234: What if your joy came with a tragic price?
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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. To feel like at any moment something tragic could happen put me in a deep, deep cloud as far as who I am, what can I be, and what could I have been. From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein.

You're listening to This Is Actually Happening. Episode 234. What if your joy came with a tragic price?

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I was raised in a suburban northern New Jersey town about 25 miles from Manhattan. My father worked in Manhattan. My mother was a homemaker. My sister is two and a half years older than me. My dad had been married previously. In my dad's first marriage, he had a son. My brother from my dad's first marriage was five years older than me.

We basically had the classic suburban life. Always had clothes on our bodies, we had food to eat. There was an external a lot of laughter and I always felt loved. That's external. Internal, my memories growing up are not very positive. There was a lot of yelling. There was a lot of blaming and shaming. There was a lot of physical violence.

I was often called "wimpy" by my father. Although it was a very heavily populated Jewish area, northern New Jersey, my elementary school, I was the only Jewish kid in my class. As early as second grade, I remember being ridiculed and made fun of for being Jewish. I didn't really understand that because when I went to Hebrew school, everybody was Jewish. My grandparents were Jewish.

And I had this feeling of something is wrong with me because I'm Jewish. I also was not one of the largest kids in the class. So there was a lot of bullying for being small and taking advantage of someone being small. Conversely, at Hebrew school, there was a lot of joy and there was a lot of love, especially coming from how much it meant to my maternal grandparents, my

My grandfather, who was an architect, he designed our temple. He started our temple. And even at Hebrew school, where everyone was Jewish, I felt like an outsider because it was so foreign to me in my elementary school that I never really put in the full effort to be a good student, to take it all in. And that separated me from the rest of the group in Hebrew school as almost the dumb one.

Everyone else was in it 100%. I didn't want to be there. Why do I have to do this thing that I'm being made fun of at school? What I discovered early on was ways to combat not feeling safe. Ways to combat verbal and physical ridicule was to use my own mouth in humor,

Being funny, I saw was an immediate impact. It could make people laugh. I could cut through the tension. I could get power back. I could feel safe by being funny. But I also understood that being funny meant taking that power and using it to make fun of other people and then do my own bullying and having people rally behind me and hurt others like they were hurting me.

Making jokes at other people's expense about how people looked, how people what they wore, whether they were overweight, their nationalities. I had nothing holding me back of what I would make fun of to get a laugh or to make other people feel like I was feeling.

That occurred in both schools and also occurred in my house, where I would use that power on family members. I would use that power to try to feel safe, to try to escape. I was with a group of friends that dug into my weaknesses. This was freshman year, maybe sophomore year of high school. They really doubled down on the anti-Semitic comments and bullying issues.

I didn't know what to do. And so finally one day it was coming at me so hard. I just straight up punched a kid right in the face and no one ever bothered me after that. And it felt great. It was celebrated. Look what he did. He stood up to the other kid. Wow. And there was power from that. But when the smoke cleared and I would think about it, I felt so much shame and guilt

that I didn't have control over myself, that this is how I'm viewed of someone that can do something like this. Shame, in my experience growing up, felt debilitating, felt hopeless and unbelievably hurtful. And unless I was able to be funny or to attack somebody verbally with jokes or inappropriate comments,

I felt worthless. As I got a little bit older, early teens, it showed up in depression and anxiety. And it got even worse when I was commonly referred to by my father as wimpy, time and time again. About the age of eight, my mother was diagnosed with epilepsy and she started having seizures.

So the first time my sister and I experienced something, my grandparents were there. And I remember being upstairs in my room and hearing ambulance really loud. And then I came downstairs and I saw the paramedics in the house and I saw them taking my mom out. Didn't really know what was happening. After that happened, all over the house, there was these tongue depressors with cotton swabs. And it was like any minute, if your mom starts shaking, you have to put one of these in her mouth.

And if you misbehave, you might cause this. On two occasions, my friend's mom was all of a sudden at school to pick me up. I said, why? She said, well, your mom was in a car accident. Two occasions, she had seizures when she was driving and she crashed the car. And then after the second time, she wasn't around to have her license anymore. I witnessed many seizures where she would just black out.

