302: What if you could only find closure within?
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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. It was like the public life that we lived where everyone thought we were a normal, happy, regular family. And then there was kind of the darkness that happened internally in our family that we tried to keep a secret. From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein.

You are listening to This Is Actually Happening. Episode 302. What if you could only find closure within?

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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 in high school, actually, and they've been together ever since. My oldest brother, when he was born, he was more than three months premature.

I think the experience was quite traumatic for both my mom, my dad, and my brother. They were having a really hard time stopping the bleeding with my mom, and they had to do an emergency C-section. And at one point, the doctors had to ask my dad, who was in the waiting room, if they couldn't save both of them, who would he want to save? Would it be my brother Chris or my mom? He chose my mom.

But she survived. My brother ended up surviving. They thought he would have severe learning disabilities because of it, but somehow it all worked out. He had to be in the intensive care unit for months at a time while they were trying to get him up to a proper weight and size.

to think that you might die or your son might die and to feel that intense weight of that situation. And then for months afterwards, worrying if your son was going to make it, if he was going to live till his first year, the pressure of that must have been intense.

After this happened, my mom was told that she probably wouldn't be able to have children again because it was such an extreme and damaging experience. And luckily, she was. I have three older brothers, oldest brother Chris, and then my brother Greg, and then my brother Jeff was born. And three years later, then along came me.

She had always wanted a girl, and I still have this postcard that she sent my grandma when I was born. And it says, we finally got our girl. I'm so happy. It also put a lot of pressure on me down the line to feel like I had to fulfill that role of kind of her dream daughter that she'd always wanted. But seeing that message is very, very touching.

So coming into the world and growing up, our life was pretty good. We lived in Canada. We were upper middle class. I had my best friend living next door. My dad had a good stable job. My parents never seemed to fight. It was just a very average family. It seemed like life was perfect from the outside.

The turning point seemed to be around the age of four when my family moved to Houston. My dad got a job offer. So at age four, we moved to Houston and I really saw the effect it had on my older brothers, Chris and Greg.

They were about entering junior high and the other one was in high school. So it was a really tough time. They struggled to make friends. They struggled to fit in. There was a lot of bullying. They started to rebel and lash out. My oldest brother, Chris, started sneaking out of the house and smoking cigarettes. And there became a lot of arguments between my dad and Chris.

For my brother Greg, it was even harder. He was 12 years old when he first started using drugs. And I think it was my brother Chris who was the first one to introduce him to drugs and alcohol.

The two of them shared this kind of bond. And Greg, his way of trying to fit in and make new friends was to say yes to anything. There was nothing really off limits. And this was all happening very obliviously to my parents and to me and my brother Jeff.

It wasn't until Greg basically walked into my parents' room one day crying, saying, I have a problem. I need help. I have addiction problems. I can't stop and I don't know how to stop. They had to pay attention to it. They had to address it and they wanted to. They wanted to get him into treatment, send him to a rehab facility. And so that's what happened.

He was there for, I think it was probably a month. We used to go and visit him at the rehab. Sometimes we would have group therapy sessions. And when he came out of rehab, things seemed to be somewhat okay. We were very optimistic. We went back to our way of living.

We didn't realize how difficult it can be sometimes to overcome addiction. And little did we know that he was using again. He was keeping it a secret. And it didn't seem like he really wanted to ask for help. It seemed like he was pretty content in what he was doing. My brother Chris at the time had turned 18.

And since we were living in the States, Chris had to leave to go to university in Canada because we couldn't afford to have him in the U.S. for school. I was six at the time, and he was the protective older brother. Chris would always have my back. He would always defend me. He would always try and stick up for me. And I really missed that when he moved out.

One night, I was six years old. My parents went out for the evening and my brother Jeff was out as well. And my brother Greg was asked to take care of me for the night.

I had a really hard time feeling like I fit in with my brothers because they were all boys. They all had a lot of the same interests and seemed to naturally bond together. And I always felt like a bit of an outsider. I would always cling to my mom and I would always try and be included and to force my way into that circle. But it always felt like I was a burden, like it was just more of an obligation.

