343: What if you were caught in a spiral of violence?

Summary

Podcast Summary – This Is Actually Happening, Ep. 343: "What if you were caught in a spiral of violence?"

Release Date: December 10, 2024
Host: Wit Misseldine, Wondery
Guest: Julianne

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Overview

This riveting episode centers on Julianne’s harrowing and ultimately hopeful journey through a succession of abusive and traumatic relationships, culminating in life-threatening violence and profound personal growth. As Julianne shares her story, she reflects candidly on anxiety, survival, self-worth, the cyclical nature of trauma, and the healing power of community and self-love.

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Key Themes & Discussion Points

1. Early Life and the Onset of Anxiety

• Julianne’s childhood in Michigan was marked by divorce and shifting family dynamics.
  • She speaks warmly about her father’s home (“it was home,” 02:59) but describes feeling alienated at her mother’s due to a new stepfather who was "not really pleasant" (03:24).
• The emotional strain of choosing where to live led to severe anxiety and what was, at the time, labeled as hypochondria.
  • “The first time I had what I now know as a panic attack...I was 10 or 11…” (04:01)
• School was difficult; she excelled in choir and found solace in music, culminating in a life-changing trip to sing at Carnegie Hall (06:14).

2. Escape to New York & First Abusive Relationship

• At 19, Julianne moves to NYC, excited for possibility despite persistent anxiety.
• She enters her first serious relationship, blinded by inexperience and hope.
  • Early warning signs: threatening behavior with a knife, increasing possessiveness, and isolation.
  • The violence becomes overt when her boyfriend punches her in the face after a minor disagreement (08:57).
    • “There was no dialogue before he hit me. I just laid there. I didn’t really know what to do.” (09:18)
• Unable to leave due to emotional manipulation and threats of self-harm by her boyfriend.
  • “I was terrified and thought I would be safer just trying to keep the peace.” (09:51)
• She recognizes her own eroding self-worth and eventual participation in physical altercations before finally leaving.

3. Second Marriage: Love, Red Flags, and Betrayal

• Julianne moves to Utah, quickly immersing herself into a new relationship with a man who has three daughters.
  • Again, there are “red flags": anger issues and a hidden drug-selling side business.
  • “His excuse was, 'I can’t afford to pay for our wedding on the job that I have, and I’m just gonna do this until...it’s done.'" (13:23)
• The marriage unravels almost immediately; he leaves her for another woman just after the wedding (19:38).
  • “It was like my whole world was crumbling and he told me...I punched a hole in the wall. I just couldn’t believe how matter-of-fact he was.” (19:39)
• Julianne embraces independence, goes back to school, and discovers a passion for interior design and yoga, reigniting self-agency.

4. Michael: Love, Trauma, and Gun Violence

• Julianne enters a relationship with Michael, an intelligent and emotionally perceptive man dealing with his own mental health and family estrangement from the LDS church.
  • She is struck by his emotional maturity and openness: “He suggested we each write out our goals for ourselves and the relationship. I had never had anybody...even present the idea…” (23:31).
• The pandemic exacerbates Michael’s existing struggles—unemployment, substance abuse, and depression.
• They survive two drive-by shootings at their home.
  • “We see these holes in the walls…then we look down...and there’s a bullet. We were like, ‘Oh my God, that was a gun. Like somebody just shot into our house.’” (31:19)
  • Police inform them their house was part of a string of shootings, possibly gang-related or a result of a drug deal gone wrong.

5. Escalation, Loss, and Catastrophe

• The physical danger and stress strain their relationship; Michael’s drug use worsens, leading to volatility and eventually physical altercations.
• Julianne, reflecting on past abusive dynamics, decides to leave.
• On March 31, 2021, after a fraught argument, Michael retrieves a gun and, in Julianne’s presence, dies by suicide (41:53).
  • “My instinct was that he was going to shoot me. So I jumped up, ran to the door...He turned towards me and put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. He immediately slumped over, and I started screaming.” (42:37)
• In the aftermath, Julianne is interrogated but ultimately released, surrounded by friends and even strangers who support her through the initial shock.

