What do you do when a friend tells you he’s just gone through his worst year? Well, when he’s a brave and bright light in the world, and he’s Mishka Shubaly, you invite him on the podcast! Seriously, Mishka Shubaly is a brilliant writer, a profound soul and the owner of one of the darkest senses of humor EVER. As he says early in our conversation, “I'm here to bring you the inspirational message that there's always a fresh hell available to you.” And…somehow, it’s a laugh line! Alternating between raw, courageous vulnerability and pungent insight, this conversation with Mishka reminds us that getting clean, looking inward, and being committed to the well being of others doesn’t make you exempt from the pain - but it does give you a place to stand when the world goes upside down. Mishka’s IG: https://www.instagram.com/mishkashubaly/ Mishka’s linktree: https://linktr.ee/mishkashubaly Spotify playlist for this episode: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4r1RHnqkMeTri5FbZVTXwB Episode link: https://www.tmstpod.com/episodes/43-mishka-shubaly-on-getting-through-your-worst-year Tell Me Something True is a 100% independent podcast. There are no corporations or advertisers backing this community. We are 100% funded by the TMST community. Support TMST today so you can hear the uncut interviews, attend private events with Laura and help keep TMST ad-free: https://tmst.supercast.com/
Tell Me Something True with Laura McKowen
[00:00:00] Laura McKowen: Hey, it's Laura. If you're listening to this, you're not hearing the complete unedited version of this conversation. If you want in on that, you can get it by becoming a TMST plus member. Just head over to our website tmstpod.com and click support. All right. Enjoy the show.
[00:00:30] Hey, it's Laura. Welcome to another week. Another episode of TMST before I get into this week, we have a couple quick announcements. I am getting ready to do another, Ask Me Anything episode. We have some great questions in the bank from you. These episodes are where I take some time and answer a few questions from you, the listeners, and they can really be about anything.
[00:00:57] If you listen to the show, you know, the things that we generally talk about, but you can ask anything. And you can send those questions by going to TMSTpod.com and clicking on submit a question. You can submit it with your voice as a voice memo or in text as a form anonymously or not. Second announcement broken record I don't have the south by Southwest tape. When we do get it, you will have it. We're going to stop talking about it and just hope that it lands in our inbox. And as soon as it does, you'll have it. All right. So this week we have got my friend Mishka Shubaly on. If you don't know Mishka, he is the author of several bestselling books, including The Long Run and his recovery memoir, I swear I'll Make it Up to You. Who my friend, Lisa, a couple of weeks ago, texted to me. I didn't tell her to read it. She's also in recovery. She texted to me apropos of nothing Mishka Shubaly's memoir should not be this good. I can't stop reading. It is really great. He's an amazing writer. He has an MFA in fiction from Columbia and the joke he tells is that after he got it, he promptly decided to quit writing and go on to playing music living out of a truck.
[00:02:22] So, yes, he's also a musician and a comedian and a generally great, very honest human. So this conversation transpired or came about because I texted Mishka a few months ago on his birthday and said, hey, how you doing happy birthday. And he told me he had just started to surface from the worst year of his life.
[00:02:52] He is not the only person I heard say this about 2021. And I wanted to talk about it. I want to talk about how you get through the worst year of your life and to talk about what was going on with him. When you hear that from someone in recovery that they've just gone through the worst year of their life and sobriety as someone who's in recovery, it sends, it sent a particular chill down my spine.
[00:03:25] And I know his story. I know what he's gone through. And he's been through a lot. And so it's like, okay, how do we, how do we emerge and walk through the worst year of our life as a sober person and someone in long-term recovery. So, I went in with that. How does one get through the worst year of their life?
[00:03:52] Because we're all going to have one of those at least. And what transpired is a really, really raw and brutally honest conversation. So that said, I'm going to issue a trigger warning for mentions of molestation and suicidal ideation. Before we go any further. When we called this show, Tell Me Something True we actually meant it. And this conversation is an example. He does not try to wrap up his experiences in any kind of bow. He's not the type to do that anyway. He will admit he still very much walking through it. But he does have some really important and helpful things to say about how we actually, what it's actually like to go through something like this a year like that and how we move through it without any platitudes or, you know, BS, positive psychology, aphorisms, none of that.
