Thankstaking.
I miss the old life Alyssa and I had in Albany so much. I really had a good thing going, especially after Alyssa joined it, and I worked so fucking hard to build that life for myself. I miss feeling like I had a lot of friends, acquaintances, and support. I miss always being busy and constantly coming up with new plans to fill my Slingshot planner up with, always doing activism and organizing community events. I miss the outlets I was able to create for myself that allowed me to be creative and useful while doing things that left me feeling fulfilled and proud. I miss always having conversations about things that were important to me. I miss helping people, bringing people together, and inspiring others to do more. I miss having a tight crew that kept me motivated and accompanied. I miss Alyssa and I always running around the city to get things done like some sorta super duo and creeping around at night like benevolent raccoons. I miss hanging out at the Social Justice Center and acting like it was our own little clubhouse. I miss feeling like I'd finally found my calling. I miss feeling like I'd finally gotten some control over my own life. Maybe it wasn't a "career" that made me money, and therefore wasn't valid to some, but it was a decent lifestyle and it was enough for me.
As many of you know, at the end of May 2017, I tried to kill myself and spent a couple of days in a psychiatric ward. Up until recently, it was the most hopeless, lost, and out of control that I'd ever felt in my entire life. Failing at suicide scared me away from trying it again, even though I still desperately wanted to die. The deep physical pain that being alive caused me at that point was nearly unbearable, so I decided to do everything I could to at least distract myself from it. I took my medicine every day and became very dedicated to my weekly therapy appointments. I begrudgingly decided to pay rent so I could live in a friend's basement since being homeless made recovery a lot harder. I had a safety plan I signed when being discharged from the hospital and I stuck to it by removing sharp objects from my room and reaching out to my brother whenever I was feeling like I'd try to hurt myself again. I reached out to the few friends I had and tried harder to let them know how much I appreciated them. I tried to nurture a strong support network and safety net for myself. I tried to never be alone.
Eventually, I decided to keep busy and dive head-first into local activism, mostly for non-human animals at first, and even began attending a lot of the lame concerts and tiny events this shitty city had to offer. I attended nearly every activist event I could find, which was hard since I didn't have my own car and leaving the house to surround myself with triggers made me feel like I was going to have a heart attack. I went out of my way to talk to strangers and meet new people every chance I got. I said yes to just about any proposed plans or offered responsibilities. I found ways to be helpful to the people I was around who were leading the activist projects I was participating in. I got very involved. I even allowed myself to get romantically close to others despite how damaged my ability to love and trust felt. If I wanted to get better, I needed to stick close to the city most toxic to me, so I did everything I could to try and create a bearable life there.
I cannot effectively articulate just how fucking hard it was for me then to push myself the way I did. I think I made it look easy to a lot of people, but deep down I was exercising superhuman strength to keep going. Truth be told, at age 29 it was the first sincere attempt I'd ever actually made to create a life in Albany. Prior to then, I'd spent most of the decade burning bridges, being alone and homeless, running away for months at a time around the country, and never even trying to settle. Never before in my adult life had I put that much effort into my mental health, into my social life, into activism, into putting myself out there, into supporting the few things happening in this broken community.
Inspired and energized by a couple other people in leadership roles, I eventually decided to try and organize my own events, rather than just complain that enough wasn't being done, or that the tactics being used weren't effective, or that the right issues weren't being addressed; that organizations were too rigidly hierarchical, that the vegans weren't intersectional enough, that the leftists were too speciesist, and that both were too liberal. I was surprised at what and how many people supported me, and even more surprised by what and how many people seemingly refused to. But I found ways to get done what I wanted to accomplish even if it were alone, and I got so much done, distributed so much information, and helped so many people with their immediate needs in ways I didn't see a lot of people in the area doing--and I did it without ever compromising what I believed in, without the backing of any non-profits or other organizations, with little to no resources or money and absolutely no fundraising, and while literally homeless for much of that time.
