266: What if you thought everyone was dead?
53:33 Share

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. And it's almost like your whole peripheral vision suddenly becomes awake and everything has meaning. The signs, the colors that people are wearing, the way people are looking at you, everything takes on this other meaning. From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein.

You are listening to This Is Actually Happening. Episode 266. What if you thought everyone was dead?

Today's episode is brought to you by Audible. Listening on Audible helps your imagination soar. Whether you listen to stories, motivation, or expert advice, you can be inspired to new ways of thinking. And there's more to imagine when you listen. As an Audible member, you can choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog. Currently, I'm listening to Daring Greatly by Brene Brown, a wonderful audio title that challenges us to imagine a new way to lead a

love, work, parent, and educate through the power of vulnerability. New members can try Audible free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash happening or text happening to 500-500. That's audible.com slash happening or text happening to 500-500. This Is Actually Happening is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. What if comparing car insurance rates was as easy as putting on your favorite podcast? With Progressive...

It is. Just visit the Progressive website to quote with all the coverages you want. You'll see Progressive's direct rate. Then their tool will provide options from other companies so you can compare. All you need to do is choose the rate and coverage you like. Quote today at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Comparison rates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy. My parents met when they were both pilots, so my dad for his whole career has been a pilot, and my mom was doing aerobatic flights at the time. They met at an aero club and they fell pretty quickly in love.

My dad told me once that people used to come up to them and tell them how much they seemed like they were in love. And he talks very fondly about that time saying he's never been so in love and it was just a really beautiful time when they were together. But it ended up getting quite chaotic. My mum had postpartum depression after my brother, who is a bit older than I. He's about two years older, so she sort of still had it when she had me. And it got even worse.

My parents' divorce, it happened when I was quite young and they immediately lived in different countries. My mum moved to Australia and he moved to New Zealand so I would only see him about once a year. I used to keep a family portrait above my bed that I would stare at every night praying that they would get back together. I also used to have this locket that I used to wear which had my mother and father's photos on either side.

I asked my mum all the time, like, if she was going to get back with dad or is dad coming home. But yeah, it just didn't happen. I didn't fully understand why they couldn't be together or why I didn't have my father in my life anymore. I experienced some sadness early on because he was such a loving, caring guy and my mum was as well. You just feel like in some ways it's your fault. My stepfather came into my life when I was around six years old and I immediately didn't like him.

Here comes this new guy and he's immediately moving into our house. But, you know, he acted really kind. He went out of his way to buy us presents or show affection and he wanted to be our father. You grow up with someone, they're there for many years and it becomes normalized and you end up, you know, loving that person as a family member. But we sort of thought there was a bit something off about him.

I was a very emotional kid, very sensitive. My mom's best friend, she would sometimes yell at her kids and stuff. They were just that kind of family, and I would just start crying, even though I wasn't in trouble. I used to cry a lot at movies, and my family used to make fun of me for that. I was also known to have fluctuating moods, and if I didn't want to play, my brother would sometimes just be like, oh, Kim's grumpy again.

We grew up in far north Queensland in a really beautiful sort of smallish town. We would be climbing mountains and finding waterfalls and that was a really quite magical aspect of it. I think there was a lot of discovery in my childhood even though at times I would get quite sad.

In my early childhood, my mum would have periods of being quite emotionally unstable. My brother and I would maybe do something or act out slightly and there would be a really, really strong reaction. My stepdad and my mum worked together and she ended up leaving that day and she didn't tell him why she was leaving. He tried to contact her, she wasn't answering, so he thought, "I'm gonna go home, I'm gonna see what's happening."

He went home and he found that she had drank a bottle of vodka and a whole bottle of pain pills. So she had to get taken to hospital and have her stomach pumped. And then she was hospitalized for, I'm not sure if it was a few weeks or a month or so. And we were told that she was just off somewhere on holiday.

When my mum had to be hospitalised, we actually moved to Singapore to stay with my grandparents for about three months. We were unaware of what was really going on with my mum. But I later found out that she had attempted to take her own life and she told me at the time when that was all happening, she was just extremely depressed, felt like a failure as a mother and that she couldn't cope and...

just thought it would be better if she just ended it all. She was also in quite a manic phase so as she was drinking this alcohol and taking the pills she said that she hallucinated lights coming through the window and feeling like aliens were coming down to take her. Even though it was a quite tumultuous at times upbringing my mum is definitely one of the kindest people I've ever met.

She was always so loving and caring and she instilled in me that I am capable and whatever I could dream of could be possible.

So after she's back from what we thought at the time was a holiday, I guess it seemed like we were back to being a family with her and my stepdad. But I still had quite a chaotic teenage years because when I was around 15, my mum sat me down and told me that my stepfather had admitted to having sexual feelings for me and that it had them for quite a while.

