Dangerous Ignorance In The City Attorney's Office

 

Seattle City Attorney, Ann Davison, doesn't know the difference between HIV negative and undetectable. Normally, I'd say, "So what. Plenty of people are surprisingly ignorant when it comes to HIV terminology. But an elected official in such a seat of power who chooses to conduct investigations on innocent people over an angry and misguided tip from someone claiming (falsely) that he had been intentionally infected by a friend who he said was supposed to be negative, is a danger to any citizen of this city living with HIV. 

In case she reads this post, allow me to illustrate the difference, because the distinction matters immensely. 

A person is HIV negative if they have never been infected with the virus. This means there are no virus copies anywhere in their system, and there never has been. These people have the option of taking Truvada or other medications once daily to prevent HIV infection through sex. 

HIV attaching to a lymphocyte

When an HIV-positive person taking Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART) daily is successful at suppressing the amount of virus in their bloodstream to a level so low that it becomes impossible for them to transmit the infection to others through sex, those people are considered HIV+/undetectable. 

The virus isn't gone. The few copies that remain travel into the nooks and crannies, mostly inside lymph nodes, and become dormant. They lie there in wait for an opportunity when the medicine is no longer around to suppress it, sleeping until they can wake and resume making copies of themselves using helper T-cells from our immune system as the building blocks. This is why adherence is critical and why remaining undetectable has always been my goal. 

The CDC considers an undetectable status, meaning there are fewer than 40 copies of the virus per mL of blood, to be untransmittable. This is the basis of the U=U campaign aimed at educating people like Ann Davison so they understand risk factors accurately. 

I have been HIV positive since 1993. For the vast majority of those years, I have remained durably suppressed or undetectable - same thing. Since day one, I have been upfront about my status with every partner I've had, despite the rejection and stigma that accompanies such an admission. It's in all my profiles on Grindr, Scruff, and Sniffies. I have never hidden my status. Not ever. As is the case with any long-term survivor of HIV, there are occasional "blips" where viral load spikes unexpectedly above the level of detection. It happens through no fault of the patient. This is what happened to me in the fall of 2023. 

A white blood cell infected with HIV

That year in September, I got a viral load that was "detectable" at 63 copies per milliliter of blood. This is still considered to be durably suppressed. The CDC and WHO consider any viral load below 1,000 to carry a risk of transmissibility effectively negligible.
63 < 1,000. Do the math, Ann.

If you are going to send investigators in to haunt a person's life for years, invading
their privacy day and night, holding embarrassing conversations about the subject's weight, hygiene, eating habits, and masturbation schedule, at least know which people among your constituents present a credible risk of spreading HIV. Because when you get that basic factor wrong, your whole basis for an investigation goes right out the window.

But you don't let a little thing like that stop you, do you, Ann? Even when your own investigator reads you a list of reasons to call off the investigation and leave me alone, you shut him down, reminding him he is a City Employee and as such will do whatever you tell him to do. Not very good managerial style, but hey. You do you.

I guess if it's no longer about whether your pal (my former friend turned ridiculous enemy) actually became positive through my intentional transmission, then I guess it must be a personal grudge now. I imagine it must be pretty humiliating to realize partway through an investigation that your target is medically incapable of the crime you are trying to pin on him. Add to that the bonus of the subject catching on to your game and listening to your investigators talking about him from their hiding place nearby. That's got to be salt in an already embarrassing wound. So you direct them to keep monitoring and to find probable cause sufficient to get a warrant and arrest me. Disregard the protests of the man on the ground who has seen firsthand my innocence. What does the truth matter when you've got a crusade to finish?

I suppose this is why Seattle PD's records department can't seem to fulfill my public records requests in a more timely manner. I have requested records of police reports, body worn video, dash camera footage, investigation notes and basically any artifact available in connection with me going back as far as April 2024 that still have not been fulfilled. The first bunch was held so long that some of the records met their retention deadline and were deleted despite my open request for them. Did you make a call and instruct those city employees to drag their feet as long as they could? I guess we'll see, won't we. Another batch of released files is due 12/31/25.

I can't wait until I have an opportunity to face you in court and look at your face when I show the judge my hard, unimpeachable evidence of my durable suppression since 2020 right on up through this past Tuesday. I'm envisioning your head exploding or at least plumes of cartoon steam gushing forth from your ears. Keep it up, Ann. But try to learn something along the way, ma'am. It's kind of your job to know this shit.

HIV & Depression

 How Long-Term HIV Survival and Depressive Episodes Go Hand-In-Hand

Living with HIV for decades turns time into something strange. The urgency of the early years eventually fades, but the virus doesn’t. It just settles in, like a roommate you never invited and can’t evict. The crisis slowly becomes routine, and routine becomes its own kind of prison. That little pill that keeps me alive is both my miracle and my mirror—every morning it reflects back the part of me I’d most like to erase. I swallow it with water and a wince, a daily ritual of gratitude and resentment in the same breath.

What people don’t always see is that long-term survival comes with a quiet, grinding grief. I outlived the panic-era headlines, the funerals, the whispered “Did you hear…?” phone calls—but survival has a body count, and sometimes I feel like I’m standing on top of it. Survivor’s guilt isn’t just a dramatic phrase; it’s the heaviness you feel when you realize you’re still here while faces you loved live only in old photos and half-faded memories. You start to wonder why you were spared—what cosmic math decided you get to grow older with this virus while others never had the chance. The world moved on to new scandals and new crises, but my body never got to move on from this one.

Then there’s the stigma that doesn’t die, it just evolves. It lives in the awkward pause when I disclose my status. In the way some people say “Oh… thank you for telling me,” like I just handed them a ticking bomb instead of a piece of my truth. It’s in the dating apps where you either brand yourself with three letters—HIV—or play this exhausting game of timing and disclosure and risk. Even in 2025, with PrEP and U=U and all the science in the world, there are still looks, still questions, still people who treat you as a walking warning label instead of a whole person.

Sex, for me, isn’t a minefield of disclosure anymore; I took that part out of the equation a long time ago. My status is right there on every profile, in plain sight, so anyone who can’t handle it can quietly move along before we ever exchange a word. It’s a kind of harm reduction for the heart: I don’t have to brace for the awkward pause, the panicked unmatch, the “sorry, I didn’t realize…” message. But there’s a quieter cost to that system too. I never see the rejections—I just feel the absence. Fewer messages, fewer replies, conversations that die on the vine. You can’t prove it’s because of those three letters, but you feel it anyway. It becomes easy to see yourself less as a person who happens to have HIV and more as a filter people are silently passing or failing before they ever bother to meet you.

