Hanging with Humans Podcast | Episode 13 | Heather Lisk

Yeah , yeah , that sucked yeah it did suck , but we got it to where we're just about done . So tomorrow we're going to finish that off and that will be like the feather in our cap of the last week before you leave back to Kansas . Ohio , Not Kansas , sorry Ohio . How are you feeling about that move ?

And then you have to think when you move away from somewhere , especially when you do it several times and you always go back to it , it doesn't matter how old you are , you're going to feel like a failure , but I was more than happy to help you because you've helped me build measure and you always go back to it . It doesn't matter how old you are .

You're going to feel like a failure , but I was more than happy to help you because you've helped me be on measure .

I travel so much and , um , yeah , I'm , I'm glad that , um , when I do get to come back home and hear like that , you know , you helped me build this , you know what I mean and I know , yeah , I know you're going to go and do good things and then you're going to be back to visit and we'll be reminiscing on this all over again , damn you're going to make

me cry .

No no no , I love cooking , I love cleaning , I love decorating , not to sound sappy , but when you're in love with somebody , you want to take care of them . Yeah , and I just I love to be in that traditional role to a degree . Yeah , to a degree . Yeah , not completely old-fashioned . Not to the 50s degree , yeah , yeah yeah , those are different times .

Uh , you know , we , we both know how rampant mental illness is in this country and in the world , that you know in general , and , uh , I like to think that what I do here with the podcast is like a representation of how to , uh , you know , win a fight that we've been losing in terms of , you know , losing people to these type of things .

She had such a good sense of humor . She just broke up laughing and looked at me like I was insane and I loved it . You know it . Just it cracked me up . I love that . Oh my god .

Um , you've done a lot of traveling in your life , um , where ? Uh ? I've asked this question before to other people . Um , if you think of , like , a favorite place or place , if you close your eyes and take yourself to and you envision it , what is that place and have you been there before ? Uh , what is it to you ? What does it mean to you ?

And these are small boats , these are not cruise ships .

These are like 12 to 15 passenger boats with four to six employees and just whether you're under the water or on it , being out on or in the ocean is the most tranquil I'm sorry I can't talk tranquil , freeing feeling I have ever had , really , yeah , I mean therapy yeah , absolutely , absolutely , especially with the scuba diving .

Um , I was telling you earlier about , uh , my zen places , this uh memory I have , uh being underwater , yeah , uh , and um , um , as I was telling you , I realized , uh , during , uh , one of my scuba dives , when I was down there , nothing , nothing can disturb you .

There's no taxes , there's no medical bills , there's no family drama or harassment or bullshit Pardon my language and there's no . I mean , even if the police have a warrant for you , they're not going to get you while you're scuba diving , not unless they're as well trained as me .

and he's uh , he's an older man . Uh , oh , he'd kill me for saying that I can't say his age , or he'd really kill me . Uh , his name is joe . And um , I found out he taught scuba and there's a place in west virginia called mount storm and it is a man-made dammed up lake , uh , where they use the water . It's huge . It's 90 feet deep at the trench .

They use the water from it to cool the turbines , uh , in the power plant . So in january in west virginia it's steaming , warm and all you need is a bikini . You don't need a wetsuit . Well , if you're a woman , a bikini . I guess that's awesome . I learned there in a lake up in West Virginia and in what they call blackwater diving .

I learned in the bends of the Ohio River and that's something you're not really supposed to do until you're advanced , but I became so obsessed with after my first trip to the bahamas . I was so obsessed with it . There was nothing else I wanted to do so . Uh , my family put me through a very expensive probably the most expensive dive school in the world .

Really dang and we're saying it's 36 grand 36 000 after the interest , but um damn it , even though that is because most dive schools are around two or three thousand . I have no idea . I went to the first one I could find online .

Actually that amazing , and I don't even remember the man's name . He was an older gentleman and , being 5'3 and 110 pounds and strong enough to pull a 220-pound man out of the water , that meant the world that I was capable of that .

It broke a lot of people . I don't know why they were so hard , but uh , in the end it turned me into one of the best instructors . I'm lapsed now . I don't teach anymore . I barely even dive .

She does not have her license because she was in my class and when I saw how she flustered around in the water I failed her . Dang , she does not have her license , dang . Because she was going to drown .

