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- This is Google's cache of http://documents.from.bz/note.txt. It is a snapshot of the page as it appeared on Jan 31, 2011 18:11:15 GMT. The current page could have changed in the meantime.
- Text-only version
- I have the urge to declare my sanity and justify my actions, but I
- assume I'll never be able to convince anyone that this was the right
- decision. Maybe it's true that anyone who does this is insane by
- definition, but I can at least explain my reasoning. I considered not
- writing any of this because of how personal it is, but I like tying up
- loose ends and don't want people to wonder why I did this. Since I've
- never spoken to anyone about what happened to me, people would likely
- draw the wrong conclusions.
- My first memories as a child are of being raped, repeatedly. This has
- affected every aspect of my life. This darkness, which is the only way I
- can describe it, has followed me like a fog, but at times intensified
- and overwhelmed me, usually triggered by a distinct situation. In
- kindergarten I couldn't use the bathroom and would stand petrified
- whenever I needed to, which started a trend of awkward and unexplained
- social behavior. The damage that was done to my body still prevents me
- from using the bathroom normally, but now it's less of a physical
- impediment than a daily reminder of what was done to me.
- This darkness followed me as I grew up. I remember spending hours
- playing with legos, having my world consist of me and a box of cold,
- plastic blocks. Just waiting for everything to end. It's the same thing
- I do now, but instead of legos it's surfing the web or reading or
- listening to a baseball game. Most of my life has been spent feeling
- dead inside, waiting for my body to catch up.
- At times growing up I would feel inconsolable rage, but I never
- connected this to what happened until puberty. I was able to keep the
- darkness at bay for a few hours at a time by doing things that required
- intense concentration, but it would always come back. Programming
- appealed to me for this reason. I was never particularly fond of
- computers or mathematically inclined, but the temporary peace it would
- provide was like a drug. But the darkness always returned and built up
- something like a tolerance, because programming has become less and less
- of a refuge.
- The darkness is with me nearly every time I wake up. I feel like a grime
- is covering me. I feel like I'm trapped in a contimated body that no
- amount of washing will clean. Whenever I think about what happened I
- feel manic and itchy and can't concentrate on anything else. It
- manifests itself in hours of eating or staying up for days at a time or
- sleeping for sixteen hours straight or week long programming binges or
- constantly going to the gym. I'm exhausted from feeling like this every
- hour of every day.
- Three to four nights a week I have nightmares about what happened. It
- makes me avoid sleep and constantly tired, because sleeping with what
- feels like hours of nightmares is not restful. I wake up sweaty and
- furious. I'm reminded every morning of what was done to me and the
- control it has over my life.
- I've never been able to stop thinking about what happened to me and this
- hampered my social interactions. I would be angry and lost in thought
- and then be interrupted by someone saying "Hi" or making small talk,
- unable to understand why I seemed cold and distant. I walked around,
- viewing the outside world from a distant portal behind my eyes, unable
- to perform normal human niceties. I wondered what it would be like to
- take to other people without what happened constantly on my mind, and I
- wondered if other people had similar experiences that they were better
- able to mask.
- Alcohol was also something that let me escape the darkness. It would
- always find me later, though, and it was always angry that I managed to
- escape and it made me pay. Many of the irresponsible things I did were
- the result of the darkness. Obviously I'm responsible for every decision
- and action, including this one, but there are reasons why things happen
- the way they do.
- Alcohol and other drugs provided a way to ignore the realities of my
- situation. It was easy to spend the night drinking and forget that I had
- no future to look forward to. I never liked what alcohol did to me, but
- it was better than facing my existence honestly. I haven't touched
- alcohol or any other drug in over seven months (and no drugs or alcohol
- will be involved when I do this) and this has forced me to evaluate my
- life in an honest and clear way. There's no future here. The darkness
- will always be with me.
- I used to think if I solved some problem or achieved some goal, maybe he
- would leave. It was comforting to identify tangible issues as the source
- of my problems instead of something that I'll never be able to change. I
- thought that if I got into to a good college, or a good grad school, or
- lost weight, or went to the gym nearly every day for a year, or created
- programs that millions of people used, or spent a summer or California
- or New York or published papers that I was proud of, then maybe I would
- feel some peace and not be constantly haunted and unhappy. But nothing I
- did made a dent in how depressed I was on a daily basis and nothing was
- in any way fulfilling. I'm not sure why I ever thought that would change
- anything.
