The 12th (and likely final) episode in my formative sex & relationship series.
Trying to fit into my older boyfriend’s uncompromising & chaotic lifestyle, I double down on becoming everything I’m not. From a serious accident to a sudden death-sh*t gets real as I continue to push the needle on trying to capture this man’s love & attention.
*Heads up* I use explicit language
In this series:
Ep 14 :: Seeding disenchantment
Ep 16 :: Petroleum engineering smart
Ep 17 :: Sex and the city
Ep 18 :: Part of the job
Ep 19 :: Hawaiian breeze era
Ep 20 :: Time out (update episode)
Ep 21 :: Risky business
Ep 22 :: That kind of girl
Ep 23 :: Under the influence
Ep 24 :: Sex therapy (update episode)
Ep 27 :: Daddy issues
Ep 28 :: Man food
Ep 29 :: The widowmaker
More Relevant Episodes:
Ep 3 :: The day the music died (my dad’s death)
Ep 7 :: A contortionary tale-Part 1 (catch up with me 2 yrs later as I jump into a dicey love affair)
Ep 8 :: A contortionary tale-Part 2 (and turn that love affair into a 6 year relationship)
Camouflaging into my room’s colour palette. 2006 vibe activated.
The unfortunate hair stylings of this era ✂️
Houseboat visits & fracking representation
Motel stays & wilted roses🌹
My least favourite pastime: hiking into an icy canyon, crawling on my stomach in the snow & squeezing into a terrifying dank cave. Cheers! 🍻🥶❄️🗻
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This is Divine Interruption. I'm Sarah Hildreth Rankin. Hi, welcome back.
Okay, let's complete this story that I've been telling that also spans, you know, way back to when I was 12 years old now. We've followed quite a long trajectory in this series about sex and relationships. And this is going to kind of wrap things up. If you haven't been following along, I would suggest starting at the very beginning with the episode Seating Disenchantment. I will have everything in the show notes. But you can also just follow along with this specific story as well, starting with daddy issues. The last episode was The Widowmaker. So I'm going to pick up where I left off in this relationship with an older man that we're calling Steve. So something that I've been reflecting on as I've been combing through all of these memories and looking at all these photos and journal entries is really how my style and my haircut changed during our relationship. That's normal when you're younger, right? Experimenting a lot. There's nothing really crazy about that, but I do find it hard to look at some of the photos from that time because I just see such a different version of myself. And one that's hard to recognize. It it's like I kind of got lost somewhere along the way because I remember the feelings I was having at the time. So when I look at those photos, I can sense that. And it's interesting because after we started dating, I felt like I was giving a lot of my agency away to Steve in our relationship in everyday life. And that's also what I started doing with my hair. I would go into a salon and I would just say, just, just do whatever you want. So my hair was this reflection of what I was doing in my relationship. And you'd think that I would have learned that lesson in high school when I went to go see Dean at Swizzlesticks, and I just assumed that he would know what was best for me, that somehow he was the expert. And I would say, yeah, do do whatever you want. And he gave me this wolverine-looking, spiky bob, mini bangs. For you know, at least over a year, that was my look, something that was just not myself. But somehow, here I was doing this all over again five years later at a different salon. Just, oh, do whatever you think will look best. And so they did. They experimented. I was like their guinea pig. They bleached my hair, they gave me blonde highlights, they cut it so short that I looked almost like a Lego woman. And then they dyed it red, they dyed it black, and it was just short with these tufts or spikes or chunks. And, you know, I didn't even necessarily like it. You know, it didn't feel like me. I felt like I was getting lost in these looks that they were giving me, but I just kept telling them, oh, do whatever you think is best, just as I was doing with my boyfriend. He was the decider, he held the power, and I just gave up over time because he never relented. And it was just a waste of time. You know, he didn't do compromise. But I loved him. I needed him. And this was my first serious long-term relationship. And he picked me when I believed that no one else ever would. So for the better part of our relationship, Steve wasn't working. After he had that knee injury at the beginning of our relationship, well, non-relationship. After he had his knee injury, he didn't go back to rafting in the summers, and he mainly collected employment insurance. And I don't know why, but I just thought he had it all figured out. I just did. You know, he was an adult. He had just leased a new car. You know, obviously he was paying rent. And all of those things made me think he's got his stuff together, right? And at some point he did need to get another job. And this time he found one working for the oil fields, what we call fracking. Now, there are very different roles, uh, various different ones working in the oil field, but kind of beneath the higher management and the engineers, there's just a lot of manual labor, and the work can be really demanding. And as far as I remember, Steve operated drilling equipment and then he would transport material driving really large oil trucks. And again, I am