Surprise! Surprise! I Got Wrecked!

 

He Went Out Like A Wreck'em Ball

For years now, I was certain that the bullshit investigation that has been an ever present part of my life since the summer of 2023 was the doing of the friend who lied to me, stole from me, and used the courts to silence me. But new information has come to light that points at another close friend as the culprit. 

Picture it. Capitol Hill. Summer of 2023. My dear friend, (let's call him Daniel) and I were planning a camping trip to Triangle Recreation Center for Labor Day weekend. I was so excited to have been offered a chance to leave the city for a weekend and spend it cruising the woods with my buddy. Daniel had been such a good friend to me, listening so patiently to me whine about Cody's cruelty and disrespectful behavior. He even sat in as moderator after Cody had shut me out of his life around the time of my birthday, and because of him, there was a short-lived peace between us. 

I'd met Daniel a year or so before Cody ever came into my world, and we were frequently making the best of our friendship's benefits package, if you get my meaning. It was at one of my sex parties in early 2023, in fact, that I introduced them to one another. It was the first of many fun bedroom adventures the three of us shared. Of the two friendships, mine with Daniel was the one I felt most secure in. I never could have imagined the turn it would take.

Soon after Daniel mediated the peace accord between Cody and me, Cody once again lost his patience with me over my having sent him too many texts trying to get some of his time and attention. By then he'd shifted his reserves of those to his new boyfriend, Jake, who, like most of the people he now calls friend, he also met through one of my sex parties. (Read all about it in my book, The Wall Between Us, available on Amazon.com!) 

It was in the aftermath of that particular falling out that Daniel shared with me a text message he'd received from Cody in which he was warning Daniel to stay away from me. I confronted Cody about his meddling, asking him why on earth he thought it was his responsibility to try and chase off my one remaining friend. Cody's reply was cold and self-righteous. He felt Daniel ought to be aware of the potential challenges that spending time with me could bring if he continued being friends with me. The fuck?

Well, I guess Cody's hateful words planted a seed in Daniel's fertile imagination, because I'll be damned if he didn't completely disappear a week later without explanation. As weeks passed with no returned calls from Daniel, I began to fear something terrible had happened to him. I even brought up his absence and my growing concern week after week in therapy, alongside my usual topic of all the shitty things Cody was doing to me that week. Eventually, I had to just accept that my friend, a man whose company I had enjoyed so much, was simply gone from my life without offering a word of closure. It sucked. Hard.

Then all that shit with Cody went down, and by Christmas, my world had shrunken to a singularity of just me, myself, and I. Daniel was gone. Cody had stabbed me hard in both the back and the heart. And all of my other acquaintances, most of whom I had happily introduced to my buddy, Cody, when he was new to the city and wanted to meet new people, chose to distance themselves from me as well. I have spent nearly all of the time since then completely by myself, trying in vain to reach out to old acquaintances only to have my messages met with Cody's "deafening silence". 

A year after his disappearance, there came a knock at my window late one Saturday night. It was Daniel, a bit intoxicated after his night at Cumunion, asking if he could come in and talk. I was shocked! As relieved as I was to see him alive and well, I was still a bit miffed that he had chosen to abandon our friendship without giving me his reasons for doing so. I walked him into my apartment, unsure of what to expect, and when he spoke, what he said to me still blows my mind when I think about it!

Daniel launched into what was clearly a rehearsed speech he'd practiced for some time, probably to an audience of who knows how many other guys in the city. He told me first and foremost that he knew I had hacked and stalked him the previous summer, and he told me that part was not open to debate. I beg your pardon? This man walked into my home after a year of letting me wonder what had become of him, of what had happened to our relationship, and the first thing he tells me is that I'm guilty of something I know damned well I didn't do? Oh, HELL nah!

He began saying that even though he was 100% certain I had done that to him, he had come to the realization that even good people can sometimes do bad things, and he hoped I'd be open to restarting our friendship. I stopped him and asked him what kind of friendship he saw us having if he trusted me so little as to believe I would have ever done the things he had just accused me of doing. In what world did he think I would want to start a new friendship with someone who believed something so untrue and so unfair about me and on top of that refused to even allow me a chance to defend myself against it? 

