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This Is Actually Happening
394: What if you found yourself naked, starving and surrounded by cops?
01:02:17
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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.
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I was just who I am, down at my skin without anything somehow that felt necessary to be totally empty and to try and, like, purge that vessel of suffering.
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From wondery. I'm Wit Misseldine. You're listening to this Is Actually Happening, Episode 394. What if you found yourself naked, starving, and surrounded by cops?
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I was born to two parents that absolutely adored me. My mom was a teacher, and my dad was working as a general manager at Kmart. And they met there. They met at Kmart. When I was born. My dad was 32, and my mom was 28 years old. They had tried to have children before, and they tried multiple times, and they finally had me. And I was like this miracle child. And I felt very loved. I remember my mom just being very motherly, and she was always right there. My dad, he was always a very free spirit. He loved animals. He loved plants. I mean, he loved people, too. He. He kind of loved a lot about life. He did work a lot, so he would get home pretty late at night. And I frequently remember him bringing home some kind of surprise, whether it was like, candy or a toy from Kmart, which he managed. He was just always trying to make me happy. I also remember frequently the feeling of him being gone. Like he had left for the store without letting me know, or he had just disappeared. And I would run out into the front yard and the backyard and I'd look for him. And I remember it being just really scary multiple times. I remember not being able to find him. It was that true childhood fear and panic. So I had gotten up earlier than my dad in the morning. My mom must have been at work. I was about three years old. And I waddled out to the kitchen, and there was a cat that was trying to get outside. And I was able to open up the door, go outside with her, and I closed the door. And it was one of those doors that locks from the inside. I became aware that I was stuck outside in that same feeling of panic, absolute dread. Panic came up, and I started knocking on the door. And that lasted for about five minutes. I started throwing things at the door to make noise and hopefully wake him up. And there was a huge bucket of birdseed. He was a true animal lover. And he would always feed the birds. And I remember picking up tiny handfuls of that bird seed and throwing it at the door as loud and as hard as I could. And I couldn't wake him up. He was passed out, and he was extremely hungover, and there was just no amount of birdseed that was going to wake him up. So at three years old, I ended up crossing the street in Florida and going to a neighbor's house. And I don't remember how he contacted my mom, but he did contact my mom, and she came home. And that was really one of, I believe, one of the main reasons why they ended up getting a divorce. My mom decided that my dad was very deep into alcoholism, and he did reject help. So she was pretty panicked. My grandpa came out from New Mexico and helped her pack up a moving truck while my dad was at work. My dad just went home after work one day and walked into the house and realized that we were gone. I know that my dad always struggled with a little bit of depression, but definitely substance abuse. But I blamed myself for the divorce. Through that incident, I did go with my mom and grandpa. We all drove from Florida to New Mexico. And I remember being totally confused. I didn't really understand what was happening. I worshiped my dad. He was the coolest guy. And my mom had to work all the time, so she was at work. So I was just very confused. I was out of my element. It was just a really slow, lonely time. I miss my dad very much. I just thought the world of him. And it was easy to romanticize all the good things about him because he was all those miles away. He made all the effort to stay in touch. He tried to come out and visit me, but it took a serious toll. I remember my mom working really, really hard. She was incredibly determined to give me the best life possible. I was confused. You just don't understand things like alcoholism and the level of fear and protection that she must have felt to make a decision like that. I now understand that's heroic, but back then, I very unfairly held it against her. I was about eight years old when my dad got remarried and they had their first trip child together. That shook me up. I remember my dad trying everything he could to make me feel like a part of the family still. But I was always sort of jealous that those siblings got to grow up with him in close contact. I have a feeling that he was sober for a couple of years at least. But he started drinking again, and they ended up getting a divorce. So he lost another wife and another set of children. He ended up getting a house, and I remember visiting him, and the entire mood of the house was entirely different. There was a weight to all of it. I think that's when his descent into depression and incredible alcoholism really began. And the weight that he was walking around with, that shame, I just can't imagine. And it breaks my heart. So I graduated 8th grade and went to a public high school. I felt very alone pretty much my entire life. I had felt alone since we moved out to New Mexico, even though I had my mom and my grandparents. And in class one day, one of my good friends was texting a girl that went to a high school that was an hour away from our high school in a different city. We and I ended up calling her. We were able to get to know each other. She was very much like a best friend that I thought about all the time, and she was the top of her class. I just thought