Episode notes:
Check out Claire's great artwork at her Etsy shop.
Episode Transcript:
Claire Laffar
Episode #109
Paul: Welcome to episode 109 with my guest listener Claire Laffar. I’m Paul Gilmartin. This is the Mental Illness Happy Hour. 90 minutes of honesty about all the battles in our heads. From medically diagnosed conditions and past traumas, to everyday compulsive negative thinking. This show is not meant to be a substitute for professional mental counseling. It's not a doctor's office. It's more like a waiting room that doesn't suck. The website for this show is mentalpod.com. There’s all kinds of stuff you can do there. You can join the forum. There's so many different threads that have been started on various subjects. In fact, while I’m thinking of it, I have started a thread about ‘meet ups,’ and one of the subthreads underneath that is the Bridgetown Comedy Festival, which I am going to April 18-20th, so any information about shows, and meeting places will be posted on that thread, so go there for it. You can also email me—well I guess I should tell you that the shows that are going to happen there in Portland April 18 thru 20, that Thursday night, it’s not a show so much as at 8:00 on Thursday night the 18th, we’re going to do kind of a group recording at Lewis and Clark College, which is about 15 minutes south of Portland I’m told. A student there has been nice enough to reserve a conference room and so, I thought it would be fun to have people bring and print out surveys that they relate to, that other people have filled out, and get on mic and talk about how they relate to what that person’s feeling and going through. So I’m not really sure exactly how it’s all gonna shake out but if you want to reserve a spot at that, it’s free, isn’t gonna cost anything. Email me at mentalpod@gmail.com, and I’ll forward that to Mattie who is one of the students there at Lewis and Clark, and she is spearheading this. So for the directions and everything, go to that forum thread. The festival shows that I’m doing there in Portland, at the Bridgetown Comedy Festival, I’m doing three shows. I’m sorry, four shows. Friday night I have one at 7:00 doing my jackass satirical character. Then on Saturday at 2:00, we’re doing a live version of the Mental Illness Happy Hour show. Then at 6:00, I’m a guest on Walking the Room, a live recording of that podcast. Then at 11:00 on Saturday night again, I’m doing my jackass satirical character. All that information about the festival performances you can find at BridgetownComedyFestival.com. I think that’s it as far as the announcements.
Let’s kick it off with some surveys. What do you think of that? This is from the Shouldn’t Feel this Way survey. This was filled out by a woman who calls herself “Twosy.” She’s straight. She’s in her 30’s, was raised in a safe and stable environment. What would you like people to say about you at your funeral? She said, “that I went through life peacefully and gracefully.” How does writing that make you feel? “Writing this makes me feel like I’ve wasted so much time being angry and feeling guilty and ashamed at how I’ve handled difficult relationships.” If you had a time machine, how could you use it? “I would go back in time and pinpoint when I became so insecure und unconfident and full of self-doubt.” What feelings do you have that you tell yourself you shouldn’t feel? She writes, “I’m supposed to feel energetic, but I don’t. I feel exhausted. I’m supposed to feel creative, but I don’t. I feel lazy and unmotivated. I’m supposed to feel accomplished, but I feel like I’ve wasted so much of my life being concerned about the wrong things.” I relate to that so fuckin’ much, it’s not even funny. How does writing your feelings out make you feel? She writes, “I feel like I want so badly to achieve my goals, but I’m scared I may never do anything that fills my soul, aside from my husband and daughter. They fill my heart. I feel so angry at my laziness.” Do you think you’re abnormal for feeling what you do” She writes, “Yes, I feel like most people have a hobby or something they are passionate about. I don’t think it’s normal to just want to watch TV in spare time.” Would knowing other people feel the same way make you feel better about yourself? She writes, “Being that I get super jealous of people who have passions, I guess it would make me feel better to know others feel the same way.” Well Twosy, I can tell you, I have gone through periods where I do have passions and I do enjoy it, but I also go through periods, I’ve been in one for two years now where it is just hard to be excited by anything. Where I just rarely feel inspiration and everything feels like an effort, so I get it. I get it. Yeah, why are we so fuckin’ hard on ourselves?
This is an email I got from—how does she want to be referred to? Tracy. She says “I’ve been listening to the podcast for a while, and being someone who keeps everything to herself and hates talking about her feelings, it’s been helpful to hear how important it is to actually talk about things to someone. I finally thought it would be cathartic and a good first step to fill out some of the website surveys to get myself out of my own head. Anyway, I was sort of shocked to hear my survey on this past episode. I didn’t fully comprehend how unhealthy it’s been to never talk about what happened to me as a kid, until I heard the words read out loud back to me and experienced it in the third person. I just wanted to say that I almost immediately called up the university mental health clinic and made an appointment. Who knew that a podcast and an internet survey would be what I needed to get over this hangup of being afraid to seem quote damaged. Thanks for the show and for the support you give your listeners. Tracy.” Thank you Tracy. Of all the emails I get, that has to be one of my favorite ones is seeing people overcome their fear of asking for help.
This one’s just a sweet email I got “A Happy Thought” from listener David. He writes, “when things seem so serious and my anxiety is going through the roof, I force myself to think about Apollo 12. Pete Conrad, Dick “Dickey Dick” Gordon, and Al “Beano” Bean were on their way to the moon for the second manned lunar landing. All three were naval officers, test pilots, and smart as hell engineers. No nonsense types, right? They had a portable cassette player to play music they liked, and whenever the song Sugar, Sugar by The Archies came on, they’d stop whatever they were doing and dance in zero G. For some reason, I smile when I think about three guys, astronauts, military officers, engineers, traveling through deep space, going to the fucking moon, dancing to The Archies. How cool.
[Intro Music]
Paul: I am here with Claire Laffar and she is a listener from England. You had emailed me I guess it would have been about what, a year˗˗˗
Claire: 6 months, yeah
Paul: 6 months ago, and do you remember what you said in the email?
Claire: I think it was just that I’d discovered the podcast, and I’d been recommended it by a friend and listened to a few episodes, and it was just to say “hi” and that I loved the podcast and just where things were, and I was at a time when there was kind of a few changes going on and I was being a bit braver than I had been. Um, so I think we got talking really because of that. Yeah.
Paul: What I remember from your email was a guy had asked you out who you really liked and you had been, you shut him out, you didn’t return his phone calls because you thought that you weren’t good enough for him and you felt eventually ‘he’s going to know that the real me is not worthy, and I’m gonna get hurt anyways.—
Claire: Yep. That’s an ongoing thing [giggles] we’ll probably get to—
Paul: so I might as well get hurt now.’
Claire: Yeah, that was definitely something, but I did go out with him a few times. We’re not going out now, but it was good ‘cause it kind of got to the stage where I was like ‘we’re not going out but I don’t want that from this relationship. I don’t want it to be a romantic relationship. And that’s fine.’ And it’s the two things that you can say ‘I don’t even want to try or I have to try too much’ because I’m giving up on it for the wrong reasons, and it wasn’t meant to be I guess, but yeah, we had a good time.
Paul: But the fact that you went out with him I think was great that you overcame that fear of ‘this is gonna be disastrous, so I might as well ignite the bomb myself rather than ˗˗˗
Claire: I’m a control freak. [laughs]
Paul: [laughs] A control freak with low self-esteem. What a wonderful, a wonderful combination. ‘I will chose the ways that I hurt myself so that other people don’t hurt me’ and that, I guess, in a survival sense, that makes total sense because in your mind life is about pain, so ‘at least I will control the pain.’
Claire: Exactly, yeah, yeah
Paul: But that’s such a sad, small way to go through life.
Claire: Exactly, and it’s very lonely, so˗˗˗
Paul: And you were also pushing friends away.
Claire: I was, which is what I tend to do when I feel very low. I tend to get it where I’m like ‘well, I feel really low, and I’m not gonna be any fun so no one’s gonna wanna hang out, so I’m gonna not hang out with them. I’m gonna spare them of the melodramatic drama that is my life.’ Which never works ‘cause my friends love me, I love them, and seeing your friends does bring you out of it and you need to—if anything helps me when I feel down, it’s being busy, and seeing people, and making plans. It’s the best thing ‘cause otherwise, you’ve got things to look forward to. Otherwise you just wallow, or that’s what I tend to do anyway.
Paul: So what happens when—describe to me if you would what happens when it begins to turn and you’re not in that place. How does it start?
Claire: Do you mean to the more…?
Paul: To where you want to push people away. What does it feel like? What thoughts go through your head? Is there something that triggers it?
Claire: I do have a few triggers, which I find I’ve worked out, and that’s only from kind of therapy and doing a lot of work on myself and observing my mum, which we will probably get to as well. And˗˗˗
Paul: We don’t talk about parents on this show.
Claire: [laughs] We’ll leave them out of this. It’s usually with change. Change is like a big thing, and I now kind of anticipate it. If there’s gonna be a change, I’m gonna have a new job, or there’s gonna be a change in management at my job, or a move. That will definitely affect my mood because it is like it just shakes everything that you know. And even though that it might be a good change, I definitely feel the dip in my mood, and I start getting worried because it’s a change, and it makes you realize where you are in your life. Then I start going ‘oh, why I’m not married, and I don’t have children, and I don’t have this, and I don’t own a house.’ And then it’s just like a snowball. It just builds, and then it gets worse and worse. Then you’re lying in bed not answering the phone. [laughs] And you know, eating cereal out the box, which is what I do.
