A family that can't love

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!

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.

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?

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.

My name is Bruce, and I'm caught in the midst of a grave injustice. As you explore the events of October 1, 2004, it might be useful to know a bit about my life. I sat in the dimly lit interrogation room, the air thick with suspicion, as the police detectives bombarded me with relentless questions. They seemed utterly disinterested in the details of my past or the experiences that made me who I am today. Yet, shouldn't these things play a crucial role in determining someone's guilt or innocence, especially in a violent crime? But then again, maybe it's naive to think they'd care.

The question of what a person is capable of doing is on our minds and yet not so when considering crimes where opportunity, alibis, and means are all that matters.

Let me offer some glimpses into my life and the experiences that have shaped me, though capturing the entirety of who I am in this book feels both necessary and futile.

I arrived in Chapel Hill still haunted by the weight of what had happened. The trial loomed over me like a surreal nightmare that could always get worse—each day darker than the last.

It felt like I had one foot in the Upside Down, that decaying alternate world from Stranger Things—gray skies, black vines coiling through every structure, flakes of ash suspended in the air like frozen sorrow. A world where sunlight never broke through, and something monstrous always lurked just out of sight.

That was my emotional landscape. A place of trauma, fear, and numb detachment. One version of me walked Chapel Hill’s streets. The other was trapped in that shadow world—haunted, hunted, unseen.

I had started seeing a therapist, one I would continue seeing for years. But in those early days, he could barely reach me. I was too far down. Healing felt impossible when my future was uncertain, and every breath I took carried the suffocating fear of what awaited me in court—because no matter how implausible Ana’s story was, sitting in front of two detectives in bloody clothes had not been enough to convince them of the truth.

At night, I slept on the floor of the homeless shelter. During the day, I found temporary refuge in the libraries on UNC’s campus. I’d sit at a computer, pretending to research or write, anything to keep my mind from spinning. I still didn’t allow my mind to go to the place where the charges existed, didn’t understand the sentence I was facing, and my lawyer hadn’t explained any of it.

I was moving through fog, without a map, without a compass.

The Call That Changed Everything

It was sometime in July 2006 when I called my lawyer from the UNC campus. He picked up, abrupt and urgent.

“Come to court. Now.”

No explanation. No context. Just: Now.

I asked how long I had, but he didn’t care—just that I needed to get there fast.

My pulse spiked. I grabbed my things and rushed to the bus from Chapel Hill to Duke. From there, I walked toward the courthouse in a panic, nearly running.

My heart was racing—not just from the exertion, but from the deep-rooted fear I had lived with since being charged. I had already missed a court date once, and the shame and terror of that mistake still sat in my bones. I could not afford another one.

By the time I reached the courthouse, sweat clung to my skin. I was gasping for air—not just from the walk, but from the dread clawing at my insides. No matter how implausible the charge was, my only fear that morning was being late—getting in trouble, being punished for missing something. I had no idea this was a turning point, a break in the case that would define the rest of my life. I was terrified of being arrested for failure to appear—not of walking into a courtroom where my lawyer would ambush me and unravel my future in minutes.

The Ambush

The moment I stepped into the courthouse, I saw my lawyer—standing in the hallway. Not in a private room. Not even in a quiet corner. Just… there. And beside him, the prosecutor.

My stomach sank. The whole setup was wrong. It felt staged.

I barely had time to catch my breath before he said:

“They’re dropping the sexual offense charge. You’ll plead guilty to second-degree kidnapping. No additional jail time, just time served and probation.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

My lawyer had once told me, “No jury will ever believe you capable of this.”

Nothing had changed. No new evidence, no new testimony. No revelations.

He had known I was innocent. From everything I’d ever told him. From every conversation. He had never doubted I was the victim.

But now, standing in front of me, he was threatening me.

“Take this deal, or you could face 10 years in prison,” he said. “We discussed this.”

We hadn’t. That was a lie.

