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

 

Hope It Gives You Hell

 Petty? Perhaps. But It Feels Right.

After what's been done, the lies that have been told, and the damage done to each other, all I can say at this point is that I really, really do hope I serve as a thorn in his side every time he has to come near my door or walk past my window. When he's parking, I hope there's a moment when he has to ask himself if I can see him and drives around some more to look for another option. I want to know that as much as he hates it, I'm on his mind every damned day, and I hope it's utter hell.

Jealousy Makes A Lousy Third

Part 2: How To Destroy A Friendship With Jealousy In Just 5 Easy Steps

My friendship with Cody began unexpectedly and with such a strong and surprising bond between us. The three months he spent living with me at the beginning of 2023 proved to be three of the best months I've had in all the years I've lived in Washington. We were inseparable. When Cody wasn't at work, he was with me. There were even mumblings from envious mutual acquaintances that I had some sort of sway over Cody to the point where they believed I kept him under my thumb and away from their individual company. 

The truth is that in the beginning, Cody honestly enjoyed spending his time with me. We talked, watched movies, exchanged stories from our troubled childhoods, and formed a truly great friendship. He was so fond of my company that after I'd helped him to move into his own apartment in my building just one floor up from me, he still chose to spend every night of that next month at my place instead of his.

I was happy to have someone so patient who actually seemed to get me. I hadn't felt heard, understood, or accepted by anyone in so long, that by the time Cody came into my life, I'd forgotten what a wonderful and powerful feeling that was. He bolstered my confidence, gave me someone to care for, and was kind and appreciative of the support I offered him. 

While he lived with me those first three months in 2023, Cody and I would co-host countless sex parties. We were cautious about how much 1-on-1 interaction we had, not wanting something as ridiculous as sex to interfere with the friendship we had built. So we invited in others to satisfy our needs while his boyfriend was locked up in California for probation violations. I would recruit guys from Grindr or Sniffies, run their pics and stats by Cody for his input, and invite them over if we were in agreement. It was a lot of fun, until it wasn't.

There began to be a pattern where the guys who came to join us in bed would focus all their attention on the younger, sexier Cody, leaving me feeling left out and unwanted. At first I let it slide, not wanting to make a stink of it by addressing it with Cody, but after the fourth or fifth time, I spoke to him and clued him in on what I was experiencing. The friends who I had been inviting over to play with Cody and me had begun to go behind my back directly to Cody to hang out and spend time, and some of them went so far as to expressly ask him to keep it secret. 

If there's one thing you should know about me, dear reader, it's that I don't do secrets very well. When I get a whiff of one, it's all I can think about. I'll scratch it and pick at it and rub it raw trying to uncover something that's being intentionally kept from me. And that's how I found out about these friends bypassing me to go and have alone time upstairs with Cody. 

I wrote him a letter letting him know that I was aware, and I told him how badly it hurt my feelings that he would participate in such clandestine rendezvous with friends he'd met because of me. I brought up how often I'd been feeling ignored and left out of the fun at our co-hosted parties, and I asked him if he might be willing to be more aware of the times when he felt me pulling away and try to circumvent me getting pulled into my head to overthink the situation by offering some reassurance.

He was hurt, feeling accused and blamed for the friends choosing to spend their time without me at his place. I assured Cody that I wasn't blaming him for their actions, and I apologized for failing to consider his own feelings about those friends and the possibility that he might have felt a kinship that had nothing to do with me. It was selfish of me to expect Cody to be my tether to the real world when I inevitably started to withdraw from activity that seemed exclusive of me. He wasn't to blame for being younger and having more appeal to these guys than I did. I felt awful for the jealousy I felt. It was humiliating.

And though he volunteered to be more vocal toward these guys when they began to focus all their attention on him, offering to speak up and remind them who had invited them to play, the task began to feel like a chore to him pretty quickly, and he ultimately came to resent the responsibility. And then, to really start the jealousy ball rolling, in came Skyler.

Skyler was a cheap hooker I'd hired about a year earlier who turned out to be a criminal and a manipulative, backstabbing thief. I was cautious of him, but when I found out that he and Cody had met and formed a close friendship, I welcomed him back into my life for Cody's sake. I didn't want to be seen as the mean old man who wouldn't let Cody have his friend over to play. So, when Skyler asked for help getting back to Seattle from Louisiana, I helped. I even let him stay with me when he got back, since Cody had moved upstairs by then.

When he arrived, there were a couple of nights of sex, first with just him and me, then with Cody. But from the start it was clear to me that there was a spark between them that I would not be able to compete with. They paired up, and without a word, suddenly Skyler was no longer staying with me as we'd discussed, but had opted to move in upstairs with Cody. They spent more and more time away from me, opting to party with Cody's growing circle of ne'er-do-well buddies.

It became difficult to get any alone time with Cody the way we'd spent the previous three months, just he and I. Anytime he came to see me, he had Skyler in tow, so there were conversations we couldn't have for lack of privacy. Part of me thinks that may have been by design, since having heartfelt conversations on the subject of feelings was low on the list of Cody's favorite things to do. And my jealousy grew more fierce and constant.