I was having so much fun and felt so proud of what I, Alyssa, our friends, and many people we met along the way were able to accomplish together. I really busted my ass in a way I never had before in anything else I'd ever been passionate about. By capitalist metrics, I was oftentimes putting more than full-time hours every week into the things we did even though I obviously never got paid for anything, and I put on events and actions with little to no overhead costs because my life as a bum had taught me how to do and acquire things without using money. It was exciting to find an outlet for my politics, my ideas about the world, my creativity, and the resourceful schemes I'd picked up in my life as a result of being poor and homeless. I took a chance at assuming a default leader position because no one else was doing what I wanted to see being done, and it turned out I was pretty good at it. The events and actions I organized were by all accounts hugely successful and well-attended, and even got my friends and I attention from local media outlets. Unlike other individuals and groups in the area, I put on these things while also still supporting others' groups and events, even ones led or attended by people I absolutely hated. It was all hard and thankless, but worth every minute. I felt like I'd found my purpose. It was never about my own ego, but it was obviously wonderful to receive a lot of praise and respect from others around the area, and for once actually feel like I'd truly earned it--and I did fucking earn it, by putting in the work and by being a genuine, compassionate, honest, respectful person whose intentions were sincere and pure. I walked the walk and proved who I was with my actions, and everyone knew that even if they didn't like me.
At the end of last year when I first found out I was being accused of emotional abuse and rape, I'd already been hurt, betrayed, and abandoned by so many people I thought were close friends and gave so much emotional energy, loyalty, and support to. It got to a point where I honestly felt bullied. This felt like the final straw that would finally get me to give up. But I did what everyone told me to and kept quiet about it, not giving it attention and hoping it would go away. So many people told me to ignore it and let it pass, that justice and truth would prevail, that people would know better than to believe me capable of that sort of shit. But as the months went by and I kept pushing forward like I always did at that point, I had to sit back and watch it slowly blow up and begin to erode every aspect of the life I had put so much time and energy into creating.
Now it's the end of the year and justice and truth clearly did not prevail. It did not matter there was no proof whatsoever of what I was being accused of. It did not matter that no one actually in this community could accuse me of any predatory or threatening behavior and hence could not prove immediate or imminent danger to anyone here. It did not matter that the one and only person accusing me of these things was so unwell that she had to go in for shock therapy. My life and reputation in Albany is irreparably ruined, and it doesn't matter who continued to believe or support me because in the end all that mattered was who wanted to hurt me and the amount of social capital they had. The campaign to run me out of town and smear my name was the most elaborate and successful combination of local effort I'd ever seen. It was such a shame that the same energy could never be put into things that were actually beneficial to the community. And it was salt on the wound that the primary groups of people who led my public stoning were either a.) Cool Kids in their late teens/early 20s who spend all of their time at bars or house shows that I obviously am never at and therefore am never around, or b.) fake leftists and Berniecrats who never attended or helped with any of the events I was a part of because they were too busy hanging out at their houses together or sitting at monthly meetings for the worthless slacktivist groups they were a part of and therefore were never around me.
I've been forced to back out of the city and to stop organizing events. I'm banned from the Social Justice Center, which was literally the only space I could afford to use. I left the state for over a month because running away was all I saw left to do. I'm only here because Alyssa didn’t want to travel anymore and I don't have anywhere else to stay for the winter. The crippling anxiety and shame of going out in public or to events and not knowing who thinks I'm a scumbag rapist keeps from me going to other people's stuff. I went out for food and groceries the other night with Alyssa and had to see three different people I knew thought I was a rapist. It doesn't matter that I and people important to me know the truth. I can't really get people to understand how awful it is to be on the streets or in a room and know that there are people who think you've done one of the most vile and unforgivable things one can do to someone. If enough people believe something is true, it's as good as fact, and for some reason the extensive tangible evidence of my character and positive contributions to this community isn't enough to outweigh the unsubstantiated accusations of something terrible I allegedly did almost eight years ago to a single person no one knows and who hasn't lived here in almost six years.