But this night it felt like, okay, it's time for the two of us to bond. It's going to be a nice opportunity to connect with my brother and have a fun time. We watched a movie on my parents' bed and it all seemed completely innocent. And the next moment he's asking me if I want to go play a game in his bedroom.

And I thought, yeah, I would love to be included. I would love to spend time with you and to feel like you want to spend time with me. And so I said yes. He loved collecting rocks and crystals. He had an amazing collection and I was always so envious of them. I remember walking into his bedroom and saying, wow, I love those rocks. Those are so cool. And he said, I'll give you one if you want.

And I just couldn't believe it. I thought, that's so nice of you. I can't believe you're offering me this thing that you think is so precious. Like, how can you think that highly of me? Then he said, well, I'll give it to you. But in exchange, you have to do something for me. And what he asked for in exchange was a form of sexual abuse. And at the time, I really didn't understand what was happening there.

I could not make sense of it. It just felt kind of like a really weird request. At first, I was hesitant. I didn't know if it was something I should agree to because it felt out of character. Why is he offering me something that is very prized to him? And what is this weird thing that he's asking me for?

He took advantage of me being innocent and he sexually abused me. I was very confused. I had no idea what was going on. I had no idea what I was doing was inappropriate. I knew that something felt off, but I didn't know any better. I was six years old.

About halfway through it. I just felt like I don't know if I want to do this anymore. I it just felt like this Sensation or intuition that just this this isn't right. I shouldn't be doing this. I shouldn't be here And so I said, okay, i'm done. I'm gonna go to my room and and it was just this silence He just said okay Leave the room and close the door and that was that was it

I felt like I had done something wrong. It just felt like, I don't know what was wrong about that situation, but I feel like I'm in trouble. And I feel like this is something I can't share with anyone.

I just felt afraid that I had done something wrong that Greg would get mad at me for. And so I just put it out of my mind. I went to bed and I just had this sinking feeling in my stomach like something is off. Something about this does not feel correct anymore.

But I didn't know why. I didn't understand it. I really couldn't make sense of it. So I just kind of stored it in the back of my head and said, I'm just going to ignore that. I do remember later being with a friend. We were playing a game. And I remember I told her, hey, I had this weird thing happen with my brother. And I explained to her what happened. And she just looked at me so confused. And then I felt even more like, okay, something is really strange here.

So my mind was like, it was just something that happened that was weird. Let's just pretend that didn't happen and move on. I don't know how much longer after the incident, but at some point, my brother Greg, his use of drugs was getting out of control and my parents caught him. And again, he went back to rehab. And while he was at the rehab facility, he told the therapist that he had sexually abused me.

The counselor then reached out to my parents. And at that point, my parents had to have a conversation with me. They took me outside into our backyard. And my mom, I've never seen her have such a serious look on her face before. And she said, I have to ask you something. Greg's counselor called us and told us that when he was babysitting you one day, that he had sexually abused you.

I need you to tell me if this is true. And I froze. I remember facing them with great shame and barely being able to look my parents in the eyes. I remember just nodding my head, yes.

That was it. There was no conversation. There was no reassuring me that I hadn't done anything wrong. There was no comforting me. It was like they were disappointed by my answer, like I had let them down and that I should have known better. I was just so ashamed and I felt so...

guilty and like I had made this huge mistake and embarrassed everyone. And I didn't know how to feel better about that or what to do with it. Greg never said anything to me. My parents never brought it up with me again. I went to a therapist one time and I just remember sitting in a therapist's office and being terrified and uncomfortable. And that was it.

Greg came out of rehab a few weeks later, and he was back living with us again. As far as I could tell, there was no punishment for him. It just felt like I was being punished. For years afterwards, in my adolescence, I was acting out in ways that raised flags that I had been sexually abused.

And I think it was very obvious how it impacted me to my mom, especially. But she didn't want to face it. It was too much for her. I can also imagine what it must have been like for her. How do you still have compassion for both of your children, but also want to protect and fix what had happened and repair the damage that it created?

