Justin True: Do something great...
It’s 6.00am on the west coast of Oregon, USA and Justin True joins me from his garage, the only spot in the house to get a full wi-fi signal, first coffee of the day in hand. For the last year he had been living life in London, UK, his job on nuclear plants allowing him to work remotely, but for now he is back in his hometown in the US working on plans for his next challenge, which has been pushed back to November 2021 due to gaining interest from a documentary film company.
The challenge came about when Justin was chatting to a friend from back home whilst he was working away in Connecticut on the far East coast.“I hadn’t visited home for some time” he says, “so I said to my friend ‘why don’t I cycle home across America and raise some money for charity.’
However, a lot of people had already done the same, so to up the stakes and make it ‘a bit more crazy’, Justin decided that he should add a run and a swim to the challenge. So later this year, he will embark on America’s unofficial longest triathlon, consisting of a 50-mile swim, through the tip of the Bermuda Triangle, from the Bahamas to Miami, followed by a 3000-mile bike ride across the southern states to San Diego and finishing with a 600-mile run north up to San Francisco.
But Justin is no stranger to setting personal challenges. In June 2019, he rode a tandem bike around the Cascade Mountains in conjunction with Cycling4Gaza, a charity who raise funds and awareness for vital healthcare and education projects for children in Gaza. The same year in July, he ran a full distance triathlon carrying a 92lb homemade concrete hammer after a friend commented that he ‘looked like Thor’ with his long flowing locks. Then in August, he ran a marathon whilst pulling a car and in September he walked across Madagascar.
He says, “For me it’s simple. The thrill is in doing the challenge to try and raise money for someone or something. I feel fulfilled when I’m doing something to help others, so 2019 was a great year in that respect. I now want to get back on track with that. I felt like I’d accomplished a lot in 2019, so when Covid-19 came along, 2020 just felt like a really flat year, as it did for a lot of people.”
I couldn’t help but wonder where Justin’s motivation came from to selflessly put himself through all this, in order to help raise funds for others. And that’s when he touched on his own story, which I know he struggles to fully share. “It’s cool if you don’t want to go there”, I said, but I’m glad he opened up with such honesty.
Justin grew up in a small rural town in California with his older brother and his Mum and Dad, in what he refers to as a ‘picture perfect family’, on the outside. But the outside is where ‘perfect’ ends. His father, rarely present, was abusive, both mentally and physically, and his older brother spent the majority of the time trying to ‘kill him’, whilst high on drugs and flirting with a jail sentence. “There were all sorts of conspiracies in our town about my father being an international drug lord.” Justin says. “He owned a towing company and frequently transported million-dollar supercars across America to Miami and New York. It made no sense to me why someone would want him to be doing that from a tiny little town in California. Then there was a period of time when the Chief of Police would be hanging out at our house, along with the head of the California Hell’s Angels Chapter.”
“my brother would pull a knife on me and hold it to my back, just to get the upper hand”
Now looking back, Justin recalls how ‘dodgy’ it must have looked. He believes his father’s abusive nature reflected heavily onto his brother’s behaviour and, as a result, if the two boys were left alone, it would always end up with them fighting. “We weren’t fighting like normal siblings though,” Justin remembers, now laughing at how stupid it seems. “My brother would pull a knife on me and hold it to my back, just to get the upper hand. He would demand I did what he told me, silly things like cleaning something, or just moving something. It was all about control. He’d lock me in the dog pen and flame torch me through the wire fence by lighting a deodorant can.”
He recalls one particularly notable escalation after turning off his brother’s video console mid-game to provoke him. “He was on house arrest at the time, so I knew if I ran away, he couldn’t chase me. But it didn’t stop him. He chased me all the way down our street screaming with an electric chainsaw in hand.”
Justin admits he was no saint as a child either and was just part of an aggressive family, his mother was the peacekeeper who held everything together. “My mum was, and still is an absolute saint” he says. “She kept my brother, and me to some degree, out of jail on numerous occasions.” But during the housing crash of the early noughties, the family got hit hard and lost everything.
The crisis caused his parents to separate and whilst his father remained in California, his mother moved away up to Oregon. His brother became heavily involved with increasingly harder drugs, frequenting juvenile detention centres and by the time he was 17 years old, had his first overdose. As his mother began to build a new life for herself and a new relationship started to develop, Justin, missing his friends, decided to move back down to California and stay with his father, although openly admitting ‘hating who his father was’.
