Craigslist Confessional

by Helena Dea Bala

  It snuck up on me—that feeling of not being whole anymore, not equal, of being less than a man. This homecoming was heartbreaking, and I wondered if I’d have been better off dead. That tiny basement room closed in on me then. I looked down at my legs and cried for the first time. While I was in the hospital and in recovery, I’d kept telling myself that things would turn around once I was home. But seeing what home had become broke my heart. It felt like a final loss of hope.

  I wouldn’t really say that I’m over it yet, although it’s been a few years, but I guess I’m through the worst of it. I’ve tried dealing with it through prayer, therapy, and humor. Sometimes they work, sometimes not. It’s obvious that I’m a military amputee, so when people ask me what happened—and to be fair, they seldom do—I just tell them that they fell off and I’m waiting for them to grow back. Because nobody really wants to hear the truth.

  Through cognitive behavioral therapy, I’ve learned what to do when the thoughts begin to spiral. I can notice when I’m about to go down the rabbit hole, and most times, I can stop myself. But when I can’t, I know it’s going to be a dark few days. I don’t struggle with PTSD anymore so I can do things—like driving without having to worry that I’ll get triggered. That’s a big part of my recovery, and I’m lucky because it seems that I haven’t had it as rough as most guys I know. Mostly, therapy has helped me not be angry anymore. I used to feel that I had given up so much—for what? For what? For what? But I’ve stopped asking. All I need to know is that it happened, and I’ve made my peace with it. A lot of people I served with feel that they were wronged, cheated. It is what it is.

  I read the Bible and self-help books. I listen to Joel Osteen. Sometimes I call into Prayerline to talk to other people and tell them how I’m feeling, if I’m particularly low. I go to church a lot. Really, I do anything that helps me feel less alone. What has hurt most since coming home has been not feeling loved. Back when I was in a wheelchair, and then in a walker, and then on crutches, I used to fall down a lot. My wife would just stand there and watch me struggle on the floor. She never helped. When she’d been drinking and I’d fall, she’d laugh at me.

  It’s difficult. I feel partly responsible for what has happened to our marriage. The distance was hard on us. The injuries, even harder. It can’t have been simple to raise our daughters alone when I was away. I’m not trying to blame her. But I guess my sacrifice would seem more bearable if it felt appreciated by someone. And not in a “Thank you for your service” type of way. But really. It hurt to see my things in the basement. It hurt. I thought I was coming home to a family, but pieces of us got lost along the way, too.

  I’m not sure what will become of us. On my part, I’d like to wait until our youngest goes off to college and then I’ll give my wife a divorce if she wants it. My daughters keep me going. They’re a big bright spot in my life, and I just don’t want their lives to be disrupted by this. They’ve been through enough.

  When I was overseas—I served two tours, and I was in Afghanistan for a total of eighteen months—I’d think about why I was there. When all you see around you is war and destruction and people dying, you do a lot of deep thinking. The mercenary nature of being a soldier can make the killing feel impersonal, so I needed to hold on to something so that I could hold on to my humanity. I needed a way to ground myself so that I didn’t lose my mind out there. And I always held on to my family and my home, the way that I imagined them: my wife and our daughters in the backyard with the sun shining on them.

  Damon, fifties

  Once, a very long time ago, I had a good job, a loving family, and a white picket fence. I started my own business, worked hard, and collected the toys that the wealthy have—a boat, a mansion, a few Harleys. I worried about the things you probably worry about—the stress of work every Monday morning, the bills that kept piling up, and the fact that the more we had, the more it didn’t quite seem like enough.

  Then, following the financial crisis in 2007–2008, I lost my business, my family, and my home. I lost everything.

  You know what they say: when it rains, it pours. The same week that our business went under, my wife’s younger sister, Sarah, was killed in a tragic car accident. She was dating a naval cadet who was set to graduate the next day. They were on their way back from the ball before graduation when he lost control of the car and crashed. Sarah died in the wreck. He was able to get to the highway to flag down help, but he was struck and killed instantly. I was depressed, and we needed money and a car; I was looking for a job, any job, to pay off our bills and debt. I worked anything I could get my hands on—lawn care, mechanic, pawnshop—and drove a dead woman’s car around all day.

