cellini's Diaryland Diary

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I never regretted clearing an innocent man of murder more than tonight

I've had enough.

Three or four days ago a friend announced on Facebook that his girlfriend had been missing for about 24 hours and he was looking for her. Immediately, I put out the word on FB and Twitter. Hundreds of people shared and retweeted it. The whole city mobilized to look for her. I also offered -- at 2:30 am -- to pick him up immediately and start driving him around to look for her (he has never held a drivers license).

My friend was immediately under suspicion for murdering her, which is usually how these things seem to go.

The missing woman's mother contacted me to ask me to start writing about the case and looking into it. So I did.

There were a few hours when I thought that he might have killed her. Especially when the police found her body in his house 3 days after she'd gone missing. But the facts that I and others found proved otherwise. All signs seem to point to her having committed suicide.

She told mutual friends over a year ago that she had terminal cancer but hadn't told close family members. Other friends told me that she had been talking about suicide seriously and often. A source close to the police department told me that she was found in the back of a closet, behind a lot of junk, where she had hung herself. There's more evidence that I'm not getting into here.

Half this city was ready to lynch the guy. I feel pretty sure that I've cleared him.

But now her family is upset that I wrote that she killed herself. They find it shameful? I don't know. They are asking me to take down everything I wrote that mentions suicide.

But tonight something just broke in me. I can't take this anymore. The constant demands that I investigate this or that and then when I do, everyone fucking hates the truth. They don't want to hear it and they bitch and complain and throw insults around and then the same assholes will be demanding that I look into something else for them a week later.

Fuck this. Fuck all of this. I hate doing this. I don't want to be this anymore. I wanted a regular job and a wife and more babies and a house and a garden and dogs and a life that isn't this. Not this.

There's no way out for me. No path to doing anything else. I'm too fucking notorious. I apply for jobs and HR googles me and there's no fucking way anyone is going to hire me to do some normal job when I've written two books and there's a whole fucking movie about me and I just made another film that was kind of a big deal and I've written hundreds of articles for nationally known news outlets and there are hundreds more written about me.

I'm not allowed to be anyone else. But I don't want this anymore. And there's no paycheck for being this person. There are no real journalism jobs in this city and I can't go anywhere else because I have two kids and an ex-wife. And I'm just done. I'm just fucking done with having to be this person and living in nightmarish poverty. I'm done.

I want to quit and I don't know who to hand my letter of resignation to or what I'm supposed to do the next morning.

Fuck this.

There was a time when clearing an innocent man of murder would have seemed perfectly wonderful and a great adventure. There's no part of me that needs to play Mrs. Marple at this point in my life. I've done enough of this shit. Literally, I have hunted enough pythons, stabbed enough bears, covered enough riots, been tear-gassed and covered murders and trials and broken stories and met anonymous sources in the middle of the night and I've fucking done that. I've done it and I'm done with it.

You know who is impressed with any of that? Fucking nobody. I am an appliance whom they EXPECT it from and praising this behavior would be like applauding a dishwasher for getting the crud off of a pie plate.

'The grease is off the plate? You cleared a man of murder? Fuck you, ENTERTAIN ME!'

I want to quit and I don't know how.

Tonight I shut down my Facebook and Twitter accounts. It's the only act of quitting that I know how to accomplish.

And fuck this. FUCK THIS. I don't want to solve your fucking mysteries anymore. I don't want to chase your Nazis and help bring down your corrupt government officials or cover your trials. I don't want to hear you bitching at me for solving the mystery you asked me to investigate just because IT WAS AN ANSWER YOU DIDN'T LIKE.

IT'S NOT MY FAULT MOLLY KILLED HERSELF. You fucking asked me to help find her and this was the answer. I DIDN'T MAKE THE TRUTH I JUST GOT IT FOR YOU.

And fuck this. Fuck this. I just want to quit. I want a cyanide capsule to swallow right now. I don't want to exist anymore. I don't want this life anymore. I don't want to be alive anymore. I would like to be dead instead of experiencing this. This life, almost completely alone, is not worth experiencing and I literally want to die. Molly had the right idea and I hope that I can manage my own passing with less drama than that.

3:14 a.m. - 2018-01-03

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