The Dadliest Cast
Dave & Garrett, 2 best friends, get together to talk about being dads, life, hobbies, and some other things.
The Dadliest Cast
The Unseen Battle: Confronting Shadows and Shaping Identity
Have you ever felt trapped by the weight of your past, struggling to reconcile your identity amid harsh trials and deep personal traumas? Join me as I reveal my own tumultuous journey from a Korean-American childhood in a predominantly black neighborhood, through the loss of my father, to the harsh discipline and academic struggles I faced, and ultimately towards self-improvement and healing. I am laying bare my soul, sharing these deeply personal experiences, not to solicit sympathy but to demonstrate that we can rise above our darkest hours and emerge stronger.
My teenage years were far from easy. I grappled with identity issues, mental health, and the harsh reality of a strained family relationship. I was the high schooler who skipped classes, sold weed, worked at McDonald's, and even faced a false academic accusation leading to a court hearing. You'll get an insight into my struggle with burying emotions, my strained relationship with my mother, and how a DNA test forced me to reevaluate my identity. This roller coaster ride of experiences is not just a testimony of my resilience but a beacon of hope to anyone experiencing similar challenges.
This episode is not just about the struggles but also about triumphs and revelations. It takes you through my journey of severing ties with toxic family members, the harsh revelation of family deception, and a recent medical scare. These experiences led me to discover the power of self-care, positivity, and, most importantly, the mantra of living life to the fullest with no regrets. So, come along on this intimate emotional journey and muster the courage to face your own battles head-on.
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Good evening everybody. Welcome to the Daliuscast podcast. I'm your host, david, doing a little something different with this episode. It's going to be a two part special recording part one by myself, garrett will be recording, part two by himself and then part three. He and I are going to get together and talk about our two recordings.
Speaker 1:Reading David Goggins' book Can't Hurt Me and actually taking my time reading it and really absorbing the information he's giving. I'm going to do these challenges at the end of each of his chapters or as they come up and share them with you. Part of the whole idea of this podcast was to help other dads and fathers, husbands and guys in general really get a grip on their life physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually. Sometimes we just have to dress things and put it out there for others to hear and kind of take the power away from the negative things in our lives, the negative things in our past, in order for us to continue to grow and build on the positive things that we have currently deep down in the corner of our dark minds. Every guy has something or some handful of things, or a lot of things that have led them to the point of being calloused, being closed, not being open with their loved ones and it really snowballs that affect. It's bigger and bigger to the point where you end up lonely old man, bitter by yourself, wondering where it all went wrong. So, before that happens, I'm going to share my story with you guys and hopefully that gives you guys the courage and the confidence to open up to somebody and share your story and take that power away from all the pain and the hurt from your past that's still haunting you or holding you back, from what life hasn't stored for you. So yeah, this is my story. Let's get into this.
Speaker 1:I was born July 17, 1986 on a US Army base in Seoul, south Korea. I was left there till I was about two and a half, maybe three years old. I don't know why, honestly, but I just know that my mom came to America, moved to Pittsburgh without me, and when I was about three years old, one of my first memories was on an airplane I have this real vivid memory and come into Pittsburgh and I was living with a foster family. I don't remember much about them, but I do know that I was with them for a period of time before I was actually reunited with my mother and my understanding of that situation really was. She couldn't prove she was my mom. So she had to go through all these hoops and hurdles to prove she was actually my mom so that she can take me in as her son and be my mom. So fast forward a little bit.
Speaker 1:I remember vividly kindergarten being a good time, first grade, pretty decent time. But life was a little hard on me because I have a Korean mom who has had very high expectations for me from a very young age. I was spoiled to a degree as a child, especially when I was really young. Like I said, kindergarten first, second grade my mom, to her credit, worked her ass off to provide for us. I lived in a really old but historic three-story brick house, huge rooms, and it was just the two of us for a very, very long time. So, to her credit, she did work her ass off to provide for us, but in that she did instill some work ethic in me. But she did make my life a little bit more difficult growing up as a child than it should have been.
Speaker 1:I remember I was a real talkative kid in kindergarten and I would get calls home from the kindergarten teacher saying I wouldn't shut up in class and my mom threatened to take me to a doctor to have my vocal cords or something you know, adjusted so I wouldn't talk as much. Scared the hell out of me as a child thinking that that was actually true. First grade I remember a huge wrestling fan growing up as a kid. I've mentioned this in the past Big, big WWF guy and WrestleMania 10 was coming up March or April, whatever month it was. When I was in first grade and my mom said if I got 100% on a spelling test, she would order the pay-per-view for me, which was a big deal because I think back then that was like a 49, 95 or 59, 95 purchase through your cable company and I really, really wanted to watch WrestleMania 10 and I had to get a perfect score on this spelling test, not an A but a perfect score. And I got a B and she did not order WrestleMania. She was dead serious about it and I was heartbroken. It was very, very heartbroken.
Speaker 1:That was always a pretty reserved kid, you know. I made friends and stuff, but I didn't have close friends growing up as a kid. I didn't have close friends growing up as a kid. I didn't have sleepovers at my house. I didn't get to sleepover at other kids' houses, things like that. I really wasn't allowed to have company over and hang out, so sheltered, I guess to a degree.
Speaker 1:But I also grew up as the minority in my neighborhood. I grew up in a predominantly black neighborhood so I was surrounded by the good things of the black community, like the food, the old black women, the big mamas, the grannies who would beat you even if you weren't theirs. So they instilled a lot of respect into me. It was always yes, sir, no, sir, yes, ma'am, no, ma'am. I got to experience some really good food, some good, just soul food and comfort food. So I got those good experiences as a child. But being the minority within a minority is an awkward place to be because black people were getting help back in life and white people didn't like black people. Well, when you're the only Korean kid in town, all the black kids didn't like you. So they picked on you, they made fun of you and that's. I endured a lot of bullying grown up from my peers and the kids in the neighborhood and stuff like that, which, again, my mom sheltering me or whatever. But I kind of kept to myself too. I didn't want to go out. It wasn't until several years later that I started getting some confidence and making my own friends and going out defending myself in fights and getting into a lot of fights, which earned me a lot of respect in the neighborhood with the other kids. But I still got picked on, you know. So I was bullied from a very young age At home.
Speaker 1:It was weird because it was me, my mom and this guy and I'm not going to mention his name, he's probably dead for all I know but there's this guy who lived with us Basically as far as I can remember living with my mom. He was there and I always thought he was my dad. He treated me like his own kid and he disciplined me like his own kid. Both. I got into trouble in school or whatever, but verbally discipline me, physically discipline me. Manual labor was always an option and out of the clear blue, I guess, he and my mom got into a fight and she kicked them out. So he's gone out of my life and it's just me and my mom. We're all in the same boat. And my mom got into a fight and she kicked them out, so he's gone out of my life and it's just me and my mom for a little while there and she kind of said, no, that's not your dad, it's just somebody who was living with us.
Speaker 1:I was helping him get off his feet or get on his feet and give him a place to stay. He was helping us around the house and helping you and I'm like, okay, that's kind of weird, I guess. So I started asking the natural question well, who's my dad? Where's he at? And she wouldn't tell me we're skipping past third grade, we're skipping past fourth grade. At this point she wouldn't tell me. It wasn't until, I think, the summer before fifth grade.
