406: What if a terminal diagnosis set you free?

Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of This Is Actually Happening. Add free right now. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app. This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the show notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services. Every adversity carries with it a futuristic advantage of equal or more proportion. And I have found that to be so true in my life. All the worst things that ever happened to me, all those things helped me. I didn't know that at the time. But now I know how to navigate through all kinds of weather. From Audible Originals, I'm Whit Missildine. You're listening to This Is Actually Happening. Episode 406. What if a terminal diagnosis set you free? Audible Originals Audible keeps you fascinated so you can be just as fascinating. Select any audiobook every month plus exclusive podcasts, plans and outstarr at £5.99. Audible, be fascinated, be fascinating. Audible Originals My mother was the oldest of ten and my grandmother, her mother, was a product of pharmacy drugs. They overprescribed her. My grandmother, she was out of her mind. So my mother, you know, at ten years old, she was taking care of all these other children, making their lunches. And there was alcoholism in that side of my family. My great-grandparents on her side came from Sweden and they're all like old Viking alcoholics. My mother was an alcoholic with a lot of anxiety. And my dad, as far as I can tell, him and this guy hitchhiked to California. And then he went to the Vietnam War and he was back on a leave and he met my mother. And she was 16, he was 19. They had three boys, ultimately. I was born in 1976. I had two older brothers. My mother was actually a really beautiful woman. She was like a Barbie doll. And my dad, at one time, had these pictures next to each other of my dad in Vietnam. He was standing on a tank with like explosions going off in the back with his M16. And he had his beret on a no shirt. He was kind of muscular. And my mom sent him a picture of her standing on the beach in a big peace sign, smoking a cigarette in a bikini. And he said when she sent him that picture, all the guys were like, there's no way that's your wife. I grew up in what was a rural area. I lived in Pinkney, Michigan. And in like 1986, the population of that town was probably not even 1,000 people. So kind of in the country, I'd say. How I remember my earliest memories. You know, just really being on edge and being afraid. My brother, Eric, was constantly attacking me. He was already on the wrestling team and he was constantly jump on me. We were fighting a lot. And my dad was very unpredictable. He was explosive. And I was terrified of my dad at that time. That first memory, I could have been four years old. I shared a small bedroom with my brother, Eric, and he would have been, I guess, 10 years old at that time. I could hear him, you know, yelling and screaming. And I ran to where the sound was. It was at the top of the stairs and I could see that my dad was bent over him, you know, like holding him down and slapping him, yelling at him and slapping him. So I went up the stairs to like rescue my brother and I grabbed on my dad's leg and he just shoved me down the stairs. That's like the first thing that I can remember. He was, like I said, he was young. He was drinking. You know, he didn't know how to deal with his anger. So he never was too much violent with my oldest brother because he was very passive. And he got straight A's and he, you know, was respectful. My brother, Eric, was very defiant. And so my dad would tell him something and he would push back and say, no, and my dad would shove him on the ground. And my brother, Eric, he wasn't having it. He had this spirit. He kept, he would get up and. So he took a lot of it. My brother, Eric. So I think my brother Eric, I took a lot of stuff out on me. In fact, he was messing with me so bad one day that I hit him in the head with a lead pipe and he was unconscious before he hit the ground and he was head was bleeding. I thought I killed him and I ran in head. A few minutes later, I heard the front door slam and he's basically like, I'm going to kill you. And he came right to where I was hiding immediately. He would just jump on me and say, Mike, you get free, get free, get free. And try to make me fight my way out of these situations. You know, as a five, six year old. But if anyone else messed with me, my brother Eric was instantly like my bodyguard. Nobody could touch me. He was protected me, you know. I didn't have like a measuring stick until I stayed with some of my mom's friends. And I'm like, wow, they have all these toys and what a nice house. I came home one time, maybe I was around seven, my dad's in the garage. I went in the garage and I asked him, I said, why are you so mean to me? And he got very serious and he said, I'm not here to be your friend. He said, I'm going to teach you how to stay alive. He taught us how to work. I worked on construction sites with him yelling at me, hurry up, let's go, let's go. Quarterweight and on a nickel. I worked at farms, five, six, seven years old, pickin melons, baling hay, cleaning horse stalls. I got paid, which later these things became helpful. But at the time, you know, stuff. My mother and my father could not get along. They had screaming matches and it was like the worst possible combination. When I was around five years old, my parents got divorced. When my mother was dealing with our household, if me and my brother Eric were too super crazy or we were sick, she would take this, what I now know as a double shot glass and she would pour lemon juice, a little bit of honey, and then what I now know is whiskey. I vividly remember five, six years old having that drink and feeling like everything is okay. Like that edge and that anxiety I had being in my own house was gone. You know, it became my medication. So when I was 10 years old at that time, you know, I still shared a room with my brother Eric. He was my best friend, my hero, my bodyguard, like whatever he was doing, I wanted to do. We walked to school in the winter, rode our bikes in the summer. You know, he was like my big brother's like my hero. In the summer of 1986, him and my dad got to a little argument because it was his best friend's birthday. And my brother Eric, he's like, I'm going to Jay's birthday party. My dad's like, you're not going anywhere. You're grounded. They got into a little wrestling match and my brother took off. Late at night, somebody knocked on our door. I go to the top of the stairs to see who's at the door. And it was these state troopers. And they asked my dad his name and they asked him that he needed to come down to the hospital and identify my brother's body. He had been killed in a drunk driving accident. And we went to my mom's and when he told her, my mother was jumping up and down like pulling out her hair to scream, you know. And ultimately she just wasn't the fetal position on the ground. And I was just kind of sitting there