- I didn't realize how deep a hold he had on me and my life until my
- first relationship. I stupidly assumed that no matter how the darkness
- affected me personally, my romantic relationships would somehow be
- separated and protected. Growing up I viewed my future relationships as
- a possible escape from this thing that haunts me every day, but I began
- to realize how entangled it was with every aspect of my life and how it
- is never going to release me. Instead of being an escape, relationships
- and romantic contact with other people only intensified everything about
- him that I couldn't stand. I will never be able to have a relationship
- in which he is not the focus, affecting every aspect of my romantic
- interactions.
- Relationships always started out fine and I'd be able to ignore him for
- a few weeks. But as we got closer emotionally the darkness would return
- and every night it'd be me, her and the darkness in a black and gruesome
- threesome. He would surround me and penetrate me and the more we did the
- more intense it became. It made me hate being touched, because as long
- as we were separated I could view her like an outsider viewing something
- good and kind and untainted. Once we touched, the darkness would
- envelope her too and take her over and the evil inside me would surround
- her. I always felt like I was infecting anyone I was with.
- Relationships didn't work. No one I dated was the right match, and I
- thought that maybe if I found the right person it would overwhelm him.
- Part of me knew that finding the right person wouldn't help, so I became
- interested in girls who obviously had no interest in me. For a while I
- thought I was gay. I convinced myself that it wasn't the darkness at
- all, but rather my orientation, because this would give me control over
- why things didn't feel "right". The fact that the darkness affected
- sexual matters most intensely made this idea make some sense and I
- convinced myself of this for a number of years, starting in college
- after my first relationship ended. I told people I was gay (at Trinity,
- not at Princeton), even though I wasn't attracted to men and kept
- finding myself interested in girls. Because if being gay wasn't the
- answer, then what was? People thought I was avoiding my orientation, but
- I was actually avoiding the truth, which is that while I'm straight, I
- will never be content with anyone. I know now that the darkness will
- never leave.
- Last spring I met someone who was unlike anyone else I'd ever met.
- Someone who showed me just how well two people could get along and how
- much I could care about another human being. Someone I know I could be
- with and love for the rest of my life, if I weren't so fucked up.
- Amazingly, she liked me. She liked the shell of the man the darkness had
- left behind. But it didn't matter because I couldn't be alone with her.
- It was never just the two of us, it was always the three of us: her, me
- and the darkness. The closer we got, the more intensely I'd feel the
- darkness, like some evil mirror of my emotions. All the closeness we had
- and I loved was complemented by agony that I couldn't stand, from him. I
- realized that I would never be able to give her, or anyone, all of me or
- only me. She could never have me without the darkness and evil inside
- me. I could never have just her, without the darkness being a part of
- all of our interactions. I will never be able to be at peace or content
- or in a healthy relationship. I realized the futility of the romantic
- part of my life. If I had never met her, I would have realized this as
- soon as I met someone else who I meshed similarly well with. It's likely
- that things wouldn't have worked out with her and we would have broken
- up (with our relationship ending, like the majority of relationships do)
- even if I didn't have this problem, since we only dated for a short
- time. But I will face exactly the same problems with the darkness with
- anyone else. Despite my hopes, love and compatability is not enough.
- Nothing is enough. There's no way I can fix this or even push the
- darkness down far enough to make a relationship or any type of intimacy
- feasible.
- So I watched as things fell apart between us. I had put an explicit time
- limit on our relationship, since I knew it couldn't last because of the
- darkness and didn't want to hold her back, and this caused a variety of
- problems. She was put in an unnatural situation that she never should
- have been a part of. It must have been very hard for her, not knowing
- what was actually going on with me, but this is not something I've ever
- been able to talk about with anyone. Losing her was very hard for me as
- well. Not because of her (I got over our relationship relatively
- quickly), but because of the realization that I would never have another
- relationship and because it signified the last true, exclusive personal
- connection I could ever have. This wasn't apparent to other people,
- because I could never talk about the real reasons for my sadness. I was
- very sad in the summer and fall, but it was not because of her, it was
- because I will never escape the darkness with anyone. She was so loving
- and kind to me and gave me everything I could have asked for under the
- circumstances. I'll never forget how much happiness she brought me in
- those briefs moments when I could ignore the darkness. I had originally
- planned to kill myself last winter but never got around to it. (Parts of
- this letter were written over a year ago, other parts days before doing
- this.) It was wrong of me to involve myself in her life if this were a
- possibility and I should have just left her alone, even though we only
- dated for a few months and things ended a long time ago. She's just one
- more person in a long list of people I've hurt.
