Latest / Tony & Sarah Unscripted / EP 6: Faith, Truth, and Finding Each Other - Part 1

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EP 6: Faith, Truth, and Finding Each Other - Part 1 · Tony & Sarah Unscripted

0:29
Welcome back to a new episode of Tony and Sarah Unscripted.
0:32
I am very excited to welcome my dear friends, Eddie and Tim to this show.
0:38
We've got lots to talk about today.
0:40
But, Eddie, let's start with you.
0:44
So you're gay?
0:47
Yeah. Okay.
0:48
And you and Tim would be my problem since 2014.
0:54
Did you know that, Eddie?
0:55
He's better with dates.
0:57
He can tell you dates. We've met. Okay.
0:59
Not as good. Okay. Okay.
1:01
Did you always know that you were gay?
1:06
That's a tough question, because I remember thinking that I would
1:10
grow out of it, that this won't stop when I'm, like, 18, 17, 18.
1:15
So just to get right into it,
1:16
I was sexualized at a young age and I wasn't sure if that had.
1:23
Caused this feeling, you know.
1:26
But, you know, listen, I wasn't good at sports.
1:29
I wanted to play with girls.
1:30
I was obsessed with the, you know, Sonny and Cher.
1:33
I have no idea what the attraction there is for gay men, but I know as a kid.
1:38
Sundays at 7 p.m.
1:40
CBS Sunday. And share.
1:42
Well, what is the attraction? Do you have that?
1:44
The camp. I think it's the camp.
1:46
You know, the.
1:47
There's a cabin. No, there can't be.
1:49
No, it can't be like.
1:51
No. Well, there's camps too.
1:53
But anyway, I don't know why.
1:56
You know, they always say that gay men were attracted to these flamboyant women.
2:00
And I just remember that, you know,
2:03
Sonny and Cher, it was like the Carol Burnett special.
2:06
And then suddenly and share. And I was fascinated.
2:09
I had no idea that I wasn't the only gay man watching.
2:12
And I, you know, but there was a fascination
2:15
and I can look back and say, I was gay back then, you know,
2:19
but obviously
2:21
I know a lot of the story you didn't want to be.
2:26
No, no. God, no.
2:27
Because of the stigma, because of religion.
2:30
It's hard to say.
2:32
You know, when I had an understanding of what I was
2:36
and that this wasn't going away.
2:41
You know.
2:42
So in 1980, I'm, what, 13 years old and Aids is prevalent.
2:48
And, you know, I grew up Catholic with the Catholic school.
2:52
Eight years tended 16 years of.
2:55
Oh, God. But I don't remember.
2:57
No one ever said, you know, if you're a gay, you going out in school?
3:01
But there certainly was a hell, you know, we knew the commandments.
3:05
We knew the data, we knew things.
3:07
If you're not good, you're going to have it.
3:08
So I knew that.
3:12
But when you know if you're a sinner, you're going to hell.
3:16
And you're seeing Aids is God's punishment for gays and they're going to hell.
3:21
And, you know, I had a cousin who was gay and he was a little bit more.
3:25
He was flamboyant and they would refer to him as a fagot.
3:29
And I was like, I can't be that.
3:31
I need that, you know? And.
3:36
It's weird.
3:37
I, I wanted six kids.
3:40
We grew up on the Upper West.
3:41
We lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan until like 1976,
3:45
and I think it was a 2 or 3 bedroom apartment.
3:47
And then we moved to Queens.
3:49
So we went from being in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood
3:53
on 108th in Amsterdam to predominantly Irish Italian neighborhood.
3:58
And I say that only because.
4:02
My parents,
4:03
my mom worked two jobs, my dad worked in Manhattan
4:08
and it wasn't really around, but so we were six
4:12
kids that were left to raise each other, but number five of the six.
4:16
And so I basically I'm
4:19
on my own, you know, if I leave the house, I'm being beaten up and tormented
4:24
from being a sissy and for being a spic and not, you know, belonging.
