Episode 5 - The One Where I Hit Rock Bottom

In this episode, we swear just a little bit, and there are some pretty intense moments

“related to sexual assault struggles with mental health and self-harm, but it's also honest”

and very real. You can find more information like specific content warnings in the show notes. And by the way, if you have a story of family secrets or darkly funny drama that you want to share, we want to hear it. Email us at [email protected]. We'll keep you completely anonymous if you want, and only publicize details you feel comfortable sharing

with the world. Everybody knows but me is brought to you by Memento Mori, reminding us all of the fleeting nature of being and the Tamagachi Corporation. Our show is recorded in front of a live studio audience. Dear Diary, it's day five here at the Healing Brook Mental Wellness Center, which sounds

like a day spa, and that's exactly what my insurance would like you to believe. But boy, am I ready to go home? Sure, things got pretty intense for me for a bit, and I kind of didn't have a choice about coming here, but there's a lot that I'm going to not miss about this place. If I have to eat pasta for breakfast lunch and dinner anymore, I might murder Chef Boyardy.

I did have a few laughs, though, and made some friends along the way, like my roommate Beatrice, who says she can talk to God, "Holy darling, be a dear, and brush my hair." Sorry, B, can't right now I'm in the middle of something. You will burn for eternity in the fires of damn nations. What a character. Speaking of this guy next door, Nelson is a real wild card. He's a gambling

addict with schizophrenia, who always walks by my room. In three, two, one.

Which one of you melon heads has the remote? Don't you know it's the last leg of the triple crown? I got 28k riding on a pony named Calvin Coolidge Jr. Who would even take that bet, Nelson? You got no money. I love you, no I agree to that, Wager.

“Listen, buddy, if you keep betting against yourself, you're never going to, you know what?”

Never mind. Good morning, healing Brooke family. It's time for our first session of the day. If you could please start making your way to the rec room, are you there, God? It's me, be a thrice. Come on, B, before they make us choke down more cheeseless macaroni. Okay friends, good to see everyone. How are we today? Everyone filling the three peas,

peaceful, patient, prepared for disruptions? Yes! Wonderful. How about some morning announcements,

huh? So first things first, I want to talk about trust. It feels like trust is at an all-time

low-here healing Brooke and it makes me really disappointed because our team here is done nothing but try to build trust as all of you here try to grow and reconnect with reality. And part of that means us opening your mail, watching you sleep, and listening to your phone calls. So let's try our best to reframe things. A big part of your mental health journey is positivity. So for example, you might find yourself saying, sure, we don't have books to read,

but we do have many themed word searches and doesn't this silly way they talk make my sadness just disappear? I'm sorry, Miss Brown. Something funny? Oh, nothing. Just that giving unstable people words searches in a made up minion-ling which feels like throwing napalm on a bomb fire. Sorry, Miss Brown. I almost forgot. You think your time here with us is nearly done. This all probably seems like a joke now, huh? No, sir. Very serious, sir. You're absolutely

“right. Wonderful. We're actually done with morning announcements. So how about we get things started today?”

I hear your sisters coming to pick you up today. Maybe now would be a good time for an evaluation to make sure that's still the right choice. Oh, sure. You normally do this kind of thing and private, but hi. Well, if you think you might not be ready to leave, we can. No, no, no, no, no, I'm ready. I am so, so ready. Wonderful. Let's get into it then. You've been taking your meds.

And you're not thinking of hurting yourself, are you? No, absolutely not. I hate it.

Even though it is fairly common for someone dealing with what you're going through,

“honestly, amazing. It doesn't happen more. You could probably even get one of those”

fourth floor windows open without much fuss. Wouldn't need to go much higher, really. We are, are you suggesting that I violent threat to themselves and others say what? What? Hey, sis! So excited you're ready to come home. Oh my god, Casey, get me out of here. There's no way anyone can get better in these places. It's like all they want to do is

trap you into staying here so they can keep making money off of you. That is flagrant slander.

And your sister is at risk, miss. I cannot release her without giving her the treatment she needs. What Holly needs is a caring, loving environment full of people who only want her to get better. What you need is a reminder that California law says a 5150 hold only really lasts for 72 hours.

“Thanks, sis. Let's lead this place in the dust where we had it first by the way,”

a loving and caring environment. Another mental hospital will you just drop off mom this morning. We've talked a lot about sitcom family stereotypes, but the reason those tropes work, the reason they've existed in sitcom writers rooms for decades, is because they're rooted in very real family dynamics. sitcoms just simplify them, exaggerate them, and throw a laugh track underneath them, but the emotional archetypes are actual family roles psychologists analyze all the time.

There's the smart one who's responsible, brainy, mature beyond their years, which in real life can mean anxious, perentified, and suppressing every need they've ever had to keep the peace. There's the zaning little brother who's climbing furniture, lighting something on fire in the background, disappearing for hours. But in actuality, maybe they're neglected and left unchecked. And then there's the problem child, the dramatic one.

The black sheep. Families don't sit around assigning these roles like a casting director for a TGIF lineup, but in high stress households, especially ones shaped by addiction, neglect, secrecy, or emotional instability, people unconsciously fall into these dynamics because simplifying things can create an illusion of stability. Instead of seeing people fully, everyone becomes the overachiever, or the sensitive one, or maybe the wild one. Once that role is assigned, it sticks.

