Fear

There comes a point when you stop trying to explain.

Not because the pain is gone.

Not because the injustice no longer matters.

But because you know who you are.

I am not what they said I was.

I don’t have to win back trust—because I never broke it.

I’ve lived my life by the highest morals:
With gentleness.
With integrity.
With compassion for those who suffer.
With respect for others’ boundaries, bodies, and beliefs.

Even when I was invisible, I lived with purpose.
Even when I was silenced, I held onto truth.

Even when I was shattered, I chose not to shatter others.

A therapist once wrote that I was a gentle person.
She didn’t say it to defend me.
She didn’t say it to counter a narrative.
She said it because it was the truth.

It still is.

I’ve spent years trying to survive.

But survival isn’t the end of the story.

Now, I want to live.

Not to prove anything—
 

But because I still have something to give.

There’s a voice in me, buried under layers of pain and shame, that’s slowly growing louder.

It says:

You are not your trauma.
You are not what they assumed.
You are not the roles others cast you in.

You are a good person with passion and love to give.

You are still here.
Still standing.
Still healing.

And that is more than enough.

Talk therapy had never helped.

Too many years of hearing therapists ask:
“How does that make you feel?”
“Have you tried reframing the experience?”
“What would it take for you to move on?”

Move on? From what? From being falsely accused, shackled, humiliated—treated like a danger to society when I had been the one crying out for help? I didn’t know how I felt. Not really.

My emotions were locked behind thick walls. I had spent too many years dissociating from pain. Everything inside me felt numb or vague—a fog I couldn’t clear.

But in late 2018, something shifted.

I searched the Psychology Today directory for “trauma therapist” and filtered by those who took Medicare. It didn’t make sense. I didn’t have the money, barely enough to live. But I needed something to change. I was unraveling.

That’s how I found Andrea Treimel.

A Different Kind of Therapy

Andrea practiced EMDR—Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. I had used trauma-focused methods myself when I was the therapist. But this was different.

Our therapy sessions would last into 2020 - weekly or more often sessions processing a different trauma each time.

Now I was the one sitting in the chair. Now I was the one trying to hold it together. No lectures. No deep conversations.

Andrea barely spoke at all.

Instead, she guided me into memory.

She introduced me to grounding techniques—focusing on a “safe color” in the room, holding small devices that vibrated in alternating hands, watching her hand or a light move from left to right. These were tools. Anchors. Ways to stay present while entering the dark places.
 

Into the Core Wounds

There were so many memories that haunted me.

Each one felt like it had been sealed away, quietly poisoning me from the inside.

The arrest.
The handcuffs.

The interrogation where my truth was dismissed before I could even speak.

The betrayal.

The loss of my career.

The silence of jail.

The feeling of being labeled a threat when I had always lived my life as a pacifist and so gentle I was incapable of violence. In one session, I went back to that moment with Lynn—the moment I felt I had abandoned her.

She had been gasping for air. I couldn’t help.

I left for work, crying as I walked away.

I told Andrea, “I abandoned her.”

In another memory, I held Lynn’s hand as the nurse inserted an IV line near her heart. Her tears matched mine.

I fought back every instinct to stop them from hurting her. I had to let it happen.

She trusted me to protect her—and I couldn’t.

The shame of leaving the hospital room, dizzy, needing a break…

The moment I slid down the wall in our home, after she had left.

Staring into nothing… in the void.

Feeling like the world had ended.

Andrea had me visualize the grief inside me as dark ash, soot rising out of my body and being locked into a freezer. It wasn’t magic. It was practice. But it helped me name what I hadn’t been able to face.
 

Reclaiming My Anger

I had always feared my own anger.

False accusations had taught me that any strong emotion could be used against me.

If I expressed frustration, people might think I was dangerous.

If I cried out, they might say I was unstable.

But in these sessions, I began to access something I hadn’t felt in years:
righteous anger—not destructive, but clean.

Not rage, but grief with force behind it.

EMDR let me feel it without becoming it.

Andrea watched silently, with compassion.

I clenched my hands—not to strike, but to hold in everything I was finally feeling. This wasn’t about being a therapist anymore.
This was about surviving as a human being.

Yet we had begun to speak about me returning to work as a Clinical Social Worker.

The Interrogation

Eventually, I brought in the memory I had tried to avoid the most:
The interrogation.

I described it to Andrea.

The officer just inside the boarding house, just a few feet from my room. I had already dissociated from the reality and was entering a state where I was on autopilot. Then another police officer enters. He told me I would be handcuffed.

I was just outside my room, I had stopped bleeding when the paramedics came following my call to 911 but I was still wearing the bloody shirt, bloody shorts, and bload soaked socks and even my sneekers had blood on them. I was revisiting that state of being in shock.

Later, in the patrol car, my friend called. I put her on speakerphone, desperate for someone—anyone—to hear my side of the story. I told her what had happened, that I was the one attacked. Her voice was soft and kind, filled with disbelief at what I was going through.

Then I was in the interrogation room.

“That’s not what happened,” the detective snapped at me.

His words landed like a punch.

He wasn’t asking questions—he was correcting me.

I had come to them as a victim, wearing bloodstained clothes.

Did they really believe I staged it? That I kept a set of bloody garments ready for moments like this?

They had already decided who I was.

And I couldn’t fight back.

Because in that moment, I was just a man in handcuffs.

A man being stripped of his dignity.

Later, I was placed in a padded suit. Suicidal, they said. But that wasn’t it.

I was terrified. I was broken. Andrea encouraged me to bring in resources. This could be anything. In this case, I needed protectors. I wanted Jessica Jones, the superhero with superpowers. Pusing and throwing aside police officers and forcing them to feel ashamed about how they were treating a victim!

She always did the right thing. She was there tossing and pushing the bad guys who were hurting me. She shouted at them, “Leave Bruce alone! What is wrong with you!”

In the Shadows

Later sessions blurred into each other.

Sometimes I brought in heroes in addition to Jessica Jones, e.g. Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Fictional characters who did what I couldn’t: speak up, fight back, win.

Other times, I relived memories of clients who had confided in me.

Dark, disturbing memories—real or imagined—about abuse, fear, and helplessness.

At one point, I saw John F. in the background of one of my waking dreams.

Not hurting me, just standing there—watching.

It was its own kind of violation.

The Silence of Jail

Jail wasn’t just confinement. It was abandonment. No one visited. No one fought for me.

No one even looked me in the eyes.

I lay awake night after night, thinking:
“This is who I am now. This is how it ends.”

Andrea coached me to find a way to change the way these events shaped the thoughts that I had about myself.

Even now, years later, I can’t fully describe what it felt like to be forgotten.
To know that one’s innocence means nothing to the system.

I Survived

Andrea guided me through all of it.

Session after session.

I called in “resources”—people who had loved me:
Lynn. Celta. My maternal grandparents.

Superheroes. Symbols of strength, protection, nurturance and safety. I learned that I could survive remembering.

I learned that I was still here.

I hadn’t been erased.

And for the first time, I began to believe… maybe I wasn’t lost forever. However, I don’t want to overstate how far I had come in healing. I was still suffering.

What Healing Can—and Can’t—Do

Healing didn’t fix everything. Realistically, that means the healing was not as complete as I needed.

The shame still lived in me.

It always had.

Yes, I was the victim.

But the label of “perpetrator” had been stamped on my life like a brand. And EMDR couldn’t erase that.

I still couldn’t talk about it with most people.

Only a few—Thomas, Elee—had ever heard the full story.

I wanted someone to see me for who I was and to find a lasting relationship. Elee had left and divorce soon followed. I knew I was gentle, calm and loving but I had felt that with the loss of Elee there wasn’t going to be another chance. Regardless of the quality of the relationship, the fact that she believed me, believed in me, and my story, meant the world to me.

But the world still saw someone who had been convicted. And that conviction carried more weight than truth.

EMDR helped me process what had been locked away.

It gave me back parts of myself.

But there were things even healing couldn’t change.

When I speak of waking up after a suicide attempt, I am referring to the sense of having been detached from truly living life. I would get married to Elnaz Rezaei Ghalechi in 2010 and it is not hard to understand that aspects of this marriage were problematic. 

I didn’t approach this as a true chance at happiness but more of a desperate desire for connection… to share a life with someone else. To find someone who cared about ME.

I might have had a home. I might have had a hefty lump sum of cash, but the thought of connecting with anyone felt like an impossible dream. The concept of being loved was beyond my grasp. How could I connect with anyone after everything that had torn me apart?

