221: What if you were addicted to each other?
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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. All that stuff I went through, the abuse, the physical, verbal, everything, was not rock bottom for me. Me realizing that I was being abusive to people I loved, that was my rock bottom. From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein. You're listening to This Is Actually Happening.

Episode 221 What if you were addicted to each other?

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I was born to a 16-year-old mother and an 18-year-old father. I'm a twin. That's kind of where we started, these two teenagers having a pair of twins. My mother fell in love with my dad. He was a surfer. He had a girlfriend. They ended up getting pregnant, and my grandparents were very old-fashioned, so they made them get married. My dad was brought up around a very strict household.

Back in those days, they just like iron fist. You lay the law down. His father wasn't abusive to his children, but he was abusive to his wife, my grandmother. And so my dad is a product of what he was raised around. My mom is a product of you just stick in a marriage no matter what. You just deal with it. You put up with what your husband says.

My dad was completely cheating on her all the time and not wanting to settle down, not wanting to be married. I mean, he was 18, constantly leaving us. He was just kind of in and out of the picture for a long time because he was a young guy too. They were teenagers. They were babies raising babies. So we decided to all move to Indiana so that my mother and father can get a fresh start. I have some really great memories from Indiana, but I also have some really, really bad ones.

I have those memories of me and my twin sister pretending that under the sink was our clubhouse. But then also I have these memories of my dad being so angry at my mom that she's hiding and she tells us to not tell him where she's at. And he's yelling and screaming and she's crying and we don't understand because we're so little. When they were together it was horrible because they were always just fighting or drunk. But when they were apart she was crying because he was cheating.

Luckily, when you're a twin or when you have siblings, you don't really focus on your parents. When we were little, we were inseparable. We had all the same interests. We loved all the same music and everything. She was my best friend. I didn't need my parents because I had her. And I think we were each other's safe haven. Even though I know that our home was very rocky and it was abusive, she was my safe place and I was hers.

My sister and I were brought up being the pretty ones. So my mom and dad were always like, these are my beautiful daughters. My mom, she's beautiful. But my dad was very abusive to her. She was always a fat, ugly cunt. But I saw her try to please him with her beauty or appearance. But just those words has resonated with me throughout my whole life because we don't forget it. Even my twin sister, we strive to never be fat, ugly cunts.

My dad left my mom because he found another woman in New York. So we had to move back to California when I was about 12 years old. My parents separated and both went in their own directions and did not take me and my sister. They left me and my twin sister with my aunt. So we had to kind of fend for ourselves. I thought it was going to be a great thing. We started school in California. But right when I got here, fell into the very wrong crowd.

Basically, me making my own decision at 14, going out anytime I wanted to. Literally lost my virginity at 13 and got pregnant at 14 with a man who was 22. When I got pregnant, he bought us an apartment, and it was an apartment that I wasn't allowed to leave from. I was locked into an apartment with him at 14 years old, pregnant. He locked me in every single day.

He completely took everybody out of my life. He took everything out of my life. I had nobody but him. I mean, I couldn't have girlfriends. I couldn't have friends that were even guys at all. I couldn't go to any functions. He just wanted to know every single move I made every day. So I was not able to get out of the apartment. And he knew if I did because his mother was across the street and she would watch the apartment.

But I took that as a form of love and I let him. I didn't see anything wrong with it because I was around abuse a lot. He never told me I was ugly or like he never was verbally abusive. He was controlling. Our parents really showed us they were always so wrapped up in their own turmoil that they didn't really focus on any of us. So therefore, any form of attention is good attention when you don't get it. It felt like love to me.

He had such a control over me. But I just thought, this man loves me so much, he just wants me all to himself. One day, I just started getting homesick. I realized that I can put a piece of toilet paper where the door latches and it won't lock. So I decided that morning, because he woke up so early to go to work, I decided to do that and test it. And it worked.

I remember right when he left the apartment that morning to go to work. I remember hearing him leave and hearing that the door did not latch. It was probably the first time I felt so much fear, actually. I was so scared of if his mom would see me and tell him. But I waited till the sun came up when she took her kid to school because he had a little brother that was like really young. And I knew she was going to be gone. And that's when I got out of the apartment.

in my pajamas and ran to the nearest payphone. And that's when I called my dad. I know my family at home, they were falling apart. My mom and dad were gone. My sister, I didn't even know where my sister was. I don't know if they were looking for me. I'm sure they were. But when I saw my dad, I literally ran and jumped on him, forgetting I was pregnant because I missed him.

