Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
Hey, it's Britt. You've arrived at the last episode of You Probably Think This Story's About You, season one. I barely made it to the end, so thank you for coming along with me.
Over the last eight weeks, I've shared some of the worst and best parts of my life. Sharing my story has brought my family closer together. And in the end, connecting with you and them makes everything worthwhile. While this is the last chapter of the season, my story is far from over. I will be posting updates of season two and bonuses on my Instagram at brittany.ard. I'm also sharing my daily life. I'm not for everybody, but...
If I'm for you, keep listening. We have some great bonuses and teasers coming. If you have a moment, please post a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Reviews are so helpful. And with that, I give you episode eight.
Well, I don't think the situation would have happened if Granny was still here. When she died, it broke me. It ruined the way that I normally handle the hard stuff. And I actually had to deal with my feelings and the grief and that loss. You probably think this story's about you. I'm Brittany Ard, and this story is mine. I've approached all my relationships since Granny died as...
Being willing to get hurt. Being open to the fact that if I'm not authentic and I don't actually show people my soft spots, I won't truly have a connection. And going into this relationship with Kanan, I made sure that I did that. I wish I could say that I regret it, but I don't.
I don't think that I've ever seen a relationship get to her like this one. And she's had plenty of interactions that should be more devastating. It didn't just go away. And when I would see Brittany at Sunday dinner, for instance, or other times, or talk to her on the phone, this was just front and center in her mind. She couldn't
just let it go, and it was clearly overwhelming her thoughts. This wasn't the bright, vibrant Brit that we know. She was just stuck. In my previous relationship, it felt like I had an eyes-wide-shut approach. I went into those relationships, you know, wanting the connection and the love, but I don't think I ever really
allowed myself to be cared for or loved. And it wasn't until Canaan that I walked into that wanting something more than I had had and questioning if maybe my marriages didn't work because I didn't walk into those relationships with that same vulnerability.
My attitude is, okay, that's bad stuff. We're going to just forget it and move on. I kind of was expecting that moment to happen sometime that she could just let it go on this. But every time we'd get together or talk, she'd want to talk about it and had learned more and found out about these other women that have had the same experience.
Going into dating Kanan, I went in with my true, authentic, vulnerable self, and I was rejected, manipulated, lied to, and I'm okay. What it taught me is that I can still be who I want to be, and if it happens again or it doesn't work out...
I'll be okay in the end. It was a really hard lesson that I wouldn't avoid. For the first 40 years of my life, I just pushed through. Last week in therapy, my therapist was saying that when we had talked about me becoming a more vulnerable person, he didn't expect me to full send it and share it with anyone that would listen. I...
And I think she does, too. When something uncomfortable happens, we fill our mind with all this other stuff to distract us and help us through the current trauma. The main thing that you're told is a person who is having an experience with somebody with this psychopathy, which could be narcissism. In Kanan's case, I believe a sociopath.
You go no contact and never look back. The sociopath in this story then just thinks, I had another failed relationship. I'm the victim. What we've learned in Kanan's case is you keep doing this and you keep thinking that you're getting away with it. There's more women, there's more lies, more manipulation, and he's never going to stop.
After talking to these other women, especially face to face, it really became apparent that he fucked me up. In my brain, I went into that relationship wanting to be vulnerable and open and honest about who I was and what I expected. And, you know, probably felt like I had done everything right.
The vastness of his lies and behavior was something I could focus on because it was just so crazy. I never took a moment to grieve the loss of that not working and it not being what I expected it to be. In order for me to continue to want to show up in relationships the same way,
I needed to grieve the loss of that relationship. I want a partner that is like him, just actually a human. There are so many other women that have had these experiences with Canaan. They can't keep trying to find them.
There's not enough hours in the week to do that. But I hope that if any of this resonates with someone, they do reach out. The whole goal is that we all get something positive out of this, even if it's just friendships with each other, but figure out how to move forward in our lives and not have these things happen to us.
At this point, I don't know where Kanan is. I don't know what he's doing in his life. We have attempted numerous times to reach out to give him a chance to talk. He doesn't want to. Hello? Hello, is this... Yes, hi. I got your number from a woman named Britt. I'll just tell you briefly why I'm calling. I'm a producer. Oh, huh.
