I see a Joey Diaz quote all the time online, about being born a nice kid and losing his way. The actual quote is him speaking to Joe Rogan and he says:

“Dawg, listen let’s get something straight, you’re gonna hear this from me one fucking time. I was born a nice kid, somewhere along the line I lost my fucking way. Somewhere along the line when you suffer a traumatic experience as a young man you stay stuck for a few years. I’m not making excuses, these are all proven things, you have to read this shit. You just don’t grow until the reality of what happened comes to you, you’re still in shock. When your mom dies or your father dies, and somewhere along the lines I went off the rails, and I’m sorry for that.”

Let me just say my mom and dad didn’t die. However as a young man I think I did experience some traumatic experiences. Somewhere along the way I did lose my way, and I acted out, and I was mean to people that didn’t deserve it, and I’m sorry for that.

I’ve been listening to Joey’s book about his life and there are some things that really hit. Being stuck for a while is one of those things. When I was a kid my parents got addicted to drugs, and things got so bad by the time I was 12 I had lived in 8 different houses, and at some points didn’t have anywhere to live. The hard part of that wasn’t the moving, though I’m sure it didn’t help my nervous system. I don’t know what it’s like to live in a place and feel like you’re at home and safe. That’s why I believe the idea of home is a feeling you have to go down a path to find inside yourself. You need to be home for you, because you’re what keeps you safe.

I was thinking last night about how this time last year I wasn’t leaving the house because of agoraphobia, and I thought about what a stupid fucking idea agoraphobia is. For me it’s triggered by the fear of having a panic attack. I’ve had more panic attacks than I can count, so I’ve already beat the thing I fear most. I experienced the thing I fear most in life and I made it through, so being afraid of it still is pointless.

Anyways, growing up I didn’t understand that home wasn’t a place you leave behind each day. I didn’t understand it because I was a kid, and because I just wanted to exist in a place that I felt at home. Now I see that I’m able to decide where I feel at home. I think spending as many years as I did not never feeling safe or at home, severely damaged my nervous system. The beauty of the human body, is its ability to heal, and our ability as people to put in the conscious work, to make our subconscious selves feel better.

If I had to guess I’d say I was really stuck for around 10 years, then spent a few years healing, and then got stuck for a couple more years. It’s truly not an excuse though, I take responsibility for every mean thing I ever said, for every person I ever hurt.

I spent so much time not growing, that I feel behind now. I wasn’t growing because thinking about my childhood gave me panic attacks, I wasn’t growing because I was running from the storm. The hard part about that is you can only run so long, eventually the storm catches up, always. So for me, despite not knowing better, or having the confidence to speak about what I was feeling, I feel like I wasted many years not facing my feelings.

A lot of this is to say that I was born a nice kid, but that was taken from me. I was able to get it back, and now I consider myself a kind person, but it took years of therapy, and self reflection to realize that I was the problem. Even still there are times where I don’t fully feel like a kind person, because I still speak my mind and sometimes that shit is rude.

All of this to say I was born a nice kid, but I think I grew up to be a broken person. Last night someone said they didn’t want to hurt me and I told them they couldn’t. No one can hurt me, because you can’t hurt someone that’s already broken. For me in this instance I always think about Peaky Blinders, when Grace offers to sing Tommy a sad song and warns him it’ll break his heart, to which he responds: Already broken.

I wouldn’t consider my childhood a particularly good time, but there’s irony. I’m thankful I had a shitty childhood because it broke me over and over again, and now I can’t be broken by someone else. The things my own mind do to me are cruel, but there isn’t a single thing someone external can say or do to me that are worse than the things I have said, or do say about myself. It made me invincible to external pain, physical and emotional. I get tattoos because I think it’s fun, and the pain is therapeutic. Emotionally, when your parents abandon you to do heroin, there’s not many things in this world that are harder to deal with than that.

I write this on thanksgiving eve because I don’t really celebrate holidays, for me they are days that I tend to go M.I.A. and so with that here’s what I’m thankful for:

1. I’m 29 years old and I’ve been fortunate enough to experience unconditional love.
2. I’m fortunate enough to know what true heartbreak feels like
3. I was fortunate enough to raise a beautiful, kind, gentle dog.
4. Professionally, I’ve been more successful than I ever thought I had the ability to be.
5. I’m in relative good health.
6. I have a home.
7. I can’t be beat by anyone but me.
8. My current job allows me the free time to write a cocktail book.
9. I’m in the beginning processes of opening a restaurant.
10. I have people who want to help me with my dreams.

I hate thanksgiving because while I appreciate the idea of being thankful for things, this land isn’t ours, we stole it from the people it truly belonged to. The least you can do is actually think about what makes you thankful. Feel free to share what makes you grateful.

Have a good holiday and stay well.

J