Speaker 1:I might have been nine. I was nine years old when she finally broke and said your dad lives in apartment, not even seven minutes down the street from us, and right next door was my grandmother Quote unquote. And I'll explain that in a little bit. But right next door was my grandmother, his mom, and so through some begging and pleading and crying, they make arrangements, we go over and we meet them and I'm like, cool, you're my dad and I would go and hang out with them all the time. And he was the complete opposite of the previous guy. You know, he was fun. He didn't attempt to discipline me ever. He bought me whatever I wanted Newest video games ever. He wanted newest video game systems the whole night and I would hang out at his apartment every second I could and he was a character he definitely was a character Served in Vietnam. That's how I met my mom was while he was in Vietnam he got to go over to Korea and get some R&R and they got married and boom. Next thing you know, here I am, here I stand.
Speaker 1:So I started building a relationship with this guy and I beg and plead my mom, let him move in. Let him move in. We can be a family. You know it could be me, you, my mom and my dad. We could be a family. Grandma lives right next door. My aunt and uncle live right on the corner. So she let him move in, which I thought was awesome. Dad's here, my mom's here, like, life is great. Maybe six months, eight months go by and she kicks them out. They have a big fight. They can't, they can't live under the same roof. So my aunt and uncle own this house, this duplex right around the corner from our house, literally like if you walked out my backyard we could see their backyard, kind of deal. So he moved in right away and immediately back to hanging out at his place every second I could and, like I said, he spoiled the hell out of me. Birthdays, christmas, whenever Bought me any and everything I I freaking asked for. My mom hated it, but it took a little bit of a burden off of her for me, but it took a little bit of a burden off of her financially. I guess.
Speaker 1:Back back in school you know I'm having a good time. I'm telling all my friends hey, I met my dad. I met my dad. They're like yeah, what's he look like? I'm like he's a black guy. You know he's boom. Let me show you this picture of him I got. They're like dude, that's not your dad, that's not your dad. I'm like yeah, it's my dad. And we I'd get into fights over these guys saying that he wasn't my dad. If you guys know what I look like, I'm. I'm five, six hundred and eighty pounds, fair skin, asian looking guy. This dude was about five ten. He had a hernia, so he had a really big belly, but five ten, 1159 pm, black. I mean, he was dark, but he's my dad. I'm like yep, I don't care what anyone says, this is my dad.
Speaker 1:So one summer I go to a church camp with my Aunt and uncle and their family down in the Korean culture. Anytime your mom or your dad has a really close friend, if it's a woman, she automatically becomes your aunt. If it's a dude, he's your uncle. They weren't at all related to us. They just happened to be another Korean family that my mom knew for years. So that was an Sue, my cousin Jamie.
Speaker 1:So we drive all the way up to Erie one weekend in July, july 9th, 9, 10, 11, 12. Yeah, it was like a week long little camp thing. So we drive up to area. I'm having a good time up at camp, eating some good food see Lake Erie off in the distance and we had home. We come home on a Sunday Afternoon, july 14th. I'm like I can't wait to get back to my dad.
Speaker 1:He'd been in the hospital for a while, though you know haven't been in the Vietnam War. He has some Agent Orange exposure to your research, not not good stuff which led to health complications further in his life. So you know he'd been in the VA hospital for some time, in and out and then extended stays. But I would go to the VA and visit him all the freaking time I learned how to play pool at the VA. He'd take me down to their little rec room in the ground floor or the basement, introduced me to some other guys he knew there that were long term patients and they taught me how to play pool. Some really funny stories are shared. So yeah, you know, in a weirdly bad time for him, he still made, made time for me. Show me some life experiences, you know.
Speaker 1:So I was too young to really know better at the time what was really going on with him. You know, there'd be times I'd go to visit him and he'd just be sleeping and the nurses say you know, don't bother him, he's got a rest. So I literally just sit in his hospital room, read a book or something, go sit in the waiting room Outside the elevators and look out the windows and look at Pitt's campus, whatever. But I was there. At every second I could be, I was there. But anyway, we're driving back from Erie. It's a Sunday.
Speaker 1:I get home and I walk in the door my aunts who comes in with us? My cousin Jamie. There's my mom, my grandma and my three aunts, my dad, younger sisters, and they're all in my living room, all dressed in black. I'm like what's going on here? And they're like your dad died this morning while you guys were driving back and that kind of broke me, you know. So I go running up to my room, I start slamming shit, screaming, crying, and at the time I was like I'm going to be in my room and at the time I was crying because I lost my dad. At the time I was crying because I lost the relationship I had with him, my father, my father, my role model, the guy I looked up to, and I was that. That messed me up. So they buried him a day before my birthday and I remember thinking what do I do now? So I'm 11 years old. I met him when I was nine, so I had two years with the man and two really good years with that man.
Speaker 1:But this is where things start to take a little turn for the worse. My mom's still just harping on me. I mean I'm a straight, a student, but she's just on my ass about everything you know cleaning the house, basement, attic room being impeccable condition, helping out in the garden, helping out other Korean families that needed assistance with manual labor the whole night. I mean I couldn't play organized sports. She wouldn't let me do any of those extra curriculars. I did get to do martial arts, skipped over that part, but I was doing martial arts and the only reason I was doing martial arts is because my mom happened to know the mom of Grandmaster CS Kim or not the mom, his sister, I believe it was actually but they were really good friends. So she convinced my mom to let me do that, which is cool, you know. It gave me something to do and I enjoyed that.
Speaker 1:But I'm not going to talk too too much about that. But she's on my shit constantly. Why don't you have straight A's? I mean, I'd come home from school with tests 92%, 94%, 98%, 99% and she'd give me shit for not being 100. So I bust my ass in class, try to do all the extra credit, you know, just to be able to show my mom, boom, there's 100% of that. Just to be able to show my mom boom, there's 100%, here's another 100, here's another 100,. You know, and never got any at a voice for those. I can remember all the times, though I didn't come home with 100% on a test.
Speaker 1:And then, as I got another year older I'm 12 years old I start doing manual labor with my neighbors son-in-law, in the summertime mowing grass, pulling weeds, stuff like that, with his landscaping company, and then in the wintertime, whenever there was a snow day, go shovel snow and clean out driveways and stuff like that that. He'd pick up on those jobs, so got into actually working and he would pay me under the table 50 bucks a week in the summertime. I can't remember what he paid me for the snow removal, but I'm making money now and my mom's like you can't spend it, you got to save it. You got to save it, which I'm like fine, whatever, but I was never allowed to spend that money. And then high school hit. Let's fast forward a little bit. Middle school was blah, whatever. Oh, actually, yeah, my mom didn't come to my fifth grade promotion. I had to go by myself to that, and I came home with a pile of awards and accolades and she didn't seem to care. She was, I remember her saying it's fifth grade, it's not like you're graduating high school or college, so let's skip past middle school. There really wasn't much, actually. No, I started therapy in middle school.
