nightmares

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.

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. And you thought 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!

I wish I could have helped with the obituary or contributed toward telling the world how special Lynn was.

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 on various occasions - the poem that was dedicated to her, about my love for her, when it was her turn to share at some poetry reading - and when 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 during those years we were together!

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 did call 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 mainly just in August. I have tried with the guidance and counseling of others to find those answers.

It might have seemed like I had a long-lasting problem but I think that Lynn would have noticed such a problem. 

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 not been a more joyful moment in my life - I was overjoyed 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 was 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" nor did she previously state that she knew I wasn't strong enough to bear the weight of what would happen when her health would get worse. I would not have hesitated to get the help I needed so I could be here for Lynn.

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 had feared losing her, forever. It doesn't mean I loved her less than you did. My experience was that of being completed by Lynn and unable to exist without her. So, when she got sick and might die, I felt like I was dying.

Again, I had survivor's guilt and felt it was wrong to make excuses for myself. 

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.  I was drawing inward and away from the higher brain functions that are typical of social animals.

Something inside of me died during that time period.

It is my hope that trusting Lynn's judgment is a valuable way to think about the life we had. She would not have stayed with me if she doubted my life, saw me as an unhealthy person for her - unhealthy psychologically.  

The psychologists who were hired by the social work licensure board spent all of one afternoon assessing me. They found things that Lynn had never seen. They found things that none of my counselors, psychologists, or therapists noticed. 

They found and arrived at conclusions that I didn't challenge because I was not well at the time. I had survivor's guilt, a lack of self-compassion and self-love, and other problems. I am merely pointing out that what it might have seemed like was that there was something wrong with me that was best kept from Lynn. That's what I felt and why I didn't return to pursuing Lynn like I once had.

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 someone who wanted to be your son-in-law.

Lynn wanted someone who came and apologized right away when I said something hurtful. She wanted 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 at the time that she would leave me. This is me saying that Lynn was so special that I felt lucky to be chosen by her and I was so desperate not to do anything at all that would cause me to lose her.

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.

There was no formal discussion between Lynn and me about going our separate ways. I had been visiting her at your home. 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. I knew what it meant when she said she might not be coming back but neither of us wanted to say what it meant. 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 overwhelmed her. It's not a real comfort but it's a reflection of the fact that she did understand better than I did what was wrong with me at the time.

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

Should I have tried harder to get her back? Should I have contacted her directly instead of letting others reach out to her? Those questions will haunt a part of me forever. 

When asked recently if I was over her, it was obvious to the person asking, I think, that the answer was no. 

In the years later, I lost all the photographs of the life we had. The way the house was packed up and the life we had was deconstructed made everything so hard without closure. I am trying to honor her and create a memorial for her. 

I could use some photographs of her and I hope you can find it in your heart to let me honor her memory. 

[Disclaimer: I have used aliases for clients to protect their identity and confidentiality.]
 

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 making 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. John 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. In case I was unclear, when sometime after John referred a few clients to me, with Jessica being the first one, he moved in with Jessica, her husband, and son. 

This arrangement grew. Clients who came to my support group for people with Dissociative Identity Disorder exchanged phone numbers and then started spending time over at the home of Jessica where John provided "support" as he called it but it was really more accurate to call what he was doing therapy. 

When I described the actions of John to my fellow clinical social workers they agreed that what he was providing therapy and that I should tell them that I cannot continue to provide therapy to them while they were seeing him. A much fuller explanation of what he was doing is available elsewhere. 

It is likely that these clients got worse due to the interventions of John and they needed someone to blame. So, when John told them they could and should file a grievance against me and sue me that must have made perfect sense.

I mentioned that I had turned to my family for support when Lynn became ill. I am not sure how hard I tried to get support from my family.

I couldn't ask Lynn's mother to reconsider selling the house and allowing this incredibly special relationship to end. I had no idea what Lynn was thinking at this point which is so painful to admit. 

My shame at not being there for Lynn made it hard to discuss what was happening to me and the problems that we had in a way that would have been easier in the past. 

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. When I say on the run, I mean that I had no stable living arrangement for a long time. I had no home.

I would end up leaving my clients stranded as well without an explanation.

