Bill Zeller was a talented programmer whose work we’ve featured on Lifehacker. He took his own life on Sunday and left an evidence that I feel it’s important you read.

Zeller was a victim of sexual and psychological abuse. It’s clear from his writing that the abuse left him unable to interface with the sector whatsoever that didn’t leave him feeling he was too sullied to have an analogous experiences that he thought others had. He had a self-described ” darkness” , which despite his prostration it’s clear he handled more ably than perhaps he ever realized.

Programming was a solace, but only temporarily. Zeller never felt he could escape the things that had happened to him because he carried his torment with him everywhere.

I think an individual has the perfect to live or end their life as they choose. If Zeller really felt that suicide was his only option, so be it. But as someone who has had similar experiences in my own life, I need to claim to anyone else who feels the style Zeller felt: You could’t escape your past. Not completely. But you could focus on it. You could contextualize it. You’ll be able to learn to prepare for the times after you feel love it’s not even in your radar and then it totally broadsides you.

And you’ll be able to consult with people. You actually can.

Bill Zeller

I have the urge to declare my sanity and justify my actions, but I suppose I’ll never manage to convince anyone that this was the perfect decision. Maybe it’s true that any one who does this is often insane by definition, but I will be able to at the least explain my reasoning. I considered not writing any of this due to how personal it truly is , but I admire 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 incorrect conclusions.

My first memories as a toddler are of being raped, repeatedly. This has affected every aspect of my life. This darkness, that is the only real way I will describe it, has followed me like a fog, but sometimes intensified and overwhelmed me, usually triggered by a unique situation. In kindergarten I couldn’t use the toilet and would stand petrified whenever I wanted to, which started a trend of awkward and unexplained social behavior. The wear that was done to my body still prevents me from using the toilet normally, but now it’s less of a physical impediment than a regular reminder of what was done to me.

This darkness followed me as I grew up. I remember spending hours twiddling with legos, having my world include me and a box of cold, plastic blocks. Just anticipating everything to end. It’s an identical thing I do now, but as opposed to legos it’s surfing the internet or reading or listening to a baseball game. Most of my life has been spent feeling dead inside, awaiting my body to catch up.

At times growing up i’d feel inconsolable rage, but I never connected this to what happened until puberty. I was in a position to keep the darkness at bay for a couple of hours at a time by doing things that required intense concentration, however it would always get back. Programming appealed to me thus. I was never particularly fond of computers or mathematically inclined, but the temporary peace it should provide was like a drug. But the darkness always returned and built up something like a tolerance, because programming has become less and no more of a refuge.

The darkness is with me nearly whenever I wake up. I believe like a grime is covering me. I believe like I’m trapped in a contimated body that no amount of washing will clean. Whenever I believe about what happened I think manic and itchy and might’t specialize in the rest. 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 everyday.

Three to four nights per week I even have nightmares about what happened. It makes me avoid sleep and constantly tired, because sleeping with what seems like hours of nightmares will not be 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 ready to stop brooding about what happened to me and this hampered my social interactions. I might be angry and lost in thought and then be interrupted by someone saying ” Hi” or making small talk, unable to grasp why I seemed cold and distant. I walked around, viewing the skin world from a distant portal behind my eyes, unable to perform normal human niceties. I wondered what it might be want to take to other folks without what happened constantly on my mind, and I wondered if people had similar experiences that they were better ready to mask.

Alcohol was also something that allow me escape the darkness. It will always find me later, though, and it was always angry that I managed to escape and it made me pay. Among the irresponsible things I did were the outcome of the darkness. Obviously I’m chargeable for every decision and action, including this one, but there are the reason why things happen the way in which they do.

