Locked In with Ian Bick - My Eye-Opening Experience Inside a Psychiatric Hospital | Stella Ann

Episode Date: October 15, 2024

Stella Ann shares her eye-opening experience inside a psychiatric hospital in this candid conversation. She talks about the challenges, the personal growth, and the insights gained from her time there. Join us as Stella offers an honest look at mental health, recovery, and what it’s really like behind the hospital walls. #MentalHealthAwareness #MentalHealthJourney #MentalHealthStruggles #PsychiatricCare #MentalHealthStory #BreakingTheStigma #MentalHealthSupport #LifeInPsychiatricHospital Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ Connect with Stella Ann: https://www.instagram.com/stellalommasson/profilecard/?igsh=MW1rZGFzbGp4OHEzdg== Presented by Tyson 2.0 & Wooooo Energy: https://tyson20.com/ https://woooooenergy.com/ Buy Merch: https://lockedinbrand.com Use code lockedin at checkout to get 20% off your order Timestamps: 00:00:00 Stella's First Podcast on Her 21st Birthday 00:05:56 Overcoming Bullying and Building Self-Esteem 00:12:27 The Missing Safe and Party Regret 00:19:09 Family Turmoil and Signs of Mania 00:25:16 Life Inside a Mental Hospital 00:31:14 Strict Communication Rules in Residential Facilities 00:36:59 Experiences in a Co-ed Residential Facility 00:43:24 Struggles with Family and Loneliness 00:49:34 Navigating Family Relationships and Respect 00:55:18 Confrontation and Conflicts with Family 01:01:16 Arrival at the Military Base 01:07:28 Impact of Limited Resources on Life Choices 01:13:00 Life in Military School and Overcoming Isolation 01:18:41 High School Drama and Relationships 01:24:37 Receiving the Heartbreaking Midnight Call 01:30:31 Reflections on Family and Loss 01:36:30 The Importance of Having a Trusted Mentor Powered by: Just Media House : https://www.justmediahouse.com/ Creative direction, design, assets, support by FWRD: https://www.fwrd.co Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Enjoy every day like it's the weekend at Treasure Island with special rates of only $79 midweek. Could it get any better? It does. Get free parking too at Treasure Island while staying in the center of the strip. With summer coming, enjoy all your favorites, steps away from your room, including their world-class spa, classic Vegas steakhouse, and tropical resort-style pool. It's all at Treasure Island, Las Vegas. Visit Treasure Island.com to book your room for just $79 a night. That's Treasure Island.com. Stella, welcome to Locked in all the way from Virginia today. Yes.

Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. And this is your very first time doing a podcast and it's your birthday, the big 21st. Yes, it is my 21st birthday and my first time ever talking about my story on a podcast, really with anyone, like start to finish. I haven't really ever laid it out before. Wow. So cool that you gave us the opportunity to share and it's on your birthday. That's awesome.

I'm super excited. I felt like it was a really good time. I felt like my birthday was the perfect time to do it. You guys were like, yeah, we're booking like June to August. And I was like, how's September? And you guys were great about it. So I'm glad it was able to work out. You lost your keys again.

When we were filming Mr. Base, did you watch that episode? Yeah, I did. That guy's kind of a... It was an interesting episode for sure. It was an interesting episode. How was that traveling? Because I know you said for a while that you were never going to travel. Yeah.

just wanted people to come here. I have all the gear. I mean, it's a lot. I was really excited about traveling and then it's just like so many episodes. And this is like the quality here is way better. Yeah. And even though it looks like the cameras look good on location, it's just outside distractions, noises, it's so much better here.

So I just did like a bunch of episodes in Kentucky and I just did a bunch of episodes in, or I'm doing them in Nashville. But I think after that I'll take like a year off from like the heavy traveling unless I'm going to Spotify in L.A. Yeah, you're doing that monthly, right? Yeah, because they have the studio that I can use. So it just costs me a plane ticket in a hotel. That's nice.

But to check the gear in, it was like 500 bucks each way on Delta. Oh, my gosh. I know. So I'm taking a break on that. I'd rather people just come here and it looks better. And it's more intimate one-on-one, like therapy, like you were saying. Yeah. And I think it's very authentic to like your podcast because I feel you've always had this

vibe of like the one-on-one. Like, it was cool seeing it. his house and like the change of setting is really cool you going into prisons i think it's amazing did you interview an inmate yeah that was my first i always said i would never interview an inmate because i mean you know because you listened to every episode um which is cool that you saw like the evolution of the old studio and then this one it's been really cool to see the growth of the podcast thank you i'm glad i was able to come on with the way that the growth has been going because i put in my application probably in like the middle of all the episodes that you

out. And then I was sort of watching the ones with like famous people. And I was like, oh, this man is never going to answer me. No, I mean, the show is for just unique, you know, average individuals. And that's what the purpose is, you know, and those episodes like do the best of the people that no one ever knows. And now we're doing the five episodes a week. I haven't necessarily like announced that directly yet because this show is not really like a me talking about myself podcast where like I talk to the audience. Yeah. But that's like a little update. So did you grow up in Virginia? I did. So I grew up in northern Virginia. I spent the first like 10 years of my life in Lorton, Virginia. The start of my childhood from the outside looking in was amazing. We had a really nice house on the Potomac River. We had boats. We had nice cars. Both my parents were together. I did sports. But from the inside, it was, things were rough. My dad drank a lot. He was very absent. my older sister, she was diagnosed with brain cancer when she was two.

She's now 26. She still has brain cancer. So when I came along, she was six and I had been dealing with cancer for four years. And I think that that drove a big wedge between my parents. From what my mom has told me, my dad was very absent in the hospital. He never spent the night. He was never there. And I think that caused a lot of issues.

and then my dad worked a lot, drink a lot, sat in the garage a lot. So everything just kind of boiled up with my parents. So when I was eight, my mom kicked him out. I remember the morning that my dad left. He was in his bathroom and I went down. I was getting ready for school. It was super early. And he looks at me and he's like, I'm going to go spend the weekend with your Aunt Cindy.

And, you know, I'll be back after the weekend. And he never came back. And my parents were separated for two years. I guess in Virginia, you have to be separated. it for two years. And then after the divorce finalized, my dad moved to Florida. And I only saw him about once a year after that. But like pre-divorced during the separation time, we stayed in hotels almost every weekend with my dad, which was, it was fun. My parents, I think, tried to make the best of the divorce. But like, I have a memory of like looking out of my bedroom window and watching

them fight in the driveway and just thinking, like, what happened to my family? Like, where do my parents go like and I just knew nothing was ever going to be the same after that um so after the divorce my dad moves um we see him about once a year and we're living with my mom it's just me my mom and my sister we move out of the house that I grew up in um and we move to our second house I labeled them by colors so this was the blue house um and this is when I think I really started to struggle and school. I think I always struggled in school. I think I flew under the radar a lot and no one really picked up on the fact that I wasn't actually learning anything. So by this point, things at home were just so crazy that I couldn't be bothered with what was going on in school. And I was struggling a lot with

making friends and fitting in and feeling accepted and I was bullied a lot from elementary school all the way through high school, I was severely bullied. And I had horrible self-esteem issues and I was just so insecure. And my parents separating, my dad leaving and just kind of piecing out on us really, I think, tore down like who I was. And I think I lost all confidence in myself and all like just trust within myself and within others. And I started making really poor decisions. and I just don't think I had like, I feel like I wasn't conscious. Like, I just feel like I was a completely different person.

And like looking back on like my teenage years and my behavior, I would say, started to shift at like 12. I went to a really small elementary school. So when I went to middle school, it was three elementary schools combined and only about 20 kids from my elementary school went. So I had very few friends. We had none of the same classes. And it was terrifying. And I somehow made all the wrong friends when I got into middle school. And I just started to get in trouble.

And I started to get curious. I started to smoke weed in, I want to say seventh grade. One of my friends got me to do it. And I will say, like, my mom will always say, like, oh, you had such bad influence friends. I was the bad influence. Like, nobody had to influence me to do anything. It was all my own doing. And I remember like watching my friend's siblings with them and seeing like the partying and the fun that they would have.

And I wanted that. I was 12, 13 years old. It wasn't really going to work out. But like my friends had a lot more freedom with their parents than I ever did. And it just made me fight and push back on my mom like endlessly. My friends could do essentially whatever they wanted with what I thought were very, consequences, but their parents just kind of, I think, allowed them to experiment more safely. And I think my mom just being so strict on me and wanting to keep me sheltered, just made me sneaky.

A lot of people will say, like, strict parents make sneaky kids, and I firmly believe in that. I think that if my mom wasn't so strict and had just kind of opened that door up more for communication, I don't think I would have done a lot of the things that I ended up doing. So around seventh grade, I start sneaking out. And I'm sneaking out with, like, adults, like grown men and getting myself into very sketchy situations. And I'm like 12, 13 years old, running around with 18, 19 year old men, smoking weed, doing drugs, and just misbehaving. I was doing horrible in school because I was staying up all night. And I was getting in constant trouble with my mom.

