396: What if your unresolved grief led to a fatal decision?

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. I was now the villain. I was now the monster. It was a whole new reality for me. I'm a bad person now. I'm no longer a good person like I always thought I was. I am now and forever will be a bad human being. There's no way around it. That's just who you are now. From Wondery, I'm Whit Misseldein. You're listening to This Is Actually Happening. Episode 390. What if your unresolved grief led to a fatal decision? My grandfather is Amish. He's from Apple Creek, Ohio. He ran away from his community when he was 18 and eventually met my grandmother, who's Puerto Rican, in Puerto Rico. They had kids all in Puerto Rico, brought them all over here. My mom, growing up, was in a strict household because my grandpa being Amish, the girls couldn't do as much as the boys could in the family. When my mom was 14, she met my dad. My mom was 14. My dad was 18. They got married. My mom was 18. She had me when she was 20. I'm their first. 18 months later, they had my brother. We were just a little foursome ever since then. When I was younger, we'd go over to my grandma and grandpa's every Sunday with the aunts, the uncles, the cousins, and we were all very close. I loved my grandparents. They had lots of land. We tried to grow apple trees in Florida, but I always thought that was funny. because you can't do that. And he was determined as an Amish man from Apple Creek, Ohio. My Puerto Rican grandmother was loving. She was the matriarch of the family. She would have traditional Puerto Rican food for all our holidays. We would spend weeks leading up making those things, the pasteles. That was a huge highlight of my year. She passed that down to my aunt and my mom, and we would all just be in the kitchen together cooking. She taught me how to dance, bachata, merengue, all that. My early childhood was amazing. My dad was always there, present. He coached our soccer team. My mom was the most selfless mother, would do anything for us, was always there for us. We were both good kids, my brother and I, and that's because my parents didn't let it be any other way. We were not raised to be disrespectful. My brother definitely took more chances than I did. I was definitely more of the quote-unquote good child and would try to keep the peace with my mom. Our family loved to joke with one another. We're always laughing. We're always teasing each other. That was a huge part of our dynamic and I love that part about my family. We still do that to this day. I was seven when I started playing soccer. I would do cheerleading. I also did drill team, which is like a form of a dance team for the marching band. I went through the normal wear and tear of being 13, the normal growing pains of who am I, where do I fit in. But I've always had really good luck with having great girlfriends. From sixth grade all through twelfth grade, I was enrolled in a pre-med program. I planned on being some sort of doctor. I started off wanting to be an emergency room doctor, and then I eventually changed it to an orthopedic surgeon. Our junior year, we go through a really harsh program where you do clinicals, so you go to the hospital for one or two periods out of your day, and you shadow doctors, and you actually can go into surgeries. I was playing three sports, track, soccer, and cross-country, and staying up and writing out these clinicals that I had done during the day and have to write my pathos reports. I got a little burnt out from that. And going into college and going to my orientation, I walked up to my parents in the middle of orientation and said, I'm going to do art history instead. So I switched to art history. When I got to college, I found my freedom, and I did go a little crazy. Smoking weed and going out every night, I started doing very poorly in classes. As soon as I was called out on it, I redirected myself, and this is not who I am. This is not good. And I need to refocus. In my early 20s, I had my great group of friends. We were all living in this big house together. I met my boyfriend. He came into my life. I couldn't believe how wonderful he was. And about a year in or so, his true colors started to come through. A lot of cheating, a lot of emotional cheating, a lot of physical cheating over and over again, lying to no end. I genuinely would ask him for an honest answer, and I would take his word for it, which now is crazy because he had lied to me and cheated on me a million times before, but I believed him because he was my love. That was the first time that idea was shattered, that I can't just trust anybody and a man especially, that people will lie straight up to your face that you care about. Because like I've said up until this point, I've only had great friendships and relationships and I put all my love and loyalty into this one person and then it was shattered over and over again. But I ended up staying with him for five years and it was continuous cheating and, you know, big bombshells being dropped on me like once every six months or so. And I just stuck around. At this point, I had changed my major three times and not finished college. I was like, I'm going to stop spending money when I don't know what I wanted to and I'm going to take myself out of college, take myself out of this city and go back home and regroup. Didn't know where to go from there. I was 25. I had been in the hospitality industry since I was 16. I was serving tables. So I got three or four serving jobs. I was kind of floating around and then I had a friend from high school come into my one job and