It was April 15, 2000. I had a few books stacked beside the bed—reading material that reflected the many states of mind I moved through in a week: psychodynamic theory, ego state therapy, even a book written by a woman with dissociative identities using collages and magazine cutouts to represent the parts of herself.

I had been reflecting on all of it—how we carry different selves inside us, how trauma and healing play out over time—when Lynn appeared at the doorway.

She had that mischievous smile I loved.

“I want sex,” she said, straightforward as ever.

My heart lifted. “Me too.”

We undressed quickly, comfortably. Familiar, yet new each time. The kind of comfort and chemistry that only deep love can produce. When she moved toward the bed, her gaze locked with mine, I felt the same awe I always did. Like seeing her again for the first time.

She climbed on top of me, our lips finding each other fast, hungry. Her body pressed close, arms wrapped tightly around me, the space between us seeming to vanish.

“I feel like I can’t get close enough,” she breathed, her mouth pressing into mine like she was trying to merge with me—hungry, urgent, needing more than just touch.

“I know,” I said, pulling her even closer.

She shifted, her breath catching as our bodies moved together. Then, gently but firmly, she paused.

“You’re too close, sweetie,” she said with a soft sigh, her meaning unspoken but understood.

We had talked about it before—her health, the impossibility of pregnancy due to her condition. It was the one boundary we couldn’t cross, no matter how much we wanted to become one in every way.

But still, we held each other. Moved together. Loved each other as fully as two people can.

The intensity built. She clung to me, her body not arching but wrapping itself around mine—like she was trying to become part of me. Our mouths met again and again, hungry, urgent, like we could dissolve into each other if we just held tight enough.

And then—suddenly—I let go.

She felt it. Paused. Still. A quiet smile crossing her face.

There was silence, the kind that only happens when two people have given something wordless to each other.

She whispered, “We should shower.”

I caught my breath. “But you…”

She looked at me, her eyes soft. “I'm happy,” she said. “It’s okay.” 

I was confused a bit and wanted more for her.

This was about connection. About wanting and being wanted. About love so deep that it didn’t need to be measured. It amazed me that this kind of passion was still happening nearly every day - like we were newlyweds. Yet, we were years into the life as husband and wife. It didn’t feel routine. It felt alive. Urgent. Sacred.

Afterward, she went to start the shower while I stayed in bed, a wave of serenity washing over me.

We were in love—because she was in love with me. Because I was in love with her. Because we had become, in so many ways, one.

“I love you,” she said as we stepped into the water together.

“I love you so much,” I replied, heart full.

Then I laughed softly.

“What?” she asked.

“I was just thinking of that song by The Moody Blues—the way the singer repeats those lines like he’s overcome, like he just can’t hold it in.”

I spoke the words that the singer in the song sang:

'Cause I love you,
yes, I love you,
oh, how I love you,
oh, how I love you…'

“That’s how I feel,” I told her. “I want to tell the whole world that I love Lynn.”

She smiled, the way she always did when she knew I meant every word.

And I did. I would have shouted it from rooftops. Not just after making love, but anytime. Every day.

That night, as I lay beside her, I started thinking about her dreams. About how much I wanted her happiness. She had talked about getting her Master of Fine Arts one day. Maybe I could help with that. Maybe I could buy her a kiln so she could fire her pottery at home. Maybe, with this practice I was building, I could give her more than just love. I could give her the things that filled her dreams.

I was in love. Not just based on the passion we shared but the peace and serenity that matched our connection together.

When Diane offered to buy us a house, everything changed. Not just practically—emotionally, spiritually. The moment she said it, without hesitation, it felt like the world had finally caught up to what we already knew: Lynn and I were a family.

Diane saw who we were to each other, and she honored it. With love. With trust. With a profound and silent blessing.

Diane purchased a home in Wilmington, and we would pay her rent—$200 a month, split between us. She helped us furnish it, decorate it, make it ours. She bought the bed, helped us arrange the bedroom, and never once suggested we live as anything less than husband and wife.

This wasn’t something Lynn and I had to tiptoe around. Diane understood. She didn’t need us to explain. Her presence in our home wasn’t a threat to our privacy—it was a quiet affirmation. There were no awkward conversations, no veiled comments. When we stood with her in the bedroom we’d share, picking out furniture or planning the layout of the space, there was a sacred simplicity in it: this is your home, and you belong to each other.

And with that, the final traces of my old religious fears—the ones that had once whispered about sin and shame—finally fell silent.

