Episode 026 - Relief in Silence

I spoke to Alfredo Gomez after he spoke at a Circles of Men Project gathering. The theme was “If you know yourself, you can move past fear.” It was his first time at a Circles of Men gathering, and he was inspired to share. When I later asked if anyone would be willing to speak for a podcast, he contacted me to share his story in a little more detail.

Thank you so much, Alfredo, for sharing. I think it means a lot for men to be able to model openness and vulnerability to other men, and your story was moving and definitely relatable.

Our theme song is “Start Again” by Monk Turner + Fascinoma. All other music in this episode was made by me using my new toy that I’m having so much fun playing with and learning: Ableton Live. So much fun! I hope you’re all finding ways to learn and grow and connect while we’re staying the hell away from each other.

Here’s the transcript:

I was born in Mexico. I was born one of 12 kids, and my mother had kids kind of like in a row, like almost every other year or every year. And so there was 2 older brothers and 2 older sisters before I was born, and then the rest of them followed, so I’m the 5th kid. Well, I felt like because of the number of kids that my mom, the large number of kids that my mom had, she just couldn’t, didn’t have the time to attend every one of us, and she neglected some of us.

And my father was a federale in Mexico, which is kind of like the Texas Rangers used to be back in the day. And he was rural, which means that he had machine guns, shotguns, .45s, carrying, you know… So he was very aggressive, and he would take some of that aggressiveness to the house. And he had a horsewhip for us. Sometimes he used the handcuffs on my older brother that I saw that he did. He handcuffed him to the window and whipped him with the horsewhip.

My mom, she would try to stop him from beating us, but then she would become a victim herself. He would push her out of the way, and then he would, that would really, made him more angry than anything because he would continue the beating, and then he would hit her after that for getting in the middle or trying stop him.

And so all those things made me fearful. I mean, I got horsewhipped too, but more than anything, what scared me the most is watching a lot of the stuff, my mother getting beat. It was just a lot of trauma. For me, just watching that and even my older two brothers were fighting at one point, and I went and told my dad so he could make them stop. They were hurting each other, I mean, there was blood. So I went and told my dad. I said, “Hey Dad, you know, they’re fighting.” So I wanted him to stop the fight. So he goes and stops the fight, of course, and whips both of them, and then he comes and whips me for being a snitch. And as a 6, 7 year old, you don’t understand what you did wrong. I didn’t understand what I did. And so it was, to me, very brutal.

And then so when we came to the States when I was 12 years old, the whole family. My dad, my mother, and all my brothers and sisters. We all came. Well my father had a job. He first came in and got a job here in Corpus Christi. He did a lot of construction. And then he brought us after he got settled, he brought us into the States.

I couldn’t speak English. I went to the school, and next thing you know, people don’t like me. They’re being mean to me, and they’re telling me, I don’t even understand what they were saying, but they kept on repeating this word “wetback,” and I didn’t know what that meant. I really didn’t know. That was my first time… Living in Mexico, there’s no, everybody’s the same, you know? There’s no racial tensions or any of that stuff, and so when I came here, that was foreign to me and a different culture.

So things didn’t get better for me. And then going to the school and then not being able to speak the language, the teachers would get mad because I was speaking Spanish. But what else was I going to speak if I can’t speak English, right? So then I would get in trouble for that.

And my English teacher, we were reading, everybody was reading out loud, and then she called me to read, and I had a really heavy accent, and she made me read out loud, and if you can imagine, the rest of the kids laughing at the pronunciation, giggling and all that. It was really hard for me. Being there, kind of like in front of everybody so everybody can laugh at.

So then I was 15, and my father had a gun in the kitchen, and I knew where he kept it, a small .22 revolver. And I decided that I just wanted to just finish this, finish with this anger, this anxiety, this hate that I was feeling constant. So I went to the kitchen and reached for the gun. And I looked in the chamber, and it had bullets, all of them. So I put it on my head and decided to, started squeezing the trigger. Well, being that it’s a revolver, and it’s, you know, as you’re squeezing the trigger, the hammer was all the way up, and I figured OK, it’s got to go off any time, and then there was a little pause in my mind that said, OK, what are you doing?

And then I stopped and thought for a second, and I say, maybe this is not what I should be doing. So I took it off my head, grabbed the hammer and put it back into place slowly. I put the gun back in the kitchen, and I went and picked up a Bible. Just a Bible. I just wanted to read something, something reassuring. The first thing that I read, I just opened it at whatever it would come up, and it was a scripture that I read somewhere along these lines. “God gave you life, thou should not take it away.” And then from then on, any time I felt that that was the answer, I knew it wasn’t the answer, taking my life out. So I decided that was never going to be an option.

It’s kind of funny because my father talked about the Bible a lot, and he said he had read the Bible, but it seems like he was choosing the things that kind of stuck, like using the rod and not letting kids get away with anything, but instead he used the whip, the horsewhip and belts and whatever. And then, I never saw him go to church, but he would send us to church. 

And there was a bus from the church that they would send by our house, and so I really enjoyed those times because they called it the Joy Bus, and so we were all singing church music and church songs, and it was really nice. I really enjoyed that growing up. But still, I always felt like I was alone, because I couldn’t talk about the stuff that was happening at home anywhere else. This is kind of like a secret, or a family secret. Still I felt alone during those times.

Then I got into athletics. I kind of decided that athletics was a good thing for me because I felt a lot of anxiety, and I felt like by doing athletics, by exercising, by running, by playing a sport, it would get my mind off and concentrate on something else than all the stress and all the anxiety at home and at school and so on. I tend to be competitive, if I couldn’t depend on people, I could depend on my own self by being the best that I could be on whatever sport that was.