He took me home to my aunt's house, but then my mom and my dad were there too because everybody was obviously worried about me. And I was about six months pregnant at that time. I remember that evening walking to get some ice cream, my water broke. I remember when I saw my dad and I ran and jumped in his arms.

I forgot I was pregnant. And my dad is like, hey, be careful. I was like, oh, you know, I didn't think anything of it. And so we went home that evening. And then all of a sudden, I'm walking to go get ice cream with my little sister. And my water breaks. I'm like, oh, my gosh. And me, even knowing I'm six months pregnant, I'm like, oh, my God, I'm going to have a baby today. Not even thinking, OK, it's really premature.

I walk home and I tell my family my water broke. They rushed me to the hospital and I had a little baby boy. He obviously went straight to an incubator. He was very very premature. My ex came to the hospital after I had our son and he wasn't mad. I was recovering. It's like we just picked up where we left off. We got a phone call in the middle of the night from a nurse. My ex

He was the one talking to her. That nurse told him, "You guys need to come down here tonight. He is not going to make it through the night." I was so young and immature. There was nothing in my head that even told me, "Oh, he's not going to live through this. This is my baby. He's going to be okay, and I'm going to love him. I'm going to take him home, and I'm going to be the best mom ever." I was so in shock and in a weird place that I told him I didn't want to go.

So my little baby died by himself. This is one of the biggest regrets I've ever had in my whole life. Him not feeling his mom when he died. We were together after my son died for about a year. And then one day he broke up with me. It was so devastating to me because he was my only friend, only person in my whole life.

I also got hit like literally like a brick wall with the grief of my son dying. Like it's almost as if I never really dealt with the grief of him dying because I had his dad there. But when he walked out on me, I was hit with the grief of him walking out. And then I got hit with the grief of my son dying. About a year.

Month after him leaving and the worst depression and grief I've ever felt in my life, I had a dream. And in this dream, I was sitting in front of a vintage vanity that had the lights all around it. The room was completely pitch black. All of a sudden, something or somebody places a bundle in my arms in a white sand blanket. And I knew it was my son.

I was just sitting there and looking at him and holding him close and singing to him until he turned into glitter falling through my arms. I woke up the next day completely. I felt like I could breathe again. Like that dream was a gift. I did not hold my baby when he died. But in that dream, I was there. Grief and heartbreak, it can weigh like a ton of bricks.

But that morning I remember waking up with less grief and less heartache. And from there on, I moved forward. 16 to 18, I literally worked full time. I had to drop out of high school because our parents left me and my sister to our own means. So I had to make money. I met my first husband when I was 19. We had two beautiful children together.

I was married to him for about seven, eight years. And he was a great man. He was not abusive or anything. He was older than me. But at a certain point, I just did not want to be married anymore. He was like a father to me. He treated me like a kid. After I got divorced, I wanted to just go experience life. I wanted to have fun. I wanted to just be me, not be who he wanted me to be, not be who anybody wanted me to be.

I went out and made a lot of friends, which I never had. I went out and drank all the time, went to bars, had many relationships, many failed relationships. And then my friend and her boyfriend go into our local dive bar that we're always at. And sitting at the bar is this man in like surfer shorts and curly hair.

I took one look at him and I knew I wasn't leaving without that guy. You can say love at first sight or crush at first sight. That was the very first time I've ever felt that in my whole life. We danced all night and we closed the bar down. Gave him my number and he gave me his. And I remember calling his phone the next day. And I remember the message I sent him. I said, man after my own heart, call me.

And he did right away. And then we met up that night and we sat by the pool at my apartment complex and talked all night long. We were both infatuated with each other completely. The next day, about two days later from there, he wrote me a song. I remember thinking to myself, oh God, what if I hate it? Like, how do I pretend? He put the CD in and this song came on.

It was about the first day we met, us dancing all night. And it was the most beautiful song I think I've ever heard in my life. And from then on, we were inseparable. The early days were crazy. Him and I were so carefree. He was so carefree. We lived, we loved, we made love, we drank, we ate, every single day.

It was the best time of my life. I'd never experienced that before. And that's why I got so addicted. You get blinded by that. Two weeks into our relationship, I was going to meet his dad. For some reason, he was very particular about how he looked. His looks meant everything to him. He asked me to straighten his hair for him, like with a straightener. And I didn't bring it with me and I forgot it.

