208: What if you ran through the pain?
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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. I was just in a haze. Honestly, I don't even remember there being people there. I just remember being like alone. It was like I was in a whole other universe for like five to ten minutes just walking around. Not like I couldn't function. I didn't know what to do. From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein. You are listening to This Is Actually Happening.

Episode 208: What if you ran through the pain?

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My father was born in New Kensington, Pennsylvania. He was a very athletic person, but he never really got to play any sports because he grew up very poor. Not having a car to take him to and from school to practices to games really hindered his ability to even attempt to play any sports. So he would just stay at the gym after school and work out.

He told me at one point he could bench press double his weight. You know, he would have people watching him lift weights.

His father worked in the mill. His father was a raging alcoholic and sometimes would abuse my grandmother physically at times. And my dad would tell me that him and his younger brothers, you know, they'd be scared shitless being 10 years old, seeing this, you know, their dad is just drunk and, you know, beating their mom.

My dad said one day, you know, they were starting to become big guys and they said the next time dad beats mom, we're going to handle it. They saw it happening and they just pounded the shit out of him. I had heard that they almost killed him. He was in the hospital for a while. They went to see him in the hospital and they said, if you ever touch him again, we'll fucking kill you.

Needless to say, after that, he never really was even mean to my grandmother. I mean, he had his temper. He still drank, but he never hit my grandmother again. Mentally, my father was always a hardworking person.

He would always tell me about, you know, when he was younger, how he pretty much had nothing. And he would always tell me this story about his first bike that he ever got. He pulled out of a crick that had been in there for some time because it was rusty. It still had the tires on it and everything was real, just beat up. It was bent between both tires. He needed 28 patches to patch the tires up to inflate them.

And to get those patches, he like cut grass, do work on people's houses when he was 14, 15, just to get patches, just to put on these used almost rotted tires, just to have a bicycle to ride around. As an unappreciative kid, as most of us already young age, I still realized I have it pretty lucky. You know, I have food on the table and I don't have to dig out of a creek to get a bike.

Whether he thought about it or subconsciously, I always knew that he resented the fact that his parents never really had the means to give him a good education. In his mind, I think for a lot of his life, he felt stuck. I am an only child, and I'll tell you what, it's not as good as everybody makes it out to be.

especially living out kind of in the country. I spent a lot of my time in the woods talking to myself, climbing trees, talking to trees, even giving trees certain names, talking to the same ones every day. It kind of makes you feel lonely from time to time. And there was more cows where I lived than people. Interaction with kids my own age never really happened outside of school. I guess the closest thing I had to a brother was my dad. I mean, we

always be throwing baseball or throwing football in the backyard. But I definitely lacked having social skills with people my own age. In fact, I believe I still do.

I kind of look at myself as almost an outcast. I never really, I've never been a best man in anyone's wedding, if that makes sense. In fact, I've never been in anybody's wedding. You know, I'm never like that guy for anybody. I kind of feel like growing up in the woods, you know, I just relate more to nature and the wilderness than I do people.

I had a really good relationship with my parents. I would be out in the backyard. Me and my dad would be catching football. Nothing ever really bad happened. You know, I mean, I got yelled at just like any other kid.

Being an only child, I kind of felt closed in by my parents. They were, I would say, overprotective of me. To a certain extent, I guess that it's because my parents gave a shit about me. But definitely, I would say a little more on the overbearing side growing up.

Ever since my dad was young, he had a great work ethic. So my dad always told me that, you know how I decided to find a job was I applied for everyone that I could apply for and I took whatever offered the most money. And he said, the one that offered the most money was the post office in the early 80s. So he said, I took it.

The guys that worked in the post office in the 80s and when my dad started working there, he said that they really took pride in it. It was a very enjoyable job for those guys to do.

It was more of a friendly type of job, like a neighborly kind of a job where you were doing a service for somebody also working for the government. So you had a sense of security as far as your monetary future, that you'd be being paid well, even though you were doing the same job over and over again. He really felt that doing a hard job, a good hard job every day really defined who a person is.