Alcohol and other drugs provided the way to ignore the realities of my situation. It was easy to spend the night drinking and forget that I had no future to appear forward to. I never liked what alcohol did to me, however 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 likely be involved after I do that) and this has forced me to judge my life in a good 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 depart. It was comforting to identify tangible issues as the source of my problems as opposed to something that I’ll never be capable to change. I assumed that if I got into to an outstanding college, or a decent grad school, or lost weight, or went to the gym nearly on a daily basis for a year, or created programs that millions of folks used, or spent a summer or California or Big Apple or published papers that I was happy with , then maybe I might feel some peace and not be constantly haunted and unhappy. But nothing I did made a dent in how depressed I was every day and nothing was by any means fulfilling. I’m unsure why I ever thought that could 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 irrespective of how the darkness affected me personally, my romantic relationships would somehow be separated and protected. Growing up I viewed my future relationships as a probable escape from this thing that haunts me daily, but I began to achieve how entangled it was with every aspect of my life and how it’s never going to release me. In preference to being an escape, relationships and romantic contact with people only intensified everything about him that I couldn’t stand. I’m going to never be capable of have a relationship during which he’s not the focal point, affecting every aspect of my romantic interactions.

Relationships always began fine and I’d have the capacity to ignore him for a couple of 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 provided that we were separated I may view her like an intruder viewing something good and type and untainted. After 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. Nobody I dated was the precise match, and I presumed that maybe if I found the appropriate person it’d overwhelm him. Component to me knew that finding the best person wouldn’t help, so I got interested in girls who obviously had no real interest in me. For ages I assumed I was gay. I convinced myself that it wasn’t the darkness at all, but rather my orientation, because this may give me control over why things didn’t feel ” right” . The indisputable fact that the darkness affected sexual matters most intensely made this concept make some sense and I convinced myself of this for a variety of years, starting in college after my first relationship ended. I told people I was gay (at Trinity, not at Princeton), although I wasn’t drawn to men and kept finding myself desirous about 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 fact, that is that while I’m straight, I’m going to 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 what sort of I may care about another someone. Someone I know I may be with and love for anything else of my life, if I weren’t so fucked up. Amazingly, she liked me. She liked the shell of the fellow the darkness had left behind. However it didn’t matter because I couldn’t be alone together 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. Your entire closeness we had and I loved was complemented by agony that I couldn’t stand, from him. I spotted that I might never be capable of give her, or anyone, all of me or only me. She could never have me without the darkness and evil inside me. I may never have just her, without the darkness being an element of all of our interactions. I will be able to never be capable of be at peace or content or in a healthy relationship. I noticed the futility of the romantic portion of my life. If I had never met her, I might have realized this as soon as I met some other person who I meshed similarly well with. It’s likely that things wouldn’t have worked out together with her and we’d have broken up (with our relationship ending, like the vast majority of relationships do) despite the fact that I didn’t have this problem, since we only dated for a short while. But I will be able to face exactly an analogous problems with the darkness with anyone else. Despite my hopes, love and compatability isn’t enough. Nothing is enough. There’s no way I will be able to fix this or perhaps push the darkness down far enough to make a relationship or any sort of intimacy feasible.

So I watched as things fell apart between us. I had put an explicit closing date on our relationship, since I knew it couldn’t last as a result of the darkness and didn’t would like to hold her back, and this caused a considerable number of problems. She was put in an unnatural situation that she never must have been a component of. It will need to have been very hard for her, not knowing what was actually taking place with me, but this can be not something I’ve ever been in a position to focus on with anyone. Losing her was very hard for me in addition. Not as a consequence of her (I got over our relationship relatively quickly), but as a result realization that i’d never have another relationship and because it signified the last true, exclusive personal connection i’ll ever have. This wasn’t apparent to other folks, because i’ll never discuss the $64000 reasons for my sadness. I was very sad within the summer and fall, nevertheless it was not due to her, it was because I’m going to never escape the darkness with anyone. She was so loving and sort to me and gave me everything I may have asked for only the circumstances. I’ll never forget how much happiness she brought me in those briefs moments once 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 attainable and I have to have just left her alone, though we only dated for a number of months and things ended decades ago. She’s only 1 more person in an extended list of folk I’ve hurt.

I could spend pages talking in regards to the other relationships I’ve had that were ruined resulting from my problems and my confusion regarding the darkness. I’ve hurt so many great people simply by who I am and my inability to experience what should be experienced. All I will say is that I tried to be honest with people about what I assumed was true.