He got really mad and it escalated because he started yelling. The fact that I forgot to bring the straightening iron, it was the dumbest thing in the whole wide world. And I didn't know at that time that I couldn't voice my own opinion or talk back or defend myself because when I did, he went crazy. He lunged at me. I remember being just falling into a ball on the floor. He took a handful of my hair into his hand

And started banging my head into the floor. But when I got up, I was crying. There was blood vessels in my eyes. He became immediately remorseful. He cried. He's like, I'm so sorry. I can't believe I did that. That'll never happen again. I love you so much. Two weeks in. I love you so much. I can't believe I did that. He just kept holding me. And I just felt loved again. Me?

Always thinking positively or not even looking at the negative, I think is a form of self-protection, like not dealing with it, just looking at the happiness. That's what I did as a kid. The abusive stuff my mom and dad went through or did to each other, I just like ignored it all. That's what I do. I ignore all the hard stuff and I focus on the great stuff.

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And the next, something goes wrong. But with ADT's 24-7 professional monitoring, you still feel safe. Because when every second counts, count on ADT. Visit ADT.com today. I ended up just wanting to spend every moment with him and him wanting to spend every moment with me, even though they were so bad and so good. I got fired from my job. He got fired from his.

I moved out of a three bedroom, beautiful condo in an amazing apartment complex right next to my work to losing my job and losing the apartment, getting evicted, not making any money, living in my car for a little bit with him and us renting a room together. We were addicted to each other in the worst way. My kids were half with me and half with my ex-husband.

My ex-husband said, this is so unhealthy. You cannot be around our children anymore until you leave him. And I knew I needed to leave him because like I said, it was abusive at that point too. It wasn't just that one incident. It was every day, every other day. It was so bad. But then when they abuse you and then they apologize, it's like, God, it's such a weird thing to say, but it's almost like I feel loved. I feel loved. I felt loved.

So I lost my kids too because I could not get away from this man. So I lost them. And we never did drugs or anything either. People are like, where are you guys on drugs? No, never did anything like that. It was just this weird addiction to each other. Gilbert was brought into this world by a mother who was an addict. When Gilbert was two years old, his mother took him to his dad's house and left him on the doorstep and bolted.

Gilbert was left to a man who was an abuser, an alcoholic, a womanizer. That's why he was raised with him and his dad. Gilbert's dad made him sleep outside in a trailer by himself at three years old because he didn't want him in the house while he was having sex with women. No love. No mother love. And around a father who was...

extremely abusive, called him ugly, piece of shit, you know, like all these horrible names. So Gilbert, that's why his looks meant so much to him. And it made me see exactly why he was the way he was. Him and I drank so much together. I never drank so much in my whole life. It numbed stuff. It numbed the shit we were going through. And he always wanted to be drunk. He would drink from the moment he woke up in the morning to the moment he closed his eyes. After I lost my job,

The abuse was even more. There was nothing I could do to not trigger it. I started cleaning houses to make money. He never tried to work. It was always on me to pay our bills and our rent and buy his alcohol and our food and everything. One time I was late coming home from cleaning houses

We got into a fight and he ended up going into the bathroom, taking the cat litter box and dumping it on my head and taking the cat. This is horrible. And just like smearing it all in my hair. I went down in a fetal position and just let him do it until he stopped. And I cried in the shower and I knew it wasn't okay, but he apologized and he made me feel like loved again.

We went out one night. He thought that someone was hitting on me. I knew better to not make eye contact with anybody. I knew better to keep to myself with him. But that night, some man came up and talked to me. He wasn't hitting on me. I don't even remember what it was about. It was so stupid.

He got so mad that he made us leave the bar and we got into the truck. We got into a fight and he was so disgusted in me. He pulled the car over on the side of the road in the middle of the night and yanked me out of the truck and left me. I started walking home. I had no money. I had nothing. My purse was in the truck.

Somebody from the bar that we knew saw me walking and picked me up and took me home. He was an older gentleman, very nice man. By the time I got home, our little apartment or little studio was trashed. Everything I owned, anything that I loved was damaged. It was a sick cycle, but at this point, I had nobody in my life.

We had no friends. He had no friends. I had no friends. We had no family. He had no family because nobody could stand being around him. But I had no family because no one could stand me being with him. So he was all I had. It was like a codependent sickness. He constantly, constantly talked about how I look. I was 98 pounds and I was a fat, ugly cunt.