6. Aftermath, Therapy, and Healing

• The detective calls Julianne:
  • “He wanted to let me know how lucky I was to be alive...there aren’t many of me." (46:50)
• Michael’s mother reaches out to absolve her of blame:
  • “‘I need you to know that this isn’t your fault. I’ve been waiting for this phone call for Michael’s entire life.’” (47:13)
• Julianne begins trauma therapy, where she is encouraged to reconnect with her younger self and finds this profoundly healing.
  • “It was really powerful to be confronted with myself as a child and then the person that I am now.” (48:56)
• She gradually lets go of Michael—both emotionally and physically, spreading his ashes in the wilderness and finding symbolic freedom and closure (54:45).
• Julianne reflects on guilt, anger, grief, and the complex nature of suicide:
  • “I don’t think suicide is selfish, because in the moment you feel like you are doing people a favor by unburdening them. And in that same moment, the way he did it was incredibly selfish.” (54:40)
• She emphasizes the importance of accepting love—from self and others—and breaking destructive patterns.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On cycles of abuse:
  “I was so lost and stuck. The logical part of me knew that I didn’t deserve that, but maybe it was the best I could do and I deserved it in some way.” (10:34)
• On longing for connection:
  “My addiction is love and connection. And at times, it has led me astray just as much as alcohol or drugs would do.” (17:36)
• On trauma’s impact:
  “I know that I’ve worked through a lot of the PTSD, but I know that there are some things that I just will have to deal with and face.” (55:26)
• Epiphany on survival:
  “One of my mantras has been that I’m not dead, I’m alive. Because there have been moments since then that I have had to remind myself that I’m not living in an alternate reality, that I really did survive that night.” (49:38)
• A moment of healing:
  “...Just submerged myself in the water. As silly as it sounds, it was just like it was the first time I could feel...I was so relieved that I was still capable of feeling what it feels like to jump in a cold river.” (51:21)
• On showing up for others:
  “If people are asking if you need help and they’re offering their help, it’s really important to accept it because they’re not just asking for you, it’s for them too.” (45:13)
• Letting go:
  “I took the day off, and I drove up into the mountains...I spread his ashes out and let him go.” (54:45)
• Moving forward:
  “It was really important to go back to the foundation of the things that I love and that have always brought me joy...In loving myself now, I’m giving myself the love that I needed when I was little.” (56:06)

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Important Timestamps

• 02:35 – Julianne’s childhood, onset of anxiety
• 08:57 – First act of physical abuse
• 09:51 – Emotional manipulation to stay
• 13:23 – New marriage, uncovering drug abuse
• 19:38 – Marriage abruptly ends
• 23:31 – New relationship, new emotional tools
• 31:19 – First drive-by shooting
• 42:37 – Michael’s suicide
• 46:50 – Detective’s call about her survival
• 47:13 – Michael’s mother offers absolution
• 48:56 – Therapy and inner child healing
• 51:21 – Symbolic moment in the cold river
• 54:45 – Spreading Michael's ashes in the mountains
• 56:06 – Affirmations of self-love and closure

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Closing Reflection

Julianne’s story is a powerful testament to survival, resilience, and the importance of breaking destructive cycles—both in oneself and in relationships. Her honesty about fear, vulnerability, trauma, and healing serves as a beacon to others caught in spirals of violence or pain. Listeners are left with a sense of possibility: that, even after unimaginable experiences, it is possible to reclaim one’s life with compassion, wisdom, and a return to simple joys.

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For those affected by trauma or in need of support, please consult resources provided in the show notes.

Transcript

[Narrator/Host]

Wonder plus subscribers can listen to exclusive episodes of this Is Actually Happening by joining Wonder in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the Show Notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services.

[Julianne]

I knew what I had seen, but I didn't process it. I knew it and I saw it, but it just was out of the realm of possibility of anything that I could ever think I would witness.

[Wit Misseldine]

From Wondery, I'm Wit Misseldine. You're listening to this Is actually Happening.

[Narrator/Host]

Episode 343 what if you were caught in a spiral of violence?

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[Julianne]

