Jonathan Harnisch's Blog - Posts Tagged "dystopian"
Author’s Note – TBC: Third Alibi
This is not just a book.
This is a confession. A scream. A love letter to survival.
Pervo – Third Alibi is not fiction.
It’s a mirror. It’s my life, stripped to the bone.
It’s Georgie Gust’s life—who is me, who is every broken version of me that has clawed their way through pain, humiliation, abandonment, and unrelenting torment.
I didn’t want to write this story. I had to.
Because no one talks about this kind of pain—not the real kind. Not the kind where your body becomes a prison, twisted and locked down by dystonia, where akathisia sets your nerves on fire, where trauma fractures you into pieces you don’t recognize in the mirror. Not the kind where your childhood was a battlefield and your family the enemy. Where a mother’s hands were weapons, and the ones you loved later in life turned out to be holding knives behind their backs.
This book was written in the middle of that war. On the days when I couldn’t move without searing pain. On the nights when I counted pills, cutting them into eighths because they were the only thing keeping me tethered to this world. On the mornings when I had to remind myself to breathe, because everything in me said stop.
Georgie Gust lives in these pages because he lived in me.
He is me.
He is every shattered, fragmented part of me that survived when I shouldn’t have.
And he is the proof that there’s something left to say. Something left to fight for.
I didn’t write this for sympathy. I wrote it because someone out there is carrying their own version of this hell, and they deserve to know they’re not the only one. I wrote it because the world turns away from people like Georgie—people like me. People who can’t hide their scars. People who live in unrelenting physical and psychological pain. People who dissociate because reality is unbearable. People who were abused by the ones who were supposed to protect them.
I wrote it because I’m still here.
And that matters.
Claudia—my cat, my shadow, my silent witness—has been here through all of it. She’s more than a pet. She’s my alter ego in this world. She has watched me fall apart and still curl up beside me like I was whole. If there’s love left in this world, I’ve found it in her.
And if there’s a story left to tell, it’s Georgie’s.
It’s mine.
It’s ours.
Third Alibi doesn’t offer answers. It doesn’t end in a miracle.
But it tells the truth.
And sometimes, that’s enough.
Sometimes, telling the truth is survival.
This is for everyone who has ever lived through the unbearable.
This is for those whose pain is invisible but all-consuming.
This is for the ones who wake up every day inside a body or a mind that feels like a warzone.
This is for anyone who was hurt by the people they trusted, and lived to tell about it.
This is for Georgie.
This is for Claudia.
This is for me.
And this is for you.
Still here. Still fighting.
— Jonathan Harnisch
This is a confession. A scream. A love letter to survival.
Pervo – Third Alibi is not fiction.
It’s a mirror. It’s my life, stripped to the bone.
It’s Georgie Gust’s life—who is me, who is every broken version of me that has clawed their way through pain, humiliation, abandonment, and unrelenting torment.
I didn’t want to write this story. I had to.
Because no one talks about this kind of pain—not the real kind. Not the kind where your body becomes a prison, twisted and locked down by dystonia, where akathisia sets your nerves on fire, where trauma fractures you into pieces you don’t recognize in the mirror. Not the kind where your childhood was a battlefield and your family the enemy. Where a mother’s hands were weapons, and the ones you loved later in life turned out to be holding knives behind their backs.
This book was written in the middle of that war. On the days when I couldn’t move without searing pain. On the nights when I counted pills, cutting them into eighths because they were the only thing keeping me tethered to this world. On the mornings when I had to remind myself to breathe, because everything in me said stop.
Georgie Gust lives in these pages because he lived in me.
He is me.
He is every shattered, fragmented part of me that survived when I shouldn’t have.
And he is the proof that there’s something left to say. Something left to fight for.
I didn’t write this for sympathy. I wrote it because someone out there is carrying their own version of this hell, and they deserve to know they’re not the only one. I wrote it because the world turns away from people like Georgie—people like me. People who can’t hide their scars. People who live in unrelenting physical and psychological pain. People who dissociate because reality is unbearable. People who were abused by the ones who were supposed to protect them.
I wrote it because I’m still here.
And that matters.
Claudia—my cat, my shadow, my silent witness—has been here through all of it. She’s more than a pet. She’s my alter ego in this world. She has watched me fall apart and still curl up beside me like I was whole. If there’s love left in this world, I’ve found it in her.
And if there’s a story left to tell, it’s Georgie’s.
It’s mine.
It’s ours.
Third Alibi doesn’t offer answers. It doesn’t end in a miracle.
But it tells the truth.
And sometimes, that’s enough.
Sometimes, telling the truth is survival.
This is for everyone who has ever lived through the unbearable.
This is for those whose pain is invisible but all-consuming.
This is for the ones who wake up every day inside a body or a mind that feels like a warzone.
This is for anyone who was hurt by the people they trusted, and lived to tell about it.
This is for Georgie.
This is for Claudia.
This is for me.
And this is for you.
Still here. Still fighting.
— Jonathan Harnisch