Over time, that kind of invisible sorting seeps into the bedroom, even when I’m with someone who does show up, who does understand U=U, who doesn’t flinch at my status. My body still remembers years of being treated like a risk instead of a partner. Desire gets tangled up with self-consciousness, with side effects, with the sense that I’m a “safer choice” only because I’ve turned my sex life into a disclaimer-first operation. It’s not that I’m afraid to be honest; it’s that honesty has taught me exactly how conditional other people’s desire can be — and some days my libido responds by just shutting the whole system down.

Depression doesn’t just drain my mood; it interferes with the one thing that’s literally keeping me alive. When I fall deep into an episode, basic tasks turn into impossible mountains. Getting out of bed feels like a negotiation. Feeding myself, brushing my teeth, taking a shower—those start to feel optional. The pill bottle on the nightstand stops looking like hope and starts looking like a judgmental little witness. On the worst days, I just roll over and let the hours pass, doses slipping by untouched. It’s not always a dramatic “I want to die.” Sometimes it’s just a quiet “I don’t care what happens to me right now,” and that indifference is its own kind of danger.

That’s what scares me when I finally surface: how easily survival can start to unravel in those stretches. If I miss meds for long enough, HIV stops behaving like a managed chronic condition and starts becoming a real threat again. The virus I work so hard to keep caged gets a chance to wake back up. Then the shame hits: You know better. How could you let this slide? That shame folds right back into the depression, which makes it even harder to pick the pill up the next day. It becomes a loop—virus, pill, depression, avoidance, more risk—and it’s terrifying to realize how quickly that loop could become deadly if it goes unchecked.

From the outside, it just looks like I’m “having a rough week” or “in a funk.” Nobody sees the small, lethal math happening in my bedroom: missed pills, skipped meals, a body quietly absorbing every choice I’m too numb to make. Long-term survival is sold as lab numbers and adherence charts, but for me it’s also this constant fight not to let the darkness talk me out of basic self-care. The same daily pill that gave me a future back can become the first thing I stop reaching for when the future feels too heavy to hold.

And yet, here I am. Still taking the pill. Still doing the laundry. Still paying bills, going to work, flirting on good days, hiding on the bad ones. That’s the darker side of survival no one prepared me for: not the drama of dying, but the discipline of living. Waking up again and again to the same virus, the same bottle, the same history, and choosing—sometimes reluctantly, sometimes angrily—to keep going. It isn’t inspirational. It isn’t neat. It’s just real.

At The Precipice Once More

 LOOK OUT FOR THAT FIRST STEP. IT'S A LULU!

I'm really trying hard to have a more positive outlook. Truly! But I can't seem to stop tripping over huge reminders that taking two steps forward will ultimately land you three steps back. It's like just when one awful thing resolves itself, there's no time to even celebrate that small win before its mutant cousin pops up with a chip on its shoulder looking to double the awful you just finished tidying up. 

A major development in my ongoing saga of the mysterious "investigation" that has haunted me for the last two-and-a-half years finally came to fruition this past
weekend, and there are two ways of looking at it. Either these nosey nellies calling themselves "investigators" finally did some elementary investigating and uncovered the truth, which, surprisingly, they shared with a certain former friend whose raison d'etre for the last couple years has been to shout "Shannon's a murderer!" from the mountain tops. The alternative view, and the one I'm actually inclined to believe, is that he and his gal pals got creative and put on one of their now famous scripted performances wherein the former friend gives a stellar performance as a decent human being just long enough for me to swallow the act and buy into the ruse. 

Not this time! Fool me thrice, and . . . well, shove it where the sun don't shine, I guess. Trust is a resource I now guard more tightly than China on rare earths. He killed off my former default setting, which was to trust people completely until they give you a reason not to. Ah, but it's for the best really. There are just way too many people around who look for simps like that and suck 'em dry before they use up that free trust and then bounce. I'm done with those guys. 

Either way, it represents a milestone for me, and it felt like a huge weight was about to be lifted. I could actually feel myself ready to rise, to lift off and glide toward a better future. Nah-ah! No, sir. Get your fat ass back down here in the dirt! Pigs don't fly, big boy! 

Because this troupe of assholes, er. um, actors playing at investigating are incapable of talking to one another at a volume lower than 120 decibels, especially when the whole gang is on speaker phone or Zoom, I got to hear the universe winding up for the next kick to my nuts. I might have been cleared by these jokers of having ever been a murderer or a terrorist, but because they have been invading my privacy for going on three years now, they've managed to make a list of lesser gripes that the Head Cunt in Charge seems intent on pinning on me with a warrant, even though this bitch and her chums are personally responsible for irreparable damage to my life and for the loss of what was a very important relationship for me. 

Bitch has zero empathy and no sense of shame at all. A decent person, upon learning they were completely wrong about something so terrible would reflect on their actions and the impact they had on their target during the course of their mishandled blunder of an investigation and think, "Hmm. I fucked up, and this guy was really hurt in the process. That's on me, and I'm gonna leave this dude the fuck alone. He's earned a break, surviving me and my around-the-clock surveillance as well as he did." And then they would tuck their tail between their legs and shuffle off quietly into the sunset. 

Not HCiC. She see's her errors as inconsequential and focuses on saving face instead of giving grace. Her priority is to find something, anything that will justify the HUGE expense she's racked up with her fruitless and baseless three-year crusade to catch a killer that never existed. What a fucking bitch. 

Even her fellow investigators were taken aback by her gall. One dude, who I actually think is pretty cool, stood up to the twat for a good many hours yesterday, arguing from a place of accountability and sympathy that there was no way in hell there should even be a discussion about sending me to jail after what they did to my life. He's right! 

I just started my work study job last week, and the drama going on all around me is putting me in very real danger of losing my financial aid. I'm taking three classes this quarter, and I'm on a collision course with utter failure in at least two of them, because I've been so consumed trying to figure out if and when these assholes are going to come for me. If I fail even one, my financial aid gets pulled for next quarter, which means I can't attend school or work study. If I don't attend school, I have to start repaying student loans, without which I can't pay rent. Without school, I no longer qualify for SNAP food benefits. Without those, I don't eat. It's like I said, two steps forward. . .here they come.

But, nah. Fuck them. I gave my friend all my support, my love, my loyalty, and in return I earned his betrayal, his lies, and his crusade to punish me for embarrassing him. I did everything I could to protect him, and he wants me in jail for failing to do that. It's so fucked up! He wants an apology I have not been given an opportunity to give him, and because it's so late coming his way, he's beyond angry. He's nuclear. He's lost all reason. There is no getting through his wall of hatred to his gooey Tootsie-roll center. He's lost to me, and in becoming so lost, has become a danger to me. 

His Obsession With Me Is Absurd

From The Shadows A Coward Watches

AI-generated Illustration of my stalker harassing me from the shadows.