Nobody's going to love me. You have stretch marks. You're disgusting. No one's going to love you. You're fucking ugly. I don't know why the fuck I'm even with you. You know, that's constant. So basically I got with my dad in the very beginning. We talked about each other's past and fears and stuff. And he used it against me because I told him that my dad would always call my mom that. So he used that against me every chance he had.

But once he apologized, I just looked at the bright side again. We were together for about four years at this point, just making ends meet. We were so poor. We were in another little tiny room that we were renting because we kept getting kicked out of places because of the abuse. We were fighting over him not wanting to do the dishes because I cooked.

And it escalated and he was wasted. We both were at action. I think we were both just drunk at this point. He took me by the hair. He said, let's go for a ride. We got into my car. I had no choice but to go with him because he had me, but he dragged me out of the house by the hair. He starts driving just to scare me because he starts driving really fast and not stopping at any stop signs or stoplights.

He's yelling at me. Finally, I'm like, please stop. You know, I'm screaming and crying because I think we're going to die in this damn car. And then he finally drives us back home. He's still mad and upset over the dishes. And I don't even remember how it even started. He put his hands around my neck and he just started choking me. I remember thinking I'm dying and I blacked out.

I remember being on the ground in the living room where he was strangling me at. I woke up. I'm like, I can't believe I'm alive. Oh my gosh. And he's passed out in the room. I escaped out of our apartment and I ran to the nearest payphone and I called the police. The police met me at the payphone. They looked me over. I had popped blood vessels in my eyes again and I was already bruising and kind of scratched. So they go and they arrest him.

And he goes to jail. I think in the back of my head, I always kind of knew that there is going to be something that's going to make me snap. There's something that's going to make me feel brave enough to leave. That moment when I said, oh my gosh, I'm dying. He's going to kill me. This is when I'm going to die. I knew that was the moment. So that moment he got arrested, I started making moves for myself.

I feel like I'm going to finally pick up my life and like get it together. So the first big move I made for myself was to get out of that place and get my own. I decided to rent a new place. I did not want him to find me. I was able to get a little studio apartment on my own. I filled it with just stuff I loved. I just love this place so much. It was me.

I painted the walls colors I wanted. I had a hot pink bathroom. It was so stupid at the time, but I mean, it was just all my stuff and my decisions. And I knew that I was safe in this tiny little studio and my stuff was safe. Anything I loved was safe. My children can come and stay with me again. I got a better job too. I was making money. I was a manager again. Once he got out of my life, things were falling into place.

This tiny little beautiful apartment, a great job. My kids were coming around. My stuff wasn't being broken. I got to go anywhere. I got to do anything I wanted. After about six months, he gets out and I take him back. He promised me he would never touch me again. He promised the world to me.

After he got out of jail, they still call me names. The verbal abuse was really still a very big issue. But the physical abuse, it kind of subsided. The fact that he wasn't physically abusing me, even though he was very verbally abusing me and mentally abusing me, even though the verbal abuse is so much worse than the physical, I accepted it. We tried to live life again like that. And he moved into my sanctuary that I created for me and my kids.

I remember being at work one day and feeling dizzy and thinking, "Wow, this is really weird because this is a very strange feeling for me." And then I realized, "Hey, I have a happy period." I took a pregnancy test at work. It was positive. And I cried and cried and cried. I didn't tell him. I knew I could not have a baby with him. I made an appointment. I saved up the $600 to have the abortion without him knowing.

And saving up money behind his back was a rough thing too. It was hard. I go to my appointment and they do an ultrasound and they tell me, oh, you're actually farther along. This is a two-step abortion. This is going to cost you $800. And I cried because I didn't have it. And I didn't even know how to get it. We were so poor. I was taking care of us. I was paying the rent. I could not even afford the extra $200.

I got out of that appointment and I cried. I went home and I told him I was pregnant. I asked him to ask his family for the money and he was so dead set on not having an abortion. His dad came over and talked me out of it too, saying, you know, we're going to do everything we can to help you. Things are going to be so different. Things are going to change. This is the best thing that ever happened to us. This is such a blessing. It changed my mind completely. I got excited about it.

But it's so funny because I went to my first OBGYN appointment and found out that the abortion clinic lied to me and I was only like nine weeks along. I could have had that $600 abortion. I'm pregnant. He's not abusive physically at all still. Verbally, very much so. Now I'm a big fat ugly cunt for sure for him.