I grew up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan on Lake Superior. Where I grew up was a really lovely place. I feel grateful that I grew up there. Fresh water, trees. I have a lot of memories of fishing, hunting with my dad and that side of the family. But when my parents split When I was 4, my mom and my brother and I moved out to a neighboring town about a half hour away. Once we moved out of the house right away there was my stepdad. She got with him pretty quickly and she became pregnant with my sister. So I have a half sister. She is six years younger than I am. My stepdad was 19 or 20 when he and my mother got together. He was nine years younger than my mom and he was not really pleasant to be around. My dad's house, it was home. We had friends on the street. It felt a bit more peaceful. But my mother's house, because there was this man that I didn't know there, it always felt like I didn't belong there. It never felt like home. My dad had approached a judge and said, obviously my ex wife wants one thing and I want another, but it's really up to my children where they want to be. So we had a meeting with a judge and you know, he asked us about our home lives and where we would prefer to live and he granted my dad custody. So we moved back and I started fourth grade. Having interactions with my mom on the phone was really draining. She would be crying by the end of the phone call and telling me that I'm a girl, I need to live with her mother. And I felt really bad about that. So I started having anxiety, a lot of anxiety. The first time I had what I now know as a panic attack, I was 10 or 11 and I was eating dinner and I suddenly just couldn't eat it. I got this pit in my stomach, this sense of dread, and it scared me because I didn't know what it was at the time. And it was the beginning of me having anxiety take over my life. At that time, what I was called and referred to as a hypochondriac. So I was always asking my dad to take me to the hospital anytime something felt off. It just caused a lot of trouble with concentrating in school, feeling tired a lot. I struggled with that all the way through high school. From a young age I remember thinking, oh, I'm gonna be lucky to make it to my graduation. Through every milestone that I made it through, I'd be like, well, I'll be lucky to make it till I'm 30. And it's always just been consuming. In middle school I was teased a lot. You know, I had a lot of friends, I had different groups of friends, but because I had a lot of anxiety, I ended up kind of just sitting with it at home a lot. And I just was so self conscious. Although I was not into academics in school, I loved choir. When I was 16, my choir was going to New York City to sing in Carnegie Hall. We took a bus from Michigan and it was Thanksgiving weekend and we sang in Carnegie Hall. And I knew that New York City was somewhere that wasn't going to be the last time I was there. So I was 19, I moved to New York City and I got a job at Planet Hollywood in Times Square. And I finally felt like I really could do anything. I was still dealing with anxiety at that point, but I was young and excited to have the opportunity to live in such a place. As I made my way through my early 20s, I moved into a really awesome house in Brooklyn. It was a five story brownstone at one point, there were nine of us living there, and I built garden beds and just kind of created a little oasis. During this time, I was dating a little bit and I met somebody. I thought it would just kind of be a one and done type of encounter. And then we started hanging out a little bit more. There were some things about the relationship that seemed a little bit off. There was one day where a couple of my roommates had gotten in a fight and my boyfriend was there, and he grabbed a knife from the knife block and kind of threatened them, like, hey, if you guys don't stop. And they're like, whoa, when did this escalate to this point? And, you know, he put the knife down. It was definitely a red flag that I was a little weary of, but I enjoyed spending time with this person and they were my first boyfriend, and I just thought I would stick it out a little bit. He had moved in with me and he definitely had some anger issues where it started to get a little bit possessive, you know, where are you going? What are you doing? Who are you going to be with? You know, make sure you're back. At this time, I had a friend visiting. Her and I were out and we had made plans, and I called him. I said, hey, we're going to do this. And I hung up. And then plans change. So I texted him, you know, oh, we're actually just going to come to the house and hang out. She's got one more night here. She's going home tomorrow, so let's just, you know, reconvene at the house. We got there and he was really upset. He made it seem like I had wronged him in some way by changing plans. So