Latest / Motivational Podcast / For Those Going Through Dark Times – Find Strength and Perseverance

Transcript

For Those Going Through Dark Times – Find Strength and Perseverance · Motivational Podcast

0:00
Speaker 1: I sat among thousands of combat veterans in a packed
0:04
Speaker 1: Kansas City convention center for the twenty eighteen Veterans of
0:08
Speaker 1: Foreign Wars National Convention.
0:10
Speaker 2: I wasn't just an active member. I was their guest.
0:14
Speaker 2: I'd been flown in to.
0:15
Speaker 1: Receive the vfw's prestigious Americanism Award and an annual honor
0:20
Speaker 1: for those who demonstrate a commitment to service, patriotism, the
0:25
Speaker 1: betterment of American society, and helping fellow veterans. The most
0:29
Speaker 1: famous past recipient was one of my heroes, Senator John McCain,
0:34
Speaker 1: survived five and a half years as a pow.
0:36
Speaker 2: During the Vietnam War.
0:38
Speaker 1: I've always admired the courage he exemplified back then, and
0:42
Speaker 1: throughout his very public life, he continued to set the
0:45
Speaker 1: standard for how I believe men should handle hard times.
0:50
Speaker 1: Now my name was going to be alongside his. I
0:53
Speaker 1: was about to receive the greatest honor of my life
0:55
Speaker 1: so far. I should have been proud as hell instead
0:58
Speaker 1: of confused, as for over an hour I sat in
1:02
Speaker 1: the audience between my mother Jackie and my uncle John Gardner.
1:09
Speaker 1: That's a lot of time to contemplate the meaning of
1:11
Speaker 1: the moment. And all I could come up with were
1:15
Speaker 1: the reasons that I shouldn't be there, that nobody should
1:17
Speaker 1: know the name David Goggins, much less put me in
1:20
Speaker 1: the same sentence as Senator McCain, not because I didn't
1:24
Speaker 1: earn my spot, but because the circumstances that life served
1:27
Speaker 1: me should never have led me here. Sure, I'm a
1:30
Speaker 1: winner now, but I was born a loser. There are
1:34
Speaker 1: a lot of born losers out there every day. Babies
1:38
Speaker 1: are born into poverty and broken families like I was.
1:43
Speaker 1: Some lose their parents and accidents. Others are abused and neglected.
1:48
Speaker 1: Many of us are born with disabilities, some physical, others
1:51
Speaker 1: mental or emotional. It's as if every human beings issued
1:54
Speaker 1: their own personal pinata just for making.
1:57
Speaker 2: It out of the womb alive.
1:58
Speaker 1: No one gets a sneak preview of what's in there pinata,
2:01
Speaker 1: but whatever it is will set them up one way
2:03
Speaker 1: or another. Some of us smacked that open and sweet
2:07
Speaker 1: things rained down.
2:09
Speaker 2: Those are the ones who.
2:10
Speaker 1: Have it relatively easy, at least at first. Some are
2:14
Speaker 1: empty as a dry well. Others are worse than empty.
2:18
Speaker 1: They're packed with nightmares, and the haunting begins as soon
2:22
Speaker 1: as the.
2:22
Speaker 2: Baby takes its first breath. That was me. I was
2:26
Speaker 2: born into a terror dome.
2:29
Speaker 1: As the speakers took their turns on the mic, I
2:31
Speaker 1: was deep in my own dark cave, reliving the countless
2:35
Speaker 1: bloody beatings my father dealt to my mother, my brother,
2:38
Speaker 1: and me. I watched us escape to Brazil, Indiana, only
2:41
Speaker 1: to settle just ten miles from an active chapter of
2:44
Speaker 1: the Ku Klux Klan. And guess where those motherfuckers sent
2:47
Speaker 1: their kids to school. I recalled the steady flow of
2:50
Speaker 1: racist threats from some of my classmates and how I
2:53
Speaker 1: cheated my way through school and learned nothing. I thought
2:57
Speaker 1: of my mother's fiance, Willmuth, a would be father figure
3:00
Speaker 1: who was murdered before he could become my stepdad. I
3:04
Speaker 1: recalled my repeated attempts at the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery,
3:09
Speaker 1: a standardized test required for all military recruits to fulfill
3:14
Speaker 1: my dream of becoming a para rescue man. After I
3:18
Speaker 1: finally passed that dreaded test and enlisted, I quit paara
3:21
Speaker 1: rescue training when the water evolutions became too hard. That
3:26
Speaker 1: brilliant decision ultimately led to me becoming a three hundred
3:29
Speaker 1: pound graveyard shift exterminator at ecolab raking in one thousand
3:33
Speaker 1: dollars a month at twenty four years old.
3:35
Speaker 2: I was a shell of a man at that point,
3:38
Speaker 2: with no self esteem or self respect.
3:40
Speaker 1: I was still haunted by the same old demons that
3:43
Speaker 1: had tailed me from birth, and the harsh reality was
3:46
Speaker 1: that I lacked everything I needed to become the man
3:49
Speaker 1: I wanted to be. Mind you, I wasn't thinking about
3:52
Speaker 1: all of that to punish myself. I was sifting through
3:56
Speaker 1: the files, searching for the catalyst, the moment that restarted
4:00
Speaker 1: the fire and ignited something primal inside me. I needed
4:05
Speaker 1: to remember exactly how and when I flipped the script
4:08
Speaker 1: and managed to build a life of honor and service.
4:11
Speaker 1: But I kept coming up empty. I was so deep
4:14
Speaker 1: in my brain cave I didn't even hear them call
4:17
Speaker 1: my name. I wouldn't have reacted at all if my
4:21
Speaker 1: mom hadn't nudged my arm.
4:23
Speaker 2: Even now, I don't remember walking.