I knew like when I first met him that there was something off about him but you know you're normalized and you grow up thinking well that's a display of love.

Nothing physical happened. There were just creepy things looking back that I could see. Like he would always walk in on me showering. And when I tried to lock the door, he'd unlock it with a knife and say, no, but what if you hurt yourself? I have to be able to get in. Or he would play a game in quotation marks where he would try to guess the color of my underwear. And then I would have to like show him and...

Like if I would get home early from school, he'd be walking around in his underwear and ask for hugs. The truth story of it is she actually found some of my underwear under his pillow with his ejaculate on it. And so then he admitted to it. When I became 15 and my mum told me about this, it was a really interesting moment because my dog actually came over and rested her head on my lap and let me like cry into her fur.

So another father figure left, in a sense, and what felt like was because of me. Obviously they were married, so they had a lot of joint finances and a failing business. So he got an apartment and was going to therapy, but ultimately they couldn't afford this apartment on top of all of their financial difficulties. So he had to move back in while they were separating.

My mum put a lock on the inside of my door and so he would get back from work after I'd gone to bed and leave before I would wake up and I would just lock myself in every night for a few months. I guess I felt like at the time that my experience of it wasn't as valued because I was also told by adults that, oh, you're fine, he didn't actually do anything. And I was never sort of given therapy or anything.

really asked how I was coping with everything and I think those were early sort of experiences of there's something inherently wrong with me or I affect people in big ways. I did think because of me my mum's marriage is ending. I had this man in my life as a stepfather for about 10 years, someone who I'd grown to truly love. So I didn't feel completely angry about

Later, I would get very angry about it, thinking about that and sort of the sense of injustice that my mum didn't recognise what was happening or think that it was abnormal until it was a very obvious sign.

It also made me look at the way I looked in a sort of negative light because I was told I was quite pretty and these things a lot. And I was very uncomfortable with older male attention because as well when you're 15, like I'm six foot one, I was already about six foot. And I developed this real distrust of authority figures and didn't like being told what to do.

In school I also got quite deeply into philosophy and read a lot of Nietzsche and Socrates and stuff like that. And I guess I just felt like I wanted to live the best life I could and I didn't want to be told how to live that life. So I was quite rebellious. Also seeking out, well, how do I get love? How do I get affection? I always felt from a young age there was a hole in my chest. And how do I fulfill this void?

So since I was 12, I had decided I wanted to be a filmmaker. I was obsessed with movies from a young age. My favorite film when I was about 10 was The Elephant Man, which is quite a weird choice. And that was actually where I first learned about suicide. I was so incredibly moved by film and sensitive to it and loved feeling emotions through the art of film.

So when I was 17, I entered a competition run by Blockbuster at the time where I had to create a successful film review website. And I ended up winning...

The prize was I got taken to the Cannes Film Festival in France when I was 18. And I, you know, became sort of like an interviewer for the festival. I got to go to Sean Penn's house party, which was really cool. So that was quite amazing, immediately feeling like, wow, I'm capable of actually achieving something. Your dreams are possible. And I realized I don't just want to commentate on films or review them. I want to make them.

And I made this promise in myself that I'll only go back to the Cannes Film Festival if I have a film in it. And I moved to Sydney to go to film school. So when I was 20, I went to a warehouse party for the first ever time. We don't have those kind of things where I grew up. So that was a very interesting experience.

I just saw this sort of alive, musical, beautiful experience where it was sort of underground in a sense. So there wasn't like CCTV and bouncers and overpriced alcohol. It was cheap alcohol. They were also serving NOS balloons and people were on MDMA and it was just this almost like church-like experience.

I remember looking across the room and I saw this guy dancing in the center basically with such freedom and no like self-consciousness that you know a lot of people do when they're dancing. It was just total abandon and I was just so drawn to that and I asked a friend I'm like who is that and they're like oh that's this person but you should stay away from him. Even though he said that that kind of intrigued me more and

I remember he just like looked at me with strong eye contact and he was smiling and I looked over at him and I smiled. And then he got up and he came over to me and he said, hey, I just want you to know you're so welcome here. I didn't see him again that night, but I remember I went to another warehouse party a few weeks later and it turned out to be the one that he actually lived at. And he was behind the bar.

And I went up to him and I was like, hey, do you remember me? And he looked at me and his eyes sort of sparkled and he was like, yes. And we just started this intense, like hour long conversation where we just really seemed to connect extremely well. And he said at one point, I've been waiting for you my whole life. And I just felt just seen like he was truly seeing me. And just this free person, he sort of embodied all that I wished I could be.

Couple times a week, I would go to the warehouse parties and just learn more about him and his life and this sort of very outsider society that existed in warehouse culture at the time in Sydney.

