
Speaker 1: know if I've reached that yet, but you know, any potential.
Speaker 1: You know, there was a great deal of self doubt,
Speaker 1: self loathing. Even I don't know, I seem to have
Speaker 1: just gotten by that way, as horrible as it sounds. Now,
Speaker 1: I think both because I need both were my writing,
Speaker 1: you know, I need to tap into both things. I
Speaker 1: was afraid to write this book because I was, in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways displaying that more negative wolf. I
Speaker 1: was sort of putting him out there for people to
Speaker 1: look at and evaluate and judge um. And I was
Speaker 1: afraid to put the book out. But what I found,
Speaker 1: you know, since it's been out, is that many people
Speaker 1: relate to the anxiety, the depression, the self loathing. You know,
Speaker 1: I've had so many wonderful letters of support from people
Speaker 1: who quite opposite of what I thought was going to happen,
Speaker 1: you know, are saying, I absolutely understand what you were
Speaker 1: going through. I know it, I live it, I still
Speaker 1: live in on some days. Yeah, as I was reading
Speaker 1: that parable to you, it made me think about something
Speaker 1: in your book that was on my mind to talk about.
Speaker 1: And a lot of your book is really reflecting on
Speaker 1: what we get from our parents and our society that
Speaker 1: tells us how we should live. Specifically, you reflect a
Speaker 1: lot on the lessons you got about what it means
Speaker 1: to be a black man, you know, masculinity and blackness.
Speaker 1: I have half that equation, the masculinity, and I related
Speaker 1: with a lot of that. But as I was reading,
Speaker 1: I was thinking about, like, what might your life have
Speaker 1: been like if you had a grandfather or a parental
Speaker 1: figure who said to you, you know what, bravery, kindness, love,
Speaker 1: These things are what's good to feed in life, Not toughness,
Speaker 1: not never crying. You know, if we had been taught
Speaker 1: that some of the qualities that I certainly think you
Speaker 1: have that you show in the book, you know, those
Speaker 1: have been nurtured. And I'm not really asking you to say, like, well,
Speaker 1: my life would have turned out like x. I just
Speaker 1: as I was reading it, it made me think about that. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I thought about this a lot myself too.
Speaker 1: Would my life have gone down such a you know path,
Speaker 1: Sorry for the language, but there's no other way to
Speaker 1: put it. You know, would my life have gone down
Speaker 1: such a path. If I had had somebody in my
Speaker 1: life to tell me that it's more important to be
Speaker 1: yourself and to treat other people well and to be brave,
Speaker 1: what would I have been? And I remember very distinctly,
Speaker 1: like when I first left home, I was just trying
Speaker 1: to escape home. I didn't really know what I was
Speaker 1: going to college for. I just wanted to get out
Speaker 1: of that little town. And I signed up for a
Speaker 1: ballet class because I was always really interested in ballet,
Speaker 1: and I would I would see ballet dancers on public television,
Speaker 1: and I thought it was just the most beautiful thing.
Speaker 1: So I signed up for a ballet class at the
Speaker 1: University of Akron. And I remember, you know, they had
Speaker 1: this requirement that you had to you know, you had
Speaker 1: to come to your first class in your tights. You
Speaker 1: walked into this room with all these people. So I
Speaker 1: put onto tights underneath my jeans, and I got as
Speaker 1: far as the front door, you know, and all these
Speaker 1: voices in my head just came echoing, you shouldn't be here,
Speaker 1: this is girly, this is for fix um. You know,
Speaker 1: every single voice that I had heard in my head
Speaker 1: to tell me what I wasn't supposed to be became
Speaker 1: really loud, and I just turned around and walked away,
Speaker 1: and I didn't go back to that class. And in
Speaker 1: terms of like what I might be doing, I mean,
Speaker 1: I could have been a d answer if I had
Speaker 1: just had that person in my life who told me
Speaker 1: that it wasn't the most important thing in the world
Speaker 1: to represent this idea of manliness. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: things that I probably would have done had I had
Speaker 1: that person. But you know, as it turns out, I didn't,
Speaker 1: and you can't live and regret, and the only thing
Speaker 1: that I can do is try to be that person
Speaker 1: going forward. Yeah, it's a great story. I want to
Speaker 1: read a section from your book A because I think
Speaker 1: this little part summarizes so much of the themes in
Speaker 1: the book, and be when I interviewed someone like you,
Speaker 1: who write so beautifully, I'm always afraid, like, no matter
Speaker 1: how well I do this conversation, it's not going to
Speaker 1: get across to the listeners, how lovely the writing is.
Speaker 1: So when it's that case, I like to read parts
Speaker 1: of it, and so I wanted to do that. In
Speaker 1: this case. I'm going to set it up a little
Speaker 1: bit for listeners you were young. I don't know what
Speaker 1: age you were, but you were in your sister's room
Speaker 1: playing with their dolls, and your dad basically walks in
Speaker 1: and it hits you hard several times. And you then say,
Speaker 1: each time I felt a sob rise to the surface,
Speaker 1: I would choke it back down. I suspect that this
Speaker 1: was in my initiation into black manhood really began. I
Speaker 1: placed a pillow over the face of bad feelings and
Speaker 1: held it there until they stopped moving, until I was
Speaker 1: sure that they were dead. But they never really die.
Speaker 1: They just find other ways to escape. I am learning
Speaker 1: to sit with them now. Yeah. The thing about masculinity,
Speaker 1: I mean, if we all take a look at it,
Speaker 1: it seems to be more about things that you can't do,
Speaker 1: you know, than it is about things that you can do.