Families notice the behavior that reinforces it, and ignore the behavior that contradicts it. Eventually, the kids start performing the role, too, because, well, everybody already decided that's who they are. Now, guess which role I got assigned. I'll give you a hint. It wasn't the lovable comedic relief who pops up every once in a while just to drop an iconic catchphrase. I was a little darling Connor.

What are you talking about? I don't smoke fun. It's my hatred. A sprinkle of Eddie Winslow. "What if you need someone to confide?" "No, no, no, I don't want to air out dirty laundry. I'll just go down to principal Shimada's office and let him take away the one thing I have left that brings me joy." "I know a lot of Sean Hunter." "I don't know what happened to him, but I tell his everybody, where the hell is everybody?" "Stop it, stop it, try to be cute with me boy."

“"Maybe?" "I remember watching Sean as a kid thinking. How could these adults”

ever treat Sean like he's the problem when he's had such a difficult life? Why is he being compared to Corey Matthews whose biggest crises are like ski lodge drama and his brother's hot roommate? Corey's baseline is a home of morality and safety and his problems only felt big

because he's never actually had to wonder if his family was going to implode. So the problem

child usually isn't actually this awful, uncontrollable kid. More often, they're just the loudest one in the room. The one reacting most visibly, least capable of pretending everything is fine.

I became the one acting out all the feelings nobody else wanted to acknowledge because I made sure my pain was going to be the hardest to ignore. From next chapter podcasts and companion arts, this is everybody knows but me, episode 5, the one where I hit rock bottom. We're about halfway through this story and some pretty insane things have happened.

Two addicted parents, abuse, terminal cancer, neglect, may desperately wishing my favorite sitcom families could somehow reach through the TV screen and pull me into their world. Then,

“just to completely jump the shark, my dying dad's secret twin confession that everybody else knew”

about. Even I'm listening back to this story like, "This is my life!" checks notes. That is, in fact, the plot. The writer's room of my life was in sweeps week throwing absolutely everything at the wall. What's next? Somebody joins a cult or turns into a robot oracle clone. That brings us here. Two, the problem child character whose inner world we haven't really cracked

open yet. And you guess it folks, my brain was basically a game of operation full of so many secrets and unresolved issues that every time I tried to pull one thing out, emotional disaster. Because while all of this was happening, I was also trying to figure out how to be a person, a child person specifically, with emotions I didn't yet have the language for and without adults

“helping me process them. So, how exactly does young Holly Brown respond to all of this?”

What does normal even look like when your actual life feels nothing like everyone else's? How do you go to school and talk about homework and crushes when your nervous system is

always preparing for battle? All I can say is, buckle up and only gets wilder.

Losing my child at home because of my mom's addiction was a problem people finally noticed and it was devastating. I loved that house. Honestly, I still drive by at some times. It's painted a different color now and there are all these additions on it, but the bones are still exactly the same. And well, so are mine. I just can hear like even from your little little. I just hear moms of ways so to think they're like,

“"Oh, Holly!" That's what you would say all the time because all is like running down the street”

or drinking the mud or even the nails or whatever you were doing. From as early as my toddler years, I hated being told what to do. If somebody said, "Don't leave this spot." I'd immediately do this little bow leg at Sprint down the street as far as I could get before someone came chasing after me.

I always wanted to leave, but I also desperately wanted someone to want me to stay.

What's that you say? Q the ominous sitcom for shadowing music? Not now, faithful listener. Can't you tell where already in the middle of a music bed? I was a quirky goofy little kid. My middle name is Annabelle, but my dad nicknamed me Bugabelle because I loved bugs that much. While my sister was making tiny cakes in her easy-bake oven, I was over there cooking up mutant insects in my creepy crawlers machine.

Don't get me wrong. I like dolls. I had Barbies. I loved polypocates and moody little brats dolls with giant, beautiful alien heads, but in classic middle child fashion. And please, feel free to roll your eyes when I say this. I march to the beat of my own drum. Like, successfully convincing my parents to let me get Nagwana because I dreamed of walking one down the street on a leash like a tiny suburban eccentric. Sssssssss.

We're cutting all of my hair off and bleaching a giant stripe like rogue from X-Men and do it because I felt like I was her kindred mutant spirit. Now remember rogue. No scenes. No scenes, sugar. Just a little down home, John.

Even then, I knew who I was. You were never afraid to let people know how you felt about things.

four years in a row. From our baby sweater, our daughter's costumes. They were beautiful,

handmade, and so on costumes. But Holly really didn't want to be a princess. She had cut her in the other day's hair cut of all time and demanded that she wear a baseball hat with grumpy on it. The dwarf? Because she's like, "I'm not gonna be a princess. I'm a grumpy princess." If this is how I can show my distaste for this costume, I will.

“Like, you know, how you felt, you know, about stuff like that?”

Wow, I didn't put my foot that together. About how young I was when I was just like, "I'm booty!"

