*** Trigger Warning: This episode discusses sensitive topics, including trauma, eating disorders, and abusive relationships. If these topics feel overwhelming, please take care of yourself and step away if needed. Your well-being is the priority. ***
We are truly humbled and deeply grateful to announce that we’ve been honored as the 2024 Women In Podcasting Award Winner for Mental Health! Just a few weeks ago, we also received the 2024 People’s Choice Podcast Award for Health, and honestly, we’re still in awe. These recognitions mean the world to us, and none of this would be possible without the unwavering support of our incredible listeners, amazing guests, and everyone who took the time to vote for us. From the bottom of our hearts—thank you! Our mission has always been simple: to normalize how we talk about mental health, and these awards show us that we’re making a difference together.
In this powerful and inspiring episode, G-Rex and Dirty Skittles sit with Ella, a bestselling author, mental health advocate, and public speaker. Ella opens up about her incredible journey through trauma, beginning with a devastating car accident at age four that left her physically scarred, followed by relentless bullying, abusive relationships, and substance abuse. Her battle with an eating disorder eventually brought her to the brink of organ failure.
Ella’s memoir, From Broken to Beautifully Broken, shares how she transformed her pain into power and found beauty in the broken parts of her life. In this episode, Ella's story reminds us that no matter how dark things seem, there’s always hope for recovery and healing.
This is Part 1 of her incredible story—be sure to tune in next week for the continuation!
Key Takeaways:
- Mental Health Is Health – Ella’s journey highlights the critical importance of treating mental health with the same urgency and care as physical health.
- The Power of Sharing – By bravely sharing her story, Ella empowers others to speak up about their struggles and break the silence.
- Support Systems Save Lives – Ella’s message is clear: strong support systems can make all the difference in helping people find their voice and heal.
- Website: http://www.ellashae.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ellashae_author
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elisa-d%E2%80%99amelio-5a74b4289/
- Her Book: From Broken to Beautifully Broken: Turn Grief Into Growth
If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health issues, please don’t suffer in silence. There are people ready to help—reach out.
- United States: Call or Text -988 – https://988lifeline.org/talk-to-someone-now/
- Canada: Call or Text - 988 – https://988.ca/
- Worldwide: Crisis Lifeline – https://findahelpline.com/
- Official Website: https://goesoninourheads.net/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shltthatgoesoninourheads
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/grex_and_dirtyskittles/
- Newsletter: https://sh-t-that-goes-on-in-our-heads.ck.page/profile
- Merchandise: https://www.goesoninourheads.shop
- Donate: https://donate.stripe.com/8wM4hy4js24y9b26oo
- Advertise with Us: https://www.passionfroot.me/goesoninourheads
Audio Editing by NJz Audio.
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Don’t forget to subscribe to hear more real and raw conversations about mental health. Please rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform or visit our Website: https://goesoninourheads.net/add-your-podcast-reviews
#MentalHealth #Resilience #HealingJourney #FromBrokenToBeautiful #MentalHealthMatters #TraumaRecovery #PodcastCommunity #PeoplesChoiceAward #EatingDisorderAwareness #AdvocateForChange #SubstanceAbuseRecovery #SupportSystems #DomesticViolenceAwareness #MentalHealthPodcast #STGOIOH #Grex #DirtySkittles #WomenInPodcastingAwardWinner
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Trigger warning. Hey, listeners. Before we get started, we wanna give you a
00:00:04
heads up. In this episode, we talk about some tough topics, including
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eating disorders, trauma, mental health struggles, and abusive
00:00:11
relationships. These conversations may be hard for some listeners.
00:00:15
So if it feels overwhelming, please take care of yourself. It's okay
00:00:19
to pause or step away. Our goal is to have open, honest
00:00:23
conversations, but your well-being is most important. Come back when
00:00:27
you're ready, and don't hesitate to reach out for help if you need it. Thanks
00:00:30
for joining us today.
00:00:38
Hey there, listeners. Welcome to Shit That Goes Under Our Heads, the
00:00:42
podcast where we normalize conversations around mental health.
00:00:46
That's right. I'm Dirty Skittles, and alongside my amazing cohost,
00:00:49
gRx, we are here to share stories and tips from our incredible
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guests. Each episode, we deep dive into struggles and
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triumphs of mental health, offering practical advice and heartfelt
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support. Because no one should feel alone in their journey. Join us as
00:01:03
we break the stigma and build a community of understanding and compassion.
00:01:07
Tune in, and let's start talking about the shit that goes on in our heads.
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3, 2, 1. Welcome back to
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another episode of Shit That Goes On Our Heads. Today, I'm here with my
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amazing cohost, Dirty Skittles, and we have our amazing guest,
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Ella. Welcome, Ella. How are you? I'm doing
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so good. Thank you guys for having me. I'm so
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glad you're here. It's been months since we did our prerecording, and I was getting
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so excited about this episode. So I'm super excited to have you.
00:01:43
I have been dying to have this chat with you guys too. I'm so excited
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for this. Welcome. Welcome. I feel like I need to, like, chug
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this chai real quick so this before up I'm like,
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so if I sound like a monster to our listeners, I promise. I'm
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just I'm just tired. Or I know, man.
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It feels like a Sunday. Saturday. Feels like a Sunday to
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me. Don't ask me. I never know what day of the week it is. With
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3 kids, I I can barely keep the hours straight.
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Look at that. Pretty sweet. She has 3 kids. I don't know how you're
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doing it. Have one child, and you don't even know.
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One child and 2 dogs. Oh, and a
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husband. Oh, that's true. That's true. We can't forget the husband.
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And an owl and some crows and, like,
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500 other things that live in your backyard. Oh, wait. And the spiders.
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The spiders. There's lots of spiders here in Georgia.
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So, Ella, tell us a little bit about yourself.
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So I am, like I said, a mom of 3 children.
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I'm married. This is my second marriage.
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I recently just published a book called From
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Broken to Beautifully Broken. And it it
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was originally listed as a self help book,
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but I felt like that term doesn't really do it justice because it's so
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much more than that. It's a memoir of my life
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that sort of serves a purpose for my readers.
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It creates a platform and a safe space
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for people to talk about the things that are normally not
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spoken about due to embarrassment or
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stigma, judgment, all of those things. So I like to call my
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book more so a memoir with purpose rather than self help.
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And I and I and it is exactly that. It has its purpose, and
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it's had so many people responding to it so far, so I'm so
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thankful for that. Wow. I mean, I love this title.
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Beautifully broken. Thank you. I guess, why
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did you choose to share your story?
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In March of 2022, in the middle of
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COVID, I was admitted to Robert Wood
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Johnson Barnabas for an eating disorder,
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and it was not by choice. My family, you know, sort
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of made me go there. And I didn't
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wanna talk about anything when I was there. And
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pretty much the people that were in my groups with
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me didn't wanna tell their story either. And I think it
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was because of those same things, the shame, the judgment, the embarrassment.
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But once one person was brave enough to
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tell their story and we were all able to
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find relatable moments, we may have not all
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gotten to treatment by the same path, but we were all there
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for the same reasons. And so once we were able to relate and
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somehow to the person who was telling the story, everyone else
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started to open up. And it wasn't for a while.