And he had this idea that we could be this amazing couple or these truly free sort of people. And he said, like, I can see who you could be. I can see the amazing person that you could be. And it kind of made me feel like, again, there was something sort of wrong with me. And that if I could figure it out, if I could intellectualize it enough and get to the root of it, then I could be what he sees in me.

When you're like having parties every weekend and you're on MTMA and stuff, it is this heightened sense of love and joy. But on the flip side of that, he could get very angry if I disappointed in him some way. There was a joke at other warehouses that our one was a bit of a cult because of him.

Because he was such a unique, philosophically minded, intense person that people really liked to listen to. And because he spoke so intelligently that he got away with yelling and being aggressive. But he would, because I guess I was his partner, really direct it mostly at me. So after about six months, I ended up moving in with him. That's kind of where I started to see more of his darker behavior, I guess.

It would be late at night and people were in their rooms and he'd be yelling at me and I'd be yelling back and then he would be like punching the walls or pushing me against a wall. He used to like slap me across the face but he would say that it was just like a wake up. One night when it was really bad he choked me against a wall and I could feel myself blacking out.

And then when he released me and I was saying, I'm sorry, like, I'm so sorry for upsetting him. And I sort of felt like it was my fault. He said, if you're so sorry, write it on the wall. Because he had all these philosophical writings all over his walls. And so I just sat there crying, like, writing I'm sorry over and over again on his wall as almost like a student told off by their teacher.

I felt so emotionally unstable and like I couldn't do right by him, but I loved him so much. Just walking on eggshell and not wanting to make the wrong move. I was 20. I was already a very sensitive person going through mood swings, not sleeping because we were fighting, smoking a lot of weed. And I started to hear like the occasional whisper and see something out of the corner of my eye.

Like I'd be drifting off to sleep and I would hear like, like I would hear my voice and it would wake me up and I'd look around and be like, that sounded so real. And one night when we were in bed, I remember I wasn't sleeping, we just had some sort of fight, but we'd made up. And so he was sleeping. And I remember staring at his face and his face just morphed into this crying little boy's face.

Just this utter like sad child and I remember thinking well that's like him his behavior comes from this this childhood sadness and I just remember staring at it and feeling like I was absorbing his pain as a way to like take it away from him and then I looked over to he had this massive pot plant in the room that would overhang the bed and I stared at it and then I started to see these little bugs grow

appear on the leaves and these little fairies that were like looking at me these tiny little glowing beings and I was at the time still mostly in reality where I was like oh my god like I was aware that that was wild that I was seeing those things and blown away and just thinking partly a little bit like magic is real like the veil is lifting for me like I'm able to see these things almost like I was discovering a superpower I thought

And it was like, you know, augmented reality. I could move around the plant and they would stay there physically in space. So I just thought, oh, wow, this is incredible. I would go on nighttime walks and there were all these stray cats in the area that we lived in. And they would like stare at you, you know, and like follow you around. And I had this weird feeling that I was like communicating with them.

And then when the streetlights would move through the leaves, the light would come through the leaves on the ground and the shadows would form into these like shadow beings. Even though I was alone walking down the street as a sort of escape from him, I felt completely like surrounded by these caring beings. It was almost like my brain was opened up like an escape hatch because of the intensity of what was happening.

Today's episode is brought to you by Quince. It's been a busy season of events and travel, and my wardrobe has taken a beating. A total overhaul isn't in my budget, but I'm replacing some of those worn-out pieces with affordable, high-quality essentials from Quince. By partnering with Top Factories, Quince cuts out the cost to the middleman and passes the savings on to us.

I love the Italian board shorts. They're made from quick-drying material and offer UPF 50 protection for all-day wear, so I can go from hiking to lounging on the beach without a wardrobe change. And compared to other luxury brands, the prices are well within my reach.

Upgrade your wardrobe with pieces made to last with Quince. Go to quince.com slash happening for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's q-u-i-n-c-e dot com slash happening to get free shipping and 365 day returns. quince.com slash happening

Hello Prime members. Have you heard you can listen to your favorite podcasts like this is actually happening ad-free? It's good news. With Amazon Music, you have access to the largest catalog of ad-free top podcasts included with your Prime membership.

To start listening, download the Amazon Music app for free or go to amazon.com slash ad-free podcasts. That's amazon.com slash ad-free podcasts to catch up on the latest episodes without the ads. Check out our recently completed six-part series, The 82% Modern Stories of Love and Family, ad-free with your Prime membership.

My partner had traveled quite extensively and he really believed in travel being like a really important part of growing as a human being. And even though I traveled quite a bit because of my dad's job as a pilot as a kid growing up, I hadn't much as an adult experience.

I brought up the idea of, oh, maybe I should go to, like, Ecuador or South America and stuff. And he really said, yeah, that's a great idea. You should do it. And you should do it for, like, three months. He's like, travel doesn't matter if you do it for two weeks. And so I booked this three-month trip to Ecuador, which had a stopover in LAX.