Paul: I can totally relate to that feeling because I remember being in grade school, and they would have fire drills every once in a while. And they would tell you “we’re going to have a fire drill today,” but they wouldn’t tell you when it was going to be, and, my day was absolutely ruined. My heart would beat the entire time ‘cause the noise that this thing made was like eeeeeeeehhhhh! The anticipation of that was—I used to think to myself ‘why am I so afraid? Why is this so terrifying to me?’ But I would imagine for somebody that has social anxiety, it is that all the time. The unknown is coming through the door, and I can’t stop obsessing about what form that’s going to take. How is it going to unfold.
Claire: It’s interesting because a friend of mine, I was talking with him about films and we were talking about horror films and, this is related, and we were talking about jump scares in films. And I don’t tend to like jump scares in films. I tend to like more psychological horror or thrillers, and it’s not that they scare me, jump scares, but I hate that physical reaction of leaping in anticipation, and he described that the reason he doesn’t like it, he says “this is kind of what it feels like. It’s like someone standing over and they say ‘I’m gonna punch you in the face, but I’m not gonna tell you when.’ And after a while, you are just like ‘just punch me in the face!’” because you are getting so worked up, so it’s like˗˗˗
Paul: You punch yourself in the face.
Claire: You punch yourself in the face. Exactly. You know, that’s what it’s like. But I wouldn’t be able to stand that fire alarm thing. I would just be sitting there on edge˗˗˗
Paul: It was awful. It was awful.
Claire: Yeah, I can’t stand it.
Paul: I knew it was going to happen. That’s the part that’s so weird. I knew what the sound was gonna sound like. I knew that we were gonna line up. We were all gonna file outside, and we’d be cracking jokes and all this other stuff. It wasn’t like somebody was gonna come through the door and hit you. So I can’t imagine what it’s like to have crippling social anxiety. I certainly know what it’s like to have social anxiety, but crippling social anxiety, my heart goes out to anybody that deals with it on a daily basis. So let’s talk about your mum.
Claire: My mum.
Paul: You’re from where in England?
Claire: I am from just outside London in a place called Kingston, which is a kind of a mix of city and rural. I was born there. I grew up sort of very nearby.
Paul: In the land of Claires?
Claire: In the land of many, many Claire Louises. Here’s a shout out to all of you out there, um˗˗˗
Paul: You said that there was like six of you?
Claire: Yes! There were so many, so many. My mum gave me the most generic name of girls born in 1980 in the area we lived in. There was just so many Claires. So many. But yeah I had a pretty normal upbringing, sort of a middle class family, I would say. My dad’s an engineer. We think he secretly a spy because he’s always going off to Russia to do stuff to do with satellites.
Paul: Really?
Claire: Yeah, he’s a spy [whispering].
Paul: MI-6?
Claire: Probably [laughs] Yeah, and my mum˗˗˗
Paul: Does his car release smoke˗˗˗
Claire: Not that I’ve seen but he does sometimes go “can you come around and keep your mum company next week? I have to go to Russia.” Doesn’t say why.
Paul: Interesting.
Claire: Yeah, interesting, and something with the satellites he does there. They are kind of ones that take photos from space, yeah. [laughs] I’m sure he has friends in MI-6.
Paul: Yeah, I bet.
Claire: He’s James Bond [laughs] My mom works in retail, always has. And I’ve got one younger sister. We’re very close. We’re 21 months apart and˗˗˗
Paul: And how old are you?
Claire: I’m 32 now, so she’s 30, about 31. So, very normal upbringing. The best way I can describe my parents is, again a line from Anne Boleyn, and you’ll see from, I work a lot with movies. I’m a big movie fan. In that film there was a line where she described being brought up, growing up between an iceberg and a neurotic. That was my upbringing. My mom is a complete neurotic and my dad is an iceberg. My dad doesn’t show emotion at all, whatsoever, and when he does, it’s like floodgates. It comes out. He’s a big crier. He gets very upset, very emotional and is very uncomfortable with it. My mum kind of shows too much emotion. She’s always been very anxious, had low self-esteem, definitely one of the things that helped me with the issues I have is looking at my mum and going ‘that’s me, that’s me, unless I do something’. I love my mum but I don’t want to become my mum because it does affect her every day. It is crippling the way it affects her. So that was kind of a hard upbringing, and you don’t realize it until you are older, and you realize how other people’s upbringings were, I mean everyone has that, that this wasn’t a normal upbringing per sé.
Paul: It’s like your dad is the fire alarm, and your mom is the kid sitting in the desk.
Claire: [Laughs] Exactly. My dad had a few issues with anger as well. He’s very, very loyal to my mum. He’s an absolute family man. Drinks a bit too much than we would like him to. He’s never been violent but he’s got a temper. He’s definitely got a temper.
Paul: What’s it like when he gets angry?
Claire: It’s just, it’s completely irrational, and it’s an explosion, and it’s exactly the same when I get angry. It will be completely irrational, and I’m aware it’s irrational, but I’m so angry I don’t care. I just need to get it out there.
Paul: Can you give me an example of his or yours, or both?
Claire: Yeah. We were on holiday in Turkey with my auntie and uncle and my two cousins. I was 14—this trip may come up again later—and my dad, he just lost it, and it was for no reason whatsoever. It was the first day we’d got there. He thought that my mum corrected him or something when he was paying for some drinks at a bar and in the hotel. She corrected him and he thought she was kind of belittling him, and he just lost it. He was shouting. They ended up going up to the room in the hotel. We were down by the swimming pool at the bar, and we could hear them shouting. They were about 20 floors up˗˗˗
Paul: Wow…what?!
Claire: We could hear them. And he was pretty much ready to pack up and go home, and my uncle kind of talked him down, which is my dad’s brother.
Paul: Yeah, he said “listen you’ve got hash to smuggle”
Claire: [laughs] Exactly, or more important things to˗˗˗
Paul: You’ve seen Midnight Express.
Claire: [laughs] It’s scary, it’s very scary. He doesn’t get that angry too much now, it was more when I was younger, but when he does, I do remember as a child feeling this kind of fear. That it was gonna happen, and not wanting it to happen.
Paul: And, I think the thing that people forget too, especially parents, is how big and loud an angry adult is to a child. It’s like a monster.
Claire: Absolutely, absolutely. I think partly because of that I was very creative from when I was young, I was very imaginative, very dreamy. I just escaped into my head. I just shut the doors and went ‘ok! I’m completely happy in here.’ You know with my books and everything, and that’s still kind of my defensive mechanism and just go ‘I have drawings to do, I have this to do, and I’m just gonna do that’ and˗˗˗
Paul: What were the fantasies, or the escapes that you had as a child?
Claire: Oh, everything. I was very into books. I used to like read until I fell asleep, and then next day pick another book, and when my mum, when I was a child, used to go to change my bed, there would just be books. I would sleep on a bed of books, like, literally. I read a lot of books which were about different lands, and I’d fantasize about going to those and I’d come up with these ideas in my head. My grandfather, which is my step-grandfather, my father’s step-father, was an artist and he really got me into art, and he was very imaginative as well. And we really bonded, and I would just go and sit outside for hours in the garden just to escape, just sit there and examine the bugs and wood lice. I was a tomboy. Pick up rocks and go “ooh, worms!” everything like that, and look at the flowers and study books about wildlife, you know things like that. It’s just that complete escape, and then, you know, I’d be so excited about stuff and bring it to my dad and go “Dad, Dad, look at this!” “Uh hmm, uh hmm,” no reaction, he just wasn’t there. He was in his own head, and I think that’s still where he is. My dad’s definitely someone who I look at and go ‘You have a lot of secrets.’ And I’ve tried to get them out of him—with my parents as well, it took so long, it took ‘til I was 30 to go ‘I can only help them so much.’ You can’t force people to do anything. They have to help themselves, which is very frustrating because a lot of stuff I’ve done for myself that’s definitely helped me would definitely help my mum, and she’s not willing. She’ll come up with every excuse in the book. You know, including listening to this podcast. “But I don’t know how to put podcasts on iPod” “I’ll do it for you.” “But I don’t know when I’d listen.” “Listen to them on the bus on the way to work.” “No, because I don’t like listening to stuff on the bus to work.” “Listen to it when you go to sleep.” “No because um because I have to have the light on.” There’s just so many, so many excuses˗˗˗
Paul: Sure, and it almost sounds like she doesn’t want to say “I don’t want to listen to the podcast.”
Claire: Nope, she doesn’t want to. She’s˗˗˗
Paul: She’d rather˗˗˗
Claire: Yeah, definitely, and even not just things like that. It’s things like if I find an article and I go “this is great. You should read this.” Or I find a CD which helps me sleep. I have one that I listen to when I can’t sleep. And she has problems with sleep. She won’t do that. She won’t go to support groups, and I feel like we should be able to talk about this ‘cause I’m very open. I went to my parents and was like “I’m depressed. I’m going to the doctor, and I’m going to, you know, go and see someone because I have to for myself.”
Paul: How old were you?
Claire: That was really late. I was about 27 and it was that kind of time in your late 20’s where apparently everyone has a wall because you’re approaching 30 and it was just one day I was like “I’m miserable. I’m really miserable.” And I got really low and it was one day when I went to my GP, and I’d been to him before and said you know “I’m not happy.” And he put me on some tablets and they hadn’t really helped, and a big problem in the UK, and I don’t know if it’s the same over here is they don’t know a lot about mental illness. And they don’t know about it, so they just go ‘take these tablets and go away, and it will make it all better.’ And it doesn’t. And I went to my GP and I said, “You need to sort out me going to see someone because otherwise I’m gonna walk into A&E because I don’t trust myself with myself.”