that she was a total catch. I would make the drive up to where she lived, and she made those feelings of being really alone go away. It was just the beginning of good things. We stayed together through my graduation and her graduation, and we decided to get our own apartment. I was going to college, and she was doing the same. So we were just kind of starting a life together. My dad was always trying to get me on the phone just to check in, and he would call me at least once a week, and I had just avoided him. I was just having fun with my friends. I was having fun with my partner. I had started smoking pot, and often he would call when I was high, and I didn't want to answer the phone when I was high because I didn't want him to think I was weird. I wanted him to think that I was this star child and somebody to be proud of. So I didn't answer the phone when he tried to call. I just always assumed that there would be a chance to get to know my dad later. So in 2015, I was still in college, and I was really big on camping, and we decided to go up to the mountains to camp. It was just this really good memory. That next morning we woke up and we felt like we should probably get going and head home. We packed up all the stuff, and as soon as we made it back into cell phone range, I had a missed call and voicemail from my mom. Her voice told me that something was wrong, and she said, tommy, you have to come over here. You have to come to my house. And she was crying and. And I said, who is it? Is it dad or Grandma? She said, you have to come over here. We have to be in person. My partner was with me, and I was just crying. I Was trembling. We got to my mom's house, and we walked in. I remember her saying, tommy, what I'm going to tell you right now is going to change your life forever. And she said, it was your dad. Your dad died. And I remember shrieking, screaming. I was not able to look at that fact. It was that panic feeling from when I was a kid. It was terror. And it took me a couple minutes to even believe it. He had gotten into an argument with his current girlfriend. She had called the police because he was being a little belligerent, and he had a gun. He called my grandma and he told her, if the police come to this house, I'm gonna die. He was just really sad. I mean, I don't know how much torture you can go through or how much shame you can still stand up straight from, but he went outside with a gun. I don't know how many officers showed up to his house, but from what I understand, he shot one time up into the air. And the police made the decision, I mean, for their own safety, that they were gonna kill him. I believe in my heart that he was not able to end his own life, and he was desperate to do exactly that. I think that he was hoping that they would allow that suffering to end for him. And, yeah, he passed away on October 23rd. I remember right after she had told both of us I was in really bad shape. Just an infinite panic attack. This feeling of, oh, my God, my dad is dead. And he tried to contact me multiple times before it all happened. The guilt was starting to brew, and I was starting to find all these reasons that it was my fault. And, oh, man, the guilt. I just felt like if I could have said the right thing, he would still be alive and everything would be okay. I really wallowed in that. The event that I thought caused them to get a divorce, the birdseed event. I figured that that was the first domino in this long line of dominoes that wouldn't have fallen over if it wasn't for me going outside. So somehow I convinced myself that I was pretty much the reason that he was sad and that he had such a hard life. I just blame myself for all of it. My partner and I had decided to get our own place but stay together. We'd really tried to make the relationship successful. We had been on again, off again multiple times and taken multiple breaks. I had moved in with my friend group from high school, and we were huge on skateboarding. We would go to the skate park, and that's literally how we spent the afternoon. Until it got dark for months. It was great. One day we were at the skate park, and the security guard came by to tell us that it was time for us to go home. And I don't know what he was thinking, but one of my friends decided that he was going to start a fight with the security guard of the skate park, and he ended up hitting him with a skateboard. The cops were called. We all got charged with felonies. We were charged with conspiracy to commit an aggravated battery or something like that. That was like five months after my dad had died. So it was a pretty quick addition to all of that guilt and sadness and shame. And it was now exponentially more, because now, for the rest of my life, I'm going to be labeled as a felon. That really made things get darker, and that added to the guilt about my dad. I had made the mistake of not being there for him when he died. And now I was going to be labeled as a shitty person. I was going to be a felon. That means I can't teach. I wanted to be a teacher. It just means that I can't do any of the things that I thought I was going to be able to do. I chose to stop going to college because I wasn't sure that I was going to be able to use my degree for something that I wanted to be. I was just so ashamed because my partner was the top of her class, just a real caliber woman. And I saw this happening as a valid opportunity for her to leave me, but she didn't. The court case lingered above our heads for, like, four and a half years. We would get called to the courthouse and the state would ask for an extension. And one day it was just dismissed. It was the most anticlimactic victory, and now it's water under the bridge. But like, four and a half years later, you can get your degree in four years. And I had just been waiting. Everybody around me, my partner included, was just making progress. And, yeah, I felt like a failure. I was 23 when all the charges were dismissed, which