not 100% sure, right? That is a generalization. There are just some details that aren't worth maintaining in our brains, and this is one of them. I don't specifically remember what his role was. But this was a very common job in Alberta at the time, anyway, mainly for men. People would go out to the oil fields, they would work for long stretches at a time, they would often be away from their families, they would sometimes be living in a camp, and then they would come home for a stint before they went back out to work. It paid well, but it was labor-intensive. And from what I gathered, it could be kind of monotonous, it could be a little bleak at times, so it wasn't necessarily an easy job. The nearest oil rigs were just half an hour away from town, so Steve could commute. And with this new job came new friends, and as he always did, he met people right away, and soon they were coming to visit on weekends and we'd be hanging out together. They were from all walks of life, mostly people who had moved from other provinces to quote unquote make a shit ton of money, as they'd say. And because the work could be so tough and the hours were so long, there was often a party element to the equation. Again, that's a generalization. Certainly does not pertain to everyone at all. I just witnessed a slice of what that lifestyle could be like because they'd work for sometimes weeks at a time. And then when they got off work, they could go on these crazy benders. And Steve would often be at the center of these or hosting these guys at his place. And so if I wanted to see my boyfriend or be a part of his life, I would need to insert myself into various situations that were often just not the most comfortable for me. Because he was definitely not going to be catering to how I felt or the things that I wanted to do. Like the time we went caving, we hiked into this network of winding tunnels of the bottom of this glacier. And at one point, like we actually needed to lie down on the snow, on our stomachs, and individually squeeze ourselves through this tiny opening in the ground to get into this cave. And even when I'm talking about this, this makes me want to throw up. It was just so claustrophobic. And you know what? Maybe I would have felt a little bit different if I'd gone in a group with a tour guide or something. But in general, I just don't like things like this, right? I was like, I am going to die this way. And of course, you know, everyone's cracking beers and smoking weed. And so by the time we make it to the opening of this cave, I'm just questioning if I like fully trust anyone here. But I did it. And there are pictures to prove it. I will post these on my website, link in the show notes. I was definitely the odd one out in this group, but I was trying desperately to just hide this fact by like, oh, I'll just crack another Pilsner and ooh, I'm cool and I'm normal, and ooh, look at what a risk taker I am. I'm so fun. But really, like I just wanted to be at home, you know, reading or drawing weird pictures with my left hand in my room with like a fancy coffee, maybe daydreaming about the next movie I wanted to make with my camcorder. But instead, I was force-feeding myself these interactions just to feel a semblance of connection to Steve, to my boyfriend. And it was these older men who held the key to my existence at the time. And of course, post-caving turns into day drinking at the bar, which turns into late-night partying with harder drugs and more people. And I just couldn't keep up. And I felt again like a child at the kids' table, you know, and I felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb. But I continued to desperately try to fit in and keep up. And one such occasion was Steve's Christmas work party. It was this semi-formal event, and I was like, yes, this is a chance where I can really impress. I really just wanted Steve to notice me. Like in a way, you know, when you really crave something and you're not receiving it in the way that you can feel it, it's like, oh, I will try harder. I just need him to think I'm really great. I just need to be able to hold his attention. So I use this event as an excuse to find like the perfect outfit and get done up. There was a Walmart, a Reatemans, and a Susie Shear in a strip mall in the next town over. So I drove 40 minutes to get there and I spent way too long, like hours at this strip mall, just kind of like agonizing over the minimal choices of what to wear to this party. I ended up with this black, sparkly, puffy, like tool-skirted strapless dress, and I got these like kitten heels, like patent black leather with little bows on them. Like, thank God there are no photos because I know it was bad. I remember it being bad. I was just trying so hard. So I put a lot of time and effort into getting ready for this event. And it was going to be a huge Christmas dinner, followed by a dance and a party, and we'd booked a hotel for the night. So I get all ready. Steve picks me up from my place. I think he comes in and he's wearing like maybe a button-up shirt, maybe some pants that aren't denim, and I am definitely feeling way overdone. As soon as I step outside of my house in the broad daylight, I just feel so out of place. I'm almost like embarrassed. Like, why did I overthink this? And as he's driving us to the party in the next town over, every now and again he kind of leans the car over to the right of the road. So we drive over the rumble strips and he goes, as he always did, boor man's vibrator, and