Behind the Artist
My Story
I’m Christopher Wheeler—artistically known as Fotobudz—a fine-art photographer, AI-collaborated song creator, and trauma survivor. My work is a window into an inner world that fractured when I was a kid in Jacksonville, Florida, and is now slowly coming back to life. I live with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). This is how I broke, and how I’m building myself back—truthfully, patiently, one frame and one song at a time.
The first picture I remember (before I had a camera)
I was three or four, riding the classic red tricycle, playing with an empty Coke bottle. The tricycle tipped, glass cut my hand and elbow, and I screamed. My dad scooped me up and raced me to the ER; I remember the ice-cold exam table and the stitches. Soon after, my parents’ marriage fell into silence and distance. The divorce was hard and love from them often felt like a competition—who could buy the better bike or turn cold the fastest. We were broke, so I returned bottles and cans after my mom’s nightly drinking for extra change. There were some bright spots like Doug, my mom’s boyfriend. A biker with a Norton motorcycle treated me with respect and took me for rides. But the bottom dropped out fast. My mother got a roommate with her daughter so that we could afford the rent. The roommate’s daughter needed to keep her bird warm, even though it was a sunny, warm day outside. She turned on a old space heater to keep her bird warm while we played outside. The old heater sparked, and the room lit up in flames. The damage ruined almost everything, and we were forced to move.
We ended up moving to a one-street trailer park off 103rd in Jacksonville, a street called Arrow Lane and the location of my fracture. My mother, not having much money, forced us to take in my mother’s brother to share living costs. He turned out to be the monster that forced me to fracture as he severely abused my 3 younger sisters and me. It was a cold December night, about 100 yards into the woods at the fort my friends and I were almost finished building. This is the location I fractured and was left in the woods. That fracture was not for me but for my sisters even though the abuse was happening to me.
As a single mother, my mom didn’t have much money, forcing us to live in poor neighborhoods. It was there I learned to fight off bullies and slip away into a crowd. As a white boy growing up in a primarily black neighborhood and attending a primarily black school in the south during the 1980’s and 90’s, racism played its part. My sister and I had to fight many bullies going to school. Between the trauma at home and the drama at school, I failed the fourth grade. I originally thought it was because I hated my teacher and didn’t want to do the work she assigned to me. It wasn’t until years later when I obtained my Duvall County School Records, I noticed that I was rated by the Burk’s Behavior Rating Scale as an “aggressive – hostile child” in 1990. Even though it clearly outlined the symptoms of DID better known as Multiple Personality Disorder at the time and revealed that I failed the 4th grade to remain in the same school as my sister, in order, I believe, to protect her. As well as, I complained to my mother that “I wished things were the same as they were before.” I didn’t have words for it, but parts of me were already taking on jobs they would later keep.
As a teen we relocated to San Diego with my mom’s last husband because he was a Gunnery Sargent in the Marine Corps being stationed at USMC Miramar. At first things were good, him being in aviation, I was able to watch missiles being put onto planes, the ability to walk on the wing of an F-18 Fighter Jet and even crank in the machine gun to the nose of that fighter jet. But the good times quickly turned dark when he proceeded to abuse not only my mother, but my sisters and me. His abuse went on for many years until 12:00am on my 18th birthday when my mother gave me my birth certificate, $15 for travel to Job Corp and a boot out the door. At this time my rebellion also led me to stealing clothes from Marshall’s. I had got caught and was awaiting a court date which wouldn’t allow me to join Job Corps. This led to several months of living on the streets of South San Diego. Skinny, pale and losing hair, I was finally able to attend Job Corps. Since I was kicked out of Montgomery High School for not going I got my GED from Chula Vista Adult School through Job Corps. While attending Job Corps I completed my pre-apprenticeship for the Carpenters Union in 1999. After completing Job Corps I enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserve, as a 71 L (lima) Administrative Specialist where I learned organization and filing systems. I was discharged about a month before 9/11 on a volunteered Other than Honorable Discharge (OTH) during peace time. Later in 2012 I obtained my CompTIA A+ certification. As well as completed all the courses towards a Certificate in Photography with straight A’s from Mount San Jacinto Junior College. From the outside it looked like forward motion. Inside, whole years were missing.
A name for the map
In my mid-40s a Trauma Therapist finally named what my brain had built to keep me alive: Dissociative Identity Disorder. The diagnosis didn’t break me; it gave me a map.
In November of 2021 I went into a dark, 4-month disassociation, that I would not wake up from until sometime in February of 2022. I believe my mind showed me my full trauma during that disassociation. I woke up with a death scare and the understanding that I could never repeat that again. It was also at that moment that I understood that with every step forward there would no longer be a step to go back to. I was around 300 pounds and drinking every day. That is when I immediately started into therapy, quit drinking and started going to the gym 5 days a week. I decided to go all-in on healing—EMDR, skills work, relentless journaling. I even read “Feeling Great” by David Burns M.D., “Facing Co-Dependency” by Pia Mellody, and “Healing Your Lost Inner Child,” by Robert Jackman. I spent 3 and a half years averaging a session a week with all 3 forms of EMDR therapy, spent a year with a bipolar specialist and spent time with a child abuse therapist and couples therapy, before I was found by a trauma therapist. I was diagnosed correctly…finally. Still, trauma knows how to hide. Every time we neared the core, my body would panic and eject me. Hours gone. Blank spaces.