He had never told me what the potential sentence might be. Why would he? If he truly believed no jury would convict me, there was no reason to warn me of prison time. The implication had always been that we’d win. That truth would matter.

Now, I was being railroaded. Ambushed. He was cornering me—and doing it with the prosecutor present.

I was frozen with fear. And in that surreal moment, something happened that still stuns me to this day:
I looked at the prosecutor for comfort.

She wasn’t smiling. She wasn’t reassuring. But she wasn’t threatening me either.

My own lawyer was the one making threats.

That moment—me looking toward the prosecutor because my lawyer frightened me—sums up everything.

Walking Into a Lie

I must have nodded. Or maybe I said nothing at all. But the next thing I knew, we were walking into the courtroom.

My mind was shutting down. I wasn’t in control anymore. I had entered freeze mode—a full trauma response.

The courtroom blurred. I was barely registering anything. I was aware that something terrible was happening, but I couldn’t stop it. It was happening to me.

Everything moved too fast.

I stood before the judge. The room felt like it was tilting.

When asked if I was satisfied with my counsel, I said, “I don’t know.”

I wanted to scream. I wanted to say, No, this man is betraying me! He’s lying!

I wanted to tell the judge that I had been ambushed, that I hadn’t been given time to process, to think, to weigh my options.

When asked if I was on medication or had any mental condition that might prevent me from understanding the plea deal, I wanted to say, Yes!

I had PTSD. I had depression. I was terrified. I was not thinking clearly. I was on medication.

But I was too detached and in a state of traumatic shock to speak or to summon air that is needed to form words that one might hear.

A Last, Desperate Attempt

As I stood before the judge, I knew I had to slow this down.

I had to fight—even if I could barely form words.

When asked if I was satisfied with my counsel, the only thing I could manage was:

"I don’t know."

What a fool! My mind screamed at me. Tell the judge the truth! Tell him this lawyer has failed you!

I searched for a way out, a moment to speak up. When asked if I was on medication or had any mental condition that would prevent me from entering a plea deal, I hesitated.

Every part of me wanted to say yes.

"Yes, I have a trauma disorder. I have Major Depression. I have an anxiety disorder. I am not thinking clearly. I am on medication."

But I didn’t say it.

I couldn’t say it because I lacked the capacity to draw in air and force it across vocal chords that would utter words of truth.

Forced to Speak a Lie

Then came the final question.

“Are you in fact guilty?”

Everything in me screamed No.

Instead, I pointed at my lawyer and said, “That’s what he told me to say for the purpose of this plea deal.” That was it.

That was my plea.

Not a “Yes, Your Honor.” Not a confession. Just a statement that I was parroting what I’d been coached to say. My lawyer had spoken for me almost the entire time.

He entered the plea. He confirmed everything. He led me—like a lamb to slaughter.

I shook his hand afterward. Why? I don’t know. Trauma does strange things. I should’ve pulled away, but I didn’t have the strength.

Suborning Perjury?

Here’s what I’ve always wondered.

If a lawyer knows their client is guilty—because the client confessed—and still allows them to lie on the stand, it’s called suborning perjury. That’s how we define “knowing.”

But what if it goes the other way?

What if a lawyer knows their client is innocent—and still coaches them to say they’re guilty?

Isn’t that just as wrong?

Even if the law doesn’t see it that way, common sense does.

To any layperson, this feels like the same thing. It is the same thing. Morally. Rationally. In every meaningful way.

My lawyer knew I was innocent. Not suspected. Not assumed. He knew. And yet, he stood beside me in a courtroom and helped me plead guilty to a crime that never happened.

A Crime That Never Happened

As I was led away, a court officer pulled me aside to draw blood for DNA records.

I tried to protest. “This plea deal makes it sound like I committed a crime.” He didn’t care. No one did.

No one ever talked about what actually happened that day in 2004. No evidence was reviewed. No facts were examined. No truth was spoken.

Just a quick hearing. A rushed judgment. A courtroom full of people too ready to move on.

