Preface

I spent twenty-two years learning to be visible, only to discover that becoming real is not the same as staying real.

As a very young child, I hid behind a telephone pole when my mother told me to go play with the other kids. Not because I was playing hide-and-seek, but because without a secure base at home, I didn't know how to reach out to the world. I climbed trees and disappeared into the woods—not to escape the neighborhood, but to escape my parents. From the sudden punch or kick that could come out of nowhere. From parents who built a pool and took us to Disney but never once asked if I was happy, never seemed to notice or care who I actually was. 

Even as a child, I could see the disconnect—the performance of family for the outside world, the indifference behind closed doors. By fourteen, I was asking questions I had no language for yet: Why are you doing these things for us when you don't actually care? The only time I remember being held was around age three or four, in swimming lessons, my arms wrapped around the young instructor's neck, and even then I felt certain I didn't deserve it.

By high school, I had perfected invisibility. I sat silent in classrooms, never called upon, a ghost among my peers. I went away to college and immediately started counseling—not because I believed I could change, but because I couldn't keep living this way. I set goals: speak in class, ask someone out. 

For most of my undergraduate years, I remained the third person with every couple—best friend to both the boyfriend and girlfriend, even best man at a wedding, but never part of a couple myself. I finally got two dates my senior year—one date each with two different people. I never spoke in class. I'd come so far, but something fundamental was still missing.

Then, in 1990, after graduating from Georgia Tech, I was seen through the eyes of love. For the first time in my life, I had proof that I was special, that I mattered, that I was real. It was the missing piece—the experiential knowledge that no amount of therapy alone could provide. She died at the end of that same year, and for a time I wondered: what good is it to find this love and have it taken away so suddenly? But something had awakened in me that couldn't be undone.

In April of 1992, I took a microphone and read poetry, choosing to be the center of attention for the first time in my life. Three months later, I met Lynn. What followed over the next eight years—from 1992 through 2000—were years of success and joy beyond my wildest dreams. Graduate school in 1993, becoming a therapist in 1996, full licensure in 1998. Leading therapy groups and counseling couples despite having gotten only two dates in all of college. Building a life with Lynn—enduring love and earned secure attachment, learning in adulthood what I should have known as an infant. 

I want you to understand what's possible. I could have become like so many others who can only connect with narcissists like their parents because it's familiar. I want to show you that it doesn't have to be that way. That even from a childhood like mine, you can find real connection, meaningful work, genuine love. The kind of success that looked, for all the world, like I'd been cured of my past.

By July of 2000, everything seemed perfect. By September, I'd lost it all.

And that's when I learned what I'm still learning now: psychological wounds don't heal like broken bones or diseases cured by vaccines. You can grow, transform, build a beautiful life—and then lose it and discover that all your old patterns are still there, waiting. Letting my parents back into my life recreated the trauma of childhood. By my mid-fifties, I finally did what I should have done decades earlier: I cut off all contact with my family. This is the story of learning to be real, forgetting I was real, and finding my way back—not to where I was, but to something I'm still discovering. This time, with tools I'm learning to use.

My Invitation

Have you ever felt invisible? Not just shy or like a wallflower, but truly unseen—not noticed, not known for who you really are? Noticed social anxiety in yourself? This book is for you.

You might also recognize yourself here if you grew up in a home where you had many things, but your feelings were never validated or didn't seem to matter. Where everything looked normal from the outside - maybe you even say things were good, you weren't abused—but somehow you became responsible for a parent's happiness or emotional needs. That's called covert narcissism, and it's more common than you might think. And narcissistic patterns don't only show up with parents, they can appear in partners and other relationships throughout our lives.

This isn't about blaming parents. It's about understanding what happened and finding your way forward. As the title states, this book covers Complex-PTSD and/or Developmental Trauma—regardless of where those wounds originated.

You may not relate to everything in these pages—everyone's experiences manifest in different ways. Because we have much to cover, take it slowly. I hope you'll relate and know you are not alone.

Introduction to Part I – When Love Was Still Unimaginable

There was a time in my life when I didn’t even know how to dream.

Not because I lacked imagination, but because I had never known joy - the kind of joy that opens the heart to possibility. Before college, I wasn’t thinking about what I wanted, or what might make me happy. 

When I first sat down with a counselor at Georgia Tech in 1984, I didn’t know that I was beginning a journey that would lead to love, healing, and a life beyond anything I’d known.

I was just trying to survive.

College felt overwhelming. I had no real social skills. I had spent my adolescence in silence, invisible in my classrooms, uncertain in my own skin. I didn’t know how to connect. I didn’t know what it meant to belong. And so I found myself, at age eighteen, walking into a campus counseling office - not because I had a vision for the future, but because I felt I wouldn’t make it on my own.

I had no idea then that this search for support would lead me not just to stability, but to profound transformation.

If I had ever taken the time to dream, I would never have been at Georgia Tech and studying engineering.

I’d like to say that I experienced joy and success beyond my wildest dreams, but the fact is that when I walked into the Counseling and Career Planning building and into the office with my counselor, I had never thought about what I wanted. Nothing could be more meaningless for me than engineering. No career direction could be more inappropriate for me than engineering. 

In addition, what my parents had given me was fear. That was their greatest gift. Initially it was fear of them. I guess they took the verses from the Bible that said that “beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord” literally and they used that as a template for what they were seeking. Not respect but fear of one’s parents. 

Undoubtedly, there are obviously more disturbing stories of abuse. Stories that would inspire almost anyone to value the role of Child Protective Services, even those who otherwise are hesitant to see the goodness of what Child Protective Services (CPS) is tasked with doing. My second wife would tell me about how much more brutal and violent her father was. Undoubtedly there are arguments about overzealously involving CPS and those who think that a child is just oppositional when it comes to any rules. That wasn’t me. I did wish that CPS would have come to examine the things that were happening to us. 

Let me state that again. I don’t want there to be any confusion or uncertainty. As a child, I wanted CPS to get involved and ask us, as me, if I was a victim of child abuse! If that happened, I would have been talking for hours and hours describing things that were happening, and I would have been put in foster care. It would have been far from ideal, but it was what I desperately needed. 

It wasn’t just fear of them that I learned but fear of the world. I was made to fear all the things that could go wrong if I didn’t do everything right - get into a great college/university. For this to happen I had to get straight A’s. It’s ironic that I didn’t question this wisdom since my brother and sister could not begin to approach my begin to approach the grades I was achieving in much more advanced courses. By high school I was taking advanced placement classes for those on track to enter a prestigious and challenging university and I was getting straight A’s. 

Looking back, I now understand that what I was really searching for was attachment - the kind of secure, mutual, loving connection I had never experienced growing up. My family, though outwardly intact, was emotionally barren. The messages I received from them - explicit and implied - taught me not to trust closeness, not to expect to be wanted, and not to believe I mattered.

But slowly, that would begin to change.

This first part of the memoir traces that journey - from a shy, uncertain person to someone who not only found their voice but found love. First in the brief but life-changing relationship with Celta. Then, more fully and enduringly, with Lynn. It was through these relationships that I came to understand what safety, intimacy, and joy truly felt like.

This is the story of earned secure attachment. Of discovering what I had never known to want. Of realizing that life could be more than survival - it could be beautiful.

I didn’t know, then, that it wouldn’t last forever. And I certainly didn’t know how deeply it would hurt to lose it all.

That part comes later.

However, one cannot know or appreciate loss without first discovering joy, expansiveness, connection, and a life where one is allowed to dream because one has no idea that those dreams can’t come true. So, the first half of this book is a love story. But it doesn’t start that way. I have to tell you where I came from and what life was like from the earliest days of my life. 

Dear Reader,

I've spent years studying the craft of writing, and I know that a compelling narrative should evoke emotion and draw you into the story through vivid scenes and immersive detail. I've also been studying the latest research in psychology and neuroscience that has profoundly influenced how I understand and tell my story. Yet for this first section, I must break a cardinal rule of storytelling—I will be telling you rather than showing you much of what happened.

This isn't a failure of memory or craft, but a consequence of survival.

Through a combination of dissociation (what laypeople call "blocking out memories") and years of intensive therapy, the specific details of repeated physical assaults by my parents—and yes, I use the word "assaults" deliberately, as these were not punishments but acts of violence—have been processed, metabolized, and in many cases, dissolved. What remains are the memories of having nightmares about these events, the somatic imprints of fear, and the knowledge that these things happened without the accompanying sensory details that would make for gripping narrative.

When my sister engages in gaslighting about our childhood, the confusion isn't about which particular incident she's disputing—it's that there were so many that they blur together in a haze of normalized terror.

This section chronicles my journey through shyness, social anxiety, and what might be best characterized as social phobia – a fear so complete that it required total avoidance. Paradoxically, by avoiding what I feared most, I never experienced the typical anxiety symptoms others describe. No sweaty palms, no racing heart as I contemplated asking someone on a date. Instead, there was simply... absence. A void where connection should have been.

I'll share stories from my college years, including my experiences with two young women I dated—each relationship lasting exactly one date—as I began the slow work of emerging from my invisible shell.

The background in this section is essential groundwork. At twenty-three, I experienced what felt like waking up for the first time in my life. We're not there yet. That awakening, that full immersion into living—that begins in Section Two, where the narrative becomes what you'd expect from a memoir: immediate, sensory, emotionally resonant.

Recent research, as Lisa Feldman Barrett explores in "How Emotions Are Made," reveals there are no single necessary characteristics of any emotion. This understanding has been crucial in making sense of my own experience—why my anxiety didn't look like textbook anxiety, why my trauma responses were more absence than presence.

For now, I ask for your patience as we traverse this necessary landscape of context. Think of this section as the foundation upon which the house of my story will be built. Some details might feel sparse, but they represent what remains after the essential work of healing has been done.

Before I ever knew the word for "shame," I had already absorbed its weight. Not from a single moment of humiliation, but from a slow erosion of safety—emotional neglect that left me starving for comfort, for gentleness, for someone to notice my fear and say, "You're okay."

The earliest years of my life are not defined by memories but by their absence—by the hollow space where warmth should have been. And in that silence, shame grew. It would shape the way I spoke—or didn't speak—the way I looked at others, and how I would eventually disappear from my own life without realizing I was gone.

One might think that "nobody remembers the earliest years of their life," but I am talking about what I knew when I was very young—that I would not have fond or happy memories with my parents.

The earliest years of life can only be discerned from secondhand stories we're told. As a toddler, my parents bought me a fire truck, and when it made a sound, I was terrified. I can only imagine, from the story and my later experiences, that I wouldn't have received the comfort I would have offered a child myself. No soothing words telling me everything was okay and that I was safe. Instead, my parents told this story with frustration, lacing their voices.

It's the opposite of how I respond to my cat when a pot or pan falls to the floor and startles him. I gently call him back with soothing sounds: "Come here, Kitty, it's okay, you're okay." Yes, I named my cat Kitty.

These were the years of emotional deprivation.

The Birth of Shame

My earliest memory is of water.

Learning to swim with an instructor who was in her late teens or early twenties. I am four or five. The indoor pool at the Y. The warmth of the water against my skin. The vastness of it—stretching beyond my reach.

I remember floating near the wall, small and weightless. Swimming toward the instructor. Then, a moment of panic. The deep end offered no bottom to secure myself. My arms flailed; my breath caught in my throat.

I saw the instructor was nearby. I don't know what gave me courage, but I leapt. I wrapped my arms around her, clinging to her like my life depended on it. She steadied me, her arms firm, unshaken. My heart pounded against her shoulder, but she didn't let go.

I was safe.

But something else lingered. Not just relief. Something deeper. Something I wasn't meant to have.

I wasn't supposed to know what it felt like to be held. To be protected. To be cared for. And even at four or five years old, I knew that.

That is the birth of shame.

This was the first time I knew what it felt like to be held—and the first time I knew I wasn't supposed to want it. The indifference I knew from my family told a story about who I was and how I should think of myself.

The House of Unspoken Rules and Child Abuse

I don't remember my parents ever holding me like that swimming instructor.

In my family, affection was something distant, implied rather than given. Love was duty. Gratitude was expected. Respect was mandatory and not earned.

My father, Bruce Sr., was a man of unshakable silence. He believed actions spoke louder than words, but his actions were cold efficiency—he provided, and that was enough. My mother, Kathy, was a storm you learned to anticipate, never knowing when lightning would strike.

There was a chill in the air, a tension that wrapped around me like a vice. It was the kind of silence that demanded submission, not understanding.

I never looked directly at my father's face. I kept my gaze down, or slightly averted, as if instinctually avoiding something dangerous. The thought going through my mind was that I should not expect an easy explanation of what I did wrong. My mother's nature was more volatile, though that would become more obvious later in life.

I felt that I was being met with a general sense of disapproval for being.

Later in life, I would become incredibly skilled at reading people's body language. I had so much to learn because I purposefully chose to avoid observing the looks of general disapproval.

Refuge and Frailty

Our maternal grandparents were our refuge, our shield. They moved in with us when we were very young. Grandpa had my mother when he was 48 and my Grandma was 40, which meant that when I was born, my grandmother was 66 and Grandpa was 72. For whatever reason, they didn't age well, which shaped my impression about what it meant to get old.

On one hand, they were a refuge just by their position as parental figures to my parents. On the other hand, they were frail. My grandfather had lost his vision. This created a sense of distance that is uncomfortable for me to write into words. I remember the skin hanging off my grandmother's arms, her legs were discolored, and she had a scar or mark on her leg. Grandma was staying in the dining room that had been converted into a bedroom. She needed a walker to get around. Grandpa stayed upstairs.

In retrospect, I wonder now what could have reduced them to such weakness. This distance that existed as a result of me seeing them as old and unhealthy kept me from having the true relationship that many children have with their grandparents. To this day, I am shocked to discover that some people are grandparents who don't bear any of the signs of what "old" was imprinted upon my childhood mind to mean.

I remember Grandma standing up for me—her frail voice telling my parents, "Don't hurt him." I might have been 10 years old at that time. That small moment, that whisper of resistance, was the only time someone tried to intervene.

Grandpa would worry about me lifting too much when I joined him to take out the garbage once a week, stacking the garbage pails in a way that would ensure dogs couldn't get into them. He was very protective of me and worried about me getting hurt. I was concerned about not being a wimp or a sissy—which is not what Grandpa intended—but being a tiny boy made me feel a pull away from being seen as weak.

The Art of Hiding

I began to hide. In Kindergarten, I literally hid behind a chair instead of walking up to the front of the room with my milk money.

We lived in Southington, Connecticut, near the end of a dead-end street. There were woods around our home, a small mountain (Ragged Mountain), and trees to climb. This offered a way for me to hide by myself in the woods.

Around this age, there was one incident where a few boys taunted me. This would not be repeated. My life was not defined by any form of bullying or torment from other kids.

I recall at about age 8 or 9, my mother ushered me out to play with the neighborhood kids after school. I found a telephone pole and hid behind it, my small body pressed against the rough wood, hoping no one would notice me. The world felt too big, too loud, too dangerous. Maybe if I just stay here, no one will notice. Maybe if no one sees me, I can't get hurt.

A Brief Respite

Then the world felt safe in third grade. I was still thin, but I wasn't afraid. I had a friend, Paul Plourde, and that made all the difference. His presence was like armor—with him beside me, I could face anything.

One day, I sat at my desk in Mrs. Felt's classroom when a girl named Donna stood up and declared, "I like Bruce!" My face burned crimson. Then, to make things worse, she leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. Back then, before 5th or 6th grade, boys didn't like girls. The age-old idea of girls having cooties was part of our culture, this bizarre notion that we could get infected by being touched by a member of the opposite sex who was the same age as us.

When Donna said this, the class erupted in giggles. Heat crawled up my neck, spreading to my ears. I didn't know what to do, so I said the first thing that came to mind, the thing I thought boys were supposed to say: "I hate girls."

Mrs. Felt chuckled and turned to the other teacher in the room. "Aren't they a cute couple?"

It's strange, the game we played when we were kids. When did it change—by 5th or 6th grade, when it was suddenly okay to admit that you liked girls?

After my grandparents died, the house grew colder. Not in temperature, but in spirit. The small sense of safety I’d known vanished, and in its place was silence—mine. By junior high, I was no longer just a shy boy. I had become a ghost in my own story. I sat in classrooms for years without speaking. Not once. I learned to disappear so well that I even convinced myself I had chosen it. But I hadn’t. What I had chosen—without knowing—was survival. Because silence was safer than wanting, and wanting something—friendship, affection, love—meant risking the confirmation that I didn’t matter.

Family and Friends

I had Paul as my best friend in the neighborhood, and that gave me immense confidence. I could stand my ground and know that he would rescue me if anyone dared to try to mess with me. As I mentioned, Paul moved into the neighborhood in 3rd grade, giving me confidence at school for at least one year; perhaps it carried over into 4th grade.

The problem was that it was obvious to my mother that I preferred my cousins and my aunt to them. It should not have been surprising. My mother had such a temper.

Kathy, my mother, would punch, slap, kick, push, and throw things at me when she lost her temper. Her rage was a physical force which somehow didn’t leave obvious bruises that would have gained the attention of our extended family. .

I made a vow in the quiet of I I ddmy childhood bedroom:

• I will never become like them.
• I will never lose my temper.
• I will never let anyone feel unsafe because of me.

I would spend my whole life keeping that promise, even when it meant swallowing my own pain.

I did share the stories about the abuse with my aunt, my cousins - Sharon and Karen - and with Barbara, the daughter of Karen. Barbara was about my age. And it wasn’t like it was normalized. Barbara never suggested that her mother, Karen, ever hit her. Sharon worked at the Department of Social Services and so it seems like she would have been obligated to report suspected abuse.

I spent my time trying to predict whether there was a pattern to when my mother, Kathleen Whealton, would lose control and become violent. Was it PMS?

No. It was strange that as an early teenager I was having to think about things like this!

I had wanted to be removed from this family and placed in foster care. I wanted out. I wanted to escape. I wasn’t as brave as my friend Paul who chose to leave his parents and move into our fort in the woods.

Anyway, getting back to the extended family…

At every family gathering, I was thrust into the role of entertainer for my younger cousins who demanded supervision—if they were to wander off to the park down the street or venture into the woods to climb trees, I had to be there. In those charged moments, every laugh and every small adventure ignited a fierce yearning within me. I was beginning to understand a burning truth: I wanted to be a parent well before adulthood when such things would be possible. With every tiny life I looked after, I felt an almost desperate surge of being needed, of being significant—of finally being seen.

The child in me was also set free. I could see a child wanting that from their parents - a chance to connect in a real way with one’s adult parents.

I did spend time with Dan from time to time, though those encounters came with conflicting emotions. I vividly remember one time when he invited me to join a brutal game of tackle football—a violent, raw display of physical contact that tore open memories of my mother’s explosive anger, mirroring her harshness in every potential collusion with another person. I couldn’t really tackle anyone and I hoped no one noticed that.

But what truly consumed me was the time I spent with Barbara. We would simply be together, wandering the stark, fluorescent halls of the mall or just lingering in the sanctuary of her downstairs bedroom. There, as she prepared herself—dabbing on makeup or trying on outfits—I would sit silently, yearning for the quiet validation that came from merely sharing the same space. In that unspoken communion, every blink of her attention made me feel less like an invisible shadow and more like a living, breathing presence.

Deep down, an undercurrent of anxious shame stirred—a twisted fear that someone might misconstrue my longing for validation as something else, something forbidden. She was very pretty, and though I sometimes wondered if my feelings were misread, the truth was far simpler: she saw me, she acknowledged me, and for a moment, I could believe I mattered.

Then there was the overwhelming salvation of my extended family—a lifeline in a world that had been frozen by the callous indifference of my parents. The stark isolation that left even my sister distant was suddenly broken by the warmth of my cousins and aunt. I craved human contact with an intensity that bordered on desperation, and even the slightest gestures—a hug from Aunt Maureen, Karen, Sharon, Linda, or Barbara—filled that cavernous void within, feeding my hunger for connection in ways I could barely articulate.

Yet the bitter taste of validation was always accompanied by the sting of neglect. When Barbara canceled plans—perhaps to be with someone else, someone not bound by familial ties—the cold, cutting voice of my mother echoed in my mind: "They have their own lives." Those words were like a knife to my heart, reinforcing the painful notion that my existence was barely worth a moment's consideration. It was a brand of rejection that threatened to shatter my fragile sense of self, feeding the seeds of an ambivalent attachment that scarred me deeply.

And then there was that haunting moment when my mother, tangled in jealousy and bitterness, suggested that I was naïve to expect refuge from my cousins—perhaps she meant Sharon, Karen, or Aunt Maureen. "Do you think they are going to let you live with them?" she snapped, her words dripping with disdain. In that moment, a brutal reality cut through me: I was stranded in a barren wilderness with no sanctuary for the wounded parts of my inner and true self.

I wasn't wanted. Yet, a part of me hoped I could still find my way to belonging.

Caught in that unwantedness, I began to see the foundation of who I might become—a person yearning to matter, to be noticed, to be chosen. Yet, I was conflicted, wondering if I would ever truly unlearn the painful lessons of my childhood, find a voice that had been silenced, and emerge visible after years of being unseen.

Breaking Free from My Shell

In the neighborhood and after school, unmistakable signs emerged that I was shattering the confines of my shell. I hurled myself into the whirlwind of sports like kickball, soccer, and hockey, playing in the streets, our yard, or on our driveway. Kickball, our most frequent game, awakened a softer side within me. A revelation struck me like a bolt: when my team clinched victory, the opposing team tasted bitter defeat, a blow that could crush their spirits. This empathetic insight, one that psychologist Carol Gilligan notes as typically more feminine, struck me profoundly even before I had ever read her work and resonated even more deeply later in life.

I also embarked on a relentless paper route, delivering newspapers to over 50 houses every single day. Each morning, I'd venture out, sometimes before the first light of dawn. Later, collecting payments from countless clients with Paul by my side, I unearthed a flair for humor and a daring streak to entertain. On a scorching summer day, when temperatures soared past 100 degrees, we pulled a wild stunt—donning winter coats, hopping on our bikes, and approaching doors to collect payments. The real kicker was when someone didn't even blink at our outrageous attire.

An uproarious tale from my life is about landing my first job at 16. Just prior to that, I drove my brother and his friends to the movies in a nearby town, only to end up hopelessly lost on the way back. Hours slipped by before I finally stumbled home, a comic misadventure in its own right.

Even more ironic was the nature of the job being offered to me by Jack Donlon, the owner of the Medical Mart living right across from us, who wanted to hire me. The job? Delivering supplies to customers in New Britain—a task demanding navigation skills I had yet to master. Yet, it wasn't long before I became adept at wielding maps, pinpointing every house with precision. When the deliveries were cumbersome, there were two of us, giving me a chance to connect, socialize, and indulge in mischief.

Thus, there existed vibrant exceptions in my life that defied the confines of my proverbial shell.

Boy Doesn't Meet Girl

By the time high school rolled around, I had long accepted that I wasn't one of the guys who got noticed. The idea of dating was so far removed from my reality that I didn't even consider it.

But I did watch movies.

One movie in particular haunted me—Carrie.

I watched it repeatedly, but I always halted just before the notorious prom scene, before the blood spilled, before the terror erupted.

Because to me, it wasn't a horror film.

It was a vision.

Carrie was my mirror. She was silent. She was invisible. She was abused, not only by her peers but by her own mother, though, in my case, my peers never abused me - I was just invisible.

My own mother had been venomous in a myriad of ways. This inevitably instilled a deep, corrosive shame that gnawed at the very essence of my being.

And then Tommy saw her.

It didn't matter that he had a girlfriend. That wasn't the point. The point was that he noticed Carrie. He saw something in her that no one else did. And not only that, but he was kind. He asked her to accompany him to the prom, not as a joke, but because he wanted to make things right. And for one night, Carrie was part of something. She was wanted. She was special.

I wanted that.

Not the prom, necessarily, and definitely not the supernatural revenge. But I wanted to be seen. I wanted someone to look at me the way Tommy looked at Carrie—like I mattered. In that dream, there would be a girl who would fill a role like Tommy did for Carrie.

I also wanted to be held close in the warm arms of someone just like Tommy did for Carrie when she was on the dance floor. I would have felt so profoundly uncomfortable on any dance floor because I NEVER had anyone wrap their arms around me and hold me... then look at me and kiss me. This very thought made my heart race with equal parts longing and terror.

I was not bullied in school. No one stuffed me in lockers or tripped me in the hall. I wasn't tormented, I was just ignored.

But even that stung like salt in an invisible wound.

I didn't go to prom. I didn't go to parties. I didn't go out on dates. I watched from the sidelines as other people lived those moments, and I wondered what they have that I didn't?

I knew the answer, of course.

Confidence.

They knew how to talk to people. They knew how to ask a girl out without their voice catching in their throat. They knew how to dance without feeling like every eye in the room was watching, judging.

For me, that wasn't an option. I couldn't even raise my hand in class. How could I approach someone and ask them to spend time with me?

Even the kids who were teased more than I was had girlfriends. Even they had found someone who saw them.

I waited.

Maybe someone like Tommy would come along—a girl who saw something in me that others didn't, a girl who would notice me first.

That didn't happen.

Maybe I had a phobia of rejection. Maybe the preverbal script I followed unconsciously held me back. I would have to wait until college to figure this out.

I know that social skills are important, and I could not have learned any social skills when I was growing up. I didn't know it, but my life and career direction would require social skills—but I am getting way ahead of this story.

And so, high school passed, and I left it the same way I entered—unnoticed.

For some, high school is where they meet their first love.

For me, it was where I realized I was invisible.

From a young age, the idea of attending college was not a mere possibility—it was a relentless force, as inevitable as gravity itself, dragging me toward a predestined future. The moment I grasped the concept of college, my journey was as predetermined as steel train tracks, rigid and uncompromising in their direction.

I had been desperate to leave the band behind, yet it seemed I was shackled to it, devoid of any other extracurricular activities to demonstrate to a college that I was “well rounded.”

Georgia Tech was the most prestigious engineering school willing to accept me into its ranks. I didn't need the hallowed halls of MIT to validate my worth. Georgia Tech, mercifully, did not care about my lackluster participation in the school band, marching band, or other extra-curricular activities. Maybe Ivy League schools cared about and looked at student participation in extra-curricular activities, yet Georgia Tech didn’t care and Georgia Tech was extremely prestigious. All those years were wasted in musical mediocrity were for nothing.

I had hated band and I hated marching band even moreso.

I was trapped in a cycle of obligation, following a path I felt compelled to tread rather than one I truly desired.

My father, with a hint of regret, had once told me that college would teach me how to think, provoking fears of intellectual emancipation. Little did he know, I would evolve into an independent thinker, a liberal in a family staunchly rooted in conservative beliefs.

Setting off to college marked the dawn of a new era—a definitive severance from my nuclear family.

In high school, we had no guiding counselors to illuminate the path best suited for me. Through a haze of forgotten reasons, I selected engineering.

There was no confidant to whom I could confess the gut-wrenching anxiety of leaving Connecticut—abandoning my aunt, my cousins, the sparse anchors in my turbulent world. This anxiety laid bare my anxious attachment style, fueled by my mother's envious whispers that sowed seeds of doubt about my bonds with extended family.

The Drive

The distance between Southington, Connecticut, and Atlanta, Georgia, stretched before us like an eternity—fourteen hours of highway, each mile pulling me further from everything familiar. Dad's knuckles whitened around the steering wheel as we hit traffic outside New York City. Mom tuned the radio to a station that faded in and out as we crossed state lines.

I pressed my forehead against the window, watching the landscape transform. The lush green hills of New England flattened into the sprawling fields of Virginia, then rose again into the red clay foothills of Georgia. I tried to match my breathing to the rhythm of the yellow lines passing beneath us, to find some sense of calm in the chaos of change.

"Almost there," Dad announced as the Atlanta skyline appeared in the distance, a jagged silhouette against the setting sun. The Bank of America Plaza towered above the other buildings, its golden spire catching the last rays of daylight.

My heart hammered against my ribs. This city dwarfed anything I'd ever known—a concrete jungle teeming with millions of people, all strangers. The Georgia Tech campus sat nestled in the heart of Midtown, not isolated like the small colleges back home. Here, there was no buffer between campus and the real world. They bled into each other, boundaries blurred.

As we turned onto campus, we passed the basketball stadium and the baseball field. We approached the fraternities. I knew that at Georgia Tech - an engineering school - the guys outnumbered girls 2 to 1. I had not dared to dream about actually making a connection with a girl, yet. So, this statistic meant little.

What was strange was to see on a frat house the words “I hate Georgia.” Huh?

My father had to explain about college rivalries. Georgia State was our rival. Whatever.

We pulled up to my dormitory, Armstrong Hall. A three-story brick building with windows like empty eyes staring down at me.

My mind was somewhere else… trying not to think about what lay ahead.

We were looking for the “orientation” process for incoming freshmen.

Orientation: A Lonely Crowd

"Parents, congregate in the Student Center for your designated program. Students, follow your group leaders."

The orientation sliced the room into two distinct worlds—parents and students—executed with chilling precision and ruthless finality. But what in the world did my parents need with such a ceremony? They were preparing to vanish from my sight.

As I watched my parents stride away, a void of unsettling emptiness took hold—an absence of expected grief or terror. Shouldn't I have felt anguish, fear, some profound emotion? Instead, the overwhelming relief that surged within me felt perversely wrong, a glaring indication of some deep-seated flaw in my very being. Yet, I had grown up detached from my parents with no sense of “family connection” toward my parents.

I finally had what I wanted, freedom from my parents influence.

Throughout orientation, we were compelled into orchestrated activities. One day, we were brutally thrust into the rapids of the Chattahoochee River, forced to raft as a group of incoming freshmen—an exercise designed, they claimed, to forge connections with one another. I kept musing about what chaotic scene our parents were caught up in while we were left drowning in these contrived interactions. Truth be told, my bond with my parents had always been muted and distant, the kind of connection built on unspoken silences rather than shared moments.

The irony was palpable: you could scarcely wander far enough beyond the city's suffocating skyscrapers and plunge into the wild country, only to be reminded that you were an alien in your own life. Out there, amid rushing waters and sprawling landscapes, I felt like an outcast. I strained desperately to connect—with everyone around me, yet the words that might bridge the gap between me and the others evaporated into a suffocating silence. Their effortless conversations mocked me, amplifying my eternal sense of being utterly different.