I'm a kind of stick-to-myself kind of girl , yeah , yeah , and I know it's not kind of boring , but I am an avid , voracious reader . I am the kind of person that goes to the library and checks out 35 books in a week and they're all read within seven days .

office and just getting my crib in order , the HQ headquarters for Hanging with Humans , headquarters for Hanging with Humans , and yeah , no , I'm so very appreciative that I got to spend all this time with Heather before she goes off to do some cool things . So let's start from your beginning . Where were you born ?

I am not insane about ohio because they have a poor health care system well , several poor health care systems , too many restrictions on things . They have horrible prison system , do they ? Oh , absolutely , and their death penalty state .

I know you were asking , uh , somebody that you interviewed , if texas was a death penalty state well ohio is as well , but west virginia is not really . They did away with it in the 70s , um , so they're horrible with health care for the most part . Uh , the the the justice system is what I call the injustice system .

They will lock up somebody for possession in a heartbeat and keep them in in jail for months , but you can beat the hell out of a man or a woman . Domestic violence does not have to be gender specific . Yeah , and you might only get 30 days for felony domestic violence .

That's what happened with somebody I knew 30 days 30 days spread out over weekends for his seventh felony domestic violence . Wow , and they said it's because you didn't show up and advocate for yourself . No , it's because y'all didn't do your job . Uh , but it's a gorgeous state . Yeah , it has so many beautiful things to offer .

But you know , going forward , uh , I want to go to the ohios and , you know , chill for a week with you know , catch up with friends and and then maybe do another podcast and then , you know , go to my next destination and do that , and so I'm glad that , even though you're moving it now , I have like a another doorway in ohio to like venture out more .

You know what I mean absolutely .

I have a seven-year-old grandmother , we're going to be a six-generation family pretty soon . Yeah , that's so crazy , very insane , and my mother is between 70 and 80 . So I needed to get back . It was time because , failing health , no help , they need me .

funny .

Okay , that's what that is okay because , as you very well know , I , I have borderline personality disorder and I know that you know it comes from severe abandonment issues . Yes , people are not born with this and they are not genetically predisposed . But there is no genetic predisposition for borderline . People go often get it mixed up with bipolar .

It could be because the acronym is the same bpd borderline personality disorder is um I . I think I said it best the other day when I said we can be manipulative , but it doesn't come from a place of malice , it's a , it's a self-defense mechanism from our extreme , extreme fear of abandonment . And that's what it all boils down to is fear of abandonment .

That that's why the number one book ever written on BPD is called I Hate you , don't Leave Me .

Uh , so , no , I didn't know until you told me I just assumed it was part of your ptsd because you , you were in the military , you were at a second airborne , and I know you had to have gone through some serious trauma at your age . In this , in this time in the world , with what people in the military are going through , I can't even imagine .

Uh , I assumed it was just depression and ptsd . When you said borderline , you could have knocked me over with a feather .

So when you do have that , you know commonality , it helps because it's like almost like oh , you do feel my pain , yes , because from the outside , I feel like people have looked at me or will look at me either way as like emotional and as like oh , but I've been like that .

I feel like forever , like I take loss so horribly and it feels worse than a loss , know , and , and even growing up watching people go through breakups and they're just like bounce back , you know , like nothing , and me I'm just like crippled for the longest , and it's it helped to understand and learn that . You know it stems from something , though .

We'd exchange numbers and I said I said I'm not trying to be a weirdo , but you know , I feel like a super connection to you and I think it's because you always have a bond with anybody you share something with , even if it's something negative . Uh , because it's .

Everybody wants empathy , everybody wants understanding , everybody wants their pain to be felt and or for somebody to just at least understand it and not mock them or belittle them or judge them for it yeah and I absolutely , absolutely , 100 understand some of what you've been going through .

I mean you know it didn't just

give me purpose . It I didn't feel like a reject that you know was hiding on the margins because I'm too awkward to talk to people . You know what I mean . Yeah , I don't know how else to say it .

Like we always had a room at our place for anybody who needed it . Or you know , hey , can I park my car here for six months ? You know what I mean . Like we , my dad couldn't say no to things like that and uh , not that he ever would or want to . Like I , uh , I really enjoy helping people and I feel like it's with the podcast especially .

Um , if you , if I were to show you some of the text messages I've gotten from people that have listened to it and said that , you know , listen to this person's story has completely changed their outlook . Or , you know , said that they're better because of it . Or , you know , saved them even . You know what I mean .

I true , but if any experience I've ever had , any negative experience I've ever had any negative experience I've ever had , or anything that I can share , can help one person , you know I pretend like I don't care and I do close myself off and numb myself to other people , but if I can truly help somebody get through something , then you know I'm not doing it

to feel good , but I just hope that'll just make me happy .