I, for pretty much all of middle school, I had like no apps on my phone. I had no social media. Like, my mom disabled all of my apps. And I remember at one point, I like figured out the password. And I like redonloaded all my apps. But I would like delete them every day. And I would delete them when I went around my mom. And I eventually got caught, got my phone taken for like six months. I think from like all of middle school, I had a phone for maybe like a year of it, if that. And then let's see. Let's see. when did things start to get really bad? Eighth grade. I had done horrible in seventh grade. I don't know how I, like, continued on in school. I had horrible grades. The county I was in had no child left behind laws, so I think that's what pushed me through. I know that's what got me from eighth grade to ninth grade, because I completely failed my eighth grade year. So I was an athlete. I did gymnastics growing up, and then I switched to cheerleading. And my first year of doing cheerleading, and my first year of doing cheerleading was, I think my eighth grade year, I went through the whole season and I tore my labrum in my hip. Yeah, a laboral tear. I had a laboral tear in my hip and it just completely

ruined my career. I had to have hip surgery at 13 and I was in like a huge leg brace up to my waist for six weeks. I was on crutches for six weeks. I literally couldn't move. Like, hip pain is the absolute worst. I wish nobody to ever have back or hip issues because they are horrible. And so it was at this point, I got the surgery and I start getting better. And for some reason I have it in my head that like I deserve to have fun after this surgery. Like I deserve like my big one and I should, I deserve to have some fun after the surgery. I don't know where I got this from, but my mom was planning a trip to go visit some friends,

and under some freaking impression, I thought that she would leave me home alone. She wasn't going to do that. So me and one of my friends start planning a house party, and I have no friends. Like, I barely fit in. So I just start posting on my Snapchat. Worst mistake ever. And then, like, the day of the party comes, and my mom is like, you're not staying here. and I'm like, I'm not canceling this party.

So I make the dumbest decision ever, and I let my friend throw it in my house while we are gone. So I sneak her, I'm 13. I sneak her over to our house. She's hiding in my basement. My mom comes home from work. We leave for our trip. My friend throws this party.

Over 200 people show up to this townhouse that I live in. The neighbors call the cops because 200, people aren't fitting in the townhouse. There's hundreds of people in the street. Like, it was complete chaos. And I'm, like, tweaking out because, like, I have almost no service. And I'm at, like, this party with my mom and her friends. And I know that everything is going wrong. And, like, my friend had left. She left in the middle of the party. And that's when I knew, like, oh, I'm fucked. I fucked up so bad. And, like, the next day I ended up having, I had a friend go over and, like, try and clean up. And she did a great job. except people stole stuff from our house.

So we get back and my mom just noticed like things are off in the house. Like things are shifted. Like things just aren't in the right spot. And she goes upstairs and her safe is missing. And she starts freaking out. She calls the cops and the cops are like, I actually just remember this. The cops called my mom's phone that night. And my mom wasn't around.

Like my mom was passed out drunk. Like she was pieced out. And I talked to the cops. and I don't know what the hell I told them, but like somehow they didn't talk to my mom. They locked our house back up and I thought I was in the clear. So she calls the cops. The cops show up and the cop is like, do you want to tell your mom what happened? And I was just like, I fucked up so bad.

And my mom just looks at me and she's pissed. And I tell her and like to this day it's my biggest regret in life. That's the one thing that I wish I never did in my life was throw that party because I know it devastated. my mom and I got kicked out of the county for it. I didn't get in any legal trouble for it because I wouldn't say anything. I wouldn't say who I told, who was involved. My friends wouldn't say who was involved. So they couldn't pin anything on anyone. We couldn't find the safe. It was lost. I was, I felt horrible about it. Still do feel horrible about it. So we move. This was like at the end of eighth grade year. So this was like May, May, June time. I don't

finish eighth grade year my mom just takes me out of school i go and live with a family friend for some time um i spend like the entire summer with them and like work on my behavior and stuff as soon as i go back with my mom it's just right back to chaos like there's a repeated pattern of me like getting shipped off with other people and then as soon as i end up back with my mom i start fucking up again so it's supposed to be a fresh start brand new county i don't know a single person in this high school that I'm going to. So it's supposed to be a brand new fresh start. I again make the worst friends possible and just get involved in the wrong crowd again. And so I try to do good. I try to make it a fresh start. I join the dance team. I make some good friends. And then I meet this boy.

And he ruined my life. I was 14 years old and he was 18. He was a senior. And I was always big on I'll never be that freshman that gets taken advantage. That was that freshman. So we meet like December time around Christmas. And I also regret this. I essentially stole him from one of my friends. He showed interests in me and I was all over it. It was the first time I had a male give me attention that made me feel good.

And he just knew what to say to wrote my little 14 year old self in. I don't know why nobody looked at that situation and wasn't like, I don't think this is very appropriate. But we are in a situation, whatever, for a few months, he's cheating on me the whole time, manipulating me, gaslighting me, emotionally abusing me. He ends up giving me mono, and I get very sick from it. I was sick for three months from it. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone. can get the same premium wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying.

It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistance assistants assistants switch you to MintMobil today. I'm told it's super easy to do at mintmobile.com slash switch. Up front payment of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. Seeful terms at mintmobile.com. Um, and somehow he gaslights.

me into not believing that he gave it to me. He's like, well, I guess you were kissing someone else. And like, I knew that wasn't true, but he was able to just play it off enough that, like, I let it slide. You get mono from kissing someone else and swapping saliva with someone else. It's not like a common cold. Like, I was so freaking stupid. And I just start losing my mind. I get severely depressed and, oh, I completely skipped over this part. I went on Adderall going in at freshman year. This was a horrible decision. The first time I started taking Adderall, I'm hooked, and I just started abusing it. I started selling it, and I started abusing it. I'm taking it at night, staying up super late. That also is probably contributing to my mental health going downhill. So

I'm abusing Adderall at this point, severely depressed. This boy is ruining my life, ruining my self-esteem, and I go on antidepressants, and I start to feel better. But like, I was depressed, the point where I wouldn't leave bed, I wasn't going to school, I was crying constantly, I was starving myself. This boy had full control over my life at 14 years old, and I don't know one, why I gave him the power to do that, and I don't understand why nobody stepped in, because looking back, the signs were there that I was very clearly being abused and taken advantage of by this boy, and nobody noticed. So everything comes to a head with him in like May. And he, his ex flies up, he's from Florida.

His ex flies up from Florida to go to prom with him. He goes to pick her up from the airport, blocks me. And I'm like, tweaking out. I'm blowing up his phone. I'm like, I'm going to text your fucking mom if you don't unblock me and text me back. And he's like playing both me and this girl. Somehow I get her contact information, tell her everything that's been going on. And she tells me everything that's been going on.

And this is them like trying to reconnect, get back together. and I'm like, okay, that's great. And I'm devastated. Like, it shatters me. And she plays this whole, like, oh, I'm on your side girl. Like, fuck him. I need somewhere to stay. And then within like an hour, I don't know if he manipulated her, what he did.

She was sending me videos of them naked in bed together. I was 14 receiving videos from grown adults sleeping together to try to make me jealous and feel bad. And I lost my shit over those few. days. And I was really suicidal. It made me absolutely hate myself. And it just broke me inside. And after this, after we kind of ended things, he had introduced me to a friend group. And I continued to hang out with them. He would occasionally tag along, but like I would hang out with his friends now. And I really liked them. They were a great group of friends. We don't talk anymore, but I have no ill will towards them. And I stayed friends with them for most of high school.

and I snuck out with them almost every night, smoked with them every night. I missed every single final my freshman year, except for my PE final because I was seeking out every night and staying up too late to get up for school. So I completely fail freshman year, and we're getting into summer of going into sophomore year. And it's like July, me and my sister and my dad go to Hawaii. We're supposed to go for two weeks. at this point I was showing signs of mania. I wasn't sleeping for days at a time. I was staying up for two, three days, sleeping for maybe three, four hours max. And I was just completely unhinged.

I had no thought process behind what I did. If I wanted to do something, I was going to do it. And it didn't matter who would hurt, who is in my way. Like, I was going to do it. So, somehow I am able to get on this trip with my dad and my sister. We get to Hawaii. The time zones are switched. So my mania is like thriving and it's worse. And I just, me and my dad didn't get along very well when I was a kid either. Me and my parents always butted heads. Like I think I'm too much like my dad and I think my dad hated that. And like I will say, I don't think my parents wanted to be parents. I think that they loved the idea of having a family, having kids, but I think once they divorced, we were just something else that they had to take care of now.

And after the divorce, I felt like there is very little love in our households. So we get to Hawaii. And me and my dad, neck and neck, me manic with my dad was the worst possible combination. I've always been a fighter. I have fought my parents since day one. If I felt like my parents weren't treating me or my sister fairly like I was going to be a screaming match with them. And my sister was never like that.

My sister was always very, very compliant with them. And I was not. I was always going to push the boundaries. I always wanted to know why. I always wanted to know why I couldn't do whatever I couldn't do. And I just, I didn't like the rules. I didn't like what they had to say. And my dad would try to parent sometimes and I had a problem with that.

I was like, how do you want to be a parent sometimes? But when I actually need you, you're not here. So I had full beef with my dad at this point. 14-year-old manic Stella is like enraged with her father. And we're down there and he's drinking a lot. He, I think also eventually developed an issue with pills. And he was mixing narcotics with alcohol. And he was completely unhinged also.

So we're sitting at the dinner table. And I have no phone at this point. My mom took my phone before I went to Hawaii, so I'm like using my sister's phone. And my dad makes like a slick comment about something that I had done because I had just got in trouble again. And I was just like, I was just done. And I was like, you know what? You haven't been here for shit. You weren't here for Serena being sick.

My sister. You were never there for me. And he was like, he called me a whore. I forget exactly what he said. but he was like, well, you've been a little fucking whore. So why would I want to be around you? And I was like, oh, okay, cool. So we go our separate ways for the night.

The next morning, we're going at it again. Because he, like, comes in, ask my sister if she wants to go to the beach but, like, ignores me. And my sister's like, no, like, we're uncomfortable with him. And he's still drinking. So we get into another argument. I'm like, leave us the fuck alone. And we get into a whole fight. I, like, push him out of our room.

