John Knopick: All right. So I've been dreading recording this episode for a while now. Long while actually. Not because I don't know what to say, because I do. I know exactly what I want to talk about, what I want to say. It's just saying it out loud and putting it out into the ether, which is my one of my biggest fears. But I've come to realize over these last ten episodes that this is very therapeutic for me. Going through these things out loud to the universe, trying to reach other people who've been through the same things as I have, I feel is cathartic in a way. Because if you keep things back, if you keep things bottled up, if you keep things hidden, it's gonna eat away at your insides. It's gonna make things worse to the point where it's just gonna keep bottling up and bottling up until it just explodes in one way or another. You never want to get to that point. I never want to get to that point. I nearly did with all the stuff I've been with over the last few months. But this episode is going to be a tough one for me personally. And I think it'll probably resonate with a lot of people out there as well. I hope it does. I hope all of these have. But I've always had this problem with things ending. Things that have become commonplace to me, things that were were a comfort to me, things that I had gotten used to. Like for example, TV shows, like my favorite TV shows, when those ended, like the newsroom ended out abruptly, unexpectedly, Big Bang Theory, when they rapped, Superstore, MASH, Boy Meets World. Yeah, I'm I'm a I'm a kid of the nineties. I was born in nineteen eighty. All of those shows. I I like became they became part of my orbit. They became part of my daily life. Things that I looked forward to after a hard day of e school or whatever was going on. I could always count on them. I still watch Big Bang Theory and NASH all the time, over and over and over again. Because those are comforting to me. But when they ended, it hit me like a ton of bricks. Cause I felt like part of me was taken away with them. Then it started getting into my real life. I started doing theater productions. And I noticed myself spiraling into really deep depressions when we got near rap, the rap, the last performances and things like that. It really started hitting me hard because I was immersed in that world. I felt like, you know, my world in that in those instances, in those places, I felt comfortable. I felt free. I felt like. Anything else going on in the world didn't matter because I was just in that moment, in that place. And then it was taken away from me because it ended. It was going to end. And it did. Some things don't hit me as hard. Like when they end, like like sporting seasons, like when I play baseball or softball or when I play bowling, things like that. They don't hit me that hard. even professional sports, like when basketball season ends or baseball season, hockey, whatever the case is. Am I a fan of those teams? Absolutely. But does it affect my life when those things end? Not at all. I mean, I mean, I feel bad in the moment, you know, teams are losing, winning, whatever the case is, but it doesn't affect me to the point of depression the way the other things did, the way theater did, the way the and those TV shows did. And in in tandem with that, another problem I have is Time. I absolutely hate time because when you're a kid, time drags, not in a bad way, but time drags. Summers feel like they're never gonna end. You're hanging out with your friends, you're doing your thing. Like back in our day, we didn't have the technology that we have nowadays. So we were outside playing baseball, we were out play outside playing kickball, we were walking around the neighborhood. We were, you know, playing till the street lights came on or till our parents screamed for us to get home for dinner. We enjoyed those days. We longed for those days. And even, you know, even when we were in school, we were like watching the clock go very slowly because we wanted to get out and go to recess or lunch or end the day, whatever the case was. Time seemed to drag on. But again, not in a bad way necessarily, but you know, in certain cases. Now that we're older and we're adults and we're in our middle ages and and on and on, time's gone by way too fast. Time has decided, you know what? I'm making up for lost time, pun intended. So I'm gonna start treating this like a sprint instead of a marathon. And I hate it. Straight up. Absolutely hate it. I used to I I'm when I'm on Facebook I used to on a daily basis, part of my daily cadence, part of my morning processes was I always got up in the morning. I always went on to Firefox, the browser I used for my phone, for the this particular thing. I went on to Wordle, did my daily Wordle. And then I went into Facebook and I scrolled through. because one of the first things always came up was here are your memories on this day from years past until you, you know, when you started Facebook, when you joined Facebook. And I used to go through those memories. And I used look back on them fondly. Things that I had done two, four, five, six years ago on that date. And then I had my son. We had our son. And everything changed. Not in no way, shape, or form am I saying that he's at fault for anything, because he absolutely isn't in this case. This is completely me that I'm working what I'm working through. But I look at The photos and videos of him. He's six and a half now. And I look at those memories of him when he's a baby, when he was a newborn, when he was five, six, eight, nine months old, year, whatever the case was. And I