I will say one thing is this is getting a little intimate here , but like part of my own mental illnesses or whatever you want to call them , or disorders or whatever words you want to use is and this is a big part of being on borderline . I can't separate sex and love , um , and this is a big part of being on borderline .

I can't separate sex and love um . I I can't , like , I can't , cheat on somebody . I can only be with a person I'm in love with . Uh . But when I was in my early 20s , I um got around a little bit and I'll tell you that was almost as damaging to me as actually being raped , because it was basically like I was doing it to myself .

Yeah , yeah , yeah , was that like a form of self-harm ? I believe so , because my first addictions before any drugs or alcohol , my first addiction was sleep . My second addiction was love , men , love , uh . I'm one of those people that's in love with love and I want it to be perfect . I want to be fair to , and that's not how love actually works .

At least , I don't know how it works um , I I hope that you know that I do too , but I , I'm , I'm 45 and it's like I have learned that , um , love , it can actually be a lot more beautiful than what a fairy tale is .

Uh , real , true love when you , when you are completely selfless and you only want to give of yourself to the other person , is so much more beautiful than any crappy reading a storybook .

It made one , I would say , mostly looking back now at the time it's just all numbed out like a robot just doing clockwork , getting up . Oh , this is my life .

I mean , you just , you're just going through the motions of life and I think , um , there's a lot of different things we do when we are in complete survival mode , and that is one of them is when you have to shut down every feeling and you are literally a robot going through the motions because you just can't take any more trauma all at once , or bad shit's

going to happen , something's going to give . Yeah , it's a scary place to be , terrifying .

We're not doing it , um , like a narcissist for gain . We're doing it because we're terrified of what's going to happen if we don't , and we think it's our only coping mechanism because we haven't learned a better way yeah , dang it , that's .

I just wrote down wonderful people you've met , but I know you had a list of of a couple people and you have now you had another night or two to kind of think about it . Um , who , uh , can you tell me about a couple people that come to mind ?

He had some serious problems and I have never seen somebody fight so hard to overcome their own issues . My dad .

And you know what I freaking miss hearing that , yeah , little .

Um , I'm not going to go into the story , but he got pistol whipped in one eye because he shot at somebody and the gun misfired . So they , they hunted him down a week later and blinded him in one eye . What a rascal .

So he had this , this scary gray eye , and then he had this normal brown eye that was sharp , as as a hawk's eye , yeah , and he had this way of looking at you that if you were family , you knew it was just messing . But if you , if you , it didn't matter .

If you had only known him , if you'd known him , finally , for two years or something , you're always wondering is this man gonna kill me ? And you know , um , he , he teased my first husband , okay , uh , my first husband was navy . So you know the sgi life insurance policy .

Well , uh , chris was talking about the sgi life insurance policy on thanksgiving one year and how , if anything happened to him , I I'd get $250,000 . And my dad just slammed his fist on the table and says $250,000? . I'm not killing your fucking ass now . He was joking . But Chris got up and was scared .

People were scared of my dad until they got to realize he was the most generous giving man when he served up from his severe alcoholism , he gave cars away to people that had nothing because he was a mechanic and a body man . He found out in 2006 , sorry , he found out in 2016 . He had lung cancer and , um , he still worked .

And when he couldn't work anymore , you know what he did ? He volunteered at the strecker cancer center and he was everybody's favorite volunteer and he told me it , other than raising his daughters , it was the most rewarding thing he ever did . I always thought , oh , volunteer work sucks . I've done it . You know . I'm like you know , let's get it over with .

You know , feels like community service . But my dad , he truly found the humility to find inner peace with that and I've learned something from that too . I've learned , you know . I've learned that almost everything my dad ever told me was right . Really , yeah , that's amazing .

You know , when I was , uh , when I was partying and and and , uh , you know , having a lot of party favors and things , yeah , nobody wants . Nobody wants to hear shit from their parents . When you're , uh , 26 years old and you're out with your buddies , uh , you go on skiing or something yeah , I wouldn't have time for that shit .

Mom and dad I know right , it's like mom and dad are gonna be there forever .

I got to do two seasons on his show , not every episode or anything , just a few episodes , yeah yeah . But my sister , she got to do one episode . She was married and I wasn't . So I got to chase him around . So , yeah , I got to be on Criss Angel Mind Freak seasons two and three .