At work and at home, he was a perfectionist in everything that he did. He was very, very detail-oriented, and I learned a lot off of him. He taught me to change my own oil in my car, how to change my own brakes and rotors. Knowledge is everything. You have to know how to do things on your own to make it in this world.

For as long as he worked at the post office, he gave his all every day. He started off just explaining the importance of enjoying every day at work. Unfortunately, the last half of his career at the post office, he hated going to work every single day. He would often reflect on when he started at the post office in the mid-80s, I'd say. He said it was the best job you could have.

He said, you walk every day, you deliver your mail, you say hi to the same people. They gave you Christmas tips. Sometimes even if you were working overtime and things were really busy, you were really slammed, they would make you a sandwich for lunch or for dinner. He just had a really good rapport with

In the mid-90s, he said that the larger post office branches decided that they were going to implement a military-style job atmosphere where the clerks that work behind the desk, the letter carriers, the guys that got the trucks ready, they were looked at as enlisted. And they couldn't really work their way up to be a manager anymore.

But the management, anyone that managed the employees or the postmasters, they were all looked at as the officers. So their pay raises, their pay grades all got a bump. They cracked down on guys taking a minute too long on their lunch break. They would have different managers follow different guys out on their routes. And if they started to fall behind, it would be brought into an office and given a warning.

You had to sort letters a certain way. So every morning for like the first year of them starting this new system, each worker would have a manager standing behind them, tapping their feet on the floor to set a rhythm. And they each tap, they wanted a different letter to go through each different sorter.

Hearing this story, I'm thinking, that's so fucked up. They're turning these workers, these blue-collar, hardworking guys into their robotic slaves just to put some fear in them.

These guys hated their fucking lives. And I've talked to many people based on this. The structure that was implemented, the toxicity of it all, the harassment from the bosses, the intimidation factor, constantly dangling their jobs over their heads, saying that, oh, you've worked here 20 years, but we're the only show in town. Where are you going to go if you leave here?

You have to do what we say when we say it or you're going to get written up. And if you get written up more than a couple of times, you're eventually going to get fired. One day when I was in high school, my mom had to come get me early, maybe an hour or two early. And she said that something had happened at home. She was telling me that an ambulance had to bring my father in for a psychiatric evaluation.

So we got to the ambulance and my uncle was there and his face and elbows were all bloody. And I'm like wondering what the hell happened. I had found out that a couple weeks prior to this day, my dad was in the bathroom at his work and his manager at the time walked in and squeezed his ass while he was taking a piss and

and my dad turned around like what the and he almost punched him but then he didn't and then the guy was like kind of smirking at him and he's like what are you doing and he didn't say anything so he just walked out well he tried to go through the the whole thing at work filing paperwork this and that and nothing ever came of it so they really messed with them at work and they were giving them a lot of trouble

So this one morning he walks into work and they were giving him a bunch of shit and telling him this or that, or they're going to move his route to some really bad part of the neighborhood. And he was like, you know what? Fuck this. And he said that he was leaving for the day, taking a vacation day, or he was sick and he had to write an excuse or fill out a paperwork as to why he was leaving. And his reason for leaving, he wrote considering self-elimination and

And he drove home. His boss's boss, I guess, saw that and he had to take action, you know, according to the protocol of the post office and seeing that he took that as a reasonable threat and he called the state police. Well, my dad, when he got home, he immediately went into the kitchen and he had a jar of some kind of whiskey and he drank almost the entire jar.

He was outside sitting up against a tree and in one hand he had a .45 and in the other hand he had a .38 snub-nosed Smith & Wesson. He was sitting there dry firing his pistol at a groundhog that he saw at a nearby tree about 30-40 feet away. So as he's sitting there drinking out of this jar, he sees a police car coming down the driveway.

The state trooper gets out and walks around the house and my dad's watching the whole time. He didn't say anything. Well, finally, the trooper sees my dad sitting against the tree with two guns in his hand. And he walks up to him and says, sir, do you need help? What are you doing? And my dad said, get the fuck off my property. So the state trooper left calmly. My dad was like, you know what? I'm pretty hammered. I'm going to go in the house and, you know, sleep this off for a little while.