I was haunted by the fear that if my uniqueness became too conspicuous, every extra second would only deepen the stain of my otherness. It wasn’t fear or nerves per se—it was an urgent, maddening drive to speak, to mask my inner deviation with the facade of normalcy.

Desperate to forge friendships and integrate into this new, unforgiving environment, I craved the semblance of normalcy. Every passing moment felt like a countdown, a chance for others to silently condemn me for my inability to engage. The internal monologue was relentless: “What’s wrong with that guy? He talks to no one; he has nothing to say.”

That negative perception—a label of misfit, an outsider—was a bitter specter that made every effort to connect even more fraught and urgent. As part of the orientation, a cold, brutal truth was hammered into us: only a sliver of those admitted to Georgia Tech would actually graduate.

We were ordered to face the person on our left, then the one on our right, only to hear the stinging proclamation, “One of you will graduate!” The implication was clear and merciless: two out of three of us were destined to fail, not by chance, but almost by design.

Perhaps it was this searing need to belong that drove me to the Counseling and Career Planning Center in that same dismal week when classes began—a desperate bid to heal the gnawing loneliness festering inside me. It soon became painfully apparent that the harshest lesson taught at Georgia Tech wasn’t hidden deep in the labyrinth of engineering, but in the relentless combat against crippling social anxiety and the ceaseless struggle to communicate and connect. Engineering? It was a dead end that had never truly resonated with me, a fact I was too blind to acknowledge at the time.

In another life, I might have had endless conversations if I’d possessed the social skills that, paradoxically, would develop at this school, during these next five years, when I learned something more valuable than engineering - social skills.

I carried the unbearable weight of shame over my shyness and my crippling inability to converse, a secret burden I couldn’t share with my parents—a taboo as potent as the unspoken silences of my childhood. Their departures were curt, mechanical—brief farewells laden with the same cold detachment I had always known.

In that brutal crucible of orientation, forging friendships wasn’t merely a luxury—it was a desperate, existential struggle, a fight for survival. In my mind, escaping into the woods or climbing trees to not be noticed for the outsider that I was didn’t seem possible.

I believed that I had to connect with others. College, especially at Georgia Tech would be infinitely more challenging than high school. Despite the lack of connection with my family, I could still count on my father to help me with science and math classes. Yet here I was alone. I didn’t know I would make a human connection with another person. Initially, I thought I would make the necessary connections to survive and pass my classes.

Most of the other Georgia Tech students had been exposed to some calculus but my own social anxiety in 7th grade had prevented me from starting advanced math in 8th grade and so I was never exposed to calculus in high school. I am not saying this to claim that I enjoyed math at all. Yet, despite my lack of interest in math, I had excelled in it. It is interesting to note that despite not having calculus in high school because my 7th grade teacher didn’t recommend her best math student, me, for advanced math in 8th grade, I still breezed through calculus, which is profoundly challenging. I would have started with Algebra in 8th grade instead of pre-Algebra. But I am getting ahead of my story.

Taking a Risk

I felt like my entire future was hanging by a thread at Georgia Tech, where academic failure seemed synonymous with a life doomed to fail.

Each evening descended like a crushing weight, my isolation reverberating through my thoughts like a constant drumbeat. It felt like the world was alive with activity while I was trapped in a void. What would people think if they saw me haunting the dormitory halls alone?

Back home, I had friends, neighbors, and family—cousins and an aunt who formed the fabric of my comfort zone. But now, I was thrust into a new world where forging connections became an urgent compulsion. I couldn't pinpoint the reason, but sometimes an intense urge demands action, as if it's a matter of survival.

On my second day at Georgia Tech, an unbearable pressure to act weighed on me. It was as if time stretched, making my solitude feel eternal and oppressive. The thought of another evening after the official orientation, aimlessly wandering past silent vending machines and deserted TV rooms, filled me with dread. The silence was a tangible force, suffocating and terrifying. The empty dorm room hallways echoed with the silence of my pacing steps creating a sense of profound isolation and desperation.

That evening, a beacon of hope flickered—a barbeque with hot dogs and hamburgers sizzling on the grill. This was my chance to break free from the chains of solitude and attempt to socialize. In retrospect, it was a good thing that I felt such discomfort and overwhelmingly negative emotions. I had learned about he Counseling and Career Planning Center and realized I would go there when the school quarter began (we had quarters and not semesters at Georgia Tech).

I spotted a guy who seemed approachable, standing with just one other person. I could manage that. I steeled myself, trying to project calmness despite the awkwardness I felt threatening to betray me. They were discussing fraternity parties.

"Do you mind if I go with you?" I blurted out, my heart pounding. "Good job," I congratulated myself. I had faced the potential sting of rejection head-on.

Soon, we were venturing off to several fraternity houses, our footsteps echoing the beats of a newfound camaraderie. We visited a couple of frat houses that night, and the next night we repeated the ritual, eventually finding ourselves at Zeta Beta Tau (ZBT) fraternity.

Rush Week

This was Rush week, the time when fraternities aggressively scout for fresh recruits—new pledges.

At ZBT, everything felt electrifyingly different. Sure, every frat house we visited put on their best charm offensive, trying to make us feel like the kings of the world, but something about this place just resonated with me. While the guys I came with were busy mingling and diving into the social landscape, I steered clear of the pulsating dance floor, where the music thumped like a heartbeat.

Instead, I drifted with surprising fluidity through the house and its grounds, ears wide open. I was there to absorb, letting the frat brothers spin their enticing tales.

They were masters of "love bombing" without even knowing it—that's what psychologist call it. I was fully aware that it was a strategic ploy to make us feel like we were the chosen ones, but it worked wonders on me.

One after another, I met people who pitched the fraternity life like seasoned salesmen. Johnny exuded friendliness and warmth. Danny had an unconventional coolness that intrigued me. And then there was Stew, the cook who seemed perpetually in a drug infused haze, yet somehow managed to study Chemical Engineering. How on earth did he pull that off?

I felt an undeniable pull, a sense that this was my path. I needed connections, friendships, and never before had anything like this unfolded in such a whirlwind.

Periodically, a bell would clang, and the room would erupt into cheers as someone declared their intention to pledge.

Summoning the courage to declare my pledge was a Herculean task. The mere thought of being thrust into the spotlight filled me with dread. But I knew the moment of attention would be fleeting, quickly shifting to the next eager candidate. Still, the idea of standing in the center, under the glaring spotlight, was foreign to me.

I had to push through, right? So, I just let the tide carry me. I approached a guy named Pat, who was hanging out with Stew, and declared my intention. The room exploded into cheers, the bell clanged triumphantly, and I stood there, a reluctant focal point. I wanted nothing more, yet I forced myself forward, knowing that if I hesitated, I'd falter.

The whirlwind of cheers and attention was over in a flash. The intensity of the moment dissipated as quickly as it had come, and just like that, it was done.

After Rush Week

After "Rush" and as classes kicked in, everything shifted in ways that left me feeling torn. One moment I was regarded as someone special; the next, I was shoved into the role of a lowly pledge. I never did anything to deserve it—it was just the dynamics changing. Now, as a pledge, my new identity came with obligations and rituals, all of which culminated in an initiation that was supposed to mark my transformation into a full-fledged fraternity member.

We were handed a pledge paddle almost immediately and forced to adhere to a strict dress code—suits or jackets with ties were mandatory for the entire day including going to classes and showing up at the frat house. Every day, we had to show up at the frat house, kneel, and hold up our paddle as if asking permission to reenter a ritualistic space. Everything was done so openly that it couldn’t be dismissed as hazing, yet the whole affair filled me with a mix of resignation and mortification.

I desperately wanted to avoid being the center of attention, so I began bending the rules in my own small ways. I chose to dress casually for classes and deliberately kept my paddle out of sight until I had no choice but to join the ritual at the frat house. This quiet rebellion made me feel both defiant and deeply conflicted—I knew I was breaking expectations, yet I couldn’t see myself enduring the humiliation if I followed every rule.

Growing up, the only constraints I really knew were those imposed by our parents—rules aligned with their desires and needs. Now, it felt like I was subject to an entirely different regime, one that was equally suffocating but wrapped in the guise of tradition and brotherhood.

Most of our studying and homework took place at the frat house, unless we had to be elsewhere to use the mainframe computer or group studies and lab work. Mainframes no longer exist. They have been replaced by servers and supercomputers. Back then a supercomputer was one computer system that allowed hundreds of students to access computer resources on the mainframe computer. Even back then the speed of computers was much faster than the requests made by any one of hundreds or thousands of students and staff looking for a slide of time on the computer.

Anyway, the time spent at the frat house every day was a constant reminder that every part of life was now being directed by the new rules of fraternity membership.

By the end of the quarter, the looming “initiation” brought a fresh wave of mixed emotions. The fraternity kept the process enshrouded in mystery, assigning group tasks that were supposed to foster unity and teamwork, yet inside, I couldn’t help but question the real purpose behind it all.

You may recall a scene from an old movie like “Animal House,” where pledges endure exaggerated paddle strikes and respond with a rehearsed, almost robotic “thank you, sir, may I have another?” Nothing remotely like that happened here. Instead, we learned a “secret handshake”—a gesture that was supposed to bind us together even as it left me wondering how much of it was just for show.

Some might call this a “tell-all” story—a term that’s all the rage nowadays. And while I’m not holding back on sharing the more embarrassing or emotional parts of my experience, I’ve also decided to keep some “innocent” secrets untouched, details about the initiation that, in the end, don’t define the core of my journey.

This, then, was my first quarter at Georgia Tech—a time when I was forced to navigate the new realities of adulthood while wrestling with conflicting feelings of excitement and deep-seated uncertainty. Life seemed better than it had before, yet that improvement was shrouded in an inner turmoil that I couldn't easily unravel. I valued the distance from the home I once knew, but it came at the cost of shedding parts of the comfort I’d relied on for so long. Counseling sparked fragile new hopes that life could be different, even if I still felt the lingering shadow of my high school self haunting my every step.

Let me be clear about something: it took me four years of weekly therapy to ask a girl out. Five years. That's not a casual mention - it's the central fact of my college experience. While my engineering classmates were designing circuits and solving equations, I was learning something far more fundamental: how to be human in the presence of another human being.

The details of this time period are a blur to me. As much as psychology was helping me overcome the past life that was defined by being invisible and hiding, I was still living a life that was not very memorable for the most part. It’s not that I have a bad memory but there was so little that would create lasting memories for me.

By my senior year, when I finally worked up the courage to ask Michelle for lunch, I had become a different person entirely. Not just socially - fundamentally. The transformation was so complete that sometimes I couldn't believe the terrified, silent freshman and the confident senior were the same person.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The point of starting with this scene - me asking out the girl with the John Lennon glasses who worked at the campus post office - is to show you what was possible. Because when I first sat in the Counseling and Career Planning Center as a desperate freshman, dating existed as a vague goal, but my self-esteem was so low that actually asking someone out seemed as far outside my capabilities as designing a computer processor. I could see that others were doing it, just like others were designing computer chips, but they knew something I didn't yet know.

The Weight of Never

Throughout high school, I hadn't dated. Not once. It wasn't that I didn't want to - the longing was there, sharp and constant. But wanting something doesn't mean you believe it's possible. For me, the idea of approaching a girl, of risking rejection, of exposing my fundamental awkwardness, felt impossible.

I carried the unbearable weight of shame over my shyness and my crippling inability to converse - a secret burden I couldn't share with my parents. Their departures from Georgia Tech were curt, mechanical, laden with the same cold detachment I had always known.

What I understand now, through the lens of trauma therapy, is that my dating paralysis wasn't really about rejection. It was about attachment. Having never experienced secure attachment with my primary caregivers, I had no template for intimate connection. The very idea of being chosen, of being someone's first choice, felt not just unlikely but literally incomprehensible.

I was avoiding situations that might trigger anxiety, which meant I wasn't blushing or experiencing racing hearts around girls - because I never got close enough to them for those symptoms to emerge. Avoidance was my primary defense mechanism.

If I didn't know for sure that someone was interested, I wasn't going to take the chance. But how could I ever know for sure without taking risks I wasn't equipped to take?

The Therapeutic Journey

Every week for five years, I sat across from my counselor and dissected human interaction like we were studying a foreign language. Because that's what it was for me - foreign.

We talked about "free information" - those casual conversation starters that neurotypical people seemed to access effortlessly. Weather, classwork, current events. Things that didn't require deep vulnerability but could open doors to connection.

We practiced active listening - reflecting, rephrasing, asking open-ended questions. I took notes. I had homework assignments. Learning to connect became as structured and deliberate as learning calculus.

The therapy group was revelation. Here were other Georgia Tech students - brilliant engineers and computer scientists - who felt as lost as I did in social situations. We role-played conversations, practiced assertiveness, and slowly built the courage to speak up in class.

I carried a pad of paper everywhere, using the Three-Column Technique from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Column one: the catastrophic thought ("She'll think I'm weird"). Column two: the cognitive distortion (mind-reading, fortune-telling). Column three: the reality check ("What's the actual evidence for this belief?").

Page after page, I battled the voices in my head that told me I was fundamentally unlovable.

The Post Office Girl

Michelle intrigued me. She was quiet like me, but there was something warm in her demeanor that suggested the quiet came from thoughtfulness rather than fear. She wore those distinctive round glasses that reminded me of John Lennon, and there was something mysterious about her - a depth I wanted to explore.

We worked together at the campus post office during my senior year. By then, I had learned to make friends easily with my coworkers. I could joke, share stories, be open about my feelings - as long as I knew romance wasn't on the table. Friendship felt safe. Dating felt like stepping off a cliff.

But Michelle was different. I noticed she never seemed to have a boyfriend picking her up after work. I noticed how she struggled with eye contact the same way I did. I recognized something in her - a familiar shyness that felt like looking in a mirror.

For weeks, I would stand outside the student center after our shifts, trying to build the courage to ask her to lunch. The Three-Column Technique worked overtime:

Column One: "She'll say no and think I'm pathetic." Column Two: Fortune-telling, mind-reading. Column Three: "She's been friendly every time we've talked. The worst that happens is she says no, and then I know."

The First Date

When I finally asked - "Do you want to go for lunch?" - and she said "Okay," I felt something I'd never experienced before. Not just relief, but a kind of bewildered joy. Someone had said yes. Someone had chosen to spend time with me.

Walking across campus together felt surreal. I kept scanning the crowd, looking for friends to witness this moment - not out of pride exactly, but out of disbelief. Was this really happening? Was I really walking with a girl who had agreed to spend time with me?

Then came the money situation - me fumbling through my pockets, realizing I hadn't brought enough cash. The shame was overwhelming. Not just because I'd broken some dating "rule," but because it confirmed every fear I had about not being enough.

When Michelle offered to pay her part, she wasn't angry or disappointed. She was understanding. But I couldn't receive that grace. The critical parent voices in my head - actual recordings of my parents' disapproval - played on repeat. I had one chance, and I'd blown it.

I never asked her out again. That might have been worse than forgetting the money.

The conversation that never happened

I've played over in my head the fact that I never did anything other than drown in embarrassment for forgetting to have enough money to buy lunch. What I could have said that might work could go like this:

"Michelle, can I explain something?" I would ask.

"Sure," she would answer.

"I am thinking that I can't ask you out again because of the thoughts going through my mind. Let me explain. It's embarrassing. You see me looking confident as I talk to people at the post office, the way Mike and I laugh. I speak up with the manager and others.

But I am shy. I wish I had made sure I could pay for our lunch when I finally invited you. I was feeling so good as we walked across campus. Being seen with you..."

"Can I try this again tomorrow? Otherwise, I will wonder if this was even a date and I will be too embarrassed to ever try."

Realistically, it is probably worth noting that with all the changes in our culture, inter-racial dating is still not as commonplace as one might imagine. And back then, I was told by a white friend that she and her black boyfriend that it wasn't safe to travel outside metro-Atlanta.

To me, I saw Michelle as beautiful and attractive. I may have made an unwarranted assumption that others agreed. I probably thought, "let me just get a date and later I can worry about whether people will approve and if not what they would do."

By the time I went on my first real date as a college senior, it felt less like a rite of passage and more like a miracle. I had spent years watching others fall in love, flirt, and fumble their way into relationships, while I stood on the outside, silent and studying them like specimens.

Everything changed when I began working with my counselor. But let me be clear: this wasn't casual support or general guidance. This was intensive rehabilitation for someone whose capacity for human connection had been stunted by years of emotional neglect and selective mutism.

The Clinical Approach to Connection

My counselor treated social skills like any other learnable competency. He gave me articles, handouts - actual tools. We broke down conversations into component parts - how to ask questions that invited response, how to read nonverbal cues, how to keep dialogue alive beyond one-word replies.

I took this seriously because I had to. My social life, my sense of worth, my hope for love and connection - everything depended on learning these skills that seemed to come naturally to others.

The Three-Column Technique became my constant companion. In my backpack, I always carried a pad of paper and pen. At first, it felt clinical and awkward. But over time, it became my anchor:

Column One: The Thought

• "She won't want to talk to me"
• "I'm going to embarrass myself"
• "I'm too weird, too quiet, too boring"

Column Two: The Distortion

• Predicting the future
• Mind-reading
• All-or-nothing thinking

Column Three: The Challenge

• What's the evidence this thought is true?
• Have people actually said I'm boring?
• Aren't there times I've made someone laugh?

I filled page after page with these exercises. In classrooms, at frat parties, walking across campus - I was constantly battling the thoughts in my brain. Each interaction required strategy and courage.

Here's what I learned that changed everything: shyness wasn't just a personality trait. It was a survival strategy. One I had outgrown but didn't know how to abandon. Every time I avoided a conversation, I felt fleeting relief - like dodging a bullet. But afterward came the self-loathing, the shame, the deeper invisibility.

The Three-Column Technique gave me something stronger than avoidance: agency. For the first time, I could do something about my anxiety besides disappear.

The Therapy Group Laboratory

My counselor also ran a group specifically for socially anxious students. That group became a laboratory for human connection. We role-played awkward scenarios, rehearsed how to speak up, how to assert ourselves without aggression.

I was surprised by how many brilliant Georgia Tech students felt the same way I did - awkward, unsure, invisible. Engineers and computer scientists who could solve complex equations but couldn't figure out how to ask someone to study together.

It gave me strange hope: maybe I wasn't broken. Maybe I was just inexperienced.

What we practiced in group:

• How to enter conversations already in progress
• How to disagree without becoming combative
• How to express interest without seeming desperate
• How to handle rejection gracefully
• How to recognize and respond to social cues

We also worked on something called "graduated exposure" - deliberately putting ourselves in increasingly challenging social situations. For me, this meant:

• Week 1: Make eye contact with three strangers
• Week 2: Ask a question in class
• Week 3: Initiate conversation with a classmate
• Week 4: Join a study group

Each step built on the previous one, creating evidence that I could handle social interaction without catastrophe.

Always the Extra Person

Despite all the skills I was developing, I still couldn't cross certain thresholds. I never met girls directly at parties or in the cafeteria. The women I got to know were friends of friends, or already connected to people I trusted deeply.

I was always the extra person. The third wheel. The safe guy.

My friend Thomas trusted me completely around his girlfriend, Jo-Lee. That trust wasn't misplaced - I never crossed boundaries. But I couldn't help noticing how easily they connected, how gracefully they touched each other's arms, how they laughed without hesitation.

After Thomas graduated, I grew closer to Jo-Lee as a friend. We'd eat lunch together, talk about life. I never made a move because that wasn't what our connection was about. But her presence reminded me that I could connect, that I wasn't completely invisible.

What I understand now is that these "safe" friendships were crucial to my development. They provided evidence that I was capable of meaningful connection without the terror of romantic rejection. They built my social confidence in low-stakes environments.

Dancing Lessons and Missed Opportunities

At Thomas and Jo-Lee's wedding, I was the best man - a role that came with the terrifying expectation of dancing. I'd never danced, not really. The idea filled me with a phobic-level dread that went beyond normal self-consciousness.

Jo-Lee asked her maid of honor, Mary, to teach me. Mary was stunning and patient, guiding me through basic steps while I tried not to focus on how attractive she was. For a moment, I wondered if I should ask her out. But the old patterns held - she was probably out of my league, probably had better options.

Then, at the post-wedding party, something unprecedented happened. Another woman, Marleesa, was clearly interested in me. Jo-Lee had to point it out because I literally couldn't recognize the signs.

"Seriously, Bruce. She's been trying to get your attention all night."

This was entirely new territory. I had trained myself for years not to notice interest, not to hope. It was easier to assume no one was attracted to me than to risk the disappointment of being wrong.

But once I looked - really looked - I saw it. The way Marleesa kept glancing in my direction, the way she positioned herself nearby, even how she protectively moved a dog away when it was bothering me.

The First Real Invitation

Marleesa invited me to an Easter play at her church where she had a role. This wasn't subtle or ambiguous - this was a clear invitation from someone who was interested.

I said yes, feeling for the first time that someone had chosen me.

After the performance, we walked together under the night sky. The air was comfortable, stars were out. I was thinking about how much she seemed to care about me - which was still difficult to process.

Given my religious conservatism at the time, a gentle kiss seemed appropriate and expected. I leaned in slowly, hesitantly.

She turned her head away.

Shame and Silence

The rejection wasn't cruel or harsh, but it was clear - this wasn't the moment I thought it was. I froze, didn't say a word, just stood there humiliated. My face went hot, my thoughts collapsed inward.

I read it wrong. How could I be so stupid?

It wasn't just about the kiss. It was about everything I'd been working toward - every CBT column I'd filled, every group session I'd endured, every hopeful thought I'd barely let myself believe. It all felt undone.

I didn't lash out or push or even ask for explanation. I just disappeared back into the silence I knew so well.

That was the last time I saw her. Just like Michelle, I let embarrassment override everything else. I couldn't understand yet that rejection doesn't equal personal failure, that social missteps are part of learning, not evidence of fundamental unworthiness.

What I needed then - what took years more therapy to understand - was that my reaction to rejection revealed the deeper wound. It wasn't really about being turned down for a kiss. It was about a nervous system that had learned early that being unwanted meant being in danger, that rejection confirmed every terrible thing I'd been taught to believe about myself.

The path to genuine connection would require not just social skills but healing the attachment wounds that made every risk feel existential, every "no" feel like abandonment.

But I was learning. Slowly, imperfectly, but learning, nonetheless.

The Transformation I Could Finally See

By my senior year, I was amazed by how much I had changed. The person who had been left alone on that August day during orientation, before classes even began, could never have imagined things could change so much.

I was choosing an once-impossible-to-imagine new career direction, drawn to psychology by the very transformation I was experiencing. Psychology was amazing - look what it had done for me! I walked across campus with my head up, scanning for friends to greet rather than hiding from eye contact. I hung out in groups of six to ten people, going to amusement parks and movies, fully included in the social fabric I had once observed from the outside.

I had many friends - real friends who sought out my company. With the women I knew, I might have been the "safe friend" rather than a romantic prospect, but I spent time alone with them, was trusted completely by their boyfriends, and even accompanied one friend to the all-girls college nearby because I was confident enough to handle that social setting.

At the post office, I laughed easily with coworkers like Mike. I spoke up with managers. I had opinions, made jokes, contributed to conversations. In small groups, I was no longer the silent observer but an active participant. I realized I was actually an extrovert who had been trapped by anxiety and poor social skills.

Yes, larger groups still intimidated me. Speaking in class or at full fraternity gatherings remained out of reach. I tried during English classes to share thoughts but couldn't quite break through that barrier. But the contrast with who I had been was staggering.

I was no longer drowning in the invisibility that had defined my high school years. I had learned to connect in meaningful ways. I could imagine becoming a therapist myself - helping others the way I had been helped. The foundation was solid now for a future that included love, partnership, and the family I had always wanted.

That transformation happened through five years of deliberate, sustained effort to heal and grow, and I could see it, feel it, celebrate it.

A Note to Readers

If you've made it this far, you might recognize something of yourself in these pages. Maybe you've sat in therapy sessions wondering if CBT worksheets could really change anything fundamental about who you are. Maybe you've avoided situations that trigger anxiety, telling yourself it's easier than risking rejection or embarrassment. Maybe you've watched others connect effortlessly while feeling like you're missing some essential manual for human interaction.

What I want you to know is this: the transformation I experienced wasn't magic, and it wasn't quick. Five years of weekly therapy, countless Three-Column worksheets, role-playing in group sessions, and gradual exposure to increasingly challenging social situations. It was tedious sometimes. It felt clinical. There were moments I wondered if I was trying to engineer my way into being human.

But it worked. Not because the techniques were sophisticated, but because I was finally learning skills that most people absorb naturally through secure early relationships. For those of us with attachment wounds or complex trauma, these skills don't come automatically - they have to be learned deliberately, practiced repeatedly, and reinforced consistently.

The college environment helped enormously. I had friends who treated me well, a fraternity that provided belonging (however imperfect), and access to excellent mental health services. I was surrounded by other brilliant students who were also figuring out how to be adults, which normalized the learning process.

If any of this resonates with you, I invite you to re-read this chapter after you've finished the book. See if you can identify the specific elements that might apply to your own journey. The path forward isn't always clear when you're in the middle of it, but it becomes more visible in retrospect.

What I learned at Georgia Tech didn't just help me ask someone out - it set the foundation for everything that followed, including my eventual career change to clinical social work with a strong focus on applying psychology to helping others. 

Sometimes the most profound transformations happen so gradually we don't realize how far we've traveled until we look back.

In this section, I will describe a very special person who came into my life in 1990. Her name was Celta Camille Head. This was before I met Lynn but it is an important story about my development and the development of this larger story depicted in this book.

It’s impossible to overstate how important, meaningful and life changing this was for me. It might have been just one year but three and a half decades later, every moment, every second of being loved by Celta speaks to me in a way that says I am worthwhile. This reality was not something I would have realized from my family of origin.

I stumbled across a high school yearbook photo of Celta Camille Head on Ancestry.com—years after we met—and it sent shockwaves through my body. She would have been sixteen in that photo, radiant with a kind of quiet, haunting beauty. I never knew her in high school. She was eight years older than me. And yet, when we finally crossed paths, it was as if something long dormant had stirred awake.

The few photographs I once had of her—the ones I took in those fragile months we spent together—are gone now, lost before the age of digital backups. That loss still stings. But her memory... her memory has never left me.

When we met, I had just graduated from Georgia Tech, riding high on the belief that the future was mine to conquer. I had mapped it all out: career success, independence, a new life built by my own hand.

Instead, I moved back in with my parents—a decision that would cast a long, oppressive shadow over everything that followed.

Yet somehow, even within that suffocating darkness, a spark ignited.

In 1990, I met Celta.

At the same time, I was volunteering with the social work team at Georgia Regional Hospital, a sprawling state psychiatric hospital. The work was profound, humbling, and exhilarating. It awakened a passion in me I hadn’t known existed: an instinctive call toward psychiatric social work, and toward healing.

I had come so far already. College had been my laboratory of transformation: five years of brutal work to overcome shyness, social anxiety, and an aching sense of isolation. I was ready for professional success. What I wasn’t prepared for was to meet someone who would see me in a way no one ever had.

Celta was that person.

I met her on a cold Wednesday afternoon, January 3rd, 1990. She had been admitted for anorexia, her tiny frame whittled down to less than sixty pounds. Four-foot-eleven and dangerously fragile—and yet when I first saw her, pacing in frustration across the hospital room, she emanated a presence that seemed impossibly larger than her body.

When our eyes met, I felt a strange calm settle over me. Not the fear or clinical distance I might have expected. Just... recognition.

"Hi, I'm Bruce," I said, stepping toward her. "I'm a volunteer with the social work team. I'm off duty now. I just wanted to meet you."

She smiled—truly smiled—and in that moment, a connection was forged.

She suggested we go outside. There was a porch swing out front, and we sat together, side by side, letting the world drift away. For once, I didn’t rehearse my words or second-guess myself. I simply was. And so was she.

I told her I wasn’t there to gather information. "I'm not here in any official way," I said. "I just wanted to talk."

She smiled again. That smile—the way it reached her eyes—felt like an invitation into a world I didn’t know I was longing for.

She listened to me with an intensity that startled me. No one had ever listened to me like that before. Like I mattered. Like my voice wasn’t just tolerated—it was wanted. She made no demands, offered no judgments, and for the first time, I felt seen not as a project to fix, not as a future professional, not as someone who needed to achieve something to matter. I was seen as me.

Celta had very little family support. She spoke only of her parents in passing, and her loneliness hovered around her like a second skin. In her presence, something ancient in me began to heal—the part that had always wondered if I was invisible to the people who should have loved me most.

We sat together almost every day until she was discharged. We walked the grounds. We talked about pansies and how their petals seemed to hold faces, their expressions mirroring our moods. We marveled at small things. I told her stories about my life, and she listened with rapt attention, as if every detail mattered.

And yet, even amid the sweetness of those early meetings, I knew there were risks.

Ethically, there were supposed to be boundaries between patients and staff—even volunteers. Even I, just starting my journey in the mental health field, understood that dimly. And there was another complication: I was still living with my parents. I wasn't free to defend someone I loved if she were judged or criticized. I didn't have the independence yet to say, without fear, "This is someone who matters to me. You don't get a say."

Still, no one on staff ever warned me off. Everyone seemed to sense the purity of what was growing between us.

Celta soon began writing me letters—long, sprawling diary entries where she catalogued the smallest details of her days. Sometimes she mailed them. Sometimes she handed them to me when I visited. She wanted me to know her world. All of it.

It was magical. It was terrifying. It was confusing.

Was I breaching some invisible ethical line? Was I betraying the standards of the field I hoped to build my career in? Maybe. But it didn't feel like exploitation. It didn’t feel like imbalance or coercion.

It felt like love.

She trusted me. I trusted her. We were two broken souls who, for a moment, found wholeness in each other.

In March, two months after we first met, she pointed to a bed of pansies and said, "Look—they have faces." I paused, and for a second, I could see it too. Their petals smiled and frowned back at us, as if the flowers themselves were alive to our joy and our sorrow.

Celta asked me once if I would draw her—how I saw her. I told her I couldn’t draw, but that I could paint her with words. Maybe she wondered if I saw her as beautiful. I did. So much more than beautiful.