Speaker 1:Eighth grade, eighth grade, I wiggled out about something. I can't remember what it was, though, but I remember I said I wanted to kill myself. I didn't say it to my mom, I said it to my group of friends, telling them all the shit I was going through, which I was probably blown out of proportion at that time. But I remember sitting in class one day and a principal and the school cop show up and they pulled me out of class and they're like where's your locker? So I take them to my locker, they open and they start searching all my stuff and they take me into an empty classroom. They're like been told that you're having suicidal thoughts and I'm like what? And they're like, yeah, someone came and told us. So one of my friends went and told a teacher or the principal or somebody which good on them, hear something, say something, see something, say something you know. And, like I said, I was probably blown, that completely out of proportion. But they called my mom, they called my grandma and they showed up to the school and told them what was going on and my mom lost her shit on me, and not in a good way, not in the. You know why are you feeling this way? I don't want you to feel like this. I want you to be happy. What can we do? She didn't blow up in that manner. She wasn't apologizing for anything she may have done to help me feel that way. She freaked out saying I embarrassed her, there was nothing wrong with me. You know I'm too emotional, I'm stupid for saying that. Look at the trouble we're getting into. So school was like whoa, whoa, whoa Therapy. So I get enrolled in therapy.
Speaker 1:I don't think I made it four sessions, five maybe, with this therapist. I remember being alone in the therapist's office, going over my feelings and stuff like that, and then, like the final 15 minutes they would bring my mom in and recap the conversation to a degree with my mom and my mom was so dismissive of everything the therapist said, saying I was making it all up, there was nothing wrong with me, and I remember this went on for a couple of sessions. In the final session I finally snapped. I'm like what's the point of even doing this? You know I'm sitting here telling the therapist how I feel about things, how you only hold me to a standard of straight A's and what am I doing to bring you a good image and make you look good and make you look out to be the best single mom on the planet? And just freaked out on her and the therapist, you know, told the therapist you don't defend me, kind of deal, like I'm telling you all this and then you share with my mom and she dismisses it all and you're like, okay, we'll see you next week. So I stopped doing that after that session.
Speaker 1:And then high school hit and that's where things kind of went downhill. My mother worked as a janitor at a senior care facility but she had to take two buses to get there. She worked the morning shift so she was out of the house by like 530 in the morning to get to work on time, if not a little earlier, and then she had to catch two buses home. So you know she'd get off at three o'clock but not get home to like almost five. And I found some some freedoms. Like wait a second, I'm going to, I'm going to fuck off, do whatever I want, because she's not here. How can she stop me?
Speaker 1:So in my ninth grade I started fucking around, skipping classes, skipping school, not to the point where I got into any trouble, but enough that I felt like I had some freedoms and I was starting to have some fun. You know, skip school with friends, go, hang out, went to school in Oakland, which is where Pets Campus, university of Pets campus. There was a lot of shit to do in Oakland to kill five, six, seven, eight hours of your time, and no one batted an eye because you were just another kid walking around with a backpack. You look like a student. As long as you didn't do anything stupid or crazy to make yourself stick out, you blend it right in. So I started doing that and at a little point in time where I started smoking weed made more friends for extra cash. I started selling some too, and then 10th grade rolled around and, as for shit really went downhill, I skipped.
Speaker 1:I showed up on the first day of school to my 10th grade year, picked up my school books, my class schedule, and I proceeded to skip every single day following. And remember, my mom doesn't, doesn't get home till almost five o'clock, so I would make sure I stopped home. He raised the voicemail on the answering machine. For those of you who don't know what an answering machine is, it's like a voicemail, but it was built onto the phone, so you had like a big, big phone and you actually had to press the play into a play through a speaker. You didn't listen to it on your phone. I would delete the messages from the school saying I skipped or I was marked absent that day. Any letters that came home from the school I threw away the whole night Covered my tracks.
Speaker 1:I was pretty good at it. You know I had picked up a job at the McDonald's right by my house over that summer so I'd skip school all day, I'd go fuck around in Oakland have fun, and then I would go to McDonald's and work till they closed. This was one of the few McDonald's at the time that actually closed. You know, I think they closed at 11 o'clock on weekdays and at midnight on weekends. I always worked the evening shift because I was a student. So skip school all day, had to work at McDonald's, click my paycheck, go have a good time. And I did this first nine weeks, first quarter of the school year.
Speaker 1:I carried in into the second quarter of the school year and then, probably a week before the Christmas holiday break, I decided hey, let's go see what's going on at school. I haven't been there in a while. So I show up one day fucking around in school. People like where the hell you been? I'm like, oh, everywhere.
Speaker 1:And ironically I'm skipping English class and I'm walking down the hall and a bone coming around the corner is the school guidance counselor, slash truancy officer. And he goes. I've been looking for you. I'm like me, I don't even know you. He goes, but I know you. And he hands me an envelope and he says this is your court. Notice my court. For what he goes for being truant. Listen, I'm a 10th grader at a public squad. I know what the hell truant meant. So what do you mean truant? He goes. Well, you've missed so much school this year that, um, you have to go to court and your, your parent or guardian will probably have to pay a fine for the amount of school you've missed.
Speaker 1:So I start freaking out and he takes me to his office and he goes. We're going to call your mom right now. I'm like she's not home. He goes OK, we're going to call your next contact, which is your grandmother. Right, I'm like shit, yep, I'm busted. So I'm like, yeah. So he calls my grandmother and she freaks out. So she's like I'll be there after school to pick him up. Do not let him leave. So for the rest of the day I had to sit in his stupid office. They don't want to send me back to class For fear of me dipping out. Because sure shit I would. I had the opportunity to dip out, I definitely would have. So my grandma comes and picks me up, takes me back to my house and she just starts to tear into me.
Speaker 1:Now think about my grandma. She was a nice woman For the most part, but when I was younger she would beat me. That was her way of disciplining me, just like my mother. But my grandmother had an umbrella stand full of switches and she go, she look at you when you're in trouble. She'd tell you to go over to that umbrella stand and grab nanny she always referred to herself as nanny Grab nanny. A switch which is messed up, because, one, you're about to get your ass whooped. But two, you had to pick the weapon by which your ass was getting whooped. Now you couldn't take the really thick one Because she knew what you were doing. The thick ones didn't have that nice whipping, snap and crack to it. So if you brought her a real thick one, she'd just lay into you for that much longer to make sure the message got across. You definitely didn't take the real skinny, thin one, because a couple of cracks of that I mean you were crying, so you picked one somewhere in between. The psychological effect that you know that would have on someone you can only imagine, right, that'd be like me saying hey, you're on death row, go get me a weapon for me to kill you with, so you know what's coming. So she would beat me. No, we're near to the degree that my mother did, though.
Speaker 1:While I'm on the subject of getting my ass whooped, my mother would grab whatever she could get her hands on and beat me with it. My mother used to sew, so she had these really thick quarter inch, almost half inch thick yard or meter sticks to measure out fabric and stuff like that. I guess she'd grab those. I mean, she broke so many of those over my ass. In my back. We had those ornamental wooden fork, spoon and knife on the wall. She hit me with those a couple of times. She broke the. She broke the knife Once I because it never went back up on the wall. She'd hit me with her hands. If she could, she could get her hands on me. She'd smack me around, smack my arms, my chest, my back, my face, my ass. But yeah, my mother, my mother, lay an ass whooping and that's not a compliment to her, but anyway, as I got older, my grandmother would stop whooping you.