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It wasn't for a few months into treatment that I thought if I could
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create this safe space for people where they could hear my story,
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then maybe they would be more comfortable talking about their own story and
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finding their own voice and advocating for themselves. So it
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started out as my journal entries, which I thought
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were just gonna stay private. And then I said, alright, let me try to turn
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this into a book. And it took me a really long time to get through
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some chapters. And then I really hadn't been sold on the fact that I
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wanted to even publish it. I just felt therapeutic to do it
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myself. And I still had the idea in the back of my head that this
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could be helpful to so many people. And so I took the
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plunge, and I published it, and it became
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a best seller on Amazon in numerous categories
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in in 24 hours. So like,
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guessing me the right choice. Right? I have a
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random well, it's not really random, but I have a question. So when you were
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putting together this journal, which was obviously for yourself, right, it was
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serving a purpose that only you intended to read and kind of
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get out what was in your head. Did you share that with
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anybody before making it into a book? Like, did you run it by
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somebody, or were you just, like No. You know what? Actually, a lot of people
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have asked me that question. It's like, if I had sample readers or, like, a
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test audience. And, no, I didn't. I hadn't even, like,
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read them to my husband. The only person who maybe heard some of
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my journal entries were people in treatment if we, you know, shared them as a
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group. And that was completely voluntary, so not all my journal entries were read
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out loud. But no. And I was so,
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so scared when the publishing date came out for this book. And
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I was like, everyone is gonna know everything about me. And
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how is this gonna go? And I just you know, it was really
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it was really hard to write the book. But then I had
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to have that anxiety and anticipation of how people were going to respond to
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it, especially people who knew me for a long time. And
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then when I started doing podcasts and interviews, I then had
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to continuously relive those chapters by
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discussing them. So it was a lot harder than I thought it
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would be because of all of these steps and all of these times I have
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to re you know, open up those wounds and that trauma from
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the past. But at this point, almost it
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has been a year since the book has been out. It it has become a
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lot easier, and I see that it's helping more people than it
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is giving me anxiety. So I'm a trailblower,
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and it's it's better now. I
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love that. Oh, I'm sorry, Dernisha. No. Go ahead. Go ahead. I was just gonna
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say I love that. That's kind of how the podcast started too
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is, you know, I had my own journey and I started talking about it
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on social media Because you're right. Like, I didn't want anybody
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else to feel as terrified and alone as I did in my own journey.
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And, you know, letting them know that they're not alone and that, you know, we
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need to normalize having these conversations. Because for people my
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age, we were taught never to ever talk about this,
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right? Our deepest, darkest secrets, our mental health,
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how we're doing from day to day. It's absolutely free once
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you get it out. And like you, I'm trying to write a book. But
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you're right. Those hard parts, that that's the hardest
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stuff to get out. But I do wanna get it out of my head because
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there's other stuff I wanna do in my life besides relive that
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trauma day in and day out. Yeah. You know what? Sometimes,
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like, specific chapters, it took me months. Like, I would have to walk
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away when I felt triggered by something and,
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you know, I would just shut the computer and leave it. Like, I wasn't on
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anybody else's timeline. I wasn't, you know, rushing to have this done. It just
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it is what it is. I I took whatever time I needed to write the
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chapter and or rewrite the chapter. And I was very conscious
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to make sure that it was my story and I wasn't
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putting any words in anyone else's mouth. You know? It was
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completely from my point of view, how I saw things. I
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wanted to make sure that I preserved, you know,
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the identity of everybody in my
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book. I wanted to make sure that I wasn't exposing anybody. You know? I had
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to make sure that names were changed, places were changed, whatever the case may
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be. And my intention of the book was never to call
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anybody out, you know, never to hurt anybody's
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feelings. It really just truly is what my opinion
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was from age 4 to age 40.
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And I tried to leave out the judgment, and I tried to change my perspective
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on the situations from my past. So, yeah, so it does. It takes a long
00:09:33
time. So past. So, yeah, so it does. It takes a long time. Sometimes you
00:09:36
have to walk away and regain that perspective, you know, to continue writing. So take
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your time. I'm taking my time.
00:09:48
I do I you know, I we stopped doing pre recordings
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from, like, July until mid October. So I
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did spend a lot of time writing. I'm about
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I probably have about 20, 25 more pages to write, and then
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I'm I'm gonna be good to go. Oh, good. I have, guests that
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came onto the podcast that wanna, edit the book. So I'm
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super excited about that. And I'm not afraid to share my story.
00:10:13
Right? My hope is that it does help somebody. It helps a
00:10:16
caregiver. It helps a teammate. It helps friends, family.
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And mainly just to get out of my head, but, you know, it's kind of
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funny. My aunt asked me if I could write a PG version of the book.
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I don't think I can because it's really hard to transfer that
00:10:32
emotional fuck into something else. So, you know, I'm going
00:10:36
to keep trying. But, you know, listening to your story and reading your book,
00:10:40
it helped me to understand that, you know, you can be
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vulnerable on pages and that what you know,
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I'm not everybody's cup of tea. And, you know, at the age of 61,
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I've earned the right to not give a fuck about those people, just kind of
00:10:56
move on with my life. So I I'm more I I I
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wanna hear more about your journey and, like, what really, like,
00:11:03
led you to to lay your heart out into your book.
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Like I said, I really just wanted to be that safe space for
00:11:12
somebody else to be able to, you know, find
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within themselves what their traumas were. And I think if I
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were to make my book in a PG version, it wouldn't be
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my truth. It's like that raw honesty, like the stuff that
00:11:27
people don't wanna talk about is what's going to change the
00:11:31
stigmas. Right? Like, you can't sugarcoat anything
00:11:34
because that's not how it happened. We have to say how
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it exactly happened so that people can relate to it. Because if
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you're telling me your story and it seems like it went a lot easier for
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you, I'm still gonna stay quiet. I'm gonna be like, oh god. My my story
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is so much worse. You know? So I wanted to put all of those
00:11:53
pieces out there so people could be, you know, like, wow. That is
00:11:56
what happened to me. And it's okay to talk about it because look what happened
00:12:00
to her when she spoke about it. So I I think it's important
00:12:04
to stay true to your story, you know, and tell it exactly
00:12:08
how it happened so that you can you know, others can relate to it. That's
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the whole point. For me, at least, that was the whole point of my book.
00:12:15
And each chapter is dedicated to a different part of
00:12:19
my life, a different trauma that I went through in my life. You don't
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even have to really call them a trauma. It could have just been a hard
00:12:26
time or a difficult time in my life. But each of the chapters is very
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important because they played a significant role
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in the snowball of events that eventually
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led me to the eating disorder unit. So
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how I thought to write my book was to break down my life into a
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timeline, like I said, of those significant moments. And
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the stories that I chose to tell were really the
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ones that affected me emotionally,
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affected me with anxiety, depression, substance abuse, things like
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that. And without those things in my story,
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then the the story just wouldn't make sense. So I
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had to put those things on paper, and I had to tell my whole truth
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to help people. Yeah. So how does your story start?
00:13:14
I was 4 years old, and I was in a very bad car
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accident. A neighbor of mine, well, a neighbor of my
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mother and my mother would take turns driving us to school
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every morning. She had a little girl my age. We were best friends.
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And we're on our way to preschool, and we were
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struck by a postal service
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truck. So not like your normal mailman. It was the truck that
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delivers the sacks of mail to the post office. So it was a larger
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truck. He ran a stop sign, and he hit
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the side of the car exactly where I was sitting.
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So that was in 1987. So back in
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1987, the metal frame around the window,
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it was metal. Now it's that, like, mushy
00:14:02
material, but back then, it was metal. That metal
00:14:06
frame essentially sliced the entire right half of my
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face off, my nose, my lip, my eye. My
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entire cheek was exposed, cheekbone, muscle, everything.
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And then the glass also shattered into the open
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wound, and then the car went down like an accordion with me
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underneath it. So when my parents were
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called and notified that we were in this car accident
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and they got there. They didn't know what my position was.
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They had no idea, you know, if I was alive, what my you know,
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how extensive my injuries were until the
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jaws of life could come and essentially get me out from underneath that
00:14:47
car. And it's very interesting because
00:14:50
when I asked both my parents this story,
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they both left bits and pieces out that the
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other one did not. And so I know you guys are probably
00:15:02
familiar with this association. When you're in, you know, certain
00:15:06
traumatic situations, it's something, you know, that your body
00:15:09
just naturally does to protect itself. So, you know, my
00:15:13
mom remembers everything
00:15:16
after I was pulled out of the car, but
00:15:20
nothing before. And my dad remembers
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everything before, but nothing after. So
00:15:27
between the 2 of them, I was able to piece together the story.