look at those and it rips me apart. Because I know I'm not gonna get those days back. I did what we did what we could. In those days, we took advantage of those days as we had them. We lived them to the best of our abilities, I feel, for the most part. But I look at them and I look at them and I go, I can't get those days back. They're never coming back. They're not coming back. Those days will never happen again. He'll never be one again. He'll never be two again. And I know a lot of you may say, Well, you know, he's only six and a half. He still has his teenage years. He still has his adult adult years, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And that's where another part of my issue is that I will get to here shortly. And it's a much more touchy subject that I'm gonna touch on in a little bit. But again, I look at these memories and it hurts because I know I can't get those days back. Growing up as a kid, I didn't have the best home. Well, for the most part, I had a decent home life as a young kid, but When my father lost his job because his boss died and the company was sold, and they basically axed his job and other people's jobs, and he started bouncing around from job to job and struggling financially, which put a strain on my mom and the rest of my two older sisters and myself. And my decent home life as a child, like my elementary school years, became more strained as I got into my junior high and high school years, to the point where in high school. Near high school and into high school, I was basically an afterthought to my family. I love my mother to death, and I'll get with her and talk about her in a moment too, but one thing she said to me will always stick out in my mind, and she uttered the words, You were just a tax exemption. How do you expect a kid to react to a phrase like that? To the person that you felt was the person you could rely on the most, that you came to when you needed support, caring, understanding, to be told that you were just a tax exemption. kinda cuts you a little bit. And that's a phrase that'll always stick with me for the rest of my life. Again, I know what they were dealing with. Again, I know what they went through. But I come to find also that my parents essentially they had tried like my with my two sisters, they had them in seventy two and seventy six. And then I came around in 80. And they tried to I think my my older sister said that they tried to actually have another one, but they weren't able to. So I was basically a surprise baby. I wasn't like I was not even, you know, they weren't expecting to have me. They thought that they were just done with two, and then I was able to then I came along. But it's the strain of the financial situation with my family put a massive strain between me. And my father, which was already there, the groundwork is already laid because of his upbringing. And I I'm still at this point, I'm trying to go through ancestry and other things to figure out his backstory because we're we're estranged now. He's going to be, he's gonna be 87 this year. And I don't know much about his family, his upbringing. All I know is what my older sister has told me. And I know that, you know, he was born in Pennsylvania in 39. And his parents didn't want him. He was raised by his aunt and uncle. And I I may have some cousins or some other people out there, some step f sisters and siblings, because apparently he had a wife and family before he met my mom. But that that's a whole nother story for another that could be a whole full episode upon itself. But we had that strained relationship. So I didn't get the traditional father-son upbringing. When he was a when I was a young, long little little kid. And he was working his truck driving job. Yeah, he took me on some runs. I got like Cheetos and Reese's. He brought me home some toys and things like that. And it was, it was, it was fun. He and I even remember, like when I was really young, we had neighbors across the street and they had a basketball hoop. And he used to come over and play basketball with us. I remember sometimes we went bowling. We even took a trip, like we had money, like he saved up money. They saved up money for years. We actually ended up going ended up going to Hawaii for a week. That was like our biggest trip ever. And things were good. And then the job fell apart and everything else. waned after that. But I always felt like he had struggled raising me. He had his two sisters, he had his two daughters. He had his favorite, which is my older sister. And then he had my oldest sister, which was more like my mom. And he didn't he favor he favorited my older sister to no end. Like she could s she could have smacked me in the face. He could have seen her do it and he would have yelled me. That was that was our that was the setup we had. But as I got older And the financial stuff caused the strain in our in the family household. He started basically outcasting me more and more and shunning me more and more to the point where he was screaming at me more, he was chasing me more. I even remember once when I was a kid, eight, nine years old, I think he got so mad at me one night, he chased me up the stairs, caught me on the landing to our upstairs part of our house and kicked me in the stomach, knocked the wind out of me. And there's other things too that I have memories of, but I'd rather not get into those at this time. But what I'm going back to, and I tend to get up on tangents and and off topic when I'm talking about things like this. So I apologize. But what I'm getting back to is that I didn't get the father-son