Speaker 1:She was a very religious person. She pulled out of her big ass purse this thick ass leather bound King James Bible with the tissue like paper with the Gulf oil edges. And then she'd pull out this little bottle of oil and it literally just had a sticker on it that said Holy oil. And she'd open the oil, turn it over onto her thumb and she'd pull out and she'd swipe a little crucifix on your forehead, kind of like Ash Wednesday If you go to church and get the Ash Wednesday crucifix on your forehead. She did that with the Holy oil when she'd open her Bible and she'd read a scripture and then she'd pray. She'd pray over you, pray the demon away, pray the sins away, pray for change. She'd pray for so long that eventually I'd start praying with her and I zoned her out to the point where I didn't even know what she was saying any longer. But I knew I was talking to God and take me now Just to end this, which you never did, and I appreciate that. But yeah, that that was her method of punishing me growing up into my teenage years, instead of physically beating the hell out of me. She'd just pray over me for 45 minutes to an hour.
Speaker 1:But I remember my mom got home and my grandmother told her everything that was going on and my mom was pissed and my only saving grace at the time was my grandmother was still in the house, but grandma left. She yelled at me some more. I ignored her. I let her say what she needed to say and I just went to bed and my mother would be downstairs swearing and cussing, calling me every name in the book, both in English and Korean. You know her English was God awful, but I live with the woman so I knew what she was saying. I could translate, but I guess she was so pissed off and this this had happened a couple of times to me prior to my death She'd just be prior to this but I guess she had been so pissed off that the next morning when she was getting ready for work, she bust into my room like the SWAT team and beat the shit out of me while I was sleeping. I mean, whooped my ass to the point. Now I'm in 10th grade and I've had my fair share of fights, had my fair share of ass weapons from her and other people in my life up until that point in time. But she beat me so bad I was fucking crying. I was in tears until she left.
Speaker 1:So I go to school and I'm like, all right, I got to figure out how I'm going to get out of this. So I start going to all my classes on time, sitting in the first, first row right in front of the teacher participating, turning in the homework. All nine and a few days before my court date, the damn guidance counselor slash truancy officer. I can't remember his name, but if I ever see him I'm going to kick his ass. He invites my mom and grandma to come in and meet with all my teachers. I'm like great.
Speaker 1:So now the kids are making fun of me because you know my mom's over there bitching up a storm about how much of a piece of shit I am. So I'm getting teased by them Standing in the background pointing and laughing at me. Every chance I get they say something stupid. But they started me with my teachers. Funny enough, all my teachers gave me high praise. Crazy. We love him, he's great, he's an awesome student, he knows so much, he doesn't cause any problems. Blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1:The look on the guidance counselor's face was golden though, because he was hoping. He was hoping he was hoping that he would get some bad reports. My grandmother was happy as hell. My mom was just like, yeah, ok, whatever, he's a piece of shit, he's just working you guys over, so Show up to my court date. It's at this little match, it's at a magistrates office, it's not even like a school board thing, it's in front of an actual judge. They call me in.
Speaker 1:So I'm sitting there with my mom and my grandma Stupid guidance counselors over on the other side talking about you know how I'm wasting the school district's money by being enrolled but not attending classes, stuff like that. And then she took the judge, turns to me and says what's going on. I told her the truth. I was like I was bored. I don't find school challenging. I don't find school to be fun. I don't really have a ton of friends XYZ. I prefer to be working. I prefer to be out and about exploring and learning the world. And I was like but I understand this is a very good of all this. I understand the issues that this is all brought up, all that stuff.
Speaker 1:And the judge looks back at the the guidance counselor guy and she said well, do you have any written Reviews or reports from his teachers? What do they have to say? So he's like, yeah, and he starts going through them. Boom, boom, boom, one after the other. Awesome student, great student, wonderful to have in class on everything, all the good stuff. So the judge looks at him, looks at me, my mom, my grandmother, and says listen, you obviously know what you're doing. You've obviously started going to class for the last few weeks. You haven't missed anything, you haven't caused any trouble with your teachers, you haven't skipped, you haven't been late. It's like you've been the model student. She goes this is the behavior I expect moving forward from you. So I'm going to drop all the charges. No, no, nothing, no fine, no, no, anything. I'm like cool. She goes I better never see my courtroom for this bullshit again. Basically, I'm like you won't. So I did about Gone Back to going to my classes, no issues.
Speaker 1:Then semester exams show up. I've been going to class, so I go to these damn exams, do my thing, leave, come back. Here comes his bullshit as guidance counselor dude. Again. That's where he added out for me he goes here. Notice of court for what? Now he goes. Uh, chuck, chuck. He goes uh, chuck, chuck, chuck, chuck, chuck, check your grades. You obviously failed the semester For attendance reasons. Okay, I haven't missed any class. So what's this? And he goes. Well, now you have to go in front of the school board Accusations of cheating on your semester exams. This leads to expulsion.
Speaker 1:I'm like all right, let's go call my grandma. I'm like I'm not even going to beat around the bush with this one and try to hide anything. So call grandma, tell her what's going on. She's like really. So I get home and I'm like listen, I didn't cheat. I can prove that I didn't cheat. Let's just ask the teachers. So they go around, they start asking the teachers and they're like did you give out different exams? Yeah, okay. And the people that sat around him, they're like there's no way he could cheat it because I gave out a bunch of different exams. He would have gotten an identical score to somebody if he cheated off of them, which he didn't. You know, he got the only 97, or he got the only 96, or whatever, or he got the only 100, you know.
Speaker 1:So the guidance counselor meets with me, my mom, my grandma. He goes how'd you do it? I'm like you want the honest truth, I was like I was bored. So all those days I was skipping school and stuff. I was reading the textbooks. I've read every one of these textbooks, cover to cover, and I just retained the information. So 10th grade kind of sucked, finished out the school year or whatever, no big issues.
Speaker 1:11th grade moves on and the relationship with me and my mom are just getting worse and worse and worse. I don't think you could pay that woman a million dollars in cold, hard cash to say something nice about me. I just I don't think that's possible. We're always in a fight, we're always arguing. I mean, I started spending nights at other people's houses and not telling her where I was, just anything to not be in that home with her. You know, because I got, I was getting real sick of the. You're worth this piece of shit. You're never going to mount anything. The whole. You know your worth is what you, what you bring to the table. What have you done for me lately? Attitude. But there was never any support, emotional support of what I wanted to do, and at that point in my life I was so fucked up I didn't know what I wanted to do so I was literally just scraping by classes because I was doing the bare minimum not to get into trouble and not to raise any red flags.
Speaker 1:Senior year things are still progressively getting worse and worse and worse. It was about December, my senior year. I'd run away from home for about a week's period of time and I was still going to school. But I guess my grandmother was like, well, why don't we go to the school one morning and see if his ass is there? And sure shit, I show up and boom, there she is with my mom, back in a guidance counselor's office, with the principal, and now we're in a big ass fight. I hate you, you don't love me, you know you just treat me like shit. I'm just, I'm going off.
