TAYLOR SOLO CRASHOUT VAULT EP4: Welcome, welcome, my worrisome warriors. I'm Taylor Coker and you're listening to Casually Crashing Out. Because I have thoughts and lucky for y'all, they're loud AF. Well, well, well, it's the most wonderful time. of the year. I cannot believe that it is almost October, guys. Or I guess the day I'm releasing this, it will be October. and with October comes the first of the slew of holidays that are to come. This is legit just the instant rush of dopamine that your girl needed to get out of that crusty, dusty funk I've been in. I asked Alexa to play me fall vibes this morning. She played Pete Pablo radio. I was like, okay, not what I had in mind, but I can't say I hated it. Nothing like starting your day off to some raunchy 2000s rap. Alexa be doing that sometimes. not giving you what you wanted necessarily, but giving you what you needed instead, maybe. She knows me so well. I'll ask for a recipe to make brownies and she's like, here's a great recipe for healthy brownie overnight oats. fall is such a reset, isn't it? This fall feels like a huge reset. And with that comes, of course, transitions, right? The air, the leaves, changing for the better, like it's supposed to, just like you. I told Jason that we are dressing up as Fred Durst. He's gonna be Fred Durst from the Roland video, and I'm gonna be one of the limp bisquettes. it was either that or I said I wanted to be the guy from the labyrinth, David Bowie's character, but He says it's not sexy enough. And I'm like, David Bowie was sexy in his own way. Okay. I can make David Bowie sexy. My mental health check today is actually a lot higher than previous weeks. I would put it at an eight today, maybe. A little bit of overstimulation, but I mean that's literally every day of my freaking life. Lexabro can only work so hard, you know. we also decided in the midst of the madness to get a new dog. I will say that I do not regret it one bit. This dog is the apple of my eye. I love her so much. She's just like her sister, the sweetest little baby. She's actually a way better puppy than Zoe was. She's actually listens. I think it's because Zoe's training her, not us. neither one of us are great dog trainers, but golden retrievers are smart as fuck. So, you know, all she has to do is watch Zoe and she's pretty much set. the amount of Googling that I do that begins with is it normal to I mean, seriously, it's a daily struggle in this house. I love my life, but the letters WTF run through my mind constantly. On some real shit. Let's see. Where do I begin? Well, we can begin at 3 a.m., I guess, because that was the time that I woke up this morning. I couldn't go back to bed. I kept obsessing over that Netflix docuseries, The Pastor's Wife. If you haven't watched it, go watch it right now. That's pretty much been my life since the Lindsay Clancy trial has been on hiatus. By the way, I have to constantly be watching or listening to something all the time. And lucky for my husband, it's usually about crime andor murder. So it's just the way my anxiety works, guys. I don't know. Sue me. Sue me. Anyways. Yeah. So I woke up at 3 a.m., toss and turn and obsessed for like an hour. And then I finally moved to the couch. I binge the remainder of the pastor's wife. And then I decide, you know what? It's already 5 a.m. A lot of people wake up at 5 a.m., right? I want to be productive. So instead of going back to bed like I should have, I drank a whole Assalani in like 20 minutes. Then I spent an hour and $150 on my Amazon card on DIY nail stuff. Because apparently that's where my hard earned money needs to go right now. And then I fell asleep immediately after and felt like shit when I woke back up an hour later. Like, why did I do that? Why did I do that? Now my dogs are barking. I gotta get up. I've barely slept. I'm waking up anxious because of this damn two hundred milligrams of caffeine I just downed right before I napped. That just shows you how immune my body is to that stuff now. Who else do you know that can chug in a lani and go right back to sleep? actually, if I'm being honest, I know many. I can't even lie, I know many. And it's probably just because we're all bartenders, so I do have a story for you guys today. It is an oldie. It's an oldie, but nonetheless Only the best for my listeners. I think about this story a lot, and it's kind of a core memory for a lot of reasons, to which you will find out. But yeah, let's just dive right into it, shall we? We're gonna take it back to 2004, maybe. As you guys know, my adolescence weren't some of my proudest moments. It was a mess. Let's just put it like that. But I do remember one particular time I had gotten a progress alert because I had a 59.7 in English, which I hated my English teacher, by the way. She was such a bitch. Sorry, moving forward, this woman and I did not get along, obviously. I'm not blaming