And a handshake with the villain who had silenced me.

That’s all it took to permanently alter the course of my life.

All because the system wanted a win. All because my lawyer, who knew I was the victim, coached me into silence.

All because no one—no one—listened.

Why the Rush?

Why the urgency? Why couldn’t he have warned me on the phone? Why couldn’t I have had a night to think, to speak to someone I trusted, to feel the weight of the decision I was being coerced into making?

Because letting me think was the last thing anyone wanted.

My silence was convenient. My trauma, my fear, my confusion—they all served the system better than my voice ever could. If I had been given time—even the hour-long trip to Durham—I would have been ready to say no. No, no, no! I would have realized that an actual prison would be no worse than the virtual prison created by this plea deal.

But this—this was by design.

As I was awaiting trial, I could barely process the horrifying thought of what could happen if the trial did not go my way. In a brief encounter with my lawyer that I mentioned previously, after I got out of jail, the only thing he discussed was his sense that no jury would be able to imagine that I was capable of harming anyone. 

I was overwhelmed and traumatized by everything that had happened. I had been homeless or on the verge of homelessness before the assault by Ana that landed me in jail for 7 months. I had been homeless in Durham after my lawyer got me out of jail to “prepare for trial.”

At no point during the one meeting with my lawyer had I discussed the potential prison sentence that I could receive if found guilty of these charges - 2nd degree kidnapping and 2nd degree sexual offense. 

I was existing in a state of trauma. I could have diagnosed myself, if I was thinking clearly, with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I could have recognized that I was using a form of dissociation, that is called derealization, as a coping mechanism. This is the brain's creative way to cope with overwhelming stress or trauma. 

My mind was experiencing life as if I was living in a dream-state. This was a living nightmare! 

Ever since the assault and during the months of captivity or while living homeless in Durham and then Chapel Hill, the topic of spending years in prison never entered my consciousness! It was too overwhelming to imagine.

After spending that month in jail while awaiting trial, I would find and secure a bed at the homeless shelter in Chapel Hill. For a brief moment in time, I experienced a miraculous event where I had a chance to connect with a lady.

It was a rare reprieve, a brief glimpse of something tender before I was thrust back into the cold, both literally and figuratively.

Homeless in Chapel Hill, Holding Onto Hope

At the Interfaith Council (IFC) shelter, I started at the bottom—sleeping on the floor, waiting for a bed to open upstairs. Eventually, I got one, which meant a reserved place to sleep. It also meant I had a small storage space downstairs for my belongings, but the space was barely enough for what little I owned.

During the day, we were forced to leave after breakfast. There was no place to simply be.

I tried to find work. Vocational Rehabilitation had funded Web Design training for me, but what chance did I have of landing a job while living in a shelter, marked by a pending trial that would decide the rest of my life?

And yet, I tried.

I still held onto a shred of self-worth, fragile as it was. I still believed, somehow, that I was more than what the system had labeled me.

A Miracle in the Midst of Chaos

Then something unbelievable happened.

I met someone.

It was November, and I had been on a dating website, though my self-confidence had been shattered. What woman would want a man who was homeless? A man who had been cast as the villain when he was, in fact, the victim?

But she did.

She listened. She believed me.

She invited me to Thanksgiving dinner.

I was stunned. A woman I had only recently started talking to wanted to meet me. She even bought my train tickets to visit her in Sanford, NC.

"I am a respectable lady," she told me. "You should not expect anything sexual to happen."

It didn’t matter. Just being wanted, just being seen, was enough.

I packed a few changes of clothes, enough to look semi-presentable, and boarded the train. Thanks to the shelter, I was able to shower, shave, and brush my teeth before leaving. That, in itself, was a luxury.

A Moment of Connection

We had a wonderful evening and weekend.

Dinner was warm and filling. We watched the Superman movie together. That night, we shared a bed, though nothing sexual happened.

But I still felt close to her.