They thought maybe if we just ignore it, then she'll forget about it and she won't remember it and then it won't have a huge impact on her. But that was not how it happened at all. The more I pushed it down, the more I ignored it, the more it would bubble up. I started questioning if anything had happened or if I had just made this up in my head. At the same time, I knew that it had because it had such a strong physical impact on me whenever it would come into my mind.

And with that would be this complete fear of someone learning about it and also like total hatred towards myself and disgust for what I had willingly done. So I ignored it as long as I could. I just thought that I was alone and I had to hold on to it and protect it at all costs.

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I remember this one time between rehab facilities that Greg was again living at home. We had like an intercom system in our house and it was nighttime. We were all going to bed. It was a school night and we were all in our rooms. Greg was on the speaker and he was saying that he was really unhappy. He was crying. He was saying that he couldn't do it anymore. He didn't want to live anymore anymore.

And my mom was in the living room. And she wasn't taking it very seriously because my brother Greg did have a tendency to exaggerate sometimes. I think he just really wanted the love and affection from my parents that they weren't able to give because they were never very good at providing that emotional support that was needed. And so sometimes my mom would come off pretty cold sometimes.

In this moment, she was trying to calm it down and he was escalating. And he eventually said, I can't do this anymore. I don't want to be alive. I have a razor here with me and I'm going to cut my wrists. And eventually while over the speaker, I hear him cry out. It was just an excruciating sound to hear the pain in his voice and to know in that moment, like he did it.

I couldn't open the door to my bedroom. I just stood there frozen and terrified. And my brother Jeff, who probably would have been 10 or 11 at the time, ran in and found my brother lying in his bed bleeding out. And he had to put pressure on his wrist to try and stop the bleeding.

I could hear on the intercom him say to my mom, it actually happened, mom, we need your help. And then my mom, of course, went into a total panic. And together, the two of them had to carry my brother down the stairs with towels wrapped around his wrist and get him into the car to drive him to the hospital.

The next thing I knew, they were out of the house and they had left. And I was alone. I was so terrified and so confused. And I remember going downstairs and just sitting on the living room floor watching late night TV, just in complete shock.

I felt so alone and scared and forgotten. Why didn't you take me with you? Like, why did you leave me alone in this house by myself? It was a really scary experience.

When my brother Greg attempted suicide, I don't think I really connected the two, that I had been sexually abused recently before this and that now here he was in so much pain trying to show that to us through a very extreme measure. But it was clear that he needed some support and that the only way he knew how to ask for that was to show how severe the pain was for him.

There's a part of me that feels like, would that have happened if the sexual abuse hadn't happened? And this is a huge thing that I struggle with to this day, feeling some kind of responsibility. Like if I had said no and walked away and that hadn't happened, that Greg wouldn't have gone through so much pain.

That is a guilt that I still have a really hard time to let go of. I know that it's not my fault that this happened, but how can you not feel like you unintentionally played some part in someone's suffering? It was just a very confusing seven years of my life living in Houston. There was so much unpredictability. I never knew what was going to happen next. Greg was in and out of rehab facilities constantly.

We would get a call from a rehab saying that he had attempted suicide. We would go visit him in the hospital, and then it would be back to regular life. And it just felt like this huge shift between these two worlds. It was like the public life that we lived, where everyone thought we were a normal, happy, regular family.

And then there was kind of the darkness that happened internally in our family that we tried to keep a secret. And I think that probably also played into Greg's struggle because he felt like his struggles were something to be ashamed of or needed to be hidden. And mine as well. My own parents wouldn't acknowledge what happened to me. So how could I share it with anybody else?

It was so confusing that my mom would be ignoring it. What kind of message does that send to your children when they're crying, literally crying out for help? In my last two or three years of living in Houston, when I was nine to 11 years old, I all of a sudden had a huge interest in boys. And I think this was probably a reaction to my sexual abuse.