[00:04:54] I so appreciated spending this time with him, the honesty, his [00:05:00] willingness to show up. And I hope you do too. Here's Mishka. So hi, welcome.
[00:05:18] Mishka Shubaly: Hey, how are you, Laura? Good to see you.
[00:05:21] Laura McKowen: You too. So this conversation started or it's happening kind of, because I texted you maybe a month or so ago. And I was like, I think it was your birthday. I was like, how you been, how you been? And you said, well, I just survived the worst year of my life in sobriety.
[00:05:43] I think that's worth talking about. I know for me, you know, we all, we all go through periods of life that are like our worst years, of course, but for someone in recovery, at least for me, there's a certain extra layer on there because when you hear something like that, because it's like, okay, no, I know a lot of your story, both from what you have written and what you've told me, and I know what you went through to get sober and to stay sober.
[00:06:13] And so when you hear something like that, it's like, okay, you've already been to a kind of hell and you've had to learn a lot to stay sober and maybe even be happy now. And then, and so like, what other hell is there? Like, that was just, it sort of struck fear in me because it's like, what else is there?
[00:06:37] Mishka Shubaly: Well I'm here to bring you the inspirational message that there's always a new hell. There's always a fresh hell available to you. It's funny. You know, I was talking to a friend the other day and he was like, I'll definitely email you by Wednesday. I promise I'll email you, you know, by Wednesday, unless my mother dies. In which case I definitely won't email you, you know? I feel like that's where we all are right now in our sobriety in, you know, where we are in life, where we are in the pandemic, in this weird sort of post COVID, is this, is this actually the end of it? Is this return to normal? What does normal look like? Or is this just a smoke break between waves?
[00:07:33] I sort of have to speak a little obliquely about what happened to me because sort of what happened. It's my story. And also not my story. It's somebody who I love tremendously, who was very close to me, was assaulted. And this was November of 2020 and lost my fucking mind.
[00:08:00] And I lost my mind and in every way possible the, of sort of like every incarnation of losing it, the, you know, this sort of come up to with every wrong answer to a question and because of that and because it wasn't something that unfolded in front of me, there's sort of an infinite spectrum of these are all the variant possibilities of what could have happened.
[00:08:32] Who could have been at fault, the degree to which people were at fault. I'm a writer and I've always had a potent imagination and you know, and I think one of the things that you do when you're, when you're a writer, when you have, when you work from your imagination, is you look down every path, you, you, you try to sort of examine every possible narrative and then I just became grimly fixated on that.
[00:09:07] Laura McKowen: What did that look like for you? Just obsessing?
[00:09:12] Mishka Shubaly: Basically every negative behavior, short of picking up alcohol and drinking alcohol again. One of the ways in which that manifested for me is I stayed up late one night and I woke up the next morning and I remember sort of like coming out and being like, you know, what am I working with today?
[00:09:35] And I was sort of tidying up the coffee table and I found a list that I had made. And when I was I was in my twenties I worked in New York with, with guys who had mob connections and they, they liked me and they sort of took me under their wing. And one of the things that they taught me was, how to, how to murder somebody and get away with it.
[00:10:05] The, like the, the technique that you use. And the night before I had written a shopping list of the things that I would need to go and kill the people who had hurt the person that I loved.
[00:10:23] Laura McKowen: Were you consciously making that list? Like you, like you, I have to imagine it's like, that's one of those, like you watch yourself doing it kind of things?
[00:10:32] Mishka Shubaly: Maybe it was just like a moment of recognition where I realized like, what this list means is that you are plotting to end several people's lives forever. It didn't take me long to realize that that wasn't a viable option. That wasn't something I could do. That both it wasn't like a real world solution to my problem.
[00:10:58] And also that I wouldn't be able to go through with it. You know, my mama didn't raise a killer, you know, and also the revenge does nothing to go out and you know, and punish these guys, that would not undo the harm that they did, you know, that they did, what it would do is it would, it would make one more murderer in this world, you know, that to try to punish what they did would, it would actually make things, you know, worse, you know, the old proverb of, you know, when you go to seek revenge, dig two graves, you know, one for the person you're seeking revenge upon, and one for yourself.
