Shownotes Transcript
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. My stomach just felt like it turned over on itself. That feeling of the brain just trying, trying, trying, trying, there's got to be a solution, there's a solution, and all the solutions are slowly being tried and shot down. I don't think I've ever felt so alert and alive in my entire life.
From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein. You're listening to This Is Actually Happening. Episode 264. What if you were carjacked at gunpoint?
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I was born in the South. My father was a businessman and my mother was a teacher for a little while and then became a homemaker. And I have one sister and we grew up fairly rural. My parents are extremely religious.
It was almost more of a polite family situation where manners were extremely important. You always had to put your best face forward. Big emotions were not really encouraged. There were rules that you had to follow. And if you didn't follow the rules or you didn't understand the rules or you didn't agree with the rules, then you could be pushed away emotionally.
We were expected to be excellent students. We were expected to attend church two or three times a week. And if you stepped out a little bit, it was almost immediately squashed. That's why I became a people pleaser, because if you're a people pleaser, you A, don't ever have to show your own emotions, and B, you rarely get treated negatively.
I mostly understood the rules. I did not necessarily agree with the rules, but ours was not a family where you questioned authority. If you messed up, the ramifications would be the silent treatment, which is really frightening to a child.
Anytime that I ran up against authority or anything like that, when I felt that I had let them down or gone against what they wanted me to do or felt that I had done something wrong, it was just crushing guilt. And that took forever to get over. The sense of letting someone down was just overwhelming.
It makes you crave that approval and attention even more. And you feel like, "Okay, how many hoops do I have to jump through? How good do I have to be in order to get this attention?" It would leave me just consumed with worry, trying to figure out what it was I could do to fix the situation. I had to behave exactly the way she wanted me to without any freedom to be myself.
I did feel loved. The older I got though, the more I felt constrained and that it was conditional and I felt I could not be myself. They only knew one version of me and it wasn't even the real me, but that was the version that was safe to be around them and it followed the rules.
I was a model student. I was an ideal child up until about age 16 or so. I never caused any waves. I spent a lot of my childhood trying to fly under the radar. But I did get fed up with having to follow the rules that my mom set as far as what I could do outside the home and who I could hang out with and where I could go.
Then I got frustrated and angry. And the older I got, you know, 16, 17, the angrier I got. When I realized that other people's moms didn't do that, their parents didn't just stop speaking to them for days, that that was not normal. Something was missing. We weren't doing this right. I felt like two people most of the time. I was a model child.
And I was someone who was just dying to get out there and do other things I couldn't do. It's like pressure building up. Starting about age 14 or so, ninth grade, I started to become very depressed. And it was not situational. I started to feel the rumblings of something's not right here. I shouldn't be confined in this way or constrained in this way.
I was frequently sleeping or sometimes crying. And so the response was to send me to a Christian counselor. And I was very resentful of that because I knew that there was something else that I needed. And of course, it didn't work. I still remember being really angry and upset that I was having to go talk to this guy who was essentially telling me to pray more.
Eventually, I was just like, okay, well, I'm happy now so that they would get off my back. When I was 16, maybe a junior in high school, my mom found out that I had been hanging out with this boy in the woods. She was so upset about it. And for a long time, I was heavily restricted in my movement. I could go to school, I could go to work, I could go to church.
One time, one of the ways I made money was I taught music lessons after school. And the little kid I was teaching, his mom was late coming to pick him up.
I knew I was going to get in so much trouble because I was only allowed to be in these certain places at these certain times. And so when his mom finally came and picked him up, I got in my car and I was just flying back home. And I passed my mom going the other way, going equally as fast. And I thought, she's coming to see what I'm doing. And she absolutely was. And she turned around and followed me home.
And, you know, I had to convince her that that kid's mom had been late and that I wasn't up to any shenanigans. That was very frightening, but also at the same time, very suffocating and constricting. When I was 18, the summer after I graduated high school, I got my first boyfriend. And of course, my mother didn't like him. But at that point, I felt like, well, what's she going to do? I'm leaving in the fall.
I went off to college and I went to college out of state. It was a small Christian liberal arts school. It was evangelical in nature. And so I sort of put myself back in the same cage that I had been in before. My depression got really bad. I was put on an SSRI for a while, but I didn't react well to that. And when I was in later college, one day I woke up and nothing felt real.
