206: What if no one believed you?
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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. The best way I can explain how it feels to not be believed is just profound loneliness. To not know where to turn to seek advice or to get a hug. I wouldn't wish that on anybody.

From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein. You are listening to This Is Actually Happening. Episode 206. What if no one believed you?

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I grew up in the Midwest, but my parents are from Kentucky. Middle-class family, had a brother. He's about a year and a half older than me. My mom was a stay-at-home kind of mom, but she also had a seamstress business outside of our house.

My brother was actually born with some behavioral problems. He was born with the cord wrapped around his neck. And they said, hey, he's going to have, you know, some behavioral problems, but he'll grow out of it. And he did. So he was difficult through probably high school.

I do, you know, distinctly remember vacations were always difficult because he would have these like crazy temper tantrums in the middle of Washington, D.C. And then, you know, he learned mechanisms to be able to manage his anger and his frustrations. So a lot of my early childhood, I really kind of remember was focused on him. Like my parents were really focused on him. And I think that really stressed out my parents. And so I was kind of a background kid.

My mom was super engaged. You know, she was very creative, crafty. She would throw sort of, you know, elaborate birthday parties. She would create dresses for me and then she would create the same dress, a matching dress for my Barbie or my doll. It was a good childhood. Grew up in a great neighborhood, had lots of kids around. I believe my parents were really happy. You know, I remember things changing or noticing a change when I

I was 10, 11, maybe in fifth grade. In particular, I noticed that my relationship with my mom was changing and she was changing.

I didn't really know what was going on. I just knew that she was constantly annoyed by me, didn't seem to have a lot of time to connect with me. I knew that things were not going well with my parents' relationship at that time. There was a lot of slamming doors and crying in the hallway kind of thing that I could hear. So I knew things weren't going well, but at that time, I really didn't have a sense for what that meant.

I felt alone and I didn't feel like my parents were really paying attention to me because of course they were going through their own nightmare of realizing that they didn't want to be married to each other anymore. I would say they borderline hated each other. It was really scary because you grow up in this kind of perfect world. I'm just sort of going along in my life and then all of a sudden it just felt cold and

There was no conversation at the table. And very often my dad wouldn't be there. You know, my mom was a drinker. Both of my parents were heavy smokers too. So growing up, we were never allowed to drink soda. There's never soda in our house. And again, this is in the 80s. And all of a sudden my mom started buying Tab. If you remember Tab, it was like the first diet soda. And, you know, she wouldn't let us drink it. It was her thing.

So one day she had a glass and I, you know, I snuck a sip of it and I thought this stuff is terrible. Like I can't even believe you're drinking this. And so I sort of went on my merry way, never thought about it until sort of years later when I had another sip of tab and the taste was completely different. It still tasted terrible, but that's when I realized that she had been adding alcohol to it. It all sort of fell into place afterwards and,

I think that's when she developed a whole new level of a drinking addiction. And in my mind, it fundamentally changed who she was as a human being. She just was a completely different human being to me. I felt like I was watching this sort of train wreck from the front row. And it was tough to watch because they really both changed very much. And it was clear that they weren't going to make it.

My parents made an announcement to my brother and I that they were going to separate. We, you know, of course, were really upset about it. And I don't remember what my brother's reaction was, but, you know, I was totally devastated by it. Your future is uncertain and you don't really know what's going to happen next. During those several months, I

I realized that my mother was changing significantly and she didn't want to have a relationship with me. I couldn't get her attention. She was always super angry with me. It escalated. She became really quite severely emotionally abusive and

Some of it was physical. She would pull my hair. She would dig her nails deep into my armpit. And I would, you know, have pain for days. And I think she would do that because the bruises would be hidden. She would constantly call me fat. You know, at school time, she would tell me that she couldn't take me shopping because I couldn't fit into any of the clothes that were available. And that if I looked like my friends, then she would take me shopping.

She, I think, was sort of disgusted with me. I don't know. It's hard for me to even understand it, quite frankly. You know, honestly, it got to the point where I just didn't feel, I didn't feel safe around her. When my parents started their divorce process, my mother moved out and she moved a few blocks away to an apartment and we were at the house with my dad.