My self-worth lay in ruins—obliterated by injustice, crushed under the weight of loneliness, and suffocated by the relentless branding of something I wasn’t.

Then Amanda crashed into my life. A street person just like me. The sequence of events might be muddled in my mind, but I met Amanda before the $30k lump sum disability payout found its way into my possession. I remember that because once the money arrived, I tried to sever ties with the suffocating identity of homelessness. It took me far too long to realize she was trapped in the clutches of a crack addiction and that she was a sociopath in disguise.

At the men’s shelter, where the air was thick with desperation, three meals a day were served. There, I encountered a cast of characters etched in the harsh lines of survival. Mike stood out, seeming more like a volunteer than a fellow wanderer of the streets. His full story remained a mystery, but he carved a different role amidst the usual throng seeking sustenance. I saw him repeatedly at meetings where companies, agencies, and the community grappled with the behemoth of homelessness.

Janet was a fixture there too, clinging to her camper as a makeshift home, desperately parking wherever she could. Wanda, another regular, came for meals, her own car an elusive dream for me until my mother passed. Bob lived out of his van. And then there was Eddie.

Once they caught wind of my good fortune, everyone seemed poised to become visitors or overnight lodgers. They never asked how long they could stay, but the truth was, there were strict limits on how long someone could actually reside with me. I had been given a house to rent, and my share of the rent was determined by my social security income. The rules forbade me from having others live with me, even if I entertained the idea of transforming my new dwelling into another homeless shelter. Yet, I couldn't forget the haunting familiarity of being homeless myself.

As for Amanda, I had crossed paths with her at the homeless shelter before. It hadn't dawned on me then that her slender frame was maintained through the use of crack. Only in hindsight did the pieces fall into place. Was she interested in me? I wasn't certain. Then, in an uncharacteristic moment of impulse, I leaned in to kiss her one afternoon. It wasn't romance, nor was it connection. It happened there on Franklin Street—a bustling street teeming with students and passersby. The kiss wasn't forceful; it was driven by a hunger—a longing for closeness, for validation that I was still human, capable of feeling something beyond the numbing ache of isolation. She seemed slightly surprised.

I had dabbled in dating during the early 2000s via online platforms, but the gravity of the charges against me led me to believe I was only deemed acceptable to society's outcasts. With a new home in the safety of Carrboro, VR was set to help me embark on a home-based business. Yet, life felt devoid of anything I truly desired. I had left engineering behind long ago. Sure, I was a geek who marveled at technology, but that didn't mean I wanted to create anything that ran on a computer or the web. The excitement was there, but it didn't translate into a desire to be part of the creation of new technologies or the latest websites.

At this juncture, I was just going along with what I thought might bring me joy. I had to craft my own hypnotic scripts to convince myself that I enjoyed this path and that I could find success and happiness. But deep down, I was torn, uncertain if this was truly what I wanted. I should have known that working with computers or writing software for websites was not a good match for me at all. I had learned that about myself long ago.

I can’t forget the lump sum payment of $30,000. By inviting Amanda into my life with her drug addiction, little by little I was being drained of that money. She was good at scheming and manipulation. She always had some lie about why she needed money. Of course, I didn’t know this at first.

I clung to a false notion that there was something positive about the relationship with Amanda, completely oblivious to the fact that she was draining me, like a parasitic vampire, exploiting my vulnerability and loneliness to fund her own destructive habits. I clung to this relationship because I saw myself as wretched and marked with a scarlet letter and so even an unhealthy relationship or connection was better than utter isolation.I was drowning in internal pain, overwhelmed with isolation and loneliness.

Yet I was never like Amanda. I was not someone who used and hurt others. That was part of her character and I wish I had seen it earlier.

Desperate to create the illusion of a better life, I splurged on a few luxuries. I remember heading to Best Buy with conflicted joy to pick up a large wide-screen TV and speakers designed to flood my living room with surround sound. The Geek Squad even came in, setting up speakers—running wires to each speaker, running lines through the attack to speakers mounted on the ceiling—and even fitted it with a booming sub-woofer that promised an immersive experience.

But as I gathered with Bob and a few other friends, crashing on my couch and watching King Kong in 4k with that surround sound extravaganza, a bitter part of me wondered if I had merely traded one kind of emptiness for another. I cursed myself for not keeping some of that money secure in savings, for not making a more pragmatic investment like buying a car. Ironically, it took the long shadow of losing my mother some 15 years later for me to finally purchase a car—the care package I’d denied myself back then.

I couldn’t understand why, after receiving the $30k, I had not invested in a car which should have been a priority.

My yearning for connection was a double-edged sword. I desperately opened my home to people, perhaps too freely, letting them assume it was theirs to use without any regard for my own wellbeing. I’d tasted the pain of homelessness, and I clung to the belief that everyone deserved a home.

Yet I was constantly reminded of the rules—warnings from Vanessa in particular—that no one was allowed to live there. Whether those rules came from Section 8 or the local Shelter Plus Care program, they were clear: visitors were fine, but no one could stay beyond a mere two weeks. And here I was, making decisions, failing to speak up or consider what I needed.

My couches became beds for those who would otherwise sleep in their cars or vans. At different times it was Wanda on one couch, Bob on another. And Mike somewhere else. Bob had his van and so he just brought inside his own portable bed. I was completely passive during all this. I felt compassion for everyone and a certain obligation to share my good fortune of having a home with those who were not given this.

I wasn’t thinking about either what I had to do or what I wanted.

At some point, Eddie, whom I met at the IFC shelter where I went for meals, promised to pay rent to me to use the room that had once been a quasi-office. Now, as I write this, it serves as my bedroom. For a while, that space was where Eddie stayed, complicating my ability to run the computer web design and development business with him sleeping there. Despite being homeless, Eddie had an uncanny confidence with women, a trait I lacked. So, it wasn’t just Eddie in that room but also his girlfriend(s). This was the same room that housed the essential computers for my home-based business.

Then there was Mike, who somehow inserted himself into the new home-based web design venture. He didn’t have any particular skills, yet it seemed web design and development didn't require a 4-year degree. My web design certificate was just that—a certificate, not even as comprehensive as an Associate's 2-year degree. Initially, I welcomed Mike’s involvement. At first.

It’s not like we didn’t get any business. How about that. I said “we,” but with VR’s support, it was, as far as they knew, my business. I/We called it Future Wave Designs, initially, then Future Wave Web Development. The shift to Web Development involved more technical aspects like hosting websites on Linux-based servers. Web Development also required deeper involvement in coding—from CSS, to JavaScript, to server-side PHP coding. Throughout all this, I was torn. On one hand, I had long known my true passion lay in social-oriented careers and creative pursuits, learned as far back as the 80s. Yet, here I was, caught in this web of software and servers, unsure if this was where I truly belonged.

Web design seemed like it should satisfy the creative side of me, but I couldn't quite grasp it. The software and tools felt overwhelmingly complex, and I didn't genuinely enjoy the process. Yet, I found myself making self-hypnosis recordings to convince myself to embrace this new reality—a reality where I supposedly found joy in software engineering. Engineering used to be about creating tangible things, but with the internet's rise, design shifted towards the aesthetics of a website. It was more artistic, yet web design or design in general required mastery of the tools involved. In a way, it wasn't unlike a musician needing to play an instrument.

In this bewildering new world, where I felt increasingly lost, I thought perhaps I should rely on my programming skills, or "coding," as it was now called. My background in electrical engineering and computer engineering, with all its rigorous programming, might be my saving grace. Maybe it would earn me the respect of my family, a respect I had once deemed unnecessary. There had been a time when I could see my family clearly and had abandoned the desire for their approval. But now, I felt adrift, as if I were nobody. That was a different life, a different reality. I was being compelled to embrace something else entirely.

I was caught in the struggle to reshape my entire existence. Who I was and what I yearned for seemed futile. I once had love, dreams, hopes, and ambitions, but now I labored under a burden of shame I never deserved. Rationally, I knew I had done nothing wrong, yet realistically, I knew others would see a different narrative. If I wanted my clinical license back, they would see my criminal history. If I wanted to work in the helping professions, they would see my criminal history. It felt like a stain that would never fade. I was in a constant battle to program my mind to accept this grim reality, yet part of me resisted, unwilling to surrender entirely.

There was a suffocating despair that things would never improve or change. The justice system is a cold, unyielding machine that disregards the potential for revisiting and rectifying errors. Sure, if I were locked away in a physical prison or languishing on death row for a crime I hadn’t committed, there might be a glimmer of hope in the form of appeals. But honestly, I wasn’t even sharing my story back then like I am now. Maybe it would have made a difference when witnesses’ memories weren’t yet shadows of the past. The crushing weight of undeserved shame forced me to suffer in silence.