The first time it happened, I thought this has to be transient, right? Because nothing feels real. Like I would pet my skin, like stroke it and then pinch it. If I pinch hard enough, maybe I'll lose this numb feeling and this feeling like nothing's real. It was very strange. And my mom came and she took me out of the dorm and she took me with her to a hotel and
You know, she let me sleep a lot, but when I was sleeping too much, she would wake me up and she'd hand me my makeup and she'd say, I always feel a little better when I look put together and I have my face on. Then she would watch me in the mirror and I put on my makeup. But of course, to me, it didn't feel real. It felt robotic. And I would sometimes like touch my face to see if I could feel it. And then I would like touch the reflection because it didn't feel real to me.
I would still function, but it resulted in periods of dissociation and derealization, depersonalization. One time I had a study group with my friends. I had it marked down on my calendar and I gathered all my stuff and I walked to the common room where we had the study group and I sat down and I was looking around at my friends and I thought, I don't know any of these people.
I just looked and looked and I thought, I don't know these people at all. They don't sound familiar. They don't look familiar. But the scariest part, I think, is when I looked in the mirror, I had that very same experience, which is really disconcerting. When you look at yourself and you feel like you don't even exist and nothing exists, but you know you exist. It's very difficult to be out in the world, but it's even more difficult to be alone with yourself.
It's just such a foreign feeling, but you're well aware of what's happening. Intellectually, you understand that you aren't a ghost, you know, that you are existing in a world that is real and you also are real. But I would try to talk myself out of it. I'd be like, okay, my brain is doing something that I don't want it to do. But when I touched like my own arm or leg or something, that didn't feel real. And so it was very confusing to me.
I knew that I still existed and I felt very frustrated that I couldn't control my brain. I was like, "I should be able to control this. This should be something that I can snap out of." It's a powerless feeling. It's a sense of betrayal from yourself. Yourself has betrayed you and you just can't get a hold of it. When the derealization would happen, it lasted two weeks, usually to the day.
And I would go to sleep around the 14th day and I would wake up and I would know I would be like, I'm here. The world is here. And it was unbelievable relief, unbelievable relief. But of course, then I would be afraid that it would come back any minute. So part of my college years are just completely obliterated for the most part. I went through graduation like that.
And they were never able to figure out exactly what caused that. I was severely depressed, which that's what they ended on eventually was severe depression. But something was clearly wrong. And when you are around people who are sort of, let's just get through this and brush it under the rug and never speak of it again, that's kind of what you do. So I never received adequate treatment for it.
I was afraid of it all the time. I lived in fear of it. But, you know, if Jesus is your psychologist, it's fine. I did know that it would require more than trusting and praying. I just did not know how to access the real help that I needed. I didn't have a positive taste in my mouth for psychological intervention because of the way that they attempted to address my depression in high school.
So it was just something that happened and we never spoke of it.
After I graduated college, when I was 22, I went off to graduate school and I thought that I would become a librarian because I love books so much. But when I got into library science school, it was not what I expected. And also when I was in that program, I had an episode of derealization. And so I had to drop out. In fact, I went back and stayed at my parents' house for a couple of weeks.
And then I decided that the next semester I would go into an MFA program for writing, Master of Fine Arts. It was a wonderful program and everybody in the program was really great. We were young and we thought really highly of ourselves and we enjoyed creating art and sharing art. And I was dating one of the people in our cohorts. I enjoyed my classes. I enjoyed my social life.
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After that first semester, it was June. It was very hot that night and humid and sticky. I remember it was really uncomfortable outside. I was hanging out with some of our friends at a bar in the little student downtown area. My boyfriend at the time and I got into an argument.
We had ridden together from my apartment to the bar, and so he was insistent that he go back to my place. So I drove him back to my place, and we argued a little bit more, and I got very frustrated, and I said, well, I'm going to go back to the bar and talk this over with my friend. I was so frustrated about the argument and angry at him that
My apartment was literally right up the hill from the bar. It was maybe five or seven minutes away by car. And I was just fuming. And I was driving down the hill and thinking about how I was going to talk to my friend about what was going to happen. There was a bank parking lot right next to the bar. And so I parked there. When I had pulled into the parking lot, I had seen a man out of the corner of my eye. He was walking in the shadows up close to the building.