And so the abuse with my father still continued, but I joined the track team when I was a sophomore, and I became a very good runner. I was a naturally good athlete, and they put me on the JV team, and because I joined like a week before the first cross country meet, and I was training by myself on my own, I had no knowledge about training, but I would just run as fast as I could for as long as I could, and that was my training. So my coach puts me on JV not knowing anything about me. And he told me before the race, Alfredo, if you get tired, just walk. He did a prayer also, before the race, and that was really neat, and I really liked that.

And when the gun went off, I ran into the guys in front of me because they were going like, they weren’t racing, they were jogging. So I went to the front with the frontrunners, and they were doing the same thing. They were jogging. In my mind, it’s like, you run as fast as you can. It’s a 3 mile race, cross country. So I’m like, OK. I ran with them for about 2 or 3 blocks, and then it’s like, I have enough. I just took off. I took off. I tried to relax as much as possible, but I ran at 90% effort, 85% effort, and then if I got tired a little bit, I would slack off a little bit and then resume again. That was my first 3.1 mile race, a 5K, and my time was a 16:08. As a sophomore in JV. And the winning time for varsity was a 16:06. So then my coach was just so happy, he’s like, oh my God, who are you? Tell me more about you! So the next time, he puts me on varsity.

So then I felt stronger, too, as a sophomore, and I started working at Kentucky Fried Chicken part time after school. And so my routine was to go to the gym at 5:30, go for a 3 mile run or lift weights, and then be at the school at 7:30 to start the classes at 8. And then after school, and after the track training, I would go to the house, and then get ready, go straight to work at Kentucky Fried Chicken, and then get off at 10 o’clock, do my homework, and then get up early in the morning the next day. And that was my sophomore year.

But then one day I decided, they were having something where they had some balloons that the manager said, hey, you want to take these to your brothers and sisters? Three helium balloons. And I said, yeah, I have a little brother and 2 little sisters I can give them to. So I took those helium balloons to the house, and I gave them to each one of them. And then my younger brother wanted the balloons, the girls’ balloons. And I told him, no that’s, you have yours, and you have yours, and you have yours. Now my dad was spoiling kids now. Now he wanted to change his ways, I guess. So he spoiled the youngest one, and he told the girls, give him their balloons. And I’m like, no Dad, that’s, everybody has a balloon. And he got really mad, and he started yelling and cursing at everybody, saying give the boy the balloons.

So he walked away, I went to the kitchen, grabbed a knife, and popped all 3 of them. Well, if you can imagine my father. He goes, oh, you see what you're going to get. So he goes inside to the bedroom, comes back with the belt. I’m 16 years old already. And he’s coming towards me, and I stopped him. I put my hand up, and I said look, Dad, if you hit me, we’re going to fight. I’m just telling you what’s going to happen. I’m going to fight you. I’m probably going to be on top of you most likely. I’m just letting you know, and I don’t know what’s going to happen after that. I’m not going to let you hit me again.

Well, he looked at me, and he saw that I was very angry. He knew that I wouldn’t have it any more. He looks at me, he says, well just don’t do it again, turns around and walks away. That was the first time I felt some relief. I felt some relief that that stopped. My father was never going to hit me again, and now I could stand up to him.

I mean, it was still the struggle. And my father was still very loud and aggressive and abusive with my younger siblings and with my mom. But he knew that he couldn’t do the stuff that he used to do to me. So I felt safe, but I would see what he was doing with everybody else.

And then my brothers, my brothers used to drink and do drugs. And I was a freshman and sophomore in high school, and one of them was more aggressive than the other towards me and everybody else. He was more angry. And one day, about the same time that I stood up to my dad, he came in, and I was playing with my youngest sister, and I was sitting on the floor with her playing, and he was sitting on one of the couches behind me. And then he told me to leave her alone.

So I looked at him, and I saw that he either had been doing drugs or he was drunk, one of the two, so I said, I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m just playing with her. And then he kicks me in the back of my head and tells me again, I told you to leave her alone.

So when he kicked me, I got up, and I felt that anger rise out of me, and then I hit him. I just hit him one time. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the expression, turning off the lights, but I did turn off the lights on him. He couldn’t see. I didn’t knock him out or anything, but I hit him like right on the temple, and he could not see for like 15 minutes.

And I just had so much anger already, and I just had enough, everybody beating me up, and everybody… And I couldn’t talk sense into them, so I just felt like I had to use physical aggression. And now that I was running and lifting weights, I felt like, you know, I’m going to defend myself now. And I don’t feel good about it, but that’s what I did as a 16 year old. I hit him.

But you know what? That was the last time he ever tried to hit me again.

So then, it’s like I feel OK. I feel better now. They can’t mess with me anymore. But I felt like a lot of the damage was already done. But running would help me get out of the house, and I became one of the fastest, like I said, I won district in the mile, the two mile, in cross country. My sophomore year, my junior year, and senior year, in a 5A, which was the biggest division there was. And then I went to regionals and won the mile, or the two mile at regionals, and then I went to the state. I ended up 4th my senior year, and I think it was also 4th in the mile and two mile.

So I started getting scholarship offers, and I could go anywhere in the country, basically. I never thought about going to school. Well, with that, being that my brothers were also working construction, my dad worked construction, I’d be the first boy to go to college. My grades were OK. But my coach said to me, Alfredo, you ought to try it. Try to go to college, and if you don’t like it, try it a little bit more. And if you still don’t like it, try a tiny, tiny, tiny more before you… What I’m saying is, just give yourself a chance. And once you give yourself, you tried, and you didn’t do it, and you couldn’t do it, and you tried again, you couldn’t do it still, then you can say, at least I tried. So I said, well, I’ll try it coach. And next thing you know, I graduated from Rice.