4:25
Speaker 1: Up the stage steps with her because I was still
4:28
Speaker 1: floating between my past and my disorienting present. I heard
4:32
Speaker 1: them read my resume, detailing the money I'd raised for
4:35
Speaker 1: veteran causes and the objectives I'd met over the course
4:39
Speaker 1: of my career. Before I knew it, they put a
4:42
Speaker 1: metal around my neck and the audience was on their
4:44
Speaker 1: feet ap plodding. That was the surest sign yet that
4:48
Speaker 1: this born loser had been reborn somewhere along the way,
4:52
Speaker 1: that there had been a moment that sparked my metamorphosis.
4:56
Speaker 1: When it was my turn at the microphone, I gazed
4:58
Speaker 1: out at all the unfamiliar faces, members of a brotherhood
5:02
Speaker 1: and sisterhood that I will always be a part of.
5:06
Speaker 1: The fact that this recognition came from them was the
5:08
Speaker 1: deepest honor, But I didn't know how to thank them.
5:13
Speaker 1: I was a sought after public speaker by then, comfortable
5:16
Speaker 1: in front of crowds large and small.
5:19
Speaker 2: Factor in my work as a recruiter for.
5:21
Speaker 1: The military, and I'd been a professional public speaker for
5:25
Speaker 1: over a decade. I rarely got butterflies, but that summer
5:29
Speaker 1: day in Kansas City, I was nervous as hell, and
5:32
Speaker 1: my mind was still clouded. I tried to shake it
5:36
Speaker 1: off and started by thanking my grandfather, Sergeant Jack. He
5:39
Speaker 1: would be the proudest man in the world to see
5:41
Speaker 1: me up here right now, I said, choked up, I paused,
5:46
Speaker 1: took a deep breath to compose myself and started again.
5:50
Speaker 2: I'd like to thank my mom, who.
5:53
Speaker 1: I turned to my mother, and when our eyes met,
5:55
Speaker 1: the moment that permanently changed my life finally hit me,
5:59
Speaker 1: and the power of that realization was overwhelming. I'd like
6:04
Speaker 1: to thank my mom, who My voice cracked again. I
6:08
Speaker 1: couldn't hold back the flood any longer. I closed my
6:11
Speaker 1: eyes and sobbed. Like a dream that only last seconds
6:15
Speaker 1: yet feels like hours. Time stretched out and scenes from
6:18
Speaker 1: the ultimate turning point in my life, the last time
6:22
Speaker 1: I ever saw my father colonized my mind. If I
6:27
Speaker 1: hadn't taken that trip, you'd never have heard of me.
6:30
Speaker 1: It finally hit me, and I was overwhelmed by the
6:33
Speaker 1: work it took to get here.
6:36
Speaker 2: I was twenty four years old when I.
6:38
Speaker 1: Realized I was broken inside. Something had gone numb in
6:42
Speaker 1: my soul, and that numbness, that lack of deep feeling,
6:47
Speaker 1: dictated what my life had become. It's why I quit
6:50
Speaker 1: going after my goals, my biggest dreams. Whenever things got hard,
6:54
Speaker 1: quitting was just another detour. It never bothered me much
6:58
Speaker 1: because when your numb, you can't process what's happening to
7:01
Speaker 1: you or within you. I didn't know the power of
7:04
Speaker 1: the mind yet, and because of that I had ballooned
7:07
Speaker 1: into a fat ass and taken a job as a
7:10
Speaker 1: cockroach sniper in restaurants. I had my excuses, of course.
7:14
Speaker 1: My numbness was a survival mechanism. It had been beaten
7:18
Speaker 1: into me by my father. By the time I turned seven,
7:22
Speaker 1: I developed a pow mindset. Going numb was how I
7:27
Speaker 1: took my beatings and maintained.
7:29
Speaker 2: Some level of self respect. Even after my mother and I.
7:33
Speaker 1: Escaped, I continued to be stalked by tragedy and failure,
7:37
Speaker 1: and numbness was how I coped with the fact that
7:39
Speaker 1: losing was all I ever knew. When you're born a loser,
7:43
Speaker 1: your goal is to survive, not thrive. You learned to lie,
7:47
Speaker 1: to cheat, to do what it takes to fit in.
7:50
Speaker 1: You may become a survivor, but it's a miserable existence.
7:55
Speaker 1: Just like the cockroaches I was assigned to kill. You
7:58
Speaker 1: find yourself scurrying in from the sh to claim the
8:01
Speaker 1: bare necessities while hiding your true self from the light
8:05
Speaker 1: at all costs.
8:06
Speaker 2: Born losers are the ultimate cockroaches.
8:10
Speaker 1: We do what we have to, and that attitude often
8:13
Speaker 1: enables some pretty severe character defects.
8:17
Speaker 2: I certainly had some.
8:18
Speaker 1: I was a quitter, a liar, a fat, lazy motherfucker,
8:21
Speaker 1: and I was deeply depressed. I could feel myself unraveling
8:25
Speaker 1: a little at a time. Fed up and frustrated, bitter
8:29
Speaker 1: and angry. I couldn't take much more of my sorry
8:32
Speaker 1: ass life. If I didn't change, and change soon, I
8:35
Speaker 1: knew I would die a loser or worse. I might
8:40
Speaker 1: end up like my father, the hustler, who was one
8:43
Speaker 1: quick twitch away from violence. I was consumed by misery
8:47
Speaker 1: and groping for some mental foothold to keep me from
8:49
Speaker 1: giving up for good.
8:51
Speaker 2: The only thing.
8:52
Speaker 1: I could come up with was to go back to
8:54
Speaker 1: that house on Paradise Road that still haunted me. I
8:58
Speaker 1: had to get to Buffalo, New York and look my
8:59
Speaker 1: f the eye, because when you're living in hell, the
9:03
Speaker 1: only way to find your way out is to confront
9:06
Speaker 1: the devil himself. I was hoping to find some answers
9:09
Speaker 1: that would help me change my life.
9:12
Speaker 2: That was what I told myself.
9:14
Speaker 1: Anyway, As I crossed into Ohio from Indiana and veered northeast,
9:19
Speaker 1: I hadn't seen my old man in twelve years. It
9:21
Speaker 1: had been my decision to stop seeing him. At that time,
9:25
Speaker 1: the court system allowed children to make those decisions once
9:28
Speaker 1: they turned twelve.