Sitting on the couch, she was there. We're talking and then she would be gone. I would just sit with her, sometimes call my dad. And then when she would wake up, she then would feel so awful about herself and would feel so much shame and guilt.

I guess angry with herself and embarrassed and became very difficult for us to have an active mom after this because she was just so scared. We were told that one of the things that helps this is low stress and rest and relaxation. As all of this chaos was happening in the house with myself and my sister,

We would be argumentative, as sometimes kids are, and we heard constantly, "You're going to make your mother sick and put her in the hospital." We were being blamed for causing these seizures. So walking on eggshells thinking you're the cause, being told you're wimpy in the house is supporting what you're hearing outside the house. I just tried to survive.

survive the best I could. I was doing my own bullying. I was doing it to my sister. I was doing it to people in school. But I had something inside of me that I don't really know what to call it. It was just, you are better than this. You can get through this.

and just try to find solace in humor or music, movies, just places to escape where you're entirely in control. There's nothing that can hurt you here. And just find another space in my head that's outside of this universe. But it was exhausting to survive.

As I start to get into middle school and high school, I start to sink my teeth in with rebellion. I am not going to be a prisoner of what's happening in this house. I'm going to speak up with more confidence fueled by anger. I can remember specifically having an argument with my father. I don't know what it was about, but I remember calling him a motherfucker.

He was still stronger than me at this point, but I remember him pinning me down with his knees on my arms and slapping me in the face over and over again and seeing my mom in the other side of the room screaming, but not doing anything to stop. After that happened, I said, "I'm going to be stronger than him physically, so this can never happen again."

And that was about age 13. And that's when I started lifting weights because I never want to be pinned down by him ever again. And shortly thereafter, when we were wrestling and I pinned him, he never attacked me again. However, with my mother, I realized I was much more effective with talking back or verbal assaults than physical assaults.

I leaned into because I had power over her with my words and hurtful things. She was so frustrated with, I think, her medical situation. I think she felt a lot of shame. And in those heated moments with that screaming, when we were yelling in the kitchen, we were right next to the kitchen knives, and she took out a knife and came at me where I had to take all the strength that I had and grab her wrist

to prevent that knife from going into my face. My relationship with my mother throughout the rest of high school was extremely fragmented, while then the relationship with my father became more of a buddy-buddy relationship once I had the physical control. What changed for me after these moments in the house was I almost felt like I was leaving the house.

I can direct the relationship with my dad and be as much of a buddy-buddy that I want to be, and then almost not even have any interaction with my mom. I started working at 13 because I understood, wow, if I'm working and get my own money, I can do my own things. And I realized when I was working, I enjoyed it and I wasn't being subjected to what was happening in the house.

My brother lived with his mother, but he would come to visit us on weekends. My sister and I had nothing but love that our big brother is at our house. We don't get to see him that much. He was five years older than me and seven years older than my sister. He's so cool.

Being at our house, as much as it was good for him to see us, it was very hurtful for him to see this quote-unquote perfect life in suburbia. But his life was living with his mom, separated from his dad. His dad's other family has this perfect life. As he got a little bit older into his teens, the fights with my father would escalate.

My parents went out and we had a sit or stay at the house. My brother was probably early teens and he decided to raid the liquor cabinet. When my parents came home, the yelling, screaming, I hid in my room, shaking under the covers. After that, he went to live at a reform school where we would visit him on weekends sometimes. And I don't think he ever was the same.

So as I grew into my teens, even though my brother didn't live with us, man, it was so cool to have this older brother, five years older, that would maybe show up at a random event at the school or would be at the pizza place. He was cool and he was rebellious. It was like my ace in the hole. I got this cool, mysterious older brother.

We would start to do things together. We started to go skiing together, some vacations together. I distinctly remember being on the ski lift and he pulls out a joint and starts smoking it. I was in sixth grade and I felt safe and I felt protected. And he was telling me about his girlfriend and having sex. And I had no idea what...

any of this was, but man, it all sounded so cool. How happy he was just talking about life and he felt relaxed and he had this glowing ear to ear smile and such a great heart. I remember also the group of kids that were really doubling down on bullying me where I hit the one kid in the face. At one point they were calling the house nonstop.

