lost love

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

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

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

A New Chapter Begins

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

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

The Poetry Reading That Changed Everything

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finding My Comfort Zone

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

Building a New Future

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

A New Beginning, A New Love

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

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

Conclusion: Embracing Change and Growth

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

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

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

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

Working as a Software Engineer/Programmer

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

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

No matter what I actually wanted.

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah, I moved through time like a robot.

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

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

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

A Meaningless Connection with a Lady

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Poetry as an outlet...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This was life-altering.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was as if it had happened already, almost.

It would never happen.

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

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

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

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

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

The pain was unbearable!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was all a blur. My entire existence.

Talk therapy had never helped.

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

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

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

But in late 2018, something shifted.

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

That’s how I found Andrea Treimel.

A Different Kind of Therapy

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

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

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

Andrea barely spoke at all.

Instead, she guided me into memory.

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

Into the Core Wounds

There were so many memories that haunted me.

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

The arrest.
The handcuffs.

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

The betrayal.

The loss of my career.

The silence of jail.

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

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

I left for work, crying as I walked away.

I told Andrea, “I abandoned her.”

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

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

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

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

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

Staring into nothing… in the void.

Feeling like the world had ended.

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

Reclaiming My Anger

I had always feared my own anger.

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

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

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

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

Not rage, but grief with force behind it.

EMDR let me feel it without becoming it.

Andrea watched silently, with compassion.

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

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

The Interrogation

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

I described it to Andrea.

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

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

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

Then I was in the interrogation room.

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

His words landed like a punch.

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

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

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

They had already decided who I was.

And I couldn’t fight back.

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

A man being stripped of his dignity.

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

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

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

In the Shadows

Later sessions blurred into each other.

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

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

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

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

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

Not hurting me, just standing there—watching.

It was its own kind of violation.

The Silence of Jail

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

No one even looked me in the eyes.

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

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

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

I Survived

Andrea guided me through all of it.

Session after session.

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

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

I learned that I was still here.

I hadn’t been erased.

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

What Healing Can—and Can’t—Do

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

The shame still lived in me.

It always had.

Yes, I was the victim.

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

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

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

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

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

EMDR helped me process what had been locked away.

It gave me back parts of myself.

But there were things even healing couldn’t change.

The Web Development business wasn’t paying much but I was working quite often at Measurement Inc. We were hired as readers. All that was required was at least a 4 year degree. It seemed like this was attracting a large number of people. I doubt that many of them were homeless or had been homeless. Some were at retirment age. It seemed like the place to work for anyone who had nowhere else to go. No clear career tragectory.

I saw Bob there. He was the guy who showed up at my home and who was living out of his van. He was quite a character. Highly religious and spiritual. He was someone who appeared completely rational and normal but if you spent any time talking to him, you heard about bizarre spiritual beliefs that even people with schizophrenia did not articulate in such a clear and coherent manner.

That being said, his low soft spoken well articulate voice would sooth me in a hypnotic and peaceful way when I had the opportunity to just listen.

Tragically, the $30,000 had dwindled away as if it was not meant to last. I had not even purchased a car.

With every cent I'd scraped together from work, I made my way back to Wilmington, driven by a longing that gnawed at me day and night. I took the bus. Initially, I got rooms for a night on the weekend at some of the lower cost motels in town. I’d rent a bike and go to Wrightsville Beach.

The beaches called to me, whispering promises of the belonging I'd known once and still craved so desperately, a sanctuary amidst the simmering trauma, dispair and hopelessness of my existence.

In Wilmington, I reunited with Jean Jones and Thomas Childs—two long-time friends from the life I once knew… a life I expected to continue forever with Lynn.

Jean and I were good friends again and in a new way. Lynn and I used to hang out with Jean occasionally. He only remembered the fights that Lynn and I seemed to have all the time. He failed to see the nearly perfect love that we knew. The reality of that part of my life is part of a different story.