9:29
Speaker 2: I made that.
9:29
Speaker 1: Choice mostly out of respect for and loyalty to my mom.
9:34
Speaker 1: He'd stopped beating us after we left Buffalo, But the
9:37
Speaker 1: one thing that never went numb was how I felt
9:40
Speaker 1: about what my mother endured at his hands. Still, over
9:43
Speaker 1: the years, I had questioned that decision and began to
9:46
Speaker 1: wonder if my memories, if the stories I told myself
9:50
Speaker 1: were true. On the long drive, I didn't listen to music.
9:54
Speaker 1: All I heard were the competing voices in my head.
9:57
Speaker 1: The first voice accepted me as I was, It's not
10:00
Speaker 1: your fault, David, None of this is your fault. You're
10:03
Speaker 1: doing the best you can with what you've been given.
10:06
Speaker 1: That was the voice I'd been listening to my entire life.
10:10
Speaker 1: It's not my fault was my favorite refrain. It explained
10:13
Speaker 1: and justified my lot in life and the dead end
10:15
Speaker 1: path in front of me, and it played twenty four
10:17
Speaker 1: to seven. However, for the first time, another voice chimed in,
10:21
Speaker 1: or maybe it was the first time I stopped listening
10:23
Speaker 1: only to what I wanted to hear Roger that it
10:26
Speaker 1: ain't your fucking fault that you were dealt a bad hand,
10:29
Speaker 1: but it is your responsibility. How long will you allow
10:33
Speaker 1: your past to hold you back before you finally take
10:38
Speaker 1: control of your future. Compared to the first, more nurturing
10:42
Speaker 1: voice in my head, this one was ice cold, and
10:46
Speaker 1: I did my best to tune it out. The closer
10:49
Speaker 1: I got to Buffalo, the younger and more helpless I felt.
10:53
Speaker 1: When I was one hundred and fifty miles away, I
10:55
Speaker 1: felt like I was sixteen years old. As I pulled
10:58
Speaker 1: off the highway and wound through the Buffalo city streets.
11:01
Speaker 1: I felt like I was eight, the same age I
11:04
Speaker 1: was when we packed all our into garbage bags and
11:07
Speaker 1: walked out the door. Once I walked into the house,
11:11
Speaker 1: it was August nineteen eighty three all over again. The
11:15
Speaker 1: paint on the walls, the floors, the appliances, and the furniture,
11:19
Speaker 1: all of it was the same. While it looked a
11:21
Speaker 1: lot smaller and out of date, it was still the
11:24
Speaker 1: haunted house I remembered, filled with years of grisly memories
11:28
Speaker 1: and palpable dark energy. However, my father was warm and
11:32
Speaker 1: more affectionate than I remembered Tronas was always a charmer,
11:36
Speaker 1: and he acted genuinely happy to see me. As we
11:39
Speaker 1: caught up, I found myself laughing at his jokes, slightly
11:43
Speaker 1: confused by the man in front of me. After a while,
11:46
Speaker 1: he checked his watch and grabbed his coat. He held
11:48
Speaker 1: the front door open for his wife, Sue, and me
11:51
Speaker 1: as we headed for the car. Where are we going?
11:53
Speaker 1: I asked, you remember the schedule? He said, it's time
11:56
Speaker 1: to open up. The first thing I noticed about Skateland
12:00
Speaker 1: from the outside was that it needed a paint job.
12:04
Speaker 1: Inside the floor and walls were chipped and stained, and
12:07
Speaker 1: the whole place smelled funky. The office had deteriorated too.
12:12
Speaker 2: That sofa we.
12:12
Speaker 1: Slept on his kids, where my mom caught him cheating
12:15
Speaker 1: on more than one occasion, still hadn't been replaced. It
12:19
Speaker 1: was filthy as hell, and that's where I sat after
12:21
Speaker 1: the grand tour, while my father headed upstairs to spin
12:24
Speaker 1: hip hop records in the Vermilion room. I felt dizzy
12:29
Speaker 1: and disoriented. It was strange how far the old man
12:32
Speaker 1: had let his standard slip. He wasn't the strong, exacting,
12:38
Speaker 1: demanding figure i'd remembered.
12:40
Speaker 2: He was old, weak, soft, in.
12:42
Speaker 1: The middle and lazy. He didn't even appear to be
12:45
Speaker 1: that mean anymore. He wasn't the devil at all.
12:48
Speaker 2: He was human. Had I been feeding myself a false history?
12:53
Speaker 1: As I lingered in that office, steeped in the past,
12:57
Speaker 1: I wondered what else I'd been wrong about.
13:00
Speaker 2: Then, at around ten o'clock, the.
13:02
Speaker 1: Baseline dropped upstairs and the ceiling started to shudder and shake.
13:08
Speaker 1: Within seconds, I heard hollering laughter and that steady stomping
13:13
Speaker 1: to the beat. In the same way a song can
13:15
Speaker 1: take you back to a distinct time and place, that
13:18
Speaker 1: thumping bass returned me to my darkest days. I'd been
13:21
Speaker 1: funneled into a relapse of my childhood nightmare. I closed
13:25
Speaker 1: my eyes and saw myself as a first grader, tossing
13:27
Speaker 1: and turning on that very couch, trying to sleep after
13:30
Speaker 1: working all night and not being able to get more
13:32
Speaker 1: than a wink. My mother was there, too, struggling to
13:35
Speaker 1: paper over our pain with home cooked dinners prepared on
13:39
Speaker 1: portable electric burners in the cramped office. I saw the
13:43
Speaker 1: helplessness and fear in her eyes, and it brought back
13:45
Speaker 1: all the stress, pain, frustration, and depression that came with it.
