Real stories, told by real people.
We're back! Hope this finds you all in good spirits. Today, we're joined by Clarence, and he's got a story to tell. This conversation will be broken up into two parts. From an early age, and pretty much his whole life, Clarence has suffered from a host of health conditions. Autistic (in the process of undergoing an official diagnosis), ADHD, facial blindness, turrets. amphantasia, all of these disabilities may of put him at a disadvantage.
But, you can't help be inspired after listening him. And how he's been able to work out ways to better himself, mentally, emotionally, and physically. From even teaching himself how to talk. You'll be surprised by helped him.
Clarence also suffered abuse. Sexual, Physical, Mental. Which led to depression, and eventual weight gain. Over 400 lbs, and sleeping 17-18 hours a day for about a year. He was in a bad place. His story, as you may of guessed, didn't end there. It was only the beginning. Listen to Clarence in his own words talk about his journey with claiming a life, his life. And the transformation he was able to accomplish.
If you enjoyed the Show, you can support it with no cost at all. You can rate and review it. We appreciate the feedback. And word a mouth is still the best advertisement, so if you know someone who you think might find value in any of these stories, share it with them.
'Til
very soon,
PEACE!!
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Connect with Clarence :
Reddit : https://www.reddit.com/user/0rsss/
Email : orthrees@gmail.com
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00:00:00
This is Giant's Amongst Us.
00:00:17
We're back and welcome back.
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I want to make it a point right now like I tell the guest every time they get on the
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show to share their story, to speak their peace.
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Thank you to everybody listening.
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All of you tuned in because you could be doing a million other things.
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You could be listening to a thousand other podcasts flipping through the channels trying
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to find you a new series to watch.
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But right now, at this moment, you're tuned into the human experience and sharing in that.
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Appreciate you and your time.
00:01:00
We've got another one for you.
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And today we're joined by Clarence and he's got a story to tell.
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Talk about having the odds stacked up against you and pretty much from out the womb and
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dealing with the whole host of conditions.
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The H.D. autism, facial blindness, Tourette's, but that didn't define him.
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And then there's the abuse, the sexual, emotional, mental, physical, the very thing that can
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destroy a human being.
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They broke him.
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It beat him down and laid him out to the point where he was damn near sleeping all day every
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day for about a year.
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17, 18 hours a day in bed to the point where he picked up weight a lot of weight.
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He said at his highest, he was about 420 pounds, which is 200 kilos or so.
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Poor habits, depression.
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There was a lot of things he was dealing with.
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But for those of you who have listened to the show in the past, you know that it doesn't
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end there and Clarence's story is no different because he also talks about how important
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it was for him to change his environment.
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And that in turn helped him with losing the weight, developing better and healthier habits
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and also helped him with his progress and healing from the trauma, from the neglect and from
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the abuse that he suffered as a kid.
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There's a lot to unpack and I'm sure there's some things that I missed.
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This is going to be broken down into two parts.
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And the first half is pretty much the chunk of our conversation.
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The other half will be released towards the end of the week.
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So be sure to check back with us so you can listen to the rest of it.
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Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, this is Clarence and his story.
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Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for tuning in.
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We've got another story.
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This is about sharing in the human experience and today we are joined by Clarence.
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Clarence, thank you so much for taking time out of your morning and spending some of that
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with us.
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So appreciate it.
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Yep.
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Yeah.
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Thank you for the opportunity.
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I, you know, I really appreciate being able to share my life story because I think I can
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legitimately help other people going through similar things.
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Right on.
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Absolutely.
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So this just started off from the top, but we don't have to get too in depth with it.
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But can you share a little bit with us about your background and where you come from?
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Yeah.
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So I live in the mountains of North Carolina.
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It's a woodland region, a lot of wildlife, a lot of trees.
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I live in a forest.
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My parents, my father, he was in the army.
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He became a long haul truck driver.
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And my mother, she, she's a, she was a substitute teacher at the time.
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I was born.
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And both of them really struggled a lot with, you know, their own problems.
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My father, he probably has autism and he never really learned how to cope with it.
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And so he kind of just distanced himself from people, including his own family.
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My mother, she suffered a lot of trauma as a child.
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And because of that, she would just really dissociate a lot.
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And this, so neither of my parents were really there for me growing up.
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And honestly, it was neglect.
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And it's something I used to blame them a lot for.
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But as I got older, I really realized that a lot of the same things I fell into, you
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know, they were suffering from.
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And so I just, I learned how to forgive them.
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It was, it was pretty bad.
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Do you have any brothers and sisters or were you the only child?
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My father, he had two daughters in his first marriage and then they divorced.
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And my mother, she had my brother, a man I grew up with in her first marriage.
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And then her husband died and then my parents found each other and they had me and my sister.
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Oh, okay.
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Are you in good terms with, with your other siblings?
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Yeah, yeah, it's two of my sisters, they live, you know, halfway across the country
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from me.
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I don't really see them that often.
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But my sister and my brother and my parents, we currently live together right now.
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Oh, okay.
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Right on.
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We were talking not to get right into the heavy stuff, but you do have some things that,
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some challenges in life, let's just say.
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And there was a few of them.
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Can you kind of just flesh it out for us a little bit and talk about some of those things
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that you've dealt with probably from a young age and up until now?
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Yeah.
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Probably the biggest problem I faced whenever I was a kid was sensory sensitivities, which
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is something a lot of autistic people struggle with.
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Whenever I was a kid, my, I was so sensitive to the sunlight that I couldn't really go
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outside.
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Like me looking outside during a sunny day would be kind of like you looking at the sun
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directly to where it would just be completely debilitating to me.
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And it was, it was pretty crazy.
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A lot of sounds, they were really overwhelming for me.
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Just to tie this into something most people probably know.
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You know, stereotypically autistic people, they can't handle touching silk or felt.
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Yeah.
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It's a lot like that.
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How old were you?
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Was it early on or what days when you started to feel this affecting you as a child?
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It was as long as I can remember probably since the day I was born.
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Going outside, a windy days, anything from weather on the fabric.
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Yeah.
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I've never really had problems.
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Honestly, I don't like touching felts.
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For some reason, it reminds me of like, if you've ever been cut really slowly, like
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if you've been cutting, if you cut food with like a dull knife and you accidentally cut
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your finger, it has like slow cut for you.
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You can kind of feel like the individual skin cells part.
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It just feels terrible.
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It felt kind of feels like that to me.
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So it's kind of unnerving to me.
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I don't have that many sensitivities when it came to ever, when it came to touching
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things.
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You also brought up a point that you have a high tolerance for pain and different things
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like that.
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So in the same way that some autistic people, we have too high of a census in some regions
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called like a hypersensitivity.
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We can also have a hyposensitivity where we can't feel things as well.
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I can't really feel pain.
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I can't really feel hunger.
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Like I can probably go like a few days without really feeling any hunger sometimes, depending
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on you know, how much water I drink and what I ate beforehand.
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Yeah, I wonder now that also brings up a point and this is really tying into a few things
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that we, because we had a, we had a good conversation before we actually started recording.
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But now with your weight issues, I wonder if like how that worked out with you, like
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say for instance, you can go days without feeling any hunger or eating a hot-owl or
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when did that start becoming a problem to when you, because you ended up at a, you
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know, a very, very heavy weight.
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That was something that I could imagine took a toll on you physically.
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Probably had some issues during, during school as well because of that.
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Yeah, it was bad.
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To just describe it into the way that I don't feel hunger, a lot of people have the same
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response, but to put it in perspective, I don't feel hunger as much and I also don't
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feel the sensation of fullness as much.
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And since people need to eat every day, it's, it was a lot easier for me to overeat than
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it was for me to under eat because I was always afraid of like having two little foods.
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But honestly, it was mostly trauma that I, I ate that much because, you know, there's
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no, it's hard to become super morbidly obese and, you know, my highest weight, I was like
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420 something pounds.
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And it's, it's definitely difficult to get that heavy.
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That's what I was going to ask you.
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How many, how many years went by for you to reach that weight at your highest?
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Well, honestly, it was probably the time I was in a senior in high school.
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After high school, I got a pretty abusive job where I just worked a lot.
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I worked so much that I forgot to eat and I lost weight because of that.
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All I did was work during that time.
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But yeah, so like 18 is the time I was at that weight.
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18 and you were at 400 and you said about 70, 70 pounds.
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420, I think it was like 426 that might have the biggest weight.
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Wow, that's, that's over 200 kilos for anybody listening who is more familiar with kilograms.
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But my goodness.
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And that was, you were eating, for a fact, it wasn't the healthiest, the healthiest of
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choices.
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And how did you manage to shed that weight?
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Because now you're telling me you're nowhere near that.
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So that's also, that's a lot of work in itself.
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If you did it by diet and exercise, how did you, how did that work out for you?
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So just to describe, on the most basic level, losing weight is about using or eating less
00:10:50
calories than you're burning.
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The easiest way to do that is to eat less food or I should say less calories.
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You can eat the same volume of food, but eat less calories by eating, you know, foods that
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have less calorie density.
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A lot of the foods, the cheapest food, at least here in America is very calorically
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dense because we have, I forget what they're called.
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It's like the government will pay people much subsidies.
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Stuff like corn is subsidized and stuff like wheat are subsidized, stuff like cereal, a
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lot of processed things are subsidized by the government.
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And they're not really the healthiest.
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It's legitimately hard.
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It kind of messed up that the foods that are better for us, more and more expensive, while
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things that will legitimately hurt you, hurt your health, hurt your ability to, you know,
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think because you'll be deprived of vital nutrients are less expensive because of stuff
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like lobbyists.
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But it's just, you know, where we are right now.
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But you, you just eat.
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It's hard.
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A lot of people who try to give you diet plans will focus more on the exercise in your diets.
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But the diet is a vast majority of how you lose weight.
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Just full stop.
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If you change one thing, you, I could honestly, I didn't really change what I was doing physically.
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I wasn't the most active person in the beginning of my weight loss, but I was, it, I can't
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honestly overstate how important the diet is.
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You could have like an Olympic level of training regimen, but you still eat too much food.
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You're not going to lose any weight.
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You can eat less food and just sit on a couch all day.
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You can still lose weight.
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It's not going to be healthy.
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You're going to do things like lose bone density and lose muscle mass, but it's possible.
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And it will actually work compared to the alternative of just exercising a lot and still overeating.
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Yeah, it is what you, what you put in.
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I've heard that mentioned from a lot of people that are involved in, in health and fitness
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nutrition, about 95% of it starts in the kitchen or just in your diet alone, what you're putting
00:13:07
into your body.
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Yeah.
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Well, some of the most important things I think you could learn are like the cooking
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skills because I feel like to a lot of people that's the biggest barrier to losing weight
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is the time you spend cooking.
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So they'll just buy things that aren't healthy for them, but they're time savers.
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And so if you really focus on those skills and learn how to cook efficiently, then it's
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a lot easier.