[00:11:41] Laura McKowen: Was this like a, a conscious sort of rational process that you went through?
[00:11:48] Mishka Shubaly: I mean, to decide not to kill people. Yes. It was.
[00:11:53] Laura McKowen: You know, you have, you have, and I'm wondering what you read this list and you, you nursed this idea for however long. And then, and then you obviously had a stopping point. What happened?
[00:12:05] Mishka Shubaly: I mean, I think it was the kind of thing that I only sort of felt comfortable sharing with my closest friends after the danger had passed, you know, because the first rule of killing somebody is you don't tell a fucking soul. The only way to do it is to not tell a single person your entire life.
And you know, when you carry that with you, and I knew too, that. Like best case scenario that I fucking did this and did it successfully and got away with it. I would then carry that knowledge for the rest of my life.
[00:12:45] Laura McKowen: Right. And you know, at one thing we know, and being an alcoholic is secrets actually do kill you.
Like, like that's Cardinal rule number one. And it's actually true. Like I, any secret I've carried in my body has been fucking poison to me. So you, so you, you knew that.
[00:13:10] Mishka Shubaly: And I think I knew one of the things. Like that. I try and talk to my friends about when they were sort of like careening off the rails. I mean, just this last two years, it's like the insanity is just, or your suicidal ideation is a hat that we're all passing around and it's like, who's wearing it.
[00:13:30] Laura McKowen: The darkness of the conversations is the ratchet few degrees.
[00:13:36] Mishka Shubaly: And one of the things, you know, that kept me alive for a long time was, um, you love your mother. Why, why would you kill her son? Right? Why would you do that to that nice old lady? And that's the thing is that I knew that no matter what to go down.
[00:13:54] That path of violence, that, that I would be lost either to, to death or to imprisonment. If I got caught or two, I would be a fucking murderer, you know, the that's not an option. So here's the other thing too, is that, you know, when, when there's the lifetime movie of horrific experiences like this. You know, the, the narrator always has this epiphany where they realize that it's wrong, you know, and, and that's why they can't do it. And I did have that epiphany, but also I realized that I wasn't strong enough to do it. So it was, it was a decision that I made out of conscience. And also out of weakness, I knew I couldn't do this thing that I had planned.
[00:14:50] Laura McKowen: What did that feel like?
Mishka Shubaly: Awful. You know, that I'm not a 12 step person and when my drinking was out of control and when I've been sober and thinking, oh, maybe I maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I missed the opportunity for transformation. And, you know, I should pursue the 12 steps. The furthest I've been able to get is the first step, the admitting powerlessness, because the, at my worst.
[00:15:21] You know, with alcohol, I was never, I was never powerless. The 2021 was the year that I had to accept powerlessness. You know, that this is bigger than me and I can't, I can't deal with it. I'm going to have to learn to live with this thing that happened and find a way to live with it because I can't try to, I can't fight my way out of it.
[00:15:45] I can't muscle my way through it. I'm going to have to try and find a way to make sense of this experience and move on, you know, and leave it unpunished.
[00:15:59] Laura McKowen: I so appreciate the honesty because no, like very few people would be willing to have this type of conversation. But as you were just saying, just those last few sentences, like I can feel in my body that, I mean, I would call it surrender, which sounds like this really beautiful hallmark word it's gnarly and awful.
[00:16:23] And. Yeah. I mean, it's like, it feels like your soul's being ripped out of you. Were you scared of what you were feeling, thinking.
[00:16:39] Mishka Shubaly: Yeah. The, you know, I was scared too, to sort of discover that I did have that in me, that you know, that I have. I had enough sort of murderous rage combined with intellect or cunning to start writing this list, you know, the, and to, you know, sort of start making a plan and to fantasize about it, you know, but I've been sober for almost 13 years now.
[00:17:09] And what I was losing control to was not a substance. It was me.
[00:17:17] Laura McKowen: Yeah. That's what I meant in the beginning by that extra layer of fear is this fear of I've been there, not in the same circumstances, built fear of like, oh, is this what it feels like to lose your mind? All the psychologists throughout history would not be surprised about this.