13:49
Speaker 1: Those memories were real. There was no denying it. I
13:54
Speaker 1: was disgusted to be sitting on that couch. I was
13:57
Speaker 1: sickened to have let my guard down and enjoyed my
14:00
Speaker 1: father's company, even for a few minutes. I felt like
14:03
Speaker 1: I was doing a disservice to my mother. And the
14:06
Speaker 1: longer I sat there and watched the ceiling shake, the
14:09
Speaker 1: more rage rose up inside, until I was on my
14:12
Speaker 1: feet and racing up a back stairwell into the Vermilion room,
14:15
Speaker 1: where my demon was slurping whiskey, the smoky elixir that
14:19
Speaker 1: gave him his power. As a kid, I rarely saw
14:23
Speaker 1: the space in full bloom, and while it had lost
14:25
Speaker 1: most of its shine, it was still happening. What was
14:29
Speaker 1: once a glitzy nightclub serving funk to a well dressed
14:32
Speaker 1: crowd had become a packed dive bar flush with hip hop.
14:36
Speaker 1: Trounis was in the DJ booth, orchestrating the energy, spinning records,
14:40
Speaker 1: and sucking down scotch after scotch until closing time. I
14:44
Speaker 1: watched him work, drink and flirt, and the more wasted
14:48
Speaker 1: he became, the more my memory sinked with reality. After
14:52
Speaker 1: locking up, I drove us all to Denny's for an after.
14:56
Speaker 2: Hour's breakfast, just like old times.
14:58
Speaker 1: More than fifteen years had passed, yet the ritual remained
15:02
Speaker 1: the same as ever. Trunas was sloppy as hell by then,
15:05
Speaker 1: and he could tell it made me uncomfortable, which ticked
15:07
Speaker 1: him off. While we waited for our food, he glared
15:11
Speaker 1: at me as he deaced my grandparents and claimed they
15:15
Speaker 1: were responsible for the breakup of his family. Lickor always
15:18
Speaker 1: brought his ugliness out, and I'd heard that argument so
15:21
Speaker 1: many times before it didn't have much effect on me.
15:24
Speaker 1: But when he started in on my mom, I wasn't
15:26
Speaker 1: having any of it. Don't go there, I said, quietly,
15:30
Speaker 1: But he didn't care. He barked about how everyone turned
15:33
Speaker 1: on him and how weak and sorry we all were.
15:36
Speaker 1: His spittle flew the vein in his temple.
15:39
Speaker 2: Throbbed Trunis, please stop.
15:41
Speaker 1: Sue said there was something in her tone, a mixture
15:46
Speaker 1: of fear and dread, that I recognized she wasn't standing
15:50
Speaker 1: up and telling him how she felt.
15:53
Speaker 2: She was pleading with him. It reminded me.
15:55
Speaker 1: So much of my mother and how powerless she felt
15:58
Speaker 1: when Trunas would rage on and on. He was the
16:02
Speaker 1: type of guy who would call a woman over to
16:05
Speaker 1: the house at three point fifty five pm, knowing my
16:08
Speaker 1: mom would be coming home at four o'clock. He wanted
16:12
Speaker 1: her to catch them in the act, to show her
16:14
Speaker 1: that he had all the power and would do whatever
16:17
Speaker 1: he wanted at any time of day or night. It's
16:19
Speaker 1: the same reason he beat me in front of her
16:21
Speaker 1: and did the same to her in front of me
16:23
Speaker 1: the very.
16:23
Speaker 2: Same day we left. Sue moved in.
16:26
Speaker 1: Yet he often told her and anyone else who would listen,
16:30
Speaker 1: how beautiful and smart my mother was, as if she
16:33
Speaker 1: were the one who got away.
16:35
Speaker 2: He needed Sue to feel she wasn't good enough for
16:37
Speaker 2: him and never would be.
16:40
Speaker 1: For the first time in my life, I felt for
16:42
Speaker 1: Sue and realized that Trunnis's specialty was the weaponization of disrespect.
16:48
Speaker 1: It was a tactic he used to bully women and
16:50
Speaker 1: children into submission. He knew that once he choked a
16:53
Speaker 1: mother for out mentally, they would lose all their fight
16:56
Speaker 1: and self respect, which would make it easier to manipulate
17:00
Speaker 1: and dominate them. That's what he was after, not love.
17:04
Speaker 1: He craved dominance and subservience. It was like oxygen to him.
17:09
Speaker 1: He harvested souls with violence and rage. He wanted the
17:13
Speaker 1: people closest to him to feel wounded and empty. Decades later,
17:17
Speaker 1: my mother still struggles with self respect.
17:19
Speaker 2: Decision making, and confidence.
17:21
Speaker 1: Tronis's face was red from alcohol, his jaw clenched with
17:25
Speaker 1: tension as he kept talking. There was no doubt that
17:29
Speaker 1: he was the bully and abuser I remembered, but not
17:32
Speaker 1: because he hated my mom or Sue, or my brother
17:35
Speaker 1: or me, but because he was a sicked up old
17:38
Speaker 1: man who didn't believe he was worth a damn and
17:41
Speaker 1: could not and would not help himself. Years later, I
17:45
Speaker 1: would learn that he had suffered abuse. When he was
17:47
Speaker 1: a kid. His father made him stand in front of
17:50
Speaker 1: a flaming hot coal furnace in a dark room, and
17:53
Speaker 1: after a torturous waiting period, his dad would show up
17:56
Speaker 1: with a belt and lash him buckle side. First he
18:00
Speaker 1: moved away from the belt, he'd get burned, so he
18:02
Speaker 1: had to accept his father's lashings and try not to move.
18:05
Speaker 1: He never dealt with his trauma. Those memories festered into demons,
18:10
Speaker 1: and before he even knew it had happened, the victim
18:12
Speaker 1: became the abuser. Whenever he got drunk and the party
18:15
Speaker 1: died down. He self soothed by picking on people weaker
18:19
Speaker 1: than him. He beat them up, he ran them down.
18:23
Speaker 1: Sometimes he threatened to kill them, but as soon as
18:26
Speaker 1: an abusive episode was over, he would erase it from history.
18:30
Speaker 2: The beatings we took never happened.
18:32
Speaker 1: He liked to think of himself as a big man,
18:34
Speaker 1: but never accepted responsibility for anything he did that went wrong,
18:38
Speaker 1: which didn't make him any kind of a man at all.