He said that he probably slept an hour, maybe an hour and a half. And he woke up to our dog barking and he looks outside and he sees a swarm of police officers, a SWAT team, the phone's ringing off the hook. So he picks it up and on the other end is a hostage negotiator.

My dad's on the phone with the hostage negotiator saying, what's going on here? And the guy said, sir, if there's anybody in the house, please release them unharmed and exit the house without hurting yourself. Within about an hour and a half to two hours, there's multiple police officers, SWAT teams, state troopers, and the FBI on our property investigating.

And my dad's on the phone with this guy saying, I do not have anybody in here. My wife's at work, my son's at school, and I came home early from work, got drunk, passed out, and I woke up to all of this stuff going on. So he says, okay, sir, I'm just going to have to have you go out onto your deck and surrender yourself. And my dad's like, surrender what? I haven't done anything.

So he's like, just please go outside. They're not going to leave until they have you restrained and they check the house just to make sure everything's okay. So my dad goes out onto the deck. He says, I'm just on the phone with this hostage negotiator. I'm going to set it down. I told him I don't have any weapons on me. I'm going to get on my hands and knees and put my hands behind my back and lay face first on the deck.

And they're screaming at him. They're motherfucking him up and down, this and that. He told me that he had like 20-some guns pointed at him. And he gets down on the deck on his hands and knees, and they cuff him. They take him in. They have to give him a psychiatric evaluation, and they want him to stay overnight.

At first, I was a little confused and obviously a little scared and worried for my dad. But when they finally said, you know, you can go see your dad, he was just sitting in jeans and a t-shirt in a hospital room like he was just waiting to be seen by a doctor. It wasn't to me what I thought was going to be the stereotypical. I thought I was going to be walking into a padded room with a guy in a straitjacket. It wasn't anything like that.

I remember my dad telling that story. I mean, what had happened just 12 hours ago? And he's laughing about it. And he's encouragingly telling this story like he's proud of what happened. He's like, yeah, those motherfuckers think they could get to me. I'm crazier than them, this and that. He's like, I'll never go down without a fight. They confiscated all of my guns, but I know there's definitely a couple more, my powerful ones that they weren't able to find.

There's a camera in the corner because it's on the psychiatric floor, so everything's pretty much being listened to. I'm like, watch what you're saying. He's laughing about it. He's like, oh, fuck him. He loved saying that. Oh, fuck him. I don't give a shit. He was released that night. After all was said and done, I heard the whole story. I just thought, my dad's a badass.

It took him about two or three months to get all of his guns back, even though they were taken from him for basically no reason. After all that, after all is said and done, he got a letter in the mail, and his charge was disorderly conduct. And that was it.

And he was laughing about it. He's like, you know, they went through all of this and this is all I'm being charged with. You know what? This is still bullshit. I didn't do anything wrong. So he went to court. He actually fought the disorderly conduct. And the judge says, you know what, sir, you were drunk with guns on your property. And my dad's like, you know what? It's my property.

And then the judge goes, you swore at a state trooper, right? And my dad's like, yeah, I told him to get the fuck off my property. He's like, all right, I'll tell you what, it's going to stay as a disorderly conduct, but I'll write you up for the minimum fine, $50 plus court costs. So my dad ended up roughly paying close to $70.

After that whole situation with the police and the post office, fucking with my dad, not doing anything about the sexual harassment, I would hear him on the phone talking to this other guy that he worked with about, oh, fuck this guy and fuck that guy. I hope he gets cancer and fucking dies. And like laughing maniacally about it.

When I was a kid at the time, like I'm hearing my dad swearing more in this phone conversation than I've ever heard him swear in my whole entire life. But one thing that I heard him say over and over again on different phone conversations was, you know what? If I was standing outside of my work, getting ready to punch in, and I saw somebody with a machine gun walking toward the post office, getting ready to go up, go inside and blow everyone away, I'd hold the door wide open for them.

And he would laugh about it as he said it more and more. And as the weeks and months went on, he said it quite often. I remember thinking, how horrible would it be to hate your job that much that you want to see everybody there get fucking killed?

