Alright, it's Wednesday December 11th and it's 9 a.m. driving to work. Just passed the Buck Institute in Nevada. It's a rainy morning, 54 degrees. I'm trying to gather my thoughts and feelings so I could kind of sum up how I need what I need to say to Dr. Stern on Friday. Hopefully I'll see her then. Heidi and I had a pretty bad fight yesterday. Wasn't we didn't hurt each other physically or anything like that. But there's a lot of shouting and yelling and cursing and was in the car on the way to her work. And so I guess I was so aggravated and so out of sorts that it made her want to get out of the car. She got out of the car. I quickly realized what this was going to happen when we're not going to have our day together like we had planned. And so I told her to take the car and I mean she was already walking on the sidewalk at that point. I told her to take the car and that's it. I was clearly hysterical. I was losing my mind. I was as you know as she was driving away. See, I'm saying you're leaving me leaving me. And I was desperate. I don't know how this happened. It's been almost a year and a half now. Since she finished her chemo, finished her surgery. She has... I mean her hair is back to the point where no one knows what happened. And the surgery was pretty much flawless. So physically she doesn't look any different than she did before. The double mastectomy. But as her spouse, I never got a chance to breathe. For... You know... I never got a chance to express my anger over the fact that she's diagnosed with breast cancer. I immediately had to switch gears from... Oh, this will never happen to you. We have such a great life to... Let's see if this is happening. So... Yeah. And I don't really know if she ever wants to hear this. I mean that would just make her feel terrible. But if I were to sit down with you, Dr. Stern, and tell you... Who I am... It's more than just that. I mean... I wasn't prepared for this. Meaning I wasn't... I didn't deal with all my own issues. And I just let this pile up. I threw this on the pile that was already there. I mean I can go backwards. I can go... Start of it all. I mean we essentially have been married. We essentially have been married for 22 years now. And... I mean it's not perfect marriage, but we have a wonderful life. We have two wonderful smart kids, a boy and a girl, a great school, a great place for us. And we have the house on the corner lot. You know, in a nice neighborhood. We went through hard times. Yeah. We survived foreclosure in Berkeley. I survived getting laid off at work and... Pulsing my way back into my job. I survived... I mean my wife... I mean we're in Petaluma because my wife works at the JC. And it's closer to Santa Rosa. Where she started working in 2005. And at that time she didn't even want to finish her PhD. She was ready to start working. She was tired. It brought her to tears to think that she would be happier at Santa Rosa without a PhD than doing a postdoc at Stanford while she was finishing her PhD. So... We came out to California from Texas because she was determined to go to UC Berkeley to get her PhD. And I followed. I followed because she took me away from it all. She took me away from all the reminders that was Texas. And that's where I grew up. I secretly applied to UC Berkeley and basically used it as an excuse to follow her out here. And I'm sure you know... We were not prepared for marriage. But you know when her father found out we were both coming out here. He pretty much insisted that we get married. really didn't question it. She wasn't prepared to question it and I was already following her so what more could I ask for? Don't give me wrong. She is the love of my life. I cannot live without her. I need her. But I guess needing anyone is hard especially when you need a lot. One of the reasons that I wanted to leave so bad and I wanted to be with Heidi so bad was my mother was dying and she died in April of 97. About four months before we got married. So my mother died of multiple myeloma type of blood cancer. That was in her bones and four months later I went to Egypt and married Heidi. And then we left Texas all together and started a new life. She was already doing what she was planning on doing. I was making it up as I go alone. And the first thing that her father wanted us to do was buy a house. Investment wise that's a smart decision in California. But emotionally I was still attached. I was still grieving over the loss of my mother and even buying a house. I don't know what it was but maybe him saying it. I don't know. A lot of hostility towards this man. And I can get into that later but yeah. At the time I did not want to spend my mother's inheritance on a house. I mean I did but I didn't want him telling me how to spend my inheritance. I didn't want anyone telling me anything for that matter. I had survived on my own since I was and on my on my own I mean emotionally on my own since I was nine years old. And what I mean by that is when I was nine years old it was about a week after the assassination of Sadat and Cairo. My father returned home to quit his job and prepare to move the family to Egypt where he was taking over the management of the family's hotel. He uh I'm going to pause it here because these files are getting big as I recovered them.