18:41
Speaker 1: I suppose I was in that Denny's booth with him
18:43
Speaker 1: because part of me was hoping Trunnis would apologize, but
18:47
Speaker 1: he didn't.
18:47
Speaker 2: Think he had anything to be sorry for.
18:49
Speaker 1: He was straight up delusional, and his delusions demoralized all
18:53
Speaker 1: of us. They were also contagious. For years, he made
18:57
Speaker 1: me bleed, and he made me doubt myself. He transferred
19:01
Speaker 1: his demons to me through the lashes of his leather
19:04
Speaker 1: belt and the open palm of his hand, And like him,
19:07
Speaker 1: I grew up believing in delusions. I hadn't become an
19:11
Speaker 1: evil sociopath, but like him, I never took responsibility for
19:15
Speaker 1: my own shortcomings or my failures. Sitting there listening to
19:18
Speaker 1: him rave made my blood run hot sweat, beat it
19:22
Speaker 1: on my forehead, and all I could think about was payback.
19:25
Speaker 1: It was his turn to suffer at my hands. I
19:28
Speaker 1: wanted to make him bleed for my pain. I wanted
19:30
Speaker 1: to beat that mother down right there in Denny's. I
19:33
Speaker 1: was hair trigger close to allowing my father to turn
19:36
Speaker 1: me into a violent maniac, just like I remembered him
19:39
Speaker 1: to be. He recognized the fire in my eyes because
19:41
Speaker 1: it was as if he were looking into a mirror,
19:44
Speaker 1: and it scared the shit out of him. The weather
19:46
Speaker 1: changed in our booth. He stopped ranting mid sentence. His
19:50
Speaker 1: eyes went glassy and wide, and in the fluorescent light
19:53
Speaker 1: of the diner, he looked meek and small. I nodded
19:57
Speaker 1: as I recognized, in that very moment the lie that
20:00
Speaker 1: inspired my trip to Buffalo. I hadn't driven all the
20:04
Speaker 1: way from Indianapolis as some first step towards self improvement. No,
20:10
Speaker 1: I was there looking for a free pass. I went
20:12
Speaker 1: to collect more evidence that all my many failures and
20:15
Speaker 1: disappointments stemmed from the same root cause, my father, Trunnis Goggins.
20:19
Speaker 2: I've been hoping that everything I.
20:21
Speaker 1: Believed all those years was true, because if Trunnis was
20:24
Speaker 1: indeed the devil in disguise that gave me someone to blame,
20:27
Speaker 1: and I was looking for a cop out. I needed
20:30
Speaker 1: Trunnas to be the flaw in my existence in order
20:33
Speaker 1: to claim the lifetime warranty on my get out of
20:35
Speaker 1: jail free card. Trunas was flawed, all right. He showed
20:40
Speaker 1: me that all over again. But he wasn't my flaw.
20:43
Speaker 1: The second voice was right. Unless I took responsibility for
20:48
Speaker 1: my demons, the ones he put on me, I had
20:50
Speaker 1: no shot at becoming anything other than a perpetual loser
20:54
Speaker 1: or another miserable hustler like him. When the food arrived,
20:58
Speaker 1: Trunas stuffed his faith while I reflected on how much
21:01
Speaker 1: power I'd given him over the years. It wasn't his
21:04
Speaker 1: fault I experienced racism or barely graduated high school. Yes,
21:09
Speaker 1: he beat me and my brother up and tortured my mother.
21:13
Speaker 1: He was a stup man. But I hadn't lived with
21:16
Speaker 1: him since I was eight years old. When was I
21:19
Speaker 1: going to take my soul back from him? When was
21:22
Speaker 1: I going to own my own choices, my failures, my future.
21:27
Speaker 1: When would I finally accept responsibility for my life, take
21:31
Speaker 1: action and wipe the slate clean. Nobody said a word
21:35
Speaker 1: while I drove us back to Paradise, wrote, Trunnis watched
21:38
Speaker 1: me with a mix of drunken sadness, loss, and anger
21:41
Speaker 1: as I grabbed my car keys from the kitchen counter
21:43
Speaker 1: and walked straight out the door. I'd planned on spending
21:46
Speaker 1: the weekend, but I couldn't stand to be in his
21:48
Speaker 1: presence for one minute longer.
21:51
Speaker 2: While the words were never spoken, I.
21:53
Speaker 1: Believe we both knew that would be the last time
21:55
Speaker 1: we would ever see each other. The funny thing was
21:58
Speaker 1: I didn't even hate Trunnis and more because I finally
22:01
Speaker 1: understood him. On the drive back home, I turned the
22:04
Speaker 1: volume way down on the nurturing voice in my head
22:07
Speaker 1: and tuned into reality in.
22:09
Speaker 2: Place of excuses.
22:10
Speaker 1: It was time for ownership of exactly who I'd become
22:13
Speaker 1: in all of its ugliness, and that meant acknowledging that
22:15
Speaker 1: my thin skin was definitely.
22:17
Speaker 2: Part of the problem.
22:18
Speaker 1: All of us are dealt circumstances in life we don't
22:21
Speaker 1: have any power to control. Sometimes those things are painful,
22:27
Speaker 1: Occasionally they are tragic or inhuman. While the accountability mirror,
22:32
Speaker 1: which I tagged with sticky notes, filled with real talk,
22:35
Speaker 1: daily tasks and a few bigger goals had helped me
22:38
Speaker 1: get to a certain point.
22:40
Speaker 2: Those fixes were surface level.
22:41
Speaker 1: I'd never attempted to dive down and solve the root
22:44
Speaker 1: cause of my problems, so I crumbled whenever life asked
22:47
Speaker 1: me to dig deeper and persevere in order to achieve
22:50
Speaker 1: something that could lead towards sustained success. I'd spent my
22:54
Speaker 1: entire life in surface waters, hoping that my luck would
22:57
Speaker 1: change and everything I'd dreamed of would fall into place
23:01
Speaker 1: for me. That night, on my drive home to Indiana,
23:06
Speaker 1: I accepted the hard truth that hoping and wishing are
23:09
Speaker 1: like gambling on long shots, and if I wanted to
23:12
Speaker 1: be better, I had to start living every day with
23:15
Speaker 1: a sense of urgency, because that is the only way
23:18
Speaker 1: to turn the odds in your favor.