I’ve spent my life hurting people. Today often is the last time.

I’ve told different people numerous things, but I’ve never told anyone about what happened to me, ever, for obvious reasons. It took me your time to attain that in spite of how close you might be to someone or how much they claim to love you, people simply cannot keep secrets. I learned this a couple of years ago once I thought I was gay and told people. The more harmful the secret, the juicier the gossip and the more likely you might be to be betrayed. People don’t care about their word or what they’ve promised, they simply do whatever the fuck they wish and justify it later. It feels incredibly lonely to attain you could never share something with someone and have it’s between just the two of you. I don’t blame anyone especially, I suppose it’s just how persons are. No matter if I felt like that’s something i’ll have shared, I even have no real interest in being section of a friendship or relationship where the alternative person views me as the damaged and contaminated individual that I am. So however I were ready to trust someone, I probably do 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 would like to end life. I have to stop this. I have to be sure I don’t kill someone, that is not something which might be easily undone. I don’t know if here is relating to what happened to me or something different. I recognize the irony of killing myself to stop myself from killing some other person, but this decision should indicate what I’m capable of.

So I’ve realized i’ll never escape the darkness or misery associated with it and I even have a responsibility to prevent myself from physically harming others.

I’m just a broken, miserable shell of a person. Being molested has defined me as an individual and shaped me as a man or women and it has made me the monster I am and there’s nothing I will be able to do to escape it. I don’t know any other existence. I don’t know what life seems like where I’m except for any of this. I actively despise the person I am. I just feel fundamentally broken, almost non-human. I believe like an animal that wakened in a human body, looking to make sense of a foreign world, living among creatures it doesn’t understand and might’t hook up with.

I have accepted that the darkness will never allow me to be in a relationship. I’m going to never doze off with someone in my arms, feeling the relief of their hands around me. I’m going to never know what uncontimated intimacy is like. I am going to never have an exclusive bond with someone, someone who could be the recipient of all of the love I need to give. I will be able to never have children, and I wished to be a father so badly. I believe I’d have made a positive dad. And despite the fact that I had fought during the darkness and married and had children all while being unable to feel intimacy, I may have never done that if suicide were available. I did attempt to minimize pain, although I know that this decision will hurt a lot of you. If this hurts you, I’m hoping that you may at the least forget me quickly.

There’s no point in identifying who molested me, so I’m just going to depart it at that. I doubt the word of a dead guy with out evidence about something that happened over two decades ago would have much sway.

You may wonder why I didn’t just seek advice from a qualified about this. I’ve seen various doctors since I was a youngster to speak about other issues and I’m positive that another doctor do not have helped. I was never given one piece of actionable advice, ever. Various spent a giant element of the session reading their notes to bear in mind who I was. And I actually have no real interest in talking about being raped as a toddler, both because I are aware of it wouldn’t help and because I actually have no confidence it’d remain secret. I know the legal and practical limits of doctor/patient confidentiality, growing up in a house where we’d hear stories in regards to 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 health care provider 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 another individual perhaps at risk). All it takes is a single doctor who violates my trust, similar to the ” friends” who I told I was gay did, and everything can be made public and I’d be forced to live in a global where people would understand how fucked up I am. And yes, I realize this indicates that I actually have severe trust issues, but they’re based on numerous experiences with those that have shown a profound disrepect for their word and the privacy of others.

People say suicide is selfish. I feel it’s selfish to ask people to continue living painful and miserable lives, simply so you most likely won’t feel sad for every week or two. Suicide can be an everlasting method to a short lived problem, however it’s also an everlasting method to a ~23 year-old problem that grows more intense and overwhelming everyday.

Some individuals are just dealt bad hands in this life. I know a lot of people have it worse than I do, and maybe I’m just not a powerful person, but I actually did try and cope with this. I’ve tried to house this each day for the last 23 years and I just can’t fucking take it anymore.

