(Trigger Warning – Sexual Abuse, Traumatic Events, Self Harm, Substance Abuse, Rape)

Originally Published March 9, 2023

“The hardest part of writing it, is reliving it.”

I am losing my mind, but I like it. It’s August 2022; I just turned 33 and have never been this creative. I can barely sleep at night because I don’t want to waste my magical inspiration. I am making earrings, greeting cards, and clothes. I have written 20 different stand-up comedy specials and 100 letters to myself. I literally can’t stop.

I have also been taking pharmaceutical meth, known as Concerta, for over a year. In my bipolar denial, I got misdiagnosed with ADHD, and now I’m hooked on my little white energy pill. I love how it makes me feel. I am thin, motivated, and confident as fuck.

On August 9th, 2022, while driving to a new talent night at Helium Comedy Club, I devised an elaborate plan to perform a stunt outside the front door. Everyone had to walk past me to get in, so in my mind, I was the real headliner.

I pull over my car, take out a brown paper bag and a black Sharpie, and write –

“No Trust Funds in the Trailer Park”

Then, I take out a white stack of paper and write a series of signs –

“Sorry I Don’t Have Rich Parents”

“85% of Stand Up Comedians are Men.”

“Let Women On Stage”

When I finish my art project, I start driving again, and I feel a huge surge of energy jolt through my body. The rush is so intense that I feel the need to strip down to my black bra and panties and start getting out of my car at red lights. I begin dancing around cars and running up and down lanes of traffic.

I hold up my signs. I run! I jump! I’ve never been this wired. Shockwaves of pure bliss are exploding out of my body. People honk, scream, and videotape me – I fly so high. I am in complete euphoria and losing all sense of “reality” by the minute.

When I arrive at the comedy club, I set up my props and make another sign that says “White Trash.” Then I cover my eyes with a blindfold and tape my mouth shut. I also string toilet paper over myself, draw a cross on my head, and write WWJD on my chest. Suddenly, I am becoming Jesus Christ and talking to God.

I have no idea where all of this biblical shit is coming from. I have never practiced religion or gone to church, but now I am acting like a Christian crusader… It only gets crazier as the night goes on.

People start lining up outside the club, and I begin the performance of my life. For three hours, I walk up and down the block of the comedy club. I can’t see or talk, but I hear everything.

As I prance around in my underwear, I start hallucinating and going into a full-blown manic episode for the first time in my life. I feel like drugs are pumping through my veins, and I can’t stop moving. I have never experienced anything like it. I feel invincible as I march around the sidewalk – I even use my microphone as a fake penis to jack off at jealous men.

..And I have officially lost all control.

Large groups of people start walking by and react in different ways. Some people get jealous that I have my creative ideas. Others say I am smart. Some say I am hot. Others film me. But there is one group I am not prepared for.

As I am standing with my microphone in my panties, a group of 4 guys walk by and say demeaning things. They speak at me, and my body begins to tremble. I become hot and panicked. I can’t see them, but their words are enough.

These random men have trauma triggered me to a horrific experience that happened to me 10 years ago when I was in college. One night, when I was 22 years old, I went out with a group of friends and got drugged at a dive bar. I ended up getting gang raped at a house two blocks from my apartment. I did everything I could to block out this memory forever, but now I relived it on the sidewalk like it was happening in the present.

I got flashbacks of them passing me around like a rag doll. My drugged-out body came in and out of consciousness. As I finally came to, I walked outside and threw up. I felt dirty, hurt, scared, and so confused. I told one of my girlfriends about it, and she urged me to go to the police. Instead, I tried to pretend like it never happened. And I did, until tonight.

After the open mic ended, I started to pack my belongings. I was still blindfolded when I bent over to pick up my paper bag. As I bent down to grab it, I slammed my forehead with full force on a metal water meter box on the concrete wall.

Fuck… Fuck… I whispered as I felt the warm, thick blood dripping down my eyeball. It was the most brutal blow I have ever experienced. I rubbed my face and finished grabbing my stuff. There were still people around, so I pretended that nothing had happened.

As I walked barefoot with a light blue pillowcase slung over my shoulder, I caught my reflection in a car side mirror, and I couldn’t believe what I saw.

“Holy Shit! I look so Badass.”

