What if you had a ten-year nightmare? [Rebroadcast - #103]
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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. And the hardest part is I still don't have any answers. It was 26 years ago, and I see it like it's yesterday. I have the same question I had then. What came into my house that night? From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein. You are listening to This Is Actually Happening.

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This first incident that happens, and this is kind of...

In literature, they call it the inciting incident. It's that event or decision that begins the story, the story's problem. This event, this decision, it's kind of the beginning of my story. I'm five years old, and I'm riding my bike through the neighborhood. Actually, it wasn't my bike. It was my sister's bike. I didn't have one of my own yet. And this teenage kid next door called me over, and he said...

"Hey man, we're gonna play this game and you gotta come into the garage. We're gonna play this game and it's gonna be really fun. You'll enjoy it." I feel like that moment is that inciting incident in my life. The event of him asking and the decision for me to say yes and go in the garage. And basically he said, "We're gonna play this game," and he ended up tying me down to this chair.

So my hands were tied down. I don't even remember if they were behind my back. I just remember that I couldn't move. And I was just terrified. And this kid just screaming in my face and yelling at me. And he was slapping me in the face really hard. And really the only things that I remember are not being able to move my arms, his angry face, him slapping me really hard. That's pretty much it.

Looking back on it, I didn't remember there being any sexual abuse. And so I just kind of wrote it off. It wasn't any big deal. After he untied me, I'm running across. This was next door. This was right next door to our house. Running across the grass away from him, just yelling after me. So I went home. I was crying. I was upset. I was terrified. And I told my mom what he'd done and just cried.

She did absolutely nothing. And then soon after that story, not long after that, about a year or two later, I was introduced to porn. And I was in third grade. I was over at a friend's house. There were probably three or four of us. And we went into the dad's room and there's a playboy sitting on the couch.

like the bedside table. And I remember the kid picking it up like, yeah, this is my dad's, you know, and kind of threw it on the bed. And the other people kind of looked at it. Other kids kind of looked at it and then just kind of walked away. And I remember opening it and just, it was like heroin. It was like just my whole body just filling up with magic. I think those two incidents in my life, the garage and that magazine,

were really key in how the next 30 or 40 years of my life kind of unfolded. I think what I learned is that the world is an unsafe place and that even the people I trust and love can't keep me safe. I can't keep me safe. No one can. But there's this thing that can make me feel good. This thing can be mine.

I grew up in a religious home. I grew up actually in the Lutheran Church. I just remember feeling deeply when I was young about wanting to love and to please God. And that was a big thing in my early life. But I grew up with a mom and a dad and a sister. And, you know, there was this real...

that everything was perfect and together, 50s, 60s, 70s mentality of this perfect family on the outside. And it wasn't that way. I just remember feeling sad a lot of my young life. I remember kind of just feeling disconnected from myself. My dad was loving, but he was distant much of the time.

He was a World War II kid. He had a shitty dad. And I think he didn't know how to be a dad. And I know that he did the best he could. So I have good memories of him growing up. But I also remember kind of feeling disconnected from him and like he was just out doing his own thing. I remember hearing from my mom later that she was afraid to have a boy. There were no boys in her house growing up. So I think she just didn't know what to do with me.

I use the term rageaholic. I don't know if that's accurate or not, but she had a real Jekyll and Hyde character. And I just remember her getting so angry. Her face would change. I would say I would be in the kitchen and I could see her face just turn into that other person.

I must have wondered why at some point, or maybe at that age I didn't wonder why, but I think I internalized a lot of her anger. I learned to just stuff my own feelings down and to kind of take on her feelings and to carry her weight.

I remember when I got older, just feeling a lot of rage about not being able to express my own anger and my own feelings. But I think when I was younger, I think I just sucked it all up like a sponge. Her rage was so unpredictable that one minute things were great, and all of a sudden she's just...

yelling at the top of her lungs or reaching out to slap one of us or spank one of us. And I think that's part of the trauma for me too, is how quickly that could change. I remember my mom slapping me in the face and she didn't burn me. She didn't hit me with a belt or whatever. But still, when something comes near my face, I think that it's going to hit me.

