172: What if you were lured into an unspeakable hell?
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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. Today's episode will be the last new episode before a three-week holiday break until we return again in the new year on January 12th. However, over these three weeks, we'll be rebroadcasting three incredible episodes from the Bat Catalog, all centered around stories of people involved in life-threatening chases.

It goes without saying that this has been such a weird and challenging year, but for this show, it's been one of exponential growth and expansion. It is honestly so humbling to witness how many of you have connected with these stories and with the vision of this podcast. I can't thank you all enough for your continued support, and I wish you all the best over the holidays as we close out 2020 and usher in a new beginning. I had an understanding that things can happen very, very quickly and change everything right away, but I couldn't point out specific ways how.

I did have a hard time ever really feeling safe anywhere. And the problem was just that inside of me it wasn't safe. So it didn't matter where I was. From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein. You are listening to This Is Actually Happening. Episode 172. What if you were lured into an unspeakable hell?

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I was spectacularly lucky when I was growing up.

My parents are very kind and supportive and just like good parents, but they also, you know, really love each other. I have an older brother who is just about my favorite person in the world. And I had grandparents and great grandparents and cousins, just a happy little protected life.

We lived in West Texas in a pretty small town. So there's this kind of like cowboy atmosphere. But we were also encouraged, at least in my family, to not necessarily paint the cowboys always as the hero, but to just kind of learn and enjoy, you know, what other cultures had to offer.

I was pretty weird and sweet. I was very sweet. I, for example, would put all of my stuffed animals to bed on my bed and tuck them in and then there wouldn't be enough room for me to fit. And so I would sleep like on the floor. So I was weird, but like in a nice way, like I was just trying to make it fair for all of my stuffed animals.

Or I moved for a little while into this little nook behind the sofa and I set up a little house back there. I was probably six or seven. And so my parents just kind of found me living behind the sofa and I'd put up pictures and brought all my things. I don't know. I was just kind of an odd kid, but happy. And I had a lot of friends and I got along with everyone and I did well in school.

We lived there in that small town with my family until I was 11. And then the oil market kind of fell. There just wasn't any work left. And so my dad ended up getting work in Houston. I didn't want to say goodbye to my dad. So I knew he was leaving and I didn't want to say goodbye. So I laid on the sofa and pretended that I was asleep. So when he left, I wouldn't have to say anything. And so he came over, he saw me sleeping. He gave me a kiss and he left.

I felt at the time that was like the worst thing I'd ever done because it was so dishonest. And I felt really guilty about it, honestly, because I just wasn't a liar. I just was a sweet kid. I wanted everyone to be happy. So I was excited to move, but nervous, you know, to leave everything behind. It was just so different. It's, you know, West Texas and East Texas are like

two separate countries. Culturally, it's different. And the fact that it's a city versus a small town is different. I was going into middle school. I was coming from a very small, private Episcopalian church school where I had been with the same 30 kids that were in my grade since I started school. And I was going to a huge inner city public school.

I was nervous, but we got there early in the summer and we kind of explored the city, took the bus places, which was out of this world exciting. We didn't have buses where I came from. So it was a good summer and we took a trip back home. All my friends from school threw a little party and we decided in the evening, I guess, to all of us sit on the trampoline and we played spin the bottle.

I spun the bottle and it landed on this boy who was very sweet, a nerdy kind of thoughtful guy. And off we go. And he asked me, was it okay? And I said, yeah, it's okay. And so he put his lips to mine and then he walked away. And that was my first kiss ever.

I mean, the movies of the time were John Hughes. Those were like the raciest things that were available to me. It was very sweet. And okay, I got that done. That's my first kiss. I was very nervous. You know, you're always nervous when you're a kid. You know, it was this looming thing that I would have to overcome at some point. So I got it done. And it was just nice.

I treasure it, honestly, because that was like a marking point in my head. I was one way and I was a sweet, innocent little girl who, you know, had their first innocent little kiss with their sweet, innocent little friend they'd known their whole life. So that's a real defining moment for me of who I used to be. I had just started school and I didn't have any friends yet.

The first couple of mornings, you know, all the students would just kind of stand around outside waiting for the bell to ring. And one of the first people who introduced herself to me was visibly pregnant and in the seventh grade. And I was like, oh, what? I don't understand this at all. It was just a whole new world. It was a whole new world. I went out for cheerleading. And so I was able to start making some friends.

