As their husband faces criminal charges, Sam Freese struggles to find self love
Editor's note: Sam Freese first told this story on stage at the Des Moines Storytellers Project's "Love." The Des Moines Storytellers Project is a series of storytelling events in which community members work with Register journalists to tell true, first-person stories live on stage. An edited version appears below.
I’m burrowed in bed on the new flannel sheets I picked up from Target — white, with birch trees. They feel so soft against my tired and heavy body. Then my husband yells, “BABE WAKE UP! I gotta go, I gotta go.”
The bedside light comes on. “I gotta go."
"We shot people.”
I met my husband in college, just up the road in Ames back in 2009. We dated casually before breaking up so he could focus on finals, only to get back together a month later when he messages me, “I miss you, I miss whatever we had.”
Things became serious this second time around. I met his whole family, all seven of them. And I introduced him to mine, the near 45 of us.
We moved to Minnesota in 2012 and got engaged the next fall when he sat next to me on the couch and handed me a small, wooden box. It was painted like Van Gogh’s "Starry Night." The stars and swirls encompassed the outside, and on the inside of the lid it said “For the girl who waited.” There in the deep blue velvet was a beautiful solitaire alexandrite in a silver band. I cried, said yes, and we celebrated by calling everyone we knew.
We married in a small ceremony with his family and just a couple of mine in August 2014. By January our relationship began to change. He started wearing headphones while he played video games instead of letting the sound of the games color our evenings. He grew distant and started going out more without me. Then he became cruel, criticising what I ate. After I opened up to him about my worsening depression, he suggested I go to the gym because I’d feel better once I looked better.
Where was this coming from? Was he having an affair? A desperate creep through his phone didn’t tell me anything. I tried to tell him how I was feeling, that I felt he was acting differently and that I wanted us to begin seeing a couples counselor. At each turn I was gaslit and shut down.
Well, something needed to change. By our first anniversary it was as if the invasion of the body snatchers had come and my husband was gone. Laying in our gilded anniversary suite I knew it was over. This person I shared my everything with has turned vicious and being near him is making me feel weird. So I resolved to save money and ask for a divorce after the holidays.
Which brings me back to that cold November night.
“I gotta go, I gotta go. We shot people.”
He didn’t, but a friend he met through a message board for weapons enthusiasts did. My husband was frantically packing a bug-out bag of supplies before he would leave me confused and alone in our home at 1 a.m. to call a lawyer and potentially turn himself in.
Our home was surrounded by SWAT the following afternoon as he was frog-marched out onto the driveway and arrested. The next day I was notified by a reporter from the local CBS affiliate that our home was host to several Minneapolis police officers while they served a search warrant. It was as if tiny little bombs in drawers, nooks and crannies had exploded all at once. In our bedroom our clothes made a new carpet, large boot prints of drywall dust showing where they walked, our drawers empty.
He and his friends attended a protest for the fatal shooting of a young Black man in north Minneapolis. Their attendance resulted in the shooting of five protestors by his friend. My husband would ultimately be charged with misdemeanor aiding an offender, down from the original felony charges.
Though the biggest victims of this story are the people who felt the physical impact of those bullets — their families, their community — the emotional buckshot of his offense ricocheted through my already damaged life.
I cried so much during those first weeks as I carried the weight of his crime. I could have, no, should have moved out months prior. I reached this new level of gutted and numb previously unknown to me. Who did I marry? I mean, I know he was growing more cruel, but this cruel? And if he’s that hateful, what does that make me? Where does this leave me?
It left me picking up the pieces with this "Looney Tunes"-esque anvil on my chest weighing me down. I cleaned up the house, I made plans with my friends to help me move out, I researched if I could move out and divorce him or would that risk me having to testify at trial?
Move out, yes. Divorce, not yet.
In the meantime, my friends were there to support me. We decided to drop everything and go to Iceland, without passports, plane tickets, and all the while my disaster movie of a life was unfolding. Overhearing a phone conversation, my husband asks “Iceland? When are we going to Iceland?” Not “we.” Me. And we need to talk.
And that is the moment I told him I was moving out.
Hungover, sweating out the shots from the night before, my friends again showed up with love and patience for me as we packed my life and tiny dog into three cars and one questionable trailer. On the drive to the apartment I signed for sight-unseen with deposit money pooled together by those angels, I cried. I cried for my hopes, I cried for my dreams of a future together, and I cried for myself.