4:29
And then at home, there was physical violence even within the siblings.
4:34
That was physical violence.
4:35
So I couldn't understand, you know, and I had this, like,
4:39
gay thing where I'm having sex with men at such a young age. And
4:44
to me,
4:45
it was love, you know, it was comforting.
4:49
It was love.
4:50
I was getting money
4:53
when we had none.
4:54
So it felt like love.
4:58
Yeah. But I was like, it's got to stop. This is.
5:01
This has got to stop. I have to get a girlfriend.
5:03
You know, it's weird, but you're trying to figure
5:04
all of this out on your own at ten, 11, 12.
5:07
You have no idea.
5:08
You know, and seventh grade confirmation.
5:12
I did mescaline before.
5:14
I think I even had a drink.
5:16
I did a tablet, mescaline and mescaline.
5:19
Acid
5:21
in seventh grade.
5:22
Seventh grade. Confirmation, confirmation.
5:24
Do it.
5:24
You're going to do it.
5:25
Do it then, right? Wow.
5:28
Sylvester's.
5:30
We hung out with older kids, and
5:33
I did that. And
5:36
I did it a lot, you know?
5:37
And then it was drinking and and
5:40
it certainly.
5:44
Quieted and numbed the thinking.
5:47
And, you know, as Tony and I were talking earlier, you know,
5:50
it was a sense of numbing that you do.
5:55
I don't know, it was just a lot free kid to process.
5:58
But I have to say, all the while
6:01
I had this relationship with God,
6:04
you know, because the nuns would say, ask and you shall receive.
6:07
I hate that,
6:08
but they would say these things because I would ask, please let this stop.
6:12
Let this all stop.
6:13
Whether it was the beatings for my father or the kids
6:17
going to school in a dirty uniform, no homework, being humiliated by the nuns,
6:24
you know, just all of this stuff and I like.
6:27
Please. Why? What did I do?
6:28
I was born into this family, into this situation,
6:32
you know, with these, all of this, it was a lot.
6:34
And I just remember wishing I would die.
6:38
That started early on.
6:39
Plus, I had a father
6:42
who was arrange a holiday, not an alcoholic.
6:46
He was just a rage holic, but he would often
6:50
tell us he wanted to die.
6:51
So I heard it.
6:52
That was a message that was, you know, a solution to this issue.
6:57
You don't want to live, you can die.
6:59
And I would talk to God, but to no avail.
7:02
Nothing, nothing, nothing.
7:04
And I thought, there's something wrong with me.
7:06
I am some kind of some, some kind of a mistake or something.
7:09
But, you know, then the drugs in the alcohol became more
7:15
of a scapegoat.
7:17
Like a medicinal.
7:18
Yeah. Self-medicating. Yeah. Yeah.
7:21
Can I stop you right there?
7:26
Does your story tend to
7:29
know?
7:30
Quite different.
7:31
Okay. Much easier.
7:34
Yes, yes.
7:36
What was it? Hard in its own ways.
7:38
Yeah. Hardened its own ways.
7:40
What Eddie and I have in common is
7:45
I don't want to be this like, I just.
7:47
I knew at a young age and I did not want to be that, but,
7:55
you know, sort of my upbringing
7:57
and my experience in my journey is, is different than Eddie's.
8:02
But what we share is this,
8:05
Dear God, please take this away.
8:07
And I think, you know, back then
8:09
because, you know, back then in the 80s, I was a lesbian, believe it or not.
8:13
And it wasn't.
8:14
And when I was growing up, it wasn't like it is today, that you see it, you see
8:18
successful, you know, people that identify as gay or trans or something like that.
8:23
So back then you really felt isolated and alone.
8:26
And to be a kid in that environment, it was terrible.
8:29
It's not like it is today where, you know,
8:31
there's conferences I can go to and stuff like that.
8:33
So yeah, and Eddie and I are ten.
8:36
I'm ten years older than Eddie.
