There’s a difference between lying and pretending. A liar knows what’s real and hides it. But someone pretending? They’ve forgotten the difference. That was me.
I didn’t set out to scam anyone. I set out to survive.
I wanted the Billy Coull that people imagined. The activist. The visionary. The metaphysical doctor with a heart for broken people. I built that man out of pictures, websites, blog posts, AI-generated books, and charity events wrapped in fairy lights. But underneath it all? I was a man bleeding behind the curtain.
I didn’t know how to ask for help. So I staged it instead. I gave the world a performance.
A Script I Couldn’t Stop Acting Out
I remember the moment I stopped believing the show. It wasn’t at the Wonka event when everything fell apart. It was long before that, in the silence after publishing my twelfth AI book. I sat in the dark, staring at the screen. The words were perfect. And they meant nothing.
That hollowness crept into everything. Into my charity work. Into my conversations. Into my relationships. I started talking like the scripts I wrote. Performative kindness. Rehearsed compassion. I thought if I said the right things, wore the right titles, showed the right images—I’d become real.
But the audience sees what the actor tries to hide. They saw through it. And they were right to be angry.
Between Villain and Victim
People ask, “Were you trying to deceive everyone?”
The truth is messier. I was both the deceiver and the deceived.
I was caught in a role I didn’t know how to stop playing. I believed I had to be that man—the fixer, the redeemer, the bold visionary who knew the way out of the dark. But I didn’t even know where I was standing. The degrees, the AI books, the charity banners… they were costumes, not cures.
I hurt people. Not because I hated them. But because I couldn’t tell the truth—that I was lost. That I didn’t know what I was doing. That I was scared, desperate, and ashamed.
The Myth Is Dead. The Man Is Learning.
I used to think storytelling would save me. I thought if I told a good enough story, the truth didn’t matter.
Now I know better. Now I write these blog posts—not as performances—but as confessions. No illusions. No metaphysical titles. Just a man trying to understand the wreckage he left behind.
You can call me a fraud. You can call me a liar. But at least now, when I speak, it’s my voice. Not a machine’s. Not a title’s. Mine.