Eddie had wreaked havoc when he left, sowing chaos with a malicious grin. He deceived the police into believing that some of my possessions belonged to him. In those early years after the conviction, I was a pariah in Carrboro. The police, complicit in Eddie's treachery, assisted in the theft of my belongings—a bike and several other items he falsely claimed as his.

Then, in a twisted act of malice, Eddie went to the magistrate with an insane accusation that I was consuming my cat’s feces. It was a claim so absurd it might have been laughable if it hadn’t been so gravely serious. I was nearly driven to the edge, contemplating giving up my next cat because it dared to defecate indoors. My stomach was a fragile fortress, crumbling at the mere attempt to clean the foul mess. Anyway, my ordeal at the Emergency Room was brief. Mike, still a steadfast ally in my life, stood by me throughout the nightmare. Time has blurred the exact details, but I do remember the harsh reality: once a commitment order is issued, you’re trapped, waiting for a psychiatric evaluation. If someone merely suspects you’re suicidal, it doesn’t unfold like this. With a commitment order from the police, they slap handcuffs on you, shove you into a police car, and haul you to the Emergency Room.

After what felt like an eternity of humiliation, they finally released me, and I trudged home, each step heavy with the weight of injustice.

Probation and the Shame That Lingered

The plea deal I never wanted had left me with two years of probation. I couldn’t leave the state for that long. I met with my probation officer just as scheduled, once a week, speaking as little as I could, swallowing my shame in silence. My silence mirrored the deeply embedded shame and low self-worth that permeated my entire being.

One day, they came to my home for a home visit. "This is for your safety," they said, as they put handcuffs on me in my own home.

No one else was there to witness my humiliation. That was the only mercy.

They searched my home, looking for… what? Some kind of proof that I was the monster the system claimed I was? Who knows. It didn’t have to make any sense.

They found catnip. I had a cat that I named Buffy, after Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I suppose the catnip looked like pot. I said, “that’s not… it’s catnip.”

One of them responded with statement of disbelief, “Where’s the cat.”

I had plenty of photos of Buffy and so I pointed to a photo of my cat and deadpanned, "See? Cat."

I was drowning in shame.

But at my last probation meeting, something shifted. Supervised probation was ending. I looked my probation officer in the eye and finally told her the truth.

"I never did any of the things I was accused of." I expected skepticism. I expected dismissal.

Instead, she just looked at me. And in that moment, I knew—she believed me. Maybe not enough to change anything. But enough to see me.

And that was more than most ever had. Perhaps because I wasn’t giving anyone a chance. I was too ashamed.

The end of things with Amanda

Amanda could insinuate herself into my life because I was desperate for a connection.

I wasn’t just lonely.

I was terrified of being alone.

I should have paid attention. Amanda wasn’t around much. It would take me a while to realize that she had been out somewhere getting high all the time. For a while, Mike was the most consistent fixture in my life. He played a role like that of a business partner. He was a hulking person at 6 and a half feet or more. Eventually, he would become a threat to me.

There was a moment when it all hit me. Amanda was using me. She had no real interest in me—only what I could give her. And I gave too much. I was ashamed that I had not seen this earlier. Amanda was never around. The realization hit like a slow, sickening wave. I don’t even know what was the wake up call.

One would seem to be able to remember that but the truth was that I had not really been able to connect with anyone during this time because I assumed no lady would be interested in someone with a violent criminal history - even if it was all lies, even if I had been the victim. So, maybe I just told myself that there was something positive about having Amanda in my life.

What the hell was wrong with me?

At some point after I knew that Amanda was out of my life, I saw a photo of her in a newspaper. It was about the homeless in Chapel Hill. Mostly good people but the photograph mostly drew me to her eyes. This would be the inspiration for one of the poems in a collection that I wrote with Scott Urban who was living down in Wilmington. Scott wrote dark poetry that was infused with the imagery from the horror genre. I’m getting ahead of my story here.

The Break-In

Amanda left my life as unceremoniously as she had entered it—by telling me how much better her new boyfriend was in bed. I felt pathetic for ever letting her in. I had not cared about her, I just wanted a connection and human contact. She didn’t tell me she was leaving but somehow I learned that she was heading to Florida.

Then, one day, I came home to find my house broken into.

The front bedroom window was shattered.

The home office I had set up for my web site design and development business was where she entered the home. I didn’t have to wonder who did this. The only thing missing was the laptop and perhaps a few other items. The police dusted for prints. This was unusual. Often the police avoided getting involved in minor crimes that didn’t involve grave physical harm or the theft of expensive items.

This window would have offered some concealment from the neighbors. The important fact was that Amanda had stolen my laptop. The police weren’t going to go looking for her but at least they dusted for fingerprints. It wouldn’t matter. She had left the entire state.

The Setup That Could Have Destroyed Me

Early 2008.

I was half-awake at 3 AM when I sensed something was wrong.

A movement outside my window.

I went to the side entrance of my home.

Then I saw them—four police officers.

Guns drawn, pointed down, but ready.

They stormed my house, moving from room to room—even searching the attic.

What the hell was happening? This was surreal. How could my life become more bizarre? This was actually happening! It was beyond crazy. None of them were telling me anything.

I sat at my computer, watching as one officer walked up to me and said:

"Look at your Myspace account."

Okay. I can do that.

And what I saw made my blood run cold.

It said I was holding a little girl hostage. That is what it said on my myspace page… if I had written it myself. As if I was bragging about it.

Obviously, Amanda had done this.

Fighting Back

The next day, they came back—with a court order to seize all my computers and electronic devices. The false conviction I never deserved was being used as justification for a fishing expedition. The court order allowed them to look for child pornography. The content of the information on Myspace said that I had a “girl” that I was holding and it referenced the school up the street from me. The plea deal didn’t include the sexual component of the crime that was alleged originally. However, in my mind, that mere accusation stood not as truth but as reality.

Note, that I have described this distinction repeatedly. Truth is about what really is. Reality is what we come to believe about the world and people.

I spoke to my friend Wanda who had coincidentally moved to Florida as well. She had made the phone call to the police. She thought I was in danger. That is why she called the police. But the story took on a life of its own.

This time I had some funds and I hired a lawyer. My lawyer later told me what one officer had asked him:

"How can you represent someone like him?"

That sentence haunted me. This was so crazy. So surreal. I had been transformed into a villain which was the exact opposite of who I truely was. I had been a therapist who helped vulnerable people. I had given up on engineering because all that mattered tome was helping others. Yet, in the eyes of a police detective in Carrboro, I was some villain that no one should want to help. They didn’t look at the hundreds of lives I made better. Ana had erased that and made the actions of Amanda believable.

After many weeks we traced the IP address. It was from a library in Florida and I was able to realize that Amanda had fled after robbing me. It was hard to believe that she had memorized the password to my account. She was using a public computer in Florida.

She had done this. At the same time, on the same day that my lawyer had this proof, the police gave me back my computer, but there was no apology. They had been ready to believe the worst. Eager to believe it.

I felt like no one saw the real me.

They only saw the conviction.

The label.

The lie.

Insight from this latest villain to cross my path

After this harrowing incident, my curiosity about psychopaths and sociopaths exploded into a desperate need. I had encountered at least three malevolent figures who wreaked havoc on my life, and I had grossly underestimated their destructive capabilities. It became imperative for me to arm myself with knowledge to shield against these predatory individuals.

The first psychopath who invaded my world was that insidious John F., masquerading as a therapist with an air of false expertise. He thrived on chaos and the suffering of others. If anyone actually got better they would not need him. He preferred to leave people shattered and spiraling further into despair without a glimmer of remorse or concern for others.

He obliterated my life when I was at my most vulnerable. Then came Ana, the central figure of this book, whose malevolence knew no bounds. Lastly, there was Amanda, another remorseless antagonist. A few other lesser characters also left a trail of damage in their wake. I picked up books about sociopaths and psychopaths. This included books about sociopaths, psychopaths, fear, awareness and the criminal mind. It also included books about infamous psychopaths who were known for their crimes.

I needed to understand evil.

Dear reader, if you are feeling overwhelmed by everything that has happened over the past dozen or more chapters then you know what it was like for me. There seemed to be no end and no limit to the depths of suffering I was experiencing.  

I had lost the love of my life. I had lost my home. I had lost my career. Most of that happened in one month - August of 2000. Then in March of 2001, I had to surrender my clinical Social Work license.  