As it got closer and closer to the date, our relationship got more and more negative and traumatic and I started to see things and started to lose my grip on reality. But he was very much insistent that I go. He maybe wanted a break from me as well and thought somehow that this would wake me up or something.

I hadn't been sleeping much in the previous nights, but the night before my flight we had this really massive fight and I can't remember even what sparked it. But he felt like I was being too judgmental of him or criticizing his behavior. I was just trying to be like, why is this happening? Why do you react this way? And he's like, well, if you think I'm a monster, then I'll be one. And he got his belt and he started hitting me with it.

And then he broke down crying and I ended up like holding him as he like sobbed in my arms and stuff. But I had these like marks all over me and that hadn't really happened before. When we went out into the warehouse and there were other people around, I wished that they could see them and they were visible but nobody ever like asked about it. And I just thought like I couldn't tell anyone because that would make him even angrier.

At the airport, it was like we were just completely loving and, you know, we kissed a lot and he wished me all the best. And then I just fully snapped in a sense and it started to feel more and more like a video game. I started to feel like most people were sort of just players or like extras in a sense.

And it's almost like your whole peripheral vision suddenly becomes awake and everything has meaning. The signs, the colors that people are wearing, the way people are looking at you, everything takes on this other meaning. I was fully in magical thinking, like fully that feeling that everything has a deeper meaning, that this is all happening for a reason.

I get on the plane and I'm sort of mostly keeping to myself, but I start to see messages within the screens. So everyone's got their personal screen and I'm watching something on mine, but I'm looking around and I'm seeing these actors. What's happening on other people's screens is somehow relating to me and I'm getting these messages. When the sunlight comes through the windows of the plane again, it casts these shadows.

And that looked like those beings that I had seen on the streets when I went on for night walks. And so I was like, oh, they're here. This flight is special. When we got our food, the way I would eat it would be this incredible gratitude of each bite and the food and really tasting each bite of it. It was as though time was extended and everything was important.

What I was seeing and what I was listening to felt like messages to do things. I got this sense that I had to do socially outsider tasks in order to prove that I was ready. Like I got these voices started saying like, are you ready? Are you ready? Will you do this? Will you do this? And for some reason I thought I had to like walk up the aisle and then get down on one knee and face the back of the plane.

And this guy who I'd kneeled in front of was like, hey, you okay? And I was like, yeah, but I feel like something's happening, like something important is happening. And he was a very L.A. guy because the stopover was in L.A. And he was like, oh, don't worry, I'm protecting this plane. You know, this plane is under my protection. We'll be fine.

And so we ended up getting into this quite deep spiritual conversation. He stood up and we were standing in the aisle talking and I was starting to say these bizarre things of like, you know, isn't it interesting? Like, I think it's all a game. I think, you know, something's really happening in this world. And he was like, yeah, I agree. Something is happening. And he was obviously just more of like a spiritual hippie guy thinking I was on that sort of trip and not aware of what was actually happening with the psychosis.

The air flight hostess, you know, would say, oh, you guys need to sit, you're not allowed to stand here. And then a woman got up and said, do you mind if I listen in and stand here? And looking back, I think she was the flight warden or, you know, to maintain peace on the airplane. So on the plane, my emotional feeling was quite euphoric and this sense of waking up or seeing the truth behind reality. I felt almost chosen in a sense and that this was my time now.

And all I had to do was prove that I was ready for it. And it kind of feels like life is beautiful. There is a deeper meaning. There is a point. This is all a game. So, you know, stopped over in LAX. The plane landed. I made it out of there quite well. But as everyone was lining up to get through like an initial customs check, I had this idea that all lines are just doing what you're told.

And I had this idea in my head that I have to do the opposite of what I'm told because that's how you show that you're ready for what's about to happen or that the key to life is just outside the door that says no exit. So I didn't line up. I sort of walked around and tried to initially go out this door that said no exit. And someone was like, hey, you can't go there. You have to line up.

It took me a while to really do that and accept that and people were definitely side-eyeing me and looking a bit annoyed and like, ugh, this bitch. I think I just seemed like a very maybe entitled person that didn't want to wait in line.

I got through that initial check into the airport and you know how the airport signs are telling you where to go. I looked up at them and thought I was sort of getting these messages. So I would change directions and I would go down different terminals and things. And then I had this idea that belongings were a crutch as well and you had to get rid of all your belongings in order to ascend the

Because I thought at this point that this was a level of heaven, that we were all actually dead. But we were stuck in a sort of purgatory where we still had all of the bindings of being a human that we needed to let go of. I just put my bag on the ground next to a column in the airport and just walked away from it. I took off my shoes at some point.