[00:17:40] The whole idea is that we all have everything in us and you just have to be put in the certain circumstances is that either, we don't get put in the circumstances where those parts of us are fired up, or we don't acknowledge it. We just deny that we have this, but that we all have the capacity for everything.
[00:17:59] The past two years have been like this giant shadow side. And you're not, you're not immune to that as a sober person. If anything, I think you're more in touch with it. It's right there. I think this is a big reason why. Why we medicate, like we don't want to see this shit. And then what happened next?
[00:18:23] Like you realize, okay, I gotta find a way to go on with this and live with it somehow and not punish it.
[00:18:30] Mishka Shubaly: You know, what, what happens next is the falling apart in every possible way. You know, I started cutting again for the first time, since, you know, since I been a kid, you know, several times I just stood there and fucking punch myself in the head as hard as I could again and again, like sort of hoping that I would, that either it would hurt so much that I would stop [00:19:00] thinking or that I would actually like lose consciousness. And then that, then there would be some relief there throwing up in my yard, punching myself in the head as fucking ugly and far preferable to drinking.
[00:19:15] And because I did those things, I made it through without drinking, but yeah, last summer was like really brutal. In February, March of last year, I sort of like catapulted myself into another relationship to try to cause I was like, I need to move on. This will make me move on.
[00:19:44] This will help me move on a terrible idea. And people tried to tell me that and you know, the worst an idea is the more enthusiastic we are about doing it about going forward. I tried to go on this anti-anxiety medication and they left off the thing that one of the possible side effects going into it is heightened anxiety and suicidal ideation.
[00:20:10] And that was like, so you know, it was just like trying and trying to get on this medication to get over the hump for like a month. And it was, uh, you know, that was just sort of like stagnation on here. I just couldn't get off the couch. And I felt the, it was just sort of like day after day. And I was like, man, is this just my life now?
[00:20:30] You know? And then finally I was like, fuck it. I can't do this, this medication isn't working for me. And I stopped, my relationship fell apart, which of course it had to because I couldn't, I couldn't be in it cause I was, you know, still just equal parts, grief and fury and I started going to therapy.
[00:20:52] Laura McKowen: Okay. So that's a, that's a piece.
[00:20:54] Mishka Shubaly: I have a great therapist who pisses me off all the time and hurts my feelings and he says stuff I don't agree with. And an early argument that we got in was she was like everything, you know, your, your demeanor, the way you're reacting to this, everything tells me that you were molested as a child.
[00:21:19] And I was like, well, that's not true. I have this weird memory where I remember everything and I don't remember that at all. And then. In an effort to, to prove to her, not just that she was wrong, but how wrong she was. I made a list of every sexual experience that I'd had under whatever age 18 or something like that, you know, down to the sort of earliest things that I could remember.
[00:21:49] And I remember being sort of like, wow, I got a lot of action when I was a little kid. This is weird, you know, and completely inappropriate. The, was I, I was a cool guy, I guess, you know, the, and then I remembered one thing and I was like, um, on. I was waiting to walk into my therapist's office and I, and in the process of trying to prove her wrong, I did all the things like I Googled like child sexual experimentation, which like, if I wasn't on that watch list before I am now, you know, trying to, trying to figure, trying to figure this shit out, like trying to figure out what I have, the stuff that I recall, what is normal child development, you know, and curiosity and, and what constitutes, you know, abuse or molestation or whatever. Then, and then I was about to walk into her office and I had remembered this one experience when I was, you know, and it was before we left Canada. So I was like, you know, less than eight years old.
[00:23:01] And then the person who was involved in that interaction. I am friends with on Facebook. So I was able to look at their profile and then I was like, oh, the . I remember them being like two years older than me. And in fact they were like eight or nine years old. And then that means that it's all a station.
[00:23:27] And you know, that I was between four and six I was like between four and six, something like that. And then my therapist walked out and she was like, okay, I'm ready for, you know, we're ready to go into session. And I was like, well, fuck, you got me. Weird thing about that is that I don't know. Feel any sense of trauma about that initial, you know, initial thing.
[00:23:55] But when you're talking about, you know, child early childhood development and childhood experiences and stuff like that, then it is true. You know, that small things affect us in, in huge ways, you know.