watching it. I didn't understand what was happening. It really didn't set into me that he was gone for a couple of weeks. I mean, I think I was like looking for him. I just couldn't really figure it out. I didn't cry at his funeral. After my brother Eric had passed when I was 10 years old, I was very angry. My dad doubled down on drinking alcohol and my mother was a wreck. I was angry. One of my aunts who is a very devout Christian told me that God needed my brother. And that began my relationship of hating God. I was getting into fights at school. I definitely noticed that I drank more than the people around me at 13. We would drink on the weekends, sneak out, get some beer, steal liquor through middle school. I was all into wrestling. I started wrestling and I was just killing everybody because of my older brother Eric. I was used to wrestling somebody that weighed 25 pounds more with more strength, five, six years older. So people my age and weight, I didn't, it was nothing. One thing I will say about wrestling practice back then, all those coaches I had, when we go to jail now for child abuse, I mean, wrestling practice in the 80s was no joke. You really had to have that extra gear to show up and know you're going to get slammed on the ground, run out of gas, you're going to throw up from exhaustion and you just got to keep showing up. Wrestling was a huge part of my life until I was about 16 and I got tired of it. That's when the alcohol in women started to become more of a factor. When I was about 16, I had a little motorcycle and we lived on a lake. I lived with my dad at this time. Where he lived, there was no furniture, definitely no food in that refrigerator. Beer, maybe some ketchup. He drank a case of beer every day. He was a very hard working man, very strong. He was like a womanizer actually. I saw him with different women continuously. He was a handsome guy, my dad. Very funny, charming, handsome guy. I had this girlfriend who had been my girlfriend for a few years and I brought her over there at like 10 o'clock at night. My dad was heavily intoxicated. We walked in the house and he said, who's that horror? And I punched him, punched him in the face. I got to keep in mind at this point in time, I got eight, nine years of wrestling practice. I've been in a bunch of fist fights, but I was no match. Pretty quickly it ended up outside and there was six inches of water in the backyard. We lived on a small lake at that time and he was hauling me under the water, strangling me. My neighbor came out and shot a gun off. I got out, my girlfriend, it was hysterical. She stayed with me for a little bit. My dad went in and he passed out on the couch. My girlfriend left and I grabbed a butcher knife and I was just pacing back and forth. I'm just sitting here like, I'm going to kill this son of a bitch. Here and now I'm going to push this knife through his fucking throat and I'm going to throw him off in one of these swamps. But I wasn't able to bring myself to do it. I was ready to kill them, but I couldn't do it. I was becoming more volatile, more disrespectful, and I've kind of followed in my dad's footsteps. I had different girls all the time. I graduated from high school amazingly. I had already been arrested a couple of times. So my older brother went to USC and he got a full scholarship. He's very smart. He got a fantastic job selling commercial real estate. So I moved out there to Santa Monica when I was 17 and my brother's office was in Beverly Hills. It was really a culture shock for me for sure. But I continued to drink. I had a lot more access to cocaine. I developed a full-time cocaine habit there. On my 18th birthday, I went to enlist in the Marine Corps. I called my dad. I said, Dad, I'm going to enlist in the Marine Corps today. He's like, fuck yeah. I told him I called my mother and she's like, no, go to college. So I went down there. I lied to them. I already had warrants for my arrest for minor cocaine possession charges. And they're like, you got warrants for your arrest. You lied to us. So I just kept drinking at that point, pretty much drinking night and day. And finally, my brother had enough. So I went back to Michigan. I'm 18, 19 years old. I have a full-time cocaine addiction. From the age of 19 through my 20s, my crimes are becoming more and more spontaneous, violent. I did real robberies. Armed robbery with a firearm, robbery with a knife. I did rob innocent people at stores. I stole cars. I did take people hostage. Anything that came into my path. And at this time I was smoking crack cocaine. And I was living off of whiskey and crack. It just dominated my whole world. In and out of jail, I became a worse of a person. Nobody wanted to be around me. The first time I took somebody hostage, the people that I was dealing with couldn't provide me with what I needed. And so I get hooked up with this guy and the first few transactions went very smooth. Same setup. I go there, I give him the money, and he's telling me I have to come back in a couple hours. So I go to a bar and I keep calling him and he's like, no, nothing yet. I went over there. I knocked on the door and right when he opened that door, I punched him straight in his face. I jumped on top of him, duck taped him up. I had a knife and I told him, if you don't have my fucking money and my cocaine by the time I get done with this, I'll kill you here and now. He's shivering. He's freaking out. He gets out of his phone and sure enough, here comes the cocaine. Some Latinos that were pretty much in the same neighborhood, they had this big setup going on. So I don't think nothing of it. Maybe a couple of weeks after that, I was in the strip club in that same city. And this tall guy, he comes over to me and he says, hey, man, my boss wants to talk to you. So I go over there, this heavy set guy and he's like, are you the guy that duck taped up so and so? Immediately, I was nervous and I was like shaking my head. I'm like, man, that dude and they all started laughing and they're like, you want a job and offered me work. They're like, man, you're crazy. So, you know, they just were feeding me cocaine. I was just a crash dummy for these people. Really dark times. My mother sent me to Florida to get sober. I had already been to multiple treatment centers, jail, hospital, detox, but I never wanted it. It was forced on me by the court system, but I could not imagine my life without alcohol. I was 21 years old and went to Jackson State Penitentiary. When I went into there, it really got my attention. You know, it's old school prison, cages, five stories high. There's bats flying around at night. There's rats in there. They released me. I immediately violate. I'm drinking in and out of jail, in and out of rehab, halfway house, detox. I just couldn't stay sober, no matter what. I'm 24 years old. My life was a disaster. I got jammed up. I don't even remember what my charges were. Probably elite fleeing and eluding, resisting arrest, theft. But when I settled into that little prison, I decided that I needed to quit drinking. I'm reading the Bible. I'm