Paul: What’s A&E?
Claire: Accident and Emergency. I literally said to him, “I’m gonna be walking to the hospital because I don’t trust that if I go home tonight, I don’t trust myself with myself.” By the way, I’m a crier, so I’m like, crying. [laughs] That’s why I have tissues. And that—
Paul: Meaning that you were thinking about killing yourself because you were feeling that—
Claire: It wasn’t so much about killing myself. It was I didn’t know what was going to happen. I had twice where I got close. Neither time, I wasn’t hospitalized either time, but there was a couple of times where I was really close, one in particular. The scariest thing was how calm I was both times. I was just like, and I didn’t trust myself that was it. It was just like that was the only option, so—and the time I mentioned, I remember I was sitting in my bedroom and my flatmates were downstairs. I was sitting in my bedroom. I was on my laptop, and I just stood up, and I went to my door and there was a hook on the door like a coat hook, and I took my hairdryer, and I tied the hairdryer in a knot, and I hung it from the hook, and I put it around my neck, and I sat back and it pulled my head up and the hook broke off the door ‘cause I was too heavy. And afterwards I just felt like ‘I can’t even do that’. And I didn’t tell anyone until years later. Yeah, so I’ve been close, I’ve been close.
Paul: It’s so sad. That’s such a powerful image.
Claire: Looking back at it now, it’s why didn’t I go downstairs and talk to my flatmates. They were there. They love me. My flatmates are the ones I am staying with now when I’m visiting LA. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go down there and talk to them. So, that was the only thing I could do, and then the other time I just had my antidepressant tablets, which was probably only about four tablets. It wasn’t very many. I grabbed a thing of paracetamol, or something like that, aspirin, and just took the lot. Nothing happened. I just didn’t feel well. [laughs] So neither were—I don’t know how serious I was about them but I know I was terrified after that one with the door because I was so calm—
Paul: What if you had taken the pills and then another hook fell off the door?
Claire: [laughs] I would have been like ‘what’s going on?’ I don’t know. It’s a message! Uh, but yeah, I mean—
Paul: Thank you for sharing that by the way.
Claire: I’m, with this I’m happy to talk about it because nothing got spoken about in my family and that’s not healthy, and I know that’s not healthy—
Paul: It’s not.
Claire: And I know how much that kind of had an impact on me growing up. Saying about my mum. My mum kind of spoke too much. My mum’s, as well as anxious and low self esteem, my mum’s a hypochondriac. I’m sure she would be diagnosed with OCD if she ever went and did that. It’s very hard to tell with my mum when there’s a genuine problem, which is why I think I mentioned to you before that’s one of my fears. I am terrified that she will genuinely be ill, and my first thought would be ‘It’s just my mom’.
Paul: Is it fair to say that your mom talks a lot but doesn’t say much?
Claire: Oh yes, definitely. And she doesn’t listen. She doesn’t listen at all.
Paul: Yeah, I have a parent who’s like that, and it’s very frustrating because it’s like, it almost reminds me of the honeymooners where Norton makes that big flourish to sit down and you just want to go ‘just get to the fucking point. Just sit down.’ It drives you crazy because it’s all talk and there’s nothing of substance in there, or if it is, it’s got multiple kind of angles that it’s working. And there’s manipulation in there, and there’s just no directness. There’s no directness.
Claire: Yeah. She has this real thing which is only in about the last five years, that I’ve just gone ‘I’m not putting up with your bullshit with it’ and I don’t. And she has this real thing about responsibility. She cannot make decisions. She will, if we’re going out for a family dinner and I’ve gone around there to meet up with my parents, she will not decide what she’s going to wear. She’ll be like ‘should I wear this? Should I wear that?” And I’ll say, ‘wear what you want. What do you want to wear? I don’t know. Well I’m not wearing it. Wear what you want to wear.’ Everything she will not make a decision because then if my dad goes ‘wear that one, that’s nice’ she will then go out and go ‘I’m cold. I should have worn the other one. You made me wear this one’ And it’s all about taking responsibility too, and I think it’s because she has no faith in herself. She is too scared to go ‘this is what I want to do’. And I won’t put up with it now. I’m like ‘you do what you want. I’m not gonna do it. I’m not gonna be the person who says ‘no wear the sandals, don’t wear the trainers’ so that10 minutes later she’s saying about how her feet hurt because she’s wearing the sandals.
Paul: She sounds to me like a classic example of somebody that doesn’t know what their own needs are, who just defines their life by how other people react or treat them. And that is a recipe for insanity. And probably depressed would be my guess. That type of anxiety, you know one of the hallmarks of depression is an inability to make decisions or difficulty making decisions, and there are so many aspects to depression, you know, when people think about depression they think about a sad person staring out the window and there are so many other aspects to depression. You know there’s the anxiety, there’s rage. A lot of people don’t realize that rage is very, very common with people that are depressed. They could be a lot more angry than sad, but it’s good that you are starting to see that ‘wow, it’s a circus that I can’t control, and what I do have control over is how much I expose myself to this.’
Claire: Yeah, that’s it. My sister as well is the same. We’re both very aware of it. My sister kind of gets a bit more upset about it. She’s always been a bit more under pressure from my mum. My mum’s very, my mum wants grandchildren, and she hasn’t got any yet, and she wants us to get married and have a traditional wedding.
Paul: Has she considered abducting?
Claire: [giggles] She should. I have said to her if she pays me enough money, I’ll be an incubator then she can take the baby away. I decided early on I don’t want children. That’s just a personal decision. I don’t mind children. I don’t tend to get fuzzy over babies. I’m just not that way. When they’re about six and you can sit down and have a conversation, they’re cool. I like them, but my sister gets a lot of pressure from her because my sister is just getting married. My mum really plays up my friends ‘well my friends have grandchildren. Well my friends are lucky. I’m not getting any younger, and I have health problems, and—
Paul: All about her.
Claire: Yeah, and my sister’s just like, you know, gets very upset because of that. My mum’s given up on putting pressure on me ‘cause I’ve just turned around flat out and gone ‘not having kids. I’m not getting married. I don’t know who I’m marrying yet. It might be a man. It might be a woman. I don’t know! I’m not even thinking about it.’
Paul: And that’s, that to me is also—I’m not, I hope this podcast doesn’t come across as me trying to say, bag on parents. That was that generation. They’re certainly doing the best that they can. I am certainly glad that I didn’t have to be raised by their parents. But what I want to talk about is the effect of not dealing with that stuff that has, not only their lives but our lives, your mom to me sounds like a classic example of when you don’t learn how to say what your needs are, your neediness comes out in another way. It’s gonna come out. It comes out in ‘oh I’m getting older. My friends are having kids.’ Because if she could ask for her needs, the needs that are essential to any human being, that any person should have, which is to be treated with respect, to be listened to, to be loved, to be comforted, to be protected or whatever, she probably wouldn’t be saying those things because there would be certain sense of peace and ‘ok’ and of comfort in her own skin. But when we don’t get to feel that comfort in our own skin, then we begin to try to squeeze that from the people around us and drive them crazy, and we can never get enough juice from somebody else to satisfy ourselves. I guess that’s the point that I wanted to make, but I hope this doesn’t sound like every episode is about ‘how shitty were your parents?’ It’s about what we do with the stuff that we dealt with and where we are now that I want the focus and highlight to be, but we have to deal with that. We have to start with point A where all that stuff happened to, otherwise there’s no context to it. That’s what I want to say.
Claire: Well saying about parents as well, my mum’s parents, my grandparents, my grandmother is still alive, my grandfather isn’t. My grandfather was very unafraid to show his affection for my mum. He had two sons before my mum. My grandmother is not affectionate at all. She, if you go give her a hug, my grandmother’s northern. You go and give her a hug, and she’s like ‘oh, get off!’ kind of thing. She’s just not affectionate at all, so you know I think my mum grew up, and she got affection from my father because her mother was not affectionate, and my dad can be affectionate but he doesn’t talk about stuff. He won’t sit and talk about how my mum feels, and then my grandfather passed away and of course that affected her. That’s that person in her life, and she’s not close with her brothers, and how else can that affect you in how you treat your children, so she is slightly clingy with me and my sister. Like the amount of times where she’s sitting down and I’ll be leaving and I’ll give her a hug, it’s just holding on to your neck that bit too long, and you’re pulling away. You know, she just wants you to say, and I can see where it comes from. And I can see it with my my dad as well and his parents. I can see how my parents have affected me and if I had kids, you know…
Paul: There’s something to it that is, it fucks you up a little bit when, especially when you’re a kid, and you hug your parent and you feel that it’s you always comforting your parent and not your parent comforting you. You know it when you feel it. Did you experience it as a kid?
Claire: Definitely, my mum, with part of the whole thing of not making decisions, my mum— me and my sister discuss now that a lot of the time feel like she’s the child in the relationship. We have to look after her. And I remember that from a very early age in that it would be us comforting my mum. And that’s part of the reason why I never addressed my own issues because I was always too worried about her. And I was like ‘she needs to kind of vent about what’s happening with her, and I can’t address my issues because I don’t want to upset my mum,’ but that didn’t work because I was a mess until I was, what, 30 I would say. It’s only in the last few years. I had a miserable childhood in some ways because I was bullied at school, and I couldn’t go to my mum and dad and say ‘I’m unhappy at school. I’m bullied.’ Because again, I was like, worried about my mum, and upsetting my mum. I’m worried that my dad will get angry.
Paul: So there was never anywhere to go with that.
