There are experiences
we would wish never happened...
memories re-experienced
again and again,
without warning,
like a knock on the door
that you wished you had ignored....
a call that you wish you missed...
a place so dark
it never leaves you....
infinity that cannot be endured -
or so it seems...
you know this will be
a part of you, forever,
Always showing up uninvited.
PS: What we know
is not always true.
Note: This poem was written originally with a different title at a time when I was brainwashed by religious ideas that made anything sexual to be shameful, secretive, or dirty. Hence, in the original version of this poem I used the word "lust" and used vampire imagery instead of describing healthy sexual activity. I also referred to the vampire as a virgin, further insinuating that healthy sexual activities are something other than good.
Sensuous and Strong as the Serpent
This vampire lived
a lustful life
nourished and satisfied
by flesh on flesh -
She with the strength of the serpent.
Tonight, she held
a young man, barely 20,
who is lost in her dark red eyes.
For a brief while,
he was convinced he had the upper hand.
Seeking to overpower her,
with his 6-foot muscular frame,
to her five and one half feet...
He thought she would be an easy
victim
to satisfy
his desires and need for power.
With each motion he made,
she wrapped more of herself into him,
hands, arms, legs around him.
Till there was only the sound of blood
Beating louder,
pulsating
throbbing.
As he struggles for air,
in this last dream of his life,
Somehow he finds a pleasure
in her pulsating blood-red eyes.
Her pointed teeth rested
against his pulsating artery.
There was just their rhythmic motions
as she consumed all of him
up to his last breath.
Not a drop of his blood was spilled,
she had not intended to kill,
in fact, she herself
was wounded in his attack.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Way back in the Introduction to this book, I mentioned that I had been suicidal. It would take that experience in 2019 to allow me to tell this story.
I kept thinking about the loss of hope for me. It was December 11, 2019, when suicide became the only idea that was on my mind. As Anne Sexton said in 'Wanting to Die,'
"But suicides speak in a special language
Like carpenters, they want to know which tools
They never ask why build."
I was no longer asking why build. I had the clearest sense of purpose in my life. I didn't want anyone to know what I was going to do. The tools were pills... either that or a slip noose that I would have to hang somewhere. On this particular night, my planning was not clear. I had started drinking rum, a good enough alcoholic beverage to help me get the nerve up to do this.
I had spoken to lawyers from the Pre-Paid Legal law firm about how there was a story on the web that showed up at the top of the results when you googled my name. John Freifeld, who had it in for me and who was described in another book by me, had reposted the article in the paper that characterized me as the perpetrator of a violent crime.
"There is nothing that can be done now," they said. It seemed like they were speaking about my fate and all my hopes and dreams. My thinking wasn't entirely clear but I heard that there was nothing that could be done. I was looking for a way to challenge the conviction but the way I was coerced into letting my lawyer enter a plea deal and the statute of limitations stood in the way of everything.
Dear reader, do you care to know what it is for which nothing can be done? Do you care? As I write this my mind drifts back to these moments on December 11, 2019. I have not met some of my current friends. So, my perception of the world during this time is that it is exceedingly dark, cold, and devoid of human compassion.
This is the true story that an editor for a horror magazine didn't want me to write. The editor thought I was giving a green light to suicide and so I was encouraged to write something different.
To be honest, people are still wanting me to write something different. Or they want me to think and do things differently. They make arguments that they cannot defend because they are not me and they have not seen what I have seen. It seems that they would prefer not to look and that is fine. Yet, do you want to cheer me up or persuade me without listening to me?
Anyway, it's December 11 and I am now taking the pills.
Oh, I need to tell my ex-wife how sorry I am for inviting her to come to America. She was going to be a doctor and would have been a doctor and perhaps living a happy life in Iran.
Let's see if I can explain to Elee how bad I feel. I begin the text with an apology for what she gave up to be with me. I am explaining how she will find out that I am not alive any longer.
She won't find this out until after I am dead.
My planning was not so good as I did this. Before I knew it I heard a knock at the door. It was the police. I rambled on a bit about what had happened to me many years ago and how it wasn't possible now that anything can be done to remedy this problem. This isn't the best strategy if one really wants to die. Maybe I was ambivalent.
Maybe part of me wanted to believe that something could be done.
This was before I saw the TV movie about Ted Bundy entitled "Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile." Maybe you, dear reader, will understand in the reading of this story that what Ana did to me was extremely wicked, shockingly evil, and vile. For to destroy the life, the hopes and dreams of someone for as long as they will live is an act that is evil beyond imagination.
I had been victimized by Ana who physically attacked me in a brutal and bloody assault years ago but her greatest and most vile deed was to lie and tell the police that I attacked her. My belief was that no one understood this deed to be vile and shockingly evil and that is why I was suicidal. I also was terrified of the very notion that anyone would EVER make a connection between violence/attack as an action I would ever do... and that others wouldn't trust me.