say, you should come work at this marina. You work outside, you work at the outside bar and you get to serve all the yachties. And yachtie is what people call crew members that work on yachts. I started working there and as soon as I started there and saw the lifestyle that these yachties were having of traveling the world and getting paid a ton of money for it, I knew that's what I'm going to do. I will do everything to get to that point. I ended up getting a job on a boat there from working at the bar. The captain saw the way I worked. I was a hustler and that I could handle my own. And he's like, all right, we'll try you out. That felt like the start of a whole new world. And it was, it really was. This is when I met my boyfriend. He pursued me and I was kind of hesitant because I was still hurt from my last partner. It had been a year since then. There's about a year gap in between them. He was an extrovert. He was a partier and was like, yes, that's what I want. I got him a job on that boat, and so we started our yachting career together. We traditionally did the Northeast in the summer, and then we would do the Caribbean the rest of the time. That was on my first boat. We're both very hard workers, but in the same respect, we were also very big partiers. Like, where's the party at? We were there. We were known for that, and it gets a little messy. At the time, it just felt like we were young. We were wild. It was fun. We were having a party. and everything was lighthearted. Nothing meant anything. Everything was okay. But it did become a hindrance sometimes on the boat in the sense of us going too hard at some points and being hungover the next day. And our bosses seeing that. And I'm sure they didn't appreciate that at all. I wouldn't either. But that is also the lifestyle of yachting. It's a work hard, play hard mentality. During the week, we'd buckle down, we'd run, we'd exercise, we'd go to the gym. And then starting Thursday or Friday, it was game on. we were pedal to the floor and we didn't stop until Sunday night. That went on for years. At that point, we started traveling a lot. A few weeks in Europe, the next boat we were on, we went to Alaska and Panama and all up and down the West Coast through the Panama Canal, all the way up through Alaska and all the way back down. And it's just incredible, the experiences and opportunities we had. I'm just, again, so grateful for that because it definitely shaped me. And the more I saw, the more I realized there was to see. The more I saw, the more I realized I don't know anything. But as time went on, that relationship started turning sour. I was just craving the acceptance from him and craving love from him in any form I could get it. And the only way I felt I could get it is if we were out and partying together. That's the only time I felt I got true attention from him, or it could take a turn and then we would get into huge blowout fights. There would be a lot of gaslighting and calling me crazy. His favorite quote was, I'm going to break you down to build you up. So that says a lot. And to hear myself say that out loud now is, I guess, astonished that I would laugh that off with him and be like, ha ha ha, even if it was framed as a joke. I should have stood up for myself and walked away way sooner than I did, but I didn't. In 2020, we had gotten word that our boat that we had been on for three years was going to sell and that we would be getting paid severance. I thought my yachting career wouldn't be over, but I knew I needed a break. I was very tired. It's a very demanding job. I had been living in a small cabin for eight years. I absolutely love that lifestyle. But I got this beautiful apartment. It was on the intercoastal, face the water, and I was so proud of it. I was so excited to have it. We both at that point didn't have a job because we were getting paid our full salary and benefits. COVID had just hit. So here we are, us two in this apartment, when we've only had this go-go-go lifestyle. Later in the year, he ended up ending things via text message. That destroyed me, even though it should not have because I should have been the one doing it. But at the time, I was devastated and blown away. post breakup i'm very disoriented not doing okay unsure about what's gonna happen i'm embarrassed i did not handle it well i never wanted to go home i never wanted to sleep at the apartment by myself i latched on to a best friend of mine put a lot on her as far as taking care of me goes and she did but i don't think it was fair and i think it was very selfish of me i would hang out with anyone who wanted to keep staying out. As soon as I would get to a certain point of being drunk, the tears would come out. It was just messy and very ashamed of how I handled myself in those two months. For me to not face my grief and sadness, I just needed to stay busy, keep hopping from place to place. I just wanted to keep it moving instead of facing anything. Following the breakup about two months later, we all decided one night to go out to dinner on a Tuesday and have a girl's night. One of my girlfriends is telling us about how she has a brother that I had never really heard about before. A brother that had been away for five years or so. He struggled with addiction and he was back home now. The family was excited to have him home. She was really close to her brother and it was her best friend. She was just really worried about him and that he was falling into the same problems that he was having in the past. The dinner was on Tuesday but around Thursday or Friday I said to myself enough is enough I going to stop just