Claire: Yeah, and that’s how I went into myself. You know, I just retreated and went into art and movies and other geeky pursuits. As I mentioned before, I’m a massive geek. [laughs]
Paul: Which make sense then why, because that solution worked for you as a kid so then when you are faced with things being shaken up as an adult, you’re wired to want to go inside, to retreat.
Claire: Exactly. Yeah, and I think, I think the kinds of starting thing that actually helped me was when I was 21, I was at college doing my foundation core, so you choose what you are going to specialize in and then you go into it. And I did my foundation, and then I decided, I can’t even remember why I decided ‘Nope. I’m not going to go to university. I’m gonna go traveling around the world for a year,’ and I went. And I travelled with someone else, but halfway through the trip we fell out. And I travelled the rest on my own, and I didn’t think it was a great thing at the time but looking back it was the best thing I ever did, rather than going to university because I lived on my own, and I was self-sufficient. Sometimes I’m too self-sufficient, but I lived on my own for months, and I got a job abroad, and I travelled around, and I am here in LA at the moment, and I came on my own and I’m going up to San Francisco on my own, and I tell my friends back home that I’m doing that, and they say ‘well, who are you going with?’ and I say ‘well, I’m going on my own’ and they’re like ‘what?’ They can’t understand it. It made me much more confident going into my 20’s, and I think that was definitely the start of me deciding what I wanted to do and find out who I was I guess. I sound a bit self-helpy.
Paul: No, no, I’m struck by the dichotomy of somebody who can kind of go into her shell when things happen and be a complete isolator and then a person who will get on a plane and go visit five different cities. I mean, that’s so fascinating to me.
Claire: Yeah, it’s a bit of a contradiction but I think of the part of going into a shell. I do art. I do podcasting. A lot of the stuff I do are quite solitary things. I love films. I love going to the movies with like one friend or by myself, and I’ve become so used to that I now get enjoyment out of it. I’m used to it, so I know when I’m doing it and I’m retreating ‘cause I’m too scared to face something, and I know when I’m doing it out of pure pleasure because I’m like ‘no, I’m gonna take some time for myself.’ I can be own best friend and my own worst enemy in that respect.
Paul: It sounds like yours is a great example of, if you just do something, the act of doing it can kind of loosen things up and help to rewire—oh that’s ok—what was a necessary coping mechanism as a kid now is something that is kind of holding us back and making our lives small as an adult. The fact that you took that trip when you were young proved, you know, kind of set something in your cells that said ‘no, no, this is good.’ It overrides that fear in your brain that says, ‘oh, there’s gonna be too many unknowns going to do that by yourself’ Does that make sense?
Claire: Yeah it does. You can now look back at it now and go ‘I did that. I did it.’ And as I said to you before we started recording, I said ‘this is terrifying sitting in the studio. It’s terrifying,’ but if it wasn’t it wouldn’t be worth doing—
Paul: Are you still feeling fear or do you feel more relaxed now?
Claire: I still feel a bit nervous but that’s because there’s a big microphone [laughing] looking at me but I feel a bit more relaxed now, yeah.
Paul: Well, you’re doing great.
Claire: Thank you.
Paul: You know one of the things I love about doing this podcast is there is no wrong. I suppose just dishonesty would be the only thing wrong, but hopefully you feel safe enough that you don’t need to—
Claire: Absolutely. That’s not going to be beneficial at all, and I will know, so…
Paul: I do all the lying.
Claire: Yeah, you do all the lying.
Paul: I do all the lying. Uh, so what are some seminal moments, did you want to talk, was there something that happened on that vacation in Turkey?
Claire: Yes, there was. Kind of linking in with some moments. As I mentioned, I was kind of bullied from an early age, and because I was very sickly when I was young, there were problems with when my mum had me, and I had problems with my eyes when I was younger and I have asthma. I was just very sickly, so I didn’t do sports and I was thin, and I liked reading, and I was a loner, so I was a target. I got bullied verbally and physically a lot at school, and I mean physically, I mean being—
Paul: Hit.
Claire: Bruises. Not hit so much but it was a lot where I’d be sitting at my desk and someone would have their back to me, like their chair, and they would just shove their chair out, and I would hit the table right under the ribs, and I would be bruised and I’d start wheezing. I had it once where I had like a handful of grass thrown at my face when I was asthmatic. I was very sickly with asthma and hayfever, and they would do that because it would affect me. And I also had it where, I remember once at school, and I was probably about 7, 7, 8 maybe, and it was like the group of boys and they came up to me and they just pulled my dress up, pulled my pants down and laughed. And, at such an early age, that definitely had an effect on me and this does link in to Turkey. When I was in Turkey, I was 14 and we went on a tour, and I was on a tall bus and my family were asleep. This was on the same trip. There was a tour guide, and he basically molested me. There is no other way to put it. I froze, and I couldn’t do anything, and I still beat myself up about that. And he, I just sat there, and he put his hand down my, up my t-shirt. I was wearing a t-shirt. And I had like jeans on or shorts or something I can’t remember, and he put his hand down those and I just froze, and I couldn’t move. My dad was right there. And all that was going through my dad was ‘if I tell my dad, he’s going to be so angry. He’s gonna be so angry. He’s gonna kill this guy.—
Paul: Oh my God.
Claire: And I couldn’t do anything, and that definitely did affect me because I am very independent and as you mentioned before I do still have that anxiety about dates and about that side of it. And that’s definitely from that, and I…
Paul: And by the way, the freezing, I cannot tell you the number of emails I read, and survey responses, of people, boys and girls, who had that happen to them. You know they always talk about fight or flight but freeze is the third ‘F’ and it is as common as the other two. So many instances of people, and then they blame themselves because they didn’t do anything but I know that feeling. You just, you feel, you’re almost like you leave your body, and your mouth becomes frozen, and your face gets hot, and your stomach falls, and you don’t even—
Claire: There’s again going to someone else’s words ‘cause I’m not that articulate, I read Watership Down when I was very young, and I re-read it a few years ago, and there’s the line in it where he basically says about the rabbit going “thawn” [spelling/word unknown] “in a state of thawn” and it really stuck with me because it’s the rabbit in headlights that just freezes and let’s the car coming at it, just take it away. I was like ‘that’s it!’ That’s exactly what it was. That’s exactly how it felt. I just froze, I had no control, like you said, and you just leave. You don’t know how you’re going to react and everyone goes ‘why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t you push them?’
Paul: They don’t understand. And the predator, I would imagine, in their mind, they’re looking for anything that tells them that this is ok, so in his mind, ‘she’s not stopping me so…’, you know, who knows, maybe if you had said something, maybe he would have still done it but—God that’s such a, that is—
Claire: It definitely impacted me, even in little ways, I mean you kind of figure things out after doing work on myself and going ‘that’s why I did this, I know’ because when I was in Turkey, I naturally am blond, I have read hair at the moment, and I had very long, blond hair, both me and my sister did as a child and in Turkey, the men loved blond hair, they loved it. They would come up to us, and they would stroke our hair, and they would—
Paul: That is beyond creepy.
Claire: They would say stuff about our hair. It was a focus. A few years after that, I shaved my hair off, and I needed to do that.
Paul: Bald?
Claire: About an inch long.
Paul: Really?
Claire: Uh huh. And I think it’s to do with that. My hair got shorter and shorter and shorter after that, and it went every color under the rainbow, and I do think it was part of that. I felt so ‘this makes me a target.’
Paul: And the other thing I want to point out to that, why a lot of people will continue to blame themselves is when they’re molested, or somebody forces themselves or kind of corners somebody, and that person freezes, their body may even respond with pleasure, but their sole is screaming ‘this is weird. This doesn’t feel right.’ You know their spirit is really what’s getting molested, but because their body may respond, they may, after the fact, blame themselves, and say ‘I wanted it. I deserved it.’ But it’s what it does to your spirit.
Claire: Exactly, and it’s like when you’ve said before on the podcast, you know, and there is that little voice in my head when I’m telling you saying ‘yeah but I wasn’t raped by my father. I wasn’t repeatedly, and everything.’ It is that thing, but it had such an effect on me, and I now what effect it had on me—
Paul: Claire, you were molested next to your father, that—and yet you want to minimize that.
Claire: I know, I know. But still there’s that voice that says—
Paul: And you didn’t feel protected enough by your father. You didn’t feel that your needs were important enough—
Claire: You wanna hear the best thing. I told him years later. He didn’t say anything.
Paul: What?
Claire: And I know my dad loves me. I know he does. He won’t talk about stuff like this. I will say to him now, I will go to my parents, and they will be like, they will go ‘well how are you?’ ‘Yeah, I’m great. I went to support group the other night, and it was great, and you know, I’ve been to the GP to talk about the tablets that I’m on and…’ I’m completely open with it. I came out as bisexual to my mom and dad about three years ago, which kind of also ties in, we can go into that if you want, which ties into the thing with Turkey. They, at the time, the first thing that my mum said was, and I really wish I had done it a different way because I did it where I was crying, and I was like ‘[sobbing sound] I’ve got to, I’ve got to…’ which is kind of the worst thing cause it’s like I’m getting upset because there’s something wrong with it, and there’s not, and I should have been like ‘I’m fabulous! and I’m bisexual.’ But instead I got so worked up and told my mum and dad and the first thing my mum said was ‘does that mean I’m not gonna have any grandchildren?’
Paul: Oh my God.
Claire: Yep. Thanks Mum. They have never mentioned it since. And that is, I mean if anyone’s listening, I mean, coming out is a huge thing in itself, and I would love it if at some point you did an episode on that because it is a huge thing, and I was also raised evangelical. So, I was beating myself up about it in all directions—
Paul: Oh my God.
