We spoke to many patients in waiting rooms. All of them women, since my girlfriend wanted to become a gynaecologist. One of her professors at the time, the one who supported her master thesis, is now the deputy Prime Minister of Belgium, Petra De Sutter.

A transgender woman I support, because, and now you already know, if I spot a minority at risk of being oppressed, Crusader William rushes to the rescue.

Never mind that the minorities I defend may not be congruent. I don’t know for sure how Palestinians view transgender women and perhaps I don’t know because I am scared that the Palestinians I always defend may have a different opinion on this matter.

Sometimes it’s not so clear who the underdog is. I found myself rooting for Ukraine until oddly something almost started to switch when Russia’s army seemed so weak and Ukraine got propped up by the west. Even more confusing is that my underdog in the Ukraine versus Russia conflict doesn’t support my underdog in the Palestine versus Israel conflict. It’s clear that Ukraine has chosen to back Israel and not the Palestinians.

I see my mind operate like this and I question it and find it hard to know for sure if I am really supporting the good guys.

Have I mentioned that my ‘favorite’ Nazi is Albert Speer? Favorite as in the one I own the most books on, apart from Hitler, Albert Speer’s mephisto. Within the Nazi establishment Speer was also an underdog.

Gita Sereny wrote a book about him titled: His battle with the truth.

The German title is better and goes something like: ‘his wrestling with the truth’ (I can’t think of an English equivalent that fully captures the images evoked by Sein Ringen mit der Wahrheit).

I run a website called ‘project authenticity.’

The original plan was to write about myself as honestly as possible. Call it maximum oversharing, if you like. I had to quickly give up on that, because to get to the truth about myself there was always another layer to uncover and it led to fights with my wife and others – not everyone enjoyed being a character in my ovesharing project – and I am convinced that if one truly throws off all fig leaves – if it’s even possible – the level of vulnerability and embarrassing info you have to share risks making any semblance of a normal life impossible. One basically starts falling apart. You give ammunition to anyone who already despises you. You start second guessing anything you say or do.

You can’t walk if you really concentrate on how exactly you are making your body walk. Blind spots and thoughtless automatisms seem necessary for our every day functioning, if not survival.

Still, quite regularly I wish to challenge myself and others – the closer you get to me the more I will grill you on your authenticity, sincerity and motivations, not a very pleasant habit of mine – about what is happening behind the scenes of this entity called William who has layers like any other person, some more obvious, some more hidden, a lot of them easy to misinterpret when seen disconnected from the other layers. This reminds me of a book by a psychotherapist called ‘No bad parts’, but more about that later perhaps.

(Is it a Jewish psychotherapist? Sorry, I just have to check given the topic of this book. Seconds later. So there are at least two people named Richard Schwartz and one is definitely an orthodox Jew, but I can’t find this info on the author of the book I have just mentioned. It really doesn’t matter. Would be funny though if every book I spontaneously bring up would be written by a Jewish author.)

On Twitter I wrote the following today:

There are people seeing a severely burned girl, still alive, feeling every second of her personal hell on earth, with bloody stumps where legs used to be and it’s way past their horror threshold so they find a reason to not feel anything for that girl. It’s her family’s fault somehow and that makes it ok to shut off any sort of empathy for the twitching bloody mess of pain that a few minutes ago was still a beautiful girl bursting with hope and will to live. It’s a defense mechanism, but a very scary one, the kind that allows evil to have its way.

Earlier I had described what I had seen in a video that I later saw banned by Twitter. Probably because it was just too horrific. It was so bad that I think I will smile less in the days I have left on this earth because of my seeing that video and the girl in it will be forever on my mind. According to me that video should instantly get the status of that iconic Vietnam war picture of the naked girl with the napalm burns.