It may be the most ironic thing I have ever witnessed in my life. For the last three mornings in a row, two of which I had to spend away from home just to get away from it, I have heard my former friend in the vicinity of my new apartment barking orders with such angry intensity at the investigators who are still watching me around the clock. He not only knows where I live, but he and his pack of peepers clearly have a base of operations nearby from which to spy on me. 

Now, I want to remind my readers that this is the same friend who two years ago cut off all communication with me, told me to leave him alone, and even went to such ridiculous lengths as to file a false petition for a protective order to silence me from collecting a debt owed to me by him. And now, he can't seem to get enough of me. 

While this hypocrite gnashes his teeth and barks orders at his team of spies, insisting they find a way to arrest me, he engages in the very behavior he found so intrusive and violating when he imagined it being done to him. One would think that someone wanting nothing to do with me would put as much distance between us as possible. Not my former friend. He may be a coward, too afraid to face me after all he has done to punish me for humiliating him over 2 years ago, but he's a wily one, staying just close enough to intrude on me without being seen.

I have no idea where he lives. I don't know if or where he works. Since he was evicted from our former building for nonpayment of rent for two years, I've kept a low profile and have not tried to find out anything about him or his whereabouts, because I was just hopeful that I could finally put that horrible man out of my life for good. But not him. He has kept tabs on me and has been watching my every move since 2023. 

So, it seems I may have to take a page from his playbook now and file my own petition for a protective order. The fact that he is clearly on the property where I live so frequently with no business here other than to harass and stalk me, coupled with the fact that he has a license to carry a concealed weapon and owns a gun, has me very concerned for my safety. I'm going to ask Seattle Police Department to help me request an Emergency Protection Order with mandatory weapon removal to protect me from any violence my former friend may intend to visit upon me.

I tried to be a good sport. I forgave his debt to me. I have maintained the no-contact status he so badly wanted even after the order expired, except to send him certain documents related to tax and legal matters I was obligated to send to him. I want nothing to do with him, because he was such a duplicitous, abusive liar who ended up stealing a great deal of money from me when I needed it most, negotiated in bad faith while cooperating with a ridiculous investigation under the presumption that I was guilty of terrorism. He's a moron, but he's a damned good actor.  

Since I have heard you making snarky references to my posts, old friend, I know you are monitoring my blog and social media. Let this be my final warning to you. Leave me alone. Stop monitoring me. You have no business anywhere near my home. 

You CHOSE to leave me with hundreds of unanswered questions and to lead me to believe in a feigned friendship you invented to deceive me. You didn't feel obligated to fill in any blanks to make life more bearable for me, and that's your fucking prerogative, asshole. 

But you don't get a say in how I fill in the blanks for myself. I'm entitled to know about the things going on around me that have direct impact on my life, and I will do whatever I have to do to answer the questions your cowardly ass left me with. 

If I see you around my apartment, I will confront you. Neither of us wants the awkwardness of having to look the other in the eye or speak a single word to the other. I despise you, and I want nothing to do with you. Be gone, you hateful, vindictive little backstabbing bitch. And take those idiots you call investigators with you. They clearly suck at their job, and there's nothing to fucking see here.

I Embarrassed My Infallible Friend

How A Birthday Betrayal Broke Reality In Two

A Tale Of Two Birthdays 

Mine (June 2023)

A recent revelation landed in my lap like a 500-lb anvil this weekend. For over two years, I have pondered how a person who called himself a friend and said the words, "Love you.", when he left for work in the mornings, could have allowed a day as momentous as my 50th birthday to pass without even a single text message, phone call, or visit. 

For the month leading up to it, I'd talked about it with him at least a dozen times, telling him how important it was to me and how I'd never expected to see such a milestone come to pass in my life. And he was, after all, just 40 feet away, one floor above me the entire time. 

I questioned how he had justified allowing me to sit in tears on that special day, depressed, alone, and feeling so unwanted and unimportant that my thoughts turned dark and ready for the pain to end. If the situation had been reversed and it was his birthday, you can believe I would be there with a cake, a card, and some gifts to celebrate with Friend, because that is what friends do, especially when they live 40 feet apart in the same building. I never could figure it out. . .

. . .Until this weekend, when the explanation was uncovered unexpectedly. It turns out that on that very special day, Friend was in his apartment listening to a pair of strangers fill his head with such unbelievable lies about me being a murderer, a terrorist, and under federal investigation by at least three different agencies. 

I couldn't believe the preposterous words coming out of their mouths, and I certainly thought the next thing I would hear would be Friend laughing at them as he ushered them out of the building in disbelief. Instead, what I heard was that friend immediately swallowing their made up history for me like he'd suspected it all along.

This man had lived with me for three months in my small one-bedroom apartment. We had become inseparable for some time, fast friends, a team.  Even after I'd helped him move out of my bedroom and into a unit one floor above me, Friend was back at my place every night after work, staying the night for another month instead of going up to his own bed. 

He was there for me when I had to put down my beloved cat, Moriarty, offering me his sympathy and support while my heart was breaking. We were so tight that other acquaintances started complaining that he was always with me and never free to go do things with them apart from me. And that was his choice. The man knew me better than just about any other person I can think of, or at least I thought he did. 

But if he'd really known me, really absorbed my truest nature and felt the kinship with me that I did with him, he wouldn't have stood in that upstairs apartment shouting and screaming, "Oh my GOD!", in response to each more incredible allegation these two people offered him, sounding as if he'd been wearing wool over his eyes the whole time we had known one another only to have it removed that day to reveal the real monster they were describing. 

These lies were so crazy that anyone who has ever met me, ever spent a day with me, would know that they could not possibly be true. And if Friend had bothered to speak to me about any of it, or even to approach just one person out of the hundreds of available people that have known me my entire life, he could have been relieved of these laughable delusions once and for all. 

But Friend treated any contradiction as an attack and dismissed anything that didn’t fit his view. He had begun to grow suspicious of me after trying to connect dots  from completely different pages out of completely different books. I recently learned that he has a belief loop that only let in confirming facts, and when he felt criticized or embarrassed, he rewrote details to protect himself and his image.

If any of those feelings threaten to jump out at him based on what he says or does to people, his psyche goes to work blurring any incoming information that might contradict his perception that he is not an asshole. It rewrites reality in real time, forgetting specific details that don't support this infallible image of self, and only accepting evidence that aligns with his already strongly held beliefs about a person, place, or thing. 

It relies on a complicated mixture of confirmation bias, double standards, insecurity, projection, lack of empathy and understanding, and emotional immaturity, and it's one hell of a tough cookie to crumble. You can't logic your way past this kind of delusion. 

The only way to change his mind is if he finds his own way there, slowly cultivating new beliefs that over time may eventually reveal the truth he was denying. But brute force won't do it. Think of cults. It's like trying to explain to one of those guys that the Kool-Aid is a bad idea.