He pulls the door. shut while I'm slamming it. And my hand was like that, closing the door. And my finger gets stuck in the door as the door fully slammed shut. I think my finger is now broken. So I'm like sobbing. My sister's freaking the fuck out. So we call the cops. The cops show up and my dad is trying to flip it on us. My daughter is losing her mind. She's unhinged, whatever. And I overheard the conversation. The cops were like, you're lucky you're not walking out of here in handcuffs. Go to the airport. Get your daughter's flight changed. They're going to the emergency room and then they're leaving and they're going back to their mom. So we go to the ER.

Thankfully my finger wasn't broken. I don't know what was wrong with it. They splinted it up and we get on a flight back to Virginia. We got off the plane and my mom is like, you're going to a mental hospital. And I was like, I'm going where? And the mental hospital was five minutes from the airport. I had like no time to prepare for this. So I'm just like, no I'm not. And she's like, yeah, you are. I called your psychiatrist today. You're going. going to the mental hospital. And I was like, okay. So we get there and I like get a bag of clothes from my Hawaii trip and I have like no fucking clothes to go to a mental hospital in because I was in Hawaii. So I get like two pairs of PJs and like two t-shirts. We go check in and they're like,

that we know you were coming? And I'm like, yeah, I think I might be able to get out of this. And she was like, I talked to her psychiatrist today. Her psychiatrist was supposed to do everything for admission and then I was like, fuck. And then they start getting me checked in and I don't even remember the like check in process. I just remember going upstairs onto the unit, walking into the bathroom, they'd like have me put on this gown and I have to like fill out a chart of like all my injuries on my body. So I like fill that out. I thought that was going to be good enough. No, they'd then checked my entire body for all of the scars and everything. Make sure I know piercings in. it was very invasive at 14 years old.

And I just, it was the first moment where I was like, the fuck is going on. And so I don't remember the first night, but they drug the hell out of me because I haven't been sleeping. So they give me some sleeping pills. I sleep pretty good the first night. And then the next day, they're like, yeah, we think you're bipolar. My grandma had a history of bipolar. So they just kind of were like, it makes sense.

You're having bipolar symptoms. So lithium. And they put me on lithium and some other sleeping pill at the time. So I'm at this mental hospital for maybe two weeks. I'm in the kids unit. So it's ages, I want to say, 13 to 18. And everyone is varying in mental illnesses and why they're there. And looking back on it, me and my sister joke about it.

because my sister went to the same mental hospital for two summers in a row for the same issues that I had. And we call it summer camp because it was people are literally dropping their kids off like it's fucking summer camp at the mental hospital. And I met some people that did not need to be there and were there because they had gotten in legal trouble and it was easier to get them sent to a mental facility than to like JDC or something. So my roommate was also manic and very bipolar and had she was a little older. than me. And it was probably the worst person I could have roped with in that whole facility. But we just start raising hell together. We like throw chairs at windows because they won't break. So we just how are we going to entertain ourselves? Throw chairs at windows. So we're throwing chairs at windows. We snuck a boy into our room one night. We didn't even do anything with him. Like we were just able to

do it and we just wanted to piss everyone off. And so she knew she was getting sent to a residential. And she thought she had found, like, a great residential that she was going to be able to, like, kind of do whatever she wants at. And I didn't think I was going to go to a residential facility. I thought I was going to be going home. And me and my mom and my therapist sit down, and my mom was like, you're not coming home. And I'm like, then where the fuck am I going? And she's like, you can either go to a residential facility or you can go to your aunt and uncle on their farm. I was like, fuck you, I'm not going to the farm.

And I'm not going to a residential. And I just was so fucking mad. my mom visited me like every day and I kicked her out of that visit. I was like, you need to get the fuck out of here because I don't want to see you. And I feel bad because I will say my mom did show up when I needed her. Like when I was in all my facilities, my mom was there for me. She did support me through it. So my roommate gets shipped off to this residential and now they're like, you need to go to a residential.

So I'm like, okay, well, can I go to the same when she's going to at least? And they're like, yeah, that's perfect. It's a network with your insurance. And I'm like, fuck yeah. like this is going to be a great summer. It's in Indiana. So, um, me and my mom fly to Indiana. We get a rental to wherever the fucking facility was in the middle of nowhere. Um, we pull up, we park. I get checked in. I walk into the girls unit and I see my old roommate and she just looks at me and she's like, and the staff immediately was like, you need to sit down and shut the fuck up because we can't,

I guess we can't know each other. Like we can't talk about like, how we know each other from out of here. And she just looked at me and she was like, we fucked up. And I was like, great. And so we sit down and it's fucking weird. Residential is weird. What is a residential? So it's like a long-term mental health facility.

For, from my understanding, like, mental health hospitals, you can really only stay in for about 180 days. I don't know if it was specific to the hospital I was at or the physical. facility I was in. But after 180 days, you had to go somewhere. I was only there for two weeks, and we knew that I needed something more permanent. So that's why we stuck on a residential. I guess they're just long-term care facilities. I don't think they're all necessarily for mentally ill kids. I know a lot of people will get sent to residential for bad behavior and being a troubled teen. Why didn't they send you to one of those like troubled teen schools?

Like it seems a little bit of an overstep to send you right to a mental, that seems like aggressive, a mental health hospital? Yeah. I thought the same. But I will, like looking back, I needed a mental hospital. Like, I needed to be stabilized on medication because I was absolutely manic. Like, I needed medical intervention without it out. I was definitely not healthy and I think I probably would have ended up in a psychosis really soon after that if I had continued on the way that I was.

So the residential was so strict. The mental health facility was we could do whatever the fuck we wanted. We woke up when we wanted. If we wanted breakfast, we would go to breakfast. If we wanted lunch, we would go to lunch. If we wanted dinner, we would go to dinner. We didn't have to do anything. What kind of food?

Not good at all. Like, they tried. But like the bread was always stale and soggy. I don't even remember what we ate. But I remember vividly meatball sandwiches were frequent and they weren't great. And no cell phones. No cell phones. TVs at all?

So we did have TVs in the mental hospital. We had TVs and the residential, they were a little stricter. We got like an activity time. And playing video games was a part of that. We couldn't watch TV or do anything like that. But we could play like an hour of video. games, but you would have to share with all of the other girls there because there was one TV. The food at the residential is actually really good because we had catering from a local

business for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. My favorite thing about the mental hospital is they had a kitchen with like those little cereal packs and then they had like fruit cups in the fridge. I fell in love with peach fruit cups and cinnamon toast crunch. So I, every time they would restock it, I would just fill up my room with cinnamon toast crunch and peach cups. And I would just kind of eat off of that for the most part. My mom could also bring me food when she came to visit. So she would usually bring me like breakfast or lunch when she would come and visit. The residential, food was good. Really can't complain about that. But they were so strict. We couldn't talk to each other. Like we couldn't talk about our lives. We couldn't talk about

what we were going through, why we were there. Like we could only have like very mundane conversations. and we would try and kind of like whisper and talk to each other and get to know each other a little more. We couldn't share any social media information. We couldn't share numbers. Like we could not keep in contact with each other. And we would all kind of try to, but it just didn't work out. What kind of patients are there? Are they like court-ordered patients or just all voluntary?

I don't think anyone was court-ordered there. We couldn't talk about why we were there, so I don't know if anyone was court-ordered. but pretty much all the girls there were usually there for some form of behavioral issue. A lot of people were either severely depressed or had anger issues. Those were the biggest ones. And I just, I don't think that was the place a bunch of depressed teenagers needed to be. And I don't think that's what a bunch of depressed teenagers need. Why did they not want you to interact with each other?

I have no idea. I genuinely have no idea. I think it might be to refrain from sharing, triggering information with each other. Because all of us did come from pretty traumatic backgrounds and had pretty traumatic things happen to us. So I think that was a big thing is that they didn't want anyone to get triggered. Because there were some girls that would like absolutely lose their shit. They would have to get pinned down, booty juiced. What's booty juiced?

You've never heard of being booty juiced? No, what's that? You get tranquilized pretty much. So they would do it in the mental health hospital and in the residential. You would give booty juice if you were too rowdy. If you couldn't, if you could. Tires matter. They're the only part of your vehicle that touches the road.

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staff members will hold that person down, and if they won't calm down on their own, they'll inject them with some booty juice, and it'll calm them down, and they'll usually sleep for 24 hours. And most people don't do it again, because it's not fun from what I've heard. It never happened to me, but I did watch it happen to someone, and they didn't do it again. Do they put them in, like, separate rooms or like a lock cell or something? Yeah, so there were two quiet rooms that kids could be locked in, And it was a mattress on the ground, nothing on the walls, no windows, no nothing.

Wow. And they would just lock kids in there when they would be too rowdy. Or if they were at risk of hurting themselves or hurting other people, they would lock them in there. Are there male staff or all female? There's male staff. There's male and female staff. So we have our own rooms and we have our own showers in our rooms. And we could come and go from our rooms as much as we wanted.

For the most part, during the day at the mental health. health hospital, we were in groups. We had three different groups and we would be in three different rooms on the floor, but we could kind of come and go. Like, if I wanted to go back and take a shower, I could go back and take a shower. But at the residential facility, we could only shower in the morning and at night, and you could only do one or the other. You couldn't do both. So like if you were on your period and you wanted to shower in the morning and then shower at night to keep yourself clean, you couldn't. And we weren't allowed to use tampons. So it was not. No tampons at all? No tampons at all.