When I went to bed and felt afraid, I always used sexual thoughts to make me feel better. And for me, as a third grader, fourth grader, fifth grader, I was always fantasizing about adult women. It was really never about women my age. The porn just became a thing of seeking that out and finding it sometimes, not finding it sometimes, but sexual thoughts, feelings.

And with the religious upbringing, you can probably see where this is going. Like, it's not exactly a marriage ordained by God. And I don't think I'm alone in that. I think just what began to emerge for me is this disconnection from myself and others, especially with girls and women my age, just feeling horrible about myself looking at porn as I got older and feeling like I was a bad person because I was looking at it.

And then I didn't date much at all in high school. My parents were really strict. And also, honestly, I'd kind of found my thing. And instead of learning at that time to push through that fear of being a dork, being an adolescent, asking girls out, dating and physical intimacy and sex, instead of doing that, I just hid out.

And then there was the Christian part that premarital sex is wrong. And in one sense, I felt like I was kind of taking the high road that I was that I was porn was bad, but but having sex was even worse. So I was I was kind of patting myself on the back that that I wasn't having sex when a lot of my other friends were through my high school years.

I started to really feel this disconnection from my dad. I didn't like him. I didn't want to be near him. And even before that, I saw something that I really resented, which was him.

ogling other women, looking at other women besides my mom. And I would just used to get, I used to get so angry at him. And then when I started coming into my own, again, not feeling like this is anything tremendously rare that never happens with teenage boys, but I just pulled away more and more from my dad. And I couldn't, I couldn't even stand to be around him.

My relationship with my mom evolved in sort of similar fashion. She was very controlling. I was trying to find my power and my freedom. And at 17, I went away to college. And at 18, I fell in love for the first time. And I found someone just like my mom. She had that Jekyll and Hyde quality.

totally on board one day, totally angry at me about something the next. And I always felt like it was me that I...

There was something wrong with me, and it wasn't her issue. It was my issue. And we dated all through college. We went through the roller coaster. We'd break up. We'd get back together. For five years, we did that pretty much all through college. And we were Christian kids, so we never had sex. It was always everything but. Guilt about it. But again, feeling justified, feeling...

to my other friends that were having sex, and I was just doing porn. And when I graduated, I had an opportunity to either go to Seattle and join a band, or to join her where she was and try and figure out, supposedly once and for all, if we were meant to be or not. As if the universe hadn't given us enough signs that this was not working. But...

Because this was the first one, I wasn't keen on that at this point. So I did decide to move down two hours to this other city to be with her. I moved in with a college friend that had just graduated as well. And she and I broke up the last time a month or two later. So here I am in this new city. I've got a new job and a serious relationship breakup. And so for the first time, I just felt completely lost.

I found a place by myself and suddenly I was living alone. And now I was alone for the very first time in my life at night. I'd just gotten this job. I was working at a church. I was a youth minister and a music minister at a church. And this is when it started. It started with this feeling of not being safe. So I would go to bed at night.

Loving the feeling of being home and having my own place. But as soon as the lights went out, I noticed that I was starting to check the doors and the windows obsessively, making sure the doors were locked. I had blinds in my room and I was really obsessive to make sure that the blind was coming all the way down to the windowsill. Now I needed all these blankets on top of me. I needed pillows at the foot of the bed over my feet. And I just...

It was like this feeling was pressing in that I was trying to feel safe. And there was just, at night, I just couldn't do it. And then I had this dream. I opened my eyes. I think I'm awake. My whole house is dark, or my apartment. I have to go to the bathroom. So I sit up on the bed, and I stand up, and I'm moving really slow. I can take a step about every 30 seconds, and I don't know why I can't move. And in the other room, I hear this voice saying,

There's no lights on in the house. And then there's this entity that's there, that's come inside. And I finally make it out to the living room and my dad is sitting on the couch. He's in his underwear and he's sitting Indian style on the couch. And I can see him in the dark. I can see his silhouette in the dark. And I know that it's my dad, but I know that it's not him.