reading the AA book. I have kind of a sponsor. I met this guy who had a big positive impact on me. I'm going to do this whole year. I'm going to stay sober. And when I get home, I'm going to stay sober and I'm going to build a new life. And that's how I live that whole year in that prison. I just smoked cigarettes, lifted weights, read books. My day came up. End of sentence. They gave me like a typical brown jumpsuit that they give prisoners and they gave me a hundred dollar bill and bus tickets to come to West Palm Beach. So I ride the bus. We get to Jacksonville. This kid got on there. We're traveling south now and he comes and sits next to me and he's like, oh, you just got out of prison. Oh, the chain gang. I said, yeah, he pulled out a bottle of wild turkey and he handed it to me and I said to myself, this is probably not a good idea. And I opened it up. I should take four or five poles off this bottle and I'm like, fuck yeah. I like cigarette. The guy driving the bus comes on the microphone and he's like, there's no smoking on this bus. And I'm like, fuck you. I'll fuck. You know, I just fly off the handle. He says he's calling the police. He pulls the bus over and I ran off into the woods. I have no idea where I was. Turns out I was in Gainesville. I was there for about two weeks stealing liquor, committing crimes, smoking crack. My poor mother, no one knows where I'm at. That whole year, sincerely, I'm telling myself I'm never going to drink alcohol again. And right when that kid puts it on my face, I have zero. I didn't have a defense. Then I really was getting worse, getting worse and just the same kind of crimes, jail, prison, repeat, rents and repeat. The whole time that I'm in there, I'm training, lifting weights. I put 50 pounds of muscle on and all I thought was when I see my dad, I'm going to punch him to the ground. That was what I thought about when I lifted weights. I ain't going to fuck this dude up. And so I get released. Immediately I'm drinking. I call my dad. I get a phone number from somebody and I said, check this out, old man. I said, tomorrow me and you are going to meet at Eric's grave. Eric was my older brother that was killed. I said, we're going to Eric's grave. I said, I ain't going to beat your ass. I said, we're going to have a nice old fashioned fist fight over there, dad. And he said, I'm not doing that. And I said, all right, well, when I see you, just know it's coming. So I found out where he lived, but I didn't know anything had happened in his life at all. And when I drove to this house he lived at, before I even got out of my truck, I saw a salt lick, bird feeders, plants on this little balcony. None of that because I've ever seen it anywhere I ever lived with my dad. And I see fish tanks, plants, the painting. And I'm like, well, he opens the door and I'm full of hatred for this man. And when he opened that door, it was definitely something was different. I said, what's with the fish tank and the flowers and the bird feeders? He's like, it's just how I am now. And I was like, I got a different life. He's been sober for a couple of years in AA. It really disarmed me. I was still very angry with him, but when we had that little interaction, the violence that I intended kind of disappeared. His eyes were clear. He was calm. It was just like, I didn't know who this man was, but it didn't change how I felt about him at all. As the years went on, I still thought about when he would shove my brother on the ground. All this hatred and anger, you know, I had for him. But before the Jerry Springer show became a symbol of cultural decline, its namesake was a popular Midwestern politician and a serious-minded idealist with lofty ambitions. Through dozens of intimate and revealing interviews with those who knew Springer best, I examined Springer's lifelong struggle to reconcile his TV persona with his political dreams and aspirations. Named one of the best podcasts of the year by The New Yorker and Rolling Stone, Final Thoughts Jerry Springer is a story about choices. How we make them, how we justify them to ourselves, and how we transcend them or doubt. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or binge the whole series ad-free right now on Audible. Start your Audible subscription in the Audible app. I'm Razer Jeffery and in the new season of The Spy Who, we tell the story of Dr. A. Q. Khan, the spy who sold nuclear secrets to Iran. He was the scientist spy who stole nuclear technology from the Netherlands and used them to give Pakistan a bomb. But he didn't stop there. He became a black market atomic salesman, a fix-it man for rogue states seeking nuclear weapons, including Iran, Libya and North Korea. And that left the CIA and MI6 in a race against time to put him out of business, before the world's most wayward regimes get hold of the world's most destructive weapons. Follow The Spy Who now, wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also listen to the full season of The Spy Who sold nuclear secrets to Iran. Early and ad-free on Audible. At that time, I had already survived several near-death incidences. I flipped a grand Cherokee into a lake. Later, I fell off a second-story roof and landed on a cement patio. As I was falling, my life flashed before my eyes. My head smacked the pavement and I was unconscious. And I used that as an excuse to get pain medication. They took me to the hospital. I said I could cut your fractured arm or something. And they gave me some morphine and that just set me back off. During this whole time, I never took any responsibility for my actions. I blamed everybody but myself. I blamed my dad mostly. I blamed the fact that my brother was killed. I had all these excuses. My grandparents were alcoholics and so my genes. I didn't know any better. I believed I was a victim. Around 25, 26 years old, the person that I had become, I believed I was hopeless. You know, I'm doomed to be an alcoholic criminal. I couldn't look at myself in the mirror. I went to brush my teeth, which probably hadn't brushed my teeth in a month. And I went to look at the mirror and I immediately couldn't look at myself. And I was just like this deep part of me that was like, what the fuck are you doing, man? You know, such a low level loser, criminal, total shame and guilt. And I couldn't bear it. I lived in hell. I contemplated killing myself, but that didn't last too long because I just remember my mother, her reaction when my brother was killed. And I'm like, I can't, I can't kill myself. I did not want to be alive. I hated my life. I hated myself, but I couldn't bring myself to kill myself knowing what my mother went through when my brother was killed. I justified a lot of that violence with most of the people that I was dealing with were already in this world of drugs. So I really didn't feel bad. That guy stabbed in the chest. He's already selling cocaine. If you're selling crack cocaine, you better be prepared to get killed because I know people that will kill you for $50. I tried to rationalize it by like, it's not like I'm robbing nuns or, but also, you