I had no evidence. No physical signs of my rape existed anymore. My body had already purged them. That was the irreversible reality.

I needed to stop hiding: I was raped. It was time to honestly be exactly who I was. I saw—the shame wasn't mine, it was his, and I could stop misrepresenting myself, and I could accept myself.

Living as Wild Child, I could no longer be Debby Parker comfortably — this name that I’d been given at birth that defined me before I’d had the chance to define myself.

He was sprightly and uncommonly good looking, with a quiet, magnanimous confidence that attracted people. He was my hero, too, and I listened to him. He gave me lots of wise advice. He told me to put myself in win-win situations, and that, “You have to know what you want, and you have to get it,

The PCT would lead me to an otherworld, through the sadness I felt here, out of it.

It was heartbreaking to realize how we can fail the people we most love without even trying.