So we're early fall of my sixth grade year and a little girl in my class wanted to hang out. And so we made plans. She lived a couple blocks away from me and I lived directly across the street from this really cool park. We thought a good idea would be to meet up at this park. So I just walked across the street and met my friend.

At one point, someone came and approached us, like a young man, but my friend knew him. I had some understanding that he was my friend's kind of older brother, older stepbrother, older mom's boyfriend's son, something like this. We walked around the park and hung out for a while on the football field, which was as far away from my house as you could get and still be at the park.

And the rule was that I was not allowed to leave the park without going back home and telling my mom where I was going. I really worried about rules like that. I did not ever like the idea of disappointing my parents, but we ended up leaving the park. My understanding when we left was that we were going to her brother's house.

I knew that the house was not her mom's, and so that made me think more like he was a step brother. I was trying to be cool and not have to go home and tell my parents.

So off we go. And we walked down the block just a little ways and we crossed the street and the three of us are together. But I ended up being the person at the front door of this house first. And the brother was right behind me and told me I could open the door and walk in. So I opened the door. I walked in and I was in a living room. The lights were out, but the windows were open so I could see everything.

And I turned back to look at my friend. And as I turned around, I noticed the room itself. It was empty except for two lawn chairs. And there was a man sitting in one of them. When I saw his face, I became immediately terrified. And he immediately gets up and he keeps his eyes on me. And he walks to the front door and slams it shut. And my friend was not in the room. I don't know where she ended up.

I don't believe she came into the house. But at that point, once he slammed the door, I kind of forgot her because he was walking towards me. And he scared me so bad that I wet my pants. It's crazy. I'm about to turn 46 and I still feel the humiliation of wetting my pants in front of my friend's brother, who's like this big, cool guy. It all happened so fast.

I had a hard time comprehending who he could be in the world, if that makes sense. Like, I thought he was this guy's dad, but he in no way looked or acted like any dad I'd ever seen or known. His face was maybe blank or angry. I don't know. I knew that it was, that he was not normal. And when he came toward me, I wet my pants.

and he lifted me up off the ground by my arms. So he was holding the tops of my arms and just kind of lifted me up. Meanwhile, I'm so humiliated and I always call him the mean one in my mind. There's the brother and the mean one. So the mean one had a hold of me and he took me into the hallway

He was taking me into a bathroom, but he was kind of half carrying me, half dragging me by the time we got into the bathroom. And he came in with me and shut the door. And he told me, you know, to take off my clothes. And I was not going to take off my clothes. He just reached out and started to unbutton my shirt. You're just compliant when you're a kid. And I was an especially compliant child, I think. And I still had no idea what was happening.

I had just bought a bra. I was turning into this kind of adult who went to middle school and walked by myself and navigated the world in this big city. And now I had a bra and I was like feeling really good about it. And he told me to take it off and I took it off and he laughed at the size of my breasts, how small they were. And then he wanted me to take off my underpants. And so I did.

So I was standing with my back to the wall and I turned my back to him and kind of faced the corner. I don't remember even thoughts at this point except that I didn't like him and I didn't want to be there. And then he pulled me around to look at him. And when I did, I saw he did not have any clothes on. And then he started to lean in toward me. And then I started to understand what was happening was that he wanted to kiss me

And he did. And I ended up immediately throwing up into the sink. He pushed my head down toward the sink. So I lost my balance and I hit my head just over my eyebrow, that bone right there on the sink. And I fell to the ground and I was on my hands and knees. And so I was crawling to try to get behind the toilet. And he ended up

Grabbing me by the ankles, pretty much at that point, I just went limp. I remember just not being able to move. And then he ended up getting on top of me and raping me. My head was always in the clouds and in storybooks and fairy tales. And I remember thinking about King Arthur, which I know sounds nuts, but that sword he had, Excalibur. I was thinking about that's what had come inside of me.

So I dissociated. I didn't understand that that's what was happening, of course, at the time, but it felt like I was away. It felt like just not being present really for a lot of what was going on. Like I know the facts of things that happened and I remember some of the experiences, but I think for a lot of it, my brain was just as checked out as you can be.

Like I let some other person experience it alone because I wasn't willing to be present for it. But there was a child laying in there and this was happening to them. And so for a long time, I felt this kind of guilt that I had let this happen to this kid. When you're not in your body, it's very hard to connect what is happening to your body to yourself. And I was sure I was going to die.