relationship in that in that aspect. Like when I played Little League, it was my mom that took me to the games. He didn't take me. When I played sports briefly in high school. He may, I think he showed up like one event, but I played basketball briefly. I played track briefly, played baseball briefly. And it was primarily my mom that was there. My sisters come here, it came every now and again, but it was primarily my mom that did all the taking me back and forth and being there and cheering me on. He was nowhere to be found. And I swore up and down as I got older, and our our bridge got for our our our estrangement got bigger and bigger. I swore up and down. I said, When I have a kid. I'm never gonna treat my kid the way he treated me. And I'm never gonna let him, I'm gonna break that cycle. He that this kid is gonna know love, he's gonna know support, he's gonna he's gonna get a father that's present and a father that means everything to him. That father that thinks the world of him. And for the longest time, I never thought we were gonna have that chance. My wife and I went through a couple miscarriages, including one in February of 19. And we thought, you know. maybe we're just never meant to have children. But then March came, March of nineteen. We went on a trip to Jamaica because I won two trips when I was on Wheel of Fortune. Again, story for another time. But we didn't realize at the time, but my wife was pregnant again, less than two months after she lost the other child, six weeks in. And when we got home from Jamaica, she felt off, took a test, found she was positive. And we were we went to our first appointment. We're like, okay. If we don't see a heartbeat, because we've been through it twice before, we'll just keep hoping that it's there and it's and you know, we'll we'll we'll move forward and just keep hoping that he sticks. It sticks because we didn't know what the gender was at the time, obviously. But when we saw the first appoint when we saw the first ultrasound and that the first appointment, we saw that little blip, that little little that little little tiny blip on the screen and it was moving fast. That was a little heartbeat. Changed our lives. I'm like, okay, game on. From that moment on, I knew this kid is gonna know love. This kid is gonna know support. This kid is gonna know what it's like to have a father that thinks the world of him and will always be there to support him. But now, you know, I screwed up a lot initially at first when he was firstborn. And a lot of it had to do with the way I was up, I was brought up. My father hated it when we cried or when I cried, yelled at me, you know. you men don't cry. Don't don't show those tears. Basically told me to suck it up. And unfortunately, at first, when my son was an infant and really young, his crying kind of was like a little bit like nails on a chalkboard to me. Just because I didn't know how to handle it, because I had never had that support from my father. So it was a it was a learning curve. It was a learning process. It took a quite a while for me to get accustomed and get comfortable with it. And I look back, and the point I'm getting to with all of this is that I look back at the six years, six and a half years now, and I'm like, I wasted opportunities then because of how I was acting, because of how I was treating him. I wasted opportunities. And I can't get those back. I can't rewind the clock. And it hurts because he's growing up Because the time and the clock is moving way too fast for me. He's he's already in first grade. He's doing exceptionally well, but he's already in first grade. What the hell's going on? Slow down. You know, I I and and the the reason why I say this, and this is getting to more of the touchier stuff, is because of the unexpected, of the unknown. We lived in California in 2019. We'd been out there for four years because I got a really good job at the time. We decided when we got pregnant and it was sticking and he was there and he wasn't going anywhere, he was thriving. We were like, okay, it's time for us to move back to Iowa where we were from originally, because now we have our family. Now we have our little one. Now it's time for us to go back home to where we were from, set up roots, and everything's gonna be unicorns and gum drops. But my brain should have told me that, hey. Your time in Iowa was always marred with drama, with anxiety, with stress, with depression, with all kinds of muck. And that's why when you moved to California, things were so much different because you were out of that, those dark clouds. But my brain, my brain was warning me and screaming at me: don't do it, don't do it, don't go back. Didn't listen. So we drove back, and less than 12 hours. Less than twelve hours before He was to meet Cause he'd already at the time when we moved back, he was born January 3rd. And we moved back at the end of February, 2020. So he was like two months old. So she'd already, she'd already seen videos of him. We'd done video chats. We sent her audio clips. And my mom was like so supportive of him. Like she gave him, she sent him all of these like diapers. And all these other things, and always made sure we had enough enough things, and and you know, she she was exceptional, she was a nurse, she was incredible in that in that aspect. But we drove back less than twelve hours before she was to meet him in person for the first time and hold him in her arms, her final grandson. Passed away unexpectedly in her sleep. She had been dealing with some heart-related issues. And as a nurse, she tried to self-diagnose and she was