Finding Me (29 page)

The dude was allowed to speak during the sentencing. “People are trying to paint me as a monster, and I’m not a monster,” he said. “I’m sick.”

That last part was the only true thing that came out of his mouth that day. He claimed he wasn’t violent. He even had the nerve to say that the sex we had was “consensual” and that there was “harmony” in the house. After it was over I felt like justice was done. The judge gave him the worst sentence he could get: life in prison with no chance for parole, plus a thousand years.

About a month after he was sentenced, the woman who ran my assisted living facility came into my room to talk with me.

“Did you watch the news today?” she asked me. I hadn’t. “Well, then I’d better tell you something,” she said. “Ariel Castro killed himself today.”

I told her I wanted to be alone. Later on, I turned on the news to hear the details: the dude had hanged himself with a bed sheet. I sat there and cried.
What a punk!
I wanted him to sit in his cell and rot away a little bit at a time for the rest of his life, just like he forced me to do.

The next morning I called Gina. She had heard the news, and she told me that she had cried too. She was just as angry as I was that he took the coward’s way out.

“He couldn’t even deal with one month of the torture that he put us through,” I told her.

Several weeks later, when the news came out that he had killed himself by trying something called “auto-erotic asphyxiation” (basically, he used the sheet to choke himself to make his orgasm more intense), I wasn’t surprised. I figured he got that idea from that show he used to watch about weird fetishes.

G
INA
AND
I
TALKED
on the phone a few times after that day. She was my best friend in that house, the person I was literally chained to. I wanted to talk to her every single day. But as the months went by there were fewer phone calls between us. Just like me, she had to sort out her feelings and make her own decisions. I had to respect her choice to move on. If it wasn’t for Gina helping me in that house, I wouldn’t be here. For the rest of my life I will be thankful for her friendship.

Not long after I got to the assisted living facility I started seeing a counselor. To be honest, I had a hard time opening up to her about what I was feeling. It’s not easy to talk to someone who doesn’t know you. Even though she was a very nice woman, she couldn’t take the place of Gina. Only two other people in this world have any clue what I went through—Gina and Amanda.

People come up to me on the street all the time and ask, “How are you doing?” I know they mean well. But you can’t really explain to someone what it’s like to go from sharing a dirty mattress with a friend to suddenly feeling all alone in the world. It’s impossible for someone who didn’t live through that to get that, even if they really care about you. That’s why I just sit and write in my diary and draw a lot. It keeps me sane.

It took several months for the FBI to return my spiral notebooks. I read through every single one of them, all the painful memories. Sometimes I had to stop reading because it was too much. But in a way that’s why I needed to read them. In order to get past something terrible, sometimes you have to walk through the pain, not around it. It might be messy. It might make you sob. But if you let yourself cry long enough, you finally reach the bottom of your tears. I haven’t reached the bottom yet, but I know that someday I will.

P
EOPLE
ASK
ME
all the time where my strength came from during those eleven years in hell. The answer comes down to one word:
Joey
. Gina helped me hold on to hope in my darkest moments, but the hope itself was my son. My huggy bear. My reason for waking up every morning. Since the moment I had to say good-bye to him I have always held him in my heart. The desire to get him back is what has kept me breathing. I’m here today because of him. Sometimes people stay alive for one another. I’ve stayed alive for Joey.

While I was still in the hospital I had one big question for my lawyer: “How is Joey?”

She cleared her throat, looked directly at me, and spoke softly. “Well,” she said, “he was adopted by a wonderful foster family when he was four.” I looked down and tried to keep the tears from coming. I was glad he was in good hands, but I wanted to see him so badly.

“Will I ever get to see him again?” I asked.

She paused. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “We’ll have to figure that out.”

I couldn’t hold back the flood anymore. I held my face in my hands and cried for an hour.

At first that news broke my heart, but I have come to understand it. My lawyer explained to me that my son’s adoptive family doesn’t want me to be directly in touch with him. They’re afraid that might be too unsettling for him, and as much as I want to wrap my arms around him so tightly and share so many things with him, I’m scared of the same thing too. He might have seen the story of my escape on the news, but I don’t know if he even realizes I am his mother. In fact, I don’t even know if his new family calls him Joey. They might have given him a different name when they adopted him. If I showed up out of nowhere, it could turn his world upside down. I care about him too much to do that.

I told my lawyer that I wanted to write to Joey’s adoptive parents. She said that she could pass a letter to them through the FBI. So one evening I sat down and wrote my letter. Here is part of what it said:

To Whom It May Concern:

Thank you for watching over my son while I was gone. It gives me peace of mind knowing my son has been in good hands during the eleven years when I was a hostage. I thought of him often and dreamed about what he looked like as a toddler, his first steps, his first words, his first day of school, his likes and dislikes, and how his personality was developing. I wondered if he liked to sing like me, whether he was shy or talkative, and what he liked to play with. As years passed, I wondered if he liked baseball or football.

I wish I had a photo of him. I would be so appreciative if you could find it in your heart to send me a picture of my son as a baby and a little boy. I know you will always be his parents, and that won’t change. I won’t try to take him away. I am just hoping you can help me fill the hole in my heart with whatever photos or stories you are willing to share with me.