[As an aside, after working for over a year on the Mobile Crisis Unit at Freedom House, in 2023, when my supervisor suggested that I might consider opportunities at a specific local company. I asked if she knew about what I had to disclose in getting this job and how it affected my employment at that company, 16 years after the fact. When she heard about me being accused and charged with a violent crime, she was shocked and could not believe it, saying, "you and violence do not go together." ... adding that she would fight before she would imagine me doing so.
[Getting back to the narrative of my despair and suicidal thoughts in 2019...]
The feeling of not being understood made me want to die. That might seem strange but a child will experience a failure to thrive and can die if there is no human connection. I was feeling these same things before and for a while after my failed suicide attempt.
I sat in the Emergency Department thinking of things that I would tell the people from the psychiatry department when they come. I had worked in this capacity myself years ago. I had been asked to evaluate if a person is indeed an ongoing suicide risk. So, I knew how to persuade them that I was not suicidal.
If people keep finding out that I am suicidal they will keep trying to stop me. That won't work so well. Hanging myself would have been more certain to achieve my goal. I wasn't sure how to pull that off, though.
When the lady spoke to me, a psychiatric resident, I said that what I took would not kill me. It wasn't a lethal dose. I wasn't explaining the part that I hadn't yet gotten to that point. I was reasoning that someone like me would know what a lethal dose was and that she would know that what they discovered in my blood was not a lethal dose.
So, we can just send me home, right?
Nope. She announced the words I had used years earlier. I hadn't wanted anyone I met in the Emergency Room to die. I had believed that there was always hope and that I could help with emotional distress.
This was before the entire incident in 2004 when I was victimized and then told year after year for the next 15 years that nothing could be done.
Nothing can be done. Deal with it! That's what I was doing. Part of me wanted to ask someone if they would understand why I was doing this and wouldn't it be an act of mercy to let me die?
I understand this is a hard sell. But if nothing can be done? Don't you get it? Injustice affects every aspect of my life. And it's not I that will bring up the topic. Should I seek volunteer opportunities and jobs, they will do a background check, and it will appear that I was the perpetrator when in fact I was the victim.
And nothing can be done.
By Friday evening, I was being checked into the Neuroscience Unit of the University of North Carolina Hospital in Chapel Hill.
I had a mixture of feelings. I remember restlessness. I was pacing constantly. I was shy and didn't want to stand out and get the attention of others or to be noticed. It was just embarrassing to be walking past the nursing station or using the hallways on the unit for pacing/exercise to try to cope with the anxiety and restlessness that I was feeling.
No, exercise was not a sign that I had hopes and plans for a healthy future. It was the weekend and not much in the way of activities were ongoing over the weekend. They had some groups and there were times when all the patients came out and socialized.
I would come to realize later that I was more sociable than I had imagined.
When I met with the doctors over the weekend, I didn't try to offer them an excuse as to why I should be released right away.
The darkness of my mind began to take hold of my thoughts. I couldn't sleep. I was too restless. I was sitting in front of the nurse's station at one of the tables where the people sit for any of the three daily meals.
Whatever flicker of hope might have crossed my mind over the weekend was fading. I was thinking "no one can change my situation."
No one can help me.
My ex-wife, Elee was the one who called 911. She didn't want me to die and she had been angry that I did what I did. She understood why I did it, though, or why I was feeling the way that I was feeling. I had explained that a lawyer had conveyed that no lawyer could possibly help me. That nothing could be done.
Nothing could be done. This is why I was there! This is why I was suicidal. Because nothing could be done and very few people understood what this meant to me and for me. Some have had the gall to suggest that there are more evil forms of injustice and those people don't ever get justice. To this day some people will make that same argument that demonstrates a lack of understanding about how I got to where I was in the first place.
Getting back to my story, it's Monday morning as the hour has just past midnight. I am contemplating suicide.
Something amazing happened to make it possible for me to bring this story to you. It was Monday, December 16, 2019, and someone saved my life tonight. Let me tell you how someone saved my life. Then we will see how that relates to love, kindness, nurturance, compassion, and empathy.
I was in the hospital at the University of North Carolina Medical Center in the psychiatric unit. I had meant to end my life a few days ago. My ex-wife found out because I told her. I had expected that it would be too late when she got the message.
On this Monday morning just after midnight, I was absolutely convinced that nothing can be done to change my circumstances and that there is no hope. I knew that I would be released soon and then I wouldn’t fail in my next suicide attempt. Visions of a slip noose swings in my mind along with other ideas – pills.
I can’t sleep. I’m restless… sitting in a large, darkened room just past midnight – a common room. The hospital is quiet.
My ex-wife had been angry that I considered suicide, but she understood why I had been that desperately depressed. Yes, I have been through hell but that was in the past. This is not about past pain. That doesn’t matter. No one can help remedy the situation because no one understands.
This is what was going through my mind when this girl came out.
“You can’t sleep either?” she asks and takes a seat next to me to talk. A simple question that started a process that made this book possible!
