A reflection.
When the steal meat-hooks of life tear into the flesh of your hopes and dreams... survive.
When the labyrinth of indecision seems to close you in forever... survive
When you feel you are abandoned and buried, far away from love and light... remember to survive.
I am about to embark on the biggest tour of my career. I will be traveling to every major city in the country. Please come and share your presence with me. It is only when we share each others fears, dreams, and light that we can all remember to survive.
The first five people at every appearance will receive a signed copy of my book. Buy another and share it if you love someone who is trapped.
-Bobby
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Sunday, October 24, 2010
SURVIVOR GUILT
Guilt is the source of sorrow, 'tis the fiend, Th' avenging fiend, that follows us behind, With whips and stings”
- Nicholas Rowe
Bobby asked me to write something. I didn't want to, but he said it would help.
I read a lot, and when the world gets darker I read more. I've been trying to find some answers in books, because events in the world are too hard to figure out without some context to give them meaning. Especially the events in my world, when over and over I have been responsible for deaths, one way or another. I killed eight people and caused endless suffering in a fire I started. Next, trapped underground by Jigsaw, I watched others die around me, others who should have survived until the end. Charles did not need to die. Luba did not need to die. And because they died, I lost my arm. This useless stump is a reminder of how ineffectual I am, how my weakness and my selfishness cause suffering again and again.
I have not taken drugs since I awoke, alive, in the hospital. Amazing, as I am haunted by guilt, by the faces of the dead. Bobby has insisted to me that I am not guilty of murder. I am guilty of weakness, and maybe, somehow, that weakness has been made into strength. I can't bring back the dead. I can't make up for what I've done. But maybe there's some way I can give back. Maybe I can take what I've learned and spread goodness. I am looking for a way to do this, now. One little bit at a time.
“The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness.”
- Victor Hugo
-Mallick
- Nicholas Rowe
Bobby asked me to write something. I didn't want to, but he said it would help.
I read a lot, and when the world gets darker I read more. I've been trying to find some answers in books, because events in the world are too hard to figure out without some context to give them meaning. Especially the events in my world, when over and over I have been responsible for deaths, one way or another. I killed eight people and caused endless suffering in a fire I started. Next, trapped underground by Jigsaw, I watched others die around me, others who should have survived until the end. Charles did not need to die. Luba did not need to die. And because they died, I lost my arm. This useless stump is a reminder of how ineffectual I am, how my weakness and my selfishness cause suffering again and again.
I have not taken drugs since I awoke, alive, in the hospital. Amazing, as I am haunted by guilt, by the faces of the dead. Bobby has insisted to me that I am not guilty of murder. I am guilty of weakness, and maybe, somehow, that weakness has been made into strength. I can't bring back the dead. I can't make up for what I've done. But maybe there's some way I can give back. Maybe I can take what I've learned and spread goodness. I am looking for a way to do this, now. One little bit at a time.
“The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness.”
- Victor Hugo
-Mallick
THE SURVIVOR COMMUNITY AND YOU
When you look at this site, many emotions leap off the screen. This is a community full of energy, and experience, and feeling. There are those who are guilty, those who are in pain, those who are angry, those who are resigned, confused, searching. All of them are honest. I hope that this honesty will inspire whoever reads it. It has inspired me.
When I began my quest to develop the S.U.R.V.I.V.E. program, it was for myself. I needed a way to escape the horror of my own life. But now that quest is much bigger. There are so many people who can benefit from it. Meeting the members of this group has shown me that. Touring across the country, meeting people in every town and every state, has opened my eyes. We are ALL survivors, and we all need each others help.
Our group is a laboratory for the future. We have suffered at the hand of jigsaw, we have turned the darkness into light. We have learned how to be OURSELVES. And from this community, we will boldly shared with the greater communities around us, and show everyone and anyone how to be a SURVIVOR.
- Bobby Dagen
When I began my quest to develop the S.U.R.V.I.V.E. program, it was for myself. I needed a way to escape the horror of my own life. But now that quest is much bigger. There are so many people who can benefit from it. Meeting the members of this group has shown me that. Touring across the country, meeting people in every town and every state, has opened my eyes. We are ALL survivors, and we all need each others help.
Our group is a laboratory for the future. We have suffered at the hand of jigsaw, we have turned the darkness into light. We have learned how to be OURSELVES. And from this community, we will boldly shared with the greater communities around us, and show everyone and anyone how to be a SURVIVOR.