23:20
Speaker 2: Reality can be a motherfucker when all of.
23:22
Speaker 1: Your excuses are stripped away and you are exposed for
23:25
Speaker 1: exactly who and what you have become, But the truth
23:28
Speaker 1: can also be liberating. That night I accepted the truth
23:32
Speaker 1: about myself. I finally swallowed reality, and now that I had,
23:37
Speaker 1: my future was undetermined. Anything was possible. As long as
23:42
Speaker 1: I adopted a new mindset. I needed to become someone
23:45
Speaker 1: who refused to give in, who simply finds a way,
23:49
Speaker 1: no matter what, I needed, to become bulletproof. A living
23:53
Speaker 1: example of resilience. Think of a packet of seeds scattered
23:57
Speaker 1: in a garden. Some seeds get more sunlight, more water,
24:01
Speaker 1: and are planted and nourishing topsoil, and because they are
24:04
Speaker 1: put in the right place at the right time, they
24:07
Speaker 1: can rise from seed to seedling to a thriving tree.
24:11
Speaker 1: Seeds planted in too much shade or that don't get
24:14
Speaker 1: enough water may never become anything at all unless someone
24:17
Speaker 1: transplants them, saves them before it's too late. Then there
24:21
Speaker 1: are those seedlings that look for the light on their own.
24:25
Speaker 1: They creep from the shade into the sunshine without being transplanted.
24:30
Speaker 1: They find it without anybody digging them up and placing
24:33
Speaker 1: them in the light.
24:34
Speaker 2: They find strength where there is none. That is resilience.
24:38
Speaker 1: Once we're born, our natural instinct is to look for
24:40
Speaker 1: ways to thrive. But not everybody does, and sometimes there's
24:45
Speaker 1: a damn good reason for it. I was brought up
24:48
Speaker 1: in darkness. My roots were flimsy, I was barely tethered
24:51
Speaker 1: to rock hard ground. My spirit, soul and determination weren't
24:56
Speaker 1: nourished in the light. But on that ride home, I
24:59
Speaker 1: realize that only I have the power to determine my.
25:02
Speaker 2: Future, and I had a choice to make.
25:06
Speaker 1: I could continue living in the haven of low expectations,
25:09
Speaker 1: where it was comfortable and safe to believe that my
25:11
Speaker 1: life was not my fault or my responsibility, and that
25:15
Speaker 1: my dreams were just that fantasies that would never be
25:18
Speaker 1: because time and opportunity were not and would never be
25:21
Speaker 1: on my side. Or I could leave all that behind
25:24
Speaker 1: for a world of possibility, much more pain, unfathomably hard work,
25:28
Speaker 1: and zero guarantees of success.
25:31
Speaker 2: I could choose resilience.
25:34
Speaker 1: At twenty four years old, a powerful force was gathering
25:37
Speaker 1: within me, waiting to be unleashed. I would soon call
25:40
Speaker 1: upon it to complete two hell weeks, become a member
25:42
Speaker 1: of the Navy, Sea, Air and Land sealed teams, and
25:46
Speaker 1: complete Army Ranger School. I'd compete in ultra races and.
25:49
Speaker 2: Break the world pull up record.
25:51
Speaker 1: Thanks to that one night in Buffalo, New York, when
25:54
Speaker 1: I accepted my fate and became determined to tap into
25:57
Speaker 1: my resilience, I found the will to transform myself into
26:00
Speaker 1: the grittiest motherfucker ever to find light where there was none.
26:04
Speaker 1: I had never been a pow like John McCain and
26:07
Speaker 1: countless others, but I lived like a prisoner in my
26:10
Speaker 1: own mind for the first twenty four years of my life.
26:13
Speaker 1: Once I'd liberated myself and begun to evolve, I learned
26:17
Speaker 1: that it is the rare warrior who embraces the adversity
26:20
Speaker 1: of being born into hell and then, with their own
26:24
Speaker 1: free will, chooses to add as much suck as they
26:27
Speaker 1: can find to turn each day into a boot camp
26:30
Speaker 1: of resiliency.
26:32
Speaker 2: Those are the ones who don't stop at good enough.
26:35
Speaker 1: They aren't satisfied with just being better than they used
26:38
Speaker 1: to be. They are forever evolving and striving for the
26:43
Speaker 1: highest level of self. Eventually I became one of them,
26:47
Speaker 1: which is why I was honored at the VFW convention.
26:51
Speaker 2: I like to thank my mom, who.
26:54
Speaker 1: The audience gave me another round of applause as my
26:56
Speaker 1: sobs ebbed and I returned to the present moment, who
26:59
Speaker 1: never pick me up when I fell. She let me
27:02
Speaker 1: pick myself up when I was knocked down. By the
27:05
Speaker 1: time I was done speaking, all the emotion had drained clear.
27:09
Speaker 1: Honored and humbled to have received an award that most
27:12
Speaker 1: people would consider the crowning achievement of their career. I
27:16
Speaker 1: walked off that stage into the unknown. They say, iron
27:20
Speaker 1: sharpens iron.
27:21
Speaker 2: But at forever.
27:23
Speaker 1: But I had left the military behind and there was
27:25
Speaker 1: no one pushing me on a day to day.
27:26
Speaker 2: Basis any longer. Okay.
27:28
Speaker 1: I was always destined to be that one warrior, content
27:32
Speaker 1: to be the motherfucker who sharpens his sword alone. I've
27:36
Speaker 1: worked in emergency medical services on and off for fifteen years.