Jean was given a normal life like the one I had always expected. Like most people, no one had ever pointed a finger at him and falsely accused him of a violent crime. Ironically, when he spoke about having guns to protect his family, I thought about how with my ultra-pacifist leanings had violently attacked in my own home and then labeled a criminal who couldn’t be trusted. Jean wasn’t always available when I wanted to come to Wilmington and re-connect with people from the poetry scene. So, he helped me to connect with another younger poet named Ryan. He had a couch where I could stay when I wanted to visit the area.

I went with Jean to the aquarium at Fort Pierce, south of Wilmington with his two children. He met me for meals here and there.

There were a few other regulars to the poetry scene that I befriended. I saw David Capps again. He was cool in every way but there was something inscrutible about him that made it hard for me to truly connect with him. I had known him since I first moved to Wilmington back in 1992 but not like I knew Jean, or Jeff and definitely not like I knew Thomas.

Thomas, in particular, felt like a lifeline, as if the years between us had evaporated. Between meeting Thomas down in Wilmington, we spent hours on the phone, our conversations blazing with the intensity of a friendship rekindled, leaving me warmed for the first time in years by the fierce glow of connection.

I ran across Lynn in mid-September, 2008 with the summer still a part of life in Wilmington. She had once been a part of my life that I never imagined losing. I could even argue with her and it never seemed like it would impact the lasting nature of our relationship. With Lynn right there in the same room, I said nothing. Some part of me couldn’t speak even to Lynn. This was unimaginable. I could have spoken to Lynn about anything.

Yet, I froze up, while standing in the same room with her just a few feet apart. Alone in that room as if someone had hoped or arranged for me to take this opportunity to tell her all my feelings. She had known I was going to be there. I should have told her that for what it was worth, I was still in love with her. I guess I couldn’t imagine being rejected by Lynn of all people in the world.

It was my new go-to coping strategy. Silence. In retrospect it was reminiscence of me standing in front of the judge a couple of years earlier in 2006. I had been silent and unable to speak, to protest the way I had been treated by my lawyer.

It wasn’t that I willingly kept silent when standing before the judge in 2006; it was more that I couldn't muster the courage to speak out. But why was silence my default?

Who would have imagined that it wasn't until I began writing this book that I'd uncover a disturbing parallel: the same gripping fear that silenced me from confessing my love to the person who mattered most in my life was the very fear that suffocated my voice two years earlier in the courtroom, preventing me from declaring my objection to the plea deal... from proclaiming that I was the victim?

That is where the parallel somewhat falls apart. While I had lost the earned secure attachment that I once had with Lynn, suddenly and abruptly, I wasn’t concerned about or wearing the shame of a false conviction around Lynn.

The Bigger Picture Here

The most amazing thing about returning to Wilmington was the peace and serenity that came with this and how that materialized. The disability checks and the occasional work with Measurement, Inc. allowed me to come to what was once home to me. I left behind the shame that came with being falsely accused and convicted.

I never had a enough money to buy a car. Not yet. My credit was not very good as one might imagine considering that I had been homeless and my life had been so chaotic.

Yet something amazing was happening down in Wilmington. It didn’t offer me the home I once knew. There are so many things that had happened. There is an entire story that could be written about aspects of my life that had changed beyond the facts discussed in this book on injustice.

What was significant was the sense that I didn’t have to worry about what others would think about me. I told my two best friends down there, Jean and Thomas. We talked a bit about it but I never felt uncomfortable. I never felt the embarrassment that came from wondering if the person hearing my story would doubt my innocence.

I made new friends down there and strengthened other relationships with people from the poetry scene. I might have been shy about the criminal matter but in many ways, while I was down here, in this scene or setting, it seemed irrelevent. This is amazing since I was just getting off supervised probation from the lies told by Ana. Yet, somehow, I managed to place it in a sealed container that wasn’t opened in the Wilmington area.

Speaking of friends and connections, tragically, Dusty had passed away. As the emcee at the poetry readings at the Coastline Convention Center going back to 1992 when I first came to Wilmington, Dusty was a warm motherly type that I could have used at this time in my life.

Indeed, a mother was what any injured person needs. Whether revealed in words or actions, Dusty had once filled that role of a mother figure that I never had. There had been Celta and Lynn who had made me feel special. All that was gone and I had no one who was a source of support during the horrifying moments, that turned into days, weeks, months and years.

