The Web Development business wasn’t paying much but I was working quite often at Measurement Inc. We were hired as readers. All that was required was at least a 4 year degree. It seemed like this was attracting a large number of people. I doubt that many of them were homeless or had been homeless. Some were at retirment age. It seemed like the place to work for anyone who had nowhere else to go. No clear career tragectory.
I saw Bob there. He was the guy who showed up at my home and who was living out of his van. He was quite a character. Highly religious and spiritual. He was someone who appeared completely rational and normal but if you spent any time talking to him, you heard about bizarre spiritual beliefs that even people with schizophrenia did not articulate in such a clear and coherent manner.
That being said, his low soft spoken well articulate voice would sooth me in a hypnotic and peaceful way when I had the opportunity to just listen.
Tragically, the $30,000 had dwindled away as if it was not meant to last. I had not even purchased a car.
With every cent I'd scraped together from work, I made my way back to Wilmington, driven by a longing that gnawed at me day and night. I took the bus. Initially, I got rooms for a night on the weekend at some of the lower cost motels in town. I’d rent a bike and go to Wrightsville Beach.
The beaches called to me, whispering promises of the belonging I'd known once and still craved so desperately, a sanctuary amidst the simmering trauma, dispair and hopelessness of my existence.
In Wilmington, I reunited with Jean Jones and Thomas Childs—two long-time friends from the life I once knew… a life I expected to continue forever with Lynn.
Jean and I were good friends again and in a new way. Lynn and I used to hang out with Jean occasionally. He only remembered the fights that Lynn and I seemed to have all the time. He failed to see the nearly perfect love that we knew. The reality of that part of my life is part of a different story.
Jean was given a normal life like the one I had always expected. Like most people, no one had ever pointed a finger at him and falsely accused him of a violent crime. Ironically, when he spoke about having guns to protect his family, I thought about how with my ultra-pacifist leanings had violently attacked in my own home and then labeled a criminal who couldn’t be trusted. Jean wasn’t always available when I wanted to come to Wilmington and re-connect with people from the poetry scene. So, he helped me to connect with another younger poet named Ryan. He had a couch where I could stay when I wanted to visit the area.
I went with Jean to the aquarium at Fort Pierce, south of Wilmington with his two children. He met me for meals here and there.
There were a few other regulars to the poetry scene that I befriended. I saw David Capps again. He was cool in every way but there was something inscrutible about him that made it hard for me to truly connect with him. I had known him since I first moved to Wilmington back in 1992 but not like I knew Jean, or Jeff and definitely not like I knew Thomas.
Thomas, in particular, felt like a lifeline, as if the years between us had evaporated. Between meeting Thomas down in Wilmington, we spent hours on the phone, our conversations blazing with the intensity of a friendship rekindled, leaving me warmed for the first time in years by the fierce glow of connection.
I ran across Lynn in mid-September, 2008 with the summer still a part of life in Wilmington. She had once been a part of my life that I never imagined losing. I could even argue with her and it never seemed like it would impact the lasting nature of our relationship. With Lynn right there in the same room, I said nothing. Some part of me couldn’t speak even to Lynn. This was unimaginable. I could have spoken to Lynn about anything.
Yet, I froze up, while standing in the same room with her just a few feet apart. Alone in that room as if someone had hoped or arranged for me to take this opportunity to tell her all my feelings. She had known I was going to be there. I should have told her that for what it was worth, I was still in love with her. I guess I couldn’t imagine being rejected by Lynn of all people in the world.
It was my new go-to coping strategy. Silence. In retrospect it was reminiscence of me standing in front of the judge a couple of years earlier in 2006. I had been silent and unable to speak, to protest the way I had been treated by my lawyer.
It wasn’t that I willingly kept silent when standing before the judge in 2006; it was more that I couldn't muster the courage to speak out. But why was silence my default?
Who would have imagined that it wasn't until I began writing this book that I'd uncover a disturbing parallel: the same gripping fear that silenced me from confessing my love to the person who mattered most in my life was the very fear that suffocated my voice two years earlier in the courtroom, preventing me from declaring my objection to the plea deal... from proclaiming that I was the victim?
That is where the parallel somewhat falls apart. While I had lost the earned secure attachment that I once had with Lynn, suddenly and abruptly, I wasn’t concerned about or wearing the shame of a false conviction around Lynn.
The Bigger Picture Here
The most amazing thing about returning to Wilmington was the peace and serenity that came with this and how that materialized. The disability checks and the occasional work with Measurement, Inc. allowed me to come to what was once home to me. I left behind the shame that came with being falsely accused and convicted.
I never had a enough money to buy a car. Not yet. My credit was not very good as one might imagine considering that I had been homeless and my life had been so chaotic.
Yet something amazing was happening down in Wilmington. It didn’t offer me the home I once knew. There are so many things that had happened. There is an entire story that could be written about aspects of my life that had changed beyond the facts discussed in this book on injustice.
What was significant was the sense that I didn’t have to worry about what others would think about me. I told my two best friends down there, Jean and Thomas. We talked a bit about it but I never felt uncomfortable. I never felt the embarrassment that came from wondering if the person hearing my story would doubt my innocence.