I've lost count of how many Facebook friends I've lost, but it's in the several dozen, and I still lose a couple more every week. Many of those people were local and people who I respected a lot. Some of them were online and real-life friends who I've known for upwards of a decade. To lose their respect and trust broke my heart. And there are plenty of people I once considered close friends who don't even talk to me anymore. Only one person has reached out to me since I've gotten back here. There are many people who I've noticed have stopped interacting with me on social media entirely, so I can only assume they've politely hidden my posts from their feed. I miss being well-liked, relied on, confided in, and respected. At the very least, I just wish I were hated for who I am rather than for someone I am not and something I did not do. It's such a strange and disorienting thing to be branded something you're not and punished for something you didn't do. I'm well aware the world is so clearly and disturbingly unjust, but this was one of the most astoundingly unfair things that has ever happened to me in a life of a lot of struggle and misfortune. And this is such a rare and specific thing to go through that I can't really talk about it with anyone and feel like they really understand. Most people don't believe false accusations really happen and that it ruins lives, or they are comfortable with the collateral damage of a system that says we must blindly believe whatever anyone says about someone accused of abuse 100% of the time.
This has dominated my entire year. I tried everything to fix it, but nothing helped and usually only made matters worse. After half a year of talking about it and going directly to people I knew to discuss it, I eventually had to accept that nothing I said mattered. I haven't brought it up on here in quite a while, but the reality is that everything that happened to me in Albany this year haunts me every day. I still can hardly wrap my head around it. I live every day in the wreckage of it all. It practically knocks all the wind out of me when I start going down the rabbit hole of it all while lying alone in bed. And all I can do is hope the pain will pass as my thoughts always conclude with the harsh realization that I am completely powerless to what has been done and there is nothing I can do to reverse the damage inflicted on me by the scum of this city. I no longer own my own name or narrative.
No longer being able to travel and distract myself from all of this, it's obviously a lot louder lately, especially being back in the area code I swore I'd never return to where I need to experience firsthand what post-cancellation life here is like. I'm face to face with being back to square one, feeling just as lost and hopeless as I did when I left the hospital that day in May over two years ago. I can't do the things I loved doing with my time here anymore, so I'm not really sure what to do with all of this miserable free time. Any effort I'd put into establishing myself here has been undone. Almost two years of effort and energy destroyed in less than two months. I want so badly for what has happened to not have happened; for all of this to just have been a nightmare that I wake up from. I don't want to survive this and I don't want to try and start over, especially since she apparently can just ruin anything else I manage to do in the future elsewhere, effortlessly and remotely from the comfort of her home hundreds of miles away. I don't think I can ever muster the emotional energy I did two years ago again, anyway, and I don't want to try even if I knew I could. I'm too aware now of just how low people will go to hurt others, how little truth and justice mean in this shitty world, how readily and enthusiastically even leftists will exhibit retributive sadism and spite and dishonesty in the name of control, and how quickly my efforts can and will wind up being completely fucking worthless time and time again. As a person living in poverty with little to no personal resources, I have very few options even when it comes to hobbies. I can't move on because I'm not sure what to even move on to. And again, I don't want to move on--I want my old life back! I want my "hard work" to have paid off like everyone acts like it does, but this society is the exact opposite of a meritocracy.
Yesterday, for the first time since the last one I put on in February, the Social Justice Center had a Really Really Free Market inside of it. It took almost nine fucking months for the assholes who sabotaged one of the most successful and effective mutual aid projects to ever happen in Albany to finally step up to the plate and at least pretend to want to fill the void they've created. We had to stand around for months, helpless, as people online and on the streets asked us and others when the next one would be. These pieces of shit didn't just hurt me and my friends, they hurt the people who looked forward to and relied on the things we did. And if social media is any indication, it appears their Albany Free Store was very small and hardly promoted to the community at large. It was infuriating to see that it was being "sponsored" by the same fucking groups of people who actively avoided helping us in any way when we were busting our asses to get involved in the community: the General Defense Committee, Food Not Bombs, and the Socialists. It's almost as if they only want to participate in the things they personally own. If you go to the General Defense Committee page, you'll notice they have permanently pinned their post outing me so it's the first thing anyone sees on their page. It is the only post like that.
