Matt Spilling His Guts in 50 Facts

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  1. Hay - I have never talked about this with anybody, but I WANT to talk about it with you because you make me feel safe and you understand me. You create a zone of comfort for me that I’ve never felt before and I am truly astonished yet downright grateful for your beautiful heart. It brings me a sense of ‘feeling whole’ because ‘feeling whole’ to me actually means exposing myself entirely. I haven’t been ready to do this until I felt safe. You bring me a sense of confidence that it’s ok when I’ve grown up trying to be better than ok - I want you to know that. This is a very difficult thing for me to write about because I don’t know how to comprehend it. I’ve struggled with it for a long time in terms of whether it is an issue in my life and whether it is something that I need to address. As you know, my mom is incredibly loving (no doubt about it), but I do think that her love has sometimes led to anxiety issues. Having very severe asthma growing up and having a very severe dairy allergy, combined with my mom’s experience as a Cardiac OR Nurse, made her extra protective of me. While that was the right thing to do and the best way she knew how to be, it at-times made her hysterical and as a result, drove a lot of anxiety within myself. Every time I would get sick, her ‘medical’ side conflicted with her maternal role and that became an extreme recipe. I often saw her hysteria even if I was not in distress and that caused tremendous anxiety.

    When I was 6, I jumped off one of those playground sides and landed really awkwardly on my arm. I fractured it really bad and I just knew it was bad - it hurt, but I also knew how my dad was acting that it was not good. My dad rushed me to the hospital because he knew it was a bad break.

    • I was taken to Children’s Hospital LA (CHLA) where my mom was just getting out of a surgery at the time, and she was pretty hysterical. I still remember crying and getting pain meds as they x-ray’d it. I felt so alone and scared - I will never forget that. When they found out how bad it was and that I needed immediate surgery, my mom made sure that the Chief of Orthopedic Surgery would operate on me. I began having breathing problems due to my asthma and I just remember a sense of everybody being frantic. I remember some of it so vividly and then my memory just goes blank. The last thing I remember was all the people in masks scrambling to get everything set up and my mom came in and was just being reassured that I would be fine. Something happened during the surgery and to this day, I don’t know what - I only know this from it turning into an 8 hour ordeal, but my parents did not want me to know anything about it. When I think about this, the words that come to mind are fear, crying, ‘everything going blank’, being hospitalized for over a week, and then being in a cast for a very long time. I really want to ask my mom what happened, but I’m afraid it might trigger some type of PTSD in her. It is a very delicate situation for me (tearing up writing about it). I just have never wanted to broach this subject and it doesn’t really help, but it was a ‘formative’ experience from my childhood with lingering effects - less over time for-sure. I’ve never discussed this with ANYONE except you. I just don’t know if / how / why I should broach the subject. Seems so trivial…

  2. VALUES I PRIORITIZE IN A PARTNER: what I value in a prospective female romantic partner RANKED (me at 25 vs. me at 42)

    5 DIMENSIONS: 1) Physical Beauty | 2) Intellect | 3) Passion / Prestige in Career | 4) Independence | 5) Spice

    • Matt at 25: 1) Physical Beauty; 2) Spice; 3) Passion / Prestige in Career; 4) Intellect; 5) Independence

    • Matt at 42: 1) Tie Between Physical Beauty & Passion / Prestige in Career; 3) Independence; 4) Intellect

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Detail 3

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