So he raped me and then he got up. And then the brother came in. The mean one was standing in the doorway and the brother got on top of me. And so he ended up raping me anally. And I was very overwhelmed because I didn't understand in any way at all what was happening to me in that moment.

It had never crossed my mind that anal sex was a thing. All of a sudden, this is happening to me, and I don't even know what's going on. And I remember I turned my head to face the mean one in the doorway, because he had told me to. And when I did, the young one who was on top of me asked me, are you okay? And this is meanwhile he's raping me. And I said, yeah.

So the mean one, he was taking pictures. I remember the flash more than anything else. And I remember instructions. That's hard because I couldn't make it make sense what was happening at all. I just couldn't make it make sense. So he gets done. So the mean one comes back over and basically told me, and I can't remember all of his words, but that I was really dirty and gross and

And I liked all this stuff. And so he ended up, he had a bottle. It was a soda bottle that was glass. And there was a clear liquid in it that I assumed was water. And so he put the bottle in my bottom and was trying to get the water to go in my bottom because he said it was so dirty. He kind of turned me over again. So now I was on my stomach again.

and then he anally raped me also. I think at that point I was just, I mean I was conscious, but like just barely, just barely. I remember hearing him telling me to turn over

and kind of meaning to and just not really being able to and he ended up kicking me in the side and my ribs and so I turned over and he basically sat on me like on my stomach and chest and he put his hands around my throat and

and told me that I couldn't tell anyone and that if I did, he knew where I lived because my house was across the street from the park and that he knew who my mom was and that he would do these same things to her before he killed her himself and that I should get up and go home. So I got up and I left the house. I just walked out into the bright sunshine and the warmth. I can't imagine what I looked like, but I mean, there were people at the park. Nobody seemed to notice anything.

And I went home, I went up the back stairs and I went into the bathroom and I felt, I just felt very sick to my stomach. It scared me so bad how much everything hurt and the fact that there was blood. So I got really worked up again and I ended up throwing up onto the floor. And then it's like I got a hold of myself.

It's like I stepped in and took over for myself. And I was like, okay, this is it. We're going to clean everything up. So I did. I cleaned the toilet. I cleaned the floor. I got in the shower. I was still wearing my clothes. And then it occurs to me, okay, I should take my clothes off. So I did. I got dressed. I took my clothes and my towels and the things I'd used to clean up and put them in the laundry. Kind of next thing you knew, it was my mom was calling me to come downstairs for dinner.

So I went to the top of the stairs and I remember taking like a big breath and thinking, okay, this is it. It's done. Nobody knows. It's behind me. It didn't happen. I'm just going to move on. And I kind of had this very odd physical sensation of almost, I just call it stuffing because I ended up doing that the rest of my life.

You take all these big emotions and you squeeze them into the tiniest ball you can, and then you just swallow it down. And then you're done. You don't have them anymore. You don't have to worry about it. They're gone. That stuff's behind you. You just move on. It's like a dream come true. You don't have any problems because if you have them, you can just pretend like you don't. So I went downstairs and had dinner and I just went on like nothing ever happened.

Basically, the way I understood it is that I had had sex with two men. I didn't understand the word rape. That didn't mean anything to me. So I knew it was there. I knew it had happened. And there was a marking point in my life, like a before and an after that I always kind of referred to in my mind.

But I just maybe 10 more times until I was about 40. Did I ever even think about that day? I just never thought about it. It was gone. It didn't happen. There was no reason to think about it. I had put it away. I had to keep my mom alive. This was not a joke. Like he clearly meant business as far as I was concerned. He was violent and angry and he told me what to do. And that's what I did. He told me don't tell. And I was like, okay, I'm not going to tell.

And so when I had to put it away, it was like life or death for my mom. So yeah, my brain took it really seriously and put it away. And I just didn't think about it. In fact, my friend came, the one I was with at the park, came over the next day, which was Sunday. And she knocked on the door. And I went out on the front porch and I was speaking with her. And she was very upset. And she said that she had heard I had had sex with her brother.

And I said, no, no, of course not. And she was like, well, he says you did. And I was like, oh my gosh, of course not. She was like, oh, okay, like calm down. And we ended up going over to the task force and playing.

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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,

I started having trouble sleeping at night. And I remember having a lot of fear and anxiety, which they were my new best friends. I had them. I still have them. They're with me all the time.