Speaker 1: I think the list of things that you can't do
Speaker 1: is a lot longer than the things that are supposed
Speaker 1: to actually externally be like, you know, masculine, and I
Speaker 1: named them at the beginning of the book, Like curiosity
Speaker 1: is one of them, you know, being bookish was one
Speaker 1: when I was a kid. I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: still the same way now, but there was just this
Speaker 1: long list of things that you couldn't be. And one
Speaker 1: of the most important and biggest things was you couldn't
Speaker 1: be emotional, You couldn't be sad outwardly, you couldn't be
Speaker 1: insecure outwardly. You couldn't be any of these things. And
Speaker 1: I see it all the time, you know, with men,
Speaker 1: particularly a lot of men in their relationships, you know,
Speaker 1: are very closed off. And those bad feelings, those feelings
Speaker 1: of insecurity, as I say, and those feelings of sadness
Speaker 1: and depression and anxiety, they don't go away. They don't
Speaker 1: like you just find another way, whether it's known to
Speaker 1: you or not, you know, you find another way to
Speaker 1: let them escape. Sometimes they escape, you know, unfortunately through violence.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they escape through other ways that are that are
Speaker 1: cruel to other people. And I've engaged in all of that,
Speaker 1: you know, I've engaged in horrible behavior because of my
Speaker 1: own feelings of you know whatever, just by my own
Speaker 1: bad feelings. I'm learning now that I just need to
Speaker 1: sit with them, Like I literally go into a room
Speaker 1: and I just sit with them, and I feel every
Speaker 1: bad thing that people feel, and I just I cry,
Speaker 1: where I call a friend or I try to process them.
Speaker 1: Now as opposed to acting out on them through other people.
Speaker 1: It's a horrible way to use other people to get
Speaker 1: through your bad feelings. And that's what I do now,
Speaker 1: you know, and they feel just as bad, you know.
Speaker 1: But I don't want to bring anybody else down with
Speaker 1: me anymore. Yeah, there's a theme in the book, certainly
Speaker 1: about fathers. The way the book is laid out is
Speaker 1: so great because you are observing a young black boy
Speaker 1: on a bus interacting with his father, and you're using
Speaker 1: it to refle lect back on all these interactions and
Speaker 1: all these stories through your life. I just love the
Speaker 1: way it's laid out and structured. And you know, your
Speaker 1: father is a prominent figure in this book. And there's
Speaker 1: a line that you wrote that I think speaks to
Speaker 1: what you just said, which is, there's no thing on
Speaker 1: earth more dangerous than a man who refuses to accept
Speaker 1: that he is carrying all of these loads, because it
Speaker 1: then becomes up to everyone else to carry them for him.
Speaker 1: In one way or another. Other people have to pay
Speaker 1: the price for his insecurities. Yeah. I believe that very
Speaker 1: very strongly. You know, if you look at the news
Speaker 1: and you look at men doing, you know, horrible things
Speaker 1: that to me, is the embodiment of that, you know,
Speaker 1: there's some person who had to pay the price for
Speaker 1: this man's feelings of insecurity. Oftentimes it's a woman who
Speaker 1: had to pay the price because this man hated himself
Speaker 1: or because he couldn't feel, he couldn't process the feelings
Speaker 1: that he was feeling. You know. My father, I think
Speaker 1: was was one of those men. He had been told
Speaker 1: throughout his life that you know, men shouldn't feel, men
Speaker 1: shouldn't cry, men shouldn't you know, all these things that
Speaker 1: men shouldn't do. And I think what he ended up
Speaker 1: doing was taking a lot of those things out on
Speaker 1: his family, my mother. Mostly. He was a very jealous man.
Speaker 1: He was a very controlling man, you know. But I
Speaker 1: also believe, you know, underneath all that he really did
Speaker 1: love us. And I say I believe that because he
Speaker 1: you know, he never said it or really showed it
Speaker 1: in any sort of like tender way. But I just
Speaker 1: believe that he was so walled off one of the
Speaker 1: main reasons why we're here, and by we, I mean
Speaker 1: like human beings, you know, I think we're supposed to
Speaker 1: relate to each other. But he was so wrapped up
Speaker 1: in this idea of you know, man cause play m
Speaker 1: that he never that he never got to access, you know,
Speaker 1: those feelings. You know, my father was a steel worker,
Speaker 1: He was a strong man, He was a provider. He
Speaker 1: was the head of the household. And when the provider
Speaker 1: thing got taken away from him, he honestly did not
Speaker 1: know what to do. He didn't know who to be.
Speaker 1: When I look at your father in the way that
Speaker 1: you describe in the book, there's a few different factors
Speaker 1: that I think you're capable of looking at the way
Speaker 1: he treated you through a few different lenses. You know.
Speaker 1: One of them, and it's an important lens, is as
Speaker 1: a black family. His belief was I'm gonna make you
Speaker 1: behave a certain way so that you don't get hurt
Speaker 1: by white people. So some of what was happening with
Speaker 1: him was coming through that fear. And then, as you mentioned,
Speaker 1: he was laid off from steel work and never found
Speaker 1: another career. So you know, he had that factoring into
Speaker 1: who he was. And then of course he had the
Speaker 1: way he was raised. All these things factoring into what
Speaker 1: you're saying. But it's still I think for me, I
Speaker 1: believe that part of my role as a human is
Speaker 1: to take everything that's handed to me and work through
Speaker 1: it and transform it so that I don't just pass
Speaker 1: the pain on to other people. I really loved in
Speaker 1: the book how you were able to both look at
Speaker 1: the factors that caused your dad to be the way
Speaker 1: he was and look at those things and hold him
Speaker 1: responsible for the way he was at the same time
Speaker 1: and acknowledge the impact it had on you. I just
Speaker 1: thought that that balance was done really well because it's
Speaker 1: a nuanced topic. It is, you know, I thought I
Speaker 1: didn't act the way he did just out of nowhere.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of racism informed the way that
Speaker 1: he thought men black men should be. You know, my
Speaker 1: father grew up in a time where white people could
Speaker 1: literally just pretty much do anything they wanted to you,
Speaker 1: and he was very aware of that, and he was
Speaker 1: very aware of the fact that he had sons and
Speaker 1: he really wanted his sons to be strong and tough.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't just because he was like a mean dude, right,
Speaker 1: You know that that he imposed these kinds of like
Speaker 1: rules around behavior and rules around what not to feel
Speaker 1: and what not to think. He didn't want you to
Speaker 1: be soft in the world. That was going to be
Speaker 1: harsh with you as a black person, as a black man.
Speaker 1: So and I understand that, but at the same time,
Speaker 1: I can't help wishing that there was a way that
Speaker 1: he could have done both by first learning who I
Speaker 1: was as a person and then maybe teaching me how
Speaker 1: to properly or how to better navigate the world as
Speaker 1: the person that I was, rather than the person that
Speaker 1: he wanted me to be. Yeah, this may be a
Speaker 1: terrible direction to take this. We'll see. I'm watching this
Speaker 1: TV show. It has been gone for a while. It's
Speaker 1: called Dexter. I don't know if you ever saw it.