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And the next, something goes wrong. But with ADT's 24/7 professional monitoring, you still feel safe. Because when every second counts, count on ADT. Visit ADT.com today. We eventually got a computer when I was in high school and there was a desk in the computer room and there started appearing all sorts of these different books.

The one was the anarchist cookbook. Another one was how to make a silencer. Another one was how to kill somebody and get away with it. All of these crazy books. There was other things like how to live during an apocalypse and how to survive in the wild when you're being chased and hunted by somebody. I mean, he had like almost a hundred of these different books. And I asked him what all this shit was about. And he's like, well, you know, I'm getting ready.

I'm getting ready for, you know, whenever they come and I'm going to be ready. My dad was never against guns, but he never really flaunted having them either. I mean, he had them in the closet, but he never talked about guns. You know, he hunted when he was younger, before I was born. Toward like the last year of high school and when I was in college, I would start to notice guns just like laying in random spots.

I had always known through him telling me whenever we would target practice or whenever we would just go out back and blow off a few rounds into a big dirt pile, he would always tell me, you know, never leave a gun land around, especially when it's loaded, never have it, you know, sitting just on the table aimed at random places and,

I was sitting on the couch watching some TV. I think my dad was at work. My mom was at work. And I noticed sitting on top of the entertainment center, snub-nosed Smith and Wesson sitting on top of a book.

And when my dad got home, I said, Dad, you know there's a gun up there? And he's like, oh yeah, I got it loaded and ready. I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, well, if anyone tries to fuck around and break in here, I take two steps. And he proceeded to stand up and show me the two steps he would take. I'm like, you seriously have a loaded gun up there ready for any intruders to come in? And he says, yeah. And I tell you what, I fucking hope it happens one day. He started to have more and more of these crazy dark thoughts,

And he started to drink a lot more. And he never really drank during his life, especially because my grandfather being an alcoholic, he always tried to stay away from booze. He would have an occasional drink on vacation. But his last couple of years at work, he really, really started to buy half gallons of rum and different kinds of liquors. He eventually started drinking a couple of drinks before work.

I told him, I was like, you know, if you get pulled over, you're going to get a DUI. And he's like, I don't fucking care. He's like 50 at this time. And he's like, I'm trying my hardest to get an early out. I need out of this fucking place. So he was eventually able to retire at 52 years old with a full pension. And I thought that he was happier.

He said that the grass was greener, that the sky was bluer, and he told me the air smelled fresher outside. But he was still drinking. He was drinking a lot. He eventually started buying this half gallon of rum by the case of six. That would last him at most 10 days.

I remember I'm like, dad, you're, you're retired. You're 52 years old. The house is almost paid off. You're living the dream. What's going on? And he's like, you know, I don't know. And he would still talk about how much he hated the post office and how many times that they messed with him over and over again.

I was gone most of the time in college. My mom would call me and say, your dad's drinking, he's doing this. I was afraid and I locked the bedroom door and he kicked one of the panels out of the door.

He was scary. He kind of turned into a different person. Not a violent person, but more of a hateful person. Just didn't give a fuck about anything when he was hammer drunk. I eventually graduated. He seemed to have stopped drinking as much. I eventually moved in with my fiancée.

One day he called me in the morning and he asked me to take him to this detox center in Butler, PA. I go, I pick him up. He doesn't look too good, but he's sober at least. I can just tell he's like going through some form of alcohol withdrawal. And he's like, I really need to straighten myself out here.

10 or 11 days later, he calls me to come pick him up. And he's telling me about all these people that were in there and how worse their lives were. And he's like, you know what? I'm really going to straighten out. I'm like, dad, you know, that's great. And, you know, he's telling me these stories and we're about to get home. I remember he starts crying and he's like, you know, I'd do anything for you or your mom. And I'm like, yeah, that's good, dad. You know, me too. He's like, you know, I just want to say I love you.