This is interesting… because for some reason, I am thinking that I should tell her my story. I have no idea where that idea arose. I am listening to her. I remember her name is Kirra. No, I’m not going to tell you her last name or why she was there. Confidentiality is important.
She seemed at the time to be drawing a story out of me. I felt compassion and empathy for her situation as well. There is something about the problems she has been facing that reminds me of someone who was very special in my life in the past. I can’t say what that is because it would reveal something about her that should not be made public with this book.
I felt an overwhelming need to tell her how I had been harmed in the past. I told her how I had been victimized by a woman who brutally attacked me and then lied and said that I attacked her! And if that lie was not bad enough, she said I tried to undress her which meant that I was charged with a sexual offense!
I explained how I would NEVER do anything to hurt someone. I was a therapist who understood how traumatic events affect people. And in fact, dear reader, you will see this when I show it to you throughout this book.
She said, “I believe you, one hundred percent.” She had demonstrated understanding of what I had been feeling – empathy.
My first reaction was a thought that floated through my mind, “of course you do… what person who has spent any time at all with me would think I would harm a person.” That is what I was thinking.
I had held the weight of this pain for more than a decade and a half. I held it almost all alone. I asked questions about how it is that we come to know these things about a person. Indeed, there are subtle cues or clues that we pick up that tell us about danger. She used the word “vibes.”
She seemed like she wanted to help me and to be my friend. She was much younger than me, so I wasn’t thinking in romantic terms about this friendship. She just said she wanted me to join her and sit with her at breakfast in the morning and at other meals. Love takes many forms.
She also understood why events from the past did have a tremendous impact on my life in the present. I had described my passion for helping others and working as a therapist… and working in the mental health/psychiatric field.
I wondered why this wasn’t so clear to everyone.
My plans to end my life suddenly evaporated. I had hungered for this as truly as we can be starving for food or air!
I came alive. So much more was offered to the patients on the unit during the week. I arrived on Friday night and there were not many therapy groups over the weekend. I started connecting with others during therapy groups, at meals, and as we, the patients, socialized.
It was a transformative experience. The world had seemed like a very dark and cold place devoid of human compassion, but I was observing how caring people here were. I’m talking about the other patients that I was meeting.
A couple of days later, we were asked to pick a feeling word to describe how we feel or what we were experiencing. For some reason, I chose to use words like “outsider,” “alone,” “unnoticed,” and “invisible.”
The response from the group caused my jaw to drop. I was told that I was actually like a “social butterfly.” That I had been at the center of all the action. Another person said I persuaded and encouraged him to come to the group.
Indeed, this was a transformative experience. I had been noticing others and listening to them. I had encouraged someone to come to the “group” because I was concerned and also, I felt that it works better if we can be there together for each other.
There was one other important and memorable event. Some of us were watching Law & Order: SVU. There was an episode that portrayed a teacher who loved teaching children who were falsely accused of sexually molesting one or more children. The visceral pain of this was exquisite. As someone who worked as a clinical social worker, I could recognize that pain from the way it was portrayed to the way we think about having that happen to us or another person.
I wanted to tell some others the experience I had and how I had been harmed by a lie of this nature. I approached two people who stepped out during a commercial break, and I said I wanted to share something with them.
I explained how I had been falsely accused and falsely convicted. By that time, they knew that I had worked as a therapist. They knew how much I loved that kind of work or those kinds of activities and experiences.
Beginning with Kirra and then with others I was telling my story and finding the support that I had needed for so long. I had tried to carry this burden all alone and now I was finding opportunities to unburden myself of this exquisite pain. They and others in the hospital, patients, and staff showed love, compassion, and empathy which is precisely what motivated me to go into psychiatric social work.
So, many people would tell me that the terrible events were in the past and that I shouldn’t let it bother me now. I shouldn’t dwell on the past.
Excuse my language dear reader, but that is such bullshit! The lies of that woman who attacked me in 2004 – the false accusations, the false conviction – affect every aspect of my life in the here and now. Those lies are etched into stone metaphorically speaking. Before we talk more about love and empathy let me add a few points. Bear with me just a moment.
The pernicious lie suggests that people should worry about did or might do in the future. It’s on a North Carolina Public Safety website. This is the modern equivalent of something being etched in stone.
The criminal record presents me as the perpetrator of the crime, but it has no basis in reality. I had been the victim! It’s still out there and I had been told by a law firm that there was no hope for me that I would ever get justice… When I heard that cold statement from a lawyer that no one could do anything, I didn’t hear the full story. I just heard no one can do anything – there was no hope!
You may disagree strongly with my choice to try to end my life in 2019 but ironically that was the only way that I was able to have this transformative experience. The world had seemed to be dark, cold, and devoid of caring people… devoid of compassion and empathy. The empathy, love, compassion, I developed over a lifetime would not be available to anyone were it not for what started with “a story.”