I saved for this chapter the details about how the case of the false allegation by John Freifeld that I had made harassing phone calls was resolved. The lawyer who appealed the case was able to get the phone records for one of the two days that I was alleged to have called Freifeld on five separate times. He got the records for the day before and after just for good measure. It proved that I had never called Freifeld. I knew that was what would be found. So, we could prove that it was a lie. Right?

 Wrong. For some reason, my lawyer couldn't get phone records for the other day that I was supposed to have called Freifeld. It was within a week of the other day so that made no sense. While it was a minor misdemeanor, it's the principle of the matter. It was wrong. 

My lawyer said the infamous words "the truth doesn't matter, only what you can prove." I had thought that we were innocent until proven guilty.

Can you believe that? Someone can make stuff up about you and force you to spend a month of your life in jail on a lie. You will recall the humiliating way in which I was brought to Wilmington from Durham. In a cage with chains on me! Like I was a wild and dangerous animal!  If you have read this far into this book you probably know that I am about as dangerous as a fluffy bunny or a butterfly.  

Then I was back in Durham trying to put my life back together, little by little, and this happened in October of 2004. This was the kidnapping of Bruce Whealton by the state. The name of my attacker was Ana, she was the landlord's wife, Jimmy's wife.  

This was a form of prolonged and seemingly never-ending suffering of biblical proportions. 

I felt like I was experiencing shell shock. Literally.  

If you are wondering what else happened during these four years from late 2000 through my victimization at the hands of Ana, there is not much to tell other than what I said. A bad nightmare of being profoundly depressed, without hope, poor and homeless. It was just a blur. I am not saying I have amnesia, but it is now very much a blur.

I cannot even remember 9/11 as a significant day! That is how overwhelmed I was.  

It was October of 2004, and despite having done no wrong to anyone and having led a good life, always treating others with kindness and compassion, I found myself abandoned and in jail. Also, it should have been obvious that I was the victim here. My victimization was written in blood on the clothes that were still down in a locker room at the jailhouse – they would stay there from the day of my arrest until May when I got out.

When you get assigned a court-appointed lawyer, they take their sweet time coming to visit you. My lawyer didn't seem to care about me at all or how I was doing. I would write to him frequently, but it was close to impossible to get an appointment with him. I saw him over the next few months once and I saw someone else from the public defender's office just once. Each time it was for not more than fifteen minutes.  

This was extremely terrifying for me. I was placed for a while in the general population. I met people who were guilty of real crimes, violent crimes. I met someone who had been on death row. I didn't feel safe. The guards seemed to have no compassion for individuals who might be innocent and are supposed to be considered innocent until proven guilty.  

My body was reacting in strange ways to this captivity. I was having panic attacks where I would feel overwhelmed by surges of adrenaline. Thinking I was going to die. Feeling short of breath. I would push the button in my cell as a way to cry out to see a doctor or nurse, but no one cared. At least no one cared for a good long time until they put me into protective custody.  

I also discovered new things about my gender and how we think of gender. The first signs of that were in jail. I met a very effeminate person who went by the name Lulu. She was born male but identified as female.

She was an African American woman who was born a man. I am sure she had male genitalia. I didn't care.

She was very kind and sweet to me. I needed to be close to someone. No, you don't get that much privacy in the Durham County jail... nothing remotely intimate happened. Not physically intimate.

I thought she was attractive though. I only remember noticing her legs and her face.

While I did find some comfort and humanity from Lulu, there was no way to change the reality of what was happening to me. My entire life hung in the balance. I was terrified every moment of every day.

I had reached out to my so-called family from the depths of my pain and desperation. Surely, a mother would be moved by the unjust suffering of her firstborn son. For reasons I will never understand, nor can I forgive, both parents abandoned their own flesh and blood - they abandoned the son who shared the same name as his father - I am Bruce Martin Whealton Jr and he is Sr. 

I spent seven months in jail! Seven nightmarish months.

Despite my desperate pleas, my family lacked human compassion and empathy. What little capacity they once had for somewhat normal human emotions had died. My sister also could have done something. They all had the means to rescue me. They knew just how horrifying this was, and yet they did NOTHING! 

It would be literally impossible for me to not act to hire a lawyer and free my siblings or a parent, or even a son or daughter if I had one.

They didn't even come to visit me! That is an act of evil in the faith in which they raised me. It is a mortal sin!

Their capacity for ignoring the pain of someone they were supposed to love knew no limits or bounds. 

I don't know why I expected them to act like real human beings. They had been demonstrating their inhumanity for a long time now - since Lynn got sick in August of 2000.  

Years later, my second wife said that you don't treat your enemies that way! That's true. Their actions were evil!

The faith in which I was raised does not allow for us to act this way. Everything about how they acted over these years goes against everything I was taught as a Christian. I have since metaphorically divorced myself from them. They are my ex-family. 

I had kept in touch from time to time with my sister. She said she and our parents (my ex-parents) knew I was innocent of everything I was ever accused of doing. That wasn’t surprising, actually.

I know that I did not deserve this to happen to me. 

My so-called family could not even be bothered to bring me clothes to wear when I was released from jail.  

I was released finally, in May, to await the trial.

I moved to Chapel Hill where it was safer. I was staying in the homeless shelter.  After my release, I met with my lawyer for thirty minutes, if that. My lawyer had told me that I would sit on the stand and tell my story and that no one in the jury would believe that I was capable of doing what I was accused of doing. That was the plan.

He said he knew I was innocent. He should have known I was the victim too. I had asked him if he could test the bloody clothing that I had been wearing. He said that since I wore it outside of jail after I was released this could not be done to help my case. 

He had seven months to do something like this! I had written to him countless times when I was in jail.

A Guilty Plea for the Victim

I called my lawyer on a day in March of 2006 and he told me to come to court immediately. He didn't say why. I got on a bus and rushed there. I didn't want to make my case any worse than it was.  

My attacker should be the one going to prison. Ana should be in prison for what she did. 

I was out of breath when I arrived in front of the courtroom. My lawyer was there, and the prosecutor saw me for the first time. You might think she would look at me and drop the whole case, laughing - I looked so pitiful and small.

My lawyer scared me, telling me that I would spend 10 years in jail if I didn't take a plea. I was in total shock. What was the big rush? Why was he telling me this in the hall outside the courtroom? 

He could have at least told me something before I headed to court!

My lawyer insisted that I knew this was coming and that I knew what I was looking at if I was found guilty. That is patently false. He had never discussed anything like that.  

He previously had told me to expect a trial. He also never hinted at the punishment that might come out of the matter. NEVER! It remained as some abstract idea that hung over me like a shroud for nearly two years.

He had promised that a jury of my peers would see the truth and free me. Then I would pursue justice against Ana - the perpetrator!

He knew that I was not only innocent but a victim according to his own prior statement to me. 

One usually thinks that a person chooses to take a plea. This implies some time to think about the matter and contemplate the decision. I was still winded. I was hardly in my right mind. The last thing they wanted was for me to think about anything.

I walked down the aisle to stand in front of the judge. He began to speak. He asked if I was satisfied with my legal representation. This was my chance to protest this farce. I began to talk but my soft voice only managed to say, "I don't know."

The reality of what was happening began to settle in and I wanted out of this. I don't think the judge was picking up on what I was trying to tell him. My voice was soft as a mouse. I was scared, I had no allies. I couldn't get enough air to vocalize my words clear enough to be heard and understood.

I have seen on TV shows and movies where they ask the defendant if they are on drugs that might impair one's judgment when entering into a plea deal or if a person had a mental illness that would impair that ability to enter into a plea deal.

I would have answered that "yes I am on mind-altering drugs" though they were prescribed and "yes, I am suffering from a mental illness that would impair my judgment."  I was suffering from anxiety, major depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. “So, I am not competent to be entering into a plea deal.”

That’s what I would have said.

I had been traumatized by the entire matter that resulted in me standing in front of a judge on this particular day in my life history up to this point. 

The judge asked if I was in fact guilty. I said, "Well, that's what my lawyer told me to say for the purpose of this plea deal but... " I was trying to explain. 

Sometimes on courtroom shows, they depict a person elocuting to the “crime.” That means they say what happened. 

Had anyone asked me to say what happened on that October day in 2004, this would not be the culmination of a plea deal. I would have described how I had been brutally attacked in my home resulting in every item of clothing being soaked in blood all the way down to my socks and sneakers. It would have been a statement of my victimization and my inability to even defend myself.