And I had seen him, but I mean, it's the college hangout area of town. Of course, there's people out milling around, walking around. I got out of my car and all of a sudden he's right behind me. Something pokes me in my ribs and he said, get in the car or I'll shoot you.
And I thought, you have got to be kidding me. I thought, this is really ruining my night. Which sounds so funny to say now, but it didn't feel dangerous yet. You can't make sense of that. It's like, okay, your brain doesn't understand what's happening. And so I said, well, I was holding my purse and I said, well, you can just take it. You can have my purse. And he was like, get in the car. And I said, you can have my purse and the car. No, get in the car.
you get in the backseat of the car. My brain felt like it was going in circles. It was trying to match this up with something it had experienced before, and it couldn't, I couldn't find the right course of action here. It was almost a physical sensation of how fast my brain was moving to try to find the key to get out of this. I had actually taken a women's self-defense class
I thought, "Man, I am ready. I'm well prepared in case anything should ever happen to me." But of course nothing will ever happen to me because nothing bad ever happens to you in your own story. You're supposed to stomp him in the insole and the heel of your hand in his nose, but I was facing the wrong way. If I stomp this man on his foot and he has a gun in my ribs, that's not going to be a good outcome either.
I remember feeling the panic kick up a notch when I realized that that self-defense training was going to be useless to me. So I was in the back seat. I'm having this running tally in my head. What were my options? I said, what's your name? He gave me a fake name. I found out later.
I asked him what kind of music he liked, which was a really weird question, but I remember down at my feet was my music collection. He was nice. I mean, he was conversational, which I think gave me a false sense of hope. It was unbelievably bizarre, but I knew that that was one way to disarm a person, relate to them or try to get them to see you as a human being.
And it was surreal. We were talking about random things. You know, how old are you? What kind of music do you like? Just the kind of things you would ask somebody like on a first date. It was very strange. So I was in the back seat and my purse was in the passenger front seat.
And I don't know why it took me so long to think of this, or maybe it took me so long to work up the nerve to do it. But I like snaked my hand between the passenger seat and the passenger door. And I sort of snaked my hand over there so I could grab my purse, which was sitting on the passenger seat. And I like worked the zipper open with my index finger, quietly feeling around in the purse. I was like, where is my cell phone?
I will never forget this feeling. I had plugged it in and put it on my hall table to charge because it was almost dead. And I remember picturing that in my mind and thinking, oh my God, that particular line of defense that I had to cross out in my mind, that one was really scary. I didn't know where we were anymore. We had gone into a neighborhood that I wasn't familiar with.
Now we had moved away from all the people on the street and I didn't have a phone. My stomach just felt like it turned over on itself. That feeling of the brain just trying, trying, trying, trying. There's got to be a solution. There's a solution. And all the solutions are slowly being tried and shot down. I don't think I've ever felt so alert and alive in my entire life. Keenly aware of my existence.
There was an overwhelming sense of fear, but I also knew that that wasn't going to do me any good. And so I think instead of focusing on that, I was more focused on action. Here's this action I have to do. Okay, that didn't work. Here's this other action I have to do. Okay, that didn't work.
Plus, my brain was just moving so fast through these scenarios. I was afraid. I was very, very afraid. But I knew that wasn't going to get me out of that car. It was action that was going to get me out of that car. And usually when I'm afraid, I freeze. You know, they say flight or fight or freeze. I'm a freezer. So it actually is really amazing to me that I managed to stuff that fear down and allow my action brain to take over.
but it never occurred to me that there was going to be any sort of sexual aspect involved in this. I had grown up very sheltered, and I had grown up in a very rural area, and it never occurred to me that things like this could happen to me. We come to a driveway and we park. I felt more and more defeated, but also more and more determined. We pull into a driveway. They told me later that that was his mother's house.
I was wearing a big oversized t-shirt from an oyster bar and I was wearing blue jeans and I was wearing brown Birkenstocks and he made me take all of that off. Then he took his clothes off. He made me perform oral sex on him and then he did it on me.