Okay, starting up again, it's Wednesday, December 11th and I'm driving to work and I was talking about my father losing my father. He had come back from Egypt. He told his boss, he gave his boss two weeks notice. Actually, it was his last day. He had already given his two weeks notice and this was his last day at work. Everybody went out to lunch and he had to finish some stuff up and it was during lunch where he had an episode and died of cardiac arrest. My brother and I did not find out until the very end of the day. We were playing at the local Y like we always did and someone, one of our parents friends came to pick us up and they drove us to our house where all these cars were parked outside. I'm not done with this. I don't know why. It makes me so angry that I asked them to linger. I can't tell which one of my memories is the worst. That was just the first one. It's like watching a little kid die in the movies. It's the worst kind of tragedy. My mother sits us down and tells us we would come into our house filled with people. I didn't know we were having a party. I literally probably said that to them. Something to that extent. We were immediately rushed into my bedroom where my mom was either there or she'd met us at the door and took us there. I don't remember but my brother was sitting on that bed. If he and I share something it's being survivors. Evil villain in a movie. I want to kick its ass. She set us down. She couldn't even finish the sentence. I wrote about it. It was done but it's clearly not done. That was the beginning of my life changing forever. I was trying to find the bad guys and keep throwing more shit at them. There's no way this is going to end well. That's fucking how my life went. It's been the next three or four years watching my mom cry at night. We just got used to it. She would eventually stop crying and bear herself in books. She even tried short story writing for a while. She would take classes. She never finished college. That's another sad story of its own. If she was salutatorian of her high school. That's so sad. I went on through a middle school. I tried to make her as happy as we could both my brother and I. I guess it wasn't until my freshman year in high school that shit hit the fan again. I suppose my mom was hoping that we would just be there for her. She used us as her crutch. We had to grow up and she didn't know how to let go of us. She held on to see my mom grew up as a practicing Baptist. My father, you know, was a Muslim. But I guess they agreed to raise us as Muslims and my mom eventually accepted Islam as her religion. One of the things that she had to basically inherit from my father was the Muslim Sunday school. He started one. She felt that she had to finish it. She had to finish what he started or uphold his legacy. Or her promise to the kids. But either way, she took over the Sunday school and she I guess tried to raise us as good Muslims both as a mother and a father. And I don't know. I mean, that's just she wasn't prepared. I mean, she wasn't prepared to find out that I didn't even believe in the religion. Today, I'm an atheist. And if I can say it's more, if in some ways my ability to accept atheism as my own belief is more of a triumph in my life than anything else, then the two masters degrees that I have in the book or the story that I wrote in the book. It's a very hard belief to walk away from. It's not the belief that's hard, it's the community. But I really didn't accept atheism as my belief until she died. It wasn't until after she died. But our problems started up again when I was 14 and you know, started having crushes on girls and wanting to date girls. Oh my god, the normal American thing. And all of a sudden, my American mom wanted me to feel like I was some caged Muslim child. Good and day girls. Couldn't drink. This is Texas for God's sake. So I did it behind her back. And I was angry. I was angry at a lot of things. If I'd had just been allowed to date girls and if she'd have looked the other way with the drinking, I don't think things would have gotten out of hand. I think I would have had another crazy life of another high school kid just like everybody else. But no, when my mom found out, I was drinking. And in some ways, yeah, I mean, if she would have tolerated it, if she would have partnered with me on it. I wouldn't have done it behind her back. I wouldn't have done it so aggressively. I'm blaming her, yes. I'm blaming my father too. I'm expecting us to be Muslim. I'm never going to be Muslim. Latino. You know, one day when she... Let's back up a bit. I mean, after my father died, my mother took us to a counselor. And of course, I can't even remember it. All I remember was the waiting room and someone asking us questions. Those, you know, those questions were very clinical. I could see right through them in some ways as if they were just telling you the answer. Please don't give me a wrong answer here because I don't want to have to deal with your crap. So