introduction!
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What's up? It's Cam. Welcome to the Dumb Blonde Podcast. This is immediately weird. Like, talking to myself is immediately weird. Not that I don't do it, like, all the time. Because when you live alone and there's no one else to talk to, shit gets weird really fast. Anyway, it's 2 o'clock in the morning right now. And I'm sitting at my kitchen table and...

talking to my phone, which is fun. This is a fun- this is a good time for me. I don't really sleep either because um well, I mean if you know me you probably know I'm severely ADHD and I take meds for that so It makes me not sleep very much. Not that I didn't really not sleep before I was on it but

You know, it is what it is. So as far as the podcast goes, I've wanted to do this for such a long time. When I first moved out on my own, I started this private story on Snapchat called Illegally Blonde that I basically just posted rants on and talked to my phone constantly about

um, which was a really good, I, I mean, it was really good for me at the time. Um, as of today, I've deleted Snapchat, uh, because it got very toxic for me, mostly because I couldn't control all of the people that were on there, which is my own fault, but talk, I mean, Snapchat is just toxic anyway. But anyway, so, um,

I think I wanted to start this podcast because I did delete Snapchat today. And that private story is kind of like a coping mechanism for me. Somebody to talk to when there's nobody else around. And I just didn't want to go without that.

That and I found out that a lot of people really appreciated that private story because it made them feel like they could also be themselves, which was the goal in that in the first place. Because I just, you know, I was so sick and tired of being bottled up and not being who I really am that I just wanted to let it out and talk my shit and be me.

and say whatever I wanted to say and not care who saw it or who judged me. Which is, and I think that got me to where I am right now. Because if I would have ever thought about posting a podcast when I was in, say, junior high or high school, I would have absolutely shit myself.

because I was so scared of people judging me. Like, really, think about that. I don't give a shit anymore. I really do not care. I put this out there so that it would, you know, I'll be able to look back on it in the future. My kids will be able to look back on it in the future if I ever decide to have kids. And the fact that my private story on Snapchat is

could reach only a few people, but, you know, from the feedback that I got from them, it helped them want to be more themselves. Can't get enough of it. I want to keep on doing that. So that's what I'm gonna do. Okay, next item on the list is introducing myself.

Um, I actually have like a whole list written out so that I can keep my mind on track because of how severely ADHD I am. It's actually insane. But anyway, so my name is Cam. If you don't already know me, I mean, it's actually Cameron. Um, but I prefer Cam just because I feel like it fits my personality better. Um, I live in Tyler. Um,

and I go to school at TJC and I love it. I'm 19. I don't know if I already said that and I have a cat named Boo but we call him Boobie or Boob or sometimes Tits. He's really great and yeah so I'm gonna go into some of the significant moments in my life and if you already know me I

Keep listening because this might be interesting for you to kind of see here. But we're going to start with my very early childhood. When I was younger, I was physically and mentally abused. And this might get a little deep here because I have talked about this trauma like a million times. It doesn't really affect me anymore. But I do think it's significant.

in the way that I've grown from it and that some people let that get them down. And at some points, I also let myself get down because of that. But I think it's important to mention because I am who I am now because of overcoming early childhood mental and physical abuse.

But yeah, that was not because of my parents. That was a step-parent deal, which I can't blame anybody for it happening. It happened, and that's what it is. But I do believe that had a big effect on me as far as middle school because I was told basically my entire life by parents

a step parent that I was not beautiful, very ugly. There was a lot of things wrong with me and, um, that I would never deserve anything good ever. Um, and I, I think I let that kind of get to me for a long time. Um, which is, you know, cause when you're, when you're young and

Those are your developmental stages. Those years are very important. And, you know, while I may have had my mom in my ear telling me that I was beautiful every day and that I was a good person and that I deserved the world. Yes, that did help. But when you're young, you focus on them. You tend to focus on the negatives because I don't know. That's just kind of how it is. I hate it, but that's how our brains work.