- I could spend pages talking about the other relationships I've had that
- were ruined because of my problems and my confusion related to the
- darkness. I've hurt so many great people because of who I am and my
- inability to experience what needs to be experienced. All I can say is
- that I tried to be honest with people about what I thought was true.
- I've spent my life hurting people. Today will be the last time.
- I've told different people a lot of things, but I've never told anyone
- about what happened to me, ever, for obvious reasons. It took me a while
- to realize that no matter how close you are to someone or how much they
- claim to love you, people simply cannot keep secrets. I learned this a
- few years ago when I thought I was gay and told people. The more harmful
- the secret, the juicier the gossip and the more likely you are to be
- betrayed. People don't care about their word or what they've promised,
- they just do whatever the fuck they want and justify it later. It feels
- incredibly lonely to realize you can never share something with someone
- and have it be between just the two of you. I don't blame anyone in
- particular, I guess it's just how people are. Even if I felt like this
- is something I could have shared, I have no interest in being part of a
- friendship or relationship where the other person views me as the
- damaged and contaminated person that I am. So even if I were able to
- trust someone, I probably would not have told them about what happened
- to me. At this point I simply don't care who knows.
- I feel an evil inside me. An evil that makes me want to end life. I need
- to stop this. I need to make sure I don't kill someone, which is not
- something that can be easily undone. I don't know if this is related to
- what happened to me or something different. I recognize the irony of
- killing myself to prevent myself from killing someone else, but this
- decision should indicate what I'm capable of.
- So I've realized I will never escape the darkness or misery associated
- with it and I have a responsibility to stop myself from physically
- harming others.
- I'm just a broken, miserable shell of a human being. Being molested has
- defined me as a person and shaped me as a human being and it has made me
- the monster I am and there's nothing I can do to escape it. I don't know
- any other existence. I don't know what life feels like where I'm apart
- from any of this. I actively despise the person I am. I just feel
- fundamentally broken, almost non-human. I feel like an animal that woke
- up one day in a human body, trying to make sense of a foreign world,
- living among creatures it doesn't understand and can't connect with.
- I have accepted that the darkness will never allow me to be in a
- relationship. I will never go to sleep with someone in my arms, feeling
- the comfort of their hands around me. I will never know what
- uncontimated intimacy is like. I will never have an exclusive bond with
- someone, someone who can be the recipient of all the love I have to
- give. I will never have children, and I wanted to be a father so badly.
- I think I would have made a good dad. And even if I had fought through
- the darkness and married and had children all while being unable to feel
- intimacy, I could have never done that if suicide were a possibility. I
- did try to minimize pain, although I know that this decision will hurt
- many of you. If this hurts you, I hope that you can at least forget
- about me quickly.
- There's no point in identifying who molested me, so I'm just going to
- leave it at that. I doubt the word of a dead guy with no evidence about
- something that happened over twenty years ago would have much sway.
- You may wonder why I didn't just talk to a professional about this. I've
- seen a number of doctors since I was a teenager to talk about other
- issues and I'm positive that another doctor would not have helped. I was
- never given one piece of actionable advice, ever. More than a few spent
- a large part of the session reading their notes to remember who I was.
- And I have no interest in talking about being raped as a child, both
- because I know it wouldn't help and because I have no confidence it
- would remain secret. I know the legal and practical limits of
- doctor/patient confidentiality, growing up in a house where we'd hear
- stories about the various mental illnesses of famous people, stories
- that were passed down through generations. All it takes is one doctor
- who thinks my story is interesting enough to share or a doctor who
- thinks it's her right or responsibility to contact the authorities and
- have me identify the molestor (justifying her decision by telling
- herself that someone else might be in danger). All it takes is a single
- doctor who violates my trust, just like the "friends" who I told I was
- gay did, and everything would be made public and I'd be forced to live
- in a world where people would know how fucked up I am. And yes, I
- realize this indicates that I have severe trust issues, but they're
- based on a large number of experiences with people who have shown a
- profound disrepect for their word and the privacy of others.
- People say suicide is selfish. I think it's selfish to ask people to
- continue living painful and miserable lives, just so you possibly won't
- feel sad for a week or two. Suicide may be a permanent solution to a
- temporary problem, but it's also a permanent solution to a ~23 year-old
- problem that grows more intense and overwhelming every day.
- Some people are just dealt bad hands in this life. I know many people
- have it worse than I do, and maybe I'm just not a strong person, but I
- really did try to deal with this. I've tried to deal with this every day
- for the last 23 years and I just can't fucking take it anymore.