I couldn't place it to anything, so what I started doing was becoming afraid of really random things. I became afraid to be in the car, even though a car had nothing to do with anything. I didn't learn to drive actually until I was like almost 30 because I was so afraid of cars. I started to be afraid of fountain drinks. Like I could only get a bottled drink. I couldn't

It was just random stuff. I think what happened was I would be feeling a lot of anxiety and then I would just attach it to whatever I was in the middle of doing. So I think probably one time I started to have a panic attack while I was in the car and therefore cars became scary. I was probably at the 7-Eleven getting a Coke and had a panic attack and now Cokes are scary. But no...

frontal knowledge. It was never on my mind. I never connected it to any emotion I had ever, but my anxiety grew and grew. I had an understanding that things can happen very, very quickly and change everything right away, but I couldn't point out specific ways how.

I did have a hard time ever really feeling safe anywhere. And the problem was just that inside of me it wasn't safe. So it didn't matter where I was. So middle school overall was really tough. So I had this idea that I had had sex and I felt very ashamed that I was such a bad, why was I such a bad girl? I had this great family.

I don't know why all of a sudden I'm so bad and I'm out in the streets having sex with these two men. I should never have left the park. I shouldn't have told that lie to my father months before and pretended I was asleep when he left because maybe that makes me such a bad person that God's really mad at me. And so he sent me into that room. And there was so much shame there.

And then I started changing a lot. Like I went from like little house on the prairie dresses and cheerleading to, you know, I shaved my head. It was like new wave time. So I was like really into the cure and I had all these feelings and I started wearing like slouchy kind of new wave clothes to show on the outside of my body, the hurt that was happening on the inside of my body.

It controlled a lot of my day-to-day life for most of my life. And then I had a couple of fun years in my 20s. I never got wild, but I, you know, I would go to clubs with friends and I had a very safe group. I ended up in a very unhappy and unfortunate marriage.

We were happy for a couple of years, but he was very bossy. And at first that was attractive because I could just kind of let go. I didn't have to think. I didn't have to always be. He would tell me what to do and that's what I would do. It was easier. Now the bad part to that was that every single thing that went wrong in our lives, he blamed on me. And I 100% took the blame because I already felt like a worthless person.

Once he found out he could blame me for everything, he really took advantage of that. And I just put up with it for a really long time. And he wasn't abusive, like punching or anything like that. He was just kind of an asshole who took advantage of a really damaged person. About six years into our marriage, we had a daughter and she's perfect in every single way and the most amazing person in the world.

But during our marriage, he had two kids outside of our marriage that I knew about.

And I don't mean previous to our relationship, like during our relationship, he made two living beings with other women. And I did that same thing with my husband that I had done with the attack where I just, I'd have all these feelings and I would just like squeeze them into the smallest ball possible. And then I would just swallow it down. And it was like it hadn't happened. So

So now my husband had cheated on me, but I didn't have to worry about it because I never had to think about it. I could just put that away and keep getting up in the morning and not dealing with anything. But I would have these spells where a couple of weeks would go by and I couldn't get off the couch.

One time I stayed in, we had a big walk-in closet and I just got so overcome with fear, random fear from nothing that I ended up kind of moving into the closet and stayed in there for about a week. My husband was furious with me, but of course he didn't know what was going on and neither did I. I just knew that I was bad and wrong in every single way.

I always felt a lot of shame that I was this like dark cloud that would show up into these happy people's lives and just kind of ruin everything.

Even in the moment that these things were happening to me, the shame was mine. I wet my pants. I left the park. I crossed through that woman's yard. I made bad choice after bad choice that got me here. And now I've made this man really, really angry with me. And I don't know why he's angry with me. I don't know what I did wrong, but I did something that was so wrong that it deserved this response.

Eventually my husband and I got divorced. You know, I had to start from zero in terms of money or I just, I didn't have any furniture. I just had my kid and my dog and my parents took me in. I had to file for bankruptcy. My truck got repossessed. It was just this whole series of like, I just kept falling and falling and falling further behind. And so it took me a long time to kind of catch up. But when my kid was in third grade, I started college and I went to college and I studied really hard and

And it took me five years and I graduated. All throughout, I was working, usually two jobs, sometimes three, and then I would have school full time. And then I had my kid and I have this really great partner

Now, and we've been together 12 years. So we were all living together and things were going really pretty well. I was still super anxious all the time, but things were good. And I was trying to decide if I wanted to go to grad school or start working in my field. I wasn't sure. And that was December of 2015. And then everything kind of fell apart in January of 2016 for me.

