Despair weighed upon me as I wandered the dark Durham night. The shelter was full, so I tried to sleep on the grounds of Duke West Campus. No signs warned against trespassing. I didn’t feel comfortable so I left and taking a shortcut I scaled a 4-foot rock wall, unaware of doing anything wrong.
Then, as if summoned by fate, a police car appeared.
A block down the road, its lights flickered in the night. The car slowed, then stopped. My stomach clenched as the officer stepped out, approaching me with a cold authority.
“License."
The request made no sense. I hadn’t done anything wrong.
Why were they stopping me?
And then, those dreaded words. Words that had already shattered my life once before.
"Warrant for your arrest."
Time collapsed. My thoughts spiraled. A warrant? For what?
Then came the explanation—something about using someone’s credit card without permission.
I couldn’t breathe.
A credit card?
Panic surged through me. How? I hadn’t even had the chance to meet anyone with a credit card since my release from jail. How could I have committed a felony without even knowing it?
I barely had time to process the accusation before cold metal closed around my wrists. Handcuffs. Again.
As they led me away, my mind raced to make sense of the impossible.
How the hell did this happen?
A Rabbit Hole of Betrayal
To understand this new nightmare, we have to go back—back to a time before Ana, before jail, before my life unraveled.
I had once been part of therapy groups in Durham, trying to build a community, trying to heal. That’s where I met Kathy.
She knew I had worked with people diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)—once called Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD)—a condition made infamous by movies like Sybil. It was rare, misunderstood, and yet, here it was, again, threading itself into my story.
Before my time on Holloway Street, before the assault that would alter my life, I had briefly lived in a spare room offered by a friend, Elaine. During that time, Kathy and I became intimate.
Then, one night, everything changed.
In an instant, she transformed—her voice, her body language—childlike.
It was as if I was suddenly in the presence of a child in an adult’s body.
I freaked out. I pulled away and got dressed immediately.
It didn’t matter that she was an adult. It felt like I was with a child.
Kathy soon returned to her boyfriend and Elaine wanted to live alone. I moved into the home of Kathy and her boyfriend —sleeping in the same room as her son, on the bottom bunk. But our relationship had become twisted, toxic.
She demanded my attention, needed me to play the role of therapist. I had already explained how inappropriate that would be after what had happened and I wasn’t licensed and practicing at that point.
Some of her other personalities were angry at me.
Some were obsessed with me.
Some were jealous—especially when I spent time with my girlfriend, Shonda.
The situation was untenable.
And then came Christmas.
The Credit Card That Would Ruin Me
December 2003—less than a year before Ana’s attack.
Kathy wanted to give me a gift.
She offered to pay for my website domain renewal—the same poetry website I had started with Lynn back in 1995.
The life I had shared with Lynn felt so close, and yet, like an entirely different lifetime.
We sat together as she entered her credit card details into my GoDaddy account. It was her choice.
Neither of us thought much about the card being saved on file.
At the time, it meant nothing. But that decision—the smallest, most mundane act—would later become my undoing.
A Dangerous Shift
Tensions escalated.
Kathy became more unpredictable, more hostile.
One night, things turned dangerous.
I felt threatened—physically and sexually.
I ran.
Outside, hands shaking, I called Shonda. She offered me a place to stay, a bed in the back of her family’s store.
Then, I called the police.
The authorities came. They didn’t arrest Kathy, but the report was on record—a crime of a sexual nature, with me as the victim.
I should have seen the warning signs then. But I didn’t.
And now, here I was—being arrested. Because of her.
The Forgotten Charge
Fast-forward to 2005, after Ana, after my release from jail.
I had forgotten about the GoDaddy domain.
My cards on file had no funds, so Kathy’s was automatically charged.
Instead of asking for her card to be removed, instead of seeing this for what it was—a mistake—she pressed charges.
The charge? Felony credit card fraud.
The amount? $15.
Fifteen dollars.
And I was back in a cell.
Trapped in the System Again
This time, I spent a month in jail, mostly in protective custody.
The same lawyer—the one handling my pending trial—was assigned to this nonsense case.
"I’ll enter a plea to misdemeanor larceny," he told me when he got around to contacting me at all, after I had been there almost a month!
"You’ll be released right away. No court appearance necessary."
I should have been furious but I was in such a state of shock during this period of time. I was detached from feelings and living life as if in a bad dream.
Misdemeanor larceny? Over a clerical error?
A System That Doesn't Care
I was too numb and detached to feel the anger that I feel as I write this almost 20 years later.
I was too beaten down, too traumatized to feel the full weight of my indignation.
But looking back?
This shouldn’t have happened.
A competent lawyer—one who actually cared—would have had this dismissed immediately. Instead, my public defender took the path of least resistance, pushing me through a legal system that wasn’t about justice, only efficiency.
I just wanted out.
So, I did not protest when he told me what he was going to do. As soon as I was free, I left Durham—straight for Chapel Hill.
Because even in homelessness, I had learned: some places were safer than others and Chapel Hill was safer.