I have tons of questions for him, but I wouldn't believe any of his answers. It doesn't really matter what he has to say at this point. It's not part of my story. Just like my dad had a bad feeling about Kanan, I believe that if Granny would have met him, she would have figured out very quickly that he wasn't who he said he was and probably saved me a lot of heartache.
She had a very low tolerance for bullshit. I give all of that credit to Granny. I just do, because Granny taught us all, not just Britt, but she has taught this whole Sunday dinner crowd how to do it, what to do, what matters, what doesn't. You can be mad at each other, and you're still going to sit down and have dinner and figure it out. I always thought that Granny...
sounded older, but she was adamant that everyone called her granny from day one. But so you think of it and it's like, oh, there's this cute little white haired lady, you know, making roast in the kitchen. And it's like, no, that was not granny. Granny had purple hair, deep, deep, not old lady purple, but like so purple, like
You couldn't tell it was purple unless it was in the right light, and it was beautiful. I think she was 36 or 37 when I was born. She was very young when she had my dad. My parents were only 17 years older than me, so we're all growing up together. It really is how I think about it, and all of these things make us all tougher and stronger and hopefully a little smarter.
She was the same age as most of my friend's parents. Granny said, do what you can, try your best, but don't let a man come between you and joy. She just lived however she wanted. And she said whatever she wanted. That's where I get it from. It's a huge blessing and a curse because sometimes it gets us into trouble sometimes.
This episode is brought to you by Experian. Are you paying for subscriptions you don't use but can't find the time or energy to cancel them? Experian could cancel unwanted subscriptions for you, saving you an average of $270 per year and plenty of time. Download the Experian app. Results will vary. Not all subscriptions are eligible. Savings are not guaranteed. Paid membership with connected payment account required.
She'd go wander over to the piano and she wasn't a professional piano player at all, but there was a piano in the house. She'd just start playing. No thinking. And everybody, of course, would just kind of stop.
She had it, but it always took her a few dabs to get it to work right. She's the most important part of this whole story.
When I would spend summers with her when we were younger, it was just so comforting because there was just food all the time, like great food. And when you are trying to feed you and your sister macaroni and cheese and, you know, sometimes I'd get really creative and put cut up hot dogs in my SpaghettiOs, which is so good, by the way. So, to the right, we're going to the right, to the right.
So Sunday dinner started when I was 13 years old. I was not the best teenager and my grandma wanted to
force all of us to hang out every week. And so she started doing Sunday dinners and we'd go over to the tiny little house at the time and eight of us, I think, would scrunch around her table.
But it really quickly became my favorite three hours of the week, even through that teenage time. And it just grew. We come down every Sunday to Sunday dinner and continue that tradition. Once you get through that gate, you are in your own land and can relax and calm down and just enjoy the crowd. And it's it's the best.
It's bring a friend, just come on in, doesn't matter, come on in. My favorite part of Sunday dinners was always the hour before everybody showed up. I would go early and help her cook.
She wanted to teach me how to set a table. And so she very specifically taught me how to set a table properly. If there is a pattern on your plate, you make sure that pattern is straight and you make sure that the silverware is lined up and the glasses are in the right spot. In the last few years, I've passed that off to my kids, which is incredibly hard work.
because some of them are not as detail-oriented as I am. Thankfully, Brianna is, and when she shows up, she fixes the table.
Knife and then spoon are on the right side, forks on the left side. Knife you want to face in so you don't want the blade facing out. And all the bottoms of the silverware are lined up. So like you have the plate and then like it's all lined up. So like you're going to put the glass right there. I keep showing up late and then I get there and I'm like, okay, I'll fix it all now. You're doing it wrong. I mean, they're doing a great job. They're doing the best they can. Everybody's doing their best.
Everyone kind of has their role and like I know who's what five people are going to be helping with dinner. Braylee would help me set the table. My dad will immediately walk in the back door, grab the paper bag and the potatoes and start peeling. She fed us.
All of us, all the time. I mean, it was just, I guess her love language was, you know, feeding people. And it wasn't like this elaborate meals. It was just good food. After Granny died, I wasn't able to just push through. I really had to sit in grief as physical pain.