January 16th of 2016, I woke up with the worst headache I've ever had in my life. And that headache lasted about 18 months.

I ended up seeing my doctor and maybe it was migraines and we tried different medicine and I ended up with a neurologist and he looked at my brain from every direction and of course my brain was fine. I wasn't sick, there was nothing wrong, I just had this headache that would never ever subside. It was just always there. Around

September, maybe October of 2016, my neurologist said, "Why don't we try an antidepressant? Because that sometimes helps people with chronic migraine problems." So I said, "Okay." So he puts me on an antidepressant and I probably within two weeks had started hallucinating. I would look down at the road when I was driving and I would just see it covered with snakes.

I saw a really big, like three feet in diameter spider on the side of my house when I pulled up home one day. And of course, there was no spider. And I would hear someone talking to me and I would turn to respond and there would be no one there. And I knew that I was hallucinating. So I wasn't confused. I knew that this wasn't right.

And so I called very quickly my neurologist and they said, oh, you know, don't take that medicine anymore. We're going to give you another one. So I tried a different one. And that's when I first started to have this demon. I started dreaming at night about this demon. And he was sometimes my size and sometimes much bigger.

He was very dark red, but covered also with white. So it's almost like if you took a very dark red car and painted like one coat of white paint over it, you'd still be able to see the red underneath. It was something about the texture of his skin that I saw that was horrifying, horrifying, terrifying.

I would just wake up screaming and screaming and screaming. It was just the fact of him, the existence of him, everything about him was disgusting and creepy and scary and vile. My boyfriend would be asleep next to me. I was safe in my home. But at the same time, I was in my bed with a demon who was threatening me, threatening to have me do bad things.

At first, he was just kind of in my dream. It was just like a bad dream I had. And then I started to hear him when I was awake. And he tells me terrible things. He tells me, you know, basically, I'm ruining everybody's life. I'm a terrible mother. I'm a terrible person. Then he started telling me things like I was at lunch with my parents.

All of a sudden I hear the demon telling me that he's gonna kill the little girl who's sitting in a high chair at the table next to us. And I was like, "Oh my god." Very strange to know that I'm the only one who can hear him, that my parents can't hear him. And it was very scary to think that at some point he would take over my body.

Oh my gosh, what if he gets inside of me and then I do something wrong to one of these kids? Or what if... Just a lot of what ifs. I would spend a lot of my day worrying about things like what if my skin is full of spiders? I would imagine spiders climbing out of my skin.

and how horrifying that would be. What if ticks lived in my skin? And if you cut my skin open, you would just find a bunch of ticks. Like I would just think these disgusting, horrible thoughts. I was in a fog. I was in a fog. I was in so much fear. I would sob and sob and sob and sob for hours and hours without a break. I was just everywhere. I

And so here I have this demon telling me he's going to kill the kid at the table next to me. And I think, okay, what do I do here? So I ended up just, I had to leave. Two days later, I was at my school teaching. We were having circle time. I taught small children and I was reading a story and the kids were just listening and being perfect little children. And I looked down at one of them and there was blood pouring down her face. And I didn't know if it was real or not real.

And it turned out she just had a nosebleed and she was fine. It made me realize in that moment that it wasn't safe for me to be at work anymore. You can't have an adult around kids who are psychotic. And also the part where maybe I'm bringing a demon to school now and I'm hurting these kids by bringing a demon. So I had to quit my work and stay home. I was already seeing a therapist because of all my anxiety.

And the demon just, it just kept growing and growing. 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.

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He told me he was going to get inside of me and take over and then I would be dead, but my body would still be here and he was going to run my body. And so what was going to happen is that everybody, and specifically my daughter, would think it was me and I was going to just do these hateful things to them and hurt them.

So I'm living with this man who's fantastic. And so he has known for a while that I'm slipping and he sees me slipping hard and fast, kind of all of a sudden. And I started hurting myself. So I started hitting my head on things. On a sink, I hit my head. On a cinder block wall, I would hit my head and just bang it over and over until I would get a welt or a bump or a cut.

I started hitting my foot in the same place over and over with a hammer. And then I started cutting my arm. I thought, I'll cut my arm. And I did. And I felt so much better and just kind of completely relaxed for a few minutes. It was like a miracle I had discovered.