- Bobby Dagen
Thursday, October 21, 2010
MY SON, MY SON
I always have to defend my son. Or defend myself. Jigsaw locked us up together in a cage and forced us to choose life or death for the man that took my husband Harold Abbott. You never dream of these moments, of having the chance to destroy or to save. I remember the moment like slow motion. I held the lever. He begged for his life. I wanted him dead. I saw Harold when he was sick -- and then I saw him when he was healthy, happy, when I first met him 22 years ago. And when I saw him, really saw him, I could not kill, not like that, not for revenge. Not without saving anyone. I did not take the responsibility of that man's death. Not on my hands. But I could not stop my son. I cannot make him not see what he saw, when the syringe filled that man with acid which destroyed his body.
Since we walked from that rusty cage back into our lives I have been challenged on all sides to defend my son. My boy is not a killer. He is a young man who had his father stolen, and who was ripped from the safety of our home into the labyrinths of a madman. There was no lesson. No transcendence. Just blood and grieving.
I thank Bobby for his energy and his efforts in helping to comfort and educate the survivors. He himself came through great trauma and his strength has been to turn that trauma into something positive. But I will not celebrate a madman who forces innocent people to become murderers.
-Tara
Since we walked from that rusty cage back into our lives I have been challenged on all sides to defend my son. My boy is not a killer. He is a young man who had his father stolen, and who was ripped from the safety of our home into the labyrinths of a madman. There was no lesson. No transcendence. Just blood and grieving.
I thank Bobby for his energy and his efforts in helping to comfort and educate the survivors. He himself came through great trauma and his strength has been to turn that trauma into something positive. But I will not celebrate a madman who forces innocent people to become murderers.
-Tara
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
PULL THE SURVIVOR TRIGGER
Everywhere I look there is a trigger. The sound of a lawn mower. The slamming of a door. A ladder perched against the side of a house. These triggers have the power to fill me with dread and terror. I hear the screams of the dying, I taste the salt of blood. But when I met Bobby, he showed me that these could be triggers for a different kind of feeling. Strength. Freedom. Self-determination. Bobby showed me I was clinging to the fear.
Two times in my life I have clung to something that hurt me. The tighter I held on, the more I bled.
The first time it was when I clung to Alex, my boyfriend, my partner in crime. He said he loved me. And maybe he did. He loved how I looked on his arm. He loved how we worked together, grifting businessmen in hotel bars for wads of cash or wire transfers. I was good. We were good together. I felt like we were Bonny and Clyde, cruising across America taking whatever we wanted from whoever we wanted.
And even when he would disappear for nights at a time, even when he made me feel like a worthless piece of shit, even when he broke a whiskey bottle over my head -- I still loved him. One night he tried to push me out of a moving car in the middle of a highway in Atlantic city. Hours later, when he cried and apologized and said he loved me, I still clung.
A year after Atlantic city, I clung to a ladder made of razor wire. The flesh on my hands was chopped down to the bone. Below me was a whirring machine, threshing blades whose only purpose was to grind a person down to liquid.
And across from me, clinging to an identical bladed ladder, Alex was trying to knock me to my death.
But I am still here. And he is not. As his blood cascaded over me, I realized I was free. Free in my body. Free in my spirit. Jigsaw did not know who would survive. He was not there to save me. But he gave me an opportunity and when I emerged from the pit of despair, I was reborn. A survivor.
The sounds of whirring blades, the slamming doors, the sight of a ladder -- these triggers remind me of my strength. They remind me I can be fearless. They remind me I am free.
We all have triggers of fear. And we all have the chance to change what they mean for us. We can all TURN TRIGGERS OF TRAUMA INTO TRIGGERS OF SURVIVAL
-Sidney
Two times in my life I have clung to something that hurt me. The tighter I held on, the more I bled.
The first time it was when I clung to Alex, my boyfriend, my partner in crime. He said he loved me. And maybe he did. He loved how I looked on his arm. He loved how we worked together, grifting businessmen in hotel bars for wads of cash or wire transfers. I was good. We were good together. I felt like we were Bonny and Clyde, cruising across America taking whatever we wanted from whoever we wanted.
And even when he would disappear for nights at a time, even when he made me feel like a worthless piece of shit, even when he broke a whiskey bottle over my head -- I still loved him. One night he tried to push me out of a moving car in the middle of a highway in Atlantic city. Hours later, when he cried and apologized and said he loved me, I still clung.
A year after Atlantic city, I clung to a ladder made of razor wire. The flesh on my hands was chopped down to the bone. Below me was a whirring machine, threshing blades whose only purpose was to grind a person down to liquid.
And across from me, clinging to an identical bladed ladder, Alex was trying to knock me to my death.
But I am still here. And he is not. As his blood cascaded over me, I realized I was free. Free in my body. Free in my spirit. Jigsaw did not know who would survive. He was not there to save me. But he gave me an opportunity and when I emerged from the pit of despair, I was reborn. A survivor.