My brother was at our house. I said, "Can you answer the phone and tell them if they keep calling, you're going to go find them and go beat them up?" And he did it. And I was like, "Here's my guardian. Here's someone that will protect me." It was so empowering and it made me feel so good until it didn't. I think out of his trauma that he was going through, as he graduated high school, he was really lost.

After high school, he just kind of wandered for a little bit and eventually went into the military. We went down to see him at Fort Dix in New Jersey. He was a chiseled soldier, and we were so proud. About a year or so later, he was stationed in Europe, and we get a letter that he was kicked out because of excessive drinking and fighting, and he was sent home.

I was probably about 14 at the time, and I don't think I forgave him for about four or five years. And our relationship became fragmented because I was just so hurt and disappointed. Regardless of things that would happen where I did feel bullied from him from time to time, my view of him was always an enamored, loving brother.

he could do no wrong by me until we got that letter about being kicked out. And for the next couple of years, while I was in high school, we didn't talk very much. We didn't communicate very much. He moved out to California for a bit of time, dropped out of one college and then dropped out of another college. And it was just a lot of disappointments

So selfish, not really thinking about what was happening with him, only thinking about me as a selfish teenager and how this impacts me. We didn't have a close relationship during those years.

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I went to college. And when I got to college, it just all clicked from the second I got there. Roommate, people on the floor, people in the fraternity. It was just like, this is me becoming me. This is me without shame and blame and violence and yelling and belittling. And it was fantastic. This is going to be my life. There is so much ahead of me.

I came back to New Jersey around Thanksgiving of my freshman year. My sister had turned 16. I saw my brother at that party. It was just a comfortable cold greeting and conversation and being around him at that Sweet 16 party. But after the Sweet 16, we did talk and I reached out to him.

We were both very excited to go see Godfather Part 3. And so what we decided to do was we were going to spend Christmas Eve watching Part 1 and 2 all the way through. And then Christmas Day, we're going to go watch Number 3. We were having a couple beers. We watched both of those movies. And it was just perfect.

The next day, we had breakfast, went to the movie, we watched part three. Just had a great two days, and we hugged and said goodbye. And there was just so much ahead of us to be brothers. Nothing feels better than those two days. Went back to school, second semester, freshman year, and it was just where it left off. Everything is just fantastic. Five, six days later, my friend and I

go to an off-campus party. When we walked in, I remember seeing this woman from across the room and our eyes met. I just was instantly taken to her. Just beautiful eyes. My friend and I started talking to her and her friend. At that point, I was 100% ready to take any sexual experience that come my way. And there had not been many at that time or there'd been zero. How about that at that time?

And I thought, well, maybe this could be the night. As we stay at the party a little bit longer, we continued to talk. We made our way back to one of the dorms. I told her that I was a virgin, and she thought that was the coolest thing in the world. We spent the night being with each other.

She slept over in my dorm. And then the morning she woke me up and we were having sex again and again. It was a beautiful night, an amazing person. I felt that the world was ahead of me. It was just completely open canvas of life. The phone started ringing and I didn't answer it. So we just kept spending our time together.

And it rang again and I didn't answer it. So the third time the phone rang, I jumped down from the bunk. I was naked and I answered it. The first thing I heard was my dad saying my brother's name. He didn't even say hello because he was in the military and the country was in the Gulf War. There was some discussion about would he be called back?

So my first thought was, he's going to Iraq. But the next thing my dad said was, there was an accident. And I remember just saying no over and over again. No, no, no. Meanwhile, this woman who I had just met the night before, who I just had an amazing time with, is naked in my bunk. And she's looking at me, just completely losing it.

as I'm talking to my dad. And he told me there was an accident and he died. I hung up the phone and she's in bed with a blanket around her and she's looking at me and I said, "My brother just died last night." She came down from the bunk and she gave me an amazing hug. We just hugged for who knows how long.

couldn't feel anything. I could not understand how this could be possible that these two things could happen in the exact same night within hours of each other. How I could be drinking, having fun, having sex throughout the night and my parents are identifying a body. How everything that I felt being with him those last couple days will be the last time I ever saw him.

completely numb from the trauma I went through growing up to have four or five months thinking I have escaped and all of the possibilities of being brothers completely taken away. And throughout that night thinking, I can't wait to tell him. He would have been the first person I would have called as he told me about what it was like to be with a woman years before.

all gone. We got our clothes on and she helped me get my things together. I called a friend, told him I needed a ride to the airport. And I said goodbye to her. And I went back home to New Jersey. A couple of days after when I went back to New Jersey, when I walked past his room, immediately went up to my room and just hid in there like I was eight or like I was 12.