Claire: And I’m not now. I left the church when I was about 12. But, you know, the thing is when you come out to someone, and you, it’s great if people go ‘yeah, yeah, that’s fine.’ If they never mention it again, you just feel, I feel like there is still a problem, you know, because they don’t want to talk about it. You need to talk about it. It’s like anything. I f you don’t talk about it’s kind of like you’re pretending it never happened.
Paul: Right, screaming silence.
Claire: Exactly. Sometimes I’ll have my mum up, and my dad, and I’ll comment on some woman on the tv or something, and they just kind of go ‘uh hm’. Don’t say anything and I just think ‘well, that’s them, and they need to work through it.’ I can’t force change upon my mum and dad. I can just be as open as I can be and hope they’re taking it in.
Paul: Was the attraction to girls—was that there, and this may sound incredibly ignorant on my part, was that there always, or did women suddenly seem more attractive and safe after the thing in Turkey happened?
Claire: I think a bit of both. It also linked in with when I was 17—do we have time to go into this?
Paul: We have time, yeah.
Claire: When I was 17, I had a very close friend who I worked with, a guy. I won’t say his name. I’ll call him Tom. And Tom and I worked together, and we got on really well. If two people could be more similar that I’ve ever met. I mean, so similar, so on the same wavelength. Apart from the fact that he had this real thing about teasing people about being gay. He would throw around the term ‘faggot.’ ‘Oh, he’s a fag’ and all this kind of thing. We went out drinking one night with another friend of ours, a male, and the whole night this guy Tom was just teasing this other guy and saying, and calling him a ‘fag’ and just being really passive-aggressive about it. And this guy in the end, turned around, clearly he’d had enough, turned around, grabbed me, stuck his hand up my top, squeezed my breast, and snogged me, stuck his tongue down my throat and then pushed me away and went ‘there’. And then this guy Tom went, ‘so you prove you’re not gay by kissing a fucking dike?’ And that definitely had an effect because—
Paul: What kind of friend is this Tom guy?
Claire: You wanna hear the best bit? He came out five years later.
Paul: Oh I was gonna say that’s not a shock.
Claire: Yeah, I’m no longer in contact with him. I would like to get back in contact because clearly he was going through a lot of shit. About a year after that, he kind of got into some stuff I didn’t want to get into, including drugs. I kind of tried to do as much as I could but I was going through, I wasn’t in the right place either, and in the end, I had to go ‘you need to sort yourself out.’
Paul: And I can’t imagine the kind of homophobia that was thrown around the kitchen table of Tom, when he was a kid. It must have been terrifying.
Claire: Oh yeah. He was from South Africa as well. He had a very strict upbringing. A very strict religious upbringing, so I’m sure it did. But that as well, at the time, it was just ‘ok, so I’m just, it’s just someone else who’s just taking it, you know, it’s just—
Paul: ‘I have no control over my own body. Anybody can touch it at will.’
Claire: Yeah, and then for him to go ‘oh she’s a fucking dike.’ And that was when I was like ‘well am I? Am I?’ I mean, what was going on here. And I know when I was listening to your episode this morning, which was Dan…? I can’t remember—
Paul: Dan Telfer. And by the way, there’s a good coming-out episode. Steven Mancuso is a good episode about coming out, and Dave Holmes. I don’t know whether or not it will have aired when this episode airs, but Dave Holmes talks about—
Claire: Oh ok, I look forward to hearing that. I listened to his one, and he kind of mentioned about wondering about his sexuality and saying ‘I wish I was gay because there would be a reason for this.’ And I had points, and I don’t want to go ‘coming out as a bisexual is harder than coming out as gay because it’s still the effect it has on you’ but I would be like ‘well, I must be gay’ and then I’d kind of go down that thing, and I’d kind of beat myself up for that, and then I’d see a guy and be like ‘oh, that guy’s so hot. I’m not gay, so I must be straight! But I’m not straight. What am I!’ You know that was really difficult. And then I, what you said, and am I just thinking this because of what’s happened to me? And it’s not. And I at the point now---and it’s not even about sex. It’s just I’ll see someone and go ‘that person’s attractive. What gender are they?’ It’s not the first thing I think of.
Paul: That’s awesome.
Claire: And I’m completely happy with that, you know, again, I will talk about it, and I will be very open about it. Particularly things like that, which are slightly more political like that, and I would say I’m atheist, and growing up Christian. I’ll be very open about it, about talking about it, but it’s kind of the more deep-seated feeling stuff you know when I feel low that is me going ‘[makes chopping sound], no, no one’s getting in here.’ But I wanted to bring that up because I think that had something to do with it because, again, that was 14 and that was 17 and that was when I was starting to develop an interest, but I felt like both times I started I just kind of got shut down because it was like ‘I have no control. I’m just here for someone else to go ‘right, I’ll have a bit of that’’.
Paul: I’m an object.
Claire: So what’s the point?
Paul: Do you feel safer about your own body and it’s boundaries now or do you still have anxiety that somebody’s gonna touch or…
Claire: Yeah, I mean, I wrote some fears before I came here and it’s funny, a lot of them are very body-intrusive. I think that has something to do with it. I think that’s where it’s come from. I do still have some issues. I don’t tend to have issues so much with my body. I live with four other women and every day I’m like, I hear ‘I’ve got cellulite, I’ve got this, I’ve got that.’ I couldn’t give a fuck if I have cellulite. So what, that’s what happened. You know, one of my flatmates is 25 and wants to get botox. “You’re 25!” And I just think, yeah probably got wrinkles, but that’s life, that’s living. It’s like, I have tattoos, I have scars. That’s what you accumulate. That shows that I’ve lived, and I don’t want to change it. I might want to change my mind when everything sags in a few years. So I don’t have issues with my body in that respect but definitively with physical intimacy still makes me uncomfortable. Yeah, it definitely does. I find that easier with women. Which again, I don’t know if that’s to do with what’s happened to me or if that’s where I land on the Kinsey scale. I don’t know.
Paul: I don’t think it matters.
Claire: I don’t really care.
Paul: The body intrusion thing, I really relate to. I used to have this, before I set more boundaries with my mom, I had a fear that I was gonna get cancer, and it wasn’t the cancer that I was afraid of. It was, I wouldn’t be able to tell my mom that she can’t be in my hospital room and that I would be trapped in a bed with her there every day. And I would have to re-live all of that stuff from being 10, 11 years old, and her being invasive with me and my body, and no privacy, and it’s weird how that stuff just kind of gets tattooed onto our soul.
Claire: I was just gonna say it gets under our skin. And then I was like ‘No pun intended’. But it does, it definitely does. Saying about the podcast, saying about it’s scary but that’s why you do it. I’ve tried to make that so much my philosophy. I think with the physical intimacy, that’s something I struggle with, but I do do it. I love dating. Love dating. I love meeting new people. That’s the kind of side of it. Then when it gets a bit too serious, that’s when I go ‘[makes shaking sound] Oh, I don’t know“
Paul: What are you afraid is going to happen?
Claire: It’s just that loss of control. I don’t know what’s going to happen. When I am physically intimate, I do find it quite uncomfortable. Sex isn’t a bit priority for me.
Paul: Do you find it uncomfortable with both men and women?
Claire: I would say I find it more uncomfortable with men, but yeah, both because we’re all kind of, we’re all bodily fluids by the end of the day, you know, we’re all more similar than we would like, so—
Paul: Are you afraid that there’s gonna be something about them that grosses you out or there’s gonna be something about you that grosses them out?
Claire: I think a bit of both. Yeah, I think a bit of both, and genitalia isn’t that nice to look at anyways. So I think it’s a bit of both and then it’s almost the kind of thing, then I start getting past the physical thing and go ‘then we’re gonna like, when we’re gonna be lying in bed, and the we’re gonna be talking and they’re gonna find out what I’m really like and they’re gonna find out I’m crazy and then they’re gonna run! So I’m gonna run fast.’ It’s that classic thing of ‘well I’m gonna leave first, so they don’t leave me.’
Paul: Genitalia I think sometimes is like a movie. It may not be best in the first row. [laughs]
Claire: Yeah, I agree. [laughs]
Paul: Some are great in the first row, but… So what else would you like to touch on? Are there any other seminal moments from your life? Do you want to do a fear thing—
Claire: I would, yeah---
Paul: Or is there something else you want to talk about?
Claire: I’ll have a quick look ‘cause I wrote some notes, but I don’t think there was really anything. Oh, podcasting. If you wanna--- as I was saying to you earlier---if you want to become confident, more confident, start a podcast and then edit your podcast because I’ve done that and you really—after 2 episodes of editing out every “um,” every pause, you go ‘I’m tired of this. I don’t give a shit about what I sound like!’
Paul: Well it’s good that you can get to that.
Claire: Oh yeah. I really don’t care. And I’m very aware that I ‘um’ and I pause and I stammer, and I probably talk too much. But I don’t care. I’m just like ‘oh so what. People say they enjoy listening to the podcast so I’m just gonna go ‘ok, alright.’
Paul: That’s great. What is the name of your podcast?
Claire: We did one called CarnyCast which is a television one, and I appear on various ones—
Paul: You guys talked about the HBO show Carnivale which was on for a season or two?
Claire: Two seasons, yes, in 2005 I think. But I appear on a lot of podcasts, so if people really want to get more of my voice, follow me on Twitter, which is Maiafire M-A-I-A-F-I-R-E and then I usually post what I’m gonna be on.