The sounds of whirring blades, the slamming doors, the sight of a ladder -- these triggers remind me of my strength. They remind me I can be fearless. They remind me I am free.
We all have triggers of fear. And we all have the chance to change what they mean for us. We can all TURN TRIGGERS OF TRAUMA INTO TRIGGERS OF SURVIVAL
-Sidney
CUT THROUGH THE B.S.
Bobby is single-handedly showing us the truth. His ordeal has become all of our ordeals, and his coping skills have become like a sharp tool we can all learn to wield.
My own experience at the hands of jigsaw left me mutilated and shaken to my very soul. I lay dying in a room for 12 hours while jigsaw himself lay just feet from me. The architect of so much suffering and transformation, close enough to choke. But yet we did not have a chance to speak. One interacts with Jigsaw through action and blood.
As a doctor I learned to explain devastating facts in a manner that would sound dry, matter or fact, even insipid. No one wants to be told they are dying. But communication was never my job. My job was to cut, to extract, to sew, to prescribe. Never to nurture, or even to heal.
But Jigsaw made it very clear what it feels like to be on the other end. To be told how it is. To be given an impossible choice. To be literally handed a saw and asked to hack off your own foot.
Which I did. To survive.
The story of his ordeal is so vivid, so real. I feel as if I'm right there in the room with him. It's even more real than my own, genuine experience with Jigsaw.
-Dr. Gordon
My own experience at the hands of jigsaw left me mutilated and shaken to my very soul. I lay dying in a room for 12 hours while jigsaw himself lay just feet from me. The architect of so much suffering and transformation, close enough to choke. But yet we did not have a chance to speak. One interacts with Jigsaw through action and blood.
As a doctor I learned to explain devastating facts in a manner that would sound dry, matter or fact, even insipid. No one wants to be told they are dying. But communication was never my job. My job was to cut, to extract, to sew, to prescribe. Never to nurture, or even to heal.
But Jigsaw made it very clear what it feels like to be on the other end. To be told how it is. To be given an impossible choice. To be literally handed a saw and asked to hack off your own foot.
Which I did. To survive.
The story of his ordeal is so vivid, so real. I feel as if I'm right there in the room with him. It's even more real than my own, genuine experience with Jigsaw.
-Dr. Gordon
FLIP THE SWITCH
I flipped a switch that said die. Not choosing death for me, but choosing to punish evil. I chose death for him and in that I found a new life.
I didn't think about how he would die when I hit the button. I watched his body liquefy in front of me. I watched him scream in agony. But I had also watched my father die in front of me. That's why I flipped the switch.
I woke up in a cage. I had no idea where I was or even how I got there. I was terrified and when I realized my mother was there, I started to freak out for real. Then we saw the video, the... I'll call them the Instructions. The rules of the game. The JIGSAW TAPE.
When my father died it was like the universe got smaller, darker, and angrier. It was horrible that he died at all -- but the fact that he didn't have to die, the fact that he was murdered -- that made it all the worse. Nothing can make you feel more helpless, insignificant, weak. My mother blamed herself. I blamed myself. We knew he had been murdered and we couldn't do anything about it.
And it's clear to me that he was murdered. Some people have tried to tell me otherwise. They have tried to tell me that it was a system that it was a mistake that it was the way the world works. William Easton was not a system, and he did not make a mistake. He deliberately created a process that would murder my father and others like him.
So I flipped the switch.
This is how the world works: if you do evil, if you hurt others, something -- some one or some force -- will arise and it will take you down.
I chose death for Easton and it brought me life -- I am no longer helpless. No longer weak.
I survived.
-Brent
I didn't think about how he would die when I hit the button. I watched his body liquefy in front of me. I watched him scream in agony. But I had also watched my father die in front of me. That's why I flipped the switch.
I woke up in a cage. I had no idea where I was or even how I got there. I was terrified and when I realized my mother was there, I started to freak out for real. Then we saw the video, the... I'll call them the Instructions. The rules of the game. The JIGSAW TAPE.
When my father died it was like the universe got smaller, darker, and angrier. It was horrible that he died at all -- but the fact that he didn't have to die, the fact that he was murdered -- that made it all the worse. Nothing can make you feel more helpless, insignificant, weak. My mother blamed herself. I blamed myself. We knew he had been murdered and we couldn't do anything about it.
And it's clear to me that he was murdered. Some people have tried to tell me otherwise. They have tried to tell me that it was a system that it was a mistake that it was the way the world works. William Easton was not a system, and he did not make a mistake. He deliberately created a process that would murder my father and others like him.
So I flipped the switch.
This is how the world works: if you do evil, if you hurt others, something -- some one or some force -- will arise and it will take you down.
I chose death for Easton and it brought me life -- I am no longer helpless. No longer weak.
I survived.
-Brent
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