My big emotions were also noted from a very young age. Even though my sister was only 18 months

older than me, she was taller, stronger, and significantly better at tricking my parents into thinking, "I broke the lamp." When I absolutely did not break the lamp, Casey. She may have had early strength and strategy. But I had crocodile tears and biting. And my god, only an incredibly dramatic child chooses biting as their primary method of conflict resolution. My parents would call me their little Sarah Bernhardt, a legendary state actress from the 1800s known for these huge,

“votive villain performances. Time out. Look at this. The earliest sign that my desperate need”

to be seen and heard would one day take me from my bedroom to the stage, right to your ears. Trust me. I love all your siblings, but I have to say, "You're kind of booking it." Yeah. You have peace-maker bookings, and where they would like go around the curtain. You just barge through the curtain.

And you were always that way, though. Ever since you were little, and that had to be hard for you,

because you probably felt different. Yeah, I did. But you were just being your genuine true self. Like my Aunt Cecilia just pointed out, even when the consequences were unfair, I've always had this instinct to say what's on my mind and trust that I can survive

“whatever happens after. But when I was young, being loud, sensitive, emotional, or outspoken,”

didn't feel like qualities anybody appreciated about me. It felt like one of the first places I was taught that there was something fundamentally wrong with me. Because once things became scary in the brown household, after the sun would go down and my dad's drunkenness became unavoidable, we all adapted differently. At the time, it felt like my dad favored my younger brother, who was still in kindergarten. My sister learned to stay out of his way completely,

and I became the kid who challenged him. He had hurt my mom, and now me too. I'd look around at my siblings and interpret that as there must be something wrong with me. Still, I tried really hard to carry on like a normal kid and find things that made me happy. And when you grow up visiting studio lots, sitting in TV audiences, watching Ray Ramano, catch a pop fly at a sitcom softball game, Hollywood starts to feel weirdly attainable.

So naturally, I decided I wanted to be an actor. After all, I did have the off-camera troubled child star trauma part down. And unlike with modeling, acting felt like a way to get people to see me for who I was and not what I looked like. I'd watch Amanda Bines on all that in think I want to make people laugh. Whatever! I hit a huge growth spirt early, it was very tall and skinny, and those quote unquote talent scouts that lurk around the mall would approach me constantly.

Make me feel like all of my comedy dreams were one contract away. My dad had just been kicked out of the house, and my mom's addiction was starting to spiral, but still, I had to try. After a disastrous headshot session where my mom drove me there high and on a flat tire that threatened to cause a wreck at any moment, I learned pretty quickly that I could not rely on my parents to help me pursue this dream. I tried for a little while after

So I quit, and filed it away as a dream to chase some other day. But as things in my life kept

“getting crazier, my Sarah Bernhardt emotions got even bigger. I became angry, explosive at home,”

and instead of focusing on any of the reasons behind that, my parents decided to put me an anger management therapy. "I was there, I was so mad, I was there, because I was like, I'm not like these other kids, I'm not, oh that's me, I don't know them cats and spurtians on them, but like, I'm sorry being there like, I am here because I hate you guys. I'm not angry at the whole, I'm here at the world because I've been this situation, and you know growing up,

being told I was so dramatic all the time, and it's like complicated, because I know there's parts of that that are true, I'm an extroverted, a big explosive person, but when somebody's also using

“that against you, I don't know anymore, I don't know if I am, or if I'm living in reality,”

so like, life time of people, and like, it's just everything made to frame like it was my fault. It was the beginning of a pattern. Everything framed as evidence that I was the problem instead of evidence that something was wrong in our home. I felt enraged about life, but I didn't know how to express it in a healthy way and eventually, I started looking at my own emotions, suspiciously. Was I actually sad or was I just being dramatic? Was I reacting appropriately? Or was I just pulling a

holly? And yes, I am trademarking that. My sister and brother weren't acting this way, so why couldn't I be more like them? One of my goals during this podcast was to ask my aunt Cheryl, my dad's youngest sibling, about a particular moment, something that has a pre-teen permanently shaped the way I thought the adults around me viewed me. It involved a conversation with my mom and sister about my dad's abuse. I asked my mom, if anybody else knew, like, does, does Uncle, you know,

Uncle Man at KJ on Cheryl, and she said that she had told you and that you said Mark would never

do that holly's a liar. And that I think it literally took me till now as an adult to be like,

“did this even happen? Never. Yeah. Never. That's what I thought the answer was going to be. Absolutely not.”

Yeah. Well, I'm shocked that my brother did that. Yeah, I know. But for you to know that if I ever knew about that, I would have come and got you. Like, 100% I didn't, I didn't know that. I think that's like, for a very long time, I thought people in the family assumed I was a liar. I don't think my mom made that up as some calculated active evil. But addiction is a disease, and sometimes that diseases survival mode is deflection. Desperately needing the spotlight off

yourself and on to literally anything else. And I was an easy target. Loud, emotional, already labeled the problem. But for me, it fused directly to my bones. From that moment on, I genuinely thought no one would believe what I said if the accusation came from me. It also wasn't the only moment during the making of this podcast where I realized that something my mom claimed other people said about me, things I carried for decades,

weren't actually true. And I still grieve how many years I spent building my identity around things

that never even happened. So, there I was, a pre-teen forced into therapy, trying to correct

my reactions before anyone bothered addressing the things causing them. As if I was just having some, my so-called life-esque teen girl existential crisis, and then something unspeakable happened. My therapist, an older man with thinning hair and glasses, someone I hadn't fully opened up to yet, but was trying to trust, suddenly sat down next to me on the couch instead of a cross, like usual. And then, he put his hands on me. Somewhere an adult should never put their hands on a child.