- I often wonder what life must be like for other people. People who
- can feel the love from others and give it back unadulterated, people who
- can experience sex as an intimate and joyous experience, people who can
- experience the colors and happenings of this world without constant
- misery. I wonder who I'd be if things had been different or if I were a
- stronger person. It sounds pretty great.
- I'm prepared for death. I'm prepared for the pain and I am ready to no
- longer exist. Thanks to the strictness of New Jersey gun laws this will
- probably be much more painful than it needs to be, but what can you do.
- My only fear at this point is messing something up and surviving.
- ---
- I'd also like to address my family, if you can call them that. I despise
- everything they stand for and I truly hate them, in a non-emotional,
- dispassionate and what I believe is a healthy way. The world will be a
- better place when they're dead--one with less hatred and intolerance.
- If you're unfamiliar with the situation, my parents are fundamentalist
- Christians who kicked me out of their house and cut me off financially
- when I was 19 because I refused to attend seven hours of church a week.
- They live in a black and white reality they've constructed for
- themselves. They partition the world into good and evil and survive
- by hating everything they fear or misunderstand and calling it love.
- They don't understand that good and decent people exist all around us,
- "saved" or not, and that evil and cruel people occupy a large percentage
- of their church. They take advantage of people looking for hope by
- teaching them to practice the same hatred they practice.
- A random example:
- "I am personally convinced that if a Muslim truly believes and obeys the
- Koran, he will be a terrorist." - George Zeller, August 24, 2010.
- If you choose to follow a religion where, for example, devout Catholics
- who are trying to be good people are all going to Hell but child
- molestors go to Heaven (as long as they were "saved" at some point),
- that's your choice, but it's fucked up. Maybe a God who operates by
- those rules does exist. If so, fuck Him.
- Their church was always more important than the members of their family
- and they happily sacrificed whatever necessary in order to satisfy
- their contrived beliefs about who they should be.
- I grew up in a house where love was proxied through a God I could never
- believe in. A house where the love of music with any sort of a beat was
- literally beaten out of me. A house full of hatred and intolerance, run
- by two people who were experts at appearing kind and warm when others
- were around. Parents who tell an eight year old that his grandmother is
- going to Hell because she's Catholic. Parents who claim not to be racist
- but then talk about the horrors of miscegenation. I could list hundreds
- of other examples, but it's tiring.
- Since being kicked out, I've interacted with them in relatively normal
- ways. I talk to them on the phone like nothing happened. I'm not sure
- why. Maybe because I like pretending I have a family. Maybe I like
- having people I can talk to about what's been going on in my life.
- Whatever the reason, it's not real and it feels like a sham. I should
- have never allowed this reconnection to happen.
- I wrote the above a while ago, and I do feel like that much of the time.
- At other times, though, I feel less hateful. I know my parents honestly
- believe the crap they believe in. I know that my mom, at least, loved me
- very much and tried her best. One reason I put this off for so long is
- because I know how much pain it will cause her. She has been sad since
- she found out I wasn't "saved", since she believes I'm going to Hell,
- which is not a sadness for which I am responsible. That was never going
- to change, and presumably she believes the state of my physical body is
- much less important than the state of my soul. Still, I cannot
- intellectually justify this decision, knowing how much it will hurt her.
- Maybe my ability to take my own life, knowing how much pain it will
- cause, shows that I am a monster who doesn't deserve to live. All I know
- is that I can't deal with this pain any longer and I'm am truly sorry I
- couldn't wait until my family and everyone I knew died so this could be
- done without hurting anyone. For years I've wished that I'd be hit by a
- bus or die while saving a baby from drowning so my death might be more
- acceptable, but I was never so lucky.
- ---
- To those of you who have shown me love, thank you for putting up with
- all my shittiness and moodiness and arbitrariness. I was never the
- person I wanted to be. Maybe without the darkness I would have been a
- better person, maybe not. I did try to be a good person, but I realize I
- never got very far.
- I'm sorry for the pain this causes. I really do wish I had another
- option. I hope this letter explains why I needed to do this. If you
- can't understand this decision, I hope you can at least forgive me.
- Bill Zeller
- ---
- Please save this letter and repost it if gets deleted. I don't want
- people to wonder why I did this. I disseminated it more widely than I
- might have otherwise because I'm worried that my family might try to
- restrict access to it. I don't mind if this letter is made public. In
- fact, I'd prefer it be made public to people being unable to read it and
- drawing their own conclusions.
- Feel free to republish this letter, but only if it is reproduced in its
- entirety.
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