So , yeah , I got to be on Criss Angel Mind Freak seasons two and three . You can see me in the front row on the far right in the episode at the end of season two titled my Secret Cabaret .

Yeah , and it was pretty , pretty cool because there were after parties and hanging out and he was actually a really humble , chill guy that remembered his origins really , yeah , cause he he came across slightly arrogant at first on the show , but I think it was because he was nervous that he blew up so fast .

I felt like I was a part of something huge and I wasn't looking to get a break and become an actor , nothing like that . I was just thrilled to get to be a part of something that unique and cool for a small period of time . Yeah , no , that's super cool .

I I happened to just notice he was standing down a little bit from me . I couldn't quite tell him , and then I realized who he was and I was like , hey , man . And he's like , hey , what's up ?

And then , you know , all of his people like came out of this , these double doors , yeah , we gotta go , we gotta schedule , and he's gone , so I didn't even get time to get a picture and autograph . But that was pretty cool . He's a cool dude . Yeah , getting to meet , uh , the lincoln lawyer was pretty awesome

. Those are my celebrity stories right there .

I should say I don't like disorder . Um , so I'm just gonna call them diagnoses , unless , unless I'm referring to myself , I'll call myself crazy all day long . I know I like diagnoses , yeah , diagnoses yeah , I like that , because nobody , no matter what they have , should be stigmatized any more than if they had diabetes or cancer or lupus or anything .

I didn't choose to have this , can you ?

But this one's a really tricky one because not only , as I said , it's very , very hard to diagnose and it's often misdiagnosed . There's no medication for it . It's not depression , it's not post-traumatic stress disorder , it's not anxiety . It makes you feel those things , but that's not what it .

There's no pill that helps it um , so yeah , this one gets pushed to the side . And no , it is generally a learned behavior from and when I say learned behavior , I don't mean you know , I went out and like taught myself to , you know , be like that .

I mean like abandonment is usually stemming from childhood , almost always stemming from childhood , that do not manifest until the 20s . I just got the .

It's more like you don't want people showing up unannounced and uh , the places you want to go , okay , the wide range keeps shrinking and shrinking until suddenly you just want to go to the dollar store across the street and that's it . That's it , huh .

What the six thousand yeah , well , those are . That's got to be to chris angel , your sister oh , yeah , yeah , yeah , what , oh gosh .

So finally they go to him and he's about 10 million dollars into his career . Yeah , at the time him and my sister split up .

I think he was at like the two million dollar mark , yeah , and when they got together she was selling furniture , making more money than him on her commission , just killing it yeah but his practice blew up and um , so he kept taking these insurance companies as court and finally uh , a big , you know conglomerate of insurance companies , said we will give you 30

million dollars if you will surrender your chiropractic license and sign an affidavit swearing you will not practice any type of medicine , including veterinary , in the united states ever again . So you know what he does now .

With this 40 million that he sits on , he went to uh columbia law school and now he sues the insurance companies for other chiropractors because these are insurance companies that are ripping people off . Oh yeah , he's not . He's not scamming , he's , he's protecting people that are not getting their stuff .

Oh yeah , he's not scamming , he's protecting people that are not getting their stuff paid for . Yeah , holy shit so anyway , sorry that was a little off topic , but it's just funny .

So the first time I I was on myspace if anybody remembers that crap , top 12 had us all uh , had us all uh , do an html code like some geniuses coding some new music coding like a mad woman and I saw that Criss Angel was going to be in Hollywood with an open casting call to film one of his episodes , maybe two , and I told her about it and she told

her husband and he said I don't give a shit what y'all do . And he's like here you go . And she took her Amex Black Limitlessless credit card and it cost us six thousand dollars round trip to get out there but that's because she flew us red flight first class columbus straight into la and then back . But yeah , it was a ridiculous amount of money .

That's not counting what she paid for the clothes that we had to wear to get into the black .

It was beautiful , you know , but we went to Nordstrom just to get our clothes to be on the television show , which were casual clothes , and then our formal wear to get into the after party , and you also had to be 21 . So most of the people who showed up couldn't even go . They either weren't 21 or they didn't have formal wear .

So here comes , you know rich bitch and her little sister and . I'm Not that my sister's a bitch , but rich person . Yeah , and we had literally just dropped . Like I know , the clothes we wore in one night were worth over $1,800 , but I can't even remember what she spent the day . We went shopping and we also went to Rodeo Drive .