But yes, moving on to middle school, I think that really got to me at that point because I really felt worthless, which thankfully, at about 10 years old, I got out of that situation. Thank the Lord. But yeah, so middle school. In the middle of seventh grade, I moved from my hometown to a little shithole town called Rusk.

which, like, I never even want to step foot into ever again. Sometimes I have to drive through there still, and it literally makes my skin crawl. But anyway, I moved there in seventh grade, and I was really, really excited to move, actually, because, you know, I thought this could be an opportunity for me to have this fresh new beginning,

I could make a lot of new friends and it was going to be so good. And also I was really excited because the school that I was going to before had uniforms and Rusk did not have uniforms. And I was really excited about that because I had always been really interested in fashion and style. And, um,

I was excited to be able to express myself in that way, finally. Which I would then find out that everybody just dresses the same. And I conformed to that. But anyway, moving schools was definitely a big, big, big, big change in my life. It was not anything like I thought it would be. I was very disappointed because...

literally I don't even think anybody talked to me on my first day um which was really shitty right I mean I don't know I guess when you're in middle school it's a little different because you just want to fit in you just want to get along with with your peers and when somebody new comes into the equation it's like oh my god like what is happening and I get it I don't blame anybody um

because it was middle school, but that definitely completely changed the person that I was. Because I used to be, I was very bubbly and very outgoing before I moved to Rusk. Anybody that knew me back then would tell you that. But something like a flip switched on me back then, and I just turned into this totally different person, and...

started experiencing depression and I developed social anxiety, which is really probably why I never really made good friends all throughout middle school and high school. I did have friends, but I could never keep them. And I always kind of thought that was probably my fault for some reason, which it may be. I don't really know.

If so, I need to fix that. But I never really had good friendships until about probably my senior year. And my senior year was an absolute shitshow too. I mean, not really, but we'll get into that. So my senior year of high school, I never even thought that that year would have so much impact on the person that I am now.

Going into senior year, it was like finally the year that I stopped caring about what people thought about me. I wore the clothes that I wanted to, which I was doing that already, but I really started to pop off my senior year. But I was just kind of like happy for the first time in a really, really long time. I also had really good friends

at that time too. Some work friends that, I mean, if you're listening to this, I just want to let you know that I love you and that I really, really miss you and I hate the way that our friendships ended. So yeah, my senior year, I was very happy. And I kind of, I made some friends at my own school too that I love. I don't talk to them anymore, but, you know, I still love them.

But a person came into my life that would ultimately change absolutely everything for me. I mean, they'd already been there before, but that was not as significant as this time. And we'll talk about that.

Even though, you know, like I almost kind of hate talking about this person now. Everybody knows who this person is that I'm talking about right now. If you know me, you do. But it's almost like I can't even talk about myself without talking about them anymore. Because of so much of what happened between us, so much of what they did to me and how we ended is why I am the way that I am now.

So I almost don't even have the choice to not talk about it if I'm trying to get to this point in this story here. So yeah, we'll talk about that. So, um, and I think it was September. Yeah, it was September because the first day that we started talking to each other again was on his birthday. Um, and I, I sent him a happy birthday text.

And I didn't think of it. I didn't think anything of it. But we had dated before back in, like, sophomore year. But I was weird. I was really weird back then. I didn't know how to have a relationship or even talk to men in general. Boys, I mean, it was sophomore year. I mean, come on, they're not men. But, yeah, no, I mean, we had dated before. So I texted him, like,

Happy birthday. It was just that. And then from then on out, we never stopped talking. We were like attached at the hip. It was insane. I mean, we did not leave each other alone. We did not go a single day without seeing each other or I mean, no, seeing each other for I think it was almost a month, which is kind of crazy to think about. It was almost two months, actually.

I don't even, I don't even know. But, you know, I developed that, you know, high school crush. I mean, high school love, social, or what is that called? Separation anxiety. I got that really, really bad. Which made me kind of crazy towards him. Which I do completely regret. I mean, I wish I would have taken it a lot slower, but I had never had a real relationship before him.

Because I didn't know who I was yet until my senior year of high school. Which, I mean, this person also, like, genuinely has everyone fooled. Or had everyone fooled. Because I thought he was a good person. Something that I used to talk about all the time was how he made me want to be a better person.

because of how good he was, how genuinely good of a person he was, because he loved everyone and all he did was for other people. And I don't know, something changed. Something changed drastically. And I began to hate the person that I was with them. And they, I mean, they also changed a lot. And they showed me that

Multiple times. Twice, actually, in our two separate breakups that we had, which I'm not going to talk about. I mean, I may eventually talk about the first one, but the second one is important to talk about for sure because that's how we get to where I am now. But yeah, so we'll talk about that. The first one was...

A shit show. It was very crazy. I will do like a little skim over it. Basically, he was going to go on a trip for a week. Oh shit, I completely forgot to mention. We moved out with each other. We had decided in the middle of senior year, I think it was right after the TMI, I had lost my virginity to him, that we decided that we were going to move in together.