So I quit hitting my head and I quit using a hammer and I just started to cut my arms whenever I felt stress. And within a couple of days, my arms were just cut to ribbons. So when I showed my boyfriend that, he was like, okay, we're done. So we went to my therapist and my therapist said, well, I think she needs to go to the hospital.

When we first met and were starting to become like a partnership early on, I did tell him that once when I was 11, I'd had a really bad day. And some men had been really not nice to me. And I had some, you know, some emotions about it. That was what I told him. And so he had to kind of guess at what it was.

And he said something about being a victim. And I was like, huh, you're misunderstanding me. I'm not a victim of anything. I'm telling you, I had a really bad day. And you need to know that I'm not a good person so that you can kind of make this decision about whether or not you want to be together. And he was like, okay, whatever. That's ridiculous.

So we go to this meeting with my therapist all these years later. And so we get in the car. And before I've shut the door, I turned to him. And I promise you, it wasn't me that spoke. But I opened my mouth and a voice came out and said, when I was 11, I was raped by two men in a bathroom. One of them put a bottle in me. They told me not to tell. And I never told. And then I just started crying. And so my boyfriend's sitting there like, okay, okay.

Then it's like I came to and I just started shaking. I had told and that meant doom. That's what I had been trying to avoid doing ever since it happened because that was the threat if I told. By saying this out loud, I am putting my family at risk. So off we go to the hospital and I get admitted. I stayed for a week and they gave me some antipsychotics and antidepressants and

I went home after a week and I felt calmer, I guess, for a couple of days. But then there was the demon and he was telling me again how he was going to get inside of me. And he gave me a specific date that he was going to get inside of my body. And so I told my boyfriend, I said, that's the day he's going to get in. And I was terrified and just hysterical all the time, crying all day, every day for weeks.

So I told him, okay, so I have a date now that he's going to get in my body and I don't, I don't know what's going to happen, but you need to keep my child away from me. Like you need to be in charge. And he's like, do you want to hurt your kid? And I'm like, no, that's why, that's why I'm telling you because I'm not going to be me anymore. I'm going to be a demon. So you have to make sure that she's safe. And he was like, okay, you need to go back to the hospital. I did. I went back to the hospital and

And I spent the night there that the demon was supposed to enter my body. And I was just awake all night. I had this huge amount of fear, huge, huge, huge amount of fear that seemed to equal what was appropriate for the fear you would feel around a demon. And then I didn't hear from him when I was in the hospital anymore. So I felt relieved he wasn't in me, but I didn't feel like it was over for a really long time.

You have to see a psychiatrist when you're in the hospital like that. And I was speaking with him and he asked me, had I ever been sexually assaulted? And I was like, I mean, yeah, a long time ago, but I never, I never talk about that. There's, he said, well, maybe you should talk about it. And I was like, no, I'm telling you, the problem is a demon. My problem is that I have a demon. But he put it in his chart. He was a smart man and a good doctor. And pretty soon I had a family meeting. So my boyfriend came and my mom came.

And the doctors kind of went over everything that was wrong with me and what was happening with me and why I couldn't function. And they said PTSD. And I was mortified that they had said that in front of my mom, because PTSD implies there's a trauma. So my mom now is wondering, what's the trauma? She was waiting till I was better, I think, before she was going to ask me anything. I didn't want her to know. I never intended to talk about this.

And I also felt kind of grumpy that people didn't take my demon more seriously. Everybody was trying to come up with like a mental health answer. But I was fighting a demon. I needed help. I didn't need a diagnosis. I didn't need pills. I needed someone to get this demon out of my life.

And I ended up, in fact, seeing a priest and talking about it with him. And that ended up not really being helpful. But I didn't like that PTSD was even thrown in the mix because that felt like an escape for them, an easy answer for them. For me, the problem was a demon. When I got out of that hospital, I was doing better. And I went into a kind of a day program where you don't spend the night, but you just spend your days. So I really started from zero, basically.

building up a way to function in the world. So I had to learn how to, first of all, identify and name my actual emotions. I knew everything was scary, but I couldn't, I didn't know anger. I didn't know valid concern versus me just being a completely anxious person. So this was months of 2017, just getting over like a total breakdown.