His (July 2023) 

The following weekend was his birthday. Despite some huffing and puffing and a bit of asshole-ish behavior, I managed to convince him to allow me to bring him a birthday cake, a card, and some gifts. Because, you know, he was my friend, and I lived just 40 feet away, one floor down. 

He didn't behave like someone who had just discovered he'd been living with a murderer. There was no sign of him being afraid of me or anything. All I saw was his usual levels of impatience, intolerance, and simmering irritation, which had sort of become his default where I was concerned. 

But no indication anything had changed between us. He accepted the gifts, of course, and the cake. Later on, I had to ask him if he'd seen the card I'd made, and he eventually responded that he had and that it was cute. 

Summer of Silence
(July 2023)

Walking on eggshells had been my preferred mode of perambulation, as for some time, anything I said or did, whether it as texting him hours after he'd told me he would be right down, or reminding him to move his car from the illegal spot he'd parked in before parking enforcement popped another ticket under the wiper, pissed him off. 

He had developed a certain tone in his voice when answering a call from me that I referred to as a mix of impatience, anger, and frustration curled into a sharp staccato. Before I even spoke or had a chance to provide some context for my call, he had started answering me with the tone. I wonder if he ever stopped to consider that being spoken to like you are a nuisance over and over again can make you start to think that anything you say is going to be irritating. It feels like being in never-ending trouble.

Even eggshells turned out to be too annoying a conveyance for him, and by morning the next day, I'd been exiled. Blocked. Stonewalled. Silenced. There are basically three ways Friend handled conflict and emotionally dense situations. 

• He either avoided it, choosing when, how long, and about what we would talk; 
• He might erupt into a fearsome tantrum loud enough to shake the walls, substituting volume for whatever proof or truth his argument lacked; or 
• He would simply shut you out, shut you down, and put an end to your access to his friendship. 

This was one of that third variety, and I managed to land there before he had even managed to eat his delicious 35th birthday cake. 

My exile lasted through the full month of July and halfway into August. It so happened he had borrowed $50 from me at the beginning of June before he joined Team Terrorist, and none of my efforts to recover that money had been successful. I decided after a month and a half of his evasion, both of me and of the debt, I would file a small claims case in King County District Court. 

Before I went down that road, though, I wanted to give him a heads up, warn him that I would be filing the following morning if I didn't hear from him by 8:00 AM, and give him one more chance to take responsibility and repay me, in which case we wouldn't have to drag our friendship through a courtroom. So I put a note to that effect on his door and went to bed.

Strangers In The Night
(August 2023)

Around 3:00 AM that night, while I was sleeping, I heard my phone ring beside the bed. It was Friend's ringtone, which I had not heard in so long, it woke me when it rang. I missed the call, but dialed it right back, and when he answered, he didn't have "the tone". He sounded tired. Maybe a little down in the dumps. Defeated, almost. 

He asked me if I would like to join him outside the building on the sidewalk outside my windows for a smoke and a chat, and I jumped out of bed, dressed, and hurried outside to find him leaning against the wall, a half-smoked Marlboro between his fingers while he chewed at the nail of a finger on the other hand. 

I said hello. He returned my greeting. He seemed unexpectedly calm for someone who had been so unreasonably furious with me the last time we spoke. He told me he didn't want me to go file my suit. It would be a waste of money, he said, and he had every intention of repaying me the $50. 

He explained that it had been a particularly rough summer for him financially due to repeated issues with his cars breaking down, being towed or impounded, and basically being unreliable to get him to and from work, which he had been trying to do as much of so he could catch up. 

I told him I completely understood and added that what he had just told me would have been all I needed to hear to put the matter to rest before I had to consider legal action. He conceded that he should have been better about communicating with me and apologized. 

He stayed outside with me while I smoked a second cigarette, telling me more about his summer. He announced that he and Boyfriend had become official on July 4, a couple days after my exile. I congratulated him. He told me he'd had some bad news the day after they became boyfriends, and I immediately hugged him, fighting back tears, not wanting to spook him by showing to much emotion, and he returned the hug. We stood there for half a minute in that embrace, silently speaking so many things without a word. 

Just then, Boyfriend came around the corner of the building looking for him, obviously perturbed. Friend told him his phone was on silent, so he hadn't heard any of the ten phone calls Boyfriend had made trying to track him down. He told Boyfriend we were almost done, and Boyfriend retreated back inside looking a bit disgruntled. 

I stamped out my cigarette and asked him if he minded letting me back in through the gate I'd come through, because in my haste to meet him, I'd run out of my apartment without my keys. He unlocked the gate, then the door, and we walked inside together. Before we each turned to go our separate ways he reached for another hug, and I was so relieved to return it. 

I told him I had really missed him, and he said the same. Still no sign of the rabid man who'd been sipping all that haterade on my birthday. I  was completely oblivious that any of that nonsense ever happened thanks to his stellar performance in the role of remorseful friend.

The Delicate Road To Reconciliation
(August 2023)

A week or so later, I ran into him outside on my way to buy smokes, and I asked him if he might consider coming by my apartment for a visit when he was free. He was running an errand, but said, yes, he could do that. When he showed up, there was still no tone. I got a hopeful sense things might be salvageable between us. 

I asked him point blank if he would be open to trying a reboot of our friendship and working on a real reconciliation after the difficulties we had faced months earlier when it all fell apart. He agreed, but said he would only consider doing so if I promised not to push things too fast. I agreed, but I had no idea what his measure of "too fast" was going to be. 

We hung out every day that week, at least for an hour or two, usually until Boyfriend was done doing whatever he did, and then he'd say good night. Wanting to be sure I understood the major points I'd gotten wrong in our previous version of friendship, I kept asking him questions about them, trying to get a clearer picture of his perspective and understand what I might have done differently. 

He cautiously played along for the first few days, surrendering to my plea for open dialogue and clarification of our problems, but we quickly hit a wall. He told me on the fourth day that he didn't want to revisit some of the things he had said to me when we parted ways, telling me I shouldn't dwell on the past, just let it go and move forward trying to stay in the moment. 

I wanted to agree to that, but there were some rather harsh statements he'd made that I felt were based on misunderstanding or misinterpretation of things that had prompted particular breakdowns in communication between us. I told him it was easier for him to move on without talking about those things because he wasn't left feeling misunderstood or unfairly treated, hadn't been left with unanswered questions that he felt were critical for the friendship to move forward. 

Nope. Not gonna do it. And if I insisted, I was pushing things too fast. So I quickly came to heel, picking up on the unspoken threat that it was his way or the highway. And still, even with this new blatant streak of undisguised avoidance coloring our relationship, there was no indication that the time he spent away from me he was working with investigators and trying to help them surveil me and gather evidence of god knows what so they could eventually arrest me. Nothing in his demeanor even hinted that such a cruel and nefarious scheme was underway behind my back. 

