Wounds and Wreckage

Grief piles stones on the thoughts where hope once hung.

Readers,

I wasn’t surprised at the outcome of the election. Part of me kept a light on, but it was more symbolic than functional. Now there’s just darkness.

Trump and his circle aren’t saviors, they are accelerants. We burn faster now.

If you are now feeling the urge to pigeonhole my politics, I do not identify as a Democrat, the performative betrayers of the working class. Nor Republican, who overwhelmingly stayed in line despite their party’s rot, selling their souls, betraying their country and blazing the trail towards authoritarianism.

Both parties are but organs of the same neoliberal beast. Different in appearance and behavior, but still part of a whole that has long been captured by the ultra-wealthy and transnational corporations.

Not Libertarian. Not Green. Not Independent. I don’t identify by any label or metric within our millenniums-old zeitgeist of Empire. Power has always been its aim and goal. Force has always been its means.

My politic isn’t allowed the possibility to exist because it would mean an end to the world as we know and enact. So, I dream. I resist. I adapt. I vote and take what I can get. I try to talk and listen to others who also want out of this undead culture of domination and destruction.

Because all of it bends a knee to Moloch.

I’m writing today to grieve and bleed. I’m writing because the mad political fracturing and rot has finally found its way to the most tender parts of my heart.

—C

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Everything that has occurred since Trump’s first swings at the presidency has been a long spearing of the soul. And before that, I chose a brutal path in 2008 that came with some precious sacrifices. Both of these trials by fire have not ended. They’ve merged. Mated and intensified.

I’m already so tired. Weary to the bone.

The subject of family has been an open wound for most of my life. I’ve never felt completely at home, or whole. My origins were careless. A mistake. A fluke. A scandal. A burden. As a result, my whole life has been spent trying to find a place for my ill-fitting and cobbled identity. Always between worlds I’ve been. Always unsure. Always judged and questioned.

Cherished by a dragon. Abandoned by a ghost.

In good times, the wound is thinly scarred over but it never stops aching. Sometimes it weeps some blood or pus, depending on the circumstances. When bumped or prodded, I sometimes apply first aid, remembering who I am, what I’ve been through, and what’s important to me. I breathe. I carry on. But sometimes I turn fierce, especially when I’m intentionally punched or stabbed in the wound. I bark and growl. I bite and tear.

I’ve learned to defend myself from harm, because there wasn’t always someone there to protect me. It’s a necessary skill when you’re a stray thread. There’s always scissors about, looking to clean up frays and loose tags of shame.

The curse of this survival instinct is that I begin from a closed state. Others must prove themselves worthy of my unfurling. And even when they do, I never completely let down my guard. My hard-to-earn openness will snap shut in an instant when a threat, a swipe, a dig, a deception, is sensed.

If you’re let in, unbreakable loyalty and acceptance are the prizes. Harsh judgement, disingenuousness, or betrayal gets tooth and claw. And rarely the chance to gain my trust again.

So when my ex-wife called and began to shame me for caring how our adult son perceives the world concerning Trump’s return to the presidency, I said two words: fuck off. And then I hung up.

He’d posted something publicly on social media and I sent him a text about it, explaining that Trump was going to strip the ACA and attack state provided medical care, something he’d tried during his first term but was blocked, and now would be much more likely to succeed because there will be no checks.

He called me after, but was defensive. I said I loved him and would always love him. I told him I would not reject him, but that I was also sad and disappointed. With myself and him. I tried to remain calm and explain more, but I was also in shock. I didn’t see this coming, though I have always worried.

He benefits from the ACA and California’s MediCal program through me to keep his continuous and outrageous medical costs to a minimum. He needs it because he’s a Type 1 diabetic: a chronic, incurable illness. There’s no way he can get employer-sponsored medical coverage anywhere close to what he is now receiving. Especially not for low wage work.

His wellbeing is now in serious jeopardy.

My ex had found out and didn’t like what I told him, hence the shame flame phone call to me, which were followed by texts. Trump would do nothing of the sort, she piously explained.