That's where I got the jeans and the top in the picture that I showed you .

That was one of my favorite stories I've heard in a long time . Really , yeah , a long time .

It was just ridiculous and I I never got to . Well , okay , she's taken me on several trips , but that was the most expensive . I never got to live like that again , but it felt special , especially with the celebrities , you know .

First of all , you don't look like a craggy ass Clint Eastwood with a scary blind eye .

Yeah , because I was his clone , as he told everybody , mm-hmm , but like it's been since before he died , since I was able to talk to anybody on this level and you don't realize how much you need it and how much you miss it . So it's , it's been missing and you find it again you know what ?

I'm like when the fuck did I do this to myself ? I hate it . Have you ever been hospitalized for alcohol ? Like withdrawals , Not for withdrawals ? No , I have twice . Really , yeah , the first time they kept me from having to do it . I'm done Trust . Really , yeah , the first time they kept me from having to do it , I'm done .

Trust me , can your ears clear okay , like when you're on a plane or something ?

Will could not clear his ears . So if you can't clear your ears at eight feet , you can't scuba dive I mean , I guess I'd have to try , but I feel like I'd be all right . I saw a paraplegic , an amputee , no legs . They were able to do it . They made him hand fins Hand fins that's tight and an automatic regulator .

But he had his thumbs out of the fence so he could still check his gauges and shit . And he dove with his hands and there was a gun that had a golden retriever that he made a specialty complete full head thing for and the dog went diving with him voluntarily .

He didn't force it , the dog was always jumping in after him , so he made him a diving helmet really yeah it's like one of the big bubble helmets . It looks like a big glass fishbowl . But yeah , he did . I love it . I did too .

Now you just have confidence about a lot of other things , but that's the only thing I'm still like yeah , I ain't taking my accomplishments away . I still know how to do this shit . I'm still bomb as fuck at it . I know how to take the nitrogen out of air or add extra oxygen into it , just to up the percentage of the oxygen . There's two ways to do it .

I told you guys today DNA-X denitrogenated air , or E , eanx enriched air nitrogen , which is adding the oxygen in . I did both . I used what was called cascade system Cascade system . Yeah , that's why I mixed up the plumbing term for whatever the hell we made in Helenax , because I was thinking of my air tanks on the side of the dive building .

Yeah , I could tell that you're very passionate about it . I think I'm more passionate about that than I am about love . You think so , maybe I don't know .

And then there those pills you get in mail uh , which you can get from you . Get on joyous

ketamine right now , probably get them . I don't think you can get them shipped to montana , but like 200 a month now . It used to be like 600 a week , uh , yeah , um , I can go over uh 50 to 80 yeah , I want to look up those dosage numbers and I never pulled up our percentages . Oh , that's right .

The suicide rate is higher than any other psychiatric disorder in the entire general population . That's so crazy , jesus . I didn't realize it . I never knew that .

Just research it , get on reddit what is it ?

But it's sitting there uh saying you're going to kill yourself , planning how you're going to do it , making feeble attempts that we're never going to hurt you , whatever , but it stops it .

I took all 90 of my xanax and I drank an entire fifth of cuervo and I jumped off of a pier into the ocean and a fucking dude yanked me out and I woke up . Baker acted against my will in the guidance clinic of the middle case for evaluation , I don't know .

And I remember holding down my panic attack because I was afraid they were going to think I was just having a panic attack . I didn't want to kill myself . Like two days later , well , I did , but I I wasn't going on .

Yeah , and I remember holding this panic attack inside because I was afraid the psychiatrist would think I was insane and lock me up because panic attack , your mind isn't right . I know I am the reason I started on that Central nervous system's all crazy .

I had this fucking Mustang and I wanted to leave for Hall's dive school but I had these fucking $450 a month payments . You can't go off to school without a job and it didn't occur to me just take out extra loan money for the next six months . And I'm like Joe , this car needs to be fucking totaled .

And we planned it out to where I was going to accidentally go off of the road and drive into the river and they make these little oxygens . You see them up at the gas station . But they're not the same things . They actually have a full-on regulator on them and they're for an emergency ascent .

They only have two , two airs in them , two breeds , but anyway , we stashed one in my fucking car , but I was still too scared to do it . And then I broke up with my boyfriend . I dumped him actually , but it hurt and I decided okay , I'm going to do it tonight , and if I die , great . And if I live , great , yeah , 50-50 . Anyway , the car got totaled .