Dear reader, if you have any unanswered questions now, please understand one thing that is key. I was so out of it, so in shock, so unable to process everything, so overwhelmed... I couldn't figure out anything myself!

I entirely expect readers to have many more questions. When you fully appreciate my state of mind, you will understand why I do not have answers or did not know then... anything.

This might be a good time to make a transition to another section of my book. Where I went and what I did as I bounced around from place to place was as a ball dropped down some steps.

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.

Through the next few years, I was someone without a plan and without hope.  I have a short chapter that is a letter to someone else who loved Lynn.

It had seemed that cystic fibrosis was about to destroy my entire life, as well as threaten the life of the woman I loved. I feel selfish to say that it was destroying my life. I cannot say that I was dying, not literally. I felt survivor's guilt because of this fact. I felt I didn't have a right to speak about how I was experiencing all of this. That might be part of the reason why I didn't reach out to friends and say, "I need your help" or "I need your support." or "I need to talk."

Lynn had known the devastating pain this would cause me. I just had a hard time thinking about "me." It's ironic that by not focusing on how this was affecting me, I didn't appreciate that this was an emotional, psychological and existential crisis for me.

To be honest, it happened too fast for me to get in to see a psychotherapist or a doctor for help to deal with this. If I had a physical sickness, I would have called my doctor and gotten an appointment in a day or so, maybe a week. With a psychological crisis or sickness that comes on so quickly, we don't think in terms of emergencies that must be addressed immediately.

I was like a walking zombie without Lynn.

She was now staying at her mother's place in Wilmington, the place on Wrightsville Beach.

I was beating up on myself for not keeping the place clean enough for Lynn to feel comfortable living in our home... but in reality, there was more to the story of why Lynn was living with her mother.

I was reflecting on the entire month that and what had happened.

We had two cats and they used the litter box in the garage. Sometimes I would forget to clean that also or before she went into the hospital the second time, I didn't want to do it myself. I had been in denial and struggling to admit to the fact that she could not do the things she used to be able to do.

Every little failure or thing I forgot to do made me feel ashamed. I hadn't been stubbornly refusing to do these things. I hadn't been angry at Lynn for not helping with any of these chores that would have been shared in the past. No, I just was in denial of what was happening and what her inability to do certain things meant.

It might have seemed like an easy calculation, that cleaning the home and doing other things to make it more likely that Lynn could come home is the most obvious thing for me to do but that just wasn't registering as something that was so obvious. Plus, I was terrified that Lynn might die. I kept pushing that thought away. In so doing, I was pushing a part of my reality out of my mind.

My normal capacity for planning and problem solving wasn't working at peak levels, to put it mildly. All the resources within me that had served me and guided me throughout the years were non-functional at this time. It seemed like those faculties had shut down.

We all need help at times in our lives - a supportive person like a therapist, friend, family member.

Dear reader, you might wonder why I could not offer myself the same support and guidance that I might offer a client. You might wonder why I couldn't draw upon my own skills. Up until this point in my life, I would have been able to step back, plan, figure out what I need to do, and then do it.

I would have done something.

I cannot overstate this fact, but I would have done anything imaginable to hold onto the life I had with Lynn – to hold onto any life with Lynn!

We were still in the month of August of 2000.

Clients depended upon me also.

Despite the grievances of those five clients, I had dozens of other clients whose therapy was going along well and things were fairly "normal" in that regard. I felt a responsibility to try to help them.

I couldn't just wallow in the grief and pain of losing Lynn forever. I also didn't know what to expect regarding Lynn's health. I felt powerless to help her so I didn't know what to do.

I had developed a coping mechanism to deal with the issues of being in love with someone who had a terminal disease called cystic fibrosis. I (or maybe we) had lived life as they say "in-the-moment." What else can you do? I mean, whether you are talking about Lynn who had lived with this her whole life all those years before she met me or if you are talking about me knowing in some way that I might not have Lynn forever, we both had to focus on what we had.

That strategy might make the best sense in a way, but it can also lead to denial. I know that this is what I was experiencing in August of 2000. In essence, it was like telling myself "This isn't happening. Everything is fine." But things were not fine. Lynn needed me and I wasn't giving her any sense that I could be there for her.