Paul: Ok, well we’ll put links to your stuff on this. Do you want to do a fear off?
Claire: Yeah, definitely. I have a few. Hopefully I can think of some more.
Paul: I’m gonna be reading the fears of a listener named Kay. And, she writes “First and foremost, I’m afraid that writing down/articulating my fears will not be helpful at all.”
Claire: Ooh
Paul: Right out of the gate! Setting herself on fire.
Claire: I fear that I will take after my grandfather and possibly my mother and develop Alzheimer’s.
Paul: She writes that “I’m afraid that I will die instantly like in a car crash and won’t have time to possibly work through my crippling fear of death and experience peace before the big event.” Oh, and “I’m also afraid that I’ll have the long lingering death I hope for, that I will suffer and still not experience that peace I so badly want.”
Claire: Wow. I fear that I will eat too much red meat and get a tapeworm and have to do that thing where you apparently have to put a cut on your leg and then you have to tie the tapeworm’s head to a match. Then you have to pull it out a bit at a time, and I will see this tapeworm, this parasite in my body.
Paul: Are you shitting me? That’s what you have to do?
Claire: No, that’s what you have to do. Apparently if you see it under the skin, apparently that’s the way of doing it. You like cut so you can pull the very end, and then you tie the tapeworm around a match, and then every day you turn it so you are pulling it out.
Paul: Ohhhh!
Claire: Just the idea of seeing some of it. No, no, no.
Paul: Oh my God! I had a—
Claire: I don’t know if that is general medical practice. All these doctors are gonna write in now and go ‘No that’s not what it was.’ But I remember seeing that one time.
Paul: One of the worst nightmares I ever had one time was that there was a big tapeworm in my ass, and I woke up and told my wife this, and she laughed so hard. And she had to hold a plate of milk near my asshole to lure the tapeworm out. Yeah, and she’s like, “Oh my God. I wish you hadn’t have told me that.” And I’m sure the listener feels the same way right now. But there’s something about a tapeworm that is just—it’s like the movie Alien. The thought of something with a head inside you is fucking awful! Alright, whose turn is it. That was yours right? Kay says, “I’m terrified of having children even though I love children and I know I’d be a great mother. I’m afraid of the complete loss of my identity as an individual. I won’t be Kay anymore. I’ll be Sally’s mommy for the rest of my life.”
Claire: You wanna know something. My flatmate who I am staying with at the moment said that exact same thing to me this morning.
Paul: Really?
Claire: Uh mm. She and her husband are thinking about having children, and she said that she’s really scared that that will define her and that being defined as a mother.
Paul: Well, she actually had a little bit more to that one. She write, “Any negative feelings I experience either won’t be legitimate because look at the beautiful baby and won’t matter as long as Sally is healthy and happy.”
Claire: It’s my turn? Here’s another similar, I’m worried about getting a blood infection or septicemia.
Paul: Kay says, “I’m worried that I’m living beyond my financial means and don’t even know it. I’m afraid that in like 5, 10 15 years I will be in a situation where I won’t be able to pay my rent or bills, and I’ll end up homeless or worse that I’ll end up relying on other people for help.”
Claire: I’m afraid that my bad posture will mean that eventually I will become a hunchback.
Paul: But you’ll always have a job ringing the bells at Notre Dame.
Claire: Exactly. [laughs]
Paul: “I’m afraid that my students are no better off when they leave me than when I got them.”
Uh, yes, her first short one.
Claire: Yeah. I’m afraid that when I hug people I’m being too clingy and thus I’m becoming my mother.
Paul: I have that too.
Claire: I’m kind of like ‘how long do I hug?’
Paul: I had that the other night. I was at my support group, and I was like ‘oh my God. What if I’m the creepy dude and I don’t know it?’ What if I don’t know it.
Claire: And I am a big hugger. I love hugging people.
Paul: Yes, me too.
Claire: But I’m always like ‘they might not like it’ but then you don’t want to go ‘Can I hug you? And how long can I hug you before it’s inappropriate?’ Yeah.
Paul: Right! Kay says, “I’m afraid that my friends aren’t friends at all. They just feel sorry for me.”
Claire: Oh, oh, that’s, yeah.
Paul: It’s hard to know when hers end because some of hers are double fears that are paired together so I probably should have read these first but I also kind of like grabbing a sheet that I had printed out—
Claire: And then just going with it.
Paul: Seeing it as I read it for the first time.
Claire: I am terrified that I’m gonna develop arthritis in my hands, and I will no longer be able to draw. Terrified. Every time I do this, and hear creaking, I’m like [gasps].
Paul: My support group had a guy come in and speak about six months ago and he is a Disney animator. And he got paralyzed on the drawing half of his body, and he re-taught himself to draw with his other hand, and he put a book out.
Claire: What was his name?
Paul: I can’t remember his name. I’ve got his name in my phone book.
Claire: I studied Disney when I was younger. That was my dream. When I grew up, I was going to be a Disney animator, and then I realized, I’m far too impatient to be an animator.
Paul: But he did a book that is all his drawings, and his drawings with his other hand now. And just hearing this guy tell the story, I was like ‘when we decide that we are not going to be, that we are not going to quit,’ and this sounds so Rudy for me to say this, the human spirit is fucking amazing. When we decide to stick up for ourselves and do something and say we can do it and give it our best shot.
Claire: Exactly.
Paul: It’s fucking amazing.
Claire: And at least you’ve tried. We’ve just had the Paralympics in London. They’re amazing.
Paul: I find them tedious.
Claire: Well I was inundated with them, living so close to London, but we would meet some of the athletes around town and chat with them, and just amazing, amazing.
Paul: I like to go to the Special Olympics and from the stands scream every time “I could beat that guy! Come on!”
Claire: Oh, it’s your turn.
Paul: This is the trouble. When I print these out, they’re single-spaced and sometimes it’s hard to find out where I was. “I’m afraid that I will get into some kind of trouble with the law. Accessory to smoking marijuana or something equally ridiculous and I’ll never be able to teach again.”
Claire: I am terrified that I will suffocate in the air. Actually, I think that was one that I sent you before, and I sent you some fears, and I said that I was terrified of drowning in the air. And I think that comes from my asthma. I am so scared that my lungs will just stop working.
Paul: That must be scary. Jesus.
Claire: I haven’t had, I mean, my asthma now is manageable. I am very wheezy in LA but I think it’s the smog and the dust. But I haven’t had a severe attack since I was probably about 13. But it’s still scary. It’s just I have to take drugs every day for it. It’s just that my lungs will just give up, and I’ll drown in the air is terrifying.
Paul: That’s scary. Good luck with that. Kay writes, “I’m afraid that I will be in a life-threatening situation where I know exactly what to do driving my car into deep water for example: undo seat belt, break a window, swim out, swim parallel into the current until you get to shore, but I am physically unable to do it. I die anyway, and on the evening news they say, ‘she could’ve saved her own life if she had only known these steps.”
Claire: Follow these basic steps. I am scared of the “too lates”. To be specific, I am scared that I don’t want children now, but I will when I’m 65, and it will be too late. Or I’m scared that I will have wanted to do something and it’s too late.
Paul: Yeah, I think that one is really, really common. I think that one lives inside of us.
Claire: Yeah, I think it’s part of us. It is part of that thing that you say I’m not enough, I’m not doing enough.
Paul: I’ve blown it. I’ve blown it. My path has been wrong. There is nothing like those moments in life when you say I love the path I’m on. I love all the bumps that I’ve been through. They were necessary for me to be the person I am and to be in the position I’m in right now. And I am just gonna love the fucking hand that I’ve been dealt. Yeah, there’s a lot of twos in there, but there’s some aces.
Claire: Exactly. Yeah, I think going back to the art thing, I’ve got quite the odd sense of humor and I love like dark comedy, and I don’t mind the macabre. My poor dad, too go off on a tangent, sorry, the last three times that me and my dad have had like a day out in London, and he’s like “alright, let’s go and do something touristy. Where do you want to go?” The first time we went to a prison museum. These are all my choices. Second time we went to High Gate cemetery, which is this gorgeous old Victorian cemetery which was beautiful to look at and find out the history of it. The third time, we went to the Lifeworks exhibit, which is skinned animals, and it’s all about anatomy.
Paul: Oh my God.
Claire: My dad, my poor dad, is just like ‘this is so macabre.’ But I love it, and I definitely think that has come from the dark kind of places I’ve been in my head, and it’s gone into my art. And it means I’m less scared of it, and I was looking at these skinned animals, beautiful, it’s like the anatomy and it was amazing. My dad was just like ‘it’s a skinned elephant. What the hell.’ So that’s getting a positive out of it, and I can look at it and go ‘well, I wouldn’t have that unless I’d been through all this.’ So…
Paul: I find comfort from things that are dark.
Claire: Oh definitely. My favorite film is Harold and Maude.
Paul: Oh that’s a beautiful, beautiful movie.
Claire: I love it. It’s hilarious.
Paul: I love that scene where it’s sunset and you just the hearse driving in the distance.
Claire: Yeah when I’m going up to San Francisco I’m gonna go and look at I think a couple of places they filmed at.
Paul: Hal Ashby was an incredible director.
Claire: Yeah, he was. And I love Cat Stevens as well. That started my Cat Stevens love I think Harold and Maude.
Paul: Al right. Let’s do a couple more fears and then let’s get into some loves. Let’s see. Kay says, “I’m terrified that my epileptic student will have a seizure in my class. I will do everything exactly right but she will die anyway. All my planning and practicing and perfectionism will have been for nothing.”