And all this time, he's been saying this long string of words, just one after another without a pause. Just none of it makes any sense. It's just this one long random sentence. And he's looking at me there in the dark. It just felt like evil. And in the dream, I'm terrified. I know this thing has come into my house. And I tell it, you know, you need to leave. You need to get out of here. And he laughs and he says something like, oh, what's the matter? And I just...

And he goes right back to that big, long, meaningless sentence of words. And I walked back into my room at regular speed now, and I said, you need to go. And I was afraid, but I was angry now, too. And soon after that, I wake up. And so when I woke up, I knew that it was a dream. But at that time, I thought I was awake. And after that dream, the fear at night just amped up. It felt like something had slipped in to my house.

And I started sleeping with all the lights on, not just the bedroom light, but every light in the house had to be on. Like if there's two lights in the kitchen, both of them had to be on. No dark, no shadows in the house. And at some point I realized that this fear wasn't about someone from the outside getting in. It was that something was already there and I couldn't get away from it.

And probably a week or two after that dream, I nailed up all these heavy blankets over my windows in my bedroom. And I recall that I was trying to create a womb. I was trying to make a place for myself that felt safe.

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So I remember the night the attacks started. I don't know what to call them. I'll just call them that. I had some friends over. We were all drinking. I was severely depressed at that time. I was drinking a lot. I was missing my girlfriend. I was in this city that I didn't know a lot of people. I had church friends, and so I invited them over. And I remember just being really drunk, going into my room, laying down on my bed, and

and suddenly I just started moving. My body started moving and it started slowly at first and then it was just, it got more and more and more violent. Picture being a little kid, maybe four or five, and picture just lying there on a bed and picture an adult just grabbing you, say by the clothes, and just violently shaking you, throwing you around like back and forth. That's how it felt.

I had a female friend that was there and she was kind of trying to stop it and I didn't really know what was going on. She just kept saying, "You're okay, you're okay." It went on for an hour or two of just not being able to control my body and feeling like somebody had taken over it. A night or two later it happens again and this starts to happen more and more. Now though, it starts to develop this sort of ritual.

The first thing that happens are my hands are pulled behind my back. So I can't move my hands or my arms. Sometimes one of my legs, I would say one or both of my legs sometimes were tied, like I was hogtied. Like my arms are behind my back. One or both of my ankles is tied to my wrists.

And so that was always the thing. That's always when I knew that was coming on is I could feel my shoulders being pulled back. I can feel it right now when I'm talking. I remember just my hands being pulled behind my back and almost always my left ankle would come up and they would all just meet in the back.

I remember that when it went from these violent, really random shaking movement, where it's like all of a sudden my hips are moving back and forth. And I remember thinking, oh my God, I'm being raped.

During these episodes, my functioning mind would just sort of go away. I'd like to just kind of tune out. And usually I would just close my eyes. And sometimes I'd see these flashes of light. They felt like kind of right at the center of my forehead. And I never had visuals. I never had visuals around it. I never had memories around it. But it was just my body moving these really violent and really sexually violent motions. And I couldn't stop it.

And so it's like my mind was split in two. And one part of my mind was like, what the fuck is going on? And the other side would just do this let go thing. Sometimes I would cry afterwards. And then sometimes it would just feel like I just vomited something out and I feel a lot better. So picture this. I mean, I'm working at a church.

I mean, I'm teaching like high school kids the Bible, you know, and I'm leading worship. And here's this thing that's happening to me. I mean, it's like, what do you say? I mean, how do you tell someone about that?

And so I had this little circle of friends who kind of knew what was going on and they didn't know what to do. And I did have this close female friend. She and I had been friends for a couple years. And I started seeing her therapist because she was starting to uncover memories of her own of having been incested by her father.

Her marriage was falling apart. She and I were getting closer and closer. We never dated. We were always just friends. But the fear at night just kept getting worse and worse and worse and worse. There were these violent attack things that were happening to my body when I was awake. But when I would fall asleep at night, I would just have these horrible dreams. In one of them, I'm fighting with my dad, where he and I are fist fighting or we're just trying to beat each other up.