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It takes out a lot of friction from making healthier choices.
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Right.
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Yeah.
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You were at your highest about 420 now just to give like a rough idea where are you at
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right now?
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I'm probably like 190, 180 pounds, something like that.
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Honestly, I still have some weight that I'm slowly losing, but I dieted to the point where
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I couldn't, you know, get, just to describe this, whenever you, whenever your BMI goes
00:14:01
too low, people will either be able to stop having erections or stop having their period
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because it's your body going like realizing that you're not getting enough food and you
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can't reproduce right now.
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Like you can't provide for a child.
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And so whenever your BMI drops too low, you can't, you can't reproduce.
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And so I dieted to the point without really knowing that was dangerous.
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And I was like, whoa, that's kind of weird.
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You know, I, I just can't get an erection.
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And so I actually gained some more weight back.
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You know, a lot of my, the way I still carry some fat on my stomach.
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And the only way you can really lose that kind of stuff, I believe it's like called
00:14:42
sub dermal fat, skin fat is via exercise.
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So but just to like tie it back into everything, the majority of the weight you lose can be
00:14:53
from diet.
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It's just some of the weight will, you'll run into a wall with that.
00:14:58
And you know, you could, if you do like cardio activity, something like that, you can lose
00:15:04
the weight.
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And that's something I'm in the process of doing right now.
00:15:08
You took matters into your hands.
00:15:10
Like you took responsibility and did it yourself because I'm sure the other option could have
00:15:15
been especially at that point in your life when you, when you were carrying around so
00:15:20
much weight, the other option could have been surgery.
00:15:24
Yeah, I, I don't think less of anyone who does surgery because some people just to tie
00:15:31
this back in with autism.
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It's like how, you know, people with autism, we have a lot of differences in sensory experience,
00:15:37
neurotypical people or, you know, normal people, if you've never heard that word before, anyone
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listening hasn't heard that word before, they have differences in their sensory experience
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as well.
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Some people don't feel hunger as strongly as others and other people feel hunger very
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strongly.
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And whenever you go to that point of being morbidly obese, you stretch your stomach out
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to the point where it's much larger than it is for a normal person.
00:16:03
And so it's so, everything is really stacked up against you whenever you want to like come
00:16:10
back from being that obese.
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And so there's surgical options to help alleviate that, which is like a gastric bypass where
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they take out most of your stomach and some of your intestines.
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Or I believe it's a gastric sleeve where they take out some of your stomach, but leave all
00:16:24
of your intestines intact.
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And if you're struggling with that and you're struggling with hunger, it's just legitimately,
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I think it's a completely valid option.
00:16:36
When you were at your highest, was that something that you thought about or you had your mind
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made up to where I'm going to go ahead and just watch what I'm eating, watch my intake?
00:16:48
So this is a little weird to describe, but most people, they don't, they don't like eating
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the same thing every day.
00:16:57
I think it was an instinct that evolved to stop people from just eating, you know, all
00:17:01
of one thing, like birds are like easy to get game.
00:17:06
They enjoy diversifying their diets, but some autistic people, they don't have that.
00:17:11
And I don't have that.
00:17:12
I eat the same meal every day.
00:17:14
You made losing weight, much less of a learning curve for me because, you know, a lot of it
00:17:21
is learning how to cook, not just one meal, but learning how to cook a lot of different
00:17:27
meals.
00:17:28
And that just makes it so much more easy, so much easier to, you know, change your diet.
00:17:34
So you had one choice meal that you ate every day or the same thing that you were eating
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day in, day out?
00:17:40
Yeah.
00:17:41
I eat chicken breast and to this day, I eat white rice and chicken breast.
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How does that work out?
00:17:47
Breakfast, lunch and dinner.
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Do you just eat one time once a day or?
00:17:51
I eat two meals per day.
00:17:53
What I do is from the day before I grab the white rice and chicken breast out of the refrigerator,
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I put it in the microwave.
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You know, I heat it up and I eat it.
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Whenever I get back from work, I wake up at five o'clock, go to work.
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I clock in the work at six o'clock.
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I come back from work four thirty.
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I throw two and a half cups of white rice into the pressure cooker and I believe it's
00:18:18
like sixteen ounces of chicken breast I'm eating right now.
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I put that into the oven so I can prepare the food for the next day.
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I take half the rice.
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I eat it now with one egg.
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I take the other half of the rice.
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I put it into a container with the chicken breast and put it back into the refrigerator
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for the next day.
00:18:35
You have a process.
00:18:37
You have it down to a T.
00:18:39
Yeah, it's really a great benefit to me because most people can't realistically do that, but
00:18:44
it just makes your life so much easier.
00:18:46
The one thing you have to worry about though, whenever you just eat the same meal every
00:18:51
day is vitamin deficiencies, but I just take supplements for that.
00:18:55
I find it to be easier.
00:18:57
As long as you take supplements with the material that's bioavailable, it's basically the same
00:19:04
thing.
00:19:05
How about now you mentioned things are easier, but what are some of the benefits?
00:19:11
I'm sure there's a boatload of them, but what are some of the things that you can appreciate
00:19:17
now that you lost so much weight?
00:19:21
So honestly, just everything about life is better when you're not morbidly obese.
00:19:28
I know it'll sound kind of bad to some people, but it's honestly the truth.
00:19:34
I don't honestly, I don't like socially not being fat because people will pay more attention
00:19:42
to me.
00:19:43
Being autistic, that's a lot more stressful than it is for a normal person.
00:19:47
I had a lot pushing me towards being fat.
00:19:51
I just didn't want to have the health consequences of being morbidly obese.
00:19:56
That's something I just want to say straight up.
00:19:59
Honestly, I would still prefer looking the way I did before, but feeling like this the
00:20:04
way I do now because it supports me in every aspect of my life.
00:20:08
It's easier for me to breathe.
00:20:09
I have asthma and being morbidly obese is just terrible.
00:20:14
It puts so much stress on your cardiovascular system that it's just kind of, I don't know
00:20:20
how to describe it, it's kind of like having a low grade fever constantly.
00:20:25
I feel sick now, that's like what my normal was back then.
00:20:30
It's just such a drain on your quality of life because it's so, I don't know, the word
00:20:38
for it, so sneaky, so insidious because it just gradually builds up to be worse and worse
00:20:44
and you just get used to it.
00:20:47
What I can tell you is that it's legitimately terrible looking back at how I felt back then
00:20:52
compared to how I feel now.
00:20:53
Yeah, my hat's off to you for that.
00:20:56
Like you said, there are choices for some people and if it makes sense, they can go
00:21:00
ahead and, now what is the word exactly again?
00:21:03
It's a bypass, gastric bypass?
00:21:06
Yeah, so the fields of medicine that deals with, I believe, bariatric surgery and the
00:21:11
two main surgeries is a gastric sleeve or a gastric bypass.
00:21:14
Okay, yeah, there you go.
00:21:16
Or the other route where you're, it's a process and like you said, maybe there were some things
00:21:22
that benefited you but you took advantage of those to where you're able to eat the same
00:21:26
thing day in and day out and not get tired of it.
00:21:29
But it's still discipline, you know, you're disciplining yourself to it because I'm sure
00:21:35
that maybe there still was the temptation there, especially nowadays where if you're
00:21:40
watching TV, if you're out there in the streets, whatever it is, I mean, you're getting bombarded
00:21:47
by advertisements.
00:21:49
You smell the food, you're driving around and you're seeing people with those packaged
00:21:56
goods, those convenient snacks and all that kind of stuff.
00:21:58
I don't know if that was a temptation of yours or because of your condition, you're
00:22:04
kind of, you're able to bypass that and it didn't really affect you like it would somebody
00:22:09
else.
00:22:10
Yeah, it's the gym is terrible.
00:22:13
People who just something to point this out to, to, you know, put it into perspective
00:22:20
like this to understand a lot of scientists, you know, they work for junk food companies,
00:22:26
you know, and they, they will spend their time to make the advertising, make the food
00:22:32
legitimately as addictive as possible.
00:22:35
It's something where they just, they put this, they, these are groups of professional people,
00:22:43
you know, cutting edge science, shoving this stuff in your face in the way that will get
00:22:50
you to be subservient to it, to get you to be addicted to it.
00:22:55
And so you coming up against that, you know, the you as in the person watching this, just
00:23:02
you coming up against that, it's not a good game to play.
00:23:06
It's, it's not a game I don't think most people can win, at least not win every day.
00:23:12
And I think we really see that in our society with how hard it is to lose weight.
00:23:16
No, you're right.
00:23:18
Yeah, that is a fact that they are in the labs, they are behind the curtains, and they are
00:23:25
getting it down to a science and targeting your, your taste buds, your, your sensory
00:23:32
perception, everything that's going to attract you to unfortunately things that aren't the
00:23:38
best for us health wise, physically, and even mentally with some of the things that they
00:23:43
put in, in the advertisements in a, in front of our faces all day long.
00:23:48
Yeah, legitimately, like just like, you don't feel worse just to say that because you, you
00:23:54
talked about like mentally and just whenever you're more likely obese, it doesn't just
00:23:59
affect you physically, like making it harder for you to like to breathe.
00:24:03
It makes it harder for you to think it makes it usually everything in your life just a
00:24:07
little bit harder.
00:24:08
And I think putting life on the hard mode, I guess is just the easiest way to say it.
00:24:14
It's legitimately a drain on every way, on everything you could possibly imagine.
00:24:18
Like I'm sure I could make an argument for literally anything in life and say that how
00:24:24
you know, being morbidly obese will make it harder for you to do that.
00:24:28
Yeah.
00:24:29
And you can speak from both sides of the fence when it comes to that.
00:24:32
I mean, how it was then and how it is now.
00:24:34
Yeah.
00:24:35
And that's how you were mentioning the scientists and these people that are working for junk
00:24:41
food corporations and these people who are marketing geniuses and targeting adults and
00:24:49
even kids.
00:24:50
That's the reason why there are some countries that they actually, I think they put in a policy.
00:24:56
I want to say some parts of South America, I can't think of the countries off the top
00:25:00
of my head, but it's illegal for them.
00:25:03
They can't between certain hours of the day.
00:25:06
And I think even in the weekends when children are home from school and certain hours of
00:25:11
the day when kids are having their breakfast or in between their cartoons, they can't play
00:25:17
any advertisements that is promoting junk food or soft drinks like soda, Coca-Cola and
00:25:23
things like that.
00:25:24
Yeah.
00:25:25
That I believe there's also people trying to pass laws to ban targeted campaigns towards
00:25:31
children for junk food, but they're running up against a lot of lobbyists and a lot of
00:25:36
red tape from the food and drugs like from those people.
00:25:40
So yeah, that's always how it's been that just those companies will just pay as much
00:25:46
money as they need to to stop the game from changing, to stop the thing that works for
00:25:51
them from actually being fixed on a systemic level.