Speaker 1: I saw the first season. I think the basic idea
Speaker 1: of Dexter and it's not quite what you were saying,
Speaker 1: but there's an element of it, which is that he
Speaker 1: rescues his son, Fexter, from watching his mother be murder
Speaker 1: at the age of three, and he realizes very early
Speaker 1: on that Dexter is not like the rest of us,
Speaker 1: like he has problems right in his case, it's he's
Speaker 1: a serial killer. But it's fascinating because his dad works
Speaker 1: so hard to create and help Dexter find a world
Speaker 1: that works for him. I don't think that's such a
Speaker 1: bad analogy. Yeah, it's just such an interesting thing. Now
Speaker 1: there's good and bad to that. You know. The show
Speaker 1: raises questions about, well, did his dad sell him short?
Speaker 1: Could he have been better than he was? But the
Speaker 1: point being, I think that it's wonderful when our parents
Speaker 1: can see who's in front of him. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: a parent when we can see the child that's in
Speaker 1: front of us and think what's the best way to
Speaker 1: raise this child, not shove him into these collective cultural
Speaker 1: and gender based straight jackets. Right, That's exactly my point.
Speaker 1: Like my father, I don't think ever really knew me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know as a person, like I think first and
Speaker 1: foremost in his mind was who I was supposed to be,
Speaker 1: and so the thrust of my upbringing was just trying
Speaker 1: to hammer me into this shape that he felt I
Speaker 1: needed to be in order to get through the world. Also,
Speaker 1: there's also a bit of ego in there as well,
Speaker 1: like he didn't want me reflecting on him, you know,
Speaker 1: in this way that wasn't masculine, that wasn't you know strong,
Speaker 1: so and I think a lot of parents do that too.
Speaker 1: That's part of it as well, Like you know, you
Speaker 1: want your child to some degree to be, you know,
Speaker 1: a younger version of yourself. I mean, I don't have
Speaker 1: any kids. I don't know, but I feel like I
Speaker 1: see it sometimes. You know parents who just really want
Speaker 1: their kid to be You're young me now, so do
Speaker 1: all the things that I would do and think, all
Speaker 1: the things that I would think, and believe all the
Speaker 1: things that I would believe. So there was an element
Speaker 1: of that in it as well. Yeah, it's funny. At
Speaker 1: one point, I basically drove my life off a cliff
Speaker 1: with heroin addiction. So I have constantly throughout my son's
Speaker 1: life been like trying to just at him and be like,
Speaker 1: I hope he's on a different track. Yeah. I do
Speaker 1: not want to turn him into a little version of me.
Speaker 1: I don't think, or at least I don't want to
Speaker 1: turn him into a little version of what I was.
Speaker 1: Like then maybe the different version of me. There's a
Speaker 1: really sad scene in the book, and sad because I
Speaker 1: relate to it very very much. And it's basically, you
Speaker 1: find out that your father is dying, and you know
Speaker 1: your mother is really trying to get you to come
Speaker 1: visit him, to spend time with him. You know, everybody's
Speaker 1: envisioning this moment at the end of your father's life
Speaker 1: where you know, you guys are going to have these
Speaker 1: beautiful moments together, and you know, maybe you could describe
Speaker 1: what happened. Well. You know, at this point, I was
Speaker 1: really in the high cotton of my addiction and my
Speaker 1: mother had been after me to come home for quite
Speaker 1: some time to visit my father. He was in a
Speaker 1: hospice or like a nursing home, just getting worse and worse.
Speaker 1: And you know, when I got there, it was very strange, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, my mother, who didn't really have that great
Speaker 1: of a really ship with my father either, was really
Speaker 1: pushing for this moment, you know, like she really wanted
Speaker 1: us to connect, and you know, and it was very
Speaker 1: strange because I thought, well, she must have loved him
Speaker 1: to some degree to which I had never seen growing up.
Speaker 1: You know, she seemed to really want this moment, and
Speaker 1: so he kept begging me to come back home. I did,
Speaker 1: you know, she wanted my father and not to have
Speaker 1: time alone in this room, in this little tiny room
Speaker 1: in this in this nursing home, and so she literally
Speaker 1: like shoved me in the room, it felt like, and
Speaker 1: and you know, I just sat there with this man
Speaker 1: who was a lot frailer than I had ever seen him.
Speaker 1: And the scene plays out in the book, you know,
Speaker 1: like a movie scene, like you know, like a set,
Speaker 1: completely manufactured experience. You know. I literally was sitting there
Speaker 1: by his bed, like I dig my fist into my eyes,
Speaker 1: you know, and try to make them red. Will dissatisfy
Speaker 1: my mother when I come out of here, so that
Speaker 1: it might look like I was crying because I think
Speaker 1: I loved him, but I didn't know him, you know,
Speaker 1: I loved him on this level that I guess you're
Speaker 1: supposed to love your father, you know, since he's been
Speaker 1: gone to a long time, I do remember the good
Speaker 1: times when I was little, before all the sort of
Speaker 1: rules around masculinity kicked in, you know. I remember playing
Speaker 1: with him when I was really little. But in that moment,
Speaker 1: the scene that played out between two people, I mean,
Speaker 1: he couldn't say anything. Um he was already at that point,
Speaker 1: but it was just two complete strangers in a room,
Speaker 1: you know, where I was trying to sort of like
Speaker 1: drum up some thing. And I felt bad about that
Speaker 1: for a long time. But if there's nothing there, there's
Speaker 1: nothing there, you know. At the time, since then, as
Speaker 1: I've gotten older, I realized now that there was something there.
Speaker 1: You know. Maybe I couldn't access it at the time
Speaker 1: and he couldn't speak, but I recognized now as an
Speaker 1: older person that if you're lucky, your parents just kind
Speaker 1: of do the best they can. You know. The best
Speaker 1: thing that somebody's tolding me about parenting somewhat recently was,
Speaker 1: you know, when you're growing up, your parents are growing
Speaker 1: up to you know, a lot of times they don't
Speaker 1: know what the hell they're doing. And it has allowed
Speaker 1: me to have a little bit of grace with regard
Speaker 1: to not just my father, but my mother as well.