Once more, he tried to schmooze me with his scripted line about good people being more than their mistakes, and I just could not even. I looked Daniel in his ketamine-glazed eyes, held him by both arms, and told him he had to leave my home. The look of disbelief in his eyes was incredible. He obviously predicted that with such a well thought out speech, there was no way I could refuse accepting him back into my life with open arms. Surprise, surprise! Somewhere along the way I picked up a modicum of self-respect, and unfortunately for him, it prevented me from accepting other people's disrespect. 

Sadly, I stood silently and watched Daniel leave my apartment building in a bewildered state of disbelief. He did secretly pop back by my window later that night to leave a hand-scrawled note telling me he loved me and wishing me well in life. More of his hokum philosophical BS that he offers as his particular brand of enlightened charisma. I wasn't buying it. If Daniel spent less time psychoanalyzing every one and labelling them all narcissists, he might have more opportunity for some self-reflection and come to understand how he hurts the people who love him the most. 

Last summer during Pride, I was shocked to see Daniel's profile picture pop-up on my Grindr grid nearby. I had moved to my new place by then, and I thought I'd uncovered some of the mystery from the events of the summer of 2023. I messaged him, asking him for a chance to meet and share with him some of what I'd discovered in the year since we last spoke. I'd hoped to show him my proof that he'd been fed a load of bullshit by Cody and his accomplices. So, I asked if he'd meet up with me at Cal Anderson Park to chat. 

He was weird. Weird even for Daniel. He gave me very strict and precise instructions for how he wanted our meeting to go down. First, because he did not trust me, he said he would not be bringing his phone with him, just in case I decided to hack him. (Seriously?) Second, he said he would walk to the center of the park and wait there for only a handful of minutes. If he saw anything that gave him reason to believe I was fucking with him, he said he would bounce, and that I'd never see or hear from him again. 

I thought the whole spy-vs-spy shit was ridiculous, but I agreed with just one small amendment to his proposal. Because, as he knew, I still suffered from agoraphobia and venturing out in public for any reason was likely to spawn some intense anxiety for me, I told him I'd go and sit on the bench near the spot where he and I used to sit and people watch. While he didn't exactly confirm he'd accepted my request, he did message me once more to say he was out the door and would see me there. So, I went through the process of psyching myself up enough to make it out the door, and I walked nervously to the park and the bench where I told him I'd wait for him. 

I sat on that bench, scanning the length of the park for his face for over an hour. With every passing minute that I sat there I became less and less able to hide my fear. I was sure that every person walking past me was taking notice of the nervous fat guy sweating through his unfashionable old-man shirt and looking sus as fuck. Eventually, I gave up and walked home, gasping for air as I crossed the threshold back into the air-conditioned safety of my apartment. I went back to Grindr and sent Daniel a message saying what a waste of time for both of us that had turned out to be. 

Almost immediately, Daniel replied, saying, "Shannon, try to live a more honest live, brother." Then he blocked me as I was trying to type a response asking him what the hell he was talking about. He never saw it, and I doubt it would have earned me an answer even if he had. All I have to say about that whole situation is that I'm better off without a person like Daniel in my life if he can't give me the decency of allowing me to defend my good name against mistakes, misunderstandings, and misrepresentation by others like Cody. 

Well, it turns out that when he disappeared in early July 2023, Daniel had come to believe I had hacked into his MacBook one night at my apartment, replaced his desktop background with a static photo of his actual desktop, and somehow planted malware that allowed me to track his location on all his devices wherever he went. While it isn't the first time someone has mistaken my brilliance and my vast knowledge of many things for in-depth hacking skills, it may be the most shocking instance of such a ridiculous accusation. 

• First, I know jack shit about how to hack someone's computer, email, network, or phone. Absolutely nothing. It simply doesn't interest me, and I have never felt the need to dig into someone's private lives badly enough to learn how to. So, there's the first problem with his crazy theory. 
  