sitting in my grief so much I got disgusted with myself Okay, I'm going to start running again. Okay, I'm going to not go out every single night, every opportunity I get. I wanted to get out of the habit of going out every Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or at that point, every day. That Friday, I decided a good movement in that direction would be going to my brother's rather than going out. So I did that, spent the night at his house. The next day I got up, this was Saturday, I went to a going-away party during the day for an old crew member, and then I justified me going out that night because it was a friend's band playing. So I went out, met up with friends, saw the band playing, and then I got a call from my mom and dad saying that they were at the bar across the street. I went and met my parents. Eventually the group of friends comes over. It's my parents and a group of family friends that I've known since I was born. We're all hanging out, drinking a little bit. I remember someone offering to get us all shots, and I said, oh, I don't, I had a rule that I couldn't do shots. Because of the breakup, I wasn't eating a lot. But I said, I'll do half a shot. Talking to my parents at the bar, they made a joke that, oh, are you going to leave your car in your parking lot? Because every weekend I would leave my car in the same parking lot. Leave my car there on a Friday, pick it up on a Monday morning, and I would hop around with other people, get into their cars, sit on their couch. That would be my norm. And my parents even made a joke of that. Oh, are you going to leave your car in your parking lot? I said, yep, probably. My parents ended up leaving around 10, 1030. And then this is where it gets cloudy for me. From here on out, this is what I've been told and what I've pieced together over the years. I leave the bar. I'm crying. I think there was a sense of I'm so alone and just trying to find anyone to be with instead of be with myself and with my own emotions. I called a friend, was trying to see where she was at, what she was doing. But when I realized she couldn't hang out, I decided I was going to go home. I get in the car and I'm driving. I don't remember any of this. There was a bicyclist in the road. We were both traveling southbound, and I hit him. I remember getting out of the car and leaving my shoes. For some reason, I remember that. But then I don't remember anything after that until a witness comes over and gets me off the road and brings me to the sidewalk. I remember her presence being such a comforting presence. I don't know why. But I remember texting my mom, and I'm being pulled away from the scene. My mom said that she woke up because she heard my voice say, Mom, really loud. And it woke her up, and then she saw my text messages. At that point, I think the cops had taken my phone, or I'm not sure, but I was sitting on the sidewalk for, it felt like eternity, It was a long time with the witness and then just the cop. And I think the witness was trying to comfort me, which I just am so appreciative of because I had just done something so horrible. And I was yelling and screaming, is he dead? Did I kill him? And I kept calling for my mom. And the cop said, why do you need your mom? You're 32. Holy shit, that was so harsh of you to say, but also at the same time, Yeah, but now I'm the monster. So that was like my first moment of realizing like, no, everything I get from here on out, I have to take. He's right. I don't deserve any kindness right now. That was my first moment of that realization. I'm not a victim here. And I just caused something so horrible and I deserve no kindness. It felt a lot like I was underwater. It was very surreal. Tunnel vision. and it felt like that womp, womp, womp feeling around me with all the sirens and the lights. They had me sitting on a grassy area next to a bush with one cop standing behind me at all times. I'm not exactly sure how long that woman stayed for, but I remember I kept asking if I killed him if he died. They weren't giving me straight answers, and I kept yelling it, and eventually they told me that he was dead. it just felt like I was in a dream like it wasn't real but it was so real at the same time I don't even know if I can explain it it was just literal nightmare in real life I was now the villain I was now the monster I took someone's life it was a whole new reality for me I'm a bad person now I'm no longer a good person like I've always thought I was. I am now and forever will be a bad human being. There's no way around it. That's just who you are now. We were on the side of the road for a while. The other cop comes up to me and tells me that I need to do a test. As soon as he started reading me my rights and put the cuffs on me, I just shut right down and got tunnel vision. He kept asking me questions and asking me for a breathalyzer test and saying, we're going to take away your license for a year if you don't do this test. And I said, I'll probably never drive again. I'm not worried about the next year. From that moment on, I was hysterical, but I think as soon as, like, he stood me up and put the cuffs on me, I just shut down, just kept saying, I want a lawyer, because that's all I could think to do. We get in the cop car. Then he brought me to the hospital. They did a blood test to test my blood alcohol level. I remember the nurse being kind to me there and giving me socks, saying it was going to be cold in the jail. Because I didn't have any shoes. I left my shoes in the car. We get to the jail. He sits me in a chair, and he goes and talks to the guy at the counter in a