But going through Rice and going through college, I found myself with a lot of anxiety. Doing presentations, I would feel that anxiety getting in front of groups, large groups in front of the classroom, I felt a lot of anxiety.

R: Did you think about those kids laughing at you in high school, and that fear of being laughed at?

A: Yeah, being laughed at, that I wasn’t smart enough, that I didn’t belong there, almost kind of like I felt like I didn’t belong in the States, coming here to the United States, because I was a wetback. I felt like I didn’t belong at Rice, that I shouldn’t be there. Same old feelings. And then getting in front of a classroom, I felt a lot of anxiety in speaking in front of, in doing a presentation.

But then after I graduated from Rice, I decided to teach there at Lamar High School in Houston. And I was teaching there, Spanish and coaching soccer, and I did that for one year, but again, I felt a lot of anxiety being in front of, in the classroom. And Mondays was like my worst day of the week. Well, actually Sundays, like the anticipation of Monday, and then Monday was terrible my first hour or two, and then I felt better towards the end of the day. And then Tuesday was better than Monday. Wednesday was better than Tuesday, and so on. And then Friday is like, what the heck was wrong with me on Monday, right? Well, the weekend came, and then Monday came again, the same feeling again. I felt awkward. I felt insecure. I felt, and I’m like, OK, it’s going to get better, right? And people say, well, it’s natural. You know, you get over it after awhile. It just wouldn’t go away. And I’m like, what’s wrong with me?

R: Why do you think you were drawn to that profession when you had such anxiety about standing in front of people?

A: Well, because I care about kids. I wanted to help kids. Helping people, even like love and affection, or caring for your students, showing them that you care for them, and that kind of thing. I really liked that, but I didn’t like to be in front of the class all the time. And I know that that was what I was signing on for, and I thought that I could handle it, being that I’m not talking to a whole bunch of professionals. These are high school kids, right? But then still I felt that anxiety of being in front of the class, like I said, Monday through Friday. And it was a cycle. It never got better.

So I moved to Austin from Houston. I started working for Texas Employment Commission, and I did a lot of good programs for them. I did Communities in Schools, which is a dropout prevention program. And I also did the Job Corps program, helping kids get education and training, and a lot of those kids had problems with the court system or with the law, and they were on probation and trying to get their life together. So I was trying to help those kids, and I did that for awhile, altogether for like 10 years working for the state.

But then I had my first panic attack. I didn’t know what that was. I found myself that I couldn’t breathe, and I was breathing very heavy and hard. The breathing would not slow down. So I’m like, what the heck is wrong with me? So then I started getting light-headed, and I felt like I was going to pass out. This is at the office. And so somebody said, you’re having a panic attack. You need to go to the doctor about it. And I went to the doctor, and they said, yeah you did have a panic attack, and he prescribed Xanax.

I was doing the Unemployment Services also for the Texas Employment Commission, so I was always doing presentations at which I felt anxiety, but it was a little bit more controlled, suppressing some of those feelings. And I would still do my job, but it got to the point where it was kind of like putting stuff under the rug all the time and just piling and piling. I mean, the medication would help me, but it never solved the problem. To me, it was just kind of masking my feelings and my emotions.

So after the Texas Workforce Commission, I got a call from a new program that was starting. It was Steve Jackobs from Capital IDEA. Capital IDEA is basically getting people into careers, not just a job, but a career. So we provide the training, the education, everything that they need so they can get a good quality job with benefits and the whole 9 yards, not just a job. It was 5 of us that started that program from scratch, and we started recruiting, we started doing presentations. I worked for Capital IDEA for almost 5 years.

But it got to the point where I felt that I’ve taken a deep dive, and I was running out of oxygen. And I could see the surface, but I didn’t think I had the energy to swim all the way to the top. That’s how I felt when I left Capital IDEA. And they offered me all kinds of different options, work from home, part time, don’t leave, what about your benefits, and all this and all that. I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything. I just wanted to leave. I couldn’t handle it anymore, and I went into a deep depression, anxiety, paranoia.

R: Were you doing anything besides the medication, like seeing a therapist or counselor or were you involved in church or anything?

A: No, not at that time.

R: Just on your own, huh?

A: On my own. So when I had, I call it a nervous breakdown, I mean, because I totally went under the radar after that. I just stayed at the house after that. I didn’t want to leave. I even felt embarrassed going to the mailbox to pick up the mail. So I just kind of stayed in one spot on the couch or whatever and just stayed there all day. And it was really dark for me.

That lasted for about 3 years, until I just felt that I needed to get a job, get back on my feet, and I got some medication. They thought I was bi-polar, and then they thought maybe it’s just anxiety, and then depression, so I was taking medication for just about everything for a large number of years. But it wasn’t doing anything for me. I mean, I would gain weight, it made me foggy, and it wasn’t just doing the trick. I had a lot of side effects that were kind of worse sometimes. I felt worse.

So I tried everything, and so then, so what is the answer? What can I do now? I started to look at more manual work, more using my hands more, and trying to ease the anxiety. So I tried to look for work that was less involved with the office and meetings and stress and the anxiety that I felt and working more on my own. So, and then for the next, I don’t know, 15 years, I would get a little job here and a little job there.

So then I started reading more about... and reflecting. Why am I so nervous? Why am I feeling so anxious? What happened to me that’s causing me… Is it in my blood? Is it passed down from my mom or my dad? What’s going on? Why do I feel so awkward? Why do I feel so much anxiety? So I started reading more about it, educating myself more about it. I went to church too, praying. Maybe I don’t have enough faith. More prayer. Maybe God, I need to get on my knees more often. So I was trying to do all kinds of things to help me deal with my anxiety, but I wasn’t finding a lot of positive feedback from a lot of that stuff.