I wanted and needed to believe that the situation with Lynn living with her mother was temporary. Lynn's mother, Diane had separated from her husband, Bob, and was living down in Wilmington all the time. She had gotten a job as a psychologist in one of the schools.

On about the fourth of September of 2000, I heard Lynn tell me that she might not come back to me. I couldn't even begin to have a "logical" conversation about this because I broke down and started crying.

I was moving through life on autopilot.

I was in denial when I heard those words from Lynn that she might not come back. I thought, "this is not happening."

This is not happening. I could not wrap my mind around the reality of what I was hearing.

I reflected upon the weeks and months before the nightmare had started.

Just a few weeks earlier life had seemed so "normal." We were so in love. I had felt her body next to mine and knew that the love, passion, and romance had not faded at all in all the years we were together. If anything, it had only grown.

We had been so close just weeks earlier. Falling asleep with my arms around her. My heart and breathing synchronized with hers. I had felt such a sense of serenity as she drifted off to sleep. I tried desperately to hold onto that memory and that peace, but I couldn't.

My mind kept trying to conjure imagines and memories of this serenity of falling asleep, our bodies touching... the image of both of us facing the front window in the bedroom.

Her heartbeat and breathing slowed little by little as she transitioned into sleep. That was just a few weeks ago but it felt like the day before.

It might have been the day before but for her disease - cystic fibrosis.

There were other things that were happening in my life, but I was so consumed by the changes in Lynn's health that I could not function as I once had. I had tried to go on coping and working but things were different now.

This section of my book describes events that are dark and horrifying. This marks a radical change in the narrative of the book. Nothing that happened prior to now could have prepared me for the horrors that await.

At the end of the last chapter, I was on top of the world. I certainly would not have wanted anything to change. I would have done anything imaginable to hold onto the life I had with Lynn. I was crazy in love.

My career that I had spent the past sixteen years building was about to come to a sudden, crashing end.

Most of the events described within the chapters of this entire section occurred within one month - August of 2000.

John Freifeld became obsessed with destroying my credibility and my career. He had moved from Virginia to Wilmington and moved in with the first person he referred to me for treatment. He would brainwash some of my clients into thinking that I was the cause for all their problems and why they weren't getting better. That included one client, Sadie, who had successfully completed therapy with me and previously had said she was very satisfied with the care that I had provided.

Freifeld composed a complaint letter to the North Carolina Social Work Certification and Licensure Board (NCSWCLB) on behalf of five of my clients, including the client who had been satisfied with my care when I last met with her for therapy. The complaints were the same, verbatim.

One of the complaints was that I planted false memories of Satanic Ritual Abuse. I had previously looked into how it was that two of my clients had begun to believe that these bizarre things happened to them as children.

Everything that mattered to me was under assault. Lynn's disease suddenly took a turn for the worse. This more than anything was terrifying to me. She was my whole life. I was madly in love with Lynn. She was part of me. We were one body. We were husband and wife.

How do you cope without the one person that connects you to the world and everything meaningful in the world? Whatever success I had found in life was made all the more beautiful and amazing because I could share it with Lynn. Now her life was in jeopardy.

The issues that clients presented to me could be addressed with rational reasoning. That had worked for a while. However, there was no similar way to cope with the loss of the entire life I had built with Lynn. Again, most of the chapters in this section occur within one month of 2000. So, there wasn't time to go ask a therapist for advice or guidance.

Previously, I would ask my colleagues, therapists, psychologists, or my psychoanalyst how I might handle complicated matters that might have an impact on my success as a psychotherapist. Now things were changing too fast - literally from one day to the next. It wasn't clear to me when I should have canceled all appointments with every client.

It would have been easier if I caught a serious illness like a virus in August of 2000. Then I would have known to cancel all appointments for as long as necessary. It's easier to tell when we have something physical happen to us. 

If this was a normal story about victimization, I would not be telling a story about this twenty years after the fact.

This story is far more complicated, and the nightmare was only beginning. It seemed obvious to everyone so far - me, the police, the witnesses. I was the victim of a violent crime, and with the perpetrator leaving behind her phone, the police would find the perpetrator.

