Preface

There are moments in life that quietly divide everything into before and after. You don't see them coming. You don't mark them as history when they arrive. They slip into your life like shadows - unnoticed at first - and when you finally look back, everything has changed.

This is a story about how love found me, how it changed me, and how the eventual loss of that love shattered everything I had come to believe about who I was and how life works. But more than that, it's a story for anyone who has ever felt fundamentally different - invisible in a crowd, uncertain of their worth, carrying wounds that others can't see.

As both someone who lived this experience and later became a therapist specializing in trauma, I've learned that our stories of struggle can become bridges to healing, not just for ourselves but for others walking similar paths. This memoir weaves together personal narrative with insights I've gained through my professional work, particularly as a Peer Support Specialist who uses his own pain to help others find their way through theirs.

This is not just a story about love and loss. It is a story about attachment - what it means to be seen, held, chosen. It's about the lasting impact of childhood emotional deprivation and how trauma can masquerade as personality, making us believe we're fundamentally flawed rather than wounded. And it's about what happens when those crucial bonds are broken, when the very foundation of safety we've built comes crashing down.

If you've ever struggled with social anxiety that felt like selective mutism, if you've wondered whether you might be on the autism spectrum only to discover your differences stem from trauma, if you've lived with the deep shame of believing you're unlovable - this story is for you. For some reason, this seems to be the latest fad where being on the “spectrum” is being embraced by many to celebrate their differences which is good but it might not fit you.

It's for those who understand what it means to feel like a ghost in your own life, for survivors of narcissistic abuse, and for anyone grappling with Complex-PTSD symptoms that seem to emerge just when you thought you'd healed.

As a child, I knew emotional deprivation. I knew how to hide and survive. But I didn't know how to want - because I had never been taught what it meant to be loved. The transformation that followed wasn't just personal recovery; it became the foundation for my life's work helping others who carry similar wounds.

Then, I met Celta. And then Lynn. Through these women, I tasted the kind of connection I once believed was reserved for other people. I built a life. I became a therapist. I knew joy and purpose and secure attachment for the first time.

And then, in 2000, everything fell apart.

What I discovered in that collapse was that healing isn't linear, that attachment wounds can reopen, and that Complex-PTSD symptoms can resurface even after years of apparent recovery. But I also learned something crucial: our capacity for connection, once awakened, never truly dies - even when we can barely remember what it felt like to be held.

This book is told in two parts.

Part I is a love story. A story of healing. Of what it means to be truly seen and how that visibility can transform a life built on invisibility.

Part II is about what happens when that love slips away - when loss becomes trauma, when the past you once survived comes roaring back, and when you must learn to live with an activated nervous system that remembers danger everywhere.

This is not a tale of tidy recovery. It is a story of endurance, dissociation, searching, and longing. Of trying to find one's way through the fog of Complex-PTSD while holding onto the professional identity of someone who's supposed to help others heal. And of wondering whether hope, once lost, can ever be trusted again.

But it's also a testament to the human capacity for resilience, the power of peer support, and the radical idea that we don't have to love ourselves first to be worthy of love. Sometimes, it's through being loved that we learn we are lovable.

Whether you're a fellow traveler on the path of trauma recovery, someone who loves someone struggling with these invisible wounds, or a professional seeking to understand the lived experience behind the diagnoses - I offer this story as both witness and guide.

We all deserve to be loved. We all deserve to know we are loveable. And sometimes, sharing our deepest wounds becomes the very thing that helps others find their way home to themselves.

I met Lynn and started seeing her around the 4th of July of 1992. I had been grieving the loss of Celta when I came to Wilmington in April of 1992.

I found love briefly with Celta and yet she died so suddenly and at such a young age. I was devastated. I didn't think I would feel, or experience love again. Then I met Lynn in 1992. We fell madly, and passionately in love. The poems that follow are about that love. I wanted to tell the story to all those who would ever follow me in the later generations about some epic love to rival any husband and wife or any couple.

We lived as husband and wife and were married in every way that mattered. As a Catholic at the time, I sought the sacrament of Holy Matrimony from the Church, but they denied us—the disgusting attitude that someone born with a debilitating illness should be denied access to the sacred! This treatment of Lynn, among many other harmful attitudes, pushed me away from religion.

