Fractured
Fractured, embracing our imperfections.
We all are fractured one way or another mentally or physically.I want this to be a away of coming together and embracing each other through telling my story, there stories , speakers , interviews and so on.
Fractured
Shattered Pieces
There's a moment when life flips on its head, and all that's left is the journey back to finding yourself; that's where my story begins. With a past painted by a catastrophic accident and a future uncertain, I, Patrick Alowichus McGillicuddy, lay bare the raw and vulnerable voyage of piecing together a life altered by physical and mental scars. Witness a candid exploration of dark thoughts, the pursuit of purpose, and the rediscovery of joy amidst adversity, where laughter becomes an unexpected companion. I volley against the impact of AI on creativity and cherish the potency of human connection, inviting you into a space that transcends politics and religion for a shared quest towards healing.
Amidst the laughter that threads through tales of an abusive childhood and life's unpredictable blows, I navigate the landscape of pain with a comedian's grace. I unfold the complexities of confronting abuse, murder, and rape, weaving through the emotions that bind humor and hurt. As we bid adieu to the familiar and brace for the unknown, I extend an open invitation to engage in a transformative dialogue. Your stories, your feedback, your suggested topics—they are the heartbeat of our conversations. Together, let's create a tapestry of experiences, where each thread strengthens the fabric of our collective narrative.
Remember, be good to one another
Hi and welcome to the very first episode of Fractured. I'm your host, patrick Alowichus McGillicuddy. For those of you who follow me on Facebook, I'm sure you're a little disappointed. I'm not speaking with a bit of an Irish accent. But the planet I come from. I live in a single wide trailer with polyester curtains and my truck's up on blocks and my truck's up on blocks. Yes, it's a bit of a masquerade. I prefer to play the character of Patrick the Alien.
Speaker 1:It helps protect the innocent in this situation. If you'd like, we can dive right into this. I decided to start this podcast with just a bit of a selfish endeavor to help me. I had an accident a year ago. Changed my life, I would say for the worse broke my neck and nicked my spine. I winded up having four surgeries to correct my neck and fix my spine. I winded up having issues with my strong arm and my strong leg. Peripheral nerve damage, having to wear a splint on my leg. Short-term memory loss. I have a TBI. I have a spot on my frontal lobe.
Speaker 1:A lot of therapy Hasn't been a whole lot of fun. It changed me. It changed the person that I am. My family have noticed the changes in me. I'm a much more sensitive person. I cry a lot Sometimes. I don't like the person I am. There's been times where I've, unfortunately thought about taking my life sometimes. So this has been a selfish thing for me. I need to find myself, and then there's my life. There's been a lot that's happened to me over my life and I'd like to get into that. I mean, it's been a really rough life. I have a lot of things I'd love to talk about. I think you're going to find it interesting. I've had a really interesting life, extremely interesting life, but I want to talk to you about your lives. I want to talk about what helps. I want to hear your stories. I want to find out about different therapies. I want to interview. I want to find out what helps you, what helps me. I want this to be a group effort. I want to know about the things in your life. I want you to know about the things in my life. I think this will be helpful to all of us.
Speaker 1:I pulled a book off the shelf this morning, unfortunately. I was an avid reader for years and years and I can't do it anymore. My mind won't let me. I can't retain the words anymore. But one of the books that I read multiple times and I'm a collector of classics. I pulled it off because I needed to practice hearing my voice. I hate my voice, by the way. I pulled a book off and I needed to practice hearing my voice recorded, so I pulled one of the classics off the shelf and, of course, one of my go to's was Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne, and my favorite, like I said, one of my all-time favorites and young Harry, who is so inquisitive, and that's, I guess that's me.
Speaker 1:I'm inquisitive right now. I need to know you know there's so many things I need to know. And I need to know. You know there are so many things I need to know. And I need to know what my purpose is. I need to know why I'm here.
Speaker 1:I want to believe it's to help people. I've never cared about money. I never have. You can ask anybody. Money's never meant anything to me. I just I want people to be happy, I want people to be successful.
Speaker 1:I don't like strife, I can't stand to see people suffer. I don't like arguing about politics, I don't like arguing about religion, and I would like just to set down a few ground rules. If we're going to have comments and discussions, let's do this. Let's not make this about politics, please, because I have friends on both sides of the table and I love them both and I don't really care, okay. And when it comes to religion, I have brothers that are ministers and I have friends who are Buddhists and I have friends who are Muslims and I don't care. I love everybody. Okay, I love you if you're gay, I love you. For straight, I love everybody. Okay, I love you. If you're gay, I love you. If you're straight, I love you. If you're bisexual, I love everybody. It means nothing to me. I just want everybody to be happy. I want everybody to be successful.