was a huge relief. I got a job that I really liked. I was still trying to get traction back, and my partner and I were still trying to make everything work at this point. We had been together for a long time, and after everything was dismissed, I felt like it was very appropriate to propose. The engagement changed everything. I think it scared both of us a lot. It just added this level of reality to our relationship that exposed that it might not be the healthiest option. But we've been Together for so long and through some really heavy personal life experiences at this point. And instead of us breaking up in and just making a clean cut, we decided that we were going to go on another break and that I was going to go on a trip and kind of get my life together and figure out just what I wanted to do. I bought a pickup truck. I built it out with a camper shell and put a bed back there. I just headed north, and I started visiting different national parks. I had gotten a call from my partner, and this is about three weeks now that I've been on the road. And she gave me an ultimatum to either come home or to keep going on this road trip. But she made it very clear that we would be over if that was the fact. I saw what the future would look like if I went back home. And I just knew that it would be that same struggle of not really knowing where I fit, Feeling semi out of place. So I decided that I was not going to go home, and I let her know that I was going to keep driving. The reality of losing her, I think hit me some part deep inside. But there was a lot of denial. I just couldn't really look at it for what it was. It wasn't really registering like it should in that, wow, this is somebody that I've been with for a long time. We would be breaking up. Is this the right thing to do? It was an impulsive attitude of, okay, if that's what you really want. I guess that's what happens. After we had broken up, I kept going north to Montana and hit Glacier park and had a great time in Glacier. I had met somebody out there who recommended that I go check out Olympic national park in Washington. So I went out to Washington. It was so green, and there was so much water, and there was the ocean and hiking, and I was starting to get in really good shape and just fell in love with Washington. I eventually kind of ran out of money, and it became clear that it was time to get a job. And I ended up getting a job at this little farm store in Sequim, Washington. Somebody had offered up a converted school bus that was made into this tiny home. And I was staying there and just really thriving, which was, yeah, a stark contrast to how I had been feeling after my dad had passed away. And definitely with the court case and not really even thinking about what had happened with my partner. So I had been working at the farm store for about three months at this point. I had gotten really comfortable, but I did not realize it. My Enthusiasm, and my energy level was getting cranked up. So at work, I had been exhibiting just, like, some extra energy and maybe being a little bit unpredictable and unprofessional, like scaring people around the corner, Just things like that. Everybody at the farm store was starting to become aware that, like, there was a shift happening. One day I had gotten into an argument with the owner of the school bus, and she decided that I was out of there and told my boss at the farm store. They decided to leave, let me go. It was really dramatic, and I'm sure I said some things that would be incredibly cringy. That was when extra energy that was maybe playful started to turn into anger. I couldn't tell that I was acting any different than a normal day. So it really hurt me. To have these people that I felt had accepted me, to feel them reject me was just very confusing, and it brought up a lot of anger. I went from the farm store to the house of somebody that I was seeing and told her what had happened, and I could tell that I was scaring her. I was just so confused by the rejection that I was starting to feel from people. And I couldn't see that I was acting any differently than I ever did. But that contrast between people being accepted with open arms and now rejected, it was painful, it was confusing, and I just knew that I had to get out of Squim. There was a town called Port Angeles that's about an hour away from Sequim. I had another friend there, and she invited me to hang out. So we all went climbing, her and her housemates and myself. We had this beautiful day rock climbing, and I was just again, feeling this integration and acceptance from people as we were all getting into our separate vehicles. When we were done climbing, I started crying. And I remember thanking them for just inviting me to climb and for like, letting me hang out. I remember catching that and thinking, whoa, why am I crying? Like, why am I feeling these emotions so deeply? And it was just this quick oscillation between hot and cold. At this point, I'm starting to pick up the. That I'm being perceived a little bit differently than I'm perceiving myself. But it just got filed away. We drove back to their house, and we were having a Halloween party. There was alcohol, there was cannabis. There were a ton of these people. And after the excitement of rock climbing and the victory that. That felt like. I remember being incredibly extra at that party and drinking a ton of. And just really very in your face. Everybody was done partying, and I decided That I wasn't. I went to a couple more bars and caused a couple more scenes. And it must have been about 3am I went back to the house that she was living at. I was knocking on the window of a window that I thought was hers pretty much back, begging for her to let me in because it was so cold. But it wasn't her window. It was one of the main guys of the household. He came to the door and he told me that the girl that I was friends with and kind of seeing did not feel comfortable with me coming inside the house