we all went to bed. Not too late. She left, she said goodbye, and he turned around and punched me in the face. I just laid there. I didn't really know what to do. I just remember feeling so violated and confused. There was no dialogue before he hit me. I tried to leave that night, and he threatened to hang himself and hurt himself. And so I had to stay there. I had to sleep with him. When I went to work the next day. He made sure that I had sufficiently covered up my black eye with makeup and gave me the go ahead to go to work. I didn't want him to kill himself and I didn't want him to hurt himself. Even though he had hurt me. I didn't think he was serious at this point. I had kind of gathered that he was just trying to keep himself safe and didn't want to Take accountability for what he was doing and didn't want to get caught. So even though I didn't believe him, I didn't want that responsibility of not staying and having it happen. I was terrified and I thought that I would be safer by just trying to keep the peace. I tried to avoid making him upset, but it wasn't the last time he hit me in the face. I had such low self worth and just did not have the tools and the strength to know that I would be better and healthier. Not being in this situation with somebody like this, I was so lost and stuck. The logical part of me knew that I didn't deserve that, but maybe it was the best I could do and I deserved it in some way. It's a really isolating situation to be in. You know, you're afraid to be around this person, but you're afraid to not be around them because you don't know what they're scheming up while you're not there. It's a really confusing place to be, especially with people that are mentally unwell. And he was not well and a part of me felt bad for him, even though I was the one in danger and I was the one being hurt. About two and a half years into the relationship, I was so exhausted and so worn down and we got in a fight one time and I finally started to fight back. I hit him in the face after he hit me and we just got in a fistfight and it made me feel terrible. Even though I was defending myself, it wasn't me. That was really when I knew that I had to get out. It wasn't the bruises, it wasn't him hitting me in the face and threatening me. It was my own reaction to the years of abuse and violence. I believe it was that night he packed up his stuff and he left. And that was it. One of my friends at the time, she had been talking about moving back home to Utah. Additionally, she had said, oh, I have a friend in Utah and I'd really think that you guys would hit it off. Can I give him your phone number? So I said, yeah, sure, whatever. You know, like, I've been in this really bad relationship, it would be nice to talk to somebody else. So she gave him my number and we started talking. You know, we really hit it off. And about a month later, he came to visit. We had a really great time together. And about two months after that, my friend and I were on our way in a car to utah. He is nine years older than me, so he had three daughters. They were all teenagers. And I was 25. You know, I moved here to kind of start over and live on my own and ended up having a partner move in with me. And then on top of that, one of his daughters, his oldest daughter, moved in with us as well. So I became a parental figure to a teenager. About six months into us knowing each other, he proposed on Christmas. It was in front of his entire family. I was very much in love with him. I was very much in love with his daughters and his family. And it was everything I wanted. I've always had this desire for family, you know, getting together and having people around and having a support system and being a support system for somebody else and the people around me. And it was just what I wanted. So I went ahead and I said yes. Shortly after, I started seeing some red flags with him as well. He had pretty bad anger issues. He had had a pretty heavy past, and I ignored it. As time went on, I found out that he had had a. An addiction problem. And at this point, he was selling drugs on the side as well. His excuse was, you know, I can't afford to pay for our wedding on the job that I have, and I'm just gonna do this until we can pay for the wedding and get married, and then it's done. On top of his addiction issues, he wasn't being honest about where he was some nights, and there were nights where he wasn't coming home and he was working a lot. But I just. I felt like there was somebody else at this point. All of his daughters were living with us, so I was also taking care of them, making sure they were fed. And I just felt like they had filled something in me that I felt like I was missing. You know, I've never had substance abuse problems, but my addiction is love and connection. And at times, it has led me astray just as much as alcohol or drugs would do.