he just laughs a whole bunch. So this was the vibe. This was the vibe in the car on the way to the party that I have taken far too seriously. So we arrive at this huge hall that they've rented out. There's shiny white fabric draped all along the walls. There's these fake white columns that they've put fake candles on. There are these like purple and red and green lights that are shining up from the floor. Are you getting the vibe here? Am I setting the scene? Do you know what kind of party this looks like, right? And as soon as I arrive, I am instantly on high alert, right? Like I only know maybe four of these people. And I'm like, okay, I'm trying to amp myself up. I'm like, I am going to be fun. I am going to be interesting. And hopefully, I'm going to be engaging enough to just hold Steve's attention. That was essentially really what was driving so much of my behavior at the time. It was all about how do I keep his attention? How can I make myself better, more interesting? Maybe if I was like prettier or I dress sexier or I could just act more fun. Those were all of the things that I was thinking at that time. I just, I never felt enough around him. That was the vibe for me. I never felt like I could hold his attention. There was all these other things he'd rather be doing, or other people he'd rather be talking about. But I thought, you know what? If I if I can't hold his attention, at least, you know, I will make a couple of friends for the night or something, so that I just don't feel so awkward or alone. So after this large turkey buffet dinner, I just keep drinking. Steve's talking to everyone, he's having a good time, being loud. I go to the bathroom, and there's a group of women snorting cocaine. One of them starts knocking on the stall of my door, and she's like, Hey, you want some hun? Now, me still being me, but like desperately wishing I could be cooler and not me. Eventually I reluctantly say, like, no, no, thank you, even though I kind of wished that I could just take that risk or that jump to do something different. But instead, I drink my weight and coolers and sparkling wine just to kind of keep up. And a couple hours later, we're in a minivan cab. It is freezing cold. It's winter in the mountains, but the backsliding door is wide open. I am on the ground, leaning my head out with my sparkly dress just flapping in the wind so that I can vomit along the street as we drive to our motel. And believe it or not, that was not actually the low point of this experience. Oh no, that came the next morning when I woke up in this motel and I blew actual chunks of turkey dinner, like turkey, peas, stuffing, out of my nose from the night before. It was bleak. A lot of what I share of my experience with Steve revolves around alcohol or smoking weed. I was still out of my depth in understanding why he had to get high or drunk all the time. And at that age and that time, I took it all really personally. And for years after that, I would get overcome with panic and even fear when a partner that I would be with would casually smoke a joint or maybe drink too many beers. It always felt as though it was a rejection to me, a not wanting to be present with me, or that I wasn't engaging enough or good enough to hold their attention. It just always felt like they were choosing substances over me. But obviously, like really, it had nothing to do with me. But I don't know, I was young and I didn't understand. And it's when you take things at face value, right? And you create these equations in your brain about what certain things mean. And that experience with Steve and him kind of never, I think, fulfilling my needs or offering like that deep connection on an ongoing basis or attention and the way that he was always getting drunk or getting high. I equated those two things together. And for Steve, he always needed the next thing to keep him going. I rarely saw him, you know, slow down enough or be quiet enough to actually feel things that maybe they were difficult to think about beyond the surface or beyond his immediate circumstances. And if it wasn't being stoned, it was being drunk. If it wasn't chain smoking cigarettes, it was online gambling. If it wasn't being in a crowd of people, it was seeking out activities to get this adrenaline high of doing something risky and maybe not thinking about the consequences. And it just appeared, and I started to put it together, that he'd been doing this for such a long time that he wasn't going to be changing things up anytime soon. And if it felt like I wasn't a priority in his life, that's because I wasn't. And when I say this, I it doesn't mean that he didn't care, but he had found his own way to live life by then, you know, coping strategies that kept him comfortable, but didn't allow him to be fully present with me. And I could also tell that years of doing substances on a daily basis had actually affected some of his cognitive function and his ability to make decisions, as I have talked about before. But we never really got that far. I could feel that there was a lot there, but he was certainly not ready or comfortable to look at that or even acknowledge that it was driving so much of his lifestyle. And I noticed that it was much easier for him to blame the world or the system or the banks or his boss or that person who cut him off on the highway than it was for him to consider his role in his own life. And I would say that his coping mechanisms became a problem for him when he was working, specifically in the