and that I needed to get out. I mean, it was just earlier that day that there was the open arms feeling of rock climbing. And now we're back to the other side of the coin. Like they were so scared of me that they didn't want me inside their house. Even though I wasn't thinking straight. I understood that there is a theme now, that this is a multi city rejection. And I could not figure out why I was being so repulsive to everybody. But I knew that I was. I went out to my truck to leave. I pulled out my phone to look at the time and it was October 23rd, the anniversary of my dad's passing or suicide. In that moment, it all came together. I understood what was going on, or I thought I did. And what was supposed to happen was that I was supposed to suffer really bad that day. I got my truck and I started driving towards a town called Forks. It's four in the morning, it's totally dark, I'm absolutely drunk. I'm on the road. And the truck started to kind of hiccup and sputter. And I looked down and sure enough, I was out of gas. I pulled my truck over to the side of the road. It was pure panic and frustration and anger. Just that feeling of I give up. It was like this boil that was deep inside my ribs was like finally coming to a head. The same feeling I would imagine my dad had of like, I can't do it anymore. I got out of my car. I don't know if you've seen people doing primal screams to try and relieve some suffering or for therapeutic value, but I was just, just screaming in the middle of the woods in Washington at the top of my lungs. I called out for something. I just was calling out for something else. It just made total sense now that I was going to suffer really bad today. And it was a day to purge all of that negativity that I'd been building up for my entire life. And I was Going to get it all out that day. It felt very appropriate and it felt necessary. It felt like divine intervention. Honestly, it felt spiritual. Screaming in the middle of the forest. So an officer, a police officer ended up driving by. I waved him down and he pulled over. He knew that I had been drinking. I wasn't sure if I was going to get in trouble then and there, but no, he ended up giving me a ride back into town and he let me know that my truck would be there for two days and after that it would be towed. I mean, at that point I'm really. I'm kind of getting far out. I'm not remembering things. I forgot where my truck even was. I was in town and I was walking down the side of the road still screaming like I had been cutting myself. And I'd given away my backpack at this point. That had my wallet, it had my phone. It was just absolutely deteriorating into a bad situation. I walked to the business where one of my friends worked. I was talking to her and telling her that today was the day that I was going to suffer it all out and that I was going to be on the news later because everybody was looking at me and I was just sure that everybody was watching me. She ended up calling an ambulance. And they took me to the hospital to kind of do a mental evaluation. They're asking me my address and my phone number and who my parents are, and I had the actual answer for everything. They were just really confused at what was going on. And I tried to explain to them, my dad died today. The police killed him. I'm going to suffer as much as I can today and get it all out. Which, I mean, made no sense to them. But like, they couldn't really hold me in the hospital because I had a good answer for everything. So they did let me go. I scared a lot of people that day. There were multiple run ins with the police where they had been called to different parts of town to do welfare checks on me. It was a day full of torture and suffering. It was nighttime at this point and I'm waiting for some kind of finale to come. I'm waiting for some sign that this is over and that I've suffered enough and it's done. So I took off every piece of clothing that I had absolutely naked. And I started running. I was so desperate to like, get this out of me that like, I shed all of my stuff. I thought that that was necessary. And I just, yeah, started jogging. I was just running. I hoping to see some sign that it was done. And that I had suffered enough and just that my dad knew that I loved him. I saw the port, and I saw the moon on the water. And, oh, my God, it was beautiful. I turned my head to the right, and it was somebody's house. It was just like a residential property. And it had a billboard in the yard. The billboard was significant in that it was illuminated. There were two lights shining on it. But more than that, the billboard was a means to get up to that second story window. I went into their yard, and they had rain catches, big tubs of water. And I dunked myself inside these tubs of water to try and wash something off. I don't know. Absolutely naked, freezing at this point. And it's. It's cold. This is October. It became clear that the thing to do was now get inside the house with the billboard and to take a bath, because I was really cold. So I climbed this billboard with no shoes, with nothing on, absolutely naked. And it was, like, 30ft up in the air to jump onto the house roof because there was a bedroom window there. I tried to open up the window, and it was locked. Thank God. I turned around, and there were red and blue lights that were getting closer and closer. And finally, I think about three cop cars showed up. They shined a spotlight up onto this billboard where I'm standing just totally naked. And it became clear that this was the finale, that the cops would show up. They were kind of responsible for my dad dying. This makes sense. I felt like I had started to touch some kind of deep puzzle piece inside myself that I was not really familiar with everything. While it was really crazy, it felt so meaningful. It was chaos, but it was purposeful chaos. It's literally what I set out to do that day, which was, like, suffer. I'd gotten rid of everything, and