27:40
Speaker 1: When an ambulance arrives on the scene of a severe
27:42
Speaker 1: trauma situation, we are immediately shotgunned into what's known as
27:46
Speaker 1: the golden hour. In the vast majority of cases, sixty
27:50
Speaker 1: minutes is all the time we have to save a
27:52
Speaker 1: critically injured victim. The clock starts the moment the accident
27:57
Speaker 1: happens and doesn't stop until the patient arrives at a
28:00
Speaker 1: hospital trauma center. By the time we get to the
28:03
Speaker 1: scene of the accident, we are already behind, which means
28:06
Speaker 1: it is vital that our assessment of each patient is
28:09
Speaker 1: rapid and on point. Some are identified as load and
28:12
Speaker 1: go because they need specific, time sensitive interventions that we.
28:16
Speaker 2: Can't do ourselves.
28:18
Speaker 1: Others are identified as stay and play. Though their condition
28:23
Speaker 1: may be dire, they have issues our skills are built
28:26
Speaker 1: to address to ensure they survive the trip to the hospital.
28:30
Speaker 1: One of the first things we do when we get
28:32
Speaker 1: to a patient is check their ABC's airway, breathing and circulation.
28:37
Speaker 1: We need to make sure their airway is unobstructed, their
28:40
Speaker 1: lungs are inflating, and they aren't bleeding profusely. Usually ABC
28:44
Speaker 1: issues are obvious, but every once in a while we
28:47
Speaker 1: come across a distracting injury picture a shattered leg twisted
28:51
Speaker 1: way up over the victim's head. When you see a
28:54
Speaker 1: limb in a place it does not belong, it's easy
28:57
Speaker 1: to become fixated. It looks so gruesome that human instinct
29:01
Speaker 1: is to address that problem first and block everything else out.
29:05
Speaker 1: I've seen a lot of EMS personnel get sucked down
29:07
Speaker 1: that rabbit hole, but a badly broken and dislocated leg
29:11
Speaker 1: typically won't kill anyone unless it distracts us from realizing
29:15
Speaker 1: that their airway is also blocked, or that they are
29:18
Speaker 1: gurgling because their lungs are filled with fluid and they
29:21
Speaker 1: are in danger of bleeding out internally. A distracting injury
29:24
Speaker 1: in the ems universe is anything that entices a medical
29:29
Speaker 1: professional to forget their procedures. It can happen to anyone,
29:34
Speaker 1: which is why we are trained to remain alert to
29:37
Speaker 1: those distractions.
29:38
Speaker 2: It truly is a matter of life or death.
29:41
Speaker 1: The same can be said of the distracting injuries I carried.
29:45
Speaker 1: By the time I turned twenty four, I was too
29:48
Speaker 1: distracted by child abuse, neglect, and racist taunts to see
29:52
Speaker 1: all of the stuff things in my life over which
29:55
Speaker 1: I had direct influence. Nothing that happened to me could
29:59
Speaker 1: be concent a fatal condition on its own. Yet I
30:02
Speaker 1: spent so much time worrying about what my father did
30:05
Speaker 1: to us and felt so alone.
30:07
Speaker 2: I was refusing to live.
30:09
Speaker 1: And when you spend your life regretting what was or
30:11
Speaker 1: asking why me, you eventually die having accomplished nothing at all.
30:19
Speaker 2: The trip to Buffalo was pure distraction.
30:21
Speaker 1: I wasn't ready to put in the work to change
30:24
Speaker 1: my life, so I went on an evidence collecting mission.
30:27
Speaker 1: In fact, by the time I figured it out, it
30:30
Speaker 1: was almost impossible for me to become a seal. I
30:34
Speaker 1: was so heavy that if I had been even a
30:36
Speaker 1: few pounds heavier, I would not have been able to
30:39
Speaker 1: lose the necessary weight in the allotted time. I had
30:43
Speaker 1: to take extreme measures, like eating two tiny meals while
30:46
Speaker 1: working out six to eight hours a day for ten weeks.
30:48
Speaker 1: But when I started to shed weight and shift my mindset,
30:51
Speaker 1: I realized I had never been as alone as I thought.
30:54
Speaker 1: I'd always told myself that nobody could possibly understand me
30:58
Speaker 1: or what I went through. But as I looked around,
31:02
Speaker 1: I noticed that there were a lot of motherfuckers out
31:04
Speaker 1: there with distracting injuries, stuck neck deep in their past.
31:08
Speaker 1: These days, I hear from them all the time. Some
31:12
Speaker 1: suffer child abuse or lost a parent very young. Others
31:15
Speaker 1: grew up feeling ugly or stupid. They were bullied and
31:18
Speaker 1: beaten down, or had no friends in school at all.
31:22
Speaker 1: It's not always the childhood minefield that foaks us up.
31:25
Speaker 1: There is no shortage of psychological and emotional snags in
31:29
Speaker 1: adult life. Every day people suffer bankruptcy, foreclosure, divorced and
31:34
Speaker 1: catastrophic injury. They get cheated or robbed by their so
31:37
Speaker 1: called loved ones. They get sexually assaulted. They lose everything
31:41
Speaker 1: they own in a fire or flood, their children die.
31:45
Speaker 1: It's so easy to get lost in the fog of life.
31:47
Speaker 1: Tragedy hunts us all, and any event that causes suffering
31:50
Speaker 1: will linger longer than it.
31:51
Speaker 2: Should if you let it.
31:53
Speaker 1: Because our sad stories enable us to grade ourselves on
31:56
Speaker 1: a forgiving curve.
31:58
Speaker 2: They give us latitude and.
32:00
Speaker 1: Justification to stay lazy, weak minded motherfuckers, and the longer
32:05
Speaker 1: it takes for us to process that pain, the harder
32:08
Speaker 1: it is to reclaim our lives. Sometimes weakness and laziness
32:13
Speaker 1: are rooted in hate and anger, and until we receive
32:16
Speaker 1: the confession, apology, or compensation we believe we are owed,
32:22
Speaker 1: we stay stuck in our as a form of self
32:25
Speaker 1: righteous rebellion against our tormentors or even against life itself.
