In 2001 or 2002, I found a video of another girl engaged in acts with him, filmed from his vantage point. It was filmed in the house of his, the house I was in when I found it. The girl appeared to be about my age, and she had my hair color. He didn’t appear but I heard his voice.
That is why I think there might be video of me out there somewhere.
There were other patterns, with me, back in the day. He interrupted movies we were watching at the oddest times to guide me to his bedroom. He always, always had either the “Sleepless in Seattle” soundtrack or Elton John’s “Love Songs” CD playing when we were together in his bedroom. Usually things went on just long enough for the entire CD to play. The decor of the room, in retrospect, was nonexistent, which would have made the setting unidentifiable. There was literally nothing on the walls, there was no headboard on the bed, there was literally nothing about that room that had any personality at all.
And I had no idea at the time, at age 20, that music could be used for grooming. It worked; for the rest of my life, I will think back to that time whenever I hear any one of those songs. I have spent the past 26 years doing my very own desensitization therapy of sorts, listening to those songs over and over as I am able to handle it, to be able to listen to any of those songs without throwing myself into a melancholic, longing funk.
“The law student had seemed trustworthy and responsible. It seemed like an obvious choice. I had torn my dorm room apart. I still remember the mound of stuff on my bed, including the lamp from my desk whose lamp shade was now all dented and torn up. I still remember having torn most of my favorite wall coverings off the walls, including that gorgeous pastel I’d done my senior year of high school which got destroyed in the process. It was so obvious something was off. And it was a welfare check He was supposed to come see that I was okay and then call the officer back.
I don’t remember exactly how it all went down. Except that it was dark in the room except the TV was on. And I hadn’t let him in the building, this was another example of him managing to let himself in after someone, probably. But it was about 9 PM. One of my pod-mates must have let him into our suite, bevcause he was able to knock right on my room door. He didn’t call to tell me he was coming over.
I was 19. He said he was 26. It was his birthday, so I thought he was turning 27. I was psychotic. There should have been no question about my ability (or lack of ability) to consent to anything sexual in nature. I’d already made clear to him that I was a virgin waiting for marriage for sex. But sex with that man happened to me during that welfare check.
He was there for maybe 15 minutes. He wouldn’t let me leave my room with him when he said it was time for him to go, told me to stay in the room. I assume he called the officer after he left.
I managed to get a withdrawal with hardship due to health reasons from GSU that semester. I got in touch with my psychiatrist from home and got the meds I needed and got back on track to start again in the Spring semester. It was a nightmare. I had to start over from scratch school-wise which included 4 W’s as grades, but I’d gotten a WF in English, which meant my HOPE scholarship was in jeopardy if I didn’t do exceptionally well over the next several semesters. It’s a miracle I managed to graduate in five years— it was really four and a half, given that the first semester didn’t count except to lower my GPA. But I graduated with departmental honors in the end.” “My Me Too,” by me, November 4, 2017
“Also– I have reason to believe you sold that photo I sent you a million years ago. I want whatever proceeds were made from that photo. Every. Last. Single. Dime. Plus any proceeds from any videos you may have made of any of our “escapades.” I don’t have to tell you that that photo was sent under duress, as was every last minute of our entire relationship. Your entire empire is built on a series of lies. I hope you sleep well at night. Every last night. But any proceeds you made off me are mine.”— Me, in writing, to him, May 8, 2023
“Please don’t be mad at me for the things I did.” His words, in person, to me, December 5, 2025
“There will be no absolution, no forgiveness. I never actually responded directly to your statements last December imploring me multiple times desperately to “not be mad at you for the things you did.” I simply wanted to see if I was strong enough to face you last December. And then I did the thing I always do in the aftermath: I retreated into myself, doubting myself, deferring to you all these months after.”— Me, in writing, to him, October 30, 2025
“I don’t want to hate you anymore. Feeling like I am at war with somebody I used to love is exhausting.” Me, in writing, to him, March 2, 2026
I did tell him that relational power is so much better than his transactional power of buying board seats to make himself feel important, too, earlier in February in writing. I couldn’t resist bragging about having a child who was admitted to Grinnell.
Silence since October 30.
I listen to the podcast “We Can Do Hard Things,” and when it came on today, I should have known from the tone exactly what the topic of the day was. It wasn’t the most recent episode but there was the beginning of chat about the Epstein files.
And I crumbled, and I came home, and I wrote this in a one-fell-swoop-stream-of-consciousness after I washed my hair in a crazy frenzy that felt like my life depended on getting this writing out of my head and into my computer.
And most days, most days even looking at the news, I can compartmentalize. I don’t get swept up in the parallels even if I was of-age even though I was definitely in the midst of a psychotic episode in November of 1998. Or the fact that the five years that followed felt definitely like coercion.
He told me on December 5, 2025 that he had been in love with me. He told me everybody in law school thought he was 29— HA he couldn’t even keep track of the age he’d told me he was at the time, given that he’d lied abou this age. And I guess I can sort of buy that on some level, in whatever capacity his narcissistic brain is capable of falling in love with anyone.