When she moved out, there was a huge sense of relief that came over the household. But because there was such a bitter divorce, the courts assigned a psychologist, a court-appointed psychologist, to meet with all four of us individually.

So my parents sat us down and said, hey, we're, you know, each one of us is going to meet with a court appointed psychologist. We're all meeting with the same person. This is to help the court determine whether or not the right fit is for my dad to have full custody of us.

I remember meeting with this doctor and quite frankly, it was like the worst because, you know, I was little and I felt like it was more of a intelligence test. His disposition was threatening. He was cold. He wasn't a nice person. And I don't remember a lot of it except for I was scared to death the entire time. And I left the interview and never really thought about it much after that.

Every once in a while, my dad would be talking to somebody and I would listen in on different things about this psychiatric evaluation and how my mother's sort of report was not very favorable to her, but never really heard anything other than that. After maybe a few months, it was announced that my dad had custody of us and we would see my mother on Wednesday evenings for dinner. That's all.

Every once in a while, we would spend a holiday with her. Our connection with her was limited. Plus, we were, you know, moving into teenage years. I was in middle school. So Wednesday visits with my mom were always really strained. They felt forced, not only for me, but for her.

There was no inclination that she wanted to know more about what was going on with me or really, you know, have an emotional connection to me. And by that time, I know that I had walls up all around me, 10 foot walls around me because of all of the sort of abuse that happened when I was younger.

As we got older and more in their teenage years, the Wednesdays kind of fell off as we got older and less sort of interested in taking time from our own lives. Our relationship kind of fell off. Middle school for me was not easy. I was not a popular kid. I definitely was still reeling from all of the stuff that had gone on in my household.

I was self-harming myself. I was reclusive. I was gaining weight. I started pulling my hair out and I did it pretty significantly to the point where I was very seriously bald in places on my head. But I remember just sitting in French class one day and looking down and seeing a huge pile of hair on the floor right below me. You know, I'd ripped my toenails out.

Pulling out my toenails was something that I did privately. And I don't think that anybody knew. I leaned on my friends a lot when I was, you know, in middle school, because I didn't, I didn't have anywhere else to go. And I started to gain self esteem, I started to work on myself, gaining more friends and being, you know, engaged and part of life.

It took me a while, probably a couple of years to get to that point because I was just so, I don't know, exhausted from this trauma that I went through with my mother living in my house with me.

My dad got remarried and this woman does my laundry and she takes me places when I ask her to. And she asked me deep questions about myself and we would go shopping. She never ever said anything about my weight or what I look like or anything. I definitely felt like my dad marrying my stepmother gave us a family unit back again. And she, in my mind, replaced my mom.

So there was a span of a few years where for sure my mom was on the outskirts of what was happening within our new family unit. And my brother and I were thriving. But there was still a person in my life who, you know, genuinely just she didn't like me. And I couldn't figure out why.

She's a Southern belle. She's very sweet. She's got a thick Southern accent and she's got a million friends. Everybody loved to hang out with her. And all I heard growing up was what a great, fun lady my mom is. But she was never that person with me. The internalizing component of it really is not understanding how you can be a mother and not really like your child.

And so what I attached that to was that I didn't meet her expectations as a daughter. So, you know, I wasn't pretty enough or smart enough or charming enough, which sounds so typical of every mom-daughter relationship that's gone wrong. But I couldn't place it anywhere else. And I have never sort of recovered from this void that I've always had with her. And I think that that's going to live with me forever. Yeah.

So when I was 16, I was still living with my dad and my stepmother, but I was 16. So of course, you know, I was acting out and the usual teenage stuff, but we had one particular argument and he told me, you can't use the car. You're grounded from the car for like a month or something like that. And I got really angry with him and said, fine, then I'm going to move in with mom.

And he laughed and was like, you go ahead. So it probably had been a good solid two plus years where I really did not have a lot of contact with my mom except for these Wednesday dinners. So I packed myself a bag and I move over to her house. And at this time she was living above a store that she ran. I probably stayed with her for maybe a month or

Within that month, she was drunk and passed out at least by nine o'clock every day. She would leave her cigarettes burning, burned her couch a bunch of times. She never ever had one thing of food in her house, but there was always a bottle of Skoll in the fridge. Like I was completely on my own the entire time I was there. And I wasn't used to her sort of abrasiveness and her constant rolling of the eyes and disappointment and

So as that month went on, I started to realize, wow, she's in bad shape. Living in this space with her was really eye-opening. And I realized that she's in trouble, that she's not in a good place. And that fear that I had of her kind of fell away. And I was 16, I was starting to

get an attitude and whatever. And I sort of realized, why am I afraid of this woman? She's a train wreck and it's not my fault.