Our divorce was my choice, though the choice was anything but easy. For years I had avoided acknowledging that my perceptions and understanding of myself and the world were shifting, because it’s a kind of death. A part of me was dying, and that meant the life I’d built up to then was dying too. We had a child, and that meant there was a huge loss attached to an unstoppable transformation that was underway inside me.

The easier choice would have been to stay. The easier choice would have meant I could see my son everyday. It would have meant less financial precarity. It would have meant that I wouldn’t be alone. But it would have meant constant pretending. It would have meant a shallow relationship of convenience and convention and privilege posing as love and intimacy.

It would have meant deep betrayal, to my wife, my son, and myself. It would mean living a lie. I think a lot of marriages are like this.

I want no part of it.

Instead, I finally made the hard choice. And that meant tremendous loss stained with shame, guilt, and worst of all, grief. It meant being the villain and labeled a quitter. It meant harsh judgement and ridicule, the most brutal of judges being myself.

Was it the right choice? You’d think the right decision, even if it meant great pain and sacrifice, would ensure things would eventually get better, that there would be recovery and redemption. Well, that hasn’t happened. It’s been 14 years since the divorce and I’m still struggling. Still hurting. Still grieving.

I don’t know if a clear conscience was worth it. I don’t know what living in truth has to offer but itself.

Both my ex and I struggled to find a way to live on our own during the fallout from the country’s financial collapse. My ex and our son moved in with her mother. She lived just a few blocks away, and that meant our son could stay in the same nearby school. The less disruption for him, the better.

We worked to be cooperative divorced parents most of the time.

I found a below market rate detached guest studio for rent. I was lucky, because even back in 2010 rent prices were high in Sacramento. The find was 20 miles away. Depending on the time of day, the drive to see or get my son could be anywhere from 40 minutes to over an hour. Another sacrifice just to try to survive.

In a couple of years, she had stabilized financially and got her own apartment.

She also started to go to church. This was a bit surprising, since we’d never done that while married. She never stated a desire, and didn’t have a family history of committed churchgoing. But, to each their own.

The part that concerned me was she’d be taking our son, too. She didn’t ask if it was okay. It wasn’t okay.

What could I do? These are the constant joys of divorce with children.

I’m not sure if she met her boyfriend at church or though an online dating site, but he moved in with her…and our son, in fairly short order. Did she consult me? Make me aware? Nope.

Again, what was I to do? Worry, that’s what.

I had made it a priority not to bring a parade of potential mates into my son’s life. He only met one, one time, when we had dinner together. And that was after nearly six months of dating. I never had a longer-term relationship than that, let alone one where I was sure it was worth introducing a stranger into his already fractured life.

In time, I pieced together that the boyfriend was unemployed, and a huge Trump fan. I would later figure out he was an alcoholic. So it wasn’t long before they had to move back in with her mother. Still, my ex bought him a car. The boyfriend and and my ex’s mother fought a lot. And then they all would fight.

Worry. Worry. Worry.

I was in no position to remove our son from the situation. I always had joint custody, but I did not have the resources to have him move in with me full time. My mother was dead, and even if she’d been alive, she suffered from severe COPD and rarely left her house. I had no other family in town. I had no girlfriend. My ex’s mother was retired, so she had built-in daycare.

All I could do is keep checking in with our son when I spent time with him.

Is he mean to you? No. Does he hurt you, scare you? No. No.

All I had was faith in his words.

Their relationship finally broke, and the boyfriend scurried back to Washington, where he was arrested in short order for drunk driving. He went to jail. The car was put in impound. After it racked up a bunch of storage fees, my ex was notified. The car was in her name, of course.

I did not shame or attack her. I showed her compassion when she explained the situation and made arrangements with me to be with our son while she traveled to take care of the mess.

Around the same time this all played out, I’d finally managed to put a down payment on a home with my portion of the sale of my mother’s house after she passed. Between my siblings, it had to be split four ways so it wasn’t much. The home was much closer to his mother and school, so I had him more. This helped with the worrying.

