Not Mutually Exclusive
I am dying of pulmonary disease. I am 52. I am Autistic. I am an OG Cybersecurity Specialist. I am also an OG in the original sense. I am an ex-convict. I am a former slave — the 13th Amendment made both of those simultaneously possible. I am an abuse survivor. I was, at times, a monster.
None of these are mutually exclusive. All of them are true.
There are people who believe I did not receive enough time. Who hold the position that I retroactively deserved the abuse and suffering I experienced as a child. Who believe this because of choices I made — a category of decisions, made under duress, without the benefit of any social or societal formation that would have produced different ones.
That is not an excuse. It is an explanation. The distinction matters and I am not blurring it.
Most of the people who hold this position call themselves Christians.
For them, I have something to offer in their own language.
Matthew 18:6: "But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he was drowned in the depth of the sea."
Luke 17:2: "It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones."
Matthew 6:14-15: "For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses."
These are not my words. They are yours. They were not written to point outward. They were written to point at the person reading them. That is the corner of your own theology you are not applying to yourselves.
I left Christianity when my son died. I am not asking to be forgiven. I no longer need it.
The secret about dying is that you stop giving a fuck whether you were forgiven.
I have spent a lifetime as an observer. I observed as a small, non-verbal, autistic child while cigarettes were put out on my hands and feet by uncles — family that was supposed to be trusted. I observed through abuse, through institutionalization, through injustice after injustice, through a system that used every scar left by those uncles as evidence that I deserved more punishment.
Dying means the threats stop working. Going to kill me? I am already ahead of you, and it will be less painful than the choking. A life sentence? I would not make it to trial. Six months outside without my medications is not survivable. More realistically, a few weeks — I am a strict vegan, and I will starve before I eat slop made of animals for animals.
When the leverage is gone, all that is left is the truth.
I told a fellow terminal patient today: you know the destination. You have always known. Now you just know the most likely cause of the inevitable outcome. Every day you spend worrying is a day you are not living. It is not one more day. It is one less day. Choose your road and make an adventure of it.
That is what I am doing.
Why am I telling my story now? Why am I naming names, expressing views, putting things on record that some people would prefer I leave alone? Because that is the adventure I decided to take. I spent decades as the observer. I have a finite and increasingly specific number of days left in which to be something else.
The series that follows this is part of that adventure. This is who is writing it, and why.