So, that’s what I am giving to you as a gift – a story.
Over the next year I continued to write “my story” and this is what you are reading now. I hope you understand, dear reader, why abstract ideas and platitudes are not every helpful to me. When I hear “things are going to be okay” said to me without first acknowledging the pain and without pragmatic statements about how things are going to be okay, I just think you are not offering empathy and compassion.
In my life experience, I have learned how to specifically figure out what a person needs or desires. I have learned to understand how that changes from moment to moment. I have learned how to recognize needs, things that we hunger for and desires almost instantly.
This is how I act from a place of love!
As a psychotherapist, I have developed certain instincts that are almost like common sense for me now. I would NEVER imagine telling a client or a patient what I think is good or a good life. I learned about active listening.
I would argue that love can be a quality that is the foundation of all societies and all people everywhere in one form or another. A psychotherapist or psychologist might use the word unconditional positive regard.
Certain social workers will speak of social justice because we recognize what happens to people and how they feel, how they experience life when it is lacking. That’s empathy.
True empathy, true love, and true compassion reject ideas like “nothing can be done” or “that’s just the way it is.” That’s injustice.
Love comes in many forms though. A mother and father's love are demonstrated in the way they nurture a child. I know I didn’t have that growing up. So, I hungered for it.
I found love either from my cousins and my aunt growing up or later from friends and those in which I fell in love.
Love was never something I knew from my family of origin. Neither did they know empathy or compassion. My effort to find it in them nearly cost me my life. I was only looking for love, empathy and compassion from my sister Carrie and my parents Bruce Whealton Sr. and Kathleen Whealton.
So, if not from my family of origin…
I found love through Celta first, a friend and more. Then I found love in my relationship with Lynn – we lived as husband and wife for many years. I found love from my dear friend Thomas Childs Jr.
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.
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.
And the most terrifying question of all may be just how much horror the human mind can stand and still maintain a wakeful, staring, unrelenting sanity.
- Stephen King, from "Pet Sematary"
Please, dear reader, let me imagine you are with me as I tell my horror story and try to imagine the comfort that I need when I am so scared like now.
Within just more than an hour, with the sun getting low now, the police showed up again. The most disturbing nightmare of my life was about to begin. My attacker had done a larger and far more sinister evil than brutally attacking me and leaving me literally covered in blood.
I noticed lights outside.
Then there was a female police officer in the doorway next to the stairway that led to the second floor. It was a warm day, this October 15th of 2004.
I heard something repeated on the police radio that a woman had been sexually assaulted out here!
What! Oh, my God!
This is not happening! No, no, no.no.
The police were just here. They knew what happened. They witnessed the extensive nature of my injuries.
It had not occurred to me that this would be hard to believe.
Time moved at an excruciatingly slow pace. I was waiting to speak to someone and clear all this up. Surely, they would know what had really happened. They had been out here just an hour earlier.
Before I knew it, I was being put in a handcuff and put into a police car. I struggled to speak. My mouth was dry, and I could barely draw a breath. I wasn't sure my words were being heard when I said, "no, I was attacked."
I was terrified beyond belief. I wasn't shaking but I was frozen. I felt dazed and confused. It seemed impossible.
Then I started to move from the frozen reaction of a trauma victim to the fight or flight stress response - a misnomer since neither fight nor flight was on my mind.
On the ride with the policeman next to me, my female friend called me. My hands were shaking as I tried to pick up the phone. My heart was beating so fast, and I was fumbling with the phone. My voice was shaking as I said “Hello,”
I began to explain what happened to me. I wanted the police officer to hear me and the sincerity of my words.
I told her that I wanted to see her soon and that this will get all straightened out, but I didn't know about tomorrow.
She was shocked herself. I can imagine her desperately out of words to say to comfort me.
Choking on my tears I said, "I'm scared. I don't know how this happened to me."
She knew a little about me and so she recognized the concern in my voice. I heard compassion in her voice as she said how sorry she was that this was happening to me.
I then hung up the phone. I registered the fact that someone had said that she was the landlord's wife. The landlord who had evicted me recently.
The police officer had handcuffs on me and took me inside a police station. I saw the woman who attacked me inside the doorway, and I said, "she's the one who attacked me."
I was still holding onto reality.
They sat me down outside a room somewhere. I was asked to wait. It didn't seem like anything was happening. I tried calling the pre-paid legal provider firm as I had maintained an account with them. I never imagined I would need it for a criminal matter.
They were not very much help. I couldn't process what was being explained to me.
I had never imagined a scenario even remotely like this in my worst nightmares.
I was naïve enough to still think that the police wanted to find out the truth.
We sat down in a room with them across a table from me. I re-enacted exactly what had happened with me going to the door of the room where I was with the police detectives and opening it to demonstrate what I had done and how said "I'm Bruce," and how before I knew what was happening, she was entering the room or apartment.
They didn't like that and so I tried to re-enact it again. I was confused as to what I had left out that they didn't like or wanted to hear.