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[Julianne]

So I got married and a little over a month later we got into a fight. He left for the weekend and he came back and told me that he had slept with somebody and that he was leaving me for her. I was shocked. It was like my whole world was crumbling and he told me and I walked up the stairs and I punched a hole in the wall. I just couldn't believe how matter of fact he was. It was just we got married and like a switch had flipped. I slowly started packing up my things. I moved into this little house and it was mine again. I had realized that I had been ignoring so much anxiety. I was constantly worried about what he was doing and I didn't have to worry anymore. I started to realize that my anxiety when I was younger it had kind of blossomed from uncertainty surrounding my family and my life. But it had evolved into the uncertainty not knowing the status of my close relationships. So while I was with my abusive partner, it would come from not knowing how and when the abuse would come, whether it was verbal or physical. And with my ex husband not knowing where he was and what he was doing, I made the decision that I was never going to not be able to support myself regardless of the relationship I was in, the situation I was in, I was going to find a way. And so I decided to go back to school. You know, all these years I had been mostly working in restaurants, but on the side I was always making things and I wanted my career path to be in the creative field. So I decided to take a class in interior design and kind of go back to what my original thought was from high school. And I loved it. At this point I am 27, 28, feeling like I have direction. Then I started really getting into yoga. I started going four to five days a week, eating better, Just really starting to feel like I had agency. And I feel like I was falling in love with things for myself instead of somebody else. But I had started hanging out with a friend who I had worked in a restaurant with, named Michael. So another pretty quick transition into a different relationship. But I felt like I was doing it on better terms this time. I felt like I was in a more mentally and physically healthier state than previously. He was such an interesting person. When he talked to you, he made you feel like he wanted to know everything about you. And we loved to read together. We would go to coffee shops and read. We really learned a lot from each other. He was more pragmatic and brilliant, and he was definitely more driven by logic, where I was driven more emotionally. So we really balanced each other out in that way. Michael grew up in Utah. His family are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and he was part of the church up until he was eight. That is your baptism. They ask you if you want to be part of the church. And when he got asked, he said no, that he didn't want to. So he never went on his mission. And he was very much the black sheep of his family. He started, you know, experimenting with things in high school. He did not get along with his family, and going into his teens, he did struggle with mental health. He was also sent away to camps in the LDS Church that, you know, reform any sign of homosexuality or drug abuse, anything that they deem as nefarious or that doesn't follow with their values. So he was sent off to one of these places in high school. His family had college funds set aside for all of his siblings, and they didn't have any funds for him because they had spent it on sending him away. At some point, he had gotten into self harm and he had tried to kill himself. And he struggled. It was always in the back of his head. It was always in the background. When we actually started intentionally dating, Michael had suggested that we each take some time and write out what our goals are for ourselves and in our relationship, what are things that we want from a relationship. And I had never had anybody even present the idea of getting into our separate wants and our collective wants in such a way. And I thought it was wonderful. You know, I'm 28 at this time, and I finally feel like I am being treated like an adult. It just felt like I Had turned a corner in choosing a more appropriate partner for myself, My personal growth, and somebody who was going to be willing to grow with me. That summer, I decided to go through a yoga teacher training course at this studio that I was a part of. Once I finished the course, I started teaching and I taught for about a year. While I was also going to school and serving at a restaurant on nights. I had gotten a new serving job in a fine dining restaurant and I absolutely loved it. And then Covid hit. At this point, Michael and I had moved in together. We were together for about a year and a half. He was a manager at a wine bar. He didn't want to be working in the service industry during this time. But he had also been struggling with long term effects of lyme disease. He had been creating his own regimen of herbal medicines and working with a doctor and trying to heal himself. The struggles from his past didn't come up really until Covid. Michael lost his job. And because he had so much free time, he started to really get into his head and it kind of opened up this underlying dragon. He ended up getting some cocaine from a friend as a gift. And I said, well, when we have a little bit of extra money, maybe we will have a hotel date night and just do it together as like a. That was fun. I'm done with that kind of thing. And that was the plan. So I was hanging out with a friend one night and trying to get ahold of him. You know, he wasn't responding to my phone call. And I finally got ahold of him and he's like, I don't. I don't want to talk right now. I am not feeling great. Come to find out, he had done all of the cocaine by himself. And I was really upset about that because there was no reason in my eyes for him to be sitting at home by himself doing this. And I was just worried that this was going to become a pattern. Following weekend, the restaurant opened back up. It was exhausting