Speaker 1:So my mom being the big church goer, being the big Christian that she was at the time, she's telling everybody at her church and she went, went to a Korean church. So the thing about Korean churches are is they're based on the Bible and they're based on gossip. They're based on the Bible during the actual service hours and they're based on gossip every other second around it. She's telling everyone who would listen how horrible I was, how horrible I was and the look of shocking on a lot of their faces is kind of comical. So the pastors got together with my mom and was like, hey, there's this program, there's a school up in Canada he can go to maybe get his life together. So they approached me about that, I think right after Christmas. They're like, hey, there's this Bible school up in Canada. I'm like, yep, I'm in, I'm in, you have me at Canada. And so basically they were like you're going to leave, you're going to go to Canada, and then there's a mission trip that you can go to, that you will go on. And at that point in time I'd already been on a couple of missions trip, trips with my church. So you know, I was slowly building a relationship with God personally. So I was slowly doing all the church, youth group stuff, going to youth retreats and her GPA and Delaware and stuff like that, and always had a good time at those things and I always learned a lot and was building a relationship with God personally through those things. So you know they're like you go to school in Canada, you're going to learn about the Bible, you're going to do all this stuff. I'm like, yep, I'm in. So we get to working on that.
Speaker 1:March 2005 rolls around, and I'm not talking about previous girlfriends, but I've had a few relationships up until this point in time. So basically, I'm getting ready to leave 10 days, 11 days before I leave Well, I'm actually a little sooner than that, a couple weeks. It was like mid February, early February, early, early March I started hanging out with this group of girls I knew a couple of them because I classes with them. With this one girl I didn't know, she caught my eye, so I started hanging out with them a lot just to be around this girl and, you know, finally worked up the courage to ask her to be my girlfriend. Boom, she says yes, I'm like all right time for the bomb. I'm leaving for Canada in like 10 days. So you know, let's just do what we need to do for the next 10 days. And we do, and I have a great time. But it's Easter weekend in March, so it's Friday.
Speaker 1:I'm at the Pittsburgh International Airport it's like 6 30 in the morning waiting for my flight to Atlanta. My mom, being so cheap I couldn't get really a one stop or nonstop flight to Calgary. I had two stops then Calgary. So I'm at the airport and I'm sitting there waiting for my, waiting for my flight. So I call my girlfriend and she's crying. She ended up skipping school that day and so I hop on my my flight to Atlanta, fly down to Atlanta, have a couple hour layover there. I call her from Atlanta. She's still crying. So I'm in Atlanta, hop on a flight to Salt Lake City, utah, and from there hop on a flight to Canada, calgary. I get to Calgary and it's beautiful. I mean it's late so I can't really appreciate it. But the next morning Was a Saturday and it was really cool, beautiful view. We were about 45 minutes South of Calgary, actually little town called Turner Valley. Easter Sunday rolls by and then Monday, that's when school actually starts.
Speaker 1:Now, this was an interesting school. It was called YWAM YWAM youth with a mission. Those were young people, 18 to 23, and basically it was a Program that you spent a week on a particular lecture topic, really just diving into it, and then during that week you would do some self-reflecting and some Openness and discussion, talks and stuff like that, and every week was a different lecture topic. So it was kind of fast-paced. It was kind of intense, really in depth about this stuff and I Used it as an escape or to get away from home and I was cool with again doing the bare minimum skating by. I was prepared for that the first week. The lecture topic was called the father, heart of God, and I don't really remember Any of the other lectures as well as well as I remember this particular one.
Speaker 1:The pastor was pastors Ron and Judy Smith, husband and wife couple Late in the late in their years. I think they were in their 60s at the time, maybe even 70s and he comes in and he starts talking about Viewing God and having a relationship with God as it feeds your dad, your father and but one of the days in the week I think maybe the middle of the week, one zero Thursday. The lectures ran Monday through Friday. He had us all in the classroom. There was one, two, three guys, including myself, and unto Three, six girls. It's me from Pittsburgh, my one roommate, johnny, was from England or other roommate, rudy, was from Switzerland. There were three girls from Korea, one girl from Edmonton, another girl from California and another girl from Switzerland. Go figure, we were all there. We had three like I Don't know the equivalency, but they weren't principles, but they were kind of like the leaders of the program.
Speaker 1:There it is program leaders. So we're all in the room and Pastor Ron says everyone kind of spread out, find a little more private spot for yourself, and we're gonna do some self-reflecting. And he starts talking. And Again, my first week there, I was fully prepared to kind of just breeze by this as best I could. But he started really striking nerve with me talking about having a relationship with God as a father and Not God as in a higher being.
Speaker 1:Remember, I had one guy in my life who I thought was my dad. Turns out he wasn't a second guy in my life who's my dad, but he's gone. He's been dead for a few years now and I didn't know him that well, only knew him for that two-year period of time. So he's sitting there, he's like everyone close your eyes and just Open your your heart and your mind up and he goes. There's somebody in this room who is angry at their father for dying and I broke down weeping. I Mean, I was crying from my soul Because it dawned on me I Knew my dad for two years and he died and I Think I came to the realization that in that two years of time he was never my dad. He was making up for lost time and he was trying to be my friend, like I said earlier, who spoiled the hell out of me. But I don't ever think he said he loved me. I don't ever think he he really treated me as a son.
Speaker 1:So you know, when pass Iran said that I just I Became an emotional mess and and really just was broken. At that point and I'm 37 years old now I was 18 then. So we're talking, you know, 19 years difference. You know, and in those 19 years from that moment happening to now, I have learned that Hitting rock bottom which at that point I thought I did, but hitting rock bottom Isn't necessarily a bad thing, because rock bottom is the best foundation to build on. There's nowhere else to go but up. So from that moment on, that epiphany, that that break in my spirit, that break in my heart, gave me some freedom. So I Decided to forgive my dad for not being my dad, for not being there for me, and I really opened up myself to God's word and and really building a relationship from with him from that moment on. Because up until that point in time Afterwards I told him this I hadn't told anybody. No one knew that my dad was dead, no one knew that there was only a two-year window of a relationship. No one knew that information. So how could he? You know, and I remember that wasn't the first thing he said. He had said a few other things prior to that that were affecting my, my classmates, in their own way. But he, his statement, broke me and so I'm like, okay, this is real and I got to dive into this. So, you know, I really did dive into that with both feet, fast forward a little, while Not talking to my mom at all. She's not writing nothing like again, I'm still using this as get the hell out of town, get as far away from her as possible, and Fast forward a little while later and we're off to Thailand.
Speaker 1:Part of this youth with the mission School program was you had to do a mission-ish trip as well. So our class go, we went to Thailand and Thailand was freaking amazing. Got bit by spider there. That turned into a nasty infection. I Got malaria. I got a lot of. That was a trip. 10 out of 10 would not recommend Anybody ever getting malaria. But we were teaching English. That was kind of our Scheme into getting into the country of Thailand to spread the gospel, because most places. If you are there and they ask you what your visits for and you're like I'm here to spread the word of God, here's my Bible they're probably going to get on a plane and go back home. Most countries aren't just gonna openly let you come in and spread your beliefs to their people. So we did teach English and I had a great time doing it many times Friends there and made some great memories, more than anything else. We came back to Canada for a little while, had like a debrief like this is what to expect when you go home.