oil field at that time. That was what I was witnessing. Because of the tough lifestyle and the often dangerous equipment that needed to be handled and managed in this job, they did regular drug testing. On more than one occasion, I remember him coming home in a panic, saying, Oh my God, they're testing for drugs next week, they're testing for drugs in two days, and then he would have some crazy plan. He would take some weird tea, he would have a detox kit from a friend that he would try to use to flush drugs out of his system so that he could pass these tests. And at some point, I could tell, oh, he needs to be drunk or high, kind of to just manage his life at this point. When I knew that it was bad, was the night that he came over. He was completely wasted, he was speaking gibberish, but he climbs into my bed and just instantly falls asleep. A few hours later, I'm woken up by this weird noise. It sounds like water is running. And in the darkness, I can make out that he is standing in the corner of my room and he's facing the wall, like Blair Witch style creepy. I go over to see what's up, and he's fully naked, and he is peeing into my laundry basket. I'm so weirded out, and I'm trying to talk to him. He's not responding to anything that I'm saying. I try to get him to stop and I push him towards the bathroom down the hall. But as I'm doing this, I see that he has now peed to the point where his pee is pooling under the laundry basket and is now running all the way under my door and into the hallway. And before I know it, as I'm trying to make him go to the bathroom, he actually slips and falls like hard onto the floor, and he's laying naked in his own pee right outside my roommate's door. And I was freaking out because I didn't want to wake her up. I didn't want her to bear witness to any of this. But he's also like a really big guy. Like we're we're talking, like, think of Paul Bunyan, right? Like barrel chested. So now I'm dragging him naked in his own pee into the bathroom and trying to get him into the shower. It was an absolute nightmare. And he was not responding, right? He he was belligerent and he wasn't giving me anything to work with. He didn't even fully understand what had happened until the next morning. And this wasn't the only time he did that. He did it another time and he peed into my closet onto my favorite yellow sweater. But then something quite serious happened. I was away for the week visiting my parents on Vancouver Island, and I received a phone call from Steve one night, and he said, Okay, there's been an accident, uh, but I'm but I'm okay. And I was obviously concerned. I was like trying to get more details out of him, and he tells me, Well, I flipped a rig today. And I'm like, What? He had been transporting oil, and somehow he'd caused an accident, and he had flipped this oil tanker. And at that point, I don't think he was sure what was going to happen with his job. Maybe there was an investigation or a probation or something. I don't remember. But what I do remember was that it turns out that he had been hung. At the time. And that was the part that he took no accountability for. I remember thinking that the gravity of the situation would get through to him and like, thank God he hadn't been hurt. Thank God he hadn't hurt or killed someone else. But instead, he was angry. He was angry at his employers. He was saying it was unfair. He's like, oh, I can never catch a break and all the bosses are the same and the system's against me. And I actually, I don't remember if he was fired or if he quit. I think one of those things happened, but I can't, you know, find the proof in my memories. But hearing that just felt like a culmination of all of these situations that I'd witnessed or been a part of where he'd pass things off with this confidence and this bravado and almost an entitled energy at times, like the world owed him something, and that he should be able to do whatever he wanted whenever he wanted, regardless of those consequences that could possibly harm others. So at this point, I was starting to kind of put certain things together, and I was becoming, I guess you could say, a bit disillusioned in the relationship. But I continued to try harder. That was how I dealt with it. And that Valentine's Day, I wanted to pull out all the stops and just create a scenario where I could manufacture more deep connection or love or romance or just have an evening where I got to be in control. And therefore, I thought, well, nothing could go wrong, right? I had ordered a custom cake from my work, and I had one of the bakers help me uh personally decorate it. I left work early and I spent the afternoon cleaning his apartment, setting it all up. I'd bought this new spicy outfit. And look, I have no idea what I would have thought looked good at the time and definitely do not have a good track record. And I'm definitely concerned about what that was, but we will just leave that there because I don't remember. I also had dressed up underneath, you know, wearing some like special, like sexy red underwear or something like that. I'd rented kind of a sassy thriller movie that I actually wanted to see, and I'd researched it. I was like, okay, it's gotten really great reviews. We'll watch this. I splurged on a fancy red wine recommended by my brother, and I made an elevated version of Steve's favorite meal, man food. I don't know how I elevated it, probably by adding a more sophisticated cheese or something to, you know, make those crinkle-cut