Speaker 1: You know, the grudges that I held when I was young,
Speaker 1: I don't have those anymore. You know, although my father's
Speaker 1: parenting style was problematic in a lot of ways, I
Speaker 1: do have to also recognize that he just was doing
Speaker 1: what his father did to him, and from all accounts,
Speaker 1: you know, my grandfather was worse. I mean, he was
Speaker 1: far worse than my father was on me. So I
Speaker 1: have to recognize that as well. Yeah, I love what
Speaker 1: you just said there, which is that I loved him,
Speaker 1: but I didn't know him. That's a really great way
Speaker 1: of saying it. I have a similar relationship with my
Speaker 1: father closer, I would say than the one maybe sounds
Speaker 1: like you have, and I see him, but he has Alzheimer's,
Speaker 1: he's declining, and largely what I end up feeling very
Speaker 1: often is nothing kind of like you describe. It just
Speaker 1: didn't feel anything. And my father was not maybe violent
Speaker 1: in the same way that your father was, or to
Speaker 1: the extent, but there was definitely a lot of the
Speaker 1: same dynamics where at play, I was a relatively sensitive,
Speaker 1: clumsy kid, and my dad had no patience for it.
Speaker 1: And you know, everybody in the neighborhood was kind of
Speaker 1: scared of him, that kind of thing. I have no
Speaker 1: ill will towards him at all. I've healed that enough.
Speaker 1: But what hasn't sprung up in its place is this
Speaker 1: deep and abiding love because I don't think I know
Speaker 1: him or he knows me. You know, our conversations for years,
Speaker 1: they are just stilted. You know, I think we both
Speaker 1: want to, but it just doesn't work. And so I'm
Speaker 1: left with that that sort of feeling of not a
Speaker 1: lot of emotion and the same thing you're saying, which
Speaker 1: is that I end up then going what is that bad.
Speaker 1: Is there something wrong with me? Should I feel something
Speaker 1: that I don't? Well? What happened for me? And I
Speaker 1: don't know if you'll find this as well, but you
Speaker 1: should write a book about what happened for me and
Speaker 1: it's still happening. Is that I have learned more about
Speaker 1: my father after his death than I ever knew about
Speaker 1: him when he was alive. And I started writing this book,
Speaker 1: and um, I started doing this sort of research for
Speaker 1: this book, and I was asking people about my father's life.
Speaker 1: You know, I just told you that my grandfather, who
Speaker 1: I had never met, who died before I was born,
Speaker 1: was far harder on my father than my father was
Speaker 1: on me. I didn't know that until after my father
Speaker 1: had died. I've heard horrible stories of how my father
Speaker 1: was treated as a boy and as a young man.
Speaker 1: I have heard of things that he tried to do
Speaker 1: and failed at. I have been preppy to things that
Speaker 1: he has said to other people you know about me,
Speaker 1: that I just he would have never said to me. So,
Speaker 1: although it isn't a well spring of love that has
Speaker 1: sprung up, it is, however, a great deal more understanding
Speaker 1: of the kind of obstacles he faced, and he built
Speaker 1: his emotional walls for a reason. They weren't always good
Speaker 1: reasons in my opinion. But I didn't live his life,
Speaker 1: you know, with a father who just was cruel and
Speaker 1: abusive on a quotitian basis. So yeah, I think I
Speaker 1: understand him a bit more. In that understanding, I can
Speaker 1: find a bit of love. Yeah, I agree. I think
Speaker 1: you know, when I look at my dad, it's very
Speaker 1: clear to me why he became the way he was,
Speaker 1: what the set of circumstances were. Let's change direction a
Speaker 1: little bit. I want to talk about sobriety a little bit.
Speaker 1: Because you got sober, I guess I'm sort of curious
Speaker 1: how you got sober and what your sobriety has been
Speaker 1: about since then. Is it something that you've gotten support
Speaker 1: from through different organizations or groups, or just always kind
Speaker 1: of curious what people's journey is into that world. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've got my own. I'm fourteen years sober this time around,
Speaker 1: um my head of stint before that, So I'm just
Speaker 1: kind of always curious what people's path looks like in
Speaker 1: that area. Well, I am so bored because there's just
Speaker 1: no drama in my life anymore. After writing, I'm coming
Speaker 1: up on year nine in December and congratulates to you,
Speaker 1: by the way for fourteen YouTube. I had gotten to
Speaker 1: a point where my behavior was so appalling. I met
Speaker 1: a guy at a bar, which is a bar that
Speaker 1: I always went to, and we were both just obliterated,
Speaker 1: and we were going to go back to his place,
Speaker 1: and he was like, we can walk to my place.
Speaker 1: I live. I live really close to the bar. Uh.
Speaker 1: It turns out he didn't live as close as he
Speaker 1: thought he did in his state. Um, and we ended
Speaker 1: up and this is going to get a little blue,
Speaker 1: but we ended up like falling into somebody's backyard and
Speaker 1: making out in a doghouse, and that's like the last
Speaker 1: thing I've met. You know. We were in this doghouse
Speaker 1: and like tearing each other's clothes off, and there was
Speaker 1: a dog. I think the dog was so oct that
Speaker 1: it didn't even like bark, Like it was just like,
Speaker 1: what the hell is going on? So I wake up
Speaker 1: the next day, you know, he's gone, right, he just
Speaker 1: left me there, and there's this dog, you know, just
Speaker 1: looking at me and the dog. I think at that
Speaker 1: point had gotten enough gumption up to just be like,
Speaker 1: I'm going to murder you like, like the dogs started
Speaker 1: barking and I ran away. So anyway, I'm I told
Speaker 1: this story to a friend of mine. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: picking up clothes, you know, off the ground, and I'm
Speaker 1: running away from this dog who's like, fortunately tied up.