The comfort of Lynn’s arms or Celta’s arms existed only as tearful memories of something amazing that was gone. I didn’t have a mother figure or a source of deep love that I had once had. I had to face the lies of Ana and the impact of that injustice all alone. Despite the losses and pain, I might have taken for granted the peace and comfort of not having to worry about what others might think about me. Somehow returning to people who had known me was profoundly peace in a way that I failed to appreciate.

I could have used that attitude to help me cope with the challenges I was facing in every aspect of my other life when I was not down in Wilmington. I was even able to make new friends down there wrapped in the warmth of everything this place was offering me in some way that seemed like magic. I was able to make new friends. There was Ryan who I mentioned above. He let me stay with him every time I visited. I also made friends with Ana Ribeiro from the poetry scene down in Wilmington.

So much was missing and could not be recovered from the injustice and what it did to me. Yet, the peace of being in this place around people who had come to know me… there was something magical about this. Wilmington was a haven and refuge. I had once been forced to leave the area due to the first injustice I experienced with John F. He had made sure I couldn’t work down there and that had sent me Durham back in 2001.

Now I was trying to anchor in positive experiences. This is a term from my training in hypnosis and Neuro-Linguistic Programming. From a cognitive behavioral aspect, I could see how certain beliefs about what people would think about me if they found out about the accusations and conviction. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy encourages us to challenge our thoughts and to try to find deeper core beliefs that create very negative feelings - anxiety, trauma responses, depression.

I had resurrected the poetry magazine that Lynn and I started in 1995. Jean became my new co-editor. We had an event down in Wilmington at a new location for the poets in the area - a wine and coffee bar.

I found an outlet in my writing. I wrote a book of poems that was co-authored with Scott Urban who wrote dark, horror poems. I alluded to this book in my earlier discussion of Amanda. In this collaboration, with Scott Urban, I created a collection entitled “Puncture Wounds.” This drew upon the myth of vampires as soulless and without a conscience. Scott’s poems were not based on actual experiences. I was casting the actual villains that I met in my life, including but not limited to John F., Ana (not my new friend Ana but the perpetrator described in this book). I had minimal contact with other sociopaths and psychopaths and was in fact trying to learn about and understand the thinking of these people - these monsters.

I was influenced in part by the series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” which was created by Josh Whedon. I believe he was an atheist but he still found the symbolism valuable as a literary form. In that series a vampire lacked a soul which meant they lacked a conscience and preyed upon others. Writing was a form of therapy and catharsis. As a professional in the field, I have learned that catharsis might not create healing in itself. However, I am unsure if it doesn’t actually help us deal with emotions and the horrors of life.

Many of these characters depicted in my poems were responsible for my legal problems and my inability to get justice.

Like Josh Whedon, I was becoming an atheist and giving up my “faith.” Yet, I am getting ahead of my story. I was still a Christian during this time period when I was visiting Wilmington up to at least 2010 and for a while after that.

Under normal circumstances, I might have been very concerned that I would reveal a dark side of myself with this publication. I had squelched any expression of what might appear to be a dark side to myself or a delight and fascination for evil or monsters. I was afraid that might make me appear capable of harming someone as Ana had alleged. I was also uncomfortable even being able to express justiable anger and righteous indignation. Again, this was related to the overarching concern in life that no one sees me as capable of violence.

I suppose the visits to Wilmington and being around people who knew me or were getting to know me gave me a new perspective and lowered my inhibitions - I was temporarily, during those excursions to Wilmington, inside a safer mindset. Being seen and accepted, having a connection can certainly make a big difference when dealing with profoundly traumatic events.

Otherwise, in other situations away from that protective bubble of comfort that I felt when I was visiting Wilmington, a painful scarlet letter had been branded into my psyche.

And I didn’t want anyone to see me in that way. I didn’t want to re-experience the taunting and humiliation that had occured when I was stripped down and put inside a padded suicide prevention outfit for the infamous mug shot taken in the early morning hours of October 2, 2004, after the detectives interrogated me, the victim who had been brutally assaulted hours earlier when the day was still October 1st.

