Using Writing as Therapy
(Trigger warning: Suicide)
I wrote Pirate Cove angry.
Here I was, an ordinary guy who discovered his dream job was a felony. In fact, it was a $350 million fraud.
So, what’d I do? I went on a years-long roller coaster ride of fear, anger, betrayal, and—yeah—revenge.
I went on the type of journey you read in books and see in movies. I hired a famous private detective. I even hired my own criminal attorney. Forget the fact that I had done nothing wrong. I needed someone who could walk me through this minefield.
I didn’t tell people to do anything. I didn’t ask them for anything. I did what I was told. “I want the system to work,” I told them and myself. I’m a rules guy. If you break the law, you pay the price. That is how my parents raised me. I’m no angel. I have made a lot of mistakes. But I am not a fraudster and thief.
Once I finally got in front of the FBI, I did everything they asked me. I wore a wire. I recorded calls. I even snuck a camera into a meeting. The crowning achievement, the FBI told me, was I got them the information needed to get a search warrant. Once they raided the place, I had to keep my head down and my mouth shut.
The result was four guilty pleas and three prison sentences. The ringleader, the kid who hired me—who liked to say he was “always the smartest person in the room”—committed suicide. He couldn’t handle the thought of going to prison.
But here is what I never saw coming. I had gone on a roller coaster ride that lasted three years. But once the case was over and the clandestine work done, the private investigators, the lawyers, and the FBI went back to work. For them, everything I went through was another day at the office.
Me? After the company lawyers sold the company, I was back to being unemployed.
Yeah, the lawyers for the company gave me a severance payment. But they never knew I worked undercover for the FBI. That was a secret. Didn’t matter. They never would have cared.
I didn’t work for another three and a half years. By the time I earned my next paycheck, that severance payment was long gone.
All the while I pretended to anyone who asked that everything was hunky dory. But it wasn’t. I was angry. After all, I was the one who sacrificed. I was the one who took the risk.
I was the miserable S.O.B. who dragged my wife and kids through years rife with anxiety and uncertainty. It didn’t cost anyone else a thing. They went back to work. Not me. I sat at home and stewed. For three plus years.
So, when the FBI called me in late October 2021 to tell me my old boss had taken his life, I knew the story had come to a close. It had an ending. The lead FBI agent even encouraged me to write the book. So, after a dozen attempts with nothing to show for it, I wrote Pirate Cove for real. I could take my anger out on the page.
Writing has always been therapy for me. A way to organize the constant hurricane in my head. It helps me define my fears, which, once defined, no longer seem to pose a threat. In other words, once I know what I am afraid of and have thought out the consequences, I am no longer afraid.
Writing Pirate Cove allowed me to start putting the whole experience in the rearview mirror. I had a story to tell. It was the classic story of an ordinary person thrust into an extraordinary event. There were secrets to tell. Secrets that only a handful of people knew. People love reading secrets.
But to tell the story, I also had to be honest. Especially when it came to characterizing myself. I couldn’t write some fictionalized version of what happened. I couldn’t embellish the good parts and cut out the bad. To make it real, I had to open a vein and let it bleed on the paper.
Now, I am a copious note taker. Like a throwback to an earlier time, I keep my meeting notes… and the questions they raise in old-fashioned brown hardcover notebooks. So, I pulled them all out, sat them next to my favorite chair, and started to type.
But the most important decision I made about writing was to “serialize” the story. I decided to publish it, chapter by chapter, on Substack.
What that did was force me to write the next chapter. Then something remarkable happened. Friends, family, victims, and random interested parties joined the mailing list. Even some family members of the guys who committed these crimes signed up. Again, I never suspected that would happen.
So, I kept writing. Some chapters were short. Some were long. When I didn’t publish anything for a few weeks, people contacted me to ask why. So, I kept writing.
I began with where I was and how I was feeling—about myself—when I received the call to go back to work. I wrote about my anger and my despair.
Friends and family asked, “Aren’t you being a little tough on yourself?” I heard that line time and again after publishing the first few chapters. Here’s the thing: On certain matters, I have always been hard on myself. But it is something I let few people see.
Those who know me know when I am fighting with myself. My wife sometimes looks at me, sitting silent and alone, and will ask, “Who’re you arguing with?” My mother has said many times over the years, “Richard stews.”
As the author and one of the main characters, candor is critical. After all, you want people to believe your story. Getting it right is everything.
Writing nonfiction also brings you criticism. Friends, co-workers, and others will dispute what you wrote. They’ll argue with your tone or your description of them. Sometimes they are right and you gotta change things. Sometimes you must be mindful of their feelings but stick to your guns. Oftentimes those closest to you are your harshest critics.
Finally, sometimes you must map out your fears so you can beat them. Sometimes you must argue with yourself out in the open. Sometimes you must let people see the blood on the page.
Writing Pirate Cove was akin to making an open-air confessional. I let everyone in to see the war within myself. My ups, my downs, my bruises, and my scars. To be frank, I still wonder about that decision. It’s too late now.
But I’m not angry anymore.
Check out Richard D. Bailey’s Pirate Cove here:
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