I all of a sudden had a crush on multiple guys in school. I started dating one of them and then I got a second boyfriend and I felt like this attention from boys just felt like, okay, I'm normal. If a boy likes me, that must mean that there's nothing wrong with me or at least I'm good at disguising what might be lying under the surface.

Around 11 years old, after seven years living in Houston, we decided to move back to Canada. My parents felt like it would be a fresh start for all of us, but also for Greg, so he could be in a new environment. The rehab centers and psychiatrists and everything that we were trying to do was not having a lasting impact on him.

So we moved back and it seemed like there was a huge shift almost instantly. It felt like it really was a new chapter, a fresh start. Greg was happy. He seemed to have some friends. He was working full time now and he seemed like things were just, they'd finally settled. It felt like we could all just take a big breath and

Greg and I never really had a proper relationship after what happened. I always kept my distance from him, and I felt like he was always trying to form a bond and connect with me and have a close relationship, but I always had my guard up. Eventually, I graduated high school, and Greg went on to become a train conductor, and he loved it. He loved his job. He seemed really happy. He was doing really well.

I assumed that life was going pretty well for him and that he was on the right track and overcome his struggles. I also formed a really close relationship with my oldest brother, Chris, at this time because I moved away from university and he, of course, had to move away when he was 18 and never lived at home again after that. Chris was almost like another parent to me.

He would send me care packages in the mail. We would FaceTime or Skype all the time. He was a very sensitive, kind, loving, creative person. And every summer I would go to Toronto where he lived and I would spend like a month there. And it was the best memories of my life was being in Toronto for that month. We were brother and sister, but it really just felt like he was one of my best friends.

As a kid, I always felt like I was the outsider among my brothers. But as an adult, we became so close and that felt very healing. So for a long time, life seemed to go back to quote unquote normal. I moved away to Vancouver for university education.

I started to use weed more as a bit of a relaxation tool, and it really helped. After I graduated university, I started using it even more.

Every day, it would be my ability to wind down from work and to be able to fall asleep. My sleep was right back to how it was when I was a child. I just would have so much anxiety, even more anxiety at this point, and would be up all night. I wouldn't sleep at all. And it felt like I was in a way kind of recreating that addiction behavior I saw in Greg. And I was really ashamed of it.

And I'm not trying to advocate for anti-marijuana use. It's just for me, it became a crutch that I had to lean on. For like probably eight years, I would smoke weed every single day.

But at the same time, I think it also helped me avoid facing what had happened to me because it felt like the more time passed, the more my memories of the sexual abuse would surface at very unwanted times out of nowhere. It would just pop into my brain and I'd just have this complete and utter fear and feeling of disgust in my stomach and then it would be gone. So I used weed to kind of numb me out.

I moved back to Calgary for my boyfriend and we moved in together. I was working a steady job that I liked. Then in 2017, my partner and I decided we were going to move to Amsterdam. We wanted to start a new adventure.

It was exciting. It was something new. It was what we wanted. And eventually I got a job at an amazing fashion company. That was all that I had hoped for. It was glamorous. I felt like things were going really well. It felt like things were settled. My brother Jeff came to visit me. And then my brother Greg came to visit me in 2017.

It was nice to see him. I still had a wall up. I still kept a bit of distance, but it was nice. And he seemed really happy. I was so glad to see him doing something for himself because I wanted him to be happy as much as everything that we had been through was really painful. I still did love him and wanted the best for him. I wasn't trying to hold any resentment against

He continuously would tell me how proud he was of me and how he wished he could do something like this for himself. And I kept on telling him, it's possible. But I could just tell he thought, no, I have to keep working my job that he was quickly becoming dissatisfied with. And then a few months later, he got laid off from work because he was smoking weed on the job.

They said, if you go to rehab, then we will bring you back. But you have to show that you've made the changes necessary to come back to work. One night I was in Amsterdam and I get a call from Greg and I never get calls from Greg.

I immediately knew something was wrong. He was crying and he was telling me just how scared he is. He said that he had been drinking. He couldn't stop spiraling, that he had no control over what was happening. He kept on using cocaine and whatever other drugs he had available.