00:25:56
And then they blame like the people who have personal choices.
00:25:59
Like, I think a lot of it comes down to personal choice, but a lot of it comes down to your
00:26:03
environment and behavior change.
00:26:06
To put this into perspective, whenever I started changing my life, I didn't just gain more
00:26:13
willpower whenever I was a child.
00:26:15
That's what people told me to do.
00:26:17
That if you want to change your life, it's a matter of you not trying hard enough.
00:26:22
And honestly, I tried so hard every day when I was a child that I would like come back
00:26:27
to my house just wrecked physically, emotionally, you know, I gave it my 100%.
00:26:32
I did that every day.
00:26:33
And eventually I just, you know, I would either fall into depression or someone just
00:26:36
beat the crap out of me and I would just give up.
00:26:40
But you understand, like I was going about that incorrectly.
00:26:44
The way that will actually help you is to change your environment.
00:26:48
Like to invest in systems to give you an easier like thing tomorrow.
00:26:54
So you don't have to spend that mental energy every day.
00:26:57
Like to put this into like perspective of like numbers, if you can imagine you have
00:27:00
like an energy bar for your willpower and like 90% of your willpower is just taken up
00:27:06
on a daily basis, just resisting the urges to do things that are completely avoidable
00:27:14
by, you know, moving stuff in your environment.
00:27:16
And you just have that 10% to, you know, give it your best shot.
00:27:20
That's not a winning situation to be in.
00:27:22
That's a different terrible situation to be in.
00:27:25
But whenever I started actually like changing my life, whenever I started to find things
00:27:30
that were working for me, it was making those systems and investing in my environment to
00:27:38
just take away that like willpower attacks I had every day.
00:27:43
So I could have that energy to spend on like, you know, overcoming the trauma I had as a
00:27:50
child and finding better ways to cope.
00:27:53
And that's that's the generally what works.
00:27:56
Honestly, I can't say that like from a scientific perspective, I don't have like a paper to
00:28:01
quote on that.
00:28:02
But from my anecdotal experience, that's that's why I would recommend to anyone who's struggling
00:28:06
out there.
00:28:07
Change their environment.
00:28:09
Yeah.
00:28:10
For the you had mentioned it before and it was depression and it was the trauma that
00:28:17
led you to where you found was it how some people say I found like the comfort in eating
00:28:23
I found a comforting food.
00:28:25
I know you did right.
00:28:26
And I remember, I don't think you said that while we were speaking a bit offline, but
00:28:32
it even got to the point where you were sleeping, you were in bed pretty much more than half
00:28:36
the day.
00:28:37
Yeah, I honestly at the worst of my depression, I was nihilistically depressed probably a few
00:28:43
months before the coronavirus.
00:28:45
I don't have a good timeline on this.
00:28:48
I, you know, I wasn't in that state of mind.
00:28:50
I wasn't really recording memories at the time.
00:28:53
But what I was doing is I was probably sleeping 21, 22 hours a day for like, I don't know,
00:28:58
like a year or two.
00:29:00
And the only time I would wake up is when my mom would call me to help her because she
00:29:06
had had a stroke a few months before I really lost it and fell into depression.
00:29:11
And so while I wasn't taking care of her, I was just sleeping in my bed, you know, just
00:29:17
I had just completely given up on life and everything.
00:29:20
Now that was going on for almost, you said, between a year and two years of, I mean, that's
00:29:27
that's damn near the whole day in bed.
00:29:29
Yep.
00:29:30
I wasn't living a life at all.
00:29:32
Like it's, it was a really surreal experience because every hour I was conscious, it just
00:29:38
felt like my life was slipping away from me, but at the same time, every second just felt
00:29:42
so long and agonizing that it was just, it was just so surreal.
00:29:46
It was, it just felt impossible.
00:29:48
I felt like I was dreaming just all the time.
00:29:51
I felt like life was a dream now.
00:29:53
And as I was already dead.
00:29:55
When you did wake up for those few hours, what did you feel, feel that time with?
00:30:00
Was it to eat, go to the toilet and then right back in bed?
00:30:04
I, so I would normally wake up whenever my mom called for me if she needed something
00:30:09
for me or if I needed to go do stuff like drive to town to do a couple of things for
00:30:15
her like errands or to like to help her with the things she needed help with, whether that
00:30:20
be helping her clean herself because she was bed bound after she had a stroke.
00:30:27
Yeah, I would eat.
00:30:29
Obviously I lost some weight during that time, but it wasn't, it wasn't a lot to be honest.
00:30:37
At that time, I probably ate like once every two days, but what I would do is I remember
00:30:46
back at this, but the meal I would eat, I would go to Walmart and the people in the
00:30:51
bakery section would make this just giant thing of rice crispy treats.
00:30:57
Like it was in, it was in a clear container and it was probably like by itself like two
00:31:03
or 3000 calories.
00:31:04
Like it was like probably like six, honestly, it was probably the size of a cake.
00:31:11
I would say about that.
00:31:13
And I would grab a couple of boxes of family size chicken strips and a gallon of chocolate
00:31:18
milk and I would just eat that, you know, just one meal once every two days.
00:31:23
And then yeah, I would just go back to sleep.
00:31:26
Yeah.
00:31:27
I know we were not joking about what we were talking about.
00:31:32
A lot of times people are looking for a quick, that quick fix or I woke up and suddenly I
00:31:40
felt like a new man in my perspective completely changed.
00:31:44
But after those, those down and out times, like where did things begin to start changing
00:31:55
to bring you out of it?
00:31:57
Yeah.
00:31:58
So just to start off with how we started the conversation last time.
00:32:03
Behavior change has kind of been romanticized by a lot of, you know, movie and other media
00:32:08
and like with the internet to where it's kind of like some, it's like somebody waking up
00:32:13
and they're just a completely different person.
00:32:16
And that, that at least to me and my experiences is can't be further from the truth.
00:32:22
Actually changing mentally is along the same way like changing physically.
00:32:26
Like I didn't just wake up one day morbidly obese, you know, just bench press as hard
00:32:31
as I can for like 30 minutes and then I just walk out looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
00:32:35
That's just not reality for weight loss.
00:32:38
Overnight success.
00:32:40
And in the same way, changing your habits mentally at the same way.
00:32:44
But people have to understand about that is that you have a lifetime of habits and coping
00:32:48
mechanisms of like Mount just all these maladaptive habits that you have to like confront and
00:32:54
that you have to find better ways to cope in life.
00:32:57
And it's, you know, it's a lot of sacrifice.
00:33:00
You have to give up so much safety and so much comfort that you were just that you were
00:33:06
just using to get by.
00:33:08
And it's, it's just not reality to just wake up one day completely different person.
00:33:14
Like I'm sure it's happened before, but there has to be like some kind of medical explanation
00:33:19
of it.
00:33:20
It's not how the vast majority of cases go is what I can say.
00:33:24
No, no, no.
00:33:26
It's not the overall reality of life and what people go through.
00:33:30
It's kind of like Savant syndrome where you get a traumatic brain injury and you can just
00:33:34
like play the piano or something that that might happen in the realm of overcoming trauma
00:33:40
or maybe you might get anemia and that gives you like a new, new lease on life.
00:33:46
But for the vast majority of people, that's not the reality.
00:33:48
And so if, if you watch TV and stuff like that and you feel broken because you can't
00:33:54
do that, it's completely natural.
00:33:57
That's just not realistic at all.
00:33:58
And I'm sorry, you know, that's the only disservice to you.
00:34:01
But you, I'm sure you had, there was a few things brewing inside of you.
00:34:07
There could have been even a few things that happened in the outside world that gradually,
00:34:13
I guess, affected your mood and your reality to where you wanted to start doing things
00:34:20
differently and come out of that rut, so to speak.
00:34:24
Yeah.
00:34:25
What, what happened to me was I didn't really, you know, have changed.
00:34:30
Change kind of happened to me in the way that my sister just came into my room one day and
00:34:35
she said, Hey, you know, our grandmother's in the hospital and you know, she might die
00:34:40
like she's having heart trouble.
00:34:41
And I was just like, dang, because my grandmother, she, she tried to give me the love and support
00:34:48
that she knew I was missing out on throughout my entire life.
00:34:50
And it's just, you know, when she realized what she needed to do, it was a lot of ways
00:34:55
too late.
00:34:56
Like she didn't have the resources to, you know, help me get therapy and she didn't
00:35:01
understand like how to help me, but she always tried and she always believed in me and she
00:35:07
always said that like I believe in you.
00:35:10
And she always, you know, try to talk about she, because she used to struggle with her
00:35:13
weight for a lot of the same reasons I did, because sexual trauma and other things like
00:35:18
that, just a lot of different terrible coping mechanisms.
00:35:23
And it hurt me so much that she might die, you know, hoping that I find a way in life
00:35:30
instead of die happy knowing that I did find my way in life.
00:35:35
And I just felt so ashamed that I could fail her like that.
00:35:39
And that gave me a lot of purpose in my life where I just had nothing.
00:35:45
And you know, I decided that whether she lived or not, I would lose the weight for her.
00:35:50
And that's honestly something I needed because I've never been the kind of guy I don't, honestly,
00:35:55
I don't care about suffering.
00:35:56
You know, we talked before about how I don't really like feel pain or hunger, but to understand
00:36:03
that if you don't feel negative emotions, you don't feel positive emotions, like we
00:36:07
have different words for them, at least in English.
00:36:11
But if you deny yourself one, you deny yourself the other and kind of like in the same way,
00:36:15
if you've ever heard someone say, Nope, don't make me happy, you know, don't make me happy
00:36:20
because that that'll open me up to vulnerability.
00:36:23
And so I denied myself that pain because it was just so overbearing.
00:36:29
I denied myself everything.
00:36:31
And I was just, you know, just rifting in nothingness.
00:36:34
I didn't feel anything at all.
00:36:36
And she opened me back up.
00:36:39
She opened me back up to feeling responsibility, to feeling pain.
00:36:43
And that helped me.
00:36:44
It gave me the start I needed to, to start learning how to cope, learning how to live
00:36:50
again in a healthy way.
00:36:51
It's like kind of, it's kind of weird, but she like gave me the chance I needed to help
00:36:55
me learn how to live kind of like for the first time, but really, you know, for the
00:36:59
second time, if that makes sense.
00:37:02
Wow.
00:37:03
Isn't that a curious thing because I hear it time and time again when it comes to somebody
00:37:12
who is in a bad place, whether it's depression, it's suicide, it's the, the wheel isn't there
00:37:21
anymore to live.
00:37:23
But the reason something in them changes, it may not be for themself, but for a loved
00:37:29
one or somebody in their life, their daughter, their son.
00:37:34
For you, it was your grandmother, a nephew, a niece, a mother, like you're doing it for
00:37:42
them.