Just for a while, and easily forgotten in time, I had an escape.

This confidence did in part carry over into my life overall. It wasn’t entirely limited to my life in Wilmington.

I was able to find an intimate relationship with a woman again. I got married in Ankara, Turkey to Elnaz Rezaei Ghalechi or Elee, as I call her.  

Elee had been submitting poetry to the poetry magazine that I was publishing with Jean Arthur Jones called Word Salad Poetry Magazine. I, at one point, asked her "would you ever marry someone like me?"  

I had thought she was very beautiful. We began talking on the phone and chatting with video chat across distances that separate us. She was in Iran.  

It would not be honorable for her to come to America without a commitment toward marriage first.  

It might seem like a strange way to get married for Americans. We date people and get engaged, then have a period of engagement, and then get married. Elee and I only knew each other virtually when we made the decision to meet in Ankara and to get married.  

Iran has an embassy in Turkey. I had to tell them that I was going to be a Muslim for Iran to allow the marriage to be recognized. That just meant that I had to say something.  

Ankara was very nice. The Mosque there is very beautiful. The food was amazing. The people could tell that I was an American. I walked outside the hotel and they would speak to me in English about the food that they wanted me to try in their restaurants.  

Then we had to wait almost two years for her to get a visa to come to America to live. She even went back to finish her education in medicine. Elee had been training to be a doctor. She had completed that training.  

I hope Elee can help me to reach my goals again, and to help others who will benefit from my services in the human services and psychiatric field.  

Elee and I got separated in 2018. We weren’t communicating well. We both thought the other one didn’t want to listen to them. We fought all the time. I kept trying to get her to go for counseling or work on the problems in our relationship. I was afraid to lose her and wanted to work on our relationship. She seemed uninterested.

We just are not meant to be married.

So, we are in the process of getting divorced. 

We are friends though. So, it's complicated. She is there for me when I need her. She paid for me to get into Epcot Center this past December of 2020. It was such a special and memorable event. We also went to Daytona Beach and then to Cocoa Beach. 

Getting into Epcot center is so expensive now. It costs $125 per person! Elee is not rich at all. We had to pay another $25 to park there. Then she paid for food that day. When you buy food inside the park, it is very expensive. It's like $5 for a small candy bar. The most affordable place we could find for lunch cost about $40.  

The cost of renting the car for five days with insurance and coverage for the tolls was almost $200. Yes, I paid for some of this but it would not have been possible for the day at Epcot had Elee not paid for that day. She also took me out for a crab or lobster dinner overlooking the beach at Cocoa Beach.

Dear reader: This book is a true story of the life I have known. I am writing to you to share this story in the hopes that we can make sense of things. I welcome your response and feedback on the story you have read.  

How do we make sense of suffering like this? Or injustice? 

I would wonder every year since that plea deal that had been threatened into taking, how I could still get justice. I haven’t stopped wanting that. Ana and Jimmy should pay for what they did to me. And no amount would be enough!

I keep wondering, how can I prove my innocence and Ana’s guilt (or Ana and Jimmy’s guilt? Clearly, they had a well-contrived plan. 

If you are wondering why, I would even consider a plea deal, consider the fact when I was sitting covered in blood, knowing that my attacker didn’t have a scratch on her, that didn’t matter at all!

The sense that I could not get justice or do anything made me become suicidal in December of 2019. 

My memories of the good times with Elee are complicated by the fact that we separated the way we did in 2018. 

Anyway, I was told by a law firm that no lawyer or attorney could possibly help me. They said there were no options. I cannot overturn the conviction, appeal it. I cannot get it expunged. I cannot sue to make the case in a different court.

Since everything that makes life meaningful and which brings joy to me is social in nature and is defined by connections and relationships, it seemed like no hope existed for me ever. This would follow me forever. 

You know how I like kids. Who would let a guy adopt children if he has been convicted of a violent crime?

Even volunteer opportunities seemed out of reach. That’s what I was thinking. 