That is how this story should have proceeded.

Please, dear reader, let me imagine you are with me as I tell my horror story and try to imagine the comfort that I need when I am so scared, like now. Just telling this story decades later is terrifying.

Within just more than an hour, with the sun getting low now, the police showed up again. The most disturbing nightmare of my life was about to begin. It wasn't enough to violently assault me. The perpetrator of this crime had done something far worse, and I was about to find out about that.

I noticed lights outside. The police were back.

Then in my next memory, there was a female police officer in the doorway of the building next to the stairway that led to the second floor.

It was a warm day, October 1, 2004, so I had not changed out of the bloody shorts and t-shirt. The door to my apartment was about 8 feet away from where this officer was standing.

I heard something repeated on the police radio that this police officer was wearing. The words I heard were that a woman had been sexually assaulted out here!

What! Oh, my God!

On any normal day in my life I would not have considered that they could possibly be talking about me… not in the context of hurting another person.

This is not happening! No, no, no.no.

The police were just here. They knew what had happened. They witnessed the extensive nature of my injuries… my cuts. How badly I was bleeding.

I was thinking, your fellow police officers were just here. They know what happened.

Time moved at an excruciatingly slow pace. I was waiting to speak to someone and clear all this up. Surely, they would know what had really happened.

Part of me wanted to talk and get this cleared up immediately.

Another part of me was utterly terrified. I had already seen how the justice system works when John F. had claimed that I called and threatened him. That was characterized in this book earlier as harassing phone calls. I left out of this book that he falsely claimed that I threatened him. It was not relevant. It never happened. There were no recordings and no phone records.

I may have left out of this narrative that when my public defender got the phone records, he had proof – according to him – that John had fabricated the story for one of the two days when I was alleged to have called John. He never could explain why he couldn’t get the phone records for one of the days, including the day prior and after, but he couldn’t get the records for the other day which was just within the same week.

So, part of me wanted to talk to this police officer in the hallway watching over me, but most of me was dissociating from the reality of this. When I said, “This is not happening” to myself, I was being literal.

The physical assault was experienced as less of a threat to my survival than the notion of what it would mean to be falsely accused of a crime of this nature - my freedom and my sense of self as a person in a social world were threatened.

I had known about derealization and depersonalization. When Lynn was suddenly at risk of dying, I had experienced both derealization and depersonalization. I had entered a dream-like state (derealization) and as I remembered those events, I was at times floating outside my body and looking down at Lynn (depersonalization). More specifically, in my memory, I am talking to Lynn in the doorway to our bedroom and I am looking down at Lynn as if from somewhere near the top of the door and the ceiling.

To be clear, I had NEVER fully taken on the symptoms of dissociative identity disorder, where I would have amnesia and another personality would take control of me. This is relevant to the events that occur next. I NEVER had a dissociative disorder of any type but briefly during traumatic events, I did dissociate.

At this point and for some time after, I was not feeling anything. I was detached. I was not angry at Ana for making this up, nor was I angry at the police for ignoring evidence from their own fellow police officers who had just been out here.

It seemed like time was frozen. I was desperately waiting for some opportunity to clear this up. However, I was simultaneously frozen and shut down like a zombie, and the zombie part of me was more in control.

I was repeating the words in my mind "this is not happening." "This is not happening."

I remember another police officer who entered the building.

I struggled to speak. My mouth was dry, and I could barely draw a breath. I wasn't sure my words were being said out loud, “No, I was attacked, I am the victim.” I don’t think that was vocalized.

The male police officer explained that he was going to have to put me in handcuffs.

I was terrified beyond belief. I wasn't shaking, but I was frozen. I felt dazed and confused. Aware and not aware of the shame of walking to the police car in front of the house while in handcuffs.

This public humiliation, even in this neighborhood, of being in handcuffs required that I detach from the reality of what was occurring.

I walked as if somehow on autopilot.

I noticed that I was shaking as I was led into the police car. He placed me in the front seat.