But I'm just trying my best to enjoy my pregnancy because after that, I was so excited. This little baby in my belly was the only reason for me to live at this point. All I cared about was taking care of myself so that I could have a healthy baby. She changed my life from that moment. I was about eight months pregnant at this time. Gilbert walks across the street to the liquor store to pick up something for, we needed something to cook. And he jaywalks.

Police pull him over and they see that he has a bench warrant because of the strangulation he did on me. He missed a court date for that. So they take him into jail. He was there for about a week. He gets out of jail and he was sick. I thought he just had a flu. He recovered probably about a week later. But when he was recovering, I started feeling sick. I'm like, oh man, now I have what you have.

I started getting the same symptoms, the fever, the coughing, the chills, the body sweats. The coughing was so bad. I couldn't even breathe without coughing. I couldn't talk without coughing. I was coughing so much that I started coughing up blood. And still in my mind, I'm like, this is just a flu. But at that time, there was something called H1N1 or the swine flu coming around.

My twin sister was like, "You need to get to the hospital. What if you have H1N1?" Because it was killing pregnant women. I'm like, "No, I don't have H1N1." You know, that would never happen to me. I remember sitting in a bathtub, like just like in cold water thinking, "No, I'm totally fine. I'll be fine in a few days." Finally, my sister called me up crying, saying, "You have to get to the hospital. You have to get there. Sis, you could die."

Gilbert drives me to the ER and I told them my symptoms. Within moments, they're already trying to put a tooth down my throat because I was suffocating and I didn't even realize it. But I literally felt like I started suffocating right before I got into the hospital. So they had to knock me out. I had one dream and the one dream I had was me walking into just whiteness, just whiteness.

There's nothing under me. There was nothing above me. There's nothing outside of me. I'm walking into whiteness and all of a sudden I see the clouds that you see on a sunset where they're all the colors, the pink and purple and orange and yellow clouds. And then I see purple diamonds or purple crystals just raining on me, just raining on me. There was a lot of people praying for me.

So for me, that dream, to me, felt like those purple diamonds or crystals falling on me were prayers. This season, Instacart has your back-to-school. As in, they've got your back-to-school lunch favorites, like snack packs and fresh fruit. And they've got your back-to-school supplies, like backpacks, binders, and pencils. And they've got your back when your kid casually tells you they have a huge school project due tomorrow.

Let's face it, we were all that kid. So first call your parents to say I'm sorry, and then download the Instacart app to get delivery in as fast as 30 minutes all school year long. Get a $0 delivery fee for your first three orders while supplies last. Minimum $10 per order. Additional terms apply. Seven days into me being asleep, my family was called into the hospital. My body was literally trying to keep my baby alive, but my baby was dying inside me too.

So my family had to make a decision. Who do we save? My family was told that my baby was dying. There wasn't a whole lot of hope for her. So they decided to try and save Violet. They decided to do an emergency C-section on me while I was in a coma in the ER. My baby was born dead. She had no heartbeat and she was not breathing. They were able to revive her though.

She went into the NICU and she was a little fighter and she thrived. She started healing and therefore my body was able to start healing and fight for myself. At this point in my life, my mom and dad hated each other. My sister and I didn't even talk. None of us talked. I have a younger brother and a younger sister. None of us talked. When this happened, my family came together.

My dad never left my side. He slept in his truck at the hospital every day. My mom was there every day. My sister is the backbone in our family. She's the strong one. She was there every day. She read to me. She read me the Twilight book. My family lived at the hospital.

When Sadie was born and she was okay, my twin sister was the one who started doing motherly comforts with Sadie as a baby so she can feel contact and be mommy to her. I remember waking up, I couldn't lift my arms up, I couldn't lift my legs up, I couldn't move at all. I couldn't talk at this point either because I actually had a tracheotomy put in too. So I had a tube in my neck.

So I could not move and I could not talk. I could open my eyes, of course, and just hear and listen. I remember waking up knowing that Sadie was born and that she was okay. I don't know how, but I think it's because I'm sure my twin sister kept telling me that over and over. And that was a very, very secure feeling. Although I felt it was just one day, I was asleep for about two and a half weeks, maybe

I didn't believe them. I didn't believe it was that long at all. Until the nurse came and she was changing my sheets. My legs were so hairy. That's the only thing that made me realize that that's actually, maybe they're telling the truth. Sadie has no contact with her father. He is not even on the birth certificate. My family automatically put a restraining order on him and moved me out of our apartment and I moved in with my mom.

They were very proactive getting me out of this situation and making sure I stay out of it. There's no contact at all. She doesn't know him. I never wanted her to know him. It was my escape. I had to get away. Sadie and I lived with my mother and I started another great job and I thrived. I got into other relationships though that really suffered.