know, as the violence progressed, as I became worse, more violent, the consequences were worse, but I was adjusting to it. You know, I was slowly adjusting to it to where the point me going to jail is nothing. I'm going to go sleep. I'm going to work out. I'm going to get hydrated. I'm going to get food. I'm going to read me going to prison or jail was definitely not a deterrent by the time I was 25 years old. It was part of my life. It was my comfort zone when I fit right in. The most guilt that I really felt was for my mother. She was already a nervous wreck from how my dad was and my brother dying and my behavior. She had her wondering if I was going to live. That was heavy, very heavy. She blamed it all on my dad, too, though. She said, that's all your father's fault. When I was 26, I was in a neighborhood I didn't belong in. I was actually on bond from Palm Beach County for trafficking cocaine. This car pulls up and it's like a typical drug dealer car. It's got gold rims and all this base and everything else. I said something to the guy driving it. He was very disrespectful and I said, I'll beat your fucking ass, bro. Get your fat ass out of that car. It's still like a Shaquille O'Neal. You know, when he got out of a car, 64 huge. I'm still not afraid of him. I always have a weapon. I got a knife. I got a pistol or whatever. But now I switched my plan because he left his car in park and it was running. So I started dancing around like we're going to fight. I jump into the driver's seat to steal his car. He jumped on my lap. We're a wrestler. He's clearly got a massive strength advantage and I hadn't eaten. I've been living off of vodka and crack, you know, I get my knife out. I reach around, bang, I plunge it into his chest. He squealed like a. He's on the ground. I kick him and I start hearing gunshots. It's kind of like projects in South Florida. Gunshots are coming from this second story balcony and I can see this kid jumping down from the second balcony. So I start running and he's sitting here shooting at bang, bang, right shot. He finally shoots me in the leg hollow point bullet from a Glock 40. So I go down. It looks like mashed potatoes. The bone is liquid. And I'm laying there and I'm like, damn, this is how it's going to end. I think about my mom and I could see the guy that shot me. He's probably 20 yards away, maybe a little farther. And he starts to walk towards me and he's coming to put a bullet in my head or my chest. He's coming to finish the job. I knew what I did. That was one of his partners, the dude I stabbed and I definitely knew that he was going to kill me. I mostly was thinking about my mother, you know, and I was like, I can't believe that I'm doing this to my mother. That was like my main thing. Like she's going to find out that I got killed. I got every drug in my system, my poor mother, you know, look what I've done to her. What a piece of shit I am. These headlights came car driving towards us on a not very busy road. They start flashing their bright lights. It spooked him and he took off running. And I'm laying there thinking I was so thirsty. I had never been so thirsty in my life. I'm bleeding like hell. And I start crawling to this house because I want to find a spick of the drink water. And here comes the police and ambulance and all this stuff. I give them an alias. I had some alias names. They take me to a hospital. They must have lifted my prints while I was unconscious. I'm not sure. But when I came to, I was handcuffed and then they took me back into custody into the jail. I had a bunch of copper fragments from the bullet inside the bones and they wanted to amputate my leg at the knee down. So I signed a consent to get my leg amputated, but it never actually happened. Somehow there was a turnaround. The surgeon did his thing. They said that I would be on a cane all my life. I would never run again and all these things. I went back to the jail. At this time, I had in other far away places, I had robbed some banks. I had sent thousands and thousands of pills up north. This was in the pill mill thing was happening in South Florida. Tons of crime. They try to pin every unsolved crime on you. I got kind of a release from the county jail and there was those Spanish guys that bonded me out. They put up $20,000 to get me out of jail and they were going to make me work. But I end up in a halfway house and I have an ankle monitor on. And while I was in there, the guy that I stabbed in the chest was like in a gang and they were pretty violent. And I had that was kind of in the back of my head. So while I was a couple of days sober in this halfway house, all the stuff's coming on my mind. It was so much pressure. I got bank robberies wondering about my leg. And now I'm thinking that these people are going to come in and shoot the house up that I'm at. And I'm sitting here like, man, all these other people in this halfway house, I'm going to get all these people killed. To live in this halfway house, you had to go to an A meeting every day. And you had to get a sponsor or you couldn't live there. I'm going through the AA steps. This guy that I had just kind of started to meet him, he had it going on. And so I trusted him. I trusted his guidance. We're reading in the AA book together every night and we get to one part and it says that God will solve all of our problems. When we practice these spiritual principles, more or less our problems are going to be the same. And at that time, that was probably the most pressure I ever felt in my life. And when I read that, I looked at him and I said, is this true? And he said, yeah, it's true. So I decided to believe it. And I was like, I'm going to try to believe that all my problems can disappear. And I felt hope for the first time. I felt like, I felt like, I felt like I was going to die. I felt like there was a way out of how I was living. But that wasn't the end of it. Unfortunately, I had to go learn more the hard way. Where I stayed at from where the shooting was, was not very far. I was very paranoid. I just thought it was a matter of time. I'm going to be walking down the street or I'm going to be going to the store and now somebody's just going to kill me. There was a couple of seeds planted. This girl came over there and had given me these books. One of them was called Anger. And the other one was called Peace is Every Step, which was written by a Vietnamese monk named Tich Nhat Hanh. Realistically, at any other time in my life, I would have threw that book in the garbage. I didn't care for peace. I was not peaceful. But just by the moment in time, you know, I started to learn about meditation and also learning about Zen because I was definitely in my head at that time. Am I going to get murdered today? Am I going to life in prison? How am I going to go down? And so I picked up some gems out of that book and it later evolved into like positive mantras. I am calm. I am relaxed. I am peaceful. I am calm. That's Thich Nhat Hanh. You know, you could practice this when you're washing the dishes. Think about how nice it is to have this