I was more authentic without all the extra stuff. I was just who I am, down at my skin, without anything somehow that felt necessary to be totally empty and to try and, like, purge that vessel of suffering. I felt like my dad's suffering was mainly my fault because it was his death day. It was the 23rd, the day that he passed, and now it was the anniversary of that day. That somehow, cosmically, he would either be free from the torture if it did continue into the afterlife, or he would be aware that I was doing it for him. A part of me was starting to think pretty abstractly, and I thought that, yeah, maybe there was a piece of him that could be trapped. And by doing this day of suffering, it would prove that somebody loved him enough to let him free if he was stuck somewhere. I felt like I had a lot to. To make amends for just with what happened at the skate park. And even though it didn't result in any kind of charges, I still felt a lot of shame for that and not being there for my dad. It was all of this inner baggage and this inner turmoil, Just that uncomfortable feeling that maybe we all have. I was ready to make this offering, maybe to something bigger and to have it be enough and to be forgiven and for my dad to be forgiven as well. A lot was tied together. I remember being on top of the billboard and seeing all of the cop cars pull up and being hit with that moment of understanding now that the cops were there. There was that feeling of, ah, now this makes sense. Just in that the next part of the story was now going to come and I didn't have to search it out. It was so similar to what my dad went through and how they showed up at his house and he went outside and confronted them. So that's definitely very fresh in my mind. I was able to slide down the billboard. I turned to face them totally naked. They did have their guns drawn. They told me to put my hands behind my head and to get on my knees. And I did exactly that. There was a little bit of that primal fear that cops can pull out of us. I was scared. They surrounded me and handcuffed me and put me inside of the cop car. I began to just absolutely abuse them verbally, yelling that, you all killed my dad. What you stand for killed my dad. It made sense to like, confront these people. And I was saying things like, you all owe my family money. I'm going to kill all of you if you take me out of this cop car. I think that there definitely was a piece that thought that I was going to die, that they were going to maybe shoot me, and that the suffering would be over. The amount of privilege to be able to say something like that and not die. Like, I'm blown away that I said that and that there aren't lasting repercussions from it. I definitely attribute some of that to the color of my skin. It's really unfortunate. We made it to the station and we pulled into a garage and there were at least 1, 9, 10 cops ready. They had all the backup they would ever need to get me restrained. And I'm sure that they had communicated that I had said, if you take me out of this car, I'm going to try and kill you. So I'm still Naked at this point. And a couple of big burly guys pulled me out of the car. They put me belly down on the cement. Like five or six knees of gigantic men went into my back and my kidneys. And they were just pinning me down. But the pressure of that was shocking. While there are all the knees really pressing into me, I feel one hand. Somebody put their hand on my back and it was a gentle touch. It was like an up and down rub, like a mom would do. It was a reassurance, or that's how I thought about it. So they brought out this restraining device called a rapper. It's basically a Velcro and mesh burrito that they roll you up in and you sit up straight with your legs straight in front of you. And they tether your neck to your feet so you can't sit back any further than the strap lets you, so it keeps pulling you forward. It's really uncomfortable. At least four of these people carried me in this wrap device, restrained into what they call the rubber room. It's this padded room where if you're having a mental breakdown, you can't really hurt yourself. If you're suicidal, it's probably really hard to kill yourself in there. And they sat me down and they put one of those padded helmets on me. So I'm in this wrap with my hands handcuffed behind my back. And I was. Was under the assumption that it was just all part of the game, it was all part of the test. So I started trying to get out of this rap thing. I was just rolling over and they'd come back in and pick me back up. And time doesn't make any sense in there. I definitely kept up the verbal pressure. And every time they would come in the room, I would make some statement or something to piss them off. And I just was not making my life any easier. I don't know if it was the pain or the heightened mania or psychosis. At this point, it's really starting to come out. Maybe it was a protective mechanism, but the meaning and the purpose factor was amplified. Now the suffering, it just tracked. It made sense why I was in the room, what was going on. And by that time I was actually seeing things that weren't there. Different shapes inside on the walls, and just things that weren't there. I stayed in the rubber room for a couple days. It should have been terrifying. And thinking back on it now, it is terrifying. The entire thing was traumatic, but back then it just made absolute sense. The best part of that and something that I just Wasn't expecting at all was to be fed. I had no money, and I was just really hungry. And I remember bologna sandwiches and potato chips and that just being like an experience to eat was incredible. After the rubber room experience, I did do a video court session from the jail. I did get charged with trespassing and the indecent exposure. And as long as I agreed to show back up to court, they gave me a court date. They said that I was able to be released on my own recognizance with that caveat