thinking, well, it's I I had like a workup, but you know, I think I just need to cut back on the caffeine and I'll I'll be okay. And she didn't wake up. Literally twelve hours before she was supposed to hold him for the first time. That was my welcome back to Iowa. That was our welcome back. That was the universe saying, dude, told you. Told you. And we had we had delays and we were we drove back from California to Iowa. We didn't fly back. We didn't have the money at the time. We drove back. So my my brain immediately goes into what if, what if, what if mode? What if we drove faster? What if we had made less stops? What if we had not stopped? We we were living in we were we were moving into Des Moines and my my parents lived in Iowa City. What if we didn't stop at Des Moines to our new place to stay with my sister for the night? What if we would have drove all the way to Iowa City? What what what if what if what if? Didn't happen. That is one of the hardest things I've ever had to deal with in my life. About 10 years prior to that, my uncle, Johnny, John Hammond, who I loved immensely, like he was what my father didn't give me, he he did. He was like my he was like my brother, kind of like a father all in one. Incredible man, brilliant man. He was a chemist. He lived in Texas. He drove all he lived in he lived in Iowa, was born in Iowa, but he moved to Detroit. He'd worked in Flint, lived in Troy. Then he moved down to Houston and lived in Missouri City. when he was doing his chemist stuff and then he he used to always drive back up and see us on holidays and give us all these stories, his travels and things like that. And again, he's my mom's he's my mom, he was my mom's brother, his younger brother. And again, he was really heavy. He was a very large man, unfortunately, and he didn't care for himself. And he struggled with health, had had a CPAP, had really bad apnea. To the point where like he couldn't yet couldn't even get out of his car, walk up this short h sidewalk to our short flight of stairs into my parents' house. Couldn't do it without having to sit down and take a break. And nobody warned him. Nobody said, Hey, you need to get seen. You need to be seen by a doctor. This is getting really bad. And he passed away unexpectedly. Nobody heard from him for a couple of days, and then my aunt went and checked on him at his home and found him. Dead in his bedroom, going to his bathroom. Unexpectedly. That one hit me really hard. And unfortunately, like my my wife's family, when something happens negatively, health-wise to a family member, they all scream to each other on Facebook, Messenger, whatever the case is, call family, call family. And they make sure that they get a hold of everyone and they talk to them live to let them know what's going on. When my uncle passed, my older sister, all I got, because my wife and I were going to Denver at the time, all I got was a voicemail letting me know that he had passed. A voicemail. So yeah, as you can see, Iowa wasn't the best for me. But the point I'm getting at with this is that those things happen unexpectedly. It's totally out of the blue. And it hurts because I know how fast time goes. And I know, I understand that the ending for everyone, ultimately, as far as we know, is the same. I understand that. Everybody understands that. But I don't like time going getting away from us. I don't like time Going past so fast. Like I love my wife to the ends of the earth and back. We've been together twenty-three and a half years. We only had the one son, our six and a half year old. I I longed, I so wanted to give him a second one. I wanted to give him brother or a sister, because he'd be an incredible big brother or little s or have a you know, be an incredible big brother to a little little sister or a little brother. But my wife's forty nine and she's starting to go through some things. And it's looking like the window for us to be able to make that happen naturally is closing faster and faster. And it hurts me because I wanted to give him a sibling. I wanted to give him a chance to have a relationship with his siblings that I never had with mine growing up. And I feel like horrible that I never got a chance to do that. And again, this all comes from my hate. of time because we had him six and a half years ago. We had him in twenty twenty. I know the whole pandemic thing happened, but we never had the we had never had the additional one. And I know there are their the window isn't shut from an opportunities like adoption, foster care, whatever the case is. But it's not our genetics. It's not our DNA. That's gonna be I know it'll still be an amazing child and that we would love them to the end of the earth and back and they would be our child and we would treat them like they we had had them. But deep down you know they're not genetically yours. But it hurts because again, I look back at time and I look back at all the time. Like I we lived in California for four years. My goal when I was a kid was I wanted to be an actor. I love making people laugh. I love making people smile. I love talking. I love acting. I love performing. And I was like, I'm gonna get to California and I'm gonna make a name for myself. I'm gonna get an agent. I'm gonna get headshots, I'm gonna get. Opportunities, I'm going to be the next big thing. Not not to the extent of other people, obviously, but I mean, you know what mean? The dreams. And even my wife was like, Yeah, you know, if you can find a good enough job that would allow you to do what you want to do and make us enough money that I can stay home and work on my book. Okay, we'll