I didn't tell anyone. Why would I? I already believed, nobody trusted what I said. So instead, I did what kids and unstable homes learned to do best. The lock it out, shrink it down,

“bury it alive, and keep moving. I had to see him a few more times after that, and honestly,”

I don't even remember how I eventually got out of therapy. My brain basically just hit the

emergency eject button and disassociated through the rest of it. But even this became something I believed I had caused. Like the mere fact that had happened to me meant I had done something wrong. This black sheep's subplot had officially turned into its own dark little spin-off series, and a true sitcom problem child comes with very specific qualifications. But if my life had one of those cheesy TGIF promos, my version of a troubled kid didn't fit

so neatly into something that black and white. You know the kind of ads I'm talking about. Sandwich between Captain Crunch and Toys R.S. spots that would leave you on the edge of your seat. So much so that you chose to stay home on a Friday night. You know what? This feels like a job for our show announcer. Take it away and not a misveo guy. This week on everybody knows but me. It's hard enough, and now all is in trouble. And like, you know, like I wish the Hollywood

just like knock in trouble or like... Holly's struggle to keep it together at home starts to make its way outside of a house. Oh, I get to get arrested a lot. I was just... I was just feeling like I'm like you did it. And now they're in. Then Holly enters her freshman year and senior boys take notice. Yeah, I think I prioritized boys because they made me feel loved. And I did get that up. Yeah. Oh, looks like there's a new sad, not exactly by the book

wild child in town. I just was so taught conditioned from such an early age like men like you

“so that you must like them. You look back and like, oh, god. In Holly's world, her parents thought”

she was one bad girl. He didn't drink. No, she drove us straight edge for sure. But did she really fit the mold? I was like, do not even. You have weed and/or alcohol in your breath. Get over from me. This Friday, it 8pm Central, only on Typecast TV. My sister seemed like the perfect kid. Helpful, responsible, beloved by every adult she encountered. My brother could get away with almost anything because, well, he was little and no one was really

paying attention. But me, I felt like there was a microscope on me at all times. And to be fair, I did brush up against the classic bad girl checklist. I threw myself into boys because, finally, someone was paying positive attention to me. And yeah, I did get arrested for shoplifting because I desperately wanted new back-to-school clothes and we couldn't afford them. I was like, going into ninth grade and I just wanted new clothes. And like, we didn't have any

“money, no one was, but no one was taking a shopping. I think only of Ansysilia came maybe to take”

us shopping. Did we get new stuff, right? Is that what you feel like? Yeah, yeah, I still, I have a, I still have a card again that, uh, Antsysilia bought me for a piano as a title from when I was like 14. Does it fit? It's nice. It's a nice card again. It got from Aunt Taylor Loft. Oh, gorgeous. Yeah,

and Taylor Loft, oh my god, and mom and dad were never have gotten us, and Taylor Loft, we were

target through and through at best. Yeah, J.C. Penny. So, like, I just weren't really not, like, knowing in my brain, like, I know I'm not a bad kid. Like, I know I'm not a bad kid, and I know that I really just wanted school clothes. Like, I just wanted to, something, and then every, like, mom got to use that, you know, and be like, Holly shoplifting is a bad kid. My mom made it feel like people were constantly keeping score of every mistake I made. Sometimes I think of it as a chicken

or the egg situation, was I acting out because people saw me as the bad kid, or what I have done

it anyway. I guess I'll never know. What I do know is that my anger didn't make life easier for my

what, but that also meant they got hit with the full force of my thunderstorm of emotions too.

“I had absolutely no idea how to talk about everything I was dealing with. The abuse,”

feeling targeted, constantly feeling unsafe around people I was supposed to trust. So instead, I yelled, I slammed doors, and became unpredictable. With all the chaos happening at home, the one place I actually felt normal, where I had a structure, routine, and escape was school. But wait, the wild child isn't also good at school. Sorry,

that's way too nuanced for a sitcom. Typecast TV would never have that storyline in a lineup.

But I was a good student. I did everything I could to follow in my sister's impossibly giant scholastic footsteps. It didn't come as naturally to me as it did for her because years later,

“I'd find out I had some learning differences. And boy, wish I had known that sooner,”

but we both poured ourselves into school, because if no one at home was putting us first, maybe we could piece together little fragments of love from teachers who made us feel seen. So, doing my best impression of my sister, I joined student leadership. Became president of the drama club, organized fundraisers planned school dances, we stayed at school from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. for as long as humanly possible.

But still, at home, I had already been assigned a role. And then, my sister got to leave for college, far, far away, where she could spend even more time at school and even less time inside her house. The year after that, my dad's health started rapidly declining. Every single year we were told he was going to die and even though he didn't, he could no longer drive and he needed constant care and help. And my mom continued to have

brief stretches of sobriety, but drugs always found a way to creep back in. Then it was my senior

“year and my dad's massive secret was finally out in the open. What did that mean for her?”

