I’ve spent the majority of my life living in fear. There were varying degrees of fear and anxiety, most of it stemming from childhood abuse, and being told constantly that it wasn’t abuse, but that they could certainly show me what was. That alone, I’ve learned in recent years, was abusive. I lived in fear of being hurt, either physically or emotionally. I’d already lived through rape and molestation. Those didn’t scare me anymore once I hit about 17 years old. I didn’t even fear death anymore by the time I was in my 20’s. In fact, there were times I’d welcomed it.
I once started writing a book called “A Thousand Deaths I’ve Died” and stopped when I learned of a series that came out on television called “A Thousand Ways to Die” because I didn’t want people thinking I was copying someone else’s original idea. The book was actually a chapter by chapter exploration of the different ways I tempted death and somehow survived, from running away to attempting suicide, to going on dates with total strangers, screaming through Malibu canyon on the back of a motorcycle at nearly 200mph. There was a long time that I would have done anything to end my life, without having to end it myself. Death was more of a temptation than ice cream. I wish that analogy was an exaggeration. Sadly, it is not. When I returned from Scotland, I came back a changed person. Some of those changes took a little while to come to the surface. They seeped through my pores like the alcohol I’d consumed over my time in captivity that somehow managed to keep me alive and almost numb to the torture. The wish to die was ever present, and was easily expressed when I immediately took the opportunity to travel to Paris and London with a complete stranger, and lied to all my friends telling them I was going with a friend from high school. Until now, I've never admitted that was a lie.
There was no friend from high school. Threw as only a man I’ll refer to as “him” for the sake of his privacy and anonymity, as well as saving me from having to search my memory banks for a name long forgotten. While he was away at business meetings, I wandered the cities completely alone, not caring if I were snatched up and murdered for no reason. I wandered back alleys of Paris, wondering if I would get lost in the city, never to be found again. I wondered if that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. At night I found myself back at the Radisson Bleu somehow, back in the arms of the man I didn’t know, and wondering why I’d done it. Why would I have gone from being raped daily by someone who said they loved me, to then travel halfway around the country to be with someone I had only just met? It was one of a thousand ways for me to tempt death.
I went to Catalina Island with my uncles and went on the zip line, in spite of my very real fear of heights. I was terribly insecure, and I needed to be around people I knew I could trust and love. There was nobody but them. My own best friend had started telling people I’d been a high priced call girl in Scotland while in reality I had been a victim of human trafficking. I nearly lost my job, I lost several friends, and I nearly lost my home when the landlord found out. My uncles saved my life. I’ll owe them every ounce of happiness that I scrape out of my own existence forever. Without them I wouldn’t be here. And yet, when I left California in hopes of finding a new life in Colorado, I didn’t even have the courage to tell them, or to say goodbye. I was still a coward, terrified of being hurt, and terrified of hurting someone else.
One night I found out the man that I’d once been engaged to long ago was engaged to someone else, and that she was going to have a baby. In a fit of rage, I stopped by a liquor store on the way home from work. I was distraught. I honestly believe it would be in everyone’s best interest to make it illegal to sell alcohol to a sobbing customer. That night, I drank an entire bottle of Jack Daniel’s myself, alone in my bedroom, and I don’t even remember doing it. Not all of it. I remember the first few chugs, and the flashbacks of Scotland that surfaced, but that only made me drink more. I wanted to drown my memories of Scotland, of the man I loved before that, of the abuse and pain and fear and anger I had at the whole world. I wanted to forget that my life had never been my life, and that it had always belonged to those who said they loved me, and yet were the ones to hurt me the most. Eventually I woke up in my own bed, fully dressed still. It was where my roommate had put me after he found me curled up on the bathroom floor, unconscious. I never touched Jack Daniels again. That was the day I decided I was done with the sauce. I had hurt so much that I’d finally managed to drink myself to being blackout drunk. It was the first time in my life, in spite of my repeated attempts while being trafficked. I just never could seem to get that much alcohol down my throat before that day. I’ve never tried again since then. The memory still hurts, but not enough to attempt drowning it. I prefer to feel my feelings these days. That’s one of the positive changes that have happened since Scotland.
I became a flight attendant, in spite of watching all of the “Air Disasters” episodes while I was in Scotland. I was convinced that someday my plane would eventually go down. I’d either die instantly, or have the chance to save someone else’s life. Either way, it would be a defining moment for me. Neither thing happened. I lived, none of my flights crashed, and I never saved a life. Instead, far more traumatic, I had an infant bleed to death in my arms, knowing there was nothing I could do to help him. I often joke that I had that job for 2 years 3 months and 28 days, not that I was counting. Honestly, I didn’t count, until the day I was forced to leave because of yet another abusive relationship where some guy I barely knew thought that they had the right to control my life and to make me into who they wanted me to be. The rest of that joke is that I tell people I should have kept the job - I kept it longer than I kept that guy around anyway. The ever persistent wish to die remained for several years.
I spent THIRTY YEARS of my life wishing to die, from the age of fifteen to the age of thirty five. Yet, somehow, God kept me alive. I’m ashamed of that side of me. I’m ashamed I was so angry at the world that I thought the only option for me was death at the hand of someone else. I used to pray a serial killer would murder me so people might finally know my name.
I moved out here to Colorado almost 6 years ago now. Slowly, ever so slowly, I began to form real bonds with people. I didn’t have superficial connections anymore. I wanted to learn how to make a difference. I had learned in little ways that if I did kind things for others, I began to feel better about myself. I decided to form my own charity organization and planned a great event to really do whatever I could to make me feel better, and a little less like dying. As a result I nearly went into bankruptcy. I spent everything I had, and several more thousand dollars on top of that. I placed my trust in someone who claimed they wanted to help me create something wonderful. I was lied to, manipulated, and cheated. Yet the hope remained that I could do something to help someone else.
My friend Bill sent me to a conference in February 2018 where I learned what human trafficking really was, and although I wasn’t willing to admit it right away, I learned that it was something I had actually survived more than once. I had been a victim three separate times. My anger, once more, bubbled to the surface and I needed to do something about it. Always before it manifested in my own vicious desire to end my own life. I wasn’t going to let that exist anymore. I needed more out of life than that. My anger needed to serve a purpose. It would be like the soft jacket I take on an airplane that would double as a pillow. If it was going to exist, I needed it to have a dual purpose. The dual purpose for my anger would be to not only fuel my desire to change things in my own life, but to find a way to make an impact. Eventually, after several years of fighting myself on actually doing it, I have told my story. My life will not exist as nothing more than a nightmare for me to remember, but to serve as a warning to others, that nobody is immune.
People look at me and think I’m a tower of strength and that I’ve got it all together. They don’t see me behind closed doors. I go to lunch with a friend and sit in tears thinking of all I’ve overcome in the last ten years now - ten years of fighting to either die or to stay alive, and not knowing which one I wanted more. They don’t see how insecure I am, and how often I doubt myself. I wonder if people are even going to care about the book I wrote, or really ever want to know the ‘me’ behind the story. I sent out press releases and copies of my book to news stations all over the city, and all I heard in return were the crickets of my mind chirping incessantly that I wasn’t good enough and that nobody really cared about my story. The insecurities are still there for me. I don’t know if they’ll ever go away.
Here it is now 2021 and I’m 41 years old. I’ve moved 43 times both out of fear and out of anger. I’m finally done running away. I’m done hiding. I can’t live like that anymore. I finally found a thousand ways to tempt my own death and there’s nowhere left to go within the confines of that book I will probably never write.. Now, instead, I want to find a thousand ways to live. Sure, I'll eventually die, but only once more, ever again.