00:15:31
And, nonetheless, I ended up with over
00:15:34
500 stitches on the side of, my face. Well, they stopped
00:15:38
counting at 500. I had to have my eyelid
00:15:41
reattached, pieces of my nose, my lip, and
00:15:45
my collarbone was broken. So I
00:15:49
was at yeah. I was at 4. Yep.
00:15:53
I was out of preschool for quite some time, but, you know, at 4 years
00:15:56
old, I that was after that was my
00:16:00
face. I didn't know my face. You know, you don't really remember anything
00:16:04
before 4 years old. So at 5, 6, 7,
00:16:07
8, I just thought that was my face. I didn't think my scar on
00:16:11
my face was anything significant. And then came
00:16:15
middle school. And well, actually,
00:16:18
let me backtrack. I did have to see a therapist after the accident
00:16:22
because I did have PTSD severely when it came to
00:16:26
getting into cars, except, like you mentioned,
00:16:30
Gretchen, it was the 1980s. And so
00:16:33
PTSD wasn't even something that was spoken about unless you
00:16:37
were in you know, a veteran or what in war,
00:16:41
things like that. It had nothing to do with the normal person.
00:16:45
So nobody really knew I had PTSD. They just thought I
00:16:49
suffered from nightmares. So I saw a therapist for
00:16:52
that, but I don't think that ever went away for me. I
00:16:56
think maybe, you know, I was it became easier
00:17:00
to get into cars again with the guidance of this therapist.
00:17:03
But even as an adult, I wouldn't let anyone drive my kids
00:17:07
around. I'm so cautious when I drive a car. Like,
00:17:11
cars in general give me anxiety. Driving in general gives me anxiety. So I
00:17:15
don't think I ever truly recovered from
00:17:19
that. You know? And it and it's 37 years ago
00:17:23
already. But so now fast forward,
00:17:26
middle school, I was in a Catholic
00:17:30
school, not a lot of kids. There was only
00:17:33
between, you know, 6th, 7th, and 8th grade throughout all
00:17:37
those years. I think the most kids I had in my class was 10 or
00:17:40
12 kids. Very small class, and,
00:17:44
somebody had started calling me Scarface to my face.
00:17:48
So I don't know if this was something that was already happening behind
00:17:52
my back or if this was the first time anybody, you know, called
00:17:56
me this, but it's something that stuck for a long time.
00:18:00
And that's when I started to become aware of my
00:18:03
scar, something that I never really had thought about before.
00:18:08
I tried to ignore them thinking, you know, if I
00:18:12
just ignore them, it'd be so bothersome.
00:18:16
But then I started, I guess, sort
00:18:19
of spiraling a little bit in my head thinking, are they
00:18:23
talking about me? Is this person looking at me weird? You know, are
00:18:26
they're laughing in the corner. Is it because of me that they're so I sort
00:18:29
of became paranoid that everyone was always talking about
00:18:33
me. My freshman year, I
00:18:36
went to a Catholic high school as well, and
00:18:40
I was tormented by the same
00:18:45
one boy who went from 8th grade to the same Catholic school
00:18:48
for high school with me, then had his group of friends who
00:18:52
sort of chimed in. And I just was tormented,
00:18:56
like, every day. And there were times where, you know, I
00:18:59
had some suicidal thoughts. There really was
00:19:03
nothing that I was looking forward to in my day. I didn't have any
00:19:07
friends. All I did was come home, do homework.
00:19:11
You know, I didn't go out on Friday nights or go to the football games
00:19:14
with everybody. I stayed home. My parents were sort of
00:19:18
struggling with each other in terms of their relationship.
00:19:22
So while I can't say that my house was
00:19:26
unhappy or violent or any of those things, but you could
00:19:30
feel the tension between them. So
00:19:33
not having an escape from that and, you know,
00:19:38
also what was happening in school became a
00:19:41
self worth, self confidence issue. So you can see how this all started to
00:19:45
snowball for me. The self confidence
00:19:49
issue then became I'm not gonna go into the lunch
00:19:53
room anymore. Because when I go in the lunch room, I feel like everyone is
00:19:57
staring at me, and I don't want anyone to look at me. If they
00:20:01
don't look at me, if I stay under the radar, then they can't possibly
00:20:04
make fun of me. So I started to
00:20:08
skip lunch. That was the beginning
00:20:12
of my eating disorder. Once I started skipping
00:20:16
lunch, I realized, you know, obviously,
00:20:19
some pounds started to come off. I was, you know, thin and
00:20:23
tiny to begin with. But I thought
00:20:27
that if I could take the focus off of my face and
00:20:31
maintain this nice body, that people would no
00:20:34
longer look at my face and call me Scarface. They would instead
00:20:38
just, you know, look at me for the way
00:20:42
my body looked. And so that's when eating disorder really
00:20:45
started spiraling even more.
00:20:49
My sophomore year, I decided to switch schools because
00:20:53
it had really just gotten so bad that, you know, my parents
00:20:57
even noticed I was falling into this deeper depression.
00:21:01
That summer, before I switched schools, I had some surgery on my
00:21:04
face. I had, you know, some reconstructive surgery. Nothing major, just, you
00:21:08
know, some derma abrasion, some lasering to get rid of the scarring.
00:21:12
But I did start a new school sophomore year. And
00:21:17
contrary to anything I ever knew in my entire life,
00:21:21
I made tons of friends on my 1st day of school.
00:21:24
So, of course, in my mind, I'm thinking, oh, it definitely was my scar that
00:21:28
the it was the issue here because I fixed it, and now, look, I have
00:21:31
friends. So, again, that affected my self
00:21:35
confidence and my self worth. Like I
00:21:39
said, I didn't have my parents didn't have the best relationship at home.
00:21:43
And I started dating guys that weren't so
00:21:47
great for me, sort of because I just
00:21:50
wanted to maintain that popularity. So if
00:21:54
a boy was popular and he asked me out, I did it because I was
00:21:58
so scared of going back to that freshman year, to that girl
00:22:01
freshman year that was, you know, being teased and being made fun of.
00:22:05
But all the while, I had a level of anxiety that was
00:22:10
unlike any I've ever had before. Because my freshman
00:22:13
year, when I was teased and all that stuff, I was a little depressed, but
00:22:16
I had nothing to lose. I was already at the bottom. Now
00:22:21
I had this newfound, you know, popularity,
00:22:25
and I was so scared I was gonna lose it. And I was so scared
00:22:28
I was gonna go back to that girl that I was
00:22:31
living in a constant state of anxiousness and
00:22:35
anxiety. It was awful. I mean, I'm sure you guys are familiar with,
00:22:40
you know, the side effects of what comes along with anxiety. I tried
00:22:44
I started trying to do whatever I could to silence that anxiety because
00:22:48
nobody went to a therapist. Nobody went to a psychiatrist.
00:22:52
And there was no way I was gonna tell anybody
00:22:56
these things because the people who did see therapists in high school
00:23:00
were labeled as, like, the severely crazy people.
00:23:04
So and, again, because this was the nineties. So I, you
00:23:07
know, kept it to myself, and I started trying alcohol and
00:23:11
different drugs and things like that to to silence
00:23:15
that anxiety. And it worked, obviously. In the in that moment,
00:23:19
it worked. But then those things wear off, and you're back to
00:23:22
reality. And the anxiety is even worse because the
00:23:26
drugs are altering the chemicals in your brain, which actually makes the anxiety so much
00:23:30
worse in the end. So what I thought was, you know, helping to
00:23:34
get rid of my anxiety was actually making it 10 times worse in
00:23:37
the end. The story actually gets
00:23:41
worse. So I wanna give you guys a second. I kinda gave you so much
00:23:44
of my story. I wanna give you a second to see if there's something you
00:23:47
want me to talk about more before I I move forward because this is where
00:23:50
it gets really complicated. I have one question that
00:23:54
I keep going back to. You had mentioned something earlier that you didn't
00:23:58
know a difference. Like, your face was your face, and at some
00:24:01
point, you talked to your parents about what had happened.