The demon quit showing up. I quit hearing from him. And then when he was gone, it felt like a relief in some ways. But for months, I was afraid he would come back. And by then, I was really getting involved with trauma therapy with my therapist. So in between a couple of hospital stays, my boyfriend says to me, I think you need to talk to your therapist about your bad day.

And I said, no, I'm not going to do that. Why would I do that? And he said, well, I think she should know. And I said, well, I can't say those words to her. There's no way. And he said, well, what if I told her? And I said, oh, actually, that's fine. I didn't mind her knowing. I just knew I wasn't going to be able to say it. So we ended up making an appointment and he went in and sat with her. And I stayed out in the waiting room. And he told her what I had told him, which of course wasn't a lot.

I think he delivered that information in March or April of 2017. And I started speaking with her about it in October of that year. That's how long it took me. I would see her every week and we would work on me being able to speak with her about what had happened to me. And then when I started talking, I had to reveal it to myself and

because I had dissociated and then stuffed it. So it was just this raw experience that was tucked away inside of me for months. Every night, I would have some little small flashback of maybe walking in the front door. So I would just sit with that memory. It would just be whatever memory popped up to me. And then I had to kind of fit it all together. It probably took

almost a year to get through the story of what happened in the bathroom. I didn't have the perspective of what happened to me in the bathroom from inside of my own body. I had it more like an above looking down view. And so that's kind of what I dealt with for several months was just getting through the story, the facts of what happened and

and then trying to attach appropriate emotions to those experiences. And as I did that, it really helped to calm down my anxiety, my sobbing, my out of control feelings of fear and anger. I was able to put it in the places where it belonged. But what came next was like a real split.

I don't know how to describe it except for that I felt like it wasn't just me in my mind. It felt like it was me and this little girl who had been through this terrible event. I would hear her talk to me in my mind. She had a name, this person in my mind.

She lived in the spare room. That's where Holder lived in my mind, is in that room in my mind. And she was the one who'd been in the bathroom. And I had left her there, of course, to go through it alone. And then she was the one who came home. And she was the one who kind of fell apart in my own bathroom. And then that was all she had. That's as far as she went. That's as deep as she got.

And she was very angry with me. She did not trust me. I did not trust her. I worked against her. I didn't like the idea of having this other voice in my mind. And it didn't feel like it was my own. And it felt intrusive and uncomfortable. And I was very upset and kind of angry about it for a while.

My therapist, of course, recognized what was going on and was able to say, you know, maybe try being nice to her. Like maybe try when she wants to tell you something to say things like, okay, you know, you're safe here. You can tell me. So I had to start to practice that and treating this little voice with some dignity and kindness. And then she really blossomed.

She would every now and then kind of speak out of my mouth.

She really liked my boyfriend. She trusted him. She wanted to talk to him a lot. And so sometimes I would lay in the bed with him and I wasn't there, but she was talking to him and telling him what had happened to her and how she felt about it and how she didn't trust me. And so he would explain to her over and over. My therapist would explain to her over and over till I learned how to explain to her. And then once she and I connected and she started to trust me and I started to be kind to her,

She filled me in on everything. When you read a book and you imagine what the characters look like, and you can picture it all in your mind, that's the same way I imagined the bathroom and what happened in there. But once she and I connected, suddenly all of her memories were also mine. And so I could see them for what they actually were.

Which was very confusing and difficult. And I'm still working on totally understanding that she and I are the same person. And that her memories, of course, are mine because I was the one in the room. So I had Holder in there and she was holding all the memories of that day.

But then there was someone else and her name was Mask. And she was the girl who went back to school and went to high school and got married and lived that life.

She really had a struggle because she was very stunted developmentally. You know, a big part of her was disconnected completely. So she was kind of like an 11-year-old who stayed 11 but kept going on through life. So I really, I think I spent a lot of my adult years with the emotional capabilities of like a tween.

That was about as deep as I could get. I was not accepting reality ever. If it wasn't pleasant, I just pretended like it wasn't true because that's how she knew how to cope. So now I feel like I'm me and I've got these other couple that, you know, ride shotgun and we're really trying to integrate. And we have a lot. They aren't taking over my body. There's nothing like this. It's not like civil, but it's more like I'm sharing my brain with someone

all the parts of myself that probably everyone shares their brain with. It's just that normally everybody grew at the same time. So there aren't these splits. So mine, it's just, I've got these other people and I have to check in with them. And sometimes they get upset

Mask has been really feeling upset lately. She feels sorry for herself a lot. And she feels like nobody understands her and she's doing the best she can. And people don't give her enough credit for how hard she's had to work. And so she's kind of stuck in a really dark place right now.