00:37:43
You're doing it to make them happy, whatever, however, and whatever they did to impact you
00:37:48
was so significant that you were willing to change your situation to make them happy,
00:37:56
to bring joy to them, to, you know, to make them proud of you in a sense.
00:38:00
And a lot of times I hear that, and I could even say for me, like the motivation may not
00:38:07
be there for me, but then I'm thinking about me.
00:38:09
I want my wife to be proud of me.
00:38:11
I'd like my mother to be proud of me.
00:38:13
You know, I'd like a family member to look at me and it's good to kind of see him doing
00:38:19
things better now, doing things a bit different.
00:38:21
And so I always find that interesting.
00:38:25
We may not have it in ourselves to do better for ourselves, but it's somebody else that
00:38:29
we may want to bring joy to or please in a way.
00:38:32
Yeah.
00:38:33
It's, honestly, we, I think we've, we're like going more and more towards like an individualistic
00:38:39
society and, you know, obviously from like the realm of like financial stuff and like
00:38:45
purely efficiency wise, there's a lot of benefits to that.
00:38:49
But emotionally and societally, I feel like it's a real, real shame because, you know,
00:38:54
we are social creatures.
00:38:57
Yes.
00:38:58
And when you just make life all about you, you really lose out and so much in life.
00:39:06
And that's, I think, a lot of the reason why so many people have struggles with purpose
00:39:09
and meaning in their lives, because, you know, they're just committing themselves to, you
00:39:14
know, making money or it's chasing like fame or something.
00:39:18
And whenever they get that, they just fall apart because they realize that they have
00:39:23
no purpose in their lives.
00:39:24
They have no, besides, you know, that one thing that they strove their entire life for, they
00:39:29
have nothing.
00:39:31
And it's honestly sad.
00:39:34
It is, yeah, it is very unfortunate.
00:39:36
It's hard, you know, it's the generally nearly impossible to, you know, do life on your own.
00:39:42
And I feel an obligation because of the things I've went through in my life to try to help
00:39:45
other people because I understand how difficult it is.
00:39:49
Yeah.
00:39:50
How did that, to kind of bring it back to you at that point in your life where you heard
00:39:55
about your grandmother's situation now, now could I ask how that ended up playing out
00:40:01
for your grandmother, did she recover or how did that go?
00:40:07
So what happened was she was going through heart failure because I believe she had a
00:40:11
leaky valve or something.
00:40:13
And so what they did is they had closed heart surgery or keyhole surgery, I believe, I believe
00:40:20
it was, where keyhole surgery is where they, the surgeons will make holes in your body
00:40:27
for medical instruments instead of opening up your chest cavity and doing open heart
00:40:32
surgery.
00:40:33
It's a newer kind of surgery.
00:40:35
And so what they do is, I believe they put in like a replacement valve or something like
00:40:41
that, but they credited her survival despite her old age with the fact that she was living
00:40:47
a healthy lifestyle and an active lifestyle.
00:40:49
And that they said that she probably would have died without that.
00:40:52
So she survived and she was able to see your progress along the way.
00:40:58
Yeah, it was pretty messed up because I didn't tell her why I was losing weight until I was
00:41:06
basically done with my weight loss.
00:41:08
I know we already lost so much weight, like over 200 pounds, I forget exactly how much
00:41:14
it was, but probably like about there.
00:41:17
And so I just came to her and I described to her the story that I told you.
00:41:21
And she just starts crying and said, I wish you would have told that to me earlier.
00:41:26
I didn't do it because I was just so scared of just relapsing or something else happening.
00:41:33
And she was just, she would just feel so heart crushed and disappointed.
00:41:37
But obviously that wasn't the right decision.
00:41:42
If that did happen and I did relapse into old bad habits, she couldn't have helped me
00:41:48
if I would have just communicated to her.
00:41:50
That's what my purpose was in losing weight.
00:41:52
But for whatever the case was, it worked out to where you stuck to the course and she was
00:41:59
able to see you in a completely different physical form.
00:42:05
Yeah.
00:42:07
Honestly, one time I was walking in Walmart and she hadn't seen me in a while.
00:42:13
I just came up to her and say, hey, you know, how's it going?
00:42:15
Like making conversation with her.
00:42:17
She didn't recognize you, I bet.
00:42:19
She legitimately didn't recognize me because she, the person in Walmart came up to me and
00:42:24
said, excuse me, ma'am, is he bothering you?
00:42:27
And I said, she's my grandmother and she looked at me like, what the hell?
00:42:31
And you know, I pull out my ID and I show it to her and she's just like, oh my God.
00:42:37
And he's like, oh, okay.
00:42:38
And he just leaves and she's like, I'm so proud of you.
00:42:42
And I'm like, thank you.
00:42:44
You had to pull out your ID to show it to her.
00:42:46
It was that much of a transformation, huh?
00:42:49
Yeah.
00:42:50
I used to be stupid, morbidly obese and now I'm just a healthy body weight.
00:42:55
So it's a pretty big difference.
00:42:57
Man, that's a hell of a story.
00:43:01
And talk about pandemics or epidemics.
00:43:05
That, I mean, we went on about it for a while already, but that is a big, big issue.
00:43:15
Not just, it's not even just in the States anymore.
00:43:17
I mean, people, like they're saying even here in Germany now, they're noticing that
00:43:22
the change in weight, like everybody can go back to, if we go back to the 70s and the
00:43:28
60s, people weren't looking like this and it's just that we are being poisoned.
00:43:34
They're feeding us poison and they're kind of making money on both ends.
00:43:40
They're making money when they're selling it to you and then when you're having to come
00:43:42
in for your conditions because everybody's sick, diabetic, at an early age, kids that
00:43:48
are being diagnosed with diabetes.
00:43:51
Yeah.
00:43:52
It's terrible.
00:43:54
I mean, it really hurts me whenever I hear children diagnosed with metabolic syndrome
00:43:58
because I've never had diabetes before, but my mother, she struggles with diabetes and
00:44:05
I see her, she's still morbidly obese and I just see her going through that stuff.
00:44:12
And I just feel so bad for her.
00:44:14
I try to help her learn better habits, but it's just not something she wants to do.
00:44:18
It's not something she's ready to give up.
00:44:22
And my heart just really goes out to those people because I understand, it's a lot about
00:44:28
the environment.
00:44:29
It's a lot about just, it's just terrible.
00:44:35
Just a lot of people taking advantage of people for money and I just don't understand how
00:44:42
you could do that.
00:44:43
I don't understand how those people can just go to bed at night knowing that they're legitimately
00:44:48
killing people and that they're making people live lesser lives.
00:44:52
It is a special type of sickness for individuals that are profited by money and nothing else
00:45:00
at the expense of somebody else's well-being.
00:45:03
Yeah.
00:45:04
So, it was not to change the subject completely, but there was, and this is also having to
00:45:13
do with some of the conditions that you are dealing with.
00:45:16
It would be considered a disability or a handicap, I would say, and it was interesting because
00:45:22
I've never heard this before and this is also something that we talked about a bit offline.
00:45:27
But can you explain a little bit?
00:45:29
I know you said it's kind of hard to explain, but the whole condition with you, I feel
00:45:34
like, forget how you put it, but where someone like myself who isn't dealing with that, I
00:45:41
can close my eyes and I can still picture things.
00:45:43
I can picture the room and things like that, but when you close your eyes, you say that
00:45:47
there is no images, symbols, nothing that's going on when your eyes are closed.
00:45:53
How did you put it exactly?
00:45:55
So, afentasia is the inability to visualize.
00:45:58
It's sometimes called a blind mind's eye, where most people, when they close their eyes,
00:46:03
they can visualize things, whether it's in black and white, whether it's in color, whether
00:46:07
they can remember things they've seen before or just make completely new images in their
00:46:11
head.
00:46:12
It's everyone, most people exist on that spectrum.
00:46:16
People with afentasia, they can't get, they can't make any images at all.
00:46:22
Some people might see like blobs of color.
00:46:26
Sometimes I see that.
00:46:27
Like, whenever I'm about to go to sleep, it kind of looks like not an aurora borealis,
00:46:31
but kind of like, imagine the halfway between a cloud and a aurora borealis, just like those
00:46:35
colors floating there.
00:46:37
It's not really majestic, but it's kind of cool, but it's, it's so extremely difficult.
00:46:42
Because of afentasia, I have a really hard time, you know, distinguishing people.
00:46:47
It gives me facial blindness or the inability to, you know, pick somebody out of a crowd
00:46:53
that you've seen before.
00:46:55
It makes it a lot harder for me.
00:46:57
And things I do is just like, look at people with like their striking facial features and
00:47:01
try to make up, like, you know, if there's like a list of five things, there's not a,
00:47:06
if you have five striking features on your face, there's not a very high chance of,
00:47:13
you know, you coming up to another person like that, and it not being that.
00:47:17
And that, that's just how I've learned how to cope with that.
00:47:20
And another thing you brought up was the whole trip, because I asked you, so how is it with
00:47:26
dreams?
00:47:27
Do you see symbols, images, pictures, colors?
00:47:30
And yeah, so I don't really dream that often, to be honest.
00:47:35
I've had some pretty crazy dreams.
00:47:38
Like I'm not spiritual, but I've had dreams where I was like another person, like people
00:47:44
will call them past life dreams.
00:47:47
But it's not something I personally really believe in.
00:47:49
I don't really know how or why.
00:47:53
But most of my dreams are just like me, like I know I'm in a dream because I can't see
00:47:58
anything.
00:47:59
In my dreams, I'm blind.
00:48:00
But I kind of know what's happening in like a spatial awareness kind of sense.
00:48:04
Because that area in your brain where that's, you know, for you to visualize things, I believe
00:48:08
has been taken over by like general spatial awareness things for me, because I'm really
00:48:13
good at like understanding where things are in physical space and like juggling.
00:48:18
It's kind of like in the way that if you don't, you know, have any eyesight, if you're blinds
00:48:22
then your other senses are sharper.
00:48:24
Because I can't visualize things by a sense of spatial awareness is sharper.
00:48:28
And during, say that the times that you do dream, are you able to hear?
00:48:34
You can hear and you're just aware, like maybe at a subconscious level that you are dreaming,
00:48:40
that it is a dream?
00:48:42
I usually know I'm dreaming because I'm blind.
00:48:47
What I can do is I understand, like sometimes I'll have dreams like, you know, they're kind
00:48:53
of like flashback dreams to where these guys used to like jump me whenever I was like in
00:48:58
the seventh, eighth grade.
00:49:00
And I would like have flashback dreams to those events.
00:49:03
And I could understand where they are in physical space, like whenever they're coming to strike
00:49:07
me, and I can just, you know, move to avoid it.
00:49:11
It's along the same way as whenever I see someone coming to punch me in real life.
00:49:16
I still have my eyesight to help me in that situation.
00:49:19
Okay.
00:49:20
Almost like a feeling.
00:49:21
Is it like a feeling or a sixth sense?