Like, I love you too, Dad. And this was like early of March 2012. About a week and a half went by, and we had just got our daughter a swing set, and

there was a lot of pieces that needed to put together it was just very elaborate project i was like hey dad can you come help me build the swing set he's like oh yeah sure so he shows up and you know he has all his tools with him everything he needed and he zipped this thing together in like 10 minutes that probably would have taken me like two hours you know just perfectly put together and i remember thinking okay he looks good but there's still something off

I got a whiff of alcohol, but he looked cleaned up. He was wearing jeans and nice shoes, but he just looked like a fragment of his previous self. And I remember watching him walk down the sidewalk. He was a little hunched over. I was going to say something or ask him to stay and hang out, but we had been building this swing set all day and I was tired. And I just said, I'll fuck it. I'll see him next weekend.

At this time, I had just gotten a job at a large chemical company making paint. I was a temp. I remember I was in my wife's old beater car and in the back of the car was this SpongeBob chair that I had bought. It was real big and fluffy and I thought my daughter would love it because she loves SpongeBob, but it was like real fluffy and she just like tipped backwards. My fiancee, soon to be wife at the time, was like, nah, just take that back. Get your money back. I was like, okay.

So, after work, I remember going to Walmart. I was standing in the customer service line, holding this big, goofy, fucking Spongebob chair. I feel something in my pocket. I'm like, wait, what is that? And it's my phone. It's on vibrate. I saw I just missed a call from my dad, and it said, like, two missed calls or something like that. So, I call him back. I'm like...

What's up? He's like, you know what, Miles? I'm sitting out on the deck and I'm thinking of ending it all. And I'm like, come on, dad, you know, go in the house, calm down. If you have weed at home, smoke some weed, do something, just chill out. And he's like, you know what? I've been doing that for months and I just can't do it anymore. I'm like, doing what? He's like, you know, trying to trying to chill out.

And I'm like, dad, you know, just take it easy. I'm like, you really wouldn't do this with you. And he's like, you know what? I think, I think I might be doing it now. My wedding was coming up in five weeks on May 8th. So it's March 30th. And I'm like, dad, no, my wedding's coming up in five weeks. So he's like, oh, you know, I wouldn't miss your wedding, but he's like, you know what? I just can't handle it anymore. He's like, I just wanted to call and say, I love you. And I'm like, well, I love you too, dad. And he's like, all right, bye.

and i'm standing in this customer service line holding this fucking spongebob chair there's like six people in front of me it was taking forever and like my heart was racing i i didn't know what to do i started like walking around in circles walking up and down the aisles for like five to ten minutes i just i was just in a haze i was just walking around and honestly i don't even remember there being people there i just remember being like alone

It was like I was in a whole other universe for like five to ten minutes just walking around. Not like I couldn't function. I didn't know what to do. I picked up the phone and I called the number again and there wasn't an answer. And then my heart dropped a little. I called again and there wasn't an answer. So I'm like, son of a bitch, this can't be happening. I just dropped that SpongeBob chair in the middle of the store and I just walk out. I hop in that piece of shit car, my wife's beater car, and I'm driving home.

I go into my house and I'm still like, you know, what should I do? What should I do? I call my brother-in-law and I'm like, my dad just called me and said that he was going to kill himself, but I don't think that he would actually do it. But do you think I should like call 911 or something? And he's like, yeah, I know I would. So I'm like, fuck. So I'm like, you know what? Before I do that, I'm going to call home one more time. You know, just maybe he was on the other line or something.

I call home one more time and there's an answer, but it's my uncle, my dad's youngest brother. And he says, Miles, I can't say anything. Just go down to the hospital right now. And I'm like, what? And he's like, just go down to Presby right now. I'm like, is my dad dead? And he's like, it's hard to say.

I'm driving in a panic down Route 28, going way too fast. And I get there and I go in and the doctor comes in and he says, "Are you here in regards to your father?" And I said, "Yes." And then he says his name and he says, "Okay, come back with me, please."