My girlfriend and I were looking at documentaries, and we were looking into yoga, and then she was telling me, because she's been into yoga a lot herself, and she was telling me about it. And then we were looking at some documentaries from some of those masters, like the Dalai Lama and all those guys that are very deep. And then we saw Thomas Keating. And I'm like, oh, who is this guy? I don’t know, So when I saw the documentary of Thomas Keating, a guy that gave his life to God basically when he was 5 years old, because he got really sick, and he heard the nurse and the doctor talking about his condition that he might not make it. OK, I want to know more about it. 

So I started watching the documentaries, and I started, and then we start buying books, so we started reading about Thomas Keating and his beliefs and his findings and all of that. He studied all religions, not just the Catholic Church, or Christianity, but all the religions around the world. And at the end, you know how we have this little, something is missing in our lives? Everybody’s got that almost, like maybe you think it’s money, maybe you think it’s a relationship, maybe you think it’s a hobby, or a house, or something that you’re always trying to get to fill that little empty hole, that little empty thing in your heart. And what I’m gathering is that it’s the union with God, that you have to have that union with God in order to fill that empty hole there.

So then I started to do that for myself. I want to feel close to God. How do you get that union with God? Well, through prayer. And silence. So then I started doing some meditation, some prayer, and I started looking into yoga. And I started looking at Thomas Keating for answers, and I felt like that was one person that I could trust. One person that I know I can trust because his intentions were good from the beginning. He could have been a millionaire, he could have been whatever, if it was about money. But he saw that that was not him. So I found a little bit of a relief reading about him and what he's saying about our intentions, and to be kind to yourself, you know, and I've never been kind to myself. I hated myself for the longest. I hated falling short, not measuring up, and I’ve never been kind to myself.

But I started thinking about all that. And then, so my understanding of prayer was that you pray, and you’re always asking God for something. God, can you help me with this? God, can you give me this? Always asking. And I felt, and thankful, you know, thank you for the health. Thank you for helping me today, for this, with this.

But then when I started listening to Thomas Keating, he was talking about more, you kind of surrender to Him in silence, and you want to connect with Him in silence. You do that for like 20 minutes, most of the time, because of my anxiety and all the things that I'm always thinking about something, it's very hard for me to get anywhere because always, he talks about not getting on the boats that are passing by because your mind goes somewhere, and get off the boat and go back to the word that you, for the prayer. I find myself that for the first 20 minutes I was thinking the whole time about something else. And then the little alarm that I set up goes off. It's like, Oh my God, I didn't get to do the silence as much as I wanted to.

But it takes practice. It takes practice. So then I would do like, I'll try it again, and then I would get somewhere. I did it one time where I actually did 20, about 20 minutes of totally silence, and I felt getting deeper and deeper with union with God, and I felt the connection of almost kind of like stages as meditation and being in union. I felt so much peace. And I'm like, I want more of that.

So now one of the things that I'm beginning to realize in being kind with myself is that I do get a physical reaction with stress and anxiety. I do. I don't want it, but it happens. It's kind of the fight or flight sort of deal response for me because it happened to me for the first 16 years of my life. Even though I understand that is what is happening, I have to acknowledge that and not try to change it, but accept it sort of, and be kind to myself and tell myself that, yes, this is my body reacting because of my trauma, but it's not really who I am.

And so I joined the men's group, the Circle of Men. It's like 30 people in a group, 25, 30 people. And when Clay Boykin did the introduction about, OK, we're not here to judge anyone. We're here to support everyone, and this is not a group. This is a network. And we love each other. We care for each other. And what’s said here, stays here. And I felt a lot of love from everyone.

And I'm still, with my fear, with my anxiety, my fear’s always on guard. I always have my hands up for whatever happens. So then I started dropping my guard down, and I started listening to the stories or the conversation. I felt that I needed to come out, and I told my story in short, very compacted, but just basic, I came from Mexico, and all the things that happened to me at home, my dad was very aggressive and abusive and my brothers and sisters, and so on, and growing up and then coming to the States. And I, oh my God, my nerves were just, I felt it all over me. I was shaking inside me. I was sweaty. My body was reacting, and I was like, what is happening to me? as I'm talking and telling my story.

And the group was just so understanding and so compassionate with my story. And then I put my head down, and I said, I'm sorry guys, I'm feeling this way. And everybody's like, no man, there's nothing to be sorry about. There's nothing. They were giving me assurance and acceptance for the very first time in a large group like that. And I still, I was, I felt embarrassed. I felt the shame. I felt all these negative feelings about myself because I just kind of like, I've been carrying this load of rocks and I just dumped it right in front of the group. And when I did that, I was apologizing for that because the group had to hear it. And everybody was so understanding and caring, and loving and supportive and all that, that it was the very first time. I've been afraid of men for a long, because my history and everything that I experienced in my life, and I was angry at men.

So being in a group of nothing but men and feeling a little bit of acknowledgement, acceptance. Validation. I just felt like, ah, man. After I finished doing my spiel and feeling embarrassed and all that, I usually, when something like this happens, I tell myself that was stupid. Don't go back there. You're an embarrassment, sort of thing. I tell that to myself, so my natural reaction is like, OK, I’m out of here, I'm not coming back. I'm so embarrassed and so ashamed, I’m not coming back. But I told the group, you know what, I am coming back.

We are harder on ourselves. I've learned that, and for me, people are nicer to me than I’m nice to myself. And, and I realize that, and I realized that that's how we are. I tell my daughter who's 15 years old, that has some of the, as a 15 year old girl going to school, and the friends and all of that, and being very critical of themselves again. It's like no mama, just, it's like, I don't even tell that to myself and then I'll tell her, and it’s like, I should listen to myself when I'm talking to her. It's easy for me to tell her that, but it's hard for me to tell myself.