I am shy so I fear rejection and now with lies out there, I have reasons for my fears of rejection. I had tried to go on a date once and it seemed like she found out something about me online and didn’t show up.

I suppose getting this book out there and telling the world who I really am is my way of changing things. 

It’s ironic, John Freifeld died and that is why I cannot sue him for what he put up on the web about me. The lies. 

Those lies show up in a Google search. 

I felt things were hopeless for me in every avenue and area of my life – everything that makes life meaningful and happy for me. 

So, that’s why I started taking those pills and drinking back in mid-December of 2019. I wanted to end my existence. 

Then I met some people and realized that there are warm, caring, and compassionate people in the world with empathy. People I met in the hospital, other patients.

The year 2020 was one of the best in many years for me, despite a pandemic.

So, relationships, friendships, and more will connect me with life.

I will continue to pursue getting my clinical license in social work again. I will continue to pursue employment in the field. Because I learned that when people do get to know me, they know my character, my goodness, my compassion, and my empathy toward others.

What can you do? Protest injustice. Stand up for the weak and oppressed!  Do not accept the status quo when it is wrong. Do not accept ideas like "that's just the way it is." It doesn't have to be that way. Think about how things might be very hurtful to someone. Offer that person comfort, compassion, and empathy. Listen with understanding. Offer a shoulder to cry upon.

I was considered by the government to be disabled during the period that included 2004-2006. So, I should not have been able to enter into a plea deal. 

Help me fight to get justice. 

I have so much to offer the world as you can imagine by now. 

So, my request is not just about me but the people whose lives I will touch in such positive ways.

Justice for me is doing those things that I used to do. And I will continue to advocate for the vulnerable. You can do that too.  

Comfort the sick and injured. Fight for justice. Never accept injustice. Never believe the lies that "nothing can be done" or "that's just the way it is." Demand change!  

Listen, listen, listen with a warm and compassionate heart. Find out how you can help. What does the person need? Just ask and then listen. Be a change agent.  

If a person is hungry, give them food. If a person lacks sufficient clothing, help them with clothing. House the homeless. If you see injustice, protest, speak up, and be the change so that justice can triumph over injustice.    

Again, I must repeat the words of Edmund Burke who said, "the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing!" How true.  

If you cannot fix the problems a person is facing, after you listen to that person, go speak to others in society. They need to hear about what happened or what is happening. Society needs to know. The world needs to know. That's how we show love.

This book should inspire action! 

Yes, for me but not just for me!

For me, spread this story to the world. Let's see what we can do together. Let's fix these problems that I have described. I don't know what the solutions will look like. I don't mean to be rude, but the solutions will not be abstract ideas or matters of faith. 

Just as a hungry person needs food, a person who has experienced injustice needs justice! 

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

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

 I couldn't say anything when she was right next to me. I’ll get to that scene below.

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

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

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

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

 I am so sorry!

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

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

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

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

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

It was in late 2009.

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

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

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

I heard Lynn would be there.

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

What would I say?

I didn't feel the need to explain what had happened to me regarding the false accusations and conviction. I knew that she would not have wondered about that. She knew the kind of person I was.

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

I had gotten so close to saying something on another occasion.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Holding the poem in my hand I begin to read.

Fugue State:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I want to fall down on my knees
and cry… cry out to someone, 
“Please help me!”

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

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

I can’t remember the feedback that I got. 

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

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

“Okay, I’m heading back there, I’ll see you in a little while,” I said.

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

I suppose that my last words to Lynn were "Fugue State." My life had been a trance since I had to go on living without her being a part of me and me being a part of her.

I wasn't even mentioned in her obituary.

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

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

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

Diane was Lynn’s mother. In my healing, I have come to forgive myself for my mistakes and to love myself. To develop a sense of self-compassion. It was devastating to discover that I was not mentioned in Lynn’s obituary. We will get to my reflections upon that in a moment.

Dear Diane:

What I am about to write is not about me or for me. I need to honor Lynn and her legacy … to talk to the world about her value. I’m not writing this letter for personal reasons. 