00:49:25
Like how you said, when your eyes are closed, but you can kind of feel that someone's moving
00:49:28
close to you or a hand is coming near you?
00:49:31
Yeah.
00:49:32
If you want to understand what you could do is you could go into a room, turn off the
00:49:37
lights and what you can do is you can get a feel for the room even though you can't
00:49:41
see anything.
00:49:42
It's something I do sometimes.
00:49:43
Whenever I was a kid, that really helped me learn how to, you know, use my senses.
00:49:48
What I would do is I would just close my eyes a lot and do things.
00:49:51
And that helped me develop that part of my brain because I can't rely on my ability to
00:49:55
visualize like most people can.
00:49:58
And so I'm bad with like learning directions.
00:50:01
But what I do with my head is like kind of like make like a space mind map.
00:50:06
It's really weird to describe.
00:50:08
But if I look at something and I understand where I am in it, even though I can't see
00:50:13
it, I can still walk around it if I do it correctly.
00:50:16
Wow.
00:50:17
Yeah.
00:50:18
So you really trained yourself to overcome these handicaps?
00:50:23
Yeah.
00:50:24
It's, no one really taught me or helped me, but it was a lot of experimentation and a
00:50:30
lot of just me trying to improve my situation.
00:50:33
Since, you know, I was a young kid, no one told me that I was any different from anybody
00:50:40
else.
00:50:41
So I just assumed I was doing something wrong.
00:50:42
Like I was just dumb and that everyone else had already experienced and overcame the problems
00:50:48
I was experiencing every day.
00:50:49
And it was just a flaw on my part that I couldn't overcome them.
00:50:52
And so I just spent every waking moment I could trying to figure out how to be better.
00:50:57
That's really what I brought it up before, but like the heart of this right here is people
00:51:06
taking responsibility and action and that alone.
00:51:09
I mean, like you said, from an early age because of your parents not really being around or
00:51:16
giving you attention that a child needs, you develop these skills on your own, experimenting
00:51:23
with yourself.
00:51:24
A lot of people, they fall by the wayside and they, you know, get tied up in things
00:51:28
that aren't really beneficial for them in the long run and in the short term.
00:51:33
But it seemed like you spent time and energy into trying to figure out how do I develop
00:51:41
the skills, the coping mechanisms to get by into and astride a bit.
00:51:47
Yeah, it's kind of a little weird to describe because a lot of people really like look at
00:51:56
like have understood it from perspective of people like me.
00:52:01
But put in perspective, a lot of people, you know, they can be carried by like their instincts
00:52:10
to the point where they don't actually have to learn a lot of skills that could help them.
00:52:14
Like to them, they look at it and it's like you can get 20% better or this could be 20%
00:52:20
easier if you invest your time into it.
00:52:23
And they're just like, I'm good with it.
00:52:24
You know, I can just live how I am right now.
00:52:28
There's not really a problem with it.
00:52:30
And that's their choice.
00:52:31
That's the choice they're given.
00:52:32
My choice was you're not going to be able to live at all if you don't figure out how
00:52:38
to make this work.
00:52:40
Like I had to teach myself how to talk.
00:52:42
I couldn't and I wanted to be able to live that life.
00:52:46
I wanted to live something resembling a normal life.
00:52:48
And so I had to find a way to make it work.
00:52:51
To me, it wasn't a matter of having a slightly easier life.
00:52:55
It was a matter of me having a life.
00:52:57
And so from that young age, I had to, I just had to learn.
00:53:01
How did you teach yourself how to talk?
00:53:04
So it's I'm sure that's a lengthy process.
00:53:08
But if you help us, you know, walk us through some of what that was like.
00:53:14
So this is probably one of like the oldest memories I have.
00:53:18
And before I was talking about how I didn't, I couldn't go outside because it was just
00:53:24
so bright for me.
00:53:26
So I was probably like, it was probably like one year before kindergarten for me.
00:53:31
So I don't know exactly how old I was.
00:53:34
I would say like five, but I couldn't talk at all.
00:53:37
And no one thought that was weird because people, you know, guys from my mother's side
00:53:42
of the family, that's just how they were.
00:53:45
That they didn't learn how to talk until they're later in life.
00:53:48
I didn't learn until much later in life that that's actually a sign of autism in children.
00:53:53
And so I was just like walking around just completely nonverbal.
00:53:57
Well not completely nonverbal.
00:53:59
Like if you said something to me or made like a sound, I could repeat it back to you.
00:54:02
But that's not talking.
00:54:03
That's something called echolalia.
00:54:05
And so I'm sorry, that was a bit of a tangent, but...
00:54:08
No, no, go ahead.
00:54:10
That's good.
00:54:11
I'm very interested in how this whole process worked out.
00:54:16
Because it seems like you were okay not to cut you up, but it seemed like you said you
00:54:21
had people in your family that at that age they weren't talking.
00:54:24
So it wasn't looked at as we need to maybe take them to a speech therapist to figure
00:54:29
out why he's not verbalizing anything.
00:54:31
Yeah.
00:54:32
But just a lot of people, they look at autism like it's like a genetic disorder thing.
00:54:37
And while some genetic disorders or like chromosomal things can predispose you to autism, it's
00:54:43
a lot of the time it's genetic where your family has just learned how to cope with their special
00:54:50
needs.
00:54:53
And so they don't really understand that they're any different because it's like something
00:54:56
is like, oh, this is the way for my grandmother.
00:54:59
Is that the way for my mother?
00:55:01
This is the way for me.
00:55:02
This is the way it is for my kids.
00:55:04
Their idea of normalcy is skewed by their own conditions.
00:55:07
And they don't really understand that what they're experiencing isn't normal because we
00:55:11
don't really talk about our experiences like that a lot.
00:55:14
So it wasn't completely insane that they didn't go to somebody and say, hey, my child isn't
00:55:24
talking.
00:55:25
They're missing development of milestones.
00:55:27
Can you help them?
00:55:28
Because it's like, oh, that's just how it is.
00:55:30
Especially when you combine that with like, we were very poor at the time.
00:55:36
It's understandable.
00:55:38
But so I had a family dog.
00:55:40
He was really more of my brother's dog.
00:55:42
But because I didn't have anyone else in my life that was really helping me, that my dog
00:55:46
was kind of like my father to me.
00:55:49
It's I know that that'll sound very, very kind of weird.
00:55:53
But he was there for me and he could really engage with me on a level that I could understand
00:55:59
to where I couldn't really communicate with anybody else.
00:56:02
But he like a lot of communication is nonverbal.
00:56:06
And he's learned from me and I learned how to communicate with him from like a very young
00:56:10
age.
00:56:12
And so one day, you know, he just approached me and he just, you know, started clawing
00:56:16
my hand to ask me if I could go outside.
00:56:18
And I was like, okay.
00:56:21
And so I take him, you know, put him up on the on the leash that's connected to the,
00:56:26
you know, back porch.
00:56:28
So I could just let him out.
00:56:29
But he just waited for me there.
00:56:31
Like he wanted me to come with him.
00:56:33
And I was just like, I know I can't.
00:56:36
You know, it's just too bright for me.
00:56:38
And he really helped push me to go outside.
00:56:42
And that's that that was a real learning curve for me.
00:56:47
It's kind of weird.
00:56:48
How kind of weird to describe.
00:56:50
How old were you at that time?
00:56:51
I was like five, five years old.
00:56:54
And he, it was so weird to me, but I, I learned after like enough of those times how to like
00:57:04
dull my perception where if it's like really dark, I can still like up.
00:57:09
Well, at least whenever I was younger, I haven't done this in a while, but I can like, I used
00:57:12
to be able to at least up my perception to where it was really like almost pitch black.
00:57:17
I could see a lot better than most people.
00:57:20
But I don't know if I still have that.
00:57:22
Like a lot of the stuff I used to do as a kid, I've kind of lost access to the ability
00:57:26
to do that.
00:57:27
I don't know if it's because, you know, it's like an everybody thing or it's just like
00:57:31
I lost it because I didn't keep doing it.
00:57:34
Because I, you know, as I grew up and I made those frameworks, I had less and less reason
00:57:38
to do it again.
00:57:39
But I, you know, he really helped me learn how to like do that.
00:57:46
Even though that wasn't what he was doing.
00:57:47
He just wanted to go outside and hang out.
00:57:50
And it was great.
00:57:52
Before then, you know, I would hear the other children playing outside and I would just
00:57:57
want to go out there with them and like, you know, be able to have friends.
00:58:01
That's something I always wanted, like companionship.
00:58:05
And he, by helping me do that, he gave me the opportunity to literally go outside with
00:58:10
them.
00:58:11
But, you know, I was not verbal.
00:58:14
And so I just go out there and they just start making fun of me because I can't talk.
00:58:19
And so I just, you know, cried and came back to my house.
00:58:23
I just buried my head into my dog.
00:58:25
And I was just like, you know, I felt like I had done something good.
00:58:30
I felt like I did the right thing.
00:58:33
And those people just looked at me like I was still like, you know, moron.
00:58:37
I was still just a screw up.
00:58:40
And so I was like, okay, if I want to live a life, I need to learn how to talk.
00:58:47
And so I spent probably like the first three or four days making zero progress.
00:58:51
I just figured if I concentrated hard enough and thought about words I had like heard other
00:58:55
people use enough, I would just make it work.
00:58:59
But then, you know, my dog, he came back to me and, you know, he started clawing my hand,
00:59:03
you know, just looking me in the eyes, you know, just trying to lick me in the face.
00:59:06
Like he was just like asking if I was all right.
00:59:08
Like, are you okay?
00:59:09
Because I was genuinely acting very weird.
00:59:13
You know, I was just so focused that it was, it was just, and he gets sense that.
00:59:19
Yeah.
00:59:20
He, you know, he made me realize in that moment that what I was doing with him wasn't that
00:59:25
different from communicating verbally.
00:59:29
Because to me, I had made a big deal about it before that like me talking and what I
00:59:34
did was just completely different.
00:59:36
And that helped me find a place to start growing out my knowledge of learning how to talk.
00:59:42
And so like after like four days, I actually got, you know, it's kind of weird.
00:59:48
Just to go back a little bit, I felt like, like hitting a wall in my brain.
00:59:53
Like I felt like instinctually I knew where I needed to go to be able to talk, but I just
00:59:58
couldn't get there.
00:59:59
Like I felt like there was like something blocking me from doing it.
01:00:02
But somehow I just grew out, you know, my connection, I just started to make those connections
01:00:06
in my brain to be able to learn how to talk.
01:00:08
And that took about like four days of just like contemplating and like thinking about
01:00:12
it.
01:00:13
I just sat in the corner of my room staring at a wall, you know, for like a week, all
01:00:17
things together.
01:00:19
And I had like what were you kind of like brainstorming just staring at the wall and
01:00:24
then trying to figure it out?
01:00:25
Yeah.
01:00:26
In your head.
01:00:27
Yeah.