I started talking to people and just random strangers, talking about these ideas. I think someone had talked to security because at one point security sort of came up to me, these cops, and sort of talked to me and they said, what's going on? No shoes and stuff. You can't do that because I think in LA or whatever you're allowed to wear no shoes.

So the cop actually talked to me and sort of he was like, look, I understand you. Like, again, I think this was sort of a hidden spiritual cop guy. And so what I was saying seemed to make weird spiritual sense in his mind. And so he sort of like let me be. That was when I saw the no exit sign on this door leading to the airfield. And I thought, well, it's telling me not to go out there. Like I have to go out there.

And so I did. I went out there, just wandered around for a bit. Like, it's actually kind of wild that you can just do that. The planes are like, you know, taxiing. And then this guy with one of the baggage trucks sees me and he comes over. He's like, hey, you can't be out here. And he led me back inside. Someone talked to me for a little bit. I think it was just airport staff and said, you know, you can't go out there. And then they just, again, let me be for a bit.

And then I just decided I have to, no, I have to do that. I have to now because they don't want me to or that's like exactly the wrong thing. I have to go and do that. And so I walked out the same door onto the airfield again. I sort of just walked around for like, I'm not sure how long, but I think a few minutes, five minutes and just sort of like, well, nothing's really happening. I later found out that a silent alarm had been triggered. So that's where somebody else came and found me and took me back.

So they put me in handcuffs. They asked me, oh, like, do you know what you're doing? And I was like, yeah, it just seems like a good idea to do that. And they were like, you know, you can't. And I was just like, yeah, but I think I can. And I just had these voices start to talk to me in my head and like egging me along.

I remember as I was sitting behind one of these airport desks with a cop waiting for the FBI to come, there was a phone underneath the desk that said, do not pick up. Or, you know, there was one of those labels.

And so I reached around with my handcuffed hands and I picked up the phone and the cop was like, hey, put that down. I did it again. And they had to pull me away from the desk. They're like, why do you keep doing that? It said not to do it. And I just, it was just this bizarre thing of like I had to do the opposite of what I was told to do.

So the FBI came and they're dressed in suits and they're asking me questions about, are you on any drugs, these sort of things. I'm like, no, but I'm just one with the universe. We're all in heaven. Like, I'm just, you know, I was trying to explain and I think I had this big smile on my face. Because I was arrested in the airport, though, people have got their phones out. They're filming me. They're like laughing and taking photos and stuff. One of the cops even asked, can I take your photo? And I was like, yeah.

Wow, people want to take photos of me and film me like as though I'd like come to this country and they knew who I was and my ideas were sort of reinforced in a bizarre way. I thought they were questioning me because I had this deep wisdom, this knowledge that they needed to know about.

Ultimately, I think they decided, obviously, something's really wrong. So they put me into this police car. And then they took me to processing at this facility where I had my mugshot taken. They also did a drug test, which would later come back negative on everything.

was put into a holding cell and I think there was a split second when I was like is this is this bad like it am I what's and then it was almost like my brain had to like remove that and push it out because the reality would be too much to handle

I was taken to LA County Jail. I was obviously displaying quite a lot of mental illness symptoms, but they still wanted me in prison. So they put me into my own cell, so basically solitary. Because of my displays of mental illness, they thought, well, she could be a suicide risk. So they took away, like, my clothing. There was no, like, bedding. There was just this one mattress, a toilet, and no clothing whatsoever.

That's when the hallucinations really exploded and it became this full-on, overwhelmingly multidimensional experience. That would last ultimately nine days, but in personal time or within my head, it felt like 50 years. There were a multitude of visions.

In one of them, I was almost like this disembodied spirit that was in the primordial ocean, seeing the original bacterium and amoeba join together and create all of life on Earth. I sped through time and saw trees and fish and all of these things just ultimately lead up to human beings.

But it seemed to me like I could see all these different versions of civilizations throughout time, but ultimately failed. And I got this sense that life itself or the universe itself was experimenting and trying to find the right civilization. And there were all these failed ones that we could no longer remember.

At certain points it did get quite dark as well. There were like very dark visions where I would wake up in my cell and just see what I thought were just these ripped apart bodies and blood and guts and little like baby skulls. And I had this feeling that I had blacked out and killed all these people and I'm locked away because I just I killed everyone like I can't stop killing people.

Outside your cell, you can hear helicopters and stuff because it's jail. And so I had this idea got in my head that the apocalypse was unfolding right now and that most people had been overtaken by like alien intelligence. And that was who I was jailed by. And I had this idea that people were coming to get me out because I was the special person who would like lead the revolution or lead the resistance.

And so I would at moments train in my cell, fighting and stuff, thinking I was somehow going to be a fighter.