But no one was concerned about what really happened. They wanted this wrapped up before the real victim, who was being treated like the perpetrator had a chance to think about what is happening and what he is doing.  

Guilt was an abstract term. No one in that courtroom heard anything resembling the truth as to what happened back in October of 2004. What I mean is that in no way did we talk about the events in question.

No one cared what really happened.  

My fate and future were sealed. All hope is gone.

Some people have questions like what happened to my first wife, Lynn. She died in 2015, I found out. From cancer. There had been no "we" for all these years. Merely talking about her and what happened has been so painful.

Before I met Elee, my second wife, I had tried to get back with Lynn, but it never worked out. As I said in the last chapter, the times when I saw her down in Wilmington were very awkward and surreal. What could my friend Thomas do? Other than understanding what I must have been feeling.

I couldn't say anything when she was right next to me.

I had been more comfortable with her than with anyone else in my life. We had trusted each other implicitly. We had such a connection. I had stated the fact that I would have done anything imaginable to hold onto a relationship with Lynn. That fact cannot be understated.

I should have said something when she was right next to me. I had previously tried so hard. I didn't want to call her after a certain point about three years after we had started living our own lives - she with her mother and me in another city.

I had asked others to contact her and convey how much I felt for her. Obviously, those who heard my story were moved to call her and to convey this information. I had hoped to get some information that might lift my spirits.

I believe it was too painful for her to have to move on without me. I didn't want to cause her more pain. I don't know how she dealt with the memories of when we were in love.

I am so sorry!

Lynn had this survivalist instinct due to her illness. After we watched "Titanic" we were discussing the movie with a friend of hers who had cystic fibrosis like her. Her friend and I had agreed that we would jump back into the boat as the girl did to be with the guy.

Lynn disagreed. We had been living together for years at that point. So, I guess she was saying that she would not jump back into the boat to be with me. I know with one hundred percent certainty that I would jump back to be with her if she was in peril instead of getting into the rescue boats that would result in my near-certain survival.

I would NEVER be able to go to safety on a rescue boat with Lynn in a sinking ship. She would not find any justification in dying on a sinking boat just to be with me a bit longer. She might have found it senseless to stay on a sinking ship. I would have done anything to be with her, to help and protect her, no matter what.

So, there was a combination of factors that kept me paralyzed from contacting her from 2003 until her death in 2015. I had not wanted to make her life more painful. What I was going through was extremely traumatic for me and she was in survival mode.

There was another occasion when I almost spoke to Lynn during another awkward moment, years after we had been apart.

It was in late 2009.

Jean had invited me to come to a lounge on a Saturday evening in downtown Wilmington. He told me he was having a workshop for poets. We would share a poem to be workshopped. We would read it and ask for support or feedback from the group.

I had called him earlier that afternoon from Wrightsville Beach near Johnny Mercer's Pier.

I had been here at this location not long ago... up at the front area is where they have the poetry readings and music. I don't think this place existed in the 90s.

I have some videos of me reading some poetry at that location.

This next one here is a video of Jean Introducing me.
 

I heard Lynn would be there.

My mind had been racing with ideas about what I would or should say to Lynn if I said anything. This would be an interactive event... My heart raced throughout the next few hours as I headed in that direction.

What would I say?

Recently, I figured out in my mind that I had been a good person - always. So, the idea that I was undeserving of her was a false belief I had back then. It's sad that I figured this out after she died!

I had gotten so close to saying something on another occasion earlier as I mentioned in the previous chapter.

That evening came... I was told to go to the room in the back by Jean.

A few people were talking and then they left the room. Lynn was standing there - alone. I was right nearby.

Had others planned this? Left us in a dark, quiet, private room.

I was thinking and at the same time, my mind was trying to muster the willpower to do or say something. I was thinking of something to say. My heart pounded hard in my chest. I felt frozen – not cold but motionless. I was composing thoughts "I... I what?"

I imagined myself saying "I love you." and her answer would be "I know."

Wow! I just realized what a cliché that would be. It's right out of "The Empire Strikes Back" when Han Solo is being frozen in carbonite and Lea tells him. "I love you."

I'm sure I would have broken down, falling to my knees, weeping bitterly, crying "I love you so much. I NEVER stopped being in love with you."

My mind's a bit blank as I think back to what happened after that uncomfortable moment when I was there alone, close enough to touch Lynn.

Others filed into that room from the front. They took seats. Four to my right. Jean is the "leader" – he sat on the right. Three on my left. And then Lynn. My hands and arms were trembling. My breathing was fast and shallow. I'm sure others could hear me nearly hyperventilating.

The rotation was coming around toward me. I had selected a poem that I wrote called "Fugue State." A fugue state is a symptom of some dissociative disorders. I said they are caused by "trauma", but I could have just said extreme stress or distress. I had written this about the dark times I had known not too long ago.

Sometimes I don't know what I want to say until I say it. Below is the poem that I wrote. It's in free verse.

(I realized later that it was the imagery of dreams, disorientation, desolation, and despair are that I was trying to convey. I didn't know how to do this with rhyme or metered verse.)

Holding the poem in my hand I begin to read.

Fugue State:

In the dream...
I think it's a dream -
I'm not sure how I got
here or where I was going.

It's dark.
I look at the street signs
that I walk past,
and for a time I'm
not finding any that I recognize.

Then I begin to think
that things look a bit
familiar but I'm...
uncertain.
I want to run
but I'm tired
and unsure how far
I have to go.

I try to remember
but nothing comes to mind
to explain
how I got here...
where I am going...
where I live -
where my home is -
or if I have a home.

I don't seem to be injured.
I want to remember...
I begin to question
whether I even know
for certain
who I am?

The people I pass
look unfriendly -
not dangerous;
they just don't convey
anything resembling kindness
or friendship.
They don't know me.
They don't pay much attention.

What should I say anyway?
Ask them to tell me who I am?
Or ask where I am?
I cannot ask how to get
where I am going
because I do not know that.

I don't know if I am afraid of the ridicule
or convinced of the futility
in even trying to get help.

I want to fall down on my knees
and cry... cry out to someone,
"Please help me!"

But I'm paralyzed by my fear
and all I can do
is keep walking
and hoping that somehow
things will become clear
and make sense.

--------------

I can't remember the feedback that I got.

When it came around to her, to offer feedback on my poem, she said "I pass."

I got up moments later, the feelings were overwhelming me. I walked out into the night, moving fast. I stopped into a bookstore and looked at some books. I got a call from Thomas, who was on the way.

"Okay, I'm heading back there, I'll see you in a little while," I said to Thomas.

I returned and took a seat near Jeff Wyatt in that front room near the bar. He had been friends with Lynn and me just like Thomas had been. He went into massage therapy at some point.

Here's a video of Jeff Wyatt reading poetry at the Word Salad Poetry Event. Lynn wasn't at the lounge that particular evening.

I suppose that my last words to Lynn were "Fugue State." My life had been like a bad dream... I had existed without an identity for a while... lost... without direction... without a sense of where to go or where my home was or where it might be someday.

I had not thought that was a very good poem until recently. As I read this recently within the past year or so, I thought "wow, that was good... that is poignant in the way that I convey such feelings and experiences that are so hard to convey." 

I wasn't even mentioned in her obituary.

To this day that hurts so much to think about it.

I mean it really hurts. My tears blur my eyes and roll down my cheeks as I write this in 2021. It feels wrong that I didn't try harder when she was right next to me.

There was no closure. I had failed to just say those words. I love you!

And with that, I will end this book.

Please look for more of my memoirs. This is part of a series of memoirs or autobiographical stories. 

There are things of such darkness and horror—just, I suppose, as there are things of such great beauty—that they will not fit through the puny human doors of perception.
 

- Stephen King, from Skeleton Crew

Days before, things were normal. We were happy. We weren't focused on the fact that Lynn had a terminal illness that she had been born with. I am not saying we were unaware of this fact, but life just seemed normal... until it wasn't.
 

This might seem hard to understand to an observer. I guess we needed to believe that something could be done about the problem... that they would find a cure and we would live happily ever after.

Cystic fibrosis reminded us that it was a part of our lives. It seemed like a petulant child who had to be noticed. It was part of Lynn. She had that gene defect such that when a person has two copies of this recessive gene, they always have the disease.

We had lived a life that we wanted to be "normal." Lynn's health had been good for someone with this disease. So, we were lucky.

Most of the events in this chapter occurred in August of 2000. However, things started to change in late July 2000.