with a mask on. We had to wear gloves at that point. So it was Saturday night. Exhausted, so glad the night was over, I went home and went to bed. The next thing I know, I woke up to what I thought was the sound of firecrackers being thrown into my house. There's glass breaking, there's lights flashing, and I hear somebody drive off. We get up and turn the lights on, and our living room there is broken plant bases and pots. And then we start looking around and we see these holes in the walls. We had no idea what it was. And then we get into the kitchen and we see a quarter size hole in the wall. And then we look down on the floor and there's a bullet. We were like, oh my God, that was a gun. Like somebody just shot into our house. We call 911 and we go into the basement because we didn't know if they were gone, if they were going to come back. We had no idea. I was terrified. I was even terrified when I heard the police get there. I still didn't believe it was them until they were, you know, really announced themselves. And we went upstairs and I'm just in my underwear and T shirt and they start asking us questions. At that point we realized that somebody had shot a semiautomatic weapon into the house, but we didn't know anything else. They had a forensics team come, they're putting the stickers up and the numbers and taking photos. And I'm down in the basement and I hear, you know, one of the forensic texts come and say, oh, wow, they're lucky. You know, I recently had to photograph a job where the woman was sleeping, you know, next to the wall, and she wasn't so lucky. And she was getting into detail about that woman's demise. And I was so upset because, you know, we had been sleeping in the front of the house, our bedroom was in the front of the house, my dog was sleeping on the floor, and the holes were a foot or so above our heads. A detective comes the next day and starts asking us questions. He had looked us up, our history, our previous partners. He looked at my ex, saw that he had a previous charge, started asking about him and asked us if we had gotten into any road rage situations. We were just like, what do you mean, road rage? Like, yeah, you know, some people will get really upset and follow you home. And they asked about what our political status was online. They were really trying to get into everything. And then the detective leaves and we obviously are trying to get out of the house because we don't know what's happening. And Michael brings up, he's like, I don't think this matches it, but I used that cocaine and you were upset. So I was trying to get a contact through somebody I used to work with. And I was supposed to meet up with him and the guy was being weird, so I canceled. And I was like, well, does he have your address? He's like, well, no, but he has my phone number. So I don't know if you can look people up that way. And then I was just Furious because I, you know, was upset that he had even reached out to somebody to buy drugs. But I just kind of brushed it off. I was like, there is no way that that would warrant that type of response. Somebody pulling out of a few hundred dollars deal, you know, I obviously had told a couple of friends what happened, and one of them reached out to one of the owners of the restaurant I worked with. They had a little basement apartment attached to their house that they said that we could stay at for as long as we needed. So we were sleeping at the apartment we were staying at, and we got a phone call that whoever had shot the house the night before had come back and shot it again. This is an area where there are gang initiations, where sometimes they will just choose a house and, and shoot it up. But it just. Nothing added up. I was a wreck. Having been so close to death for unknown reasons, you know, I knew this had nothing to do with me. Him, on the other hand, he had proclivities of being argumentative and disagreeable. After that happened, I couldn't sleep on a bed for weeks. I slept on the floor, you know, anywhere I drove. I was constantly making sure nobody was following me. I also had a couple of bullet holes in my car because it was parked in the driveway. So I put tape over those because I didn't know if that would obviously call me out as having been in some kind of altercation. He felt like I was acting too emotionally, and I felt like he was being too stubborn. I felt like I was being reasonable. You know, how does somebody act when you're sleeping in bed and somebody drives by and tries to kill you? There's not really a protocol, but I felt like, you know, I was going to work and I was just trying to be safe at this point. I had just started a job at an architecture firm as an architectural drafter. And one of the people I was working with offered to lend me a gun. He's like, I've got a 12 gauge shotgun. I grew up with guns. I, you know, did hunter safety when I was 11. I'm not afraid of guns. This situation had me feeling fearful and like we needed to protect ourselves. And so I borrowed the gun from him. It sat in our bedroom just against the wall. And I felt so uncomfortable having it there with us arguing and not getting along. I just did not feel good about having a gun in the house. And the way that Michael was acting, he just was starting to be erratic and inflammatory and he wanted to buy a gun. So we go and I Pick out a Sig Sawyer 9 millimeter. And it sat in my closet. And I returned the shotgun to my coworker. And I felt a little bit better about not having one just out. As time goes on, we hear a little bit from the detective. We found out that the description of the car and the ballistics matched to about 10 shootings that happened that summer. So I did feel a little bit better about the possibility that it was drug related. And it could have been related to Michael and that botched transaction. But we never found out who it was and the motive. I know that he had felt responsible in a way, for putting me in danger. And so he just really started to struggle. He was taking pain medication. He was taking Suboxone prescribed. And he also had a ketamine prescription. And