  
• Secondly, he was my friend. I trusted him, and I believed he trusted me as well. Anything I wanted to know about Daniel, I knew he would tell me if I simply asked. Ours wasn’t the kind of friendship where secrets were commonly withheld from one another. Or at least that’s how I saw it. Apparently, I was way off the mark there. But if you’re in a relationship with me, one thing you can safely rely on is that I will remain loyal to the friendship for as long as I feel respected and not taken for granted — and probably well beyond the point when I no longer do. Even then, I’m not going to go out and learn a whole new set of sinister skills just so I can see the general area where you are whoring around on a map.

Since Daniel had so little trust in his good pal, Shannon, it seems that instead of confronting me with his suspicions, he chose to take his concerns to the FBI and enlist their help investigating me and putting an end to my reign of digital terror amongst the gadget-loving gays of Capitol Hill. I don't know for sure, but I imagine those first weeks after he vanished, Daniel was spending a lot of time conferring in secret with my still-at-the-time good friend, Cody. Together, I guess they worked with these investigators to try and catch me doing something nefarious. 

Well, fellas, I hate to break it to you, but it never happened. 

The fucking nerve of these assholes! I have been nothing but honest, generous, kind, and supportive of the people in my life that I call friend. That includes both of these idiots. And in return for my friendship I am repaid with suspicion, doubt, and defamation. It'd make for a great book if it hadn't fucking hurt me so badly. I'm more broken and alone than I have ever been in my life, and these paranoid dimwits are responsible for that. 

I wish you both the very best that you deserve. By my estimation, you've definitely earned something special. I hope you find it soon, and I pray when you do it doesn't wreck you as badly as you did me. 

My Truth Doesn't Belong to You

For years, I let someone else write my story.

I sat in a 210-square-foot apartment that felt more like a cell — my whole world reduced to four walls and a window I was afraid to look out of — and I let the lies someone was telling about me become the only version of me that existed. I didn't fight back. I didn't correct the record. I just... shrank. I became smaller and smaller until I nearly disappeared altogether.

The man who did this to me was someone I loved. Not casually — deeply. When he was about to lose his housing, I gave him my bedroom and slept on my own couch. When he was hungry, I fed him. When he needed money, I gave him what I had, even when I couldn't afford to. I didn't do those things to earn something from him. I did them because that's who I am. That's what I do for the people I love.

And when he decided I was his enemy — based on assumptions he never gave me the chance to address, conclusions he reached without ever asking me a single question — he didn't just walk away. He burned the ground behind him. He told people things about me that were so far from the truth they barely qualified as fiction. He painted me as something monstrous, and he did it so convincingly that every friend I had introduced him to chose his side overnight. My phone went quiet. My social circle evaporated. My name became something people whispered about with disgust.

I will not catalog his specific lies here. They are documented, and they will be addressed in their proper venue. What I will say is this: the things he accused me of are not just false — they are the opposite of who I am. And he would have known that if he had spent thirty seconds asking me instead of spending three years telling everyone else.

The isolation nearly killed me. I don't say that for dramatic effect. I mean it literally. There were nights in that apartment when I sat with the mathematics of my own disappearance and found the numbers persuasive. The only reason I'm writing this today is that something in me — some stubborn, defiant thread that refused to be cut — held on long enough for me to get help. I did get help. I am still getting help. And I am still here.

For a long time, I grieved him the way you grieve someone who has died. Because the man I thought I knew — the one who laughed with me, leaned on me, trusted me — that man is gone. Maybe he never existed. Maybe I loved a version of him that he couldn't sustain. I don't know. What I do know is that I spent months — years — aching for him to learn the truth. Believing that if he just knew, if someone just showed him the evidence, he would understand. He would come back. He would apologize. The wound would close.

And then one day, sitting in that same small apartment, I realized something that changed everything:

My truth doesn't belong to him.

It never did. I know what I did and what I didn't do. I know the care I gave. I know the records that prove my innocence. I know the settings on the server. I know what the lab results say. I know what the FBI's response says. I have always known. And his belief or disbelief doesn't change a single one of those facts.

His opinion of me is not my biography. His delusion is not my identity.

That revelation didn't erase the pain. But it rearranged it. It took the grief I'd been carrying for the loss of my best friend and turned it into something else — something closer to clarity.