01:00:28
It was a lot like brainstorming.
01:00:29
Some people like to call it meditation, but personally, you know, I think that's all
01:00:31
of the too fancy of a word for what I was doing.
01:00:34
It was just to me, just thinking, contemplating.
01:00:38
And so, you know, I had like the starting place I needed.
01:00:42
I just needed the vocabulary to learn how to talk.
01:00:45
And so the only person I could really, or the only thing I could really get that from
01:00:50
was like a TV because my, you know, my mother, she was going through like a stage of really
01:00:53
bad depressions where she didn't really talk with me that much at all.
01:00:58
My brother, he was always out hanging with his friends and my sister, she couldn't really
01:01:00
talk either.
01:01:01
I mean, she did talk that at that point because she learned how to talk really well when she
01:01:06
started to go to kindergarten because she was a year ahead of me.
01:01:08
But after school, she was always so like tired that she was just going to bed because it
01:01:14
was really draining for her going to school, which is something that's really common with
01:01:19
women with autism.
01:01:21
But so I didn't really have anybody to like learn.
01:01:26
So I just watched TV and this is the kind of thing where it's like a really impactful
01:01:33
thing that's just kind of silly.
01:01:35
And I did was, it's not even the kind of thing.
01:01:38
I'm pretty sure that like the TV was just on a TV station that was just playing like
01:01:43
Shakespeare for like all of the time I was watching it.
01:01:47
And so,
01:01:48
Oh wow, of everything Shakespeare.
01:01:52
And so I was just trying, and so I was learning like middle, well, not even actual middle
01:01:58
English, but this fancy version of middle English that no one has ever actually talked
01:02:03
like before.
01:02:04
And so to this day, I still kind of talk like that sometimes.
01:02:08
I don't know if you've ever heard, you know, during our conversation, if you've kind of
01:02:12
picked up on anything that might sound like that, but sometimes it's kind of really blatant
01:02:17
and people think I'm like, you know, making fun of them or like trying to like, I don't
01:02:23
know what the right word for it is, like kind of trying to like, I guess flex on them.
01:02:28
Yeah, show off a little bit.
01:02:30
Honestly, I, it's not something I consciously do.
01:02:35
Going back to the roots.
01:02:37
That's where you started.
01:02:38
Yeah.
01:02:39
And so just to put this in perspective, I wasn't actually speaking like fluent English
01:02:45
probably.
01:02:46
Like honestly, most of what I was saying was like terribly butchered metaphors and just
01:02:52
completely crap English.
01:02:55
And so I go up to these kids and I'm just like, you know, hey, I learned how to talk.
01:03:01
Can we be friends now?
01:03:04
And they, and it's just, they look at me like I'm just like an idiot.
01:03:08
And they're like, and it just started making fun of me because of how crappy my English
01:03:12
is.
01:03:13
And even the people who were learning, learning English as a second language, they had better
01:03:17
English than me.
01:03:18
And so they even, they were making fun of me.
01:03:20
And I feel just like, what the hell?
01:03:21
It's a lose, lose situation.
01:03:23
It felt like, oh.
01:03:24
Yeah.
01:03:25
It was, it was legitimately really traumatizing for me at the time because they made me feel
01:03:28
like no matter how much, you know, no matter how hard I tried or no matter how much I achieved,
01:03:33
I was still always at the starting line that no matter how hard I tried, I could never
01:03:37
be good enough.
01:03:39
That like what I did could never be good enough.
01:03:42
And that just really hurt me.
01:03:43
Yeah.
01:03:44
I, after that, I just went back to my room and I was like crying on my dog, you know,
01:03:49
because he was, he was my guy and my brother, he's like 10 years older than me.
01:03:53
The guy was like probably the seventh or eighth grade, you know, probably early high school.
01:03:59
And he just, you know, he sees me just so depressed and he just gave me like a Game Boy
01:04:04
color.
01:04:05
I don't know if you know what that is.
01:04:06
Yeah.
01:04:07
Game Boy, yeah.
01:04:08
Uh-huh.
01:04:09
Game Boy color, yeah, I know that.
01:04:10
I would know when I was, when I was coming up, we had the, you know, the black and white
01:04:14
Game Boy.
01:04:15
Oh, wait.
01:04:16
No, I think that is the Game Boy.
01:04:18
Yeah.
01:04:19
That's the original Game Boy than the Game Boy color.
01:04:21
I misspeak.
01:04:22
He gave me the Game Boy advanced, not the Game Boy color.
01:04:25
Oh, there's a Game Boy advanced.
01:04:27
Okay.
01:04:28
Yeah.
01:04:29
The Game Boy advanced came out after the Game Boy color that played GBA games instead
01:04:33
of the Long Cartridge games.
01:04:36
Like after that, you know, he gave me Pokemon Fire Red and that was honestly just so, he
01:04:43
gave me Fire Red and I think Pokemon Silver and Crystal.
01:04:46
Like I played Fire Red for the first time.
01:04:48
And it's honestly like world shattering to me how, how amazing it was.
01:04:53
Because for the first time in my life, I just saw a world where I could do more than just
01:04:58
exist.
01:04:59
I felt like I could actually, you know, belong there.
01:05:00
I could actually like live a life.
01:05:03
And I was just so enraptured by that.
01:05:06
I saw, you know, a world where people and animals like work together and like animals
01:05:11
were like these like super amazing creatures, even though animals are already amazing.
01:05:16
It's just like they could like, you know, communicate.
01:05:19
They were shown to be like more sentient than a lot of animals are, you know, in the real
01:05:23
world.
01:05:25
And that to me, I just knew that, you know, I belonged in that place.
01:05:29
Like I felt like that as a kid.
01:05:31
And I was just so amazed.
01:05:33
And I just knew that like I, I saw a place for the first time where I felt like I belonged.
01:05:39
But you know, obviously Pokemon isn't real.
01:05:43
Yeah.
01:05:44
But you were getting them from different sources.
01:05:48
You had your dog who was understanding and you had a, you had a certain special connection
01:05:53
with that.
01:05:54
And then now this Pokemon game is bringing you to a different place.
01:06:00
Honestly when I was a kid, like my, my relationship with Pokemon was really toxic.
01:06:05
Like it was just a fantasy that helped me to see Oshie with how terrible my life was and
01:06:09
how terrible like my childhood situation was.
01:06:13
But you know, as I've grown older, I've learned how to actually have a healthy relationship
01:06:17
with that.
01:06:18
And instead of using, you know, Pokemon to dissociate, I've learned it to like help
01:06:23
me be better, which I know is a little weird.
01:06:26
But like when I was losing weight, I found it so gratifying to be like, man, like I remember
01:06:31
one time I was walking my dog at the, we had a greenway.
01:06:35
We have a greenway where we live.
01:06:37
And I would just walk with my dog down the greenway.
01:06:41
And I remember just feeling so like this happy, like this bittersweet, like this melancholy
01:06:46
feeling.
01:06:47
It felt like something I'd always wanted to be able to walk down, like be in nature,
01:06:53
experience nature with like a companion.
01:06:55
And I had no idea why it was like such a bittersweet thing because it felt so gratifying and so
01:07:00
wrong and uneary.
01:07:02
And like I was somehow missing out on something.
01:07:05
And so I just walked all day, you know, I probably walked 10 miles, which might not
01:07:10
be a lot to some people listening, but the time I was morbidly obese.
01:07:14
So I, it was genuinely difficult.
01:07:17
And I just came back every day for like a week, just trying to figure out what was going
01:07:21
on.
01:07:22
And I, I remember it was like nightfall.
01:07:25
And I just, that memories, like that story just came back to my mind.
01:07:28
I was like, holy crap.
01:07:30
That was really holding me back in life, that feeling of needing to be somewhere else.
01:07:37
You know, it was always taking away from me being present with other people.
01:07:41
It was always taking away from my happiness and all things.
01:07:45
And I, I sat there in the dark probably for like an hour and a half, just thinking about
01:07:51
everything and unpacking it.
01:07:54
And then I walked back, you know, I had to use my phone as a flashlight so I could actually
01:07:57
see the trail.
01:07:59
And I was just like, man, my life is so crazy.
01:08:02
Because I never really understood how crazy and messed up that story was until I was an
01:08:08
adult looking back on it.
01:08:10
Yeah.
01:08:11
And especially, you know, I'm hearing you say that you, you found something in this direction
01:08:18
and you found something over here, you know, for some people, it could be a, an odd way
01:08:24
to find it, not, not an epiphany, but to have something revealed to you or something brought
01:08:31
to light.
01:08:32
But I mean, you weren't getting it from anywhere else.
01:08:34
And on top of that, you were also, it sounds like throughout all of this talk, you were
01:08:40
one for really trying to get down to the nitty gritty and understand something, whatever
01:08:47
it was, if it was trying to figure out how to speak, like, how can I do this?
01:08:51
Or if it was expressing yourself or losing the weight, you know, these type of things,
01:08:57
you really made a conscious effort to try to work it out, brainstorming and figuring
01:09:04
it out.
01:09:05
That is a highly commendable.
01:09:06
I mean, I respect the hell out of somebody that puts the effort forward to do that.
01:09:11
And it seems like you had one roadblock after the other, but that wasn't going to stop you.
01:09:19
It might slow you down.
01:09:20
It might knock you, knock you down, but you got back on the horse and you kept riding.
01:09:25
Yeah, it's legitimately the thing I'm kind of most grateful for in life, that I don't
01:09:32
know exactly where I picked it up along the way.
01:09:34
I think it was during like that experience in my life, where I never doubted that something
01:09:40
I could do was possible.
01:09:41
It was just a matter, it wasn't a matter of something being impossible for me.
01:09:46
It was a matter of me needing to better myself with information and me empowering myself with
01:09:51
that to be able to accomplish it.
01:09:53
Where I might not be able to do the same things that other people do in the same ways, but
01:09:58
I could find a method to at least do something comparable.
01:10:02
And that gave me a lot of hope and that was really what I needed at that time in my life.
01:10:08
Yes, like with the speech now, you were, when you finally started to talk, was it actually
01:10:15
through the Shakespeare, like little by little?
01:10:19
Yeah.
01:10:20
So I did originally speak in Shakespeare in English.
01:10:23
It was just really butchered and crappy.
01:10:25
But as I spoke with other people, I started to learn more and more about language and
01:10:29
I started to really broaden my vocabulary.
01:10:33
But whenever I first learned how to speak, I had some pretty terrible Tourette's.
01:10:38
And it was something I also worked on.
01:10:41
It's kind of a little weird to explain.
01:10:43
But what I would do is I would emulate having conversation.
01:10:46
Like I would, instead of speaking physically, I learned how to just emulate me what I would
01:10:52
say.
01:10:53
And I could kind of feel like the pathways I was going down.
01:10:57
If you could imagine it like a road network.
01:11:00
And so I would hit a bump or and I would say the wrong word, i.e. the Tourette's.