warm water and here you are with your hands in the water washing dishes. He's like, if you're stuck in a traffic jam, you can take it as an opportunity to relax. All these counterintuitive things I'd never been exposed to before. When I was first reading it, I'm like, this is crazy. But I did start practicing it when I would walk. I would say, now I'm calm and I'm relaxed. I was high risk and I was very volatile. I would jump and attack a person with the slightest amount of what I perceived as disrespect, just instant violence. And so practicing that stuff, it started to kind of grow on me a little bit. And I was practicing it and putting in an honest effort to practice. But I went back out and continued with the whiskey and the cocaine in and out of jail. And finally they had enough of me. My sponsor came to visit me in Miami when I started. I went off on like a massive relapse. He drove all the way down there from where he was to see me and I met him outside. I didn't have a shirt on. I had a carrying a bottle of vodka with me and broad daylight. And, you know, he had like tears in his eyes. He's like, man, he was, what are you going to do? And I'm like, I'm probably going to get shot to death this time. I was too far gone. Finally going to this restaurant. I had a hundred dollar bill and I wanted to get changed for it because I was having a guy meet me. I was buying some drugs. I go in the restaurant and look like a crazy person. They're telling me to get the fuck out of their store. And I'm telling them, this is a real hundred dollar bill. I just want 520 and they start becoming what I think disrespectful. So I grab a cash register. I yank it off of the thing. I throw it on the ground and I start stomping it. I was just like, you telling me to fuck off? How about fuck your cash register? I smash it. I stomp it. I leave. And all of a sudden we're cops come from everywhere. I take off. I hid and they were driving around. They couldn't find me. They finally got me by that time, you know, the court system, they had enough of my shit. And they were like, you're getting life sentence. You're going to get 60 years. You are now what they call a habitual violent criminal. And we are not giving you no mercy. They were like, this is it. This is the straw. You're not coming out. At that time I was 30. So 60 years, you know, would have been a life sentence. Finally, they have an offer 15 mandatory plus five years consecutive. So I took that deal, which in that time was 20 years. I went back to my cell. I threw up and I called my dad collect. And he's like, yeah, what's going on? I said, well, dad, I just signed a 20 year prison sentence. And he goes, well, everybody's got to be somewhere. What else is going on? And I was just so upset at his reaction. I was so angry that that's what he fucking said to me. And I'm like, I'm going to kill this son of a bitch. But what I didn't see was that he couldn't face this. He couldn't deal with it. His first born son gone, his other son life in prison. He was my dad was so full of guilt. Even though at that time he had been sober for like 10 years. It was just overwhelming. So he had to just deflect it off. But I didn't know that, you know, when I get the 20 year sentence, I just determined that I was going to self improve. I was going to become educated, do my best. I was going to use this time for growth. And I stayed sober that whole time, June of 2009. And I've been sober since then because I was so guilty. The first three or four years I wouldn't watch sports, which I love sports, but I had too much guilt. I felt like I don't deserve to have this leisure time where I'm going to sit down and watch a basketball, watch a football game. I just still felt like a total piece of shit. I buried myself in books. Running kind of became my new alcohol. I was running 50 to 70 miles a week, half marathon every weekend. But a big change was I got this book called the Master Key System written by Charles Hannell in the 1800s. This was like the beginning of my transformation. It's kind of like an old version of like the secret, but way better. And the gist of it, I'll say, is basically, are you going to be a victim of circumstance? Or are you going to fucking create your own reality? And as I was going through this book, I started to realize that I had the option. I didn't realize that I created my reality. And it was just like this thing opened up. And I was like, wait a second, I can create this higher self. And with my thoughts, my actions, my energy, your thoughts become things. The Master Key System was like a reality check for me where I didn't have to be a victim of my circumstances. I could be a creator of my reality. And they basically says, until you take full responsibility for everything in your life, you're not going to be free. I finally came to the conclusion I created this. And once I accepted it, I became empowered. You know, I've been convicted of every kind of robbery there is. And I was in front of a judge one time. And I told him, I said, listen, the only reason I did that is because I was smoking crack and drinking whiskey. And he said, well, I see thousands of people that drink whiskey and smoke crack and don't do the shit you're doing. And I'm like, wait a second, that's my excuse. You know, that's what I'm blaming it on. So I would take responsibility. And I was basically came to understand I'm rewiring my brain. It was a big change for me. And I read every book in that genre, seven habits of highly effective people, man search for meaning. And I got into Buddhism. I started meditating two hours a day, an hour in the morning, an hour at night, and changed my life for the better. After six months of this deep meditation, I felt like I was almost psychic. What I believe now is like my antenna, like my God connection, my connection to the universe. It was clear and realized, you know, the power of gratitude. And I was in the Florida Panhandle and a maximum security prison called Blackwater. I read Unbroken by Laura Hildebrand, which is the true story of World War Two, POW. I got to the part once he got off that raft, and he was just more or less being tortured. I climbed out of my bed and I kissed the cement floor in my prison cell. And I said, thank you, God, thank you for this water. Thank you for this bed. Thank you for this coffee. Like I became so grateful. The more you practice a new thought, the stronger it becomes ingrained. And it becomes like your default. Instead of reacting in violence, I became non reactive. I could take a deep breath and not react to the situation. I started to look at some of the people as my teachers, because I would almost be on the verge of exploding like my former self. And I would take in a deep breath. I'm calm and I'm relaxed. I'm calm and I'm relaxed, even though I was hot, angry. After I calmed down, I would secretly thank that person for teaching me how to be non reactive. Don't don't gas on a fire. It took a lot of repetitions and I still need those repetitions. I still have reactions, but I'm light years away from my old reactions. But