he was going through it in three days. So if you're familiar with ketamine at all, if you take too much, you go into what's called a K hole, and you just kind of disassociate. There were a couple times that I came home from work and he was just completely gone. I started to get concerned. And when I would bring it up to him, he reassured me that he knew what he was doing. But I was still worried. At the same time, I was really focused on making sure that I had enough money to support us, to pay for our rent. And I also knew that I needed to start padding my savings and figuring out a different situation, because I didn't feel that he was doing what he could to take care of and support me. And that I needed to really just focus on making sure I was okay. We were fighting a lot. And there was one instance where he was provoking me until I started yelling. And then he pulled out his phone to videotape me. Another time where we were arguing. I was walking down the hallway and he threw a lemon at me, and it hit me in the back of the head. And I started really seeing the connections between my previous relationships. And I was so disappointed in myself, wondering how I was there again. I was struggling, too. I was working two jobs. I was working at the architecture firm during the day, and I would go to the restaurant and waitress. I was exhausted, and I just could not accept the behavior any longer. The fights had escalated to be verbally abusive and physically abusive. And I felt at that point that there was a real breakdown of where he was at mentally. I believed that I had made a different choice this time, that I had made one, a more logical decision about going into a relationship with him. And I could not have predicted the challenges that we faced with the shooting. I felt bad because I knew he was struggling, too, but I just couldn't put myself through it anymore. Coming home to a partner who wasn't there because they were abusing their medication. I was done. He wasn't taking care of himself, and I didn't know how to help him. March 31, 2021. I came home from work. It was 10, 30, 11. And I got home, and I could tell he was high. And I was so upset, I started crying. And I just. I told him I couldn't do it anymore. When I told him that I couldn't do it anymore, I felt bad, but I was so tired. I had worked a double that day, and I am not somebody who can coherently discuss deep conversations when I'm feeling like that. And I just needed to go to bed. I didn't care about how he felt in that moment, and I knew that it wasn't even going to be a productive conversation because he was not in his right mind. I go into my room to go to bed, and I close the door. And then I hear this kind of very odd laughter. And I hear our bedroom door open. He goes into my closet, and I hear him pull something out. And then I hear the gun case open. I hear him load it. And my instinct was that he was going to shoot me. So I jumped up, ran to the door, started running down the hallway to get out of the house. And he says, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not going to hurt you. And I turned around and I asked. I said, what the fuck are you doing? Why is the gun out? He's like, no, it's okay. It's okay. And I was like, put the gun down. I convinced him to put it down. And I go to talk to him, and I was like, what are you doing right now? And he's like, I'm ready to fly. I said, what? He said, you don't understand. I'm. I'm ready. I'm ready to fly. The gun was in the hallway at that point. I picked it up, and I was so panicked in that moment, I couldn't remember how to unload it. And I was like, I'm just gonna throw it off the balcony. So I get to the front door. He has caught up to me, and he's struggling. He's ripping at my shirt. He got the gun from me, and he turned towards me and put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. He immediately slumped over, and I started screaming. No, over and over. Because we had put hollow point bullets in the gun. There was no exit wound and there was barely any blood. I crawled over and I just touched his foot just to see if there was any sign, and he was gone. I knew what I had seen, but I didn't process it. I knew it and I saw it, but it just was out of the realm of possibility of anything that I could ever think I would witness. Our door is open. My dog ran out of the apartment and down the stairs because she was afraid. I was screaming and crying in my doorstep and somebody comes around the corner brandishing a gun. One of my neighbors who had heard the shot go off, and I threw my hands up and I said, no, he just shot himself. Our other neighbors are starting to come out. There was a woman who lived downstairs who I didn't know who put my dog in her house. And she came up and she helped me inside. I had never met her before, but she helped me onto my sofa, asked if I was okay. A police officer got there. He started questioning me. He was being really aggressive. And I understood that at that point there was no witness and I was the only person in the hallway with him and the gun. So I'm a witness, I'm a suspect. And so he was trying to ask me questions in different forms to get me to answer differently. And I was remaining calm, as calm as I could be in the situation. The detective comes and he said, it's clear what happened here. You're free to go. At this point, my friend Ada had come and she was with me, and her partner had rented a hotel room for us to stay in. They took me to the hotel room and she stayed the night with me. I have always been a really stubborn, I can do this myself person. If I can figure out how to fix something, I'm going to fix it myself before I call somebody. And this situation just showed me that if people are asking if you need help and they're offering their help, it's really important to accept it because they're not just asking for you, it's for them too. Everybody took care of me and it has changed how I show up for other people and how I show up for myself. Everybody was just making sure that I had what I needed and basic needs are food, shelter, and for me, love.