00:24:06
When did you start to piece together that the scar was tied
00:24:09
back to that accident? I think I
00:24:13
always knew that the scar was from a car accident.
00:24:17
But at at a young age, it's just something that
00:24:20
I was used to, so I thought other people would be used to it as
00:24:24
well. Like, I always knew it was from the car accident. I just didn't
00:24:27
think people cared about it. I didn't think that people had an opinion about it
00:24:31
because none of my family ever spoke about it,
00:24:35
you know. So I didn't think that other people
00:24:39
would even notice it. I guess, because, like, whoever I was around all the time,
00:24:43
family, they didn't really know they didn't notice it or get the point of
00:24:46
it. So it just was shocking to me, you know, it
00:24:50
just like snapped in my head. Like, oh my god. Other people do
00:24:54
see this scar and are bothered by it, obviously. So it was
00:24:58
in the moment that he called me Scarface that I was like, wait a second.
00:25:01
People are, like, paying attention to my scar instead
00:25:05
of me. Like, I you know, it was very confusing for me. And I
00:25:08
actually for the first that when I was called Scarface, it was
00:25:12
the first time that I felt a
00:25:16
feeling I had never felt before, which I still don't even know how to put
00:25:19
into words. It was like all the air was sucked out of
00:25:23
me, and I wanted to cry and scream, and the room was
00:25:27
spinning. You know, it was almost like I was having a a panic attack. Yeah.
00:25:31
To, like, hear somebody say that out loud and for me to
00:25:35
come to the realization that, wow. Like, holy shit. Other people actually
00:25:39
notice this scar and are bothered by it enough to make fun
00:25:42
of me for it. And then that's something that sticks with you forever.
00:25:46
Like, you don't go backwards on that. I mean, even to this day, I still
00:25:49
feel like people, you know, notice it. And they're like, well, we don't even see
00:25:53
it. Like, we just thought it was acne or whatever. So now it's the opposite.
00:25:56
Now it's me that's very much aware of it and others who are not
00:26:00
paying as much attention to it now. Do you remember how old you were
00:26:03
when you were asking your parents about the accident?
00:26:08
It must have been around middle school because,
00:26:12
once they called me Scarface, you know, I started I did
00:26:16
remember bits and pieces as a kid. Like, I remembered
00:26:20
being wheeled in the wheelchair in the hospital. I
00:26:23
remember the smell of the iodine that they used on my
00:26:27
face. I remember looking in the mirror, you
00:26:31
know, when I got home and seeing the stitching on my face. I remember
00:26:34
those little things. So I I kind of always knew about the
00:26:38
accident in small pieces, and I never I never cared to know the whole
00:26:41
story until middle school when they called me Scarface, you know. Then
00:26:45
I said, like, what exactly happened here? Like, what, you know, what were the
00:26:49
series of events that happened? Because obviously, this is a bigger deal than I thought
00:26:53
it was all these years. And like I said, they would just give me small
00:26:56
bits and pieces. And I thought it was because they were trying to protect
00:27:00
me from knowing the whole truth. But in reality, you
00:27:03
know, my mom only remembered bits and
00:27:07
pieces, You know? And my dad only remembered bits and pieces.
00:27:10
And my aunt only remembered bits and pieces. So it took
00:27:14
me some time to even when I wrote the book, I had to
00:27:17
reask them to tell the story so that I made sure that I got the
00:27:20
story correct. So it wasn't until I wrote the book that I knew
00:27:24
the full entire story of the car accident.
00:27:30
So my question is, like, how did the teachers react?
00:27:33
Like, I can remember teachers when
00:27:37
I was young and, you know, they would, like, ask questions and stuff,
00:27:41
but, like, were they even empathetic to to what was going
00:27:45
on, or were they just kinda jerks? I I feel like
00:27:48
they just, like, turn turned a a key to it. Like, you
00:27:52
know, they wouldn't they were smart in the way that they
00:27:56
would tease me. Like, they would say as they were passing me in my
00:27:59
chair or in the hallway at the lockers, and they knew that I was
00:28:03
this quiet, kept to myself, girl, like, I wasn't going to
00:28:06
to tell on them. You know? And when I walked in the cafeteria,
00:28:10
they would laugh. I knew they were laughing at me. The teacher would just say,
00:28:14
oh, settle down. Like, it was never addressed. And I think
00:28:18
I don't know if it was a Catholic school. There wasn't as many teachers. There
00:28:22
wasn't as large as a staff as there was, you know, in public school.
00:28:26
Listen, I was a teacher for for 13 years before COVID.
00:28:29
And when I heard someone teasing another
00:28:32
child in my class, I absolutely
00:28:37
did something about that. Like, that was not tolerated in my classroom
00:28:41
whatsoever, and I made sure that these kids knew that. You know, I
00:28:45
didn't humiliate them in front of the rest of the bus, but I definitely pulled
00:28:48
them aside and there were consequences if they were picking on somebody.
00:28:53
But I just I don't know that nobody really picked up on it. Like I
00:28:56
said, I was this quiet girl that kept to herself, and I just
00:29:00
flew under the radar. I got straight a's my freshman year.
00:29:04
The teachers weren't really worried about me. Like, I was that student that did what
00:29:08
she was supposed to do, got good grades, stayed quiet.
00:29:11
And, you know, the teachers didn't worry about me. And when the kids were
00:29:15
making fun of me, it was just, you know, settle down, knock it off, come
00:29:19
on, sit down. It was never, an issue that was brought up
00:29:22
with the teachers where they did something significant about it.
00:29:26
And, honestly, in in that time, it would have probably not been
00:29:30
addressed properly anyways because I remember my childhood ended
00:29:34
up being told, oh, boys will be boys. Mhmm. And, like, that was just
00:29:38
you. Like, yes. Yeah. He's teasing me because he likes to, like, bullshit. You
00:29:41
know what I mean? Like, it wouldn't have probably helped nonetheless. But I did think
00:29:45
about that kid, and I was like, fuck that kid. Where is he at today?
00:29:48
What's his nose? Just kidding. You know, I do this all the time. I
00:29:52
think, like, I wonder what happened to them. And, like, I'm I'm actually
00:29:56
not a believer in karma, which is strange because I believe that we,
00:30:00
like, carve our own paths and our destination is in our own hands.
00:30:04
But I do. I'm like, I wonder what happened. Like, the universe had to
00:30:08
do something. Right. I couldn't have just, like,
00:30:12
gotten away with doing that to me for all those years. And
00:30:15
Right. I did run into one of the
00:30:19
the boys years years later. I mean, maybe it was like
00:30:23
10 years ago. And it was at a friend's christening,
00:30:28
and he was the clown at the christening. You're
00:30:31
like, as you should, fucker. As you should.
00:30:36
I just I you know what? I can't I'm not knocking that as a job.
00:30:39
However, I often would say, like, in, you know, in the
00:30:43
years after, like, oh, that kid was such a clown. Like, he was such you
00:30:46
know? And, like, oh, really, he is. And I don't know. It's just like a
00:30:50
mouse, and I'm like, Actually, this happened. For him. Like, this is
00:30:53
crazy. This thing actually happened. But, yeah, I you know?