They still didn't like what I explained.
I had no idea what they wanted to hear. I couldn't process the questions or make sense of anything. I was sitting in front of them covered in blood from face to feet and shoes. Every piece of clothing was soaked in blood. How is it even remotely possible that they didn't recognize this? Why were they treating me like a criminal in this matter? I was the victim.
Then they said that she was the landlord's wife and that her name was Ana.
I stated that I had briefly seen her with her husband in a pickup truck but that she had not left enough of an impression on me for me to recognize her when she showed up.
One of the police officers was saying that I would not forget someone that attractive. I thought "what are you talking about? That woman we saw on the way in. You think she is pretty?"
She was like a frightening psychopath who had just brutalized me, and I doubted that at any time anyone would call her attractive. What they said made no sense to me.
None of what they were saying made any sense. It wasn't like they were giving me any clues as to what she had said or what they thought happened. So, I could not possibly make them satisfied.
The time went on and on and I lost track of how much time had passed. It felt like something from a book by Franz Kafka - bizarre, surreal, and nightmarish. Why? Mainly because I was sitting in front of them clearly appearing as the victim. What could be more obvious? And they wouldn't tell me what they wanted to hear from me.
If you wanted a photograph of a victim, you could have photographed me at that moment.
I wondered what kind of people am I dealing with? Why are they doing this to me?
I had never even been in a fight in my entire life! I had NEVER done anything remotely aggressive. NOT EVER! Can't they tell things like this? Doesn't their gut tell them when something is so obvious? Couldn't they contact someone to find out who I was?
I looked to them as authority figures who had control of everything so I wasn’t saying much of what was on my mind.
They then suggested that she was there and maybe things got out of hand. That made no sense. Got out of hand? What were they talking about? She had entered my home and brutalized me.
They should be going after building a case against the real perpetrator.
I was still hoping against hope that they would see the light and realize that I was the victim. I naïvely believed they wanted to know the truth.
I had always seen the police are authority figures and protectors... people you could trust... To get it right. These two didn't seem to care at all about the truth or getting to know me at all.
I had been a therapist who helped victims. I would NEVER harm another person! Wouldn't these facts about me show up somewhere when they look into my background?
To make it even worse, now they were talking about something sexual happening. I just repeated that she attacked me, and I pulled her outside the room and called 911.
I should have pointed out that their fellow officers had witness statements that supported everything I was saying… but I wasn’t thinking clearly now.
More time had passed but I was losing track of how much time had passed.
Then I heard one of them ask to speak to "Brucie."
I was speechless at first. This was a well thought out intricate plan. I had spoken to Jimmy, the landlord, and husband of my attacker. I remembered how I had discussed Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) and used the example where if I had DID, maybe one of my personalities might be named Brucie.
No, I don't have multiple personalities. I just had used that name as an example in a discussion with Jimmy, her husband.
Logic and rational thinking had seemed to have left this interaction at some point – how long had passed, I don’t know. With the police, seeing them as authority figures you try to do whatever they want. I was thinking about what to do. By this point, I was so exhausted and overwhelmed that I would have pretended to be Mickey Mouse if they asked me.
I said "I'm Brucie" in a soft voice that a personality that was a child might have. It was just a last-ditch effort to make them happy.
I was still thinking that I could convince them to recognize that I was the victim and this entire game that they were playing was not worth it. I had no idea what they were getting out of this. My initial impression that the truth would emerge had evaporated. They weren't here for the truth. This was a bizarre game for them it seemed.
When that didn't satisfy them, they showed me a statement that they wanted me to sign. I looked at what one of the police officers had written and I was shocked. He was asking me to sign a confession. I asked, "that's what you think happened?"
"I'm not signing that," I answered. "That didn't happen."
First, they brought me in front of a magistrate. I felt a feeling of horror, unlike anything I had ever experienced.
I think Stephen King once described terror as something akin to what one might feel running from danger. Horror was a feeling you get when your mind is taken to places that are unknown when the hair on the back of your neck rises and a chill runs up your spine.
I was the victim who was being put into jail!
I thought I would state that I was suicidal as a desperate cry for help. I wasn’t planning anything at this point nor was I processing these horrors.
I was stripped down and put into a strange outfit that I guess is for people who are suicidal. Then they took photos of me. I thought I was being taunted like Jesus had been before he was crucified.
I was being charged with second-degree kidnapping and second-degree sexual offense. This was so terrifying that I could not process the events that were transpiring.
The next day I saw what she had told them and what she had written in her "statement."
Her claim was that I tried to undress her or pull off her pants. That's why I was charged with 2nd Degree Sexual Offense.
I was put into jail.
The way she described it, I would have had to have been standing over her, which would have meant I would have gotten my blood all over her. That was clearly a lie. How could these so-called detectives have overlooked these details?
She also said "he kept switching" in her statement. Hence the question that they had for me - they had asked if they could speak to "Brucie."
