My Rock Bottom

The following is a post I'm sharing on my personal Facebook page tonight.

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I couldn’t stop crying.

I don’t remember the day. The month. Even the exact year.

But 13+ years later, I still remember the inside of that bathroom stall.

The feeling that the walls were caving in around me.

I tried pulling it together to get back to my desk, but when I did and hid in my cubicle, my tears refused to stop.

Thoughts flooded my mind. Dark thoughts. Thoughts of going out to my car, getting on the interstate, and running the car off the road at full speed.

Those thoughts tugged on me like a vortex, and I knew I was in trouble.

Hours later, Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital admitted me on suicide watch. I remember standing at the end of the hall with a nurse sitting a few feet behind me, never taking her eyes off me.

I looked out that hospital window at the Vanderbilt Campus. The campus where I graduated in 1994. The medical center where I’d worked and thrived for years.

But none of that mattered.

I was broken.

Or I thought I was.

A married man with a filthy mind. A masturbation habit. A porn habit. Plus, I had repeatedly failed at emotional monogamy. Repeatedly, I fell in love with other women.

I learned that my church family had been talking to my then-wife behind my back, telling her to leave me.

I don’t blame any of them now. They all loved her, and she needed a faithful husband.

Still, hearing of their words caused my shame to boil over. I wanted to die. Believed I deserved to die.

It was my dark night of the soul.

But light met me in my darkness.

First, in the form of my hospital roommate. We started sharing what drove us to want to kill ourselves. He spoke first, confessing that he was in love with two women and didn’t know what to do. The agony had driven him into that hospital room with me.

I understood exactly how he felt.

I’d never met anyone who found themselves in love with more than one person.

But there he was.

At least one other person on the planet like me.

Then, during my first inpatient group therapy session, light touched me again. I sat at the back of a large room full of at least a dozen other patients. Feeling vulnerable. Exposed. Raw.

I clutched a notebook to my chest while the group facilitator drew a diagram on the whiteboard.

And that’s when the woman sitting next to me blurted out “Does anyone else see a vagina?”

Her words pierced the walls around my aching heart, and I felt deeply comforted. One other person—a woman—with a filthy mind.

Like me.

That woman was one of many who, over the course of my life, gave me the incredible gift of letting me glimpse their filthy mind. See their filthy secrets.

For someone like me in a lifelong battle with shame, those gifts were lifelines.

That’s why I started my podcast.

You didn’t know about my podcast? Well, here’s the truth. It’s possible I’ve been hiding from you my entire life. I’ve used aliases online instead of my birth name. I’ve had a list of Facebook friends that I shared some of my secrets with, and you might not have been on it.

That’s not your fault.

It’s mine.

I’m the one who decided to hide. But I turned 53 in April, and I’ve been asking myself, “How much longer will I keep up the charade?”

That woman who blurted out from the back of the room, “Lady Stephanie”, has been my friend ever since, and she’s my guest in the latest episode of Filthy Little Secrets.

I want to be brave like the women who have graced my podcast. To tell my filthy little secrets just like they’ve told theirs.

So here we go. For some of you, these confessions will be news.

I’ve been writing filthy books for years. Some of them, very filthy. I have a filthy blog. And yes, in the last six months, I’ve launched a filthy podcast. The interview with “Lady Stephanie” is my ninth episode, and I have many more coming.

I don’t like labels, but I know monogamy never fit me. I know because I was married to an incredible, monogamous woman who remains one of my very best friends to this day, but my soul needed something different.

I needed freedom to be me.

Freedom from who I was supposed to be.

She loved me enough to give me that by letting me go.

I have more filthy little secrets to confess. After all, I’ve been hiding a long time. You can expect more authenticity from me in the future.

I realize my honesty will have many effects. Some will feel comfortable with it. Some will not. Some will be touched by it. Some will be repulsed. Some of us will become closer friends. Some of you will need to defriend me.

All of that, I believe, is perfect. However you feel is right for us.

The only thing not right is me being out of integrity, pretending to be something I’m not.

It’s time to dismantle the facade.

No more hiding in shadows.

No more lists.