So I started, you know, acting out when she was drunk. I would tell her she was drunk. I would get in fights with her. I would tell her she's a mess. I'm not afraid of you anymore. I'm disgusted by you. This isn't how people should live. And, you know, she would pass out all the time at night. So I would start taking her car. You know, I was 16. I had my license. I would take money from her.

I would be out all night with my friends and we weren't doing anything really bad. I just, I really kind of enjoyed taking advantage of her and treating her like shit. I'm not going to lie. It really, it was, you know, it was something that certainly changed our relationship. And so that month kind of passed. And so I packed up my stuff and I moved active with my dad and my stepmother and sort of went about my business. Everything was kind of fine.

That Thanksgiving was the next time I saw her and it was her turn to have Thanksgiving. So my brother and I went over to her house and she's in the kitchen trying to cook Thanksgiving. There's a guy sitting on the couch and she's totally drunk when we get there. Big, huge smile on her face.

she introduces this guy and says, you know, he's a good friend of mine and he didn't have anywhere to go for Thanksgiving. And so I invited him and I was like, all right, you know, he, he just looked like, you know, just single guy, nothing special. He seemed really strange, but he was a Spanish teacher. He was also a member of Mensa, or at least he told us that. And I remember my brother gotten a, like a little, like quick argument with him at the table. And like,

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He says, are you mailing our divorce papers to people that your mom knows? And I kind of looked at him like, I don't know what you're talking about. And he's like, well, your mother called and said, you have made copies of our divorce papers, including the psychological evaluations that we all went through. And you have mailed them to her family across the country.

And I was like, what? And he's like, did you do that? Tell me the truth. You know, they were mailed to your grandmother, your uncle, your aunts, all of your family members. Alice, I don't understand why you did that. And, you know, it's really hurtful to your mother that you did that. She feels betrayed and she's really upset with you and she wants to know how you did it.

And I just was like, look, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't have these papers. And he sort of said, okay, I mean, I understand, I think. And so I'll talk to her.

A few more weeks, maybe a month go by, and another set of these psychological evaluations from the divorce were mailed to a group of friends of my parents that were sort of scattered all over the U.S.,

Sure enough, I walked down the stairs in the kitchen. My dad's there. He's like, I'm wondering, Alice, what is going on here? Because you need to stop doing this. Your mother is really upset. And you know, those psychological reports do not reflect well on her, really anybody. And so you're hurting us as a family. And I don't, I want you to stop it. And he was really, he was angry with me.

It didn't matter what I said to my dad because I didn't talk to my mom directly. He would go back and she would say, no, it's her. I know she did this. You need to stop it. So we had conversations about it. He asked me how I got the mailing lists or the addresses. And I'm literally like, I just don't I don't know what you're talking about.

Maybe a few weeks after that, he comes to me and is like, I want you to give me your mother's address book back. And I'm like, I just don't, I don't have her address book. I'm not, you know, I don't know what to say. I am not doing this. Somebody else is doing it. It's not me. You know, it kind of got to the point where he's like, I want to believe you, but I don't know that I do, quite frankly. And again, at the time, I had no idea what was in the reports. Nothing. I never read it, never saw it. I still have never read it.

It was perplexing to me too. I felt like, huh, this is really weird. And I wonder why anybody would do that. So I really didn't have any explanation for why this was going on. And I was starting to get angry. That irritation was felt by her and it was felt by my dad. And so my dad said that she called the police. She also demanded that I go see a therapist.

We picked out a therapist. It was a woman that lived near us. It was definitely positioned to her that like I was a troubled girl and that I was doing things to hurt people that we needed to find out what was really going on with me. I think my mom went to one of them.

And it was the first time I'd seen my mother since this all happened, since she accused me of this. So it had been six months or whatever. The therapist says, what are your concerns with your daughter? And she says, my daughter does not understand the difference between fantasy and reality.