Speaker 1:What I want most of all is to figure out how we can grasp these issues and be better. There's those of you who have been hurt mentally. There's those of you who have been hurt physically, emotionally. I think we need to touch on these issues. I think there's things touch on these issues. I think there's things we can do as individuals. I think there's things that we can do as a family. There's so many of us. I've even found even on Facebook. I have over 2,000 friends now on Facebook.
Speaker 1:I say friends, I guess they're acquaintances, whatever you want to call them, but I was just telling my wife the other night it's like we've become so lazy. It's like nobody even comments on the post. It's like all they do is like, you know, or put a heart or whatever. It's like they won't even comment. They're so lazy they won't even put a couple words. And this was nice, or something they just put, like, you know, they click a button. It's like that's what we come down to. They won't even comment on something. That's, that's amazing.
Speaker 1:And then now I've noticed, now we have the AI feature, now we have no creativity left and that's what we're coming to. These are my opinions, by the way, just opinions. That's all they are. I mean, don't you could take it for the grain of salt, but that's all it is. It's like, but we're taking our creativity away. You know it's like what's going to happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm older, I'm 55 years old. I'm probably going to be put out in the pasture and I'm trying to stay up. You know, I'm trying to stay up with things. I have a 16-year-old grandson, so I want to stay up with things. So I know what's going on. But, man, I don't know when you can tell a computer well, I want this and this, and then it draws it and then you think you were the person that created that. It's like you didn't create that. The computer created that. And then in a couple years, guess what the computer's going to be telling you what to do, not you telling the computer, can't you see this? I mean, come on, I remember a movie back in the 80s when I was a young man, called War Games. You should watch stuff like that. This stuff can become reality sooner or later. It's not just propaganda and stuff like that. It's like you should worry about stuff like that.
Speaker 1:I'm not even a conspiracy theorist, but this is a whole other thing. Look at me getting off on a tangent already. I'm only nine minutes into this and I'm already off on a tangent. So this podcast I don't really know how long they'll run. I've looked into podcasts I've seen the average podcast is about 30 minutes. These are going to depend on you Feedback. I don't know how often they'll come up. I'm thinking every two weeks, but that'll also depend on you. I'm not going to charge anything for these. I mean, this is more therapy for me, man. I have a psychiatrist, I have a therapist. I have a brother who's a minister.
Speaker 1:I have a couple of fantastic friends. I've got a guy I've known since grade school. I can't wait to tell you about him, by the way Best guy in the world. I met him in the school line in middle school. The school line in middle school. He drew a line literally. It's like an old-time coming-of-age movie. He drew a line in the bus line. He cut me in the bus line and then he told me he was going to beat me up and he was only about half my size and he was going to beat me up. We were 14 years old and we've been best friends to this day and we've seen so many things in each other's lives and I love him more than my own brothers and I hate to say it but it's true and I can't wait to tell you more about him. He's the best man in the world, awesome guy.
Speaker 1:But there's been some terrible things in my life been some horrible, horrible things you would never believe could happen to a human being have happened to me. I mean horror stories that you could never ever imagine have happened. I've got some pretty interesting people lined up to be interviewed. I think you're going to find them to be interesting guests. I want you to be involved by suggesting maybe people I can get a hold of to interview, maybe books that you could suggest, articles I hope to have segments to where I can find a quote or a book that we can suggest articles, songs, original music, anything that will help, anything that will help to soothe, you know, that need, because that's what it's about. That's what it's about at the end, man, I to me I care more about other people than I do myself At the end of the day.
Speaker 1:My wife has always said that I'm about making other people laugh. I want people laughing. I find that people laugh. It takes their mind off of stuff. I'm the comedian. You know it's like I would rather I'll take the hits, I don't care.
Speaker 1:When I was a kid, I'll go ahead and tell you just a brief story and then we'll dive into it later. I was one of four boys before the Brady Bunch episode, before the steps came into it. I was one of four boys of abusive, extremely abusive father and I would lie and say I did it all the time so my brothers wouldn't have to take the beatings because I could handle it. And let me tell you they were beatings and I could take it. I just could. I could absorb it. You know it's just who I was and I did that the rest of my life. I went looking for beatings the rest of my life and I'll tell you all about that and it kind of shaped me.
Speaker 1:You know my wife I call her Miracle Worker been married for 37 years. Fantastic woman. She saved my life. I'm so grateful to her. I have two grown children. I have a 16-year-old grandson. I live and work. Well, correction, I no longer work in the city that I live in. I'm still doing that. I still love this city, though I'm one of those weird people.