I made new friends down there and strengthened other relationships with people from the poetry scene. I might have been shy about the criminal matter but in many ways, while I was down here, in this scene or setting, it seemed irrelevent. This is amazing since I was just getting off supervised probation from the lies told by Ana. Yet, somehow, I managed to place it in a sealed container that wasn’t opened in the Wilmington area.
Speaking of friends and connections, tragically, Dusty had passed away. As the emcee at the poetry readings at the Coastline Convention Center going back to 1992 when I first came to Wilmington, Dusty was a warm motherly type that I could have used at this time in my life.
Indeed, a mother was what any injured person needs. Whether revealed in words or actions, Dusty had once filled that role of a mother figure that I never had. There had been Celta and Lynn who had made me feel special. All that was gone and I had no one who was a source of support during the horrifying moments, that turned into days, weeks, months and years.
The comfort of Lynn’s arms or Celta’s arms existed only as tearful memories of something amazing that was gone. I didn’t have a mother figure or a source of deep love that I had once had. I had to face the lies of Ana and the impact of that injustice all alone. Despite the losses and pain, I might have taken for granted the peace and comfort of not having to worry about what others might think about me. Somehow returning to people who had known me was profoundly peace in a way that I failed to appreciate.
I could have used that attitude to help me cope with the challenges I was facing in every aspect of my other life when I was not down in Wilmington. I was even able to make new friends down there wrapped in the warmth of everything this place was offering me in some way that seemed like magic. I was able to make new friends. There was Ryan who I mentioned above. He let me stay with him every time I visited. I also made friends with Ana Ribeiro from the poetry scene down in Wilmington.
So much was missing and could not be recovered from the injustice and what it did to me. Yet, the peace of being in this place around people who had come to know me… there was something magical about this. Wilmington was a haven and refuge. I had once been forced to leave the area due to the first injustice I experienced with John F. He had made sure I couldn’t work down there and that had sent me Durham back in 2001.
Now I was trying to anchor in positive experiences. This is a term from my training in hypnosis and Neuro-Linguistic Programming. From a cognitive behavioral aspect, I could see how certain beliefs about what people would think about me if they found out about the accusations and conviction. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy encourages us to challenge our thoughts and to try to find deeper core beliefs that create very negative feelings - anxiety, trauma responses, depression.
I had resurrected the poetry magazine that Lynn and I started in 1995. Jean became my new co-editor. We had an event down in Wilmington at a new location for the poets in the area - a wine and coffee bar.
I found an outlet in my writing. I wrote a book of poems that was co-authored with Scott Urban who wrote dark, horror poems. I alluded to this book in my earlier discussion of Amanda. In this collaboration, with Scott Urban, I created a collection entitled “Puncture Wounds.” This drew upon the myth of vampires as soulless and without a conscience. Scott’s poems were not based on actual experiences. I was casting the actual villains that I met in my life, including but not limited to John F., Ana (not my new friend Ana but the perpetrator described in this book). I had minimal contact with other sociopaths and psychopaths and was in fact trying to learn about and understand the thinking of these people - these monsters.
I was influenced in part by the series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” which was created by Josh Whedon. I believe he was an atheist but he still found the symbolism valuable as a literary form. In that series a vampire lacked a soul which meant they lacked a conscience and preyed upon others. Writing was a form of therapy and catharsis. As a professional in the field, I have learned that catharsis might not create healing in itself. However, I am unsure if it doesn’t actually help us deal with emotions and the horrors of life.
Many of these characters depicted in my poems were responsible for my legal problems and my inability to get justice.
Like Josh Whedon, I was becoming an atheist and giving up my “faith.” Yet, I am getting ahead of my story. I was still a Christian during this time period when I was visiting Wilmington up to at least 2010 and for a while after that.
Under normal circumstances, I might have been very concerned that I would reveal a dark side of myself with this publication. I had squelched any expression of what might appear to be a dark side to myself or a delight and fascination for evil or monsters. I was afraid that might make me appear capable of harming someone as Ana had alleged. I was also uncomfortable even being able to express justiable anger and righteous indignation. Again, this was related to the overarching concern in life that no one sees me as capable of violence.
I suppose the visits to Wilmington and being around people who knew me or were getting to know me gave me a new perspective and lowered my inhibitions - I was temporarily, during those excursions to Wilmington, inside a safer mindset. Being seen and accepted, having a connection can certainly make a big difference when dealing with profoundly traumatic events.
Otherwise, in other situations away from that protective bubble of comfort that I felt when I was visiting Wilmington, a painful scarlet letter had been branded into my psyche.
And I didn’t want anyone to see me in that way. I didn’t want to re-experience the taunting and humiliation that had occured when I was stripped down and put inside a padded suicide prevention outfit for the infamous mug shot taken in the early morning hours of October 2, 2004, after the detectives interrogated me, the victim who had been brutally assaulted hours earlier when the day was still October 1st.
Just for a while, and easily forgotten in time, I had an escape.
This confidence did in part carry over into my life overall. It wasn’t entirely limited to my life in Wilmington.