I can talk as much shit as I want, though. It doesn't matter. In the end, these toxic hypocrites and disingenuous white knights won, and I lost. They got exactly what they wanted, which was to see me gone, and now they get to possess the very project they refused to help with when my co-organizers and I were doing it for over a year. It doesn't matter if they lack the drive or interest to put in the same amount of work we did to make those events really count, it doesn't matter if they fail, it doesn't matter if I know the truth and can fall asleep with my integrity or whatever, it doesn't matter if they are all horrible people. Because everyone got away with what they did. They get to steal my little world from me and add it to their collection of resources, along with loving and supportive families, comfortable homes to live in, elite cliques of friends to help them with anything they do, trust funds and international travel plans, and the satisfaction of always getting whatever they want. Meanwhile, I'm left with nothing but hurt and disillusionment, and I didn't even do anything to deserve it. I hate to say it, but I want so badly to hurt so many people just so I can for one moment see something bad happen to a person who hurt me for a change. If I didn't think they were all cop callers, I'd physically attack some of these lowlifes. But I can't and won't, and outside of this Facebook post will get no relief whatsoever from all that I am feeling. I can't afford to live well, so I can't even get that form of revenge.
I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to be strong anymore. The last three years have shown me the absolute worst of what human beings are capable of and I've endured so much mistreatment and pain from so many people I only showed admiration and support to. I don't want to be a part of this shitty fucking world. I don't want to have to keep figuring shit out. Just the basics are so hard for me; anything regarding luxury or recreation is basically impossible. I don't care if I'll get through this because I don't want to survive anymore and I know there isn't anything on the other side of this dark tunnel. I don't even know why I'm writing this shit. It's too long for most people to care to read and I know most people are tired of my drama and whining. Others will write this off as the pathetic self-pity of a rapist who got what he deserved. Most people are simply incapable of really understanding and empathizing with the situation I'm in because it's just so awful and foreign to them, and they'll roll their eyes thinking they have all the answers, that they know what they'd do if they were in my shoes, and that I just haven't fought hard enough for my dreams.
I wish I had nice and hopeful things to share about my own life, but I've got nothing to show for myself at this point. I'm not doing well, guys. All I wanna do is have fun and keep stimulated every day before the world begins to end, but I can't even afford to be a hedonist. There's nothing to look forward to and no sign of hope anywhere. I'm watching everyone my age buy houses and travel the world and have kids while I only get older and fatter while watching movies and waiting to die, prohibited from reaching my full potential. I'm sorry to all I've disappointed.
As many of you know, at the end of May 2017, I tried to kill myself and spent a couple of days in a psychiatric ward. Up until recently, it was the most hopeless, lost, and out of control that I'd ever felt in my entire life. Failing at suicide scared me away from trying it again, even though I still desperately wanted to die. The deep physical pain that being alive caused me at that point was nearly unbearable, so I decided to do everything I could to at least distract myself from it. I took my medicine every day and became very dedicated to my weekly therapy appointments. I begrudgingly decided to pay rent so I could live in a friend's basement since being homeless made recovery a lot harder. I had a safety plan I signed when being discharged from the hospital and I stuck to it by removing sharp objects from my room and reaching out to my brother whenever I was feeling like I'd try to hurt myself again. I reached out to the few friends I had and tried harder to let them know how much I appreciated them. I tried to nurture a strong support network and safety net for myself. I tried to never be alone.
Eventually, I decided to keep busy and dive head-first into local activism, mostly for non-human animals at first, and even began attending a lot of the lame concerts and tiny events this shitty city had to offer. I attended nearly every activist event I could find, which was hard since I didn't have my own car and leaving the house to surround myself with triggers made me feel like I was going to have a heart attack. I went out of my way to talk to strangers and meet new people every chance I got. I said yes to just about any proposed plans or offered responsibilities. I found ways to be helpful to the people I was around who were leading the activist projects I was participating in. I got very involved. I even allowed myself to get romantically close to others despite how damaged my ability to love and trust felt. If I wanted to get better, I needed to stick close to the city most toxic to me, so I did everything I could to try and create a bearable life there.