00:30:57
And what what's funny is when I became popular, you know, in
00:31:01
sophomore, junior, and senior year, a couple of those
00:31:05
boys that teased me in my Catholic school freshman year asked
00:31:08
me out later years, which I found comical
00:31:12
because I would never give them the time of day. It just is it's,
00:31:17
you know, whatever. The the universe always plays out in some
00:31:21
way, but I never actually thought I would see him as a
00:31:24
clown. I love that. It is
00:31:28
very funny. It's very funny. Yes. And I went up to
00:31:32
him, actually, because I had kids, and I was like, oh, you know, my kids,
00:31:35
you know, want balloons or whatever. And I looked at him, and I was
00:31:39
like, do you know me? Yeah. And he was like,
00:31:42
no. Like, I don't know. I don't know yet. He knew. He fucking knew.
00:31:46
One 100% knew who I was. Hoping you
00:31:50
didn't know who he was is the problem. 100%
00:31:54
knew who I was. And I was like, oh my god. This is it. And
00:31:57
my husband was just laughing because, you know, he knows the story, and he
00:32:01
knows this boy also. And he was like, what are the odds? And I was
00:32:04
like, I don't know. But you know what?
00:32:08
I wish I could manifest everything like that. But
00:32:13
Oh, man. Okay. So that was freshman
00:32:16
year, flying under the radar, getting straight a's, sort of
00:32:20
almost self medicating in some way to kind of just come,
00:32:24
I don't know, to be able to operate, I would imagine, just get through the
00:32:28
day. So then what happens next?
00:32:31
So I become popular. I start dating a
00:32:35
lot of, I guess, for lack of better
00:32:38
words, losers. But just because they were popular and I needed to
00:32:42
maintain that level, I dated them. You know,
00:32:46
I went to parties that were no things were going on
00:32:49
that weren't exactly the safest. And then I
00:32:53
got a boyfriend, and that boyfriend
00:32:57
ended up being emotionally and physically
00:33:01
abusive. And because of that, you know,
00:33:05
low self worth, I thought that, hey. This is what
00:33:09
it is. This is what this is what you get. You know, if you wanna
00:33:11
have a boyfriend, this is the kind of boyfriend you're gonna deserve. So even though
00:33:14
I had found that popularity, I still thought I was this the
00:33:18
same loser from freshman year. So I
00:33:22
accepted whatever I could get, Not
00:33:25
not creating more self worth, higher boundaries, not
00:33:29
setting the bar higher. Like, I had the lowest standards. Because,
00:33:32
honestly, I never thought I was gonna you know, I
00:33:36
thought you had to be lucky to to get a boyfriend. I thought you had
00:33:39
to be, like, beautiful and you know? And so if I had a boyfriend, whether
00:33:43
he was emotionally abusive or physically abusive, like, I still could say
00:33:47
I had a boyfriend, and that's what was going on in my head. So
00:33:51
you could see how bad my my, you know, brain
00:33:55
was functioning at this point and how much therapy I
00:33:58
needed at this point. And as the years progressed, it just got worse
00:34:02
and worse. And, you know, alcohol always lasts for
00:34:06
so long, you know, so you go to something else. And then I was going
00:34:09
to clubs in the city with friends. You know, I was going to
00:34:14
clubs at 15, 16 years old, and my parents thought I was sleeping at someone
00:34:18
else's house, and I was really at a club in the city doing drugs.
00:34:22
And drugs are the only thing that gave me a sense
00:34:26
of peace for whatever that moment was. Like, it's the only
00:34:29
time my anxiety was at 0. But, of course,
00:34:33
then those drugs would wear off. And I was like, oh my god. I could
00:34:36
have died or this could have happened. So then the anxiety got worse again.
00:34:40
And so then you try to use other drugs, and then you try to use
00:34:44
I try to use pain medicate. Anything I could get my hands on just to
00:34:47
silence my head. My head was just so noisy all the time,
00:34:51
and I just needed it to be quiet. So I dated this boy
00:34:55
throughout high school. Anytime I tried to leave him, obviously,
00:34:59
he would remind me that, you know, you have a scar
00:35:02
on your face. Not many people are gonna wanna do. Like, he tried to keep
00:35:06
me where I was, and he cheated on
00:35:09
me. He definitely took advantage of me.
00:35:13
And I guess it was my freshman year in college.
00:35:17
I broke up with him and immediately started dating
00:35:21
someone else who was even more abusive
00:35:25
emotionally than any relationship I had ever
00:35:29
been in because he 100% made me feel like
00:35:32
I had zero self worth, that I was
00:35:36
worth nothing. He wanted to keep our dating a secret.
00:35:40
He would, you know, hook up with other girls in front of me.
00:35:44
He would you know, if anyone would ask our relationship,
00:35:48
oh, we're just friends, he would never, you know,
00:35:52
show me off, I guess, to say. So that made my self worth
00:35:56
plummet even more. At the same time, my parents
00:36:00
got divorced. And the divorce didn't really
00:36:03
affect me because I knew it was coming. Like, my parents had this
00:36:07
relationship where we just they just coexisted, and they did
00:36:11
everything for their children, not for themselves
00:36:15
together. So, you know, I was in in college. I was older.
00:36:18
So the divorce didn't really affect me so much
00:36:22
as when my dad left and started
00:36:26
dating someone else, that became his new life.
00:36:30
And so now I have a boyfriend
00:36:34
who wants to hide me from everybody and, you
00:36:37
know, not acknowledge the relationship or
00:36:40
or, you know, play these, like, narcissistic
00:36:44
games with me. But at the same time, I now had
00:36:48
a father who left, but not only left, he
00:36:52
decided that this new family was more important than
00:36:55
us. So at, you know, 2 different angles,
00:36:59
I was feeling like I had no like, I was insignificant
00:37:03
in every way possible at that moment. So that was a really
00:37:07
hard I think that was one of my hardest years for me. Like, aside from
00:37:10
the bullying and all that, having 2 people
00:37:15
that I cared about sort of not
00:37:19
acknowledge my existence really broke me down
00:37:22
a lot. And my eating disorder started
00:37:26
spiraling. Like, I was down to
00:37:31
taking a slice of cheese, and I would cut it into
00:37:34
4 pieces. And I would only eat a quarter piece
00:37:38
of the cheese in one day. And
00:37:42
that was just a way of me no. I didn't know this then, but that
00:37:46
was a way of me trying to control something when everything around me was
00:37:49
just spiraling in a way that I didn't want it to go, and there was
00:37:52
nothing I could do about it. In hindsight, yeah, I could have
00:37:56
broken up with him. You know, I could have, you know,
00:37:59
had built my own confidence by going to therapy. I didn't know that then. I
00:38:03
didn't know that at, you know, 17, 18, 19 years old.
00:38:08
So let me think how this goes next. If I
00:38:11
can ask a question. So you mentioned something that you said you
00:38:15
basically thought that if girls who have boyfriends are lucky or beautiful
00:38:19
and you getting this abusive relationship
00:38:23
one after another, I'm trying to put myself in your shoes
00:38:27
of, like, if I'm already feeling a certain way about
00:38:30
myself and I'm almost attracting what
00:38:34
I think I deserve. Mhmm. If that
00:38:37
first relationship just continues to tear you down, then in my mind, yeah,
00:38:41
logically, it makes sense that you would go to something worse, whether
00:38:45
you know it at the moment or not. Right? Because you're feeling worse about yourself.
00:38:48
So I can only imagine just that that internal
00:38:52
turmoil of, like, how you feel about yourself, how people are
00:38:55
treating you externally, feeling the loss of control. Like, I I
00:38:59
totally get that. Like, oh my gosh. And you were how old
00:39:03
at that time. Yeah. Let me
00:39:06
think. So 18, 19, 28. I
00:39:10
was probably, like, between 1920,
00:39:14
I was in the second relationship. My first relationship, the
00:39:18
abusive one, was in high school into my freshman year of
00:39:22
college. And then the second relationship started my freshman year
00:39:25
of college, went through all of college on and
00:39:29
off, back and forth, breakup, you know, cheat on me,
00:39:33
the the, you know, the constant battle. And then
00:39:37
my senior year of college, I got pregnant.