Claire: I have that one too. I’m trained in First Aid. And I’m terrified that something will happen to someone, and I’ll do it wrong, or I’ll do what I can and they’ll still die, and it will be my fault because I’ve done something incorrect.
Paul: I would imagine a lot of people hear that or have had that happen and blame themselves. A lot of soldiers—I’ve been corresponding with a soldier, and she said that something that will happen commonly is somebody will say ‘hey, let’s switch duties. I wanna take today off.’ And they will switch shifts, and that person will die, that they had just switched with, and that person won’t be able to forgive themselves.
Claire: Yeah, they must have it as well with doctors.
Paul: I think the human brain is always looking for a way to make ourselves wrong. Unless we decide to block out that.
Claire: I don’t think I have any more.
Paul: Oh, perfect. Let’s jump into the loves.
Claire: I think you have some of mine there as well.
Paul: I printed yours out in case you needed them.
Claire: In case I run out.
Paul: I’m gonna be reading some that I got off of Twitter. We did a love off on Twitter. I’ll start—
Claire: Which are great by the way. I love going onto my Twitter feed and seeing them.
Paul: I haven’t done them in a while, so I should do another love off. This is from Psychic Stefano: “ I love knowing that some day it will all end and knowing that it will still all be ok.” that’s beautiful.
Claire: Yeah. I love cracking the spine of a book I just bought.
Paul: Hank Thomson says “I love when you use tape and the previous person was thoughtful enough to fold the end even if that person was me.”
Claire: I love it when on the rare occasion when my dad is genuinely silly.
Paul: Victoria Eden says “I love finishing a good book and finding out it has a sequel.”
Claire: Oh yes. Definitely. I love sitting on bus and catching scent of a perfume and just finding it really, really sexy.
Paul: Yeah, and it’s the perfect distance. It’s not too strong, and it’s not coming and going. You can just—
Claire: Yeah, you can catch it every so often.
Paul: I love it when it reminds you of somebody from your past and it’s a pleasant memory. It’s a perfume that they wore.
Claire: Just scents like that, it can just take you back like that.
Paul: They say that your sense of smell is most closely related to emotion. I think they say that.
Claire: I think they do as well.
Paul: If not, I’m gonna be sure that they start saying that. Victoria—
Claire: I’ll start it. I’ll start with England, you start with over here.
Paul: Victoria Eden says “I love the smell of fresh ginger.”
Claire: I love when I’m getting the bus home, and I’m sitting on the bus, and I really, really have to pee, and then I get home, and I just sit on the toilet and go “Ohhh!” Empty my bladder.
Paul: I had that one yesterday where I was like ‘do I want to try and wait in line to go to this public bathroom or am I gonna roll the dice and wait until I go home. And then I do this weird thing where I get home but I was like ‘oh, I need to bring the garbage cans in. I’m gonna hold it again and see if I can make it.’ And when I did finally go to the bathroom, it was almost like a shiver up your spine where it feels so fucking good.
Claire: I love it.
Paul: Let’s see, this is from Protagnostic, it says “I love stumbling into unexpected deeper truths.” Oh that’s a good one.
Claire: I love going on my lunch break at my work at my office and going down to the woods behind my office and picking blackberries directly off the bushes and eating them. Fresh blackberries, lovely.
Paul: There’s nothing like blackberries. Steve Young says, “I love laughing with my friend the other night at a dive-y Chinese restaurant at my awesomely grammatically incorrect fortune.”
Claire: That’s great. I love going to karaoke with a particular friend of mine and singing the entire Blues Brothers soundtrack. My friend who is nicknamed Jake and who calls me Elwood—
Paul: Oh wow. Steve Young writes, “I love that you turned me on to Ronna and Beverly.”
Claire: I love browsing old comics in a comic book store and finding one that is the one, the exact one that I need.
Paul: Oh that’s great. Steve Young also writes, you’ll probably like this one, “I love how the pool in building reminds me of a David Hockney painting.”
Claire: Awesome. I love being able to just smile and say thank you when someone gives me a compliment.
Paul: I’m gonna read some of the ones that you sent to me a while ago.
Claire: Oh ok.
Paul: I love watching music videos by OK Go.
Claire: I love lucid dreaming.
Paul: I love finishing a project that at one point I didn’t believe I could even attempt.” That’s a great one.
Claire: I love the lead up to electrical storms.
Paul: I love the short fur on my cat’s nose. That’s a great one. I love the fur on my dogs’ noses.
Claire: I love the way my cat smells as well.
Paul: You wrote, “I love logging onto my email and discovering that someone has purchased one of my prints.” Oh, that’s got to be nice. What is the address where people can buy your prints?
Claire: I can’t remember. I have an Etsy store at which I sell prints on, and they’re mainly stuff to do with pop culture. I sell post cards, but if you go on Etsy and look for maiafire, which is my Twitter name—
Paul: Maiafire, M-A-I-
Claire: A-F-I-R-E.
Paul: We’ll put a link.
Claire: Thanks.
Paul: Whose turn? Your turn or your turn?
Claire: I haven’t got any more here.
Paul: You’re done?
Claire: I can probably think of one. What I said earlier, I love Cat Stevens.
Paul: And I’m gonna read the one that’s after that on your list. You wrote, “I love when I am able to extinguish the wicks on my fire staff just as a song ends, and time is just right.” Well I think that’s a beautiful one to end on. Claire Laffar, thank you so much for being you.
Claire: Thank you. Thank you for having me. I am very happy to be here.
Paul: And I hope you have a wonderful rest of your trip.
Claire: Fingers crossed, yes. Thank you.
Paul: Many thanks to Claire, and she did have a great rest of her vacation. We taped that episode I guess it would have been about six months ago. Before I dive into some surveys and emails I want to take it out with, and we’ve got quite a few, I want to remind you guys that there are a couple of different ways that you can support this show. You can support it financially by going to the website mentalpod.com and making a one-time PayPal donation, or my favorite, a recurring donation. You only have to set it up once and it just takes care of itself every month. You can do it for as little as five bucks a month. We got some super generous people out there doing 20 bucks a month, 25 bucks a month. I appreciate the person that even does a single donation of a dollar. It all adds up to bringing me a little closer to my dream of supporting myself doing this show. You can support us financially also by shopping through our Amazon portal. It’s on the home page, right hand side about halfway down. Doesn’t cost you anything. Amazon gives us a couple of nickels. You can also support us non-financially by going to iTunes and giving us a good rating. That boosts our ranking, brings more people to the show. And you can help us by spreading the word through social media about the podcast. Alright, let us get to some surveys.
This one is from Struggle in a Sentence survey filled out by a woman who calls herself CeeHawke, she’s straight and in her 20s, and about her depression she writes: “Like an all-encompassing fog that keeps everything good out and everything bad in. This makes me feel helpless, alone, and suicidal.” About her anxiety, she writes, “Like a microscopic ice pick that keeps chipping away at my skull, one thought at a time, until there’s whole chunks missing, and I feel like I’ve gone insane.” Other Compulsive Behavior, she writes, “Video games and the internet. A zombie that fails at being a human being. I hate myself for compulsively escaping into mundane entertainment instead of being a productive, creative person.” Oh my God, do I relate to that. Oh, she also continues, “because I was not put on this earth to consume random media mindlessly, but it’s something that I keep on doing to unhealthy amounts whenever I can’t stand to live my life.” I think there’s a lot of people that feel like we do on that one. About her libido, she writes, “I feel guilty that I’m not interested in sex anymore, and it worries me that someday my boyfriend will leave me because of it. I’m not sure who to blame, the depression or the antidepressants.” About being a new college graduate with no family in the country, she writes “it’s stressful thinking that if I fail at life in this country, which I grew up in most of my life, my parents will pull me back into our family’s third world country, and I’ll be stuck working for them. I won’t be my own woman in a progressive first world country. I’ll just be someone’s daughter to be married off to a guy of the exact same ethnicity and social class, and there goes all my independence, hopes, and dreams.” Wow, that’s intense. Thank you for sharing that.
This is from the Shouldn’t Feel This Way survey by a guy who calls himself “Linden.” He’s gay, in his 20’s, was raised in a pretty dysfunctional environment. What would you like people to say about you at your funeral? He says, “He made us laugh deeply. He made us laugh because he knew pain and used it to lift others up.” How does a Friday night make you feel? “Like I do have a purpose here.” Oh, that’s beautiful. If you had a time machine, how would you use it? “I’d take it back to a time in my childhood when I didn’t feel anxious and depressed. It’s hard to remember what that feels like, and I wonder if I ever have.” So many people write basically that same thing. And I feel that way too. What do you feel that you don’t feel you should feel? I’m supposed to feel thrilled and accomplished about getting into every grad school program I applied to, but I don’t. I feel overwhelmed by the choices I have to make, and like a loser for waiting so long to do it.” How does writing that make you feel? He writes, “Like maybe I’m too fucking hard on myself.” Ya think?! Trust me from one person to another, I get that. I get the being so hard on ourselves. You know, I was thinking the other day why it is that we love contradictions in characters in art, movies, television. We love the gray area. We love the fuzzy, the not easily definable, but we hate it in our lives. It’s like we have OCD about our lives. And we have this high expectation that everything should have an answer and nothing should be fuzzy or hazy or undecided. Or we shouldn’t have two personality qualities that don’t make sense. But that’s part of what, you know, like what Greg Berhendt says “makes us beautifully fucked up” people so I’m gonna try to embrace that part of myself that is contradictory, that is not easily defined and try to be ok with that part of my life that I haven’t been able to file away. Do you think you feel you’re abnormal for feeling what you do? He writes, “I do. I don’t think that other people live with a constant stream of self-doubt.” [laughs] You would be wrong there. “I feel like everything I do is made 1,000 times harder because I have a giant weight on my back.” And sadly we’re the only ones that can take that weight off our back. I know that sounds cheesy but it’s the fuckin’ truth. Would knowing other people feel the same way make you feel better about yourself? He writes, “In a way. I realize that other people have mental illness and these things too. I guess I just feel bad for all of us. We’re a whole lot of miserable fucks, and everyone else is having the time of their lives.” You know, I think the people that are having the time of our lives are the slim majority, and I don’t think it is a constant. I’ve yet to meet anybody that doesn’t feel like a three-legged dog in some way. Thank you for that Linden.