veggies pop with the macaroni noodles. I set the table, I lit candles, I put on my best of Al Green album that I had bought from the CD rack at the convenience store in the corner. And then I waited. It was like the ultimate Valentine's Day cliche, and I was determined to play this thing out no matter what. I was going to make this relationship real. I was going to prove that we were in love. I was going all in. I was like, this has to work. I'm going to feel the feelings that I need to feel that make me feel like I am desirable and we are in a real relationship. So he gets home late and he walks through into the kitchen and he puts a half-dead plant onto the table. And it has this little plastic stake in it and has sparkly writing that says, Happy V Day. And he says, Oh, I saw this at the gas station when I got gas. Okay, cool. But this is the main attraction. He then pulls out a puffy latex-looking metallic finished purple jacket. And he says, I got this on sale at the strip mall. It was only $25. So I'm looking at the dead plant and this aggressively like non-me jacket with all the sales stickers on it. And I'm saying, thank you. That's so thoughtful. I've never worn that color before. Wow, it has a pleather belt. That looks really handy. It looks really warm. And look, like I hope you know that it wasn't about the gifts, right? Like he could have drawn a heart on the back of a receipt and given that to me. And I would have been happy. It was about the delivery and the intention of the gifts. I felt like an afterthought. Like a cheap, dead plant that someone buys at a gas station, that thing that, oh, you almost forgot, but you remembered just enough to buy it when you saw it, when you paid for your gas. That's how I was starting to feel. After dinner, he fights me on the movie. He'd rather watch Miami Vice with Jamie Foxx, the movie that I already endured one week before. I finally was like, no, like I planned this evening and we're going to watch my sexy thriller movie. And so he says, Well, I need to get high. So he gets high. We watch my movie about 45 minutes in. He ends up just falling asleep on top of me before I could reveal any of my like sexy underwear surprise. So my expectations and projections for this person, for this relationship, were just spilling over at this point. For the most part, I just couldn't deny that I was having a one-sided experience, that I think I was maintaining to appear as if I was in a real relationship. But really, this person was just doing his own thing, and I was just there. That's the conclusion that I came to after this. But then, about a month later, my dad died suddenly in an accident. And Steve rose to the occasion. A few hours after I heard he offered to drive me all the way from Jasper to Vancouver Island, more than eight hours, includes a ferry ride, to get me there as soon as possible. And he was there with me in the hospital. He was there at the memorial. He helped run errands. He met some of my distant family. And of course, he made friends with all the locals at the pub at the marina by my parents' house. He was just a part of this pivotal experience, and that bonds you, you know, at a like a very human level. He had been witness to something very traumatic. And now we shared that. And after that, things changed for me. I've spoken about that experience in one of my first episodes. If you haven't listened, I'll link it below. But essentially, that spring and summer, I just muddled through each day and started to recognize that I had to make some big changes in my life. That exit that I had planned to make a year and a half earlier, before we officially got together, I realized, oh, that has to happen now. I couldn't wait for things to change with this relationship or with my job or with the town. And so I started to plan this trip with my friend, to take the Trans-Siberian Railway in the fall. And in Steve and Ara's relationship, it was kind of an unspoken thing as I was planning this trip. But I think it was also pretty apparent that, like, likely I was not going to be coming back after the trip. So the week before I officially ended things, I dropped by his place during my morning work break. It was like nine in the morning. And Steve was sitting stoned out of his mind, shirtless, on his couch in his boxer shorts, and he was holding an entire block of cheddar cheese with both of his hands, like as if it were a watermelon, and taking bites out of it. Now, a part of me remembers that moment as though I hadn't even entered the room, but I had kind of peered in from the hallway, seen this scene, and then left before he saw me. But I don't actually know if that's true. Then one morning, shortly after, I was taking a shower before work, and I heard an actual voice that said very clearly and calmly in my head, it's time. You need to break up now. And so I did. And it felt like this inevitable ending to this overdrawn story. And I was living with someone at the time who was fairly close with Steve. She was the woman who he often lamented about. And he said they had this long history. It was like a rather will they or won't they kind of story going on. And shortly after we broke up, she straight up asked me one night what it was like to date Steve. And I told her. And I said, he was an amazing friend. He's a great person, but he was not a good boyfriend. And that was true. And I don't think we would have ever seriously dated if I hadn't pursued him so heavily or consistently. This situation actually