Way back in the Introduction to this book, I mentioned that I had been suicidal. It would take that experience in 2019 to allow me to tell this story.
I kept thinking about the loss of hope for me. It was December 11, 2019, when suicide became the only idea that was on my mind. As Anne Sexton said in 'Wanting to Die,'
"But suicides speak in a special language
Like carpenters, they want to know which tools
They never ask why build."
I was no longer asking why build. I had the clearest sense of purpose in my life. I didn't want anyone to know what I was going to do. The tools were pills... either that or a slip noose that I would have to hang somewhere. On this particular night, my planning was not clear. I had started drinking rum, a good enough alcoholic beverage to help me get the nerve up to do this.
I had spoken to lawyers from the Pre-Paid Legal law firm about how there was a story on the web that showed up at the top of the results when you googled my name. John Freifeld, who had it in for me and who was described in another book by me, had reposted the article in the paper that characterized me as the perpetrator of a violent crime.
"There is nothing that can be done now," they said. It seemed like they were speaking about my fate and all my hopes and dreams. My thinking wasn't entirely clear but I heard that there was nothing that could be done. I was looking for a way to challenge the conviction but the way I was coerced into letting my lawyer enter a plea deal and the statute of limitations stood in the way of everything.
Dear reader, do you care to know what it is for which nothing can be done? Do you care? As I write this my mind drifts back to these moments on December 11, 2019. I have not met some of my current friends. So, my perception of the world during this time is that it is exceedingly dark, cold, and devoid of human compassion.
This is the true story that an editor for a horror magazine didn't want me to write. The editor thought I was giving a green light to suicide and so I was encouraged to write something different.
To be honest, people are still wanting me to write something different. Or they want me to think and do things differently. They make arguments that they cannot defend because they are not me and they have not seen what I have seen. It seems that they would prefer not to look and that is fine. Yet, do you want to cheer me up or persuade me without listening to me?
Anyway, it's December 11 and I am now taking the pills.
Oh, I need to tell my ex-wife how sorry I am for inviting her to come to America. She was going to be a doctor and would have been a doctor and perhaps living a happy life in Iran.
Let's see if I can explain to Elee how bad I feel. I begin the text with an apology for what she gave up to be with me. I am explaining how she will find out that I am not alive any longer.
She won't find this out until after I am dead.
My planning was not so good as I did this. Before I knew it I heard a knock at the door. It was the police. I rambled on a bit about what had happened to me many years ago and how it wasn't possible now that anything can be done to remedy this problem. This isn't the best strategy if one really wants to die. Maybe I was ambivalent.
Maybe part of me wanted to believe that something could be done.
This was before I saw the TV movie about Ted Bundy entitled "Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile." Maybe you, dear reader, will understand in the reading of this story that what Ana did to me was extremely wicked, shockingly evil, and vile. For to destroy the life, the hopes and dreams of someone for as long as they will live is an act that is evil beyond imagination.
I had been victimized by Ana who physically attacked me in a brutal and bloody assault years ago but her greatest and most vile deed was to lie and tell the police that I attacked her. My belief was that no one understood this deed to be vile and shockingly evil and that is why I was suicidal. I also was terrified of the very notion that anyone would EVER make a connection between violence/attack as an action I would ever do... and that others wouldn't trust me.
[As an aside, after working for over a year on the Mobile Crisis Unit at Freedom House, in 2023, when my supervisor suggested that I might consider opportunities at a specific local company. I asked if she knew about what I had to disclose in getting this job and how it affected my employment at that company, 16 years after the fact. When she heard about me being accused and charged with a violent crime, she was shocked and could not believe it, saying, "you and violence do not go together." ... adding that she would fight before she would imagine me doing so.
[Getting back to the narrative of my despair and suicidal thoughts in 2019...]
The feeling of not being understood made me want to die. That might seem strange but a child will experience a failure to thrive and can die if there is no human connection. I was feeling these same things before and for a while after my failed suicide attempt.
I sat in the Emergency Department thinking of things that I would tell the people from the psychiatry department when they come. I had worked in this capacity myself years ago. I had been asked to evaluate if a person is indeed an ongoing suicide risk. So, I knew how to persuade them that I was not suicidal.
If people keep finding out that I am suicidal they will keep trying to stop me. That won't work so well. Hanging myself would have been more certain to achieve my goal. I wasn't sure how to pull that off, though.
When the lady spoke to me, a psychiatric resident, I said that what I took would not kill me. It wasn't a lethal dose. I wasn't explaining the part that I hadn't yet gotten to that point. I was reasoning that someone like me would know what a lethal dose was and that she would know that what they discovered in my blood was not a lethal dose.
So, we can just send me home, right?
Nope. She announced the words I had used years earlier. I hadn't wanted anyone I met in the Emergency Room to die. I had believed that there was always hope and that I could help with emotional distress.
This was before the entire incident in 2004 when I was victimized and then told year after year for the next 15 years that nothing could be done.
