The Greatest Love

I don't know how Genevieve fared. I've wondered if she died. I haven't recently seen evidence online she's still alive, but I'm not really looking and you can get new accounts for social media.

I decided to help her because she had attempted suicide at least twice that I knew of and the details she shared with me suggested to me her parents were trying to commit murder by suicide. They were actively hoping to drive her to suicide for their convenience.

I don't believe in a Christian God, so it's not like I thought I would burn in HELL for all eternity if I did nothing, but I felt like if no one helped her escape, she would likely soon be dead and the evidence suggested her existing social support network didn't know how to get her out.

I felt I could and I felt like if I didn't try, in some I would have her death on my conscience and that's not something I wanted to live with. 

I can't say I exactly regret it because I don't know what else I might have done. I don't imagine I would have let her die and then told myself "You obviously did the right thing because you can bet money she would have burned you and lied about you and stabbed you in the back."

I was completely unprepared for what she did to me. I took measures to protect myself from her friends who were trying to get her out and from her family who treated her like a personal possession they didn't want to let go of. I was shocked at her decision to kick me to the curb and lie about me after I helped her.

So I imagine I would have felt really bad about saying "Not my problem. Let her rich friends figure it out." Only to later learn she had died knowing I was expecting her to be dead soon if I didn't help her.

I made the best decision I knew how to make under the circumstances. I sincerely believe I saved her life and had I not interceded, she would have died and I would have felt terrible about it, like it was in some my fault because I felt I could help her and that proved to be correct.

The way to bet is she probably lived but never stopped being a thoroughly awful person. 

The man helping her had personal baggage and most likely everyone helping her had personal baggage motivating them and they probably didn't really make choices conducive to expecting her to grow up and behave herself.

The story I'm about to tell is a little like the plot from the 1997 film Titanic. The plot revolves around two fictional characters with invented stories, Jack and Rose. Jack supposedly wins a ticket playing poker and Rose supposedly declines to admit she survived the shipwreck and starts her life over without marrying her fiance or reconnecting with her mother.

So the person who wrote the story could say anything they wanted about these two people. It's a convenient plot device.

I can't prove any of this. The evidence was deleted from the Internet. There are no comments for me to link to showing I'm not telling tall tales.

Jack left Hacker News in January 2011. He blogged to say goodbye and stopped posting, but apparently continued to read it.

Some time in the months I knew Genevieve after Jack said his goodbyes and before I helped Genevieve escape, Jack posted one day to tell someone they were slandering swombat and "Those are expensive words." There was some back and forth and then ALL the comments were deleted by all the involved parties.

A week or two later, Genevieve has a job working for swombat. And one day she's freaking out about how she did something wrong at work or whatever and I tell her that story, that Jack didn't just make introductions and put in a good word for her. He called in a favor.

I'm trying to get her to calm down and realize that they probably aren't going to fire her without really compelling reason. So just do your best and stop stressing.

And I may have made a mistake. It probably would have been better to let her imagine she was at risk of being fired, so try harder, but I was the person she was non-stop dumping on while everyone cut me out financially and socially and I was trying to protect myself from her to some degree.

She probably stopped really trying after that, convinced that Jack loved her and she could do no wrong that he wouldn't clean up. And this post is probably Jack (jacquesm) and swombat (Daniel Tenner) rescuing her from her psycho parents. 

Meanwhile, no one was doing fuck all for me other than letting me continue to participate on HN. And I was in social cyberia because Jack stopped talking at me regularly and I had absolutely no idea I was defacto "under his protection" until he stopped talking at me and my participation suddenly got a lot harder.

I've ended a number of relationships with people who were initially helpful to me because they all inevitably reached a point where I felt like they wanted to be my crutch -- they needed to be needed -- and didn't want me to grow too much and become capable of standing on my own two feet.

Because of his money and influence, Genevieve probably never chose to really stand up to Jack and tell him in an actions speak louder than words manner "Sorry about your ugly divorce and how you lost the custody battle, but I'm not a charity case. You're suffocating me. I need you to stop needing me to be a pathetic loser chronically in need of rescue."

I stood up to him. I'm homeless again and no longer participating on Hacker News at all.

If you are trans, be very careful what narrative you agree to when people "help" you. 

When I write about homelessness elsewhere, I somewhat often talk about The Shirley Principle which says organizations tend to keep alive the problem they are supposed to solve.

Homeless services organizations need homeless people to continue to exist so they have a purpose. 

Please don't write me and ruin my life like Genevieve did with expecting me to love you though you feel unlovable. I hope you will love yourself better than that and choose a better future you than she likely did.

Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all.

Just read my writing and look for clues to help you help yourself and if you value what I'm doing for you, leave a tip or support my Patreon. And if you don't want to pay me or so much as promote my writing so someone else might, don't be all shocked if I eventually find other ways to spend my time.