Photo by Sasha Matveeva on Unsplash

Content Warning: Fascism, abuse, child abuse, descriptions of violence against a child

I’ve told this story on the blog before, but on Monday, January 14, 1985 my dad stood outside Little Company of Mary hospital in Torrance, California smoking a cigarette and watching the sunset, thinking to himself that his life had forever changed. 

If this blog were a movie, there would be a quick cut from my dad peacefully smoking in the dwindling pink light to a fast-paced montage of blood, screaming,  glass breaking, and tiny little feet running and being dragged across ragged asphalt, interspersed with shots of him high on crack in MacArthur park, oblivious to the world or anybody in it. 

I’ve had two different people try to choke me to death before I was ten years old. My life has been threatened countless times, I’ve been drugged, had the shit kicked out of me regularly, and adult men started trying to fuck me before I was in elementary school. Two of them were my family members.  

I don’t know how much my dad’s life really changed when I was born. I’m not even sure where he is right now. We lost touch in 2021 when I asked him to please stop making plans with me and not showing up to them, and he told me that if I wanted people to show up for me I should try being someone people want to show up for. I’m paraphrasing, what he said was meant to be much meaner, but it lacked nuance due to an unfamiliarity with the subject. 

I do still get cards from him at Christmas. He signs them “Big Mike.” No signature, no other words at all. Like he signs a thousand of these things and he forgot to take me off the list. Like we were co-workers or cellmates a long long time ago.  Which is kind of true. 

One of the things that surprised me about turning 40 was that I was not surprised to turn 40. I was surprised as hell to turn 20. Less surprised, but still a little surprised to turn 30. I don’t think anyone ever thought I’d live this long. 

People like me are never meant to become adults. Except that I know for a fact we do, it’s just that most of us don’t decide to write blogs about it on the internet. Most of us try to forget, or try to move on, or we do move on. After a lot of really hard work, and reckoning, and grief. So much grief. 

The last time we moved, I found a tiny clay hand that I’d made in kindergarten. I cried so hard over that little hand. I looked at that clay imprint, for the first time, from an adult point of view. I remember thinking, so this is the size my hands were when they came up to try and shield my face, these are the little hands that tried to pull his bigger hands off my neck. No wonder he didn’t move, even when the proportionately little feet tried to kick and kick at him to let me go. Not my dad. Some other man. 

Also, I don’t have any clay imprints of my foot, I’m just making assumptions. 

I turned 40 in a haze of anxiety. About the state of the nation, about my hometown burning to the ground. At one point, the devastation was so total that we assumed my childhood home was gone, but it miraculously survived while nearly every home around it burned. 

My uncle joked that it has an evil vortex protecting it, but I don’t think so. As much terror and pain as I felt in my childhood, I felt safe with that house, and on that property. The yard especially had so many perfect little hiding spots that I could run to and stay in for hours, sometimes an entire night. 

Maybe it was the existing stress in the world, maybe it was 26 years of recovery work under my belt, but when I turned 40, it didn’t feel like anything at all.  

Since Monday, January 14, 1985, I have been in fight after fight for my right to exist here in this brief, shiny, terrifying, amazing world. 

When I tell people about this shit; the abuse, the violence, they frequently misunderstand my intention. Because most of my readers haven’t had to run for their life, they need to know that part before I can tell them what I’m really talking about, and that’s the escape. 

If you don’t know the terror of the man at your back, you won’t understand the snick of the screen door as it slams in his face and the feel of the wind as you run, barefoot and free into the dense overgrowth of the yard, where no one will find you until you want to be found. 

If you don’t know the loneliness of your last friend, your only book, being thrown out the window on the highway, you won’t be able to read these words and know who won that fight. Me, writing this for you now, or the man who signs every Christmas card “Big Mike” and nothing else.

We live on abused land, in an abused country with a legacy of theft, kidnapping, slavery, rape, subjugation, and every other horrible unthinkable awful violence. 

And also, we live in the split second burst of speed that propelled our ancestors into the safety they needed to ensure that we are here today to write and read this. We live in the cunning, the strength, the tenacity, and the sheer luck every single person who came before us brought to bear against an oppressive force that would have crushed them if it only could. 

I see old ghosts in the faces of the “leadership” of this country. I see the arrogance of the men (and women) who would hit me extra hard for trying to resist, for trying to stand up for myself. And I know that all men die eventually. Even before they die, they have their weaknesses and their limitations. There are going to be things that you think will destroy you. But until they do, there are also going to be moments of freedom, long-game victories, surprising revelations. 

Here’s what I can tell you, the people who are already like me, or who will regrettably but inevitably join me in the despicable honor of having survived. Fight, flight, freeze or fawn are all just tactics. Each one of them, or any of the others you might find along the way are useful in their context. 

Don’t be ashamed to do what will keep you alive. More importantly, don’t mistake a temporary peace based solely on your compliance for safety. Lie to the people that lie to you, especially if they also lie to themselves. Try to bring people with you, but leave them if they won’t or can’t be helped. Don’t comply without a long-term plan, don’t comply if you can help it, don’t sacrifice someone else to save yourself, do sacrifice anything and everything to save the kids. 

Most of these motherfuckers have never been in a real fight, and even a token resistance will have them at a loss when increasing threats or violence doesn’t work. And if they do try to kill you, that was probably always going to be the plan. Don’t make it easy for them. If force alone was all they needed, they would have won already.   

At the same time, hold your friends tight, let your kids play, let yourself play. Make art, and love, and grow gardens, and connect with spirit. Work a little bit if you love work. Build things that are not just resistance weapons, because you will need them one day. It’s not whether we’ll win against this fascist state, it’s how we’ll win, how long it will take, and who we will lose along the way. 

Do these things in tandem. Take wounds, heal from them, feel old wounds open up again and do what you can to heal them too. 

Awaken to the reality that this war has been raging for generations, and if you didn’t know that until now, it was by design. Live life in your own way regardless of the greater powers and what they want from you. Concentrate on the realities we live in, the horrible and the wonderful. Move forward, even when it hurts because eventually it won’t hurt so badly. Then one day 40 years will feel like nothing at all, and it’ll be your turn to tell people how to run from the man, how to hide in the underbrush. How to spend a life slowly but consistently, and with difficulty, dismantling the culture of abuse.