the grade on the woman. I know I was not the best student, but she didn't make things any easier for me by any means. but yeah, one day she slapped. that 59.7 progress alert on my desk and told me that I needed to take it home and have my parents sign it. damn it. Because I had just gotten off grounding. Like just got off. I was grounded a lot as a kid, as you've heard. And I was not letting myself get grounded again. So I had to make the executive decision right there, right then. That I was going to forge my mom's signature on this progress alert. Yep. I wasn't doing it. I wasn't getting locked up again. But it had to be in pen. So I, of course, like obsessed over how I was gonna sign it. I practiced all day at school, all through lunch, all the way home on the bus, practiced it at home some more. And finally, the next morning when I worked up the courage before I was about to go to school, I did it. and it looked so legit, like identical, guys. I was so proud of myself. I went to school that day, like skipping to the bus stop. I remember it was raining, but I didn't even care. It was like nothing can bother me today. so I get to school and my teacher who gave me my progress alert wasn't even there that day, and it was a Friday, which made it even better. so me and my best friend at the time, we were like Let's steal some of our parents' alcohol and celebrate. TGIF, right? when I say that, I'm not bragging, by the way. We were in no means the cool kids at school. I want you to imagine two 14 year old girls rummaging through an old liquor slash china cabinet, pouring little bits of every kind of alcohol that we could find into a large plastic cup, not understanding that you really shouldn't mix vodka, whiskey. Flavored rums in one glass and then just take turns taking sips, which is what we did. I literally want to vomit thinking about how feral we used to be. so yeah, we went to her house, took some booze, and then we used to have connecting neighborhoods. So we would just like cut through houses, like the the backyards of the houses as shortcuts. And I remember my friend was waiting for me behind my house, behind some big bushes, just holding this plastic cup full of the grossest combination of alcohol you could imagine, just crouched down like. We're on some kind of secret mission or something. And I go inside and my mom is sitting on the couch, almost like she's been up waiting for me. And I was like, Hey, mama. What up? Trying to act normal, you know. Like, hey, I'm just gonna go grab a couple things and I'll be out of your hair. T G I F and I couldn't remember how she told me, but come to find out. I had dropped my perfectly identical forge signature progress alert on the driveway as I was skipping to the bus stop that morning. And the rain had made it stick to the driveway. So my mom found it. And yeah, she was pissed. And I got grounded again immediately after that. And so my friend ended up sitting in the bushes for like over an hour waiting for me. And my mom took my phone and everything, so I couldn't call her or let her know anything. And she didn't want to knock on the door because she had like a cup of liquor in her hands. And so she just waited for as long as she felt she felt necessary. I really couldn't tell you. I feel really bad for my mother having to deal with all that crap, by the way. I was a shitty kid. She didn't deserve half of what I put her through. Now, the friend waiting in the bushes, however, yeah. Fuck that bitch. That's a story for another episode because it is a long one, but To make things rather blunt, let's just say she may or may not have ended up being my best friend of 13 years, all through middle school, high school, into my 20s, being my roommate for a good majority of the time, may or may not have known all of my secrets, all of my deepest, darkest feelings after she watched me go through what was probably the worst breakup of my young adulthood at that time. Sat on a couch with me, watched me cry, completely bashed my ex in every sense, telling me I deserved way better. He was a piece of shit. Don't ever get back with him, Taylor. Blah, blah, blah. All the stuff best friends say to you, right? And then may or may not have deleted me from everything after 13 years of friendship because she wanted to run off into the sunset with my quote unquote piece of shit ex-boyfriend That may or may not have happened. They may or may not have gotten married, and he may or may not still be a piece of shit who talks to other girls behind her back. I don't know. I cannot confirm nor deny any of this. But all I know is I got the way. Better end of that deal. That is a true example of God pushing the wrong kind of people out of your life. You know, good fucking riddance. Speaking of controversial, Let's get into a brand new segment that I may or may not regret later, one's called Don't Come For