I was totally thrown back by that. And I thought, that's, you know, okay, that's a new one. Yeah, you know, and immediately, like all these flashbacks kind of happened while I was sitting there. And I started like, thinking of all of the things that proved to me that she didn't understand the difference between fantasy and reality.

One of them was when I was staying with her for that month is that she would talk to herself as though she was in an actual conversation with somebody with a cigarette and a cocktail in her hand standing at the kitchen table or the sink. And she would actually be having a conversation with herself with the smiles and the laughs and the whole thing. And she would have these conversations with herself. And it was more than once that I saw her do it.

But that immediately like flashed into my mind when I'm sitting at this office of this therapist and my mom, who is the adult responsible person in the room, you know, and ultimately has control over what happens to me is telling this woman that I don't have, I don't understand fantasy versus reality. And that's the first thing that popped into my mind is wait a minute. That's not me. That's you. That's the first time I actually really got scared.

I'm used to people not believing me, I guess. But when you now sort of making these statements in front of a therapist, I really genuinely got scared. And I thought, okay, is she genuinely trying to help me? Or is she trying to sabotage me? I'm being accused of something that I didn't do. And I'm being accused of having some real sort of behavioral problems. And nobody believes me.

And they believe this person, my mother, who really does have behavioral issues. There's problems there. The story is what other people choose the story to be, not what the story really is. And I feel like I've been battling that the entire time. It's really hard, almost impossible to argue against it. It's suddenly your story isn't your story anymore. And I haven't controlled this story since day one.

I think there's one thing to lose control over your story. And there's another thing to have never had control of the story to begin with. Accusations really continued for months. And there was a lot of pressure from this therapist. This therapist did not believe me either. I think the evidence was stacked against me in that there was no other person that could conclusively would have considered doing this.

A little time goes by and here I am walking down the stairs back into the kitchen one morning. My dad was there. He was standing there and he looked really distressed. And he says to me, where were you last night? And I was out with friends. So I said, I was out with friends. And he said, somebody tried to blow up the car in your mom's driveway. Somebody tried to kill your mother. And I don't know how to explain that.

what I was feeling or thinking at that time, because I don't think I really understood what he was saying. And I didn't take him seriously, quite frankly. And so I sat down and he's really looking at me and I could see the genuine concern, like real stress in him because he knew that this had taken another turn. And I think he thought, I can't, I'm not gonna be able to help you out of this one.

And I sort of just sat there and stared at him. And he's like, you know, Alice, what the hell is going on? Did you try to kill your mom? Did you try to hurt her? And I don't know really how long it took me to answer because this was a whole nother level of insanity and accusations. And so I don't know that I even processed anything for days after that.

But I do know that the tension in my house was, it was thick. And I don't know if they thought that I did it, but they, or at least my dad, didn't definitively acknowledge that I didn't do it. There was discussion about, you know, how could you do this? I mean...

What's wrong with you? What else have you done? What's happening here with you? I mean, everything just sort of escalated to a point where I was like, holy shit, now we are on like it's DEFCON 4. Like, I don't know what is going on anymore. But not only am I just totally confused by the fact that, I don't know, that somebody tried to kill my mother, but that most definitely she was convinced it was me.

Probably 24 hours after I first learned about this, the police arrive at my door. Two plainclothes detectives.

They said, I want to know where you were last night. And I told them I was out with my friends. And they said, did you drive? And I said, yeah, I drove. And they said, did you drive home past your mother's house last night? And my mom's apartment was on this main road. So to get to my parents' house, typically I would have passed her house to jump on the highway to get over to my dad and my stepmother's.

So I said, yeah, I did pass her. They said, did you look over at her house? And I said, yes, I did. What did you see? I said, I saw a blue van parked in her driveway. What time was that about? And I said, okay, probably between 11 and midnight.

And they said, this is what happened. There's been an attempted murder. It was a car bomb that they tried to light a rag and stick it in the gas can. Luckily, it blew out in time. And so it didn't, you know, hurt anybody or ignite. They figured out that the approximate time this happened was between 11 and 12.

And they immediately started in with, you need to admit to this. You're 17 years old now. If you don't admit to this now and something happens, when you turn 18, you're going to be treated as an adult. And you have to understand that these are very serious allegations that you will go to jail for a long time. So I suggest that you just admit it now because we know that you did this. They left and I totally broke down.