But it didn’t last. Late stage capitalism crushed my soul and my ability to maintain my gains. After a couple of years I sold the house and moved in with roommates. Now I was 30 miles away.

It wasn’t long before my ex found her next boyfriend, another Trump superfan. He had his own house, at least. He bought a Trump hologram statuette for our son when they all went on a school trip to New York City. It sat right next to a personalized copy of my poetry collection, UNFU CKTHE WORLD, that I’d given him.

Our son was in his early teens.

As the relationship progressed, my ex and our son moved in with the boyfriend. Did I mention he bragged that he slept with a loaded gun by the side of the bed?

Fuck.

Then George Floyd was murdered. My ex called me in a panic from the suburbs because Fox News, the Nextdoor app, her paranoid boyfriend, and her law enforcement family, were telling her the blacks were coming to burn down everything.

Meanwhile, I went to be a part of the protests in downtown Sacramento.

Then the pandemic hit. She wanted no “clot shots” for our immune-compromised son. I took him to get the vaccine anyway. She was furious. I told her to call his doctor and ask them about the safety of the vaccine and what they recommended. She didn’t.

Our son called me upset and angry when he experienced some side-effects from the vaccination, filled with politicized fear and mis/disinformation. I told him it was a common experience, and nothing to be afraid of. I’m not sure he believed me.

During remote schooling our son was having issues printing out some school assignments and my ex asked me to come over to figure out what was wrong. I fixed the problem. Shortly after I left, the internet shut down. The boyfriend accused me of intentionally sabotaging their internet connection. What really happened was nearby road work had severed some major Comcast cabling, creating a large, extended outage.

I didn’t feel comfortable being in their house after that. Too hostile. What else would I be accused of? I would stay out in my car when I came over to pick up our son from then on.

I wanted to get our son out of all that paranoia and fear. I couldn’t. I was struggling to survive.

Before, and even as Trump’s Machiavellian chaos roared on, I’d always worked hard not to speak ill of my ex to my son. If he was frustrated with her, I would give him advice, but I never tried to turn him against her. It was his mother. He loved her and she loved him. I didn’t want to damage that.

I don’t think she’s returned the favor.

And now, based on his social media post, our adult son has started to slip into that void. Or he’s been slipping for longer but just hid it from me. Or I denied the signs. Maybe all of the above.

I feel responsible. I feel like I’ve failed.

I have an estranged sister from my father’s side that’s also a Trump supporter. She disapproved of my decision to divorce, though she never voiced her judgement. I would figure it out in time.

Back in the bucolic century of 2013, she commented on one of my Facebook posts, saying she was tired of hearing the same old stuff from me. She said I needed to move on. From what? The comments intensified as I defended myself.

It was bizarre. And cruel. Why was she so ruthlessly angry with me? Still, I tried to meet her face to face to work things out. She refused.

But being a writer, I also wrote about what I was feeling and posted it on my blog. I did not slander. I wasn’t cruel. I was sharp, but fair. I showed compassion. I bled.

She did not like what I wrote. Too many truths.

I guess I was supposed to shut up and be the person she thought I should be. I was supposed to be eternally grateful and loyal that she reached out to me so I could know my paternal side, no matter how she treated me. I wasn’t to speak of the fact that our grandmother had told my mother that she didn’t want to know her illegitimate firstborn grandson. That crime was to be forgotten.

So she did the most childish and mean thing she could think of: smear my character on social media. Her husband joined in.

I was told there was more than just this post. I had no desire to see them.

The funny thing is, no one read me. No one cared. But after she slandered my character over and over to her hundreds of connections on Facebook, the pings from people who then read my essay lit up California like a Christmas tree. Easily my most popular post at the time.

People love to be voyeurs of other’s drama and pain. Social media is primed to provide.

Months later I would find out that my sister had been sending my ex screenshots of my Facebook posts, stirring and talking shit, long before our falling out, even as she behaved as if nothing was wrong.