Nothing can be done. Deal with it! That's what I was doing. Part of me wanted to ask someone if they would understand why I was doing this and wouldn't it be an act of mercy to let me die?
I understand this is a hard sell. But if nothing can be done? Don't you get it? Injustice affects every aspect of my life. And it's not I that will bring up the topic. Should I seek volunteer opportunities and jobs, they will do a background check, and it will appear that I was the perpetrator when in fact I was the victim.
And nothing can be done.
By Friday evening, I was being checked into the Neuroscience Unit of the University of North Carolina Hospital in Chapel Hill.
I had a mixture of feelings. I remember restlessness. I was pacing constantly. I was shy and didn't want to stand out and get the attention of others or to be noticed. It was just embarrassing to be walking past the nursing station or using the hallways on the unit for pacing/exercise to try to cope with the anxiety and restlessness that I was feeling.
No, exercise was not a sign that I had hopes and plans for a healthy future. It was the weekend and not much in the way of activities were ongoing over the weekend. They had some groups and there were times when all the patients came out and socialized.
I would come to realize later that I was more sociable than I had imagined.
When I met with the doctors over the weekend, I didn't try to offer them an excuse as to why I should be released right away.
The darkness of my mind began to take hold of my thoughts. I couldn't sleep. I was too restless. I was sitting in front of the nurse's station at one of the tables where the people sit for any of the three daily meals.
Whatever flicker of hope might have crossed my mind over the weekend was fading. I was thinking "no one can change my situation."
No one can help me.
My ex-wife, Elee was the one who called 911. She didn't want me to die and she had been angry that I did what I did. She understood why I did it, though, or why I was feeling the way that I was feeling. I had explained that a lawyer had conveyed that no lawyer could possibly help me. That nothing could be done.
Nothing could be done. This is why I was there! This is why I was suicidal. Because nothing could be done and very few people understood what this meant to me and for me. Some have had the gall to suggest that there are more evil forms of injustice and those people don't ever get justice. To this day some people will make that same argument that demonstrates a lack of understanding about how I got to where I was in the first place.
Getting back to my story, it's Monday morning as the hour has just past midnight. I am contemplating suicide.
Someone Saved My Life
Something amazing happened to make it possible for me to bring this story to you. It was Monday, December 16, 2019, and someone saved my life tonight. Let me tell you how someone saved my life. Then we will see how that relates to love, kindness, nurturance, compassion, and empathy.
I was in the hospital at the University of North Carolina Medical Center in the psychiatric unit. I had meant to end my life a few days ago. My ex-wife found out because I told her. I had expected that it would be too late when she got the message.
On this Monday morning just after midnight, I was absolutely convinced that nothing can be done to change my circumstances and that there is no hope. I knew that I would be released soon and then I wouldn’t fail in my next suicide attempt. Visions of a slip noose swings in my mind along with other ideas – pills.
I can’t sleep. I’m restless… sitting in a large, darkened room just past midnight – a common room. The hospital is quiet.
My ex-wife had been angry that I considered suicide, but she understood why I had been that desperately depressed. Yes, I have been through hell but that was in the past. This is not about past pain. That doesn’t matter. No one can help remedy the situation because no one understands.
This is what was going through my mind when this girl came out.
“You can’t sleep either?” she asks and takes a seat next to me to talk. A simple question that started a process that made this book possible!
This is interesting… because for some reason, I am thinking that I should tell her my story. I have no idea where that idea arose. I am listening to her. I remember her name is Kirra. No, I’m not going to tell you her last name or why she was there. Confidentiality is important.
She seemed at the time to be drawing a story out of me. I felt compassion and empathy for her situation as well. There is something about the problems she has been facing that reminds me of someone who was very special in my life in the past. I can’t say what that is because it would reveal something about her that should not be made public with this book.
I felt an overwhelming need to tell her how I had been harmed in the past. I told her how I had been victimized by a woman who brutally attacked me and then lied and said that I attacked her! And if that lie was not bad enough, she said I tried to undress her which meant that I was charged with a sexual offense!
I explained how I would NEVER do anything to hurt someone. I was a therapist who understood how traumatic events affect people. And in fact, dear reader, you will see this when I show it to you throughout this book.
She said, “I believe you, one hundred percent.” She had demonstrated understanding of what I had been feeling – empathy.
My first reaction was a thought that floated through my mind, “of course you do… what person who has spent any time at all with me would think I would harm a person.” That is what I was thinking.
I had held the weight of this pain for more than a decade and a half. I held it almost all alone. I asked questions about how it is that we come to know these things about a person. Indeed, there are subtle cues or clues that we pick up that tell us about danger. She used the word “vibes.”
She seemed like she wanted to help me and to be my friend. She was much younger than me, so I wasn’t thinking in romantic terms about this friendship. She just said she wanted me to join her and sit with her at breakfast in the morning and at other meals. Love takes many forms.
She also understood why events from the past did have a tremendous impact on my life in the present. I had described my passion for helping others and working as a therapist… and working in the mental health/psychiatric field.
