Finding Damien

Episode One

Finding Damien | by Unfiltered. Unhealed;

Twenty years ago, I met a charming 17 year old who I instantly thought I was going to marry. Damien was a chapter in my life that seemed to fully happen in the blink of an eye.

When I met him, we were just kids trying to survive lives we weren't prepared for. He was funny, caring, protective, and incredibly kind to my daughter. He made her peanut butter and jelly sandwiches exactly the way she liked them. He called us his "two lovely ladies." For a little while, he became part of our everyday lives.

Then, almost as quickly as he appeared, he was gone.

A week after Damien turned 18 he committed a crime that changed multiple lives forever.

He was arrested, convicted, and eventually sentenced to life without parole.

For years, Damien became more memory than person. He became a cautionary tale of how one mistake can change your life. A story I kept rewriting because the “lesson” never felt right.

Life moved on, the way it always does. I raised children, survived heartbreak, made many mistakes of my own, and became someone completely different than the girl who once dated Damien.

But for some reason, I never completely stopped thinking about him.

Then one night, Fawn and I were discussing releasing the story I had written about Damien years before. We wondered if Damien was even still alive and if he was, what did his life look like today.

What started as a random conversation turned into a Google search. The Google search turned into a prison record. The prison record turned into a letter. And suddenly, the boy I remembered wasn't a memory anymore.

The Damien you'll hear throughout this series isn't the seventeen-year-old kid I knew. He's a thirty-seven-year-old man who has spent more than half of his life behind prison walls. 

When I started writing about Damien years ago, the story was about me. My memories. My confusion. My inability to understand how someone who felt so familiar could become part of something so tragic.

But, in reality, my side was only a chapter in his story.

We don't know where this story ends. Honestly, neither does Damien. But Fawn and I promised him we'd try to figure it out together.

Still learning. Still processing. Still becoming; 🐦‍🔥

This is Unfiltered. Unhealed; 🌪️☕

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