I wanted to announce a book that I wrote that honors Lynn and what she offered the world. This letter is a chapter from that book. It’s up to you if you want to read the book. It’s my autobiography but Lynn features prominently in the book. I titled it “Memoirs of a Healer/Clinical Social Worker – Autobiography of Bruce Whealton.” It can be found online at https://brucewhealton.com/autobiography

I spend a large portion of the book trying to make sense of what happened in 2000 to me. At some point during this period, I heard that you thought I needed to have learned more about emotional intelligence. That my impulses were not in check. 

I couldn’t forgive myself for not being there for Lynn when she needed me in 2000 when she got sick. I never reached out like this because I imagined I didn’t deserve any compassion or understanding. I understood what I would feel about anyone who caused Lynn any pain.

So, I get it. Let me repeat it. I know how I would feel toward anyone who caused Lynn any pain! 

In Lynn’s obituary, I read nothing that comes close to conveying just how profoundly amazing she was and how she made the world a better place!

We might think, “well, that’s okay, Lynn didn’t have anything to prove, or she wasn’t looking for recognition in her actions.” 

I know differently – at least when she was with me. She loved that I had been willing to declare my love loud and clear for anyone who would listen. I give examples of his in this book. 

Take, for example, a time when I got up in front of a group of people at the poetry reading at the Coastline Convention Center and read a new poem – a love poem – that everyone knew was about Lynn and dedicated to Lynn. She had been doodling because she thought I was going to read only poems she already heard. She felt so embarrassed when she realized what she missed.

After that, she would read that poem of mine, dedicated to her, about my love for her, whenever it was her turn to share at some poetry reading, and perhaps she didn’t have something to read of her own. 

As I was saying, this letter is part of a chapter in a book that does just that. It’s my autobiography. 

Diane, you are right, I was acting crazy in 2000. I know I was supposed to be there for Lynn. But when it came to matters of the heart, my personal life, my choice of Lynn, I was driven by my passions. 

And it seems like we are dishonoring Lynn by not acknowledging or accepting her judgment as you once did! 

Lynn wanted someone crazy in love with her! Do not EVER doubt that I was not totally and completely in love with Lynn. That is something that can be known to be true above all else!

There are few things in life that I know or believe for certain. My love for Lynn is one of those things that I know with absolute certainty. 

There might be many things that one might say about these things, but no one can say that I stopped loving Lynn ever or that I wasn’t still totally and completely in love with Lynn even during the 2000s!

During that next decade, I was still in love with Lynn. I would break down in tears ten years after we went on a different path.

I have no idea what Lynn was going through. I was afraid that reaching out to her directly would cause her pain by reminding her of the love we once had that had not lasted. I have no idea if that was the right choice.

I used to ask people who I met on Facebook. They were nice and I was only giving them her phone number which was available to the public. They were really moved by the love I had conveyed and my desperation. I heard a few of them called her but we didn’t get anywhere. 

I didn’t know what to do. 

I made a new friend who was a writer named Ryan Miller who was introduced to me by Jean Jones – a mutual friend of Lynn and mine. I would stay with him when I visited Wilmington and I would share stories about my life with Lynn, revisiting places where we had gone.

To this day, I do not have a full understanding of what was going on with me during a period in 2000 – I think it was August. I have tried with the guidance and counseling of others to find those answers. 

It wasn’t like I was always that same person that let down Lynn when she needed me and did such crazy things. To believe that would be to dishonor Lynn and her judgment. Winning, earning, deserving the love of Lynn was not something I took for granted. For all those years, I would think about how lucky I was and how much I needed to continue to deserve Lynn’s love. 

I couldn’t believe when I saw her in mid-1992 that she didn’t already have someone in her life. 

Then when I gave her an engagement ring, I saw tears of joy and there has been a no more joyful moment in my life – that I could make her that happy! We had picked out the ring together and I thought she knew I was coming with the ring that day. I was taken by surprise when I saw the happiness that I brought to her. I’ll never forget that. 

What I am saying is that I could not possibly have been in my right mind back in 2000 when she decided and told me that she wasn’t coming back home. I wasn’t myself.