We noticed in late July two things that were very troubling. One was that Lynn was losing weight, and the other was that she was having trouble breathing. That can happen from time to time with Cystic Fibrosis, so the full weight of this didn't hit right away.

I had not noticed, but Lynn told me she was having trouble keeping weight on her. To me, she still looked perfect - beautiful as ever. This is one of the signs of deteriorating health for someone with Cystic Fibrosis. She had to take pills with every meal the entire time that I knew her. It was routine. However, it is a reminder that the disease impacts her digestion.

We knew that something was wrong because she was struggling to breathe. She would become weak just doing routine things around the home. She also couldn't go to work.

It's hard to talk about this without crying. I know it's hard to understand what it is like unless you are living with this.

We went to the clinic on July 21, 2000, in Chapel Hill, which was about two hours away. They admitted her to the hospital for IV antibiotics. They had found on an x-ray that there was a heavy mucus build-up throughout her lungs and there were large black marks that indicated scarring. Her oxygen saturation was lower, which meant that she wasn't getting enough oxygen in her body. 

This lasted until July 28.

When she got back, she was having the same problems with breathing.

When Lynn started getting sick in August of 2000, she set up a place to eat and watch TV in the spare room that we had. She was short of breath and needed me to bring her food in there. She would fall asleep in there because she was too tired to walk back into the bedroom. We also couldn't make love or enjoy any kind of passionate togetherness.

Every night before going to sleep, she would also use a machine that delivered inhaled antibiotics, steroids, and other medications to open her airways. I brought this setup into the other room also.

Lynn and I had never slept apart in all the years we were living in this home, together, other than one month but it had to be with my work. That could not work out well for me, so the job only lasted a month. There were a few times when I was on call for a job or away at graduate school when we slept apart, but that was it.

Wasn't everything just perfect the other day? Wasn't she telling me how close she wanted to be to me? She said "I feel like I cannot get close enough to you" as she wrapped herself around me and kissed me so passionately. It felt like just the other day even though that was in April. But in May, June, and July, things seemed great and normal. If she had been getting worse, it wasn't noticeable to me until this time in late July.

What I mean is that it was almost like one day everything seemed so perfect and right and then Lynn was sick. Very sick!

These changes in her health hit me like a loud, hard slap in the face. Each time I saw her struggling to get enough air to walk across a room, I was so frustrated, angry, and I felt powerless.

I thought "this is not right! She is only 34!"

She had been talking about getting a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of North Carolina. 

She should be thinking about those things! She should be thinking about normal life and a career just like I had built a career. I was so bitter. This wasn't right! It was not fair!

She needed me to bring her meals to the spare room where she was having to spend most of her time.

She was gasping for air at times. I could see that she was short of breath. It was so maddening for me because I couldn't fix the root problem. I could bring her food and things she needed but that wouldn't fix the problems.

Sometimes I didn't want to wait on her because it meant admitting how bad her health was, and that meant she might be closer to losing her fight with this disease. I was terrified. I also felt guilty for not wanting to be there for her whenever she asked!

I felt shame for my actions! I do know that Lynn understood the feelings of powerlessness that I felt. She knew this was taking a toll on me. I wasn't being mean and irritable at her for asking for my help. But, I was in denial.

"Of course, I will carry you into the bathroom and help you shower," I would answer later to make up for my bad previous behavior.

Later, Lynn said she wished I had kept in touch with our friends on a regular basis. She was struggling and didn't think she could be the source of support that I needed. I wasn't thinking clearly enough to think that I should reach out to a friend for support.

Inpatient Hospitalization

Lynn was admitted to the hospital again in August of 2000.

I was blaming myself for every way I had failed to help her enough. I felt guilty that maybe I had not done enough to clear the mucus from her lungs. I mentioned earlier that I would do something that involved tapping on her back, her left and right sides, and on her chest. This was to break up or loosen the mucus that built up in her body. This excess mucus was a breeding ground for infections.

These infections and excess mucus were causing problems with her breathing.

I felt guilty that I had not kept the house cleaner. Lynn was worried that dust and other particulates could get into her lungs.

So, we went to the University of North Carolina Medical Center Hospital in Chapel Hill, because they had specialist doctors who worked with cystic fibrosis and other lung diseases - they call them pulmonary specialists.

The IV antibiotics are adapted to the person's body. They also have different ways of delivering antibiotics. Once she was admitted to her room, they set about inserting an IV in her arm. This time, they had to run the IV all the way up her arm to get it closer to her heart which will pump the antibiotics throughout her body and I guess it is close to her lungs, where the infection was.

This was unusual, more complicated, and a longer process.

It was painful to watch them piercing her body with a needle. I would NEVER have let anyone do anything to break or bruise her skin under normal circumstances. It was killing me to see this happening as I held her hand.

No, this wasn't the first time she had IV antibiotics, but this was so difficult for her and by extension, it was difficult for me. I was trying to be strong for Lynn. We were both crying.

As they finished getting the IV into her, I had to get up and walk a bit to keep from passing out. I paced around that floor of the hospital and returned to her side. I felt ashamed for leaving her. It was just a few minutes and I had made it through the procedure, but I was beating myself up for every failure on my part.

This reaction on my part had not happened previously when she had to go into the hospital. There was something more symbolic and disturbing about this time. This time the reality of her survival was the thing that overwhelmed me.

I stayed with her and tried to do anything she wanted or needed. Anything to make the time more passable for her.

They let me sleep in the bed with her. I don't think they had the heart when looking at either of us to ask me to leave. I think there are dorm rooms or other places where family members can stay when someone is in the hospital.

I must have looked like hell. I felt so overwhelmed.

The days were something of a blur. It felt like a bad dream.

I would tell myself, "This isn't happening."

You cannot unsee the woman you love gasping for air or short of breath doing just the smallest of things... routine things.

My entire reality was now like being in a fog, or I felt like I was in a dark and misty place. I felt like I had wandered out into the mist and sanity itself was somewhere in the distance like dim lights along the coast as seen from a boat on the ocean.

Things were changing for me and I felt powerless over it all.

I felt such despair and hopelessness.

It wasn't supposed to happen like this. They were going to find a cure someday. A cure for cystic fibrosis. I had hoped and prayed so long and desperately. This was happening too fast for me. One day you are on top of the world, the next day the love of my life is fighting for her life and might die.

I tried reaching out to my family. Lynn had said she wished I had kept in touch with our friends, but for some reason, I thought to reach out to my parents and maybe my siblings.

I was about to find out that to my surprise they didn't have the capacity at this moment in time to demonstrate any compassion or concern during all this.

What kind of mother, father, sister, or brother doesn't know that this is extremely painful and a time when I would need help and support? That's a rhetorical question. I am sure that my readers understand the pain I am describing.

In their defense, I suppose I shouldn't assume anything. I can only imagine but I cannot know what was going through another person's mind

In a previous chapter, I hinted that I was losing my faith. That isn't entirely true. I did pray desperately that what was happening now would change, that Lynn would get better, stronger, healthier. I also prayed that the pain I was feeling would be bearable also, so I could be there for her.

I had those feelings of a fog hanging over me as I tried to navigate life overall. I had an important role to play in the lives of others. I was a psychotherapist.

The nightmare of everything happening with Lynn was about to get more complicated and confusing.   

This is a deeply traumatic and disturbing story, one that is both painful to relive and challenging to put into words. As I write, I imagine you, dear reader, sitting beside me—offering quiet support as I share this chapter of my life. What you’re about to read marks the beginning of the most terrifying, unexpected, and surreal events I have ever faced.

Losing Lynn rivals the pain of these events, but it was not beyond my imagination of things that can happen in life. Lynn had been born with a genetic and terminal disease and therefore, while it still surprised me how suddenly things took a turn for the worse with her health, it was not beyond my imagination.

The date was October 1, 2004. I had been evicted and appealed the decision. I just wanted a place to put my belongings. I also was aware of ways in which I could get financial assistance to pay the landlord, Jimmy, what he was due. Back then, everything was not up there in the cloud.

Every written and drawn item from Celta was priceless to me. Every photograph of her and of Lynn and the life we shared... all these things were on film and on CDs. All I had were memories.

I was teetering on the edge of homelessness once again.. My search for shelter led me to what was referred to as a “boarding house” at 721 Holloway Street in Durham, NC. The area had a reputation-it was known as a drug-infested, crime-ridden part of town.

Even Eric Peters, my Vocational Rehabilitation counselor, had reservations about the move. He cautioned against starting a home-based business there, but I had no other options. The boarding house was affordable: we paid weekly, and little to no security deposit was required. That was all I could manage at the time.