01:11:07
And I would, I figured out how to avoid that road, like make a detour around it to where
01:11:13
I could actually talk without having like saying random stuff all the time.
01:11:18
And that's what I did for a lot of my time in kindergarten through first grade was just
01:11:23
I would just sit there during school, not really paying attention and just work on that.
01:11:28
You sound like you're very good at problem solving, troubleshooting.
01:11:33
Honestly, with the way a lot of autistic people have to grow up, you know, we don't have
01:11:39
a lot of support.
01:11:40
And so we, it's either we like really follow apart or we build those great habits that
01:11:45
will support us for the rest of our lives.
01:11:47
And we figure that out.
01:11:49
And it's really terrible for a lot of autistic people because, you know, honestly, I don't
01:11:56
know what my IQ is, but I was smart enough to figure out what I needed to do to survive.
01:12:04
And it's just, it's really heartbreaking to me that a lot of people, they don't have
01:12:08
that.
01:12:09
They, they don't have like generally just like the raw processing power or like whether
01:12:15
that be a combination of that and like, you know, some kind of early instilled habit that
01:12:20
helps them build what they need to survive.
01:12:25
And it's, it's terrible because, you know, probably like one of the worst parts about
01:12:29
being autistic is that like 1% of the population is autistic.
01:12:34
And that just means you have so many less people that can possibly help you.
01:12:39
Like I don't mean to say that like autistic people can't learn things from, you know,
01:12:43
neurotypical people, but a lot of things that we learn is something that really a lot of,
01:12:50
it would be so much easier for other autistic people to help you with.
01:12:53
I don't know what it's like to be autistic, but I understand where you're coming from
01:12:58
with that and, you know, the point that you're making.
01:13:01
How is it with you?
01:13:03
And this is just a random thought that came to mind, but I know some, and it's not even
01:13:09
necessarily only autistic people, but you hear of some that have a photographic memory,
01:13:15
you know, you can read something or you can retain information and you can keep it.
01:13:18
It's not going anywhere.
01:13:20
Can you say that's the same for you?
01:13:23
So I, I have appendages.
01:13:25
So that's the opposite of photographic memory.
01:13:28
But I believe people with appendages can have an idetic memory.
01:13:32
So an idetic memory is where you encode everything you ever see.
01:13:36
Like everything that comes into your sensory memory goes into your working memory that
01:13:40
goes into your longterm memory.
01:13:42
And you have a very strong ability to encode so you can just access it.
01:13:45
Like your coding retrieval ability is just very high.
01:13:49
Like it's insane.
01:13:51
But I don't, while I have a pretty good ability to encode and retrieve information from like
01:13:56
the happens I learned when I was a kid, it's, I don't have an idetic memory.
01:14:01
Okay.
01:14:02
And throughout this conversation, I just hear of all the ways that you, like the problem
01:14:06
solved, the troubleshooting.
01:14:07
And like you said, because of the resources and that you're either going to find a way,
01:14:13
you're going to find a way somehow, some way or fall by the wayside, unfortunately.
01:14:18
And in your case, in your situation, you, you had that spark that from losing the weight,
01:14:24
you did have the motivation with your grandmother, but then also with learning how to speak, you
01:14:30
had the companion and your dog.
01:14:32
I mean, all these and, and even in the, with the Pokemon game, you know, it brought out,
01:14:38
brought out something else and, and you were able to take the necessary steps to kind of
01:14:43
broaden your horizons a bit.
01:14:45
But I mean, that's quite a, that's quite a path.
01:14:47
And like we spoke about and mentioned a few times that it's not just an overnight success,
01:14:53
but it was a lot of steps, a lot of bumps in the road.
01:14:58
And even just with you yourself and the things that, that you've dealt with coming up, you
01:15:04
know, the trauma and the abuse, but you've even found through this probably a bit of
01:15:10
healing along the way.
01:15:11
Is that fair to say?
01:15:12
Yeah.
01:15:13
What I can say about being traumatized is I used to look at myself a lot like, like those
01:15:20
experiences, it's like if I was a blanket, being traumatized, like staying, it's like
01:15:25
on me, that they were things that made me lesser as a human being.
01:15:29
I just felt so much inferiority because of that.
01:15:32
I just had a lot of self-blame and it was just terrible.
01:15:36
It burdened me in a lot of ways in my life.
01:15:39
And while I was in the process of learning better habits and healing, you know, mentally
01:15:44
and physically, something that really helped me a lot was that I, I learned, it's not even
01:15:50
that like I learned, I kind of read, I forget what the actual word for it is, like reconfigured
01:15:56
my relationship with trauma before, you know, I saw it as something that took away from
01:16:01
me, but I kind of reoriented that experience as like a positive.
01:16:07
Like I, I would go through the, like the generally traumatic events of my life, like they were
01:16:12
terribly, they were just terrible.
01:16:15
And I would kind of, I would say, how can I make myself better from this situation?
01:16:21
And it's like, you know, when I was in kindergarten, I was, you know, I was raped.
01:16:25
And I kind of took from that.
01:16:27
I understand what it's like to be abused, you know, to feel inhuman, like an object.
01:16:33
And so it helps give me compassion in my life.
01:16:36
And finding ways like that to not have trauma destroy you, but to help support you for the
01:16:42
rest of your life is something that really helped me.
01:16:46
And I don't, I don't know if it's, I very widely learned or like known, you know, that
01:16:52
what I was talking about.
01:16:54
But I think it was, I've tried to overcome trauma in a lot of different ways.
01:16:59
That's probably the only way it's ever worked for me personally.
01:17:02
Yeah.
01:17:03
You also hear about not to knock anybody, but you also hear of, of those that they, they
01:17:11
never get past it, you know, and so it's always the excuse or the reason why they are in the
01:17:17
situation they, they are in today and why things haven't got better and why things will
01:17:22
not get better.
01:17:24
Everything that's going on that is negative, it's because of what happened to them in the
01:17:28
past.
01:17:29
That is a lot like, I guess like the best way to respond to that is a life is people,
01:17:37
they kind of tell themselves stories and they find meaning in their situations and how it's
01:17:43
affected them.
01:17:44
And a lot of people will blame themselves for trauma.
01:17:48
That isn't their fault.
01:17:49
And like I used to be like that.
01:17:52
And that's, you know, really, really bad way to cope and it's not healthy.
01:17:56
And the opposite way is to say, it's not, you know, my past situations weren't my, my fault.
01:18:03
And because of that, I feel entitled to not take responsibility for my actions right now.
01:18:10
And while, you know, it's true that, or it might be true that their past traumas, they
01:18:16
had no control over that.
01:18:19
They take a very toxic lesson from that, that they, it's nothing is their fault because
01:18:28
they've been hurt in the past.
01:18:30
And I think we can agree that that's a very terrible way to see anything.
01:18:36
I'm not to see like your agency as a human being, because they're really taking away
01:18:40
their own agency because they don't want to feel responsible for themselves.
01:18:44
Yeah.
01:18:45
You pretty much relinquish your power now and your powerless ultimately.
01:18:49
But from what you've shared with us today, it sounds, it's, I think it's fair to say
01:18:57
that you took that power back into your own hands and you developed the skills necessary,
01:19:04
whether it was coping with certain things, figuring out how to get by as we would say,
01:19:12
whatever a normal, normal human being is, but you know, without the someone that isn't
01:19:17
dealing with the handicaps or the disabilities that you are.
01:19:21
And then also with the trauma that you experienced as a young, as a young child, but still the
01:19:28
point of your life where you're at right now, you are in a much better place.
01:19:34
You've matured mentally, emotionally.
01:19:38
And then can you share some of the plans for the future that you have?
01:19:42
Because I know you brought up before we started recording that you're taking some courses
01:19:48
for is it radiology?
01:19:51
So right now I'm taking a, I believe it's a 10 week course of Viol 160, anatomy and
01:19:57
physiology.
01:19:58
I'm doing that to try to, it's a competitive course to get into.
01:20:03
So it's like there's a, there's a rubric with points that's really gamey to where you can
01:20:09
qualify for a radiology program as an associate's degree.
01:20:12
So after two years, I'd have an associate's in radiology that would make me eligible to
01:20:17
get a one year certificate for radiation therapy.
01:20:20
And that's, I was attracted to radiation therapy because I feel like it would be really gratifying
01:20:25
for me because cancer is one of like, you know, the hardest things people can go through.
01:20:29
And for me to be able to give support to people when they're going through something like
01:20:32
that, I, I find just the idea of that to be really gratifying for me.
01:20:37
And obviously there's a lot of, you know, skill sets and things that I don't feel like
01:20:43
I have down to where I would be a good radiation therapist.
01:20:47
And so just the idea of, you know, me pursuing that degree brings me a lot against a lot
01:20:55
of the problems I face on a daily basis, like the deficits of my social skills.
01:21:00
And it makes me want to be better.
01:21:02
And that's the kind of career that I want, a career that not only is, you know, moral
01:21:07
that legitimately adds value to the world, but a career that will push me to do, you
01:21:12
know, be a better person.
01:21:13
But that's what I want to pursue, you know, career wise.
01:21:17
I would also love to, you know, play Dungeons and Dragons.
01:21:20
I used to, you know, since I was a kid, I've always really loved the idea of that.
01:21:26
But it's just not something I could ever, you know, play.
01:21:30
I mean, you know, my brother and his friends, they had a gaming group, but I could never
01:21:34
join them because they were always just staying up too late.
01:21:37
I would love to be a voice actor.
01:21:38
I actually tried to pursue that for about six months, but honestly, I'm a pretty terrible
01:21:42
voice actor.
01:21:43
Yeah, but I like the, I'm nodding my head the whole time because especially when you brought
01:21:50
up about the courses that you're taking for the radiologist, but you're going after it
01:21:57
well for one, because it's something that you want to do with sneer and dear to you.
01:22:00
You want to give back.
01:22:02
It's morally in line with what you believe in and who you are.
01:22:07
But also stepping out and challenging yourself because a lot of people would shy away from
01:22:13
it.
01:22:14
You know, anything, I want to take the easy route, but it seems like you're, you're facing
01:22:18
it head on your game.
01:22:20
Yeah.
01:22:21
If I want an easy life, I would probably scam people by making like a cryptocurrency that
01:22:26
is, you know, completely useless to society.
01:22:30
But I, you know, I'm not going to go the classic route of learning how to code because I don't
01:22:35
think it would be as gratifying to me as helping people going through cancer.
01:22:41
Another thing actually is I've never been formally diagnosed with autism because it
01:22:45
requires a psychiatric evaluation.
01:22:48
You know, you, you told me you still live in America and so you kind of know about the
01:22:51
healthcare system.
01:22:52
Yeah.
01:22:53
So for me to get diagnosed with autism formally costs on the low end, if, if the person gave
01:23:01
me an abbreviated, you know, diagnosis, it would be like six or $800 on the high end,
01:23:08
it would be over $2.