Well , it could have been totaled anyway . I've wrecked so many of my dads Like , heather , do you want your car totaled out or do you want it repaired ? He's like , because I can smash some shit on it . If you want it totaled out . You want it totaled out ?

Oh yeah , if I didn't want to be upside down on the way I'm down , it would just beat the shit out of the car for me . That's . He's a real good dad . I like that . That was the best . I committed insurance fraud . That's awesome . One time , one time , well , I had Comprehensive and Jay , the one that I did LSD with .

He flipped out on me because I screamed at him for leaving 20 hits of acid in my ashtray when I just had my car in my dad's shop . I'm like , if my dad would . I'm like like , don't you fucking leave your drugs in my car , you stupid drunk son of a bitch .

You know , because I didn't do drugs , I hadn't even done any acid with him yet and he came out . I told him I wasn't going to drive him to college . He couldn't drive it to college anymore . He could fuck off , he could walk everywhere . He came out and he flipped out and hammered the shit out of my car .

So I called the police and I called the insurance agent and I got paid like sixteen hundred dollars . But my dad owned the body shop and he fixed it for like 250 so I got to keep the rest .

So , fast forward six months I'm hanging out with lori that we were both dating , him and I I'm we're reversing on the driveway , I'm in'm in a bad mood and I slam right into the front end of my dad's fucking El Camino , which didn't hurt the El Camino any , but it smashed up the back end of my car and I got out and I beat the shit out of my car .

I was so fucking mad and I dropped Lori off and I drove over to Parkersburg to a Texas Hold'em game that my friends were having and after about six hours I came out I said , oh my God , jay stuck me , he's trashed my car again . Look , it's the same damage and everything . And I called the police not to get him in trouble .

I couldn't prove he did anything so they didn't go after him . But all the state agents were like this damage is identical to the last damage . I said the fucking guy's crazy . And they wrote me a fucking $1,400 check and my engine blew up and my dad got me a new engine for $300 on top of fixing the damn damage .

And that's like one of the worst , like dirtiest things .

Now they do the estimates themselves . They write what the average is and you take it where you want to go . So if you can find a cut rate guy or whatever , you keep the change . And it's fucking smart . Though , if you need some fast cash Right Quicker than student learning you don't have to pay that shit back . I don't have to pay it back .

But right after that , the idea of living a life without love in it it sounds worthless to me . Yeah , those two go hand in hand . It's all about love , it's about not wanting to . If my dad really doesn't exist , then you know when I go , I don't want to fucking exist either . Doesn't exist , then you know when I go I don't want to fucking exist either .

Like , the concept of heaven and hell always cracked me up because I'm like if everybody in heaven's happy , do they are ? Are they brainwashed so that they don't remember their relatives that went to hell ?

Because how could you be happy in heaven if you're like , hey , my , my brother's in hell , or or my lover's in hell or my mother's in hell , you couldn't be . Heaven and hell are fucking ridiculous . Yes , they are , they are christian heaven . And how traditional heaven and how they're fucking absurd .

Very much so , obviously um ketamine , which I'm glad you brought that up , and Poetry Poetry yes , your mom she recommended Poetry and Art . I'm not going to talk about drawings , though you can't see them on the radio .

I didn't like his poetry as much as I like mine , and I know that's an arrogant thing to say . I helped him with some of his , he helped me with some of mine . I thought his was too romantic and sappy . I know mine's romantic and morbid . Romantic and sappy . I know mine's romantic and morbid I like the darkness , though , too , I love the darkness of poetry .

That's what I love about poetry is the darkness in most of it , because the best poetry is just riddled with pain , emotion and pain . I meant to ask you this morning if you wrote poetry . Actually , I assumed that you probably wrote .

I meant like , or when I first got here this , I just , I just assumed you did I , uh , I know how healthy like that's me , in a nutshell , like I know how good something can be for me and I know it's not a hard thing for me to even learn , or it's just like there's this weird disconnect where my brain just just like keeps away from it or something , I

don't know . It's , it's weird , I don't know what's wrong .

Or you do this you take your paper and your pen , you can just start drawing loops and you let your mind just go and if there's writing on it , something wrote through you . A lot of people think it's communicating with the dead . Also , you can leave a pen and paper by your bed when you sleep and you might do it while you sleep .

But the thing about poetry and automatic writing is it's the disconnect from mind to hand , where you're not sitting there thinking what word do I want to use . It's getting yourself into the habit , even if automatic writing is total crock . It's getting yourself into the habit being able to just free-form write quickly .