That helped me a lot being in that group. But still, I'm always going to come out with my hands up, guarding myself, especially the first 5, 10 minutes. And then I feel more at ease. Now can I stop my body from reacting? So far I haven't been able to stop my body from reacting. I don't want to fight it. I just want to be kind to myself and saying, it's OK, Alfredo. You've been through some hard, it's OK. Don't be anxious about being anxious. But I just have to be kind to myself, accept it.

And maybe sharing. Maybe others might feel the same and maybe I can talk to them about it, compare notes and help each other out. This past meeting, we were talking about free will and what is God's will. But I really believe that God's will for everybody is for everybody to be nice and be the best human they can be. You got struggles? We all have struggles, some worse than others. But at the end of the day, God's will for us is to be the best person that we can be. Help each other out, be there for each other, give somebody your hand so they can lift them up, and maybe they'll lift you up next time.

Episode 021 - No One Gets Out of Childhood Unscathed

Wow, that was a long hiatus! Welcome to Season 3 of Caterpillar Goo. This season, let’s do a meditation on something that I think has great potential for changing the world: non-traditional understandings of masculinity. Our first episode of the season is an interview with Brad Clark, a member of the Austin Stay-at-Home Dads at the same time that I was a member. Brad is an amazing father, and I love following his continuing adventures on Facebook, especially in the summer when he and the kids engage in what he calls Camp Dad. Now that’s a summer camp!

Brad opens up about what it was like growing up a smart, creative, artistic kid in the middle of rural west Texas, the heart of high school football culture and cattle ranching, and how that childhood affects and informs his own parenting today. Thank you so much to Brad for sharing his time, and for being open and vulnerable in talking about some difficult topics.

Our opening theme is “Start Again” by Monk Turner and Fascinoma. Other music that appears in this episode:

“Bully” by Tarantula at 8:21

“Wild Ones” by Jahzzar at 11:25

“Ice Where Your Parents’ Love Should Be” by Kyle Preston at 16:27

“Happy Clappy” by John Bartmann at 23:06

“Paralytic Insomnia” by David Hilowitz at 25:49

“All Who Are Weary” by Hyson at 29:27

“Caterpillar Brigade” by Podington Bear at 36:41

“Catharsis” by Anitek at 42:33

Special thanks to Flora Folgar for her time, her support, her encouragement, and her editing skills.

Here’s the transcript:

I always loved art, but I had no idea how to do it, but I just wanted to make things, invent things, be a scientist, and probably because of Batman and all the gadgets and Spider-Man getting powers but having to invent his own webslingers. For like a 5-year-old, that’s it. You’re going to make this stuff.

Because I grew up in the middle of nowhere on a ranch, there’s not a lot of time to think about doing other stuff. There’s always something going on. There’s activity and a chore to be done. There just is. So, I was pretty lucky that I could still just spend the day making cardboard weapons to match He-Man’s sword, or sit and draw characters and just run around and play.

And so when I got further along in school and realized that the kids around me weren’t reading the stuff I was reading, and the kids around me weren’t drawing and had almost a hatred for art. There were several times, even at like 1st grade or something, you know, “Look at the microscope and draw what you see.” And mine came out pretty well, or I’d be really excited to try to draw it well, and then for I don’t even know what reason, the negative reaction towards any of that was so strong from the kids in my class and from just general. It just felt like any kind of trying to be better for myself was met with, “Oh, you think you’re better than us.” So that was really difficult, because I always wanted to connect with people.

I think being an only child and having interests and expressing that, I had very little feedback besides the dogs and the cows and my parents that… how you interact with other people and express that can affect how they react to you. So in school, and growing up, I had no idea what… why… like, “I told you this fact! If you don’t believe me, why are you dumb?” I’m sure that that was the impression I was giving off, and I had no idea. Right? I just get super excited about it, and then, my parents’ willingness to protect me from having to do the chores and the work that other kids were probably having to do allowed me time that they didn’t have. And maybe that created jealousy..

I got good at running. The playgrounds were the buried tractor tires and scales. And I figured out really early on that I could fit in the smallest tire, so I could run faster than the kids chasing me, and I could get to the small tire and wedge myself up in it. And if I got there first, they couldn’t find me very fast, so I could hide in the tire. And then I could, if they left me alone, then I’d come out, and I’d run somewhere else.

But ignoring it, I just never knew how to do that. They were doing stuff to me. They took my stuff. What do I do? I ignore it, and then I never see that thing again? Or do I tell the teacher? Most of the time, I got in trouble equally or worse than whoever was picking on me. They did something; if I retaliated, I got it worse. If I didn’t retaliate, I was still involved, and I still got punished, and in west Texas, that meant the stupid… In elementary school, it meant the principal with a paddle with holes drilled in it, in a big wooden plank with tape wrapped around it that whistled when they swung it. And then you’d sit in the hall and hear the other kids screaming. And then it was your turn.

And then you’d be in trouble because they also now came out of that not learning a damn thing except that, “We both just got punished, and now I’m going to get you. When we’re out of here, I’m coming after you.” Right? And then you had to ride on the bus with them.

By the time 9th grade, yeah, I’m in high school, that question now just was like, “Oh no. What’s wrong with me? I’m broken. Something’s wrong.” I’m not the sports kid, and into weird things and just on top of being incredibly shy and not wanting to be in front of people, or talk in front of people, and I didn’t want to. If I got up from my desk, the things I cared about it at my desk were going to be stolen. The kids that didn’t like me or that were bullying me were going to do things to make it worse for me to be up in front of everybody. So every time I had to do something besides just sit at my desk and get through the day, it just meant that I was a target.