  After months of trying to dig myself out of a financial hole, I gave up and started making some very bad decisions. For one, I started sleeping with my landlord. She was married, and her husband was a cop. But she was attractive, and she made herself very available, so it was easy to make irrational choices. The first time, she asked me to help her move some things into her beach house. She came on to me—she was very aggressive—and I didn’t resist. She wanted to leave the window open so that people could watch us. I let her do whatever she wanted. She was exciting and made me feel alive, and for those few hours that we were together, I wasn’t focusing on my problems. After fourteen years of sobriety, she got me drinking again. We started going to bars every night. Twice, I rode the Harley to Key West and, another time, to Bourbon Street in New Orleans—drunk and high. My wife found out eventually, of course, and she left me.

  I don’t blame her. Things got really hard for us, and I wasn’t a partner to her. I didn’t deal with it well. We needed a steady hand at the helm, and I was out cavorting. I thought it was situational depression, but the doctors diagnosed me with bipolar disorder, too, and put me on medication. I was very active and social during this time, but I also felt dulled, lethargic, and sleepy. What they say is right: on the medication, the lows don’t feel so low, but the highs don’t feel quite as high, either. It was like draining the color out of a painting: the essence is still there and perhaps it’s still beautiful, but the playfulness—the joy—is gone. So I got off the meds and let myself feel everything. Life was definitely broken.

  At my lowest, I was certain there was only one way out. I wanted one permanent, final solution. My uncle had done it years before. We worked together for fifteen years and we were very close. He retired, and I thought things were going well for him—we even talked about buying investment properties together. About a month after he retired, I received a phone call that he had committed suicide. The way he did it was horrific. He drove to a remote area, got into the back seat of his vehicle, placed two five-gallon cans of gas next to him, and lit them on fire. The explosion was very big. I visited the site and there were car parts scattered everywhere. They told me that there wasn’t very much of him left to identify. What a way to go.

  It was Halloween night, and I was drunk. And as I swiped the rope like a rosary through my fingers, I thought about my wife or kids being called to the scene to identify me. I thought about the person who would discover me hanging from some tree, and about how maybe that would mess them up, too. I thought about the permanence of the decision—am I thinking clearly? I’d come back to it time and again, for months. The draw of suicide didn’t seem like something that would just… go away. I’d decided on hanging because it was a sure thing. Many years before, in better times, I’d read about this artist who had committed suicide by taking pills and slashing his wrists—or was it taking pills and shooting himself? Anyways, the point was that he wasn’t messing around—this wasn’t a call for help—he definitely wanted out. And it’s strange that the story of this guy’s suicide always stayed with me—something about it left such an impression, almost like my mind was bookmarking it because maybe I knew that someday I’d meet a similar fate. There’s no time for second thoughts once that noose is tight on the neck. But I had made up my mind. I wanted out, too.

  I�
��d spent a few hours that day poring over my financial records. What the market crash hadn’t taken, I had spent on booze and weed and women. The only thing left was my life insurance policy, which fortunately for my family was pretty hefty. I read the fine print a million times: if I committed suicide, my family would still get the money as long as the policy was taken out more than three years ago. I looked at the date of the policy again, and again, and again, and again.

  As soon as I’d confirm that I’d taken it out in August 2003, I’d panic and go back to check. I even thought about asking a lawyer to look the suicide clause over but was afraid of setting off a red flag. I just kept thinking that it would be a shame to kill myself and then have my family not get any money just on a technicality. Then my life would really have been pointless.

  I played with the rope some more and looked around the empty parking lot of a shopping center. There was a patch of woods in the back of the lot, and I planned on finding a sturdy tree. I’d packed on some weight in the last few years. I thought about the insurance policy again and had to exercise some restraint to not go back to the office and check the dates one last time. Then, I reached into the back seat and grabbed my stool, opened the car door, and walked toward the woods.