ended up turning the tables on my beliefs and fostered like a sense of greater insecurity because it was plain and simple from the start. We never should have been together, but I needed him to want me. And when I was in the relationship, I was desperately wanting it to be different or for him to be different. And yet here he was, openly and honestly, being himself the entire time. So it was me who was being false, who was contorting myself to be what I thought he wanted, so he would change into the person who would validate me in the way that I needed him to. And for those couple years, the year we spent sleeping together in the background, and the year plus that we spent in an actual relationship, I was always trying to find my place. I was looking to land somewhere that felt soft or normal or comfortable or safe, where I wasn't constantly having to push myself to be more to prove my worth or to enjoy things that I wasn't into. It was just never like a good match. And age did play a part in that, but also lifestyle, personality, experience. And yet, in that equation, I deduced that it was always me, like it seemed to always be me. I was the problem. I thought it was me. Something must be broken in me, that I don't like this stuff, that I don't want to watch Miami Vice again, that I don't want to eat at the gas station, that I don't want to go to the truck stuff, you know, that I don't want to get completely wasted and crawl on my stomach through a disgusting, creepy cave. Why? Why can't I just suck it up? Like something must be broken in me that I don't want to do this stuff, that I can't be what he needs me to be. Like, why can't I just let it go? Why can't I relax? Why do I care so much? But what I didn't realize was that I was just in the wrong place, you know, I would with the wrong people. Not objectively wrong, but just wrong for me. And I had landed in a purgatory of sorts where I couldn't move forward because the entire life and relationship I'd built were so far off from being authentic to me that I couldn't pretend anymore. And so ending that situation and fully leaving was long overdue. So after I went on that trip and I left town, that was the last time we ever saw each other. And I have only like good things and like positive feelings towards him in terms of his life. Those feelings are real. And I think that's what's so interesting. When you can go back and you can process things, then there's a recognition of exactly the lessons that you were meant to learn. He played the exact role that I needed him to to reflect back to me how I felt about myself, right? Where I needed to learn and grow. It's just when you are at that age and when we are in the lesson, you know, we're not seeing that. But now it, of course, there's space and there's distance, but it's also from going back and reliving it that has helped me have an even clearer picture of what that is. And so that's that's how it ended. And that was ending a chapter that was long overdue for me in my life, not just in that relationship, but in who I thought I was and what I needed and where I needed to go. So this just might be the last episode of my sex and relationship series, I think. For now, anyway, in terms of what I felt called to reprocess and share and let go of. It's not that this was the end of relationships for me. I mean, this story ends when I was 22 years old and I'm 41 now. So there's more, but these were the major experiences that really shaped me and set me up for how I related to men and sex and relationships in general, some of which I've actually talked about elsewhere. I just want to thank you for following along and for listening. And I truly feel different coming out of this, I guess, extended sharing because it's not a static experience. I've been reliving and processing everything I've shared in real time, and that's taken time, right? It's it's taken just over a year to share all of these very specific stories around this narrative. And yeah, this is real for me. And now I've got more space for other things. And what I've learned has far more to do with me and my patterns and how I've learned things and how I've moved through my life and been in connection with others than it really has to do with any of the men that I've actually talked about. And I feel like I've kind of, I don't know, rescued some part of myself that's been stuck back in the early 2000s, agonizing over why she's not good enough. Now she's here and she's with me, and she recognizes she's like, oh, nothing was ever wrong with me. She was just, you know, finding her way. And that's, yeah, that's what life is, right? We we figure it out along the way. And those places where maybe we got lost or stuck or were still in our pain or our suffering or our confusion. If we can sit with those things, if we can actually open up to them and allow them to take us on whatever weird journey, I didn't think this was going to take me over a year to share all of this. I didn't even really know if I wanted to share it before, but obviously it had to happen. And now this this has changed me. So yeah, thank you. And if you feel called, I would love if you left me a review or a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, like any of those things. It really does make the world of difference for me. So if you've been following along and you feel called, that would be amazing. And until then, I've got much more to share as we go along. So thanks again, and yeah, I'll see you in the next episode. Okay, bye.