A lot of them were just kind of just terrifying nightmare type stuff, that something was out to get me, that something was there, feeling like something is attaching itself to me. And even when the dreams themselves weren't violent, there was this component where while a normal dream was going on, just picture a normal dream that you have, I would feel myself being violently penetrated.

So I'm in this regular dream like I'm at school or I'm talking to people on the street. And while that's happening, there's this extreme pain of being anally raped. And sometimes it felt like a penis. Sometimes it felt like it was obviously like a finger. One time it was a pencil.

There were times where it was pleasurable. There were certain times where that did feel good. I would guess that that was a handful of times, probably 5% of the time. But what I remember is just the agony where it didn't feel good at all.

I remember one, whatever had been shoved in my ass just wasn't moving. It was just sitting there, but it was huge. And all night long, I went from dream to dream to dream, just talking to people, like regular dream interaction stuff, but trying to get this thing out and not being able to. Being religious, being Christian, I did wonder at some point if there was this

spiritual element to it if there was this demonic element to it I'd spoken with someone about this uh this woman friend of mine she said oh well that's it's obvious this is this is demon stuff I went and saw these two guys uh

who were supposedly well-known for exorcism stuff. And it was just a mess. I think it just freaked me out. And when I would get freaked out and anxious, these things would happen. So they're interpreting it as, oh, the demon's there. And I didn't buy into it that day, and I never really did buy into it again, at least religiously.

But I did wonder later if psychically there were things that were attaching themselves to me. There's this third component of what would happen between waking and sleeping. Oftentimes I'd wake up in the early morning, early in the morning, and then I'd fall back asleep. So it'd be like, say, maybe 5.30, 6 in the morning. And when I did, this thing would happen where I'd be lying there. I know I'm in my bed. My brain hasn't fallen asleep yet, but suddenly I can't move.

And I don't know if you've heard of sleep paralysis, but this sounds like this. The awake stuff was horrible. The asleep stuff, equally horrible, frightening. These incidents, the things that happened between the waking and sleep, fear-wise, were the worst of all.

I'd be lying there. My mind is completely conscious, but my body can't move. Sometimes I'd hear these loud clicks or pops in my head, like lightning. A number of times in this state, I could feel these things.

entities that were clinging to me. I don't know what to call them. Two separate times that I recall. Once it was this thing. Definitely wasn't human. It was small like the size of a medium-sized dog, but it had arms and legs, and it was wrapped around my torso from behind.

And during these times I would pray or I would sing and often that would help me to wake up but when I would do that I would feel it loosening its grip. Like it was trying to hold on to me and it was slipping away and my asking for divine help was weakening it somehow.

Another time there were several of them on me. It felt like seven or eight of these things. And all of them kind of like that alien movie. These things were just attached on to certain parts of my body. That time I remember trying to sing, trying to pray, and one of them actually reaching over and trying to hold my mouth closed so I couldn't. Other times I'd hear voices in the room. I remember a child screaming one time, Daddy, no.

And other times there would be someone on top of me raping me. And one sticks in my head the most. I just call it the incident. If I were to kind of sum up all this stuff, all of these experiences in one incident, it would probably be this one. Lying in bed, it was probably 8.30 in the morning. Same thing. I was asleep on my back. I had just fallen asleep again after having...

been awakened, just lying there, brain still awake. And I hear this music and I just heard the orchestra. I heard his words coming up over the top. And my assumption in that moment is that the people upstairs were listening to Frank Sinatra and I was just hearing it come through the window. And all of a sudden the music stopped and I felt someone standing in the doorway of my room. I heard the door open.

and I'm lying there in bed and someone is standing in the doorway of my room. I can feel them. I can hear them standing there. He just walks over to the bed. He's standing over me. And that moment is probably the most frightened I've ever been in my life because I know there's someone in the room standing over me and I can't move. There's nothing I can do. And I hear him take off his belt and

And he gets on top of me and starts raping me. I guess when I was in my 20s, you just roll with whatever shit happens, you know? And I think that's what I was trying to do. I just, I felt out of control. It's just that feeling of utter powerlessness. It's the most awful feeling I've ever felt. It's the combination of fear and shame and sadness and rage. And they're all just equal.