01:23:11
And you know, currently I'm in talks with somebody right now, but I think they want
01:23:15
me to go for the full psychological screening.
01:23:20
So, you know, I'm just working in a factory right now to pay for an autism diagnosis.
01:23:26
And if there's anyone listening to this right now that thinks they might have autism that
01:23:30
are below the age of 18, I'd recommend talking to your guidance counselor in high school
01:23:34
or elementary school.
01:23:36
Just like write down the diagnostic criteria for autism and pregame, talk about all the
01:23:41
way your life experience leads up to that.
01:23:44
Because once you turn 18, it's no longer the government's problem, it's your problem
01:23:47
and you're going to have to pay for it.
01:23:49
How about like say for instance, the health insurance plans that they have, they have
01:23:53
available, do any of them cover that?
01:23:56
I believe that some health insurance, I don't have health insurance right now personally,
01:24:00
it is pretty expensive.
01:24:03
But I do believe some health insurance plans at least will cover a psychiatric screening.
01:24:09
So you're looking at probably having to pay the full amount, you said there's a smaller
01:24:13
fee I guess you would say, six to 800 and then you have the higher fee?
01:24:18
Yeah.
01:24:19
So the abbreviated testing is if the person thinks that, it's either if the person thinks
01:24:27
that yeah, you probably have autism, so we'll give you an abbreviated screening focusing
01:24:31
on autism versus just a thorough psychiatric evaluation for everything.
01:24:39
And whether you know, it's pretty, the person who gave, I talked to with their organization,
01:24:46
they agreed that the abbreviated version was better for me, but I don't know if she
01:24:50
was like, if she quit or she was like fired, but she told me that she was no longer going
01:24:55
to be working with that company.
01:24:57
And another person just emailed me after that and she said, hey, this person didn't have
01:25:04
the power to say that you could do the abbreviated testing.
01:25:08
I want to get your health insurance information and we're going to go with like the full psychiatric
01:25:14
evaluation, I was like, holy crap, if I can't convince you that I probably have autism with
01:25:22
like stories like the one I told you today, I don't know how anyone else has a chance
01:25:27
to.
01:25:28
And I just think it's about them getting more money.
01:25:30
Yeah, it's a hell of a process.
01:25:33
Like you got to go through flaming hula hoops to try to get a diagnosis.
01:25:39
What is, could I ask you like what, with you, with you going through it now, like say, for
01:25:43
instance, you know that you, there's probably a fair chance that you do have it.
01:25:47
Like what would it do for you to get a diagnosis from, you know, from, from the health officials
01:25:54
that do the diagnosing?
01:25:55
What would, is there something that you're looking for or just to have it in ink, you
01:26:01
know, saying that this is what I have?
01:26:02
So there's a few reasons.
01:26:05
The first one, honestly, to just to say this outright, I don't really care about being
01:26:10
like officially diagnosed.
01:26:13
I understand who I am as a person.
01:26:16
And while learning about autism and other people's, you know, life experience is something
01:26:20
that benefited me so much whenever I was learning how to overcome my trauma and learning better,
01:26:25
just learning how to, how to not say it like correctly, learning how to be better, learning
01:26:30
how to cope.
01:26:31
That was enough for me, but to a lot of people it isn't.
01:26:36
So a lot of the reason why I want to have the autism diagnosis is because for scholarships,
01:26:42
to me, I see that as like a financial investment.
01:26:45
I also want to go into the healthcare field.
01:26:48
And with that, I understand I'm going to run into a lot of people that will not want me
01:26:54
to be officially diagnosed if I want to talk about it whatsoever.
01:26:58
And so for me to be able to be myself and feel comfortable expressing myself in like
01:27:02
my future work environment is kind of something I have to do eventually.
01:27:06
Okay.
01:27:07
Like in a sense, it's going to give you more authority in doing what you're doing.
01:27:12
It's going to give me a thing I can throw up in people's faces because a lot of people,
01:27:16
they have a lot of preconceptions about autism.
01:27:19
And you know, I would like to think that people who understand a lot about the healthcare
01:27:25
field and I understand a lot about medicine, they can recognize that.
01:27:28
But just with a lot of the people that I've spoken to, you know, they're kind of, and
01:27:34
the best way I can say that they're kind of ignorant about autism.
01:27:37
They look at me and they can't accept the fact that I have autism because I'm smarter
01:27:42
than them.
01:27:44
And I try to be as nice as I can to people, but a lot of people, they're really insecure.
01:27:51
And no matter how nice I am to them, they just look at me and it hurts them.
01:28:00
Because they see autism, a lot of people, people either see autism as like we're animals
01:28:05
or they'll see people with autism and they'll be like, they're someone to be protected,
01:28:09
like they're like children.
01:28:11
And so if I come at them as like as an equal, it hurts their pride.
01:28:16
And so if I have that official diagnosis, it helps me in that situation.
01:28:19
And also there's been like a couple of times where I've dealt with like police officers
01:28:24
that's been pretty bad and having an official diagnosis will kind of give me the certification
01:28:29
for them not to like be rude to me.
01:28:32
Okay, right.
01:28:33
Yeah.
01:28:34
I get where you're coming from.
01:28:35
Thank you for explaining that because I was just curious in that and how you said it.
01:28:39
It doesn't matter to me whether just to be officially diagnosed just so I can say, yeah,
01:28:43
I have autism, but the reasons behind it and I completely understand where you're coming
01:28:49
from.
01:28:50
And yeah, right.
01:28:51
I appreciate the explanation.
01:28:52
Yeah.
01:28:53
Yeah.
01:28:54
Clarence, you have, man, you open my eyes to a lot of things, especially the some of
01:28:58
these conditions that I've never heard of.
01:29:01
And in just your perspective, your attitude, your resiliency, everything that that go-getter
01:29:07
spirit, that's everything that this show is about.
01:29:11
What I respect is somebody who takes matters into their own hands and and they take responsibility
01:29:17
for themselves.
01:29:19
It's so easy to use things as a crutch.
01:29:21
I'm this way because my father wasn't there or I'm this way because nobody was nobody
01:29:28
picked me to play on their teams when I was a kid or they were laughing at me because
01:29:32
I couldn't speak.
01:29:33
You know, whatever, not to downplay any of those, but you can pick something out of
01:29:37
the sky and say, this is why I'm this way and I don't want to do anything about it.
01:29:41
I'm satisfied.
01:29:42
And that's okay.
01:29:43
There are people like that and they're satisfied to, I don't even know if you would call it
01:29:48
live, but they're satisfied.
01:29:49
They're happy with existing.
01:29:51
They're content with existing in that way.
01:29:53
But this is about people who think they're worth it.
01:29:56
You know, their life is worth it and they want to try to make the best out of this ride.
01:30:01
And thank you.
01:30:03
Thank you.
01:30:04
I'm happy that we were able to connect and that you were able to share your piece.
01:30:07
I feel like we can go on for another hour or so, but just for the sake of time and for
01:30:13
this show, is there any other points or anything else that you'd like to share with people,
01:30:19
even things that you're involved with or how maybe someone might be able to reach out
01:30:24
with you and just to say, Hey, you know, I appreciate your words.
01:30:27
Thank you for sharing your story and you know, anything like that.
01:30:32
Yeah, I can do that.
01:30:33
I can put my email address in the messages right now.
01:30:36
It's just or, you know, OR then T H R E E as in the number three, then S. Okay.
01:30:42
And email.com.
01:30:44
You also reach out to me on Reddit.
01:30:45
My name is just or spoke with a zero.
01:30:49
Just, you know, zero R SSS.
01:30:52
I'll leave that for sure in the description box of this, this show once it's released.
01:30:57
So people, if they want to reach out to you and say their highs and give you a good word
01:31:02
and just, you know, thank you for sharing your message, they can do so.
01:31:06
Yeah.
01:31:07
I also on my Reddit account, I had, I wrote a little bit, I think it was about a year
01:31:11
ago at this point or like half a year ago about some of the things that helped me and
01:31:16
that I learned while going through the process of really turning my life around.
01:31:21
You could just find my Reddit account, read that.
01:31:24
Honestly, probably some of the stuff on it, I wouldn't really agree with, but the vast
01:31:28
majority of the stuff I found, I was really proud of that with time.
01:31:32
It's just like a couple of like the detail stuff.
01:31:34
I probably should have spoken more about, you know, building that infrastructure.
01:31:39
Like I couldn't really articulate that at the time, but I've kind of experienced why
01:31:43
I needed to.
01:31:45
But yeah, honestly, I feel like I didn't really talk that much about like my, my life story.
01:31:50
Like I'm just, I touched it like the very beginning and the end.
01:31:53
Probably a lot of the stuff that really messed me up as a child.
01:31:57
The spirit of a warrior.
01:32:00
I was absolutely impressed with his ability and drive to problem solve troubleshoot to
01:32:10
lock himself in a room and just stare at a wall and brainstorm and try to figure it
01:32:15
out.
01:32:16
He wasn't going to let anything stop him.
01:32:19
There was no excuses.
01:32:20
He was in plain the victim.
01:32:22
I'm sure there were times in his life when he wanted to just say, enough is enough.
01:32:28
I'm done.
01:32:29
But there was a drive in him somewhere.
01:32:32
At one point it was his grandmother.
01:32:34
That was his why.
01:32:36
Everything from teaching himself how to speak with the help of his dog, might I add to losing
01:32:42
the way.
01:32:43
Everything that was put in his way as an obstacle was a reason for him to get better.
01:32:48
There's a reason for him to develop the tools to gather the resources necessary so he can
01:32:54
step over it.
01:32:56
He can move beyond it.
01:32:57
He can push past it.
01:32:59
And that's what I can respect about Clarence.
01:33:01
He's young.
01:33:03
He's motivated.
01:33:04
He's driven and he's going after it.
01:33:07
He's got a lot of plans.
01:33:08
He's got a lot of goals.
01:33:10
And I know he's a shoe in to achieve every one of them.
01:33:13
You can send him an email and reach out to him.
01:33:16
His information will be in the show notes.
01:33:19
If anybody wants to say hi or connect with him in any way, he said his line is always
01:33:24
open.
01:33:25
And be sure to stay tuned for the second half of this conversation.
01:33:29
You guys can hit that little bing ding, the bell to be notified, to opt in to be notified
01:33:36
on whichever platform you're listening to so you don't miss out on any of the up and
01:33:41
coming shows.
01:33:42
And again, thank you to everybody worldwide listening.
01:33:46
I appreciate those of you who have reached out to me through email.
01:33:51
That line also is always open.
01:33:53
And another way to show your support is on whichever platform it is.
01:33:57
You can leave a review.
01:33:58
You can rate it or you can share it with a friend.
01:34:02
And we can keep growing this thing organically.
01:34:06
The second half is on its way.
01:34:08
Until next time and very soon.
01:34:15
Thank you.