I just, sorry. I just, I totally broke down. I was so scared. I went up to my bedroom and I remember thinking, holy shit, maybe I did do this. Maybe I did this. Because they're right. I was at these places. I just kept thinking, maybe I am the one that's really fucked up. Maybe it was me.

when these people are in your house, these detectives, it's hard to articulate what it's like to just be accused of something like that. I thought, okay, if it is me, I wonder like, how would I know what to do? And I've probably thought about it for a few hours. And then I'm just like, you know what? It wasn't me. It wasn't me. And I mean, they tried everything they could to get me to admit to it. And I just said, look,

It was not me. I didn't do that. I wouldn't do that. But I think I was more just like, I can't believe my mother accused me of this. I just really can't believe it, that our relationship has gone there. It's an understatement to say it was a defining moment. It really was the absolute end of our relationship. So things got super serious. My mom insisted that my dad hire a private detective. So he did.

This private detective asked me to take a polygraph. I refused. The reason why I did was because, quite frankly, I had for more than six months said that I had nothing to do with any of this and nobody believed me. And I felt like it doesn't matter what I say, they are going to say I did this. And so why should I make any effort to help her, to help her build her story against me?

In hindsight, I think, okay, that was probably stupid. And I would have passed a polygraph, of course, but I was so hurt and angry that I wanted nothing to do with her. And I just, I had to start blocking it out. Otherwise I was going to lose my mind.

I went to my therapist. She learned about all of this. She went to my parents and said, look, this is over my head. I can't determine whether or not she's done this. Because of that, I think she needs to go see somebody who can really kind of help you with some real issues that she may have. And so even my therapist sort of was like, I'm out, you know, and she left.

So probably a week later, I get called down to the office at school in the middle of class. And there are two police officers standing in the office. And my guidance counselor is there with him. And he's like, Alice, these detectives are here to search your locker. And then I went back up to my class and

Talk about being like a zombie. I was a total zombie. Like I, I wasn't there. All I thought about was this. It just, I lost a ton of weight. I was totally stressed out. I was just like a basket case.

Never heard anything about anything in my locker because there wasn't anything in my locker incriminating at all. And so the police left and I never really heard anything. And again, it just always felt like, OK, well, we're going to try this. We're going to look here. And then if there's nothing there, then it's, well, we'll look here. But we're going to find we're going to find it, Alice. It always just felt like that. You are guilty. You did do this. We just need to prove it.

The next thing I was dating this boy and I had dated him for, you know, maybe a year. You know, he was aware, obviously, of all this stuff that was going on. And the police came, asked him to come into the police station to interview him. And he told me he was going. And I was like, OK, fine.

We talked afterwards and he came and sat down next to me and said, I gotta be honest. I, I'm really wondering, did you do this? And I'm like, no, I didn't do it. What are you talking about? He's like, well, it's just that there were these coincidences that they explained to me and all of these things. And I think he left that police station going, holy shit, you know, is my girlfriend nuts or

You know, that was kind of the end of our relationship. So my dad, I think my dad was really freaked out. I think he wanted to do what was right. And his gut was telling him to, you know, help my mom.

And I'll be honest that it hurts to think about that. You know, every once in a while I would catch him like looking at me or staring at me. And I feel like he was kind of like trying to determine whether or not it was possible that I could have done this. So I think he was hopeful that it wasn't me, but it does hurt that he, you know, never said, Hey, this is crazy. I'm going to help you through this.

And he told my stepmother not to be involved. And, you know, she did tell me that she didn't believe that I did this. But she could not be the one that stood up and advocated for me because he wouldn't let her. The best way I can explain how it feels to not be believed is just profound loneliness. To not know where to turn to seek advice or to get a hug.

I wouldn't wish that on anybody.

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So around that time, another wave of the psychological reports goes out. But this time, it's to a random group of people that my mom really did not have a close connection to that were more connected to me than they were to my mom received a copy of this report.

And I think that further kind of solidified that I did this. And once again, I really could not explain why my friend Kate's parents got a psychological report from a divorce that happened years ago. This kind of kept happening. A group of her friends in the neighborhood got copies. There were some copies that were mailed to her work.