I woke up in my cell one day. On the wall was a projector screen of a video game, like a 16-bit video game called Every Day a New Day. And then I heard the shouting voice of Duncan Trussell, the podcaster, because I'd heard a lot of his podcasts, I think, and so it was clear as day. Kim, Kim, you've got to do this. Like, wake up. Like, you've got to do this.

And as I looked down at my feet, I just saw all these like bodies piling up as I failed at this game. And I kept trying to like restart and do it over, but I just kept failing and failing. And then it was like the, it said game over and the voices in my head and Duncan was one of them were just like mad at me. Like I'd failed. Like I'd, and now everyone was dead.

Another vision was I was floating around the universe as a Buddhist monk, like a shaved head male Buddhist monk, like floating around with my legs crossed. And I felt completely alone, like that there was no life left in the universe. And I was just spending endless time just going from universe to universe, planet to planet, just accepting the sort of nothingness.

I guess at the time it did feel like I was enlightened, but it was like I wasn't Kim anymore. There were no real reference points anymore. I'd sort of become this disembodied spirit or this multitude of different beings or the witness or just beyond any sort of like human conceptualization.

I was aware that I was in a cell, but I didn't accept the real reason why. I didn't accept that I'd done anything wrong. It was as though I was persecuted unjustly for the fact that I was seeing these things and tapped into something that they didn't want me to spread. I also, if I was given trays of hot food or whatever, mushy food, I would flick it all over my cell walls and stuff, which is not great. I feel bad for who had to clean that up.

I do remember like drinking from the toilet bowl, which is so gross to think about now. And I was like also flicking the water out of the toilet onto the ground, like really saturating my entire cell with water because I could see all these alien faces on the walls and by like flicking toilet water on them, I was like killing them. After what felt like a 50 year sort of trip around the universe, I was taken to court.

And I briefly met like a lawyer who'd spent literally a minute with me and just said, you're going to plead no contest, which means basically you're pleading guilty. But at the time I was like, do I get to go home? Do I get to go home? And she's like, yes, you do. So I thought, okay, like I'll do this. Wasn't even really aware that I was being convicted of anything.

You know, you're taken into this sort of glassed off side space where the court is happening. They just go through different people in the line, like, how do you plead? Okay. And they're like, how do you plead? No contest. So I'm just regurgitating what I'm supposed to say. Then I'm taken back to the cell and they put me in all of these handcuffs, like these chains and things.

And then I heard this voice come from the ether. I heard this voice and it was this man saying, hey, you're going to be okay. Like, listen to me. And I was like, where's that voice coming from? And eventually I realized it was some guy in the cell next to me talking through the vent. And he just could tell I was distressed and was like, hey, hey, like, listen to me. You're going to be okay. You need to look after yourself.

I just listened to him and I calmed down and I really appreciate that because looking back, he could tell I was distressed and just wanted to tell me it was going to be okay. After I was found guilty and convicted of misdemeanor trespass, I was then taken from prison to a mental health facility in L.A.,

I looked at the reports that they'd written at the time and they basically said, oh, she's schizophrenic. It's an acute psychosis with schizophrenic tendencies. Also, the other people in the psych ward were as well mentally ill, but also like some of the most interesting people I've ever met. So after about six days, that was about the time it took for basically someone to be able to contact my family and let them know what had happened.

At the time, they sort of actually just thought I was missing and they actually filled out a police report in Australia thinking something had happened to me. They found out from my ex where I had gone, but nobody knew what had happened to me since. There were Facebook posts. People were sort of like, oh no, what's happened to Kim? They were able to contact my mum at the psych ward and she just wanted to get me out.

So we both had to sign a form that was basically saying that I was going to leave against the wishes of the hospital staff.

This Is Actually Happening is sponsored by ADT. ADT knows a lot can happen in a second. One second, you're happily single. And the next second, you catch a glimpse of someone and you don't want to be. Maybe one second, you have a business idea that seems like a pipe dream. And the next, you have an LLC and a dream come true. And when it comes to your home, one second, you feel safe,

And the next, something goes wrong. But with ADT's 24-7 professional monitoring, you still feel safe. Because when every second counts, count on ADT. Visit ADT.com today.

This season, Instacart has your back to school. As in, they've got your back to school lunch favorites, like snack packs and fresh fruit. And they've got your back to school supplies, like backpacks, binders, and pencils. And they've got your back when your kid casually tells you they have a huge school project due tomorrow.

Let's face it, we were all that kid. So first call your parents to say I'm sorry, and then download the Instacart app to get delivery in as fast as 30 minutes all school year long. Get a $0 delivery fee for your first three orders while supplies last. Minimum $10 per order. Additional terms apply. She took me to a hotel. I was still very much like in schizophrenic episode three.