8:37
So, you know, ten years
8:40
back in the 60s and 70s, you know, is a big span of time.
8:45
And things didn't get better for the community until many years later.
8:50
But there is that age difference, too.
8:53
So just generationally, you know, I'm sure that
8:57
has its uniqueness. But
9:01
yeah, my, my,
9:02
my story is, you know, for sure,
9:05
by the time I was in six or seventh grade, I knew I was gay
9:09
and my coping was just shove it down, shove it down, shove it down.
9:14
I grew up in a small community in the Midwest, and there were
9:21
no role models
9:24
for homosexual men
9:27
that I could see anywhere.
9:30
A couple of drag queens outside the one and only gay bar downtown
9:35
that, you know, even in high school, you know, heading home,
9:40
you know, with my friends driving past it, I'd see them outside and that was I.
9:45
Oh, and hide, hide, hide
9:48
and just try to assimilate
9:53
and be straight and, you know,
9:57
just hide that.
9:59
And I, I did that and I
10:03
ultimately, you know, I dated girls, etc.
10:07
got married and I was married for 30 years and 30 years.
10:13
Wow. Ex-wife.
10:15
And have two amazing kids
10:19
and five grandkids and number six on the way.
10:22
And by and large, we had a really wonderful,
10:27
you know, family life for many, many, many years.
10:31
And I had told my wife
10:36
when I was 25 that I was gay.
10:40
And before we had kids, and that was obviously married at the time.
10:46
Yeah, just married a couple of years before we had kids.
10:49
And that was obviously
10:53
a real difficult period.
10:56
But neither of us wanted to get divorced.
10:59
And we marched on
11:02
and just kind of like, shove that back down for sure.
11:06
I, I know that I allowed her to believe that
11:10
that was just sort of a phase, or was it really my my preference.
11:16
And so,
11:18
yeah.
11:19
Didn't you talk to a priest with her?
11:22
So the day that the day that I told her we were living in Chicago,
11:27
the day that I told her, she reached out to the nearby Catholic parish,
11:32
met with a deacon, and he was wonderful for her.
11:36
And she told me about it that night, and she said he would like
11:40
to talk to you, too. And I said, absolutely.
11:43
So I did, and I went to meet with him privately.
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And in that conversation, he we're talking, we're talking about talking.
11:53
And he finally says to me, you know, we don't know where this is going
11:57
to go, right? Our our conversations.
11:59
You know, we should meet again. We don't know where this is going.
12:02
And we could fall in love, you and I.
12:05
I'm sorry.
12:07
Yeah.
12:08
And that was like.
12:10
Sorry. Sorry. I'm sorry.
12:13
What?
12:14
And secondly, there won't be a next time.
12:17
And I remember I it was, it was
12:20
I had such conflicted feelings because he had been so good for her.
12:24
He was there for her in a moment where she just needed that person to listen.
12:31
But I did tell her, I said, I got hit on me.
12:35
That's wild.
12:36
What did she say?
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She I mean, she took it in stride.
12:40
She never went and saw him again, nor did.
12:42
But then.
12:44
Then we just marched down with the rest of our lives.
12:46
We ultimately moved to the burbs and,
12:49
you know, had our kids and,
12:52
you know, almost 30 years later, at one point,
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you know, when my kids were getting out
12:59
of high school, at Cetera, I revisited the conversation, told my wife
13:04
that I'm gay, and within a matter of weeks
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told my kids, all my siblings and the youngest of seven kids and blessed
13:15
with wonderful siblings and parents and
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and that's where our experience,
13:21
our families are critically important to both of us.
13:25
Yeah, but my home life was different than Eddie's.
13:27
Mine was more of vanilla, traditional, you know, mom and dad and seven kids.
13:32
And and I had I think of my childhood as a very happy childhood.
13:36
Told all my siblings, one by one account, called everybody and told them.
13:40
So I just kind of came out to my family,
13:44
not to my coworkers, but my wife and I still didn't want to get divorced.