I was losing another woman that was so important in my life. My dad and I both handled the grief after Braylee's death by getting busier. The depth of that loss was bigger than any person should sort of have to experience. The next week was a blur and a day turned into a week, a week turned into a month, and then a year later it's like we have to clean out this apartment.
It sat for a year, untouched. It was my dad's apartment building, so we could. Initially, it was because we still had private investigators and stuff investigating this guy and talking to the police. Like, we were hoping that they were going to be able to investigate this crime scene because it looked like a crime scene. Overturned furniture, and there was a lot of things in that apartment that were not typical or right. I think I'm the one that was like, we can't leave it there forever. Yeah.
There was a part of me that wanted to learn more about her. And the only way I really could was to go through her apartment and to see the stuff that she didn't share before.
I think I was looking for answers. I think maybe I was hoping that I was going to find something in there that resolved something for me or confirmed something. And it didn't. It actually only made it worse. But there was so much that I did learn about Brayley. I guess cleaning out anybody's space would be...
You learned some stuff that you probably didn't want to know. We kept so much stuff from there and we just have boxes of clothes and things that at the time, you know, you don't want to get rid of. We probably would have left it untouched forever. I'm glad we didn't because I really think it helped us accept that she wasn't coming back.
I didn't have the courage to read all of the things that she had wrote, and I still don't. That building had been in our family since the 1960s. I bought that property off my dad and demolished the building. It sounds like, who the fuck would tear down a building, you know, because their sister died in it? Like, who does that? But
In our family, we tear down buildings all the time. I was in the excavator demolishing it. The building itself is just wood and bricks and concrete and a thought somebody had. The home part is who you're with. I mean, tearing down the building, it felt good. That apartment and that building wasn't Braley. That building no longer had that family connection for us.
So we redeveloped it and made it something beautiful. I still don't think I'd tell it was Braylee's death. I don't think it's something you just get over one day. I don't think that's how grief works. The most beautiful thing to me about grief is that we don't get to have it. It doesn't get to be so painful unless we had the love before. My dad and I were out front of the building talking about some landscaping stuff.
We're arguing about which type of hedge that we want to put in the backyard and this hummingbird came and like circled us and then just left. And I didn't see it until it was flying away. He sort of smirked. I immediately feel better. I smile. I recognize that same spirit that we all felt when we interacted with Braylee.
So my dad has hummingbirds, which is my sister. I have 444. 444 has been the number that I've always associated with Granny. It was on her license plate for 25 years. And not a personalized plate. I mean, that's just the plate she got.
444 is everywhere. I dropped off my boots to get the heels replaced and my ticket was 444. Everywhere. For some reason in the last like three weeks, it's been like seven or eight times a day. I was on a motorcycle ride out in the middle of the desert and...
This motorcycle has a screen that tells me all kinds of information and all day long I was in traction control number four going 44 miles an hour so all I'm seeing is not just three fours the whole dash is just fours it's like what you know because clearly this is like this is louder than normal
I can't decide if she's telling me I'm doing a good job or telling me to stop. She's just telling you she's there. Braylee and Granny are all buried on top of Queen Anne. We have a big family plot. I hate it there. I don't go there. Some people in the family will stop by and drop flowers. I will once or twice a year. But I literally will pull up and, like, toss flowers, and then I leave. Because that's not...
Braylee, that's not granny. That's not where I feel their presence. I think that that's why we keep coming back every Sunday. I don't know that my story is going to have the fairy tale ending. I'm not willing to sacrifice any part of me to get it.
You probably think the stories about you is a production of large media. That's L-A-R-J media. Our executive producer is Brittany Ard. Our showrunner is Sid Gladue. Creative direction by Tina Knoll. Our associate producer is Kareem Kiltow. Sound engineering by Chris Young.
and Sean Simmons. Graphic design by Najella Shama. Opening theme by Youth Star and Miscellaneous. If you want to know more about Britt, follow her on social media. You can find her at brittany.ard on all platforms. If you like what we're doing, don't forget to hit that follow button wherever you're listening to this podcast right now. And also, give us a rate or review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. ... ...
Bye.