We weren’t sneaking around or playing house. We were fully living it. As engaged partners. As soulmates. As husband and wife in every way that mattered.

Our intimacy deepened. Slowly. Tenderly. Respectfully. Prior to this, even when Lynn stayed the night, we’d stopped short of what most would call “sex.” But now, in this home we shared, there were no barriers. No more holding back. When Lynn undressed in front of me, it was not bold—it was natural. It was an offering of trust and closeness. A language of love without words.

She wanted to be close. And so did I.

There’s a sacredness to that kind of vulnerability. The kind where nothing is hidden—where desire is not a demand, but a shared yearning. Lynn didn’t wait for me to initiate intimacy. She didn’t assume that role.

Our relationship didn’t work that way. We discovered each other. We listened to each other’s bodies. We made space for uncertainty and gave it time to become comfort.

And always, we talked.

It wasn’t just about passion. It was about care. I asked often if I was hurting her—not out of fear, but out of love. Her answers were clear, direct, and sometimes breathless: “Don’t stop.”

That was Lynn. Direct. Unapologetic. Full of life.

We also navigated practical realities—like the fact that she couldn’t get pregnant. Cystic Fibrosis made that too dangerous. But Diane didn’t need reassurance from me; she trusted Lynn. When I once asked Lynn what her mom thought about our sex life, she just smiled and said, “She just wants to make sure I don’t get pregnant.”

That was enough. It spoke volumes.

Our home became a place of laughter, of routines, of warmth. We adopted two cats—Tip and Boo. Diane installed a small swinging door so they could get to the garage. We had a treadmill and free weights in the garage, which became my mini gym. In the back room, we set up a shared workspace with a computer and bookshelves we built and stained ourselves.

The bedroom had a small TV where we’d fall asleep watching Star Trek. Lynn had a nebulizer and her medication equipment nearby. We made each other meals. Took turns cooking and cleaning. We didn’t have chore charts or rigid rules—we just communicated, shared, and adapted.

There was nothing performative about our life together. It was ordinary in the most extraordinary ways.

Sometimes I would lay my head in her lap, and she’d caress my forehead. We wouldn’t say much. We didn’t need to.

It was serenity and passion coexisting. She could arouse me with a glance or soothe me into sleep with a touch.

Our intimacy never became routine. It always felt like discovery. Like poetry we were writing together, one shared breath at a time.

Even now, it’s hard to describe what that felt like. We were never out of sync. Never indifferent. If one of us smiled and the other saw it, we responded. Always. No deflection. No distance.

That, to me, is the rarest kind of love.

We didn’t need a wedding to make it real. And no institution, no system, no doctrine could define what we knew to be true:

We belonged to each other.

Memories and Dreams of Abuse

For all the serenity and safety Lynn gave me, there were still echoes from the past that hadn’t fully faded.

Memories of the abuse I experienced growing up were never far from my mind—sometimes not far enough. Even in that haven we’d created, my body remembered what it had endured. The nightmares still came.

I had been assaulted—verbally, physically, emotionally. And long after I left that home, long after I was safe, my nervous system hadn’t quite caught up. I was still having nightmares, often vivid, always jarring. They found their way into my sleep like intruders.

In those dreams, I was fighting back. I would lash out at my abuser—usually my mother who was the most abusive. Only in dreams would I strike out at my mother. In that strange space between waking and sleep, it felt like my fists were flying. Like I was punching the bed.

What terrified me was the thought that I might hit Lynn. That, in my sleep, I might hurt her. The fear chilled me to the core. I didn’t fully understand it, but I carried it.

I remember one night, shaken, telling her what I’d dreamed—how I was flailing, shouting, punching in the dark. Her response was immediate and calm. “You didn’t hit me,” she said. “You didn’t even move that much. You shouted, and I woke up. That’s all.”

She wasn’t afraid. Not of me. Not of the shadows in my mind.

And that reassurance—that unwavering calm—was everything. She grounded me. She reminded me that I was no longer in that place, that my body could unlearn what it had been taught by fear. She held me and comforted me. I was like a child, not literally in a fetal position but in my mind I collapsed into that position.

These nightmares stayed with me when I was 30. But Lynn stayed with me, too. Not just beside me in bed, but beside me in the deeper sense—in the places where shame and trauma used to live. She didn’t try to fix me. She didn’t flinch. She just stayed.

And in that stillness, in that love, I healed a little more each time.