I remember laying in her lap, my arms wrapped around her.

I remember the softness of her lips. I remember her whispering, "Give me your tongue," as we kissed.

She was beautiful—a stunning black woman—and for that brief moment, I felt lucky.

For a single night, I wasn’t a homeless person. I wasn’t an accused criminal. I was just me, holding someone close, feeling warmth against my skin instead of the cold, cruel world pressing in on me.

But then I ruined it.

A Stupid, Simple Mistake

Some of my clothes had gotten wet on the train, so she kindly washed and dried them for me.

But in my absentmindedness, I had left my return ticket in my pocket.

When I realized my mistake, my stomach dropped.

"Oh my god."

My chest tightened with frustration, anger, self-loathing.

"How could I be so stupid?"

I knew I had just created a situation where she would have to buy me another ticket home. The thought filled me with shame.

I clenched my fists and, without thinking, slammed my hand down on the bed—not out of anger at her, not in any way directed toward her, but in sheer frustration at myself.

But it didn’t matter.

The second my hand hit the bed, I felt it—fear.

It was my fear that she might be afraid of me.

The Shadow of False Accusations

I hadn’t even been near her.

What if she thinks I could be dangerous? What if she wonders about Ana’s accusations?

It didn’t matter that I knew I was the same person who had those soft gentle hands - the only hands and arms that could have been there with Lynn or Celta before her. Celta who had anorexia and was all skin and bones.

The fear of what she might think consumed me.

This wasn’t like with Lynn, where I could wake up from a nightmare and simply ask her, "Did I hit you in my sleep, or was that just in my dream?"

With Lynn, there was trust.

But this was different.

I left the next day, hugging her goodbye. But I felt ashamed. Because of the shame that I began to carry, I didn’t think to ask for another moment with her.

That moment was the beginning of a new fear—the fear that someone might imagine that I could be violent. It would take many years, maybe a decade and a half for that fear to evaporate.

I was so frustrated that I had but one short glimpse of hope, connection, and closeness.

Back Out in the Cold

On my way back to Chapel Hill, it started snowing.

The ice and wind cut through my coat, through my skin, through the fragile layer of my dashed hopes that I had carried with me on that train that first brought me to see a lady.

I arrived in downtown Durham, exhausted, stressed, and desperate to get back to the shelter in Chapel Hill. But the buses that would go to Chapel Hill weren’t running.

I had no choice but to take the Durham bus as far as it would get me to Chapel Hill and then walk.

Carrying my two bags, I took bus 10 to the farthest point it would go on Highway 15-501, then walked for miles, uphill, through the wet, heavy snow.

At some point, another guy was walking in the same direction. He seemed safe, and we walked together, sharing the quiet misery of the storm.

But when we reached the border of Chapel Hill, I saw the Red Roof Inn and made a decision.

I would call my parents.

I would beg for a warm bed.

I entered the motel and asked for phone to call my family.

"Dad, please. I’m soaked, I’m exhausted. I just need a place to sleep tonight."

His response was cold, emotionless, detached.

"No."

I was numb.

Not from the cold outside, but from the realization that nothing I said would ever make him care.

I had no choice but to keep walking.

Blisters formed on my wet feet. My hands were numb.

Every step felt heavier than the last.

When I finally arrived at the shelter, I knocked on the door, praying they would let me in.

They did.

For a few precious hours, I had a warm bed.

But as dawn came and breakfast ended, I was back out in the cold.

Alone. Again.

Despair weighed upon me as I wandered the dark Durham night. The shelter was full, so I tried to sleep on the grounds of Duke West Campus. No signs warned against trespassing. I didn’t feel comfortable so I left and taking a shortcut I scaled a 4-foot rock wall, unaware of doing anything wrong.

Then, as if summoned by fate, a police car appeared.

A block down the road, its lights flickered in the night. The car slowed, then stopped. My stomach clenched as the officer stepped out, approaching me with a cold authority.

“License."