I was thinking about the last time I was in handcuffs, which at that time involved chains in addition to handcuffs, when I was taken from Durham to Wilmington – which had once been home, which had once been only associated with good things… falling in love… being the president of the local society of clinical social workers… being recognized at the mental health center as that person worthy of respect.

Could life get any worse? These events proved that there were no limits to how bad life could get.

It was hard to believe that I was on top of the world just four years ago. I had a sense of being part of a family with Lynn. Her cousin had two little girls, and I was like a big brother or uncle to them… All excited, taking the younger girl in my arms out into the ocean… because “of course, why would you not trust me” to take care of the little girl. That is what I still remember at this very moment while walking out to the police car and being led into the police car.

I was still in a fog as I had been for the past few years. I could recall the wife of the couple I moved in with when I first moved to Durham. She was offended that I was considering getting onto Social Security Disability Insurance when I had never been brutally tortured as a child as she and others with dissociative identity disorder had been.

On the ride with the policeman beside me, I noticed my phone ringing.

It was the friend I had been expecting that afternoon or early evening.

My hands were shaking as I tried to pick up the phone, which had bounced out of my pocket onto the floor of the police car. My heart was beating so fast, and I was fumbling with the phone. My voice was shaking as I said, "Hello."

I began to explain what happened to me. I wanted the police officer to hear me and the sincerity of my words.

I told my friend on the phone, "Earlier today, just a few hours ago, I heard a woman ask where Bruce is, and I thought that was you, but when I looked outside my door, I saw a white woman."

I continued talking to her, “I said, I am Bruce, even though I knew it was not you.” I then described how she walked right into my room, locking the door behind her, and then she started punching me in the face.”

I told her I wanted to see her soon and that this would get all straightened out, but I didn't know about tomorrow. Part of me held onto the hope and belief that this would get straightened out once I explained things. Another part of me remembered the many hours that turned into days and weeks while I waited for things to get cleared up in the past when that never happened.

My friend was shocked. I can imagine that she was desperately out of words to say to comfort me.

Choking on my tears, I said, "I'm scared. I don't know how this happened to me."

She knew some things about me, so she recognized the concern in my voice. I heard compassion in her voice as she said how sorry she was that this was happening to me. I would never see or hear from her again, but the moment of comfort she offered me was unforgettable.

I then hung up the phone.

She had heard the utter desperation in my voice, which the police officer should have heard and understood as well. Yet he was inhumanly unresponsive… seemingly devoid of humanity, like a robot programmed with pre-existing instructions.

The police officer was a large white man who seemed incapable of emotions. Humans are not perfect but this guy driving the car was especially lacking in human reactivity. The police officers that took me down to Wilmington a couple of years ago seemed to lack a capacity to understand that they didn’t need to treat me like an animal as I was offering no threat when they put me in the back of their metal cage.

The inhuman police officer, who I would soon learn was a detective, parked his car and led me into the building - the police station.

Immediately upon entering the doorway, I saw the woman who had attacked me, and I said in a matter-of-fact tone, "She's the one who attacked me."

I was still holding onto reality or rather I was holding onto the truth and verbalizing it.

He led me down into the building, and we turned left. Then, I was directed to sit down in a chair outside a room.

I was asked to wait and wait and wait.

I did try to call a lawyer. I had a subscription to pre-paid legal which I NEVER imagined needing for a criminal matter. I couldn’t process what the person who answered the phone was saying and ended up not asking to speak to a lawyer.

Anyway, this was still October 1, 2004.

I had never imagined a scenario even remotely like this in my worst nightmares.

I was naïve enough to still think that the police wanted to find out the truth.

I was directed to sit at a table with one police detective on the left and one on the right. The room was rather dark.

After that fact, one might ask me if I was aware of a camera or a two-way mirror. At this moment, I didn’t register the existence of a camera or if there was a two-way mirror.

“Let’s talk about what happened,” I heard.

Fine, I thought, finally. I not only described what happened with my apartment room door open but I re-enacted this. The door to the room was not locked, so I could re-enact precisely what happened.

One of them said, “That is not what happened.”

I wanted to argue because I was there, and they were not there.

Instead, as if we were not speaking the same language, I repeated the same exact statement as if they had not heard what I said. I even re-enacted everything precisely as it happened. I opened the door to the room with the police officers with my face looking in the direction of the woman on the stairs and said, “I’m Bruce.” … just as it had happened.