Holder, on the other hand, she's feeling pretty good. She's let the secret out and she doesn't feel like it's her fault. She understands that she was attacked and it was a crime and that they were lying and they were not going to kill her mother. And in fact, we went to therapy with my mom and I was able to tell her what had happened. And she was shocked and she was like, you were just a little kid. And I said, I know. And

Once that happened and she did not die and my father did not die and they did not get divorced, everything started to kind of calm down for me. I have so much compassion for myself now. I never had, honestly, until maybe even just the last four or five months.

Once I stopped blaming myself and carrying the shame of what went on in that room, and there is so much shame that happened. Once I let that go, because I don't feel any shame about it now at all, that I think has been the biggest gift.

And I think that came really with being able to tell my mom what happened. And that convinced that 11-year-old inside of me that, okay, this was actually going to be safe and start to offload some of this responsibility that I've been carrying onto the actual perpetrators to know that the shame is theirs and that I give it back to them.

That's been probably the biggest relief. I think that was the hardest part, just keeping that understanding that I was ruined and bad and other than that.

It depends on the day, how I feel. Some days I am wildly suicidal and sometimes it's me that feels suicidal and sometimes it's mask or holder that feels suicidal. Those are really dark days. Other days, you know, I...

Yesterday, for example, I forgot something I was supposed to do. And it's silly, but my reaction to myself was, oh, okay, well, people forget stuff. It's not the end of the world. And I just kind of went on. And that is like a miracle to me, because I would have previously just felt total shame. So when I look at changes like that,

The fact that I am able to speak this story out loud, I never thought even five years ago that would be possible. Not even three years ago, what I have thought. And here I am just telling it to everybody. And it's because the shame is gone. Even though it makes sense, the way I would have split it.

When my doctor said dissociative identity disorder, and I know that that means multiple personality disorder, really shook me up for several months. And now I'm really hopeful that all these little pieces of me and I can all just kind of join up and be one.

And my doctor keeps saying, I keep asking her, when am I going to be done with this? Like, how much more? She says that I'll be done when I no longer have secrets from myself. So that's really what I'm working on now is making sure that I'm very honest with myself and that I also honestly assess the situations I'm in.

make myself responsible when it's appropriate, hold others responsible when that's appropriate. So there's just these basic day-to-day living your life things. I have such bad luck in a lot of ways, but then in the really important ways, like I'm just really, really lucky, you know, to have such good people around me, it makes all the difference. I have a couple of close friends that have been with me, you know, through all of this and

I have this great kid that I love to be around and this awesome man in my life. And the whole time we've known each other, he's just been really kind. And when I started to really lose it and his reaction was concern and not anger, I was like, oh, oh, okay. You're concerned. You're not mad.

No matter what I was going through, he wanted to know. Like he just dove right in, never judged me. And he has modeled for me how to love me in particular. And so he sees me as like the hero of my story, where I was always the villain.

I think the main thing that I want to say out loud about myself is that I'm normal. I'm not ruined. I'm not evil. And I'm just a regular person. And that is just such happy news for me. For a little while, I took a Krav Maga class. But it's fun. And you feel where I felt strong and powerful. And like, I knew a couple of moves, but

And I wasn't able to do it very long, but it's my goal. So now what I want to do is kind of work up some strength and then go learn how to fight instead of doing things that make me feel like shit, which is how I've lived for so long. You know, just reinforcing how bad I am. Now I kind of just want to be a badass. I think it's hard to always have hope for the future. Honestly, I know that I don't know what's going to happen next.

I would not have predicted this particular year. I don't know what's around the corner, but hopefully, whatever it is, if it's not good, I won't have to split into another personality to deal with it, or I won't have to just shove it all down. So it's like a simple goal of just kind of being regular. Let's just be regular for a while and just be like, this is fucking awesome.

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I'm your host, Witt Misseldein. Today's episode was produced by me, with special thanks to the This Is Actually Happening team, including Andrew Waits and Ellen Westberg. The intro music features the song Illabi by Tipper. You can join the This Is Actually Happening community on the discussion group on Facebook, or at Actually Happening on Instagram. And as always, you can support the show by going to patreon.com slash happening, or by visiting the shop at actuallyhappeningstore.com. WITNESS

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