They even give you tampons in prison. How do they not? I don't understand what the issue is with these facilities not giving women proper hygiene. And like I hear a lot of like former prison guards talk about how disgusting women are and stuff. And I think it wouldn't be as disgusting if women were given what they needed to take care of themselves. Because it's gross. It's not fun. It's not enjoyable to be a woman on your cycle and not have the tools that you need to properly.

take care of yourself. Like, I genuinely couldn't imagine not being able to shower whenever I wanted on my cycle now. Like, I don't understand why there are such heavy restrictions on people going through natural things. So as someone that was in those shoes, do you get offended when you see like these prison guards talking about that? I do. I get it from their perspective. I understand why they have that perspective of female inmates. And I don't doubt that there's some women that are disgusting and have poor hygiene, but I think a lot of women weren't taught proper hygiene.

And I think a lot of times poor hygiene is a reflection of their mental state. I don't think there are many people out there that just have poor hygiene and have poor hygiene. I don't think many people want to walk around dirty and smelling. I don't think it's something somebody wakes up and it's like, yeah, I'm cool, smelling like this or like feeling gross. Like, I think there are very few people out there like that. So I think it's definitely kind of harmful to put stuff out there like that because I think it's a one-sided perspective. So I don't love hearing things like that, but I also get it. Because when I get to being in a military school, I lived with some dirty-ass females.

And I hated it. Now, these facilities are they women all ages? and what are like the most serious like acts that they commit that land them in there? So first mental health hospital was co-ed. It was male and female. We thought that the residential facility was also co-ed, but women and men were separated. I would say the most like severe thing that somebody was there for was this was around like fourth of July time. So somebody had caused a fire by setting off fireworks into, I think, a car.

Someone had shot fireworks at someone and hurt someone. There were a lot of very suicidal kids. There was one person that I think of a lot, and he had a really poor relationship with his family, and he was gay, and he was not accepted by anyone in his family, and he was really struggling with his mental health. And almost every single visit he had with his mom ended in him screaming about wanting to kill himself and smashing his head into the wall. And it was just, it was very sad to see somebody go through that and struggle to be accepted for just being who they are. There is definitely a lot of hurt individuals in those facilities. And I think that a lot of, I think a lot of them were just reacting to their situations. And I think that's what I was doing a lot of times was just responding to a situation that I was in.

How does one get out of these facilities? Is there a set time or do you have to wait until your parents say it's okay? So when I was in the residential, I got sent home because I knew what I needed to do to get the fuck out of there. Because once I got there, I was like, oh, fuck this. I'd rather be at the farm. So I was like, what can I do to get sent home? And I knew I had to be there for at least four weeks. So I was like, this is going to fucking suck.

So I just did what I needed to do. Like I just said I felt fine. I felt stable. I didn't feel depressed. I didn't feel whatever. and like I just I don't know I just told them whatever they wanted to hear and my insurance actually ended up

dropping me and was like she can't stay here any longer she clearly doesn't need to be here so my mom had to like fly in overnight to come and get me because then we would have been charged at a pocket for the bed which makes no fucking sense to me but I do what I had to do to get sent home so I go home and mom sends me to my aunt

my uncle's I spend a few weeks at the farm and then I start school it was only like two weeks until school starts. So it's sophomore year and it's my third fresh start. And this also goes terrible. Like three weeks into school, I go to a house party and I got sexually assaulted by a very popular boy in our school that had taken one of my friends' virginities and also had dated another one of my friends. And I didn't handle the situation very well and he said something about it first. So when I said, that was actually sexual assault, no one believed me.

And everything fucking sucked after that. School was miserable. I was bullied and tormented every single day. Nobody believed me. My mom didn't believe me. I had a few friends that believed me. But I just felt like the enemy. And I felt like I had nobody on my side.

People were constantly trying to fight me. Oh, excuse me. Thank you. And I was just so, I hated going to school. Like, I was late every day. I was leaving early every day. Like, I was just fucking miserable in school. So by December of sophomore year, we have Christmas break.

And I refuse to go back to school after Christmas break. I'm like, I can't do this anymore. Like, I genuinely cannot, I can't deal with this anymore. So my mom talks to the school, talks to my psychiatrist, and I'm able to transfer for like mental health reason. and I'm able to get into another high school, like, across the town. And I, like, remember reading the paperwork and my psychiatrist had written out, like, she needs to transfer due to, like, PTSD, depression, insomnia, ADHD.

And I was like, damn, okay. And I just didn't really understand what it meant at the time. So I transferred to this new school, and I don't really make friends. Like, I made a few friends, and I make good friends. They really helped me through the situation. that I was in and I'm still friends with some of them today. That school was a struggle for me because I had to wake up at 5 a.m. to go to school and I wasn't doing that. I was still struggling with my sleep and I was still struggling with my mental

health a lot at this point. And when I transferred to this school is around the time that I went on Ambien. I don't know if you've ever heard of Ambien. It's the worst fucking sleeping pill ever. For me, I would essentially black out, but not fall asleep. So I would be awake and I would do stuff, but I would be fully blacked out. No memory of it lights off. Like, I was there, but I wasn't there. And I got myself into really scary situations on Ambien. I snuck out of my house one night, went to a friend's house, I was sexually assaulted again.

I was then left outside with a dead phone. and I just kind of remember getting up and I just start walking. I have no fucking clue where I am. And I just start walking in the middle of the road. And this car full of three guys pulls up next to me and they're like, hey, are you okay? And I'm fucked up. I'm very clearly fucked up. And I'm like, no, like my phone said, I have no way to get home.

I don't even know where I am. And they're like, can you give us your address? Like, we'll take you home. So I get in the fucking backseat with these three guys and they took me home. and I wish I remembered their names because those are good men. They didn't do a single thing to me. I just remember they kind of talked to me. The other guy that sat in the back with me sat on the other side,

and they were very respectful, and they just made sure I got home safely, and they waited until I got inside, and then they left, and then I went to sleep. And I was just, by the time I was waking up for school at 5 a.m., the ambient hadn't worn off. So I was just completely drugged out of my mind trying to get myself to school. One time me and my mom had like gotten into a fight because she was like trying to drop me off.

And I like couldn't find my phone. I didn't have like my backpack. I didn't have anything that I needed to go to school. And I'm like, I get in the car and we're like pulling out and I'm like I don't have like anything. And my mom starts like yelling at me. She's screaming at me. And we start fighting. And she is like, get out.

And she starts pushing me like up against the car window. And so I like get myself out the car and then she just leaves. She goes to work. I go inside. I just start fucking crying. And I'm just so like defeated. And like I was just so fucking tired at this point. And I was just so fed up with life.

And just I had no friends. I didn't fit in anywhere. I kept fucking up. And I had a horrible relationship with both of my parents. My sister, she moved away and didn't even say bye to me. She packed up, moved to New York, and texted me that she had left. And, like, I just felt so fucking alone. I will say my saving grace, beginning of 10th grade, I met my best friend.

We're still best friends to this day. I call her my platonic soulmate. Like, she is the light of my life. That's the one that's here? No, that's another friend. We met in middle school. She's another one of my really good friends. But my best friend Leah, she got me through everything.

I would not be the person that I am today without her, and I don't think I would be here without her. I absolutely think I would have ended up killing myself. So her friendship is really what got me through sophomore year. It got me through the sexual assault experiences. And at this point, I think I had started to work. I got my first job when I was 15. From 15 to 16, I worked weekends. So yeah, at this point I was working.

And then we get into like summer before junior year. And I'm like miserable. I'm depressed. I hate my mom. I hate my home life. I hate everything about my existence. Like I literally just want to live with my best friend and exist with her. Like, and rot in bed with her.

Like that's all that we did as teenagers was we were just two depressed girls rotting in bed together. And thankfully my mom loved her. So we were able to spend a lot of time together. at this point so I kind of skipped over this in the beginning but my mom started dating a lot right after my parents divorced or separated and I fucking hated it because she kept bringing over random ass men that were creepy as fuck

and she eventually gets involved with this man that she still will not leave alone to this day I call him the fungus because I can't fucking stand him I have no respect for this man and his name is Steve He gets involved in our life and he tries in the beginning to be a part of our life, but I don't like him. He's an asshole and he knows I don't like him. So he reaches the point where he's like, oh, I'm not going to fucking try.

And my mom is like, whatever. So he starts making my mom pick mirror the kids and my mom picks him. And she continued to pick him as I got older. And that, I would say, is like the base of our issues. And I don't think she understands that. So at this point, I, like, was miserable. I was doing a half season of cheer at this point. I tried to go back.

And it was hard. Like, I was so out of shape. I hadn't cheered for two years. My body hurt. Like, my hip was still fucked up. I had never fully recovered from my hip surgery. So it was just, it was really hard. And I just remember, like, she would try to, like, take him to practice with me.

And I was like, I'm not getting in the fucking car with him. And I would mispractice because I wouldn't get in the car with him. And, like, my mom just never saw the issue with, like, this man in our relationship. And, like, I wish she had just seen the fact that, like, he was the biggest problem. And, like, I wish she wanted to bring someone into our lives that wanted to be a part of our lives. Like, I would have loved a stepdad. I would have loved someone that wanted to step in and be a part of her lives. And she had boyfriends that tried.