But my mom just kind of would listen to me and just kind of thought, well, she's not violent. I mean, she seems okay. So she thought, well, we're in LA. So, you know, what do you want to do? And I saw there was a pamphlet in the hotel that said, you know, Universal Studios VIP tour. So I was like, let's go to Universal Studios. And she said, yes. I wasn't too bad, but it was just like, you know, going in the wrong directions and

One time I went into the bathroom and I had to take off all my clothes and put them on backwards for some reason. And my mum would be like, "You're holding up everyone, like come on!" I guess we got through that pretty well, like I didn't get arrested. But I kind of do wish that I could have been kept in the psych ward. My mum and I went on a flight to New Zealand because that's where most of my family is and it was now the day before Christmas.

So we get on the plane on our way to New Zealand and my mum is asleep pretty much immediately. So I'm like walking up and down the aisles. I keep going to first class and just sitting in first class and eating their chocolate. And I keep being told like, hey, you can't sit here.

I stole their headphones. The first class headphones are better. And then they had to wake up my mom and be like, hey, you need to control her because when she arrives, she could be arrested because of this behavior. My mom took me to my grandparents' house. But again, just manic behavior.

My granddad was like, you need to sleep. They put me in a room and I just couldn't sleep. There was like this stuffed dog toy and I had this idea that, oh my God, it's going to come alive. And then I kept going through my grandma's like clothing and stuff and believing somehow that it was mine. And then my granddad was like, you know, we can't have her here. This is too bizarre. And then I think my mom finally accepted there was something really wrong with me.

So it was actually Christmas Eve and she took me to a psych facility. They started medicating me and it did take about a month to have any sort of sense of reality of what had happened. I was able to listen to music and my mum would bring me art supplies and things and so I started to write and create and write down the sort of thinking that I was having as though I had to document it.

Most of this time was actually quite euphoric, quite manic. But when it started sinking in, what had really happened, the fact that I went to prison, that I was convicted, I was probably going to be banned from the US. On the flip side of mania, there is the dark depression, especially if you feel like you've ruined your life.

And I ultimately ended up spending two months in the New Zealand facility because that was how much time I needed to come back to reality. But luckily, because we were in New Zealand, that was where all my family was. So my dad, my cousins, my aunts, my uncles, my grandparents, they were all able to come visit me. And I had visitors multiple times a week. In part, what happened to me is I felt completely isolated and put down.

Now I really started to feel that support network and the love that I feel like helped me out of it.

As the medication started kicking in, which is like an antipsychotic and then lithium, which is a mood stabilizer, it very much like came back to reality. And it was this rude awakening because none of the fantasies I had was true. Like I'm not special. I'm actually the opposite of special. A failure. I lost my mind. I'm a crazy person. Like I ruined my life.

My mom also got permission from my bank somehow to get my money out of my account because she needed to pay off the cost of flights and stuff. And so she took kind of all of my savings. Because I didn't have any money, I moved back in with my ex because I thought, well, that's somewhere to live. I can gain a little bit of independence.

But it took him one day and he slapped me in front of everyone with just a smile on his face as though it was nothing. And they just thought, oh, that's them. And that for some reason, even though considering all that had happened in the past, for some reason, that moment was it. That was the moment I decided, oh, I'm done.

I do wonder looking back, I guess the reason I got into so deeply that relationship is I guess a lack of a father figure perhaps or like, you know, this longing to feel loved and accepted and that this person, my ex, connected so strongly with me and, you know, initially seemed and made me feel like I was special.

And the hallucinations, again, were this sort of like, you are special, you are special, this making up for abandonment. But ultimately what I needed was just to realize that I do have love and it's family and it's friends and it's not like a relationship that seems way too intense too soon. So I left. He came after me. He's like, what's going on? I'm like, I never want to see you again. I just left.

I just felt just depressed and realizing that my dreams might be compromised. But I did start to slowly pick up the pieces and gain a bit of motivation. And I thought, okay, most likely I won't be allowed back into the States for at least 10 years. But I feel like I shouldn't have been convicted because there's this idea that we have about the insanity plea.

Of course, it's incredibly difficult to actually get somebody off based on insanity, even if they're screaming and hallucinating and put into solitary because of the display of mental illness. And then out with friends one day, I met a lawyer and he said, I'm going to help you.

He got the case reopened and with all of the documentation from the psych wards and everything, that was enough proof to be like, okay, she was not in the right state of mind to plead no contest. A not guilty plea was entered. It was accepted. The case was closed and expunged from my record. And I have been back to the US twice now since, which is really great.

It's funny, though, because every time I go back to the US, like, they do take me to the little back processing room. So something is flagged in my system. And they're like, oh, you're not going to walk out any doorways anymore? And I'm like, nope, all good. So I guess it was about a year after it all happened, I started to live again.

I ended up getting accepted into the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, which is sort of considered the best film school in Australia. It's where Jane Campion went.