Speaker 1:I actually absolutely adored and loved my job and I cried like a baby when the separation day came. I knew it was coming, I couldn't. There's nothing I could do and they they did their best for me. It wasn't one of those kind of things. It was. You know, it wasn't like that. They were good to me, I was good to them, they were good to me, I was good to them and a lot of good people. I miss a lot of good people there, including the very top Fantastic people in my city. My city is the very best. I miss them dearly. I truly do.
Speaker 1:I would go back with one arm and one leg and drag myself around today and do it all over again. I would. I would do it as a grunt. It wouldn't bother me at all. I was in charge, I ran my crew. You know day-to-day operations. I miss it so bad. It was a big part of my life and I can't get over it. I still can't get over it. I lost my mother this past year. I lost my oldest brother a few years ago.
Speaker 1:These are all big, big things in my life, like I said, there's been. There's a lot of things. These are still minor things. The big things are coming, but we'll dive into it. We'll dive into it. Major abuse, murder, rape, you name it. It all happened. Horrible things, horrible, horrible things happen, uh uh. I was a victim. Other family members were victims, uh, lucky to be alive and I'm thankful for it. But there's other people out there who've had it worse.
Speaker 1:I watch shows and documentaries all the time and it's like I've told my wife. I said I could easily be part of a vigilante group to kill these types of people and sleep like a baby at night. It wouldn't bother me sometimes. I'm sure I'm probably just saying that you know, but that's how I feel sometimes, like I don't know how these monsters live on the same planet. I don't understand it. I don't understand how the world works, sometimes Like, how do you get to live on my planet? It's just I don't get it. I just I don't get it. I'm sorry, you know this is the first episode, so it's rough.
Speaker 1:I'm going to file it down, polish it up, clean it up as much as I can for you. You let me know what you want, you tell me how to shape it and I'll get it that way for you. You know the email will be there. I'll have the link to my Facebook page. Tell me what you want, tell me input, good or bad. Man, I'm an old man, I can handle criticism and it ain't costing me anything. You know I can handle it. So you tell me what you think good or bad, and uh, we'll go from there. Uh, please, you know, don't just say hey, don't just click like okay, don't do that, please. If you didn't like it, say hey, I didn't like it and this is why I didn't like it and this is why I didn't like it.
Speaker 1:You know you rambled on about this and maybe you should have done that. You know what? Maybe I don't care to hear about this, or maybe you should talk more about this, and it would be more helpful if we spoke more about this instead of that. You know, I'm trying to do something a little different than all the others. You know, we don't need to talk about who's winning the football game or how many UFOs are landing or if Bigfoot got spotted at Target's parking lot. You know we don't need all of that. Let's be adults and, by the way, we can be lighthearted too. Like I said, we can joke. Therapy can be funny. I mean, believe me, I have to joke. If I didn't joke, I'd be dead already, believe me. So let's steer this in the right direction, folks. Okay, I think this could be a good thing.
Speaker 1:I've read a lot of books. I've gone in a lot of directions. I used to be deeply into church and then I left church and then I got very spiritual about the Dalai Lama, and then I read a lot of different books about a lot of different religions and then I got back into church about a lot of different religions, and then I got back into church and, like I said, whatever you follow, whatever gets you through the night, is fine by me, I don't care. We're just not, we're not gonna say what is right and what is wrong, because whatever is right for you is right for you and that's all that matters.
Speaker 1:I think staying busy is the best thing anybody can do. Hobbies help a lot. You know you need to keep that mind active. I do know that If you let that mind start wandering it gets to be dangerous. Because I still do it. I have my days.
Speaker 1:People, you know I I still do it because, uh, I'm in a lot of pain. They can't control the pain that I'm in now I'm. They want me to have more surgeries now and put stimulators in two different places of my back. It's like you know, I don't know what to do. Sometimes I just sit with heating pads on because I refuse to take pain medication anymore. So you know, I don't know where my world's headed and, like I said, I'm still a relatively young man, so it's hard to say don't know where my world's headed and, like I said, I'm still a relatively young man, so it's hard to say.
Speaker 1:I don't have all the answers, nor do you, but maybe we can. Maybe we can help each other. Like I said, maybe you have an idea for me, maybe I have an idea for you. Maybe Fred over here and Lily over here you know, I'm not a doctor, by the way, I'm not giving you a prescription. I'm not a doctor. I'm not a therapist, I'm not a minister. Let's get that disclaimer out. I am not giving you any medical advice of any kind. Okay, I'm a friend, I'm a voice, that's all I am. Okay, I'm just somebody who wants to listen and wants to help, and, believe me, when I say it, I mean it. Folks, that's about all I have for this episode. It's a little short. We're about at 23 minutes right now. Like I said, this one's rough. It'll be better, I promise you. Let me know what you think and we'll talk soon. Have a good day and be blessed. Remember you only get one chance. You only have one life. Until next time. This is Patrick Bye.