And if you can do that , then you can start really pouring your emotions out through your pen . I feel like , because if you can't , if you can't think of the words right fast enough , you can't pour your emotion through them .

But I know it's real . But empathy , that's real . Empathy is the act of visualizing yourself as someone else so that you can understand them , and that's the literal definition of it . Well , if I can tell you , I was a hell of a lot smarter , uh , 37 years ago . Uh , that was one of the things I wrote for you . What was that ? You know what that's ?

Yeah , let's hit the . Let's start with the ketamine and the metaphysics and let's end with the poetry , Okay , okay , a damaged or traumatized person is already someone who doubts themselves , so it is easy to manipulate them or plant doubts in their hearts . Yep , and it's very easy to steer a person like that .

A traumatized person cannot become better until they work through the trauma , just like , uh , that hair loss , intelligent effluvium , yeah until I got rid of the stressor . My hair didn't grow back about 60 percent .

Yeah , I did , and I've always had hair I ponytail this fucking big around and hair I used to be able to sit on yeah uh , and the reason it's all chopped off now is because it was still so thin where we're falling out , and this is the only part that's grown back so far . It's right as shit .

I mean it trimmed up because I cut it with a fucking knife when I was drunk . I took my skinning knife and I just went and I took a picture of a ponytail this long and sent it to Tom because he said don't ever cut off your hair . There you go . I said here you go , keep it . Keep it . Now . I told you I'm a bitch when I'm drunk .

Of course , I lied to the priest that I'd actually ever , you know , learned my catechism and done my communion and everything . I just started showing up and taking it , but , uh , I tried to be .

I uh was in a horrifying church , a cult church actually , as a child , not a severe call it , not like what you're thinking um , but it was called the marietta bible center and nobody will go there now because they are a pretty bad cult now .

I remember as a kid , instead of in what we called Big Church , I sat in Sunday school and I remember the Sunday school lady teacher standing up front telling us about one of the people that came to church , how they died of a brain aneurysm .

She described in very graphic detail what a brain aneurysm was , and every time I got a headache or a pain in my head , I was convinced the blood vessel in my head was going to blow up and kill me . But , as I told you and I haven't said this I have been an avid reader since the age of three . You were .

And I was six years old when I read it and the article was titled there is no god and all it did was explain the science behind the big bang theory . And I remember feeling that pure terror of chill that runs through every bone in your body , because I had grown up reading my little book of bible stories and stuff and convinced god was real .

And then I'm like here's suddenly a reputable uh public . I didn't realize it was an opinion piece because I was six , you know , I only could read the words and understand them . I couldn't understand the intent behind them . That set you up I became a six-year-old atheist , so I went to this horrible church , but you know why I went ?

Yeah , because they had a freaking church bus that would pick kids up , and it was a way for my mom to get rid of her two bratty , freaking daughters for four hours every Sunday . She didn't make us stay going , though , so spirituality , one size does not fit all . I am always searching for answers .

I will never stop searching for answers , answers , and I don't think any intelligent person can , until we do get to the other side . I , I , I , I would say I pray to god , I , I pray that there is something after death .

I believe that that would be the cruelest joke of anything in the world for consciousness and self-awareness and love and all the wonderful things in life , to stop existing , to just end

there , yeah , and that to me , that's unfathomable . So I went into therapy for that when I was eight , and that's when they found out I was a genius not to toot my own horn .

But , um , she had explained to me that there's a consciousness and a subconsciousness . That's all she explained and I I understood the concept and I drew a picture and it was three levels of the brain and I said , no , I think there's a consciousness , a subconsciousness and a sub subconsciousness .

And I described the id , the ego and the superego without any education . And she after that had me IQ tested . I IQ tested well over 150 .

And then I was given my first SATs at age 8 at Marietta College in the Extremely Talented and Gifted program and because I passed two of the accepted standardized tests for the American Mensa Society and we paid our dues , I was in it for several years .

I know my IQ is probably half what it was then , but I have to say growing up being able to sit through class painting my face or dumping my desk out on the floor and not paying attention , but getting a perfect score on every test . Every time . There was something that felt so good about being the fuck-up kid that had perfect test scores .

They watched me like under a microscope and they couldn't put a test in front of me that I couldn't put a perfect score on , because I damn near aced the SATs when I was eight . I love that I could ace them now , shit you still got all those gifts inside of you .