I felt this small ray of light with enormous gratitude that we had those two days. We had those two days where we were just brothers. Everything was going to be okay. I thought about that and I still think about that all the time. Those two days were his goodbye handshake to me. In the immediate aftermath, it was just like living in haze and shock of numbness.

and anger. In Judaism, when somebody dies and you sit Shiva, people come to the house and you say, "Morner's Kaddish." As good as it felt to have support and love from friends and relatives, I just wanted to be by myself. Then I would think, "Whoa, wait a minute.

I just lost my virginity and met this great girl and had this great night. I remember a friend or two that came over and deer in the headlights of their eyes of like, "The same night?" I said, "Yeah, the same night, maybe even the same time within hours." When I went back to school, every day, I would get up and say the Mourner's Kaddish. It's a little prayer book that I had.

utter disbelief that I'm doing this, that I have to do this, heartbroken, completely oblivious to the unresolved trauma and challenge from that that is ahead of me. I transferred from the School of Illinois to the School of New Jersey to be closer to my family. Didn't have any friends there and spent the rest of college in a complete haze.

I was just in such traumatic pain from growing up, from what happened, and just was kind of a nomad in college, just wandered. About a year and a half later, I was with my uncle. We were getting ready for the family to come out to our house. We got a call. My mom, she said, "You guys need to come to New Jersey. We're not coming out. Come to the hospital."

So we go to the hospital and my dad, who was 53 at the time, just had a massive stroke. As toxic as it was with the environment growing up, there was always love and he was a strong father and he was just completely full of tubes, lifeless. He recovered, had to learn how to talk again, walk again, but was never the same person again.

And then about a year or so after that, I graduated college. I was living at home with my parents. And my mom, something wasn't right with her. She was forgetting things. She was incoherent. She was talking weird. It just got worse over a couple of days. And she had a brain tumor. Why is this happening? What did I do? How am I going to go on?

Is there ever going to be an open road here? A time where I'm not on eggshells thinking something bad is going to happen. I became comfortable being in shock. I became comfortable being traumatized.

To feel like at any moment something tragic could happen put me in a deep, deep cloud as far as who I am, what can I be, and what could I have been had these things didn't happen. Never appreciating what was actually happening in the moment and taught me to be skeptical of everything, to be skeptical of anything positive.

Well, if this good thing happens right behind, it's going to be something negative. And I spent many years thinking, well, I'm not going to make any commitments to what I'm going to do with my life as far as a major, because it doesn't matter because I'm just going to die tomorrow.

When I went to Europe after I graduated from college, I just said, "I don't care. I'm going to do every adventurous, dangerous thing that came my way. Why should I think about what I'm going to do with my life? I don't care." When I went to law school and I realized how much work it was and how hard it was, I said, "This isn't worth it. I can die tomorrow." I just didn't take anything seriously and it was hard for me to make decisions.

My brother died when I was 18. My dad had his stroke when I was 21. My mom had her brain tumor when I was 23. I wanted to get so far away from New Jersey, I went as far as I could go and largely shut out contact with my family. When trauma is unresolved, it feeds into there's something wrong with you. It feeds into it's your fault.

It feeds into you're not good enough. It makes you become that child who's pinned down and getting slapped in the face. It makes you become abusive to others using your words, using inappropriate humor, making people feel like shit because that's how you feel.