I was still very angry at my father all this time. His girlfriend came to visit me and we were cordial, but it would just still kind of haunt me. And my mother was there for me the whole time. I called her every Sunday. She was very supportive. I got a shipped from the Panhandle to a prison in Miami. Literally guards are in gangs. They're these gang members who are in prison for life. They recruit their family members who have no felonies to be guards. They smuggle into cell phones, drugs, alcohol. I might as well have been in the projects. You could buy any drugs and you could get anything you wanted. It was crazy. But I got a job. I was clean cut and I was staying out of trouble. So I worked in the emergency room. You know, I had to retrieve dead bodies or guys just got stabbed 15 times. The emergency room job there was pretty intense. Another book I read that I really liked was called Happier Than God. It's very similar to, you know, how your thoughts and your emotions kind of create your reality. And I was like, this is why my life, even though I'm in this crazy prison, I got it made. I got the best job. I get food from the street from the nurses and I had like best life in there. And I was attributing it to what I had learned from those books. I got sent to Everglades prison and they have a bunch of programs for people that want to self improve. If you get in any trouble, they just automatically transfer you back to where you were. So everybody's incentivized at that prison at that time to do the right thing because it's like almost no violence. So it was a good setup for me. I woke up one morning in 2021. At that time I still had, I guess, I don't know, five years left or something. I had already done, you know, 10 years in prison. And I woke up one morning and my neck was so swollen and my right arm was like double the size and my heart was pounding. And I looked in the mirror and almost looked like my eyes were bulging a little bit. I had no idea what was going on. I thought maybe allergies. I went, I did a medical emergency. My chest was turning purple and they just kept sending me back to my dorm to the cell. Even the guards, they were like, well, you need to be in a hospital. They finally get me down there to do some stuff. I have what they say, you know, deep vein thrombosis. I have like massive blood clots, massive tumor. What was called a superior vena cava syndrome when this cancer tumor was strangling this vein that takes deoxygenated blood from your brain back to your heart. That's why my head was swollen and that's why my heart was racing. I left an ambulance. I went to this hospital in Miami, which also has a section for prisoners already. There's already guards there and everything. They run me through the PET scan and oncologist. He said, you have a very aggressive cancer. It's in your lungs. It's already traveled up. I said, you're not going to be around here for much longer. When I was in that hospital, I finally got to go to a hospital and they told me that I was left alone handcuffed to like this hospital bed. And I was thinking that I deserved it. I had felt some self pity, actually. And I was like, why couldn't this have happened my first year? You know, I just did 13 years in prison and now I'm going to fucking die in here. And I thought about all the wrong I did in my life. And I said, this is what I deserve. I earned it and that's how it is. I was upset mostly about my mother, but you know, I accepted that I was going to die. I heard a lot of people. I did a lot of bad stuff. And this is my end. But the spirit came out of me like the fighting spirit. And I'm like, fuck this, I'm going to live. I'm not going to die. I'm going to fucking live. I would feel that for 10 minutes. In the next 10 minutes, I would be feeling like I'm going to die. It was a roller coaster, a roller coaster of emotions. The master key system takes you through exercises to learn how do you control your thoughts at heart toll, you know, become the observer. I'm going to die in here. And then I had to correct my thoughts and say, I'm going to live. It was a battle. Another oncologist who does the radiation, he's like, you need to talk to Angela Martinez. She's the director of the health department for the Florida Department of Corrections. So it turns out Angela Martinez visits every prison in the state of Florida once a year. And there's 100 prisons in Florida. So from that hospital, they basically tell me I'm going to die. They send me to a single cell in the infirmary. I go back to the prison I was at. I'm no longer in a general population infirmary. They just isolate me from all the humans. They shut me in this cold cell and leave me in there. I was like, I'm going to fucking die in here. I called my dad and he was like, what's going on son? And I said, dad, I said, I'm going to die in here. I saw I got cancer. It's in my lungs. You know, it's real aggressive. It's taking over. I said, don't tell mom. I said, but I'm not going to be around much longer. And something happened was like, I felt that my dad was emotional. And really for like the first time I was able to like consider his pain. At this time he's in his 70s. I just was sitting there imagining, you know, how painful it must be for him to realize that his other son was killed. Now his other son's going to die in prison. That he has to sit there and live with himself after he slapped my brother around the last day he was alive. What a terrible father he was. And I never considered that he was in pain from how he was in his younger years, that he had his own guilt and his own shame that he carried with him. And this massive weight. He was choking up a little bit. And I was like, it's okay, dad. You know, and I actually told him that my Angelo quote, which I know it says my Angelo, she wrote, I did what I knew. And now I know better. I do better. I said, dad, I said, that's how it is. I said, we do what we know how to do. And now we know better, we do better. I said, you helped me a lot in my life. You taught me how to work. You know, you taught me how to go to deer. And believe it or not, all my hatred for this man disappeared. It was gone. Gone forever. And just once I told him that Maya Angelo quote, it just all disappeared. I forgave him and I focused on the good things. It was some kind of a spiritual release. And for the last three years of his life, he was my best friend. We talked on the phone almost every day. I just forgave him. You know, he did what he knew how to do. And it turns out he had like, unnaturally super high testosterone, which can attribute to a lot of his behavior, which I had also. But I didn't learn that till I was 45 years old. With my cancer, they did some blood tests and they were like, this is crazy. The urologist and I went through some of my history and I'm like, yeah, I got robberies, lots of fights. He's like, huh, he's like, when you were 20, you know, these levels were probably so high. It's not an excuse, but my dad had a high testosterone. And so did I. He was not prepared to deal with three boys. He worked hard