I often wonder what life should be like for other folks. Those who can feel the love from others and give it back unadulterated, those that can experience sex as an intimate and joyous experience, folks that can experience the colors and happenings of this world without constant misery. I’m wondering who I’d be if things were different or if I were a much better person. It sounds pretty great.

I’m prepared for death. I’m prepared for the pain and I am able to not exist. Because of the strictness of latest Jersey gun laws this may probably be far more painful than it must be, but what can you do. My only fear at this point is messing something up and surviving.

–

I’d also desire to address my family, once you can call them that. I despise everything they stand for and I really hate them, in a non-emotional, dispassionate and what I think is a healthy way. The realm will likely be a more robust place once they’re dead-one with less hatred and intolerance.

If you’re unfamiliar with the location, my parents are fundamentalist Christians who kicked me out of their house and cut me off financially after I was 19 because I refused to attend seven hours of church every week.

They live in a black and white reality they’ve constructed for themselves. They partition the arena into good and evil and survive by hating everything they fear or misunderstand and calling it love. They don’t remember that good and decent people exist all around us, ” saved” or not, and that evil and vicious people occupy a giant percentage of their church. They benefit from people trying to find hope by teaching them to practice a similar hatred they practice.

A random example:

” I am personally convinced that if a Muslim truly believes and obeys the Koran, he’ll be a terrorist.” – George Zeller, August 24, 2010.

If you decide to follow a religion where, as an instance, devout Catholics who try to be good individuals are all going to Hell but child molestors go to Heaven (so long as they were ” saved” sooner or later), that’s your choice, however it’s fucked up. Maybe a God who operates by those rules does exist. In that case, fuck Him.

Their church was always more important than the members of their family and they happily sacrificed whatever necessary so one can satisfy their contrived beliefs about who they ought to be.

I grew up in a house where love was proxied through a God I may never believe in. A house where the love of music with any form of a beat was literally beaten out of me. A house filled with hatred and intolerance, run by two people that 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 discuss the horrors of miscegenation. i’ll list hundreds of different examples, but it surely’s tiring.

Since being kicked out, I’ve interacted with them in relatively normal ways. I discuss with them on the phone like nothing happened. I’m undecided why. Maybe because I love pretending I actually have a family. Maybe I am keen on having people I will check with about what’s been happening in my life. Whatever the explanation, it’s not real and it appears like a sham. I have to have never allowed this reconnection to happen.

I wrote the above a long time ago, and I do feel like that much of the time. At other times, though, I think less hateful. I know my parents honestly believe the crap they suspect in. I know that my mom, as a minimum, loved me greatly and tried her best. One reason I put this off for therefore long is because I understand how much pain it is going to cause her. She has been sad since she came upon I wasn’t ” saved” , since she believes I’m going to Hell, that’s not a sadness for which I am responsible. That was never going to alter, and presumably she believes the state of my physical body is far less important than the state of my soul. Still, I will not intellectually justify this decision, knowing how much it would hurt her. Maybe my ability to take my own life, knowing how much pain it may cause, shows that I am a monster who doesn’t should live. All I know is that I will be able to’t take care of this pain from now on and I’m am truly sorry I couldn’t wait until my family and everyone I knew died so this can be kept away from hurting anyone. For years I’ve wished that I’d be hit by a bus or die while saving a child from drowning so my death may very well 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 wished to be. Maybe without the darkness I’d had been a far better person, maybe not. I did you should be a decent person, but I realize I never got very far.

I’m sorry for the pain this causes. I actually do wish I had an alternative choice. I’m hoping this letter explains why I wanted to do that. While you can’t understand this decision, I’m hoping you possibly can no less than 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’d have otherwise because I’m worried that my family might try and restrict access to it. I don’t mind if this letter is made public. After all , I’d prefer it’s made public to people being unable to read it and drawing their own conclusions.

Feel free to republish this letter, but only if that’s reproduced in its entirety.

Thanks to Xeni Jardin and Matt Haughey for bringing Zeller’s letter to my attention .

Source

This post is tagged: bill zeller, experiences, incorrect conclusions, psychological abuse, talented programmer, tying up loose ends