that I had to show up for court. And I was released back into Port Angeles. And it's right around Halloween, so I just remember all the leaves on the bricks being blown around and it raining people in costumes. And it was like I'd been released into heaven. I'm about 25 years old at this point, and everything was continuing to spiral because I was so hungry. I started going into different restaurants and ordering food and not being able to pay for it and eating out of dumpsters. I was definitely causing a scene in all of these different places that I would go into, like, bars where I would order the first drink without paying for it. And the bartender would get, of course, angry, and they would throw me out of the bar, of course. And there are only so many bars in Port Angeles, so I made a name for myself pretty quickly. There were other times where maybe I was feeling extra manic, where the cops had to be called out to kind of defuse the situation or to maybe do a welfare check on me. There were multiple dumpster diving attempts. A bunch were successful, and then a bunch were semi offensive to the business owner. The cops would be called, and they were getting pretty familiar with me at this point. While I could be pretty spicy and confrontational, there was also this side of it that was like a spiritual awakening, sort of seeing how many people needed help and how much people were lacking was heartbreaking in this spiritual way or beautiful way where I can actually do something to help. So I would be doing. Doing dumpster diving, looking for anything that people could use, or taking things that might be outside of a business, like plants or flowers. I stole a ton of flowers while I was out there. And the cops would just show up and defuse the situation. But there wasn't really enough meat. It definitely seemed like petty offenses, if they were offenses at all. And it was more annoying. And they were just watching out to make sure that the scene didn't escalate into anything bad. The more that they were called out, the more familiar they did get with me. I mean, it was a small town. There weren't too many cops, and they were all how police officers should be. They took the time to not get aggressive right away and to ask me questions and just to try and maybe feel out how dangerous this situation was. I was convinced that something was helping me through this, that the town people were supplying me with care and food and clothes, because they were. There were a lot of people that really went out of their way to try and keep me safe. Maybe it was this really desperate searching for food, for warmth, and it was always there. I mean, whatever you needed was in a trash can or somebody would give you. And it felt like I was being cared for by something magical or spiritual, whatever you would want to call it. But I definitely felt guided and cared for. Unfortunately, my mom had heard about what was happening and she flew out to Washington. She. She was really desperate to try and help me and to figure out what was going on because she had heard from the police station what had happened and she was just terrified. I didn't have a phone at that point. I had lost or given everything away. I didn't have a truck. So my mom, she asked my partner if she would be willing to come out as well, and she did. So they both came out. They got me admitted to an inpatient rehabilitation program. I remember being really confused at why they wanted me to go inside this facility because I had been fine living on the street or I thought. So I stayed at this inpatient rehabilitation center for like a day and a half. And I exited or released myself from there because they couldn't technically hold me. So I left. And my mom and my partner both continued to try for a couple days to get me to understand that what was happening wasn't normal, that something scary was happening, and that they were worried for me. My mom took off first, and later that day, my ex partner found me on the street. And she pulled over. She was on her way out of town and she. She just made it clear that her dad had begged her to get safe and to remove herself from that situation. She said, I wish you every happiness in the world. I remember that and I'll always remember that. She was crying and I was confused. I remember asking her what they wanted me to do. Like there was somebody who had been watching me and I was starting to get desperate and I just wondered what. What do I have to do to make this all end and make it kind of make sense? My ex fiance took off. My mom had left as well, and it didn't take long for me to get in trouble again. I had gone into a restaurant, and when they brought out the bill, I explained that I had no money and that I was poor and I was just really hungry. They called the cops in the same police department. Port Angeles came. And it was an actual charge of defrauding a business owner. And there was no choice. I was taken back to jail. And this time I was no longer in a rubber room all by myself. I was now in general population. I'm still very verbally spicy at this point, and I'm still kind of under the impression that something bigger is observing this whole thing. I don't know if that's like a secret group of people or if it's God, but I had this feeling that other people were watching and it was kind of being televised. So I'm in the general room with like maybe nine other guys. And I mean, I was starting it with. With everybody. I would go around and like, I was folding people's blankets. I was organizing their stuff. I was just pissing everybody off. And I think that the police were very aware of that or the officers that were watching me. And I ended up getting moved to another solo cell. And I was there for like 45 days. That's when everything really started to hit me. I was talking to my mom and my ex partner every day on the phone, if they would answer. And the fact that the ex partner did that for me, I just. I'm so thankful that she