Car Troubles
(September 2023)

Early September, he approached me with a proposition that I use the money I had gotten from cashing out my pension after losing my job at the end of June. He suggested I pay him $1200 plus the cost of repairs for his Chevy Cruze, which needed a new battery, a replacement for the front tire, and some electrical work under the hood to get it running. 

He figured the repairs would come to no more than another $500 or so, and he said he would even be find lowering the price to $1,000 plus repairs and call it done. He asked for a $1,000 down payment so that he could reserve a used car he wanted to buy for himself since his vehicles had been so troublesome over the summer. 

I told him before we moved forward that I was very nervous about entering into a private automobile sale and mixing a sizeable sum of money with friendship. I told him I would only do it if he promised me that nothing about the transaction would end up doing damage to us as friends. 

He agreed, and I sent him the down payment. He told me he was off work a couple days later and would start the title transfer then, and that we would go and get the car towed from where it was parked in West Seattle to the service department at the Chevy dealership to get an estimate for the repair work. 

But once that money hit his Cash App account, something changed. He became less responsive to my texts. He broke his promise to work on the title transfer that Thursday as he'd said he would do, and he kept ignoring my messages asking when we were going to get the car to the dealership. Days passed A week. He had been short with me a few times following multiple texts I'd sent trying to get my questions answered. 

Selective Reading
(September 2023)

He snapped at me the evening we were going to pick up his previous boyfriend (we'll call him Ex) at the airport, who had just been released from jail after nearly a year. I'd asked him three-and-a-half hours earlier if I could ride with him to pick up Ex, or if he already had a copilot. No response. 

An hour before time to leave, I sent a follow up, explaining that it was no big deal if he already had a car full. I could catch up with him later if that was the case. No response. 

Half an hour before. No response. 

Five minutes before time to go, and I got a text simply saying, "I'm about to leave in a few.", completely ignoring my outstanding question about whether I could go. So, I asked him again, "Are you going alone, or do you have someone going with?" 

I figured since I'd responded to his message in under a minute, chances were good he still had his phone in hand and would continue to be responsive. But when no reply came for another 6 minutes, I thought that was roughly the equivalent of "a few", so I messaged back, "Never mind. You must have too many things going on already. I'll see him when I see him. Drive safe."

A minute later, an angry text came through. "I'm trying to get ready. Damn!", then, "Don't start being like that." I recognized the warning. Another reminder that pushing too hard for that easy breezy friendship to come back would get me kicked out again. But it felt unfair to be scolded and lectured when my question about going along had gone completely ignored for over four hours, leaving me to guess at the last minute if I should get ready to leave. 

So I messaged back, "Be like what, Friend? I asked about going three-and-a-half hours before it was time to go. Then I followed up an hour before and again half an hour before. You chose to respond 5 minutes before leaving with no answer to my question, just a deadline. So, if I come across as somewhat frustrated with you, I'm sure you can understand why."

Another couple of minutes ticked by without a reply, and then came an angry knock at my door. I opened it, ready for the yelling this time, and he didn't disappoint. "Why do you always end up doing this? I was trying to get ready, Shannon!"

I scrolled back through our conversation, showing him all of the messages he had failed to answer going back nearly four hours. He looked at my phone, then at his, and his fire cooled immediately. He said, you're right. I sent my response to the wrong person. My bad." 

And that was that. No apology. No acknowledgement that this was just one example of an occurrence that happens almost daily. I attempt to get information I need in order to plan my day or to ready my agoraphobic ass to venture out, which is stressful and is made less so if I can plan it out beforehand. He doesn't take those things into consideration, you see. 

From his perspective, my multiple messages were an assault on his senses, a grab for control over the conversation, an invasion of his privacy, or a manipulation of some sort. Anytime his autonomy, privacy, or his assumption of being right are perceived to be in jeopardy of being taken from him, there's no room left to consider the impact his actions or inactions might have caused other people. 

He completely focuses on preserving control and regaining the upper hand. Don't I deserve the luxury of knowing whether I should prepare myself for a ride-along as much as he deserves the luxury of having to read the smallest number of messages possible? Where was the fairness in that friendship? Well, now I know - it died the day I turned 50, and nobody bothered to tell me. 

We fought again later that night, landing me back in Camp Stonewall for several weeks, the car issue still not resolved. Weeks went by with no response from Friend. I created burner numbers, trying to make contact so I could learn what he intended to do about the car sale. A few more days go by, and I happen to see him drive up to our building in his new car. Still no response about the one I was already $1,000 in the hole for. 

Storage Wars
(October 2023)

Since the mountain wouldn't come to Mohammed, Mohammed decided to tackle two birds with one stone in a burning bush. (I may have mixed my metaphors there.) I had rented a storage unit at his place of business while they were having a sale, and I had a bunch of stuff I'd stacked up to take there for storage. So I rented a Zip car and took my stuff to my storage unit, planning to make a quick stop by the office to ask him for a meet up at my place after he got off work for us to discuss the car situation.

When I arrived, my code for entry to the property was not working, so I had to ask him to grant me access. The look of cold fury on his face at seeing me arrive should have been all the indication I needed to know that this person was not my friend. He looked like he wanted to absolutely murder me on sight. 

But I remained professional and calm and went about my business, first inspecting my new unit then deciding it was too small for all the stuff I had brought with me to store. I went to the office and in a friendly manner simply asked if he would please come by my apartment after work so we could talk about the car. He gave me a non-committal reply that I took as acceptance, and I left and returned home. 

Three days later, I reached out using a burner number he hadn't yet blocked to ask that he unblock my number so we could communicate. After an initial bit of grumbling, he eventually said he had complied, but messages still went unanswered. He warned me not to take our personal business to his job, which I agreed not to do. He perceived everything I said as a threat, and he was very guarded and wary of me - the first true indications of his actual state of mind. 

Still, I had no idea his trepidation was the result of his being of the opinion I was a terrorist. I thought he was just being his usual grouchy self where I was concerned and decided to look past it and keep my eyes on the goal, which at that point was simply to finish with the car sale and be done with him once and for all. 

We finally got the estimate back from the dealership, but it was six times the amount he had said we should expect at the outset of the transaction. There was no way I was sinking $3,000 into his used, non-working piece-of-shit Chevy Cruze, so we talked about it on October 17, 2023, and he and I agreed together to terminate the sale of the car. 

He agreed he would repay me the down payment, but he told me he no longer had the money on hand as he had used it to purchase his new vehicle. Not wanting to put him in further financial hardship, I offered him the option of repaying me in small increments, which he agreed to do. I asked him to come up with a repayment schedule he felt he could afford to stick to and to let me know what it was when he was done. 