What the heck does that even me, “he kept switching?” I can’t even imagine what that might look like. Even those with DID do not do things like that.
It was clear that this was a well-thought-out and planned scheme, but why had they done this?
They had drawn my blood at the hospital, and I thought it would be helpful to demonstrate that only my blood would be found anywhere. This would prove that I was the victim. Right?
The next day I was brought to court for the arraignment. I tried to tell the lawyer that was supposed to represent me that I was the victim and could she fix this NOW! She just said I should talk to the lawyer who will be assigned to the case later.
Why couldn't SHE do something?
I desperately needed help and NOW!
I could not find a friendly and/or a safe face or voice for months after that.
I was alone and abandoned! I desperately prayed every day asking God to help me because God knows I was the victim, and I didn't deserve this.
I felt utter desolation. This was the definition of hell on earth.
For a few weeks in mid-2000, I had been making over $1000 per week. Yes, indeed. I had forgotten to mention that previously in this book. Things were really taking off for me. In June, I had been putting in more than forty hours per week and loving that. I wouldn't want to do that forever, because I wanted to enjoy the life I had with Lynn - before everything happened. There were a couple of weeks where I brought in over $2000.
I had plans. All that collapsed in August and into the first week to ten days of September of 2000. I am not going to offer an itemized list of how I went from being on track to make six figures per year to nothing. The funds that I had were not all for me, of course.
I want to try to comment on the nature of what was stated by the clients who filed grievances with the North Carolina Social Worker Certification and Licensure Board (NCSWCLB). I mentioned that I knew that John Freifeld had composed the entire grievance/complaint letter for the clients. I found out from my lawyer that the board was aware that he composed the entire statement that they made.
Some aspects of this complaint letter were vague and likely a form of projection. He filled their heads with the idea that I had only been interested in meeting with them each week because I found them attractive. It seemed to me based on my experience that he was projecting his own motives toward women onto me.
I do not know exactly what was going on at the home of Jessica, the first client he referred to me when he was still living in Virginia.
I had heard months earlier that she was having "flashbacks" and "panic attacks" and that was why she and her husband needed John to be living there for free. Yes, that was stated at some point. They thought he was helping her. My efforts to point out how they were getting worse and not better with Freifeld's help were not effective enough.
These individuals who met in one of the groups that I had I believed were spending time over at Jessica’s home. I heard that he had a few rooms set up for helping them process or deal with their memories/flashbacks of past trauma. Again, they were well aware, as I explained earlier, that he was not trained to know how to set up anything of this nature.
I had discovered the "conspiracy theories" on the internet following some interactions with two of my clients. I had just done some searches online with various keywords and that led down a rabbit hole.
I remember how I had as an activity for therapy groups that were like scrapbooking. It seemed like an icebreaker or a way to facilitate discussion. I had used this with various clients over time. I'm only mentioning this because I remember a book that I stumbled upon online called "Paperclip Dolls." That made me think of that workshop on dissociative identity disorder (DID) that I organized in early 1999 with Louise Coggins, MSW, LCSW.
Louise had mentioned ritual abuse in more than one context, including at that workshop. And she talked about using scrapbooking with magazines as a creative form of therapy.
I thought I was hearing facts and I did not put "ritual abuse" into a context with "satanic ritual abuse" which was part of the conspiracy theories that were being spread across the internet during this period. My discovery of these "conspiracy theories" was only after I had noticed a bizarre theme coming up in therapy with Jessica and one other client.
Anyway, the book "Paperclip Dolls" was another book that was in that same vein of a person discovering and reconstructing memories of "satanic ritual abuse" and mind control programming. By "programming" I mean something like behavioral psychology techniques where some cue or trigger could elicit a deliberate programmed response. Think of how Pavlov's dogs would salivate in response to a buzzer or a light because it had been paired up with dispensing food for the dogs.
Somehow the author of "Paperclip Dolls" had discovered that she had been abused as a child and she had discovered the memories of this from various images in magazines that caught her attention. These discoveries and the sense that they caught her attention seemed to confirm that her new memories must be true. She came to believe that she must have been part of a government program that involved mind control.
This is what the author of Paperclip Dolls had discovered. I hinted earlier in this book that I had been flipping through that book on a very memorable moment and sexually intimate experience that I had with Lynn back in April of 2000. At the time, I had no idea that I was going to be accused of planting false memories of "satanic ritual abuse."
I wish I could offer more details about how any of my clients had begun to believe that things like this happened to them or why they believed it happened to anyone for that matter. Again, I didn't know what was happening at the home of Jessica, where John Freifeld was living and seeking to help a few of my clients.
I had mentioned that my colleagues - members of the local Society of Clinical Social Workers - suggested that I tell these clients that I could not help them if they were also receiving treatment from Freifeld. For one thing, everything had been happening so fast that I had not had time to implement this policy. I also don't know how he or the clients with whom I spoke about this felt.