And so, again, I would look at that and go, “Why are you acting that way? That’s stupid.” And if you tell people that, that does not work. Guess what? It just makes them not like you. And I didn’t care for football either. I was like, “This doesn’t have swords or guns or adventure or bull whips like Indiana Jones. This is just people standing around, then they run into each other. This is dumb.” This is also a very unpopular thing to have as an opinion in a group where everybody plays football.

But so, that’s the pattern that’s been over and over again, everywhere I went. And it turns out, again, that that is not the best way to approach socializing with other kids. But I liked being around girls from birth. I don’t know. I remember just liking being around girls for whatever. I just, I like them. They’re not mean, usually. They would like to draw, or they would do other things. “OK, well, I’m sorry that you’re an idiot, and I don’t want to hang out with you, but your girlfriend is nice, and I like her. I’m going to hang out with her, and if you have a problem, too bad.”

Again, not great social skills. It sounds stupid, and it sounds like it’s a… like, “Oh, well, you know, you could’ve tried to be friends with people.” Yeah, but I didn’t want to be friends with people that were doing the things they were doing, and I didn’t know how to be friends with that and be OK being around it. Like, “Oh, they’re going out and drinking alcohol on the weekends. Well, that’s… I don’t want… That’s not what I’m doing. I’m underage, one. Two, do you know what that does to you?”

So I just went like, “Art. I can hide in art.” And I ended up hiding in the art room and theater and finding creative ways to just not be around the rest of the school. I loved animation. I loved special effects. I liked movie stuff. I liked building things. That’s what I still wanted to do. It was just hiding in the arts until I could get out of town. And as soon as it was done, that’s where I left. It’s like, “I’m going to go to school in Florida for film. That’s what I’m doing. I’m just going to go, just get out and start over.”

I went to school for film originally. And I was in the game industry. That was where I wanted to be, and I got hired. Yeah, animation was the direction I was going, and quickly I ended up in a bunch of other different positions, some technical, some animation, some programming, some just solving problems and figuring out solutions for things. And I loved it. I mean, I loved doing the work, and I liked the challenge of it, but I was stuck on a computer all day in an office. That was years of my life. Well that means you come in, and you leave at dark, and the weekends disappear, and there’s no sun, and you basically are on your computer for 14 hours a day. Carpal tunnel. My wrists and arms locked up.

That was my experience from going from working in a world where I was working all the time and handling stuff, and people were relying on me, and I could figure out anything, to realizing that this is not healthy. We’re going to have a kid. I’m going to try to stay home and be the parent for awhile, because that was, in our relationship, the better choice. She, my wife had a better job, more stable hours. I was flexible with work. I could pick up work easily. I could do freelance, or I could stay connected to the industry easier.

I’m just going to do this for like a year. It’s no big deal. But also, I’m sick of working, and I want to see this kid before…” I’ve watched other people around me go through divorces working overtime, through multiple kids that are, they don’t even know who they are. I’m not going to do that. And it’s expensive. Me working overtime to not see my kid to pay extra taxes and daycare? This is stupid. I’m not doing this. My wife is fine with me staying home. She wants to keep working. Let’s do this. And that was what the catalyst was.

So then, I’m now staying home with my baby, and I look around, and I’m like, “Yeah, I am a guy staying home with a baby. And this feels comfortable to me, but why is everyone else freaking the fuck out?” You know? Like, you go to a store, and everyone’s like, “What are you doing? Oh, look at you! How lucky! Are you taking the day off work?” And it’s like, “No. What’s wrong with you?” You know, it was like that same reaction of like, “Dad’s can be parents too. What kind of… What’s wrong with all of you?” You go to a playground, and it’s like, “Oh. What’s this guy doing here?”

So like that transition, coming from… It was the best thing I could have ever done was to quit full time, working in an industry that was toxic and overworking, and I was hiding myself in the work. Now I’m a parent. I’m a dad. I’m a stay-at-home dad, so that’s what that is. Because my reaction to that was, “I can figure this out,” it made for a great fit most of the time. “Oh, she’s crying. She’s upset. Go through the list. I can handle this stage.” 16:08

And you can’t fix shit. Nothing is solvable, because that little person that you’ve just introduced into your house is a separate human being that I could not connect with growing up. I was a… If it was an animal, fine. If it was a human, already I didn’t know what to do with you, really.

And it turns out that now you’re living with a bully worse than any of the kids that you’d grown up with who’s now got everything that is a flaw, they can trigger immediately. And really, it’s just everything that I was self-conscious about or worried about or scared of came forward, because you start imagining all these things and projecting things out, and it comes back on you like, “Oh, you’re responsible for that. You have to fix it. If you don’t, all these things are going to happen. Oh, it’s your fault. You’ve failed. You can’t do this.”

And I thought all of that was squared away. I thought I had handled all of it. Turns out, when you have children, anything that you thought you had handled by basically just shutting down, putting away, or walling off does not stay there. Surprise! No one tells you that part of parenting. Like, guess what? They are going to mirror back every insecurity and every worry and every stage of your life. As they grow, they are going to continue to shine lights on and break through and expose and wear away anything that you’ve put up in defensiveness and not dealt with.

I’d never dealt with it. I had masked it. I had pushed it back. I had let it just sit there simmering, and when I would get angry or upset, it was always me. This is my fault. I’ve had, at that point, 20-plus years of people giving me social feedback that something’s wrong with me, so at that point, I was just the ultimate self bully and self punisher.