00:39:41
And I told him, and
00:39:45
he was excited. You know, he was like, oh my god. I love kids and
00:39:49
and okay. So I, in high school, took child
00:39:52
development classes where I watched children in the
00:39:56
class. I wrote my papers on anti
00:39:59
abortion. I wore the little pin on my coat with the little feet
00:40:03
on it, and I loved children. I was gonna become a
00:40:07
teacher. I was in my last year of college, so
00:40:10
I was about to do my student teaching. And so kids were like
00:40:14
a big part of my life. So when I found out I was pregnant, you
00:40:17
know, I wasn't thrilled, obviously, because I I already knew that this
00:40:21
guy was not good for me. But it's a
00:40:24
baby, and I love babies. You know? So
00:40:28
he was happy about it. My parents, not so much. They
00:40:32
did not love the idea. They weren't really very supportive of the
00:40:36
idea. Like I said, they had just gotten divorced. My mom had finally gotten
00:40:40
back on her feet. She was still teaching. So I it's not even like
00:40:44
she would have been able to help me with the baby because she would be
00:40:47
going to work every day. And so my boyfriend
00:40:50
at the time's mother offered to have me live with
00:40:54
her, and she would help us raise the baby. And we were
00:40:58
like, okay. This can, you know, work out. We started telling everybody.
00:41:02
And all of a sudden, I guess, maybe 9
00:41:06
or 10 weeks into it, he decided, no. I don't wanna do this
00:41:10
anymore. I'm not all in. Like, I I don't want
00:41:14
I don't want a baby at all. And I didn't have the support of my
00:41:17
parents. I didn't have his support anymore. Obviously, I wasn't gonna move in
00:41:21
with him and his mother if he didn't want this. I
00:41:24
called a couple family members, and
00:41:28
everyone was able to convince me that the right thing to do would to just
00:41:32
be a termination. Finish college, get
00:41:36
my degree, move on. It's not what I wanted, but I
00:41:40
ultimately did that. And my boyfriend at the time
00:41:43
told me that I had to have it done, but it was
00:41:47
not something he could come with me to do
00:41:51
because he didn't believe in it. So I had to do it on my own,
00:41:55
which literally makes zero sense whatsoever because Yeah. I'm, like,
00:41:58
getting all worked up. You can't say that I'm fucking pissed. Yeah. What the
00:42:02
fuck? Coward. And I am in this just, like, cloud
00:42:06
of confusion, and my hormones are all over the
00:42:10
place. And it and I'm not justifying what I did, you know, because of
00:42:13
any of those things. But, again, no self worth, no
00:42:17
support system. The person who is supposed to
00:42:21
do this with me decides that I'm not even worth
00:42:25
it again to do something like this with. In my mind, I thought, oh, I'm
00:42:28
not somebody that someone wants to have a baby with. You know? He doesn't wanna
00:42:31
spend the rest of his life with me. Blah blah blah. So,
00:42:35
regardless, he did not come with me. My mom took me.
00:42:39
It was a place that was recommended by my doctor. And
00:42:43
when I got there, I was spit on, and
00:42:47
the picketers were, you know, shoving signs in my face.
00:42:51
And I just was dying
00:42:55
inside, like, dying. I remember the outfit I was
00:42:58
wearing. I was 21 years old. I
00:43:02
remember literally the outfit I was wearing, the way my hair
00:43:06
looked, the colors of that room. The
00:43:10
I remember details of that day. When they called my name to
00:43:14
go in, they called, like, 15 girls at once.
00:43:18
And we would all go in, and they did ultrasounds,
00:43:22
and they left the picture of the ultrasound next to my
00:43:25
bed. And I honestly
00:43:30
I just was praying that this you
00:43:33
know, when I got home, I would be one of those lucky
00:43:37
people that this didn't take. Like, it didn't work. Like, I would get home and
00:43:40
they'd be like, oh my god. Sometimes this doesn't work. Like, you're still
00:43:44
pregnant. But there I was, and I could have gotten up at that very
00:43:47
moment and left, but I just didn't have the confidence to
00:43:51
believe in myself or the confidence to believe that I could do this
00:43:55
no matter what anybody else said. And so I went through with it.
00:43:59
I got home. I fell into a serious
00:44:02
depression. That boyfriend
00:44:07
went out with his friends, like, continued doing his normal everyday
00:44:11
life stuff as if nothing happened. There were times where he would
00:44:14
have shore houses or go to parties, and he would tell me that I would
00:44:18
have to stay home and I wouldn't be allowed to go. And I would stay
00:44:21
home and write papers for him, you know, so he did go out.
00:44:25
It was just yeah. Like, it just was awful. It just
00:44:29
was so awful. And so I broke up with him. And
00:44:35
one of those times that he told me I had to stay home, I
00:44:38
was drinking a glass of wine to, like, calm
00:44:42
my nerves down. And I ended up taking
00:44:46
a a pain medication. I don't even remember exactly which
00:44:50
one. And I started to get a very
00:44:54
bad stomachache, I guess, mixing the 2, obviously. And
00:44:57
I was in my mother's basement, and I tried to make it up the stairs
00:45:00
and ended up passing out from this. So,
00:45:04
essentially, I guess, mixing the 2 was isn't really
00:45:07
considered an overdose, but it's Not
00:45:11
recommended. Exactly. So I, you
00:45:15
know, I passed out. They had to call the paramedics. It was a nightmare.
00:45:18
Like, everything I put myself through because of somebody else is
00:45:22
mind blowing to me now that I have perspective and a different mindset.
00:45:26
But I let these people just basically take
00:45:29
over every aspect of my mind and
00:45:33
insecurities and all of that. So, anyway, we break
00:45:36
up. I start dating someone else. He's a really nice
00:45:40
guy. I just don't really like him because he's a nice guy. Right? Like, I
00:45:44
don't like nice guys. So I go away on
00:45:47
vacation with my girlfriends to get away from everything, just
00:45:51
like quick weekend getaway. And when I got
00:45:55
back to my hotel room, there was flowers by the door.
00:45:59
And I thought, oh my god. This kid is, like, seriously annoying. Like, we
00:46:03
just started dating. I can't believe he's sending me flowers
00:46:06
on vacation with my girlfriends, and they weren't from him. They
00:46:10
were from my ex boyfriend. And
00:46:14
he somehow suckered me back in like he always did. He's not a nice
00:46:18
guy. Suckered me back in, and I
00:46:22
ended up getting pregnant again. This time, I was
00:46:25
pregnant with my now daughter, who's 18 years old.
00:46:29
So we had that baby. We got engaged.
00:46:33
We got married. That marriage
00:46:37
was I hate to say it because I
00:46:41
hate to say a marriage is ever a joke, but it was me
00:46:44
hoping he was gonna be a different person the entire time. And and that's not
00:46:48
on him. That's on me. Like, I knew who he was as a person, and
00:46:51
I still kept moving forward, And I still kept taking the next step
00:46:55
instead of putting an end to it. I just didn't
00:46:59
I just was like a robot. I just was going through these motions. I
00:47:03
think I had so much inner turmoil from all those
00:47:06
previous years that were just, like, festering in my head. I was living in, like,
00:47:10
a fog. Needless to say, that marriage lasted
00:47:15
not even 5 years. I did have another baby. I had my son who
00:47:19
is 14 years old now, but I went through
00:47:23
so much in that marriage. It was there I don't even think there
00:47:26
was enough time in this episode to talk about everything I went through in
00:47:30
that marriage. But I eventually asked for a divorce.
00:47:33
And for anybody who says that the
00:47:37
person who asks for the divorce has it easy, that is a complete
00:47:41
lie. It is no matter if you are the one asking for the
00:47:45
divorce or if someone wants to divorce you, it is gut
00:47:48
wrenching if you have children because you have
00:47:52
to take everything they know and rip it out from
00:47:56
underneath them. And you feel selfish
00:48:00
when you're doing it and you think and I did many times
00:48:03
say, I gotta do this for my kids. I gotta do this for my kids.