Unfortunately, I was mentally fully present for that, which was deeply disturbing. In fact, sometimes when I smell someone with a particular scent of body odor, it makes me feel like I'm going to throw up. I wish, I wish that I had been able to separate my body from that, but I was still so afraid and still just trying to think I've got to get out of this. But unfortunately, I was present for that.
He wanted to proceed further, and I hadn't figured out a way to stop that yet. But I thought, I absolutely cannot let this go any further. So I said, do you have a condom if we're going to do this? And he said, no. And I said, well, I won't do this unless you get a condom. And he said, okay, fine.
I couldn't believe it worked. That was pretty much a last ditch effort. And I think also part of it was he wanted to go get drugs or something from the other house where we were headed to
But that was a welcome relief when that worked. Although, of course, at that point, I thought, well, now we're going somewhere else. I have to get out of this car. But at least I had stopped what was going on. I just thank goodness. I don't know how much more of that I could have bared. And so he put his pants on and he got back in the front seat of the car and he started driving. He's like, I know where I can get a condom and some cocaine.
I did wonder if he saw it as some sort of consensual encounter. Maybe because I had been nice to him, it was an artificial sense of intimacy. And it was disconcerting, but also it was weirdly familiar. I had already been kidnapped from the bank parking lot. And now we were going to another house. I put my shirt back on. He didn't want me to put my clothes back on, but I was like, I'm not riding around in the car with my shirt off.
On the sidewalk, I saw this woman and I thought, okay, I'm going to jump out of the car right now and I'm going to go run to her and she will help me. But I was terrified at the same time. There's a stop sign right there on the corner. We pull up and we're kind of rolling through the stop sign. I was like, okay, I have to grab the seat release lever with this hand and I have to reach over and open the car door with the other hand.
And I practiced it in my head. And when we were rolling through the stop sign, I thought, all right, this is it. And so I managed to push the seat up, open the car door and slide out. I wasn't wearing any shoes or pants. I ran up to this woman and I said, you have to help me. The man ran away immediately, the man that she was with. I found out later that she was a sex worker.
She didn't want to put herself in any danger with the law or anything, and I don't blame her for that. But I said, you have to help me. And she said, there's a police substation. It's one or two blocks up that way, I don't remember, and you need to run. And I said, can you come with me? And I think about that now. And I think about how young I was. And of course, you know, she said, I can't, which I understand now. But at the time, I was...
I just, I don't know. I had gotten out of the car and I had seen someone that I thought would be immediate help and safety. And of course that wasn't the situation. And she wished that she could have, you know, she was sorry about it. But so I started to run. I heard the car pull away and I didn't look back.
I was running, running, running, and the substation had like a blue light in front of it. And so I was banging on the front door, just banging, banging, banging. It seems like forever, but nobody came to the door. And I thought, is this the right place? And then this disembodied voice said, come around to the back. So I went around the back, and it was maybe three officers, two or three officers.
And you could see that they had no idea what to do. Or they were really taken aback. Maybe that was it. I got in. It was very bright. There were fluorescent lights in there. And the sense of relief was profound. Just incredible, incredible relief. So they gave me a blanket and they called the ambulance. They let me call, try to call my boyfriend, but he didn't pick up his phone.
So I called my parents and I didn't want to do that because I did not want them to know what I had been up to. It was fueled by that sense of guilt that I had carried for so long. The fact that I was sleeping with my boyfriend and he was staying at my apartment, that was, of course, deeply, deeply shameful to me.
You know, I was at a bar and I was drinking and that was also deeply shameful to me. Not that it should have been. Those are normal actions. But for me, they felt taboo or off limits. And so when I was attacked, not during it, but afterwards, I did feel like maybe it was brought on by not living. I wouldn't have been in that position if I hadn't been doing those kinds of things.
It exacerbated that sense of guilt and shame. I did some things that were outside of the rules and a bad thing happened to me. So it's just confirmation bias. Look, you broke the rule and something horrible has happened.
My mom was very upset at me because my boyfriend was sleeping at my house and because I had been out at a bar at night. And I thought, I don't know if you're really angry at me because these are some kind of moral failings or if you're angry at me because something bad happened to me because I was doing this. I don't know. But she was very, very upset about particularly that my boyfriend was sleeping at my house. So we went to the hospital.