Speaker 1: I told that story to a friend of mine, and
Speaker 1: it was like, you know, on the tail end of
Speaker 1: a lot of stories and a lot of behavior that
Speaker 1: I had engaged in. And I told it to him
Speaker 1: in this way that it was like, ha, ha, isn't
Speaker 1: that funny? And I remember looking up at him and
Speaker 1: he was not smiling, you know. He said, you could
Speaker 1: have been shot. You could have been killed, you know,
Speaker 1: like you're a black man. If somebody had shot a crazy,
Speaker 1: strange looking black man in their backyard, just be reading
Speaker 1: about you in the paper. And I remember him telling like,
Speaker 1: if you don't get yourself together, you could be hurt,
Speaker 1: you know. Um. And it was at a time when
Speaker 1: my behavior was increasingly erratic and careless and thoughtless, and
Speaker 1: he pretty much issued me an ultimatum, you know, and
Speaker 1: as as a lot of people were at that point,
Speaker 1: if you don't go to rehab, if you don't try
Speaker 1: to do something, then we're just not going to be
Speaker 1: your friends anymore. And so I really initially want to
Speaker 1: rehab just to shut everybody up. I thought I was
Speaker 1: smarter than everybody. I went, and I remember trying to
Speaker 1: bamboozle the intake lady, you know, telling her I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna be here a couple of days. I was trying
Speaker 1: to make jokes, and I ended up going there and
Speaker 1: actually getting it, you know that I did have a
Speaker 1: problem and sitting in and listening to other people talk
Speaker 1: about things that were similar to my life, and I
Speaker 1: got it. I absolutely got it. That story about your
Speaker 1: friends makes me think of deep into my heroin addiction.
Speaker 1: There was similar experience with a friend where I was
Speaker 1: telling them, you know, something else that I had done
Speaker 1: or whatever, and they were just appalled. And I had
Speaker 1: a partner at the time, we were both drug addicts together. Um,
Speaker 1: I said, they're just jealous of our exciting life. My
Speaker 1: my level of delusion was deep. So you got out
Speaker 1: of rehab, and then what supports have you found in
Speaker 1: helping you to stay sober. Has it been friendships or
Speaker 1: groups or reading or just sort of kind of doing
Speaker 1: it yourself. What's worked for you? I think a combination
Speaker 1: of all of those things. You know, I don't go
Speaker 1: to meetings. You know, I have friends who go to
Speaker 1: meetings every day. Yeah, I don't go to a meeting
Speaker 1: every day. I go to a meeting like I feel
Speaker 1: like I need a meeting. I do that. I also
Speaker 1: have other friends who are sober, with whom I spend
Speaker 1: a lot of my time. But I'm not a real
Speaker 1: social person. I do like to spend most of my time,
Speaker 1: you know, on my own with my cat and I write.
Speaker 1: And it's funny because I used to think I was
Speaker 1: this people person, you know. I used to think I
Speaker 1: was Johnny party Um and I loved people. Turns out
Speaker 1: I can't stand people. I'm a lot more solitary than
Speaker 1: I thought I was. You know, if you had asked me,
Speaker 1: you know, twelve years ago, I would have told you, like, oh,
Speaker 1: I love being around people, but I didn't like being
Speaker 1: around people. I liked being around drugs and alcohol and
Speaker 1: the people were just what kind of kind of came
Speaker 1: with that. So it's just a combination of things, you know.
Speaker 1: I do have people that I can talk to now,
Speaker 1: and that's something that I didn't have when I was using.
Speaker 1: I had people that I talked with and partied with.
Speaker 1: But I now have a few good friends that I
Speaker 1: can listen to them and I can talk to them,
Speaker 1: and that has made all the different to my sobriety. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a few good close friends is a wonderful thing to have,
Speaker 1: so valuable. There's a place in the book where you
Speaker 1: mentioned I closed my eyes and breathe deeply, like my
Speaker 1: therapist tells me to do. She tells me that I'm
Speaker 1: the only black male client she has ever had. This
Speaker 1: does not surprise me, so kind of back to your
Speaker 1: black masculinity thing, you know, not going to therapy. But
Speaker 1: then there's a spot where you say, the first time
Speaker 1: my therapist asked me to go to my safe place,
Speaker 1: I giggled because this is the kind of liberal psychobabble
Speaker 1: that I used to laugh at it, and that made
Speaker 1: me laugh. I still kind of laugh at it. But
Speaker 1: then I do it right totally. Yes, Yes, that's that teaching,
Speaker 1: kicking in a teaching that you're not supposed to have feelings.
Speaker 1: You know, that's a defensive mechanism. A giggle when we
Speaker 1: start talking about that. I still kind of giggle when
Speaker 1: we do that. And again, it's just a defense mechanism.
Speaker 1: But I do have a safe place, you know, I
Speaker 1: have a safe physical space that I go to. I
Speaker 1: get it now, because through all this, I think all
Speaker 1: of us realize as beautiful as the world can be,
Speaker 1: it's also treacherous and you kind of have to have
Speaker 1: a place either in your head or in the world
Speaker 1: or both that you can go to in order to
Speaker 1: feel better about life in general. So yeah, I'll go
Speaker 1: to my happy place all day. And I'll say a
Speaker 1: happy place all day and that you know, and when
Speaker 1: I say it to other people, you know, other young men,
Speaker 1: you know, big giggle because it sounds so namby pamby
Speaker 1: to us. But also, like you say, you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of black people in general don't go to therapy
Speaker 1: because we grow up with this idea that you're supposed
Speaker 1: to be tough. You're supposed to tough it through. You know,
Speaker 1: the world is harsh and you're supposed to be harsh.
Speaker 1: And I think that's to our detriment a lot of times,
Speaker 1: this idea of having to just be tough and resilient
Speaker 1: and strong all the time. Yeah, you said in the book,
Speaker 1: as a race, we're often admired for how strong we
Speaker 1: are and how much we have endured. But the truth
Speaker 1: is where no stronger than anyone else. We've endured, but
Speaker 1: we're only human. This enduring and having to be strong
Speaker 1: adds up and takes its toll. And you say it
Speaker 1: leads to our emotional undoing. Yeah, I absolutely believe that,
Speaker 1: you know, and you know even now, and I told
Speaker 1: my mom that I was going on anti anxiety medication
Speaker 1: medication for my depression. You know, her immediate reaction was, well,
Speaker 1: why would you want to do that? You know, you know,
Speaker 1: why would you want to get on more drugs, because
Speaker 1: in her mind, you know, drugs or drugs. But I
Speaker 1: could also tell that she felt a little bit of
Speaker 1: shame in that her son had to be on anti
Speaker 1: anxiety medication and anti depression medication because you know, he
Speaker 1: isn't strong enough to just take on, you know, the
Speaker 1: headwinds of the world. He has to be medicated in
Speaker 1: order to do it. And I'm like, yes, I yes,
Speaker 1: I absolutely do. I'm not ashamed of that. And I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people could do with, you know,
Speaker 1: a little help in that department. You know, we have
Speaker 1: a lot of people, you know, going through the world
Speaker 1: depressed and anxious, and they don't have to be, and
Speaker 1: they have this stigma against, you know, medication that's supposed
Speaker 1: to help you. Yeah, there definitely is a stigma against medication.