And I loved going out with them. But she just got attached. to the shittiest one apparently. So at this point, we're fighting constantly. I'm smoking a lot. I'm still sneaking out. My best friend kind of calms me down a lot, and we just kind of spent a lot of time together,

but on my own, I'm still being a little menace to society. And I was just being so stupid, and I just had the worst mindsets, and I was so insecure that anybody that would look at me nice and talk to me nice, I, they, I would be wrapped around their finger. And it was just, I got involved with stupid men and it just wasn't fun. So summer junior year kind of goes by, I keep getting in trouble for smoking weed. And I'm like, I'm not doing anything bad anymore. I'm not sneaking out as much anymore. Like, I just want to smoke weed and hang out with my friends and, like, drop out of fucking

school at this point. Like, I was set at this point that I wanted my GD. I don't. I don't. didn't want to go back to school. And my mom was like, okay, the way that my birthday falls, I had to do a month of school before I could do the GED testing because I had to be 16. So I started school and I was 15. I turned 16 like a weekend. The first week, I like scratch my cornea in both of my eyes. So I can't go to school for four days. And I'm like in the utmost pain. And I'm like, maybe this is a sign. And I'm just like absolutely miserable. I go back to school and I can't go to school because I had to go back to my old high school. So I'm going with all the people that bullied me, tormented me, treated me like shit. I had no desire to be there and be a productive.

USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day like superheroes and sidekicks or auto and home insurance. With USAA, you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10%. Tap the banner to learn more and get a quote at usa.com slash bundle. Restrictions apply. I'm verb school. So I start skipping. I had a friend that would like pick me up and take me to school and we would smoke before school and I would just get too high to go to school and I'd be like, I'm not going to go today. And he would just go in. And like that was always the issue is like everyone had limits and boundaries to doing things. I didn't. I didn't give a single fuck. I just wanted to do what I wanted to do

and that was that. And that was a problem. I couldn't do that. And I just don't think that's realistic. But I do think that some things could have been done differently in my parenting, and I think that I would have been more receptive to things. But like my mom never treated us with respect, and she never treated herself with respect. So I never treated her with respect. And like I was raised on treat people the way that you want to be treated. You have to give respect to gain respect. And when I saw that that didn't apply to me and my parents' relationship, it didn't sense to me and it went against everything I had been raised on. And so I was like, if I wouldn't put up with this from someone else, why do I put up with this for my parents? And I think that's where I got my like

fighter mindset from with my parents of like, if I have to treat you with respect, you're going to treat me with respect. And like, I don't have kids, but if I do have kids, that's absolutely the way that I'm going to raise my kids is my kids will be treated with the utmost respect and they will be treated like people, not my things, not my kids, not their people. And I'm raising a tiny human. And I don't know. Like being 21 and looking back on the way my parents parented, I would do it so fucking differently.

And I just, I don't think my parents wanted to be parents. And I don't doubt that my parents didn't love us and that they didn't want us at some point. But I think at a certain point, it was just a lot for them. And I think that they would have preferred to live. their lives. And like, before they had kids, they had very fun lives. My dad didn't get married until he was in his 40s. He had me when he's 51. So he had a really fun life. He traveled all around Mexico. He went surfing across the country, across the world. I mean, like, my dad lived a really,

really fun life before he met my mom. And my mom was really young when she met him. And they had a lot of fun together. And I think that when the fun stopped and the kids came along and work became too much, it just wasn't what they wanted anymore. but they were stuck with kids. Like you can't just like drop your fucking kids off and give up on them. And I don't know. I think that a lot could have been done differently in the raising of us. And I think that they could have handled the divorce a little bit better.

But I can't change the past. Like I know you talk a lot about like the what ifs and everyone's like, oh, you can't think about the what ifs. I think about the what ifs constantly. Because like what if I didn't throw that party? How different would my life look today? I probably would have never moved and I would have probably never met my husband and I would never be where I am today. So I love looking at the what ifs, but I also am happy with the reality that I have today.

You're already married? Yeah, I am. Wow, when did you get married? I got married a year ago. August 1st, we had our first anniversary. You've lived quite a life at a very young age. We're like halfway there. We're getting there.

So junior year is approaching. my mom takes me to this orientation for military school. And I'm fucking pissed. I am livid. I like start sobbing in the like orientation. I'm talking to the guy and I'm like, I think I need more mental health help. I don't think I need military school. Like I don't think this is what I need.

And my mom was like, whatever. And the guy was really nice. I ended up going to that military school. And I worked with him on doing orientations when I was in military school actually. This is senior year or after graduation? Junior year. Junior year. So this is like the first month of junior year.

And do they give you high school credits for going to this? So I actually ended up getting my GD while I was there. So my mom like takes me and she's like, we'll decide. Like we'll talk about it. This is September. The program starts October 1st. So this is like middle of September. I have my 16th birthday.

And like two weeks before the program starts, me and my mom get into a horrible fucking fight at Walt. I'm at work and she's at home. I have no ride home from work and she doesn't want to come get me. And I'm like, what the fuck am I supposed to do? We work at the same place. We worked at the same grocery store. So like, everyone knows us.

So I get really upset. I'm crying. My boss notices. We talk about it. I'm like, I don't have a ride home. I'm a minor. So they're like worried about me. They get me an Uber home.

I get home. I'm locked out of my house. And my mom won't answer her phone, but she's home. And my phone's like 6%. So I'm like, great. So I start pounding on the doors. And she doesn't answer. She does not come to the door.

And I'm like, is she not home or like, is she ignoring me? So I'm like pounding on all the doors. And she doesn't answer after like 15 and 20 minutes. So I call my dad and I'm like, what the fuck do I do? And he hates my mom. So he's like, call the fucking cops. So I called the non-emergency line. And I tell them what happened.

I'm like, walked out of my house. My mom isn't letting me in. And I don't know what the fuck to do. It's 9.30 at night. I have school tomorrow. Like, I don't know what to do. So two cops show up and they're like pounding on the doors with like their flashlights. They're like screaming like they're being loud as hell.

And my mom still doesn't come to the door. And so they're like, do you have somewhere safe you can go tonight? And I'm like my best friend's house. So we're like walking down the driveway and then they can see like in the front window my mom coming downstairs. And the cop just goes, oh, she's fucking wasted. And I just start sobbing. Like I just break down. And it was just so.

it was really hard for me in that moment to like see that reality of like how my mom really was and having someone see it and then not do anything about it was like fuck and like looking back I wish every day that cop did something because the cop said like you're lucky I'm not charging you with child neglect if it had been later than 930 you would be charged right now and if I had gone to my best friend's house, she absolutely would have been charged. And like, I'm glad it didn't happen, but I think it would have been a good fucking wake-up call for my mom that she needed to get her shit together. This sends my mom over the edge. She thinks that I didn't need to call the cops. She thought it was unnecessary. She's fucking pissed at me. Another thing I left out, in sophomore year,

when I was at that second school, one of her friends tried to fight me, literally try to throw hands with me. Grown-ass woman tries to throw hands with me, get on my face, and I'm like, you're fucking weird. And my mom doesn't defend me. My mom doesn't stand up for me to her friend. So I'm upset about it. I go to school, talk to my counselor about it. They, of course, get the cops involved. And my mom loses all her fucking friends because of it. Because I told the cops what her friend had done to me and the things that they had done before, because her friends had been inappropriate with me before. And I told them that. And my mom was like, you're, fucking lying.

And I wasn't. And she lost all of her friends because of it. And she blamed me for it. And she made sure I fucking knew that it was my fault that she lost all of her friends. Years later, she apologized for it. And she said, your sister told me that you weren't lying. So I was like, thanks. Years later, I'm glad that you believe me.

So me calling the cops on her center over the edge. The thing with her friends was already like brewing from the beginning of the year. And now we're like halfway through the year. and she's like, fuck this, you're ruining my life. So she's like, you're going to fucking military school. And I'm like, fuck, no, I'm not. So I get back to the house. She had, like, picked me up from work.

This was, like, the next night, she picks me up from work. And I'm like, fuck you, I'm not going to military school. So I lock myself in my bedroom and I take a full bottle of sleeping pills. I was on hydroxazine at the time, which is an antihistamine. I can't fucking overdose on an anti-hap-he. You can, but it's hard. So I take, like, over 100 pills of hydroxazine. and I go to bed.

I'm like, I'm not going to wake up. And I was completely fine with that. And I woke up about three hours later, and I just felt like the weight of the world on me. My body was so heavy. I could barely open my eyes, and I just knew I fucked up. So I like, my bathroom was like, we had like a split-level house. So we had two stories and then our basement was kind of split. So I had to go like three stories down to my bathroom.

And I started throwing up just chunks of pills. and I'm like, I need help. So I go back upstairs and I like wake my mom up. My mom is fucking livid. My mom's like, I'm not calling a fucking ambulance. And I'm like, oh, okay. So my mom like Googles or something, I don't know. She gets me in a cold shower.

I'm like miserable and hating my life and throwing up. But I'm like not really conscious. And I'm just throwing up. And then she eventually gets me out and she like makes me a cup of tea. And I'm feeling like slightly better at this point. and like we're not talking like I'm just like in the tub like in a ball water is pouring on me I'm like throwing up next to me and like my mom is just running back and forth room to room I think just tweaking the fuck out I would probably be freaking the fuck out too and she like makes me a cup of tea we sit on her bed and we talk and she braids my hair I drink the tea and keep throwing up all the

fucking pills that I swallowed. And I'm not throwing up anything, but just chunks of pills. Genuinely would not wish that on a single fucking person. So I just kind of accept a feat. And I'm like, I'll go to military school. Like, I'll do it. I won't fight it. Like, I'll go. And she's, we just, we have a really good moment. And it was really nice. And I didn't have to go to school anymore. She said, because you agree to this, like, you don't need to go back, finish out these two weeks. Like, you can just, you know, take these two weeks and enjoy yourself before you go off. And I was like, okay, cool. So I spent a lot of time with my best friend Leah. This program is called Commonwealth Challenge. It is funded by the National

Guard. There are multiple programs all across the country, but this one was on the Camp Pendleton base in Virginia Beach. So we didn't have to pay for anything except for like the supplies I was bringing. So I had to get like two sets of grays, like gray sweats. And then like hygiene products, toiletries, like fucking boot shining kits. And just stuff that we'll need for the first like stretch. Because they'll give us like our own clothes and everything. I don't want to skip to that yet. So I like accept the feet. We get all this shit together. And then we drive down to Virginia Beach the day before I go. And like we have another really good night together. One thing about me, I love a good fucking hotel breakfast.