Me. Before I begin this segment, I just want to remind you guys, these are all my own personal opinions. If you don't agree, you don't have to listen. There are like a million other things you could be doing right now than listening to me talk about something you don't agree with, you know, just giving you a forewarning. And we're all adults with say it with me people, free will, Which gives me the ability to say what I want, feel what I want, and express how I want. And you the ability to simply not listen if you don't want to. Okay. All right. Now that we've got what most would say the obvious would be out of the way. Our very first topic for the very first segment. And this one's gonna be a doozy. I can see it now. Lindsay Clancy. I see so many people at each other's throats online about this woman. I don't typically like responding to things online because it just opens up a can of worms for like a million people. To get on there and attack you I mean, opinions are like assholes, right? We all got them. But for whatever reason, I guess it offends people nowadays, even though this whole situation has literally zero to do with any of us. Nothing to do with any of us. It is just an extremely tragic case, with quite frankly, not a black and white answer. Clearly, I think we can all agree to disagree on that. If it were that clear, we wouldn't be so divided over it. We wouldn't have a jury that can't come to a conclusion. It is a very, very, very complicated and different kind of case. I don't think the husband did it. Sorry. Sorry to disappoint. I think a lot of people got lost in the plot of it. You know, what would make a more interesting ending, if you will. This trial was about handling a very delicate situation where an obviously very loving mother up until that point had a severe decline in her mental health rather quickly and ended up cultivating this tragic act that quote unquote no one saw coming, right? I believe Lindsay Clancy killed her kids. I've never personally had postpartum. My sister has after she had her firstborn. And she said it was absolutely miserable. She said she felt crazy. She couldn't leave her house. She was put on Lexapro and she said it took a few weeks, but it helped her immensely. And that was just regular postpartum. I can't imagine adding the psychosis element to it. I am not a doctor. Again, these are my opinions. A lot of those medications that Lindsay was taking, all the ones it listed, it kind of perplexes me that they kept switching her medicines like that. I wouldn't think that's something you generally should be doing with someone experiencing symptoms like she was having. SSRIs take weeks to kick in and also weeks to completely get out of your system once you've started taking them. And you do feel very strange the first week or so taking an SSRI while your body's still adjusting. It is completely rewiring things in your brain. So I just don't understand why she. only stayed on a certain medicine long enough for her to experience probably all those negative side effects in the very, very beginning stages of taking an SSRI and then increase her dose just a few days after she starts taking it. before giving it time to actually start working. And then they tell her to stop taking it. after they've increased her dose just a few days later. not to mention the other handful of antidepressants they were throwing in the mix when they deemed necessary. guys, regardless of the medications, it was very clear she was not well. she wasn't hiding anything. She was obviously actively seeking help In my opinion, doing her best with how she was feeling, still trying to go on with life as normal, normal routines, and also trying to do what the doctors were instructing her to do, trying new medications, seeing what would work. I eventually asked Jason what he would do if I ever said to him, Hey, I'm having thoughts of hurting myself and the dogs. Yes, I said dogs. Our dogs are our kids, but I said if I was clearly in the midst of a mental break, I mean five months of no sleeping, being on antipsychotics. Multiple antidepressants, admitting myself into mental health facilities because I was afraid of what I was going to do to myself or our dogs, right? Would you leave me alone with them? Would you go off and leave me alone with said dogs that I talk about having thoughts of harming at this point multiple times? Would you even let that go on for five months? And you know what? It genuinely surprised me when he said. I don't know. He said, I don't know. And that just made me think, I know people are gonna say, my gosh, that girl doesn't know what she's talking about. You're right, I don't. I don't know what I'm talking about, but neither do ninety percent of you others that are online chirping in the peanut gallery. None of us know what the fuck we're talking about because none of us were there. None of