hex_m_hell

“If you breathe in, your lung will collapse.”

The bullet went through my diaphragm. During my first surgery, a tube had been put into my right lung to support me through the initial healing process. The diaphragm heals quickly, or at least mine did, and I was strong enough now to breathe on my own. It took me a minute to process the words. They had me on a heroic dose of everything they could find to kill the pain.

I asked the nurse (doctor? whomever..) to wait a second so I could take a couple of breaths, in order to prepare myself. So many parts of the story are a blur now. I remember I was sitting up. Was I in a chair? I was out of critical care again? This was the first of several tubes that would be removed from my body, adding fluids, draining fluids, keeping me alive.

This nurse had told me I needed to breathe out all the way, he would pull the tube out quickly and put a bandage (really, just a sticker) over my wound. The wound would close in a couple of days and the bandage could come off. My lungs would be back to normal, but one mistake could leave me suffocating and rushing back to the ER again. I took several trips to the ER during that month I spent in the hospital after the shooting.

I took a few deep breaths, said I was ready, and breathed out all the way.

There was a brief moment in my life where I learned to breathe.

Some time in 2015 or so, I cried. I let myself be vulnerable. The survival skills I had developed to deal with neglect and abuse served me well in the security industry but meditation and a few years of therapy made my personal life sustainable.

For a while I was able to experience a full range of emotions. I developed, or perhaps discovered, a deep compassion and patience. I was no longer quite so chaotic and self-destructive. I was, for a moment, the person I wanted to be.

When I heard Trump speak, I knew he was going to win the nomination. I knew because I recognized him. He is every crooked rural sheriff, every good ol' boy mayor that rural America is used to.

I spent a lot of time in Trump country. I bought the leather jacket I wore to that protest from a guy at school. After I got shot, I told him the jacket was full of my blood and in police custody (they never gave it back). He told me it was fake news. I deleted my Facebook account shortly after that.

I can't overstate how detrimental those places were to my mental health, how many horrifying things I saw, how many horrible things I heard. There's nothing I've seen as destructive as generational hopelessness. People talked about that town as a vortex, a black hole from which almost no one escapes.

Trump brought everything back. I had escaped that hell, and he represented turning all of the US into the thing that had almost killed me… and his stochastic terrorism did almost kill me.

I took a deep breath, and I organized like my life depended on it. I got shot. I gave interviews. Protests, street medic trainings, hand-to-hand self defense, armed self-defense, food security and gardening, we organized everything as fast as possible. The trial happened. We had our first child. It was all a blur. We moved out of Seattle. I slowed down, and took a few breaths.

There was a moment where we thought we could stop. We could settle in and work on the long term project of making sure this would never happen again. Then the pandemic happened, the George Floyd uprising, the murder of Michael Reinoehl, the DHS kidnapings in Portland. J6 was shocking but not surprising. I wondered when the RWDS would start murdering us like they had been promising to.

We dreaded the election. I put my fist through a window. I took a mental health leave, then we realized we didn't have to be in the US anymore. We could be free. I didn't breathe again until we were renting an apartment in the Netherlands. Now it's my family and friends I'm holding my breath for.

I can't focus. I don't sleep. I can't think of words. I forget what I am doing. My mind is full of static turned all the way up, overwhelmed with anger and despair.

How are so many Americans still going like this is normal and OK? Did everyone Heather Heyer and George Floyd? Did Everyone forget Trump telling the police to be more brutal or saying that there were “good people on both sides”?

We fought, and we won last time. Did you lose the ability to get off your knees? Did you forget how to riot? Are you ready to apologize to Willem van Spronsen and Aaron Bushnell? When will you no longer be complicit in genocide? When are you going to take action against the forces of evil? The only appropriate response to systematic horror is unquenchable rage.

I've been out of the office for a few months now, unable to work. Folks have been checking in, but I can't really explain it. I just don't have the capacity. It turns out unquenchable rage isn't well suited to an office environment and office politics. It's not conducive to long hours of sitting, careful analysis, and thoughtful critique.

I can't be polite about what's happening. There are people who are following in the footsteps of the greatest villains in history… but doing so with their eyes completely open. I feel the weight of a terrible machine crushing me, crushing everything good and hopeful in this world, and I am not allowed to scream. When will my friends be murdered? When will my family be murdered? When they finally murder me like they promised? Technology leaders stand next to the stochastic terrorist responsible for the attempt on my life, the doxxing that followed, the threats, the reign of terror. Now go read a 70 pages RFCs and write up your comments.

Once you understand a bit of what I've been through over the last 8 years, you can probably understand why I'm not able to work right now.

What I don't understand is, given what's happening right now… how can you?

So here I sit, an ocean away, holding my breath and wondering when this fucker is getting pulled out already.