I gave them the answer they wanted here and we never saw them again. That was probably not the way it should have worked out. Who the hell asked questions like that of a nine-year-old and expects an honest answer? And my mother, of course, was overjoyed to find out our children are taking the death of their father in a healthy way. So such thing should have been skeptical. You'll find out that skepticism is deep rooted within my mindset. So yeah, I'm 14 now. My mom just found out that I was drinking because I pretty much got black out drunk and threatened to take me to a hospital and where I would have to be essentially in rehab for minors. She scared the crap out of me and I didn't drink again. And in the process, we had a family friend, she was kind of like a babysitter but she was also like a lady who worked in after school care at the YMCA so the babysitting was kind of a side job for her and she was getting her degree at U of H in psychology and she you know was a trusted third party so when she told my mom, oh I have a friend he should meet because this person you know doesn't drink and you know kind of it would be good for them to meet. Well, 14 year old boy meets 14 year old girl who is also not drinking and is codependent and what do you expect? So next thing you know, we're pretty much hooked up. My mom didn't think this through, didn't realize and didn't want us to see each other. I mean Shelby was her name and she had all you know issues of her own. She was still not being accepted by her mother or her father because of her drug addiction and so she had to live in a halfway house until it was determined by the her therapist or that she should go with me. Well I'd go visit her at the halfway house you know I mean my mother and we helped her move in. So anyway, it was I think through all of this, you know, that I eventually told my mother, this is too much for me. I can't take the fire and brimstone kind of parenting. You know, can we live on planet earth here and be a parent? But it didn't come out that way. It came out that you know I mean she said if she said oh you need help and I was like well you need help too and that's what started it. She said fine if I get help where you get help and I was like fine. And we all went and that's when Richard came into the picture. Richard was my mom's therapist. I forgot his last name but she saw it was from that moment until the day she died that she saw him. My brother saw him for about a year. I saw him for about six months. I was playing the same exact game that they played with me in the beginning. Oh you're asking me questions to which the answer is already known. Let me give you the answer you want to hear. And then I won't have to be in this uncomfortable place in the shameful place. And it's the shameful part I think that has kept me from wanting to help myself. I don't know why or where but maybe I do know. So in the Islamic tradition I mean it's probably very similar to the Christian tradition except they bring the casket to the mosque and they at least in this case I don't know if it's always the case but they brought my father's casket to the mosque. They prayed almost if I remember correctly that's what I don't understand is they prayed this casket was there in the prayer hall. And if I remember correctly that doesn't that's not a thing. After prayer everybody was sitting around and there was this one guy Egyptian gentleman who I don't know. His heart was in the right place but came up to me and of course had to tell me he knew my father and he was a great man and he would be very proud of me and all that and it's okay to be sad all that and I just started crying. The first time I cried after my father's death. But the one thing that I absolutely hated was the look on people's faces. There's a look that one person gives another when they assume nothing's wrong with that person but then there's the look when they think something's wrong. That look drives me insane. It's the look of pity. It's the look of sometimes shock and then pity. That look triggers me. The suspicion that that look might happen and that I might experience that look from someone else or might receive it from someone else triggers me. A personality of someone who might who has the propensity for that look to show pity or anything triggers me. I think that's why I was probably wondering the things that I loved about my wife. About Heidi when I first met her. Z, I'm sure she does feel pity. I'm sure she does get shocked. I've seen it. But the personality that I saw was, hey, I'm, yeah, tough shit. I think her swim. And that's what I respected and that's where I could thrive, at least for a while. She did not have, she did not send a message that I would ever feel pity for you. And I thought that's all I needed. But it's not true. All I was doing was finding excuses to deny what was happening. To deny the things that I needed to take care of. I'm going to pause again because the files might get too big.