It gets to a point where you're either going to end up dead or a drug addict or where you physically and mentally cannot survive anymore. And you're at risk of losing your family. And you either make a left turn or a right and have it all go the wrong way or you decide, I need to fix this because I know somewhere in all of this, underneath all of this,

I can be the person I'm meant to be. I can be present and hopefully I can help others to understand how much pain and damage unresolved trauma does. When I had this sense of nothing matters as I started to get into my late 20s and early 30s, it didn't move me forward. In fact, it brought others down.

Nothing really matters means I haven't recognized pain. That's why nothing matters because I'm still in shock. I'm still numb. So why even think about how I feel? Why even unpack all of this? It doesn't matter.

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She was able to inject positivity into my life and saw the person I really was inside under all of these layers, even though I didn't see it. And to have someone that can say, I know you're a good person, I can have faith in you and believe in you, has enabled me to drive really hard

This sense of nothing really matters doesn't move you forward in life. It only leaves you in the past. And I think it all did matter the day my son was born because now it's not about me. It's about him. I can't live in the past anymore. I can't be numb anymore. I have to feel and I have to try to unpack this.

It doesn't mean it started to happen right on that day, but something clicked. But it's a lifelong journey. There was a time when he was about three. My wife was there. We had this minor argument that had something to do with the television set, and it quickly escalated.

And I became my father where I picked him up and physically took him out of the room. And he was yelling and screaming. And my wife was upset. And as she went upstairs with him, I sat there and I was instantly transported to my house growing up. I freaked out.

I felt utter disbelief that I have just recreated the environment I grew up in.

And as much as his birth shifted thinking of, well, what does it matter? I could die tomorrow. This specific incident showed me that if I don't address the trauma of youth, the trauma of my brother and what happened that night, and how it felt to have both of your parents basically become shadows of themselves due to medical illness,

I am going to continue to recreate my house in New Jersey in my current life. I cannot let that happen. When the voice in your head is guided by blame and shame and trauma and fear and anger for 35 to 40 years, it is a very powerful voice to always have something in your head to tell you that you are not good enough.

That you're not worth it. That you're wimpy. That you don't deserve good things. And it hurts even more to know that you're making other people feel worse. And it produces more shame. And it can never end until it becomes physically and mentally impossible to continue. It is a voice that leads you to be insecure, anxious.

that shies you away from vulnerability. It is a voice that looks to external validation to feel good about yourself. And when those aren't there, that voice only gets stronger. It becomes so toxic that it came to the point where physically and mentally, I almost couldn't operate as a human. Panic attacks, depression, and anxiety, and it feels like you can never change.

My son being born, realizing that I don't want to have the same environment that I grew up in. Those are realizations. Those aren't actions. It's difficult to even make that first step. For me, years and years of medication was not the answer.

It was all about understanding where these traumas come from and why. And it's only through good support system of therapy, mindfulness, constant diligence and awareness to be able to move the needle a little bit day by day. Just a little bit lower the volume on that voice to make the present voice louder.

And it doesn't always go up every day and some days it goes back. But if I can just get a little bit ahead every day, I can get to a better spot. I'm almost 50. This awareness is only within the last year and a half. The roots of it are 48 years deep. The things that have blossomed are about a year and a half above the surface. Hearing other people say to me, you sound different. You seem like a different person.

you look different. Those are not things that I'm doing differently of changing my appearance or changing my voice. It's happening because I am able to share this that I've kept inside for so long. This is about taking ownership, taking ownership of how my words and actions are affecting others instead of blaming others and thinking I'm the victim

If you live your days as a victim, you can never appreciate and feel gratitude for all the good things in your life and move forward. Inevitably, accountability and being open, being vulnerable, not being defensive, the impact of that is actually love. As the 30-year anniversary of my brother's death was approaching,

It was very apparent to me that this felt like it was yesterday and I still haven't really understood this. I started to write down everything that I knew about that night. And then I realized that I knew very little what was happening to my brother on that day. It felt incomplete. When my brother died, it was a drunk driving accident. He was with his friend who was driving.

They were going to a convention at the Nassau Coliseum. And I had known for years who this person was that was driving the car. And I called him completely out of the blue. And I said, this is who I am. And he knew who I was. And I said, this is 30 years since this happened. 30 years. And I still have not processed this. So I'm calling you because I want to learn more about what happened.