Like if there is a hotel breakfast, I'm all over it. So I don't eat my hotel breakfast that morning. And my mom was like, are you okay? And I was like, I'm just a little nervous. And we had another good moment. And then she took me to the Virginia Beach Convention Center with all the other kids. And we get dropped off like in our gray sweats. And it was really sad.

one girl didn't know she was coming. So she was in her street clothes and her parents just dropped her off. And she was just sobbing the whole time in her little street clothes. And we were sitting in like rows spaced out and our little gray sweats and we were all just sitting there like shells. And we were just all so fucking terrified. And then they get us loaded into buses. And they're like military buses. They're like white bus school buses.

And they're fucking mean. They're screaming at us. shut the fuck up you need to be quiet like we can't talk to each other we can't fucking speak like and it was like intense and so we like get on the bus we're sitting down it's hot as fuck on this bus and we start talking to each other and we keep getting yelled out we get like unloaded off the bus loaded back on and we're just like fuck so we get we finally go over to the base we get on base and we like load off the bus we have to like file in order and it's it's a genuine military base we're staying in barracks.

We have like our own section on the military base. It's right when you pull onto the base. So we have like multiple barracks that we sleep in because it's men and woman. It's like a five-month-long program, I think. I was there from October to like the end of February. So we get there. We get loaded off. I can't even really remember what the first day was like.

The first day was just such a fucking blur. We get like, I think we get like our sheets. We have to make our bed a certain way. We have like, what are they called? They're like gearboxes at the end of our bed. I forget exactly what we called them. But they're just like these huge military boxes that we put all our stuff in. And we have to have it organized a certain way.

Like everything has to be done a specific way. And we can't speak to each other. So we're all like scared as fuck. Like kind of trying to talk to each other. Seek comfort in each other. And like they're screaming at us. Like to be quiet. They're super, super strict on us.

And, like, I can tell, like, everyone there was just terrified. Day two, it kind of hits me, like, that I'm there. And I have a really bad anxiety attack. And I don't tell anyone. Like, I just stand there, like, sobbing, like, having a panic attack. And one of the staff members noticed and was like, hey, like, are you okay? And I was like, you know, I am. But, like, I'm just having a lot of anxiety.

And, like, I can't call myself down. And they're like, okay, we'll have a counselor. come get you. They had a counselor come get me. She was amazing. Like, I wish that woman could be my therapist to this day. Like, best counselor I've ever sat down with. And she talked me through it. She made sure I was okay. And day two, they had us do like this big PT circle. So we had like a big ass field. And I had missed like the beginning part of it because I was with the counselor. But I remember walking out there and there's this field of kids running in a fucking circle with these like bags on their back. And I'm like, fuck is this.

Oh, BDU bags is what we called them. And that's what we carried all of our gear in. And it sucked. We had to take them on all of our passes. So we got to go home for Thanksgiving and Christmas. And we had to pack all our shit up into these bags and take it with us and then bring it back and unload it. And it was so fucking heavy and it was so uncomfortable. And it was like the length of you.

So you're carrying the size of you on your back with all your shit in it. And it was not fun at all. So they're running around this field and I like eventually get in with them and we're doing PT in this field. And I start kind of talking to the girl next to me and we find out that we're from the same area. And then we find out we have friends in common. So we just kind of like stick together. And then yeah, I mean like it just starts. I mean we wake up at like 8 a.m. I think every day.

We would have only like 20 minutes to get ready. And the way that the buildings were set up, they were barracks. So you walk in and there are stairs immediately going up. And then to your left is like racks of beds and just like a long hallway with beds. And then to your right is the bathroom. And then upstairs you go up and then it's just another long hallway with all the racks. So we were split in the top and bottom deck. Each deck had 20 minutes in the bathroom.

And there were like starting out, I think we had like 36 girls. So there would be like 15 to 3.3. 20 of us at once in a bathroom trying to all get ready with three sinks and three showers and three bathrooms. That didn't go well. We eventually made it work. Like, I started to get ready without a mirror. I just kind of learned, like, how to do my bun at my rack without having to look in

a mirror because there's too much work to stand in that mirror. And people were mean. Like, girls would get into fights over mirrors and, like, people taking up space and stuff. Like, people ended up getting a little violent. Now, are there people that are sentenced by the courts there, too? I don't think so. Are those different? Because I think I had a couple of people from other states where they're actually sent to a boot camp.

Yeah, I've listened to a few of those. And I don't think anyone was court-mandated. I don't think it's a court-mandated thing. From my understanding, it's just the main purpose of it is to be accessible for lower-income families. Because it's free. You just have to pretty much pay for the startup supplies and then everything else. else is given to your child. And I think it's just kind of like supposed to be like that second hope for parents.

What was like a common theme among all of the women that were there? Did they all come from like broken homes? Did they have drug issues? Everyone came from broken homes. Had some form of like home issues, some form of insecurity issues, some form of abandonment issues. Like me and, when I told one of the girls that I was there with that I was doing this, we were kind of talking about it and we were like we didn't need military school like we were a bunch

of hurt little girls that just needed someone to give a fuck about them and to care about us and to help support us through what we were going through and I think that if I don't know what the resources were like when I was growing up I think that if resources were more attainable my story would be a lot different but I just don't think that my mom had many options and I don't think my mom knew what to do. And like I do agree with the fact that like I needed intervention. Like I was not going to graduate high school on my own. I think I would have gotten my GD on my own, but I can't say for sure.

I mean with how unsurious I took school, I don't think I probably would have ended up finishing it. So we get there. And like the first two weeks, they're super, super strict on us. And then they eventually kind of let up on us. And we're able to start bonding and talk. to each other. And like we walk in formation everywhere.

So like we line up in rows of four and we march everywhere. And we do chance and stuff. Like it was kind of fun, but it was annoying as fuck. And I was horrible at like leading the line. I did it like once I think and I was ass at it. Like I could never get in rhythm. I would always call out the wrong steps and they would be like, still look at the fuck back in line.

What were the sleeping arrangements? So they were bunk beds. I always had a bottom rack, which I loved and I'm so grateful for. But we kind of switched around a lot. We didn't have assigned bunks. We would move around a lot. And eventually, like, when we started, we were completely mixed. And then by, like, two to three weeks in, we had been separated into top and bottom deck.

Top deck was kind of the more rowdy girls that, I don't want to say were worse or, like, behaved worse. Like, they just, I guess we're getting in more trouble. And, like, the girls on the bottom deck had kind of. kind of shown like, we'll do what we need to do to get through this program. And so we're split into top and bottom deck and Halloween is the first big fight. And the girls on top deck tell us downstairs, they're like, hey, when you hear a crash, like, come upstairs, we're about to beat these girls' asses. And it was these two girls that have been bullying a lot of people since they had gotten there. And we had too many girls had that like savior complex of like, oh, you think you can bully someone?

No, bitch. And so we're on the bottom deck. We hear a bunch of commotion happening upstairs. So we all go running upstairs. And one girl is like getting beat out the emergency exit and there's like stairs going down. Another girl is getting jumped by like five girls. There's like there's 35 of us at this point and at least 20 of them jumped them. So one girl is getting fought out the like emergency exit.

Another girl gets fought all the way down the like row of beds down the stairs out the front door and like into the street. And like our staff just couldn't take care of it because we only had maybe two to three staff members per shift. And we called them lieutenants. And then there was like a captain on shift. So the captain on shift comes running over and then all of the staff from the men's barracks come running over because it's a fucking brawl. Like, two people aren't separating 20 females from these two girls. So everyone is trying to separate them. Like, girls from bottom decks are jumping in.

Like, everyone just starts getting their hits in. And, like, me and one of my, the girl that I kind of bonded with, we just kind of stood there and, like, jeered on the side. We were like, yeah. Like, go you guys. And the next day, we, like, sat down with the director of the program. And he was, like, I can guarantee you right now, more bullies are going to arise once these two girls leave. And he, like, made us promise that, like, we wouldn't have any more bullying issues after this. And sure is shit, more bullies arise.

And it was like, we all got along for the most part, but we would just kind of go at it sometimes. And, like, when you're living in that close to space with 30-something females for five months, like, something's going to pop off. And stuff popped off with the boys all the time. There were a lot more boys than there were girls. there were probably 60 to 80 men and then there were like max 30 females we only graduated with I think like 25 females a lot of people got kicked out and some people just couldn't do it and like got their parents to take them out I couldn't give my mom to take me out for shit and I will say like it wasn't horrible so when you start you're called a candidate and then you become a cadet once you become a cadet you're a green phase and then you can work your way up to silver and gold phase and you get more perks with all of those so you get more shower time you get more phone time when you're a green phase you got five minutes showers so you had five minutes to wash your hair condition your hair wash your body wash your face do everything you have to do we couldn't shave or

anything um so everyone was like i need that silver phase because it was like 10 minutes showers and then like 15 minutes showers um so everyone was like determined on like i'm gonna work for that shit. Let's see. So we start off on green phase. We don't do phone calls for the first two weeks. We don't talk to our parents at all. Once the candidate phase is over, we can have our first five-minute phone call. And you just get a five-minute phone call until you work your way up to the silver phase, which fucking sucks. To only talk to- This is worse than prison. To only talk to your family once a week and have five minutes to talk to them, it sucks. And like, having my family in separate places, I can only talk to my mom.