Okay, it's December 11th, 9.41 pm. This should be the third file in a for today's entry. I'm still on the 101 at himself. Probably in San Mfele by now, not really sure. Yeah, and it's raining. So, yeah. So, what happens? Well, I go through therapy. In fact, Shelby is there. And some days waiting for me outside his office as I would go to therapy. She eventually got out of the halfway house. She went to a different high school, but in the same school district. And Richard basically eventually told my mom to just leave me alone. She told her, if you want your son to ever come back to you, you need to let him grow. And he needs space to grow. And that was the only thing that I... I mean, other than being there for her, but I'm not really sure. You know, I guess it's a bit of an overprotective sun here, but yeah. He was... that was the best thing he did was tell her to get off my back. And she did. And Shelby and I became quite serious. I thought she was the one. We both got into UT, although she had to take summer school in order to get in. It's just back in the summer of 1990. And I signed up for summer school just for support so that I didn't want to stay in Houston anymore. I wanted to go to Austin as soon as I could. So I signed up for summer school and took summer school classes. And I remember my first couple of weeks in the dorm. And I was... I felt like it was in heaven. It was just me, my bike. And, you know, I clearly hadn't worked out the cost of living situation yet. The money was still coming from my mom. So I didn't have a job, but, you know, I did odd jobs for the dorm and I was the substitute RA. And that got me basically half off my rent or whatever it's called I forgot. But it wasn't enough, you know. Yeah. And, you know, Shelby's dad was basically paying the bills for everything. He paid her rent, he paid her tuition, no problem. He was a corporate lawyer for Shell or something. I can't remember, but he basically did patent law. You know, he was a proxy parent. He never really was there for her emotionally. But he spent every penny he could on her. And, you know, I mean, I was like, I'm... What else? Well, we eventually parted ways. I want to say it was in the end of my sophomore year. I can't really, with the beginning, I can't remember. We basically, I, you know, I couldn't afford to just... I had to get an apartment to get cheaper rent, but actually... I was ending up staying at Shelby's the whole time anyway. So we started living together to save on rent. But then one day, I don't know what happened. You know, we were two... We were just together so that we could survive high school, honestly. That's really all it was. We survived high school and moved on. I don't really know if she saw it that way. But I could tell that she had this co-dependent personality. And maybe I have it to some degree with my wife. I don't know, but... In Super jealous. And when she got depressed, I had to do everything. And she would always get depressed about her weight. She wasn't overweight, but, you know... She was just average and she just didn't like it. And that's her business. I couldn't take it anymore. When she would get depressed, it was just a herculane task to get her out of it. And I just couldn't do it. I didn't have the strength and I... It was hurting my school. And I needed to stay in school. I was at this point on student loans. And I was trying to get out of scholastic probation. So I could keep my loans. So, yeah, that's how it went. And... That's too bad. So we broke up. I found a roommate from my work, Ruben. And we literally worked at the same place. So being roommates was easy. We both were students at UT. So I basically hitched a ride with him wherever we went. We went to class together, then we went to work together. So it was a really good setup. I even sometimes maybe... I don't know if I brought my... I would go to his parents' house on the weekends. And we'd hang out at the pool. He'd wash his clothes. Obviously, you know, college students want to go home to wash their clothes. And we'd... We'd have good barbecues at his house. But... Yeah. I was pretty steady. Then I met Heidi. But I was already in my fifth year at UT as a senior when I met Heidi. Heidi. She was starting her freshman year. And... She was a rock star of a student. She placed out of her first year of school. I actually met her in a class that was history of the Middle East. And I didn't think she was Egyptian. I thought she was Mexican because... One, she didn't straighten her hair. Every Egyptian girl straightens her hair. She wore shorts. So I'd never seen an Egyptian girl wear shorts. And... Her name was Heidi. It wasn't, you know. I know that there are some Latina women with names Haiti or something like that. But until I thought maybe it was just, you know... Love for the Swiss. I don't know. But... Turns out she's moved here when she was 10th in Cairo. And, you know, super interested in her because she defied every expectation of what I thought an Egyptian woman