Because here is what I see now, with clear eyes:

A real friend would have asked. A real friend, upon stumbling across something that concerned him, would have come to me — the man who had given him everything I had to give — and said, "Shannon, I need to talk to you about something." Thirty seconds. That's all it would have taken. And I would have shown him. I would have explained. I would have put every fear to rest, because the truth was always on my side and I was never hiding it from him.

He didn't ask. He chose to believe the worst possible version of me without giving me a single chance to speak. And then he chose to spread that version to everyone who would listen.

That is not the behavior of a friend. That is not even the behavior of a fair adversary. That is the behavior of someone who needed a villain more than he needed the truth.

I've stopped waiting for his apology. I've stopped rehearsing the conversation in which he finally sees what he did. I've stopped scanning for his name in my periphery, hoping and dreading in equal measure. That chapter is closed — not because the story resolved, but because I finally understood that resolution doesn't require his participation.

I feel something for him now that surprises me. It's not anger, though the anger still visits. It's not hatred — I don't think I'm built for that. It's closer to sorrow.

Because I know something he doesn't know yet.

He lost me.

Not the monster he invented. Not the villain in the story he's been telling. Me. The real one. The one who would have driven across the city at 2:00 a.m. if he'd called. The one who gave him the last of his savings without being asked to. The one who loved him with the kind of loyalty that doesn't come with conditions or expiration dates.

That person is still here. Still generous. Still capable of that kind of love. Still offering it to the world — just not to him. Never again to him.

And one day — maybe not soon, maybe not for years — he will look back on what happened between us with something other than the righteous certainty he carries now. The lies will get harder to maintain as the years pile on top of them. The story will stop making sense, the way all false stories eventually do. And when that moment comes — when the scaffolding finally gives way and he has to sit with the bare, undecorated truth of what he did to someone who loved him — I hope he finds it survivable.

I did.

I'm still here. And my life is no longer his to write.

Special Inquiry Judges

I recently learned Washington has a confidential legal tool that lets a prosecutor gather evidence under a judge’s supervision without doing it in public view: the Special Inquiry Judge process under RCW 10.27. Think of it less as a “trial” and more as a judge-supervised, subpoena-driven fact-finding proceeding. The SIJ doesn’t decide guilt, doesn’t hand down a verdict, and—by statute—can’t later preside over the criminal case that grows out of the inquiry.

Washington law requires every county to have a Superior Court judge available to serve in this role, designated by a majority of the judges. So this isn’t a conspiracy theory “black site.” It’s a lawful mechanism—quiet, formal, and mostly invisible unless you’re pulled into it.

Here’s the basic structure as I understand it:

• Police investigate first, then the case may be referred to the prosecutor.
• The prosecutor (called the “public attorney” in the statute) can initiate an SIJ proceeding.
• Once it exists, the prosecutor can subpoena records and compel witness testimony, under judicial supervision.
• When testimony is taken, the room is kept tight: the witness (and counsel), the prosecutor, the court reporter, and a few limited necessary roles. The point is confidentiality.

And yes—this is where the whole thing gets queasy.

People hear “you can plead the Fifth” and assume that ends the conversation. In an SIJ setting, the privilege against self-incrimination still exists, but the prosecutor can ask the judge to order the witness to answer anyway, and the statute provides immunity-type protection for compelled testimony while still allowing punishment for perjury or refusal to comply. Translation: the system has a built-in way to trade your silence for compelled answers.

What’s even more unsettling is the secrecy. The subject of an investigation might not be told it’s happening. Friends, coworkers, or family can be questioned under strict confidentiality rules. That’s not automatically evil—it’s how investigations work—but it’s also how false narratives can metastasize in the dark. When questions are asked in secret, the way they’re phrased matters. A leading question doesn’t just “gather facts”—it plants an idea.

“Have you ever seen Shannon do anything that might be considered terrorism?”

That question is a stink bomb. Even if the answer is “absolutely not,” you’ve still put the word terrorism in someone’s head next to my name. And if the person you’re asking has a grudge, an axe to grind, or just enjoys being important for five minutes, the incentive to embellish is obvious.