My first semester short film ended up getting on Amazon. Like it was just this two and a half minute film. A sales company saw it at a festival and then they sold it to Amazon for like a two year period. So that was like quite incredible, like a little taste of like, oh, OK, like you're not like broken. A few years later, when I was like 24, I dipped into a really dark depression.

I seemingly had so much going for me. You know, I had this film on Amazon. I was interning at NBC. I was at the best film school and I just wanted to kill myself. I just felt like I couldn't cope with life and I was a failure. I actually had to go back into a psych ward just for a week. And I met this amazing psychiatrist there and they like really assessed me.

She took the time to listen to me and understand and see my mood swings in real person, in real time, and prescribed me this medication, which at the time was quite new. I was diagnosed bipolar, which was hard to accept. Bipolar is a chronic condition that eventually will rear its ugly head. So I accepted that. I took this medication, and it's been like a godsend, like...

I still feel mood swings, but nowhere near the level I used to. I feel like I'm actually able to lead a pretty stable life. I felt pretty vulnerable about it for a while, that I wouldn't be understood, that people would judge me. And I wanted to be capable, you know, I wanted to achieve things and I didn't want to be seen as weak. But when I met my current partner, I ended up for some reason just telling him on the first date about what had happened.

He's a comedian and he said to me, like, oh, that's an incredible first show idea. That's like a story story and, you know, might be something other people would want to hear. I used to have this crippling fear of public speaking and I had this dream of doing stand-up comedy but thought I never could. But I don't really have a fear of public speaking anymore, like, because I've already embarrassed myself so much in public.

So a couple years after this experience, I started doing it and it's been one of the greatest healing things I've ever done.

I've just found my people in comics, I love like hanging out with them you know most nights of the week that provides me with friendship and community which is super important and the validation you get from sharing your perspectives and insights on the world with an audience and sure there are like times when you bomb and it doesn't go great but it's also helping me to build a thicker skin and not be so sensitive in a sense.

So I've been with my partner, my current partner now, two years, and he's just like the complete opposite from my ex. He's just so kind and understanding and grounded and supportive. I don't know what the future holds, but I just kind of feel like I found my person. I found my purpose and integrating that experience has been a big part of it.

Bipolar does have a genetic element to it, and my mum having it is quite the correlation to me ultimately developing it. I have to accept that it's probably going to be with me for the rest of my life. Like, they say there's no cure for bipolar. It's just learning to manage and to lead a fulfilling life, even with a chronic illness. Bipolar people are 20 to 30 times more likely to kill themselves than

It's a hard thing to like accept and live with, but because I got help, like sure, it took a super dramatic thing to happen. I'm able to live now. I want to see tomorrow's sunrise. Ultimately, I was able to shift my perspective on the whole thing from being, oh, woe is me, to what a trip to be able to know from the inside what it's like to see this real limit of reality, this edge,

That's a kind of experience very few people get to come out on the other side of. I could have ended up dead or in some other much worse case scenario but it has given me this really deep insight and empathy and understanding. It really shows the capability of the human mind. We're capable of dreaming while we're awake basically and imagining these incredible things so

I look back now and think like, yeah, that was a gift. Today's episode featured Kimberly Rose. If you'd like to reach out to her, you can email at contactkimberlyrose at gmail.com. Or you can find her on Instagram at thefakekimberlyrose. 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, Witt Misseldein. Today's episode was co-produced by me and Jason Blaylock, with special thanks to the This Is Actually Happening team, including Ellen Westberg. The intro music features the song Illabi by Tipper. You can join the community on the This Is Actually Happening discussion group on Facebook, or follow us on Instagram at actuallyhappening.com.

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 slash happening. Even $2 to $5 a month goes a long way to support our vision. Thank you for listening. Wondering more.

If you like This Is Actually Happening, you can listen to every episode ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.

Welcome to the offensive line. You guys, on this podcast, we're going to make some picks, talk some s**t, and hopefully make you some money in the process. I'm your host, Annie Agarne.

So here's how this show is going to work, okay? We're going to run through the weekly slate of NFL and college football matchups, breaking them down into very serious categories like No offense. No offense, Travis Kelsey, but you got to step up your game if Pat Mahomes is saying the Chiefs need to have more fun this year. We're also handing out a series of awards and making picks for the top storylines surrounding the world of football. Awards like the He May Have a Point Award for the wide receiver that's most justifiably bitter.

Is it Brandon Ayuk, Tee Higgins, or Devontae Adams? Plus, on Thursdays, we're doing an exclusive bonus episode on Wondery Plus, where I share my fantasy football picks ahead of Thursday night football and the weekend's matchups. Your fantasy league is as good as locked in. Follow the offensive line on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can access bonus episodes and listen ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.