we'll give California a shot. And 2016 came, I got that opportunity and we moved. What did I do? Over those four years to make those dreams a reality of acting. Absolutely nothing. Why? Because time got away from me. Because I was too busy doing my IT stuff. I was too busy focusing on that stuff that I never gave myself the opportunity to try and make a dent in the acting world. I did some improv out there. I did work with an improv troupe. I did little things. But I never try to make a full on attempt to make that dream a reality. And now I'm 46, living just south of Nashville. Who's to say I'm gonna get the opportunity? And I know some people you're gonna go, well, you still have time. You know, people people have have started their acting careers in their forties and fifties. Who knows? You know what I mean? I mean, who's to say that I could I could make something out of it? I don't know. And it hurts. Again, everything hurts because as we always say, hindsight is 2020. And mine is clear as a flipping bell when it comes to that. I have so many regrets in my life. Like to the point where I with my father and being called a tax exemption and being an outcast. It got me to the point where I felt like nobody supported me, nobody cared. And I was crying out for help because I had ADHD and still do. So I right in my beginning of my senior year, I dropped out of school. I ended up getting my GED. I ended up finishing that. But I have always had an issue with completing things. And then time gets away from you and the next thing you know, months have gone by, years have gone by What do have to show for it? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Have you done things? Yes. Have you made memories? Yes. Have you had good moments and bad moments? Absolutely. Did you accomplish what you set out to do originally? Absolutely not. And it hurts. And again, I don't have a DeLorean. I don't have. Mr. Coffee Maker. I don't have a scientist with a crazy plutonium that he got from the Libyans. I don't have the clock tower with lightning bolts shooting on it to power my vehicle. I don't have it. I don't have the ability. We don't have the ability. If we do, the government and the other higher-ups haven't told us yet to go back in time, to travel back. And I know like my brain goes, well. Butterfly effect. What if you made a change? What have you got to go back in time and you finished high school? You got your, you got you went, you graduated and then you actually went to a four-year college. Would you have met your soulmate? Would you have been on Wheel of Fortune? Would you have been on the perfect line? Would you have been, you know, met all these people? Would you have met George McCaskey and the the rest of the Bears and family and stuff? Would you have done all of this? Who's to say? One thing, change one thing in the entire universe that you used to know could be altered because of it. So what's the plan? Do I sit? Do we sit? Do we just feel horrible that the time is gone and we can't get it back? Or do we embrace the time we have every moment, every second, every minute, every day, and live it to the fullest? stop looking back at the book that we initially wrote that we didn't finish, that didn't complete, the gig didn't get completed, and instead make an even better book now. Make an even better book to leave as our legacy. Make it so the past is something you don't even think about. The past, you version 1.0, version A, whatever you want to call it. You're not even thinking about it anymore because version B, version 2.0, the one you're in now, is leaps and bounds better because you have made it better. You have been determined to make it better, to create those memories, to create that legacy that's gonna shatter any dream you ever had in the past. Because that's what's important. That's how you'd live your best life for the time we have on this spinning rock. Because I don't want to spend the time I have being afraid of the day when I won't have it anymore. When these things around me are not here anymore. These people around me are not here anymore. I have I have no family members literally on my side of our connection with my wife. I have literally zero upper family members left. And I'm talking aunts, uncles, fathers, grandparents. I have nothing left except for my father. And that's an estranged, broken bridge that'll probably never be repaired in the rest of our lives. So I have no upper family members left. None. And I that's why I'm holding on to the little circle that I have now, the friends I have now, my family, my wife, my son. My older sister who lives in Spring Hill, my oldest sister, I'm very estranged from her. She lives in Iowa. But I am holding on to those things close. And I keep the toxicity out because I want to live every day as positive and optimistic and energized as possible, considering what I have to deal with from a trauma standpoint and from the past. It's been a hell of a battle the last couple of months. But I know that. I can make this work. I know that my story is not this version two story is not done yet. And I and we have to continue to make sure that this story is the absolute best that it can be and that it is not dictated by the failed stories and the failed past ventures that never came to be. And honestly, I don't know how. to make peace with time yet. It's always going to be an ongoing battle, I feel, for the rest of my life. But maybe admitting that I'm scared of it is exactly where I have to start. I'm John Kanopic. This is the Honest Middle. We'll keep figuring it out together. See you next time.