was there for me because that was the beginning of processing just how big of an occurrence it was. The stunt that I felt had so much purpose. I mean, grieving my dad's death and just like the reasoning behind it started to fade away. I felt very embarrassed. I felt very lost and very ashamed. I felt like I really had blown it. I felt like a boat that had drifted too far out to sea and there was no tether back to shore. And now I was just at the mercy of these things that I had done in a compromised mental state. Each conversation that I had with the ex partner and I had with my mom, it was just becoming a little bit more apparent that it wasn't purely this beautiful thing that had occurred. I just had scared everybody. I felt very lost. So I read a lot. I read a lot, trying to pass the time. I slept a time. But by the end of those 45 days, I was just very aware of that I had done something that could never be undone. Once I was re incarcerated, I was charged with this long Line of crimes that I had now racked up. And my mom was in constant contact, talking to different correctional officers and really, like, advocating for me from New Mexico and saying, he's having sex, Some kind of episode. This is not the norm for him. He's in trouble somehow. I don't know how she did it, but her and that lawyer advocated through the court and made an agreement that if I went home with my mom back to New Mexico and got the heck out of Washington, that they wouldn't put all of these charges. And these things that did end up in a guilty conviction, they somehow got omitted from my record. I think that they did count the 45 days served as time served, and it was an even trade for my time. And I think they were just really glad that I was getting out of Washington. The amount of care that everybody took in this situation, it was miraculous because people understood that. That I had had a manic episode. I was finally released from jail, and my mom flew out from New Mexico, and she brought me back out to New Mexico. I think she was really nervous at first to re encounter me and definitely relieved. Once we had gotten on the airplane, I had to move back in with her and her partner. At the time, my ex partner is still in the same city that I'm now back in, the city that I'd try to run away from. And we had a dog together, Petey. She would bring Petey over, and I would watch Petey. And we kind of did shared custody of Petey for a while. It was so depressing, and I felt absolutely worthless. She would come see me at my mom's home. I lived in the basement, sitting, and she would pick PD up. The whole thing was just very sad. And now she was starting her own life again, building a relationship with another partner. It was just very final. I'd just never been more lost because she helped me navigate a lot of those points in my life that were too much to do alone. Swallowing that was a lot. Being able to put myself back out there and reach out to old friends that were in the city, I felt was impossible because I couldn't really explain what I had gone through. And I tried to with a couple friends, but it was hard to explain what had happened in Washington. And at that point, I really was still digesting the experience myself. I started doing some therapy with an awesome woman. She explained everything as the psychosis and the. That I was bipolar. And I still hadn't really unpacked it at that point to being mental illness. I just was very Aware that it wasn't healthy, but she was able to help me put words to it. And we just kept peeling back layers, and we got to the dad thing. And just to start to trudge through all of it, I had jokingly said that I felt like I needed to talk to a priest because I didn't understand what was going on and what had happened. We lived right across the street from a Presbyterian church where I met a man named Mike McHugh. He was the pipe organist, and he also did counseling. So we sat down and I tried to explain what had happened in Washington. There was no judgment. He just let me talk, which led to crying, which led to him kind of giving me some context of. It sounds like this could have been a breakthrough. You shouldn't view it all as negative. It sounds like there were good parts to it as well. He had been building a pipe organ for a church in town, and the church ended up asking him to get rid of the organ that was almost built. He had had a stroke when he was about 70, so he asked me for help in taking this pipe organ apart. He had a woodworking shop where he would build everything. And he taught me how to use every tool in that shop and took the time to teach me again if I forgot something. Just a very, very available friend. Just a true friend. Mike had never been married, and. And he didn't have any kids. And I think that there was a slot that I was eager to fill with like a father figure. And I feel so blessed that Mike took the time to give me advice and to listen and to do all those things that maybe my dad would have done. I guarantee he would have done. I mean, Mike was a dad to me. After we took down the organization, we started working together in his shop and also tuning pipe organs. When I first had made it back to Albuquerque, I didn't have a vehicle or much, really. And slowly I was able to save up a little bit of money. And I was feeling like I had this purpose by doing pipe tuning. Just slowly gaining my confidence back. It took a long time for me to feel even okay about presenting myself to society. A year of therapy and digesting and working with Mike to start to accept the things about myself that I didn't want to be a part of me. Like this fact that I had a mental illness and the nudity thing. It was just like accepting these different pieces of the very real part of me, the self that I am. But these pieces that I don't realize really want to be a part of me. Mike just recently passed away. It was just so beautiful to be able to be there with this father figure in that natural end of life, how