The following is an excerpt from my upcoming book about my year in prison at Ft. Dix. Enjoy.

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“Hallelujah!”

“Trump!”

“Confirmed!!”

“God is good!!!”

The messages poured into my phone. Trump won. It was a decisive victory. I had gone to bed early, but could see it coming the night before. All signs were pointing towards a landslide. It was obvious, of course, for months that this would be the natural result. They stole it, but Trump really won 2020 easily — crushing 19/20 bellwether counties — and his relative support among the public has only grown since then. The anecdotal evidence from minorities in prison, internet personalities, and my real-world social network indicated a lot of people who voted for Biden were turning towards Trump this time around. The trend was clear. More and more people were joining MAGA — and you never saw anybody leaving it. This simple fact alone proved, absent an even more egregious steal, it was impossible for Trump to lose.

Even still, I did not stay up and watch the results. I did not turn on the news, and only barely scrolled Twitter and my messages. It was very different election for me; a more relaxed, sober one. In 2016, I was so engrossed in the outcome I could not stop drinking as I waited for the results. I must have had almost three bottles of wine, and got completely shitfaced. When he won Michigan that year and clinched it, I actually bawled with relief. In 2020, seeing only more growth in our movement, I was more cocky. I had some celebratory drinks at an election-watch party, and after seeing the early results, went home confident Trump would win it — the signs suggested by an even greater margin than before.

But then they stopped the vote-count in all the swing states, and dumped hundreds of thousands of Biden-only ballots in Michigan and Wisconsin at 2AM. Over the next week I witnessed 600,000 mail-in ballots come in “late” for Biden in PA, while poll-workers boarded up the precinct windows so no one could watch them count. Motions to the court complaining were rejected due to lack of standing, or were ignored by the apparatchiks committing crimes — without consequence. It was apparent fraud was rampant all over, and no one in the system was willing to stop it. The injustice of it all drove me to obsession. I entered into a war-time mentality with my live-streams, and I scarcely rested the next two months. My mind was seldom on anything non-political, even when my first child was born. When they secured the steal by setting us up on January 6th, I was crushed. It wasn’t just the lost bets or the humiliation; this was the least of it for me. It was the loss of our country. I knew things were going to get bad under Biden. But I didn’t know just how bad, until his first day in office, when the FBI came knocking on my door.

Which makes it pretty incredible, even to me, that this time around I have been so detached from the election. It’s not because I don’t care about the results. This election matters more than even 2020. It isn’t just about the future of America — still the most important thing for me — it is about my personal freedom and exoneration. Maybe with Trump at the helm, we will get a true investigation into 2020 and January 6th. Maybe the truth about what they did to us will be revealed, and real justice will be meted out. At the very least, I will get a Presidential Pardon. I will be completely free and clear, and able to move on with my life.

But despite all the good news, I haven’t been able to let myself surrender to the victory. I don’t trust these people to let it go. I didn’t trust there wouldn’t be another 2AM ballot drop last night, or stopped-vote counting. It’s not that I expected them to literally do the exact same thing as before — that would be too predictable. But I expected something. They wouldn’t just let us take it. They couldn’t just let us win. As always, we’d have to fight for it.

And maybe we will have to do that in the coming weeks. Harris still hasn’t conceded. Some Democrats have said they won’t certify Trump’s victory. They still control the Presidency until late January. And they may yet come up with a pretext to stop the transition of power. It might sound paranoid, but until Trump is physically in the oval office again, I don’t feel secure. I’m happy about the result, of course. But while they still have the ability to create chaos, I don’t trust them to honor it.

It’s prudent, I suppose, to think in these terms. To not become complacent or let my guard down. But as I see my parents, my friends, my clients, the entire internet open up with joy, I realize there is also something wrong with me; a political anhedonia. Why is it so hard for me to  just accept this victory? This outcome was the answer to all my prayers. Why can’t I join in the celebration? Why can’t I feel relief?

I can see the walls I’ve built up these past few years are even deeper than I thought. The defense mechanisms I’ve created to manage the trauma. I can’t let myself be happy because I’ve experienced too much disappointment. I’ve kept too much emotion in, bottled up, as wins I should have had were taken from me. I’ve become too used to getting punched in the face. It’s not that I’m afraid of fighting, or that I’ve become a doomer. But I’ve come to expect everything to be hard-won. I’ve come to expect dirty tricks at every corner. You can’t just win an election anymore. It has to cost you everything to prevail.

I want to cry and release, like I could so easily in 2016. I want to let it all out. To believe like everybody else that it’s all over. That the pain of 4 years of persecution and abuse can be finally let go.

But just as that emotion starts to swell, I suppress it. I’m ashamed of my lack of certainty. But I don’t feel safe yet. I remember: I am not truly free. I’m out on bail, with a target over me if I get cocky. The DOJ still isn’t in Trump’s hands. I can’t speak or share what I want to like others. I have to wait and see. Maybe it’s an unnecessary caution. But I’ve fought to hard to get where I am now. And I can’t have the rug pulled out from under me again.

It reminds me of a true story I read in prison about a Pole who escaped from a labor camp in Siberia during WW2. It was a good book, “The Long Walk.” The protagonist — Slawomir Rawicz — and 7 others hiked across Russia through Mongolia, across the Gobi Desert and Tibetan Steppe, and finally through the Himalayas to find refuge in British India.

As you can imagine, undertaking this trek as escaped political prisoners without any gear, training, or preparation is practically incomprehensible. The British couldn’t believe they had survived the journey when they found them half-starved to death on the frontier. And yet, when the Brits placed them in the hospital, they behaved relatively normally. They were hungry, but conversational. They could joke around, and discuss where they came from, and how long they had been gone. It seemed like nothing was wrong that a few meals couldn’t fix.

But the unconscious damage these men had suffered from all the death and deprivation was more severe than it appeared on the surface. For example, without even realizing it, Rawicz would hide portions of his rations under his pillow at night. In his sleep, he’d fight with staff, and try to sneak off. For the first time in years — after near endless abuse and starvation from Soviet commissars and the elements — he was safe. But it took him a month before his body could physically accept this safety. It took a month of nurturing for him to even begin to heal. Only then did he stop lashing out. Only then, could he finally cry.

I have not been through anything remotely as hard as Rawicz. But I have my scars. And I realize, that’s OK. I don’t have to respond to this historic moment like everybody else. I’ve earned my hesitation, and can enjoy hearing their celebrations, even if I wait a little bit longer for my own. I can give myself time to let this good news sink in. Maybe it’ll hit me tomorrow. Maybe it won’t until January.

But at some point, the damn of emotion will break. The sun may not have risen yet, but the grey-black clouds are turning purple. There is a glow on a horizon. It’s been a long, dark night. But dawn is breaking.

Whether it ends with a bang or a whimper, the nightmare I’ve been in will soon be over.