Lynn was willing to embrace any way of symbolically representing our everlasting devotion, even though she wasn't Christian. We both wanted to formally move from engagement to the next stage of formal commitment to one another forever. Now, no longer religious, I can see that if the sacred exists at all, no secular piece of paper could make our bond more holy than it already was.

For years we had a normal relationship, and the fact that she had a chronic genetic illness did not define our relationship.

Our love created a sense of tranquility and serenity at its core—a deep peace and contentment that existed at all times, even when I was depressed, which was merely a transitory feeling that would pass.

In its purest form, love is distinguished from addiction, which is momentary and transitory. We do not pursue a high that we once had and cannot reach again—that would be like implying that once we discover an awe-inspiring sunrise we need a more beautiful sunrise to feel that same sense of awe.

Love is also like beauty in the sense that it's best experienced as opposed to merely being stated like some universal truth. Creative people express these experiences of awe and wonder in many forms.

These poems capture more than fleeting moments—they hold experiences where physical sensations became markers of something profound, eternal, and awe-inspiring. Each moment contained vastness, pointing to the spiritual that even non-believers in the supernatural can embrace. They are signifiers of what endures and give ultimate meaning to what really matters.

An Infinite Beach

On some beach
that never ends
I'm with her
and just for a moment
I pretend
that things never change
that sometimes,
in moments like this
we walk hand-in-hand
forever.
This is my greatest desire -
to stop time
like this...
when there is just this place,
just these beach sounds
and just
she and I.

What Really Matters

Moments
frozen in time.

That is what love
seems to be...
these moments you remember
something in these moments
(takes my breath away)
has a certain meaning
that endures -

a feeling...
an image...
something said...
or shared...
certain sounds
in the background...
whatever it is that
you remember
is all that really matters.

Introduction: We walked into the Coastline Convention Center that Sunday evening in 1995, hand-in-hand as usual, overlooking the Cape Fear River where the weekly poetry readings were held. Lynn had no idea I had a surprise for her.

We took our seats at a table with other regulars—all friends and acquaintances who knew us as the couple we were, always like newlyweds, never afraid of public displays of affection. The sun was sinking low, and the room was getting slightly dark with just a dim light up front near the podium.

When my time came, I stepped boldly to the microphone. As I read this new poem, I could sense the knowing glances from people in the room—casual looks toward Lynn as everyone understood what was happening. I wonder if she noticed those glances, waiting for her reaction to this declaration of love.

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.

Follow-up to the poem: I sat back down next to Lynn as someone else prepared to read. I noticed she was doodling. One of our mutual friends commented on how much he liked the poem. I turned to Lynn and asked, "So, what do you think?"

"What?" she said, looking up confused. "I'm sorry, I wasn't listening."

I shook my head and smiled. She was embarrassed, her face blushing. "I thought you were only reading poems I already heard," she said. "Oh, I'm so sorry sweetie. Let me read it."

I handed her the poem and leaned in close, my arms resting on her chair. I tilted my head and slowly brought my lips to hers. She held my lips there with her hands on both sides of my face—just for a moment, mindful of the others around us.

"It's okay," I said with a smile. "You know what... I really love you."

"I love you too, honey."

She read the poem, visibly moved by this surprise declaration of love.

This became an inside joke for us. I would tease her: "If I share a poem about our love, I hope Lynn is listening?" Her way of making up for it was to read this poem at future poetry events when she didn't have anything else to share. I can't count the number of times that happened, it demonstrated her appreciation and recognition of the value of our love.

I explained that the poem was inspired by the Song of Songs from the Old Testament and a song by the Electric Prunes called "I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night)." I was drawn to the sensual imagery in both—the biblical celebration of love between two people committed to each other, and the dreamlike quality of the song that captured something both beautiful and haunting about love and longing.

In Love

Some would say they understand 
that it is not that uncommon... 
a word that is overused 
because I can't find another word.

People walking past us 
might have seen us holding hands 
they might have known 
there was love.

Yet they would not understand... 
the miraculous experience 
of her hand in mine 
as we walked by the ocean. 
They would not understand 
the experiences – physical and emotional 
signifiers of something worthy 
of belief.