hush tone. He's telling them what I'm in for, what he's booking me for. The guy stops him and looks around him to look at me and goes, Really? Wow. Whoa. That felt icky. But of course, everything at this point is horrible and didn't feel real. I get into the holding cell that's brightly lit. I look down at my nails and I see there's a bunch of blood under my nails. So I don't remember being with him, but I must have. And I wish I remembered, but I don't. so I call my mom from the cell and she's okay okay we're just trying to get it sorted they bring me to another cell they bring me to a cleaning closet and pick out cleaning supplies and they have me clean this cell and I thought okay this is weird but at the same time I was happy to do something with my hands and happy to keep busy because I was crawling out of my skin at that point. Then moved me to another cell, and I guess this was the medical area, and they're giving me four or five pills. I remember asking them what they were, and they wouldn't answer me. Finally, I got someone to tell me what they were. It was something for anxiety and just basic stuff with the assumption that my blood alcohol level was so high that they were afraid I would go into withdrawal. That freaked me out. There was a guy next to me in the cell that was not right mentally, and he was banging the whole entire night and yelling and screaming and banging. And I just was really jumpy. I felt kind of like an exposed nerve, any little movement, any little thing. I was a high alert, jumping at any sound. Eventually, my brother got lawyers to come. They're asking me questions and I finally am asking, I'm like, do we know anything about the guy who it was? And they said, do you know someone by this name? And I knew the last name, but I didn't put two and two together with the first name. I looked at them confused, and they were also confused, it seemed like. They didn't understand the connection. Then they said, oh, well, how about this name? When they told me the name, I realized that it was the brother of the person I had just gone to dinner with that previous Tuesday. The brother that my friend was telling me about, who she was so close to, and that her family was so happy to have back. in their lives and were worried about. That felt like a bomb went off. It was super confusing. I couldn't believe that would be the case. I couldn't believe that could even be a possibility. It was just insane. And, oh my God, I'm already a monster, and now on top of it, I'm ruining a friend's life and her family's life, someone I care about. She had just said that he was her best friend and how happy the mom was to have him home. And I just ripped that away from them and took away any chance he had at redeeming. And he had just gotten back. So they didn't have much time with him. And then I took whatever time they had left. And I just felt even more ashamed and disgusted. It was a whole other layer of it couldn't get worse. Yes, it can. The lawyers were very matter-of-fact about everything. They wanted me to take them on, so they were really selling themselves to me. I'll never forget something I clung on to. He said, this time tomorrow, just know that we'll be at my office, at my desk, having a cup of coffee. It'll just be me and you talking. And for some reason, that statement, that imagery, it was so comforting. Like a short-term goal, I just got to get to that. I just got to get to that cup of coffee that day. And I latched on to that. I had not seen the sky at all while I was in jail, obviously. and I made a pact with myself that I would be outside any chance I got and not take that for granted. I just wanted to see the sky so bad. As soon as I got out, it was my sister-in-law, my brother, my mom, and my dad picked me up. And my sister-in-law was the first one that I hugged out of the car. And they were just so nice to me and so supportive. And I had just done something so horrible. and they had every right to just be like, what the fuck were you thinking? What the fuck were you doing? And they didn't do any of that. The dad of the victim posted something on Facebook the next day saying he forgave me and the family forgave me. That everyone needs to keep me in their prayers. Just the kindest words someone could say and I had just taken his son's life. I just can't, to this day, can't believe that. And he has since also said very kind things to people to tell me because we're not legally allowed to have communication. I just wish one day I could give him a hug because he definitely didn't have to say any of those things. Shortly after, I did get a message from one of the sisters who I didn't know as well. And she said, I do not forgive you. But it was then that I realized that there was kind of a separation in the family as far as their stance, which I get every bit of it I was extremely angry with myself Quick to be overwhelmed quick to be overstimulated all at the same time while being underwater zoned out half the time I was very sheltered as far as who could reach me and I didn't reach out to most people I was shown nothing but support and that was wildly confusing to me. I felt like I didn't deserve that because again I'm the villain, I'm the monster and then I'm being treated like I'm a victim. I didn't like how that felt but at the same time I needed that support or else I don't know where I would be right now. Even me talking about all these emotions now I don't want it to come off as woe as me because I have all this guilt that this isn't about me. Look what I just caused. Look what I just did. I have no right to even complain about one little