[00:24:08] Laura McKowen: Your psyche at four to six years old as an impacted, I mean, you may, you may say I don't feel trauma or not, you know, I'm not resentful or whatever, as an adult, your adult self isn't, but you can't possibly know the impact, the subconscious impact that that rippled through your entire life.
[00:24:33] Mishka Shubaly: You know, once I sort of accepted it, I still have to put the scare quotes that abuse or molestation.
[00:24:42] Like I can't the once I had accepted as that, the, you know, I have a tattoo on my hand that says, be good. And I was like, well, you don't get a tattoo on your hand that says be good unless you're convinced deep down inside that you're very bad. And where would that come from? Hmm, you know, so I think that's part of it.
[00:25:24] Mikel Ellcessor: Hi, I'm Mikel. I'm the executive producer of Tell Me Something True. And I co-created the show with Laura. We built TMST and our online community with the hope of creating a sane spot on the internet. We're really passionate about the ad-free nature of this work. Our belief is that this project worked best if we're not hustling to keep advertisers happy, and we keep our attention on you, the TMST community, and this is where you can play a major role. TMST plus is the membership group that helps to keep this podcast going. Whether it's through a monthly membership or a one-time contribution, TMST plus members are vital to this experiment. As a TMST plus member, you get to join Laura for member only events, send in questions for the guests, hear the complete unedited interviews and connect with other TMST community members. You know, sometimes we feel like we can't make a difference in the world. With the TMST plus membership, you can be keeping this space alive and thriving for a one-time gift or for as little as 10 bucks a month, you can find the link in the show description and then please head over to TMSTpod.com right now to support the show. And thanks.
[00:26:53] Mishka Shubaly: So, yeah, Laura, it's been a fucking year, man.
[00:26:56] Laura McKowen: I was thinking when you said that to me, I know at least half a dozen people who truly also had and these are people that have been through a lot of shit that had the worst year of their lives in 2021. It wasn’t 2020, specifically 2021, you're probably going to groan, but like metaphysical about the whole thing like there's something big, I think it's that shadow. That shadow surfacing.
[00:27:26] Mishka Shubaly: What I just sort of thought about now, what came to me is, you know, it's sort of like the, you know, we all go to sleep at the same time. And we all have nightmares, different nightmares, specific nightmares, but then we all wake up the next morning, like what the fuck?
[00:27:46] That, that nightmare was terrifying. And we've all had different nightmares. You know, when my oldest and closest friends lost his mother and then just recently lost his father, you know? [00:28:00] And the, and there was so many, you know, and that's one of the things I've sorta like when, uh, you know, going through this.
[00:28:06] I would like cry in public and feel shame about it. And then open my phone and read a story about, oh, that woman in Detroit who lost her son and her husband to COVID and now, and that's all her people. And now she has nobody left, you know, and then I would be like, well, I got to fucking, you know, grin and bear it, you know, the hardest thing that you go through is the hardest thing that you go through.
[00:28:36] And so it's sort of like, we're all allowed to like grieve for whatever specific nightmare we've gone through in the last 18 months. But it's, but the getting over it or the healing or, or that's tricky because we we can't all join hands and say, all right, tonight, we're going to commemorate the great fire, you know, the, the great molasses flood of 1919, because as much as we were all, like, we all went through this thing together, but we all went through it separately too. We were all fucking alone.
[00:29:11] Laura McKowen: I was writing the last chapter of my book, uh, yesterday, actually. And I was talking about how in 2020, it's like, we're all trying to put out in our own individual fires and the world is going up in flames at the same time. It the thing is it's we have become accustomed to, I was listening to this historian talk the other day about in in a hundred years ago, 200 years ago. And before that, the norm was war, the norm was death. The norm was violence. You got brief reprieves from that. And, but you always kind of knew that that was a reprieve, like you said, it was like a smoke break between all the terror. And that's the way life was.
[00:29:56] It's not the way life is for most people now, like at all. And so some of that means that like, we, we can't, we don't know what it's like to all grieve at the same time. Like usually the way people get through in communities is like, you know, a rowing team you're strong when I'm not, I can take a break now and then you can hold me up.
[00:30:19] The group can hold you up. And it's just, hasn't been like that for like good two years. And the things we're experiencing, aren't just the everyday grief. You know, deaths and it's like that times a factor of God knows what you know, so yeah, you're the comparative pain thing doesn't really help at all.