Speaker 1:You know backsliding, which is a term that's used in a lot of religious situations and others where you become committed to something and you become committed to something, where you become committed to something and While you're in that environment where you made that commitment, your commitment is strong, your dedication is strong, but then when you're taken out of that environment, you're put back into your own environment and the things that may have held you back, or the the forces that may have led you to making some bad decisions, are exposed to you once again. You have a tendency to revert back to your old ways, or you backslide to your old ways, and so I come home and I'm doing my absolute best to Not backslide, to not do any of that stuff. I'm more involved with my church. I'm working with their Sunday School and their youth group program. They asked me to to give a presentation of my experiences and so I did, and I remember Seeing my mom there talking to another church member and she's not at all paying attention to what I have to say. She's I I can tell by their body language and Koreans talk with their hands a lot that the church members kind of egging her to pay attention to what I have to say and she's kind of just waving me off and like that fucking sucks, like Granted she's. She spent the money to send me to this, not me Like I don't know why she wouldn't want to hear what her money paid for. But it became apparent to me that she thought it was always some money and she didn't believe that.
Speaker 1:I have made some changes in my heart in my life. I had made a decision while I was there in Thailand and in Canada especially in Thailand working with the kids that I wanted to become a youth pastor and I was doing a lot of stuff to get to that and I wanted to to be a musician and be on worship teams. So I was doing a lot of that with the church too. But when I wasn't in the church I picked up any job I could to again stay the hell away from my mom, because now the relationship is going really sour, calling each other names and the whole nine, and you know I'm back sliding into the, the angry person that I was before I left.
Speaker 1:Having come back, I thought I kind of let that die and came to peace with that, came to grips with that, but Turned out I just kind of buried it. I kind of became blinded to it and ignored it because I was so immersed in, immersed in those experiences away from home that I never really addressed them and I never really got closure from them. But you know, my mom started hitting a nerve when she would tell me I wasn't going to a mountain, anything and I Was pretty worthless and I was just wasting my life, that, that I thought I was gonna be just like my dad and that struck a nerve with me. Because when you look like I do and your dad quote-unquote looks like he does and all his family looks like they do, as you get older and you start noticing these things, you start questioning them, like my man. That man's face doesn't look like my face. His nose doesn't look like my nose. We don't share the same cheekbones, the eye shape, I mean Not even. I don't even have darker skin complexion like I tanned really well, but naturally I don't have a darker complexion like there should be something right that connects me to him.
Speaker 1:And I remember I said something to her, set her off, and she just took a huge swing at me, as hard as she could, and I said, fuck this, I'm out, and I grabbed some shit and I left and I Didn't have anywhere to go, but I just left. So you know, I crashed at a buddy's place that I was working with one night. Then the next couple of nights I had nowhere to go, so I Ended up sleeping at the cathedral learning a couple of nights because it was open 24-7. I crashed there and Then ended up moving into at the my wife's parents basement. At the time my girlfriend lived there for a while and I made some really poor decisions and I got busted for some shoplifting while I was living with them Shoplifting from a job that I was working at, actually, and had to come clean to her now. Mind you, we had a baby during this time. Yeah, my wife was a senior in high school at the time. She got pregnant and Afterwards she, after she graduated, we had a baby. And then I got busted for shoplifting. So I came clean to her and she said, well, it's probably best she don't live here anymore and I said, okay.
Speaker 1:So here I was begging my mom 20 years old, begging my mom to let me come home, which she does and then she's treating me like absolute shit again. You dumbass having a baby. You can't afford it. You're not going to be a good dad because you can't raise it, you can't provide, you don't have any money, you have no college education, you have no home. You know your baby's mother is probably just going to use you for child support. She doesn't care about shoes One of these.
Speaker 1:The thing about my mom was she was a huge bigot. If you weren't Korean, you weren't shit to her. She didn't like non-Korean. She didn't really care about my mom's house, which I don't know how she ever got along with my dad's family, but then I remember how much shit she would talk about them when they weren't around. So finally flipped out again and left for the second and final time and she let me crash with her for a while Big shout out to her and started getting my life on track a little bit, got a decent paying job and my wife and I we got married, got our first place together.
Speaker 1:And that's where I would like to say you know, my life was great and it was. It was, but I had demons, man. I had some issues going on that I didn't know how to address, you know. So I was closed off, reserved, didn't talk about my feelings, didn't talk about emotions, my thoughts or anything like that. I just worked to provide food and money. And several years go by and we're fast-forwarding a lot, because I don't want to drag this out too, too much longer for you guys. We're already over an hour.
Speaker 1:It. It hit me. You know, my closed offness was going to cost me my relationship with my wife and my family, my ability to bury everything that I could. It wasn't a strong quality like I thought it was, because, remember, guys right, we're not supposed to cry, we're not supposed to show emotion, we're not supposed to have feelings. We're supposed to work and provide tangible things for our family Roof over their heads, clothes on their back, meals on the table, bills are paid. That's what we're supposed to be as men. That's what we're supposed to be as fathers and husbands is the provider, the strength. So I never show weakness, I never cried, I never got emotional, I never did any of that shit and over the years it just got worse and worse and worse, till something had to be done.
Speaker 1:During COVID, post COVID, I was back to work. I got that 23 and me ancestry test and you know, the question came up oh, what are you hoping to find out? I'm like I don't know. I think I know the answer to it, but we'll just do the test and see. Up until at this point in time, I missed the part.
Speaker 1:My mother died. She died of cancer. Prior to her death, I did try to make amends with her. I did try to give her the opportunity to have a relationship with her grandchildren Her only grandchildren.
Speaker 1:I was an only child, so we would go over for the holidays, take the kids over. We'd go over random days, take her out, whatever. Did a couple of things with her, but every single time we were together, she just if it was just me and her, me the kids and her. Whatever. She badmouthed my wife what? She do nothing. She's a stay at home mom. She's taking care of the house, she's taking care of the kids. Oh no, she needs to be working. She needs to be helping provide. It can't just be you. It just can't, can't, can't. You know she's just using you for your money. She's just using you for the money. I'm like I'm fucking broke. What money? Like I ain't got shit to my name. She's using me for money. She's doing a piss poor job of it. You know, even when my wife was around, she always was just cold to her and treated her like shit.
Speaker 1:And uh, I'm not telling you guys to do this fellas, just giving you my opinion. You know they say you only have one mom and that's true. But you didn't have a choice in who your mother was. You did have a choice in who your wife was or is you, do you do? You did make a choice to start a family with that person. So a shitty of a relationship you might be in um with them. If you're divorced and your co-parenting whatever. You have a moral duty to protect her. You have a moral duty as a mother of your children, as a person you chose to bring life into this world To protect them, protect their name, protect them physically, whatever. Even if you aren't together at this moment, you still have a moral duty and obligation to that woman. Okay, so keep that in mind as I say this next part.
Speaker 1:Um, I flipped out on my mom. I said listen, you can say whatever the fuck you want to say about me. You can have your opinions about me. I don't give a shit. You can have your opinions about my wife. The beauty of having free will is you have the right to a fucking opinion. Keep that shit to your fucking self. Don't be a bigot. Don't slander her, don't put her down, especially in her presence and, more importantly, in the presence of her children, your grandchildren, because I don't need your words poisoning their minds.