After we got engaged, life didn’t transform overnight—but the horizon began to shift. Our conversations became more grounded, our hopes more tangible. I had moved out of the place I shared with Donna and Terri, and sometimes Lynn stayed the night with me, or I with her. We were growing closer in every way.

Even then, we weren’t “sleeping together” in the way most people would define it—not yet. That final boundary remained unspoken, uncrossed. But something had changed between us. Lynn, always attuned to me, may have sensed that I was becoming more at ease, less tangled in the old religious shame I’d carried for so long. When she removed her shirt—no longer stopping at just dropping her bra—it felt natural. Not bold, not calculated, just... right. She was honoring the space I’d opened. And in truth, the hesitation had always come from me. My toxic beliefs.

It wasn’t about a lack of desire. We had that, abundantly. It was the religious programming—those lingering voices whispering rules I no longer fully believed. And still, they haunted me.

And yet—our bodies were already speaking the truth. We held each other longer, touched with deeper intention. Every brush of skin seemed to say: this is good. This is safe. This is love. Nothing in me felt confused about those moments. I wasn’t struggling to reconcile them with morality or scripture. Instead, I found myself quietly letting go of what no longer made sense. The unspoken language between us—how far we’d go, how much we’d share—was shaped by mutual respect and gentle restraint. She knew where I stood, without my needing to say a word.

And then came Diane’s offer.

Diane—Lynn’s mother—offered us a home to rent after our engagement. That gesture was more than generous—it was symbolic. It meant we were stepping fully into a shared life, one defined by commitment and love, not by paperwork or permission. The decision to move in together wasn’t taken lightly. It was the turning point where I had to reconcile what I’d been taught with what I knew in my heart to be true. And Diane didn’t need a marriage certificate to take this step.

Until then, even during our most passionate moments, Lynn and I had kept our clothes on. I had still been holding onto the last fragments of the religious ideas I was raised with—teachings about what sex was supposed to mean. And even though Lynn never pressured me, I think we both knew those barriers weren’t really about her. They were about what still lived inside me.

But once we accepted the house—once we knew we were going to share a home—everything settled. The clarity came.

We were no longer visiting each other’s spaces or planning around separate routines. We were going to sleep in the same bed. Wake up under the same roof. Share meals, memories, bills—and a life.

And with that new home came a new level of intimacy. Not forced. Not rushed. Just… natural.

We undressed without shame. We touched without hesitation. We slept skin to skin. We made love—not because it was overdue or expected, but because it was an extension of everything we were already giving each other.

There is something sacred about being fully wanted. Not just emotionally, but physically. There is something healing in knowing that another human being longs to be close to you—not just out of desire, but from love, from a hunger to belong.

I think of newborns placed on a parent’s bare chest. That skin-to-skin contact, that grounding, that wordless affirmation: You’re here. You’re safe. You’re mine.

That’s what it felt like. That’s how natural it became. Not performance. Not shame. Just presence.

And I knew I had made peace with it. Not gradually—decisively.

I didn’t see it as “living in sin.” I saw it as something sacred. We weren’t hiding from God—we were honoring what He had given us. I believed then that if marriage was meant to be a covenant of love, fidelity, and mutual care, then we had already entered into it. The legal part had been denied to us, but the spiritual part was already real.

But not everyone saw it that way.

The Church didn’t.

When we approached the priest, hoping for a religious ceremony, he refused. Without a legal marriage license, he said, he couldn’t perform the sacrament. He knew what a legal marriage would mean—that Lynn could lose her health insurance and risk her life. And still, the answer was no.

Lynn wasn’t religious, but she was spiritual. She respected my beliefs. But I’m still stunned that I wasn’t driven away from the Church right then—by its coldness, its rigidity, its failure to act with compassion or common sense.

A sacrament, denied. Not because we lacked love. But because we wouldn’t risk her health.

And strangely, the greatest tension didn’t come from within us—it came from outside.

Especially when we visited my family.

On one trip, Lynn suggested we sleep in separate beds. I remember being shocked. Hurt, even. But she was trying to show respect for my parents. And I went along with it.

Looking back, I wish I hadn’t. I wish I had said, No. We’re a couple. If that’s not accepted, we’ll get a hotel. Or we won’t come.

It wasn’t about shame. It was about honoring the truth of our relationship.

I could have told our friends: “We’re more than engaged. We’re already married—in every way that matters.” They would have understood. No one would’ve alerted the state. There was nothing to hide.

We weren’t pretending.

We were living it. With tenderness. With intention. With love.

Even without a wedding, we were a family.

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.