He'd always kind of had a bit of a wall up around me too, but to see him just completely broken was devastating. And I told him, listen, Greg, I really think that maybe you should go to a detox center so that you can go to rehab. And so after a while, we got off the call and I immediately texted my family and said, I'm really worried about Greg.

And I remember my dad responding and saying, I'm sorry he bothered you with this. He does this all the time. He's looking for attention. And I couldn't believe that that was his response. I was so in shock that my dad said that. But I think because they've been manipulated and deceived by his behavior in the past that they feel like they have almost been forced to put a wall up.

But I told my dad, listen, I really think it's different this time. I think the next day they took him to this detox center and then he was in a rehab program for 30 days. He came out of that rehab center a month later and it seemed like things were really great.

At one point, he started saying, I'm going to start smoking weed again, but that's all I'm going to do. I'm not going to do anything else. And his girlfriend said, no, I'm not going to allow that behavior. They were living together at the time and she kicked him out. She broke up with him and said, we're done. I'm not going to support you on this. And so he moved back in with my parents. And I remember messaging him on his birthday, wishing him a happy birthday and

And he was heartbroken. He said, I'm devastated. What's the point anymore? A few days later after his birthday, I got a text from my dad. Call me when you wake up. We need to talk. And I instantly knew something's wrong. I called my dad and he told me Greg's dead. I just, I was in complete shock. I didn't know what to do.

I never thought that it would actually happen. I spent the week just in my house, numb, avoiding everyone. I didn't want to do anything. The morning that he passed away, he was upstairs in the bedroom and my parents had checked in on him and asked him if he wanted to go for lunch with them. And he said, no, I'm fine. Around dinner later that day, several hours later, my dad died.

found him just laying in bed and he had taken fentanyl and my dad thought he was asleep so he went to go shake him awake and he was completely stiff. He had been gone for hours at this point. What I found out later was that he had overdosed in my bed. He was found in my bed at my parents' house

When he died. For a while, we didn't know if it was an intentional overdose or if it was just a mistake. But months later, we found this note crumpled up in his pocket. His girlfriend found it. It said, if you find me dead, I just couldn't handle everything that's happened to me.

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Months after he passed away, I went to this five-day silent mindfulness retreat, and the memory of the sexual abuse kept on popping into my mind. And at this point, it was screaming at me. In the past, it was like a quick flash, and then it was gone. But now it just felt like inescapable. I felt like I couldn't ignore it anymore.

And so I wrote this whole letter in my journal about what I had experienced as a child and the abuse that I had been through. And I took a picture of it and I sent it to my boyfriend. I really thought, okay, if I just share it, if I get it off my chest, if I put it out there, it's no longer in my head. Little did I know this was only the beginning. After leaving that retreat, it just felt like this open wound all of a sudden.

Anytime there was intimacy, it felt like that would be the first thing to come to my mind. I just had this subtle feeling of disappointment. I felt grief, but at the same time, I was feeling this other loss that I never got closure and that my brother never got closure.

I couldn't help but wonder if what had happened between the two of us had played into his death. At first, I didn't read into it, but it's hard to ignore that connection between everything that happened in my childhood and him overdosing in my bed. Was he trying to send a message?

Was he trying to say something to me? Or am I reading into it? Am I putting meaning to something that is meaningless? I'll never know if that was intentional. It's something that I'll always wonder about. Another part of me was really angry that I had never brought it up with him to try and find closure for both of us. But at the same time, a part of me was also thinking, why should that be my responsibility to try and

repair the damage that he had done to me? Why am I feeling guilty? And I felt anger for how he hadn't tried to reach out, tried to apologize. At my brother's funeral when I went to visit, we had all of his possessions that we were going through and trying to figure out what to do with each piece of

My parents asked me if I wanted to keep something, and when I was presented with this raw collection, I immediately knew that's what I want to take.