Her name, I later learned, was chosen by her father, a nod to Celtic and Gaelic traditions. Her sister’s name, Gael, followed the same theme. There was a kind of poetry to it, as if even in naming, her family had gestured toward something ancient and mythic without realizing it.

When she was discharged, she returned to Augusta, Georgia. Our friendship continued to grow. I worried about her constantly—her health, her loneliness, her future.

I had met her during one of the darkest periods of my own life. And yet through her, a new world cracked open—a world where love wasn’t a reward for performance, but a reflection of being seen, cherished, wanted.

And though I couldn’t have known it then, Celta taught me the first lesson I would need to build the life I later found with Lynn:

That it’s not enough to love. You have to be willing to stand for the people you love.

I wasn’t ready yet. But I was beginning.

In the last chapter, I mentioned that Celta had moved into an apartment in Augusta, Georgia after leaving the hospital. That didn't go so well. Her problems were an enormous challenge. Her weight was so low that I feared she might die. She was also drinking when she left the hospital. 

I will point out later how our love, her love for me, was influential in helping her to overcome problems that had clearly been part of a long pattern for her life prior to when she met me. Before I get to that, I wanted to describe some more details about what was happening during these next few months. 

After she lost her apartment, I put her up in a hotel one evening but that didn't go well. She couldn't stay there and we had to find a place for her.

Finally, she said she had a mother in Athens Georgia. So, we started driving there.

When we got there and knocked at the door her mother came and her first reaction was to turn her away. I didn't say anything, but I had such a desperate look on my face. It's sad but that might have been very influential in her mother – Faye Head – opening the door and letting her in.

I gave her a hug and got her phone number; told her I would be back to visit as soon as possible.

Soon after that, her father rented an apartment for her in Athens.

I met some other friends of hers and her family. It was curious that one of them, a woman said that Celta only uses people and that she cannot love anyone. This was clearly not true. Celta was doing so much that demonstrated she was thinking of me and concerned about my well-being and happiness.

It's important to note that I was living with my parents at the time. This was a temporary situation. I cannot overstate how profoundly disinterested my parents seemed to be in me and my life, my dreams, hopes, aspirations, and desires!

I loved to hear about Celta's talents. She had studied acting beginning before she was in high school.

It was Sunday. April 15th, a week before my birthday. It was a bit cool this morning as we arrived at the Botanical Gardens in Athens. She had suggested this place.

The sun was passing through the misty morning fog as we walked along a path. I reached out to take her hand, feeling as if something emotional was rippling through me at her touch. It was still early in the day and Celta was wearing a white coat made of soft cotton. I was warm-natured and only had a short-sleeve shirt on.

"Can I take off this glove?" I asked. "My hand will keep your hands warm."

She smiled as we gazed at the misty sun above and ahead. This felt so good and right. I felt awkward at first as I saw another couple. Celta and I were not a "couple" per se. I let the thought go. This felt too good.

Her hand was so very thin. As I mentioned, she had anorexia and was very much underweight. I could feel her tiny fingers intertwined in mine which sent a certain particular feeling flowing up my arm, almost like a chill or a soft rippling stream flowing up my arm. Her smile as she gazed at me gave me butterflies. I felt a lightness, almost like floating. I felt serene. And I smiled back.

What did she see in me, I wondered?

"This is nice... good," I said. Adding with a slight chuckle, "I have always wanted to feel this. I mean even as a kid. It is like a hunger that I forgot that I had or that I was too afraid to acknowledge..." I then added, "maybe acknowledging it would have made life too sad because I would know that I wanted something that wasn't available."

She understood that I was talking about what had been missing in my family. Celta always seemed to know when things had not been going well at home.

We developed synchronicity of mind and thought... respect and love... yes, respect and love felt like it was not something I had known previously. This was strange because Celta and I had what seemed like a completely platonic relationship and I have had supportive friends previously. My friends Thomas and Jo-Lee were real good friends, but the way Celta looked at me was different.

And was it platonic? I mean was it free from sensual desire? It seemed that way but occasionally my body reacted differently... my body was reacting sexually even though this would not have been known to Celta.

What do I mean when I say we developed synchronicity of mind and thought? I don't mean the tired cliché of completing the other person's sentences. The way we looked at the world was the same. The way we felt about things. The way we moved toward one another and the way our expressions were mirrored by each other.

The days and weeks passed, and I kept coming to visit her on the weekends...

Celta could seem to pick up on the emotional pain I had been experiencing during the week, with my parents. It was almost like she had a psychic connection to me. Almost like that!

I could talk to Celta about anything that was happening in my life. How and why, I felt such low self-esteem living with my parents... the emotional, verbal, and psychological abuse I experienced from my parents. I could talk about it all.

Sometimes I didn't need to keep talking about something that was on my mind. I had a sense of being in sync with Celta and a sense that she understood and felt with and for me. So, I let myself rest in the comfort of her arms. For example, in one instance, it would begin with my arm around her at the waist and her arms around my back and we just stayed like that smiling at each other.

All week, whenever I became stressed, bored, or had time to dream, my thoughts went to Celta.

My parents seemed completely unconcerned or uninterested in where I went or what I did with my life. I mean they never asked me.

I spoke to Celta for over an hour, maybe hours on the phone each day. We had only one phone, so it's a miracle that it was possible to find the phone free for that long.

I don't think they heard anything we were saying. I could tell if someone answered another phone.

Celta could tell from my voice if I was having a hard time at "home." No, it wasn't a home for me.

I struggled to explain to my parents that I was doing the best I could to find ongoing gainful employment. Yet, I never felt good enough. They thought I was deliberately refusing to work as an engineer and use my degree. I thought we had gone over that! I was going to use my undergraduate degree to get a graduate degree. They seemed to think I was deliberately sabotaging job interviews!

It was absurd. I would have loved to have a way to get out of that house and live on my own.

Yet, when I saw Celta, it was as if I was ten feet tall. I felt confident, valuable, worthy of love, and important.

Perhaps I was keeping this relationship private in a way - it was mine; she was mine. That sounds like something you might say in a devoted, romantic relationship. Yet wasn't this relationship platonic? Well, it's complicated. When I was with Celta we had not even been kissing. But my body was reacting or responding sexually in subtle ways.

Spring days passed through April and into May and for me it was like I was riding on gentle waves on an ocean – rising and falling – it was so soothing and peaceful. One Sunday or Saturday was like another.

It was an ordinary day in late summer like any other day. Sunday, May 13th. I greeted her with a hug. Instead of parting, we remained in one another's arms. Smiling at one other. It felt so different. I felt at peace... but I had something on my mind that I wanted to share.

"Can you hold me?" I ask indicating her bed. "I want to lie down next to you." There wasn't much room on her bed, but we weren't big. She lay against the wall facing me. My first thought was to curl up into a fetal position, but I turned to face her.

"Something happened?" she said in the form of a question.

"The same things ... my mother... ah actually..." My voice trailed off like a sigh of relief. My breathing slowed. I felt like my muscles were relaxing. I had been feeling restless, but I noticed my body was sinking comfortably into the bed. It suddenly seemed unnecessary to discuss what had been on my mind.

I looked down at her hands to see where they were. She looked at me. I raised her right hand with my right hand, placing my left hand over her hand while turning my eyes up to meet hers. We smiled.

For a few moments, we just looked into each other's eyes. I noticed our breathing was synchronized. I briefly thought I was never good at keeping a beat and let a slightly more amused smile pass across my face which was matched by Celta and from that our smiles drifted back to a more serene smile.

This was hypnotic and I let it last a moment longer. I was lost in her gaze... unaware of anything else. Her eyes looking into mine.

"This feels different to me," I said. "I think I have hungered for this nourishment for as long as I can remember. When I hold your hand, I feel something amazing."

After a brief pause, I added, "I love you."

"I love you too."

On another occasion, I remember how her very incredibly thin body became so evident at one particular moment. It was a warm spring day in early June and Faye, Celta's mother wanted a few photographs of both of us. I wanted copies of the photographs myself. The three of us selected different poses because I wanted to remember and hold onto the image of Celta looking and smiling at me. I needed that so much! It was a passionate hunger that I felt to see that.

Even if the angle that her mother was using to take the photograph could not capture her face or her eyes looking into mine, I would see it. I knew I would see that perspective in my mind's eye when I saw the photo.

Anyway, there was one pose where Faye suggested that I get down on one knee and let Celta sit on my other leg. I remember Celta starting to fall and I was scared. I gasped "grab, hold me" as I tried to find a place to catch her. She had a short-sleeve shirt, and I was aware of her bones around her sides, back, and her arms. I was afraid she might get hurt no matter where I tried to hold her because she was so thin, with hardly any muscle or fatty tissue.

She rested upon my arms and didn't indicate that she had been hurt.

When we were apart, each day we told each other those words "I love you." It was so easy, so natural, and so right. To be honest, I was so excited that I would go first. I guess I am just passionate in that way. But if it was not reciprocated, it wouldn't be as special, or I wouldn't feel such a desire to tell her "I love you."

Sometimes I would put the phone down after talking, lie back, and smile, resting in the serenity and joy of the moment. Picturing her. Reflecting on our shared experiences.

We were both trying to find meaning and direction in life - a purpose. I'm not just guessing. We talked about these things.

At one point she seemed to be searching for something to say about our feelings for each other. She looked up and saw a song playing on the TV. It was called "I Don't Know Much But I Know I Love You" by Aaron Neville and Linda Ronstadt.

"Yes, indeed!" I said with a smile.

It is hard to overstate how surprisingly disinterested my parents were in anything at all that mattered to me and that included a lack of curiosity as to who it is I that I am speaking to so often... or who I am seeing.

My mother would become so angry at me for "hiding out in my room." Yet, it seemed that both parents had no interest at all in my life! Plus, growing up she never took much interest in me spending quality time with her. It really disgusted me. She brought it on herself by her lack of interest in anything at all about what made me happy or where I was going with my life. It was mind-boggling to me just how any parent could be like this!

This feeling of disgust would come to a head sometime later when my mother reached out her hand to touch me and I recoiled instinctually before I could think about how she might respond to that. It was like realizing I had touched a snake - I have a phobia of snakes. She became so furious and didn't want me staying in her home at all, she was literally spitting and wanted to throw me out that night.

That's all I can remember about that. It was chilling!

The fact that I had an existence apart from her frustrated and angered her. And my father could only go along with his wife's feelings. So, they seemed to criticize everything that I was doing because it wasn't "right" in their minds... as if there is only one right way to do things.

As I mentioned, Celta was picking up on these tensions and how hurtful it was to me. She was visibly sad, disturbed, and angered that anyone would hurt me.

I wondered how many people in the world experienced these kinds of singular experiences. I mean during times that seemed dark, it makes a difference when you have someone who respects, values, and honors you as a person.

I noticed how easy it was to connect to and empathize with Celta as my friend.

I know that the other experiences I had as a psychiatric social worker at Georgia Regional Hospital were extremely positive and rewarding. I could sense that I had developed some amazing communication skills and a capacity for empathy. Patients would tell me this or they would tell my supervisors and they would ask when they would see me again. We shouldn't leave that out of the narrative.

My sense of self-confidence continued to grow as well.

There is something important that I must discuss first before we move further on with my journey of success which we will pick up in the next chapter. 

I left out some details about what had happened when Celta left the hospital. In this chapter, we'll rewind the clock and review some things that I left out.

Celta had a problem with alcohol addiction as well as having anorexia. To a layperson, the word would be alcoholic. When we went to AA later people said "Hi, I'm Bill and I'm an alcoholic."

I like the term "Alcohol Use Disorder" better since I am going into the psychiatric field and I prefer more scientific. At this time in the 90s, we used the terms Alcohol Addiction and Alcohol Dependence.

Celta had been in the hospital because her weight was dangerously low, and they had to get her to a weight where she wouldn't die within the first thirty days of release from the hospital. Yes, they said that to me.

It was March when she got out of the hospital. I found her intoxicated in a single-room apartment to which she had been released. Her father had left her some money to get started. I couldn't understand the situation. I had bought her a pretty short sleeve shirt with a picture of a cat on it. It was like having a girlfriend to be doing this. She had still been in the hospital when I brought it to her. She had liked it.

Now, seeing her like this, intoxicated, I felt so overwhelmed and frustrated. I pulled out that shirt that I had bought for her because it made her smile. I said, "remember this?" I left the shirt draped over the dresser so she would see it when she did get up.

I had been seeing her every day when she was in the hospital. Now, I wondered if I would find her sober when I showed up.

Again, this was not a conventional relationship.

I was somewhat concerned that my supervisors on the social work team might think I was doing something wrong. I was still new to the field and had not had any specific education that touched on professional ethics. Later in my career journey, I would have avoided this probably. I had told Celta early on that I was not meeting with her as part of the staff. I had always told her that we were friends. If someone had asked me, I would have explained this.

It just had felt like an unusual way to develop a relationship and indeed it had been. Plus, she smoked and normally that would not be attractive at all to me. I hope you understand, dear reader, that I do not judge people based on external characteristics, like physical attractiveness. Despite that, her very low weight did frighten me. She was four foot eleven and weighed about 60 pounds. That is extreme anorexia. This meant that she was all skin and bones.

This is hard to discuss because I know that for a person with anorexia, talking about how thin they are can trigger very negative emotions. I so much want you, dear reader, to know how much I respected Celta and loved her. 

I could see and feel her bones when I held her. Her heart was still beating. When we had been close, I would feel a tingling feeling. If I was sitting next to her, I felt it at the point of contact of our legs, hands, and arms. It felt like a current flowing through me and her. It was almost as if the pulsating beats of our hearts were synchronized and felt everywhere our bodies made contact.

Now, I was so sad. I wanted her to be with me. I told her I would be back the next day. I had gone and bought some food from a Subway fast-food restaurant. I thought I knew what she would like.

When I came back, she seemed so bad. She was passed out. She said she had to leave the apartment because she couldn't pay the rent. I had no clarity of mind to problem solve the situation. I took her to the hospital – a regular hospital not where she had been - because of her weight and condition.

After she was put in a room I left for a little while and headed home. I had to think of something. It seemed like she would be okay at the emergency room for a little while.

I got a call and was told to pick her up. They said they couldn't keep her overnight. I felt my voice assume a voice that was like pleading, and I asked for a little more time and said, "what can I do?"

They said, "we are not responsible for her."

I had been working on jobs – everything from being a busboy to a waiter. My parents made sure to add to my level of shame for not working as an engineer. It was reprehensible. I would have done anything to get a job that would pay me enough to not need them for anything. I hated my parents! And I would have done anything to escape. For anyone to believe that I was stubbornly choosing to not work as an engineer, that person surely must not be a rational person.

I hated them but I had to act cordial and see if I could shake that feeling. Yeah, I hate to say that and I only mean to convey what I felt at the time but I didn't tell out of respect and fear.

Many people overuse the word hate. In my experience as a therapist, it is rarely something that people admit to feeling. It's what you feel when you are exposed to something noxious, or repulsive! That is precisely what I mean when I say that I hated them! I found them repulsive!

She didn't have an apartment and I didn't know what to do when the hospital said that she had to leave. So, I decided to take Celta to a motel in Augusta.

She was sober now. We spoke for some time.

She said jokingly, "you can say that you spent the night with a woman finally."

We had not "slept together" as they say. This day didn't even allow for cuddling.

I said, "I better get home, my parents think I am working. It's weird how Mom suddenly wants me to be around her while I live there. Growing up this was never an issue. Now because I moved in with them, they want to SEE me. I can't say I don't want to SEE you to Mom."

It felt good to laugh about this. We had talked about this unusual situation and would continue to do that. My self-esteem was being dragged down due to the emotional and psychological abuse and so I wanted to avoid my mother as much as possible. My father was more tolerable, but he still went along with and supported my mother's point of view.

The next day I showed up at the hotel and her room. She wasn't in. I walked around frantically looking for her. A light rain was falling. This place didn't look too inviting in the day, as they had not kept up the place too well. I passed people as I looked and listened in the rooms nearby. I was never nosy, but I was feeling desperate.

"Have you seen a small woman?" first upfront at the reception desk and then I asked some people who were walking around.

No one was very helpful.

I walked around the front which faced the highway. I fell to my knees, more like collapsing than praying. Then I said in a voice that was audible but not loud, "Please, please help me."

I walked back around and spotted someone who I had seen earlier. "You are looking for a small woman?" a woman said.

"Yes."

"Come this way. I think she went in a room over here."

We knocked on a door. I saw her in a bed with some guy without her clothes on. What had he done to her? What happened? I could see beer bottles. I must have looked pitiful.

I registered voices saying, "nothing happened, she passed out here." ... "She had been looking for something to drink."

I'm thinking "does she look like someone who should be drinking?" and "what kind of guy is this to take advantage of her?"

I looked away as she dressed. She had looked so boney that she looked extremely unhealthy. At that moment I had a mixture of confusing feelings. I had had romantic and intimate feelings for Celta and I loved her. But seeing her like this was not attractive to me. My reaction around her when I noticed how thin she was from time to time felt embarrassing and confusing. Maybe it was more like I feared for her health than that I was repulsed by her appearance.

Back in her room, I told her that I didn't know what to do. She said her mother lives in Athens, and I said I would take her there. It was about an hour and a half away. We weren't sure that her mother would take her, but I felt like we had to try. Yes, she knew how to get there. I thought "don't call, just go. Just show up."

We found the house and I knocked on the door. Her mother saw us and said, "she can't stay here."

I looked at her pleadingly. "I... I don't know what to do. I tried other things." Tears were running down my face as I said, "I'm scared."

She opened the door and we entered.

"I'm Bruce."

"I'm Faye." Adding, "we've had problems and fought before." She was small herself but not sickly underweight.

"Thank you for helping. I don't know what to do."

I said goodbye to Celta and said I would be back to see her soon.

Her father had come from out of state and rented an apartment for her. There was one more episode of Celta drinking before things settled into relatively normal life. When I say "normal life" I mean she was not drinking. She had gone on what seemed like a binge of drinking and then stopped. There would be one other episode months later but that was it.

This was when I met a couple that was friends of the family. The woman was the one that told me that Celta cannot love people and that she is a user and a manipulator. She warned me not to be an "enabler."

Indeed, people with substance abuse or use disorders can be like that. They can act like sociopaths where they use people, lie, manipulate others, and might appear to act like they don't have morals.

However, I am a bright person, and I am observant when it comes to the actions and intentions of others. Celta was never asking me to do things that I didn't want to do. In fact, I could tell that she was genuinely concerned about how I felt, and she was extremely concerned about my happiness.

Things were about to become more normal shortly after Celta got settled into an apartment in Athens, Georgia. 

I'll pick up this story in the next chapter where the love story begins to take form and shape.

There is something that is so very profound about this story. I honestly never knew anyone who was so interested in me and no one had made me so happy. This is an observation I was making as the story moves into April of 1990.

As I mentioned at the end of the last chapter, things got better after she settled into an apartment in Athens. Something amazing was happening because she had been living a life previously that threatened her health and was characterized by excessive drinking. Her weight had been so low that it threatened her life. I can discern these facts. 

What was different now? Our connection had undeniably made a difference. 

I knew my parents were extremely judgmental of others. So, I was keeping this relationship to myself. I had enough to deal with when it came to them without getting into a fight if they said anything derogatory. Still, their lack of curiosity was strange.

I was calling Celta every night. We talked for at least an hour. At some point in May, I started telling Celta "I love you" every time we spoke. Just as I was saying goodbye with a promise to call the next day and she would answer, "I love you too." I felt butterflies in my stomach. After I put the phone down, I would look up at the ceiling with a smile on my face.

Most of the time I came on Sundays. She had suggested the Botanical Gardens in Athens. They had a flower bed in front of the main building. In April the pansies were in bloom. I was looking at them holding Celta's hand as we imagined what kind of expression they had on their yellow or violet faces.

Inside the building, they had exotic plants with different names. Some were trees with variously shaped green leaves. A wide range of flowers. Some of the trees sprouted flowers as well. There was a restaurant upstairs and another downstairs. It always seemed too quiet, and Celta didn't even mention eating there. We would walk around the grounds most of the time. They had paths or trails with various plants labeled along the way. Along the parking lot, there was a place that was slightly woodsy.

During this time, when we were apart, she continued to compose hand-written letters to me, and we found things to talk about on the phone every day.

I would treasure those letters. Her letters made me feel like I was with her even when we were apart. I would read them again and again. There is something magical about a person sharing their most intimate thoughts and observations in real-time, uncensored - a stream of consciousness observation.

"I think it is amazing," I said to Celta.

"What?"

"Well, your letters to me are about your experiences and observations. Yet they feel like gifts to me.

I used to think that we should not just talk about ourselves and our own feelings. That's not true."

During this time, I would often go to the Catholic Church with my parents and my brother on Saturday evenings. Then I would drive to Athens on Sunday.

Celta started going to the AA – alcoholics anonymous – meetings in the mornings. I thought that her anorexia and the psychological were equally serious, but I was too new in the psychiatric field to know what would be best for her. She told me to come with her.

I said, "are you sure I can?"

"Yes, it's an open meeting."

"Okay."

I sat there holding her hand... occasionally looking around... often my eyes rested on her while she seemed to be listening.

Just before the end of the meeting she gestured to get up and said we can go now. She had told me her religion was Episcopalian which is similar to Catholicism which I had known. As we got up and started walking out the front door away from where we parked and toward the church, holding hands, I felt ten feet tall, that feeling I would have with her.

Sometimes we showed up a bit early and stood outside where they had the meetings. We stood there, arms around each other, looking at each other, lost in words, dreams, and our own world.

One time I stepped away to use a restroom that was in another area and some people were talking.

Some of the literature caught my eye. I was feeling a bit out of place though. A guy and a woman approached me. "I'm Linda," said the woman. The guy said, "Oh, you're Celta's boyfriend."

Without a second thought, I just said "Yes," and said we are going to church now. I had not even thought about what I had just said until later and it just brought a smile to my face when I reflected upon the moment. For some reason, I didn't mention that to Celta.

I walked upstairs and found Celta standing by herself in the hallway. I smiled and wrapped the fingers of my right hand into the fingers on her left hand and we walked toward the doorway passing others who were congregating. It felt like a formal procession. That's why they assumed we were boyfriend and girlfriend. What else would one think?

I would open the doors for both of us hearing the lyrics from the song "Miracles" by Jefferson Starship drifting through my mind.

If only you believe in
miracles, baby
so would I
{pause}

I might have to move
heaven and earth to prove
it to you, baby

And we walked like this the short distance to the church. I spotted Faye, Celta's mother and we walked there. I slid down the row and next to her mother with Celta on my right – me in the middle.

No one gestured for Celta to sit in the middle next to her mother.

On another visit, Celta mentioned that she had met a guy named David at one of the AA meetings and asked if we could visit him. I took it like she was reaching out to help someone like I might do the same. He was staying in a residential facility for people with alcohol problems.

When we got there, I noticed the long entrance roadway into the place. It was a nice summer day with the green grass flowing over a gentle hill.

"Were you here before?" I asked her.

"A couple of years ago for about a month."

We found David and decided to walk a bit toward a shaded area. I reached for Celta's left hand and she took my hand. I guess I felt a little jealous. She looked at me and just smiled. I managed a smile back.

There was another visit where Celta asked to visit David again. I couldn't let her down, but I wanted my time with her. No, she wasn't looking at David like she looked at me. I was a bit surprised at my feelings. I was slightly upset but didn't say anything. As I took her hand we walked a bit and then she reached out to take David's hand too with a playful childlike look on her face.

We were near a swing set. "Have a seat, I'll push you," I said.

I pulled her forward a bit and pushed her back.

David started to talk about something then his voice trailed off.

I was pushing Celta away and she would return. Not too far, just past the triangular poles of the swing set. Her brown hair caught the sun at the farthest crest – just to the right of her head.

Everything was quiet. Our eyes were locked. She smiled that look that said she was happy to be with me. I mouthed the words "I love you" silently, and she smiled, in a rhythm with the swing, as she was closest.

It was hypnotic. We breathed with each cycle of her moving toward me and then away.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed David shift a bit almost restless. I then felt bad for him. Celta had not averted her gaze from me. She seemed content.

After another few moments, I noticed she was wanting to swing higher. I wondered, "could she fall?" and then gently caught her legs and said, "what if you fall?"

She just smiled.

"It's getting late," I said.

On another visit, we went to a zoo that was near the Botanical Gardens. They had some black bears, a few monkeys, a few wolves, foxes, a bobcat, snakes, turkeys, dear – not in the same enclosure, of course. It was called Bear Hollow Zoo.

I told Celta that this felt like I was going on a vacation when I came. An escape. A getaway – that's a good word.

I got to meet her father too. He was nice and he took some photos of us.

The time I spent with Celta seemed to sustain me through the workweek.

I have no idea why but there was a period of just over a week in early September where she had another drinking binge. I wasn't mad, I was mystified by what happened.

Then things seemed normal again with our relationship. I felt comfortable with her.

It seemed like she picked up on my feelings around this time and the sense that I was hurt and scared. It wasn't like she intended any harm to me. If she had this problem for all these years and it had been so troublesome to everyone, what was different now?

She seemed a bit off the next time I saw her. I guess it was like she felt shame for her problems and the impact they might have on me. I had mentioned previously how someone who knew the family told me that Celta was just a user and manipulator. Those are words I knew that people say to people like Celta hoping to motivate them to change.

But she was beating her problems.

When she had been in the psychiatric hospital, I remember they said they worried that if she died within 30 days of her release, they would be libel. So, it seemed like she had to gain a certain amount of weight. It seemed like they then changed their mind and decided that they can't keep her forever. It had been a grim prognosis and it offended me. But she had lasted all these months and seemed okay despite being so thin.

It felt like love had saved her – not just my love for her but her love for me – our mutual love.

We began talking about our relationship and the nature of the relationship. She had this pensive look on her face as if she was remembering something as she looked away, out the window. Then she said, "I love you, but I am not in love."

"Okay, because... I don't know either what we have." I answered. "And..." I started to say something. "I don't know what to say. I haven't thought about things like this before."

It was a late summer day in September. What was my question way back when she had looked up at the TV and saw a video of the song "I don't know much, but I know I love you?"

Nothing had changed in the following weeks when I saw her. For example, the following week I came and at one point she took a seat on her bed and I looked down at her smiling with a feeling of joy almost bordering on amusement as I looked into her eyes. She was looking up and she had a look on her face like she was in love or delighted by something. I want to say she had a look that conveyed a sense of some "hunger", but she was just looking.

When I sat down next to her on her bed, I was on her left and I touched her right leg. I was thinking that I wanted to be closer, to feel her body next to mine. She moved her legs over mine. My hand rested against her lower back. Her arms went around me.

I felt peaceful, serene. Nothing was said. We just smiled at one another. I could feel every place where our bodies touched. It wasn't exciting but peaceful. I could feel a tingling feeling and chills.

Slow and repeated like some wave.

I felt peaceful, serene. Nothing was said. We just smiled at one another. I could feel every place where our bodies touched. It wasn't exciting but peaceful. I could feel a tingling feeling and chills.

Slow and repeated like some wave.

The fall moved into the Georgia area and the air-cooled. The leaves were falling off the trees.

We came to the place where the pathway met the parking lot. I looked up to an area in the trees. I was thinking that it was cool enough that there wouldn't be any snakes. I gestured to the left. "Up there, it will be a little private for us." I said adding, "I don't want to be disturbed by the others.

I was telling her what to me didn't sound very exciting - just something about where I used to go hiking when I was growing up. This somewhat reminded me of that. We had woods behind our house where we lived when I was growing up. I was saying that just behind our house the woods didn't go very deep. We were unpacking the food we brought.

I looked up and she seemed transfixed with her full and complete attention on me.

Wow! I almost wanted to ask, "what do you see in me that is so interesting or exciting?" but that didn't seem necessary with Celta or maybe it didn't seem appropriate to me. We had a connection. Wow! What was it that was happening? I had never noticed anyone so interested in me. It was almost as if I had hypnotized her.

Later, I would think, "that was a moment I should capture in a poem."

How did holding hands feel so special? Or her listening to me with interest? Or how can non-sexual touching feel so powerful?

Moments later we were walking hand-in-hand. My mind drifted to the various feelings that I had.

Sometimes I had felt peace, calmness, serenity. Other times I felt excited or aroused. That's hard to talk about because I had not even been in the habit of talking about those things with myself.

We would exist in a place of tranquility, peace, and serenity. I tell her, "I can just stay here with you forever."

In the last chapter, I told you about the joy I found in finding someone to love and someone who loved me. I told you about the experiences I had, and I hope it was clear just how meaningful this was in my life's trajectory. It was so important to present the profound and positive impact this had on my life.

This was life-altering.

The experiences I had growing up, in my home environment were toxic to the development of the kind of self-confidence and self-worth that I would need to achieve my career goals. Something had been missing despite all the improvements I had made in my sense of worth.

It's hard to know what you need to overcome a problem that has existed throughout your life. My therapist or counselor in college was very talented, competent, and profoundly helpful. However, we failed to fully appreciate all the negative impacts of abuse and devaluation that I had experienced in my home life from my parents.

Then I met Celta, and something happened. She seemed to delight in me. She was so interested in my experiences. She also was concerned about my well-being and happiness. I knew she was thinking about me for most of the day each and every day! Her diary-style, stream of consciousness letters told me this.

I knew she was thinking about me for so much of her day, each and every day, because of the letters she wrote to me - her diary of sorts composed with me in mind as someone she wanted to share her life with. I had realized that I previously thought that I was not that important to anyone. This is what I meant by seeking a relationship with some aspect of exclusivity or the idea that I could be the most important person to someone.

I knew that I was the only one that Celta loved the way she loved me. Previously, I had friends, but they all had a boyfriend/girlfriend or spouse or the relationship wasn't as close.

After I was with Celta, I felt like I was ten feet tall... confident... worthwhile, and deserving. My self-esteem was higher than it had ever been in my life. I also felt safe trying new things. This idea might seem unexpected. She was just a small girl (woman). I sensed that she deeply cared about me and thought about me and that was transformative.

It's important to underscore these important points before I move on with this story.

When I say that our relationship was platonic, I mean that we were not boyfriend and girlfriend. We didn't have a physical relationship. That being said, we did exchange "I love you" on a daily basis or whenever we talked on the phone or saw each other. We were close and perhaps somewhat intimate and physical but not in a sexual way. Then later there was the fact that she said in September that she loved me but wasn't in love with me.