Introduction to Part I – When Love Was Still Unimaginable

There was a time in my life when I didn’t even know how to dream.

Not because I lacked imagination, but because I had never known joy - the kind of joy that opens the heart to possibility. Before college, I wasn’t thinking about what I wanted, or what might make me happy. 

When I first sat down with a counselor at Georgia Tech in 1984, I didn’t know that I was beginning a journey that would lead to love, healing, and a life beyond anything I’d known.

I was just trying to survive.

College felt overwhelming. I had no real social skills. I had spent my adolescence in silence, invisible in my classrooms, uncertain in my own skin. I didn’t know how to connect. I didn’t know what it meant to belong. And so I found myself, at age eighteen, walking into a campus counseling office - not because I had a vision for the future, but because I felt I wouldn’t make it on my own.

I had no idea then that this search for support would lead me not just to stability, but to profound transformation.

If I had ever taken the time to dream, I would never have been at Georgia Tech and studying engineering.

I’d like to say that I experienced joy and success beyond my wildest dreams, but the fact is that when I walked into the Counseling and Career Planning building and into the office with my counselor, I had never thought about what I wanted. Nothing could be more meaningless for me than engineering. No career direction could be more inappropriate for me than engineering. 

In addition, what my parents had given me was fear. That was their greatest gift. Initially it was fear of them. I guess they took the verses from the Bible that said that “beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord” literally and they used that as a template for what they were seeking. Not respect but fear of one’s parents. 

Undoubtedly, there are obviously more disturbing stories of abuse. Stories that would inspire almost anyone to value the role of Child Protective Services, even those who otherwise are hesitant to see the goodness of what Child Protective Services (CPS) is tasked with doing. My second wife would tell me about how much more brutal and violent her father was. Undoubtedly there are arguments about overzealously involving CPS and those who think that a child is just oppositional when it comes to any rules. That wasn’t me. I did wish that CPS would have come to examine the things that were happening to us. 

Let me state that again. I don’t want there to be any confusion or uncertainty. As a child, I wanted CPS to get involved and ask us, as me, if I was a victim of child abuse! If that happened, I would have been talking for hours and hours describing things that were happening, and I would have been put in foster care. It would have been far from ideal, but it was what I desperately needed. 

It wasn’t just fear of them that I learned but fear of the world. I was made to fear all the things that could go wrong if I didn’t do everything right - get into a great college/university. For this to happen I had to get straight A’s. It’s ironic that I didn’t question this wisdom since my brother and sister could not begin to approach my begin to approach the grades I was achieving in much more advanced courses. By high school I was taking advanced placement classes for those on track to enter a prestigious and challenging university and I was getting straight A’s. 

Looking back, I now understand that what I was really searching for was attachment - the kind of secure, mutual, loving connection I had never experienced growing up. My family, though outwardly intact, was emotionally barren. The messages I received from them - explicit and implied - taught me not to trust closeness, not to expect to be wanted, and not to believe I mattered.

But slowly, that would begin to change.

This first part of the memoir traces that journey - from a shy, uncertain person to someone who not only found their voice but found love. First in the brief but life-changing relationship with Celta. Then, more fully and enduringly, with Lynn. It was through these relationships that I came to understand what safety, intimacy, and joy truly felt like.

This is the story of earned secure attachment. Of discovering what I had never known to want. Of realizing that life could be more than survival - it could be beautiful.

I didn’t know, then, that it wouldn’t last forever. And I certainly didn’t know how deeply it would hurt to lose it all.

That part comes later.

However, one cannot know or appreciate loss without first discovering joy, expansiveness, connection, and a life where one is allowed to dream because one has no idea that those dreams can’t come true. So, the first half of this book is a love story. But it doesn’t start that way. I have to tell you where I came from and what life was like from the earliest days of my life. 

I thought I was moving into a role where healing happened.

The unit was called the Crisis Unit, and that sounded right to me—crisis was something I understood. I had worked Mobile Crisis.

I knew how to meet people where they were.

What I didn’t know—what no one told me—was that this wasn’t truly a crisis stabilization unit. It was a detox program, and it operated far more like a correctional facility than a treatment center.

The shift was disorienting. The clients weren’t treated like patients—they were watched, monitored, corrected. Even the language was policed: “addicts,” “noncompliant,” “disruptive.” That’s how staff referred to people in withdrawal, struggling, afraid.

The longer I worked there, the clearer it became: this wasn’t recovery. This was control.