I had so many draft letters that I consulted with therapists upon that I meant to send to Lynn. 

Earning her love was the single greatest accomplishment in my life. To lose that… to hear that she might not or isn’t coming back home… I’m speechless. 

Lynn saw something was happening to me. She said she wished I had kept in touch with our friends because she couldn’t provide the support I needed. 

There was no closure. Lynn didn’t say “I need you to get help before we can go on together because you are acting crazy.” 

I came to feel worthless and undeserving of her after what happened. I also had no idea what she was feeling or wanting later. I certainly didn’t want to cause her any more pain. The way I was in 2000 at a certain point during that year, was completely different than the way I had been. 

Sometime in 2009, I went to a poetry workshop that Lynn attended as well. I was in the same room with Lynn, she was right next to me. My heart was racing. I was so nervous and confused. I couldn’t form any words. It almost seemed like someone had created this opportunity… but I wasn’t able to realize if that was true or not. 

The poem I read was called “Fugue State.” I suppose I had been lost and confused, in fog, without Lynn. 

Then when it came around to her to comment, she said “I pass.” I had already been shaking and nearly hyperventilating. Within moments I got up and went out into the night walking.

I did not know I would go crazy when Lynn got really sick, and I feared losing her. It doesn’t mean I loved her less than you did. 

There was a moment when I just shut down while you wanted me to pack up things from the house as you were selling it. I wasn’t trying to be difficult nor was I acting out. I have studied the Polyvagal Theory recently and it seems that what happened was that I had reverted to the primitive brain’s method of coping by shutting down. Drawing inward and away from the higher brain functions that are typical of social animals.

Something inside of me died during that time period.

So, I suppose you shouldn’t have been calling my mother when I shut down and you didn’t know what to do.

My mother’s abuse and emotional neglect left me vulnerable in a way that I had not expected. I had been in therapy for so long with so many therapists, trying to be sure I worked on all my issues. If any of them got a hint that there was something more to work on, they would have told me. 

Lynn would have noticed too. Trust her judgment. You did from the day Lynn and I started seeing each other. 

Lynn wasn’t shy about telling me what was not acceptable! About where I might want to improve or what I needed to work on.

Crazy in love is just that. I felt like I was going crazy at the thought that I would not have Lynn!

Lynn wanted that or she would not have stayed with me as long as she did.

I think everyone should know that if Lynn truly doubted that I was in love with her more than anyone or anything else, she would NOT stay with me. With my book, they will know this.

That was real. 

Year after year, I lived as your son-in-law. 

Lynn wanted someone who came and apologized right away when I said something hurtful. Someone who didn’t let us stay angry at each other for long.

I would apologize profusely and demonstrate how sad I was to have upset Lynn. She saw that and knew that. I always felt that I could not take for granted having Lynn and that she could and would leave me if I was disrespectful toward her or if I wasn’t making her happy…

If she doubted that I was in love with her, I believed she would leave me. 

I never found an instruction book with answers to what one should do if anything like this happens or if one finds oneself in the situation in which I found myself beginning at some point in 2000. 

Even now I understand my choice of words might sound odd because I am talking about things happening to me instead of my actions or inaction. I often felt like I couldn’t find self-compassion regarding these matters because I didn’t have a disease that was threatening my life. However, I had been overwhelmed beyond my capacity to cope. If anyone saw that coming, I would have welcomed their counsel and acted upon it. 

Regarding the situation of what happened with Lynn and me.

There was no formal discussion between Lynn and me about going our separate ways. I had been visiting her at her mother's. Then she said she might not be coming back. 

Just as so much that was good about our relationship didn’t need to be said, we knew it before it was said, so had Lynn slipped out of my life. All I knew was that she had to focus on her health and that she couldn’t help me – it was too stressful for her. 

Did that mean she lost her love? I never let myself contemplate that. She had a strong survivalist instinct. I find some slight comfort in knowing that her desire for my happiness and success was part of the reason why what was happening to me hurt her and overwhelmed her.

Instead, I became aimless and without a sense of what to do to get Lynn back. 

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.  

Family Connections

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!

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.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

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.