What happened in court yesterday - Part 1

Why, stupid brain and mouth, WHY??????

You know me—I don’t like anyone IRL.
I mean, truly. People? After what happened the last 3 months - HARD PASS. I walk into a room assuming I’ll be disappointed, and the room usually delivers.I’m allergic to small talk, groupthink, and people who say “just playing devil’s advocate.” I assume most of humanity’s a letdown, and most days, I’m right.

I only normally like my Needed community . Many more days than id like to admit here - they’re the ONLY people i talk to - Patreon.com/stephenhilton

This week, though—three people, in three days—showed up differently for me. In ways I had lost hope that people do. Raw, real, present, way-smarter -than -me …and no bullshit

One of them just happened to be the judge in the most important case of my life,

You guys said “don’t represent yourself”, “get a lawyer”, and I said to you, “The other person doesn’t have a lawyer so why should I get one ?”. Well ….

you were right,

again!

happy now?

Guess who showed up in my email the night before my 8 am hearing at 11pm with a host of brand new allegations (nearly 30) and a massive binder’s worth of trasnscriptions of shit I didnt even recognize at first …. an unexpected new lawyer, that’s who !

Oh, and some footage from my show , Brian , that ONLY I HAD ACCESS TO. Freaked out beyond belief I responded “where did you get this?” ….. ***crickets** …..

unbelievably, It turns out it was a stolen image but im not gonna get into specifics about the case or people

I don’t have a legal team (or ANY team for ANTHING) so when something monumental like this happens I go to the people I trust for advice - you guys. I have no other option at 12am / 1am - I think that was the point..

I made a lot of mistakes in this whole adventure into court for the first time ever. The worst one, was representing myself - I thought we both were (until 11pm the night before!) Give a gentleman a fighting chance to defend himself. That’s just common courtesy!

The timing and the introduction of all this new shit, transcribed & prepared - I know it took WEEKS to prepare (If you have faith in your case, why all the shenanigans?) it felt bad-faithou would only resort to those tactics if you were very unsure about the validity of the case on its own merits, I thought. That cheered me up a little bit

I thought, oh this is easy because this is so gross, surely I can just ask for more time to prepare, I’ll just dress nicely & go on Zoom and politely ask.

I forgot one crucial thing - they obviously didn’t forget. I already filed a continuance to prepare for the LAST shitstorm & I think you can only have 1 , even with something like this. To my horror, turns out it was getting heard yesterday come hell or high water. I was TOAST…… I never even saw any of this before and there was reams of it. Everyone knows I’m doing my best to represent myself. Becuase I’m telling the truth.

You’ll die when you hear WHAT 90% of this new material was…. I CANT !

I’m going to preface the next part by saying a couple things and making a prediction. You know one of my famous, come-true ones. The ones we’ve seen such a lot of recently…I’m very torn right now because I dont want to mention the other person ever again if they just leave me alone. I say that because, a tiny part of my mind thinks the next obvious move is to try as hard possible to goad me publicly so I spin out & break some rule or other. Because yesterday was an unmitigated disaster for them. I don’t know the new “team” but, my opponent’s luck with picking “team members” since I left the organization fills me with so much anxiety FOR HER (yes, I worry about her, even after all this . I hate to see someone I used to love trip themselves up so badly & my kids are my main concern) I hate to think of bad intuition around my kids lives, it actually keeps me up at night.

So, if nothing else nuts happens I’m hoping for peace and fairness and the best for everyone. I need time to heal from this . We all do . I’d love a period where no-one interferes or tries to stir things up anymore. I dont care how much $ whoever is making out of all this (and im talking to team members and entourages or whatever the fck you are) but there’s a ton of money all over the place, go get some of that OTHER money. Especially as im doing something I hate for an extended period of time. by my own choice. To keep / establish peace. More about that tommorw ..

The judge yesterday was a Godsend to me. I clearly had no idea what I was doing. I naively thought “Ive got the truth, i’ll be fine”. Turns out, no matter how many YouTube videos you watch, you will STILL SUCK (if you’re me , anyway..)

wait, though …. I DID do that & I’M FINE so maybe it wasnt so naive. I do regret making so many mistakes and taking up peoples time by not remembering what I thought id learned from the bloody internet , by not knowing wording or process. all of the workers in that room had the patience of SAINTS with me, honestly.

There’s the one that says ‘stand up’ or ‘sit down’ & brings you a big box of tissues when you’re crying ( I mean IF you were, not me… just someone else, imagine someone random) I liked her ,and the one with the machine that, wait for it ….

has like 6 buttons , but makes ALL the words ??!! WTF

One of my least auspicious moments was saying “objection” at one point , and the judge saying “OK on what grounds” and me saying “it's not true”.

Apparently thats not how it works .🤦🏼‍♂️ The court DID somehow work a way out for me to tell my side of the story though, and i’ll always be grateful to them for that. They had a little recess and worked a new way of proceeding out (im sure because I was SO terrible at everything)

God is good and blessed me with a judge so perceptive and sharp, I feel like she accurately assessed the situation and got the vibe of the whole thing from the very beginning. IMO just being told about the 11pm addition of so many new pieces of information and the fact that none of the new pieces of evidence were properly labelled or marked which would have ADDED to my confusion.

She basically said : this isn’t fair, so you have to arrange all this new stuff in the proper manner, I’m going to do another case and then come back to this later today . Then she looked at me and said “I think you should probobly be here for this, don’t you?”

I didnt know it was possible to get into a car so quick

For the first time in three long, exhausting months, I felt heard. I felt seen.i felt I was about to experience FAIRNESS

They day couldn’t have gone better in terms of everything she noted and pointed out. I was stunned that I seemed to be in a great spot for once …… I even had a quiet kind of confidence about the day…. but then FUCK ! NO !!!! NOT NOW, BRAIN !!!!!! NOT NOWWWWWWW.

the twin devils of brain and mouth conspired at the VERY last moment

WHEN IT WAS ALL DONE AND DUSTED, like a big old fucking idiot , …I had to open my mouth again.

“If it pleases the court,” I said….. (OK, probably not that exact phrase, but dammit it looks good written like that)

to be continued …

(“continued” is what I was hoping for at the beginning of the day, but, on reflection, I am OVER THE MOON I didn’t get it now)

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