Speaker 1:And I gave her plenty of opportunities to kind of fake it. And so you know, when we come over, you don't have to be fucking nicer, but don't be a bitch either. Just be, you know, have exchange pleasantries and be amicable. And I gave her a few opportunities to do so and uh, she fucked up. So finally I told her you know what? That's it. I'm not coming back here. I'm not bringing the kids here. You're not going to do this shit. You're poison me growing up as a child. You're not going to do it to my children.
Speaker 1:So I ended that relationship and, uh, you know, I felt bad. So I had to talk with a pastor, a friend of mine, and ask you know, what are your thoughts? What should I do? And he said you know, forgiveness is a choice. It's a two-way street. If you choose to forgive them, that's great. Don't wait for it to come back your way, though. Don't hold on to that as being everything's good, like. You have to forgive them, you have to forgive yourself and your part in it and be at peace with it and and and you know, in your heart of hearts, spiritually know that you made that effort and in God's eyes you'll be right. I'm like cool, I'm good with that.
Speaker 1:Fast forward a little while later and get the phone called. You know she's dying. So I'm like all right, maybe this is God's way of saying, hey, one more chance. Man, really make a, really make an effort. I'm like cool.
Speaker 1:So I go and visit her in the hospital a couple of times and she's right back to giving me shit. I mean, I try to apologize. I did apologize, actually, and I try to make amends with her. I brought the kids over, let her see her grandchildren before she dies, and then the one day I visit her by myself, she's talking shit again and I'm just like you know what. You're going to die a bitter old woman Because you fucked up numerous opportunities to have a relationship with your grandchildren. But you couldn't get past your own hate and your own close mindedness, so that was, that was the last words I ever spoke to my mother.
Speaker 1:A little while later, I get a phone, or, yeah, I get a text message that she's being moved to hospice, that this might be your last chance to say goodbye. I'm like, ok, I really did want to say goodbye. So I, the next morning, I text that same person back hey, what's the address of this hospice place? I'm coming over to say goodbye. And she text back she died in the middle of the night, all right, so go to the viewing and all these old Korean women are giving me shit About how bad of a son I was, and I'm sitting there thinking to myself are you kidding me? Even to her deathbed, all she could do was talk shit about me and go to the funeral and they bury her and I'd be lying if I told you I didn't feel something I did.
Speaker 1:I cried and I cried over the missed opportunities. I didn't cry over Me being a shitty son back in my earlier years. I didn't cry over that. I cried over the missed opportunities on both of our parts. But she was just a bitter, close minded, awful person and I don't care what you guys might think about me after I say this next statement, but you know, you hear those things about. You know people say, you know, oh yeah, that person, yeah, they're probably rotting in hell. I genuinely believe my mother is rotting in hell. And yeah, and I don't feel bad about that statement, I really don't, but it really, you know, fortified my resolve in bottling everything up For whatever reason. It didn't make any sense that her death should make me want to bottle up more shit in my life, but it did and it got real bad, so bad to the point that, you know, my wife and I just we were coexisting, there was no relationship and I had to do something about it. So, you know, I sought some help out, called Garrett, asked him a couple of questions. He led me to one, let me down one avenue and I haven't really looked back since.
Speaker 1:I have my off days. You know, nobody's perfect when it comes to their feelings and stuff like I have my off days where I'm just I don't want to be bothered. You know, the stresses of life catch up even though a lot of good things are happening. Those little stresses kind of build up and I have my moments where I don't want to hang out or I don't want to go out and do extracurricular shit on my days off because I'm just tired. But At this point in my life I'm more open than I ever I have ever been. I'm more honest with myself, my wife, my kids than I have ever been and, most importantly, myself. You know, if you're not honest with yourself and you're skating to get by, you're just lying to everybody else around you too. You know my story was really, at the end of the day, based on A mentality of worthlessness, of never being good enough, of always coming up short, being empty handed, not being able to provide In that kind of stock with me.
Speaker 1:Oh, forgot the whole 23 and me thing. So I do this stupid 23 and me thing. They send you a little kid You're supposed to spin into this little vial and send it back in. Like a month later you get your results. So I get my results, and they turned out to be what I expected. Remember how I said I didn't look like my dad. Turns out he's not my dad. I'm not my dad. I'm not my dad. I'm not my dad. I'm not my dad. I'm not my dad. I'm not my dad. Well, turns out he's not my dad either. There's two guys, two guys in my life who I thought were my dad. It's not my dad.
Speaker 1:If you've ever done the 23 and me, it shows you like your percentage of your DNA makeup, ethnicity wise, and it says I'm like 51 percent Korean slash Japanese. I guess the DNA makeup is close enough that they just lump those two together. All agents look alike, don't cancel me. And then the other 50 percent was made up of European, a little German, a little French, a little English, a little Irish, shit like that. I didn't even get like less than 0.01 percent North African or Sub-Saharan African Like. So there's not an ounce of African or African American blood in me.
Speaker 1:I'm still hood, though. I grew up in the hood. Can't take the hood out of me, so don't get it twisted. I will fuck some shit up if I have to. That has nothing to do with growing up in the hood, but don't get it twisted, all right. So it's one of those things where you know you have an aha moment. This isn't one of those aha moments you want to be proud of or kind of shot from the rooftops, right, but it kind of just answered a lot of questions to my personality, right? My dad is some white dude that I've never met, I'll probably never meet, and I don't know if he knows I even exist or he knows and he just doesn't fucking care. All right.
Speaker 1:But the worst part, the worst part about this is everybody in my life knew. My mom obviously knew. My quote unquote. Dad knew, which is probably why he spoiled me. My quote unquote. Dad's family knew, because if I'm looking at them, thinking I don't look like any of you guys. They at some point had to look at me and go. You don't look like us at all. Now, credit to them. They raised me and treated me as one of their own, as family, Cool, I respect that.
Speaker 1:But at some point in time you know, 15 years old, 16 years old, 17, 18 years old somebody should have fucking said a word, right, like hey, dave, we need to talk to you. Sit down here, let me break up the Bible, put some holy oil on your forehead here and let's go. We're going to lay some truth on you. So you know my entire life. I grew up in literal deceit and lies For my benefit, maybe, maybe to save them from embarrassment, I don't know. But Everybody knew and no one said a fucking word. So when people say I'm reserved, I don't open up, I don't let people in, even my own wife for a while there, my own kids for a while there. Hope you guys can understand where that fucking comes from.
Speaker 1:Right, I went all those years questioning it and I knew deep down inside what the answer was. Before the whole 23 and me thing, I knew what it was. But then you know the realization of everyone lied to me and then you kind of think to yourself no wonder I hide shit. No wonder I don't tell anyone anything, because I was raised in an environment where everyone was hiding something. So it was easy answer. It was the common way of living, it was surviving, essentially. Just get to the next day. Hopefully he doesn't find out the big secret, right? So, yeah, that 23 and me fucked me up. That's what really sent me down a really bad mental spiral.
Speaker 1:I said earlier how a pastor, ron Smith, broke my spirit in a good way. That 23 and me really broke my spirit in a bad way. The accuracy of one of those 23 and me is hilarious, though If you ever want to do one, I do recommend it. Also, recommend it if you know your family is your family. Don't want to be the reason why you find out that your life has been a lie too. Hopefully no one else has gone through anything like this.
