Scott Kelly is not dead.
"The stars are the truth, but most of what we believe is what we draw in for ourselves.”
Scott Kelly is not dead.
I remember when I got the news. Scott was found lifeless on his shower rug. As I learned the mysterious circumstances of his last day, I turned hot and cold and hot again. The parallels between the coroner’s report and the book Scott wrote were striking.
Five years earlier, he had published a best-seller about a guy who faked his own death.
I met Scott on Wattpad* in 2015. We struck up a conversation and dove into a whirlwind of philosophy, atheism, and other things I barely knew of. I was 17 years old and he was everything I wanted to be; a prolific writer, educated on numerous world-views, and married.
My parents were the equivalent of Jewish missionaries. They had a synagogue and tried to convince Jewish people to come back to the fold. I was forbidden from exploring anything outside of the religion. Since I was a pretty good Jewish girl, Scott was the first person I ever posed my questions to.
We stayed friends for 5 years. Scott always seemed like he had a lot going on. He claimed to have found the perfect wife, yet he was constantly looking for the woman of his dreams. He was fired for sexual misconduct at work. And I found out about Scott’s chronic Xanax habit the same day I found out he died.
We often spoke about where the motivation for his book came from. The main character was flung into a position that compelled him to commit pseudocide. Losing his friends and family was way better than facing the consequences of actions he committed. As a result, when he was handed the opportunity to embody a fake identity, he took it.
Scott always told me, if given the opportunity, he’d do the same.
Scott died jobless and divorced. His dad had died the year before and from what I knew, he had a flimsy relationship with his mother. Scott was in a similar desperate place as the main character.
Scott always enjoyed experimenting with exploits that would scare the common man. He would do shit like get himself addicted to Xanax only to forcefully detox after a few months. It was a game of power.
24 hours before he was found, Scott texted a close friend about meeting a woman he was smitten by. They spent the day together and he returned home late to get some sleep. This woman found him the next day. The coroner claimed an overdose.
In his book, Scott wrote about a woman whom the main character falls in love with. She was the one who had swooped in and given him a new identity to live with.
What was that woman doing in his home only 24 hours after he supposedly met her for the first time? Could she have been inspired by his books and him by his own story?
Scott was cremated very soon after the news broke. Once, my heart skipped a beat when I saw the active light on his Facebook. It turned out to be someone taking care of his messages. It was silly, but for just a moment, I thought I had proof of life.
One of the conversations we often circled back on was about perspective. At 17, I was convinced religion was the only way to live. Learning from my parents how to argue its virtues cemented Judaism’s ideals in me.
I remember Scott gently reminding me of his theory on constellations. He’d explain how the picture we see between the stars depends on the lines we put.
“You can have two different people look at the same set of stars and see different constellations. Same as in real life. The stars are the truth, but most of what we believe is what we draw in for ourselves.”
The concept seems to wave at me from behind his Schrödinger’s grave. Similar to the conclusions I came to about religion, here too I drew new lines. Some people will believe Scott’s death, but I don't.
Scott Kelly is not dead.
*a social book app connecting authors with readers
So good! If you ever run into Scott again I look forward to the next chapter. (Unless the deception is deeper than I thought and you made him up.)