Again, I heard those words, “That is not what happened.”

I was so frustrated that I wanted to scream, “Why are you saying that? You were not there!”

At this point, I was not thinking that they wanted me to confess to a crime. It honestly felt like I was leaving out some details about the crime that had been committed against me.

One might think that I should be aware that I was believed to have sexually assaulted a woman, but my mind didn’t go there. I knew precisely what happened. I was there. It had just happened. They were not there, so how could they possibly know what had happened better than I?

This was beyond bizarre. I was still wearing the bloody clothing from earlier, from the assault. Did they think I kept blood-stained clothes around for moments when I wanted to claim to be a victim?

Their questioning continued. At no point did anything they said seem to get us to a point where I would be brought down here in handcuffs.

At some point, I had briefly seen her in Jimmy’s pickup truck, but when she showed up and attacked me, I didn’t recognize her, I told them. To which one of them said that he would not forget someone who looked like her. In my mind, I thought about Grace who was a friend of the family, or I thought Grace was a friend of Jimmy, and Grace was someone that a person would not forget – she was attractive. I couldn’t figure out why they thought Jimmy’s wife, Ana, was attractive.

It is many years after the fact as I write this but honestly, I don’t think my mind ever was consciously able to process what was happening. I had been in jail and the shame it caused was so memorable. This was experienced as traumatic, and my mind was doing what so many clients of mine had described. I was not consciously aware at that moment or consciously choosing to do this, but I was using derealization. This means that I was not overly responsive.

I did not feel anything either.

Police officers asking me questions in a dark room after hearing the words about a woman being sexually assaulted when I was at the house… Nothing in life had prepared me to offer an intelligent response to such a line of questioning.

The only possible reaction for me was derealization – to experience this like a dream, or a nightmare might be more accurate.

However much it might seem to not be happening and just a dream, I was simultaneously awake and so not everything slipped by without conscious awareness. I was aware of feeling a profound sense of shame that would go along with anyone accused of a heinous crime.

I was aware of how much I did not want to spend another second in jail. Symbolically, these were both the antithesis of all the reasons and events that had led me to experience the courage to be noticed, to gain name recognition in Wilmington.

All the countless times I wrote down answers to the question of what was the worst thing that could happen if I left my proverbial shell as a shy person..., I suddenly was being smacked in the face with the worst possible answer to what was the worst possible thing that could happen - the most shameful type of event that someone like me could not have dreamed up if I had tried.

At some point, I registered the words “and things got out of control?”

I responded with a bewildered look while thinking, “yes, when she suddenly entered the room, locked the door behind her, and started punching me in the face, things were out of control, but what are you talking about?” I didn’t say that, but I was thinking about it.

After I told them what had happened, it became increasingly clear that the truth did not matter.

This would have characterized the hours that passed with the two detectives trying to get me to tell them something they wanted to hear but since I had no idea what they thought happened, I could NOT satisfy them. My responses were characterized by me despondently shaking my head “no” or saying nothing more than “no.”

It was like some surreal game of “guess what we want you to say?”

My initial impression that the truth would emerge when I got a chance to talk, that the police were genuinely interested in finding the truth — that belief had evaporated at some point.

Then I heard one of them ask to speak to "Brucie."

I was speechless at first.

Now, I knew that Jimmy and his wife, Ana, had devised an intricate plan that was well thought out.

I suddenly remembered how I had spoken to Jimmy, the landlord and husband of my attacker, just a few weeks ago. I remembered how I had discussed dissociative identity disorder (DID) and used the example where if I had DID, maybe one of my personalities might be named "Brucie."

In my conversation with Jimmy, I used the name my grandpa called me as a child. In this interaction with police, logic and rational thinking were absent and it felt like a disturbing game. The detectives were not benevolent like my deceased grandparents, but playing out a sick and perverted game at my expense.

Therefore, I said, "I'm Brucie" in a soft voice that a personality that was a child might have. I was not trying to be play games. It was just a last-ditch effort to make these two detectives happy. At this point, I would have done whatever these authority figures were asking me to do.