thing or even say I was really sad and it really hurt me when X Y and Z happened I don have that right anymore in this life i am not ever allowed to say but look what happened to me or look what happening to me and look how i feel this is how i feel there's no place for that because i had caused it i was careless and selfish and disgusting even though i don't like to talk about myself like that but that's how i felt i was disgusting. I felt I was disgusted with myself and so ashamed. It's very hard for me to sit here and tell you my true experience and how this all felt because I keep catching myself and saying, look, you're still alive. He isn't. So at least you get to feel that emotion. I'm constantly stuck in that struggle within myself. My sister-in-law stayed home from work the whole week and stayed with me so I would never be alone while my parents are at work. I didn't trust myself to be alone because I was afraid that I would decide that I shouldn't be here anymore, you know, if I took a life. The first time that I was left alone was the day of his funeral. It just so happened to coincide with a day that my sister-in-law couldn't stay home from work anymore with me. And I actually realized that this is the perfect day for me to start being alone with my emotions and myself to sit with him and pay respect to him in my own little way from my house, separate from what they're doing, but at the same time. And then, of course, with that comes me feeling like, yeah, but do I deserve that? I feel like the family would say, you don't deserve to speak to him. You don't deserve to communicate with him even spiritually or in any way. So I struggle with that too, but I felt the need to do it. I had been having a lot of dreams with him in it. I just wanted to pay my respects in my own way. So after his funeral, I realized that I needed to make a decision. I was either going to fall apart, as I did before, post-breakup, let grief take over, not deal with anything. The other option was standing up and doing what I needed to do to pick myself up and do what I failed to do before that led to this. After the breakup, I didn't take responsibility. I let myself fall apart, and I knew that if I did that this time, it would lead to something else bad happening, and it already led to the worst possible thing happening. It was like, did you not learn your lesson? Okay, here you go. Figure it out. You have A or B. I chose B. B meant for me routine. I thrive on routine and I thrive on structure. And I saw no other option than to give myself that and stick to it hard. I got up every morning at 5 a.m. I would meditate in the morning. I would run. No matter how I felt, I would have the same breakfast. within those next few weeks I got a job because I knew I needed a job. I knew not having a job was part of my demise before so I needed something to go to. That was hard because I was having a really hard time going out in public. I thought everybody knew everything. I thought everyone had seen my face, my mugshot. I thought everyone knew the monster that I was and I felt like hiding a lot. I didn't want to go out unnecessarily, but getting a job was to start reintroducing myself. I grew up here. I'm born and raised here, so I'm going to see people that know the story, and it's going to happen, but I need to pull off the Band-Aid and do it now. I got my job serving tables at a breakfast place. I would come home, help my mom cook dinner. that I would meditate that night, journal that night, and go to bed at 9 o'clock and get up and do it again. I was terrified of not being able to sleep. So that was part of the reason I got up at 5 no matter what every morning. I wanted to tire myself out. I definitely latched on to running as a sense of therapy. I was also going to therapy once a week at that point. It was my first time ever going to therapy. That was a way of me trying to feel like a quote-unquote good person again. Look, I'm doing these things that a good person does. Look, I'm trying to redeem myself or just proving to myself, not anyone else, that I wasn't this evil person. And part of that was creating a routine and sticking to it. That was part of me trying to redeem myself, even though it does not redeem myself. But that's what my brain did in the beginning. I was running like a masochist, almost like if I was doing a speed training, I would be wheezing and it was so hard. I could hardly do it, but I would just know, go hurt yourself because you're good for nothing. You might as well run faster and be better at that. The one thing you can do. At this point, I was the villain and I was the persona non grata. I was the friend in the group that was exiled. There's that sense of like, how do I fix this? Like that innate longing to find a solution. And I had to realize that there's no way around this, that you can only go through it. So it was quickly I had to realize that I needed to find a peace in myself, an acceptance in myself, that I couldn't rely on what other people were thinking to make myself feel better. Okay, this person said it's okay, so it's okay. No, that's not going to happen in this situation. I needed to repair the relationship with myself because that's the only thing I could do. I can't control how other people are going to think of me and I can guess what other people think of me at this point. I had to accept that, know it's happening and move forward. Not try to ignore it or shut it out, but accept it. Like, yes, I did that. Yes, I deserve that backlash. if I let myself go to the what-ifs of my brain I would let myself imagine all the conversations that were