What did that mean? What made it so complicated was the fact that Celta knew exactly what I was feeling and experiencing. It bordered on two people being psychic and connected to one another. I didn’t have to tell her much about the abusive and toxic experiences with my parents when I came to see her. She knew. She comforted me. In her presence I experienced something no medication ever offered - total and complete serenity.

As time passed after she said she was not in love with me back in September, I was afraid to ask if that changed. It wasn’t because of anything that we were doing together physically. It’s just that she would have known how I felt and wanted me to experience love. Instead our eyes and our time together screamed that we were in love without her saying “I am now in love.”

Late in December, something happened. I had moved to kiss her as we spent so many countless moments of perfect serenity together holding each other, arms wrapped around each other. It was impulsive.

Her lips were so thin that I didn't feel what I imagined I would feel. This was my first kiss. I felt confused. She didn’t turn away or suggest that this should not happen. It just happened. It was what we did that day. If either one of us had not wanted or let it happen it would not have happened.

I discovered for the first time that some expressions of love our outside our control. This is relevant when one thinks about the religious brainwashing to which I was exposed. At this point, the words from September that she was not in love, would have been something I would eventually have asked her to clarify if she had not more likely reflected the truth that we were in love.

She had such tiny lips due to her low weight, a fact of her condition of anorexia. This made it seem like not what I expected. It was on the drive back from the visit that I realized that this had to be explored further. We needed to do something more to express our love for one another.

Sometime later I pictured my face turning to the right and moving closer to her as she moved toward me. I had been in sync with her and felt so comfortable. I knew that she might have said that one time that she was not in love but when we were together there were so many times when she had that look of someone who was so happy, comfortable and it sure looked like she was in love. Well, she definitely had "romantic" feelings.

Also, when I was with her, I could see myself and my feelings. You just know those things. There were so many subtle behavioral cues that told me what she was feeling and how she was responding to my touches... how I held her... where I touched her. Everything had been welcomed. I played back memories of how when I touched her she moved closer to me.

No, what a minute. This was NOT about the ways I touched her. By saying that, I am leaving out so much. What was so profound is the way she touched me. She was NEVER an object to be approached and desired. I was comfortable enough to be close to her all the time and at those times, she was touching me - it was so natural and right… Dreamy eyes looking at each other with my leg on the side of her bed and her leg moving over to rest on mine. Moments after my arrival when we faced each other in the fetal position staring into each others eyes.

Those were some of the moments in which I was the first to say “I love you” with her immediate response, “I love you, too.” Indeed, I would reflect on whether I always said it first.

As I replayed that imagined kiss – next time - I would begin to tilt my head to the right, bend down, she would be acting on instinct, without taking the time to over-think it – that's what I would do, and she was my mirror. Sometimes we do things as if the moment is such that it is inevitable. She would move to meet my lips... she would be transfixed upon my eyes and I hers. I felt excited as I replayed this in my mind.

It was as if it had happened already, almost.

It would never happen.

On New Year's Day of 1991, I received the most devastating news of my life. A phone call shattered my world. I was in my room on the second floor of my parents' house when I heard the words, "Celta died last night."

"How?" I demanded, unable to grasp or accept the harsh reality. I was paralyzed by shock, desperately willing it all to be untrue! The question of “how?” seemed like every part of me was challenging the mere possibility that this news could be true. The person I told every single day that I love her was gone! No, that couldn’t be true.

"There was a fire... she died from smoke inhalation." The fire had ignited from an exposed electrical cord on a TV.

As details of the funeral, its location, and time filtered through my numb mind, I struggled to articulate the turmoil within me. I had spoken with the caller a few times before—a family friend—but now, tears blurred my vision. "Okay, I'll be there, but I can't talk..." I choked out, my voice breaking. They needed to know I would be there.

I let the phone slip from my hand and erupted into a storm of anguished tears.

The pain was unbearable!

Tears streamed down my face as I drove to the funeral, my heart heavy with sorrow. Standing before the closed casket, a tidal wave of emotion consumed me. A fleeting, irrational urge to open it and confirm that it wasn't Celta inside gripped me.

At the funeral, my grief overflowed, my sobs louder and more profound than everyone else's combined. I was beyond caring about appearances.

It was at the Episcopalian church, the place Celta and I attended together, where I would sit beside her mother and Celta herself. I was still a practicing Christian, attending church regularly, but now, everything felt unbearably different.

Standing outside after the funeral, I was caught between murmurs of consolation and the overwhelming sight of the closed casket—a painful, unyielding reminder that this was real. My tears streamed unabated as I grappled with raw grief, and all the while, Celta's mother, with a mix of stern protectiveness and unspoken pity, forbade me from witnessing the burial. She believed, as did I deep down, that I was too fragile, that I wouldn’t survive the storm of that final goodbye. Torn between obeying her and my own desperate need to honor Celta, I felt pulled apart.

At the burial, it was as if the universe had decided that the one heart that loved Celta most, the one whose grief cut deeper than anyone else’s, would be absent from that final tribute. I wasn’t there, having followed Celta's mother’s command by fleeing Athens (Athens, Georgia). In that absence, I was consumed by a bitter sense of betrayal—not just by fate, but by God himself. I questioned why the one force that should have sheltered me had left me to drown in my sorrow. Why was I shown something so beautiful as love is only to have it suddenly taken away.

Despite this inner tumult, I sought help at a grief counseling group led by a nun at the Catholic hospital in Augusta, Georgia—a desperate attempt to make sense of it all. The sessions, revolving around guided imagery, relaxation, prayer, and scriptures, felt at once both comforting and painfully clinical. I met with her a few times and even asked for tape recordings, as if locking away her words might somehow patch the gaping wound inside me.

In those group sessions, where the stages of grief were laid out like a cold roadmap, the members shared mementos of memories with their lost loved ones. I listened intently, a wide-eyed outlier among older, seemingly more stoic souls. Yet, I felt like I fit in and belonged. The cold reality of death screamed and cried out that I was meant to be here. I had been in love and she was gone. That was true.

And then there was my family—the constant, yet strangely absent, presence. My parents, with their indifferent instructions and vague expectations, never quite understood my inner chaos. There was a persistent, stinging desire within me to share with them the overwhelming experience of having been loved so wholly by Celta. But instead, I was unable to share my story with them because I never did share things with my family.

It would never occur to me that they would know how to comfort me. This silence about something so profound was a reminder of the callous indifference of my parents. They had NEVER shown me compassion, empathy, kindness, comfort. Having never had real nurturing parents, not ever, I couldn’t even imagine what I would want from them.

As I recount this, it’s painfully clear that it was the first time I had ever truly been loved, and that love both illuminated and cursed me. Could it be that my parents sensed I had never truly loved them in return?

Anyone who saw me regularly would have noticed that something was terribly off—that I carried a secret sorrow beneath my composed exterior. Yet, it was as if my parents and even my brother were haunted by their own denial, unwilling or unable to confront my transformation. Despite the emotional chasm that separated us, all I wanted was to celebrate the unique, transformative relationship I had with Celta. But how does one begin to articulate such complexity?

That year with Celta, brimming with vibrant meaning and fleeting joy, now felt tainted by loss. The experience of being loved and loving in return can never be fully grasped until it is lived, and in its absence, I was left wrestling with both euphoric memories and unbearable pain.

In the midst of all this conflict, I found myself turning to alcohol—a desperate, self-destructive attempt to drown the duality of love and grief, to escape from the inescapable truth of my shattered heart.

I was put on a tricyclic anti-depressant by a psychiatrist. I had developed panic attacks as well. The anti-depressant had the effect of creating a sense of positive feelings even with my mother standing there one morning ironing something for work with my father getting ready too. Those fake feelings were only transitory. It is reminiscent of the song by REM titled "It's the end of the world as we know it."... and I feel fine. I guess I felt "high."

The days flowed around me like a mystical experience in which I flowed in and out of my body. I wasn't fully alive or so it seemed... betrayed even by God.

It was all a blur. My entire existence.

Somehow, I did get a job finally that could have made my parents satisfied. Everything was always about them. They never asked about anything that was happening to me. So, they never inquired about why I was going for grief counseling because they had no knowledge of this.

Working as a Software Engineer/Programmer

Anyway, I got a job at the National Science Foundation as a contractor. I was developing a network for the museum and that involved network programming in the C programming language. This was a job that represented me using the skills of an engineer. I would later learn that my parents felt like I owed it to them to work as an engineer because they paid for my education. They didn’t see it from my point of view… they didn’t care at all what I wanted in life.

I had not asked them to pay for graduate school but I assumed that they at least cared about me doing what made me happy. I should have known that they were not capable of that. It was my sister who decades later conveyed that knowledge that my parents felt like I owed it to them to work in a field they knew was of no interest to me. They were not just trying to reason with me that I could make more money if I worked in a job that used the skills I learned at Georgia Tech. No I owed it to them. It was an obligation.

No matter what I actually wanted.

So, with the job at the National Science Foundation, I was a software engineer. I did accomplish a great deal in that job capacity and my supervisor was very impressed with my talents. Again, this was not at all interesting to me. Yet, I was making sure that I successfully met all deadlines and deliverables.

I vaguely remember a summer trip to Las Vegas. The company paid for this to cover some job related training. It was amazing. I had this incredible per-diem rate where I was paid my salary plus extra money for expenses that exceeded the cost of the Vegas hotel room.

Vegas was probably the worst place for me to go with so much free cash and free drinks in the casinos. Somehow, I made all the presentations for the training that I was sent there to attend. In the evenings and free time, I hit the casinos and made some decent money. Nothing to write home about. Gin or vodka was an escape but somehow, I didn't drink so much so as to get sick at night or even the next day.

As I try to write this now, I have only momentary snapshots with no full-running narrative memory. Just random disconnected sensations. My hands were unable to touch the leather inside a car. The sun shimmers on the pavement. Casinos. Drinks. Sitting at a poker table. Pulling a lever on a slot machine.

I must have done what was expected of me. I don't remember any complaints from my boss.

Yeah, I moved through time like a robot.

The job was going well, as I said. I was proud of how well I was doing.

I was drinking more and more during this time period after the trip to Las Vegas. Everything except beer. Vodka with tonic or orange juice. Gin and tonic. Whiskey with ice, water, or coke. Not so much wine.

I was passing out and once or twice I would puke. I really hated throwing up, always.

A Meaningless Connection with a Lady

I did meet this girl from the home office of the company that was paying me. She lived in Alabama and I was in Augusta, Georgia and we decided to meet in Atlanta, Georgia where I had graduated not long before that.

My supervisor was joking that I had "jungle fever" because I was a white guy who was going to date a black woman. He was black, as well. I didn't let that bother me. Spike Lee's film "Jungle Fever" had been out, and it was an important film. I have always been fine with having a conversation about race if that was something that was desired.

My mother actually asked about my date. I suppose the name of my date sounded ethnic and my mother asked about that guessing that she might be Italian. I said, "no, she's black."

I was proud of one thing about my ability to assert myself. My sister had heard the argument about how “others wouldn’t approve” when she was going out on a few dates with a black guy. My mother knew not to waste her breath expressing her racist ideas by telling me that others wouldn’t approve. No, her response was a simple “oh.” And that was it.

I remember that this was the first time I kissed anyone other than a brief kiss that Celta and I shared back in December of the last year. I mentioned that earlier. This was extremely passionate. She brought her kid and left him in the car and parked near the Student Center at Georgia Tech - the same building where I worked on the bottom floor in the post office.

We were looking for someplace to sit or be as private as possible outside after dark. I remember making out at a few locations here and there. I could feel her large breasts against me, and I was aroused.

My first passionate kiss before Lynn. We'll get to that later.

Did I feel guilty about dating so soon after Celta? Maybe. But I wasn't actually feeling nor was I "aware" during this time period. I was so numb that I needed to feel something. To wake up! I was trying so hard to wake up.

The tricyclic antidepressant made me feel good for a few moments. That didn't make life a meaningful experience. An antidepressant can’t create meaning, hope, or escape from depression.

My mother had made me feel so not okay and so had my father somewhat. This "date" was a way to get out of the home and to appear normal to my mother. If I was going out with someone from the company that employed my services, it made me appear less worthy of the criticism I had been getting from my parents. That's how I figured it. It was an escape.

This wasn’t meaningful, it was pleasurable, though.

There wasn't a second date. I had expressed my concerns about pre-marital sex. My boss at the company had given me a talk about making sure I had condoms. I was living under the weight of religious brainwashing. Many Christians were having sex but somehow for me it was not going to be acceptable to God.

We weren't even in a committed relationship. I drove to Atlanta to meet her for a second date, but she never showed up after she heard that I wasn’t ready for sex. I was frustrated out of embarrassment for driving all the way to Atlanta. I don’t know what I thought was going to happen. We would get a hotel room and just kiss.

After I realized she was not going to show up, I went back home. I just forgot the entire matter by the next day and never thought about the matter further.

The various medications and the alcohol impeded grieving and dare I say reality testing. People who are grieving are in such a state of denial that it is almost like a temporary psychosis. From what I was reading and hearing in the stories of grief that I studied, "normal," healthy people did for a while embrace denial to such an extent that it bordered on delusional thinking.

The loss of Celta could not be washed away with alcohol, grief counseling, or an intimate date.

Poetry as an outlet...

I can thank my mother for introducing me to Martin Kirby, who went to our church and he was a professor of English Literature and related subjects at a college in Augusta, Georgia. He would become my writing/poetry mentor. It’s so strange that my mother noticed my interest in poetry. I didn’t think she noticed anything about me. I had given up a long time ago trying to gain her attention. Yet, here she was introducing me to Martin and telling him about my interest in poetry. How did my mother even know this about me?

Martin had not heard about my plans to be a social worker from my mother nor did he learn about the love and the loss I experienced… until I shared those things with him and his wife.

I would show up on a regular basis for poetry readings at Martin’s home with his wife where I shared my poetry and got feedback, advice, and guidance on writing good poetry. He also heard me write about my experiences with Celta and listened to my experiences. This was very helpful because I had no other outlet for this or place to talk about Celta and my relationship with her.

He said he thought it would take about 10 years for me to be able to write good poetry about Celta because the feelings were too raw.

I was living in a difficult environment with my parents. I was dealing with a major tragedy and yet the name Celta wasn't even being mentioned at home.

Between drinking, the different medications I was put on, and the panic attacks, I had to go to the Emergency Room (ER) on two occasions.

The psychiatrist tried me on a major tranquilizer, and I had these horrifying muscle spasms that twisted my body up into contortions that made me think my bones were going to be broken in my neck and elsewhere. The doctor said that in higher doses the drug is used for psychotic disorders but somehow it would help with my depression, I guess. That was the reason I was taken to the ER once. My father took me.

Another time I had a panic attack and again my father took me to the ER. It's strange that they weren't asking why all this was happening. Nothing like this had ever happened to me. NEVER!

The only ones listening to my stories about Celta were Martin Kirby and his wife as well as the attendees at the grief support group. Again, my parents were not interested to learn anything about what mattered to me. They never seemed to have any awareness that I was even going to grief counseling.

This is so utterly astonishing! I had not deliberately been trying to keep everything a secret about what was going on with me. On the contrary, I looked for an opening to discuss the matter. I wanted to repair and improve the relationship. I wanted to share the fact that I had found someone who loved me.

With all this going on, all the problems I was having, I began to doubt that I could achieve my goals in life, my career goals. I wondered how I could help others when I had so many problems myself… problems just living life.

It should be noted that while I was put on a major tranquilizer, my psychiatrist NEVER said he thought I was psychotic. We knew I had problems coping with overwhelming stressors.

After the job with the National Science Foundation ended, another opportunity presented itself in March of 1992. I was offered a job in Wilmington, North Carolina, to work with Corning as a Technical Writer. They wanted someone with a technical background.

This would change everything. I was about to be on my own again. Finally!

My perception that I had long-term "problems" would disappear as if by magic, literally - it was unbelievable. My problem was rooted in the reality of living in a toxic environment and that was complicated by the grief and the effort I had made to ignore, suppress, or deny the natural processof grieving.

My own doubts about my ability to achieve my career goals in life were contributing to the problems I was having.

It's hard to believe that I had only known Celta for one year – the year 1990 and when that year ended, so had Celta's life.

The tragic loss of Celta did not erase the positive impact she had on my life. There were other positive experiences during this time. I had become more confident.

I had been writing poetry about the experiences I had with Celta and I had been sharing that with Martin Kirby my poetry mentor but now I wanted to share this with others. The love I had experienced was so important and meaningful!

This section of the book is about the life Lynn and I built together in Wilmington, North Carolina—not in some idealized, picture-perfect sense, but in the daily, soulful way that love takes root. We were a family. That’s what mattered most.

Lynn was a poet and a potter. I was on my way to becoming a psychotherapist. We met through poetry—through words that tried to make sense of the world—and found ourselves surrounded by a creative, passionate community. The artists she knew through pottery, the poets I met at the Coastline readings—they became our extended circle. But she was my home.

We dreamed out loud together. Lynn wanted to pursue a Master of Fine Arts in poetry. I was preparing for graduate school in the mental health field. We supported each other, not just practically, but with awe and belief in each other's potential.

And we got engaged—not to prove something, but to honor what already was. We were building a life together. Like any two people in love, we wanted a future shaped by shared joy, comfort, creativity, and care.  

Have you ever longed for something you didn’t know was missing—until it arrived and changed everything?

This section of my memoir begins with a turning point: I moved out of my parents' house, left behind a toxic family system that had muted my voice for years, and started building a life of my own. What came next was something I had never fully allowed myself to imagine—real connection, the kind that felt like family, like home, like love.

What’s remarkable is how quickly many of the "problems" I once carried seemed to disappear once I was out of that environment. The grief I’d carried after losing Celta still lingered, but the doubts about my mental health? The fear that I might be too broken to move forward? Those faded as I stepped into a world where I could finally breathe.

In the chapters that follow, you’ll see a love story begin to take shape—slowly, naturally, beautifully. I hadn’t dated much before. Celta had opened my heart, but she was taken too soon. Still, what she gave me—the experience of feeling loved—changed me. It planted a truth in me I couldn’t forget: I was loveable.

And now, a new chapter of life was opening. This time, it would be with Lynn—the love of my life, my home, and my heart. We didn’t meet under fairytale conditions. Lynn was living with Cystic Fibrosis, a chronic illness that I pushed into the background. Some compromises had to be made. But we had a “normal life” in many ways… as if there is anything normal about being loved and being in love.

These next pages are about more than falling in love. They're about what happens when love is real, mutual, and life-giving. About finding a partner who sees you—not despite your past, but through it. And yes, they’re also about career, identity, and healing from shyness. Because all of that—romantic connection, professional purpose, emotional growth—became possible once I found someone who made me feel safe enough to fully be myself.

So come with me, as I begin again.

Not just in a new city. Not just in a new career.
But in love.

Because this isn’t just the story of how I found someone.

It’s the story of how I finally found a connection—the kind that changes everything and endures.

When I accepted a six-month contract as a technical writer at Corning Glass in Wilmington, North Carolina, I felt a mix of excitement and uncertainty. My engineering degree and experience as a software engineer had landed me the job, but I couldn't shake the question: What happens after six months?

The past year had been one of the most challenging periods of my life. Living with my parents had eroded my confidence in my ability to pursue my dreams. I had spent over two years weighed down by the belief that I was never good enough, never meeting their expectations. I questioned so much about myself.

But deep down, I realized that the biggest obstacle in my life wasn't my abilities—it was my environment. Moving to Wilmington wasn't just a career move; it was an opportunity to put my life back on course away from the toxic environment of my parent’s home.

A New Chapter Begins

Before arriving in Wilmington, I found a roommate named Donna. Despite our different backgrounds, we shared a sense of starting over and seeking something new. I shared some social experiences with Donna. But she was not at the center of a larger social circle that I was building. I knew she had experienced domestic violence and she was part of the effort to address this in society, in the lives of others and for herself.

In my first week, I attended a poetry reading event after being encouraged by my mentor Martin Kirby. It was held at the Coastline Convention Center and marked a turning point in my life.

The Poetry Reading That Changed Everything

The event took place on the fourth floor of the Convention Center, a high perch that overlooked the Cape Fear River. Outside, the setting sun splashed red, orange, and blue reflections over the water, these same colors spilling into a dim, intimate room, illuminating it with a strange mix of warmth and melancholy. As I stepped inside, I noticed a small group—around 10 to 15 individuals—each taking a turn to bare their souls through poetry. Dusty, the emcee, exuded a serene, almost maternal presence that was both comforting and unnerving. Although she was about a generation older than many of the regulars, there was something both grounding and disconcerting about her calm authority.

The lounge welcomed both regulars staying at the Coastline Convention Center and members of the general public. Dusty maneuvered effortlessly between serving customers and guiding the event, embodying the motherly figure I had longed for yet never truly had. Even as her gentle confidence calmed me, it clashed with my inner turmoil.

I had never read my own writing aloud before. The very idea of standing in front of strangers and exposing my innermost thoughts was both a courageous leap and a paralyzing challenge. Memories of my college years at Georgia Tech, where I was more comfortable in the shadows of large groups, bubbled up in my mind. Knowing that my future in group therapy demanded performance, I forced myself towards the microphone. I had resolved before stepping into that room: I had to face this fear. The decision to do this was a driving force that took on its own life. I didn’t let myself think about backing out.

I chose to share my writing for two conflicting reasons. On one hand, I genuinely wanted to connect with others through the raw, unfiltered experiences I had endured. On the other, I craved recognition—wanted people to know me in both a literal and figurative embrace, even as the thought of opening up left me torn between vulnerability and self-protection.

When my voice, amplified for the very first time, filled the space, it felt both surreal and jarring. As I recited a few of my poems, my hands trembled uncontrollably and my voice wavered under the weight of exposure. Yet, when I finished and was met with applause—and when Dusty’s reassuring smile met my eyes—I felt a flicker of validation amidst the storm of my inner conflict. In that bittersweet moment, she was the maternal presence I needed, her approval mingling with my lingering doubts, hinting that perhaps, just maybe, I belonged.

That night, laden with conflicting emotions, marked the beginning of a transformation I wasn’t sure I deserved. Dusty described our poetry as a “gift,” a sentiment I embraced even as I wrestled with the duality of sharing my poems about Celta and my journey—not just as a means of self-expression, but as an intricate dance of connection shadowed by the fear of being truly seen. I truly embraced and loved the concept of how Dusty called our poems gifts that we were sharing.

Finding My Comfort Zone

Through weekly readings, I made lifelong friends like poet Jean Jones and confidant Thomas Childs. Sharing my poem "The Swing" with Jean, who had an MFA in poetry, was a turning point. His feedback humbled me, but also fueled my desire to grow as a writer and use poetry for healing and connection.

Building a New Future

Beyond poetry, I had a clear vision for my future in mental health. My volunteering experience at Georgia Regional Hospital solidified this goal. From working with patients to participating in staff meetings, I gained the confidence to pursue social work as my career path. Transitioning from engineering would require more education and practical experience, but volunteering provided me with letters of recommendation for graduate school. Now, becoming a psychotherapist felt within reach as I made the move to Wilmington. Looking back, I see how each experience prepared me for this moment, even the painful ones.

A New Beginning, A New Love

As I settled into life in Wilmington, I continued to build friendships, find my voice, and pursue my goals. And then, amidst it all, I noticed Lynn.

At first, I had hardly noticed her—my heart was still processing the loss of Celta. But slowly, through poetry and shared moments, I found myself opening up to the possibility of love again. Lynn would become a defining presence in my life, a love that was enduring and transformative. It had truly seemed impossible to even think of loving again.

Conclusion: Embracing Change and Growth

Leaving home and moving to Wilmington wasn’t just about escaping a toxic environment; it was about the healing I couldn’t do while living with my parents.

Looking out over the Cape Fear River after that first poetry reading, I realized something profound: I was no longer invisible. I belonged, I had a purpose, and I was on the path to becoming the person I was always meant to be.

I truly should have remembered and made a point of never forgetting just how toxic my parents were. Had I held that fact close to my heart, I would have spared myself so much pain later in life.
 

In the last chapter, I spoke about attending the poetry readings at the Coastline Convention Center. It was April of 1992 when I arrived in Wilmington, North Carolina. I started attending the poetry readings on Sundays.

This was part of my new identity that I was discovering.

Somehow, at these poetry readings, I felt a sense of belonging. Everyone was so welcoming, and the atmosphere was serene and accepting. However, I was aware of the fact that most of these other poets had a degree in English.

I wanted to understand a poet and the ideas that poets have - these poets. I wanted to connect with people who express themselves through the written word.

Martin, my poetry mentor, gave me enough courage to believe that I could be a poet. As a reminder, I had been visiting him and his wife (I might have left her out of the story earlier) for coffee, tea, and reading poetry – his, mine, and that of famous poets. He was a professor of English.

Some of the craft of poetry would allude me, such as meter and rhyme, but I learned that there is a form of poetry called "free verse" that doesn't require as much effort to be expended in the craft and I could get to the point of communicating ideas and sharing ideas, which was the most important aspect of what I wanted or needed.

I'm only saying these things because I have always had some insecurities about my talents.

At this point, as I started this phase of my life, I noticed that for the first time, those insecurities were virtually gone. I know this because I was making friends and connecting with others. I was a part of something that was important. Something special was happening on those evenings and at those poetry readings and other events.

There was something serene about the setting that made it easier for me to get up in front of a group of people and read my poetry. The sun would reflect across the Cape Fear River casting the soft rays of sunlight into the room.

My ability to get up in front of a room of people every week was an amazing accomplishment for me. Again, I have always been shy, fearful, quiet. I NEVER put myself at the center of attention anywhere EVER... until I started coming to the poetry readings.

This ability to be the center of attention would have a profound impact on my choices and my future as I built a career for myself. I would reflect upon the struggles and accomplishments that brought me to this point.

Dusty, the emcee for the poetry readings, made it easier too. She worked at the lounge on the fourth floor of the Coastline Convention Center, where we had the readings. She had a magical quality of attending to the guests of the Convention Center whether they were there for the poetry or not.

Something about Dusty made you feel welcome and comfortable. She was a motherly figure in a way because she was older than some of the other regulars who were like me in our twenties.

I also had noticed this other girl that was coming every week for the poetry readings. There was something about her that got my attention. Her name was Lynn.

She was very thin. She had a cough and that's related to her condition, Cystic Fibrosis - a genetic illness. I must have overheard Lynn talking about that. It's not the kind of thing that you ask someone about... like "why are you coughing all the time?"

Lynn was quiet but I didn't think she was as shy as I was.

She did share her own writing and she would share or read "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T. S. Eliot. I'm not sure when I first noticed this.

There are so many little things that you observe when someone intrigues you.

Lynn definitely intrigued me.

What was it about her? Did I already think that she was the most beautiful girl imaginable? Do I dare admit to myself that I am entertaining such irrational thoughts? I don't think it was love at first sight but something about her intrigued me. I was a bit surprised that I was thinking about finding a girlfriend after the loss of Celta.

When I had previously "dated" someone in 1991, the year following the death of Celta it was at a time when I was still in shock – something akin to what a heavyweight boxer must feel right after he has just been hit with a few blows to the head, he staggers, trying to stay on his feet, stumbling about, dazed, confused, disoriented, not thinking clearly at all, on the verge of passing out? That was me for most of 1991 and into 1992 in the wake of the loss of Celta.

Back then, if you had asked me if I was ready to date or find someone meaningful to love, I would have said that the question makes about as much sense as it would to the boxer in that state of mind.

I had not been thinking or feeling for so long ... until sometime in May or June of 1992.

This was different. Undoubtedly, being on my own and living as an adult had allowed me to grieve normally and heal.

I wish I had known about my weakness and vulnerability around losing someone important. That would have been helpful later in life. But at this point in 1992, I was blissfully unaware of this coming darkness.

I should add that it wasn't only Lynn's looks that made her attractive to me. There was something that united all of us who were regulars that came to the readings and I held everyone in high regard. There was a connection that I felt to the people I was meeting.

That being said, Lynn was stunningly beautiful. Her voice was hypnotic and alluring. She had all the things that one considers in feminine beauty and shape or so it seemed to me very early on. She seemed perfect.

I loved her voice both when she was at the microphone and when I was close to her. And her face, her skin, her legs seemed like gentle features I might have created in my own mind if I had the imagination to do such a thing.

Yet, I noticed she was alone.

I would come to the readings and try to get a sense of whether or not Lynn had a boyfriend. I didn't want to risk rejection.

Asking a girl out was a very difficult thing for me to do. I would calculate the possibility of rejection.

To avoid that I was trying to come up with a plan for seeing her outside these readings that would be something easy and without the burden of her having to size me up to determine my value as a male companion when she heard the question that I was trying to pose or the request. 

I was wanting to see if she would want to spend some time with me - as in just me.

I was like a shy person in recovery. That's a phrase I just made up. It's the best way to describe the way I thought of myself and my fear - my concerns, my judgments about how to proceed.

We were coming up on July 4th and nearly 3 months after I started going to these readings. My social life involved going out a few times with my roommate, Donna, who was nice, but we were not making a connection like I was making at the readings. Plus, I wasn't into Donna romantically.

A big poetry reading was coming up this Sunday the day after the 4th of July. I thought of Fort Fischer where Jean Jones works. Fort Fischer is a historical place. There's also the aquarium nearby. And there is this jetty that goes out to some tiny island which is a mini-animal conservation spot of sorts.

Anyway, the poetry reading was a big deal. Flyers were everywhere it seemed. Maybe I just noticed them in town because I was into that kind of thing.

Yeah, we (Lynn and I) could go together. I was pretty sure she wasn't seeing anyone else.

How it was possible that she didn't already have a boyfriend, I didn't know.

On the last Sunday before the 4th, I found myself at a table by the window at the lounge where the readings were held. She seemed receptive to me. Sure, why not. At some point, I found the courage to ask her "do you want to go to the poetry reading next Sunday with me?"

"Sure," she said.

"Oh, my God," I thought. "It worked. Okay, I need to do more."

"Can I call you?"

Before long I was getting her phone number. 

The sun was still above the Cape Fear River and reflecting back into the room a kaleidoscope of orange and blue. It seemed that my awareness of a room full of people had departed and I was only aware of us.

While this was happening, I added, "We could go down to Carolina Beach on Saturday too. There are things to see down there."

"Okay," she said in a voice that was soft and warm.