I was missing meetings. Like what I remember was one night I was at this church meeting and I felt one of these things coming on. I could feel my shoulders start to be pulled. And what am I supposed to do in a meeting with a bunch of people that I've only known for a few months when all this is happening? And I just got in my car and drove home and I could barely drive. I'm driving a stick.

barely dry because my arms are wanting to go behind my back, you know? And it just took everything I could to just get home, to just get to my bed, and immediately that's, you know, the same thing that had happened 50 times before that. So that next day, I checked in with my pastor, told him what happened. I checked in with my therapist and ended up checking myself into a psychiatric facility. And I was there for 30 days.

The experience was a positive one. I liked my therapist, you know, the group meetings. But looking back on it with respect to what was happening every day in my life at that time, it didn't help with any of it. Like I had two questions. Why is this happening? How can I make it stop? And those didn't get answered. It would seem natural to move towards the demonic or spiritual option. I didn't really do that.

I moved more towards, and maybe this was because of my therapist, because of my friend who was going through recovering memories of her incest at the time. That's really what started to form for me. There was a conclusion that I found myself coming to. I was putting all these pieces together. I just found myself first wondering and then believing that my father had sexually abused me.

I still had to sleep with all the blankets over me. Um,

pillows all around me, pillows on my feet. All these things also made physical relationships and dating and sex just next to impossible. If I was with a woman, kissing, making out, moving towards sex, and she got on top of me or did anything that made me feel like I was out of control, even for a split second, these violent body attacks would start. And I can't tell you how many sexual experiences at that time began with

So if this thing happens, you know, I would just kind of have to explain that I was going through this process. You know, surprisingly, the women that I remember, they didn't freak out and they didn't leave. And a number of them saw that thing happen. So it's like they don't know me from Adam and they're watching me like violently writhe around on the bed. Most of them took it pretty well, actually. Yeah.

So during this time, I'd stopped talking with my parents altogether. Much of that was about my kind of rebellious nature and just needing to get away from them, needing to separate from them. I don't think I knew how to tell them about it, and I really didn't want to. So there's my dad, and I finally just decided I need to send him a letter and let him know what's going on.

This process, kind of coming to that conclusion about my dad and then doing something about it took three years. In the letter, I didn't accuse him of anything. I didn't say, here's what you did. I said, here's what's going on with me. And I wanted to let you know that. But it still did have an angry quality to it. And I think he picked up on that. And I think I said in the letter, it's going to take more than just you denying this for me to believe otherwise. Yeah.

About three weeks later, I got a letter back from him. And to me, it sounded defensive. And he admitted later that he was angry. He felt like I was just going. I don't think he really understood, but he felt like I was going through these problems and just blaming them on him. But we didn't speak for another six years after that.

I don't know what I wanted to hear from him. I think if he would have said what I wanted to hear, which is, I love you, please come home, I probably would have said, you know, fuck you. So I don't know what I wanted at that time. I wanted my mom and my dad to understand what I'd been through. And who can understand that?

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At that time, things were still happening. Not every day, but on a regular basis. A couple times a week. I recall this phase, like five years after this process happened, where it got particularly bad again. Every night, if I didn't kneel by my bed and pray for safety, all this shit would happen.

You know, most days I don't know if God exists. You know, I've been through my own process with God and finally just had to walk away from everything. And I feel like now in my life I'm starting to pick up the spiritual elements that I want to keep and kind of ridding myself of the religious components that I don't want to keep. I just remember that for me, reaching out and asking for help from the divine worked because when I didn't kneel by my bed and pray...

it would happen. And when I did, it wouldn't happen. So I don't know what that means. And I don't even know if there was a spiritual element or if that was just my mind adapting. I don't know. At some point, this shift occurred, happened in me. And it was eight or nine years after all this stuff started. I just began doubting my dad's involvement in this, that he had sexually abused me.