being had about me when people were out within that friend group all the things that could possibly be said but I had to stop that I had to be like yeah they probably are saying that and that's okay and that's to be expected but you have to find peace within yourself and create a new respect for yourself I guess because at that point I did not respect myself I was angry with myself. I still kind of am angry with myself. I had not forgiven myself at all. I still don't know if I've actually forgiven myself to this day. For those two years after the accident, I was almost positive I was going to be going to jail. It was just a matter of how long. So in that time, I was just trying to stuff it as much as I could. I was trying to utilize my time the best I could. I only have X amount of time left here. So I learned how to sew. I wanted to go to teacher training for yoga. I was trying to plan all these things that I could take with me to jail that I could do in jail and teach other people to do in jail. Like I was totally mentally prepared. I'm going to jail. Keeping my head down and getting things done and sticking to my routine, just finding joy in the little things that I wouldn't be able to enjoy when I was in jail. I always remember just when I was running particularly was looking up at the sky and thinking, okay, don't take this for granted because you definitely did before. Who knows how much more you have of this? I would talk to him out loud while I was running a lot of the time. One day I asked for a sign that he could hear me. And out of nowhere I looked up and there was like a double rainbow. There was no storm and it hadn't just rained or anything. It just popped out of nowhere. I don't know what anyone believes, but I couldn't ignore that. To me, that was a sign. That was him. But then, of course, I go back into thinking, do I deserve to believe that was him communicating with me? During this whole process after the accident, obviously I hadn't drank or taken any substances since that night. It was a cold turkey, and so was social media, so it was kind of like all these things that are habit-forming. The drinking was hard because I did find myself feeling such big emotions and having no idea where to put them, and no experience in dealing with them when I usually would just go pour myself a glass of wine. That was extremely uncomfortable. The biggest feelings I've ever had in my life and I don't have what I would usually use to mask it. I had never even identified what anxiety felt like in myself before. Now here I am. Oh, this is anxiety. This is what this feels like. Okay, this is terrible. This is the first time I had to actually sit with it, identify it and be like, okay, I can't do anything to mask it or numb it. That was another battle in itself. The next question for me was, am I an alcoholic? I had no idea. To me, an alcoholic was someone who got up and put whiskey in their coffee or, you know, like sneaking it around. I'm not doing that, but alcoholism comes in all shapes and sizes. And like everything else, it's not black and white. I've never tried to curb my use of alcohol before, so I don't know what that's like. I just kept going and not realizing that it wasn't good or healthy, and it was hurting me and now others. That was something to grapple with. I was struggling with going out in public, doing anything social. Even if I was in my own home and I would laugh at a joke, I would catch myself and be like, you're not allowed to laugh. You're not allowed to joke. this experience has taught me everything but a lot of it was learning to be by myself learning to have trust in myself trust myself in my decisions forming a relationship with myself and finding a home within myself I needed to be grounded I needed a ground to stand on it it needed to start within me it needs to be within you living my life more respectfully with more intention, sitting with emotions rather than trying to go around them and ignore them and mask them. Speaking up for myself has been part of it as well. Doing a lot of shadow work. Why is this bothering you? What does it say about you? And then sitting with that and dissecting that. I was potentially being charged with DUI manslaughter, which was 15 years, vehicular manslaughter, which was 15 years, and a DUI with severe bodily injury, which was five years. So I was facing 35 years is what my lawyer told me. This was all pending for two years. We get called into a meeting with my lawyers, and they suggest that it might be a possibility that I might not be facing a trial. Based on the discovery findings, if they can get the prosecutor and the sheriff's department to all agree to the conclusion, then I would be spared the jail time. I'm sitting there at the conference table and I'm shaking my head because I felt like the scum of the earth getting away with something. It was so confusing because of course that's a huge relief. I would be lying if I said I wasn't relieved and happy, but also I was like, shit, I'm just getting away with it. My family's so excited and I just got turned off that everyone was so excited about it. I was like, this is so slimy. But they kept reassuring me that it's an unbiased finding and they're agreeing to it. But I just kept thinking about the family, how they don't feel justice was served, I'm sure. But it's their findings and it's fact and they all agreed. So I don't know. it's a very confusing. I'm grateful. I am so grateful. It was a second chance that he did not get that I'm getting. So there's the guilt again, but also it comes with an ick. At the hearing, I was charged with a DUI with