I cannot effectively articulate just how fucking hard it was for me then to push myself the way I did. I think I made it look easy to a lot of people, but deep down I was exercising superhuman strength to keep going. Truth be told, at age 29 it was the first sincere attempt I'd ever actually made to create a life in Albany. Prior to then, I'd spent most of the decade burning bridges, being alone and homeless, running away for months at a time around the country, and never even trying to settle. Never before in my adult life had I put that much effort into my mental health, into my social life, into activism, into putting myself out there, into supporting the few things happening in this broken community.
Inspired and energized by a couple other people in leadership roles, I eventually decided to try and organize my own events, rather than just complain that enough wasn't being done, or that the tactics being used weren't effective, or that the right issues weren't being addressed; that organizations were too rigidly hierarchical, that the vegans weren't intersectional enough, that the leftists were too speciesist, and that both were too liberal. I was surprised at what and how many people supported me, and even more surprised by what and how many people seemingly refused to. But I found ways to get done what I wanted to accomplish even if it were alone, and I got so much done, distributed so much information, and helped so many people with their immediate needs in ways I didn't see a lot of people in the area doing--and I did it without ever compromising what I believed in, without the backing of any non-profits or other organizations, with little to no resources or money and absolutely no fundraising, and while literally homeless for much of that time.
I was having so much fun and felt so proud of what I, Alyssa, our friends, and many people we met along the way were able to accomplish together. I really busted my ass in a way I never had before in anything else I'd ever been passionate about. By capitalist metrics, I was oftentimes putting more than full-time hours every week into the things we did even though I obviously never got paid for anything, and I put on events and actions with little to no overhead costs because my life as a bum had taught me how to do and acquire things without using money. It was exciting to find an outlet for my politics, my ideas about the world, my creativity, and the resourceful schemes I'd picked up in my life as a result of being poor and homeless. I took a chance at assuming a default leader position because no one else was doing what I wanted to see being done, and it turned out I was pretty good at it. The events and actions I organized were by all accounts hugely successful and well-attended, and even got my friends and I attention from local media outlets. Unlike other individuals and groups in the area, I put on these things while also still supporting others' groups and events, even ones led or attended by people I absolutely hated. It was all hard and thankless, but worth every minute. I felt like I'd found my purpose. It was never about my own ego, but it was obviously wonderful to receive a lot of praise and respect from others around the area, and for once actually feel like I'd truly earned it--and I did fucking earn it, by putting in the work and by being a genuine, compassionate, honest, respectful person whose intentions were sincere and pure. I walked the walk and proved who I was with my actions, and everyone knew that even if they didn't like me.
At the end of last year when I first found out I was being accused of emotional abuse and rape, I'd already been hurt, betrayed, and abandoned by so many people I thought were close friends and gave so much emotional energy, loyalty, and support to. It got to a point where I honestly felt bullied. This felt like the final straw that would finally get me to give up. But I did what everyone told me to and kept quiet about it, not giving it attention and hoping it would go away. So many people told me to ignore it and let it pass, that justice and truth would prevail, that people would know better than to believe me capable of that sort of shit. But as the months went by and I kept pushing forward like I always did at that point, I had to sit back and watch it slowly blow up and begin to erode every aspect of the life I had put so much time and energy into creating.
Now it's the end of the year and justice and truth clearly did not prevail. It did not matter there was no proof whatsoever of what I was being accused of. It did not matter that no one actually in this community could accuse me of any predatory or threatening behavior and hence could not prove immediate or imminent danger to anyone here. It did not matter that the one and only person accusing me of these things was so unwell that she had to go in for shock therapy. My life and reputation in Albany is irreparably ruined, and it doesn't matter who continued to believe or support me because in the end all that mattered was who wanted to hurt me and the amount of social capital they had. The campaign to run me out of town and smear my name was the most elaborate and successful combination of local effort I'd ever seen. It was such a shame that the same energy could never be put into things that were actually beneficial to the community. And it was salt on the wound that the primary groups of people who led my public stoning were either a.) Cool Kids in their late teens/early 20s who spend all of their time at bars or house shows that I obviously am never at and therefore am never around, or b.) fake leftists and Berniecrats who never attended or helped with any of the events I was a part of because they were too busy hanging out at their houses together or sitting at monthly meetings for the worthless slacktivist groups they were a part of and therefore were never around me.