Well, that's how October 17th went down from my perspective. Turns out that behind the scenes, there was a thermonuclear meltdown going on upstairs where my friend informed the rest of the building of his intent to never give me a cent of that money back. He was so furious about my having come to the storage unit that his tantrum was beyond belief. He bragged about having gained access to one of my backup gmail accounts and all the other apps I had attached to it, like my back up Grindr, my Google Drive and Photos accounts, etc., which is wild, because that was essentially him confessing to a serious violation of both federal and state criminal law, not to mention civil law violations I can now sue him for. 

Days went by without further word from Friend. He skipped work the next couple of days, and after worry set in on my part, I checked with Boyfriend to find out if he had perhaps overslept and missed work. Boyfriend told me that my friend had been sick. Later that evening, Friend showed up at my door to tell me he'd had terrible diarrhea for the last couple of days and had not left his bed except to explode into the toilet every few minutes. 

Too much information. And quite probably a lie. 

I recently learned that on the 19th of October that year, Friend was made aware that the allegations he had originally been fed back in June had not panned out in the investigation. It was becoming clear to investigators that their initial claims that I was a murderer and a terrorist were not accurate. 

This put Friend in a particularly hairy predicament. Suddenly he realized how poorly he had treated me and how much damage our relationship had suffered because of it. He flew into a furious rage, spectacular even by his standard for tantrums, and accused the investigative team of using him, of lying to him, of destroying our relationship and my reputation over false charges. 

He reminded them they had bullied him into believing I was dangerous, that I had killed people, and that I could not be trusted. And they reminded him that he had been instructed to keep up appearances, but that didn't happen either.

AI generated video depicting possible scene from October 17, 2023.

In a ballsy move meant to save face and prevent their fruitless investigation from being made known to me by Friend, and then likely to the public by me, an investigator told him they hadn’t tied me to the terrorism case but might pursue lesser offenses and could scrutinize his role. That, in my view, explains the sudden shift. This seems to have kept Friend from coming to me with the truth, and it explains what came next.

On the 22nd of October, he texted to ask me if I had any homemade chili left, which I'd offered to him earlier in the day. I told him there was some left and welcomed him to come and have some. A couple hours later, he (and Boyfriend) showed up at my apartment looking worse for the wear (from stress, not norovirus), and I fed them the last two bowls of chili I had. 

I also put together a bag of groceries and medicine to help nurse them back to health and even made a custom pop-up card that had a fun little Norovirus theme to it. It included instructions for getting better, staying hydrated, eating bland foods, and getting plenty of rest. I took it to them, and they thanked me. 

I later concluded that visit was about gathering information. I can’t prove it, but the timing and behavior matched that pattern. 

I surmise that they were there attempting to gather some last-ditch evidence to finally give the investigators some shred of evidence to serve as probable cause so they could then get a warrant, either to search my apartment and seize my computer and phone, or for an arrest, if the little operation Friend was doing for them turned up anything worth using. 

I'm left to assume it didn't, considering I still have never been charged with anything, questioned about anything, or even approached by these investigators for any reason. 

After that night, I didn't see Friend again until late in the evening on Halloween. I guess he decided it was easier to keep his distance than to face me knowing he had thrown our friendship in the toilet over false accusations, and that he didn't want that bitch investigator making good on her threat to include him in further snooping for criminal charges. 

That night, I was fed up with being flaked on and ignored. So, I took Friend another gift I'd made him, a framed 3-D piece of artwork from Alice in Wonderland with a quote I knew he'd love about all those who wander not being lost written on the back of the frame. 

With it, I gave a letter telling him it was the last day, noting how he had broken every promise and commitment he'd made to me since they were over to eat my chili, and that I'd had enough of that kind of disrespect from him. That was the last day I intended to take it.

For a solid week, he had told me every day that he would come talk to me about the proposed repayment schedule he promised to work on, and every day he flaked on me, wasting hours and hours of my time without so much as a text message asking to reschedule or informing me he couldn't make it. 

I reached the end of the patience that being his friend had afforded him. So, I stopped acting like a friend and started acting like a debt collector. 

Collections Agent
(November 2023)

The next day, November 1, I gave him a loan statement with a repayment schedule I had come up with myself in absence of the one he failed to provide, leaving it attached to his door. Hours later I discovered it shredded, still in its envelope, on the floor in the hallway outside my door. 

Ex, who was living with him at the time, had delivered the shredded correspondence to its resting place in the hallway. So I mailed a copy of it to Friend, indicating that if Ex tampered with it this time, he could expect to face federal mail tampering charges and perhaps spend another Christmas locked up in jail. The letter was returned unopened to my mailbox a few days later. 

I then printed it one last time, took it upstairs, and taped the open statement to his door where I knew he had to look at it to remove it. He did see it. It was in his hand when he stomped angrily down the ramp and through the first floor hallway up to my door, where he banged furiously until I answered. He shoved the statement in my face and shouted at me not to put anything else on his door. 

I asked him again in a calm voice if he would be making payments per the included repayment schedule I had generously offered him, and he just hurled more insults, a fat comment or two, and several curse words at me as he retreated back to his apartment just 40 feet away, one floor up. 

That night, irritated by his refusal to take responsibility for his debt or apologize for his weeks of avoidance and disrespect, I acted in a shameful manner, letting my anger drive my actions. I scattered dozens of small, ticket-shaped flyers advertising Friend's debt to me around our building and at work. It was my way of provoking a response that I felt he owed me regarding his debt. I knew it would embarrass him, and I was right. 

I regret it, not just because of the war he has waged against me afterward, but for the simple fact that it was a childish and hurtful thing to do to someone. But I never got a chance to apologize to him for it or to explain why I had been pushed to such an action in the first place. 

He called the police. After their visit, I resolved to limit my contact with him to lawful collections letters and the legal action I had pending in small claims court.  

Because the court was still handling a huge backlog of cases from the pandemic, they were not able to issue me a date for our pre-trial hearing, which meant I couldn't serve him the notice of small claim against him. 

In the meantime, I was advised to send him the official loan statement as a demand letter, indicating what each loan and down payment was for, what I had done to try and collect, and what his response, if any, had been. 

I mailed it to him by certified mail at his home and at work. The next day, I mailed a letter to Boyfriend, begging for his assistance with finding a neutral third-party who could act as mediator and help us resolve the financial dispute outside of court. Boyfriend, unsurprisingly, opted to ignore my request for his help. 

The Christmas Spirit
(December 2023)

So I stopped trying and was waiting for the court to schedule a date for our initial hearing. Then came Christmas day. Nostalgia set in, and I felt badly for having aired Friend's dirty debt laundry all over our building and at his job. I made a beautiful portrait of him and Boyfriend as a gift for them for Christmas. 

