November 14, 2025
Before we go further, I should warn you. The world you’re about to enter is not quite the one you know.
You may see the same places—famous landmarks, the city where you grew up—but some things will have shifted. The supermarket aisles run differently. Products and brands may be unfamiliar. History may remember different dates. I might tell you World War Two ended in 1946, while you insist it was 1945. Generally, the overall scheme of things remains the same. Only certain details have moved.
This is protection rather than an accident. Deliberate protection.
The stories I have to tell are deeply personal and involve real people at their most vulnerable—caught in the quagmires of their pain, searching for ways through. To write honestly about them, I must protect them completely. So I’ve built us this adjacent world—close enough that you’ll recognize the shape of things, different enough to keep us all safe. It is a reflection of my own world—my third space.
The people and circumstances you’ll encounter here are composites, drawn from your world and mine as they exist in parallel. The emotions are mine. The experiences are real. But the specific details have been translated, relocated, made untraceable in the world you know and inhabit.
This means you cannot find us there. And we cannot find you here.
And that’s a beautiful thing. To be the same, yet different. To be whole, yet a part. Together, yet alone.
It’s not absurd.
It’s life.
Dean Bowman
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