They did a rape kit and they gave me one of those generic sweat suits. And all of this is a blur. I don't remember much of this at all. I don't remember going home. The relief and the release of all that fear and pressure. I just, I don't remember much of anything after that. I went back home to my parents. Pretty much all I really did was hole up in that room over the garage and just sort of pretend it wasn't happening.
I had no counseling or anything. I just kept insisting that I was fine. I was born for this. I was very good at not making waves. But I really just wanted to not even think about it. I didn't talk about it. I stopped talking to my friends. I sort of just disappeared up into the room over my parents' garage. It was like crawling back into the cocoon where I knew that I was safe because...
If you're in the place where the rules still, you know, the rules will protect you. So I just retreated there and felt isolated but also safe. Growing up, I guess those rules that I just chafed against, if I had followed them, I would still be safe. And that's the truth.
I was living my life, but after it happened, getting to sort of retreat back to that place where you know nothing bad can happen because you follow the rules. It was a retreat back to what I knew was safety. But charges were filed and I didn't file them, the state filed them. And so suddenly the ball is rolling and I'm not allowed to let it go.
On the news, they put a description of my car and the assailant's girlfriend. He had brought the car over to her house and she was watching the news and she saw the description of my car. And she called the cops and she said, hey, my boyfriend has that car. That was how they caught him. I had to give my statement. They did a photo lineup and I picked him out within two seconds.
He's taken into custody and first he said it was consensual. Then he said it never happened and he just stole my car. When they processed my car the first time, they either missed or mislabeled. I can't remember exactly what happened. The DA told me, but he had left his boxer shorts under the car seat and that was not entered into evidence until really right before the trial.
And when that happened, he pled guilty. We went to the courthouse. I was dressed for court. I was very anxious. And I was sitting with my mom and I said, I have to get up and go outside. And I have to smoke a cigarette. And she had never, she didn't know I smoked. She had never seen me smoke. And I came back in. The DA said, you know, he's decided to plead guilty. We don't have to do this anymore. He just took his full sentence, the whole thing.
So that was very much a relief. I never had to see him again. I never saw him after that night. 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.
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So when he was sentenced, the actual offenses were criminal sexual conduct first degree, for which he received 25 years, kidnapping, 25 years, carjacking with bodily injury, 20 years. They're running concurrently though, and he's not eligible for parole. He was sentenced on July 31st, 2002.
It has been 21 years. So projected release date is October 24th, 2023. So this October. It's frightening. In fact, one thing right after he went to jail or shortly after he went to jail, this was back when people had landlines and I had a landline and I was listed in the phone book and he called me one time and I just hung up immediately and he never called again.
I spent the summer pretty much just holed up at my parents' house. And then the fall semester started. And so I went back to my apartment and I went back to school. I had a really hard time focusing and I was drinking a lot and I lost a job. I kept insisting that I was fine and I never talked about it, even though I thought about it.
Like going outside at night was not, no, I no longer did that. It was just all the wrong coping mechanisms and a complete lack of aftercare. I think I was trying to drink myself into oblivion and I would fall into these depressions and I didn't do anything about it. I just let it happen.
It was really a bleak time and I did absolutely nothing to help myself get out of it. Absolutely nothing. I just dug the hole deeper. Maybe I was trying to punish myself. I don't know.
When you hear about things like this happening to people, the biggest scary thing is a stranger is going to jump out of the dark with a weapon and attack you. And we know that's not what usually happens. It's usually someone that you know or are related to or acquainted with. But the thing that's the lowest odds happen. And because of that, it was really hard for me to find anyone else like me.
There's no real way to find other victims of the boogeyman. I no longer trusted the outside world and I no longer even trusted myself, which sucked because I saved myself. I am really proud of that. I still am really proud of that. But I could no longer move through the world feeling safe. Like that was gone.
There was kind of a disconnect between the way I was acting and what I was thinking about and what I was feeling trying to act like everything was fine. Maybe the way I was acting was sort of in defiance of the way I was feeling. Like if I try to do things normally long enough, maybe I can outrun this sense of fear and unsafety. Never ever ever thinking about the actual event.