all day. Like he could, he didn't have coping skills for any of this stuff. And so alcohol was his medicine. And if we, if any of us got out of line, he used violence. He was born in the 1940s. Kids got spanked all the time. It with belts and my anger and hatred for him all went away. And I've never felt like a victim ever. We talked for a little bit and I said, don't tell mom, I'm going to die in here. There's nothing I could do. I go back to myself the next day as the lights coming at some point, this lady comes and she had like an entourage behind her. And she was clearly some kind of a boss and she comes to my cell and she said, why are you in here? And I said, I had to speak to Angela Martinez and she said, I'm Angela Martinez. I said, I have stage four cancer. The doctor said, I'm not going to live for 90 days. I said, I have to see my mother and she told her assistant to start some paperwork up and she starts the process of my emergency release, which is called the compassionate act. And five days later, the emergency release me out of the prison. What is amazing is the odds of her coming to that prison and there's 100 prisons is just a miracle. I feel like God did that. Higher power, maybe my dead brother, my guardian angel. I don't know, some kind of a miracle happened. And they released me and my friend picked me up and I was happy, but yet I was still dealing with this cancer. You know, I got out of the prison, he took me to a gas station. I couldn't believe it. I got a can of Copenhagen, a pack of Marlboro's, a Diet Coke. I thought I was in paradise driving in a car. It was all overwhelming. And in fact, he took me to Whole Foods. It was overwhelming in Whole Foods, my friend. He's like, get whatever you want. And I stayed at his house with him and his wife for a week. And his wife was making food for me. I was meditating and I really appreciate that time. It was nice. I would get up in the morning, have coffee, go outside. I was still smoking cigarettes, even though I had stage four lung cancer. I was still smoking cigarettes like, yeah, what's one more going to do? You know, I went and saw a doctor and I'm like, are you telling me I'm really going to die? Am I going to die in a few months or what? He's like, listen, let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. He's like, first thing we got to do is this emergency surgery. So they did that. And then I started chemotherapy. And then I got denied Medicaid and the co-pays were like insane for chemotherapy. I got 20 radiation treatments. I had heavy duty chemotherapy. I sent my dad a video telling him how awesome this place was. I was in a nice comfortable chair, air conditioning, a TV. I'm like, dad, I'm in like a luxury resort right now getting chemotherapy. I stayed with my mother for the chemo and I was working out. But by like the third round, I was pretty beat up. I was probably dropped 30, 40 pounds, vomiting sick. But the whole time my mantra was I was just thanking God for giving me the strength to get through this. I would walk to the gym and just say it over and over again, thank you, God. Thank you for helping me to outlive my mother. But always doubts creeping in. It was like 50% of the time I had a delusional optimism that I was going to live and be happy and have a great life. And then the doubt would come in that I was going to die from this cancer. Strangely enough, the first person that I talked to on the phone outside of the guy that picked me up, he struggled with the same things I struggled with drug addiction, alcoholism. We were in a halfway house together. In 2009, I went to the county jail and he was there. You know, we ate together, we hung out a little bit together. But by the time I get out, he's got a full-blown company with 100 employees, huge amounts of business. I talked to him my first day out and I said, when I get done with this chemo, then I get done with this cancer deal. I need a job. And he's like, yeah, no problem. No, I got you. He is deep into the AA program. He's deep into the giving to the church and helping. They took me in there at 45 years old. I was $80,000 in debt from medical charges of my parents and they started me off at $15 an hour. And so obviously, you know, I felt like, dang, you know, I got to overcome all this stuff. And I'm still having to see these oncologists every month. Then it was every 90 days, as every six months. Now it's once a year. You know, I was working in the field and I didn't realize that I had a high risk for a stroke because till this day, there's a massive tumor that has strangled that superior vena cava. But the amazing thing about the human body is my heart and my body figured out a way to get around it. And it made all these little like little rivers almost. It uses all these little tributaries. Like if I bend over and lift, my face will turn purple because all that blood is stuck in my head. But just like my dad, I just carry on. Just keep going back to work. In fact, the guy I was working with on my first day, I was very sick. His name's Steve. I had no business working. And so my first day there, I got to help him and he's like, here, I need you to get all these tools up these stairs. And I was so weak, I couldn't do it. I didn't want to let him down. And I'm like, man, I'm like, I'm sorry, man, this shit's just kicking my ass. And he was like, don't worry about it, man. It's good. You're cool. Man, just hang out with me. I worked with him for a while. And one day I passed out in the back of the van and split my head open on the cement. And he comes over there. He was about to call 911 and I opened my eyes and I'm like, don't tell anybody. Don't tell anybody this happened because I thought they would see me as a liability and fire me. And so he told them and I was kind of mad that he told my boss and they're like, we're not going to fire you. I saw my cardiovascular surgeon because they kept checking on the clots. He was so angry. He's like, did you fucking listen to anything I told you? He's like, you're going to have a stroke. He's like, you cannot do that stuff. And I got terrified. So I went to my job. I was like, listen, I said, I said, I can't do this anymore. I'm like, I'm sorry. I said, but could you give me two weeks? You know, can I work for two more weeks until I find another job? And this guy who's just an amazing person, they were like, yeah, don't worry about it, man. They're like, we'll find something for you to do. And so they put me in the warehouse, you know, I put in a big, I put in a big effort, I kind of transformed their warehouse. And now in that same place, I'm like a manager. You know, I got like a huge amount of responsibility. It's been about five years and that company, they have been nothing but good to me. It's just so blessed. They gave me that chance and I'm so thankful. So I finished my chemotherapy. I slept around with a few different women. It was going out in these little one night stands. You know, I still wasn't convinced that I was going to live. And I kept going back and they were like, okay, well, everything looks