13:49
I still didn't want to, but I just had to shed this burden.
13:52
And I remember saying to her, I can't spend the rest of my life
13:56
pretending to be this straight guy, that I'm just not.
14:00
And so we went to a therapist
14:04
who dealt with mixed orientation couples, and
14:10
there's some
14:11
there's such a thing and specialty therapist, she really, really was.
14:15
But this will be his house.
14:18
And then I'm about to cut him off.
14:22
No, don't
14:24
wait a minute.
14:25
In wrapping up
14:27
four years later, I finally just said.
14:32
You know, this isn't fair to you, and I just.
14:35
And I and I don't want to continue to try to be
14:39
this straight partner husband for you.
14:42
And so we separated and ultimately we got divorced, you know.
14:47
But so you were say 22 ish when you got married.
14:51
24, 24 what were you doing at 24?
14:55
I was married to a woman.
14:57
It's a long story.
14:58
Did I know that? No. Probably not.
15:00
Just one thing I want to do is know is of the generation that had he
15:04
come out, he probably wouldn't be here because it was,
15:09
you know, that whole a lot of that generation was gone.
15:11
He probably that's like the movie that would just watch that that.
15:15
Yeah. That's that age group. Right.
15:16
Well it's a little that was a little older I don't know.
15:19
What year were you born. You may be 68.
15:22
Yeah I don't.
15:22
Well are they're all dead now.
15:23
The people that were in that documentary
15:25
that they were there like, yeah, they were all so actually passed away.
15:29
But yeah,
15:32
that probably would have been different story.
15:34
How do you come out?
15:36
But his journey also is not like yours because
15:40
it was difficult for you to come out.
15:42
And it was.
15:43
But when you did choose to come out, you had support.
15:45
Lots of support, right?
15:46
I did.
15:47
Whereas you did not.
15:49
If you did, it would have been there.
15:52
There's a couple of things I wanted to say when did was talking.
15:54
I have always been very attracted to people who have strong spiritual faith.
16:03
I just go toward them and I want to know what they know because I struggled.
16:08
Even now, as I go to church, every I try to go to church every Sunday.
16:13
We pray.
16:13
Every night we read this, we would call it vespers.
16:16
We do this, you know, we just read a prayer.
16:18
We started during advent.
16:21
But I try to have a strong faith,
16:24
but I don't, but I try, you know, a lot of it's fake until you make it.
16:27
But I've had friends who were priests
16:31
in grade school who there was one priest in particular.
16:35
I think he knew what my family life was like, and he was very kind to me.
16:40
Never inappropriate, never in a I've never had any kind of
16:43
inappropriate friendship or relationship with the priest.
16:48
And I've had
16:49
friends who very good friends who were priests.
16:54
But you asked me before I had 24, what was I doing?
16:57
So I will say at 18 I tried to kill myself with about 14 sleeping pills.
17:03
I wanted to die because I was in love with a man.
17:07
I knew it was wrong.
17:10
Well, I thought it was wrong and I was in so much pain.
17:13
And I called a priest at a church and said, I'm going to kill myself
17:18
and took these 14 sleeping pills.
17:21
I slept for a day, I don't remember.
17:25
And again, it was because I didn't want to go to hell, you know, I was scared.
17:30
I just I didn't want to live.
17:31
I just didn't want to live.
17:35
I ended up calling this a priest back a week later.
17:38
He was so mad.
17:39
I never met him. Never met him on a phone call.
17:41
And he was like, I did not know what to do.
17:44
I couldn't reach you. I had no idea.
17:46
This is like 1980. Yeah, yeah.
17:49
Anyway,
17:52
at 24.
17:53
I did marry a girl who I used an actor at singing lessons.
17:58
Dancing lessons?
17:59
My voice teacher knew this woman who needed a green card
18:02
because she couldn't
18:03
get legitimate work in New York City as a manager, dancer, singer.
18:07
So I married her in the back of my head.