This is from the Happy Moments survey. You know, let’s fuckin’ spice it up a little bit. God damnit Gilmartin let’s get some chuckles in here. Some sunshine. This was filled out by Chelsea, who’s between 18 and 19. I’m gonna guess she’s 18-1/2, raised in a stable and safe environment. Her Happy Moment: “My happy moment came to me when during an anxiety attack I stripped down to my skivvies and plunged into the warm, Mediterranean waters off the coast of Spain. As I swam, I left all the baggage and bullshit on shore. And for the first time in my life, I just felt completely at peace. As long as I swam, nobody and nothing could touch me. Not my past, not the future. I was living only in the present, and the present was beautiful. I even cried.” That’s beautiful. Sadly, she later drowned.
This is from the Struggle in a Sentence survey, filled out by a woman— Actually I’ve got two of her surveys. This is the first of her two surveys. She calls herself A Vintage Shame, so you know it’s gonna be good. You know it’s gonna have a lot of feel-good self-love. She is straight. She’s in her 40’s. About her depression, she writes, “Minor depression is like running through mud in slow motion in dreams.” About her anxiety, she writes, “it steals every other heartbeat and replaces it with raw fear.” Boy, that one really got to me. What a picture, that sentence paints. About her OCD: “An endless rotation of counting and every day infinity.” About her codependency, she writes, “Please don’t leave me again. And about her PTSD: “Out of body experience every time I’m triggered to remember him.” That must be terrible. This is from her Shouldn’t Feel This Way survey. She writes— What would you like people to say about you at your funeral? “She was compassionate and put others first. She was selfless and lived to help others.” How does writing that make you feel? “It makes me feel like I live for other people’s constant approval. I know I have problems with putting myself first but I do like to see others made happy by my actions. I don’t know if this is self-aggrandizing or genuine compassion. The fact that I’m not sure makes me feel conflicted.” You know, my thought on that is, do you enjoy when you do nice stuff for people and nobody’s looking. And if you enjoy that, you know, doing nice stuff for people when you don’t get credit from onlookers, then it’s genuine compassion. That’s my take. If you had a time machine, how would you use it? “I’d go back in time and see what happened to my grandmother on my father’s side. She was extremely secretive about her past and ethnicity. I would want to answer the questions of her life we were never able to.” What do feel that you feel you shouldn’t feel? “I’m supposed to feel good about sex, but I don’t. It’s a gateway to triggers and dissociation. I’m supposed to feel encouraged about starting a new business but I don’t. I feel like it will never come to fruition and that I will be a failure. I’m supposed to be thankful about a childhood and a normal family, but I don’t. I feel like I was overlooked and ignored when I was suffering from sexual abuse from a neighbor. Why didn’t my parents see the signs and notice I wasn’t myself anymore.” How does it make you feel to write that out? “It feels freeing to admit things I would never say to anyone. Unfortunately I feel like the anonymity doesn’t make my speaking out valid. A braver soul would reveal their true identity and be applauded for it. I’m still the wizard behind the curtain or keyboard in this sentence.” You know, I think you gotta start somewhere and writing it out. And I think an anonymous survey is a good place. A lot of people feel an intense emotion when they just type something up that they never typed it out before, so I applaud you for even taking that step. Do you think you’re abnormal for feeling what you do? She writes, “some of the thoughts I have left over from when I was a child suffering from sexual abuse make me wonder if I was just lucky that I never acted on them. There were feelings of beastiality, intercourse with young kids, extreme OCD. Occasionally something will trigger these thoughts to return, but I would never act on them now. The shame with just remembering these thoughts is enough to make me disassociate. So I feel abnormal about long ago feelings but stable in my ability to act them out, unless it’s OCD. I still check outlets and count stairs.” Would knowing other people—you know I never that thought about that but I counted stairs as a kids too. I never thought about that. Would knowing other people feel the same way make you feel better about yourself? She writes, “I think it may in a general way, but the shame has hung on for over 30 years. And that is with extensive counseling, especially the beastiality. I don’t remember a good share of my abuse. I totally blanked it out, so I’m not sure if that is where the beastiality actually happened. It makes me feel sick and anxious just typing it out.” Well, I appreciate your honesty and you’re going into that dark place to share that stuff with us. All of you people that take these surveys and help us get to know you, and help us know that we’re not alone in what we’ve been through.
This is an email I got from a woman who calls herself “J”. She writes, “Hi Paul. I just wanted to let you know I love when you air really long interviews. As far as I’m concerned, you can talk and read surveys etc in the podcast as long as you can stand it. I’m listening to you read the survey answer from the guy who was relieved to have given up the fight to get into shape and lose weight. I completely get that. Something that I’ve learned lately is that survivors of childhood sexual assault often have issues with eating. I’m not assuming that this was the case for the guy, but just to say usually where there’s smoke there’s fire, i.e. there’s always a reason for even the craziest thoughts, feelings, and behaviors we have, and as long as we’re not hurting others, we need to give ourselves a break.” By the way, I hope the person from the previous interview is still listening. “Because of your podcast, I’ve gathered the courage to tell my therapist the details of my childhood sexual assault. I’ve been trying to convince myself that I could heal just by talking about the experience generally without going through the specifics. Your encouragement to be completely honest with my therapist has helped me make major progress in a shorter time than I thought would be possible. That encouragement has also helped me be honest about my feelings about her, all my projections, insecurities, fears, loves, and all the crazy stuff that the therapist client brings up. I’m amazed at the freedom and relief I’m experiencing, although it is not easy. Very challenging, totally worth it. Thank you, J. Love reading that. Love reading that.
We’re in the home stretch. Two more. This is from the Shouldn’t Feel This Way survey. Filled out by a guy who calls himself “S”. He’s straight. He’s between 13 and 19. That’s a pretty big age gap. He’s between a baby and shitting himself in an old folks’ home. He’s shitting himself either way. [laughs] Actually the joke would be, he’s not in diapers, but we can’t get any more specific than that. He was raised in a stable and safe environment. What would you like people to say about you at your funeral? “I would like them to say nothing and listen to my favorite albums.” I kind of like that idea. How does writing that make you feel? “It makes me feel discouraged because I doubt anyone would show up to my goddamn funeral except those who feel obligated.” If you had a time machine, how would you use it? “I would go back to the creation of this earth and witness everything.” I am down for that, if you can get a two for one, I will go there and watch it with you. That would be, that would be really cool. If you wouldn’t be obliterated watching it being created. What do you feel that you feel you shouldn’t feel? “I’m supposed to feel relief that I’m getting help concerning my anxiety, depression, and drug additions, but I don’t feel relieved at all. I realize that therapists, parents, and friends does nothing. I want to stay in my cocoon of social anxiety, depression, and substance abuse.” I urge you “S” to be patient with the process. You know, you’re only a teenager and you’ve got your whole life ahead of you, and I know I say this all the time on the podcast, but I really fuckin’ mean it. Be patient. Be patient with yourself. How does writing your feelings out make you feel? He writes, “It makes me feel as if I’m complaining and whining about something I should be grateful for.” No, those are your feelings, men. Those are your feelings, and we feel what we feel. Do you think you’re abnormal for feeling what you do? “ I don’t think I’m abnormal in my feelings, but I do think my feelings are too complex to understand, let alone others.” Well they can help us with it. They can. But sometimes it takes time. Would knowing other people feel the same way make you feel better about yourself? “Absolutely not. I know other people are anxious, depressed, and trying to cope with those emotions through substance abuse. I’m still stuck here.” Well buddy, I want to send you out a big hug, and let you know you’re not alone, and I thought this would be a fitting happy moment to go on. I thought it would be a bitter sweet moment to go out on, but just, when I read this one, I thought of you. And I thought of your survey response, and so I wanted to follow your survey up with this one.
This is from a Happy Moments survey, filled out by a woman who’s between 18 and 19, calls herself “Heart”. She says, “I tried to kill myself about six months ago after I got discharged from the mental hospital ward. From the mental ward, my friends through me an “I Love You” party. They didn’t know what happened. They just missed me while I was gone for a week. As I was eating cake with my face on it, I thought ‘this is so much better than a funeral.’ It’s amazing how much my brain twisted everything up so bad before. I thought that everyone hated me and didn’t care. I breathed a sigh of relief if I died. Well anybody else that’s feeling stuck, I hope you know you’re not alone, and you know that we just gotta be patient with the process sometimes. I’m in it too, men, I’ve been in it for a couple of months, and it’s comforting to know I’ve been in it before. That makes it easy, but those of you that haven’t gotten a break from it, from the pain, the anxiety, the depression, and you’ve never felt the clouds lift. Trust us that we’ve felt them lift. It can happen. So hang in there, and you’re not alone. And thanks for listening, and I hope I see some of you in Portland.
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