Speaker 1: I think there's two camps on that. I think there's
Speaker 1: one which is just the old school, like medicine is bad,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't take that stuff, you don't need it your week, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And that's one group. The other group of people seem
Speaker 1: to be coming from a place of you go to
Speaker 1: your doctor and they just give you a pill to
Speaker 1: make you get better, and that's not really what people need.
Speaker 1: And while I agree with that sentiment as in, like,
Speaker 1: if you've got mental health issues, it's good to work
Speaker 1: on all aspects of that. So I think there's been
Speaker 1: an overreaction to the medicalization of some of this stuff,
Speaker 1: you know. But I think it's we're throwing the baby
Speaker 1: out with a bath water to some degree, you know.
Speaker 1: For me, I've said on this show before, my depression
Speaker 1: is taken me throwing the kitchen sink at it. It
Speaker 1: has taken me using every tool at my disposal to
Speaker 1: deal with and medication is certainly one of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, talk therapy is good, Like I wouldn't trade
Speaker 1: my therapist for the world, you know. And in the
Speaker 1: beginning when they said like this, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: they started they started me on anti presence while I
Speaker 1: was in rehab, like after detox. You know, they were like, look, dude,
Speaker 1: you have some serious issues. And this was after talk therapy.
Speaker 1: And then you know, my anxiety started reaching new heights,
Speaker 1: and you know, that's when I really started to consider
Speaker 1: like maybe you know, because I started feeling better. That's
Speaker 1: the thing. When I was in rehab. It's a very
Speaker 1: strange thing. And I've told this story before, but when
Speaker 1: I was in rehab, I got there and I went
Speaker 1: through like the detox thing, and I had a roommate
Speaker 1: and he was a really big guy, and he he
Speaker 1: snored like really bad, like it just really loud, and
Speaker 1: so I was getting like no sleep. And the first
Speaker 1: thing that I thought to do when I was up
Speaker 1: nights with him snoring was to start right just writing
Speaker 1: about my life, writing some of the stories that appear
Speaker 1: in the book. But the funny thing about that was
Speaker 1: that when I was a kid, I used to write
Speaker 1: all the time. And it feels in some ways like
Speaker 1: I just kind of picked up, you know, once the
Speaker 1: medication chicked in, you know, and I was feeling better.
Speaker 1: You know, I just kind of picked up where I
Speaker 1: left off, you know, because there were so many people
Speaker 1: who told me don't write, it's not what boys do.
Speaker 1: But in that rehab facility, with nothing else to do,
Speaker 1: I just immediately picked up a pen and pad and
Speaker 1: just started writing and enjoyed it through the night. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: it's clear that writing is a therapeutic tool for you.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know that's not all it is. I'm
Speaker 1: always wary of turning art into only a therapeutic tool. Um.
Speaker 1: I think it's beautiful in ways far beyond that, but
Speaker 1: it does act that way for a lot of people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't mind you saying it. You know,
Speaker 1: I didn't think this book was going to get published.
Speaker 1: You know, I didn't even think this book was going
Speaker 1: to be a book. I just started writing these stories
Speaker 1: in rehab, and you know, when I got out of rehab,
Speaker 1: I just kept writing because I was afraid to go anywhere,
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't want to relapse, So I just
Speaker 1: stayed at home all the time and I was just
Speaker 1: writing and writing. And one of my friends that I
Speaker 1: managed to retain was like, you're doing all this writing,
Speaker 1: like why don't you give it to somebody? And that's
Speaker 1: how this book came to be. So I certainly don't
Speaker 1: mind you saying it's a therapeutic you know, at least
Speaker 1: this particular book was a therapeutic act for me. It
Speaker 1: really helped a lot. And then of course we got
Speaker 1: to the point where it was going to be published
Speaker 1: and I was like, wait a minute, Oh god, really
Speaker 1: it's a vulnerable book. For sure, there's no doubt about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I kind of put some less instellar behavior out there,
Speaker 1: but you know, I am a hundred percent able to
Speaker 1: admit that I was a less than stellar person. You know,
Speaker 1: I used people, you know, as a means to an end.
Speaker 1: You know, I was drunk or high or both nine
Speaker 1: of the time. You know, I did manage to hold
Speaker 1: a job or two, you know, but those jobs were
Speaker 1: strictly for the purpose of procuring you know, drugs and alcohol. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, my apartment was dark because the electricity hadn't
Speaker 1: been paid. I was a typical addict, which you know
Speaker 1: you may have lived through as well. I've been there
Speaker 1: a couple of times, very very familiar, you said at
Speaker 1: one point. You know, I've wasted time trying to numb
Speaker 1: myself with drugs and alcohol in ways that made me
Speaker 1: both vile and pathetic. And I totally related with that,
Speaker 1: like both pathetic and awful at the same time. It's
Speaker 1: like just this, it's just a bad combination. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it definitely was. And you know, one of the things,
Speaker 1: and you asked earlier what keeps you sober or keeps
Speaker 1: you striving for it is that I just don't ever
Speaker 1: want to be that person again. You know, I'm too
Speaker 1: old to be that person. Totally. I have the same
Speaker 1: thought sometimes I'm like, you know, I was pathetic enough
Speaker 1: at you know what, thirty five, which was the last
Speaker 1: time I drank, Like doing that at fifty is just
Speaker 1: too much. And I just feel like I would I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm just like it would be the same dance, you know,
Speaker 1: be the same same dance. So, yeah, you used a
Speaker 1: word a few minutes ago talking about your mom. You
Speaker 1: feel like she might have felt shame around you needing
Speaker 1: to use antibiotics, And I wanted to explore the idea
Speaker 1: of shame a little bit. And then I also want
Speaker 1: to explore a line that you put somewhere else in
Speaker 1: the book, because I think they're kind of connected, you said,
Speaker 1: because when you're young, everything is about me. You're talking
Speaker 1: about the fact that you have just stirred up all
Speaker 1: this trouble and all this fuss because you want people
Speaker 1: to see you. And I'm kind of curious. Sometimes we
Speaker 1: think shame is an emotion that is the opposite of
Speaker 1: what we think of, like with ego, I think really
Speaker 1: highly about myself, but to me, they seem to all
Speaker 1: be sort of related together. What are your thoughts? You know,
Speaker 1: I know that shame has ruled my life, and I
Speaker 1: think that when I was younger, the only way that
Speaker 1: I could stave it off was to be loud, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think I'm kind of hitting on your
Speaker 1: point where people think shame is sort of a shrinking violet, right,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of thing where you're just sort of
Speaker 1: trying to hide away. But shame can also present itself
Speaker 1: in the complete opposite way. You know, my whole life,
Speaker 1: I've been ashamed, And so when I got out on
Speaker 1: my own, like I was just the loudest, most obnoxious
Speaker 1: thing you could possibly imagine, because I think I felt like, well,
Speaker 1: people can see, people can see that I should be ashamed.