I couldn't, if my mom didn't answer, I would call other people. But, I mean, I was so limited. I mean, once I got up to like 15 minute phone calls, I would call multiple people and I would give them like five minutes each. But it really fucking sucked for the first few weeks, like just being so isolated from my family in the outside world. Was there like a commissary or anything? you could get special items? No, there wasn't. So once you became silver phase, your parents could send you some stuff

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Like a box of variety chips and candies. And so I would kind of get one every night. How long was this total program for you? So it was from October 1st to February 29th. Oh, that's not too bad. No, it wasn't. And we went home for Thanksgiving and we went home for Christmas. When I went home for Thanksgiving, my mom was like, yeah, you need to fucking go back. My mom was still, like, done with me. And I had, like, all I had done was I went to a party with my friends that she let me go to. She was like, you can only stay till midnight. I got there.

I was having too much fun. And I was like, I'll be back by, like, one. And I get back, and she's like, yeah, you're not doing that again. You're going back to fucking military school. And I was like, okay. So I go back for Christmas, and Christmas goes really good. And we were supposed to go back, like, at niltern. night and I had asked her, I was like, can I go back the next day? And she was like, no. And I was

like, okay. And then she had like thought about it. And she was like, because you didn't fight me, I'll let you go back tomorrow. And I was like, okay. So that's all I have to do. And so we go back. And I will say, it was a cool ass program. So I did my driver's ed while I was there. So like what you normally get in high school for like what you need to get your permit. I was able to do that there. I was able to get my C&S. I was able to get my C&S. license while I was there and then I was also able to get my GD while I was there. So it was a very beneficial program and I got a lot out of it, but there's a lot of favoritism in the program and there was just a lot of like ask backward things that just like didn't make

sense. And by the end of the five months, we kind of just did whatever we wanted. Like we still got up at the same times, but like we were kind of just given the responsibility of like managing our own time. And like, I definitely think it taught a lot of a structure and gave us. I think structure helps people a lot. Like, I benefit a lot from structure. I struggle to find it now in, like, my adult life. Sometimes I'm like, damn, military school would be kind of nice again. Just for the structure of, like, you go to bed at the same time, you wake up at the same time, and you do the same thing every day.

Being here makes it so hard to do. Like, being in the real world, it's so hard to do the same thing every single day. So I did enjoy that. I was taking my medicine every day because they had like med call. So I took my meds at the same time every day, every night. So like my mental health was doing great. I was seeing a counselor regularly. And they did like fun activities with us. We did a lot of art. We got to take a lot of trips around Virginia Beach. It was definitely a good program. How different do you think your life would be now if you didn't go to that program? I do not think I would be where I am today at all. I think that it led me

to reconnecting with my now husband. I think it led me to exactly where I am today. So when I came back in December for my December pass, my now husband, we were friends. So we met our freshman year of high school and we maintained our friendship throughout school, but we kind of would fall out of touch here and there. And he knew I was in military school. And I had a few friends along the way that whenever I would disappear for a period of time, I had a few friends that would always be really worried about me.

and he was one of them. Whenever I would fall off the face of the earth, he would freak out. And he would show up at my house and ask my mom where I was and ask if I was okay and ask people if they had heard from me and stuff. So I come back. I tell him what's going on. He's like, let me take you out to celebrate. Like, you're doing great. I'm glad you're getting your life together.

So we're 16 at this point. We go to Buffalo Wild Wings and we have a good night. I mean, we it was a lot of, we tipped our server, like almost 100% of our meat. because we just had such a good server and that set the tone for our relationship. That's now like our thing when we go out is like we love to tip people really well. And just like if we have a good server, like we will always take care of our server now. And so he took me out and I just didn't really think anything of it. Like I just still saw him as a friend and I was still kind of talking to other boys like on the side when I was coming back and stuff.

So then when I graduated, he's like, let me take you out to celebrate graduating. And I graduated February 29th. So we go out, oh, I didn't even add this in. So when I was in military school, I got a little boyfriend. So we couldn't interact with the males, but we could pass notes. And so, like, I started passing notes with this guy. I got into, like, a little relationship with him. And, like, two days out of military school, I was like, this guy's fucking weird.

And I just blocked him on everything, and I never talked to him again. And like I was like I had my sister send me some of the letters that I sent her while I was there because we could send letters. And so I like had her send me some of the letters that I sent her and just reading them back made me die at the way I was talking about this boy. And I was like, I didn't even know a single fucking thing about him. We were writing letters to each other. And I was like, this is the man for me. And I was like, what was I talking about? And like now being in love and seeing what love really is, I was just.

bored and I just wanted entertainment when I was in military school. And like that everyone got into relationships. Almost every single female ended up passing notes with someone. And then these little fucking bitches jumped one of my friends and we like left for the night. We went to like the like captains area. They went through my fucking shit, got my notes from him and snitched on me. And I got my silver phase taken away for two weeks.

And then I was like super delayed and getting gold phase. I had gold phase for the last like three weeks of the program, but I was like, I still got this shit. So I graduate. Me and him go out for dinner again and then COVID starts, like two weeks later. I thankfully was able to keep my job during this. So I worked when I had come back on breaks and then I was able to just come back and start working because I was done in school. I was 16 and I was completely done with school now. So I was like, let me work five days a week, close to full time.

I was a cashier and then COVID started and everything shut down and I was kind of in a really good spot with work because I worked in a grocery store. And I think they handled it really well. I actually really kind of enjoyed COVID. I'm not going to lie. Like a lot of people I think had a really hard time during COVID and COVID fucking sucked. COVID fucked a lot of people up and it fucked me up. It made me chronically ill. COVID was fun for me though because I reconnected with my now husband and we just started hanging out because we had hung out together.

He got COVID right when it started and I was like, well, fuck. And so like I quarantined for a few weeks and he did too and we just talked the whole time. So then once he was good, we started hanging out and we just did stuff together constantly. We would go to parks. We would just go on drives together. Car meets were still happening. So we would go to car meets together almost every. single weekend. And I remember one weekend, it was in August. And so we were hanging out more from

March to August. August, we're driving at this car meet and I just look over at him and I just have like this feeling in my chest. And I'm like, oh God, I think I like him. And I was just, I was terrified. And I like, I'm texting my best friend and I'm like, what the fuck do I do? Like, this will ruin our friendship. And like, we have a conversation about it. And I was just, I'm terrified. And I like, I'm just, I'm about it, like a few nights later, and, like, we both agree, like, dating would ruin our friendship. And then, like, two weeks later, we started dating. He tried to ask me out on my birthday, on my 17th birthday, and I was like, no, because our

anniversary is not going to be on my birthday. So he asked me again a few weeks later, so our anniversary is September 21st. Oh, happy almost anniversary. Thank you. I'm super excited. We'll have, it'll be four years this September. What does he do for work? He is a Domino's General Manager.

Okay. Yeah. And so we moved in together at 18. And it was rough. I mean, so we bought a trailer, a double wide in the same trailer park as his mom. And that was a fucking mistake. My mother-in-law didn't like me once our relationship got serious because I was taking her baby from her. He's Mexican. And they had, she was a single mom. And he was like, he was the man at the house when he was growing up. Like, They had what he wanted for dinner. Like, they did what he wanted to do. So it was a really, it was a hard change for her. And now, she's great. We like each other now. But, like, she tried to fight me.

And, like, she literally tried to fight me. She stole the title to one of my cars. Try to throw hands with me. Try to punch out one of my windows. One of her boyfriends backed in my car before, like, we went through it together. And I just reached the point where I was like, I can't live near your mom anymore. Like, I love you. but we need to get the fuck away from her.

And so we moved back in with my mom. And so I will say, while we were living in the trailer, my dad dies when I was 18. So I got my phlebotomy license when I was 18. So I start working in a hospital. Do you know what a phlebotomist is? They draw blood. So like when you go to LabCorpQuest, like those are phlebotomists. And so I start working in a hospital.

I love it. I love the environment. I love the pace of it. And I'm good at it. I really enjoy it. And then one day I get a call from my dad and he says that he's in the hospital. And he just kind of mentions a few things that he says is going on. And I pick up on them because I've been working in health care for a few months.

And he says that he's getting dialysis, which kidney failure. You don't get dialysis unless your kidneys are failing. So I was like, why are your kidneys failing? And he had just had back surgery. And I had been talking to him for a few weeks. He wasn't doing well after his surgery. and I was really worried about him. He had no one down there.

He had no support. He had really great neighbors, but he was alone. I mean, we were 700 miles away. And so he admits himself, he calls an ambulance on a Monday. He doesn't call us until Thursday. So he's been in the hospital for four fucking days. And he calls me and my sister to tell us that he's in the hospital. And I'm like, I'm coming down there.

Because like, this isn't minor. You're in kidney failure. You just had major back surgery and now you're in the hospital. And you just got blood transfusions. like I'm going down there and he was like fuck no you're not hung up on me was like complete asshole to me so I call my mom and my sister and I'm upset because I'm like my dad is fucking dying and we collectively decide we'll go down Sunday whether he wants us to or not he has no choice we'll be down there Sunday Friday goes by I call the hospital I get more information from his nurse and I feel confident

in going down their Sunday but he denies dialysis Friday and Friday night he goes into fluid overload and he gets fluid in or on his lungs and he can't breathe anymore. So he consents to being intubated and says, call my daughters. And unlocked his phone and gave the phone to the staff. And so they called my sister first and she didn't answer. And so I had just gotten into bed. It was like 1.30 in the morning. And I was working 2 to 1030s at the hospital.