18:09
I did this because I was going to use this as a front.
18:12
She was going to be my beard.
18:13
I was going to tend, I was straight, this is going to my family. And.
18:20
I don't know, I
18:21
just I had some kind of a depressive episode
18:24
during this period and that 25, I really tried to kill myself.
18:28
I overdosed,
18:31
I don't know, I took about 30 different pills, sleeping pills,
18:35
and I think it was the generic form of Prozac and ended up in a hospital
18:40
and had a seizure and had my stomach pump and a tar and all of that nonsense.
18:44
Then, you know, I wish I could say that, you know,
18:48
before they let you out there, like, do you still want to hurt yourself?
18:51
And, you know, you say no because you want to get out.
18:54
But I remember thinking, like, I just don't want to do this.
18:58
I don't want to do this.
18:59
And that's, you know, something I still deal with.
19:04
And one of the prayers Tim and I read at night,
19:07
there's a certain line that every time I say it, I'm like, it's not true.
19:12
I mean, it's I'm grateful for the the breath of my lungs.
19:15
I'm grateful for the breath of my lungs.
19:17
And I'm like, I wish I were.
19:19
I wish, you know, Tony and I were talking before,
19:22
and he forgives himself for the way he self harmed.
19:25
And, you know, I was like, wow.
19:28
I never even thought about trying to forgive myself, but
19:31
just this feeling of, am I really grateful to be alive still?
19:37
I don't know.
19:38
There are times that
19:40
that's being really, really freaking honest.
19:42
And I love that about you.
19:44
Really, to share that deep because who's like, I don't hear it.
19:47
Too many people say that.
19:48
And I think a lot of people might think that, you know, so
19:51
that's really thank you for being dishonest on the show.
19:54
I'm grateful. Yeah.
19:56
Thank you.
19:57
And I have always been impressed with your faith.
20:01
Something keeps bringing you back to it.
20:05
Yeah.
20:05
Because you've always you've said to me that you feel like
20:09
God has an answer to your questions or hasn't answered your prayers, right.
20:12
But yet you keep praying and you keep going back to him.
20:15
So there's like like he hasn't given up after these all these years, right?
20:20
I mean, he's never been like, yeah,
20:24
as it relates to
20:26
our faith, clearly our spiritual journeys, they're very individual.
20:31
They're very personal.
20:32
But also much of it is shared
20:35
between any and I and I think just our Catholic tradition
20:39
that were brought up in community is very important.
20:42
It's personal, it's individual, but it's also about community.
20:45
Eddie talked a little bit ago about,
20:49
did my Catholicism and my faith in religion
20:52
impact my thinking about being gay or was there guilt?
20:59
And it had there was no guilt whatsoever for me as it relates to my faith.
21:04
I just didn't I just didn't want to be gay.
21:09
And I shared this with Joe
21:11
once when you guys were at our house.
21:14
I went to a Catholic college, but a theology teachers,
21:18
and it stuck with me forever to this day,
21:20
introduced this concept of being a cafeteria Catholic.
21:24
And he was a priest. He was a theology teacher.
21:26
And he the message was, listen,
21:30
there is your relationship with God, your spirituality.
21:33
And then there's religion as an organized institution.
21:37
And the doctrine of the Catholic Church was written by a man centuries ago.
21:42
So those are two separate things your relationship with God and doctrine.
21:46
And the message was, if there are pieces of Catholic doctrine
21:51
that don't resonate with you, you don't agree with them, that's okay.
21:56
You're a thinking, discerning individual Catholic, you know, cafeteria Catholic.
22:02
And if something does not make sense and you don't subscribe to that
22:06
thinking, it's okay and it doesn't make you any less Catholic.
22:11
I'm not supposed to get communion because I'm a divorced man.
22:15
Forget the fact that a gay.
22:17
Yeah, but the Catholic doctrine has to say about that.
22:20
But my point is a very easily I got news for that,
22:26
and I don't let that disrupt my desire to continue in my Catholic faith.