Uh, which was, I'm not even gonna lie to you, solely based on the fact that all we were doing at the time was, you know, which, why are we so dumb? Why, why am I so dumb? I don't know. Uh, but no, we, we decided that we were gonna move it, move in with each other after high school. Um, and, you know, he had promised me he was gonna marry me and was freaking, like,

it's ecstatic you know somebody was gonna take care of me somebody for the first time in my life was gonna love me for exactly who I am little did I know two weeks after we move in with each other he texts me and says hey I'm leaving for a week and I'm like hey couldn't have told me any sooner which I did I did freak out pretty bad like really bad um

And, uh, moral of the story is the next morning he got up and left and told me to get all of my shit out. I mean, he didn't, he had his family do it, which is like a whole nother thing. But after his little seven day adventure, he gets back and realizes, damn, nobody's going to cook for me. Nobody's going to clean my house. She's got to come back. That's a joke kind of, but

I decided to go back to him for whatever reason I really genuinely don't know. After that breakup, I had this need and want to be single for a while, which I would have never said anything to him at the time. But I think the reason that I went with it was because I didn't want to live at home because...

Mom, I know you're listening to this. You drove me batty. You drove me absolutely insane. I love you, but you did. So when he was offering for me to move back out with him, I took it and I ran with it and we moved back in and it was hard as shit. It was really, really hard.

for me to get over the fact that I had just moved out of this place and was so completely traumatized by his actions, which is what leads us to this next breakup.

In our second relationship, I was really cool. I was really chill about everything. I let him do pretty much anything that he wanted to do. Not that I should have to let him do anything. Like, he's a human being. It's his life. We're not married, even though we do live together. But it was, I think it was around our one-year anniversary. It was, like, a couple days after. All I wanted to do was come home and be with him, and he...

decided to go out with his friends, which is fine, but it was a bad day for me and I just wanted to see him. So I started crying over the phone and I was like, I can't do this anymore because like I was completely traumatized by what had already happened, you know? So I couldn't completely trust anything anymore. I was already not ready to be back in this relationship in the first place.

But I lied to myself completely. I got home and I packed up a bag because I told him I was going to go away for a couple of days and try and figure out what I was going to do because I had told him I was going to move out of that house. No matter what I did, I was going to move out of that house. We can stay together. We can try to work things out. But I don't think that we need to live together anymore because I think that was our biggest issue.

Even though I was fine. I was financially stable. I had everything under control. He didn't necessarily have it all under control. But yeah, so I had decided that I was going to move out. I was going to find myself an apartment or I was going to move back in with my parents or I was going to move in with my dad or something. So I left and...

mind you, when this man gets angry or gets into an argument, he does not talk. He will not talk. And one of the most important things for me has always been communication. And that was a huge issue of ours because communication was almost non-existent, which doesn't matter anymore. But that is, communication is so important. If you don't have it, like fix it. Moving on. I

Went to a friend's house that night and I slept there and I had a good night that night. And then I woke up the next morning and was tired and hungover and honestly just ready to go home because my dog was there. My cat was there. I just wanted to go home. That was it. So I texted him and I was like, hey,

Like, I love you. I don't want to do this. Can I just come home? Honestly, because I just didn't want to deal with it at the moment. And the text I received back was definitely not what I thought it would be. He told me no. He said, no, I don't think that's a good idea. We both have totally different ideas of what we want for life, and I think that

that you need to move out and we don't need to do this anymore. And I was like, shit, like, we really over this time, for real. And we were. And my dumb ass didn't even realize at the time that if I didn't have a place to stay with him, I didn't have a place to stay at all because both of my parents weren't living in actual houses.

They were both selling their houses and I had just become homeless. So yeah, I had just become homeless. You know, it's not like my family didn't want to help me. They did absolutely everything that they could at the time. I mean, they got all of, they helped me move out.

for the second time even though they told me they wouldn't after the first time. Got me a storage unit. They let me stay on their couch in their camper for a couple of days until I couldn't stand that anymore and so instead I lived out of my car and I couch surfed which was like

It was really, really hard to do with a puppy because a couple of weeks before I had to move out, I had just gotten a puppy. And you can imagine, that's really hard to take care of a puppy while living out of your car, while trying to sleep on people's couches. So yeah, that was really rough. That was for about two weeks only.