Living there quickly proved as precarious as its reputation suggested. The building lacked basic security—doors to the outside were rarely locked, leaving everyone vulnerable. One evening, I made the mistake of allowing a woman into my room. She crossed a line immediately, behaving inappropriately and bending over to expose herself. Snapping to my senses, I asked her to leave.

What followed was surreal and frightening. As I walked to the store, she followed, shouting threats and warning me about someone who would come after me if I didn’t pay her. Pay her for what? I had nothing to pay for.

Discarded needles were on the street in front of the building. I knew it was some form of drug paraphernalia. I have NEVER used illicit substances myself.

I had to run for safety when getting off the bus when I was being harassed on a recent occasion. I was robbed at knifepoint while living there. I had someone indicate they had a gun in their pocket at night on a different occasion.

I had confided in my sister about needing help after being robbed multiple times, but she didn't seem to understand. It would have been difficult to explain to her the concept of not having a car and living in a dangerous city like New Britain, which was closest to our hometown in Connecticut.

She had only experienced leaving work and walking to her car; she couldn't comprehend the struggle of living in a high-crime area because it was all I could afford. Like my sister, I never imagined myself living in such conditions, relying on public transportation instead of owning a car. Mentally, I was in unfamiliar territory and completely unprepared for the challenges I faced.

Despite all the threats I faced and the repeatedly frightening experiences, I had not been physically assaulted, yet.

Not yet!

Jimmy, The Landlord Wants to Know About Dissociative Identity Disorder

There are a few other important facts to know. One is that I had a conversation with Jimmy, the landlord, in which he was asking about my experience treating people with dissociative identity disorder (DID). This used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). He, Jimmy, didn’t want to know about the incredibly disturbing trauma that people with this disorder experienced or how emotional and traumatic it was for me to help any victim to cope with this because of my capacity for empathy.

I just mentioned that people with DID have personalities that have different names. I recalled that as a child, my grandpa called me Brucie. Using that example, I said that if I had DID, which I don’t, I might name a child personality or have a child personality named Brucie.

I had the opportunity to see Jimmy’s wife partially when she was inside his pickup truck. It’s important to note that I did not recognize her as the attacker, but I am getting ahead of the story.

This detail is very important - the conversation about what DID (pronounced D, I, D) is all about. I would hear about this conversation later.

I did meet a friend of the family named Grace. I would join her and her two children at Durham Bulls baseball games, and I helped her with her computer. She was a safe and decent person. I once thought Jimmy was decent. She was very attractive, far more so than anyone directly associated with the landlord, which is only relevant to her later encounter with the police.

I had been dumpster diving near the library up the street and had acquired many books, which other homeless people appreciated.

I had books in piles all over the room. My apartment was just a room in the house.

The room is about 18 feet wide by 18 feet from the front door to the back of the room. A wall is set back about eight or nine feet from the door to the apartment room. The wall has an opening on the right and the left as you investigate the room from the door. Behind the wall is a mattress on the floor where I slept.

There was barely enough room in the apartment today. My computer was set up on a desk against the wall, to the right as you entered the room.

About six to eight feet from the door, there is a couch.

I was waiting for a friend to arrive today. She was a black woman, and the woman I was seeing romantically was also black. Let me describe the apartment building better before I explain what is about to happen. Looking at the house from the street, there is a front door and a driveway to the left. Around the back, there is an apartment. Scott stayed there. He got a discount on rent, just like I was getting free rent for working on Jimmy's website. We paid our rent weekly to Scott, and he gave us a receipt.

There is a door on the side of the building that leads inside from the driveway. If you go through that door, you will see the kitchen, which is a common area for cooking meals. Past the kitchen is the bathroom with a shower. An apartment was also down that hallway.

Turning right, you would come to the vending machines that Jimmy kept stocked with sodas and snacks. Before you came to my apartment room, there was an apartment on the right and another two apartments on the left.

Across from my room was the stairway that leads to four apartments upstairs. Next to the foot of the stairs was another apartment.

It was an all-male boarding house, but females were there offering sex for money. I mentioned an unsuccessful attempt by one woman to get me to accept her service(s).

I had come to feel like the perfect victim. It’s not untrue that people can sense vulnerability. The urban scowl is something a more confident person might use during the day to walk quickly and with purpose if they found themselves in a potentially dangerous part of town. I had sensed danger at night and had run as fast as I could to my “home” - imagining that getting inside this boarding house at 721 Holloway Street would be safe.

However, getting inside was not always safe. In addition to the encounter with the prostitute, I had seen the police use tear gas to get a gun from a resident.

My door was open as I expected my new friend to arrive.

I learned about a phenomenon called the "cocktail party phenomenon" years ago. When you hear your name, it can penetrate the cacophony of other sounds. We can hear our name if it is called out, even in a busy and somewhat loud room full of people talking. Something causes us to immediately turn in the direction where we heard it.

I noticed this instant attention-grabbing effect years ago after I first learned about it. I was walking to class, deep in thought, when I heard "Bruce." Immediately, my attention was caught, and my head turned in the direction of where someone had called out my name. The person must have been a couple of football fields away.

That is what happened next. With my door partially open, I heard the words, “where’s Bruce?” coming from outside my room.

Without thinking, I opened my door, stepped into the hallway, and said, "I'm Bruce."

A woman stood a few steps up the stairway leading to the second floor. She was NOT the person I was expecting. She was standing half-way up the stairs, asking Danny who was just another tenant that lived on the second floor. Other than her being white and not who I was expecting, there was nothing distinctive about her, and I had no idea who she was or why she was looking for me.

Time froze for about one second… enough for me to register my confusion and to wonder who is this person that seems to know me?

Her eyes locked onto mine and she charged at me, coming down the stairs and around a corner as if propelled by a ferocious determination. I was frozen in shock, unable to react before she burst past me, entering my apartment.

I stumbled after her, walking past her and into the room just as she slammed the door shut and turned the lock, trapping us both inside. Before I could assess the situation, her fist collided with my cheek in a brutal punch that sent me reeling.

The blows kept coming, one after another in a flurry of violence that sent my glasses flying across the room. I could feel blood beginning to flow down my face as she continued to unleash a relentless assault on my face, leaving me battered and disoriented.

I was dazed and shocked. I staggered backward with each blow. There wasn't much room between the door and the couch where I fell. I was shocked by the fact that a woman would lock herself in the room with me, then attack me (someone who I didn’t even know), and I was shocked by the blows to the face.

She shouted, "Why do you keep calling me?"

I answered, immediately, "Who are you?" with genuine shock in my voice. I was wondering who the heck was attacking me. And why?

I was hurt badly. Blood was pouring out of my nose and across my face almost immediately.

Was she high on drugs?

I managed to get to my feet and noticed that there was a distance between us. I used the opportunity to move forward and unlocked the door that she had just locked. Then, I pulled her toward the door, trying to get her out of the room.

At some point, I brought my hand to my face and noticed my hand was smeared with blood. As I pulled her toward the door and outside, I touched the door frame for balance and I left a blood-smeared thumbprint on the door frame with my right thumb.

She didn’t have a scratch on her. I had not even hit her at all or defended myself in any way. I had always been non-violent, peaceful. I had never been attacked at all much less in such a bloody way.

One might ask why I didn’t fight back? There was something instinctual in me about not hitting girls or women. I never had to consider a moment like this.

At this point, I had no idea that it would be crucial to know that she was not bleeding at all. She was all perpetrator and attacker. I couldn’t defend myself if I wanted to do so.

I had no idea that none of her blood being anywhere in the room or on the property would be important.

In fact, as I was trying to get her outside, I was worried about hurting her!

This happened so incredibly fast and could not have taken more than 60 seconds. I wanted to establish safety from this crazy person so I could call 911.

As I tried to shut the door, she was pushing the door to get back inside!

I couldn't close the door.

I couldn't believe it. What more did she want to do to me?

I reached my hand to try to push her away. My hand connected with her face, and it might have been partially closed into almost a fist.

This was the closest thing to acting in self-defense. It seemed like all I had accomplished was pushing her away from the door so that I could lock it and finally feel safe inside my apartment room. Here I was worrying about worrying about hurting her because she was female! Those rules were probably not meant for situations like this.

I had not used anywhere near enough force for it to be considered self-defense.

Like every victim, I immediately picked up my phone and dialed 911. I then waited for the police… still bleeding profusely.

My mind flashed back to what had just happened. The door had been open partially in case my friend had shown up and didn’t know what room I was in. But she was black. My girlfriend sometimes showed up to see me. She was black as well.