And then a social worker was there too. And she was smiling. She was like, hi, just follow us right into this room. Like she was taking me to a fucking room at the Marriott or something. I was like, why are you so happy? I'm thinking. And they take me into this small room. I remember it was so fucking small. It was like six feet by eight feet. And it was the main physician, these two New York medical students and the social worker. And he says, okay, so your father was brought in and-

He suffered a gunshot wound to the side of his head. He came in, he still had a pulse. His brain stem was still alive. And then he said after numerous attempts to bring your father back to life, he passed. I don't even remember feeling anything at the time. I just remember just almost being like an empty person walking around.

My fiancee at the time had just gotten there. So I'm like, if she's out there, can you bring her in? And they bring her in a minute later and they deliver the news. And she gets very upset. After they're going over everything, what needs to happen, I asked one of the nurses that was in the room where he was in the hospital bed. I said, can I go see him one last time before you take him away and whatever? And she says, oh, absolutely. You can go see him.

I'm like, but is he covered? Because, you know, I don't want to see, you know, the aftermath. You know, I just want to be near his body. She's like, oh yeah, he's, he's covered with a sheet. There's nothing that you're going to see in there that you don't want to. I'm like, okay, thank you very much.

I open the door and I walk in and there is his body, his limp body laying in the hospital bed. But the sheet is only pulled up to his neck. So right there I can see his exploded head. If you can imagine his eyes closed, but imagine two golf balls behind each one of those eyes pushing through almost to the point that the eyelid's gonna rip.

That's what his eyes looked like when they were closed. And if you could imagine two rolls of toilet paper jammed into each one of his ears, but completely soaked in blood, that's what his ears looked like.

And then imagine a pair of folded socks jammed into his mouth, completely soaked in blood. That's what his mouth looked like. And then there was all of this stained blood on his neck and on his cheeks that looked like it was wiped away, but it was still there, like a stain. Like he just had iodine all over him, but I know it was blood. And I'm standing there looking at his lifeless body, and I'm like, Dad, why? You know, why did you do this? You're going to miss everything now.

I had maybe five minutes in there and then my uncle walked in. He had the shocked look that I did. He wasn't crying or anything. He just had that empty person look. And he said, "Why? Why'd you do it, brother? Why'd you do it?" And then a couple more family members came in and we all prayed together. Which, I mean, I don't know why I prayed. I don't fucking pray. But I did anyway.

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I had to come to terms with knowing that my father is gone forever. I experienced an extreme amount of guilt. Sometimes I don't even know what the guilt was, but I just felt guilty about something. And a lot of the times the guilt was me thinking that I should have just hung up the phone immediately and called 911 and then drove straight there to try to calm him down.

Another thing that I had to come to terms with was him missing out on the growth of my daughter, missing everything because he was there for the first year and a half of her life. And she really brightened him up whenever he would see her. But even on our last phone call together, I mentioned my wedding and mentioned him missing that. And it didn't seem to phase him because I guess he was in that much mental pain before.

I didn't feel right on the inside and I just had to find a way to deal with it. That following Monday, waking up, I took the whole week off of work because I couldn't even think straight. And I'm sitting on the recliner in the living room and my wife goes to work, fiance at the time, and it's about 8.30 and she leaves. And her work was like a mile down the road. So I'm sitting there and

Time goes on, it's about 8:45, and then a light bulb goes off in my head, and I think, "Yeah, the liquor store is about to open in 15 minutes. I could really use a bottle of Jameson right now and just slam it to the head." So I'm about to get up and put my shoes on, and in walks my wife into the house. She had gotten to work, and her boss told her, "Just go home and be with Miles."

Another light bulb immediately went off right after that. And I thought, "I can't solve problems with alcohol. I'll just lose my family. I'll ruin my life. I'll lose my job. I can't do this because if I do this, the cycle will continue." So I just had to find a way to deal with that mental pain for a while.

Following my father's suicide, I was experiencing a lot of PTSD symptoms. And the best way I can explain it is, in any normal situation where somebody would freak out about something, I find that I would be as cool as a cucumber.

But, contrarily to that, stuff that happens every day that really shouldn't bother the average person really, really get to me. Just like uncontrollable irritability at the tiniest of inconveniences just destroy me. Not so much anymore, but I still experience that occasionally. But at that time, just the littlest things set me off.