And that is when my parents were very supportive of me going to see a psychotherapist to determine what was wrong with me. So I remember my stepmother driving me to the appointment with the new psychotherapist. I prepared myself for this just to be yet another total disappointment and train wreck.

But I sat down with this guy and we just had a regular conversation. And he sat across the room from me and he actually didn't even ask me a lot of questions about my parents or the situation. He just asked me stuff about me. And I didn't leave that meeting feeling like there's another person that's just going to write a horrible review on what's wrong with me.

He wrote a report up and he sent it to my parents. And he basically said, there's no way that this girl did any of this. There's just no way. And that kind of changed the trajectory a little bit. My parents, you know, had a little powwow. And finally, there was some pressure put on my mom to kind of look and consider some other aspects of her life that were not up for consideration before.

The police recommended that my parents hire a handwriting analyst because many of the reports that were sent out had handwritten addresses written on them. So my mom had collected a couple of them. So what she did was she collected some of the handwritten envelopes that went to people that she knew. And then she collected handwriting samples from other people. I was one of them, of course.

My dad, I just remember again, like here I am descending down the stairs, walking into the kitchen, just like a regular day. He's there and he's got a big smile on his face. And he's like, Alice, I have to tell you something. We found out who did it. We found out. And I said, oh, kind of like not believing him. So he tells me that it's this guy that, you know, this handwriting analyst is, you know, 100% confirmed it.

And that, you know, he's definitely the one that's been sending the stuff out. And my dad was so relieved. He was so relieved. I could see just like so much pressure had been relieved. And he just was so, I think, thankful that, you know, I wasn't involved in it. And this was the guy that was at Thanksgiving a couple years back when we went to Thanksgiving at my mother's house.

I met him once. He was probably there for an hour and a half before we left. Never thought anything of him again. Never saw him again. Turns out it was him the whole time. It was him. The blue van was her boyfriend's van. And he was a guy that she dated on and off for several years.

And so reflecting on that, you know, maybe this guy felt betrayed or something. And so that was his way of reacting to seeing another person's van in my mom's driveway. I don't know. So once that was discovered, my mom called the police and told them. And they didn't have enough evidence to do anything. But he was also already in jail.

It was something like check writing or fraud, something that he was in jail for several years. My dad, he asked me to talk to my mom. And at this point, I hadn't talked to her in over a year. And I said, no. And he said, look, you know, for closure, you need to like sort of, you know, let's do this for closure. You just have to like listen. She wants to tell you what happened. So I got on the phone with her. I was so incredibly enraged that

So I really didn't say anything. And I listened to her on the phone and she was crying. And she tells me that it's this guy and that she's so relieved that this has been figured out and that she can get on with her life and that this has been a really hard year for her.

And not one fucking thing about I'm sorry, how are you doing? What can I do to like fix this? How are you feeling? Nothing. Not one single thing did she say. And I just was like, I'm so, so, so done with this person. I'm so done. You know, the injustice of it all was where I kind of focused my time.

In the couple years after it, I spent a lot of my time hating her. If I had to spend time with her, I told her that I really fucking hated her. I mean, I, I hated her. I still hate her. And the funny thing about my mom is it was like it never happened. And so it was just this whole bullshit pretend act that she would do in front of her family.

And so I don't know if people thought, okay, they've done their thing and they've made their peace and they're moving on. But that was never the case. Never. She never apologized to me. And I told her that if she can't do that, we're done. And she didn't do it. She just, she wouldn't do it. My mom lived here in the same area as me for quite a while. When I had my two kids, she decided to move to Florida.

While she was in Florida, she got sick. She had cancer of the mouth. And the irony of that is not lost on me, I will say. She had friends that called up here to me and to my brother. And they were like, look, you've got to come down and kind of figure this out.

I went with my brother to clean up her apartment. I'm having a conversation with one of her friends and she goes, well, you know, now I know that you and your mom don't have the greatest relationship. What the fuck does that mean? Exactly. Because we don't have a great relationship because she accused me of trying to kill her. Are we talking about the same thing here?