22:33
I don't consider myself any less Catholic.
22:35
I just don't agree with 100% of doctor, you know,
22:39
show me a person who truly believes, and I'm sure there there are.
22:44
But institutions in general,
22:47
does everybody really buy into 100% of the doctrine of the religion?
22:52
I don't, but I don't let it get in the way of my practicing my Catholic faith.
22:58
And I don't care any guilt whatsoever as it relates
23:01
to being gay and being a Catholic.
23:04
I truly believe in my core or whatever reason
23:09
God placed me on this earth.
23:11
Absolutely the person that I am. And
23:15
that's my mistake.
23:16
I love how you said that because a lot of people always question me about,
23:20
are you Buddhist?
23:21
You know, are you like, what? Do you believe in God?
23:24
You don't believe in God.
23:25
And I do believe in God.
23:26
But my relationship with God is between him and I.
23:29
And most of the time when I'm talking to him
23:31
and I'm listening to him is when I'm meditating or I'm walking,
23:34
taking a nice long walk,
23:35
or I'm dealing with something, but I don't have to sit in a building
23:38
with other people to say that I believe in God.
23:40
And a lot of a lot of people say, well, come to this church.
23:42
You'll like it here. I don't want to go to church, you know.
23:45
And so I don't think that makes me any less of a believer, you know.
23:48
So I love that that you said that and I, we, I walked
23:52
I walked away from the church, the Catholic church, for many reasons,
23:56
one being their thoughts on homosexuality.
24:00
But we tried different denominations.
24:03
We tried weird stuff.
24:05
We and ultimately when we moved to Connecticut,
24:10
which was in 2020 4th October 2024, for whatever reason, I said to him,
24:14
I want God to have a strong presence in this house that we lived in, and I
24:18
want to go back to mass and immediately felt like, this is where we belong.
24:23
This is what we knew.
24:24
It honors what we were raised with.
24:26
We share that faith.
24:28
We may not be going to church, but we often talked every every lent
24:33
we would watch Jesus of Nazareth because it's what we grew up with.
24:36
Yeah, yeah, yeah, detective madness. But,
24:40
you know.
24:43
I think something I was going to say
24:45
about having faith and not I didn't even do I believe in the virgin birth.
24:49
So I believe in everything. That's it.
24:50
I don't know, I really don't.
24:51
But what I learned in AA is how to pray.
24:55
You know, I pray to know what God's will is for me.
24:58
You said you meditate and you hear, God drives me nuts
25:01
because I know praying is talking to God, meditating and listening to him.
25:05
Yeah. Nothing. Yeah.
25:06
So I still feel like I'm a defective somehow because I don't get it.
25:10
I don't, you know, I try to discern what God's will is for me versus my will.
25:14
Yeah, but maybe sometimes when you're not really listening, you're hearing
25:18
if you're saying like in the silence, the answer is come, you know.
25:22
But sometimes if you're sitting there saying, okay,
25:24
give me that answer and you're waiting for it,
25:27
you might not hear it, but you could be washing your car
25:29
and then all of a sudden you're going to hear it.
25:31
So don't sell yourself short.
25:33
I think because you're here right now and you're the energy that you give to
25:37
this space, you're hearing a lot and you might not just realize it,
25:41
you know, also think that
25:44
you are a messenger of God.
25:46
Yeah. And here's here's why.
25:49
When Cameron was in the hospital
25:50
going for everything, many people texted and emailed and sent me things.
25:54
You would send me prayers.
25:56
And even the other day when you were like, don't forget, it's Friday.
25:59
You can't eat me. No.
26:03
Well is in practice practicing.
26:04
We know we meet on Friday and prayer.
26:09
And then the last time we got together, you sent me a prayer that might.
26:13
And I was like, he's like, God's coming to me through him.
26:18
Isn't that something was.
26:20
And I don't know if you ever if you look at it that way when I'm in AA,
26:24
you know, I
26:26
you know, you're you're a mess.