[00:30:44] It doesn't. I know what you mean, because I have felt that hundreds and hundreds of times in the past two years, like, what the fuck, what do I have to complain about? Type of thing. It doesn't help. And I'm saying that mostly for other people who are listening. Cause there's not just a couple of people that have it worse.
[00:31:02] There's like that millions of people that are, you know, that have gone through quote-unquote worse, but pain is relative.
[00:31:10] Mishka Shubaly: It's an effective short-term strategy that will poison you in the long term. You know, the, the analogy that I always come up with is like Red Bull. You wake up in the morning and you're exhausted and you're hung over and you have to get to work and you're like, fuck, all right, I'll just, I'll drink a Red Bull and I'll get through this.
[00:31:31] And then you throw up at work the well, or maybe you don't, but then you keep doing that. And because you keep drinking a Red Bull every morning, then you can keep drinking for that much longer. And then. Five years, 10 years later, you're 70 pounds overweight. You're type two diabetic. You're, you know, you're a fucking hardcore alcoholic because you had that because you leaned on that short-term strategy that worked so well in the moment, but then over time, fucked you and so maybe it's, if you have to go to Target without crying, then maybe tell yourself in the parking lot.
[00:32:13] Yes. People have it tougher than I do. Then when you get back in your car, after you buy your. Paper towels or whatever it is you need then cry and feel bad for yourself and say, nobody has it worse than I do. And fucking let it rip because crying in your car is the best thing out there.
[00:32:34] Laura McKowen: Yes. What is it about crying in public transportation? For me, it was always a train.
[00:32:40] Mishka Shubaly: Oh, yeah, I will. I can be having the best day of my life, put me on a train and I will just cry. It will just, it shakes the tears right out of me. I guess my, the torch that I have, uh, that I carry now is I'm gonna just fucking normalize dudes weeping in public, the watch me cry and the fucking it's okay. You know, so crying has helped a lot. My animals have helped a lot because there were, you know, before I got my dog, there were days where I couldn't do anything for myself. I couldn't, I just, I that's it. I couldn't do anything for myself, but I remember looking at my cat and just saying. I can't do anything for me, but you are going to have a perfect day.
[00:33:31] And the and I would like mixed her food with a little hot water. And I would like pat her and scratch the part of her butt and the part of her neck that she likes. And I would take her outside and play with her outside and like just, I was like I don't have the power to make sure that I have a good day, but I can make sure that you have a good day.
[00:33:51] My friends helped a lot. Every straight white bro needs a wisecracking lesbian sidekick. The and I, you know, I have a hiking buddy and she was just, she was incredibly helpful, sort of like listening to me and helping me get through it. I have a running buddy who I ran with two or three times a week, uh, starting in April of last year.
[00:34:15] Laura McKowen: Were you running through this? Yeah. Did you keep running?
[00:34:18] Mishka Shubaly: Oh yeah. And, and I would just, just cry on the run, the light and not little cries. One of the ways in which I got better was, you know, when I was, when I was drinking was, uh, thinking through my feelings, using my intellect to make my way through my experiences and the, you know, to a point now where I, I think through every emotional experience, when what I, I think what I need to be doing at this point is just sort of like feeling,
[00:34:49] Laura McKowen: I have a very hard time crying. I can feel very deep, heartfelt things for my daughter and my cats, but like a lot of situations, I feel very numb and because I can think my way through it it's and that I see, I've never heard someone else say that. So thank you. Because it's like it's real and it kind of, it feels it's. I think it's terrifying in a way. Does your sobriety feel different?
[00:35:22] Mishka Shubaly: Yeah. I mean, I, I have a hard time, like putting my finger on it because having come through this without drinking, I feel like the I'm a lot stronger than I thought I was. And also I'm a lot weaker than I thought I was. You know, there were things that I thought about like manhood or being a man or something like stuff.