I don't know how we got here . My mom thinks aliens put us here , but I don't believe we were put here to hate each other because of , uh , difference in color or difference in nationality or difference in language . And I don't believe anybody was put on this earth to destroy another human being .

But unfortunately , so many , so many people do out of ignorance or illness , or yeah uh , hurt people , hurt people .

When I think about like you're going through what you're going through , but at the same time , like you're building something huge and big and I know it's going to succeed , it just um , it blows me away , because when I'm in pain , I can't imagine helping another person until I actually physically see them hurting , and then I'll give them anything they want if it

just makes them feel better .

Maybe it's not wanting not so much anymore , but like I don't know , I just I give myself away to anyone else before , like I do something for myself no , I get that because I consider myself a very selfish person , but when the chips are down , I don't care who you are .

If you need it more than I do , there's nothing I wouldn't give to help somebody who truly needed help , and that goes hand in hand with my . What I said about being in love with love . I believe that's what love is , and it doesn't have to just be romantic love .

It's , um , it's giving of yourself to other people , and I know that sounds cliched and cheesy , but it's being forgotten too much in this kind of society . Uh , which is where the um , the hatefulness towards uh , I hate calling it illness , mental illness , mental disorder , whatever you want to call it diagnoses .

There's so much hatred that people are getting worse , not better , except for a very handful . It kind of makes you think that Jehovah's Witnesses might have been on to something with only 165,000 people getting into their heaven , because the rest of them are crap , I don't know . They have a very limited number .

Apparently they have a very exclusive heaven , very exclusive .

I couldn't even say the words I understand , because the fact is I don't , don't , yeah and uh , I think it's adulthood and like reaching a point is like understanding that it's okay to learn and yeah , I don't know it's , um , it's strange that you mentioned her , because my , my grandmother just turned 97 yesterday and she has a sister , uh , who's just a few

years younger than her , and she's a jehovah's witness , and and her daughter was excommunicated for becoming a Catholic . But it wasn't just that my grandma's sister , my great-aunt Verna , she , wasn't allowed to have any contact with her daughter . My brother's second wife joined the Jehovah's Witnesses as a money scam , and I remember my niece Loretta .

The only gifts we were allowed to give her on any holiday , they couldn't be wrapped in holiday paper . It had to be , wrapped in cartoons in the newspaper , things like that , and they couldn't be Christmas gifts or anything like that , they had to just be gifts , gifts , yeah .

So the ostracism and the clannish and I'm not saying that they're a bad organization , everybody teach their own , but I don't think there's any good religion if it excludes people .

It's , it's crazy like , oh well , she got , yeah , kicked out , but like they did like a court thing and just like it was a bunch of just grown men , you know , basically like grilling her about the sex that she had out of , you know , out of wedlock , that's insane yeah , so like that's just like a snippet of like well , it's not just that , because all of

her years in such a religion would have groomed her to respect their authority , not to protect herself uh , definitely not to lie to them .

I can't imagine being spiritually cut off from my family , my friends and also my religion , being told you're not allowed to be part of us anymore . I don't know that's . That sounds so high school cliquey to me , but at the same time it's so much more damaging than that it is .

And sometimes that's like a journey that people find out after they listen to it , and they , you know , I don't know , everybody's experience is different with it , but right now this is my favorite thing in the world , besides just chilling with my kids .

You light up the way that I do when I talk about scuba diving , because I don't have a whole lot of enthusiasm for much left anymore .

So once you get back home and you know we're going to meet up again and it's going to be cool to see how far you've come . You know what I mean . Like it'll be a cool full circle sort of thing you know it's funny .

I'm really freaking good at doing it now , as making a friend like you and having somebody not just treat me with simple common human decency and kindness , but with extreme kindness and friendship , but with extreme kindness and friendship like it , lifts me up it makes me want to be there on that day to be like yeah look at all this crap I did you know like

check it out . Look where I am .

make me cry . You've got to stop For JJ . Jj loves you . Him and Loki are bros and I'm glad we got to do the little go-and-go thing . I am so glad . Yeah , that was awesome . Yeah , I appreciate you being here and I can't wait for us to link up again .

Um , it has been a long time since I've been able to , emotionally , uh , speak my mind to a friend and not feel like a freak or feel like I was going to be judged or feel like , you know , they're shaking their head at me , like behind my back , and I don't feel any of that and I just like I don't remember when the last time I felt that was .

It's a cold world out there as we know it is but there's plenty of people out there that make it warmer , and you're one of them . I will say that your light shines bright , my friend .