I remember just kind of looking back and seeing those puzzle pieces and how I put them together and it made perfect sense to me why I believed that. After I sent the letter, I told myself I was not going to forgive my father until I knew exactly what had happened. A number of years passed after that, I kind of arrived at this place. I realized for myself that I had become willing to move on whether or not I even know. I didn't want to be stuck in that loop.

of never speaking to my father again because I don't know. And if I don't know, I can't forgive and let it go. And that's what started the shift. After all these years, it just didn't make sense to me anymore. And so I reached out to my parents again and we started talking. And I remember getting off a plane

driving a rented car to go see them for the first time in a decade and I Pulled off the freeway and I sat there because I you know a half hour from their house because I was so I was so scared a half hour later I'm walking into their house place. I'd never been before there's these photos on the walls that I'd never seen You know ten years just gone and all that anger that I had all that hatred and resentment that I had all that fear that I had it was it was just gone and

A key component really for me of coming back together with my parents is I ended up getting this job for a while at this residential facility for kids. These were all kids who had been pulled out of the home for some sort of abuse and neglect. And I worked there for about a year and a half. And I remember one day I just grabbed all the files because they were open for us, the workers there, to read and just read through everything.

some of the horrible things that these kids went through. Kids were rated on a scale of how difficult they were to work with and with respect to trying to place them in homes. And these were all the most challenging kids. And there was something that put a lot of things into perspective for me. I think I had so much resentment thinking that my life as a white suburban kid was the worst that it could possibly be.

And working with these kids, my history and how horrible I thought it was, at least on the outside, paled in comparison to what these kids had gone through. And that didn't diminish the trauma that I had experienced myself because everybody's experience is different. But it really allowed me to see my parents for who they were

That was such a key part of me saying, you know what? This is bullshit. It's time for me to step up and say, regardless of what happened, and I don't believe this happened anymore, dad. I don't believe that you were involved, but I see my life in clear focus now. And it's my job to take that step. And people who know about that part of my life have asked me, do you ever still wonder if your dad was involved? You know,

And I really don't. There's not a doubt in my mind.

I'm not clear that I wasn't sexually abused. I am clear that it wasn't my father. That's one of the unanswered questions, you know, questions. You know, one of them is, you know, what the fuck was that all about? And one of them was, was there sexual abuse somewhere in my past that I don't remember, that I was too young, that didn't involve my dad, but could have involved, you know, an uncle or someone else.

But what I don't know to this day is what all of that was. It wasn't a day. It wasn't a month. It wasn't a year. It was 10 years of my life. Separated from my family, you know, severely depressed, hiding out, embarrassed, ashamed, just frightened. My first authentic relationship came six years after this process started.

And like my first girlfriend, I feel like I married a woman that was so like my mom. And I feel like a failure sometimes looking back on it that I didn't see that before. But we have this beautiful daughter and I love her like I've loved nobody else in the world. That makes everything worth it for me, I think, absolutely.

Having a child brings so much of this into perspective for me, too. I couldn't understand what it was like for my parents to have their son say, "I want no relationship with you." And now being a father, I understand how painful that must have been for them. So my dad now is in the fairly advanced stages of Alzheimer's and

We've just had a great relationship for the last 15 years or so. But about a year and a half ago, he found the letter that I sent him. And he didn't remember that we had resolved this thing together. He told my mom that I had written him this awful letter about something that I thought he did. It just brought everything to the surface again.

My mom told me to call my dad and we talked on the phone for between a half hour and 45 minutes. Me trying to convince him over and over again that I didn't believe that anymore. And shortly after that, my mom got rid of the letter so that wouldn't happen again. So as far as my life now, I mean, you know, I'm turning 50 this year.

And that scares me a little bit for a number of reasons. I think it scares me for the reasons it scares other people. But I think especially because of with relation to my story, I think throughout this whole period, I really didn't think I was going to make it to 40. So I always felt like I was going to die young, even when I was in high school. And so I feel like I haven't really been preparing in my life for

For, you know, what happens when I'm 50? What happens when I'm 60? You know? And so everything feels wide open right now because I'm looking at my life and going, you know, what am I supposed to do now? About halfway through that decade, I was alone at a friend's house. They had guns. And I pulled out one of their guns. And I just put it under my chin at my throat. And I just sat there.

