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.

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. 

Fill In The Blanks

What If Death Grants Us An Audience With Truth?

AI-Generated artwork - The personification of Truth

Ever since I was a small child, maybe 6 or 8 years old, I have had this recurring fantasy or daydream, if you will, about what happens after we die. I've always imagined myself landing in what I suppose you might call heaven (though what makes me think that's on the itinerary is beyond me) and being greeted by what I can only describe as a saintly embodiment of truth. It is a being that contains every fact that ever was and ever will be, and its purpose in my fantasy is to answer questions about the things that happened during my life on Earth.

I picture myself walking through heaven alongside this entity and coming to a stop in a secluded little area that is shaded, cool, and home to a rather plain, run-of-the-mill looking stone well. Standing against the grey stones that make up the well's waist-high wall, I peer down into the darkness at the glasslike surface of the pure, cold water deep down inside the well's shadowy bottom and see our reflections. My guide tells me I can ask any question, and he will give me the true answer from his enormous Book of Truths, which he has pulled out from who knows where and lain upon the stone well, ready to open at my first inquiry. 

I imagine myself pondering the life I've lived, trying to think of a question worthy of being my first step toward enlightenment. It feels monumental, so I dig deep for a burning question to match the magnitude of this moment. 

"How many bugs did I eat during my lifetime without knowing?", I ask. I'm certain there have been creepy crawlies in my food that managed to evade detection, and I am just curious to know exactly how many there were. (Magnitude? Check.)

He opens the book and thumbs through it as if trying to find a section conveniently titled "Insect Consumption" or something. Coming to a stop about a quarter of the way through this huge tome of infinite knowledge, he scans a page and recites the figures to me.

"During your life on Earth, you inadvertently ate 10,700,244 insects, including their eggs and larvae in various pieces and parts. That amounts to approximately 90 pounds of insect material consumed in your lifetime without you knowing it." He pauses and assesses my ability to hear more. "Do you want the breakdown by bug type? There were a surprising number of weevils. . ."

"That's okay! I'm good.", I interrupt. Even in heaven I suppose one can feel sick to one's ghostly stomach. 

I catch my breath and look at him in the eye, thinking my next question to him in my mind. "Which truth should I be asking for right now? Which one is most important for me to know?"

Discerning my mental inquiry without a word, Mr. Truth turns back to the book and flips through until he reaches the middle and runs his finger down a page, landing near the bottom edge. His face becomes very earnest, as he looks down at me leaning against the edge of the well, looking back at him inquisitively and impatient. I brace myself for the truth he is about to give me. 

That's where my little recurring daydream ends. I don't know which truth will be the most impactful or the most disturbing or the furthest reaching as far as the impact it had on my life and the lives of others around me. But I like to think that one day I'll find out. It's something I can look forward to after death, which doesn't frighten me at all. I confronted my own mortality early in life, and I have been expecting death since I was 19. Death and I have danced together several times over the years, flirting with one another but never sealing the deal. When we do, maybe I'll find myself in a shady glade in front of a stone well being gifted amazing truths about my life. 

In writing this post, I learned that this fantasy may fall under the term, gnosophilia, which refers to a deep devotion to knowing, not through intellectual pursuit, but through a soul-level understanding or intuition. It's about the soul's craving for truth and a knowing that resonates deep within, often described as a feeling that something is true in one's bones. This differs from the mind's logical pursuit of answers.   (see more about gnosophilia here.)

Lately, my daydream has changed a bit. I've been imagining others from my life going to the well and being read to from the Book of Truth by their guides into the afterlife. I find a sense of comfort in imagining them finding out that the things they believed about me were wrong, that the actions they took to punish me were unfounded, and that their hatred of me formed around a misperception and many wrong assumptions that led them to abandon our friendship for no reason other than their own stubborn, willful ignorance of the truth. My heart craves the sight of this revelation on their faces as they realize the gravity of their mistake. It's perhaps petty to want such painful knowledge to be imparted on someone, but I never said I was above being petty.

I know that's not going to happen. These people will walk around believing what they want to believe and spreading their misguided version of me to others they come across, ultimately tainting entire groups of people against me based on their mistaken belief in things I never did. And there's nothing I will ever be able to do that will convince them they are wrong, that their opinions of me were tainted by misinformation intentionally planted in their ears by malicious and monstrous individuals that thought playing with my life was a game. But that's a painful and bitter truth to swallow, so you'll forgive me if I indulge myself with a sip or two of fantasy to help that stinging truth go down and settle. 

If you find yourself being told by a friend or acquaintance about their negative experience with an individual that you do not personally know, try to remember that what they are describing is an experience unique them. No one is just one thing. To them, this person might have been clingy, might have ignored boundaries and demanded too much of their attention and time. He may have crossed lines they thought were threatening or controlling or manipulative, so they think of that person as an adversary that they will avoid. 

You will likely not hear your friend talk at length about the kindness, affection, and support he received from this awful person, or about how routinely your friend refused to accept any accountability for any of the conflict that occurred between them.

But try to picture the other guy's perspective for a moment. To him, your friend might have been disrespectful, might have broken commitments routinely and prioritized others over him so consistently that he felt frequently hurt by your friend's treatment of him. He might have tried to reason with your friend, communicating openly with them about how he felt and wanted to find compromise that would help stabilize their friendship and meet both their needs. 

Your friend might have ignored this person, belittled him and dismissed his feelings as if they weren't valid. He might have emotionally abused this person for months while using him for financial and emotional support. 

To this man, your friend might be viewed as a betrayer who was once a dear friend. This man might have spent months or years grieving the loss of his friendship with your friend, unable to stop your friend from badmouthing him and influencing others' opinions of him. 

You can't know from one person's telling of their experience what the other person's side of a story is, so how can you form a reliable, fair opinion of them based on someone's inherently subjective experience? 

We could all do a better job of giving the benefit of the doubt when it comes to making new acquaintances and letting people into our lives. Shutting others out because of gossip and rumors is not only cruel, it's ignorant. I can't respect anyone who doesn't have the conviction to form their own opinions of me based on our interactions rather than those I've had with another person. If I did, I'd be missing out on potentially wonderful relationships with decent folks who I wrote off for no good reason other than so-and-so's history with them. And that would be and ugly truth forever waiting for me in that big, beautiful Book of Truth. 

Buy My New Book - The Wall Between Us

 My Book, The Wall Between Us, Available on Amazon

Based on real events first revealed here on this blog, The Wall Between Us tells the tragic story of Cody and Sean, an unlikely pair of friends whose bond forms quickly only to be ripped apart way too early. Dive into the emotionally raw and unflinching look at how trauma can shape our lives in unexpected ways and how addiction and insecurity can destroy connection from within. Available now on Amazon.com in hardcover, softcover, and Kindle e-book formats. Get your copy of The Wall Between Us by Oscar Silvestre today!

I Wish I Never Met You