severe bodily injury. It's a DUI felony. It was on the conditions of five years, probation, could be two and a half with good behavior, no drinking, no driving. I could have no communication with the family. The family spoke at the hearing. They made it clear that they thought I had no remorse They thought that I didn care and that I was just flippantly going through this I just couldn believe that that what they thought because that is so not my experience I understand all of it, and I don't knock them for it at all whatsoever. But I was taken aback. Of course, hate me all you want. I welcome it, to be honest. But I didn't understand how they could think I had no remorse. But I'm glad they got to say it to me. I hope that it brought them some sort of closure. I would hear it 10 times over to this day. I'll take anything they want to throw at me, honestly. But I don't understand how they could think that there was no remorse. I can't control that. I just have to live with that. Leading up to the hearing and then sitting in the hearing the whole time, I couldn't fight the sense that I had gotten away with something. and that it wasn't fair to them. It felt dirty. It was confusing because I was so happy that I was being given this opportunity. But then on the other side, this isn't right, you don't deserve this. It was just another battle I still think about every day. Right before the hearing, my parents decided they wanted to sell their childhood home, where we were all living at that time. And I decided before I was marked down as a felon, I wanted to buy a house because I had money left over from that job. It was the last chunk of my money after I paid the lawyers. And I wanted to do it before I had felon attached to my name. My biggest accomplishment to date, I think, is buying my own home as a single woman. I was very proud of that. on top of that the running of marathons and ultra marathons have given me a huge confidence boost it was critical in me healing accomplishing those things proving i can do it setting out to do something and then doing it i even ran an ultra marathon in the grand canyon where we ran 47 miles in one day after that i realized okay that's what life is just accomplishing little goals that's what brought me the most joy and that's what made me feel the happiest. I was very much seeking out being content. I just want to be content. Maybe I don't necessarily deserve all this great grand happiness, but I just want to be at peace and be content. It was like kind of redeveloping a part of myself from my past and just making it a little different for my life now. Before big runs, particularly like marathons or ones that I might not finish or facing something that I know is going to push me. I talk to him at the starting line every time. I still do. Sometimes during the run, dedicating it to him. I tell him that I wish we could have been friends because some people have told me that we would have been friends, people that knew him and I. We were close in age and had similar interests. I just would have loved to know him. I just tell him stuff like that. I legally was not allowed to speak to the family, but I was constantly having dreams with the sister I was friends with where I would talk to her. Still, to this day, almost every single night I'm drafting a letter or a conversation in my head with her and imagining what I would say to her or the family. I don't know if she hates me, and I don't blame her if she does. I don't know if she would ever want to talk to me again. I don't know if I'm legally allowed to ever talk to her again. But if I ever were given the green light, I would 100%. In the process of healing after the accident, I got to have a whole different perspective on certain things. I never fully understood when people would say they had anxiety. This is going to sound terrible, but I thought it was an excuse sometimes for people. Boy, was I wrong. I just didn't know how to label it and didn't know how to sit with it. I didn't need to be happy. I didn't expect myself to be happy, but I just wanted to be able to feel grounded, I guess. Part of this healing journey, I felt like I had to mourn my old self. On top of mourning all the other things I was mourning my career as well, I was mourning who I was. And then questioning, am I still, kind of was like, I am still that person. That is my, I still have that core bit of me. I was always there, underlying, but I'm so very clearly not who I was. I'm sober and I feel like slowed down. Priority shifted. I've learned so much since then about myself. I've expanded my mind on spirituality. I just value different things. I value going to watch the sunset, going for that run. And for me, those things make my entire day a good day. And that would have never been the case in the beginning. It would have been, I need more adventure. I need more of a story here. I need something to entertain me more. I just find joy in different things, and it's opened my world up so much more. Being out in public, I was born and raised here, so the chances of me running into people are high that I know. A lot of them would bring it up, and I was grateful that they did because I hated wondering if they knew. The whole time while I'm looking them in the eye, all I can think about is, do they know? And how did they find out? And what are they thinking about me right now? Like, what lens are they looking at me right now? How should I act? Am I acting okay? Do I seem like a good person? Even though I would always get positive reinforcement, I still dreaded it and was terrified. But I've definitely gotten way better