When that didn't satisfy them, they showed me a statement that one of them on the left had created. They wanted me to sign this.

I looked at what was written, and I was shocked. He was asking me to sign a confession.

I asked both of them, and I was sincerely incredulous when I asked them, "That is what you think happened?"

"I'm not signing that," I answered. "That did NOT happen."

I could easily rebut everything and explain how it was impossible… I could direct them to their fellow officers, who would have known that what they thought happened could not possibly have happened. Now, we were getting somewhere.

Unfortunately, it was too late, or so it seemed. Why didn’t they just tell me what she had said and what they thought happened hours ago? The only thing that frustrated them now was the fact that I would not sign the statement.

The statement of confession did explain why they were so frustrated throughout the questioning. Since I had no idea what they wanted me to say or what they thought happened, I could not have said anything that came close to what they thought happened. This statement was a giant leap from anything that they asked me or anywhere the questioning had gone.

Any account of any interrogation by the police will point out the hours that police detectives are willing to go at the alleged perpetrator trying to get a confession. I write this fact as someone who has had 20 years to listen to stories about the ways police detectives conduct themselves. However, in almost every other interrogation, it seemed like the person being questioned would have a better understanding of what the police thought happened.

It was just after midnight and now Saturday, October 2, 2004, when I was handed the statement by one of the detectives that they wanted me to sign.

They could not have considered any other evidence. I don’t remember where they left the room, but this questioning had been going on for a long time, so I might not have noticed, nor would I have remembered every tiny detail.

I had assumed that their fellow police officers who initially responded to my 911 call would have spoken to them. However, if they had spoken to the police who first responded to the call, that I made after Ana assaulted me, the questioning would have had to go differently.

I learned what they thought happened, and then the discussion was over.

The next thing I remember was that they brought me in front of a magistrate. I felt a feeling of horror unlike anything I had ever experienced. Do I need to remind you, dear reader, of every experience from trying to overcome shyness to the shame that went with being in jail to the sense of how unending that had seemed, and now this was so much more serious?

I was taken in front of the magistrate, and I learned what the charges were. I was being charged with second-degree kidnapping and second-degree sexual offense. This was so terrifying that I could not process the events that were transpiring.

I was the innocent victim, and now they were charging the victim with a crime - no two different crimes!

I still didn't know the extent of Ana's lies.

They were arresting, charging, and jailing the victim of a brutal crime!

These two detectives surely had ignored every single iota of evidence collected by their fellow police officers who arrived in response to my 911 call because one could not square what the first responding police officers saw with what these two detectives thought happened.

This was serious! Second-degree kidnapping and second-degree sexual offense.

I was barely processing how strange this was. Doesn’t kidnapping involve seizing a person and bringing the person somewhere else?

Now, I was thinking about how long I would be held captive. I had seen fights the last time I was in jail for missing a court date in Wilmington after I had demanded that my lawyer appeal the ruling where John F. falsely claimed that I made harassing phone calls. This was Durham, with gangs, and I had already been robbed, as I mentioned earlier.

I wanted help, so I couldn’t think of anything other than declaring that I was suicidal. However, stating this didn’t help me at all.

They only heaped on more humiliation.

I was stripped down and put into a strange, padded outfit that I guess is for people who are suicidal, which barely covered my underwear. This seemed like a purposeful effort to shame and humiliate me. The only thing missing was a chance to taunt me.

This was like a crucifixion. The Romans had designed this method of punishment as a form of humilitation to add to the punishment of the condemned.

The next thing I remember was being taken to the hospital, where they drew blood. I wasn't worried about that. However, I was deeply and profoundly filled with shame because I was in the garb of a person coming from the jail in handcuffs.

However, I was thinking that the blood evidence would have confirmed and supported my account of being the victim. She had left without a scratch. The lack of blood evidence on her would mean that I was NEVER standing over her. It seemed like they would have to account for that.

I didn’t know all the evidence that they were considering or how long it would take. If they had investigated the crime scene, they would not have found any of her blood in there. So, having my blood should have only helped my case.

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

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

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

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

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

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

There were two police officers that arrived.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The story is about to get much stranger, though.