What was my mom feeling? Honestly, I don't think I even stopped to consider that until making this podcast. I was so consumed with trying to process the fact that everybody had hidden it from us. What I do know is that my mom's drug use kept cycling on and off, and I became obsessed with trying to stop it. I tried cutting off every possible avenue. One time, I literally called every person in her phone trying to figure out where she was getting drugs. Parent child relationships were

pretty theoretical to me. I really always thought I could stop it. I thought I could fix it.

We have to do an intervention. We have to do something I'd scream at home. But it was too much. No one knew how to fix this. So there I was senior year of high school. The time you're supposedly figuring out the shape of the rest of your life. And I was forced to think about literally anything else. I just felt trapped. I felt a lot of resentment because you got to go to college. At the time that I was

deciding when I was going to college, you were already in college. You were going to high school. And it was kind of like put on me. You're going to help take care of that. You're going to help take them to chemo appointments. I drove dad to chemo every week. And I felt so much resentment. What do you guys do? Because of that. I literally was like, is this team altering the course of my entire life? And I have no fucking control over this? And I do think I could have, either stuff

I could have done differently. But I was just like, why do I have to be the one? Even though you had been taking care of things before that. So it's like, I just felt like that timing. I just was so mad about it. It felt like life had decided without any of us actually agreeing that my path was going to look very different from my siblings. My sister worked incredibly hard to get scholarships

passed away. And we were able to pay for school with money from his life insurance policy.

But even though I had good grades, I wasn't my sister. I didn't qualify for scholarships the way she did. And we had no money for college otherwise. So the plan became stay home, help take care of dad, work part time, and slowly pay my way through community college. I know I'm not alone in being priced out of the college experience. But at the time it felt like my chances of escaping my

“situation were shrinking more and more. I could honestly go on forever about how cruel and”

classes society can be toward people without college degrees. I mean, I know men with college diplomas, technically, who still can't put on a fitted bed sheet for God's sake. But beyond the practical stuff, this also became one more thing on the list of reasons I felt lesser than my siblings. Another reminder that maybe I just wasn't good enough.

Maybe I was never gonna get out of this. Okay, time out. You know how I mentioned before that

during sweep sweep, sitcoms would suddenly take huge swings to boost ratings, like fully abandoning the original premise for one wildly unhinged event episode, hoping for a big payoff. More viewers means you're definitely coming back for another season after all. Oh my god, you're gonna tell me you're not the killer because you're beautiful. You think I'm going to believe you, but I'm not just like that movie killer killer, you're the killer and I knew

“you're going to tell me that's true. I believe you. My favorite example, no contest, is then there”

was Sean. In February 1998, Boy Meets World randomly decided to become a slasher film. Jennifer love Hewitt guest stars. The main character start dying one by one. There's blood, screaming. Sean is revealed to be the killer and then surprised. The whole thing is happening inside his anxiety riddled brain. So now we arrive at the sweep sweep episode of my problem child spin off series. And though there are yet again similarities with my boy Sean Hunter,

mine lived a lot more in reality. I was severely depressed, emotionally unstable, and convinced life was just going to keep finding new ways to hurt me forever. And I knew I did not want this show renewed for another season. I was at UCLA at the time, and I was like on the way to the play, with my boyfriend at the time, and I was like on campus when you called and, or I don't, you called me. Yes, and you called me in a very, you were not well. You were crying and very, very obviously

upset. And I don't know where you were. And I don't know if you told me where you were or the police told

“me where you were. I don't recall. I think you might have told me because you were, I”

didn't want to even talk to the police. And I think I mentioned vaguely where I was and you, I like found, you were outside of a park near where mom was living at the time. Yeah. And you were in our mom's car. You had a knife. You wouldn't come out and you were definitely like very much threatening self-harm and like unclear to like, you know, like where that would go. But

I was like you were locked in the car with a knife. And you basically were like, I will only,

like, I will get out of this car if you're here only. Like, and that was, I don't think you said that, but I was like, I am coming. Like there was no, it was no no question of my mind. You know, it wasn't like, I need a convincing. So I went and I was like, I will be there in 30 minutes. Like stay there and tell that. And I got there and the police were there. I don't remember Casey, like, I have no memory of I remember being on the car and stuff and I don't remember like the police

coming. I only remember being in the mental facility. Yeah, I got there, got you out of the car, and then you went with the police and they had to wait for a room to open up at a place. So I then

won't harm yourself. That all that hold us for is like immediate harm abatement,

but there's not facilities necessarily to accommodate that. So like you went there and then you went to a nicer place. The nicer place in Menter though, you were there for like a week and a half. I was. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you were the feeling fucking serious. Yeah, I have to two weeks. Yeah, I knew they wouldn't let me out. Yeah, yeah, you were there for a long time.

“Wow, time really doesn't matter when you're in there, but like, okay, I'm curious. I think we've”

had these conversations before, but like, what do you? The days we'll go and leading up to me going to a mental hospital. Do you have me talk to at that? Holy. What I remember from the time was that

you had a boyfriend at the time and you had broken up and that was like the catalyzing event.

