Make Me Feel Real: The Inspiring True Story of a Beautiful Woman's Life of Child Abuse, Sexual Assault, Addiction, Bank Robbery, Federal Prison, and at Last...Salvation.

By M. C. Angel

The story starts with a terrifying sexual attack on the author at her Manhattan apartment. While the attack takes place she “escapes” in her mind by flashing back on her life from her horribly abusive childhood, through her life of fitness and beauty, and on to her romances, marriage and her son, up to the moment she is suffering this horrifying eighty-five-minute-long attack.

Once the attack ends, we hear about the aftermath of the attack that leads to her spinning out of control into a high-stakes world of gambling where she quickly gets in way over her head and to survive makes the desperate decision to rob banks. These riveting true-life events culminate in her capture and her being sent to federal prison with an ending that will leave you—FEELING REAL.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662430114

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Make Me Feel Real

The Inspiring True Story of a Beautiful Woman's Life of Child Abuse, Sexual Assault, Addiction, Bank Robbery, Federal Prison, and at Last...Salvation.

M. C. Angel

Copyright © 2022 M.C. Angel

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2022

ISBN 978-1-6624-3010-7 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-3011-4 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

This book is dedicated to my son, Nicholas—my heart, my world—I love you! To my Papa, whom I miss more and more with each passing day; and to my brother Frank and sister Giselle, thank you for still loving me.

"Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive

and will come forth later in uglier ways."

—Sigmund Freud

Preface

Hurricane Sandy, October 29, 2012

Tick, tick, tick. Drip, drip, drip.

Help!

I must keep my eyes open to see the time on the DVR. I must not close them. I must see the clock.

Please help me!

I am covered in slick sweat all over. It burns my eyes. I must not close them.

My face is smashed into the pillow. Drops of his sweat fall onto my back. I count them. How many drops fall per minute? Six? No, seven.

It hurts so bad.

Please stop!

What if I die? I don’t know how I’m going to live. I must not close my eyes.

Part I

The Hurricane

October 29, 2012, 9:00 a.m.

Hi, my name is Luke Michaels. Thanks for meeting me today. I am desperate. I have to get this presentation done for tonight’s NYPD Sergeants’ Association seminar.

I shake Luke’s hand. It’s fine. Let me see what you have so far, and I will help you set up an amazing PowerPoint presentation.

We were meeting in the lobby of my building in Battery Park City. I love our lobby with its beautiful couches, leather chairs, twenty-foot windows, tables, and Wi-Fi.

I take his laptop from him, and we sit across from each other on the leather chairs. Luke found me through an ad in which I offered computer troubleshooting and software help for things like PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets, and so on. I started this side hustle a few months earlier on the advice of a friend. I was always helping people with such issues anyway. Already, I had made a nice bit of money, and I enjoyed helping the technologically challenged.

After working for about twenty minutes, Luke’s laptop dies. Do you have the power cord? I ask. We can just plug it in and keep working.

Oh, damn, Luke says. I don’t have it with me. Do you have one that we can use?

I tell him I don’t have one that will fit his laptop.

What can we do? I have to get this done today.

Well, I don’t know, I say. Are you sure the seminar is still on for tonight? We are supposed to be getting hit by that big storm. A lot of things have been canceled.

Luke replies, Oh yeah, it’s definitely on, and I am the main presenter. I must have this done. Can we go to your apartment and finish up? I will pay extra.

I ponder his request as I glance around the lobby. There are cameras everywhere. John, our doorman, has been at his post the entire time we have been working.

Plus, Luke’s not just a policeman, he’s a sergeant, so there isn’t anything to worry about as far as safety is concerned. I don’t have any other plans for the day.

Okay, I agree. Let’s go up and finish this. It shouldn’t take too much longer, but you don’t have to pay extra. Just write an amazing review.

Back

I was five years old. My sandy blond hair was cut short above my neckline, and I was proud of my chopped-up bangs, which I had cut myself. I was a snaggle-toothed little girl and starving for attention. When I look at pictures of myself as a child, I am struck by how little I recall about my life at that time. I remember my kindergarten teacher, who was a larger-than-life, older Black woman named Mrs. Childs. What a perfect name for a kindergarten teacher. Mrs. Childs resembled in both appearance and personality the Aunt Jemima figure depicted on pancake and syrup packages.

Our classroom had life-sized (as in five-year-old-sized) cardboard cutouts of kings, queens, princes, and princesses with holes for children’s arms and faces. My classmates and I positioned our parts in the appropriate spots and walked around in the cutouts. They felt scratchy when I slid my arms through the holes and stuck my face through the headpiece. Still, I strutted as though I were royalty.

I have always been drawn to things that appear to be other than they really are. I, too, like to pretend to be different than I really am. The practice was harmless enough when I was a child, but the same trait would lead me down a harrowing path later in life.

Recently, I realized that I began pretending long before I encountered the kindergarten cutouts. My brother, Frank, who is three years my senior, reminded me of an incident that occurred when I was three years old, and my sister, Gigi, was five. The three of us were running around the wooded dirt road streets in a small hick town in South Florida. It was not unusual for us to roam unsupervised, despite our ages. At some point, Frank and Gigi realized that I had gone off on my own.

After a little searching, they found me. I was dragging a small puppy behind me with a piece of string as he pushed his paws in the dirt to stop me from pulling him.

Michelle, what are you doing? Frank asked.

I looked up and smiled. He won’t stop following me.

I wanted Frank to think that the puppy was following me by choice. At home, I told my mother, with whom we lived at the time, the same story. Looking back, I think that had much to do with my five-year-old self’s desire to feel wanted, even by stray dogs. I was hungry to be seen and followed. I wanted someone to notice me as I wanted to be seen, which was as a desirable little girl. In reality, I felt invisible much of the time. In my mind, a story that the dogs found me so irresistible that they followed me home aligned with my manufactured image of myself.

I don’t recall ever living with both parents. However, I’ve been told that we lived with them both until I was two years old. At that point, they separated for a little over a year and got back together until I was about six years old. I’ve seen a few pictures of us as a family, but I have no independent memories of my parents together. I recall my dad coming home after weeks on the road from his truck-driving job. All of us children would run and jump on him. He would flip us upside down, spin us around, and cover us in kisses. It was always a celebration when he came home. Years later, he told me it infuriated my mother when he played with the children before giving her a hug and a kiss. She’d protest, I am your wife; I come first. Those little brats can wait.

My father came from a good Italian family. His parents had come to America with nothing. They worked hard for years. They scrimped, saved, and sacrificed to establish an affluent life for their family, which included my father, Salvatore, and his older brother Anthony. My father attended the University of Florida in Gainesville, where he met my mother, Gloria. Gloria was a townie. She was not a student. Her mother had been committed to Chattahoochee, an archaic mental institution in Florida. I never learned my maternal grandmother’s official diagnosis, and I don’t recall ever meeting her. My mother was raised mostly by her paternal grandmother. They lived just above the poverty line, and my mother grew up without a lot of love. I know she was abused, though I don’t know details beyond that. I don’t know why she was at the university the day she met my father. I never learned anything about her father, and I met her only sibling, Maxine, once.

My parents married and moved back to New York, where my father’s parents lived. After they split up the first time, my mother moved back to Gainesville with me, Gigi, and Frank. She and my father reconciled a little over a year