Everyone around me seemed to come from the world of recovery—people who had once shot heroin, who had gone through 12-step programs, who saw themselves in the clients. In theory, that should have fostered compassion.

But instead, it had calcified into something harder. There was excitement in catching people when they were breaking rules, in enforcing consequences. People on the staff thought about how the behavior of one person might interfere with another person’s recovery. Was there no parallel in the mental health field? Of course there was. Yet, one’s symptoms of mental illness were not met with surprise and anger.

I couldn’t reconcile it.

Even within the 12-step model, addiction is seen as a disease. So why were we punishing people for symptoms of the disease we were supposed to treat?

When clients asked about long-term options. I tried to find them places to go, but so many of the referrals led to programs rooted in religious doctrine. 12-step, higher power, surrender.

I was an atheist, shaped not by ideology but by loss. But this wasn’t about me. Some of the clients didn’t want a Christian minister. They didn’t want Bible study. They wanted to recover, not convert.

When I said as much, it didn’t go over well.

The shift lead, Alex, was on a power trip. Controlling. Aggressive. He made snide comments in front of clients, belittled staff, barked orders. When he got sick and I filled in, I thought I’d earn some respect. Instead, I got hostility.

One staff member muttered, “I know it is crazy that I can’t sign this just because I don’t have a degree.”

The respect and admiration for my accomplishments only made her defensive and angry.

What they meant was: you’re not one of us. You haven’t suffered like we have.

But I had. Just in ways they couldn’t—or wouldn’t—see.

What made it worse was what happened on the unit where we all worked. I was excluded. No one even tried to get to know me. They showed their shared friendships right in front of me with my obvious exclusion hard to not notice. I had embraced my years of learning social skills, observing social behaviors, body language. This allowed me to observe.

To see that I was excluded from their shared friendships.

I wanted so badly to belong. I tried. I smiled, I joined conversations, I asked about their lives. However, I always felt like I was intruding. I wasn’t part of the club.

Complicating matters further was my need to be knowledgeable about community resources. People who had been in recovery would know these things. Clients would ask me about different options for their discharge plans, but I lacked the necessary knowledge. I needed to know what my colleagues knew.

And when I finally spoke up—when I told them that I use they/them pronouns, that I wanted that identity respected—and when I voiced concerns about how Alex was treating staff and clients—I was fired the very next day.

“Boundary issues with staff,” they said.

No documentation. No prior warning. No opportunity to explain.

I filed an EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) complaint. My friend Sarah encouraged me to fight it. And I tried. I filed the report and the EEOC contacted them but they told me that there was not a precedent of other people experiencing the same discrimination as I had - based on disability, religion, gender or age.

I wanted to believe that if I just did everything right, someone would see me. Someone would say, You belong here. We need you.

But instead, I walked out with nothing.

I had been leading a support group on Meetup—Social Anxiety, Shyness, Loneliness and Social Skills—trying to offer something I never had growing up: a safe space to practice being human.

But attendance dropped. People stopped coming. And I started asking myself:

Was it me?

Did I think I had more to give than I really did?

Even the woman I had dated—Codi Renee—knew my story, but I never felt safe with her. I stayed longer than I should have because I thought, maybe this is all I get.

She had hurt me by always making me feel anxious instead of the comfort that love brings. And when it ended, I didn’t feel heartbreak. I felt shame. For staying. For hoping. For still believing in something like love.

So where did that leave me?

Between systems that silenced me and communities that didn’t know what to do with someone like me.

Too peaceful to fight back. Too principled to stay silent. Too broken to fit in.

But still—still—I wasn’t ready to give up.

Because even in this mess, in this loss, there was one thing I had that no one could take:

My voice.

There comes a point when you stop trying to explain.

Not because the pain is gone.

Not because the injustice no longer matters.

But because you know who you are.

I am not what they said I was.

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

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

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

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

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

It still is.

I’ve spent years trying to survive.

But survival isn’t the end of the story.

Now, I want to live.

Not to prove anything—
 

But because I still have something to give.

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

It says:

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

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

You are still here.
Still standing.
Still healing.

And that is more than enough.

Elee decided to leave, even though she had nowhere to go and no means to support herself. Despite eight years in the U.S., her struggle with English persisted, and that day her departure was unmistakably clear.

I had invited Johnetta over, hoping she might help us untangle our unraveling relationship—even though she wasn’t a therapist or relationship expert. Instead, her presence only deepened the chaos.

For months, silence had settled between Elee and me like an impenetrable fog. I wasn’t sure she still cared about our marriage—perhaps I had grown indifferent too. Then Johnetta’s question shattered the tension: “Do you love her?”