But I know right now if I was driving down the road and I saw a car on fire with a woman screaming inside, I would have no problem with just walking up and trying to assist her to get out. I had found out after being diagnosed with PTSD that it's a defense mechanism within the brain where you're prepared to deal with the worst situations. But that switch in the chemical distribution offsets the ability to handle the little things in life that one must go through.

When I close my eyes at night to go to bed, I would see either that image of my father's head blown up, or I would just see just an unknown face that was like laughing, but like bloody. Or I would just see like demons just when I closed my eyes, just not like incredibly detailed, but just like flashes of

And then I remember like walking around the house, like to get a glass of water. I would see something out of the corner of my eye or I would like hear something, but not like distinct words, just like a, just, just like a whisper. And I would like turn and then there was nothing there. And I'm like, am I fucking going crazy? And I said, you know what? I think I might have to seek some kind of psychiatric treatment.

As I had mentioned earlier, I was working at a temp agency and I didn't have any benefits. No insurance, nothing, just a straight $13 an hour wage. It barely was enough to pay the bills and, you know, have food. I mean, we were living, you know, we were fine, but there wasn't a lot of wiggle room.

And I remember thinking, I have to find something that is going to help me release all of this mental pain and all these negative feelings. But not something that costs money and not something that's going to do more harm than good. And a guy I worked with at that time, he was really into fitness. He was like, you know what? There's a small gym in the basement here that's available for employees. He's like, I'm sure you could just walk right in. You don't need a code to get in.

At this point in my life, I had never run more than a mile. And that was back in high school. For the one year I played football, which I absolutely hated. But I'm thinking, you know what, maybe I could start running. I don't know why, but maybe I'll try running. I got on the treadmill and I ran a quarter mile on it. And I was like, you know, that sucked. But at the same time, I felt like I accomplished something. So I did a quarter mile. The next day I did a quarter mile again.

the next day after that i bumped it up to a little more than a quarter mile the day after that i did a half mile and i kept telling these couple of people that were on the fitness i'm like you know what i'm i'm at a half mile and they're like you know great job just keep going so within a week i went up to a mile i couldn't believe it like i i just couldn't believe that i ran a mile

And then once I started running and building up all of this energy and all this confidence, I started to think, I hear people talking about 5Ks and 10Ks. I wonder if I could train for something like that. So I talked to the guy that told me initially to go down and check out the workout room. I'm like, hey, you ever run a 5K or a 10K? He's like, no, but I did run a marathon about four years ago in Philadelphia. And I'm like, really?

Up to that point, when I heard the word marathon, it went in one ear and out the other. I never thought in my life that I could even come close to running even a half marathon. So I'm starting to poke and prod about this idea a little bit. So I start looking into upcoming races, and I see that there is the Buffalo Trails half marathon in October 2021.

And at this point, it's like April, May. I'm like, you know what? I could do that. I think I'm going to try to do it. So I continued just like maintaining three miles every other day after work. I would just like try to run around the neighborhood. And then I started training full on for the Buffalo Trails Half Marathon in August of 2012. Mid-October 2012, I ran the Buffalo Trails Half Marathon.

When I crossed that finish line, I had felt something in my life that I had never felt before. Like I actually finished something difficult without quitting. And not only did I mentally feel good, I felt great physically. That runner's high people talk about, it really does exist, but it doesn't come easily.

After three miles, after five miles, your body starts to really experience makes and pains. You might hit the wall, they call it, where you just mentally can't go another foot. It happens to everybody. You think you're going to go out and run 10 miles and you only run one. Happens to everybody.

But there's a time where you mentally and physically decide to push through all of the pain and all the anguish. And you just tell yourself that your legs will give up before your mind. So then you just have to realize that it's all in the mind. And you just push through. And all of a sudden, at some point, it's random. You get hit with a wave of adrenaline that just rushes right through your fucking body. And it's unlike anything that you'll ever feel.

It's better than any drug that I could ever imagine. And you realize that everything comes together. You realize that you can push through things mentally. So when I finished that half marathon, I was like, you know what? I wonder when the Pittsburgh marathon is.