This was one of those rocks that I had desperately wanted from my brother as a child, that I had agreed to trade my innocence for, and that I never got in exchange for everything that I lost from that moment on. It was just instinctual. I took the rock that looked the most like what I could remember it looked like as a child,

I brought it home with me to Amsterdam and I still have it. It now signifies the pain that I still carry and the lack of closure that I will never be able to get. But it also signifies my brother and our complicated relationship that we had.

As much as I want to blame him or hate him, all I can feel is sadness and his pain. That one 10-minute moment changed my entire life. And there were so many gaps in my memory from my childhood that I now really wanted to make sense of.

I wanted to understand my parents' reaction and I wanted to know how that impacted him. If he was remorseful, if he felt ashamed or ever wanted to try and apologize to me or if he never thought about it.

It wasn't until I was 30 years old that I sat down with my parents, that we discussed all of these things. It took a long time to build up the confidence to have this conversation, and I was terrified, but I asked them everything. I asked them if this had happened, if they had asked me about it,

And my mom ignored it and pretended like she had no idea what I was talking about. But my dad said, yes, we did ask you and you didn't respond. So we weren't sure it happened. It was shocking to hear him say that I never admitted to it because in my memory, very clearly, I remember nodding my head and feeling the shame of admitting it.

But in his memory, he says, I never admitted to it, and so they didn't explore it any further. I did say, yes, that did happen, and he apologized. He told me he didn't mean to cause any harm. He was just acting in the way that he thought was best, and that would cause the least amount of damage for me and for everyone.

And then I asked them why that might have happened. What would have motivated one child to abuse another child? And then I found out that Greg had also told them at one point that he had been abused himself by another child and that my parents thought he was lying and they never took it seriously and they never did anything about it.

It took a lot of courage to open up this conversation to my brother Jeff. I said, there's something I really need to tell you. It was something that Greg did to me. And before I could even get out the words, Jeff said, I know what you're talking about. I was in complete shock. No idea that he knew. And he said, Chris told me last year that

Again, complete shock. How does my whole family know about this situation? And nobody has spoken to me. Nobody has said anything to me about this. It was heartbreaking all over again. A year and a half after Greg passed away, Chris and I were talking quite a bit. We were both checking in on each other and seeing how we were handling the grief.

Chris had recently gotten a divorce. He had two young children that were both under 10 at the time and he loved being a dad. He was the best dad I have ever known but he had also started a new relationship and it seemed to be making him really happy.

Around Halloween of 2018, a year and a half after Greg had passed away, he told me that his girlfriend broke up with him and he was really heartbroken. And a lot of emotions were coming up because of this breakup. In early November, I wake up in the morning and I see this message from my dad.

And it says almost the exact same words. It says, call me when you wake up. I call my dad and he says, I just got a call from your uncle. Chris is dead. When Greg passed away, there was shock, but there was at least warning signs. I knew that he was suffering a lot. So as painful as it was, I couldn't make some sense of how that happened.

But with this, I couldn't make sense of anything. He had the most amazing children in the world that he loved more than anything in the entire world. And all I could think about was, oh my God, his children. I couldn't understand. And I asked my dad what happened. And he said they found him in his bed. He died from suicide.

He didn't come to work that day, and his co-workers sent his friend over to go check on him. They found him in his apartment. He had taken a chemical substance from the hospital that he knew would produce an overdose, and he took it. He wrote a note that was very matter-of-fact.

He apologized and said that no one could understand how much he'd suffered. I couldn't believe it. I hadn't seen any warning signs, and I'd been looking for them. I had lost a brother. It did not feel like reality. It did not feel like it could at all be a real situation that had just happened.

At that point, I just completely shut down my emotions. I didn't feel anything. And that made me feel even worse. This is your brother that you loved so much, that you were so close with, and you're not having any reaction. I just felt numb and that felt horrible. I wanted more than anything to just cry and express all of my emotions. But instead, I just came off completely blank.

At the funeral, to this day, I regret it, but I didn't say anything because I didn't know how to put words to anything. I couldn't find any words that would make any sense of it. I couldn't reflect on the amazing person that he was. The only thing I could care about was my nephews and try to give them as much love and support as I possibly could. But even that didn't feel like enough.