The air cracked. Under the weight of the moment, I admitted, “I don’t think I do.” Elee’s face remained unreadable, as if she already expected it. But Johnetta’s reaction was explosive, and before I could comprehend what was happening, Elee was taken away.

In hindsight, I should have seen it coming. We never talked about our problems. While she was busy studying for the USMLE exams, I would fill up sheets of paper with things to discuss to keep the relationship alive and post them on the wall of the kitchen. Johnetta had no knowledge of how long and hard I had tried to work on our problems. It had gotten to the point where literally every day for the past year and a half I repeated the words that it didn’t seem like Elee cared that the love was dying.

When Elee said she is an alone woman in America Johnetta heard something that suggested that Elee should go to the domestic violence shelter. Elee got the impression that if she took out a Domestic violence protective order she could get into section 8 housing. To Elee’s credit when they pulled up my criminal history she rejected and refused to mention that at all in court. To this day she has remained passionately angry at Ana, the court system, my lawyer, everyone involved.

She had to come up with a reason why she was upset and needed a “domestic violence protection order.” The only thing I remember seeing was that I mentioned the Trump Muslim bans and how her family couldn’t visit. It was almost funny to see that on the document in court. After trying to get Elee to talk I went to a protest gathering in downtown Chapel Hill and spoke about my wife from Iran and how her family can’t visit. She knew I had not voted for this president and I vehemently opposed the ban. It was also strange to realize that she knew where I was but I had no idea where she was.

I was thinking that all she had to do is say that she didn’t want me to visit. That was not what she wanted. She just wanted to pretend for the next 12 or 18 months that we were not seeing each other.

I haven’t discussed it yet but I had begun trauma therapy and I was beginning to look at returning to Clinical Social Work. Elee knew this and supported me. I said, “don’t you see how this makes me look? It looks like I could have done the things that Ana alleged.”

She didn’t seem to be able to appreciate how standing in a court room made me feel. Of course, she invited me to visit. She had no reason to fear me.

“Just pretend for a little while,” she said.

Past Trauma and Marriage

Flashback to the early days of our marriage. Sexuality brought with it reminders of my past. Sometimes as a guy one can feel like one is a willing participant in an event. Things had happened long before I met Elee. In early 2001, someone who I had been dating had jokingly spoke of having a gun and she was a prison guard. I didn’t want anything to happen that night but she came over anyway. It had been easy to forget about this incident in all the chaos of that time. Yet, after I got married to Elee flashbacks began.

I had mentioned Kathy earlier in the book. She had different personalities ( like someone with dissociative identity disorder) and one child-like personality had come out during an intimate moment. Later I moved in with her, her boyfriend and her son. I had to ask the police to show up for me to finally leave and to get my girlfriend, Shonda, to help me move out. I hadn’t had a car since I lost my last car in early 2001. So, in early 2003, before the physical assault by Ana, I had left Cathy’s residence. I had felt trapped and there were sexual overtures to what was happening.

Some of Kathy’s personalities wanted me as a therapist, which wasn’t possible, others were child-like. There was one personality that was seductive and sexual and I had felt threatened.

All this was coming up and had caused problems in our marriage. It was triggered by these flashbacks and nightmares. In some way, this drove me toward starting therapy and eventually I would find the courage to reach out to the Orange County Rape Crisis Center where they supported the idea that any form of non-consensual sexual behavior was sexual violence. I had even been remembering my hernia operation when I was five years old.

It’s strange how so many ideas could come together where any one of them might be overlooked or insignificant. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Probation and the Shame That Lingered

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I was drowning in shame.

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

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

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

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

The end of things with Amanda

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

I wasn’t just lonely.

I was terrified of being alone.

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

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

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

What the hell was wrong with me?

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

The Break-In

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

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

The front bedroom window was shattered.

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

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

The Setup That Could Have Destroyed Me

Early 2008.

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

A movement outside my window.

I went to the side entrance of my home.

Then I saw them—four police officers.

Guns drawn, pointed down, but ready.

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

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

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

"Look at your Myspace account."

Okay. I can do that.

And what I saw made my blood run cold.

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

Obviously, Amanda had done this.

Fighting Back

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

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

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

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

"How can you represent someone like him?"

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

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

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

I felt like no one saw the real me.

They only saw the conviction.

The label.

The lie.

Insight from this latest villain to cross my path

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

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

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

I needed to understand evil.