My son’s family was kind enough to write back. That was why I was able to sit in my lawyer’s office that day and look through the photos of Joey. Those pictures are a treasure to me. Each morning I take them out of the safe place where I keep them and lay them out on the counter. I look at them and wonder what my son’s doing. What made him laugh the day before. Who his friends are now. I will never get tired of looking at those pictures. I will also never give up hoping for a miracle—that I’ll be able to hug my child just one more time.

I don’t know if I will ever see Joey again. I miss him more than you can imagine. At the same time I love him so much that I don’t want to interrupt his life. He has a new family now. He’s in a good environment. I would never rip him out of his world just so he can be in mine. Sometimes you have to care about people the way they need you to care about them. I have to love Joey enough to let him go. And that is what I’ve done.

Without Joey, I’m left with just me. A girl who once lived under a bridge. A young mom who had to drop out of school. A woman who was locked away for eleven long years. I’m still trying to figure out where to go from here; on many days I honestly feel lost. I spend a lot of time asking myself, Can I really be happy without my son? Who was I before I had him? And why did so many awful things happen to me in the first place? I don’t have all the answers. I probably never will. But I have realized that my life can’t get better if I dwell on everything I’ve been through. I have to look ahead.

The horrors I survived don’t have to define me—and with God’s help I’m not going to let them. One day at a time, one breath at a time, I am choosing to move forward. After crawling my way out of a dark bedroom and into a brand new life, that’s the best gift I can give myself.

Afterword
 
A Life Reclaimed

W
HILE
I
WAS
STILL
LIVING
in that assisted living facility, Ariel Castro’s “house of horrors” was torn down on August 7, 2013. By then the cops were done with all their searching. Thank God they never found any bodies on the dude’s property. They did run across the $22,000 in cash he had stashed in his dryer. The prosecutors offered that money to me, Gina, and Amanda. Every one of us turned it down because we wanted it to be put toward improving the neighborhood. In my eyes that was dirty money, and the only way to clean it up was to use it for something good.

I chose to be there on the early morning when the house was destroyed. “Are you sure you want to be there?” my lawyer asked me.

“Heck yeah,” I told her. “I want to go.”

I wanted to show up for the same reason I wanted to speak up in court. It was one more way for me to heal. The demolition was scheduled for 7:30 a.m., but I came to the area early so I could hand out yellow balloons to the dozens of people who were standing all along Seymour Avenue.

“Here you go,” I said to one woman as I handed her a balloon. “This stands for one of the hundreds of people who are still missing.”

Why did I give out the balloons? Because I wanted every mother out there to stay strong and keep hoping. I wanted all the victims who are screaming for help to know we haven’t forgotten them. We’re listening for their voices—and we will never stop looking for them. That morning I and so many others let our balloons float away up to heaven. It was the most beautiful sight.

Right before the crane tore into the pink room in the upstairs part of the house, I left. I really wanted to stay, but my lawyer wanted to protect me from getting overwhelmed by too many media interviews. As I rode away I thought about all the years I wasted in that house. All the times I’d been abused. All the days I cried because I missed Joey so much. Sometimes, in order to move onto something better, you first have to clear away something bad. That’s why that house needed to be demolished. That’s also why I’m trying to let go of the memories of the many awful things I survived there.

My house of hope—that’s what I call the new place I finally moved into around Thanksgiving of 2013. That’s right: I now have my own apartment for the first time! I love it. Seriously. The walls are painted in this light, leafy green color. It’s so soothing. It makes me feel like I’m outdoors, which is a great feeling after spending so many years locked inside. There are two huge windows in the living room, and the light comes pouring in every morning. Many times every day I just go stand by the window and take in the sunshine. Then at night I also look up at the moon and stars. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of staring out the window. It’s the most amazing view in the world.

The smallest things make me happy in that apartment. For one thing, I get up and make my own coffee every morning. After that I can either read a book or do some paintings—it’s
my choice
what I want to do. Lately I’ve really gotten into watercolors, and I paint a lot of flowers and blue skies. Sometimes, in the afternoon or evening, I watch some TV. And let me tell you something: I can put it on any station I want. Sometimes, if I’m flipping through the channels, and I happen to see a black person on the screen, I let it stay on that channel for a long time—just for the hell of it! It’s my little way of flipping off the dude who never let me watch programs with African Americans in them. Some of my favorite shows to watch are
The Vampire Diaries
, any of the CSI shows, and
Dancing with the Stars
. And just like Joey, I love all kinds of sports, especially baseball and basketball. Go, Cleveland Cavs!

In the evenings, right before I go to bed, sometimes I write in my journal. My new one is pink and has the word “Love” on the cover. During the holidays I had a wonderful time with some great new friends that I’ve met since I left the house. This is what I wrote about my first Christmas in the new apartment: “Today let all of our hearts be light and filled with Christmas joy. I will enjoy my friends. I will give thanks for Joey and pray that he’s doing well. I will thank God for His blessings. And I will always remember that the true meaning of Christmas comes from the heart.” I exchanged a couple of gifts with my friends, but I already had the greatest gift of all—my freedom. I have my life back again.