And I really thought at that time that life was never going to get better. I feel like I struggle with a suicidal thought a couple times a week. Like, maybe I should just. Still. And it doesn't hold the power that it used to have. And I've made a commitment to myself not to go there. The biggest aspect of that is my relationship with my daughter. But I've never been able to shake...

entirely this sense that things are bad right now and they're not going to get better. You know, and I can put that on my daughter, but it's, you know, it's not my daughter's job to get my life meaning either. I look back on that period. I think what I do have is the songs and the stories and the poetry I wrote through that period. I'm a musician and a writer and those little scrawlings just kept me alive forever.

I'm looking at this book right now called Divine Madness. Just this whole list of people whose names you know who either kill themselves or succumb to their own madness. Just artists and musicians and actors.

I'm not comparing me to them to say my level of artistry is there. I can just so relate to that feeling underneath that just holds on and holds on and holds on that just says, you're not good. You have nothing good to say. Your life is going to be nothing and things will never get better. That's still there.

And I've learned how to live with that. I've learned how to see it and recognize it for what it is. So let's just make this thing work, you know? And on the shitty days, let's make this thing work. And on the good days, let's enjoy the connection that we feel. And the hardest part is I still don't have any answers about that part of my life. I can see that thing disguised as my dad sitting on my couch in that dream.

It was 26 years ago, and I see it like it's yesterday. And I just, I have the same question I had then. What came into my house that night? What was that that was throwing me around on the bed all those years? Is that memories? Is that demons? Is that something from another world or dimension? Was it just all in my head? All these years later, I still don't know. I don't talk about this so much anymore. And I have...

close friends, close friends who have no idea that this, that, that 10 years of my life was, was that. But I also don't, I don't feel limited by my, my story anymore. You know, I think, I think throughout my, my twenties and thirties, what happened at that time really defined me, you know, and I don't, I don't feel that anymore. As a matter of fact, I journaled

extensively through that whole time. And what I did is write on sheets of paper. I didn't have journal books. I wrote on lined paper and put it in these file folders. And when the file folder would get full, I'd pull it out and I'd put it in a box and I'd start another file folder. That stack of file folders was two or three feet high.

I was literally carrying around this story. Like every time I'd move, there's the box with all this stuff. You know, my story. And one day, I took those boxes and boxes and boxes of file folders down to the beach. And I just had a bonfire by myself. And I burned it all.

I just sat there, like by myself, just feeding the fire with my story. Just taking a handful of pages and putting it in. And I remember seeing certain pages that I recognized, you know. And a couple things I saved out, stuff that I wrote that I wanted to keep. I really watched the actual story of my life burn. And it took probably two hours, maybe three. I don't remember how long I was there. But at the end, it was just gone. ♪

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I'm your host, Witt Misseldein. Today's episode was co-produced by me, with special thanks to the This Is Actually Happening team, including Andrew Waits and Ellen Westberg. The intro music features the song Illabi by Tipper.

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Welcome to the Offensive Line. You guys, on this podcast, we're going to make some picks, talk some s**t, and hopefully make you some money in the process. I'm your host, Annie Agar.

So here's how this show's going to work, okay? We're going to run through the weekly slate of NFL and college football matchups, breaking them down into very serious categories like No offense. No offense, Travis Kelsey, but you've got to step up your game if Pat Mahomes is saying the Chiefs need to have more fun this year. We're also handing out a series of awards and making picks for the top storylines surrounding the world of football. Awards like the He May Have a Point Award for the wide receiver that's most justifiably bitter.

Is it Brandon Ayuk, Tee Higgins, or Devontae Adams? Plus, on Thursdays, we're doing an exclusive bonus episode on Wondery Plus, where I share my fantasy football picks ahead of Thursday night football and the weekend's matchups. Your fantasy league is as good as locked in. Follow the offensive line on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can access bonus episodes and listen ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.