The request made no sense. I hadn’t done anything wrong.

Why were they stopping me?

And then, those dreaded words. Words that had already shattered my life once before.

"Warrant for your arrest."

Time collapsed. My thoughts spiraled. A warrant? For what?

Then came the explanation—something about using someone’s credit card without permission.

I couldn’t breathe.

A credit card?

Panic surged through me. How? I hadn’t even had the chance to meet anyone with a credit card since my release from jail. How could I have committed a felony without even knowing it?

I barely had time to process the accusation before cold metal closed around my wrists. Handcuffs. Again.

As they led me away, my mind raced to make sense of the impossible.

How the hell did this happen?

A Rabbit Hole of Betrayal

To understand this new nightmare, we have to go back—back to a time before Ana, before jail, before my life unraveled.

I had once been part of therapy groups in Durham, trying to build a community, trying to heal. That’s where I met Kathy.

She knew I had worked with people diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)—once called Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD)—a condition made infamous by movies like Sybil. It was rare, misunderstood, and yet, here it was, again, threading itself into my story.

Before my time on Holloway Street, before the assault that would alter my life, I had briefly lived in a spare room offered by a friend, Elaine. During that time, Kathy and I became intimate.

Then, one night, everything changed.

In an instant, she transformed—her voice, her body language—childlike.

It was as if I was suddenly in the presence of a child in an adult’s body.

I freaked out. I pulled away and got dressed immediately.

It didn’t matter that she was an adult. It felt like I was with a child.

Kathy soon returned to her boyfriend and Elaine wanted to live alone. I moved into the home of Kathy and her boyfriend —sleeping in the same room as her son, on the bottom bunk. But our relationship had become twisted, toxic.

She demanded my attention, needed me to play the role of therapist. I had already explained how inappropriate that would be after what had happened and I wasn’t licensed and practicing at that point.

Some of her other personalities were angry at me.

Some were obsessed with me.

Some were jealous—especially when I spent time with my girlfriend, Shonda.

The situation was untenable.

And then came Christmas.

The Credit Card That Would Ruin Me

December 2003—less than a year before Ana’s attack.

Kathy wanted to give me a gift.

She offered to pay for my website domain renewal—the same poetry website I had started with Lynn back in 1995.

The life I had shared with Lynn felt so close, and yet, like an entirely different lifetime.

We sat together as she entered her credit card details into my GoDaddy account. It was her choice.

Neither of us thought much about the card being saved on file.

At the time, it meant nothing. But that decision—the smallest, most mundane act—would later become my undoing.

A Dangerous Shift

Tensions escalated.

Kathy became more unpredictable, more hostile.

One night, things turned dangerous.

I felt threatened—physically and sexually.

I ran.

Outside, hands shaking, I called Shonda. She offered me a place to stay, a bed in the back of her family’s store.

Then, I called the police.

The authorities came. They didn’t arrest Kathy, but the report was on record—a crime of a sexual nature, with me as the victim.

I should have seen the warning signs then. But I didn’t.

And now, here I was—being arrested. Because of her.

The Forgotten Charge

Fast-forward to 2005, after Ana, after my release from jail.

I had forgotten about the GoDaddy domain.

My cards on file had no funds, so Kathy’s was automatically charged.

Instead of asking for her card to be removed, instead of seeing this for what it was—a mistake—she pressed charges.

The charge? Felony credit card fraud.

The amount? $15.

Fifteen dollars.

And I was back in a cell.

Trapped in the System Again

This time, I spent a month in jail, mostly in protective custody.

The same lawyer—the one handling my pending trial—was assigned to this nonsense case.

"I’ll enter a plea to misdemeanor larceny," he told me when he got around to contacting me at all, after I had been there almost a month!

"You’ll be released right away. No court appearance necessary."

I should have been furious but I was in such a state of shock during this period of time. I was detached from feelings and living life as if in a bad dream.

Misdemeanor larceny? Over a clerical error?