I started belittling my partners and picking out their faults and making them feel insecure. I guess, I don't know, I was used to the turmoil. It was the only thing I knew.

I've been with wonderful people and I couldn't hold it down because I was so used to the turmoil. And the aftermath of the turmoil is addicting because then you feel the love and the passion. It's almost like I couldn't distinguish the two, the turmoil and the passion. I became the abuser, not physically, but verbally. I've ruined many relationships because of that. I want to say Sadie was about five years old at this time. I get a knock on my door.

And it's a DA. And she had explained to me that Gilbert was arrested. He's in jail. He tried to kill his current girlfriend. And she came to my door to talk to me about it to see if I would testify against him. Of course, I said yes. He, at that time, was pleading not guilty. She said once they told him that I was going to testify against him, he pled guilty.

And so I don't know exactly what he did to her. I do know she almost lost her life. And he, I think he was in prison for about a year and a half. So my daughter was about six years at this point. And Gilbert found me on Facebook. He sent me a message and it just triggered me. Like it just like, I got so freaked out about it.

He's done so much damage in my life that to even see a message from him pop up was so scary to me. So I let that linger in there for a long time until one day I just decided I think I'm ready to open this. And I opened it and it was an apology. He told me that he knows that his actions has affected my life and he was greatly sorry for it.

And I remember just crying and crying. That apology affected me a lot. I needed it though. I didn't know where it was coming from because he always apologized. So obviously I felt like maybe this is not a real apology. But that was the point where I realized I think I need to free myself from this. I need to heal. And I can't heal if I'm still having all these feelings of hatred towards him.

So I decided to accept his apology and forgive him. I really feel as though Sadie saved my life. Had I not got pregnant with her, I would be in that same situation with a very abusive man who almost tried to kill me.

But once I found out I was pregnant with her, I thought of myself differently. I viewed myself differently. I was there to make sure this baby was going to thrive. I had to make sure that I was a safe place for my daughter. That was the very first time I finally felt my self-worth. I can go through a lot of stuff.

The physical abuse was rough. I have scars on my body still. Like that was rough, but you know what? It's just physical pain. The verbal abuse, that right there. Now that, that was really hard, but I still put up with it because that's what I've grown up with. And that was how I felt loved. But I was in a relationship and he was a good man.

And he literally told me, you're abusive. He straight up said, you are abusive and you're abusing me and I don't feel safe with you. I never heard those words said to me. And it affected me. It did. I never saw myself like that ever. All that stuff I went through, the abuse, the...

cat litter, everything, physical, verbal, everything. That wasn't even rock bottom for me. Him strangling me wasn't even rock bottom. Me getting sick with H1N1 and being in the hospital for a month was not rock bottom for me. Me realizing that I was being abusive to people I loved, that was my rock bottom. Hearing that, knowing that, realizing that. I was becoming like Gilbert, not physically,

but verbally, mentally. Once I started realizing that I was the abuser, I knew I had to make a lot of changes. That's kind of what I started doing, working on myself. Once that self-realization came out though, it was almost like a huge weight off my shoulders. It was so heavy. And once you can own your shit, once you own your shit,

and say, I'm owning this and I'm fixing it and I'm going to change. I'm changing this. That's when I started feeling free again. I think that the one thing that I really realized, and this is one of the reasons why I forgave Gilbert, we are a product of what we're raised with. What we do to our children really does affect us. He was a very, very hurt man. He wasn't loved. He didn't know how to give love.

hurt people hurt people. Me finding that self-love, owning my shit is a very strong thing. I remember him always telling me that he knew he was going to die young and alone and he was so afraid of death. One day, a few months back, they found him in a trailer. His brother found him dead in the trailer by himself. His brother said that he looked kind of jaundiced

days prior, so I think it was kidney failure. I was devastated because in a sick way, I still loved him extremely. I mean, I wanted him dead so many times, but when he died, it affected me in such a weird way. It was like, I grieved for him so much. It was insane. But that was kind of what allowed me to kind of be free again.

I actually went to his funeral. But then after his wake, I reread the messages him and I sent each other after he apologized to me. Me knowing that I forgave him and he died apologizing and knowing the damage he did to me.

He apologized to me before he died. And I accepted it and I forgave him. And that was a very, very freeing thing. And I felt free. From Wondery, you're listening to This Is Actually Happening.

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