The fact that the world is swept up in the sordid details of whatever has gone on in what powerful men thought was their private lives forever and ever, and is now catching up with at least some of them….
I live with the constant that I have indeed come face to face in the last year and a half twice with my own personal verison of the “elite underclass” as I prefer to think of that particular personal demon.
The sort of person who buys board seats and stadium boxes, who collects luxury cars and expendable women, for fun.
And for a time, I was one of those expendable women, even if I never saw a dime at all.
In mid-December 2025, approximately one week after I first tested myself to see if I could face him in person, I collapsed on the very couch I am sitting on right now, as I texted Jared the full story of what had happened a week prior.
And I don’t know exactly what Jared said to that man in the aftermath, but Jared has made it clear that I did nothing wrong, even though my brain says it was all my fault. I know that man wanted to know in October of 2025 if I ever dress up for Jared like a school girl, making it clear exactly what the five years I was an undergrad and in whatever form of relationship I had been in with him, had been exactly about all that time for him.
And yes, the news is triggering. And yes, it doesn’t matter that I don’t even watch the news anymore. There is literally no getting away from the fact that the world— that people— seem to not have enough of their own drama that somehow getting to the bottom of what must be a nightmare for who-knows-how-many women dealing with the public version of their very own private hellscapes…..
I walk around daily myself knowing that someone who never should have graduated from law school is now a multimillionaire and top-grossing partner at an international firm…..that person would never have even graduated had I had the wherewithall to report what happened in November of 1998. The wound is compounded by my school to this day due to his relationship with that institution, and that’s all I care to say about it.
And that person didn’t even have the decency to provide even basic job suggestion assistance despite it being a light task for someone in his particular speciality, last October.
And I am very well aware that my having any modicum of financial independence would not benefit that particular person.
And while I am unlikely to ever act on it because I definitely do not need the headache, that person also gave me the ammunition I really could take to the Bar if I wanted to, last October. That man thinks he’s untouchable enough to take a client call on speakerphone in front of me, giving legal advice right in front of me, just to show off his power. I didn’t ask for identifying information or any questions at all; he gave it in showing off.
And I don’t really know what got into me on the way home from my ACTH test today, listening to that podcast and the tears flowing from other women about the tragedy that is whatever is in the Epstein files. I try not to think about it most days.
But, I do very much know how it feels to have a powerful man walking around free and thriving, squandering his millions on ridiculously frivolous keeping-up-with-the-elite, pretending to be something he is not, and knowing all about exactly what that man is compensating for in his pants. Being celebrated by the very institution that should have protected me and didn’t in 1998.
And, I do actually think there are probably videos somewhere.
The thing is…..he apologized with out acutally apologizing. Imploring me to “not be mad at me for the things I did”— his words— is a non-apology.
But it does raise questions: what things, exactly, did he do? Because the word “things” indicates there is perhaps more than one reason I should be mad at him.
I’m too tired to care anymore about what anyone thinks, him, or anyone else. I sat through an ACTH test today to determine exactly the nature of my low cortisol and the very reaction I had— a zen feeling instead of the expected nausea and anxiety— I just cannot care anymore.
I’ve spent 28 years suppressing my voice on the off-chance that there might be some reason for preserving that relationship, and the very fact that last October’s interaction happened, compounded by the recent lack of decency that man has shown with my medical divulgences…..I’m done.
I’m done worrying about what people think, I’m done worrying about hurting his feelings, I’m done suppressing my truth.
I’m not that 19-year old psychotic girl so desperate to escape the shadow of another abusive relationship that she plunged herself into a drama with that lunatic. I’m a 46-year old woman who has spent 16 years paying her dues getting to know herself, her triggers, and yes, I have faced that man in person twice in the past year and a half and damn it, he is nothing to be afraid of. At all.
Detail of a 2011 Blogger template by Skincorner, featuring artwork by Amai, from the header of my blog at the time.
“I’m determined to salvage the comfortingly wonderful customs from my heritage while, for lack of a better term, “taking out the trash,” so to speak. Example: Karo syrup makes a really good, easy topping for breads when mashed up with butter on a fork. Fantastic taste to that. However, eat too much of it, and I know I’ll have a heart attack. It’s all in the moderation. I have bipolar disorder and PTSD and I struggle with massive doses of anxiety. Generally, though, I am a pretty happy person. Except when I’m not. :) It’s pretty much just like that. And then I feel like the world is caving in. But the good news for you is that if you know me, unless you spend a lot of time and I really let you in, you won’t have to deal with any of it. Because I put on a really good cover and generally don’t let many people close. I’m slow to trust people right now. Otherwise, I’m mommy to two really funny little boys. They keep Jared and me really busy. My living room is overrun with matchbox cars and little boy-sized desks and chairs.”
This was the “about” box on my very first blog.
I finally got up the courage to go scouting through archive.org to look at old blog posts that are now defunct. I pulled this “about” quote from my blog as it was on February 3, 2011.
And I can unpack quite a lot that goes unsaid between the lines now, 15 years later.
