A few days ago, Bill Zeller, a 27-year-old graduate student at Princeton University, died. The cause: suicide. The reason: He was tormented due to being repeatedly raped as a child.
Zeller left a 4,000-word suicide note that eloquently explained the effect that the devastation had on his life. There is a link to it in this article:
Princeton student kills self over rape as child, on CBSNews.com.
Story suggested by a Lovefraud reader.
I was abused mentally, emotionally and physically as a child from birth to my teens when I moved out and fled. My mother was an alcoholic matriarch who controlled every move my father and sisters made until the day she died in May 2006. I remember when I gave birth to my daughter in 1985 and no one in my family was there for me during this time even though they lived very close in the area. I realized 10 years later how abnormal it was for a mother not to be there for her daughter during the birth of her 1st and only baby….what is sad is that it took me 10 plus years to realize how abnormal this was, I never gave it a second thought before.When we grow up as children being told the grass is blue and the sky is green that is what we believe and All that we know, it takes being away from it all in society to see the truth. When my mother passed away her goal was to have all of us alienated from each other, even on her death bed she acknowledged nothing of the truth. I can remember trying to get her to validate her alcoholism and abuse to the end…she did nothing of the sort, I got no validation….none. my father who hid his head in the sand thru all of the years of abuse finally admitted to me last year that “I realized your mother was mentally ill a year after I married her”, yet he had 2 children with her after that year. Today it is impossible for me as an adult to understand why we as a society continue to bear children with unstable relationships and people? We are selfish and desperate. I feel for this person who took his life, somehow he couldn’t find that hidden strength to reach down inside himself and be a survivor instead of a victim….hopefully the next person will!
Beth, I’m sorry you had such an awful childhood. It’s very hard to have a normal life after growing up under such horrible conditions. The fact it took you 10 years to realize something was off about your mom not being there when you had your child speaks to how normal ‘abnormal’ is to survivors, and how much bad behavior survivors will tolerate from others.
Bill Zeller’s suicide letter is heartbreaking.
Reading Bill’s suicide letter is so deeply painful. Even as he was planning His final escape the evil bond he had with his “perpatraitor” could not be broken. He should have outed the SOB.
I have the feeling that Bill did not even touch the tip of the iceberg. He had been betrayed over and over and it caused him to build a wall around himself. He knew he had been touched by evil. A child.
God have mercy.
This letter will burn in my memory forever.
How I wish he had been able to trust someone, but in truth that avenue was cut off from him during the abuse. The ability to trust is one of the first things to go.
OMG, what a waste of a beautiful person. I always thought that my xspath if he ever told me what had happened to him would have had this kind of story. no matter how much he wanted to… he just couldn’t trust in anyone to tell them, which led to his abuse of me. I will go to my grave not knowing. OH Well!! His loss!! After what he did to me…. he deserves whatever comes his way. “do unto others….”
I haven’t been here in a long time. My ex husband took his life last September, sent me a suicide letter the day he did it. He’d been molested as a kid by his summer camp counselor, over and over and over. My ex was a psychologist, counseled many, many molestation and rape victims. The horrible thing, or another horrible thing, is that he never discussed his molestation when he himself was in therapy, not ever. I assumed he had; he said he’d never talked about it in therapy as it “wasn’t a therapeutic issue.”
Yet he counseled victims and referred them to services. But for him it wasn’t an issue for therapy? WTF? After reading Bill’s letter I have a better understanding—maybe he was too afraid of people finding out or maybe he was too damaged to even go there in any depth. He told his friend of 40 years about the molestation a year ago. He told me (I think because I’m a survivor myself), I don’t think he told anyone else.
I don’t know how much that affected who he became, how much it contributed to his having a personality disorder. If it did contribute…but carrying that around for almost 60 years had to have been very, very hard. He became an expert at compartmentalizing and was pretty split off—thousands of pieces of a human being with no real core.
He’d been on anti-depressants for decades. Had a long history of substance abuse as well. He was never happy, never content. His friends describe him as “tortured.” I agree, but he also became a torturer.
His suicide letter in no way resembled Bill’s letter. The letter my ex sent me blamed me for him taking his life. I wish he’d had enough insight, and enough courage, to write a letter that really explained why he did what he did.
I read this letter today when a friend sent me a copy of the letter. It broke my heart. I don’t have words right now to express my deep feelings concerning this young man’s act and his letter.
CAMom, my condolences to you for what I know must have been a painful experience no matter how you slice it. God bless.
Thanks Oxy. It’s been hell.
CAmom.
If there was ever a chance for a grown man to come clean of this kind of childhood abuse, it would have been your husband. Sorry for your loss through this and you know it wasn’t your fault.
Soimnotthecrazee1!
OMG…………I don’t even know what to say…..
So much of what he says, I have felt myself. The impact of “the darkness” follows everywhere….what a tragedy..if I could, I’d hug him…what a powerful message…
Such incredible clarity through intelligence and pain.
When a persons life, a child’s life is stolen through abuse this way, it is a deep pain that is so real on a daily basis that others simply cannot see. Cannot feel. Cannot understand.
This young man’s ending of his life is so terribly, irrefutably tragic for so many reasons, yet I understand his pain…
He accepted the darkness that followed him. To the point of obliteration of self.
I see the reasons why so many, including myself, minimize our abuse or cannot share it all. This man explains it in terms that I totally understood. That I understand.
But I’m still living. I will still try. I realized, that with every single male in my childhood, I was a sexual toy, a simple exploitation. Nothing more. From the stepfather, to bio dad, to neighbor…to subsequent relationships, molestation to rape. My entire being was to serve what happened to this young man. Without asking for it, but knowing just what to do: Submit to darkness…
But I’m still ALIVE…….and there is a spirit within still willing to try…
And I WILL keep trying…….darkness follows me, but I can’t allow it to envelope me. I WILL survive this.
I will fight the darkness.
As long as I am allowed to live. 🙂 I will keep trying, keep trying in any way I can, to fight the demons of hatred, pain and exploitation that follow me. I refuse to believe I am permanently tainted, but want to believe, that somewhere out there, somewhere within my heart, I’m permanently loved…that I can learn to get rid of the demons of hate, to give into God’s love and grace that sustain me every single day of my life…
I’m believing on that, even with the “darkness” that threatens to follow. He can’t have me. I’m God’s child. And I WILL survive all of that.
I will.
LL