While they were making frequent, noisy trips down to the laundry room across from my apartment that night, I set the gift out in a gift bag in the hallway where they would see it next time they came downstairs. 

I suppose the first trip they noticed it, the gift was still too close to my door, so they looked at it from afar, but opted to leave it alone and go about their business with the mountain of dirty laundry they'd brought downstairs to wash. 

So I moved the gift bag to a spot on the floor right outside the laundry room where it was a safe distance away from my apartment. He picked it up on the next trip and then took it back upstairs with him on his way back. A while later, there came a knock at my door. I opened it to find Friend standing there with a piece of paper in hand. I greeted him, and he handed me the paper, which was a hastily printed Christmas scene with two names scribbled in ink off to the side of the little printed fireplace. 

He (and Boyfriend in shaky handwriting) thanked me for the beautiful gift. He told me he wanted to hand me the card himself instead of leaving it outside my door so he could thank me in person for such a thoughtful and kind gift for Christmas. I thanked him for the card and for bringing it himself, and he turned to rejoin his harem waiting timidly at the entrance to the laundry room. 

I took the calm and peaceful interaction as a sign there was still hope for us to resolve the dispute outside of court, and so I sent him a text on another burner number asking if he might allow us to sit down and talk about the repayment he'd promised. No response. Fearing he had just ignored the new number, I printed a small note with the same message the next day and taped it to his mailbox. 

That evening, he texted me back saying, "Yes, I'm pretty sure we could have a talk." I thanked him for responding and for his willingness to talk with me, and I asked if he could give me an idea as to when he might be willing to sit down with me. I told him that I knew the subject of the money he owed had probably not featured highly on his day-to-day list of things to focus on, but explained that it had been my sole focus the last two months while I tightened my belt from hunger and poverty. 

He responded saying he needed some time to gather his thoughts and his emotions before he could sit down and face me, failing to make any kind of commitment to a time or date. I asked if he knew how much time he might need, citing past experience that had shown that if a date and time wasn't set on a calendar, chances were it wasn't going to happen. He didn't respond. 

I had made two beautiful cards commemorating our friendship which encapsulated some of the memories we'd made during our time together as friends. They were bittersweet reminders that while our friendship had indeed come to an end, there were good times to be remembered. 

In one of the cards, I included a number of photos from our time together, which included a photo of my cat, Moriarty, several cakes I'd made for him, a picture of him asleep in his Amazon uniform with my other cat, Iago, tucked under his arm on my couch, and a picture I'd taken (with his explicit consent) of him and one of our casual sex partners, where the two of them lay naked on my bed with Friend feeding grapes to the other guy like in one of those scenes of ancient Rome. 

My intention, as I said, was simply to include photos of some of the good and meaningful times we shared as friends. That isn't how he took it when I left the cards for him outside his door later that night. 

At around 4:40 AM on December 27, I received a text message while I slept accusing me of playing games, saying he'd actually believed I was being sincere and that my gift had been a genuine act of kindness (I was, and so was it), but that now he saw I was just playing games. 

When I woke around 7:30 that morning, I read his text and was completely taken off guard by the anger it conveyed. I didn't understand what he could possibly have been offended by in those cards. They were meant to inspire some nostalgia, but apparently they caused him to flip his lid.

I texted him back, asking him to explain what was wrong with the cards. Why was he so mad about them? His only reply, and the last thing he ever said to me, was, "After the shit that was in those cards, I'm surprised you think I'd want anything to do with you." And he blocked me once and for all. I kept texting him, pleading with him to help me understand what I'd done to make him angry this time. I explained what my intentions had been, but he wasn't hearing anything I had to day. 

Domestic Violence Protection Order
(December 2023 - January 2024)

I later learned that he filed a petition for a domestic violence protection order in District Court that very day, and that he'd had a hearing to grant him an emergency protection order against me the following day. But since I was in the dark about everything going on upstairs, and had been for so long, I kept texting him, begging for an explanation and an opportunity to make it right. 

Silence was the only gift he gave me in exchange until the night of January 3, 2024, when he sent his ugly neighborhood friend downstairs to knock at my door and serve me the notice of the temporary restraining order. 

I couldn't believe what I was reading. The shock of it paralyzed me. He had gathered up every  little note, letter, card, and t-shirt I'd ever given him over the year we'd known one another and claimed they were evidence of me harassing him. He'd taken parts of messages out of context and retyped them as evidence of me making threats, when in their original context there was nothing at all menacing or threatening about them. 

And worst of all, he'd included screenshots of my Plex Media Server showing thumbnails of our personal sex videos that were recorded by my home security cameras over the course of the whole year and claimed I had shared them publicly to humiliate him and that I didn't have permission to have them in the first place. It was complete bullshit!

I'd gathered all of those videos of us having sex with various guys and created a private library that only his account and mine could access. I'd done this in early September when he had blocked me as a gesture of goodwill. I wanted him to have them, to be able to download them if he wanted them. Since he'd blocked all means of communication with me, I had no way of informing him I'd created the library, and later, when we resumed communication, it slipped my mind. 

But my server logs showed he had been watching those videos on his TV and his phone since September 27, 2023, a full two months before he filed his petition with the court. He'd had plenty of time to ask me about the videos, to confirm their security and his privacy, or even to ask me to remove them. Yet he kept silent about them for over two months. Something was fishy. 

I've never had any kind of dealings with courts before. I'd had no experience putting together a defense or answering a complaint. I took to YouTube to find out what to do. I searched for an attorney to help counsel me through my defense, but none would take the case pro bono, and as an unemployed person with no income, my options were basically nonexistent. 

When the hearing date came, I asked for a continuance to continue seeking counsel, and it was granted. The hearing was reset for January 25, 2024, and I continued calling around for a lawyer and even tried to get advice from the King County Bar Association and the Northwest Justice Project. No help to be found from anywhere. 

So, I put together every scrap of evidence I had. Transcripts of our text messages where he had asked to borrow money and of our conversations regarding the sale of the car, the down payment, the estimate, and the termination of the agreement where he said he'd return my money. I took screenshots of the Cash App transactions that indicated "Loan" or "Down Payment" in the memos and showing the money going from my account to his. 

I captured screenshots of my Plex Media Server settings and logs to show I'd put strong protections in place to protect those files and had shared them specifically and solely with one account, his. I included screenshots of the security settings on his account, on the library, and for comparison, of several of the people with whom I did actually share some of my libraries in exchange for access to theirs. All of my evidence clearly showed that no such sharing of his intimate images or videos had ever taken place. 