I just felt angry at everything, at myself, at the world. It just felt like my life was over. It just felt like I would never, ever, ever be able to lead a normal life again. Three months later, COVID hits, and it's just like one tragedy after the next.

Six months after that, my mom almost dies of liver failure. It was just like a snowball effect. And I just felt like I was completely detached from everything because it would just overwhelm me and consume me.

Yet at the same time, I was trying to go to therapy and also deal with all of the sexual abuse that was popping up and try to work through all of that shame and disgust and all of the emotions attached to that. I couldn't live like this. I had to do something. I had to at least try to feel again, to feel like I have a future still, to feel like I can still live a life again.

I don't know where it came from, but I suddenly got this desire to start painting and drawing and using clay, creating pottery. And it was the only time that I ever felt any sense of peace again.

And I could also channel my emotions and all of these difficult feelings that were coming up. I was getting something out of me that needed to be released. I just started doing it more and more and feeling better. In combination with therapy, I also was doing excessive trauma treatment. I was doing EMDR, exposure therapy, regular talk therapy, group therapy, you name it.

I found an amazing therapist who literally saved my life. I do not know where I would be today if it wasn't for her.

It was honestly terrifying at first. I couldn't believe it. I didn't believe that anyone could hear these horrible things that I felt about myself and still have empathy and never showed any exhaustion or frustration. Even when I was a complete wreck and was having my own suicidal ideations and feeling guilty for that.

She showed me that I could still be loved and cared for by someone. She encouraged me to leave my job that was making me miserable and go down this very scary path of self-discovery. I came to find art therapy, and now I'm studying it. And it's been a very long journey to get to this point, to feel like I am capable of doing

doing anything positive in my life or having any kind of future of my own. Now it feels like I am a completely different person with so much potential and also so much strength. It's always going to feel like a slightly open wound because there was never that closure for either of us. The most difficult thing for me is that I will never hear, I'm sorry,

I will never have that moment to talk with Greg. And I just wish so badly more than anything in the world that we could have sat down and talked about it and healed together together.

I tried for a very long time to seek out the answers I was looking for and to make sense of the abuse and of my brother's deaths to try and find a specific moment or reason that it happened. I was constantly searching for these answers. And eventually, I realized that I was putting myself through more pain

What was really helpful for me, it was just to accept that unfortunately it doesn't make sense to just try and let it go. As simple as that sounds, it's not. It's so incredibly hard. It's still something that I work on.

And while I'm still confused and angry and have a million questions about everything that's happened, I still love them and think about them and carry them with me in everything that I do in my life. And I can still be upset and hurt and angry at Greg for what he did, but I can also have compassion and love for him.

I feel like it's possible that I'm not only capable of healing myself, but I can help others who might have felt something of what I experienced or what my brothers experienced

I've just made it my life mission to feel like I am doing something in honor of my brothers in a way, but also to uplift others, to feel like what I am doing with my life has an actual purpose. I cannot expect anyone else to give me forgiveness that I am seeking.

I can't place those expectations on anyone else, but I can work on myself and I can forgive myself and show myself the love that I missed out on. And that's the most empowering way that I can heal.

Today's guest requested to remain anonymous, but if you'd like to reach out, you can email her at dotisallin at gmail.com. That's D-O-T-I-S-A-L-L-I-N at gmail.com.

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I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York. I was like at my locker and she came up to me and she was like stuttering super bad. I'm like, stop f***ing around. She's like, I can't. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms, and spreading fast. It's like doubling and tripling and it's all these girls. With a diagnosis, the state tried to keep on the down low. Everybody thought I was holding something back. Well, you were holding something back intentionally. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah.

No, it's hysteria. It's all in your head. It's not physical. Oh my gosh, you're exaggerating. Is this the largest mass hysteria since The Witches of Salem? Or is it something else entirely? Something's wrong here. Something's not right. Leroy was the new dateline and everyone was trying to solve the murder. A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios. Hysterical.

Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.