I wondered why this wasn’t so clear to everyone.
My plans to end my life suddenly evaporated. I had hungered for this as truly as we can be starving for food or air!
I came alive. So much more was offered to the patients on the unit during the week. I arrived on Friday night and there were not many therapy groups over the weekend. I started connecting with others during therapy groups, at meals, and as we, the patients, socialized.
It was a transformative experience. The world had seemed like a very dark and cold place devoid of human compassion, but I was observing how caring people here were. I’m talking about the other patients that I was meeting.
A couple of days later, we were asked to pick a feeling word to describe how we feel or what we were experiencing. For some reason, I chose to use words like “outsider,” “alone,” “unnoticed,” and “invisible.”
The response from the group caused my jaw to drop. I was told that I was actually like a “social butterfly.” That I had been at the center of all the action. Another person said I persuaded and encouraged him to come to the group.
Indeed, this was a transformative experience. I had been noticing others and listening to them. I had encouraged someone to come to the “group” because I was concerned and also, I felt that it works better if we can be there together for each other.
There was one other important and memorable event. Some of us were watching Law & Order: SVU. There was an episode that portrayed a teacher who loved teaching children who were falsely accused of sexually molesting one or more children. The visceral pain of this was exquisite. As someone who worked as a clinical social worker, I could recognize that pain from the way it was portrayed to the way we think about having that happen to us or another person.
I wanted to tell some others the experience I had and how I had been harmed by a lie of this nature. I approached two people who stepped out during a commercial break, and I said I wanted to share something with them.
I explained how I had been falsely accused and falsely convicted. By that time, they knew that I had worked as a therapist. They knew how much I loved that kind of work or those kinds of activities and experiences.
Beginning with Kirra and then with others I was telling my story and finding the support that I had needed for so long. I had tried to carry this burden all alone and now I was finding opportunities to unburden myself of this exquisite pain. They and others in the hospital, patients, and staff showed love, compassion, and empathy which is precisely what motivated me to go into psychiatric social work.
So, many people would tell me that the terrible events were in the past and that I shouldn’t let it bother me now. I shouldn’t dwell on the past.
Excuse my language dear reader, but that is such bullshit! The lies of that woman who attacked me in 2004 – the false accusations, the false conviction – affect every aspect of my life in the here and now. Those lies are etched into stone metaphorically speaking. Before we talk more about love and empathy let me add a few points. Bear with me just a moment.
The pernicious lie suggests that people should worry about did or might do in the future. It’s on a North Carolina Public Safety website. This is the modern equivalent of something being etched in stone.
The criminal record presents me as the perpetrator of the crime, but it has no basis in reality. I had been the victim! It’s still out there and I had been told by a law firm that there was no hope for me that I would ever get justice… When I heard that cold statement from a lawyer that no one could do anything, I didn’t hear the full story. I just heard no one can do anything – there was no hope!
You may disagree strongly with my choice to try to end my life in 2019 but ironically that was the only way that I was able to have this transformative experience. The world had seemed to be dark, cold, and devoid of caring people… devoid of compassion and empathy. The empathy, love, compassion, I developed over a lifetime would not be available to anyone were it not for what started with “a story.”
So, that’s what I am giving to you as a gift – a story.
Over the next year I continued to write “my story” and this is what you are reading now. I hope you understand, dear reader, why abstract ideas and platitudes are not every helpful to me. When I hear “things are going to be okay” said to me without first acknowledging the pain and without pragmatic statements about how things are going to be okay, I just think you are not offering empathy and compassion.
In my life experience, I have learned how to specifically figure out what a person needs or desires. I have learned to understand how that changes from moment to moment. I have learned how to recognize needs, things that we hunger for and desires almost instantly.
This is how I act from a place of love!
As a psychotherapist, I have developed certain instincts that are almost like common sense for me now. I would NEVER imagine telling a client or a patient what I think is good or a good life. I learned about active listening.
I would argue that love can be a quality that is the foundation of all societies and all people everywhere in one form or another. A psychotherapist or psychologist might use the word unconditional positive regard.
Certain social workers will speak of social justice because we recognize what happens to people and how they feel, how they experience life when it is lacking. That’s empathy.
True empathy, true love, and true compassion reject ideas like “nothing can be done” or “that’s just the way it is.” That’s injustice.
Love comes in many forms though. A mother and father's love are demonstrated in the way they nurture a child. I know I didn’t have that growing up. So, I hungered for it.
I found love either from my cousins and my aunt growing up or later from friends and those in which I fell in love.
Love was never something I knew from my family of origin. Neither did they know empathy or compassion. My effort to find it in them nearly cost me my life. I was only looking for love, empathy and compassion from my sister Carrie and my parents Bruce Whealton Sr. and Kathleen Whealton.
So, if not from my family of origin…
I found love through Celta first, a friend and more. Then I found love in my relationship with Lynn – we lived as husband and wife for many years. I found love from my dear friend Thomas Childs Jr.