FOREWORD: No Words Minced

I won't mince words. And I won't lie.

Some people who have heard my tales of woe have accused me of being a liar. I don't care. If my reality tests your ability to believe, that's your problem. After offering some highlights of my earlier years to a therapist, there was a pause. And then he said, "I'm surprised you're still alive." Interesting that, years later, this man literally saved my life. But now I'm getting ahead of myself.

This tome is for my benefit. It's not meant to elicit sympathy from readers, especially considering many of you are probably reading this after I've died. It's just a case of needing to get stuff off my chest, particularly as I'm facing my mortality as I write this. Seeing these words materialize has allowed me to begin resting a little easier.

Bear in mind, I tell it like I felt it, and often that was brutal. I use crude language—not to excess, but enough to make a point. I'll even get explicit on occasion. This is not a paean to immorality, to be sure, but to those offended by profanity or obscenity, consider yourself forewarned. (For a strictly professional biography, see About Me.)

Also, much of it is stream-of-consciousness, resulting in non sequiturs aplenty, sudden shifts in the temporal setting, and a general lack of apparent structural integrity. Funny, but isn't that how our minds actually function most of the time, if we're being honest? I literally don't have the time to make this a literary work of art. And besides, that's not its purpose.

One last point. I do not identify others by their real names, and to further obfuscate their identities, I tamper with some of the events directly involving them. Yes, it means I'm occasionally lying, but that's an absolute necessity in order to ensure the privacy of others; it doesn't alter the substance or outcome of the events.

DKS, 7 September 2020

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