Any pretense I had about being over this boy and ready to be Stella getting her groove back was quickly smashed by the weight of my grief and self pity.
"All alone! All alone, whether you like it or not, alone is something you’ll be quite a lot," Dr. Seuss writes. And I was, but I wasn’t. Laying in this shoebox of an apartment on only an air mattress I held my dog close and tried to disappear.
Tried is the operative word here because I had the equivalent of a baseball team in my corner not letting me quit on myself. Each time there was an update on the trials we’d suddenly have to be out all night playing bar trivia, or at someone’s place having family dinner and watching YouTube videos together. They continued to feed me the love and grace I was unable to give myself.
Slowly, things started to get easier. A new job in 2017 brought better health insurance and I could begin therapy and the long road to finding my new normal. Lisa and I would meet twice a week to talk through my upcoming divorce, self pity, feelings of being unloved and unappreciated. During one of our sessions, Lisa challenged me to start finding the beauty in myself and the world around me. She asked me to begin taking pictures of myself every time I felt happy, or I thought I looked good and to save them in a folder. Then on the days I was feeling down, she wanted me to revisit the folder.
This soon became my bad day folder and the first selfie I added was the one I took after we made it to Reykjavík. We had been awake for over two days by the time we arrived at the Opera House along the coastline. My hair was stringy and I badly needed a shower. But my smile was so big I remember my cheeks hurting while we wandered. It had been so, so long since I had been that happy and free.
With time this folder and the pictures, videos and memes therein evolved into a shield, protecting me from the bad and the difficult. I leaned on it when there was an update on my husband’s trial and would flip to a photo of my tiny dog, Tucker, curled up on my pillow, sleeping in the sun.
It was also during this process of rediscovering joy that I began to explore the idea of forging a new identity for myself. Having two Courtneys in a group can get a little confusing and my friends had begun to refer to me as Samantha a few weeks prior to the shooting — a name I chose in jest as an homage to my favourite "Sex and the City" character, Samantha Jones. She was fearless and empowered and everything I had lost in myself.
With the new name came blue and purple hair, a septum piercing and an adornment of new tattoos. I began to experiment with my clothing and makeup, no longer trying to become invisible. Each step giving me my powerback, finding comfort in my skin once more.
When it came time to sign the divorce paperwork, I saw an opportunity. I didn’t have to keep this nickname just with friends. I could be this new me everywhere, all the time. And so, on page 11 I wrote my new first name, Samantha, further distancing myself from my marriage and ties to a life with him. Becoming Samantha legally felt like taking the first step into a new life, one where he is no longer in control of how I feel about myself.
I wish I could stand up here and tell you that everything was resolved after changing my name. That this magically improved upon my ability to love who I am. But unlike my name, my baggage didn’t stay in the old life. It came along, too. And I continue to work through each article, each triggering event piece by piece.
It’s been just over five years since my divorce was granted. When I think about how far I’ve come, it can bring me to tears. I’m stronger than I thought I was and thankful to the people in my life who reminded me of this until I was able to see it for myself.
I am not what someone says I am or what happens to me. I’m deserving of the love of others — and most importantly, myself.
ABOUT THE STORYTELLER: Sam Freese is a voracious reader, creative and a budding baker. After a 10-year hiatus in Minnesota, they have moved back to Iowa where they reside in Des Moines with their dog, Cheese, and cat, Twix.
Become a teller
The Des Moines Storytellers Project strongly believes that everyone HAS a story and everyone CAN tell it. None of the storytellers who take our stage are professionals. They are your neighbors, friends or co-workers, and they are coached to tell by Register journalists.
Want to tell your story at one of our upcoming Storytellers Project events? Read our guidelines and submit a story at DesMoinesRegister.com/Tell.
Contact storytelling@dmreg.com for more information.
Hear past storytellers
WATCH: Mediacom rebroadcasts stories from the most recent show on MC22 periodically; check local listings for times. A replay is also available at YouTube.com/DMRegister.
LISTEN: Check out the Des Moines Storytellers Project podcast, which is available on your favorite podcasting platforms.
Your subscription makes work like this possible. Subscribe today at DesMoinesRegister.com/Deal.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: As their husband faces charges, Sam Freese struggles to find self love