Bright red blood was dripping down my face, and there was black permanent marker smeared all over my chest. I started laughing hysterically and became obsessed with my reflection. In an instant, I went from only seeing the light to only seeing darkness. Every bad thing that has ever happened to me started to explode out of me like an active volcano. Except for the ash and lava, was all the trauma I pretended wasn’t there. At that moment, I had officially met my dark side.

That night, when I got home, I tried taking my sleeping medication, and it wouldn’t work. It usually knocks me out within an hour. Hours later, nothing. I was still wide awake. WTF…..I took another pill—still nothing. I tried smoking a heavy indica pot to pass out. I couldn’t get high. Still awake.

I didn’t know it at the time, but the blow to my head had caused a nasty concussion. My brain had become swollen, and my bipolar medicine couldn’t reach the receptors.

The following 5 days were a scary, confusing blur. I started having violent flashbacks of getting raped. Any lousy memory I had tried to tuck away was coming to the surface at an alarming rate. I was splitting different personalities and exhibiting bizarre behavior. I felt like 100 different men were raping me at the same time.

The trauma flashbacks were on a constant reel. They were abusing me as I lay drunk and unconscious in their bed, their car, their hotel, their boat. I am tied up. I can’t move. I am a cum dumpster for rapists.

Completely sleep-deprived and terrified, I started running around Portland in total psychosis. There was so much physical and mental pain coming out of my body I couldn’t sit still. For the first time in my life, I wanted to hurt myself physically.

I started drawing black lines all over my arms that resembled cut marks. Then I jumped out of my boyfriend’s moving car and tried to hitchhike with strangers. In my hysteria, I stood next to busy roads and pretended like the vehicles were running me over. My body was filled with so much rage and anger that I didn’t know how to stay still. One minute I was talking to God, and the next, I was trying to crash my car.

After nights of no sleep and almost constant violent memories of being raped by numerous men, my mom called the Portland Police Department, and they showed up in squad cars and an ambulance.

As the Police Officers and EMTs walked up the stairs to my apartment they told me that they were worried I had a brain bleed. I was so deranged that I started making jokes about the situation.

“Are you at least going to cuff me and make this fun?” I laughed.

“No, ma’am, we are not going to cuff you. You need to get into the ambulance so we can take you in for brain scans.”

I jumped into the ambulance with a paramedic named John, and the ambulance number was 3:16. I rubbed my eyes. Is this real? As they rolled me into the emergency room, things only got worse. I start seeing dead people go past me on gurneys. I saw my grandma, who died over 20 years ago. She rolls past me in the hospital twice.

What the actual fuck…

Then my dead dad and cousin came through, giving me awful messages about family members and friends. This experience was a first for me.

Yes, I have been black-out drunk and high as fuck on weed. But I have never really experimented with hard drugs or hallucinogens like acid or mushrooms. I have never tripped – Until now, in this hospital bed.

Amid my chaos, my boyfriend of 2 months shows up at the emergency room. He is beyond terrified. He sits next to me in the hospital bed, scared of who I have become. I don’t blame him. I couldn’t date me like this – There is never a honeymoon phase when you get into a relationship with me. It is a stress test to see if you can handle all this.

The brain scans come back clear, so they write me a script for lorazepam to help me sleep. The following 3 days, I wandered around Portland high on benzos and smoking cigarettes with houseless people. They were the only ones I felt comfortable with. I have little remembrance of what happened those days. I lost a lot of my belongings, and I almost lost my boyfriend, too.

During my manic episode, I had no idea how much my Concerta (pharmaceutical meth) had played into my manic episode and hysteria. I experienced Amphetamine Psychosis, and when I hit my head and got a concussion, things only got more serious. The little white energy pill I had once loved almost killed me – So I discontinued it for good.

My whole life, all I wanted to do was go fast. I loved anything that sped me up. Caffeine, diet pills, Adderall, workout supplements. All I wanted to do was be fit and go faster to “bypass my trauma.” It never worked.

Looking back, it exhausts me to think about how recklessly I tried to live. The only thing that saved my life over the past decade was my body constantly throwing me into depression to slow me down.

Throughout all this, the most challenging lesson for me to learn was that going Faster Won’t Fix it. Neither will distracting myself or getting busier. The only way for me to truly heal is to be honest about my issues, slow down, and deal with them head-on.

So I am.

Thanks for letting me share my truth –

Be Kind – I Love You.

See You Soon