When we sat side by side 
facing the ocean waves, 
hearing them in the background 
seeing them - 
moved by something unseen - 
our bodies were touching 
and the best analogy for what I experienced 
was electrical signals moving 
at each point where our bodies 
our legs, arms, thighs 
were in contact.

This was not merely something 
physically pleasurable, 
not merely biological 
emotional, chemical.

No, I knew that. 
I have felt passion 
but rarely have I felt 
love – though I have been 
mistaken more times than I can count... 
Meaningless encounters 
where the emptiness remained.

That core Self within me 
ready for connection was not 
fulfilled like it was now.

Waves of excitement, peace, 
serenity, joy, clarity 
flowed through moments 
pregnant with meaning. 
Each moment was vast in duration 
each moment held eternity.

I had an epiphany and knew 
what mattered, what gave life meaning 
what filled that emptiness within 
that brought forth the fullness of the 
Self.

The feelings, moving in waves 
were markers of the profound - 
physical sensations that pointed beyond 
themselves to something transcendent, 
something that could not be reduced 
to chemistry or biology alone.

I have known alcoholics that look 
to a higher power. 
I have known the religious who 
speak of a God who alone 
can fill that emptiness 
within.

Everyone is looking 
for what will complete them, 
searching for transcendence 
in substances, in faith, 
in achievement, in escape.

But I have found something - 
I believe in something - 
I believe in love.

I can't prove it exists 
beyond hormonal desires 
beyond biological drives 
beyond what science can measure.

But I know what I experienced: 
love that is true 
and real 
and right...

Love that transforms 
without diminishing, 
that changes you 
without erasing who you are, 
that asks you to grow 
but never to disappear, 
that leads toward transcendence 
while keeping you whole. 
It shows you eternity 
in peaceful moments 
yet never asks you to sacrifice 
the fire of excitement, 
the expansion of joy, 
the sharp clarity of being fully alive, 
the creative force that moves through 
two people connected 
in the deepest way possible - 
embodying what it means 
to be complete 
while remaining yourself.

I Wrote a Love Poem Once

I wrote a love poem once...
I felt it was good -
I remember how good it felt -
the love...
to write the love poem,
to share it,
to dedicate it.
I felt the poem was good.

It was many years ago...
lost - lost in the fire,
as it were,
the love...
the love poem.

I forget how it goes
the love...
the love poem.

 

I just cannot remember
the words I wrote...
but I know I wrote
a love poem,
once...
or twice or more...

I can't quite remember
how it goes -
that feeling,
that certainty,
that desire to feel
that again.

Introduction to Poem “The Whole Story”

Our mutual friend Jean once observed that he saw us argue often, and I was shocked by his concern. Years later, after experiencing a relationship where disagreements felt threatening, where conversations could end with hang-ups, where love itself seemed in jeopardy over differences of opinion - I finally understood what Jean had missed.

With Lynn, I never hung up the phone. When she said, 'I'm not done talking,' I never said we couldn't keep talking. The cognitive dissonance I felt when Lynn challenged my beliefs didn't threaten our bond—it transformed my thinking, because I respected her completely and knew she respected me. Isn't it strange and amazing when you can become so frustrated and irritated in a relationship with someone special but still maintain that pervasive sense of happiness and contentment! Even despite all the fights and arguments, there was always an underlying joy. That is the ineffable nature of what we had—something taken out of context might look like conflict, but within the whole story, it was actually love expressing itself freely.

The Whole Story

Our love is now like an epic novel,
thousands of pages in length, 
with most pages torn 
others burned - in the tragic fire.

 I tried to save what I could 
believing it was worth saving
or worth holding onto - 
believing that nothing dies 
but in the end, 
what do I have? 

 

Just scraps of the book...

Even the ring that symbolized 
the bond of husband and wife 
is gone.

We wrote the book together - 
I remember how it was, 
page after page, 
chapter after chapter, 
lie scattered around a room 
in a forgotten home 
in a forgotten place 
like dark shadows 
under a hazy sky.

Page after page, 
written with a purpose 
written with love.