Speaker 1: So I'm just gonna be as loud and obnoxious and
Speaker 1: attention seeking as I can maybe put them off, you know,
Speaker 1: to maybe like keep them from seeing the real me.
Speaker 1: And in that way, it all became about me, Me, me,
Speaker 1: me me. You know. It's this constant work to keep
Speaker 1: putting up these false ideas of myself. It was a
Speaker 1: lot of work, and it was a lot of paying
Speaker 1: attention to me on my part, and paying attention literally
Speaker 1: to nobody else, you know, everybody else, or just kind
Speaker 1: of like bit players in my little production to keep
Speaker 1: myself from actually getting to know myself or to keep
Speaker 1: myself from feeling things I didn't want to feel. You know.
Speaker 1: Everybody else was supporting cast, and I was the star
Speaker 1: of this like really rickety production of you know, ladies
Speaker 1: and gentlemen. Here's Brian and here's like the most ridiculously loud, greedy,
Speaker 1: arrogant thing. It was all in act, but it was
Speaker 1: an act that I had to keep up a lot,
Speaker 1: and it was exhausting and it required more drugs and
Speaker 1: alcohol to do. Yeah, I relate with that, trying to
Speaker 1: I don't know if I was trying to be loud,
Speaker 1: but I certainly was trying to be tough in my
Speaker 1: own sort of way, Like I couldn't be tough in
Speaker 1: like an athletic way, so I tried to be tough
Speaker 1: in like a I'm a worse uh street criminal junkie
Speaker 1: than you are. You know. That was my attempt to
Speaker 1: embody that masculinity. I did it through like just sex,
Speaker 1: lots and lots of sex, like I think in gay
Speaker 1: life at the time. I don't know how it is now,
Speaker 1: but in gay life at the time, it was an
Speaker 1: odd sort of show of masculinity. If you were just
Speaker 1: you were just a slut, you know, you banged guys
Speaker 1: and you just went home with somebody every night. It
Speaker 1: was a way of showing masculinity. I tell people that
Speaker 1: and they're like really, I'm like yeah, it was kind
Speaker 1: of a pedigree to be a slut back in the nineties,
Speaker 1: and I did it to death. I I had a
Speaker 1: lot of regrettable sexual encounters because of it, both because
Speaker 1: of me and because of the other person. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that exists in heterosexual culture too. I think
Speaker 1: men have always been regarded as more masculine. The more
Speaker 1: partners that they have, the more conquering they do beyond
Speaker 1: the basic urges that drive it. I I pursued that
Speaker 1: because I felt like it said something about me. If
Speaker 1: I was able to have multiple partners, well I must
Speaker 1: then be okay, I must be good, I must be
Speaker 1: all these things, right. I think that's been around for
Speaker 1: a long time. I didn't know, you know, when I
Speaker 1: first came out that there was gonna be any sort
Speaker 1: of test of masculinity. I thought, you know, I've I've
Speaker 1: left that behind, you know. But again, like I said,
Speaker 1: I haven't been out there in a while. But I
Speaker 1: know that when I was, you know, in my twenties,
Speaker 1: it was a mark of being a stud it to
Speaker 1: just go out and be sleeping with all these people.
Speaker 1: So I used that as well. You know, it was
Speaker 1: all a ship show. It was all pretty, you know.
Speaker 1: And I've had a lot of friends who haven't made it,
Speaker 1: you know, with regard to their addictions, whether they be drugs, alcohol, sex,
Speaker 1: you know whatever. I have way too many friends who
Speaker 1: didn't make it. And then you have that, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of survivor's guilt a little bit. You know, I
Speaker 1: was just as bad as they were, you know, and
Speaker 1: if not worse. But I'm still here and they are not.
Speaker 1: And you know. That's yet another thing that tries to
Speaker 1: keep me every day waking up saying in the mirror,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to use today, which is what I do.
Speaker 1: I wake up, Um, I look in the mirror, I
Speaker 1: look myself dead in the face, and I say, not today,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to use today. Here's what I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do instead. When that's how you get nine years. The
Speaker 1: last chapter in the book is a letter to the
Speaker 1: young man on the bus, and he's not young man,
Speaker 1: the small child, the little boy on the bus that
Speaker 1: a lot of your book is related to. Not I'm
Speaker 1: not going to go through the whole thing because you
Speaker 1: wrote an entire chapter on it and I think it's beautiful.
Speaker 1: But I'm wondering if you could summarize or say to you,
Speaker 1: what does being a man mean to you? Now? What
Speaker 1: is that concept? Is it even a useful concept? I
Speaker 1: guess I would start with, and then secondly, if so,
Speaker 1: what does it mean to you? At tend not to
Speaker 1: think that it's a useful concept. But I still have
Speaker 1: all of the things that I grew up with around masculinity.
Speaker 1: I still have those ideas in my head and they're
Speaker 1: not going anywhere. But as I get older, I think
Speaker 1: it's just not really a useful concept, this idea of
Speaker 1: being a man. I you know, this is going to
Speaker 1: sound so trite, but it is simply about being a
Speaker 1: human being who identifies as male. You know, That's what
Speaker 1: I'm starting to think about it more and more and more.
Speaker 1: There's no certain set of behaviors that you're supposed to have.
Speaker 1: There's no certain way that you're supposed to dress, there's
Speaker 1: no certain way that you're spposed to react to things.