00:48:07
Like, this is gonna be so awful for them. I'll find a way to get
00:48:10
through this. And, honestly, because my parents had a
00:48:14
relationship that was not the best role
00:48:17
model for me, I thought marriage was like this. Like, I thought
00:48:21
you got married, ended up hating your husband. You, like, split
00:48:24
split the bills, split the chores of the house, and, like, that just was what
00:48:28
marriage was. And so when this marriage was really shitty,
00:48:32
I thought, well, this is marriage. So what's the difference? At least my kids are
00:48:36
living with their father. But it come it came to a point where I
00:48:39
couldn't I couldn't do it anymore. We had moved in with
00:48:43
my grandfather when my daughter was a year
00:48:47
old. My grandfather had gotten sick, and
00:48:51
he had cancer. He was living in a house, you know, by himself. My grandmother
00:48:54
had already passed away, which is a whole another topic.
00:48:58
And my ex husband
00:49:03
didn't make enough money for us to buy our own home.
00:49:07
So my grandfather offered for us to live there,
00:49:10
and he turned the house almost into, like, a 2
00:49:14
family where we could take the upstairs and he took downstairs.
00:49:18
And in return, you know, I helped to take care of
00:49:22
him. You know, my aunt really was his really took care of
00:49:26
him for everything, but I was there when she wasn't. So, you know, if it's
00:49:29
ever an emergency, I helped or and whatnot. But
00:49:34
thank God for my grandfather because all of those years of my marriage,
00:49:37
the only reason I was able to survive was because of
00:49:41
him. He gave me everything that my marriage lacked. When my
00:49:45
husband didn't come home with money because he had gambled it
00:49:49
or, you know, just I don't even know what the hell he did with it.
00:49:52
My grandfather was always there to help me
00:49:56
with the kids. In the morning, I would get up early to go to
00:50:00
work, get the kids ready for school, and my ex husband would still be
00:50:04
sleeping in bed. You know? So my grandfather would come and help me, and
00:50:07
he'd be like, I don't I hate to see you struggling so much every day
00:50:11
with no help. And God bless him. He helped me up until
00:50:14
the day he passed away. And that death
00:50:18
and my grandmother's death before him really also
00:50:21
impacted me in a deep way.
00:50:27
So I have a question about that. Did you find that your grandparents
00:50:31
were more understanding and more
00:50:35
helpful than your mom and dad were?
00:50:39
You know, it's strange because I think well, definitely
00:50:43
more than my dad was never around. My dad was never around. I saw him
00:50:46
for holidays, and that was essentially what I
00:50:50
saw him for, until that eventually stopped also.
00:50:54
But my mother helped as much as she could. It's
00:50:57
just she had again, she had gone through her own divorce.
00:51:01
She was still trying to support my sister and younger brother.
00:51:05
So there was only so much she could I mean, she was at the house
00:51:08
every day helping me in her own way, but she was teaching also. And, you
00:51:11
know, by the time she got home from school so, like, she had her own
00:51:14
things to do to keep, you know, herself and my brother and
00:51:18
sister afloat. And my grandfather just
00:51:22
he just loved me so much. Like, he just wanted to do
00:51:25
anything he could for me, and he would have done anything
00:51:29
for me. And so when he passed away, I took that very
00:51:33
hard. And when he passed away, not shortly
00:51:36
after that, my godfather passed away, my uncle, also
00:51:40
from cancer. And that
00:51:44
also killed me, but it put things in perspective that life
00:51:48
was way too short for me to be in a relationship
00:51:52
like this for the rest of my life. And so
00:51:55
after my grandfather passed away, we still remained in his
00:51:59
house for quite some time. I asked my ex husband to,
00:52:03
you know, let's figure this out. This is not actually our house. It belongs to
00:52:06
my aunt and my father. We can't stay here forever. We either have to buy
00:52:10
this house or find something on our own. And he just didn't
00:52:14
care. Like, I just I still had to I had to go out and try
00:52:17
to get another job or do another, like, stipend at school,
00:52:20
something to keep us afloat. And I I felt like I was
00:52:24
taking care of another kid. I felt like I didn't have a teammate. I didn't
00:52:28
have a partner. It just was another person I had to take care
00:52:32
of. And, you know, after my grandfather
00:52:36
passed away, it started to come to light. You know? Like, you need to get
00:52:39
a divorce. You need to get a divorce. Once my uncle passed away, I
00:52:43
was like, I'm done. Like, you can obviously die at any moment
00:52:47
here. Like, I'm not gonna waste any more time in a marriage that is not
00:52:50
good for either one of us because, obviously, I wasn't giving him
00:52:54
love at that point either. So, you know, it wasn't good for either
00:52:58
one of us, and my children would benefit from seeing
00:53:02
their mother happy all the time rather than
00:53:06
being in a home with both parents. That's the way I looked at it. But
00:53:10
I still had to rip everything from underneath them and hope that this was
00:53:14
all gonna work out. And
00:53:17
it did eventually all work out. You know, I met my current
00:53:21
husband, and, you know, he finally treats,
00:53:25
you know, treats me in a way that I deserve to be
00:53:28
treated. You know, I have a partnership. I have all of those things.
00:53:32
But before that, you know, I had to
00:53:35
give my kids up on a Friday and let them go to their dad's
00:53:39
house, you know, for a few days, and he would be spiteful and not
00:53:43
answer the phone when I called. So I would have no idea where my
00:53:47
7 3 year olds were, you know, for 3 days straight.
00:53:51
And he wasn't
00:53:55
the most present father for them. My
00:53:58
daughter ended up doing a lot to take care of her
00:54:02
brother, made sure his lunch was ready, made sure he did his homework.
00:54:06
And so, unfortunately, the divorce did have,
00:54:10
you know, some negative effects that were unavoidable. My
00:54:14
daughter had to grow up before her time. She's a very
00:54:18
anxious person. And I think, again, that's because she
00:54:21
held the weight of so much at such a young age. And my
00:54:25
son really had a hard time at 3 years old.
00:54:29
He would constantly cry for his father. You know, he wanted to go there.
00:54:33
His father couldn't take him on certain like, he just couldn't understand why it would
00:54:36
he couldn't have both of us at the same time. But when I
00:54:40
started dating my husband now, he just, you
00:54:43
know, he loved him. Like, he showed him so much
00:54:47
attention. They hung out together, like, it and that's when it started
00:54:51
to become healthy. You know? So I had to go through
00:54:55
that rough patch a little bit, But because someone showed me
00:54:59
how I deserve to be treated, I started to gain that self
00:55:02
confidence back. You know? And I started to have that
00:55:06
self love and self worth, and he showed me that I was worth
00:55:10
those things. And I, in turn, then became a better parent
00:55:14
and a better person in general
00:55:18
for a few years. And then we got to
00:55:22
COVID. So that's a whole another part of this.