I was surprised too... not because I expected to be rejected but because of how much I wanted this. I wasn't reflecting on matters at this point. I was just acting on instinct.

In the back of my mind during the next week, I was thinking about what to do. I wanted to have lots of suggestions to offer Lynn. I wasn't sure what she would like.

I had called her and said that I knew of a peaceful and scenic spot where we could go. Maybe we could go to Fort Fischer and see if Jean was working there, or to the aquarium.

So, now, it was July 4th of 1992. I picked her up at her home on Wrightsville Beach. We drove through Wilmington and continued toward Carolina Beach. It was somehow amazing just how easy the conversation was going for both of us. I would have expected that I would have been nervous.

There is a jetty that runs out to a tiny island south of Carolina Beach where the Cape Fear River meets the ocean. It's the farthest point south if you drive down Highway 421/Carolina Beach Road from Wilmington, North Carolina.

We decided that we would go to this spot.

This is our first date. I think it's a "date." I don't have much experience dating and so if you are wondering, dear reader, what I mean by saying I was shy, these are just a few examples of what it is like. I don't think Lynn had a great deal of experience with these kinds of things either.

Since I was driving, I double-checked to see if this was where we wanted to stop first. She agreed.

So, I parked the car near the beach near that jetty that I mentioned.

The jetty is not on the open ocean, so the waves only gently lap against the beach and the rocks that form the jetty. It's just a bunch of rocks that have been stacked against one another to make a bridge of sorts. On top of the rocks, they put pavement to make it into a bridge that could be crossed.

A photo of one such jetty/bridge is shown below.

We walked out there toward the jetty together, but we were both shy a bit about the nature of the relationship that was developing.

As we started walking onto the jetty, I noticed it was a bit slippery because the saltwater had washed over the bridge recently.

I had not expected this to be slippery. I could not let her slip and risk anything bruising or scratching her perfect skin... not to mention the fear I would feel if I saw her fall.

But I was so nervous.

I had to do something. I reached out my hand to her.

"Wow!" I thought, "She took my hand. Wow! And why am I repeating this thought?"

My fingers crossed over her palm between the thumb and first finger on her hand. I felt a tingling sensation beginning in my fingers and rising up my arm, like the small soft waves beside us. The sensation came to rest in the center of my chest.

I took a breath as if I needed air. It was a lightness that I felt in my chest as if a weight had been taken off me – as if my own weight was pressing down with less force than previously.

I wasn't expecting to feel anything like this. I was just catching her to keep her from falling.

"Do you want to keep going?" I asked.

"Sure," she said, pausing to take in the scene with me. Her straight blonde hair swayed in the gentle wind. The gentle waves washed against the rocks below us. It was peaceful.

There was something interesting that I was feeling. Holding her hand was "exciting" - like I had

never felt excited before (which isn't true) ... AND this moment was also relaxed and peaceful. It might not make sense because being excited and relaxed are usually different feelings.

We walked for a bit further but then decided that this was getting too slippery.

"What's next," I thought. Then I said "Jean works at Fort Fischer and they have a tour of the historic site. We could go there."

She agreed.

I guess I was eager to spend as much time as I could with Lynn. I didn't want the day to end. I didn't want to drop her off and leave.

We let the windows down and Lynn eased back into her seat, letting the wind blow softly – we weren't going fast. She looked comfortable and dreamy. I wasn't sure what that meant other than that she was "comfortable" or relaxed as she sat back in her seat looking out the window. I didn't have much time to see if she was looking at me at this moment.

That same feeling continued as we walked the grounds at Fort Fischer – a Civil War historic site. We spoke to Jean for a bit.

It's hard to recount everything that we did that day, but I wanted to say that while I was coming up with things to do, Lynn was contributing to the conversation and helping come up with ideas. She wasn't just saying "sure" or "okay." For one that would have been discouraging to me and secondly, Lynn didn't seem like the type who went along with things.

I was desperate to find out that Lynn wanted to spend time with me and was therefore an equal participant in these decisions about what we were doing together. 

I had a feeling then and later that the reason she didn't already have a boyfriend was because she didn't need a guy to complete her nor was she looking to be in a relationship. That would happen to both of us but perhaps neither of us was looking - to be honest, I was more inclinded to desire a relationship with a girl than vice versa.

The day faded into the night and we made our way to downtown Wilmington.

We saw the fireworks that night, over the Cape Fear River and near the Battleship.

After the fireworks, we were walking back to the car and we walked by the place where she worked at a historic home that had been converted into a shelter for youth runaways. A co-worker of hers asked her if I was her boyfriend. I heard her say "No, we are just friends."

Darn. I thought this was a date. Actually, even if it was an all-day date, we were still just friends.

I could wait.

The next day I picked her up again and we went to the poetry reading down in Carolina Beach.

There must have been a few dozen people when I read my poetry. This was a major accomplishment. I had an awareness of being nervous and I wondered if others picked up on the shakiness in my voice. There could have been a hundred or more people and I would have felt equally anxious.

Lynn took a seat on the side of the stage facing where I was standing after I read. She took the microphone and read "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T. S. Eliot.

I was taking photographs, including photographs of her.

As I reflect on these two dates or days spent together, I realize that I cannot fill in any more details. Decades have passed.

Looking back at the nearly three months when I was sharing my poetry, it's interesting to note the subject matter of my poetry... It had been about grief and a special friend named Celta. Yet here I was totally focused on this new girl named Lynn.

It's hard to overstate the meaning and importance of this.  

In the last chapter, I mentioned that I asked Lynn out and we spent a weekend together at outdoor events in Wilmington and Carolina Beach, North Carolina. This might be taken out of context to imply something more intimate happened... something more than holding hands. That's not what I meant.

I dropped her off at her home after the fireworks on the fourth of July and picked her up the next day for the poetry reading that was also in Carolina Beach.

Plus, it's hard to describe but there was something more that I felt just holding hands for a few moments when we walked out on that slippery jetty. That's the thing with feelings, sometimes we discover a language that exists that cannot be expressed in thoughts or words... after all, words are the medium by which we think.

I was still struggling with my shyness but only in vague ways. I had insecurities about whether I was really that special if only one person, Celta, had looked at me like I was their whole world like they could love me and/or choose to be with me exclusively.

Maybe she was shy too. I played these ideas over in my mind. "What does she think of me?" "Is she into me?"

As I said earlier, this was a bit surprising to me. I had been grieving the loss of Celta for a long time, but I would not have pursued Lynn if I was not over that loss.

After that fourth of July weekend, I was so invested in wanting to see Lynn every day and as much as possible. I would find myself at work trying to come up with things we could do together that afternoon. It wasn't hard because she lived across the street from the beach. She lived on Wrightsville Beach just across the street from the beach, the ocean. Her mother, Diane, and stepfather, Bob, owned a house that was to be their retirement home and she was living in that house.

I have to admit that I was working hard here to persuade her to make plans with me.

In this story, it seems like for the first month or two I was having to try hard to persuade Lynn to spend time with me that day. That was the last thing I wanted. I wanted to be the focus of someone's interest and attention.

I was very invested in making sure that I did nothing to cause her to back off for any reason at all. It would not make sense to talk her into doing something that she didn't want to do. That would defeat the purpose.

From my conversations with other guys or from TV shows (no one incident stands out), it seemed that I wasn't like any guys that I knew. I just felt like I was more feminine for as long as I can remember like I wasn't fully male. Plus, guys seem to make assumptions that a girl is into them if they are seeing them regularly and they will pursue more of their "desires."

Anyway, as I was saying, I don't identify with those ways of thinking and if that means that I am not very masculine, you are catching on dear reader. I am not much of a man.

I certainly didn't assume anything. I would take whatever I could get in terms of a relationship with Lynn.

The topic of whether we were seeing anyone else never came up. I am sure with my persistence she must have known that I was only into her. It was difficult because I had to ensure that I never did anything to push her away. It wasn't that I had low self-esteem, but I just sensed that she was strong - psychologically and emotionally. I mean I sensed that she didn't NEED to be in a relationship, and I didn't feel entitled to her time.

In talking to other females years later, I have learned that many of them do want to be in a relationship and to be a wife someday.  This is not something I would ever recognize with Lynn. She seemed to find our relationship to be something that happened to her as unexpectedly as it did for me.

I felt a bit weird to be pursuing and not finding the interest I had reciprocated for a while. How could I know that would change?

Why was I so obsessed with and excited to just be talking to Lynn or sitting next to her on the beach... maybe holding hands?

I noticed that the first couple of months with Celta were more "comfortable" for me and there was more of a sense of mutual interest. With Lynn, for nearly the first two months, I felt like I had to persuade her to do things every day. Maybe it didn't take a full two months for me to start seeing that Lynn was very interested in me. I was just frustrated for a while that I had to try so hard to persuade her to spend time with me.

To be clear, as I describe this I honestly wasn't thinking of Celta at all - for the first time.

Anyway, this time that I spent with Lynn... It was becoming something of a routine. I guess I liked it when her stepfather or her mother was there.

"Is Lynn there?" I'd ask if they picked up the phone.

With her mother, Diane, the response was "just a moment." With Bob, it was a deep voice with no friendliness in the tone saying "hold on." Then I would hear, "it's Bruce."

I remember how I would show up early sometimes after work. At one point, I was parking down the street from her home and would pass the time reading from the paperback book that I had. It had the stories "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" by Lewis Carol.

I respected what she had said was a good time for me to show up. I was too nervous about showing up early. Again, there was no way I was going to do anything to make her uncomfortable or to act in any way with disrespect.

I didn't have to work really hard to persuade Lynn to go out each day. I just wanted her to call me more, sound excited when I called, and help me to feel that she was interested in me. 

Later, I would later find out from Lynn that initially, for a little while, I was more interested in spending time with her every day than vice versa. 

That would change.

When I recount stories like this to people, these days, they seem to comment from the perspective of how things normally work when a guy and a girl are dating. For example, I was talking to a female friend of mine and she said something along the lines of "a woman wants a guy to..." I try to explain that I am not like most guys. I don't think Lynn wanted a "traditional guy."

Growing Comfortable Together and Serenity

I don't know when it happened exactly, but it seemed like things were going more easily for me. with Lynn. I didn't feel like I had to try as hard to persuade her to spend time with me. I could tell she was becoming genuinely interested in me. This is what I "felt" or "sensed" – how exactly, I can't say.

She smiled when we were together. It seemed that her mother was noticing this too.

One day, it felt so natural to bring my camera over and photograph her on the back porch where she was living. She sat on the railing, her head against the corner board with the setting sun reflected off the marshlands behind her home. Her mother was in the other room and she seemed to me to be happy. That felt good. It suggested I was being discussed.

Lynn was so amazingly beautiful in my mind's eye. I saw her there posing for me... one soft and beautiful leg raised with her head against the corner railing of the porch... the sun reflecting off the water on the marshlands behind her home. 

Boats would sometimes ride up and down the marshland waterway. This was somewhere between the intercoastal and the ocean. Today was quiet and serene as I photographed her.

Discussing my future plans...

I was glad that I had someone with whom I could talk about my dreams and plans for the future. I needed that. Yes, we talked about Lynn's interests, but I am reflecting on my need for confirmation of my plans. I had been moving forward with my career plans.

It was a major change in my career from engineering to psychiatric social work. I needed someone to bounce ideas off, to assure me that I could accomplish what I wanted to accomplish... that I was healthy and competent.

I was glad to be receiving the validation I needed about my career plans from Lynn. She was intelligent and someone I respected. She listened and asked questions. When I talked about what I specifically had in mind for starting graduate school, for example, she was very supportive. That included my plan for how I would pay for graduate school.

Lynn knew I was eager to start to move forward with my plans and she encouraged me to do that.

I knew the contract job with Corning was ending soon. Somehow things still seemed okay. I'd figure things out.

An epiphany

It was September 2, 1992, when I had this peak experience, an epiphany.

We came to Wrightsville Beach, after my work at Corning. It was evening and we sat down together near Johnnie Mercer's Pier. The sun was still above the horizon and behind us.

I liked this feeling. It was peaceful. I NEEDED to feel this.

It seemed like all the time, my mind was so busy trying to figure things... Always, worried about impending problems - a job ending, where I would work next, how I would get into graduate school. 

Something inside myself told me to enjoy this moment. To be here now and forget about everything else.

It was the clearest thought that I have known... I felt serenity. My eyes moved between looking at Lynn and watching the waves coming and going. I wasn't trying at this moment to work through my plans with Lynn's support and advice. I was just at peace.

For Lynn, this was just another day at the beach.

I was excited to be able to hold her hand and walk north on the beach at Wrightsville Beach... aroused. It seemed so right. Sometimes I wondered why I was the one asking for her hand when we were walking together. Maybe other people don't ask themselves questions like that, but I wanted to be sure that she was into me and wanted that contact with me.

I liked being seen with her. I felt special. I liked that she was so glad to see me.

I had been on a date with someone and yet our passionate kisses were less profoundly pleasurable. I do not mean just exciting. I felt something more profound. A sense of awe. Contentment.

Lynn was into pottery and I would show up at the Art Center to pick her up. I wanted to know and celebrate everything about her.

She would show me around the place. She would show me her work on the different shelves in various rooms. She showed me the kiln which is used to bake the clay after it is shaped. Sometimes I would sit and watch her shape earrings or work with clay on the wheel.

The wheel is used for larger items. It does just what you would expect, it spins the clay around a center. Lynn explained that some of the bigger items on the shelves were too big and heavy for her to do. She was almost my height. I'm five foot seven and she was about five foot six. But she was much smaller than me and thin. Healthy looking but thin – yes, I noticed and can add that she was shapely.

I cannot remember how she introduced me that first year. I'll explain what I mean later but you might recall that after the first date on the 4th of July, she said to her co-worker who asked if I was her boyfriend, "no, we're just friends."

Yes, we were becoming an item. Yet, the word boyfriend or girlfriend had not been used, yet. I reflected on all of this and felt that everything was absolutely amazing to me.

Our First Kiss

There was the synchronicity of desires. It was October. What we did when we were together was not something discussed or planned. I mean so far, we had not been talking about what anything means. I can't speak for what was going through her mind but while I might have had a desire that she take my hand first when we went for a while, I didn't say "why don't you do reach for my hand first."

I suppose I was more impulsive. I don't know but somewhere I got the notion that typically guys make the first move and call girls, ask them out. This did not apply to our relationship. Lynn was self-confident enough to speak her mind. She recognized my more feminine traits – not that I looked effeminate but I mean in terms of how I acted.

We were just sitting together on the beach in October, and we knew what we wanted. I looked into her eyes. I was sitting on her right. I could feel where our arms touched, our sides and legs.

I moved toward her instinctually and without hesitation or fear. Her head was tilted slightly back and turned a bit to the right as my face tilted to the right. Her blond hair waved a bit in the gentle wind. I reached my arm over onto the sand, then brought my lips to hers.

My left arm moved over her right shoulder and onto her back. I felt her right arm move to my back as she leaned forward. My right arm moved to her back. Our lips parted ever so slightly as we kissed.

I was only minimally aware of others on the beach. It was more as if I was aware of where we were and that it was not dark yet. 

We were not that far from Johnnie Mercer's Pier. We had not gone looking for privacy.

It seems that we were communicating something for which there were no thoughts or words... It was as if we had discovered a new way to communicate. Feelings, passions, desires. Inescapable, undeniable, and so right.

The best part of this was that it was our first kiss. There was no part of this where I had to wonder if this was something she was letting happen or going along with it. I have heard people say “he kissed me” and then then they respond that they kissed them back. No, no, no. We kissed. Together as one shared action that happened.

I was too afraid of things going wrong to do anything on my own… anything that might disrupt the relationship.

This was a new aspect of our relationship. I imagine she and I hungered for this as much as she desperately needed air in her lungs.

The summer flowed into fall and colder months, with colder nights.

I was reminded of an earlier moment when it was still summer like and I thought I was the newbie at least more than I was among this social circle. I realized that Lynn was quiet at the poetry readings or elsewhere. She wasn't looking for recognition or attention in those settings. She wasn't trying to achieve something. I remembered going canoeing with some of the regulars at the poetry readings. I much more than Lynn was. But then I remember this guy named Will referring to Lynn as "the girl in the canoe with Bruce."

Lynn had been coming to these readings longer than I had. She even had a degree in English like most of the other regulars. To me, it had seemed that she would be the one who fits in more naturally with this crowd.

In November, we went to the beach dressed in warm coats... the sun had set and it was dark. We climbed a lifeguard's platform. We were standing. The wind blew across the dark beach making it even colder.

"It's cold," she said as she turned in the direction of the ocean. I was behind her looking in the same direction. I wrapped my arms around her from behind her.

I was confused about my physical arousal. This had not been the first time I noticed this happening. I was still haunted by religious brainwashing but everything that was happening was so right. I'm not just talking about this night. Our feelings, passions, desires spoke making everything seem so inevitable. All my religious beliefs about signs of physical arrousal being wrong could not deter what was happening. Not even in my mind could I hold onto the same ideas about sexual arousal being dirty or wrong.

Don't imagine, dear reader, that during this time period I am leaving out details about what happened. You don't have to wonder if I left out details about whether we went further than kissing or holding each other. I'll get more specific, in a moment, about what was happing during this time period.

I felt a sense of peace in my life. As winter moved into Wilmington, I found work in the human services field working with individuals with developmental disabilities and other similar problems. It's amazing how we can find solutions that match our career trajectory when we are psychologically healthy.

Lynn and I would kiss so passionately at my place when the roommates were out and at her place on Wrightsville Beach. Mostly at her place. My roommate Donna had rented a second room to a nice girl named Terri.

It was awkward when I showed up at her place and her stepfather, Bob, was there because he was not much into making conversation. He spent almost one week every month at the house. He was a pilot for one of the big airlines and so he made good money. I felt like I had to make some conversation with him because technically it was his house along with Diane, Lynn's mother. My parents would have made it known if this was their home.

At one point, I had to ask Lynn, "should I be more polite to him and think of things to say?" I asked her.

She said "no, he's just like that. If he doesn't talk, you don't have to talk to him."

This is what I mean by Lynn having a strong sense of self-esteem. No one was going to control her or disrespect her! I wish I had maintained that attitude with my own family as preparation for how I should insist that everyone treat me. There was nothing shy about Lynn when it came to her stepfather, what she wanted, how she expected to be treated.

I was attracted to the fact that I was not getting anywhere with Lynn if it were not what she wanted as well. I never did like the idea that the guy had to make the first move. It would have allowed me to wonder if Lynn wanted me, wanted to be close, wanted to spend time together as much as I wanted those things.

It was just awkward from time to time when he was there. If he answered the door, he would just say "come on in" and then shout "Lynn."

I would then hear, "coming" from Lynn.

Bob didn't try to make conversation. He acted as if I wasn't there. So, I didn't say anything either. There was no "thank you for inviting me in." "How are you, today, Bob?" Still, if we were hanging out together in a common room and Bob was there, I didn't like Lynn to walk away because if Bob came walking by it felt awkward because he didn't speak.

I didn't need his approval though. It also was clear that what we did together was none of Bob's business!

As an aside, I mentioned that Lynn had Cystic Fiborsis (CF) earlier. I was able to push aside the actual meaning of this and we had a “normal” relationship. I knew that it caused excess mucus to build up in her body. It made it hard for her to digest food. She had to take pills with every meal. She had a cough. It affected her lungs and her breathing. She couldn’t get air in her lungs as easily as others. While I pushed this to outside our attention so that we could have a normal life, I wasn’t unaware of or unconcerned about her breathing.

Intimate Encounters

Lynn could tell when I was uneasy around Bob, so we often retreated to her room—our safe space. Sometimes we’d talk for hours, lost in conversation. Other times, we’d simply lose ourselves in each other.

Her room became a kind of sanctuary, especially when we were alone in the house. Even when her mother visited, Lynn always had her privacy. But when it was just the two of us, the world disappeared. What remained was quiet, intense, and deeply real.

Desire built slowly and honestly. There was no game-playing between us. When we kissed, it wasn’t something I did to her or she did to me—we were kissing. Every gesture, every pause, every breath was shared. It felt like our bodies were moving with a single voice. It was as if our bodies were communicating in a language I never knew before.

Because of her Cystic Fibrosis, I was always mindful—particularly when I was above her. "Am I too heavy?" I asked more than once, meaning something deeper: Are you okay? Can you breathe okay?

Initially she said “no,” so swiftly to return to the moment and our passion.

Then, she answered not just with words but with her arms, wrapping herself around me and pulling me closer—as if to say, Don’t interrupt this. The intensity of how tightly she held me told me that she wasn’t going to let me interrupt anythng that was happening.

We weren’t undressing at all, but our intimacy became a common aspect of our encounters. I remember my hands beneath her shirt, touching the soft skin of her back, trailing gently up her side. It seemed almost as if every motion was something that just happened. Perhaps her body moved in some way that suggested how she wanted to be caressed. That doesn’t say it all because it would suggest that I wasn’t just as driven by a desire to caress her skin.

It was confusing that what I was experiencing was both exciting, thrilling and yet the experiences were also full of peaceful contentment. I suppose our level of intensity was increasing.

When I reached to caress her breast, I found myself reaching under her bra - again concerned about hurting her. She sensed my awkwardness. She sat up, removed her bra from under her shirt, keeping her shirt on, slid back down onto her back and pulled me back toward her. Her shirt stayed on. In my mind, it seeemed that she knew that I was hessitant to go to far. Lynn wasn’t religious but she knew I was.

And still—my body reacted in a way I hadn’t fully prepared for. The lingering conditioning from my Catholic upbringing crept in as embarrassment. There was no voice in my head saying, “You’ve sinned,” but there was this vague echo of a childhood message: Keep space for the guardian angel. Don’t go too far. Don’t get too excited.

But the sense of how right this was the strongest idea within me.

When I slipped away to clean up in the bathroom, I felt like I was keeping something hidden, something I learned to hide as a child. I had not outgrown that instinctual and non-verbal belief that there was something shameful about what happened. That old shame wasn’t hers . She had never made me feel embarrassed. It was mine, unspoken and buried.

She hadn’t done anything wrong. I hadn’t either. But there I was, unsure how to reconcile what my body knew was beautiful with what my past had labeled “too much.”

Looking back now, I understand. She wasn’t waiting for permission. She was reading my pace and offering me reassurance. If I had gone further, she would have gone with me—not out of pressure, but because she wanted me. Because she loved me.

And yes, I was still a virgin. So was she. But that wasn’t what made those nights significant. What mattered was that we were discovering each other. Holding each other with honesty. Exploring a kind of closeness I had never known - one where the desire for someone to be close to me held new meaning. That expression of desire by Lynn for closeness to me said something so powerful and it spoke to a form of toxic shame that I had carried too long.

I was no longer the outsider, the family scapegoat.

This wasn’t a story of one person leading and the other following. It was something we created together - a language our bodies spoke to one another and yet a connection deeper than touch.

The Christmas holiday loomed ahead, and I was fervently discussing with my roommates the idea of capturing photos of a neighborhood renowned for their extravagant Christmas decorations.

That's when Donna and Terri insisted on taking pictures of Lynn and me together. We decorated a tree, and they urged us to pose in various ways. It was deeply gratifying to realize this mattered profoundly to my roommates. Someone was genuinely thrilled for us. Within me I felt an expansive joy that someone was happy for me. Yet, in that moment, I wasn't consumed by how desperately I had yearned for all of this. I was acutely aware of not taking a single instant for granted, refusing to dismiss or overlook any fragment of time. I was engulfed in a profound sense of awe, something enduring and powerful.

It wasn’t just amazing that I was happy to be with Lynn but that someone else, two other people, my roommates, were hapy for me, happy for my joy.

I also recognized the newfound ease I felt with Lynn.

The most precious gift that Christmas was Lynn's revelation to me. I confessed my earlier uncertainty about her interest at the beginning of our relationship. She laughed, and said, "I'm glad you were so persistent." The truth hit me like a lightning bolt. The fact that initially, she wasn't as invested in us as I was didn’t matter. But the fact that she was grateful for my persistence struck a deep, primal chord within me - one that needed this validation. The realization that I could bring someone such profound happiness in countless ways was overwhelming.

I'm definitely going to embrace this life with Lynn.

Lynn and I were "an item" and that felt so right. I never took things for granted. I would savor every little thing as if my mind was taking snapshots to populate an imaginary photo album within my mind.

Remember Dusty, the emcee for the poetry readings? She worked at the Coastline Convention Center as I mentioned. Because she was so welcoming, I would go there alone sometimes or arrive alone before Lynn joined me. Dusty would ask about Lynn and what was happening with her... how she was doing.

So, among our social circle, people saw us as a couple. This made this entirely blissful dream so real. I wasn’t an outsider any longer. I wasn’t the friend of both members of a couple. I had known love once before but this relationship with Lynn went so much further and deeper. There were no limits to how much this relationship could grow.

Still, there were some formalities to be discussed.

By July of 1993, Lynn and I had been together for nearly a year. At the time, I wasn’t thinking about labels or formalities—I was simply happy. It’s only now, as I look back, that I realize something remarkable: we had never actually said it out loud.

We hadn’t defined anything. We hadn’t needed to.

We saw each other almost every day. We kissed with affection and intensity. Our closeness, our connection, our status as a couple was obvious to everyone around us. My friends, the people at open mic nights, even Dusty the emcee, all spoke about us like we were a couple. And I never questioned that.

I hadn’t wondered whether we were exclusive—it simply was. In fact, I hadn’t even thought about asking. If anything, I assumed Lynn knew. Her willingness to share such intimate moments—physically, emotionally - told me she would never have offered that kind of closeness if she thought I might be seeing someone else.

But on a warm Sunday evening—July 11, 1993—something shifted. Not in our feelings, but in how we named them.

We were outside on the grass in the fading twilight, just far enough from the sliding glass doors to have privacy. We moved together without hesitation, our bodies speaking a language we had learned slowly, instinctively. Our arms wrapped around each other. Our mouths met—open, warm, and eager. Passion flowed between us as naturally as breath. Our hands slid beneath shirts, not searching, but answering what had already been spoken between us.

We were just close enough to hear the muffled sounds of the TV and my roommates talking inside. The air was warm, and the connection between us was both strong and comfortable as the darkness grew and we decided to sit on the chairs that were outside. My hand on her leg. Her smile as she looked at me was such a joy to experience.

Then she asked a question that needed to be clarified, “Are we more than friends? Do you want to be boyfriend and girlfriend?”

There was no nervousness in her voice. No hesitation. Just clarity—like she already knew the answer, but asking made it real.

I hadn’t expected the question—not because I was unsure of us, but because I already saw her as mine, and myself as hers. Her question was a formality, but it was one that thrilled me.

“Yes, definitely,” I said. I started to add, “I kind of thought what we were doing just now made that obvious,” but caught myself—I didn’t want to take her words for granted. This mattered.

I felt a slight twinge of nervousness—just the faintest flicker of doubt about what she might say.

“Is that what you want too?”

“Yes,” she said.

I stared at her, moved by the clarity in her voice, the simplicity of her answer.

“Wow,” I said softly.

Then again, with a breath of wonder and a glance up at the sky, “Wow.”

And in that pause—where joy met relief, where hope finally felt safe—something inside me broke open. The words rose before I could catch them, bursting out like they had been waiting all along.

“I love you,” I said, the words escaping with a rush of joy, certainty, and awe.

Her smile deepened, and her eyes lit up. “I love you, too.”

The words were simple. But they settled into me like something sacred.

But what still amazes me is this: Lynn was the one who brought it up!

When we walked inside, hand in hand, I couldn’t wait to share the moment. Not just because of what it meant for Lynn and me—but because someone else would be happy for me. That was new.

“My roommates are going to love this,” I said. “They’re going to be so happy for us.”

I didn’t say the rest out loud: Unlike my parents, who never seemed to notice-or care-if I was happy at all.

Donna looked up from the couch as we stepped into the room. “Hi.”

“I have something to share,” I said. “Lynn is my girlfriend. We’re boyfriend and girlfriend now.”

Donna smiled knowingly. “Yes… and?”

There was a pause. A playful one. As if they were both waiting for the punchline.

Terri raised an eyebrow and laughed. “Wait—this is the first time you’ve said that?”

“Yeah… we just now made it official,” I replied, sheepishly.

They both beamed at us—genuinely, warmly. And in that moment, I felt something I’d rarely known before: joy, reflected back to me. Two people, happy for me—with no conditions, no expectations, just happiness. I didn’t have to explain it. I didn’t have to earn it. They just… were.

I mentioned, almost as a confession, how I hadn’t been sure in the beginning—those first few weeks—whether Lynn felt the same way I did.

Lynn laughed and said, “Luckily, Bruce was persistent.”

I grinned, because it was true. And somehow, that made this moment even sweeter. Not because I had to chase her, but because she had allowed herself to be caught. Because what we had now—this connection—was real, and mutual, and rooted in something we both chose.

From that moment forward, I wasn’t shy around Lynn anymore—not about who we were, or what we meant to each other. The connection had already been there. But now it had a name.

We were an us.

Looking back now, I can see what made this moment so powerful had nothing to do with the words we exchanged and everything to do with what they represented: a life I didn’t know I was allowed to want. A love that didn’t ask me to prove myself. People who didn’t need me to hide or explain or earn their joy on my behalf.

Lynn didn’t just say yes to being my girlfriend—she gave me a place where I could belong. And for someone who had spent a lifetime waiting to be wanted… that “yes” changed everything.

And just as she embraced who I was, I began to see more of who she was—not just the woman who loved me, but an artist, a creator, someone with her own world of expression waiting to be shared.

I didn’t want a love story that was only about me. I wanted to love her fully—for everything she was. And in the chapters that followed, I would begin to do just that.

During our first two years together, Lynn and I didn’t have “dates” in the traditional sense. There were no grand romantic gestures planned weeks in advance. We didn’t say, “let’s go on a date.” After the early weeks—when I sometimes wondered whether Lynn actually wanted to spend time with me—we simply fell into a rhythm. We did everything together. Naturally. Easily.

Without needing to define it.

She wasn’t working full-time then—I’ll explain more about that later—and I was putting in at least forty hours a week. We came to know each other's rhythms. Each day, we’d check in with a simple, “What do you want to do today?”

On Sundays, we went to poetry readings at the Coastline Convention Center. Sometimes we’d stop by on other days just to see Dusty, the emcee. We wandered through events downtown, walking beside the Cape Fear River, enjoying the simple comfort of being near each other.