I've been forced to back out of the city and to stop organizing events. I'm banned from the Social Justice Center, which was literally the only space I could afford to use. I left the state for over a month because running away was all I saw left to do. I'm only here because Alyssa didn’t want to travel anymore and I don't have anywhere else to stay for the winter. The crippling anxiety and shame of going out in public or to events and not knowing who thinks I'm a scumbag rapist keeps from me going to other people's stuff. I went out for food and groceries the other night with Alyssa and had to see three different people I knew thought I was a rapist. It doesn't matter that I and people important to me know the truth. I can't really get people to understand how awful it is to be on the streets or in a room and know that there are people who think you've done one of the most vile and unforgivable things one can do to someone. If enough people believe something is true, it's as good as fact, and for some reason the extensive tangible evidence of my character and positive contributions to this community isn't enough to outweigh the unsubstantiated accusations of something terrible I allegedly did almost eight years ago to a single person no one knows and who hasn't lived here in almost six years.
I've lost count of how many Facebook friends I've lost, but it's in the several dozen, and I still lose a couple more every week. Many of those people were local and people who I respected a lot. Some of them were online and real-life friends who I've known for upwards of a decade. To lose their respect and trust broke my heart. And there are plenty of people I once considered close friends who don't even talk to me anymore. Only one person has reached out to me since I've gotten back here. There are many people who I've noticed have stopped interacting with me on social media entirely, so I can only assume they've politely hidden my posts from their feed. I miss being well-liked, relied on, confided in, and respected. At the very least, I just wish I were hated for who I am rather than for someone I am not and something I did not do. It's such a strange and disorienting thing to be branded something you're not and punished for something you didn't do. I'm well aware the world is so clearly and disturbingly unjust, but this was one of the most astoundingly unfair things that has ever happened to me in a life of a lot of struggle and misfortune. And this is such a rare and specific thing to go through that I can't really talk about it with anyone and feel like they really understand. Most people don't believe false accusations really happen and that it ruins lives, or they are comfortable with the collateral damage of a system that says we must blindly believe whatever anyone says about someone accused of abuse 100% of the time.
This has dominated my entire year. I tried everything to fix it, but nothing helped and usually only made matters worse. After half a year of talking about it and going directly to people I knew to discuss it, I eventually had to accept that nothing I said mattered. I haven't brought it up on here in quite a while, but the reality is that everything that happened to me in Albany this year haunts me every day. I still can hardly wrap my head around it. I live every day in the wreckage of it all. It practically knocks all the wind out of me when I start going down the rabbit hole of it all while lying alone in bed. And all I can do is hope the pain will pass as my thoughts always conclude with the harsh realization that I am completely powerless to what has been done and there is nothing I can do to reverse the damage inflicted on me by the scum of this city. I no longer own my own name or narrative.
No longer being able to travel and distract myself from all of this, it's obviously a lot louder lately, especially being back in the area code I swore I'd never return to where I need to experience firsthand what post-cancellation life here is like. I'm face to face with being back to square one, feeling just as lost and hopeless as I did when I left the hospital that day in May over two years ago. I can't do the things I loved doing with my time here anymore, so I'm not really sure what to do with all of this miserable free time. Any effort I'd put into establishing myself here has been undone. Almost two years of effort and energy destroyed in less than two months. I want so badly for what has happened to not have happened; for all of this to just have been a nightmare that I wake up from. I don't want to survive this and I don't want to try and start over, especially since she apparently can just ruin anything else I manage to do in the future elsewhere, effortlessly and remotely from the comfort of her home hundreds of miles away. I don't think I can ever muster the emotional energy I did two years ago again, anyway, and I don't want to try even if I knew I could. I'm too aware now of just how low people will go to hurt others, how little truth and justice mean in this shitty world, how readily and enthusiastically even leftists will exhibit retributive sadism and spite and dishonesty in the name of control, and how quickly my efforts can and will wind up being completely fucking worthless time and time again. As a person living in poverty with little to no personal resources, I have very few options even when it comes to hobbies. I can't move on because I'm not sure what to even move on to. And again, I don't want to move on--I want my old life back! I want my "hard work" to have paid off like everyone acts like it does, but this society is the exact opposite of a meritocracy.