00:55:25
So I'll pause for a second in case you guys have
00:55:29
to take a second to just internalize all of
00:55:32
that. I I have a question. When you met the
00:55:36
husband you have now did you have the same, like,
00:55:40
oh, he's a nice guy feelings when you met
00:55:43
him? So funny
00:55:47
story. I actually met him. I
00:55:50
met him the same year that I met my ex
00:55:54
husband. I met him at my freshman orientation
00:55:58
of college. And I was with
00:56:02
my best friend at the time, and he was with his best friend at
00:56:05
the time who was somebody we knew. And so we, you know, said
00:56:09
hello. And at freshman orientation, you had to sleep in the dorms
00:56:12
overnight. And so, again, I
00:56:16
wasn't the greatest teenager. My friend and
00:56:19
I had somebody drop liquor off in dorm rooms,
00:56:23
and we had a party that night. And we invited them to the party, and
00:56:27
I was like, oh, I was so excited. I'm like, oh my god. This guy
00:56:30
is so cute. You know? Like, I I never met him before. And
00:56:34
he paid no attention to me. He paid attention to the
00:56:38
girl that was my roommate, and I was
00:56:41
not going to be fighting for anybody's attention. Like,
00:56:45
you know, I didn't have the confidence to to do that. So
00:56:49
I let it be, and I was like, okay, whatever. So I ended
00:56:53
up, you know, dating my ex husband. He went his way. I went my
00:56:57
way. And another one of my friends said to me,
00:57:01
oh, I have this new boyfriend I started dating. Like, I really want you to
00:57:04
meet him. Can you come hang out with us and his friends? And I was
00:57:07
like, I really don't wanna be, like, the 3rd wheel, but if you want me
00:57:11
to go, I guess I will. And I go,
00:57:15
and it was him. So she is a boy
00:57:18
that paid no mind to me, my freshman orientation. She was
00:57:22
now dating him. And I was like, well, this is awkward. You know what? We
00:57:25
moved on. I said, it's only gonna be awkward if I make it awkward because
00:57:28
he didn't know that I was interested in him. You know? So
00:57:32
so I hung out with him quite a few times. I got to know him
00:57:35
then. And so I knew he was a nice person from back that like,
00:57:39
from then. And I knew the way that he treated my friend,
00:57:43
and I knew that he just genuinely was a was a good
00:57:46
person, from that. When they broke up, I
00:57:50
never saw him again after that. When I got
00:57:54
divorced, I actually messaged
00:57:57
him on Facebook. I know. It's just totally
00:58:01
out of my character. Ever like,
00:58:05
I hit send, and I I literally threw my
00:58:09
phone, and I was just getting Panic attacks.
00:58:12
Panic attack, like, hives, everything. And I'm
00:58:16
like, why did I just do that? Like, what if he's like, I
00:58:20
don't even know who you are. Like, who are you? I don't remember you.
00:58:23
Like, I will die. So but he did. He remembered me. We
00:58:27
started chatting. And and he teases me to this day that,
00:58:31
like, I I sought after him. But I changed the narrative
00:58:35
on that. And I say, like, I was just the one that had the guts
00:58:37
to do something about it for 1. You know?
00:58:41
Whatever. So I I tell women all the time, don't ever be
00:58:45
scared to take a take a jump at something you really want. You never know
00:58:48
what happens. But I said, you know, I wanna go somewhere with my friends, but
00:58:52
I'm so out of the loop because I just got divorced. So that's how I
00:58:55
kinda threw in my divorce in there. Mhmm. And he
00:58:58
suggested a place that we go to, so I went with all my girlfriends. He
00:59:02
shows up, doesn't pay attention to me again. Well, you
00:59:06
got all these other girlfriends. I'm just saying. What is hap
00:59:09
like, doesn't say hello, doesn't come my way. I
00:59:13
see him across, you know, this bar slash restaurant that
00:59:17
everybody hangs out at, and I'm like, he's not coming over here. Like,
00:59:21
what is happening? You know? I was like, you know what? I I can't. So
00:59:24
I just hung out with my girlfriends. I'm like, this is a night out with
00:59:27
my girlfriends. Like, every single one of my close friends
00:59:30
left their husbands, their kids, whatever it was they had at home to come out
00:59:34
with me that night. So it was, like, the first time that I had gone
00:59:37
out in years. So I
00:59:41
was not gonna not have a good time. So we, you know, had our own
00:59:44
little corner, and we had an amazing time.
00:59:48
I was walking to go use the bathroom, and he grabbed my arm. And
00:59:52
he was like, hey. And I was like, oh, no. Like, you just ignored me
00:59:55
for the last hour. So I was like, hi. And I just kept it
00:59:59
moving. Like and and when I came out,
01:00:03
he walked with me over to my friend. And I was
01:00:06
like, okay. That's just looking at I just
01:00:10
went with it. I know I had a couple drinks at this point, so I
01:00:12
was like, okay. Whatever. Like, it is like so he was buying
01:00:16
my friends drinks. Like, he hung out with us the whole night. Like, didn't let
01:00:20
any of my girlfriends pay for one thing. And
01:00:24
after that, you know, I'm from Jersey, so we went to a diner
01:00:28
and we got cheese fries. And it was me,
01:00:32
my girlfriend, and him. And when I was there, I'm like,
01:00:36
you know, honestly, I was gonna write you off. Like, why didn't you even
01:00:39
say hello? Like, so weird. Like, you told me to come here and you didn't
01:00:42
even say hello to me at first. Mhmm. But then you did. What
01:00:46
changed your mind? Like, what happened? I was very, like, blunt and forward about it
01:00:50
because at this point, I was like, I I don't have time to waste. Right.
01:00:53
And he said that my ex husband's friend had approached
01:00:57
him when he got there and said, you know, he saw that he was
01:01:01
coming towards me. And he stopped him. And he said, don't
01:01:05
even think about it. And so he was sort of not intimidated,
01:01:09
but, like, oh, god. If this is, like, a key web of, like,
01:01:13
the bullshit here, like, I don't even wanna get involved in this. But then
01:01:16
he stopped and he was like, I'm not gonna let anybody. Like, if I actually
01:01:20
really wanna talk to her, I'm not gonna let somebody tell me I can't. And
01:01:23
so that's when he decided to come over, and we continued dating
01:01:27
from then on. He we got an apartment
01:01:31
together. After, you know, months, I introduced him to my kids.
01:01:35
After about a year of that, we got an apartment together to
01:01:38
see if this all meshed well because, you know,
01:01:42
he was living his best bachelor life prior to this.
01:01:46
So I didn't know how he was gonna do with me and 2 small
01:01:49
children and an ex husband and, you know, all of this. So I said,
01:01:53
let's give it a test run 1 year lease on the apartment. And if it
01:01:56
did, it went. We had our bumps, of course. You know, like, he had
01:02:00
his times, you know, where he probably was second guessing this,
01:02:04
but it worked out in the end. We got a house together.
01:02:08
We actually renovated the entire inside of the house together, which
01:02:12
was a challenge. But we Yeah. Got along at the end.
01:02:16
And, you know, we have something that we did together and we accomplished
01:02:19
together, which was nice. But we hit a few rocky patches
01:02:24
after we moved into the house. We hit a few road bumps, like,
01:02:28
serious road bumps. Not for us together as a couple,
01:02:32
like, things that happened to us
01:02:36
as a couple that we had to work through. And we each handled it
01:02:39
in different ways. And, again, my eating
01:02:43
disorder started spiraling again.
01:02:47
And then, you know, it got to a point where I couldn't
01:02:50
pull myself out of it anymore, and I ended up in the eating
01:02:54
disorder unit. So if you're ready for that chapter of my
01:02:58
life, we can move on to that, or I we can okay.
01:03:01
Okay. So I had a beautiful relationship
01:03:06
with my now husband, but was my boyfriend then. But a lot
01:03:09
of things happened to us. A lot of things that
01:03:13
happened to us as a couple, not against each
01:03:17
other, but happened to us, life circumstances.
01:03:20
And in March of 2022,
01:03:24
I ended up near organ failure in the eating
01:03:27
disorder unit due to those snowball of
01:03:31
issues. Hey, all. Gerex here. I know we left
01:03:35
you with another cliffhanger. Anyways, turn in next week for part 2 of
01:03:39
this amazing journey. Talk to you soon. See you next week. Bye.
01:03:44
Hi, all. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I'm Grex.
01:03:48
And I'm Dirty Skittles. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and
01:03:52
review this podcast. We'd love to listen to your feedback. We
01:03:55
can't do this without you guys. It's okay to
01:03:59
be not okay. Just make sure you're talking to someone.
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