Speaker 1: You know, it is also constructed that it all feels
Speaker 1: ridiculous to me after a while. Yet you know, I
Speaker 1: will not go outside in a sun dress. Nobody wants
Speaker 1: to see that anyway. But you know, I'm still not
Speaker 1: gonna be breaking any molds as far as you know,
Speaker 1: some behaviors. But I do try to remember when I
Speaker 1: am crying, I am a human being crying. I'm not
Speaker 1: somehow shaming my penis by doing so so again. And
Speaker 1: and you know what's really interesting too, is that you know,
Speaker 1: I teach college, and you know, so I'm in contact
Speaker 1: with a lot of young people who are increasingly seemingly
Speaker 1: to me, the students that I get are viewing the
Speaker 1: idea of gender as an antiquated concept. So they teach
Speaker 1: me whenever I come up with something that's supposed to
Speaker 1: be about being a man, you can say the same
Speaker 1: thing about being a woman, you know, or not identifying
Speaker 1: you know at all, You can say those same things.
Speaker 1: We're all in this same weird struggle. And so I
Speaker 1: don't know that there's anything special that I think that
Speaker 1: there is to being a man. I just don't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a really interesting idea of whether there are certainly
Speaker 1: psychological traditions, spiritual traditions that talk about a masculine and
Speaker 1: feminine energy, and they're very clear to say, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: everybody's going to have a blend of these things. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, you don't know whether that's a useful framework
Speaker 1: or concept anymore to even divide them up like that.
Speaker 1: And certainly more and more I think, like you, I
Speaker 1: am learning from younger people about the fluidity here of
Speaker 1: these ideas. Yeah, and I think that the trappings of
Speaker 1: masculinity and the trappings of you know, so called femininity really,
Speaker 1: and this is gonna sound weird, but I really they're
Speaker 1: just they're just sex kinks, you know, They're just things
Speaker 1: that turn you on, you know, as far as sexually,
Speaker 1: like some people like you know, somebody who has big muscles,
Speaker 1: or wears sun dresses or whatever. I mean, these things
Speaker 1: they don't seem to really have any use beyond the
Speaker 1: sexual And that's kind of where I am leaving it
Speaker 1: for right now. I hope to learn more about it,
Speaker 1: but right now they just feel like things that, like
Speaker 1: I said, that just either turn you on or not,
Speaker 1: and they don't have anything to do with actually moving
Speaker 1: through the world as a human being. You say near
Speaker 1: the end of the book to this young boy, it
Speaker 1: would be a mistake to wait around for anyone to
Speaker 1: save you. You will have to save yourself, and I
Speaker 1: hope that you do. Maybe we can end with you
Speaker 1: just saying a little bit about that idea. In the
Speaker 1: process of trying to save myself, I've looked far and wide,
Speaker 1: high and low for somebody to save me, whether that
Speaker 1: be you know, a lot of black women on whose
Speaker 1: shoulders I have leaned, or a partner, boyfriend, or whatever.
Speaker 1: I have looked for all these things for somebody to
Speaker 1: save me. When I say save me, I mean except me.
Speaker 1: I mean love me and make me feel like I
Speaker 1: am allowed to take up space in the world. I've
Speaker 1: looked for all those things and other people, and I
Speaker 1: have found those things to be insufficient. And it's also
Speaker 1: a burden that you're putting on somebody else that really
Speaker 1: is your burden. That's what I mean when I say
Speaker 1: you'll have to save yourself. You're gonna have to find
Speaker 1: a way to be you in this world and be
Speaker 1: proud of that fact and to say to yourself that
Speaker 1: not only are you allowed to take up space, like
Speaker 1: you should take up space. And that's what I mean
Speaker 1: by saving yourself, like you're not going to find it
Speaker 1: in the bottom of a bottle, in the bottom of
Speaker 1: the syringe, like you're not going to find it there,
Speaker 1: like you have to save yourself. That's what I mean.
Speaker 1: I couldn't agree more. I think obviously other people and
Speaker 1: our relations to other people can be big supports and
Speaker 1: critical supports in that journey. But that energy of ultimately
Speaker 1: getting down to I'm okay with who I am, that's
Speaker 1: an internally generated thing, and the desire to say, okay,
Speaker 1: I want to be I think you use a word
Speaker 1: that I'm not going to pronounce, right, it's the sovereign sovereignty.
Speaker 1: Every once in a while. But I have to compound
Speaker 1: a word. I get lost. My editor Chris is well
Speaker 1: aware of this problem. Um, But I love that idea
Speaker 1: of my own sovereignty, right, I've got to own that
Speaker 1: now again, wise action. Maybe that I get lots of
Speaker 1: help from lots of people, but still the locus of
Speaker 1: ownership and control starts inside me. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, you're not an island. You're not
Speaker 1: going to do it all on your own. But the
Speaker 1: kernel of it, the core of it, has to start
Speaker 1: with you, because it's not anybody's job to like pick
Speaker 1: you up and carry you all the way. I think
Speaker 1: that's too much to lay on somebody else. And this
Speaker 1: is everybody. This is in some like masculine thing that
Speaker 1: I'm saying. We all have to find a way to
Speaker 1: navigate the world in a way that we fit into
Speaker 1: it and that we belong here, and that we deserve
Speaker 1: the entirety of the human experience, happiness, sadness, all that
Speaker 1: it has to offer, and to embrace it beautiful. I
Speaker 1: think that's a great place to end it. As I mentioned,
Speaker 1: the book is called Punch Me Up to the Gods
Speaker 1: and memoir Well of links in the show notes for
Speaker 1: how you can get Brian's book if you want to,
Speaker 1: and how you can find him and Brian. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for coming on. I have really enjoyed this conversation.
Speaker 1: It's been great. I've enjoyed it as well. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much and I appreciate you having me on. You
Speaker 1: are very welcome. If what you just heard was helpful
Speaker 1: to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support
Speaker 1: the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community.
Speaker 1: With this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive member
Speaker 1: is only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you
Speaker 1: for your support. Now. We are so grateful for the
Speaker 1: members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do
Speaker 1: what we do without their support, and we don't take
Speaker 1: a single dollar for granted. To learn more, make a
Speaker 1: donation at any level and become a member of the
Speaker 1: one you Feed community. Go to when you feed dot
Speaker 1: net slash Join The One You Feed podcast would like
Speaker 1: to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show.