Our social circles were nearly the same. I had gone to the poetry readings initially just to meet people—and that’s how I met Lynn. Many of our friends came from that world, including one of my closest—Thomas Childs. Like Lynn, he had a degree in English.

There were other poetry events we’d attend—like the big reading in Carolina Beach I mentioned earlier. And while I was still technically a paraprofessional, I was starting to form connections with people in the mental health and developmental disabilities field. Those connections would eventually open doors for me professionally, even if they weren’t friendships in the truest sense.

Lynn made acquaintances through her pottery—her creative outlet and her joy. She crafted colorful jewelry, plates, bowls, cups, and hanging planters. Pottery exhibits and seasonal events gave her chances to connect with others, though few of those relationships became close friendships.

Looking back, there’s one moment from those early months that stands out. A moment that revealed just how much I was still carrying—the fear, the insecurity, the quiet ache that had followed me from childhood.

It was April 1993, just shy of our one-year mark, at the Azalea Festival. Lynn was working the Art Center’s pottery booth, and I had come by hoping to spend time with her. But she was occupied—rightfully so—and I was left to wander the festival alone.

I remember walking past food trucks, craft stands, couples laughing and sharing ice cream. The day was warm, the park alive with spring. And yet, I felt strangely adrift. I hadn’t yet experienced what I now understand to be earned secure attachment—the kind that forms when a healthy, loving relationship helps heal the wounds of early neglect or abuse.

Lynn wasn’t rejecting me. She wasn’t ignoring me. She was just busy, doing something she loved. But the old story I carried—the one that said you’re always the extra person, the outsider—echoed loud in my mind. I wasn’t used to being claimed, to feeling fully wanted, and in that moment, surrounded by joyful couples and families, I felt like I was back in the shadows again.

That loneliness didn’t last, but it left an imprint. It reminded me that while I was healing, some pieces of my past still had a hold on me.

Later that year, around Halloween, we took a haunted tour of Wilmington. Just the two of us. I didn’t believe in ghosts, but I loved the mystery of it—the way the historic town seemed to breathe in shadows and flickering lanterns. We walked side by side, her hand in mine. There was a quiet magic in it. That night, I didn’t feel like an outsider. I felt like I belonged.

We had our favorite restaurants. For casual nights, we’d go to P.T.’s for burgers and seasoned fries. For something special—like Valentine's Day—it was always our favorite sushi place. Our rituals became part of the rhythm of our relationship.

Each December, we went to a Christmas party hosted by someone from Lynn’s pottery class. I didn’t know the people there, and the first time I wasn’t sure how she’d introduce me. But by the second year, there was no doubt—I was her boyfriend. And that label, that place in her life, felt more than good. It felt earned.

That night, I remember wrapping my arms around her waist as she chatted with someone, feeling both proud and slightly out of place. She placed her hand over mine—grounding me, letting me know I wasn’t alone.

“Are you okay, sweetie?” she asked.

“I’m fine,” I said. And I was. Because she was with me.

Even then, even months into our relationship, I was still discovering what it meant to be loved without question, without having to prove anything. To be claimed—not just in private, but in public. To feel seen.

That Azalea Festival moment in April had shown me how far I still had to go. But moments like this—her hand over mine, her smile, the easy way she introduced me—showed me how far I’d already come.

There’s more to share, of course. But that early experience—the loneliness I carried into the sunshine of a crowded festival, and the quiet safety I would later feel beside her—reminds me how healing happens not all at once, but in gentle, repeated gestures.

In being chosen again and again, until you finally start to believe it.

Seeing Lynn’s Dreams – And Letting Go of Old Expectations

As I reflect on how deeply Lynn became the center of my world, it feels only right to turn toward hers—her aspirations, her values, her quiet defiance of the narratives so many of us are handed.

She never lacked ambition. But her ambition didn’t follow conventional rules. It wasn’t about money or titles or status. And I admired her all the more for that.

Many of our friends in the poetry scene had degrees in English. A few had studied other subjects, but most had pursued literature not because it guaranteed a high-paying job, but because they loved language. In America, where we’re taught to equate education with income, an English degree is often dismissed as impractical. Lynn didn’t care about that.

By the time I fell in love with her, I had grown deeply weary of that kind of judgment. If someone had questioned her path—or her poetry—I would have spoken up. Maybe in the past, I wouldn’t have. But things were different now.

Her confidence was infectious. She had a favorite phrase she used when something crossed a line: “That’s unacceptable.” I wish I could recall a specific moment she said it—maybe it was in response to something I said offhand. But what mattered was the clarity in her voice. She didn’t let things slide. And slowly, I began to do the same. I stopped absorbing criticism as if it were deserved. I stopped apologizing for who I was.

To be clear, neither of us was putting the other down. We had left that kind of treatment behind. I had known what it felt like to be belittled, to be criticized without compassion. But now, I was starting to embody the same firmness with my parents that I had first seen modeled in Lynn.

Before Lynn, I hadn’t always known how to speak up—even when someone hurt someone I loved. I remember holding back when it came to Celta. I hadn’t yet learned how to defend someone without fear. And while I was still living at home, I wasn’t in a position to reject insults or challenge my parents. But with Lynn, I found my voice. And I made it known—any insult toward her, her choices, or her creativity would be met with unwavering resolve.

We weren’t building a life like the one I grew up around. I had been raised to believe the man should lead, provide, and decide. That would never have worked with Lynn. And the truth is, I didn’t want it to.

There were also practical realities shaping her decisions. Lynn had Cystic Fibrosis, which meant ongoing treatments, daily medications, medical equipment, and the ever-present need for reliable health insurance. She qualified for a state insurance program designed for people with CF, but it came with strict income limits. Even if she had chosen a more "practical" degree or job, she couldn’t earn above a certain amount without losing the coverage that kept her alive. She worked part-time, not because she lacked motivation, but because she couldn’t afford to gamble with her health.

And yet, she dreamed. She talked about going back to school for a Master of Fine Arts in poetry, like our friend Jean Jones. Jean wasn’t using his degree to teach or publish in elite journals—but that wasn’t the point. He pursued his art because he loved it. That kind of integrity spoke to both of us.

Lynn didn’t write poetry to impress anyone. She wrote and shared because of the passion for poetry and the written word that she shared with me. When she stepped up to the mic at poetry readings, she wasn’t performing. She was sharing something personal, something sacred, in her own time, in her own way.

We honored each other’s dreams. We created space for one another’s creativity. For me, the dream of love and marriage had always burned quietly, sometimes with desperation. For her, the relationship blossomed more unexpectedly—but just as powerfully.

That’s not to say everything was perfect. We argued, of course. Sometimes about ideas, sometimes about nothing. The small things that didn’t matter. The big things that did. When I said something that hurt her—when I got careless with my words—I knew it. And I apologized. Quickly. Sincerely. I never wanted space to grow between us.

The truth is, I don’t remember what most of our arguments were about. And maybe that’s the point. What we had wasn’t fragile. We disagreed, but we came back together. We listened. We learned. We made amends.

From Shyness to Celebration: The Joy of Being Seen

Before Lynn, I had never really thought about giving gifts as an expression of love. But during our first year together—especially after the evening she asked if we were more than friends, and I responded with “I love you”—everything changed.

From that moment on, saying “I love you” became as natural as breathing. We said it often—sometimes multiple times a day.

Lynn might’ve joked that I was more impulsive in the romance department. I was usually the first to say it. She leaned more toward endearments—sweetie, honey—while I simply called her “Lynn,” which, in retrospect, feels like something I should’ve done differently. Still, I never held back how I felt.

We were affectionate in public, too—something I’d never imagined being comfortable with. But Lynn brought that out in me. She’d take my hand, sit on my lap, rest her head on my shoulder. Her touches were playful and intuitive, never showy or awkward. She knew what felt good to me, and I felt safe returning the gesture.

By Valentine’s Day, I wanted to give her something special. I walked into a grocery store to buy roses—the first time I had ever done that. It might seem like a small thing, but for me, it was monumental. I didn’t just want to pick out flowers. I wanted to be seen picking them out. I was the kind of person who used to shy away from attention, who kept emotions tucked away like secrets. But that day, I wanted the world to know.

I approached an employee and said—loud enough for others to hear—“Hi, I need roses for my girlfriend.” I wanted them to know. I wanted to say it out loud.

“For the card,” I added, “maybe something that says ‘I love you.’ I’ll sign it, ‘To Lynn. Love, Bruce.’”

And when she said I could pay at the register, I thought, Perfect. More people would see me walking through the store, roses in hand. More strangers would witness that I had someone. That I was loved, and that I loved someone fiercely in return.

That day, I felt like I was ten feet tall.

Later, I went to a jewelry store, not sure what to buy, but sure of one thing: I wanted to say it out loud again.

“I need a gift for someone I love—my girlfriend.” That declaration, made to a total stranger behind the counter, was thrilling.

She asked if Lynn preferred silver or gold. “Silver,” I answered. I didn’t hesitate. I wasn’t trying to impress anyone. I just wanted to find something she’d like.

Another clerk joined in to help, and we finally found a piece that felt just right. My face must’ve given everything away. I wasn’t hiding anything anymore.

Before Lynn, I would’ve kept that kind of thing quiet. I would’ve bought a gift silently, tucked it away in a bag, and slipped it to someone in private. But now, I wanted the world to know. My love had changed me. I didn’t want to be invisible anymore.

Being a couple wasn’t just a milestone. It wasn’t just a stage of life I stumbled into. It felt sacred. Miraculous. Surprising.

What we had wasn’t routine. It didn’t look like the marriages I’d seen growing up. It didn’t follow the patterns I’d always heard it should follow.

Have you ever heard Carly Simon’s song “That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be”? It’s peaceful, even haunting, with lines like:

“My friends from college they’re all married now
They have their houses and their lawns
…Tearful nights, angry dawns
…They drink, they laugh
Close the wound, hide the scar.”

That wasn’t us.

We didn’t come together because it was expected, or because we were supposed to. We came together because we fit. Because we felt something that was spiritual in nature and necessary.

A touch. A look. A shared glance across the room. These weren’t just gestures. They were declarations. Our kisses weren’t hurried or hidden—they were slow, intentional, often preceded by a smile or a glance. Public, but gentle. Expressive. Poetic.

We were two poets writing our love in the way we touched, the way we walked, the way we looked at each other.

Even now, it still takes my breath away.

And when we fought—and yes, we did—it never meant we loved each other any less.

I don’t remember the substance of most of our arguments. Maybe that’s because they didn’t leave lasting wounds. Or maybe it’s because what came afterward—the repair—meant more than the disagreement itself.

If I had said something that hurt Lynn or pushed too hard in a debate, I felt it immediately. And I didn’t let the silence linger. I’d walk over, look her in the eyes, and say, “I really love you. And I’m really sorry.”

She would smile, sometimes reluctantly, sometimes with a laugh she tried to suppress. She didn’t want to stay mad - but she also wanted me to see her frustration. And I did.

We ALWAYS worked through our issues and problems. That was our rhythmif there was a fight(argument): connection, rupture, repair. Again and again.

Let me take you to one moment that still lingers in my mind.

We’d had a disagreement—something sharp enough to leave a chill between us, though not sharp enough to change our plans. That night, we were headed to a book signing downtown for our friend Jean Jones, who was releasing a chapbook at a cozy coffee shop.

Lynn and I sat upstairs, stiffly, saying nothing. My brother and his girlfriend were with us, but the tension between Lynn and me filled the space. It wasn’t loud. It was just... there.

After a while, I quietly stood up and said, “I’m going downstairs. I’ll be back.”

Downstairs, I approached Jean. “Let me get two copies,” I said. “Can you sign one for Lynn?”

Then I went to the counter and ordered an iced tea—exactly the way Lynn liked it, with lemon - and carried it upstairs like it was the most natural thing in the world. Anger and not speaking was something to be fixed.

She noticed me carrying the glass of tea and the two signed chapbooks, and I caught the first flicker of a smile.

Standing beside her, I handed her one. “This one’s for you. Jean signed it.”

Her expression changed instantly. She couldn’t contain her happiness—or the amusement.

She glanced over at our guests, then back at me, eyes gleaming. “How can I stay mad at you when you do stuff like this?” she said, practically laughing. Then she took the tea, still smiling.

Still standing, I offered what I needed her to hear. “Just because we’re fighting doesn’t mean I don’t love you.” The fact of my love was simple and straightforward.

That was always the truth I needed her to know. And she did.

That night, my brother left not long after—maybe because he was bored, maybe because he sensed that Lynn and I needed time alone. (Though to be fair, I’m not sure how tuned in he really was.)

But we were back. The wall had crumbled. And in the quiet that followed, we reclaimed the comfort we always returned to.

Fights didn’t scare me—not with Lynn. Because I knew, deep down, that nothing we said in frustration could ever outweigh what we had.

The love wasn’t in question. It never was.

What Drew Us Closer

One of the things I’ve mentioned—earlier in this chapter and throughout this book—is how Lynn had dreams of her own. She talked about maybe getting a Master of Fine Arts degree one day, like our friend Jean Jones. She also dreamed of having her own kiln so she could fire pottery at home. She was endlessly creative, and she loved working with her hands—sculpting, shaping, turning earth into art.

I shared my own ambitions with her not just to inform—but to feel validated. Lynn was practical and grounded in a way I admired deeply. When I talked about graduate school, or trying to find the right path in the mental health field, she didn’t just listen—she helped me think it through. She asked thoughtful questions. Let me bounce ideas off her. She challenged me when I needed it. Encouraged me when I doubted myself.

I told her about the federal loans I’d learned were available to graduate students, and how I was planning to finance school. I wasn’t just thinking aloud—I was hoping to see a spark of belief in her eyes. And I did. She didn’t just approve—she believed in what I wanted for myself.

After years of second-guessing my value, it was healing to have someone hold my dreams with the same care I gave hers. She didn’t care whether my plans would make me wealthy or impressive—only that they would make me fulfilled.

That kind of support… I had known it before, briefly—but not like this. Not with this kind of steady presence. Not with someone who stayed.

A Love That Deepened Naturally

As we moved toward our second year together, the topic of marriage and engagement came up. It wasn’t about changing anything—it was about offering more of ourselves. About asking: What else can I give you? What else could we share?

The idea of getting engaged wasn’t about proving something. It was about honoring what we already had. A way to deepen the relationship in a symbolic and meaningful way. It came from passion.

We already belonged to each other. The engagement would simply give that belonging a shape—something tangible we could hold.

It’s amazing how much the silhouette in the photo that I found to include with this chapter of the book looks just like Lynn.

But before I share the story of our engagement, I want to go back to a moment that perfectly captures the spirit of who we were—a couple rooted in poetry, playfulness, and a love so deep it sometimes caught us both by surprise.

I had written a poem for her. That wasn’t unusual—I often wrote love poems—but this one was different. It had a dreamlike quality, inspired by both the Song of Songs from the Old Testament and a psychedelic 60s song by The Electric Prunes called “I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night).”

We were at one of our usual Sunday night poetry readings at the Coastline Convention Center. It was late May 1994, nearly two years since we started seeing each other. The sun had sunk low, casting the room in golden dimness. Dusty, our beloved emcee, had turned on the soft lamp at the podium. It felt intimate, almost sacred.

I got up to read, not telling Lynn in advance what I was about to share. I wanted it to be a surprise. A public declaration of love.

Here’s what I read:

Dreamlike Visions

In this dreamlike vision
I lay in her lap,
while her golden hair
flows in the gentle wind,
on the beach.

Is this real?
I reach up to touch her
but she is gone... gone... gone
and I am laying on the sand.

Looking skyward I see her
in a vision.
She searches for me,
calling my name, saying,
"I am his and he is mine."

I try to get back
to find her
and that infinite beach
where we would walk hand-in-hand
or lay on the sand
holding each other
together
forever.

The vision –
the dream –
(incomplete)
the love
never ends...

the dream never
ends.

Even now, those words move something in me. At the time, I was still a Christian. Lynn was agnostic but open to the supernatural. I, on the other hand, have since become an atheist—one who still aches to believe. Back then, I wrote from that place of yearning and wonder, of faith intermingled with desire.

The song that partly inspired the poem had lyrics full of longing, of presence that slips away with the dawn. Though it was featured in a horror film, I was drawn to its haunting beauty—the way it captured the way love can feel like a dream, so vivid and intense, you ache when it's over.

At the end of my reading, the applause washed over me like a wave. People smiled and stopped me as I walked back to my seat. It was obvious what and who the poem was about.

But then came one of the most human, hilarious moments of that night.

I sat down next to Lynn, proud and quietly emotional. One of our mutual friends leaned over to compliment the poem. I turned to Lynn and whispered, “Well? What did you think?”

She looked at me, a bit startled. “What?”

“I mean... the poem.”

“Oh,” she said, her cheeks beginning to flush. “I wasn’t listening. I thought you were just reading something I’d already heard.”

There was a pause. I just smiled, shook my head.

“I’m so sorry, sweetie,” she added quickly, clearly embarrassed. “Let me read it now.”

I handed it to her. As she looked down, I leaned in, gently placing my hands on either side of her face, our lips meeting in a quiet kiss—slow, affectionate, full of amusement and intimacy. There were others around, so we kept it brief. But it said everything.

“It’s okay,” I said softly. “You know I really love you.”

“I love you too, honey,” she replied, eyes still smiling.

She read the poem then. Really read it.

And from that moment forward, it became a kind of inside joke between us. I’d tease her, saying things like, “If I ever pour my heart into a love poem, I hope Lynn’s listening.”

She’d laugh. And in time, she made it more than right. On nights when she hadn’t brought something of her own to read, she would ask me if I had that poem. And then she would read my poem—our poem—at the mic. I lost track of how many times that happened.

There was something magical in that gesture. She made my words her own. She carried them, shared them, honored them.

Just like she did with my love.

We didn’t plan a wedding at the same time we planned to get engaged—though of course, it was implied. Those details could wait. For now, it was about the promise. The meaning. The declaration that we were choosing each other, not just in feeling, but in the form of a ring.

We talked about what it meant to be engaged. For us, it wasn’t a performance. It was a lifetime commitment to live as husband and wife. It felt natural. It felt right. And yet, it also felt astonishing.

Words like amazing and wonderful get used so much they almost lose their meaning. But not here. Let me tell you what actually happened.

We went to the mall to look for a ring. Lynn was practical, as always. She reminded me we didn’t need anything flashy. We weren’t rich. A big diamond didn’t matter. “About two hundred dollars,” she said, matter-of-factly - it was her practicality that mattered. Since this was about us, we were going to be dealing with shared finances. So, I had to do what she knew to be what we could afford.

Still, I was nervous. Butterflies-in-my-stomach nervous. My heart was racing. I kept thinking, This is real. This is happening. I’m not dreaming.

They measured her finger. She chose the ring.

“Are you sure?” I asked, my voice catching a bit.

“Yes,” she said, turning to the salesperson with a smile. “Let’s get this one.”

The woman nodded. “Your fiancé can pick it up on Monday.”

Your fiancé. That was the first time I heard it out loud.

Monday came, and it felt strangely ordinary.

I arrived at her place on Wrightsville Beach with the small bag in hand. Lynn was upstairs.

She entered the room just as I was reaching into the bag.

“I want to…” I began, lifting the box, ready to open it. But I froze at what I was seeing.

Her eyes welled up with tears before I could finish the sentence.

She knew I was bringing the ring—she’d heard the woman at the store say, “your fiancé can pick it up on Monday.” But the emotion on her face—it wasn’t expected. It wasn’t rehearsed. It stopped me cold.

I didn’t finish the sentence. I couldn’t. I just looked at her. I held the box in one hand and reached toward her with the other.

We moved together like magnets. Her arms wrapped around my neck, her cheek pressed to mine, her whole body trembling slightly as her tears touched my skin.

I whispered, “Do you want to put it on?”

She nodded, still speechless.

I slipped the ring onto her finger. And for a second, we just stood there.

Then she kissed me—deeply, hungrily. Her hands cupped my face. Mine moved around her waist. We didn’t speak—not right away.

There was only the heat of her body pressed against mine, her tears mingling with our breath, her legs wrapping around me as I lowered us gently onto the bed.

My arm slid under her shoulders. Her heart was racing. So was mine.

“I’m in love,” I whispered.

“I love you so much,” she said, her voice thick with emotion.

It was—without question—the most joy I have ever felt. Not because she said yes. But because she showed me something deeper: that I could bring her such joy.

My legs went weak.

I lifted her slightly, cradled her, and let us both fall back onto the bed. Her body melted into mine. My arm slipped around her shoulders, hers wrapped tight around my back.

Her heartbeat was loud against my chest. Her lips pressed harder to mine. I could feel the dampness of her tears on my cheek, her breath against my skin, the way our bodies moved together—like music, like ritual.

“I’m in love,” I said again, more to myself than to her.

“I love you so much,” she repeated, as if it needed no further explanation.

Nothing in my life has ever come close to the joy I felt in that moment. I had made someone that happy. Her. Lynn. The love of my life. And her joy was so pure and obvious.

She kissed me again—this time with hunger, with urgency. Like she had waited her whole life for this moment and didn’t want it to end. Her fingers gripped my back, my shoulders, my face, like she was trying to anchor herself to something solid, something real.

Later, we sat on the back porch above her kitchen—half a floor up from the surf and sand of Wrightsville Beach. She was on the phone with her mom, Diane.

I barely heard the conversation. My eyes were fixed on her, the light catching her hair, the ring glinting on her finger. And in that quiet, I just sat there, overflowing with awe.

That was the moment. Not the ring. Not the kiss. Not even the words.

I had not known that love could be so amazing and such a powerful experience.

It was the knowing. The knowing that we were building a life together—one full of creativity, practicality, tenderness, and shared dreams.

This wasn’t fantasy. This was commitment. Real. Mutual. And even now, all these years later, that moment still feels like the best single moment in my life.

After we got engaged, life didn’t transform overnight—but the horizon began to shift. Our conversations became more grounded, our hopes more tangible. I had moved out of the place I shared with Donna and Terri, and sometimes Lynn stayed the night with me, or I with her. We were growing closer in every way.

Even then, we weren’t “sleeping together” in the way most people would define it—not yet. That final boundary remained unspoken, uncrossed. But something had changed between us. Lynn, always attuned to me, may have sensed that I was becoming more at ease, less tangled in the old religious shame I’d carried for so long. When she removed her shirt—no longer stopping at just dropping her bra—it felt natural. Not bold, not calculated, just... right. She was honoring the space I’d opened. And in truth, the hesitation had always come from me. My toxic beliefs.

It wasn’t about a lack of desire. We had that, abundantly. It was the religious programming—those lingering voices whispering rules I no longer fully believed. And still, they haunted me.

And yet—our bodies were already speaking the truth. We held each other longer, touched with deeper intention. Every brush of skin seemed to say: this is good. This is safe. This is love. Nothing in me felt confused about those moments. I wasn’t struggling to reconcile them with morality or scripture. Instead, I found myself quietly letting go of what no longer made sense. The unspoken language between us—how far we’d go, how much we’d share—was shaped by mutual respect and gentle restraint. She knew where I stood, without my needing to say a word.

And then came Diane’s offer.

Diane—Lynn’s mother—offered us a home to rent after our engagement. That gesture was more than generous—it was symbolic. It meant we were stepping fully into a shared life, one defined by commitment and love, not by paperwork or permission. The decision to move in together wasn’t taken lightly. It was the turning point where I had to reconcile what I’d been taught with what I knew in my heart to be true. And Diane didn’t need a marriage certificate to take this step.

Until then, even during our most passionate moments, Lynn and I had kept our clothes on. I had still been holding onto the last fragments of the religious ideas I was raised with—teachings about what sex was supposed to mean. And even though Lynn never pressured me, I think we both knew those barriers weren’t really about her. They were about what still lived inside me.

But once we accepted the house—once we knew we were going to share a home—everything settled. The clarity came.

We were no longer visiting each other’s spaces or planning around separate routines. We were going to sleep in the same bed. Wake up under the same roof. Share meals, memories, bills—and a life.

And with that new home came a new level of intimacy. Not forced. Not rushed. Just… natural.

We undressed without shame. We touched without hesitation. We slept skin to skin. We made love—not because it was overdue or expected, but because it was an extension of everything we were already giving each other.

There is something sacred about being fully wanted. Not just emotionally, but physically. There is something healing in knowing that another human being longs to be close to you—not just out of desire, but from love, from a hunger to belong.

I think of newborns placed on a parent’s bare chest. That skin-to-skin contact, that grounding, that wordless affirmation: You’re here. You’re safe. You’re mine.

That’s what it felt like. That’s how natural it became. Not performance. Not shame. Just presence.

And I knew I had made peace with it. Not gradually—decisively.

I didn’t see it as “living in sin.” I saw it as something sacred. We weren’t hiding from God—we were honoring what He had given us. I believed then that if marriage was meant to be a covenant of love, fidelity, and mutual care, then we had already entered into it. The legal part had been denied to us, but the spiritual part was already real.

But not everyone saw it that way.

The Church didn’t.

When we approached the priest, hoping for a religious ceremony, he refused. Without a legal marriage license, he said, he couldn’t perform the sacrament. He knew what a legal marriage would mean—that Lynn could lose her health insurance and risk her life. And still, the answer was no.

Lynn wasn’t religious, but she was spiritual. She respected my beliefs. But I’m still stunned that I wasn’t driven away from the Church right then—by its coldness, its rigidity, its failure to act with compassion or common sense.

A sacrament, denied. Not because we lacked love. But because we wouldn’t risk her health.

And strangely, the greatest tension didn’t come from within us—it came from outside.

Especially when we visited my family.

On one trip, Lynn suggested we sleep in separate beds. I remember being shocked. Hurt, even. But she was trying to show respect for my parents. And I went along with it.

Looking back, I wish I hadn’t. I wish I had said, No. We’re a couple. If that’s not accepted, we’ll get a hotel. Or we won’t come.

It wasn’t about shame. It was about honoring the truth of our relationship.

I could have told our friends: “We’re more than engaged. We’re already married—in every way that matters.” They would have understood. No one would’ve alerted the state. There was nothing to hide.

We weren’t pretending.

We were living it. With tenderness. With intention. With love.

Even without a wedding, we were a family.

When Diane offered to buy us a house, everything changed. Not just practically—emotionally, spiritually. The moment she said it, without hesitation, it felt like the world had finally caught up to what we already knew: Lynn and I were a family.

Diane saw who we were to each other, and she honored it. With love. With trust. With a profound and silent blessing.

Diane purchased a home in Wilmington, and we would pay her rent—$200 a month, split between us. She helped us furnish it, decorate it, make it ours. She bought the bed, helped us arrange the bedroom, and never once suggested we live as anything less than husband and wife.

This wasn’t something Lynn and I had to tiptoe around. Diane understood. She didn’t need us to explain. Her presence in our home wasn’t a threat to our privacy—it was a quiet affirmation. There were no awkward conversations, no veiled comments. When we stood with her in the bedroom we’d share, picking out furniture or planning the layout of the space, there was a sacred simplicity in it: this is your home, and you belong to each other.

And with that, the final traces of my old religious fears—the ones that had once whispered about sin and shame—finally fell silent.

We weren’t sneaking around or playing house. We were fully living it. As engaged partners. As soulmates. As husband and wife in every way that mattered.

Our intimacy deepened. Slowly. Tenderly. Respectfully. Prior to this, even when Lynn stayed the night, we’d stopped short of what most would call “sex.” But now, in this home we shared, there were no barriers. No more holding back. When Lynn undressed in front of me, it was not bold—it was natural. It was an offering of trust and closeness. A language of love without words.

She wanted to be close. And so did I.

There’s a sacredness to that kind of vulnerability. The kind where nothing is hidden—where desire is not a demand, but a shared yearning. Lynn didn’t wait for me to initiate intimacy. She didn’t assume that role.

Our relationship didn’t work that way. We discovered each other. We listened to each other’s bodies. We made space for uncertainty and gave it time to become comfort.

And always, we talked.

It wasn’t just about passion. It was about care. I asked often if I was hurting her—not out of fear, but out of love. Her answers were clear, direct, and sometimes breathless: “Don’t stop.”

That was Lynn. Direct. Unapologetic. Full of life.

We also navigated practical realities—like the fact that she couldn’t get pregnant. Cystic Fibrosis made that too dangerous. But Diane didn’t need reassurance from me; she trusted Lynn. When I once asked Lynn what her mom thought about our sex life, she just smiled and said, “She just wants to make sure I don’t get pregnant.”

That was enough. It spoke volumes.

Our home became a place of laughter, of routines, of warmth. We adopted two cats—Tip and Boo. Diane installed a small swinging door so they could get to the garage. We had a treadmill and free weights in the garage, which became my mini gym. In the back room, we set up a shared workspace with a computer and bookshelves we built and stained ourselves.

The bedroom had a small TV where we’d fall asleep watching Star Trek. Lynn had a nebulizer and her medication equipment nearby. We made each other meals. Took turns cooking and cleaning. We didn’t have chore charts or rigid rules—we just communicated, shared, and adapted.

There was nothing performative about our life together. It was ordinary in the most extraordinary ways.

Sometimes I would lay my head in her lap, and she’d caress my forehead. We wouldn’t say much. We didn’t need to.

It was serenity and passion coexisting. She could arouse me with a glance or soothe me into sleep with a touch.

Our intimacy never became routine. It always felt like discovery. Like poetry we were writing together, one shared breath at a time.

Even now, it’s hard to describe what that felt like. We were never out of sync. Never indifferent. If one of us smiled and the other saw it, we responded. Always. No deflection. No distance.

That, to me, is the rarest kind of love.

We didn’t need a wedding to make it real. And no institution, no system, no doctrine could define what we knew to be true:

We belonged to each other.

Memories and Dreams of Abuse

For all the serenity and safety Lynn gave me, there were still echoes from the past that hadn’t fully faded.

Memories of the abuse I experienced growing up were never far from my mind—sometimes not far enough. Even in that haven we’d created, my body remembered what it had endured. The nightmares still came.

I had been assaulted—verbally, physically, emotionally. And long after I left that home, long after I was safe, my nervous system hadn’t quite caught up. I was still having nightmares, often vivid, always jarring. They found their way into my sleep like intruders.