How do I know? Our son had snuck my ex’s old phone over to my house during my time with him. When I found it, I paused. I had suspicions so I checked the text messages between my ex and my sister, trying to understand why she was so bitter. What I saw made me sick. My family wound gushed fresh blood.

But at least now I felt much less responsible for all the blame and shame she’d been shoveling on me. I did not confront her with what I knew. Knowing was enough. She was not safe, maybe never safe. I shut my heart.

It’s the cruelty that’s the ugliest. The callousness. The lack of empathy. The refusal to imagine our lives as someone else. Trump’s rise legitimized the simmering darkness in people. He showed them it was okay to be openly mean. Vile. Cruel.

He promises impunity. Superiority. And they love him for it.

You're being dramatic

“I was just joking!”
"Get over it."
"You're overreacting."
"Stop being so sensitive."
"Your body, my choice. Forever."

So, here we are. Relationships torn asunder. Broken hearts and minds. Legitimized cruelty roaming wild. Brutality defended and excused. Traveling circuses of lies and manipulation. Half of us appalled, half of us enraptured.

Me, trying to hold on to my son through it all.

I am furious and brokenhearted in turns.

I’m not sure what to do. I do not want to lose him in the torrent of lies and misplaced anger and petty grievances gushing from the internet. I don’t want him to embrace cruelty. I don’t want him to legitimize and excuse hate.

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(If you’re interested, here’s that essay I wrote back in 2013. It has been lightly edited from the original version.)

Sad Song

It is amazing the power nothing can have.

The fact that my father was absent was one of the most profound influences on my life. I cannot stress how wounding this is. And it is permanent. The best you can do is accept it and consciously refrain from giving it power. Sometimes it’s easy. Sometimes it goes silent long enough that you let down your guard. Then it comes roaring back, triggered by something that seems insignificant.

My memories of my father fit in the space under one fingernail. None of them offer comfort. While my siblings have the luxury to remember good times to possibly balance out our father’s shortcomings, I have a big gaping hole of  n o t h i n g . He abandoned me at birth. After I met him — even after offering him a clean slate, he chose not to know me. He said he was disappointed that I was getting a divorce. Then he died of a heart attack.

All I have is rejection and indifference.

Absence can be physical. It can be emotional. The lack of engagement is key. If you don’t think this is a problem worthy of your concern, let me give you some perspective:

My stepfather was 24 when he married my mother, 12 years his senior. He was immature, without experience to know how to connect to me. He tried his best I guess. He abused drugs and alcohol. Eventually he was diagnosed as bipolar. I don’t harbor ill will, but there is pain.

A friend’s alcoholic father used to leave him in the truck with nothing but a car repair manual while he went into the casino for hours. The father shot himself in the chest, dying on the living room floor. His teenaged daughter was the first to find him.

My ex-wife’s father was an alcoholic that also beat her mother. His father abandoned him.

My mother’s father was an alcoholic, abandoning her to a foster family after her alcoholic mother walked out the door, and on to start a new family.

My mother’s brother abused drugs and alcohol and ended up homeless, riding the trains from Reno to South America. She suspected he committed suicide after I excitedly told her I had watched a sheeted and decapitated body being loaded into a coroner’s van by the train tracks just outside the trailer park where we lived.

After they left, I went to where the body was found on the tracks. Bits of bloody gore and hair marked the spot. I was six. We never saw him again.

[If the coroner’s report I found is correct, it looks he actually died in 1991 in Southern California—only a year older than I am now.]

It is easier to count the friends that didn’t have absent fathers. It’s easier to count the people I know who didn’t suffer from physical and emotional abuse, or child molestation, or rape, or mental illness, or substance abuse.

We are not moving on to bigger and better things. We are not letting go. We have not stopped reliving the past.

We are failing.

So when my sister criticized a recent Facebook post of mine about the memoir I’m writing, it made me grind my teeth.