32:29
Speaker 1: Some of us become entitled. We think our pain entitles
32:34
Speaker 1: us to feel sorry for ourselves, or that we are
32:36
Speaker 1: entitled to good fortune because we've survived hell. Of course,
32:41
Speaker 1: feeling entitled doesn't make it so. Understand the clock is
32:45
Speaker 1: always ticking, and at some point your golden hour will
32:49
Speaker 1: expire unless you take action. People who get lost in
32:52
Speaker 1: their past, the ones who bore their friends and family
32:55
Speaker 1: with the same tragic story over and over without showing
33:00
Speaker 1: a hint of progress, remind me of a skydiver who
33:04
Speaker 1: becomes too fixated on their tangled parachute. They know they
33:09
Speaker 1: have a backup ready to go, but burn so much
33:11
Speaker 1: time trying to fix the primary shoot that they forget
33:13
Speaker 1: to track their altimeter, and by the time they cut
33:16
Speaker 1: the first shoot away and pull the second rip chord,
33:19
Speaker 1: it's too late. Part of the problem is that they
33:22
Speaker 1: have become terrified of pulling that second chord because if
33:25
Speaker 1: it's also st up, then they truly will be helpless.
33:29
Speaker 1: That is a mental trap set by fear. We cannot
33:33
Speaker 1: afford to remain afraid of cutting away dead weight to
33:35
Speaker 1: save ourselves. I was at skydiver for far too long.
33:39
Speaker 1: My father was violent, my mom was broken. I was bullied,
33:43
Speaker 1: laughed at, and misunderstood check check and checkmate.
33:47
Speaker 2: And yet I was breathing free, and I was not
33:50
Speaker 2: bleeding physically.
33:51
Speaker 1: I was alive and well and perfectly capable of cutting
33:55
Speaker 1: all of that bullshit away. I'd wasted way too much
33:58
Speaker 1: of my life telling myself the same sad story. I
34:00
Speaker 1: needed to move forward. It was time to write something new.
34:04
Speaker 1: If an act of God or nature tore your life apart,
34:07
Speaker 1: the good news is that you really have nobody to blame,
34:10
Speaker 1: Yet the randomness of it all can feel so personal,
34:13
Speaker 1: as if you've been marked for doom by the fates.
34:16
Speaker 1: If you feel wrong by somebody else, you may be
34:18
Speaker 1: waiting on a confession or an apology in order to
34:21
Speaker 1: move forward. But I'm sorry to say the apology, that
34:25
Speaker 1: tearful confession you've been dreaming of, will never come. The
34:29
Speaker 1: good news is you don't need anybody else to free
34:31
Speaker 1: you from your trauma.
34:32
Speaker 2: You can do it on your own. My father never
34:36
Speaker 2: apologized to me.
34:38
Speaker 1: Nobody ever said sorry for anything I went through. I
34:41
Speaker 1: had to come to the conclusion that while I didn't
34:44
Speaker 1: deserve any of it, I was my main problem and
34:46
Speaker 1: primary obstacle. I'd given Trones Goggins all of my power.
34:50
Speaker 1: I had to take it back. I had to diffuse
34:52
Speaker 1: my demon. I had to shrink him down to the
34:54
Speaker 1: lowly pathetic figure he was by humanizing him. Just as
34:59
Speaker 1: there was no other way to come out of the
35:01
Speaker 1: gauntlet that was my childhood except up, I had to
35:05
Speaker 1: see that he was a mortally fed up piece of
35:07
Speaker 1: shit because of.
35:08
Speaker 2: What he went through.
35:09
Speaker 1: Once I understood that it was up to me to
35:12
Speaker 1: either do the hard work to break that cycle or
35:15
Speaker 1: stay cursed.
35:16
Speaker 2: Like medics on the scene of a car accident.
35:18
Speaker 1: We all must act with a sense of urgency and
35:20
Speaker 1: tune into that ticking clock in the back of our minds,
35:24
Speaker 1: because there is a drop dead time on everything we
35:27
Speaker 1: do in life. All our dreams and visions come with
35:30
Speaker 1: expiration dates etched in invisible ink. Windows of opportunity can
35:35
Speaker 1: and do close, so it is imperative that we do
35:39
Speaker 1: not waste time on bullshit. None of us have any
35:42
Speaker 1: clue what's coming for us or when our time might
35:44
Speaker 1: run out, which is why I do my best to
35:47
Speaker 1: ignore anything that is counterproductive. I'm not suggesting we act
35:51
Speaker 1: like robots, but we need to understand that forward motion
35:55
Speaker 1: gives our lives momentum. We need to remember that sometimes
35:58
Speaker 1: chaos will descend and a clear highway can be wiped
36:01
Speaker 1: out by a flash flood in the blink.
36:03
Speaker 2: Of an eye.
36:04
Speaker 1: When that happens, a lot of motherfuckers look for a
36:07
Speaker 1: cozy place to hunker down and hide out until the
36:09
Speaker 1: storm passes. I'm only human, they say. When Holy Hell
36:13
Speaker 1: rains down upon them and they feel drained and powerless,
36:17
Speaker 1: they cannot conceive of a way to keep going. I
36:20
Speaker 1: understand that impulse. But if I had succumbed to the
36:23
Speaker 1: I'm only human mentality, I never would have dug myself
36:26
Speaker 1: out of the deep hole I was in at twenty
36:29
Speaker 1: four years old, because the second you utter those words,
36:32
Speaker 1: the white towel is fluttering in the air, and your
36:34
Speaker 1: mind stops looking for more fuel.
36:37
Speaker 2: I didn't know for.
36:38
Speaker 1: Sure if I'd ever find my way out of the darkness.
36:40
Speaker 1: I just knew that I could not throw in the towel,
36:43
Speaker 1: and neither can you, because there is no towel in
36:46
Speaker 1: our corner.
36:47
Speaker 2: There's only water and a cutman.
36:50
Speaker 1: And if those are your only options, you have no
36:52
Speaker 1: choice but to keep fighting until you overcome every last
36:56
Speaker 1: thing that once held you the fuck back. You have
36:59
Speaker 1: been pre occupied by both for way too long. It's
37:03
Speaker 1: time to switch your focus to the things that will
37:05
Speaker 1: slingshot you forward.