was. And trust me, I did not know what Egyptian women were like at that point. I only knew what I knew of other from other girls, you know... Going to Muslim Sunday School. And to be honest, they were not Egyptian. They were Americans. Just like myself. So with Egyptian background, Egyptian household. And again, an Americanized Egyptian household. But, you know, when she told me she wanted to be an archaeologist and get her PhD. And she really cared for her family and always wanted to go home to Houston on the weekends to see her family. And I was hooked. And I was really feeling a lot of emptiness at the time because I kind of figured something was wrong with my mom, but I didn't know it. I'm not going to sit there and believe in all the six cents crap and everything like that. When my mom retired from work, she was half the person. You know, if she was a strong individual and my dad was alive, she was half of that after when he died. She got a little bit of her strength back through surgery, through therapy. But then she had a really unfortunate retirement. She was forced into early retirement. And she, you know, the IRS, she worked with the IRS and her local office at that time was trying to fill racial quotas or ethnic quotas, whatever you want to call it. So they put an African American in a job that she probably felt she could have had. Or at the same time, they probably laid off her white supervisor and put an African American in place. And that African American basically had an agenda of hiring more people of color. And so the very first thing he did when he saw my mother was, oh, she is a old white woman needs to go. And it's ironic, right? Because my mother married a man who attended, you know, an HB, HB, whatever you call it, historically black college. You know, when my father came to Texas and knew you wanted to get a master's degree, he applied to TSU because they would accept him. He took classes at U of H2, but he's got his master's degree from TSU. I have the student yearbook that shows him. He is a lighter skinned African. That's all it was. He had kinky hair. No African American mistook him as white. And he wasn't white. He was, as far as he was concerned, he was African American. And trust me, my mom's family in Lubbock, Texas, the light southern Baptist. My grandmother, you know, who was a daughter of the Confederacy, all thought he was black. As far as we were concerned, we were half black, half white kids. My mom always told us to tell people we were white because we didn't look black. I don't know where I was going with that. But yeah. So... Anyway. Yeah, so this, my mom's new boss essentially took one of her awards and kept it for himself. I remember it's this big trophy of an eagle that sat in his office with her name on it. And after that, basically, you know, started to encourage her. You know, she would obviously need to go on sick leave for medical reasons for, you know, because she was dealing with issues. I mean, my mom was diagnosed with PTSD. And... She, you know, she had to take time off from work, you know, for... To be healthy. And then at one point in time, I forgot to mention this, you know, it was in my junior year of college. I think it was my junior year or my senior year. I can't remember. My brother was in school too. In high school with me. My mom, check through, you know, my therapist recommended that my mom... Check herself into a facility. And so she spent a good six months of that, I believe, junior year in a facility. And, you know, of course I confided with my friends, but word got around. And no one talked about it, but yeah, there goes that... The pity and the shock. And even, you know, the jerks of the world making fun of us. So and so's my, you know, Maddie's mom, by the way, I went by Maddie in Texas. Maddie's mom is crazy. She's in a loony bin. So that was a hard time for me, my brother. I was, I was not there for him. And he had to, you know, figure things out. I remember one time we tried to make fajitas on the grill. Actually, I think we did all right. We made fajitas on the grill and we had them together. I don't know if that was when he was in college or if that was when my mom was away. Because honestly, in high school, it was all about TV dinners. It was nothing else. We had TV dinners in front of the TV, as it was meant to be every night. We had a fridge with stock with coke, pop turtleneck and cross the flakes for breakfast. Quick turkey sandwich is made from one to bread for lunch. But the villains just keep pounding you when you're just trying to finish to resolve the conflict. So if it wasn't my father dying, it was, you know, the trauma of watching my mom go through the struggle with PTSD that eventually put her in a facility. My brother and I had to figure out how to go to school. I'm going to pause this again because I realized one of the biggest things that I haven't talked about. And I'm a bit surprised, but in hindsight, not surprised that I haven't brought it up yet. So I'm pausing again.