2004ish, if you were a man with a baby, “You must need help. You can’t handle this. No man should be out with a baby.” And you’re like, “OK. I’m not just borrowing some friend’s baby to try to pick up women. I just want to go play at the park and have my kid see other children.” And the overwhelming reaction is, that is wrong. Also in here is, “You’re an idiot. You’re wrong. You’re lying to yourself. Everyone else has already told you you’re a failure. You’re a failure.”

How do you separate that? You push it away until the kid reflects back because she’s had a bad day, or she doesn’t understand how to walk or just learning to be a human, and then you suddenly feel like you have failed because you can’t understand what they’re going through, or you can’t fix it. And now you also can’t fix it for the person you’re living with and who you love. So now you feel like you’ve let everyone in the house down, including yourself.

And then we had our second kid, and I met more dads, and the economy crashed, and everyone was out with their kids everywhere. You’re finally around enough people that are good at what they’re doing, and you’ve made new friends. And you’ve got that experience, like, “I can handle a baby.” You’re changing them in the dark in the middle of the night blindfolded, half asleep, and the baby ends up back asleep. You know, it was not a big deal. Like this is easy.

I think when the economy shifted, and everyone suddenly was having to just survive, parents, men and women both, were like, “I don’t care who’s watching the kid. We can’t pay for daycare.” So you’d go to the park, and there’d be all kinds. It wasn’t just nannies in one end of Austin and moms in the other and then some random dads in the middle of Austin. It was just like everybody was out everywhere trying to just get by. I just feel like I watched that happen as we were having our second kid, and I was like, “This is now just the world. Everyone is just the village mentality. Everyone’s gotten this experience a little bit, and it’s not as weird.”

And I’m sure some of that is confidence, right? You’ve gotten more comfortable as a parent, but also, you just quit getting that reaction from people, like, “Oh, there’s a dad.” So I think for me, when I realized that I was a good parent was when we finally started music together and started going to classes, and the environment basically normalized adults laying on the floor playing with instruments and singing and goofing around, and also my kid made a best friend, and I connected with other parents, and I was like, “OK, this is good.”

And I was in a room full of new mothers, I was the experienced mom of the group. They were all having panics about all this, like being a new parent. And I ended up being the experienced parent, which was a weird feeling. There was just such a drastic shift that, on top of me being confident with my kid and it not being weird to just see a guy with a baby, having the experience of being the mother hen, the experienced mom in the group, was such a good feeling for awhile. And it took the self-confidence and kept it high, and also the worry about being out and someone bothering me about it went away.

And that was all great. That felt comfortable. And then it turns out you still didn’t deal with anything. I had done such a good job of lying to myself that I had taken care of it, that when stuff went wrong, and went wrong-slash-a child’s normal development, and they developed differently, as far as a strong-willed child who is ready to take on the world, and you included, that cycle of “Oh, I need to be prepared for 3 hours of just surviving my child.”

The next child didn’t have that fight. They would just stop. “I’m not going to talk.” Or they just would start to react, and in me, I reacted the way that I did for the first kid, which was, “This is a fight. I’m going to have to survive this for 4 hours, and then it’s going to be fine.” And instead of handling it, I would immediately jump to that place of “panicked, scared, bullied by my own kid” father, which is a terrible place to put yourself in when your kid is just upset because they didn’t get the right cereal spoon or something.

It was just anger, just grouchiness and being snippy. It wasn’t that I was just stomping around. No, it was just lots of little things that I would find and pick at and dig at. And we didn’t spank the kids, and we didn’t… It wasn’t a physical thing, and I wasn’t trying to be verbally abusive. And it wasn’t even that it was that intentional. I was super aware that I didn’t want that to be the message, but it didn’t matter because in my actions and in my words, that was coming across. I didn’t need to say, “Oh, you screwed up,” whatever, and berate them, but just in the interaction, you’d look at it from the outside, and you’d go, “Oh, that is not healthy.”

When I fail, if I get upset, if I yell or I get… if I storm off, or I just explode and take out angry words and just… what words are the most punishing, most manipulative, like just a societal model for what will cut someone down to nothing. Because I practiced on myself for years. I know exactly what words are going to hurt and do damage. It didn’t make me a good father or husband or a good person. It just was exhausting.

And I couldn’t stop it. I could just see it. I could just watch it, and I couldn’t do anything about it. And then every time that would happen, it would reinforce that I was a failure. The bully that was in me, I would attack myself twice as hard. And so it would just continue, and it would just stack on and on until I just couldn’t handle it. I just didn’t feel like I would ever be able to fix it.

You hit a point where you have to get help and you’re afraid to ask for help, because that means that you’re a failure. In my head, it was, “I don’t even know how to ask for help, because what are they going to do? There’s nothing they can do. I should be able to fix this.” I couldn’t be a good role model. This was not how they should be seeing human interaction.

But I finally, finally, reached out to one of the other dads, and I said, “I don’t know how to get help. I know that you have experience with mental stuff, and I just don’t even know what to do.”

He said, “Well, I have a therapist I go to see.” And it was, he was like, “I was freaking out all the time, and then they just said this one thing to me, and once that was it.” I was like, “Are you kidding? It was that simple?” I just basically went, “OK, it’s OK to get help. It’s OK to get help, and it’s OK for it not to work and me to try again. Why am I afraid to try? Why am I punishing myself for punishing myself? It doesn’t even make sense, so finally, I’m going to do it.