us went through this. It's so easy to look at something and say, I would have done this. my gosh, I can't believe he didn't do this. if I knew I was feeling that way, I would have immediately done this. You don't know what you would have done because you've never experienced that. Thankfully. And thank God that you've never experienced that. Thank God I've never experienced that. I cannot imagine having thoughts of wanting to. harm myself or children, my own children for that matter. I cannot imagine having that happen to you, being in this foggy depressive episode, and coming to and realizing that not only are you paralyzed, but you've also killed your three children. With that being said, my overall take this was a tragedy, guys. And nothing we do or say or argue about is gonna bring closure to Lindsay, Patrick, their families, and more importantly, it's not gonna bring those three babies back. But what I hope we can gain from this is how easily postpartum can slip through the cracks in today's medical systems. I think she will live the rest of her life in a mental prison that she will never be free of? if her mental health was bad before, at this point, it's probably fucking shot. The headspace she's currently in slash will be in for a long time. I just don't think she's stable enough to be out in the world in this moment. I hope she gets the help she needs. And I hope Patrick finds strength in this time and just gets through it the way he needs to. I don't think anyone should judge how someone grieves. Especially with children. I cannot imagine It would be earth-shattering. I mean, your whole life just ripped away from you. So yeah. Don't come for me, but that's my take. And again, if you don't agree with me, that's fine. I literally don't care. And I refuse to argue with anybody because it doesn't involve me. and I have enough shit that does involve me that I would rather argue about. So anyways. this week's Crush It of the Week submission comes from a girl y'all know and love, my soul sister and the coolest boss ever, Hannah Banana. Now, I need to preface this story with if Hannah didn't have bad luck, she would have no luck at all. Okay. I mean, the amount of shit she gets dealt with on a daily basis, like the amount of bullshit that she's actually carrying on her plate actively at any given time. deserves a trophy. I could never. And that's why she's a queen. That being said, this story, it's giving well, let's just call this one the pajama heist. Hannah writes, Okay, so first I need to explain that I am the sleepwalker in our family. I've done it since I was a child, and now I've noticed that my seven year old son does it too. so never in one million years did I think I'd be submitting a sleepwalking story about my husband. I run the beverage department for a new horse race track in Kentucky. My husband is basically the groundskeeper and helps oversee the track itself. We've both been working insane hours getting this track up and running. And because apparently that wasn't enough stress for one family, a couple of weeks before racing started, we discovered a leak in our house that led to finding mold. We had to move out almost immediately. Thankfully, my mom has an efficiency apartment attached to her garage, so the three of us moved in there. We went from our big house with a king size bed to a tiny efficiency apartment with a full size bed for me, my husband, and our seven year old son. I was so stressed out of my mind trying to help open this racetrack while also dealing with contractors and our house being torn apart, getting my son back to school, baseball starting, and approximately four hundred other things life decided to throw at us for fun. Then comes race night. my husband gets off work about 10 PM and has to be back up at 4 AM. That night I noticed he was sleeping really restlessly, but I didn't think much of it until the next morning. At some point during the night, this man apparently got out of bed, left the efficiency apartment, walked into my parents' main house, and took off his own pajamas. Then over he went into my 76-year-old father's bedroom, found one of my dad's matching pajama sets, put it on, and then went back to bed. Now I need you to understand something. My father is 5'7. My husband is 6'1. Absolutely no question, these did not belong to this man. my dad was out of town that night. So my 76-year-old father comes home to find his 6'1 son-in-law casually sleeping in his matching pajama set with absolutely no explanation or how or why he got into them. as the lifelong sleepwalker in this family, I finally got to experience what everyone else has apparently been dealing with from all these years. Bitch. Hannah's actually told me this story before, so it's not the first time I'm hearing it. I made her submit this story because it was that good. I could not imagine keeping it from you guys. But