In those dreams, I was fighting back. I would lash out at my abuser—usually my mother who was the most abusive. Only in dreams would I strike out at my mother. In that strange space between waking and sleep, it felt like my fists were flying. Like I was punching the bed.

What terrified me was the thought that I might hit Lynn. That, in my sleep, I might hurt her. The fear chilled me to the core. I didn’t fully understand it, but I carried it.

I remember one night, shaken, telling her what I’d dreamed—how I was flailing, shouting, punching in the dark. Her response was immediate and calm. “You didn’t hit me,” she said. “You didn’t even move that much. You shouted, and I woke up. That’s all.”

She wasn’t afraid. Not of me. Not of the shadows in my mind.

And that reassurance—that unwavering calm—was everything. She grounded me. She reminded me that I was no longer in that place, that my body could unlearn what it had been taught by fear. She held me and comforted me. I was like a child, not literally in a fetal position but in my mind I collapsed into that position.

These nightmares stayed with me when I was 30. But Lynn stayed with me, too. Not just beside me in bed, but beside me in the deeper sense—in the places where shame and trauma used to live. She didn’t try to fix me. She didn’t flinch. She just stayed.

And in that stillness, in that love, I healed a little more each time.

After settling into our new home and rhythms of shared life, Lynn and I found another way to express our connection—through poetry.

We were both writers at heart. I had always identified as a poet, and Lynn had been sharing her work at open mics since before we met. Creating a project together felt like a natural extension of everything we were building—something creative, collaborative, and uniquely ours.

So, in 1995, we launched an online poetry magazine: Word Salad.

The worldwide web was still fairly new in the 90s. Lynn and I were both interested in poetry and I had the idea of publishing a poetry magazine on the web. This was in 1995.

I had a goal of becoming a psychiatric social worker and I was learning a great deal about psychiatric issues at this time. I will describe this in greater detail later.

Anyway, we were thinking of a title and I thought of a term that I heard in the psychiatric field – word salad. The definition from dictionary.com is as follows: "incoherent speech consisting of both real and imaginary words, lacking comprehensive meaning, and occurring in advanced schizophrenic states."

I had remarked that at one time, years ago, I had struggled to make sense of poetry... like when I was growing up. I once had the impression that poetry was hard to understand. Maybe I just had bad teachers.

This seemed like a good name that we both liked. So, we called the magazine "Word Salad" or "Word Salad Poetry Magazine." I got a domain name online and started creating a static website. This was prior to WordPress and so I had to work with Microsoft Word or perhaps WordPerfect (yeah, back then both programs were equally popular).

I would then create a list of pages for each poem with links on the main page which would serve as a table of contents.

Lynn let me do everything related to the presentation of the book on the web.

I also did what was required to try to get submissions. Back then, newsgroups were very popular, and your internet service provider included a list of newsgroups that you could subscribe to. It is similar to a forum today, but they were more open and not controlled by any particular owner... meaning there weren't strict rules about what you could post.

Consider something like this today. We might join groups on Facebook, but someone is an owner and creator of the group or there are a small group of administrators for the group. Unsolicited requests for submissions posted to a group might get you kicked off for sending spam.

Newsgroups were not like that and you could find appropriate groups where you could find creative people who are writers and poets. That's what I did.

Poetry submissions started coming into our email account for the magazine.

Keep in mind that at the time this idea of an online magazine was very new as well. That is no longer the case.

We decided to publish four times every year. Around the time when we were getting ready to publish an edition, I first asked Lynn to sit down in front of the computer and see what she thought of some of the poems we were getting – which ones did we want to publish?

She said she wanted me to print out all the poems that I got. I did that and she started creating piles for rejects, those we might want to publish, and those she or we liked. She might show me ones she liked right away along with the ones that were in the "maybe" stack or I would look later... sometimes I would start off indicating which ones I liked.

This was really taking off and it was amazing.

At one point, we got an interview with Ben Steelman who is a reporter with the Wilmington Star-News. We sat down together with him outside near his office in town. It was memorable.

We got some submissions from our friends as well.

A similar process occurred when Lynn would edit/proofread my papers for graduate school. She would ask me to print out the paper and she would go about marking up typos or other stupid mistakes I would make in my writing. It's strange how easy it is to make all these errors even if I was a much better writer than might be indicated by some early drafts of my papers.

In the next section, I will describe some aspects of my career. None of that would have been possible without the support, nurturance, and encouragement of Lynn. That journey might have started in the 80s when I decided I was going to go into social work, but it took off in 92. That just happens to be the same time when I met Lynn.

The life I had with Lynn felt like the culmination of a lifelong dream. I had a career that was beginning to take shape, but more than that—I had a partner. A family. Even though we couldn’t have children, we were a family. That truth carried weight and meaning.

From the outside, some might have seen our relationship through a distorted lens. But it was the ability to argue, to disagree—and to talk about anything—that made our connection so strong. I don’t remember my parents ever disagreeing about anything, which now seems bizarre to me. It was like they were afraid to have different opinions. That kind of silence doesn’t feel like peace; it feels like avoidance.

My friend Jean, years later, once remarked on how much Lynn and I argued. But he only ever saw the tension—not the tenderness that followed. He never saw the repair, the softness that always came after.

In fact, in one moment that I mentioned earlier, he missed the part where, after a disagreement, I’d handed Lynn a signed copy of his book and said, “Just because we’re fighting doesn’t mean I don’t love you.” Her face softened, and that amused, radiant smile returned—because she couldn’t stay mad.

That was us. That’s what he missed.

We never let distance fester. If Lynn was upset or hurt, I couldn’t stand it—I had to make things right. Once, in a moment of frustration, she asked, “Then why are you with me?” and I blurted out, “I don’t know.” But I caught myself instantly. “I’m so sorry,” I said, my voice clear and without any uncertainty. There were some things I knew for certain and my love for Lynn was one such absolute truth. “I’m with you because I’m in love with you.” Spoken with the solemnity that was both profoundly passionate and yet simultaneously matter of fact - a truth so undeniable as it was almost a contradiction that passion could co-exist with simplistic truth.

Some of our arguments came from the tangled roots of my religious upbringing—beliefs I’d inherited but never questioned. Absolutes I mistook for truth. But Lynn was patient. We didn’t avoid hard conversations. We challenged each other, disagreed out loud, and always found our way back. Our arguments weren’t threats to our love; they were part of how we strengthened it.

Our Home

Our home was a space that reflected who we were. We adopted two cats—Tip and Boo—and Diane even installed a swinging door so they could reach the garage where their litter box was kept. We each had a car, though we parked them outside because we used the garage as a workspace. It had a treadmill, free weights, and even a punching bag that became my occasional outlet, inspired by Gestalt therapy.

We worked together to make the house our own. Diane helped us build bookshelves using stained ladders and a stud finder to anchor them into the wall. We set up a computer station and eventually had cable internet—cutting edge at the time. One room was turned into a cozy guest space for Lynn’s cousins, with a larger television. In the bedroom, we kept a smaller TV near Lynn’s nebulizer and medication equipment, often falling asleep to Star Trek.

We took turns cooking, cleaning, and organizing. Lynn, ever practical, often directed how things should be cleaned, and I was happy to follow. We both handled litter box duties when possible, though I now regret letting Lynn do it at all—it wasn’t healthy for her to be near the dust. At times, I denied the seriousness of her condition. That was something I had to grow through.

I obviously had to mow the lawn and while I didn’t see the same urgency to do this as Lynn did, I respected her desire that it be done - by me.

Serenity and Intimacy

Growing up starved for nurturance, I often craved closeness in ways I couldn’t explain. With Lynn, I found peace in the smallest gestures—resting my head in her lap, letting her caress my forehead, feeling my body finally exhale into someone else’s care.

We hadn’t had sex before we moved in together, but that changed as our life together deepened. I remember asking Lynn, somewhat shyly, to pick out something sexy for Valentine’s Day. She did, and it meant everything. Not just because it aroused me—though it did—but because it showed how deeply she saw me. It wasn’t performative. It was for us.

That’s the thing about our intimacy—it was always new, always unfolding. There was a mystery to it. We weren’t just reenacting some cultural script. We were exploring. Learning. Responding. Lynn didn’t wait for me to initiate every time. And when we didn’t know what the other wanted, we asked, or listened to each other’s bodies.

Our connection was unusually in sync. We rarely faced the awkward imbalance of one person being “in the mood” while the other wasn’t. We just responded—open, mutual, unguarded. Even a glance, a smile, could spark something between us. And it always felt right.

I’d grown up with the idea that men had to lead, that sex was a duty or an obligation. But Lynn and I had none of that. We moved together in rhythm, equal, attuned. We honored each other’s cues, joys, hesitations. And that felt like a kind of healing, too.

She sometimes slept nude, a quiet gesture of closeness and trust. Sometimes I’d hold her breast gently as we fell asleep, feeling peace and desire mix in a quiet kind of bliss. Even then, I’d check to see if she was in the mood and respect her response that might be something like “I need to sleep now, sweetie.”

She wasn’t fragile. But I needed to know I was giving her pleasure, not pain. That mattered more than anything else.

This, I think, is what love should look like. Passion and tenderness. Respect and desire. A home built not just with furniture, but with trust. And each night, a little miracle in the ordinary: we turned toward each other, and found the same warmth waiting there.

There’s a kind of silence that doesn’t come from others—it comes from inside. It’s the silence born of shame, planted early, before you have the words to resist it. It tells you your body is something to hide. That pleasure is dangerous. That certain fluids—mucus, discharge, even tears—are “unclean.”

That silence shaped me long before I ever met Lynn.

It started in childhood. I had a single memory of something like anal continence when I was young perhaps in 2nd grade, and instead of comfort or understanding, what I felt was dread. Not just of the accidents themselves, but of discovery. Then later I discovered Freud’s pleasure principle and discovered what happened. It could not possible be discovered. But why? Because for a moment I embraced pleasure as a young child?

I lived in fear that my mother might find evidence of my body’s betrayal—and reject me for it. There were no open conversations. No space to ask questions or seek reassurance. Just shame. Shame for being seen.

Shame for being human.

So I learned to hide. To compartmentalize. To disconnect.

Then, as an adult, I met Lynn. And Lynn lived in her body with honesty. She didn’t apologize for it. She wasn’t provocative—she was present. When she undressed, it wasn’t for show. It was for trust. For closeness.

Her body was not a performance. It was an invitation: See me. Hold me. Love me. It was also something she knew I wanted.

But I was still unlearning.

Cystic Fibrosis is a disease of the lungs, but its calling card is mucus—thick, persistent, impossible to ignore. It wasn’t abstract. It was physical. It showed up on tissues, in coughing fits, in the way her breath caught just a second too late. It interrupted kisses. It was a signifier of something I wanted to deny.

And I HATED it… wanted to destroy it. It wasn’t just frustration—it became a fantasy of justice. A yearning for something I could see and fight.

More than once, I dreamed that CF was a demon. Not a metaphor. A literal monster. Like something out of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I pictured it stalking through hospital halls, feeding off the weak, coming for my beloved. In that daydream, it came for stalked Lynn and I wanted to kill it. Not for a second did I consider whether this monster could hurt me. I was eager and ready to kill it.

Because this thing—the mucus, the coughing, the breathlessness—it wasn’t just a symptom. It was a violation. A thing that didn’t belong in the sacred space that was Lynn’s body. And I couldn’t do anything in reality. I was powerless.

But the shame - the programming - still whispered. It got mixed into a combination of secret discoveries of pleasure and signs of a disease that interfered with the normal life that we were building.

Lynn never kept me at a distance from her illness. When we met with the respiratory therapy team or sat through hospital consults, no one asked if I had the right to be there. They didn’t question whether I was her husband. They didn’t blink when I was invited into the examination rooms or into conversations that would typically remain private. They knew. Everyone knew.

I wasn’t just a visitor. I was her partner. And I needed to understand everything—how Cystic Fibrosis worked, what it did to her lungs, what we could do to fight it. I needed to know the terrain of the body we were both trying to protect.

I wasn’t just the person giving her a ride from Wilmington to Chapel Hill. I suppose Lynn conveyed something profound in calling me her fiancé.

The respiratory team showed me how to help. How to tap her chest and sides to loosen the mucus. There was no awkwardness. No question of whether it was appropriate for me to touch her there—across her chest, her ribs, even over her breasts. It wasn’t new. It wasn’t foreign. It was sacred. It was care. It was love.

It was our life that I tried to normalize - we were just two poets, two creative types who fell in love.

And what’s more: Lynn never flinched. Never acted like there was anything I shouldn’t see. Her body was never a battleground between intimacy and decency. It was our terrain—hers, yes, but shared in trust. I knew how to soothe it. How to support it. And how to mourn it, quietly, when she needed more than I could offer.

There was no shame there. No performance. No false modesty. Just the raw, necessary truth of what it meant to love someone whose body was fighting a battle it never chose.

Her body—beautiful, fragile, strong—was the first place I ever felt truly wanted.

And it was also the battleground.

I never saw her as broken. But I sometimes feared I was. That the silence I’d learned in childhood had cost me something sacred. That my uncertainty, my hesitation, my effort to unlearn shame was something she had to bear with me.

Years later, with someone else—Codi Renee—I found myself embracing physical pleasure more freely. I offered the kind of tenderness and desire that, in truth, was always meant for Lynn—the one I had truly been in love with.

But in my confusion, I mistook that willingness—my openness, my eagerness to give—for something deeper. I thought it meant I loved Codi Renee. I wanted to believe it. She even insisted it must be true because I said so.

But it wasn’t love. It was never love.

It was physical attraction wrapped in the illusion of connection. Desire masquerading as devotion. I see that now. And it feels tragic—not because I gave myself too freely to someone else, but because Lynn, the one who had loved me fully, the one who had taught me how to open, didn’t get to receive the fullness of what she awakened in me.

She deserved that depth. That freedom. That joy.

What I gave Codi Renee was shaped by what Lynn helped me discover. But the motivation with Codi Renee wasn’t love—it was the desperate hope of being good enough for someone who kept me at a distance. The desire to be chosen. To prove I could be desirable.

Lynn never made me prove anything. With her, I was already enough.

This isn’t a chapter of regret. It’s a chapter of recognition.

I recognize now that Lynn didn’t just teach me how to love—she taught me how to stay. To sit with what’s hard. To touch what’s vulnerable. To stop pretending that we need to be “clean” (whatever that means) and whole to be worthy of love.

CF never gave me the fight I wanted. No monster in the hallway. No thing to destroy. But Lynn gave me the chance to fight in smaller, truer ways. To stand beside her. To learn that sacredness isn’t found in perfection—but in discovery of each other with no expectations.

In every tear, in every kiss, in every quiet act of care—we were writing a new language. A new covenant.

One that said:

You are not disgusting. You are not broken. You are not alone.

You are loved.

By 1996, I was thirty. And while Lynn and I lived with the rhythm and comfort of a shared life, I hadn’t lived with her illness since birth. I wasn’t raised in its shadow. She was. I was still learning. Still catching up. And in many ways, still trying to forget what we were up against.

Occasionally, she would use an inhaler, but that didn’t seem to happen very frequently.

I drove her—or we drove together—to her clinic appointments in Chapel Hill. From Wilmington, that was a drive of over two hours. It happened, for the most part, only once a year.

They would check her oxygen saturation, take X-rays to see the scarring and the buildup of mucus in her chest.

Lynn was good about letting me sit in on every meeting, even in the examination room with the nurse and the doctor. Most of the time, we felt lucky. She was incredibly healthy for someone with such a serious disease.

Sometimes, I left the room when they needed to collect a mucus sample. Lynn understood. I had a weak stomach.

But even so, I asked a thousand questions. 'What’s that dark spot on the X-ray? Is that mucus or scarring?'

'Here’s some excess mucus that needs to be cleared,' the doctor might say, 'and here’s some scarring.'

'How do we clear it?' I’d ask. 'Have you learned how to do the tapping?' they'd respond.

'Yes, the physical therapist taught us,' I’d answer. But I was still full of worry.

The doctor would explain devices we could use. But Lynn would say, 'It doesn’t clear it out for me. I can tell it’s still there.' Then she’d turn to me and remind me, gently but firmly, 'I told you I needed help with it the other day.'

And I’d feel the guilt wash over me. “Oh God, Lynn, I’m sorry. I’m scared when you’re not well. It makes me feel helpless, and I hate that. But I’m trying. I really am.” I would then add, “Wait, that’s not good enough. I can NOT just be trying. I have to do whatever is possible.”

Then I’d add, with tears in my eyes, “I just want a normal life. You make me happy. I don’t want to lose you.”

“I know, sweetie,” she’d say. “I’ve had more time to process this.”

I wanted to be strong but the tears wouldn’t stop. “I love you, Lynn. I love you so much.”

I then looked at the doctor that conveyed a look of displaced anger, as if he was a cause of this or wasn’t doing enough… as if he ought to answer for why this was happening.

Then I sked the doctor, “So, how often should I do the tapping?“

'Fifteen to thirty minutes each evening,' came the reply.

And then the scarring—the thing I dreaded most. It was permanent. It made her lungs less elastic. It meant that even if they found a cure, some damage couldn’t be undone.

I could talk to clients at a psychiatric hospital about grief, loss and mental illness. Mostly I was helping people deal with non-physical problems. But this wasn’t that. This was a physical problem. This was personal. This was my life. This was Lynn.

The secret I didn’t want to face was that CF could take her from me. I pushed that thought away most days. But not in those clinic rooms. In those rooms, I had to look it in the eye.

The darkness in her lungs—visible in patches on the X-rays—felt like the darkness creeping into our lives.

Then came late 1996. Lynn had to be hospitalized. Her lung function was declining, and the doctors wanted to admit her for IV antibiotics.

They were trying a new combination of drugs—ones believed to be more effective in CF patients. People were living longer now, they said. But that didn’t make it less terrifying.

We waited in the hospital lobby, trying to be calm. I wasn’t. I couldn’t sit still. My stomach turned with anxiety.

When they called us in, I sat on the edge of her bed, holding her hand as they placed the IV. 'What’s that?' I asked the nurse.

'Just saline,' she said. 'The medications will come later.'

We sat quietly for a few moments. 'Do you want to play cards? Or read?' I asked.

She asked for a new book by Anne McCaffrey, her favorite fantasy author.

'I want to stay with you,' I said.

'I’m glad you’re here,' she replied.

'I’ll bring a book too,' I added. 'We’ll just be together.'

She smiled. 'That sounds good.'

She suggested I meet her friend Carolyn, who also had CF. 'You’ll like her,' she said. Carolyn was up here in Chapel Hill at this point.

'We’ll see her when you’re discharged,' I promised.

Later that evening, while Lynn was in the shower, a nurse knocked on the door and asked for her. They needed to change her dressing around the IV.

She’s in the shower,” I said. The nurse paused. I got up and said, “I’ll let her know.” This was a door that I alone would or could open.

No awkwardness. No explanations. No embarrassment. Concealing the view from anyone but myself,with the nurse waiting, I got up, opened the door to the bathroom and conveyed the message that the nurse needed to do something.

There was no veil of privacy between us anymore. We had already lived through enough—the bodily, the vulnerable, the raw. Her illness had already taken us into places most couples don’t talk about. This was simply part of it. A moment like any other.

And yet, it was meaningful. It signified a level of trust, of sacred familiarity. She wasn’t hiding. I wasn’t hiding. And no one - least of all the staff - treated our intimacy as strange or inappropriate. We weren’t legally married. But no one asked. They didn’t need to. Everyone in that room, on that unit, understood what love looked like; what a couple looked like.

That night, I stayed. Visiting hours had ended, but no one made me leave. I climbed into the bed beside her, gently moved the IV, and wrapped my arm around her.

A nurse opened the door to check in. She saw us, said nothing, and closed it again. There was a place for family members to stay but we were not disturbed.

Eventually, Lynn came home. And just like that, life returned to normal—or what passed for normal. And I held tighter to the fantasy that we had all the time in the world.

By the summer of our second year together, I can remember standing on a porch during one of Lynn’s pottery events. I didn’t know anyone else there. I felt a little out of place—but not alone. It was summer.

We walked in hand-in-hand.

Later, feeling a bit awkward I found a seat at a picnic table. Lynn right near me. I reached for her arm and whispered, “Sit on my lap,” guiding her gently as she sat my lap and turned to face a friend talking. There was a pause in her conversation as her acquaintance drifted away. My eyes were suddenly captivated by the shape of her leg revealed by her very short shorts - probably not even trying to be seductive… and her foot with a open sandle dangling there.

My thoughts were playful and seductive. My hand ran up her leg and kept moving, as if no one was watching. She just turned to grin at me. Not telling me to stop, just knowing we were in public and we understood that.

Her body against mine was familiar by now, and this was one of those moments when desire mingled seamlessly with peace. She turned to me and asked sweetly, “Are you doing okay, sweetie?”

My hand had stopped but still was on her leg. My answer was “Oh, yeah, I’m good.” She understood and smiled knowingly.

This wasn’t the only moment of sexual playfulness nor was I the one acting. Even while I was driving… well that’s a private matter… or was it? The memory. I was driving and whether or not a person higher up in a truck might see didn’t seem to change Lynn’s actions or desires to pleasure me… and not needing to ask permission. It would be like asking for consent to tickle a person - the non-predictable nature of the action makes it work.

Later, we visited my parents for Christmas. It seemed natual to do. I was clearly not comfortable with this despite choosing to visit. Part of me wanted to show them the beautiful and loving lady that I had, as if they cared. Another part of me wanted to show what love looked like.

It was about being close as a natural thing, not like newly we were newly weds but we were just close to one another. Being in their home made me nervous. I saw Lynn speaking to my mother and got up close… I wrapped my arms around Lynn. It said “I’m with her and not you.” It also said to Lynn, “I need you.”

Intimacy as Discovery, Not Performance

I had studied Masters and Johnson. I had worked with clients who described their sex lives in clinical detail. I knew the theories about compatibility, erogenous zones, dysfunction, technique. But nothing in those textbooks prepared me for what it meant to discover someone’s body through love—not judgment, not comparison.

Lynn and I weren’t performing for each other. We were exploring. We weren’t trying to “get it right.” We were figuring out what felt good—what was comfortable, what was sacred. There was no pressure to be experienced or skilled. There was only curiosity, trust, tenderness.

I never expected oral sex, and she didn’t either. Perhaps that was because of my queasiness about mucus, a recurring challenge due to her illness. I once admitted to her that I struggled with things like sputum samples. She understood. She never made me feel ashamed of that discomfort. And in return, we both created a space where no part of each other was taboo—even if there were boundaries.

We explored everything else. Joyfully. Lovingly. Respectfully.

And as time went on, we knew what we liked, what to ask for, and how to listen to each other’s bodies without shame.

The Sacredness of Sex

For me, sex with Lynn was never casual. It was sacramental. I was still a Christian at the time, and I believed deeply in the idea of two becoming one. Our bodies were our offerings. Our souls met in that intimacy—not in spite of her illness, but in full knowledge of it.

And yes, I was a romantic. But this wasn’t just romance. This was a spiritual union. And when we were wrapped together, as one body; I felt more connected to the divine than I ever had inside a church.

It’s true—some people confuse physical pleasure with love. But we weren’t confused. We were making love. And we did so not as an obligation, or a performance, but as a celebration of everything we were to each other.

If I’m honest, I was learning to be free in my body by loving hers. I wasn’t trying to impress her. I was just trying to love her as fully as I could. And she gave me the safety to do that.

That was the miracle.

Not the sex. Not the affection. But the safety. The shared knowing.

I had never known that before.

And I have never known it since.

This section begins at a moment of triumph—my graduation from the University of South Carolina’s School of Social Work. After twelve years of striving, struggling, and sacrificing, I had finally reached the threshold of my chosen profession. I was no longer just pursuing a dream—I was living it.

For as long as I could remember, I had wanted to help others. Not in a vague or idealistic sense, but as a real, tangible act of service. And now, at last, I had the tools, the training, and the title to do just that.

I was passionate. Motivated. Relentless. The obstacles I’d faced along the way—shyness, insecurity, financial setbacks, emotional wounds—had not stopped me. They had shaped me into the kind of therapist I wanted to be: present, attuned, and deeply human.

But let me be clear—this work was never about me.

It was about the clients. The patients. The people who sat across from me in moments of crisis, confusion, or quiet desperation. My job was to meet them where they were. To resonate with their experience. To walk beside them—not ahead, not behind—with empathy and humility.

And when I say empathy, I don’t mean sympathy or detachment. I mean feeling with. If a client found peace, I felt it too. If they laughed, I laughed with them. If they hurt, I held that pain—not as mine, but as something sacred I had been entrusted to witness.

At the same time, I had to stay grounded. I had to hold my center. Because therapy is a delicate dance—mirroring without merging, attuning without absorbing. You learn to feel alongside someone without losing your own balance. That’s the art. That’s the calling.

All of this—this emotional labor, this healing work—was the backdrop to my life with Lynn.

We were building something beautiful together: a home, a rhythm, a love that felt both ordinary and extraordinary. But while Lynn was the heart of my life, being a therapist became the structure around it. My career didn’t define me—but it held me steady, even as deeper storms were gathering on the horizon.

This section will explore those years—years when I was finally doing what I had set out to do. When I believed I had found my purpose. When I was helping others heal, even as unseen fractures were beginning to form beneath the surface of my own life.

Let’s begin.

Before I could become the therapist I was meant to be—or the partner I would become with Lynn—I had to unlearn a great deal of what I thought I knew. Not about others. About myself.

By the mid-90s, I had built something beautiful with Lynn: a home, a deep bond, a shared life. But to understand how I got there, we need to rewind several years. Back to a version of myself that still wasn’t sure I was even allowed to choose my own path. And indeed, I had not even imagined a career in a helping profession when I first started college 1984 with no social skills. The person I was when I started college at 18 would have never imagined the career path I would later pursue.

I had learned so much in college about myself and how to overcome problems that I had when I entered college at 18. The problems at the time seemed to be limited to social anxiety or shyness.

I graduated from Georgia Tech in December 1989 with a degree in engineering—an achievement, on paper. But I’d known for at least two years that I was in the wrong field. I didn’t need a career in formulas and machines. I needed a life that made sense emotionally, spiritually, interpersonally. I needed to be with people, not things.

I had broached the idea of changing majors with my parents. The answer was clear: finish what you started. There was no room for nuance. No consideration of what it might mean to shift directions after investing years in the wrong path. So, I stayed the course. I got the degree. And quietly, I made other plans.

Even then, I knew I wasn’t going to be an engineer. I had already started taking psychology courses, minoring in the subject. I had spent five years in weekly therapy, learning more about myself than I ever did in any lecture hall. I had asked myself the hard questions: Who am I really? What matters to me? What do I want my life to be about?

And I had my answer: I wanted to be a therapist.

When I moved home after graduation, it wasn’t to rest. It was a strategic step. I needed experience in the mental health field—volunteer hours, recommendation letters, something to prove that this new path wasn’t a whim but a calling. I started volunteering at Georgia Regional Hospital, learning from the social work team and quietly confirming that this was the right place for me.

My parents never asked what I was doing. They didn’t ask what I wanted. I wasn’t expecting applause, but I had hoped for something—curiosity, encouragement, a glimmer of pride. What I received instead was silence. Or worse, judgment.

Decades later, my sister would say that I “didn’t do things the right way”—that I owed it to my parents to work as an engineer first before switching fields. As if my life were some kind of debt to be repaid. As if they had invested in me only for the return, not for the person I had become. She said I should’ve worked while getting my graduate degree at night, as though I could simply moonlight my way through a career change that required daytime internships, full-time training, and a complete reorientation of my skills and identity.

The ideas my sister shared just a few years ago were already implied way back in the early ’90s. I just hadn’t let it sink in. I hadn’t yet grasped the full depth of what it meant to be raised in a household where your inner world—your interests, your desires, your truths—didn’t matter.

It was my mother’s voice I heard the most, reminding me that what I wanted was irrelevant. That my dreams were a burden. That my worth was in what I produced or how it made them look, not who I was or what mattered to me. I felt like I was something they wanted to show off - something that they created and not a human being with my own preferences, desires, likes and dislikes, interests and values.

I wasn’t their child so much as their project—something to sculpt, to display, to prove they’d done something right. But I wasn’t a trophy. I was a person. And I wanted to be seen as one

And what made it all the more surreal was that my father—years earlier—had admitted to me that he knew engineering wasn’t the right field for me. He had seen it. He had known. And he said nothing. He had never said anything that could be interpreted as disagreement with my mother. It’s one of the many mysteries of our household: Did he agree with her? Did he simply defer? Did he believe his silence was love?

All I know is that in our home, disagreement didn’t happen. Not openly. Not safely. And now, looking back, I can see just how much that silence cost me.

This reminds me of the many disagreements Lynn and I navigated—openly, honestly—without it ever threatening our love for one another. The contrast is staggering.

Looking back now, I realize that what I needed from my family wasn’t financial support. I found my own way to pay for graduate school through Stafford Loans, as many students do. What I needed was interest. Respect. A sense that my future, and my happiness, mattered.

But it didn’t. Not to them.

And that’s what toxic shame does. It teaches you that your needs are unreasonable. That your dreams are indulgent. That wanting something different, something better, something more you, is wrong. Even when your body tells you otherwise. Even when every cell in your being knows you’re meant for something else.

I didn’t ask them to finance my new path. I didn’t eat much. I didn’t take up space. All I needed was room to grow. But even that was too much.

And yet, I grew anyway.

I got the experience I needed. I volunteered. I made connections. I applied to MSW programs with clarity, confidence, and conviction. And when I stepped into my first graduate-level class, I didn’t feel out of place.

I felt like I had finally arrived.

Every client I’ve ever helped owes something to that younger version of me—the one who didn’t give up. The one who refused to live someone else’s life. The one who found the courage to begin again.

And Lynn—she saw all of that. She believed in it. She walked alongside me not just as a partner, but as a witness to my becoming.

That, too, is part of this love story.

During the summer before my senior year at Georgia Tech, I was assaulted with a different kind of violence—this time, not physical, but emotional and existential.

It came in the form of a phone call from my sister Carrie. She was distraught, crying, barely able to speak. She had just been assaulted by both of our parents. At nineteen, she had been trying to start fresh at a community college in Florida after the family relocated from Connecticut to Hobe Sound, following our father’s layoff.