I went in, talked to her for a little bit, went “OK.” Came back. “Yeah, all right. I’m going to come back and talk some more.” It started off just, “Yeah, tell me what was your parents’ sacrifice,” whatever. “I was scared to upset them.” Just the history of my worldview. And then she said a couple things, and I just couldn’t even speak. I couldn’t stop crying. I couldn’t talk. And when I did, it felt like I had taken, she said it was like shrapnel, but it felt like a cloak of 100-pound weights had just been dropped or something sharp that was keeping a wound, like a splinter that wouldn’t leave. It just came out. And the moment that happened, it was just like, “Really? Was that it? That can’t be it. I don’t trust it. It can’t be that easy to have asked for help, talked for a little while, and made it better. That’s bullshit. No way.”

I went home and talked to my wife, and weeks went by. I was trying to do some of the things that we had talked about, and it didn’t feel like it was working. It still just felt like I had masked it, and I’ve worked around it. Like cheating on a diet or something. It was just like, “This is not…” And so we talked some more, and there was another few sessions where it just was… I think one session was basically an hour of me barely able to breathe and crying, and another layer, and another piece of just glass being taken out, and over and over again, where it was like, “I don’t think there’s anything left. There’s nothing still in me that is hurting me. I’ve described it. I’ve talked about it. I’ve pulled it out. I trust that I’m enough, and I’m OK. I don’t have to punish myself for this stuff anymore. It’s OK to fail. It’s OK not to have everything under control. It’s OK to be broken.

Obviously, you can’t just flip a switch and be fixed permanently and perfectly, but I know what that process was. Once you go to the gym, and you see the weight machines and you’ve been shown how to use it, you don’t suddenly forget. Once you’ve learned it and learned the process, it’s familiar enough that you can come back to it, and it doesn’t feel like, “Oh, I’ll never be able to do this.” And that’s how I feel like with when I know that I haven’t slept enough, or when I know that things are just rough. I start to react badly or, “Well, I messed up.” And that’s where it ends most of the time. I may still react poorly. I still may watch myself explode a little bit or throw some fuel on the fire just to watch what happens, but the fallout after is not there.

I felt like I needed something for me, I started back in martial arts. I went, and I just wanted to do something again that was just for me, to get out of the house. I lost like 40 pounds, and I didn’t think that… I wasn’t trying to lose weight, it was like, “Oh, I feel good.” I don’t feel like I’m the fat kid anymore, which was also the other ridiculous part of growing up. It’s ridiculous that I was being picked on about it, but it’s ridiculous that I accepted that as the truth.

And I finally went, “OK, well why? What is that? Why am I accepting that negativity and holding on to that?” The embarrassment of just taking your shirt off at the pool or with the kids or whatever, you’re just like, “I can’t. I don’t… I’m ugly.”

And then I finally went, “Well, why? How stupid is that? What is that feeling keeping me from?” It’s keeping me from doing all kinds of stuff. “I should be better.” And what came out of therapy was, every time you feel like that… You should be? Says who? Why are you putting that pressure on yourself? You’re learning. Accept the learning process. Accept that you’re doing this, and that’s OK. That’s why you’re doing this.

And that was the biggest shift ever, because I finally was allowing myself to go through the process of learning, and it wasn’t embarrassing to not know how to do something, or it wasn’t embarrassing to fail. Because it was just a way to build. This is now something I get to work on, instead of punishing myself over and over, why didn’t I do it already. How stupid is that? “Oh, you should already know how to do this.”

You know, I watched my kids from birth fail over and over again to try to learn how to walk, to speak, to read. The only way they got through that is because they didn’t care. You don’t have a baby who’s embarrassed to try to speak because they can’t speak already. They just try to say the words over and over again until they figure it out. And you encourage that. “Yes! You said, ‘Da.’” You know? The encouragement level is so high for even an attempt. Why don’t I give myself the same permission?

And so every stage of my life, every point of contact, it just opened up so much more richness in my ability to try things and learn things and to not punish myself over it. It was incredible. You know, I’m going to go to the pool and learn to dive with my kids. And so, if you want to see something funny, it’s that for a summer camp with me and the kids was me on a diving board learning to high dive, without my shirt on and moms watching their 4-year-olds walk up the ladder that a 6-foot 40-something-year-old is on at the same time learning to do the same thing that they’re 4-year-old’s doing, and I was like, “I don’t care if I’m… I don’t have 6-pack abs; I just… I’m getting to learn how to dive with my kids, and I get to show up, and I get to be here.” And it was the most fun thing ever. I was the only adult, and what happened out of that was people were like, “Ah, I wish I could’ve done that. Oh, that’s so great you’re doing that.” Yeah, it is. Nothing’s stopping you from doing it either. And I would’ve missed all of that because I wouldn’t have given myself permission to do it.

Asking for help and then accepting the help, was the biggest thing that, besides meeting my wife, that was such a huge shift in my entire world that was… that I didn’t know I needed. There’s… It certainly is felt. It’s felt in my relationship with my wife. It’s felt in the relationship with the kids. It’s felt with being brave enough to just stand up in front of a group of people and learn to dive. And yeah, I’m going to fail bad, and I’m going to try again. And a few times, I smashed hard, and everyone felt it and heard it, and I was like, “Yes! That was awesome! I completely tried the best I could and failed, and I’m going to get it again.” And then I’d go up again. And I couldn’t have done that 3 years ago. I mean, I couldn’t have done it before going to therapy and just coming to terms with allowing myself to actually go through the process of being vulnerable and learning how to fail in a way that gives me growth as opposed to just punishment.

And I still don’t really understand how. I don’t know what therapy did. I don’t know how it worked. I don’t know why going in and talking to a stranger and just having reassurance that it wasn’t something broken in me from someone who I had no connection with, that allowed that to connect where I had blocked it off before. Clearly, everyone has their own stuff. Clearly, if you see one person that looks like they’re together, there’s a hole somewhere that they’re struggling with. No one gets out of childhood unscathed.