Speaker 1:But yeah, that broke me. That no one cared enough, no one loved me enough to tell me the truth, and that added to the mentality of worthlessness, like I wasn't worth telling the truth to. Like that. That is literally a secret my mother took to her grave with her. Like I said, I had feelings and I had ideas about it, but I didn't have the truth. She never told me. She took that shit to her grave. Kudos to her. I'm going to keep a secret, shit. She kept the fucking secret.
Speaker 1:But I tell you guys all this because it has molded me into the man that I am now, and in the last year, year and a half of being open, of being passionate about this podcast and about helping other men out there come to terms and be the best ass. They can be best husbands. They can be really stressing men's mental health. I'm on an antidepressant medication. That's helped me a lot because I was spiraling way out of control. If you listen real closely, maybe you can hear my wife snoring in the background. I'm recording this in the bedroom. I'm going to turn the output up. I'm super serious, guys, when it comes to getting yourself checked out, being open and honest about your feelings, your emotions, your mental state, your thoughts.
Speaker 1:I just had a little bit of a medical scare this past weekend. I hadn't been feeling too good for the past several weeks, probably a little bit longer, with some of my symptoms. You know I was having hot flashes, cold sweats, chills, and I was. They were happening randomly and sporadically. I wasn't too too too concerned with that. And then over the past week, maybe 10 days, I was having these feelings of just pure nausea. I was just feeling like I was in a room, spin in balance, almost like vertigo, right In balance, where I just felt like I was leaning, but I wasn't, and it was kind of freaking me out. It would happen randomly throughout the day, no rhyme or reason. I could be sitting completely still in the room and start spinning. I'd feel like I was going to fall over. Fortunately I never did never passed out but I'd feel like my blood pressure would drop or sometimes I feel my blood pressure would spike, and it was going on multiple times a day for well over a week.
Speaker 1:So this past Friday I'm like you know what I'm going to go to like local MedExpress, just to see what they think, maybe give my ear checked out. It's an inner ear thing because I know like your inner ear has a lot to do with your equilibrium. And as I'm driving to the local MedExpress I get that feeling again while I'm driving and there's an ER on my way. So I just go straight to the ER, I tell them everything I'm feeling and going through, and so they take me back. They start taking a bunch of blood from me, like five or six files right there on the spot. Boom, I hate needles, that shit hurt.
Speaker 1:And they're like yeah, we want to do a CT scan. Get me dressed, throw me into the CT scan machine and then the technician there working the machine. She goes okay, I'm going to put this X-ray dye into your IV cord or tube. And so she puts the dye in. I feel my body temperature just skyrocketed and she told me that was going to happen. And then she puts me back in the machine, machine goes for another few minutes, sent me back to my room.
Speaker 1:So basically they did a CT scan and then they did a contrast CT scan and I'm sitting in the room they're checking on me taking my vitals. I mean, at one point my blood pressure was like 150, something over like 90. And the doc goes. So all your symptoms show that you may have had a mini stroke. Oh, he goes. But you don't have any slurred speech. You have cognitive awareness of your surroundings. You know the date, the time, the location, everything of that nature. You have feelings in your hands and your feet.
Speaker 1:So I called up to the local hospital and they want to actually admit you for observation, just as a precaution. I'm like, oh, okay, so I get admitted into the local hospital and they're checking my vitals constantly. They're checking my blood pressure a lot. And then they send me down for an MRI and I meet with neurology, I meet with a few other staff members and they're not ruling out that I had a stroke. They're also testing me for Lyme disease, by the way, which would piss me off. If I get that red meat allergy, I'll burn every tick that I see from here on out. But they're like we're not ruling it out but we are going to lower it on our theory list. So I got to go and do some follow up tests and meet with some follow up doctors as well.
Speaker 1:But my cholesterol is high. My triglyceride count is through the roof. They're looking at me as if I shouldn't even be standing. That's how high my triglycerides are. My blood pressure is elevated, all these things. And I tell my wife and I'm like I'm gonna be okay, I'm gonna be okay, don't worry. I got myself checked into the hospital, all that stuff. I'm not taking this lightly kind of deal and at the end of the day, I am gonna be okay because I have something to live for, I have something to wake up for every single day of my wife and my kids. They're counting on me, they're relying on me to be there for them, not to be their provider, not to be their mode of transportation, not to be their bank or anything like that, but to be there as my wife's husband and as my children's father. That's what they're counting on me for. So I'm gonna do an overhaul of my diet and getting back into exercising properly like I used to. Things like that take control of my physical well-being as well as my mental well-being. But yeah, I was concerned. A flicker of fear ran through my mind, but that fear was immediately replaced by I got work to do, we're gonna fix this shit and we're gonna be around for my daughter's graduation, my son's graduation, their weddings, all the milestone stuff. We're not missing this.
Speaker 1:Guys, I'm dead serious when I tell you this Take care of yourselves physically, mentally and spiritually. I'm serious. Don't take that shit for granted. Don't be the reason why your kids grow up without a father because you didn't take care of yourself. I get it. Shit happens, accidents happen, can't stop, god forbid. You're driving home and drunk driver hits and kills you. You can't avoid that. But eating like a piece of shit and not taking care of your body and you having a heart attack or stroke at 37 years old you could have avoided that and you can't avoid that, and I'm going to avoid that. Not doing this shit, I promise.
Speaker 1:Take care of your mind. You know your mind can be a dark and scary place if you let it, just like this world we live in can be a dark and cruel world if you let it. Everything around you is negative. Everything around you is the woe is me and the world's coming to an end, and this, not the other. But don't let that negativity affect you like that. You know, find the good in life. Find the positives in life. Find your passion. Your passion could be something like a podcast or bringing awareness to those around you by sharing your story. Your passion should always be your relationship with your spouse. Your passion should always be your relationship with your kids and being there for them. You know, have something that drives you.
Speaker 1:I want my kids one day to look back and say you know, my dad was a pretty fucking awesome guy. Yeah, he was an asshole at times, but man, he was there when shit went down for us. He was there when we needed him. He helped the community, he helped other people out. You know, I want my legacy to be what my kids tell other people about me. I don't want my legacy to be Well, he missed out because he didn't make the right decisions.
Speaker 1:This Brown motivational speaker I really enjoy. He's got a line that says live full, die empty. That's true, you know. Live life to its fullest so that when you're on your deathbed there is nothing left. You die with no regrets. You die with the memories of all the smiles and all the happy moments and all the joy that you experienced in this life. Because you only get one shot at this shit, guys, you're not coming back. You don't get a do over, you don't get to replay this level. Life's not fair. The only way to get out of it is to die.
Speaker 1:But before that happens, you got to make sure you do everything you can and I mean everything you can to make those memories last a lifetime. When you're old and you've got grandchildren, you can share those stories with your grandchildren. You can be at your local watering hole with a group of old guys reminiscing on all the good times and never having to repeat a story. Make memories, guys. I appreciate you listening to my story. Drop a comment, message me if you have any questions, want to talk, want to share your story, want me to share your story on one of these episodes? We can do. We'll change names or privacy purposes, things like that. But yeah, thanks guys. No, dad joke, I don't have one queued up, that's Garrett's thing, not going to steal that from him, but I appreciate you listening and, as always, go out there and be the best dads and husbands you can be.