bitch, Why am I imagining Travis like we willy winky right now? Like in a nightcap holding a lantern. Just walking around your baron's house? that is so great. It's even greater that it was your husband, like you said, because she's right. She usually is the one that sleepwalks. And that reminds me of a time. She knows where I'm going with this, where we took a trip to Florida, like right after we quit our jobs. Great timing. And Hannah was stressed and drunk for like three days straight. So it was the perfect storm for her to sleepwalk. But Yeah, I wasn't aware that she really slept walk up until this point. I had woke up in the middle of the night, the last night we were there at like three AM to knocking on my hotel door and I was so confused. I'm like, who the hell's knocking on my door right now? to my lovely surprise, it was Hannah in her cute little pajamas. I guess she had slept walk down to the other end of the hotel and woke up in the middle of the courtyard. This hotel we had never previously been to, by the way. So sh how she knew her way around, let alone knew her way around while she was not conscious. I I really could not tell you. I just wonder who she interacted with on this walk to that courtyard. like where all did she go? Who all saw this half dressed woman stumbling around in the halls? I don't even think she was wearing shoes, honestly. and we and we were on the second floor too. So that means she either went down the stairs or took the elevator. Either way, d doing either of those while sleeping is thoroughly impressive. Like a lot of muscle memory and pure luck is required for either if your eyes are closed. So I love you, Hannah. And I love your little sleepwalking family. It's it's it's adorable. It truly is. You all need your own little nursery rhyme. I told my husband the other day, I said, honey, I think it's time to decorate. We love a good festive house, don't we? I'm a festive girly pop, guys. I love me some Halloween decor. I legit turned my house into a movie set for really any holiday, but main ones that might be a tad concerning are Halloween and Christmas. if you see me out at T J Max loading my cart, no you didn't. No, you didn't. And please don't tell my husband. I'm thinking about hosting like a spooky paint and sip night with my girlfriends. I can't waste my decorations, guys. It would be a damn shame if no one got to see my spooky moving bookshelves or my little witch that talks to you while she mixes her potions. Okay. I may or may not have rated a big lots a few years ago and got a million animatronic Halloween things for like ninety percent off in July. and I'm also very crafty, believe it or not. So I do like to try and make decorations as well every year. I don't know if I'll get into it this year though. it seems like I never have enough time for literally anything anymore. You know what I would love to do more than anything? And I don't know if anyone's even gonna know what I'm talking about, but do y'all remember Bunko? Am I showing my age? My mom used to have this group of girlfriends who got together every week. They rotated houses and they would host Bunko. It's a game with dice and I don't know. I just remember I loved it when it was at our house because my mom and her friends would get so litty. Not in a weird way, by the way, a very normal way. Okay. We would just get to stay up a little bit later and eat snacks. My mom was always in a great mood because all her friends were over and she was drinking wine. And her friends would just like dote over us. And, you know, we all know I loved attention as a kid, clearly. But yeah. I want to host Bunko, a Halloween Bunko. I don't know if my circle of friends could ever live up to my mom's circle of friends, They really were iconic. The iconic OG Bunko group. and don't even get me started on Pampered Chef. But yeah, adulting's hard. Adulting's hard. I've said it before and I'll say it again. There must be some club that I don't hold membership, some newsletter that I ain't subscribed to or something, because it feels like we tread water over here. What I'm saying is there's always so much to do, guys. So, so, so much. I cleaned my whole house yesterday. Like really, really cleaned it. And with ADHD, it's hard to get It's hard to get a day of cleaning. Okay. It it takes quite a while to get one task done. So a whole day of cleaning, I will start doing the dishes and then I will check my phone and then I'll be like, I'm supposed to call so and so. So I'll walk away from the dishes. Water's still running, call so and so. the dogs need to go outside. So then I'll take the dogs outside. I'll walk back in the house. I gotta make sure I, get the stuff for dinner and I start making a list. yeah, and and then laundry. I mean, I'm doing 10 different things but I've forgotten what half of them are. I don't even know what I'm doing. I'm lost in the sauce. Well, I guess we can address the ugliest elephant in the room. my month long hiatus. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I apologize, I realize that I can't just be going ghosts on y'all. And I'm sorry. There was a lot. I know that sound like a broken record because I've said it a million times. there was a lot that was going on this last month that really just I I I didn't I wasn't in the right headspace to be recording and being funny and lighthearted because I just felt like it wasn't genuine. And I don't ever want to be ungenuine with you guys. You guys are a big part of my life. And I want to be as raw and real and honest with you to make sure that I can connect with whoever out there is going through a similar circumstance or scenario. I just think it's really important with this kind of platform. All that being said, you remember as a kid when you dove off the diving board for the first time and you went up and it felt like forever before you finally hit the pool. And it's like the most terrifying few seconds of your life, like your whole Your whole adolescence just flashes. Your whole five years of adolescence flashes before your eyes, you know? It's like the first bit of anxiety that your tiny little body feels. And that's how I feel lately. It's how I feel all the time lately. Just like, what the f is going on all the time. So anxious to hit the water. And I don't know when that's gonna happen. I do feel like I owe you guys a little bit of an explanation, just a little bit, without going too deep into it. For the last few weeks, my husband has been in the stages of transitioning to a new job. I'll just say my husband is one of the hardest working people that I know and he takes a lot of pride in being able to take care and support his family when you're married and your partner's mental health isn't great, obviously your mental health isn't great as well. And in that time, I think you both need to be able to put everything outside of of you guys aside. And you really need to hone in on each other and just Make sure that even though everything else around you feels like it's crumbling, You two are solid. don't worry about anything else around you. Doesn't matter what's going on. Just make sure that it's about you guys and standing strong and and with that you will be able to get through it. Self-care for me lately has definitely included making sure not to skip my Lexapro for days at a time because for whatever reason that has been a trend and quite frankly, not something you should mess with. I'll just say that. I have cried more in the last few weeks than I have in probably the last year. I've also been trying to not add so much to my plate that I can't possibly keep up with it. And stretching myself so thin that I feel like a rubber band that's gonna snap at any given moment. Just saying, guys. And then Dolly Parton's fucking dead. Like, what the fuck? Way to kick a bitch while she's down. I told Hannah, that we were gonna host a memorial for Queen Dolly. She was Hannah's idol and the first person I checked on when I found out. Speaking of, my mom once told me that my nanny was obsessed with Elvis, which who wouldn't be, right? But she told me that the day he died, she got home from school and my nanny was on the couch and the house was all dark. And she was crying. And I was like, my gosh. It's a little traumatizing. nanny, nanny, nanny. She was a wild woman. Taylor. Give me some sugar. And she would like lick her lips and get them so wet. But you know what? I would do a lot for one more sloppy kiss from my nanny. I tell you. If she could see me now. She taught me one thing, and that was to always, always, always be unapologetically yourself and never feel bad about it. If you are too much for somebody, then that person don't deserve your time or energy, babe. another form of self-care. Create boundaries with those that take from your cup as opposed to filling it. Notice I said create boundaries, not completely get rid of, because I'll be the first to admit, sometimes these people. That are constantly depleting from our cups might be coworkers. They might be family. They may be our neighbors that drive us nuts. AKA, people that it might take more energy to try and completely cut them out. So for your own inner peace, just create boundaries and stand firm on them and move forward. AKA, protect your peace, bitch. Alrighty Spiral Squad, another episode in the books. As always, I want to hear from y'all. So check out the casually crashing out website at casuallycrashing out pod dot com and click the pink envelope if you want a chance to have your story featured. Or just submit your crash out to casually crashing out pod at gmail dot com. That's casually crashing out pod at gmail dot com. just because you're casually crashing out doesn't mean you're crashing alone. Until next time.