“But at what point does one stop reliving their past in both their minds and words?” she said. “At what point does one learn, accept and move on to bigger and better things? It's a lesson I learned years ago. I could let [go of] my shitty past, one that was created for me by choices others had made and the other part of which I created. Life is about learning and living. If I sat around thinking of all the shitty shit shit I'd be in a padded cell! Just my thoughts.”

My mind burned all day thinking about it.

I replied that I refuse to hide my pain and experience. Because nothing changes in a world that refuses to accept its participation in, and support of, human pain and suffering.

I know my sister loves me. The feeling is mutual. But I am sick of people choosing judgment to escape uncomfortable situations. It’s the reactionary easy road.

Criticism of others is often a reflection of our own insecurities. The stronger the reaction, the stronger the insecurity. And family is supposed to be a haven from such things. For many people, family is the opposite — it’s land mines and denial. It’s abuse and neglect, a cesspool of dysfunction.

AND HOLY HELL, THE WORLD IS TURDUNKEN-STUFFED WITH DENIAL AND DYSFUNCTION.

Because the deepest part of each of us is a lost, frightened, confused and wounded child, we invent stories to feel secure and to give the worlds we fabricate meaning. We legitimize and excuse our behavior and beliefs. It’s the curse we pass on, generation after generation after generation.

I am not your piety.
I am not your hope.
I am your doubt.
I am your denial.
I am your fear.
I am your rage.
I am your pain.

I will not stifle my voice for anyone. In fact, I want you to be uncomfortable. I want to shake you. I want to shake everyone. And the best way to accomplish that is by sharing my experience in a very public way.

I strip naked. I unveil all my weaknesses and secrets. I sing a sad song in a suicidal world that abhors anything that does not make them feel good. Superior. Correct. Righteous. I’m crashing your party of denial.

“But at what point does one stop reliving their past in both their minds and words?”

I don’t know. It’s different for everyone. But this isn’t really a question. It’s a statement posed as a question. She thinks I should stop. Also, it’s an assumption that I am reliving my past. I am not. I am revealing it. I’m digging it up and putting it on display like dinosaur bones. I’m waving it like a flag. I’m flaunting it like skinny jeans.

Don’t like it? Walk away. I’m not forcing anyone to watch.

“At what point does one learn, accept and move on to bigger and better things?”

I don’t know. It’s different for everyone. And this is another rhetorical question. She thinks I need to learn, accept and move on. I see this statement as an assumption that I haven’t learned or accepted anything.

I see life as a continual discovery within a churn of change. And hey, THIS IS MY BIGGER AND BETTER and she’s already dismissed it.

“It's a lesson I learned years ago. I could let [go of] my shitty past, one that was created for me by choices others had made and the other part of which I created.”

For me, certainty is immediately suspect. The only certainty is birth and death. I find myself constantly reevaluating my positions and actions. Past and present.

Learning is not a static achievement. It is not a destination where you get a trophy lesson, moral, grade or diploma and never have to think about it again. At best those are milestones — subject to revision or obsolescence.

Sometimes we forget. Sometimes we repeat mistakes. Sometimes the trophy is a bullshit lie. No one is immune.

“Life is about learning and living.”

She perceives that I am stuck, but she won’t say it plainly. She is hiding behind her words. I’ll agree in part on this because I have felt stuck for a long, long time. But now I’m actually DOING something and she wants to shut me down?

“Just my thoughts.”

Well, these are just mine. I think they are much more forgiving.

When I read her comment, I was shocked. I didn’t know what to say. Then I got mad and said a shit-ton because I knew what this was, the same curse that assails us from every direction, every day of our lives — breaking us so we willingly accept a life lived on our knees.

More comments followed. We bantered. It wasn’t pretty. And then she really stung me.

“You, my dear brother, have been speaking about the same things for the past 15 years you have been in my life.”

SO WHAT.

Do you shame a child for being afraid of the dark?
Do you blame a man with a badly healed broken leg for limping?
Do you find it audacious that blood dare pour out of a deep wound?

Two days ago was the fifth anniversary of our father’s death. Maybe it is causing her to reflect on the aching scars that remain.