And then there’s the human factor nobody wants to talk about: what happens when the prosecutor gets emotionally invested? What happens when the narrative becomes the goal? Who checks the instinct to ignore exculpatory facts because they’re inconvenient? Who stops the “we didn’t prove that, but we noticed this” drift—where the original suspicion collapses and the fallback plan becomes scraping for unrelated offenses?

At what point does the system admit it has spent enough time and resources grinding a private citizen into dust—isolating them, destabilizing their work and relationships, and wrecking their health—without producing the supposed monster it went hunting for?

Great question. If I ever get a straight answer, I’ll publish it. Until then, I’ll be over here living in the kind of atmosphere where privacy is treated like a privilege, suspicion is treated like proof, and indignation is treated like guilt—especially once you stop using polite words when addressing your watchers.

Walk of Blame

 How One Woman's Prejudice Keeps An Innocent Man On Lockdown

In a recent briefing between investigators and an Assistant US Attorney where the topic was whether or not to continue a 3-year investigation of me for terrorism, a lone investigator fought tirelessly to stand up for my rights and to show that the claims that were made against me were baseless and fictional. But he was up against a beast of a woman who oversees this never-ending invasion of my privacy, who happens to be unreasonably prejudiced against me and has no sympathy for the damage her team has caused to me, my relationships, and my mental and physical health. She is of the opinion that I am simply displaying my renowned patience, that I am waiting them out so I can get back to terrorist stuff as soon as they give up and move along back to wherever assholes and US Attorneys go when they aren’t destroying innocent lives. 

Her own investigator went over fact after fact after fact, laying out all the ways their investigation was negatively impacting me and listing for her my own evidence gathered as part of my coming civil complaint for damages; evidence that clearly and unequivocally disproves the allegations they are trying to build a case around. He told her I had concrete documentary evidence proving my HIV undetectable status for the last 5 years on hand and ready to submit. He told her about my FOIPA request to the FBI and their seubsequent response indicating that there is no legitimate federal investigation underway where I am named as a party, refuting their claims of an FBI investigation into my alleged terrorist past. He told her that since I became aware of their presence and have endured their mockery and their criticisms for so long, I am a completely different person than the one they saw when the investigation began. 

He argued that continued surveillance was sure to cause irreparable damage to my life, more than it already has, and that the longer they pressed on in search of incriminating evidence, the deeper into despair I was sinking day by day. When this brave man told the AUSA that I was so frustrated and distraught over being so blatantly monitored that I cried in my bed every single day, this heartless woman mocked me with a performative voice saying, “Oh? Is the big bad terrorist crying again? Is the murderer just a widdle cry baby?” 

Just when I thought the male investigator had her cornered with logic and facts and was prepared to hear her finally relent, she raised the most ludicrous reason I have ever heard to continue the investigation. She said that I had become unpredictable, that I had started taking walks around the neighborhood late at night, and that this was an indication that continued surveillance was required. Her reasoning? That I am not a walker. That walking is not something I normally do. 

Forget about how miserable I’ve been, stuck inside a 210 square foot box of an apartment day in and day out with no other people to break up the monotony than these assholes who watch me all day and night. Never mind that my therapist urged me to do exactly what I started doing, which is to get myself out into the world at times where I feel less anxiety from my agoraphobia so that in time I will become accustomed to the outside world again. Let’s just ignore the possibility that maybe a walk through the darkened streets of Capitol Hill was preferable to sitting in that tiny apartment listening to investigators compare notes at shift change regarding my masturbatory habits. I was walking, so that means I’m a terrorist out terroring. 

I don’t know if it’s merely a matter of needing to nail down an arrest in order to justify the enormous amount of money wasted on investigating me for crimes I never committed, or if I’ve become her own personal white wale, but this person in a seat of power over a team of investigators is ignoring facts that are irrefutable and exculpatory in favor of hammering out an arrest warrant and seeing me cuffed and sent to a federal penitentiary. Forget about “innocent until proven guilty.” This woman decided three years ago that I was 100% guilty, and nothing is going to change her mind about it.

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.