So I started talking to that guy at work about it. And he's like, you know what? I've been wanting to run a marathon again too. And this other girl that works there that she was talking about running, she's like, you know what? If you guys both sign up for the Pittsburgh Marathon, I'll do it and we can all train together. So we just all kind of looked at each other and I was like, fuck it and I'll do it.

So I started training and no matter what, if it was snowing, if it was rain and buckets, I didn't care. If I had a scheduled time to run, to train for that marathon, I was out there doing it. About a month before the marathon, I had a long run scheduled for a Saturday before Easter, a 17 mile run. So I woke up Saturday. I really didn't feel like doing it. I'll just do it tomorrow before Easter dinner.

So I wake up. It's one of those things again where I just didn't feel like doing anything. And it was time for Easter dinner. And I just felt really, really down. I'm like, I can't believe I did this. Like, am I missing this long run for real? Because I know if I eat at Easter dinner, there's no way that I'm going to wait two hours and run. I'm just like, no.

So I'm eating and I'm feeling all kinds of shitty and sitting there and I'm like, you know what? Fuck this. I'm going to wake up in the morning before work and run 17 miles. And I just kept telling myself that. And I set the alarm on my phone for 2.15 in the morning. I woke up.

I made a half cup of coffee, grabbed my iPod, got my gloves and shoes on, and I went outside by 2.30 and I ran 17 miles before work. I was back home at 6.30, got a shower, and was at work by quarter after 7. That feeling was even better than the feeling of me finishing that first half marathon. The feeling of finishing a full marathon is going to be even way better than this.

Ironically enough, I had shin splints. The other guy I was training with, he had an injured groin, so he wasn't unable to run for the past two weeks. And the girl that was training had an ankle sprain. And we're just all sitting there like, are we really getting fucked over like this two weeks before the marathon? So I just start to read, you know.

about runners injuries, this and that. It's extremely common. And it says if you continuously do long runs, the body is going to get injured. So I did what the internet said to do as far as shin splints. And I iced myself a lot. That other guy that I worked with, by the time it came for marathon day, he hadn't run in almost a month.

But he said, you know what? I'm already signed up. If I get out there and it hurts too bad, I just won't do it. And then another girl with the sprained ankle, she tightened her ankle up with bandage wrap or whatever. So we all got down to Pittsburgh about 530. Everyone gets lined up and the race started. It's a nice brisk morning. There was people lined up everywhere, cheering everybody on.

roughly mile 18 or 19, there is a part of the marathon that runs right past this place called Church Brew Works. They sit outside and on a table, they have plastic cups with an ounce or two ounces of beer in each one. And they say that that little bit of sugar and carbs in that beer really gives you a boost to finish. I'll tell you what, I stopped and I had one and it tasted so good. I had about 10 fucking more.

The day started to get very hot. It was about 80 degrees the last hour and a half of my marathon, but I didn't care. I knew I was finishing that race. I was initially on pace to finish at about four hours and 35 minutes. I ended up finishing that marathon in five hours, 39 minutes and 10 seconds. And when I crossed the finish line, honestly, it was probably the most surreal moment of my life.

I had never physically, mentally, emotionally, psychologically, physiologically felt anything like that in my life. A sense of accomplishment that just rushed over my body. And just as I'm feeling this, this woman comes up and she puts this medal around me. And it's a heavy fucking medal. And it says runner of steel on it.

Every day, at least once a day, I just think, you know, if only dad was here to see this, or if only I could give dad a call. I continued to run, continued to exercise, and a couple years later, when all the exercising and running and everything was still persistent in my life, and I was able to get a full-time job, I ended up seeking some psychiatric treatment, and

I've been taking some medication ever since, but I occasionally talk to a therapist, which is very, very helpful. Whatever kind of trauma one is going through, it's always going to be very painful at first. But when you sit down and you think about what you need to do, you realize that the grass can be greener on the other side. You just have to figure out what outlets you need to get there.

And in my case, it was just running through the pain. Today's episode featured Miles. You can reach out to him by emailing miles1357 at yahoo.com.

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