I can still hear her voice. The way it trembled. The way she said she and her friend—who I vaguely remembered as the stunningly beautiful girl she often hung out with—had talked after the assault and agreed, “Next time, we’re calling the police.” But there wasn’t a next time. Carrie just moved out.

That phrase haunted me: Next time. It carried a bitter recognition. We had been abused before. And we both knew it. But until that moment, it had never been spoken so plainly.

From that day forward, I saw Carrie differently. And I saw my parents differently, too. There was a strange new discomfort when I visited them for Christmas. I wasn’t sure how to act. I didn’t want Carrie to think I had forgotten. I hadn’t. I couldn’t. But I also didn’t know how to confront what we now both knew.

My brother had an easier time, in part because of his size. At 5’11”, he could stand up to our father. I couldn’t. Not then. Not in the same way.

But something had started to shift inside me. I had begun to feel better about myself—thanks to the support I was getting at school, in counseling, and from my close friends Thomas and Jo-Lee. I hadn’t told my parents about the conversations I’d had with my friends about the abuse. They didn’t know how much those outside relationships were helping me heal.

At my graduation, my parents met Thomas and Jo-Lee. Jo-Lee, ever kind and warm, made an effort to be polite. Thomas was quieter, more reserved—but his silence carried weight. He knew what I’d been through. And he didn’t want to pretend. My mother later commented that she “got along” with Thomas but didn’t feel comfortable around Jo-Lee.

If only she knew how much more intensely Thomas felt. How much we all saw and remembered.

That’s the legacy of gaslighting. You know something happened. You remember it vividly. But the people who hurt you deny it ever occurred—or worse, they pretend you’re the one who’s changed.

Years later, in 2020, I brought it up to Carrie again. At first, she seemed to hesitate, as if she had forgotten. I reminded her of her friend—the one she confided in. The one I remembered, even decades later, because of how shaken Carrie had been at the time. But she deflected. Changed the subject. There was no acknowledgment.

Maybe it was too painful. Maybe it was a kind of self-protection. Or maybe it was just another way shame rewrites the story.

Whatever the reason, it left me alone again with the memory. Not just of what happened to me—but of what I witnessed happen to her.

It was against this backdrop that I moved back into my parents’ home after graduation—without realizing how much unspoken tension I was walking into. I thought it would be a transition. Just a place to pause while I made my next moves. But in truth, it was a test I didn’t yet know I was taking: Could I grow in a house where silence had been more powerful than truth?

And those memories didn’t stay locked in the past. Years later, I would still wake in the night—next to Lynn, in a home built on love and safety—shouting, flinching, trembling. Nightmares of being assaulted as a child would surge to the surface, vivid and raw. I worried, in those early moments of waking, whether my arms had moved in sleep, whether I might have hurt her. But Lynn would reassure me: You didn’t hit me. I’m okay. My body was reliving what my mind had tried to bury. The violence I grew up with didn’t just haunt my memories—it lived in my muscles, my breath, my dreams. And it would continue to live there, in my memories and nightmares, until I was at least thirty.

In an earlier chapter, I described the most meaningful accomplishment of my life: building a family with Lynn. As husband and wife, we were a family in every way that mattered.

But long before I could meet someone like Lynn—let alone be ready for the kind of connection we shared—I had to become someone else entirely. I had to grow.

During college, I spent five years trying to overcome what I once called “shyness,” but what I now recognize as social anxiety and a severe lack of interpersonal skills. The person I was at eighteen could barely hold a conversation, let alone navigate the emotional landscape of love, intimacy, and healing. To even meet Lynn, to express my interest in her, required a set of relational and emotional skills I hadn’t yet developed when I entered college.

Ironically, I was preparing to be a social worker even while studying engineering at a school that didn’t even offer a degree in social work. I just didn’t know it yet. It wasn’t until much later that I recognized those years as a time of transformation, not just academically but psychologically and spiritually.

As I mentioned earlier, engineering was never a good match for me. But in high school, no one gave us aptitude tests. No one sat down to ask what kind of life might suit us. So, I did what seemed practical. What was expected. What sounded respectable. It wasn’t until I was immersed in therapy and taking elective courses in psychology that I began to see another possibility.

Psychology changed my life. Therapy saved it. And somewhere along the way, I realized I wanted to offer that same possibility to others.

When I moved to Wilmington in 1992, I was still finding my way professionally. I had accepted a six-month contract at Corning as a technical writer, but I was actively looking for opportunities in the mental health field. That search led me to The Oaks, the psychiatric hospital affiliated with New Hanover Regional Medical Center.

It was there that I met Chris Hauge, DSW, LCSW—a social worker and mentor who would become instrumental in my development. Chris supervised me during my second internship, helped me get started in private practice, and remained a professional touchstone for years. His influence was profound, not only because of what he taught but because of how he modeled authenticity.

At The Oaks, I started as a volunteer, but the work was anything but superficial. Chris assigned me to help complete intake assessments—detailed interviews that formed the foundation for diagnosis and treatment. He asked me to make diagnostic impressions before reviewing the psychiatrist’s notes, encouraging me to trust my observations and clinical reasoning. This practice, rare for a volunteer, deepened my understanding of mental health and validated my ability to contribute meaningfully—even before I began formal graduate training.

What stood out to me most was how Chris created space for authenticity. In his groups, staff were encouraged to be genuine—to respond not just clinically, but humanly. If a patient expressed feelings of worthlessness, the expectation wasn’t to retreat behind neutrality. It was to meet them with presence. Even something as simple as noticing and naming a patient’s strength could be part of the work. That kind of honesty wasn’t just permitted—it was modeled.

It might sound obvious, but in many clinical environments, that kind of openness is rare. Years later, I would encounter professionals who treated empathy like a liability—who worried that affirming a client too directly might be crossing a line. But back then, with Chris, I learned that healing could happen through relationship. Through realness. That was the kind of therapist I wanted to become.

When I returned years later for my internship, I saw even more clearly how the information gathered by clinical social workers often surpassed what the attending psychiatrists had available. Yet, in some later settings, I would find that physicians didn’t always want to hear those insights. There’s a hierarchy in medicine that doesn’t always leave space for the voices of those outside it. Still, I held onto what I had learned: that deep listening, careful attention, and compassionate presence could offer more than a title ever could.

At The Oaks, I was invited into the work in a way that felt real and urgent. There was no busy work, no meaningless tasks to “keep the volunteer engaged.” I had a key to an office where I could meet with patients privately. I sat in on group sessions. I helped complete required documentation. I saw the systems, and I saw the people inside them.

And I saw myself, more clearly each day, becoming who I was meant to be.

It wasn’t just about knowledge or training. It was about alignment—about discovering a life where my values, my skills, and my sense of purpose finally lined up.

I had been through the fire. I had faced self-doubt, shame, and misdirection. But I had emerged with something unshakable: a sense of who I was, and what I was here to do.

Helping others wasn’t just something I wanted to do—it was something I needed to do. It made life meaningful. And it gave me the kind of satisfaction that no paycheck or title ever could.

And so, I moved forward—no longer doubting whether I belonged, but knowing that I did.

Looking back now, I can say with absolute clarity: I was on the right path. I hadn’t just found a career.

I had found my calling.

By the time I entered graduate school in 1993, I had already spent nearly a decade preparing for the person I was becoming—not just professionally, but emotionally, socially, and spiritually. What began at age eighteen as a painful struggle with shyness and toxic shame had, through small but steady steps, transformed into something resilient, intentional, and deeply rooted in empathy.

It didn’t happen overnight. My career shift from engineering to psychiatric social work wasn’t just a change in job title—it was the culmination of years of internal and external labor. Long before I ever earned a paycheck for helping others, I had already been doing the work.

At Sherwood Village, a supportive housing complex for people with chronic mental illness, I spent weekends on call—providing emotional support, checking in on residents, helping coordinate group meetings and outings. Though I was technically staff, it often felt more like being part of a large, loving community. They trusted me. They felt seen. That kind of trust—the kind earned slowly, through empathy, consistency, and presence—became one of the greatest affirmations of my path. It wasn’t theory. It was real.

At Georgia Regional Hospital, and later The Oaks in Wilmington, I volunteered alongside clinical social workers who saw something in me and helped cultivate it. Chris Hauge, in particular, became a mentor who gave me real responsibilities—intake assessments, participation in therapy groups, and eventually, my second-year graduate internship. His approach, grounded in authenticity and experiential techniques, helped shape the kind of therapist I would become: transparent, emotionally present, and deeply human.

Graduate school itself was demanding—academically and logistically. I commuted long hours, worked weekends, and balanced internships with coursework. My first-year placement at the mental health center wasn’t a great fit—especially on the children’s unit—but even that taught me something: not every environment would be mine to thrive in, but every one could teach me something.

That year, I also worked with day treatment and homeless outreach programs. It was during that time I created a “street sheet”—a resource guide for people experiencing homelessness in Wilmington. Ironically, years later, I would be handed that very same sheet when I found myself in crisis. Life has a strange way of returning to you what you once offered to others.

By my second year, I had no doubt I was on the right path. At The Oaks, I finally felt fully alive in my work. I co-facilitated groups, led guided imagery sessions, practiced active listening, and slowly began offering brief individual therapy sessions. What astonished me most was how open patients were—how much they wanted to share when they felt truly seen.

I wasn’t perfect. I made mistakes. I stumbled through awkward moments and carried the weight of self-doubt. But I kept going. Because by then, I had learned something vital: showing up with empathy, honesty, and the willingness to learn is sometimes more powerful than having all the answers.

This chapter of my life—this decade of growth—wasn’t about finishing a degree or getting a title. It was about becoming someone I could respect. Someone others could trust. Someone who believed, finally, in the possibility of healing.

I had overcome more than shyness. I had crossed a threshold: from observer to participant, from anxious outsider to trusted guide. And I wasn’t just becoming a therapist.

I was becoming myself.

All of this could be a story in itself—the steady unfolding of who I was meant to be. I wasn’t just learning a profession; I was undoing years of silence, shame, and invisibility. I was continuing a journey that had begun at eighteen, in the quiet refuge of weekly counseling sessions at Georgia Tech. For five years, with the same therapist, I explored what it meant to live fully, to speak my truth, to grow. And that same energy carried me through these transformative years—from volunteer, to intern, to someone who had earned a place at the table, not by pretending to be someone else, but by finally becoming who I was always meant to be.

Graduating in May 1996 with my Master’s in Social Work should have been the climax of a long journey. But in truth, it felt more like a beginning. The real transformation—becoming a therapist, becoming myself—was just taking shape.

I accepted a position as a therapist at Brynn Marr Psychiatric Hospital, a locked inpatient facility in Jacksonville, North Carolina, not far from Camp Lejeune. It felt like a natural next step after my internship at The Oaks. I was no longer an intern. I was the therapist—one of two on the adult unit, responsible for half the patients under my care.

Leading therapy groups was a routine part of the job, and I accepted that without hesitation during the interview. The person who NEVER spoke in small classrooms at Georgia Tech was now agreeing to fascilitate therapy groups. But now? It felt like a culmination. Beginning four years ago, I had stood at open mics reading poetry to strangers, declaring my love for Lynn. Now, I was standing in hospital rooms, holding space for pain, for hope, for change. All eyes were on me. Whether the patients thought the group therapy would help was less important than the importance I placed upon my role.

Group therapy sessions happened multiple times a week. Patients could also request individual sessions. And they did. Often. That meant the world to me—not because I had the answers, but because people felt safe with me. I was no longer the shy, unsure young man who avoided eye contact. I was a therapist, and I was showing up for people in ways I once thought impossible.

And I never forgot that I didn’t get here alone.

Lynn’s support wasn’t just moral—it was foundational. She had walked beside me through my transition from engineering to social work, believing in me before I fully believed in myself. Every step of my success was built on the foundation of her steady love.

Not everything about the job was ideal. Brynn Marr was a for-profit hospital, and it quickly became clear that treatment was often dictated by reimbursement policies. One patient, Victoria—a woman with anorexia and suspected Borderline Personality Disorder - quickly exhausted her covered Medicare days. My supervisor wanted to discharge her, but in the mean time, waiting for a new placement, she would continue to see me for therapy. Not the other therapist. Me.

I couldn’t turn her away. She needed care, not just a referral. And when it became clear that the unit was becoming a hostile environment for her, and when my supervisor asked me, I told him: “Yes, I think this is a hostile and non-therapeutic environment for her.”

When she was confronted by multiple staff, I made sure to be at her side. Not to rescue her, but to stand beside her. To be someone consistent. Someone who didn’t flinch.

That’s what therapy often is—just staying with someone in the hard moments.

She was volatile at times, and the term “borderline” was thrown around like an insult. But I never stopped seeing her as a full person. She might storm out one day and return the next like nothing happened. That was okay. I stayed steady. And when she was told she had to attend therapy groups which were conducted by either me or the other therapist on the unit, Victoria stated emphatically, “Fine, I’ll go to Bruce’s groups and that’s it.” The other therapist was a woman with maybe 2 or 3 year’s experience.

One afternoon, that trust was still unfolding—Victoria and I were in session when the phone rang at my desk. The storm outside had intensified. Hurricane Fran was aimed with the eye of the storm coming right up the Cape Fear river where we lived in Wilmington.

It was Lynn.

“What are you doing?” she asked—not panicked, not pleading, but with that firm, unmistakable tone she used when something mattered.

“I’m working,” I said, as if that explained everything.

“You need to come home now!” she said, emphatically “The roads are flooding.”

There wasn’t time for her to explain anything else about her worries about me arriving home safely or her being alone. I couldn’t believe that some aspect of the indifference I had known growing up from my parents had influenced this entirely different relationship. She might have been firm but it was out of love and not convenience for her.

Her voice carried what my parents never did. When I was 18, about to go to college, my father told me to get rid of the fort built when I was a younger kid. The only reason it was still there when I was older was as another place to hide or a temporary home for my friend Paul. I had the crazy idea that I could just burn it down. So, in the middle of the summer, in the evening as darkness arrived, my friend Ken and I decided to burn it down. Talk about reckless and crazy! There was a propane heater inside with tanks of propane in there. Two of them had shot up like rockets missing Ken who was on the top dropping water that I brought from the stream.

There was something different about this memory. I had lost hope that I could put the fire out. I ran up to tell my father to call the firestation. He said “no,” probaby thinking about how I could get in trouble. He didn’t confront me for having the irrational idea of burning it down. On the one hand he might have been concerned about me getting in trouble but I had only known indifference from my mother and father. Without taking time to explain more about how out of control the fire was, I rushed back into the woods behind our house to keep bringing water from the stream to put it out. It’s tragic that I had to wonder about all the tangled ideas that I had back then that came rushing back. Was he confident I could put out the fire? It’s amazing the neighbors didn’t pitch in. Was it just too much for a stoic and indifferent father to cause his son to get in trouble?

Why am I interveaving this memory into my narrative? This is one of those few times when I can only hope that the reader can infer some meaning to this.

Twelve years later with a hurricane coming at Wilmington, I realized that I mattered and I felt something entirely different when Lynn told me to come home now! My decisions and choices took on a different meaning with Lynn. There was love.

I told Lynn, “I am leaving now.” And I added, softly and with tenderness, “I’m sorry.” And I meant it.

I turned to Victoria and said in a hurried tone, “I have to go home.” She had put two and two together in this rare instance of a therapy session being interrupted.

I left the hospital and drove through streets that were fast becoming rivers. Water rose up to the hood of my car. It was pure luck that I made it back without getting stranded. But love—not luck—is what got me to leave.

That was the moment I saw something I hadn’t fully understood until then.

This wasn’t just a job I’d chosen. This wasn’t just a career I had trained for. It was a life I was building. And someone was waiting for me in that life—not out of obligation, but out of love.

She was home, alone, afraid. And she needed me. Not just safe. With her.

I’d never known that kind of need before - not from my parents, not from anyone. But I knew it now.

And I wasn’t going to take it for granted.

In the last chapter, I mentioned being employed at Brynn Marr Psychiatric Hospital. While the work with clients was rewarding, the values and norms of the setting were not a good match. I then worked in two public mental health settings. The second one was Sampson County Mental Health Center. That lasted just about 9 months before I wanted to move into private practice.

I was able to complete all the requirements for licensure as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) within the state of North Carolina before I left my employment at Sampson County Mental Health Center.

It was clear that whatever problems I had on the jobs at this agency or at Brynn Marr Psychiatric Hospital had nothing to do with how I performed with clients or patients.

During this time, I had sought feedback, counseling, support, and guidance from my colleagues. I had joined the local chapter of the Society for Clinical Social Workers which had regular meetings where I could interact with colleagues in a congenial setting where we got to share our ideas, request feedback on casework, and learn from one another.

It is through these meetings that I kept in touch with Chris Hauge who was a mentor of mine as I have mentioned previously.

I had approached Chris seeking advice on entering private practice because I looked up to him... I had known that he had kept a private practice for some time. He had been very supportive of my goals as they related to making a positive difference in the lives of others.

The Keys to Success and Accomplishments

As it turned out, Chris said that he was considering retirement and that he was cutting back his office hours. He offered to let me rent his office space at a certain rate per hour if and when I used the office. This was a very affordable way for me to find success.

I believe it was about $15 per hour - Chris wasn't using the office anyway during these hours. He told me the hours in which he used the office and when the office would be available. He shared an office with a partner - they had the main waiting room and reception area and two private office rooms where providers, like myself, could meet with clients.

If I had to build a private practice on my own, it could be challenging to get started. I would need to build a base of clients that would be paying every week for treatment with me. If you rent an office full time you have access to the building any time, day or night, but you pay a monthly rate to do this.

The cost to rent an office every month would be higher than the costs that Lynn and I were paying to rent our home - though her mother had been renting it to us and therefore we had gotten a great deal, a cheap rate for renting a home.

Chris gave me a key, introduced me to his partner and we discussed how I would record the hours in which I was going to use the office. He had a schedule I could consult to find out when the office was available.

There are so many things to consider when you are pursuing a career in this field and when you are seeking to work in private practice. As noted, I had to consider Professional Liability Insurance also called malpractice insurance, which are different names for the same thing. Chris needed to know that I had this coverage.

Billing is another issue. I had to file insurance claims for treatment with a client's insurance company or agency. So, I had to get registered with various insurance companies including Medicare.

I had contracted with someone to do the medical billing as well and I got a post office box (PO Box) for non-personal mail.

Having all my mail go to Chris' office didn't seem like something that I wanted to do yet. If I did not go to the office because I didn't have a client that day, then I might miss my mail that day. There was a place where I could get a PO Box close to our home.

It's great to have someone with whom you can consult when you are doing all these things and Chris was helpful in this regard as well.

Then I had to advertise in the newspaper and online. The internet was still a bit new in the late 90s, but I was able to create a website.

Other Advice That I Received from Colleagues

It's important to reflect upon the support I got from colleagues as well as the therapy or treatment that I had been receiving.

I became interested or curious to learn something about psychoanalysis and I began to study this formally from an organization that provides certification in psychodynamic/psychoanalytic therapy. The organization provided learning objectives, credits, coursework, as well as certifications for mental health and psychological professionals.

I would go and see Marjorie Israel, who worked out of her home. She was a clinical social worker like myself and I met her at those meetings.

Marjorie invited me to her home office. It was an interesting and scenic location. She had a nice yard with flowers and plants in a beautiful and serene garden with a curving sidewalk.

I would lay back on her couch and do free association or recount my dreams. It was reminiscent of Freudian psychoanalysis with the psychoanalyst and the couch. Marjorie said that she had to modify her approach since psychoanalysis traditionally had been done with a client coming four or five days a week for years.

Oh, I was paying her out of pocket, also. Lynn and I didn't have a great deal of money but she was supportive of me getting the guidance and support that I needed.

She also engaged in more talking than traditional psychoanalysis. 

While so much of psychoanalytic theory is hard to prove with research, I was interested in a technique where I would not be censoring anything at all. I was interested in making sure that I covered everything going through my mind – my motivations and hidden desires. I didn't want any issues from my past to interfere with my role as a therapist for clients.

It is so special that Lynn didn't ask me to work for a big agency that might offer "good insurance." We both knew that insurance wasn't the answer. She was born with a pre-existing condition. Even forcing insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions is not a guarantee that we would need.

Starting My Practice

One of my counselors cautioned me that Wilmington was a saturated market, meaning there probably isn't a market for another psychotherapist in the Wilmington area.

I was going to prove him wrong, which would make him happy actually. I mean, he had my best interests in mind. He was speaking only about the market for therapists.

I did start to pick up clients rather fast. I had selected a few words to use in the advertisements as specialization areas that I hoped would be problems that people in the area had and/or things that interested me.  So, initially, I thought of advertising that I could help individuals who are dealing with anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and relationship issues. 

I had previously had problems with relationships which was manifested in the form of shyness, social anxiety, and social phobia. 

I added that I could use hypnosis to help with quitting smoking, weight loss, or other problems.

This seemed to work out well for me. I used a second phone number that rang at my home, but the location of where I was living was not revealed.

One guy started paying me out of pocket for weight loss.

Then I picked up a client who had relationship issues. He said that he was gay and asked if I could help. I reported that I could help. To me, relationships require active listening. So, I would demonstrate that in the sessions with the client and help him to learn how to increase his communication skills in the same way.

It's interesting that people in relationships that are non-traditional relationships will understandably want to know if we (the therapists) are comfortable listening to details about their intimate relationships.

Returning to the topic of psychoanalysis, we get terms like transference and countertransference from this field.

Transference is about how the client reacts to or responds to the therapist. It can relate to projection where a client projects onto the therapist ideas and feelings that exist in another relationship.

Countertransference is how therapists respond to the client and the client's behaviors. I was working on my own "issues" to ensure that none of my past was carried into the therapy sessions with others and would cloud my judgment. This was part of why I went for analysis with Marjorie.

Anyway, I also picked up a client who was dealing with major depression. Another issue that I was treating was anorexia. I had taken on a client who was in college and had come home with her family hoping to return to college later.

My client base was growing, and it was getting to the point that I needed more access to the office than what was available while renting from Chris. I also found that by paying a flat rate every month, I could save money.

Recognizing these accomplishments was amazing and a cause for celebration. So, Lynn and I went out to dinner at one of our favorite restaurants. Everything was amazing and a celebration was called for!

This has been an overview of the various types of clients I was seeing and the problems or issues I was treating. Later chapters will go into more detail so I will ask you to keep reading with me.

First, let's talk about family life so that you, dear reader, will know that I had another life outside the office. 

After graduating in 1996, I had officially become a therapist. But that alone wasn’t the milestone. The deeper truth is this: I was now helping others with the very issues that once defined me.

I began my post-graduate career at Brynn Marr Psychiatric Hospital, then worked briefly at two public mental health agencies. And while each role had moments of meaning—particularly the work I did directly with clients—it became clear that the settings themselves didn’t always align with my values. Bureaucracy, insurance limitations, and profit motives left little room for the kind of deep, relational work that had drawn me to this field in the first place.

So, I made a leap that once would have seemed impossible: I started a private psychotherapy practice.

Chris Hauge—my longtime mentor—was instrumental in helping me take that step. He offered his office space when he began scaling back toward retirement, allowing me to rent the space affordably by the hour. With his guidance, I took the necessary steps to get credentialed with insurance providers, set up billing systems, and advertise my services to the community.

And people came.

I began seeing clients for anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and relationship struggles. One client paid out of pocket for help with weight loss. Another came to me with questions about communication in his same-sex relationship, wondering whether I’d be comfortable hearing about the details. I was. More than comfortable—I was honored. People were trusting me with their most vulnerable truths. And they were doing so because they could feel that I understood.

Because I did.

What once had been sources of shame—my social phobia, my dating inexperience, my fear of being seen—had now become bridges. Not liabilities. Strengths. I had done the work, and I was continuing to do it. I was in therapy myself, pursuing a form of psychodynamic work rooted in self-awareness, free association, and emotional insight. I didn’t want my past to distort the present—not mine, and certainly not my clients’.

The therapy I offered wasn’t perfect, but it was real. And it mattered.

As my caseload grew, I outgrew the shared office arrangement and moved into my own space. I was fully self-employed, fully licensed, and finally—fully believing in my own capacity to help others heal.

Lynn and I went out to celebrate. It wasn’t just a milestone in my career—it was a moment of quiet triumph. Not flashy. Not loud. Just the two of us, sharing a meal, holding hands across the table, knowing how far we had come.

So much had changed since the days when I thought I had nothing to offer.

Now, I was a therapist with a thriving practice, a deep belief in human healing, and a partner who believed in me even before I did.

And maybe, in helping others become whole, I was continuing to see my value to others.

Preparing an Office for Therapy - A Space of My Own

My private practice had grown faster than I could have imagined. At first, I was renting space by the hour from Chris Hauge—my mentor and supporter—but within a few short months, I was seeing clients nearly full-time. It no longer made sense to rent by the hour. The numbers told the story: I had reached a point where a dedicated space wasn’t just a dream—it was the next step.

With Lynn’s support, I found an office in downtown Wilmington, on Chestnut Street. The rent was $400 a month, which was far less than what I would be paying if I continued renting hourly. Within a month, I had already passed that threshold—and we both knew it was time.

The space was exactly what I needed. It was part of a long hallway of offices in a building shared with other professionals, including a lawyer and a few other therapists. It came with a receptionist, a quiet waiting room, and access to a shared conference room I could book when needed.

Lynn and I jumped right into setting it up. We scoured yard sales for a comfortable couch, picked up pillows to make the space inviting, and bought a desk and chair from Office Depot. It was a whirlwind of practical and emotional preparation. I had never cared much about how things looked, but Lynn did—and thanks to her, the space felt warm, welcoming, and professional. Without her help, I would have been self-conscious, worrying if the space felt right for my clients.

We added a whiteboard for diagrams and notes. I framed my degree, licensure, and hypnosis certification. These weren’t just decorations—they were symbols of a journey that had once felt out of reach. From a young man too anxious to speak in class, I had become someone clients sought out for healing and support.

We also prepared for the full range of needs. I added chairs for potential group sessions and stocked a small toy box for play therapy with children. I didn’t expect a large number of child clients, but I wanted to be ready. I remembered how lost I’d felt during my first internship with kids—and I had since studied play therapy with more intention.

The receptionist was helpful with greeting clients, answering the phone, and handling basic tasks during regular business hours. I kept the more personal aspects—like therapy notes, billing conversations, and scheduling—between me and my clients to maintain confidentiality and control. After hours, I had a key and alarm code, and I often stayed late to see clients who couldn’t come during the day.

And then, suddenly, I was here: practicing full-time in my own space. Not as a student, not as a paraprofessional, not as someone tagging along on someone else’s license.

I was the therapist. The space was mine.

It’s hard to describe what that felt like. Euphoric. Surreal. Joyful. And above all, deeply earned.

Lynn and I celebrated the way we often did: with a quiet dinner out, holding hands across the table, hearts full. I felt like I wanted to hang a metaphorical plaque on the wall of my life—“Here. Here is where it all became real.”

Not long before, I could barely imagine a life like this. Now I was living it.

And it was beautiful.

It was April 15, 2000. I had a few books stacked beside the bed—reading material that reflected the many states of mind I moved through in a week: psychodynamic theory, ego state therapy, even a book written by a woman with dissociative identities using collages and magazine cutouts to represent the parts of herself.

I had been reflecting on all of it—how we carry different selves inside us, how trauma and healing play out over time—when Lynn appeared at the doorway.

She had that mischievous smile I loved.

“I want sex,” she said, straightforward as ever.

My heart lifted. “Me too.”

We undressed quickly, comfortably. Familiar, yet new each time. The kind of comfort and chemistry that only deep love can produce. When she moved toward the bed, her gaze locked with mine, I felt the same awe I always did. Like seeing her again for the first time.

She climbed on top of me, our lips finding each other fast, hungry. Her body pressed close, arms wrapped tightly around me, the space between us seeming to vanish.

“I feel like I can’t get close enough,” she breathed, her mouth pressing into mine like she was trying to merge with me—hungry, urgent, needing more than just touch.

“I know,” I said, pulling her even closer.

She shifted, her breath catching as our bodies moved together. Then, gently but firmly, she paused.

“You’re too close, sweetie,” she said with a soft sigh, her meaning unspoken but understood.

We had talked about it before—her health, the impossibility of pregnancy due to her condition. It was the one boundary we couldn’t cross, no matter how much we wanted to become one in every way.

But still, we held each other. Moved together. Loved each other as fully as two people can.

The intensity built. She clung to me, her body not arching but wrapping itself around mine—like she was trying to become part of me. Our mouths met again and again, hungry, urgent, like we could dissolve into each other if we just held tight enough.

And then—suddenly—I let go.

She felt it. Paused. Still. A quiet smile crossing her face.

There was silence, the kind that only happens when two people have given something wordless to each other.

She whispered, “We should shower.”

I caught my breath. “But you…”

She looked at me, her eyes soft. “I'm happy,” she said. “It’s okay.” 

I was confused a bit and wanted more for her.

This was about connection. About wanting and being wanted. About love so deep that it didn’t need to be measured. It amazed me that this kind of passion was still happening nearly every day - like we were newlyweds. Yet, we were years into the life as husband and wife. It didn’t feel routine. It felt alive. Urgent. Sacred.

Afterward, she went to start the shower while I stayed in bed, a wave of serenity washing over me.

We were in love—because she was in love with me. Because I was in love with her. Because we had become, in so many ways, one.

“I love you,” she said as we stepped into the water together.

“I love you so much,” I replied, heart full.

Then I laughed softly.

“What?” she asked.

“I was just thinking of that song by The Moody Blues—the way the singer repeats those lines like he’s overcome, like he just can’t hold it in.”

I spoke the words that the singer in the song sang:

'Cause I love you,
yes, I love you,
oh, how I love you,
oh, how I love you…'

“That’s how I feel,” I told her. “I want to tell the whole world that I love Lynn.”

She smiled, the way she always did when she knew I meant every word.

And I did. I would have shouted it from rooftops. Not just after making love, but anytime. Every day.

That night, as I lay beside her, I started thinking about her dreams. About how much I wanted her happiness. She had talked about getting her Master of Fine Arts one day. Maybe I could help with that. Maybe I could buy her a kiln so she could fire her pottery at home. Maybe, with this practice I was building, I could give her more than just love. I could give her the things that filled her dreams.

I was in love. Not just based on the passion we shared but the peace and serenity that matched our connection together.