  That moment of decision will always stand out to me as one of my clearest, most crystallized memories. I felt no fear at all; on the contrary, I walked with a sense of hope. It was the first time I had thought of the future without feeling doomed. But I also knew myself well enough to know that I was a fickle man in life—a man filled with doubts and weaknesses, and that I needed to do this quickly. Even though I was resolute, I still feared that something would change my mind.

  I wanted to be somewhere in the middle of the woods—not so close to the lot that people would see me immediately, but also not so far back that it would take a while to discover my body. I didn’t want to stink the place up, and I didn’t want animals to find me first. I walked for about a minute, and then took out my phone and activated the flashlight feature.

  I felt oddly calm, and I studied the trees with a matter-of-factness. It didn’t take me long to find the perfect branch and tie the knot I’d looked up on a YouTube tutorial. In the office, I’d spent about an hour practicing the knot because I read that hanging yourself was a tricky business. If done incorrectly, it could result in some serious pain. And I didn’t want to feel pain anymore.

  I stood on the stool and put the rope around my own neck. Then I fiddled on my phone to deactivate the flashlight. I didn’t want people to see it through the woods and interrupt me before I was done.

  As I held the phone, the screen lit up and my daughter’s name flashed across, pulsating in the darkness. I started crying in the sort of inconsolable way I’d never let my family see, and then, when I’d composed myself and sobered up enough, I called 911 and checked myself into a psychiatric hospital. They gave me Seroquel to calm me down, and I woke up the next morning in a fog. I thought, How in the hell did I get here, in a nuthouse on Halloween? I tried to leave, but they told me that you can’t leave once you check yourself in. It’s like that “Hotel California” song.

  My daughter saved my life that night. I’ve never told her.

  My wife and I are back together. We go to therapy and are working on our marriage. For the most part, we are happy. She has very little sex drive—that’s the only thing that is lacking. She only does it because she knows that I need it. During the time that we were separated and I was working on myself, we started “dating” each other again. That’s the best sex we’ve ever had. Sometimes I wish we could go back to that, but then I think of the stability we have now, and I can do without the crazy sex. It’s interesting how your perspective changes.

  We moved to a different state, far away from the people I used to know, and started over. I’m really ashamed of how I felt and what I got so close to doing, so it’s hard to face people. My friends all have their own troubles, I’m sure. But you just don’t talk about these things. It’s easier to start over where nobody knows your past. I don’t think about suicide anymore, just how close I got to it.

  We bought a nice Cape Cod—it’s just enough space for the two of us—no luxuries, and that’s okay. I talk to my daughters every day. I work a nine-to-five. I had my private pilot’s license for a few years, I took up skydiving, and I became a fourth-degree Knight of Columbus. In my spare time, I make art—little personalized tchotchkes for people. I sell them on Etsy. And I gotta tell you, I’m happy. Happier than I’ve ever been. Life sure is strange.

  Kate, forties

  For as long as I can remember, I’ve slept hard. I always chalked it up to having a physical day job. I work construction in one-hundred-degree weather; that’s a man’s job if there ever was one. So I figured being extra tired was just part of who I am. When I had my first baby, I told the nurse not to hand him to me.

  “But the baby needs to bond,” she said, perplexed. “Don’t worry, your maternal instinct will kick right in.” I insisted: no. “My sleep instinct is stronger.”

  I remember parts of the day it happened. My breast milk was leaking, and the wetness of my shirt must have woken me up. I remember going to get a diaper. He was on the bed in between my legs, and when I went to change him, I noticed that his lips were blue. They could have been blue before that; I don’t know. He wasn’t breathing. I called 911, then I went back to him and did CPR. When the firefighters came, it didn’t seem like they’d been rushing. I guess they thought that the baby was already dead. I remember that they were looking for a baggie for his oxygen, but they didn’t have infant sizes. I remember the wallpaper in our kitchen, and the faces of the firefighters as they worked on his tiny little body on the kitchen table. They got a pulse in his leg, and I remember the little sticky EKG pads on it, almost larger than the leg itself. They were there for an hour, and it was touch-and-go. As they left, the firefighters apologized that they couldn’t save my son. They said that he died of SIDS. My son was seven days old.