at that. I'm not shaking afterwards. initially the guilt and the shame from what I had just caused to this person in this family and my poor parents that was the hardest part I don't think that guilt and shame have gone down at all whatsoever it's still just as big and sitting on my chest and shoulders just as much as it was a day one but also guilt now bleeds into every aspect of my life where if I feel guilty about something, it's like times 10 because again, it's like these standards I'm trying to set for myself to doing it 10 times better than I think I should to get back to being a good person again. It's definitely blown way out of proportion. And I know that it stems from this guilt. What still lingers and I don't think will ever go away and I've come to terms with it is that I am a killer. And I would never intentionally harm anything or anyone, but I did. And so I'm trying to reconcile how I could be a good person after I've done something like this. But also, I know I'm a good person. So like, that's how I feel all the time. After the accident in the following years, especially in the very beginning, I started looking for resources to find stories of people who have caused harm, particularly people who have killed someone unintentionally. I was googling, I was looking on podcasts, I was trying to find books, public speakers. I was trying to find stories that gave a different perspective so I could try to find myself in the person telling the story. I just wanted it to decide where I stood if I thought they deserved sympathy. So then therefore, do I deserve sympathy? If they deserve to even have the emotions, to even say that they were sad or bummed about missing out on getting a job because they're a felon now. I'm bummed I can't vote. Am I allowed to be bummed about that? Am I allowed to be sad for myself? Again, the woe is me. Okay, but you're alive. I haven't come across that personally. No one has said anything like that to my face. In fact, it's quite the opposite. Everyone telling me I've been there, that could have been me, that could have been any of us, but it wasn't them. And why wasn't it them? And why was it me? Is it because I am a bad person and they were not a bad person? Was I always a bad person and didn't even realize it? Am I a bad person right now? It's got to be more prevalent than we realize. It's not just something you read about in a newspaper or Facebook or something. They could be sitting right next to you on the bus. I think that a lot. When I would sit next to a stranger, I would think they have no idea what I did. That's just proof that you have no idea what anyone next to you has been through or what they are going through and their background. I found it very hard to find any sort of group because, and I'm assuming because of all the shame and the stigma that's centered around it, Most people probably go into hiding and most people don't speak about it. I made it a point for part of my healing to tell anyone that would ask me about anything. I found it cathartic. Also, I thought I should be telling people what happened. Maybe it would help them and maybe it would prevent something one day. My hopes for the future are just, I just want peace in my life. I want to be surrounded by family and friends. I would like to one day be able to say I forgive myself. I don't know if there will be a time that I do. I just want to forgive myself and maybe diffuse the anger, the disgust I have with myself. I am proud of where I am. I am proud of how I decided to follow up. I'm proud of my response. that's something that no one can take away from me. And it's something that has given me my confidence back. It gives me hope because if I'm here now, I got time to imagine how far I'll be in five more years. I'm also extremely just grateful and overwhelmed by the love and support that I've got. It takes a village. I need a lot more help than I ever needed to ask for before. I had to learn how to ask for help. being okay asking someone for a ride, being okay asking someone to pick something up for me, asking someone for favors that I usually would just say, I'll do it myself. I don't want to bother anybody. Not one night goes by where I don't think of him, say a little something to him. I just wish he was still here today. I wish I met him. I wish I knew him as a person because I heard he's an amazing human being. I'm just so mad at myself that I took someone like that out of this world, and I'm so sorry for the pain that I've caused the family. I'll never be able to make up for that, of course. I'll never be able to fix that. I just wish I could take all their pain away for them. Today's storyteller wishes to remain anonymous. Before we close, I want to mention one final note about her story. There were details of the legal case that were purposefully left out, namely those concerning why the charges against her were dismissed before going to trial. These details were intentionally left out to protect and honor the victim. From Wondery, you're listening to This Is Actually Happening. If you love what we do, please rate and review the show. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on the Wondery app to listen ad-free and get access to the entire back catalog. In the episode notes, you'll find some links and offers from our sponsors. By supporting them, you help us bring you our show for free. I'm your host, Whit Misseldein. Today's episode was co-produced by me, Andrew Waits, and Sarah Marinelli, with special thanks to the This Is Actually Happening team, including Ellen Westberg. 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