So it was time for me to go to bed now. but I just like I was in that weird like in between like the lights were off and I was like trying to fall asleep but I just couldn't and then my phone starts ringing and I never get fucking phone calls that night and I just had like a pit in my stomach and I just knew that it was bad and I'd see it's Orlando Healthplex and I pick up the call and it's someone from the rapid response team they say your dad coded and he told us to call you and you need to get down here and I was like okay so I get up my husband's in the living room. We were still dating at the time with our roommate. And I go out there and I just am standing there and I don't know what the fuck to say. And I just in like my dad's dying. My dad's on life support. And my husband, he just gets up and he starts packing with me. I drive over to my sister's house and then we go together to go pick up my mom. She was at the time trying to start her own business and she was staying with my aunt and uncle. So we go pick her up and then we drive the long-ass drive to Florida.

I wish I drove myself because they stopped in every single state. And I was like, can we just get to fucking Florida, please? And it was just the most frustrating drive of my life. And it has made it so I will never go anywhere without driving now. Like I need to have a vehicle. I can't not have a way out now because I was vehicle list down there. My dad's car wasn't working. So I was like, this is genuinely my own personal hell.

So we get down there, we go straight to the hospital and like my dad is in horrible shape. I kind of knew what to expect from working in a hospital. So I wasn't scared when I saw him. I just, I went in a work mode. Like I had a good understanding of what was wrong with him. I had picked up a lot of information working in the hospital and I really understood labs well. So I wanted to know all of his lab information. I want to know all his test results.

Like, I wanted to know everything about what was going on. And the hospital was incredible about it. They treated me with the utmost respect. I tried to not be that crazy family member that was like, I work in health care. I know what I'm doing. I was like, I draw blood. I kind of know what you guys are talking about. I would like to know the details.

And they were amazing. I have never worked with such incredible healthcare professionals. The nurses, the hospital or the doctors, like, they were incredible. The hospice staff that we worked with, like every single person I am. interacted with in that hospital was amazing. So my dad was always clear on his wishes. My dad never wanted to be on life support. He never wanted to be intubated. It was not something he ever wanted. And he pushed that and he very heavily expressed that. And the last time I had saw him, I saw him about six months before he passed away. And it was another conversation we had had. And he was

like, if I ever end up on life support, take me off. If I ever end up losing my fucking mind, take me out. Like my dad was very firm and like, I never want to be a burden. I never want to be a burden. I never want my quality of life to be hindered. He was an aircraft mechanic for 40 years. He spent the last five years of his life repairing a car that he added when he was in high school. And he didn't get to enjoy it. And it pisses me off every day. So we spend the week there.

We give him a week to try to get better. And he's making not a single improvement. So pretty much from the day we get there, I knew, like, my dad was not going to recover from this. because my dad would never go and get dialysis three days a week and do what he needed to do to survive this. He had so many problems. Like it wasn't just his kidneys. He was in kidney failure, respiratory failure, heart failure. He had a four centimeter aneurysm on his abdominal aorta valve.

Like he was in horrible shape. And like, cardio would come in every day and be like, yeah, we're not touching that until this is fixed. So I was like, this is going to be the longest journey for him. and we were all so clear on his wishes that it was kind of a no-brainer for us. So we gave him time to see if he would get better at all, and he didn't. So Sunday rolls around, and they're like, all right, let's take him off, or let's, you know, prepare for another day of trying. And we're like, no, like, today's the day. Like, he doesn't want to go through this because they were doing, like, breathing trials with him to try and get him extubated and stuff.

And none of it was going well. none of his testing was going good at all. And so we were just like, he's not happy. Like, he was very clearly agitated. He was finding the sedation the whole time. He kept trying to pull the tube out. And he was just so frustrated the entire time. So he's extubated.

And they pretty much tell us, like, he's going to die, like, very fast. He does not. So he's actually able to talk. And he's, like, somewhat coherent. I don't know why, but, like, my mom and sister leave. really soon after he's extubated and I won't leave because he's awake and he's like aware for the most part he's very confused he didn't know he was dying um and we had a really long conversation just kind of about life and he told me like he loves me he's proud of me um he knows that i'm

going to do great things um and it's just kind of i think was everything that you could ever want from a parent before you passed away and i'm very grateful that i had that moment with my dad because I think that I would struggle a lot more with his death if I didn't get that closure from him because we had a horrible relationship when I was growing up. But those last six months and like once I became an adult, things really started to smooth out with us. And like I know now we would have an amazing relationship. Like I go to music festivals a lot and I know me and my dad would be hitting all over the

East Coast together. And he was supposed to retire. I found out later from talking to. was co-workers, he was supposed to retire within the next two years. So he never got to retire. He never got to finish his car. And he never got to enjoy the rest of his life, which I think really fucking sucks. But my husband drove 10 hours down there to be there with me for a week of the two weeks that I was there. And he went and said bye to my dad. He promised my dad that he would take care of me, that he would take care of his car, and that he didn't have to worry about me. And he hasn't had to. He has been

genuinely the most amazing person in my life. That's awesome. Since he's come into my life. And so we started rescuing cats together when we were 18. When we got our first house, we got our first kitty. And then we got our second one. And he was from an abusive house. And he had really bad behavioral issues.

So it was my first time working with animals with behavioral issues. And I fucking loved it. Just something about building that trust with him was so. so amazing. And so when my dad passed away, we sold this house and me and my sister split the cost because my parents were divorced. So it was up to me and my sister. So I took all the money that I got and I used that as a down payment for our house. My husband has the income. He's been working very hard since we were 18. He's been a general manager at Domino's for three years now. What do you do? I work at T-Mobile right now. What's wrong with that? It's just, it's the pay the bills job. Like, I have, it's a grind, you know?

I have no passion for selling phones. I am not a saleswoman at all. I mean, like, it's pretty nice. Like, I love working there. I have an incredible boss. And I'm, I like it. It's just a good stepping stone. Why did you stop the CNA stuff?

It sucked. Health care was, so when my dad passed away, the week he was dying. I was getting a call almost every day for my main. asking me when I was coming back. And I was like, my dad is fucking dying. I don't know when I'm coming back. I'll be back when he's fucking dead. So I get back and I went back to work less than a week after my dad died.

I think it was four days after my dad died. I went back to work. And that for me, I was done with that job. So I went to outpatient. I worked with Lab Corps, had a shitty manager. And my anxiety got really bad to the point where I couldn't draw blood anymore. Like I would violently shake while drawing blood and I can't fucking do that. And so I was just, I couldn't do it anymore.

It was too much stress and too much anxiety for me. So. Now you're at T-Mobile. Yeah. There's nothing wrong with that. No, there's not. What do you want to do after that? What do you envision for yourself?

I want to help people. That's the biggest thing that I want to do. I don't know exactly how. You're doing it today? Yeah. And like, that was the biggest thing with like coming on here today. I was nervous as a fuck. You killed it for being, I think I said five lines in this entire episode.

You did very well. Thank you. But you know what? I've realized it's always the people that watch the podcast that perform the best because I know what to expect. And I will say that. I heavily prepared myself because I was like, I'm so glad you didn't ask me how people would describe me in high school because I overly thought that question because I was like, I can't think of a single good fucking thing someone would say about me. You didn't let me ask you. You just took off.

I'm glad. You did a really good job, though. Thank you. One more thing to add. So we bought our house. Right after buying our house, we're gifted to kittens from our realtor. And two days after bringing them home, we lose that cat that we worked really hard with to work on his behavioral issues. And we had went out with this friend actually that I'm here with.

We spent the day on the river. and we came home and we couldn't find him. And we found him later that night and he was not alive. And that changed my life for fucking ever. My dad dying changed my life and losing that cat fucked me up. And it fucked both me and my husband up. Like to this day, like we both agree like nothing has affected us in the way that losing that animal has. Because our animals are our kids.

Like we don't want to have kids. Like we genuinely plan to rescue animals for the rest of our life. We want a homestead together and get horses and goats and chickens. And I want to build a cat. I want a cat sanctuary. And I want to rescue cats. And I want to help animals. And I want to help people too.

So I know that I'm going to probably get into something in that field. I just have no fucking clue what it's going to be. Because I thought it was going to be health care. And then after going through health care and doing it for a year, I was like, yeah, this isn't it. I don't like the system of health care. So I've been thinking about I want to work with kids and teenagers a lot because that's when I struggled the most. And I think that I don't think that kids are inherently bad. I think there can be psychopaths, people that don't have the ability to feel, but I don't think anyone is inherently bad.

I think that a lot of people are responding to situations that they're in. And I think that a lot of people just struggle with the way that they are. And I think that kids need more support. Like my little sister-in-law, she's in sixth grade. And just hearing the things that she goes through every day at school breaks my fucking heart that kids are still dealing with it. And just with my experience of really struggling with bullying, having a lot of turmoil at home. And I'm just struggling with a lot of abuse in my life. Like, I just wish that I had someone that really gave a fuck about me.

And like I never felt like I had someone to go to. And I think that a lot of kids just need that person that they feel comfortable with. Absolutely. Well, Stella, thank you so much for, you know, absolutely killing it on this episode. You did a really good job. Thank you so much for having me. Of course. I'm so happy to be here.

Yeah, it was delightful to hear your story and hear it being told so well. And you could tell that you put a lot of thought and energy into it.