So now I'm in Richmond, California on the 580 just passing or got a boulevard. So it'll probably be another 20 minutes before I park the car. I'll try to make this quick. After my dad died, and I am really, this should probably pay attention to this car because I clearly did not talk about it in the timeline that I was giving you in the chronological order. Something blocked this out. After my dad died, well before my dad died, the plan was that he was going to quit his work. We were all going to move to Egypt. We're going to live in Cairo. There's this American section of town. We were going to go to an American school there. That was it. We were just going to pay his debt to his Egyptian family, which was, you know, I'll take care of the family hotel. My mom had lived in Egypt before, so she could do it again. But he died. And he quit his job. What do you do when you die and quit your job? It was a really messed up situation. I mean, this is for Coca-Cola. I think the terms were that he was at work even though he was in his office. He wasn't the question of he had separated from the company at this point. Anyway, my mom knew that she had to take us to visit Egypt. We had not been to Egypt as a family ever. So in the summer of 82, a year later, almost a year later, we spent the summer of 82 in Egypt. It was traumatic enough knowing that we're going from, I never realized how luxurious our middle class life in Texas was. And that's a whole separate story just on that summer in Egypt. It was also Ramadan was in the summertime that year. And I was 10, so I was expected to start fasting, which means that my mom didn't expect me to do it every day of the month. But I'm sure she got pressure from my family to do it more than just a couple days. Because I'm sure the average Egyptian kid at that time was fasting. My age. And I exited the freeway. I'm on the cannon now. Anyway, they wanted to spend the end of Ramadan in Alexandria. We were in Cairo the whole time in a suburb that was quite crowded and traditional. And Alexandria is always seen as a place to get away. It would be good to get the different, you know, like the ocean air is good. Everyone says that I don't know. Spend time at the beach, etc. So yeah. We, and it turns out my family had, I guess, someone relative had an apartment that they never used in Alexandria. And that's where they go to stay when they go there. Because they hardly use it. It was old and dusty and moldy. And my mom's allergies, she just could not take it. So she, we stayed in a hotel, I think. No, we, we, yeah, I can't remember. But we, there was a time period where we were with my uncle in a new part of town and a new apartment. And, and so we spent some time there. But we also spent some time at the Sheraton, Montezza, which was a hotel right next to one of the king's old palaces. And so it's a nice hotel. I think my mom was trying to do our last days of Ramadan there. I'm not really sure. But one night after dinner, I think it literally was like we were, we were going to, the next day we were going back to Cairo. And we were going to fly back to Texas, maybe within a couple days after that. But, you know, I was always a curious little kid. The, the, the same curiosity killed the cat has always resonated with me. I always wanted to explore. It was by nature that I was a curious explorer. And I was forgetful. The, the curiosity would consume me. And the, the explorer in me would become so distracted by the new things I was seeing that I would forget what I was, the task that I was supposed to do. One time this was during the annual eat prayer and it was like a year or two later, I think, my mom told me, you can play or you can hang out with your friend with, you know, just one, I think one room over. And before I knew it, we were at the mall. And I don't even know how we got there or what made me want to tell my friend, let's go to the mall. And my mom was frantic and, you know, found us there. And of course, I didn't hear, I heard about it all the way home. And for several days after that, I was obviously grounded. But anyway, this was one of those moments where I told my mom, hey, I don't want to be stuck in the room all night. Can I go explore the hotel and she thought, sure, why not? This is the land of her husband, the beautiful land of Egypt, the wonderful paradise that we were supposed to live in. You know, the land where no one does anything wrong. Yeah, it's ironic why we were going to move there. So she let me explore. And one of the first things I wanted to see was this funny level in the hotel. It was a bit mysterious. I always saw it in the elevator and I didn't understand it. I was 10 years old and it was the first time I'd ever seen this. So what is that? You know, I mean, why does the floors go from one mezzanine to two to three to four? What does that mean? And my mom would always say, it's just like a middle floor. And I would always look and I would be like, I don't understand. I never actually explored it. So that night, I was determined to check out the mezzanine. But the very first thing I do is explore the mezzanine. Well, it's clear that I'm about to park my car and I haven't even gotten to that coming yet. I don't know how I'm going to talk about this. I'm just being dramatic. I may have to talk about this on the way home. I can't. This is not enough time. Sorry. I'll have to save this for the evening commute. But to be continued, what happened on the mezzanine?

Testing, testing, one, two, three.

