The Anarchists

I remember, like, waking up one morning

-and being very depressed. Yeah.

And I was depressed about the realization

that all these people that I thought were gonna be

the greatest people I'd ever get to know,

um, some of them were just flat-out assholes.

And that realization was very dramatic.

When the universe tells us it's time,

-it's not quiet at all. -(CHUCKLES)

At least, I'm listening.

It hits us over the back of the head pretty hard.

All of a sudden, everything that we had built,

everything that we had loved and embraced,

and was living for, was falling apart.

The freedom movement, the conference,

Acapulco, like everything.

-(WAVES CRASHING) -(SEAGULLS SQUAWKING)

It felt like the authenticity had

kinda been drained in a way.

The resounding symbolism, for me,

was that a meteor hit the pyramid.

A meteor crashed on the pyramid, you know? (LAUGHS)

We were in love with that place.

Now, Acapulco's just a puddle of bad memories.

So I was determined to leave.

We were done, like so done.

Uh, it was, uh, somebody that...

This is no longer an interest for us. It's...

It's just a bunch of shit.

When you look at true anarchists,

true people who really understand the philosophy,

that's less than point-one percent

of people on Earth.

There's not too many instances of these sort of people

gravitating to one area.

And in many ways it's been absolutely fabulous,

but it's not perfect, whatsoever.

We started out wanting to fight the government,

but we ended up fighting ourselves.

But I think that's a stage of evolution.

It's just a-- an evolution of growth.

-(INDISTINCT CHATTER) Make some noise!

Let's go motherfuckers!

I think it's preparing us to be stronger

for way harder times to come.

-(BELL TOLLING IN THE DISTANCE) -(WAVES CRASHING)

I bounced around for a little while...

and then I ended up moving to Morelia, Mexico.

When I moved to Morelia, I was, like... (SIGHS)

...I was a real big hermit.

I was depressed and I was real anxious,

and I was just trying to survive.

I had to first become comfortable being alone

'cause I'd never been alone before.

Everything with John, like that was the first time

I was truly alone.

I was trying to process all of it.

And I started to see the relationship with John

for what it actually was

and not what I had always wanted it to be.

If I'm being honest,

my relationship with John was awful.

It had its great highlights that kept me around,

but, like, neither of us were happy for most of it.

We'd almost broke up many times.

And it just took admitting all of that.

I didn't have very much self-esteem,

and he had a habit of kind of putting the bigger things

on me when they went wrong.

So, I was very much feeling the guilt.

I had kind of internalized it by that point.

Then he told me I was useless,

and that I shouldn't have crossed the border with him.

We had two phases in our relationship...

"I fuckin' hate you,"

and "You and me against the world, baby!"

I just put up with so much shit because I had zero examples

of what love and relationships were supposed to be like.

I had no memories of my parents together, for example.

There were no happy memories of Mom and Dad.

Everything just kept pushing us out of Acapulco...

...and so we drove.

We packed up our stuff and we moved.

We had a couple of places that were on our radar

that were within an eight-to-ten-hour drive

from Acapulco.

And one of them was San Miguel.

We found a couple of places we really liked,

and one of them that we ended up going with

was across the street from a park.

I mean, it was just beautiful.

We had talked about another conference

and that inspired us for a little bit.

But Nathan slowly, slowly got more,

um, withdrawn.

Nathan had always been a drinker,

but his drinking took on a different level.

He would start drinking at 10:00 in the morning.

He basically became depressed...

'cause there had been so much possibility

with the community, with the conference.

But it had fallen apart, and he felt like it was a shame.

There were so many nights

where he would be crying in my lap

and like hyperventilating and shaking

and just on his knees, trying to figure out

what we did wrong.

I just had to figure out what I wanted

to do with my life and my future.

It was just, like, I had to be able to talk to people

and stop being so afraid of everything.

As devastating as Shane's death

will always be for her,

it was nice to be able to see my granddaughter-in-law

move forward.

Susan is a saint of a woman.

After John died, she hugged me and she was like,

"Take a couple months to yourself.

But in a couple months, if you meet somebody nice,

don't ignore him 'cause you're too traumatized." (CHUCKLES)

And I was like, "Are you telling me

to date somebody in a couple months?"

She's like, "That's exactly what I'm saying."

I had a, like, friend that was going on, like, weekly hikes.

He was getting me out of the house,

him and his girlfriend.

And I went out on a hike with them,

and halfway up the mountain on this hike...

I met this really, really tall Mexican.

When I met her in the forest, it was just,

like, an accident.

But, you know, it's like saying,

how is that accidents become so meaningful?

We just saw each other and I began

to ask questions like...

Because I thought she was a mere tourist.

Yeah. He was asking me questions and I was just like,

"Ah, crap, he speaks English."

"I'm not ready for this."

I have been totally alienated from this thing

in the anarchists in Acapulco. I knew nothing about it.

So he Googled me and then he found all of the...

Yeah, that same night. And it was like,

-"Okay. Oh, I see." -(CHUCKLES)

and shat his pants as he was like, "Murder?"

But he still went for it.

-My mind was... -Running.

...was running quite fast.

I questioned all the things in your story

that were not clear to me, right.

But the story itself was, like, not so surprising to me

because of the drug war in Mexico.

There are so many stories that are so similar.

And, well, I just thought they were very naive

by living as they were.

It was, like, these gringos are certainly alienated,

isolated, from the rest of Mexicans.

...summit there. All kinds of stuff,

so really looking forward to seeing you down

in Anarchapulco.

Uh, this year is gonna be a-- a ton of fun.

For people who don't know, it's Anarchapulco February 13th to 16th.

An incredible, incredible place.

And we still have our promo code, WRC,

where you get 40-percent off tickets.

Come and be a part of the incredible things

This is where the conference is gonna go on.

Let's try to walk in. Let's see what we can get in here...

The same thing every single person

that's ever gone has ever said is,

"The best thing about Anarchapulco

is the other people at Anarchapulco."

You just get to meet, you know, hundreds or thousands of people

that you just generally don't get to meet

in your sort of day-to-day life for the most part.

I heard from Anarchapulco.

Somebody called me and was basically, like,

"Would you be open-minded to speaking?"

And I told her, I was like...

"I'll consider it, but honestly, like,