Um, when I tell people that they're like, wow, two weeks, like that's crazy. Yeah. It felt like an eternity, honestly. Cause I mean, I honestly really didn't even know when I was going to be able to move in somewhere or if I was going to be able to move in somewhere. It was horrifying because, um, I don't know if this is TMI, both sides of my family have gone bankrupt before. Um, so yeah.

Like, it's really hard to be able to get an apartment with bad credit. And me being 18, I didn't have credit yet. So I had to have a cosigner to be able to get an apartment in the first place. And an apartment was my only choice at the time. So that's what we did. I looked at a couple of different places and...

I finally found one that I liked, or that I thought I liked. Um, it was nice, which, it's the place that I live now, I'm not gonna name it, but it's, like, it looks nice on the outside, but it's definitely not on the inside. But it was really, it was really scary, because I didn't know if there was gonna be anywhere that I was able to go at all. Um,

So I didn't know how long my situation was going to be me living out of my car with a puppy trying to couch surf. But I did. In about two weeks, I finally found something. And thank you to my dad for being my co-signer. He is awesome. But yeah, I'm not homeless anymore. But as soon as I moved into this apartment, I...

I immediately started distracting myself with men and other things and literally anything that could distract me. I tried because I wasn't quite ready to deal with all of the trauma that I had been through quite yet.

And so I went absolutely apeshit for, like, a solid two weeks while I was in my apartment. I'm not saying, like, I slept with everybody. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying, like, I may or may not have had a different person over to my apartment every single night. That doesn't necessarily mean that I had a different guy over to my apartment every other night or every single night. I mean, I just mean, like, anybody, right?

It was either a guy or it was one of my friends or it was a sibling or it was my mom or a cousin or something. Somebody had to be here to distract me from how actually sad I was. Which in the long run really helped me because I know that's really shitty. I did have a recent breakdown about everything. So I have dealt with that trauma more.

Pretty much already, but in all, living alone is like the best thing ever. And I know like, yes, it gets lonely. I know I started, kind of started with that. It does get lonely for sure. And that's something that recently I've really had to try and deal with mentally, but I

Overall, there are pros and there are cons to living alone. Pros being I get to decorate however I want to. It can be messy as shit if I want it to. And it will be because I'm ADHD. I get to buy whatever groceries I want. So fun. I love grocery shopping. Also, but the cons, I have to take out my own trash.

I have to try and keep everything clean 24-7. And the biggest one is being alone. But that is also, at the same time, a big fat pro. Because being alone has given me so much time to learn about myself. Things that I had no idea about myself. Some good and some bad.

But overall, it's been a really, really good thing for me. It's been very eye-opening. Oh, and for the first time in my life, like ever, I don't want to be in a relationship, which is really very strange for me. Like, I'm going to say it a million times. If you know me, you know I love to be loved. But for the first time, I really couldn't give a shit about a real relationship.

Yeah, I'm absolutely batshit boy crazy. But that's part of my personality. That'll never go away. But yeah, I mean, I've learned so much about myself. And it's fantastic. It's phenomenal. I love it. And I have so much more time to focus on the things that I want and how I want to be and bettering myself. It's amazing.

If you ever have the opportunity to live completely by yourself, I highly recommend it. It's the best thing I've ever done. Single college life, absolutely awesome. Recently, I've been getting a little bummed out about not having a boo or whatever. I do have a boo. I have boo-boo, boobie, tits. He's great. But not having somebody so constant in your life...

is a little hard, but I also definitely have my girls. My girls are great. For the first time in my life, I also have girlfriends. What is that? Didn't think I'd ever be able to say that. For the longest time, I didn't think I'd ever have bridesmaids at my potential wedding one day if I ever actually decide to get married because I'm absolutely traumatized by men. But yeah,

So I think I'm about to end this here because I'm losing my voice, but I just want to talk about what's going to come up next. I have a ton of stuff that I'd like to talk about. I want to talk about

some of the things that I've been learning in my sociology classes and I want to talk about college and how reality is subjective but that's the deeper stuff really I you know we can talk about clubbing and going out and the pros and cons of that we can talk about clothes makeup literally whatever I decide is what I'm going to talk about and

Honestly, if anybody wants to hear anything else, let me know because I have tons of opinions and tons of thoughts on a million different things. So just let me know. But that's what's coming up next. And I hope you'll stick around to listen. If not, that's awesome. I love you. I'll move on. It's okay. Anyway, I'll see you guys soon. There's no telling when I'll post again.

But yeah, peace.