The person I encountered halfway up the stairs was white. Who was she? Who was this attacker and why did she do this? Was she high and had she mistaken me for someone else?

Some of the guys who lived in the house had been returning from work. The voices outside must have given me the sense that she had left. Some had witnessed the commotion from outside my apartment room. Unfortunately, they would not have seen what happened after she locked the door.

There were several people in the hallway or on the stairs who looked with shock at me. These would be witnesses. Someone advised me to look in the bathroom to see how badly I was bleeding.

Another tenant, Joachim, told me to go look in the mirror. He was the most friendly guy I knew at that residence along with Danny.

I was shocked at how profusely I was bleeding across my face. I wondered why I was not bruised as opposed to seeing my face sliced up like this. I was trying to stop the bleeding.

The lacerations were not deep. The cuts were more like the way one gets cut up when shaving… I was not getting nauseous or feeling faint like after being accidentally cut with a knife in the past or on a glass window - occasions which had made me feel faint.

Joachim asked me, "So, you don't know her from Adam?"

"No, I have no idea who she was," I answered.

I registered some comments by the residents. I heard the words, “Why would you let her inside your apartment if you didn’t know her?”

I was pacing between the bathroom to look at my cuts, the hallway to talk to the tenants and my room. In the room I saw my blood on the floor and another place where my hand had smeared blood from my face onto the wall, in addition to my own bloody thumbprint on the door frame.

Obviously, she didn’t leave any bloody marks or any evidence to help the police find her! She had done all the violence. She had left without a cut or scratch!

Joachim and Danny could see my blood in my apartment room, places where my blood was on the floor, my bloody thumbprint on the door frame.

Looking in the mirror, down the hallway, in the bathroom, I was shocked by the extent to which I was cut. I was still bleeding from cuts on the left and right sides of my face. I had never been assaulted in this manner in my life. I had never known any violence in my life, only threats of violence.

Blood was also coming from my nose and mouth. I believe I was in such a state of shock that I was not aware of feeling any pain. I knew that the mind had dissociated from feeling anything at all physically or emotionally.

It was hard to stop the bleeding with so many cuts. I was wearing a dark-striped, green short-sleeved shirt; it was covered in blood. I was wearing shorts, and those were covered in blood as well. Even my socks and shoes were bloody. Within just a few minutes, my shirt, shorts, socks, and shoes had soaked up blood that had drained off my face.

This section dives into one of the most harrowing experiences of my life: not only surviving a violent assault in my own home but also the devastating aftermath of being disbelieved by the very people sworn to protect me. Here, I recount the assault by Ana—a sudden, unprovoked attack while I was simply minding my own business—and the surreal nightmare that followed when I found myself treated as a suspect rather than a victim.

That night, instead of feeling reassured by the presence of law enforcement, I faced an interrogation that felt more accusatory than investigative. It was a disorienting experience, one I could barely process as it unfolded. In my naivety, I assumed the detectives were simply gathering information to understand what had happened. I believed they would approach the situation logically, with an open mind. Instead, I quickly learned how skewed their perspective could be.

Adding to my confusion and frustration, there were witnesses—people who saw Ana enter my home and leave just moments later, unscathed. They weren’t in the room when she locked the door behind her, but they saw enough to corroborate my account. Still, their testimony did little to alter the course of events that night.

I had come so far and overcome so much to achieve a place in life that exceeded my wildest dreams. I had developed confidence, self-love, a sense of connection, support, love, success and a belief that things could work out. However, things were about to change and the impact of how I lost everything would destroy the qualities I would need to face increasingly challenging situations.

There was a villain in the story. Someone named John F. He was like a guru who had not gained any relevant college education, training, supervision, or experience to act as a therapist. He had called himself a therapist but people caught onto him and so he said he was just a support person.

He had started diagnosing people with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) - a condition where people have different personalities or alters. This is a very rare condition. The way he told it, he happened to notice at a 12-step alcohol and drug online community that some people might have this condition.

He found me because as president of the local chapter of Clinical Social Workers, I organized a workshop for clinicians to learn about this condition and how to treat others. I contacted the local newspaper to announce the training but the newspaper wanted to do a full story on this.

Although, I was new in the field compared to other therapists, I got the attention of two local people who wanted a therapist. In addition, John F. referred someone that he thought might have this condition - a Mrs. D. Actually, he had been communicating with these various alter personalities that Mrs. D. had. She had not been diagnosed by any professional when she first came to my office after I told John that I would meet with her.

Before long, John would move down to Wilmington from Pennsylvania or Virginia, bringing a few other women who he diagnosed with DID and who he was “supporting.”

He had decided to move in with the first person that he referred to me – Mrs. D. I started to learn that he was providing treatment to the same clients that he referred to me. Most importantly, they were getting so much worse. 

I had eventually heard that people had made allegations against him for falsely claiming to be a therapist and there were other allegations. From confidential therapy sessions with clients, I learned more about what he was doing. I was shocked and alarmed.

We had a falling out in early 2000 when I realized that the worst claims about him were likely true. I had tried to help a client named Tracy who had come down to Wilmington, NC from New Jersey with John and she started to meet with me for therapy.

She had been afraid after she turned down sexual advances that John made. I thought I could straighten things out and help Tracy. He had admitted on the phone his lack of conscience or remorse. Tracy had left an abusive husband thinking she would be able to get help and now she was being hurt by John.

Tracy did end up escaping and returning back north to enter a shelter for women who are victims of domestic violence.

I had not studied psychopaths or others like John who harm people because they don’t generally come for therapy.

I soon learned that John had composed a grievance letter to my licensure board and had five of my clients sign the identity complaint letter or statement. While Tracy and one other client of mine with DID did not sign that grievance letter, one of my clients who had successfully completed therapy with me had signed onto the same letter!

I also learned that they had filed a civil suit for malpractice. They had a reason to be frustrated because they were getting worse. I had not known how many people were receiving treatment from John.

Everything that I had worked to create as far as a career going back to Georgia Tech in 1984, some 16 years later, was about to be taken away from me! 

This was so overwhelmingly disturbing for me. My greatest passion was to help others cope with mental illness, and this had been rewarding.

I never saw it coming. I was in shock.

On top of that, at the same time, Lynn became very sick and had to be taken to the hospital for inpatient treatment. 

Lynn Becomes Very Sick

From the moment I met Lynn, I knew her life would be cut short by a cruel genetic illness. Cystic Fibrosis – a chronic and terminal condition that used to claim lives before adulthood. Despite advances in treatment, her lifespan was still limited. But I refused to face this reality, clinging onto hope for a miracle cure that never came.

We built a home together, formed a family. Lynn had dreams of pursuing her education in writing. She had hopes beyond her illness.

And then it happened. She was hospitalized for a few days, but this time it was serious. Our newlywed bliss shattered as we faced the harsh truth of her deteriorating health. Memories of our passionate and joyful moments together flooded my mind as I watched her suffer. Our "normal" life had changed, and I couldn't bear to see her in pain.

Now, things were more dire. She couldn’t keep much weight on her, which was a signal that her health was beginning to take a different direction than ever before. Her oxygen saturation was very low. She went into the hospital initially in late July. It had happened so suddenly, and it seemed to be unexpected. 

And when she was finally released after a week, it was only temporary relief before she would have to return again. 

By now, she couldn't even function without being hooked up to an oxygen tank. The sensation of suffocating consumed her every moment, leaving her helpless and unable to care for herself.

There was nothing I could do to stop the unthinkable idea that she might die. As she lay in the hospital for the second time, receiving IV antibiotics to fight the infections, she made the decision to move in with her mother for a cleaner and safer environment. But as I sat by her bedside, I received news of grievances filed against me and a looming malpractice suit, all claiming that I was not skilled enough and that it was my fault that they were getting worse. My efforts to steer them away from John F., who only worsened their condition, fell on deaf ears.

Every moment spent at home or outside felt like a distorted reality, a nightmare that I had not been prepared to face, despite having known from the beginning that Lynn had a serious illness. I knew deep down that these were symptoms of dissociation, my mind trying to protect itself from the overwhelming terror and perceived threat to the existence I had known. The world around me felt unreal, like an illusion, while I myself felt detached from my own body, floating above it as if observing someone else's life.

Everything I had worked so hard for and achieved was being torn away from me without mercy. Love and all its accompanying emotions were foreign concepts to me, yet now they were being ripped away mercilessly from my grasp. It was a hellish nightmare come to life and there was no escape other than to retreat into my mind further.