Sure, there were chapters 
that didn't seem to belong 
or have any purpose that could be understood 
but every part of the story 
had a purpose and place, 
whether good or bad 
within the larger narrative.

This was a story to be told 
for generations to come - 
passed down within the family 
and as part of a cultural tradition.

Looking back, 
at the whole book 
and not just a chapter here 
or there, 
taken out of context, 
you see a theme 
which emerges out of the many 
unplanned chapters.

It was always about love 
and that matters 
more than the quality of the narrative... 
it matters more than 
how things might have seemed 
at any one moment in time.

Before I met Celta, I was 23 —
out of a childhood of emotional deprivation,
past undergrad where I somehow believed
I was becoming confident —
an extrovert on campus,
but not at parties,
not in groups of more than six,
still too shy to speak in class,
still escaping to the movies alone
on Friday afternoons.

I thought I was becoming someone.
Still, I was mostly surviving.
Still needing to grow.

Then there was her.

She was the first
to see me in a way
that made everything before
feel like a long, dim dream —
a story I try to tell
about life before 23,
but it’s mostly devoid of detail.

It’s not that I have a bad memory.
Some things are still vivid —
like being four years old,
floating in the YMCA pool,
held in someone’s arms,
and feeling certain
I didn’t deserve to be held.

But most of those years
blur together.

Maybe because I hadn’t really begun
to live yet.

Another Place, Another Time, Another Life

We used to walk
hand-in-hand
at the Botanical Gardens —
in Athens, Georgia,
following the paths.

This was my escape,
my other life.

And what I felt
is hard to put into words,
but I can say
that this...
        this sustained me.

(The feelings remained
and echoed throughout the upcoming week) —
until I could see her again
a week later.

We lived in different cities.
I lived with abusive parents —
I suppose I chose this.
I was an adult.

What I felt
            not just holding her hand,
or wrapping my arms around her —
but the way she held me,
chose to be close to me...

 

Perhaps there’s something else
I am leaving out...

Maybe it has something to do
with love.

Her love?
Mine?
Both.

I don’t know...
maybe because I had not known love —
from anyone, at all, ever,
before I was 24.

The Swing

Three of us are walking
in a small field—
the girl I loved,
myself, and her friend,
whom we had come to visit.

We came upon a swing,
and as I remember it,
I am in front of her
pushing her gently—
away, knowing she would return.

It wasn’t the way her hair
was caught in the sunlight
before me,
nor the smooth,
calming, undulating motion
of the swing.

It was what happened
in the quiet that fell—
a pause in time—
when our eyes locked,
and everything else faded
from our awareness.

David’s voice grew distant,
his presence dissolved.
She saw only me.
And I saw only her.

In that moment,
there was no one else.
No labels.
No explanations.
Only knowing.

After so many years—
decades—
I still remember this moment.

That’s what love is.
The kind you feel
in the body,
in the silence,
in the return
of the swing.

Where the Love Was

They said you were an angry woman —
but where was your anger at me?
Could you be so angry at the whole world
but not at me?
Not ever?
(We had only a year.)

I guess that has something to do
with love — our love.
I kept waiting for that anger
to turn on me,
for me to do
something
to provoke it —
yet I only saw
your smiles at me.

That’s where the love was.

And what about the
I love you’ s
we exchanged?
I’d never heard those words
or said them
so many times.
I never felt so moved
to say “I love you”
until then.

That’s where the love was.

Or maybe it was in certain
snapshot memories...
Like that day in the park —
I was telling a story from my past,
not even a remarkable one.
But when I looked up,
your eyes were on me —
captivated, hypnotized,
transfixed.

I still remember it
decades later,
along with so much more.

That’s where the love was.
Or is.

And finally,
it was in all the tears
I shed when I heard you died.
I never cried before that.

The love,
it’s in the memories —
in the knowing
that you are always a part
of me,
and I, a part of you.
There’s comfort in that.

I guess love isn’t
just a place
long ago.

Maybe I really didn’t believe
that someone could love me —
or be so deeply interested
in me.

These days,
or in the past few years,
I seem to have needed something
more
than just a touch
to feel anything as intense.

And most importantly —
it’s not the intensity
that matters,

but the overall mood,
the mindset of the relationship —
that is what matters.