And I know the answer to it. It's no, we're not. Because she thinks, my mother's friend, that I have done something to her. That's where she's coming from. But, you know, at this point in my life, I don't say anything. But I know that she is still spewing out that utter, total bullshit to people. She's on her deathbed. And she's still sharing this bullshit with people. These lies. I still cannot understand why, why.

The last conversation I had with her, I was on a walk through the park and her attending nurse called on her cell phone because my mom couldn't dial the phone or something. And she put my mom on speakerphone. And my mom was so nice to me through the whole conversation because that nurse was in the room and could hear our conversation. And at the end of the conversation, she told me she loved me.

She has never said that since I was 10. She said she loved me and I just, I hung up and she died a few days later. Very often I feel bad when I explain this to people, you know, I've had lots of people say, oh, but she's your mother. Like it's unconditional and it's not for me. It just really isn't. So it's hard to explain to many people what I'm about to say, but I have no real love for her.

So when I got the call that she died, I said, okay, thank you. And her death is a relief, quite frankly, for me. There's a sense of relief in knowing that that story, you know, that utter just lies about me, her child, is dead with her.

But there is a part of me that most definitely won't ever heal. And I think I'm okay with that. You know, I mean, I think that's just part of, that's part of life. And certainly people go through traumatic events and they're never going to be the same after that. And I consider this one of those kinds of situations. These memories still affect me every day.

So the way I think about sort of how do I get through and process this and continue on, you know, living my life and, you know, creating my identity, you know, I've taken a lot of what has happened to me and made it into something positive. I've been very sort of a bit of a curator when it comes to the right friends and making sure that I'm surrounded by people who are good people. And I have a million friends that I love and I consider my family.

I think what I struggled probably after all of this, what I struggle with most was just trust, finding trust, believing in people,

When I tell people this story, the first thing I say afterwards is just so we're clear, I didn't do that. Because for some reason, I think I have to say that, which when I right after I say it, I think that's so stupid that I have to say that. I mean, obviously, I didn't do that. But I feel like I've like it's ingrained in me that people aren't going to believe me.

I also think that I have made peace with the fact that, you know, a lot of what happened, I'm not really sure that other family members could have done anything about.

I know that I've talked a lot about not having any adults kind of step into this process and just say, hey, why are we managing this experience for a 16-year-old in this way? But, you know, when I reflect on it, I think there is a lot of other things going on in everybody else's life. And so I can't really say that I can blame anybody else. And part of that has really helped me sort of channel where that sort of anger is placed and

And consistently over the last 35 years, it's been placed directly and squarely on my mother's shoulders. And it is hers to carry. The other thing that I will say is that my mom's family is the greatest group of people. My grandmother, I named one of my children after my grandmother, my mom's mother.

Because she was one of the most bright, beautiful, loving, just all around amazing person. And lucky that I still have a great family on her side. She came from a great group of people. So I really have no excuse for why she...

was the person she was to me. That just brings another level of kind of perplexity to why she was who she was. Your family isn't your family. Your family is who you choose to have as your family. And I have a great family, blood family, and I have a great chosen family. That I think to me has really helped me kind of get through this. You know, those, those bloodlines that are so incredibly strong and,

I think I thought that that was how it was supposed to be and it couldn't be any other way. That's just not the case. It's just not the case. Your family is who you choose to have to be your family. Quite frankly, when I had my first child, I was quite nervous. And when I did and I found out I was having a girl, there was a part of me that was like, okay, better not fuck this up.

How am I going to be a mother to these now two girls that I have? And how do I approach these teenage years right now that I'm here with a 16 year old and a 13 year old girl? So it really kind of brings a little bit of that anger back because you go, thank God I am not or did not carry this like gene of hers or whatever it is.

this mental disease that she has into my life because I have been able to take a good strong look at my kids and say, okay, I'm going to do everything I can to advocate for them and make their life the healthiest life they can have. And my job is to just do better. My job is to take those reflections that I have had from, you know, the experiences that I've had and the experiences of the generations behind me have had and channel that in a different way.

Because now I'm experiencing myself, you know, in this very situation where I have a 16-year-old. And all I can do is, you know, hold myself back from screaming on the mountaintops about how incredibly amazing she is. Today's episode featured Alice Stevens. ♪

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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.

Is this the largest mass hysteria since The Witches of Salem? Or is it something else entirely? 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+.