The day of our rescheduled hearing, my Uber driver was late to arrive to pick me up and kept getting further and further away as the clock ticked down to our hearing time. I had already been very anxious about leaving my apartment (I'm agoraphobic), and the fear of arriving late for my hearing caused me to have a full blown panic attack. 

When I realized there was no way I could make it to the courthouse in time for our 8:45 hearing start time, I ran inside and hurried to install Zoom on my PC, create an account to log in with, and found the meeting link to join the court remotely. I managed to log in just in time, but I was in such a foggy state of mind that everything was blurring together.

The judge called our case. My heart raced as she read the bogus complaint. Then the judge asked if I objected. I said "No, your honor," intending "I don’t want contact with him anymore," not "I consent to an order." But the order was issued without my giving testimony or presenting my evidence anyway. It later expired on Jan 25, 2025.

One year of silence that he would use as a sword rather than the shield it was intended to be.

The Aftermath
(February 2024 - Present Day)

What I can't figure out is why, after learning he'd been fed a load of crap about all that terrorist business, he would continue his campaign of hatred against me with such malice and rage. I get it. I embarrassed him. That was wrong of me. But surely he must be able to take into account that the version of me that did that was the product of months of his deceit, lies, and emotional abuse. The friend version of me that existed before he fell for the investigation bullshit would never have done that. 

It's like he expects that I should have continued treating him like my friend, extending all the benefits and favors and loyalty that comes with that title, even when he had long since stopped behaving like one to me. That's just unreasonable. 

One way or another, I plan to get the rest of the details about what was really happening behind my back, who was responsible, and why he chose to abandon me and abuse me like that. I've prepared a lengthy complaint that's ready for filing in Superior Court, but I'm considering (against my better judgement) offering him an opportunity through mediation to come clean and reveal to me all that he withheld while he was lying to my face and pretending we were still friends. 

Finding out how long he lied to me and kept such impactful secrets from me was humiliating and hurtful beyond belief. Knowing how hard he tried to see me arrested as punishment for an action I took when he left me no means or recourse for resolving our outstanding financial dispute makes me angry. The unfairness of the entire situation is absolutely maddening, and I want answers. 

The people who "investigated" me these last two years are still making their presence known, even in my new home. They must be trying to save themselves by doubling down on the bullshit they fed to Friend and using whatever stale warrant they might have had as a fishing net to try and dig up other things to pin on me. 

The fact that I can and always have been able to hear them discussing me, my actions in the privacy of my home, and their opinions of all the above is a testament to how poorly these individuals conduct "covert" surveillance on a suspect. They are either completely inept at their chosen profession, or they are so far beyond done caring that I know to bother even trying to hide their chatter. 

Either way, I'm still keeping my log, documenting each time I hear them, who it was, where, when, and what they talked about, so I can show in court how consistently they have harassed me and invaded my privacy since June 2023. I'd say that's cruel and unusual, as would any reasonable person out there. 

So, Friend, if you happen to be reading this account of things from my perspective, you are now up-to-speed on what 2023 looked like from my side of the war, just 40 feet away and one floor down. I'd like to offer you a chance to tell me what it looked like from yours, now that you know I'm not a killer.  

You owe me answers for what you did to me, Friend. I'm not after the money you were unjustly enriched by after negotiating a car sale in bad faith. I forgave that debt a long time ago. All I want from you is the truth, which is something you've kept from me for two and a half long, lonely years. 

I’m open to mediation to clarify the timeline and decisions you made. If that’s declined, I’ll pursue the legal route. My ask is simple: truth and closure. You have a chance now to do the right thing and put this mess behind us both. 

As always, it's all up to you. 

Self-Sealing Belief Systems (LIKE CODY'S!)

HOW TO BYPASS THE DEFENSIVENESS SURROUNDING A SELF-SEALING BELIEF SYSTEM

When a person's reality is the product of cognitive distortions reinforced by confirmation bias, it's often the result of early trauma that teaches the mind to protect itself from criticism or embarrassment by simply ignoring or erasing any information that might shine an unflattering light on the person. If there are text messages that make the person feel guilt or overwhelm, they might go unread altogether, or they'll quickly fade and become hazy memories that aren't called up by the brain when it decides how it will interpret an event or action. It's called a self-sealing belief system, and once a person is locked into one of those, it's damned near impossible for them to break free from it.

This style of belief system is the one cults are built upon. Those with this kind of system take in only that information which confirms their already firmly held beliefs about a person, place, thing, or situation. If they think a person is evil, and that person offers them a stack of evidence proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that they are actually good, decent, and loving, they won't believe a word of it. But if some random guy who doesn't even know the alleged evil person rolls up and starts throwing out suggestions that maybe the person did this or maybe they did that, and this and that are bad, awful, hateful things, then the believer is going to accept those uneducated guesses or opinions as fact, and they will serve to prop up the skewed version of reality the believer holds as truth.

It's not easy to logic someone out of a self-sealing belief system. They have to come to the truth on their own and be willing to set aside their reality willingly so that they can try and look at things from another person's perspective. It isn't something that they do very easily. They are typically too concerned with being right, with avoiding feelings of guilt, shame, or embarrassment for getting things wrong or for treating others badly. They want to be the good guy. No, they MUST be the good guy. There simply is no other role their mind will allow them to play. And if that means completely discounting another person's lived truth, then that's what the believer will do. They will be victims and resist accountability. They will sidestep responsibility and twist words to fit their narratives. They are basically immune to empathy.

That's why I developed this game for Cody. It is intended to take him on a thought experiment that will allow him to safely explore the possibility that his perspective is perhaps flawed. By offering a calm, judgment-free journey through a number of scenarios Cody will be familiar with, I hope to help him stumble upon a truth or two that differ from his own. And maybe when he finds them, he will be willing to accept that he isn't perfect, that he makes mistakes, and that by denying those two facts he might have caused others to suffer so that he wouldn't have to. 

Now, since I know that Cody's minions, his team, and possibly even Cody himself love to monitor my social media posts and this blog for any signs I might be getting a little uppity and feeling my oats about something they know Cody isn't gonna like, I'm confident this post will find its way to that boy's angry, untrusting eyeballs. So, please pardon me, dear reader. The rest of this post is for Cody alone. 

Now that it's just us, here's the tea. 

If you aren't afraid to take a chance, Cody, and if you think you are capable of opening your mind just a bit, I challenge you to follow the link below and take the journey I've created for you. What's the worst that could happen? Will being shown a tough truth really make your world fall apart? Come on. You're the tough guy. Surely nothing I can say or do is going to make you scared to play a simple game. After all, you told me once how ridiculous I was for thinking you or anyone else could ever be afraid of me. Now's your chance to prove it, buddy. There's even a reward waiting for you on the other side of the game's 10 levels if you can finish them. We'll see. Good luck!