How the White Plastic Chair Came to Life
A Therapist once explained it like this: severe trauma can litter a brain’s neuro pathways with PTSD “scarring,” and trying to think directly about the trauma can trigger dissociation. That same Therapist told me there’s emerging research suggesting that psilocybin promotes the growth of new neural pathways—routes not marked by that scarring—allowing the trauma patient to not only see the trauma but also gives them the opportunity to process and heal it. Their guidance to me was simple but hard: learn to let your mind wander without blocking it, so it can find the source.
So—carefully, intentionally, and on my own responsibility—I began microdosing psilocybin sessions at night, lying in bed while my wife and kids slept. (This is a personal account, not advice; anyone considering it should talk to qualified clinicians and follow the law where they live.) Letting the mind truly wander without slamming on the brakes took months to learn. When I finally did, my mind found the source—a black, smoky egg where my worst memories lived.
I learned to move that egg into a vast, pitch-black room—so dark it felt like gravity. Eventually I could stand in the room alongside my black smoky egg of trauma. I tried everything to open it. Every attempt, I dissociated and was exited out of that empty room and back onto my pillow.
After more failures than I can count, I stopped staring at the egg and looked at the walls, the ceiling, and the floor. I noticed I could stay longer if I didn’t look straight at the trauma. In that moment I heard a calm question: “What color is the grass?” Intrigued, I leaned forward and asked out loud, “What color is the grass?”
Instantly, 4–6 inches of Kentucky bluegrass appeared—glowing so green that it casted a hue on the ever-black walls. I felt the dewy grass between my bare toes—and it was at that moment that I was violently ripped out of the room in the most painful dissociative exit I’d ever felt. When I came to, I realized I had not exited out of the room onto my pillow but was instead staring at a grey wall on the outside of the room.
A furious rage took over me. I’d had enough. I kicked the wall open in my mind and rushed the egg—throwing every therapeutic tool I had learned and was given at it. I pushed, clawed, screamed and even ripped myself apart in frustration, but not a mark was made. Leaning over and bleeding in pieces, mind racing in failure, I hear a calm voice say, “This is a problem, Chris. Overcome it.”
The solution arrived as understanding: If I can rebuild the trauma, I can also get lost in that same re-built trauma. Instantly a brand new shiny white plastic chair appeared in my right hand. It was at that moment that I understood the chair was a tether so that I would not get lost in my trauma again.
Intrigued, I placed the chair away from the egg and sat down. After sitting down, I realized that the chair wasn’t just a tether but a grounding tether. Allowing me to re-build the room without getting lost and gave me a return location. While sitting in that chair, in that ever-black room, next to the egg, I decided to lean over and ask again, “What color is the grass?” The blackness slowly surrendered—first a lawn, then a horizon, then light. In that room I was able to heal myself enough to be found.
The Four Who Stood Watch
As color returned, the parts of me who had kept me alive stepped forward—my alters:
- Michael — the strategist. Quiet, precise, steady hands on the wheel. Measures twice, moves once. His pulse is my track “Calm in the Chaos.”
- Tate — the jester with teeth. Lightning wit, truth-teller; diffuses bombs with a punchline. His anthem is “Laugh So You Don’t Cry.”
- Little Chris — the nine-year-old guardian. Maps fear and still finds wonder. His spirit lives in “Juxtaposition.”
- Drop Dead Fred — the wall. Weaponizes adrenaline, numbs pain, takes the hits so the rest of us survive. He roars in “Drop Dead Fred.”
Together we call them The Four Horsemen—not monsters, not a movie trope, but a survival system. Performing “The Four Horsemen” is our oath: one body, many strengths, forward.
What I believe (and what I don’t)
You won’t find graphic details here. What happened is real. The healing is real too. DID isn’t a horror plot; it’s a creative survival strategy a young brain built under impossible pressure. People with DID are often hyper-vigilant, careful, and gentle—we notice everything because it kept us alive. My work is about humanizing that reality. We are not monsters. We are survivors—artists of adaptation.
A living project
This site is alive and will keep changing—new photos, new songs, new notes from the chair. You’ll see Jacksonville nights and California dawns; GED grit, a flash of Army ribbon, tech chops earned on the fly, and a camera that doesn’t flinch. Over time you’ll watch the room fill—grass, sky, warmth—and the voices learn to stand as one.
If you’ve walked through your own black room, I won’t promise the journey will be easy. I will say this: there’s a chair. You can sit. You can breathe. You can ask, What color is the grass?—and wait for the world to answer. Sometimes the answer is a photograph of a broken place made beautiful. Sometimes it’s a verse I write. Sometimes it’s a song I build with AI so the feeling can live outside my body. But if you sit, light will find you again.
Thank you for reading. I’m Christopher—Fotobudz—still here, still building light in the dark with Michael, Tate, Little Chris, and Drop Dead Fred at my side. This is a peek into my world, not all of it—and it’s still unfolding, one frame and one song at a time.