And it is still, indeed true, 15 years later, that despite living what appears to be a fairly transparent existence online, it is true that I let remarkably few people close (pretty much 1 to be exact), especially in person, and I have learned indeed to put on a really, really great cover.
In that paragraph, I hear the angst in my writing. I hear the quiet despondency and horror of having had my social sphere knocked out from under me just the year prior.
On February 3, 2011, Porter would have been four and a half and Liam would have been not quite three. We were indeed in the thick of it with two very funny little boys. I was in no way prepared to give them the attention they deserved.
In 2011, the world was falling apart in just about every way possible.
And so, in 2011, the boys went to daycare despite me not working.
Jared kept all of us going, day and night.
I had visions of a “Mommy Blog,” and was not-so-quietly desperate to get back to some semblance of a professional life.
And for sure, whatever beginnings of a social life we’d had the year prior was long gone. Church was kind but most people were distant.
I was taking on the full identity of “sick Caroline.” And, quietly dying, horrified and terror-filled, inside.
And in that paragraph above, I was trying to not betray that any one bit of that was actually happening.
Over the next little while, I’m going to revisit some of those old posts, with updated commentary.
February of 2011 was the quiet beginning of a new sort of lifestyle: a different kind of childhood for my boys than I imagined, a different sort of marriage dynamic than I’d imagined.
A different kind of life than I’d grown up dreaming about.
And it’s been beautiful in its own way. Arguably, my boys had a more present mother because of that season of life.
And if I could go back and tell the girl, who probably drafted that “about” paragraph in between sobbing episodes, anything at all, it would be this:
Those two little boys that you worry about: they will grow up to be stellarly wonderful men in spite of whatever shortcomings you have. That man you married, that man that you feel growing ever distant with the stress of life right now: this marriage that is being tested is going to find its own comfortable peace and that man is your safe haven. And the career days may very well be done, and that will always hurt. And you, dear girl, your tears are not in vain. There’s a beauty in the growth going on right now. Do not lose hope.
That is what I would tell my 15 years’ younger self today. Because it is the same thing I can tell myself today, in 2026.
Sunday I felt the sting of a 16-year old mortification-friend-rejection again in Costco. Jared is right: there are people who cannot handle me in my more fragile states, and this person was one more of those. It doesn’t hurt any less, though. Jared assures me that I am not crazy but knowing there are people in the world who have rejected me due to my mental health does not exactly engender confidence in that area.
My life has taken twists and turns due to various mental health episodes, some more public than others. It’s affected every aspect of my life, but especially friendships and employment prospects.
And I’m nursing my ego wound by plunging my energy back into jute bag making. I’m over halfway done with the current one though it means figuring out the invisible join again because one spool of 6-ply jute is not quite enough to make two bags and this is the second bag I have made with the original spool.
On the topic of bags, I am sad because my original sourcing for the leather straps has inflated their prices, I am 100% certain due to the unfortunate tariff situation in this country. I found an alternative but it will mean the bags need to be smaller to accommodate the strap.
I confessed to Jared that this morning it was awfully hard to not bite the bullet and buy a Fuji X-H2….the old compulsion to spend to make myself feel better. It won’t solve one little thing and will only create other problems, so it is not happening at all, of course. Thankfully I have developed the discipline to say no to myself.
At any rate, this morning I found myself wallowing in the bed, texting Jared to say that I am worthless, that nobody wants to be my friend.
Which is of course objectively not true: I have a wide circle of wonderful friends.
It doesn’t make the stinging tears of shame over broken relationships due to the past any less painful at all, though.
25 years ago today, I survived psychological torture and likely real physical danger.
And the particulars don’t matter anymore; I am safe in February 10, 2026, not February 10, 2001.
But I have to wonder what my neighbors of the time thought. They had to hear the screams; I screamed for my life that night. No one responded. It was a 55+ community probably not used to domestic violence issues.
I don’t have to wonder about why it took that precise incident for me to decide to have the boyfriend of the time move out. It took precisely that sequence of events to upend our lives like that.
And I don’t have to wonder because I know: I reclaimed his old room as my own, and rechristened the energy of that space the very day my Mommy came to clean up the trashed apartment he left in his wake on the last day of February when he moved out.
My Mommy brought my baby cat Cricket to live with me that day, and Cricket and I went on to live there a good while longer.
And that day, that lowest of lows, was a turning point. It was the day I decided no man was worth my safety. No man, no matter how long I’d known him, was worth giving up my self-respect.
I was done settling after that night.
Thankfully, mostly good men followed that purging of my life.
I am so grateful that I got to marry the best one.
Jared is the one who has tolerated living in the light 24 hours a day for years on end.
Jared is the one who answers the ghosts that aren’t there when I hear noises in the night.
And Jared is the one who wants nothing from me other than my happiness. He doesn’t ask me to be anything other than real, he doesn’t ask me to perform for him.
He only asks me to accept his love as a gift. And that it is: a gift.
And 25 years on: I know for a fact karma is real, as sad as that is to say in this particular instance.
Tonight I will go to bed safe, having worked on a new jute bag for most of the day.
And I will go to bed grateful for the new lease on life I got in 2001.
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