it should be being able to be there for somebody as they got older. And he did need a lot of help physically towards the end. That felt very purposeful to me. Just something that you never regret, something that you're naturally supposed to do. When he passed away, I was really scared and terrified of what was going to come out of me, but that wasn't the case. It was very, very sad to lose Mike, but just the privilege of being with him in those final weeks and days and seconds as he passed, like I would have done for my dad any day of the week, was a gift I am eternally thankful for. I had not had another event like the Washington event, where it was full blown mania. And after the therapy and understanding mania a little bit more, I really view the emergence of whatever character came out in Washington as this stress response. My own nervous system or brain or body taking over and protecting me because it knew deep down that I was in real trouble. There was that surface part of my brain that refused to look at that it could have gone a lot differently, and I'm really lucky that it went the way that it did. Even though it's been one of the most confusing things of my life, I'm still putting the pieces back together and I still have to remind myself of the meaningful parts of the experience. And I can't just look at the shameful parts of it. These two women that I thought that I had totally just destroyed or thrashed our relationship somehow, they're both still there for me in the ways that they can be. That's incredibly healing. The hardest part of the experience was moving on from that relationship, learning how to operate in the world without somebody else to lean on. We were really codependent and I was terrified to have to do it without her. That's been the hardest part. It's also accepting the diagnosis of bipolar was one of the hardest things to swallow. But I do accept it. And I've accepted the fact that, like, that's something that I have to keep on my radar for my whole life. Like, I could get into trouble again. Currently, I'm just trying to take really good care of myself and just do all the right things. I'm excited for this next chapter, but I am sort of unsure what that looks like. I don't know what the next few years are going to bring. That's a little scary, but I'm not dreading Life the same way anymore. I'm hopeful. It could have ended a lot differently for me, and I'm lucky to be alive. So all of this happened pre George Floyd, and I was pulling stunts that if I was a person of color, I guarantee that things would have been worse. And after seeing the George Floyd footage and just remembering my own experiences and, like, man, he didn't do anything. And here I was having a mental episode. And to be a person of color and to go through that exact same situation, I think would be worlds apart. It would just be a different outcome, and that's heartbreaking. After going through everything, I definitely see people that are having symptoms of mental illness or people that are homeless. Not understanding why something is happening and not understanding why you're doing something is really painful, and I have a lot more slack to give for people that are down on their luck. My heart just goes out to. To people that are acting from a place that seems to make sense inside their own head, and it doesn't make sense in everybody else's. It's a tough place to be in, and I've been there. I take the time to remember how I felt when I came back from Washington to New Mexico, which is already a huge resource. Like, I had a house, I had a home. I had a mom that loved me and that was willing to walk through that very unsure time with me and make sure that I healed. And, like, if you take anybody else that doesn't have family or resources or people looking out for them, healing from that, when you don't have resources, it's a different beast altogether. My heart goes out to so many people now, and I definitely thank God that I have my mom and that I have the resources that I had. Even though it was very far out, I feel like it all did have the ultimate therapeutic value. Feeling guilty that my mom and dad split up, it made a lot of sense. But it's also. I can now see it as pretty selfish. Maybe the birdseed incident did start things, but, like, I didn't create my dad's I alcoholism. I wasn't the perpetrator of all the suffering that he felt. He was trying to call me at the end of his life and maybe work through some of his own confusion that he was having. So I can forgive myself that I didn't answer the call. If my dad is out there, he absolutely knows that I love him. And if he couldn't see anything, then it was all for me. And it still did have kind of the intended effects. I still miss my dad a ton, but I was able to put him to rest through that experience fully. And I think the experience was a good thing in terms of allowing my ex to move on with her life. And it was also a positive thing in terms of meeting Mike. He just taught me a lot about the the person that I care about that's inside of me, the person that I am, if he has faith in me and if my mom has faith in me, that I do too.
- [60:46]
A
Today's storyteller wishes to remain anonymous, but if you'd like to reach out to him, he's provided an email address that can be found in the Show Notes. 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, James, Jason Blaylock and Andrew Waits, with special thanks to the this Is Actually Happening team, including Ellen Westberg. The opening music features the song Sleep Paralysis by Scott Velasquez. You can join the community on the this Is Actually Happening discussion group on Facebook or follow us on Instagram Actually Happening on the show's website, thisisactually happening.com you can find out more about the podcast. Contact us with any questions, submit 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 thisisactually happening dot 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.
- [62:12]
B
Wandering.