I mentioned that I had turned to my family for support when Lynn became ill. Any reasonable person would understand how traumatic or tragic all this would be and why I would need support.
Up until last year, I have maintained a relationship with my parents and my sister. I mentioned earlier that I had not spoken to my brother since shortly after I made a call to child protective services. I had seen him lose his temper and push his daughter Emily up against a wall like she was a rag doll and she had told me when I asked her about some marks, that “your brother did that.”
As I was saying, I had maintained a relationship with my siblings and my parents until recently.
Then it hit me. It seemed so insane that they were not there at all during this period. They had not visited Lynn in the hospital to see how she was doing. Heck, they never even sent a card to me or her. They seemed indifferent to my suffering.
My sister, Carrie Whealton, has never married or been in love. However, it's not reasonable or rational to suggest that she would not understand what it would be like to lose the love of one's life. She has parents and grandparents.
I'm not saying that I am JUST angry that this happened. What I mean, is that there has never been any explanation offered for how or why they could have acted that way. It made me feel like I did not matter at all in their eyes. My success did not matter. My happiness didn't matter.
I cannot spend my time speculating on how or why they made those decisions. I know that I deserve better.
I suppose I could have been upset at Diane for not caring at all that I had nowhere to do, no income now and I was devastated beyond being able to cope with life at all. But my sense of survivor’s guilt kicked in. So, all I felt was shame and worthlessness.
We couldn’t get married for health and insurance reasons, so it had seemed too easy to deconstruct our life. In retrospect, Diane knew we were living as husband and wife. So, I was like a son-in-law.
I had always been welcomed for holidays with Lynn. More than that, Diane bought the home for us. Sure, it was an investment but her decision to sell it when Lynn decided that she didn’t think she would be coming back demonstrated that it was for us and that she knew that I was the one that had made Lynn so happy.
She must have remembered that.
I had nowhere to go now. Lynn took the cats. For a while, I asked to take the cats, but I was feeling sufficiently guilty, and I was on the run soon… without anything that I had known for so long.
I would end up leaving my clients stranded as well without an explanation.
Dear reader, if you have any unanswered questions now, please understand one thing that is key. I was so out of it, so in shock, so unable to process everything, so overwhelmed… I couldn’t figure out anything myself!
I entirely expect readers to have many more questions. When you fully appreciate my state of mind, you will understand why I do not have answers or did not know then… anything.
This might be a good time to make a transition to another section of my book. Where I want and what I did as a bounced around after this, as a ball dropped down some steps, will be described in the next section.
Here’s a poem that I wrote as I reflected upon the horrors of this period, including the inability to handle the trauma of my clients as I had been able to do in the past.
I’d like to think
I’m just like
anyone else -
that we all have limits…
There’s only so much
we can take…
So much -
Pain… Fear… Loss… Trauma.
There’s only so much
any of us can experience
and remain sane
and true to
our ideals, our values,
who we are and
the person we have become.
When the pain,
the fear, the terror,
the trauma
exceeds this limit,
We snap
and for a while
we drift away…
away to someplace
in our mind,
someplace utterly unknown,
unexpected,
outside reality…
maybe we come back
and then maybe we don’t…
It depends on what
might call us back.
You will learn about what was happening… not why. You won’t read about someone with a plan or hopes. First, I have a short chapter that is a letter to someone else who loved Lynn.
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 be delighted 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.
Late in December, something happened. I had moved to kiss her as I was leaving. 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 had not turned away or signaled in any way that she didn’t want me to proceed. So, why was I uncertain? I didn’t have to be shy with Celta. But I didn’t want to use her for my own personal “experience.”
I would play this back in my mind as I drove away. Yes, I wanted to kiss her. Having decided now for sure what I wanted, next time I would kiss her.
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.
As I replayed the 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 got the worst news of my life. A phone call. I was in my room on the second floor of the house owned by my parents. "Celta died last night," I was told.
"How?" I asked as if this wasn't possible or real. I was stunned. I wanted my willpower to make it not real!
"There was a fire... she died from smoke inhalation." It started from an exposed electrical cord on a TV.
My mind registered information about the funeral, its location, and time but I could not find the words to begin to convey any sense of what I was feeling. I had spoken a few times to the man previously. He was friends of the family. Tears were flooding my eyes. I just said, “Okay, I’ll be there but I can’t talk…” my voice breaking. I needed the family to expect me.
I dropped the phone and began to cry so bitterly.
I hurt so much!
I cried so much as I drove the way to the funeral. Just before the funeral, I looked at the closed casket and was overcome. Someone was standing by it and for a brief second, some part of me wanted to open the casket and find out that it wasn't Celta that was inside.
At the funeral, I cried more than everyone else combined. I didn't care how I looked.
It was at the Episcopalian church where I went with Celta and where I would sit down next to Celta's mother and Celta. I was still Christian, meaning I went to church on a regular basis.