[00:35:46] When I was a kid, the I'm 45 now. I think about, you know, what my dad was like, what he was doing, what I thought of him when he was 45. And then I think about how I feel now. And I'm like, oh man, I, yeah, I have fucking no idea what I'm doing. You know, one of the ways in which having an inappropriate sexual experience as a child like that is that then you see everything through that lens and making it to this age, 15 years past when I wanted to die. And now I'm, this like skin cancer thing that got burned off and crow's feet. And every time I get my hair cut, there's less black hair and more gray hair. And I can't run. you know, a mile for every year on my birthday anymore. And the 28 year old girls at the Safeway who used to like giggle and look at me now, they giggle and look at me for a different reason.
[00:36:49] That context has changed completely where they're like, oh, look at uncle creepy over there. That's my body type now is just creep old creep and it sucks.
[00:37:01] Laura McKowen: You're getting older. It's one of those things that we, none of us think is actually going to happen. And then it happens. And here we are, but you're also, I don't know. I like getting older because I care about less.
[00:37:15] Mishka Shubaly: Yeah. I mean, there's definitely parts of me where I'm like, you know, fuck it. The and also I am finding different, you know, in the same way that I found the fucking murderer in my head. You know, I also had an experience this year where I mentored a young female writer and worked with her on her stories and stuff in her submissions for graduate school.
[00:37:41] And then she applied to a bunch of places and she was a nervous wreck. And then she got into fucking Columbia and got her scholarship. And she called me before she called her parents and our entire exchange, like the, from our first communication to the, you know, to the, the last time I talked to her, it's been disgustingly wholesome.
[00:38:03] The is only there's, there's never been anything sleazy, anything creepy, even like flirtatious or something like that, you know? Being a writer, you write about erotic situations or romantic situations. And we've had those conversations where it's just been like, we're talking about the nuts and bolts of the story or of the human experience and stuff like that.
[00:38:26] There's nothing salacious about any of it. And you know, so it's like, I've, you know, I did find a murderer in my head, but I also found the like, mild-mannered or mentor.
[00:38:41] Laura McKowen: That’s awesome. I hope you let yourself actually appreciate those things instead of, and not minimize them.
[00:38:49] Mishka Shubaly: I think it's cool. I do appreciate it. I like to that, you know, helping people and doing. You know, doing things to, to help others is it is great. I wish I'd been able to get revenge too. You know, I wish I'd been, I'd been able to like write, write that I wish I'd been able to correct that instead of just live with it, you know, and it still feels, you know, that the thing about, accept the things we cannot change now, fucking hate that there's that thing that I can't change. And I always will, but the, but I, I can let it destroy me or not.
[00:39:34] Laura McKowen: Have you heard that a good man, the harmless man is not a good man. A good man is a very dangerous man who has that under voluntary control.
[00:39:44] Mishka Shubaly: That makes sense. To me, that was one of the things like living in New York and being a large guy you know, is that when shit went wrong on the street, people would say somebody do something. And then they would look at me. And there were many times where I did something, you know, or there was a fight that I broke up or there was one night when I was working at the bar with a friend of mine and this guy.
[00:40:13] A woman left a for a guy had been pestering her and then the guy left and I wasn't paying attention. And then the, you know, my friend who had been working in the back was he was like, where did that guy go? And I was like, oh, he went, you know, to the left. And he was like, go the, and we ran down the block and he had this woman pinned up against the wall and we fucking broke him.
[00:40:35] You know, we fucked that guy up. And I feel very good about that. I have no, you know, I don't feel bad about that at all. And I just feel bad that I didn't have more opportunities to do that shit. So it's a weird time for everybody. It's also a weird time to be a man where I think men are under attack for a lot of things that they deserve to be under attack for.
[00:41:07] But also it's a weird time to be a man because we are fighting for gender equality and we are fighting to build a world that doesn't exist under violent patriarchy. And we are working to defeat these concepts, you know, these sort of ancient concepts of what it means to be a man or, or what makes a man or something.
[00:41:32] And then also like, sometimes shit goes wrong. And like, you look for the big guy to try and fucking sort it out in that moment.
[00:41:41] Laura McKowen: Yeah, no doubt. No, I, I hear exactly what you're saying. There's I have often felt like it would be. Like some people are never going to want to hear this, but that, I mean, the truth is men ages 14 to 44 or something. The second leading cause of death is suicide. Like it's men that, that killed themselves. It's men that are in prison. It's men that there's a lot of suffering in men and that's an everyone problem, but I think I can see why it's a hard time to be a man right now.