Yeah, that didn't feel like that for me. That felt like what everyone else really wanted it to be. And I was like, I knew it wasn't bad. I really like studied how to kill myself, like really looked up everything I possibly could online and like did I was like what's looked at different methods to try to kill myself because I was just I had I have a lot of a version to frame me around this relationship. Yeah, and I know it wasn't just that that's just like I haven't

telling you what I remembered at the time was like if something to do with this breakup and I

“know that that's not true. Yeah, now that at the time that's how everybody's like framing it. This”

person and I broke up like I don't remember when before, but beforehand weeks months before, but

I it was also like Pete stuff was bad at home. Dad was very sick. Mom was still not well, like still very much in her addiction. I just remember feeling like absolutely no hope in the world. Like no hope that life would ever get better, ever, ever, ever and I do think those are the moments when like something like a breakup or it could have been a friend breakup or something like that thing can happen and it just like shines a light on everything else that you've

you use the other thing to avoid, you know, at least that's what it felt like for me where I like this, I can't even have this thing, unconnected to my by-home life. And so I looked up, I really researched how I could kill myself and I started to slowly steal mom's medication and I looked it up and that just seemed like the most painless for other people method that I could do is like kill myself with a drug overdose. And so I like siphon a lot of mom's different various pills

“and one night I took them all and the thing that I think about this is, oh wow, I don't,”

I don't think you are home because you were at college and my no mom and dad were home when I did this and I was in my room and like I would often just stay in my room and not come out probably but I took a bunch of like so many pills and I remember like having read exactly what it would say it would feel like like this is what it's going to feel like, this is how you know it's working which in hindsight, who's writing this? I don't know, but I started feeling those things. I started

feeling like, start to slowly start feeling dizzy and then I would start feeling like going to blackouts and I was just sitting in my bed in my mom and dad were at home and I remember the like, I don't know how to describe it now but like whatever they described it as in this thing that I was reading, I felt where I was like this is how, like this, this is very distinct feeling of this is happening. The pills are working and I'm going to die. Like I took so many pills and I

I've ever feeling like everything was getting black. My whole world was getting black. My vision was going dark and then all of a sudden I projectile-vomited everywhere over my room. You didn't know this? No, what? You were at home. I projectile-vomited everywhere and I was so ashamed like that it didn't work and I was so ashamed that I know how to clean all this. Like I've ever going out to the room and like out of the room and getting to my mom actually helped me clean it up but she didn't know

what it was from but she helped me clean it up and then I was like still had this. I still had it all on my system and I just remember laying on the couch and dad was on the couch and I was just laying there and just like a shell of myself because I had all these drugs in my system and I didn't tell anybody what I had done. Mom just thought I was sick and I was so mad and I like I remember feeling like

can't even do that right or something and so the next day like once the drugs had like got out of my

system a little more I just like lost it. I totally lost it and I just I just totally lost it and I just was like I don't know what to do I just don't want to be around I hate this life and I remember grabbing a kitchen knife from the kitchen and like grabbing the keys to mom's car driving and not knowing where I was going and like I'm sure I don't know at the time if you know I was just like cutting my legs up as I saw you and and I know deep down like I was too scared to do anything like

“actually kill myself with the knife that's why I chose pills at first but doesn't mean I didn't”

know I was going to hurt myself I just I kind of knew I wasn't going to kill myself with the knife at

that point but I also knew I didn't want to live and I didn't trust myself at home you know and then I remember texting you from a car sitting on top of this hill looking over this park but I got like a good buy text yes and then I texted you and I just I don't know I just really feel like you were my only lifeline of like knowing that someone cared about me I like I had just projected how bombarded all of my room and like no one was like what's going on

you okay this is a normal and I just like I just only know and gave a fuck about me and I hated our life so much and then they took me to the place did you come to the hill were you there when the police took me? What was that like? Just like logistical stuff mostly just kind of I was like what's gonna happen can I bring a blanket there will like knew you can't do anything you can't give for anything um you know I just asked a lot

of quite well you will you get medical care was it just you there or your boyfriend maybe at the time? No no no my boyfriend just me nobody else just you know mom and dad knows I it was just me

“at that first place um I think mom came with me one time to the nice place”

and I think it's a silly okay so yeah it was just a lot of logistics and like I think I went into like like kind of just okay what do we need to do now mode because it's all it was on new for both of us like being in this medical system and so I think we were just learning like what that was and you learn about the whole that you learn about how insurance works and going to certain places and beds having to be open and um yeah so I think it was you getting in and then

me just kind of talking they had like a socialist a social worker socialist a social worker person that would help was helping and find the bed and like run insurance and all that stuff so

“as I left after they had kind of sorted like but this is all very late at night right?”

Yeah it was like tune morning um and then it was like then sometime in the next day that they took you to the um you know how they take you this drop you to a gurney and they take you in an ambulance that's crazy and like you just see you can see outside of the ambulance you can see the cars like you're facing the people driving and you can just see them look at you and you're just like this is how you treat people that wanted to kill themselves crazy like but that's because they put

you all together even if you or in the same boat or not like you wanted to kill yourself or you accidentally overdosed on because you're a drug addiction or this other thing like it's all treated the same yeah did you come to that place more than once yeah I went um I went every other day because like you were just alone and I mom came one time dad was not well like he couldn't really travel but like I don't know I knew that I knew that you did not think in the same way I did you know

like I I don't think I would have ever diagnosed you with anything like but I was like Holly is

different than me but that was like the first time that I ever was confronted with what suicide would

mean how you might think about that like I just it's not I very luckily it is not something I've had to feel in my life and I think I mean I hate to say I think I'm in a minority

before but I didn't know anything about it and so for me it was important to like I was just like I just shifted like my whole world I was like how what does what and this is where you learn and you're not right but I was like what do I need to do to show Holly it's like worth it to be here and like that like how do I keep her alive and that was all I was trying to do I was like how do I keep