Not long after Skyler had entered the scene, I invited an out-of-towner named Lane, who was new to Seattle, to come over for sex. In keeping with tradition, I ran his info past Cody and asked if he would like to join in on the fun. In hindsight, I fully regret extending that invitation. Soon after Lane arrived and he and I had just begun to mess around, Cody showed up. The three of us had fun for a while, but I felt the familiar tug of attention being drawn away from me for longer and longer stints. I got in my head, and I tried to combat that by drinking more G. My plan backfired, and I passed out for two hours. 

That was enough time to cement what would become a burgeoning new friendship between Lane and Cody. They bonded and fucked and talked and fucked and bonded some more while I snored my face off in the other room. When I woke, they dressed and left to go up to Cody's place, where apparently Lane was going to be staying for a while. Apparently he had expressed some discomfort about the guy he had been squatting with expecting him to put out while he was staying there rent-free, so Cody, being the knight-in-shining-armor that he is, offered Lane his futon until he could find other arrangements.

It took close to three months for other arrangements to be found. And during those three months, the friendship I had forged with Cody grew more strained day by day because he was never available to do anything anymore with me, and when he did make an appearance, he always had Lane in tow behind him or Lane upstairs having a crisis, or Lane texting to say he'd been gay bashed by a group of trans girls, or Lane. . . you get the picture. Lane was a pathological liar and a master manipulator who instantly wormed his way in between Cody and me. Needless to say, I hated him for that.

Well, there you have the first two steps toward destroying a friendship with jealousy. Check back soon for steps three through five, and find out just how bad things got.

Be Careful With The Family You Choose

Part 1: How Inviting A Friend To Join My Google Family Ruined Everything

The Premise:

In late March 2023, while my new friend, whose name I should not mention for legal reasons -- let's call him Cody -- was living with me while he was trying to get back on his feet and find a home of his own, I thought it would be a nice demonstration of friendship and trust to add him to my Google Family. Adding him would give him shared access to certain folders and files on my Google Drive and allow him to control the IoT devices in my apartment linked to my Google account. So, I added him and sent him an invitation to alert him of it. 

The Confrontation:

Fast forward a few weeks, during which time there was no mention or acknowledgement of my invitation from Cody. I had completely forgotten about the whole thing until one afternoon in late April, following a series of very kind, appreciative text messages from Cody thanking me for being such a great friend, when he sent me a text message that contained just a screenshot of an email he had received showing him as a "Family Member (Limited Access)" on my Google Family account. I responded, recalling the invitation I'd sent, and asked if he was okay with my having added him. He responded in a fit of rage, asking me why I had added him and what made me think he would accept the invitation at all. 

Surprised and honestly bewildered by his unexpected anger over what I had considered to be a friendly, innocent gesture, I tried to assure him that I'd not done anything surreptitiously and was keeping nothing from him. I hadn't even fully grasped the extent of the accusation he had just hurled at me yet because I was so shocked to be suspected of violating Cody's trust. It just wasn't something that had ever occurred to me to do.

The Fight:

He continued screaming at me via text for a while, deaf to my protests and my explanations. It didn't help matters that he had been awake for several days, or that he had been hanging around with a low life who was notorious for hacking into people's networks and stealing identities. Cody was a ticking time bomb of paranoia, and he aimed the full force of that at me.

I was hurt by the accusation. To be doubted by someone in whom I had complete trust and in whom I thought I had instilled a mutual sense of understanding was a blow to the heart. I tried my hardest not to let my hurt feelings color the conversation, because I realized how vital this discussion was. 

I tried so hard to convince him to come and see me in person and not to force us to hash this out over text messaging. But when Cody is enraged, there's no reasoning with him. This was the first time I was seeing that side of him, and it was heartbreaking.

The Proof:

After some time had passed, I was able to retrace my steps in adding him and discovered a Google Help article that explained the process of adding a family member in greater detail. It turns out that when you add someone as a member of your family, Google does indeed send them an invitation to inform them they have been added, an invitation that must be accepted before its two-week expiration in order to make the addition of that family member final. 

But at the same time, when they are added, they show up in the Family group as a "Family Member (limited access)". This is the initial status that would have changed to simply "Family Member" had he or anyone else accepted the invitation before it expired. 

Cody simply hadn't seen the invitation when I sent it, and there's a very good chance he had deleted it or that it went to his junk mail folder. In any case, I thought I'd stumbled upon the perfect piece of evidence to show him once and for all that I had not violated his trust and was innocent of his accusation that I had hacked his network and gained access to his email account so that I could accept the invitation secretly on his behalf and delete it before he could see it. I took a screenshot of the help page and sent it to him.

He was not convinced. Despite what amounted to a completely unbiased and trustworthy piece of evidence directly from Google itself, he still held onto the suspicion that I had hacked him. And though he eventually dropped the matter and spoke of it no more, I would find out many months later that this encounter had distorted his perception of me and that every single thing I did from that point on was viewed by him through the fucked-up lens that he had crafted during this simple and innocent misunderstanding. 

It was, as I had predicted - the beginning of the end for our friendship. And despite the prophecy having sprung from my own message, I didn't see it coming until it was too late.