great. And then I met my wife and on our first date. Now, keep in mind, I was gone for a long time. So we're driving, driving in my truck when she's talking about something about Netflix and this and that. And I'm like, what is Netflix anyways? And she's like, you know what Netflix is? I'm like, I've heard of it. I just don't know what it is. And so she's telling me about it on the way back from dinner. She's like, oh, listen to that and Instagram. And so I was like, yeah, what, what's Instagram? Like, what does that do? What is it? And she's like, she's like, are these red flags? Where the hell have you been? You don't know what Instagram is. And so I told her, I said, you know, if we know each other in six months, I will answer any questions you have, honestly. But until that time, more or less, I'm like, you haven't earned the right to know how I got here like this. You don't want to know either. It's too crazy, overwhelming. But she was making me dinner, right? I came to her house. We had been dating for a few weeks. So I'm in her bedroom in the dark. And one thing I learned is, you know, to try to tune into the universe. You know, the sound of the center of the sun. It's in a lawnmower. And I escaped that vibration. It's everywhere. And so every once in a while, I can connect with it and I focus on it. So she's in the kitchen chopping up food. I'm listening to it. There's no TV on. I'm not looking at my phone. And she like peeks around the corner and she's like, what are you doing? And I'm like, I'm just listening to the ceiling fan. And she's like, she's like, are you like some kind of serial killer? And I was just looking back. I could see how these things were kind of crazy, you know, but now she knows everything, but she's sober too. She's been sober for seven years. We got married last year. We've been together for four years. And it's been a good, well, good team. So yeah, in August of 2021, I was given 90 days to live by an oncologist that had been practicing and dealing with cancer for over 40 years. I've been five years and I'm healthy and my life is the best it's ever been. I feel like I'm spoiled. My wife, she is just awesome. She's like just goes above and beyond to help me. She's awesome. She's like a huge blessing to me. My job is awesome. The people I work with are great. It's just, it's really unbelievable. I got into the stock market. I started to make these promotions at work. I started making more money. I started investing. I lived out of the dollar store. Everything I had was a dollar. Put five grand together. I turned that five grand into a hundred grand. All my financial insecurities are gone. I have great people in my life. I'm just feel blessed. And I want to add this is that, you know, I grew up even with my dad, you know, when I would cry, if my brother was beating me up, he would yell at me for crying. You know, he would say, you're a man, be a man, don't cry. And I never cried. All these different things when they told me I was going to die from cancer. Okay, no problem. You're going to prison forever. All right, whatever. So I've been struggling with God. I read a lot of the Bible. So my friend invited me to this church because there was a guy from the Soviet Union speaking and my wife's parents migrated here from the Soviet Union. And Russian is her first language. So I go to the church. I hadn't stepped foot in the church and forever. And I stood in the back. Everybody was smiling and they were very welcoming and happy and trying to give me hugs. And, you know, it was cool. These ladies came on the stage and they started singing and the words that they were singing were on this giant screen behind them. And I was reading the words and I had to put my sunglasses on because there was tears were coming down my eyes. And this was just a few months ago. I was overwhelmed with the gratitude that I can't even put it into words. I can't even explain it. It was just overpowering joy and gratitude. There was an acquaintance, a guy that I know his name is Chris. And when I was walking out, he could see me and he gave me a hug and he asked me if I was okay. And I just said, I said, yes, you know, I'm just so grateful to be alive. And I said, I just got this amazing, overwhelming feeling of gratitude. He's like, that's God. It's like it's a God experience and whatever it was, I've been going to that church ever since then. Every adversity carries with it a futuristic advantage of equal or more proportion. What's called the seed of equivalence and Napoleon Hill. And I have found that to be so true in my life. All the worst things that ever happened to me, all of those things helped me. I didn't know that at the time, but now I know how to navigate through all kinds of weather. I've never gotten past my brother being killed. I mean, to this day, I still think about him all the time. It's been 40 years since that day those troopers came to our house and it still hurts me. I still miss him. I still miss him and my mom still cries for him. He was my brother. I talked to him sometimes. I used to go to his grave and talk to him, pray for him. I still, I thank him. Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors. All those difficulties, all those adversities I had have helped me now. I'm a productive law abiding citizen. My word is good. These people trust me. One thing that a book points out is that these terrible experiences can be useful to someone else. And I can be helpful to people now. I did some pretty bad things. That's the hardest part. But if I'm starting to feel guilty about stuff I did 30 years ago, I can quickly alternate that to how can I take what I have to be helpful to other people. Now I'm seeking to be of service to other people. All these people that are in my life, they trust me. It's such a good feeling. It's really a massive turnaround from being a person that nobody wanted to be around. If people saw me coming, even my own mother told me if I come over there she's going to call the police on me. Now I'm like a health fanatic. I do my little 200 meter sprints every weekend. I have lots of room for improvement. I have lots of room for improvement. But I'm in this groove. My discipline is helpful. And I'm just kind of cruising along for the next chapter. Today's episode featured Michael Mason. If you'd like to reach out to Michael, you can find his email and socials in the show notes. If you'd like to hear some deeper reflections on Michael's story, as well as reflections on the last few episodes and updates about the show, please subscribe to my sub-stack called Beyond the Story at witmissildine.substack.com. From Audible Originals, you are listening to This Is Actually Happening. If you love what we do, please rate and review the show. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music to listen ad free, and get access to the entire back catalog. In the episode notes, you'll find some links and offers from our sponsors. By supporting them, you help us bring you our show for free. I'm your host, witmissildine. 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