A System That Doesn't Care

I was too numb and detached to feel the anger that I feel as I write this almost 20 years later.

I was too beaten down, too traumatized to feel the full weight of my indignation.

But looking back?

This shouldn’t have happened.

A competent lawyer—one who actually cared—would have had this dismissed immediately. Instead, my public defender took the path of least resistance, pushing me through a legal system that wasn’t about justice, only efficiency.

I just wanted out.

So, I did not protest when he told me what he was going to do. As soon as I was free, I left Durham—straight for Chapel Hill.

Because even in homelessness, I had learned: some places were safer than others and Chapel Hill was safer.

I had not asked for an ambulance to come. What was on my mind was being able to show the police just how badly I had been attacked.

I also was worried that I might have gotten some of her body fluids on me. I had not hit her in any way that would cause her to bleed, but I had no idea who she was and what diseases someone in this neighborhood might have.

I lived near the Durham police station, so the police arrived quickly.

Within about 20 or 30 minutes, the police arrived in response to my 911 call.

I heard sounds outside my room and realized that the police were entering from the front door to the building.

The first police officer held out his hand, saying, "Don't come too close." I understood what he was concerned about. He didn't want my blood on him.

There were two police officers that arrived.

At this point, I was not considering how bizarre this event might seem to the police because quite frankly, the police didn’t show any sense that they didn’t believe what I had said.

The police officers started taking my statement about what happened to me. I did recall hearing a question by a police officer about why I let her inside. I could only say that it happened so fast, and I was taken by surprise.

Next, the police officers started taking witness statements. They were all consistent in stating that everything happened very fast. No, no one had any idea who this person was.

In my account of what happened, I said that I had been expecting someone who might not know which room I was in. I had heard the words “where’s Bruce?” and came out to see a stranger.

No, I had no idea why anyone would do this to me.

I could hear the witnesses speaking to the police officers and no one had suggested that they had any idea who this person was. While they didn’t see what happened inside my room, at least one person noted that she had left without a scratch.

I explained to the police that she had said something bizarre that made no sense. She had nearly yelled "why do you keep calling me?"

I explained that my immediate reaction was to ask her, "who are you?" but she never answered that question.

I was confused that they had not done this on their own. Why were the police not taking photographs of me and the room where I was assaulted?

Before I knew it, the ambulance had arrived and they were attending to my cuts and injuries before the police had taken photographs. The police had NEVER taken any photographs during the entire time they were there.

I had little hope for justice since we had no idea who attacked me or how to find the person.

Then I heard a phone ringing in my room. I had not noticed previously that she was carrying a phone. She must have dropped it or accidentally thrown it while assaulting me. That was why she had been trying to get back into the room.

The phone was behind a pile of books on the floor. My phone was in my hand. This had to be the perpetrator’s phone.

I gave the phone to the police officers saying, "this might help you to find who did this to me."

Having given the police her phone there was hope that maybe I could get some justice. Maybe they would find her.

There would not be anything else with which to identify her! She was the attacker and left without a scratch. The only bloody markers in my apartment room were from me - it was my blood. It was my bloody thumbprint on the door frame.

She had not fallen and tripped herself leaving her own blood anywhere.

I felt a deep sense of confusion; this was beyond bizarre. I figured this was just another very bad experience in a bad neighborhood. The lack of curiosity by the police could be explained by the notion that they must have heard and seen people do crazy things in this part of town.

I didn’t expect these police officers to answer a question like, “What woman locks themselves inside a room with a guy and then attacks that person? Repeatedly punching the person?”

I had not noticed anything that would indicate why she was able to slice open my face and cause me to bleed so profusely. On the one hand, she was acting like she was high on drugs which might explain the sudden eruption of violence, but why would she ask for me in particular? Plus, a woman who is in the habit of using drugs would not have had a ring on her fingers.

The paramedics were able to get the bleeding to stop, and then they left at about the same time as the police left.

The story is about to get much stranger, though.