Yesterday, for the first time since the last one I put on in February, the Social Justice Center had a Really Really Free Market inside of it. It took almost nine fucking months for the assholes who sabotaged one of the most successful and effective mutual aid projects to ever happen in Albany to finally step up to the plate and at least pretend to want to fill the void they've created. We had to stand around for months, helpless, as people online and on the streets asked us and others when the next one would be. These pieces of shit didn't just hurt me and my friends, they hurt the people who looked forward to and relied on the things we did. And if social media is any indication, it appears their Albany Free Store was very small and hardly promoted to the community at large. It was infuriating to see that it was being "sponsored" by the same fucking groups of people who actively avoided helping us in any way when we were busting our asses to get involved in the community: the General Defense Committee, Food Not Bombs, and the Socialists. It's almost as if they only want to participate in the things they personally own. If you go to the General Defense Committee page, you'll notice they have permanently pinned their post outing me so it's the first thing anyone sees on their page. It is the only post like that.
I can talk as much shit as I want, though. It doesn't matter. In the end, these toxic hypocrites and disingenuous white knights won, and I lost. They got exactly what they wanted, which was to see me gone, and now they get to possess the very project they refused to help with when my co-organizers and I were doing it for over a year. It doesn't matter if they lack the drive or interest to put in the same amount of work we did to make those events really count, it doesn't matter if they fail, it doesn't matter if I know the truth and can fall asleep with my integrity or whatever, it doesn't matter if they are all horrible people. Because everyone got away with what they did. They get to steal my little world from me and add it to their collection of resources, along with loving and supportive families, comfortable homes to live in, elite cliques of friends to help them with anything they do, trust funds and international travel plans, and the satisfaction of always getting whatever they want. Meanwhile, I'm left with nothing but hurt and disillusionment, and I didn't even do anything to deserve it. I hate to say it, but I want so badly to hurt so many people just so I can for one moment see something bad happen to a person who hurt me for a change. If I didn't think they were all cop callers, I'd physically attack some of these lowlifes. But I can't and won't, and outside of this Facebook post will get no relief whatsoever from all that I am feeling. I can't afford to live well, so I can't even get that form of revenge.
I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to be strong anymore. The last three years have shown me the absolute worst of what human beings are capable of and I've endured so much mistreatment and pain from so many people I only showed admiration and support to. I don't want to be a part of this shitty fucking world. I don't want to have to keep figuring shit out. Just the basics are so hard for me; anything regarding luxury or recreation is basically impossible. I don't care if I'll get through this because I don't want to survive anymore and I know there isn't anything on the other side of this dark tunnel. I don't even know why I'm writing this shit. It's too long for most people to care to read and I know most people are tired of my drama and whining. Others will write this off as the pathetic self-pity of a rapist who got what he deserved. Most people are simply incapable of really understanding and empathizing with the situation I'm in because it's just so awful and foreign to them, and they'll roll their eyes thinking they have all the answers, that they know what they'd do if they were in my shoes, and that I just haven't fought hard enough for my dreams.
I wish I had nice and hopeful things to share about my own life, but I've got nothing to show for myself at this point. I'm not doing well, guys. All I wanna do is have fun and keep stimulated every day before the world begins to end, but I can't even afford to be a hedonist. There's nothing to look forward to and no sign of hope anywhere. I'm watching everyone my age buy houses and travel the world and have kids while I only get older and fatter while watching movies and waiting to die, prohibited from reaching my full potential. I'm sorry to all I've disappointed.