For nearly a year, I knocked on doors with my records. State agencies, law firms. Wherever I filed, nothing moved. Only then did I see how big the other side was. Little by little, I was letting go.
I thought I wasn’t taking revenge. I believed I held their weak points, the leverage that moves people. I believed my logs told me what they were trying to hide. That I only had to hold it, never swing it. That I only had to steer this game to checkmate, the mate with no escape. Without taking a single piece, without killing anyone.
This August, I heard talk from people around me who were worried about her. I opened the messaging app. Her account, the one that had blocked me, was gone altogether; where her name had been, there was only “Deleted Account.”
😨 Fear detected · No target account
I charged in again. I decided to force the truth. I called the one person who hadn’t blocked me, B. I didn’t put it gently. I asked him if he was a criminal. And I said, “You’ve got a lot to lose, brother, but I’m a fucking idler. Shake me down all you like, not a speck of dust falls out.”
There was a time when people called me an idler. For the first time, the word became a weapon. A man with nothing to lose is frightening. I knew that, and I chose the word.
After that B didn’t pick up my calls. B’s boss, who had been at the bar that first night, and the investor from overseas avoided my calls too. They all went dark. People who hadn’t avoided me for a whole year were avoiding me now.