  The coroner’s report said that he died of “asphyxiation due to overlay.” I had always thought that it was SIDS, because that’s what the firefighters told me. But then, I never read my son’s death certificate until I got in trouble. When the coroner was called in as an expert witness, he said that in his opinion, I had done nothing to purposefully harm the baby.

  “It’s a matter of opinion,” they said, about the decision to change the cause of death.

  It took a while, but I moved on with my life, broken as could be. I started dating someone. I wasn’t planning on having another kid, not so soon. But I got pregnant, and when she was born, we named her Mary. I was scared of being a mother to Mary, especially after what had happened with my son. I didn’t want to be alone with her. She seemed so little and fragile. I also got pregnant with my third very soon after we had Mary—Irish twins, as they call them. I figured, might as well get it over with and have them close in age.

  It was night, I guess maybe seven or eight. I fed her, changed her, and swaddled her, and we were on the bed together. I was talking to her and playing with her, and I was wide awake. Ronnie, my boyfriend at the time, came to bed at one point, and then he got back up to do laundry. I guess the movement of the bed must have rolled her closer to me. We had been in the same position for hours when I woke up, again, from my breast milk leaking into my shirt.

  Ronnie was in the front room, watching Survivor. “I thought about moving you, but you both looked so peaceful,” he told me later. I had told him to make sure that I was not alone with the baby, to make sure that I didn’t fall asleep holding her. I’d said, “She’ll end up on the floor, and I’ll know nothing of it.” I had told him what had happened with my son, so he should have known better. I should have known better. But it seemed like I couldn’t control when I went to sleep—like there was no intervening period of sleepiness or tiredness at all. I’d realize that I’d fallen asleep only once I woke up.

  After Mary died, I moved in with my mother,
who lived in a different state. I tried to focus on raising my daughter Jamie. I was honest with my doctor right after Jamie was born; I told him that I needed help and that I was having issues with my sleep. Apparently, I don’t have a maternal instinct. Instead of helping me, he called CPS, who called the detectives in my home state, who called CPS back and told them that I was a baby killer. So CPS showed up at my door, and there was a cop with them. They stormed into the house and searched it for Jamie: “Where is the baby? We have to see the baby right now. Right now. We have to know where the baby is.”

  They gave temporary custody to my mother. Here’s the kicker: my mother lived with me. So they gave temporary custody to my mother, which meant my daughter would live in my house, with me. I just don’t get it. If you think I’m a danger, then what the hell? It’s just on paper. In the court documents, it read: “Daughter was taken away from her immediately.” No, she wasn’t! I breastfed her until she was eight months old.

  The cops showed up at the door one day—Jamie was around eight months old—and I was extradited back to my home state. The people in charge of transporting me told everyone in the van that I had killed my two children. I was on my period at the time, and they refused to provide me with a change of pad, so by the time we got to the prison, I had bled through my clothes.

  “Baby killer,” one of the female guards said as I got off the van.

  I was assigned a public defender who insisted that I have a sleep study done at a medical center. I got a full night’s sleep the night before and went to the center early in the morning. They hooked me up to these machines, and I was there all day and night. The study found that it takes my body less than two seconds to fall into REM sleep. I was diagnosed with severe narcolepsy.

  I was officially charged with two counts of first-degree murder, special circumstance. That means that if I were to have been found guilty of murder, I would have been eligible for the death penalty or, at the very least, life in prison without the possibility of parole. Time and time again, the charges would get dropped and the DA would bring new charges. He and the detective on the case really had it out against me, thought that I had murdered my children.