Holly live um I know I thought I could feel it like you in an action mode and you you always did

and I just oh so much regret about what I put in the positions I put you in and I don't think

“you should feel regret though because I don't think I would be alive without you like I truly”

don't case I really don't I know that's like probably not the the opposite of what I should be saying until health wise is like it was all on one person it wasn't on you at all but you you just immediately like I remember even now knowing that you didn't know everything you didn't know there's had things you didn't know like you just took me seriously you knew that I was not okay

and I don't feel like other people in our family were looking at it like that they were looking

at it like get snap out of it like what's wrong with you Holly yeah and I just knew you weren't thinking of it like I felt that you weren't thinking of it like Holly get over this like don't act like this you were like I felt like you go wanted to help me not force me to be something I wasn't I mean well I have been your sister long enough to know that we're seeing you to do anything

“you don't want to know is not gonna work and I think part of that is like when you know when”

that all happened like they didn't see you I mean if they'd seen you that night I think people have taken it a lot more seriously you know yeah I mean from it was like you weren't I love you and you were covered in like cuts and blood and crazed like I really felt like it's so weird to think about how you know you have what you have gotten and how you what you've lived through and then feel like I don't who is that person yeah I don't know how that person feels currently

but I I know that I did and it's like I can't believe I felt that way and I saw it and I think for me like with that what I did on the back end was as I mentioned I'm academically inclined so I started reading and researching a lot about different kinds of mental illnesses I just was like I need to understand because I don't know how like I don't know how this works from a brain processing point of view and so like let me try to to get more information

and that was probably like the most loving thing I'd ever felt about my own mental health at that point besides obviously being there for me when I was at the mental hospital but like I know exactly you're talking about and like I was like I just felt like you weren't labeling me as something that was so it like this and not and anomaly of dysfunction that everybody made me feel like I was like you were like this is what's happening we can understand it we can help it yeah I was reading books

about that we're like PhD professors that deal with these you know I was like these are this does not equate to anything being like wrong with a person look at these very very high achieving

“people that like have to do daily talk therapy because that's what helps them regulate”

in this world like that doesn't yeah I don't know I just felt like I had such a fucked up relationship to like mental health stuff too because of my previous experience with therapist and then in the mental hospital they were so quick like they were so quick to just be like this is a boy problem and then to communicate and adjust the laser and why oh yeah and then they just gave me pills and I was like I just they labeled it a boy problem they didn't and I

remember trying to tell them like this is what else is happening in home but also with some

trepidation because Carson was still a minor so I wasn't saying like everything that was always

part of the problem is like I wouldn't say everything so it would be scared to tell the full picture and then that created these gaps for these people but they very much latched onto boy boy problems and I remember trying to tell them other things they did not give a fuck and then like the I remember the one of the orderlies like giving like very much hitting on me and giving me

at times that the phone wasn't allowed but he would just like hit on me and I'm sort of like at the time it was very normal to me so I wasn't I was just like whatever but looking back I'm

“like what did I do to me and then I thought what I would I remember getting those phone calls they were”

from a weird number oh yeah it's like I got a step out of class hold on last yeah I call you and you were in class you only got the phone when you got the phone so I did oh my god yeah take the

go wow my sister my incredible sister who is also dealing with this difficult hand we were

all dealt helped me through the darkest moment of my life she did whatever she could do to make me feel safe loved and understood in a moment where I felt completely and utterly broken she helped me find therapists research mental illness so she could better understand what I was going through and treated me like a human being when I genuinely did not feel like one worth saving I am grateful to her every single day of my life I love her until the end of time and I truly do not know

who I would be without her and yes I still carry guilt about putting her in that position even

though she tells me not to she says she has no regrets that loving me through that time

helps shape her into a more whole person she has shown me what unconditional love looks like and I too I'm a more whole person because of her there's nothing in this world I wouldn't throw

“in the garbage to to get to you to like try to keep the idea of losing you is the worst thing in my”

whole like that is the worst thing that could ever happen to me and it's very real fear that I I have still every day and not every day I don't I don't think about it every day but like it's not something that I ever will not take seriously because the world is better with you in it my world is better with you in it and I would spend I do everything again the same I and I know it's not perfect and I know what we did wasn't perfect but we did the best we could and my eyes you were perfect

I left that mental hospital with a plan shaped largely by my sister a plan to get help stay alive and try to understand what was happening inside my brain and because life in our family apparently believed in the magic symmetry I left the mental hospital I was in and then get this immediately went to visit my mom in a different one I wish I were making this up I wish I were a good enough writer to come up with this on my own but this level of coincidence

is saved for a life stranger than fiction my mom had self admitted to a mental hospital threatening suicide and my lowest state I was still so worried about her she went to another rehab shortly after that we were now yet again at the lowest point our family had ever reached dear listener I know this is heavy and I know this is probably uncomfortable your trust