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[Julianne]

In the morning I got a call from the detective. He wanted to let me know how lucky I was to be alive. Most of the cases that he is called on end up in murder suicide and there aren't many of me that really hit me. Another phone call I received the day after Michael passed was from his mom. I answered the phone and she said, I need you to know that this isn't your fault. I've been waiting for this phone call for Michael's entire life. There was one thing I noticed when I woke up the next morning and it was that one of my normal emotions is anxiety and I didn't have it. I almost felt lighter. I had been so concerned about what I was noticing in our relationship and him and I and I had this anxiety of not feeling safe in that house and it was gone. I felt really bad about that. I was worried that if I wasn't working that I was just going to spiral through this experience. I had two options. One of the options wasn't even a choice for me. I needed to prevail and learn and grow from this situation. I knew that Michael would not have wanted a life altering decision that he made to negatively affect the trajectory of the rest of my life. So before I got back to work I got the pamphlets that the social worker had given me and I reached out to the trauma awareness center and I was Hooked up with a therapist. Luckily, on the first try, I found a perfect match for me. As far as therapy goes, I could not have gotten luckier. I started doing therapy within the week after it happened. You know, talking about it and talking through all the things I was feeling, I realized how much I needed to address from my childhood, from my adulthood, everything that led up to that moment, Realizing that there was the previous me, a part of me that did not get the care that she needed. During one session, he invited me to find a space that felt safe. And he said if I was interested, to invite myself as a child, just to have a conversation with myself, giving her love and playfulness. It was really powerful to be confronted with myself as a child and then the person that I am now. If I had known, you know, when I was 11 that I would be the person I am now, I wouldn't believe it. And I would be so proud of myself that I am still so capable of love and empathy and care and connection. Despite being deprived of that over and over again. I realized that if I don't heal that now, I'm going to continue to make the same mistakes that I've been making for the past 20 years. One of my mantras has been that I'm not dead, I'm alive. Because there have been moments since then that I have had to remind myself that I'm not living in an alternate reality, that I really did survive that night. It was a couple months after I'd kind of just been going through the motions and just surviving. And I went camping with a friend, and we were heading home, and I was with my dog, and there was a river on the side of the road. We had been at this hot campground all weekend, and I just submerged myself in the water. As silly as it sounds, it was just like it was the first time I could feel. I actually felt like I was alive. I could feel the stabbing sensation of the cold water. And I was so relieved that I was still capable of feeling what it feels like to jump in a cold river. I've gone through many emotions in how I have felt about Michael after his passing. I have screamed in my car thinking about how selfish it was of him to do that in front of me. He took away all of his burdens, and he just put them on me in that anger. I feel bad about that. I feel guilty that I even feel bad because he took his life. I don't think suicide is selfish, because in that moment, you feel like you are doing the most selfless thing and you think that you're doing people a favor by unburdening them. And in that same moment, the way that he did it was incredibly selfish. I will never be the same person that I was before then, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. But I didn't have choice in that. He made that choice for me. I had his cremation remains in my basement with his other things. And I just got to the point this past April, I was done holding onto it. I didn't want it in my house anymore. I took the day off, and I drove up into the mountains as far as I could get, and I found a really lovely place overlooking a river, and I spread his ashes out, and I just sat there for a moment, and I let him go. It was so beautiful to just be able to also let him go. He wouldn't have wanted to be in a box in my basement with grief. It's such a spectrum, especially in this situation where I was done with a relationship. You know, I felt a lot of guilt in even the first year. I think I probably had that last image of him in my head every day at some point, and now I can go weeks without it. Going through these situations, I feel that I am just more tender and understanding of people's experiences. I try to see everybody's point of view and perspective. I think that's a really big problem that we have and so polarizing that nobody can actually have a conversation and see somebody else's point of view if it's not aligned with theirs. And so I really try to get a deeper understanding of people and how they're in the place that they are. Since Michael has passed, I think the most challenging thing I've had to work through is realizing that I didn't die. I came so close to death twice due to gun violence. I know that I've worked through a lot of the ptsd, but I know that there are some things that I just will have to deal with and face. There is more caution now with getting to know people and just being sure that I am not continuing a pattern and a cycle that I have worked really hard to recognize and move forward from. I have had to recognize my role and my responsibilities, particularly when it comes to my relationships and the partners I choose. I don't just coincidentally end up with people that aren't good for me. I make choices for me. It just was really important to go back to the foundation of the things that I love and that have always brought me joy. It's picking up little creatures in the woods and it's going to the movies by myself and jumping in the water when the opportunity is presented. It's little reminders that in loving myself now, I'm giving myself the love that I needed when I was little.

[Narrator/Host]

Today's episode featured Julianne.

[Wit Misseldine]

If you'd like to reach out to.

[Narrator/Host]

Her, please find her address in the show Notes.

[Wit Misseldine]

From Wondery. You're listening to this Is Actually Happening. If you love what we do, please rate and review the show. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music or on the Wondery app to listen ad free and get access to the entire back catalog. In the Episode notes you'll find some links and offers from our sponsors. By supporting them, you help us bring you our show for free. I'm your host Wit Misseldine. Today's episode was co produced by me, Jason Blaylock and Andrew Waits, with special thanks to the this Is Actually Happening team including Ellen Westberg. The intro music features the song Illibi by Tipper. You can join the community on the this Is Actually Happening discussion group on Facebook or follow us on Instagram actuallyhappening on the show's website thisisactuallyhappening.com you can find out more about the podcast. Contact us with any questions, submit your own story or visit the store where you can find this Is Actually Happening designs on stickers, T shirts, wall art, hoodies and more. That's thisisactuallyhappening.com and finally, if you'd like to become an ongoing supporter of what we do, go to patreon.com happening even $2 to $5 a month goes a long way to support our vision. Thank you for listening.

[Nicole Byer]

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[Julianne]

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