Five Years

I got to have lunch with my best friend today. She was in town for a medical conference she was speaking at and won an award. I’m so proud of her. She is the smartest person I’ve ever met.

We sat in a restaurant for hours chatting, with whipped cream on our noses. She had to go to a meeting after, and I had to tell her she had chocolate on her nose and clean it off before her meeting. We mainly talked about me and what’s going on.

I told her about the nonprofit idea, and she watched part of the first video lesson I put together with AI and my, for some reason, occasionally biracial AI-generated version of myself.

She kind of stopped a few minutes in and asked me if I had thought about going to law school. She then told me it looked really professional, and she is not a lawyer, but the information was good. She then said I reminded her of Kim from Better Call Saul, and she encouraged me to go to law school and told me how good I would be at it.

I started crying.

You have no idea how having someone believe in me felt.

She loves the nonprofit idea and said all the plans made sense and it was a good idea. She wasn’t placating me. It wasn’t a pat-you-on-the-head-and-say “that’s nice.” She was actually encouraging me.

I told her the story of when I didn’t take my LSATs. It was right after the Wolfson meeting, and I stared at my closed computer while doing drugs and never logged on to the test. I couldn’t do it. I froze. Everything was too hard for me at that moment.

I sat there thinking about what Steve Wolfson said to me. I sat there thinking about the rape. I sat there thinking about how worthless I was and how I would fail.

I might look into the LSATs again. I might. I still can barely get out of bed, so I don’t know if I can do law school. I don’t know, but someone in the world believes I can.

She has her own nonprofit and did advise there is no grant money right now because Trump and the other philanthropic organizations are low on resources. So I will need to have this be a side thing for the moment.

We talked a little about my job, or lack thereof, as well. She is encouraging me to go on disability. She said the severe depression should actually be enough to get me on disability. She was like, “Yeah, you cannot function.”

But a decision was made today, with the blessing of the smartest person on earth, that SPARK Justice Center is going to be real. Sexual Partner Assault Reform and Knowledge. SPARK.

I’m doing this. Let’s make shit happen.

AI videos are too expensive, so I have to redo these because I have like five classes, each needing a couple hours of footage. So it’s going to be me doing voiceover and Canva-ing the videos to the best of my ability. The courses are written, and I’m almost done with the website.

I need to make videos and format the book. I’ve given myself until the July reporting anniversary, or as I like to call it: the apocaversary.

My best friend told me it takes five years to get over it. To get over the hypervigilance. To get over the constant thinking about it. Five years.

Okay, David Bowie. Three more to go.

I can make it.

And I can change the outcome for others in the process.