Okay, here goes its 506 PM. I'm on Marin Avenue. That's an Faye Avenue in Albany. It's December 11th. And it's the light drizzle. I'm driving obviously home. In the morning I started to talk about the time we spent in Alexandria and how I had somehow forgotten to mention it chronologically. And yeah, just feeling exhausted. So when I left our hotel room after my mom said I could explore the hotel. I immediately went to the elevator and thought I'd check out the view of the hotel lobby from the Mezzanine floor. And I, you know, pressed the button and got out and watched people come and go for a little while. And off to the right of me were always probably two other parts of the hotel. And off to the left of me was a little nook where a bartender worked. People would come and go from the bar. Mainly wait staff delivering drinks to rooms. But it wasn't a type of bar that had regular customers. Basically no one was on the floor. And so, but, you know, after a while the bartender noticed me and came up to me and said, I started asking me questions like, oh, what's your name? Where you from? That kind of stuff. And they spoke, you know, broken English. And, um, he asked me if I wanted a cookie. And being the nine, nine, ten-year-old that I was, I said sure. And he took me over to the bar and we stood behind the bar. And, you know, he was starting to talk more about, you know, do I want to see his cookie or, um, and, you know, it was obviously his word for his penis. And he started rubbing my hand on his penis. And then he said, I can't remember what he said. I can't remember if he told me to keep it a secret or what I don't really know. I've locked this out. The next thing I know is, or he said, I could come over to his house any time. And play with him and his wife or something to that effect. Hold on, there's a fire engine. So, um, I was in total shock. My nerves shut down. My ability to function shut down. It was as if the devil was standing before me. And had some paralyzing effect on me. I was scared to my wits end. I did not know what to do. I was so scared the thought of running didn't even occur to me. It wasn't a type of fear that you have to fight. You have to get the courage to overcome. It was mind control fear. I, I, to this day, I don't understand why or how it could have had that effect on me. And at the same time that it did. I am so angry about that. And he took me, the stairwell was about, you know, five yards from the bar on the other side of the hall. And he took me to the stairwell. And he pinned me up against the door. And he started to put his lips on mine. He started to rub his hands on my penis. And unzipped my pants. And put his mouth on my penis. I didn't know what to think. I didn't know what to do. It was as if a tiger were standing before me. And I was under some serum that disconnected all my nerves. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to do anything. I was completely unprepared. I can't tell if one minute passed, five minutes, or 30 minutes. I don't know. He eventually stopped. And zipped up my pants. I was completely unresponsive to him. I was like a limp dead body to him. I can only think that that's what made him give up. I essentially, my body was playing possum. And it's actually zipped up my pants. It took me back out to the bar and he waited for, I guess, I guess there was someone out there. So he either went and took care of something. And then I can't remember if I was alone. It's possible. It's possible that I was alone for a while and I thought I could run. But not sure. And then he said something about tomorrow I should come visit him in his house. And again, I was, I was mute. I was mute the way a child is mute when they're completely powerless. I was still grieving over my father's death. And then this happened to me. I was watching my mother cry herself to sleep every night. And then this happened to me. I was jealous of every kid who had two happy smiling parents in school. And then this happened to me. I was jealous of my brother still in the hotel room. And then this happened to me. I went back to the hotel room in the complete shop. I was trying to tell myself, you're alive. You're not dead. But my arms and hands wanted to do something else. I literally got the scissors out. I wanted to cut my penis off. I remember lying in bed with the scissors literally on my penis. I was telling myself to cut it off. I couldn't go through the pain. The pain was too much. I can't remember what happened after that. Of course, I never saw this man again. And I never told my mother. I didn't tell her until after my first session with Richard. And I was 15. Shelby knew. And of course, my brother was there with my mom when I told her. I don't think they ever thought the same of me again. I can't tell what they thought of me. Obviously, my mother hit me when I hated that. But she was also angry at herself. I am absolutely certain she was angry at herself for letting me go that night. She always said I was very brave to hold it in, which made me think she knew something about that kind of pain. But I don't really know as we never really talked about it. She clearly didn't ever want to talk about it. So that's that. I am sure there's more stuff. You know, this timeline that I've given you is all prior to meeting Heidi. As far as I can remember, it's not, I mean, other than, yeah, there were the moments when I met Heidi. But I'm going to pause here because I feel like that's a different file.