[00:42:24] Mishka Shubaly: The, you know, I mean, there's, I don't know.
[00:42:27] It's a huge conversation. There's, you know, there's sort of like so much work to be done there. I remember, you know, watching me too unfold online in front of me and virtually every single woman in my, in my timeline had a story meant several stories or many stories or a complete horror show.
[00:42:49] Just this parade of like awful behavior. And. Oh, you know, almost without exception, the guys in my timeline were like, go Saints or fucking something completely unrelated. You know, the, and I was like, well, who's, who's raping all these women. Who's assaulting all these women. Who's beating up all these women who's imprisoning and kidnapping and torturing all these women.
[00:43:19] Spoiler alert. It's us. And the next question is why. And one of the things, and I don't have any data for this. I have my anecdotal experience of talking to friends, and I really think that there is widespread sexual abuse that goes undiscussed, that there is a you know, and you don't want to make sweeping generalizations about gender, but that there is a one over at my friend's house the other day and my girlfriend walked in and my friend's wife was there and she was like, hi, I'm Sarah. I'm having a blood situation. Can you? And she was like, yep. Right this way. And it was just instant sisterhood. Right? The, there's none of that with guys, like, and there isn't. Just immediate understanding of the sisterhood. There's, you know, there's no other way of saying it, you know, the, and I know.
[00:44:24] Laura McKowen: The brotherhood is rooted in things that aren't the brotherhood that is there, that I see is rooted and things that aren't necessarily helpful.
[00:44:31] Mishka Shubaly: Yeah. When you, when you say brother had the first thing that comes to mind is area and brotherhood, you know, the where it's not a positive thing and, or frat boys or shit like that, you know, the, and, um, you know, I'm fortunate that I have like a bunch of really great male friends who are.
[00:44:51] Willing to talk about weakness and vulnerability and horrible shit that happened when they were kids and stuff like that. You know the when I was trying to. The thing that's so fucked about the last like couple of years is that it is, it's been, it's sucked. It's been so dark. And also there's just been so many funny moments, the, of what the
[00:45:18] Laura McKowen: Don't you feel like you're at the conversations that you have had with people are some of the best conversations you've ever had?
[00:45:22] Mishka Shubaly: Oh yeah, absolutely. I have a chat thread with a couple of buddies that it's just like, we talk about everything, you know, and when I was, I was talking to a friend of mine about like, oh, you know, What constitutes like normal sort of sexual experimentation as a child and like, you know, and he was like, man, I was like, sticking my Wiener through the chain link fence, trying to touch, you know, touch pins with my fucking neighbor.
[00:45:44] Dude. I still see him all the time. You know?
[00:45:51] Laura McKowen: Like, just like this is the water.
[00:45:53] Mishka Shubaly: Yeah. And now I'm gonna have so fucking grateful for him in that moment to just be like, Okay. The human condition is that weird is normal. Right? Right.
[00:46:07] Laura McKowen: You're not weird. This isn't weird. You're not some freak this.
[00:46:14] Laura McKowen: I’m so glad I got to talk to you. I know. I'm glad you didn't bag out.
[00:46:18] Mishka Shubaly: Laura. I'm just thinking about some of the shit that I said on this podcast. I'm like, oh fuck.
[00:46:23] Laura McKowen: I know you can completely listen to all of it. And we edit a lot. So you're not, you're not going to
[00:46:32] Mishka Shubaly: I try to edit up here.
[00:46:35] So like what I, what I've said is what I've said, you know, I, and I, and I, I do believe in the value of presenting, like an unvarnished experience, you know, like it has been a fucking brutal 18 months. It has been a super, super hard time for me. And I'm feeling less bad, you know, I'm starting to like, get it together.
[00:46:59] Laura McKowen: I'm happy that you feel less bad.
[00:47:09] Alright, thank you so much for being with us today. If you want more TMST head on over to TMSTpod.com and become a member. Members get access to the full uncut versions of these conversations, previews of upcoming guests, invites to join me for members only events and access to our members only community where I hang out a lot. We decided from the beginning to make this an independent project, we don't have sponsors and we don't run ads.
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