Although still around today, Justin doesn’t see his father anymore, talking about him in the past tense. “My father was a really abusive, manipulative person” he says. “To this day I don’t really know how he did it, but he befriended my mother’s new boyfriend and over time, turned him against her. She became really uncomfortable with it all and broke off the relationship, which is when my dad saw his opportunity and convinced him to harm her in a revenge attack.”
Whilst Justin’s mother was working at the local supermarket, her now ex-boyfriend entered the store and brutally stabbed her several times in the back and jugular. Although close to losing her life, she survived the attack and Justin, upon hearing the shocking news, flew to visit her in hospital. He recalls that day. “My brother picked me up from the airport and it was the first time in our lives we’d actually spoken to each other properly. He was teary and the first thing he said to me as we hugged was ‘I love you’. It was a profoundly emotional moment after a childhood spent fighting one another.”
Justin, who was only 15 years old at the time, believes that trip was a significant moment in his life. “I was told by doctors that ‘I needed to hold it together’, because my mother was so weak, and if I cried and upset her, it could be fatal. She was lying in a bed, cocooned with blankets and bandages to keep her warm, wires everywhere connecting her to a ventilator. I decided in that moment that I was going to be strong and not let anything get to me.”
Unfortunately, his brother once again turned to drugs, struggling with the ordeal and although his mother was now home growing in strength, in the following months, Justin found himself back in the same hospital, nowlooking out for his brother, who continued to overdose. “For the next six years I tried to be the one person my mother and brother could lean on, I guess absorbing all punches and shielding them both from the pain” he says, obviously still emotional on reflection. “My brother finally got himself clean, ten years after the accident and we are now close.” But unbeknown to Justin, the years of supporting his family, physically and emotionally, took its toll. He continues “I was working multiple jobs to support them financially, as well as trying to better myself by attending university. It was tough going for years and working all hours gave little time for sleep. After graduating for my degree, I guess my body finally stopped and took stock of everything, and that’s when it all hit me. Remaining strong for so long, missing out on being a teenager and bottling up my emotions, I broke down into a severe depression and became suicidal. I didn’t like life anymore. Nothing seemed important and nothing about it was fun. The easiest way to stop the hurt was to end it.”
“I didn’t like life anymore. Nothing seemed important and nothing about it was fun”
It’s incredibly brave of Justin to express those feelings and to be able to sit and even have this conversation, may be a sign of the times. What I’ve learned dealing with my own PTSD is that talking is helping. I ask him how he thinks he managed to bring himself out of that mindset. “I had a realisation that the hurt I would be causing others with grief, would be far greater than the reality of the hurt I was feeling myself” he says. “Ultimately, I guess I decided that I needed to be around to protect my family. I found MMA fighting (Mixed Martial Arts), which taught me how to fight and defend, but also taught me about discipline.”
After fighting for a number of years, he decided in order to really move on, he needed to break the life cycle he was in. With the only savings he had, Justin decided to go travelling and booked a one-way ticket to Bali. “Seeing the world and how other people live, really opened my eyes” he says. “I’d say it actually saved me and changed my life. It showed me how much more there was to life, how amazing people and culture are. My mum had always wanted to go to Australia and so over time, I saved up whilst working in various places to pay for her to join me there. To be able to give that back to her after everything she’d done for us in life was incredible, it gave me a sense of purpose again.”
It’s hard to gauge just how much it means to Justin over a video link, but I can sense the emotion still. He says “We all have ups and down in life. Some good days and some bad days. But what I’ve come to realise, is that if I’m feeling low in the moment, it will change. There is always the chance that the next day, or even the day after that, might be ‘my day to shine’.
On the outside Justin comes across as being chilled out. He’s confident, positive and wears a big smile. But the reality is, he’s had to sacrifice so much to get to where he is today. Never giving in and always looking forward, his attitude to life is nothing short of inspiring. But he’s a modest guy too, one who has found a way to channel his emotions positively, now investing his energy into helping others going through their own struggles.
You can follow Justin and the build up to his latest challenge on Instagram @therealjustintrue raising funds for The JED Foundation.