Standing outside after the funeral people were talking. I was looking at the closed casket unable to believe this was real. I was still crying. Celta's mother instructed me not to come to the burial. She could tell that I was not going to make it through that event. My state of mind was such that I needed to be told what I should do now.
At the burial the one person who loved Celta most, who felt a visceral sense of grief above and beyond that felt by the others... that one person would be missing. I would not be there. I had followed the directions of Celta's mother and left Athens (Athens Georgia).
I certainly felt betrayed and abandoned by God. However, I did go to grief counseling at the Catholic hospital in Augusta, Georgia. A nun was leading a grief counseling group – spiritual counseling. She was using guided imagery, relaxation techniques, prayer, and biblical references. I met with her a few times and asked for tape recordings of the sessions.
In the group sessions, she spoke about the stages of grief. We were encouraged to bring in things that were mementos of our experience with our loved ones. I listened intently as the others spoke. I was by far the youngest. I had studied the grief process in a psychology class at Georgia Tech. I read some more about this from a “clinical” standpoint. I was keeping reality at a distance.
I was in denial at times and at other times I would be overwhelmed with the idea of not being able to see Celta ever again and I would cry and cry.
So much is strange about this time period. The struggles with my parents were never intentionally instigated by me out of anger for anything. They just seemed uninterested in me and my life, other than to tell me what I ought to do.
I suppose I wanted to share the fact that someone had loved me to explain what had changed. It was surreal that there was such denial that anything had happened or changed. I might be in denial as a symptom of grief but I wanted to celebrate the relationship that I had. Where would I begin?
Maybe I am forcing him out of my mind. Years later his daughter told me that my brother had done something that was potentially abusive. Then I saw him throw her up against a wall like she was a rag doll. I asked Child Protective Services to look into the matter.
I expected them to be discreet and assumed they would not reveal who called. I wasn’t trying to hurt him and wondered if anything would come of the matter.
My brother found out and never spoke to me again.
I heard later from my father that they were afraid I would call Child Protective Services again!
I was asked by the agency that looked into the matter to write a piece about the cycle of abuse.
That was in 2002.
It’s bizarre how things happen. He was the only one in the family who got aggressive in response to our parents' physical abuse or threats of violence, but they chose to invite him and his wife to visit on holidays and disinvite me ever since. Our family is so dysfunctional! I have an adult niece who doesn’t know anything about me.
Anyway, getting back to 1991, to cope with the tragic loss, I started drinking. A lot.
I was put on a tricyclic anti-depressant by a psychiatrist. I had developed panic attacks as well. The anti-depressant had the effect of creating a sense of positive feelings even with my mother standing there one morning ironing something for work with my father getting ready too. Those fake feelings were only transitory. It is reminiscent of the song by REM titled "It's the end of the world as we know it."... and I feel fine. I guess I felt “high.”
The days flowed around me like a mystical experience in which I flowed in and out of my body. I wasn't fully alive or so it seemed... betrayed even by God.
It was all a blur. My entire existence.
Somehow, I did get a job finally that could have made my parents satisfied. Everything was always about them. They never asked about anything that was happening to me. So, they never inquired about why I was going for grief counseling because they had no knowledge of this.
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. 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 training related to my work. 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 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 shimmering 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.
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 her name sounded ethnic and my mother asked about that guessing that she might be Italian. I said, "no, she's black.”
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 above.
This was extremely passionate. She brought her kid and left him in the car and parked near the Student Center - 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 it a meaningful experience.
Then later there was the fact that she said in December that she loved me but wasn’t in love with me. I had only known her for one year, from January through December 31 or 1990. I do know that countless times she had that look like someone in love when she looked in my eyes. I was fairly certain she was trying to protect me from being hurt. But I never got a chance to ask her.
And that kiss? I had stopped, not her. It was my first time kissing anyone and I should have been aware that her lips were so small that if I didn’t feel anything at first I should wait or stay there. I was always comfortable with Celta. She had never rejected any of my touches.
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.
Some people with Borderline Personality Disorder or trauma disorders will cut their own skin with razors or something sharp just to feel something. The date was something like that.
There wasn't a second date. I had expressed my concerns about pre-marital sex. We weren't even in a committed relationship. I drove to Atlanta to meet her for a second date, but she never showed. I was frustrated out of embarrassment. Then 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.
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.
I would show up on a regular basis for poetry readings 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.
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 this matter. 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.
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.
There is a positive aspect of this time period of 1990 to 1992 that I did not mention. My parents had friends that had adopted a young girl who was about 12. I have always been great with kids. I love kids and enjoy the chance to be like a big brother.
I was so impressed that she wasn't shy at all when I first met her. I went to visit with my parents, and they invited us to come swim. It was either 1990 or 1991 when I met her. I was like a big brother and I had a great time doing so many things with her.
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 had been 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 process.
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 wanted to share that with others. I had been sharing that with Martin Kirby my poetry mentor but now I wanted to share this with others. It was so important and meaningful!