“denier writer has officially hit her rock bottom but I think it's important to be honest about”

what my mental health actually looked like at this point in my life shaped by my incredibly intense trauma genetics and a brain I didn't yet understand while in therapy after my suicide attempt I was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder control that thing that keeps coming up in the story

the thing I had always desperately wanted in life was something my brain now officially wrestled with

24/7 and suddenly moments from my childhood started making sense the rituals the looping thoughts the rhythms I could never fully explain to other people and while OCD is something you are predisposed to trauma has a very effective way of turning the volume all the way up getting diagnosed was crucial to understanding myself and figuring out how to move forward and how to one day let go of control so let me tell you now I am okay I am in therapy I have coping mechanisms

and incredibly healthy support system and most importantly I love who I am OCD and all about a year

went to see a counselor at my community college to figure out what my options were for missed tests

“and assignments and I remember her being so cold about it so deeply unempathetic and she didn't”

even know that underneath my dad dying was an entire decade of trauma and survival begging for a lifeline she told me that if I didn't provide a copy of the death certificate within a certain amount of time I'd fail my classes and hindsight I probably could have pushed back I could have asked for another counselor someone who might care and help and give me more time but college wasn't the grand escape for me that had been for my siblings I was exhausted grieving burnt out from taking

care of my dad and this woman sitting across for me clearly did not care so I left and I never

went back and instead I told myself all right Holly you've got to make it as an artist somehow to my already catastrophizing brain leaving college felt like even more proof that I was failing at life no college degree now with more mental illness still feeling like the black sheep while my siblings seemed to move through life in ways that made a little more sense but then for the first time in what felt like forever something impossible happened my mom got sober actually sober

after nearly a decade she came back to us in a way I genuinely didn't think was possible anymore and because of my dad's life insurance policy we suddenly had money for the first time since he got sick which is such a warped happy reality isn't it have you heard the good news everyone your dad is dead but the financial suffering part has ended we didn't talk about the addiction we didn't talk about the trauma we didn't talk about any of the horrifying things that had happened

we just needed our mom back there she was planning family vacations actual family vacations

something we had never gotten before she cooked our favorite meals bought us clothes made birthday's

“in Christmas's feels special again I was 20 years old and I honestly didn't even remember what”

having a parent like that felt like anymore and I know this probably sounds small to people with normal childhoods but I cannot explain how magical something as simple as a family dinner suddenly felt I remember feeling this bizarre unfamiliar sensation in my body all the time like wait is this what happiness feels like this is what other people feel all the time life isn't just constant stress and dread and sadness my brother moved away to college

and my sister had already moved out but I stayed home we were all rebuilding relationships with our mom in different ways but getting to live with her during this version of her felt really special to me she came to every single one of my comedy shows she pet the hair on my head while I laid on her shoulder binge watching bravo shows together I really loved seeing you and mom so

“cordial and I remember you going into like it seemed like almost every morning you'd go sit on”

mom you perched on the end of her bed talked to her and I remember loving that being like this is a sign of health yeah daughter loving and talking to her mother at least you know in a way I was very happy about it now don't get me wrong life was still hard through my 20s I was trying to manage my OCD struggling financially as an artist while my siblings had much more stable careers and emotionally there were entire sections of my past I still couldn't even look at directly

I was terrified that if I open to that box too fully everything would collapse again because now I knew what happiness felt like and even if it wasn't perfect I did not want to lose it

and then on November 4th 2022 right as I was planning my wedding with my incredible fiance

my soon to be husband took a phone call outside something he didn't normally do he walked back in and I knew what he was going to say before he even said it

hit it home from LA thank you God for triple and actors like them easy on a bartender span

“I can almost smell that bird hear my daddy say hello my son welcome home and how long can”

you stay everybody knows but me is a production of companion arts and next chapter podcast this episode was written by me Holly Brown the cold open scene you heard at the beginning is

a fictionalized version of very real moments from my life scripted by our lead producer editor

music supervisor and sound designer Pete Musto it featured Casey Rose as me Kim Bessler as Beatrice

“Mick Fury as Nelson Sam Levine as the head clinician Maddie Worth as my sister Casey”

and Pete Musto as our shows announcer sound design for that scene was by Earl Davis

our associate producer is Alana Nevin's original theme music by Kyle Murdoch our show artwork was

created by Aaron Hill our video producer is Emily Reeves our videographer is Dalton Polivka our animator is Justin Cortese and our marketing team is Tink Media our executive producers

“are Jeremiah Tittle and also me Holly Brown new episodes of everybody knows but me come out”

every Wednesday follow the show on apple podcasts spotify youtube.com/at everybody knows podcast or wherever you get some great content like ours do you have a story of family secrets or darkly funny drama that you want to share we want to hear it email us at everybody knows pod at gmail.com and make sure to leave us a rating and review or drop a comment telling us what you like about the show follow me at Holly Brown comedy and the show on all social media at everybody

knows but me and come back next week to find out what crazy hijinks the brown family is in for and here more of the stories we tell ourselves to survive sing to all's to you from the very start not give thanks for strength to keep on trying I give thanks all the things that I keep I'll go all the river and through woods no matter how cold or how deep

I'll be in me and what I'll be I'll go all through the river and through the woods matter how cold or how deep I'll be in me and what I'll be Next chapter podcast.