I was trying to put things back to normal internally and externally without addressing the thing that had changed those two aspects of my life. I almost got kicked out of school. I lost my job. I racked up a credit card bill like you would not believe. A lot of reckless and self-soothing, destructive behavior to sort of outrun thinking about it.
And I also felt a fair amount of guilt because so many women that we know go through violence and there's no repercussion. Like this guy was immediately caught and charged. I got what so many other women don't get. I got the satisfaction of putting him away and the satisfaction of knowing that he can't do anything to me again.
When he pled guilty and was sentenced, that was the kind of justice you see on TV. The car gets found. The girlfriend turns in the guy because she sees the car and they catch him. And last minute evidence comes sliding in and he pleads guilty and gets this big long sentence. And it was a victory and it was flawless justice, but it didn't help the
I felt like because I had gotten all those things that many people don't get, that I should be thankful. I honestly felt like it was over and I shouldn't have to talk about it or think about it ever again because it was done. It was wrapped up in this neat little bow and it happened really fast. And it felt that it was over. And now that's gone. That's behind us.
And I felt pressure either from myself or others or maybe both, I don't know, for it to be over. If you're conditioned not to feel or show the big emotions and you got the outcome that you were supposed to get, what's the need for the big emotions? You got the big prize. I think I suffered a lot more psychological and emotional damage from doing that than I would have if I had said, I need help.
the legal outcome and everything's all nice and neat, but I have not dealt with this. I don't think I realized how completely something like that just becomes a part of who you are.
I underestimated or I did not think or I did not want to think about how completely this would become a part of who I am, not in spite of the fact that I was ignoring it or attempting to ignore it, but because of the fact that I was ignoring it or attempting to ignore it. I wish that in that time period, I had allowed myself to feel the big emotions and I had allowed myself having someone help me with it, but I didn't. And so I was stoic.
and made a lot of bad decisions in my 20s. But I got married. We got married when I was 30. And since then, he's just understanding and supportive and unconditional. That's the kind of love that I wish I had had. When I was a kid, I have a child now and I try to make sure that she understands that
There's no rules that if you break it, you'll get hurt. The thing that still bothers me the most, and I worry for my kid too, is that this is not a safe world. There's really no way to make sense of it. You can't justify it. You can't explain it.
I can't imagine being the kind of person who sees just somebody walking around or driving around and they think, you know what, I'm going to harm that person.
And so I don't understand what made him take that action. And I did wonder why for a long time. And now I understand that some people are just wired up that way, I guess. But I did have a hard time understanding why me. I mean, I know I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but it sounds arrogant to say, how could this happen to me?
I was no longer able to move around my life without feeling like there's danger here. Of course, I knew that things like that happened, but after that it was like it could happen at any time. Anything could happen at any time. Dangerous, bad, scary things can happen to you.
Yes, I was overprotected and sheltered and deprived of a lot of the experiences a lot of people have as young adults, but I never once felt in danger. I know that sounds naive, but I think I could have arrived at the idea that the world is not completely safe for everyone without something like this having to happen, and I'm bitter about that.
I do not feel comfortable in cities. I have lived rurally pretty much ever since that happened. I wish that I still felt confident in my ability to move through the world safely. And I don't, and I never will, again. But the older I get and the more invisible I become, the more comfortable I feel. There's a sense of safety in becoming sort of a middle-aged woman.
You don't get seen or paid attention to quite as much. And that's nice. That's kind of a relief. It's kind of a punch in the gut, but it's also like, well, the focus is off of me now. I can relax a little bit. There is a sense of safety in it. I feel a little less guilty. I got a nice ending and I got justice. I'm very happy that I did. And I shouldn't feel guilty for that. I should feel angry that other people don't get that.
The burden of guilt is not on me. The burden should be on making sure that other people can have that sense of justice at the end.
When I look back on it now, I wish that I had been kinder to myself and allowed myself processing and healing instead of just ignoring. I think that would have made this less painful and I would have felt less combative about the effects it had on my life. But I've forgiven myself now and I feel fulfilled and happy and
I feel pretty good right now because I have forgiven myself.
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