26:29
You're you the way I drugged and I drank and the things
26:35
that I would do sexually and acting out and everything, it was a mess.
26:39
It was a mess.
26:40
You know, three day benders, just craziness.
26:43
And I'm able to take that experience
26:46
and share it in a room with strangers.
26:49
Why don't we even know most of their last names and and somehow they get hope.
26:54
I'm 23 years sober.
26:56
By the grace of God.
26:57
That's the one thing I can say
26:59
is, by the grace of God that I walked in, I didn't walk into.
27:02
I was taken to Silver Hill in Connecticut, and I know Silver Hill
27:06
because I was having a mental breakdown I wanted.
27:08
I was scared
27:09
I was going to kill myself again, so checked in there, told them my story.
27:14
They said you should consider going to a meeting.
27:16
His wife and I said, well, I'm not a college.
27:18
I don't drink every day.
27:20
You know, I don't, I just don't drink.
27:23
I when I drink, I drug,
27:25
you know, I'm gone for two weeks, but I could go months without drinking.
27:27
But if I do drink, it's on.
27:30
And they said, well, you should try it out.
27:33
And the third tradition in AA is the only requirement
27:36
for membership is a desire to stop drinking.
27:39
The more I went to AA, the more I have the desire to stop drinking.
27:43
I was like, you know, something's got to, you know, something I have to change.
27:48
You know, these people are these people in this room are getting better,
27:52
and I'm hearing my story in theirs.
27:55
I may not drink every day, but I'm hearing the self-hatred.
27:59
You know,
28:00
the struggle, the religious, you know, their deficiency of God in their lives.
28:05
And, you know, so when I share that, and I do pray about it,
28:09
I pray to be of service to people in AA whenever I have to share my story.
28:13
And, you know, so I'm very conscious about what
28:19
you just reminded me about.
28:22
As we mentioned earlier, both Eddie and I
28:24
as children, high school or whatever, prayed not to be gay.
28:28
And that particular prayer didn't
28:33
get a response that we we are what we are, right?
28:36
Yeah, we had prayed to take that away, but it was nobody there to tell you
28:41
that there's nothing wrong.
28:42
Yeah, exactly. No, exactly, exactly. Yeah.
28:45
So that was that was certainly my prayer.
28:47
But fast forward.
28:50
We, as I mentioned earlier, were we were made perfectly.
28:54
I got in my mind and now here we are
28:57
in 2026 sitting down with you guys.
29:00
I mean, we have these wonderful friendships.
29:02
And if there's for me, if there's
29:06
one single person who watches this and says, wow,
29:11
I see my story in business
29:13
and therefore feels less alone,
29:17
then there's a reason that we were made the way that we are.
29:21
And if we can help one single person by telling
29:26
our truth, that reminds me of
29:31
there's a reason.
29:32
Well, let me just say this. You've already helped me.
29:33
I mean, your stories are amazing and your strength is remarkable.
29:37
It's very inspiring.
29:38
So I yeah, I know we have to wrap it up, but I did say,
29:44
when I talk to you and you about coming on, you were like,
29:47
yeah, of course, but Eddie was more like, what?
29:50
What is my story going to do?
29:51
And I was like, Eddie, daddy, you just you're missing
29:57
your purpose of being here.
30:00
And both of you really are amazing speakers.
30:03
I mean, I listen to the two of you, and I can actually see you both on stage
30:07
talking to kids. And really, I'm being honest.
30:10
I mean, but thank you.
30:11
I, you know, I think we should invite them back.
30:14
Would you guys come back because we have so much more.
30:16
We might have to do 2 or 3, 4 or 5 shows.
30:18
Who knows?
30:20
This might just be the show from now on. I'm kidding.
30:22
But no, thank you so much for coming in.
30:24
Yeah, really great guys. Thanks so much. Thanks for joining us today.
30:27
And we'll see you next time on Tony and Sarah Unscripted.