When he picked up the phone and I told him who I was, he said to me, "I never pick up the phone from a number I don't know, but I thought I'd pick this one up." I felt what good could come from yelling or cursing at him or anger? That hasn't worked for 30 years. So I want to lean in and be vulnerable and have the conversation.

At least let's talk about it because maybe it can help both of us. This conversation could open not just a dialogue with him, but a dialogue with myself instead of me basically being in silence, silence of trauma. So he told me that they were there on the wrong day. They spent the day drinking.

And when they were driving home, there's a place on the Sunrise Highway where three lanes merge into two. And right at that spot, there was a car parked on the side. He didn't see this car, but he heard this screeching sound of metal. And he looked over to my brother and he said he saw blood on his face. And he said, my brother said to him, I think I'm hurt.

And then he passed out. And the next thing he remembered was that the ambulance had taken my brother, the police were there, and then he found out later that he died. He was very open, and clearly he had been on his own journey. My brother and he were good friends. There was some solace to hearing how much pain he's been through and some empathy for him as well.

He was apologetic, but frankly, that was not what I was looking for. How he left it was just really a thank you. As painful as it is, I feel a sense of forgiveness as well because I know how much pain he's been through. It was his fault, but it wasn't intended.

And it's clear that he has suffered. And as I am able to be vulnerable and open, he was also. So I can forgive him for this. Having forgiveness for him has helped my healing because it's not hanging on to the past. It's not hanging on to the victim. Forgiveness has enabled me to talk about this today.

Had I not got to basically a rock bottom point to realize I have not dealt with childhood trauma, the trauma of this appropriately, I have not embraced this invulnerability. I would not have known these things. I would not have had this conversation with this man.

Knowing these things, as painful as they are, have only been helpful to be able to get this out and to be able to really do the work to heal. And share this with my sister who didn't know about this as well, and my uncle who didn't know about this, and to maybe even have some closure to it. But this is all from realizing what hasn't worked and something needs to change.

Growing up in Northern New Jersey is very much a tough guy environment. This is an environment that doesn't foster or enable a lot of compassion and feelings. You just are tough and you get through it. And there's a lot of positive things that can come from that. But if you're a victim of trauma in that environment, you survive because you're supposed to be tough.

And I have been under a rock. It's been under the surface for so many years until it can't. Until it comes out with behavior that I can't control and anger and rage. The most challenging part is to be open and aware of how much pain I've caused other people for so many years. I passed on this hurt to my wife.

I've recreated toxicity in the household to my son. And yet, regardless of that hurt, they love me. That is hard. This is a minute by minute, every day struggle and challenge. And the hardest thing to face is to just stand in vulnerability and pain.

There's moments if I overreact, say something rudely, lose control, to just sit in that and understand how I've hurt somebody. That hurts as much as the pain that I have felt, but that actually leads to growth. Even if it's 1% each day, it's getting better. But I am not healed. I'm healing.

This is not a story that is done. I mean, I just lost my temper with my son yesterday morning and I spent the day just fucking beat myself up. This is unfinished, but I know that I'm moving the needle by the work that I'm putting in to actually say I am. It's even a challenge to say it. I am happy.

I am a good person. I am not that person that was traumatized. I am a happy person that can take in the good things of life, have gratitude for what I have, and with courage and confidence and vulnerability to be the person that I actually am.

Today's guest requested to remain anonymous, but if you'd like to reach out to him, you can email at njsfil1972 at gmail.com.

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Hey, it's Guy Raz here, host of How I Built This, a podcast that gives you a front row seat to how some of the best known companies in the world were built.

In a new weekly series we've launched called Advice Line, I'm joined by some legendary founders and together we talk to entrepreneurs in every industry to help tackle their roadblocks in real time. Everybody buys on feeling, Guy, like everybody. So if you don't give them the feeling that they're looking for, they're not going to buy. A lot of times founders will go outside of themselves to build a story. And

And you can't replicate heart. You know, I think we all have a little bit of imposter syndrome, which isn't the worst thing in the world because it doesn't allow you to get overconfident and think that you're invincible. Check out the advice line by following How I Built This on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to How I Built This early and ad-free right now on Wondery Plus.