I would rather sit here writing about history or TV shows or the way the frost on the roof on the building across from me melts where the next roof edge acts like a sundial as the sun goes west. I would rather talk about how cute my cats have been today or finally finish one of my hate scribes about FOSS. I would rather eat dirt. I would rather bash my head into this desk 30 times.
But since the dude who instigated the harassment campaign against me starting in January, 2017 that destroyed my already precarious life was livestreaming themselves in Nancy Pelosi’s office last week as part of the putsch I (and thousands of others) had been trying to warn everyone about and no matter what I try to focus on I am forced to relive trauma from years and thousands of miles away.
I want to be calm. I want to be old and wise and sit in a tree and instead I’m 15 years old again and I’m kicking a hole in the wall with my steel toe boots (which you definitely shouldn’t do when you have a landlord, otherwise I’d probably have a whole wall dedicated to kicking that would be repaired and destroyed often).
I am a big supporter of anger. When I was that 15 year old kicking holes in walls, they tried to drug me instead of dealing with the cause of the trauma. Unfortunately this time my trauma isn’t coming from one inescapable monster but from hundreds and also millions that I’ve only sort-of managed to escape. My anger against Nazis and white supremacy as a whole is not out of the ordinary or something I cannot deal with in a healthy fashion. But my anger at “everyone else” is what keeps me up at night. (Or it would, if not for Drugs.)
Everyone else who let me be targeted. Everyone who ignored it. Everyone who dropped knowing me because Nazis were trying to kill me. Everyone who stopped financially supporting me because I wasn’t entertaining them anymore. Every member of my neighborhood who ignored the terrorists. A very large percentage of the “left”. Everyone who has failed to help me to this day. So, so many people that my logic brain does not care about but my trauma brain cannot let go of.
The anger is only one symptom. I’ve been sweating the minute I wake up. My heart rate is all over. My temperature rollercoasters up and down. And sometimes I’m so amped up, so tense with anxiety, it’s hard to pee. It’s like every bad side-effect of MDMA without any of the fun. (Do drugs safely, children.)
This is more or less a permanent state. I will continue dealing with PTSD from this for the rest of my life. Recent events have unfortunately triggered a bad spell, but it never goes away completely. There will never be financial recompense for the damage done to me, to my life, to my future. What happened to me will not be remembered or spoken of. I will not be anyone’s concern in the coming days, weeks, or ever.
Which would be all well and fine if I had enough money for groceries every week. But I don’t, and this story of why my life is fucked is something I have to carry this around and share it with any number of random people on a regular basis, recounting and reliving it. But for never enough that I don’t need to do it again a few days later. I always have to be a victim to all of this because I still am.
The hate, ignorance, and harassment only follows me wherever I go. The same pattern has been repeated in my work attempting to make software free of corporate control that people like myself can use. I need to constantly be busking for enough money to eat while dudes who want people like me dead or at least silenced get hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding to build more platforms that enable what happened to me. It’s been 4 years and already I’ve had people from that community try to have me killed multiple times, and I’m forced to daily experience or research abuse and generally just some of the worst shit you’ll see in a lifetime while the work I’ve done is ignored, erased, and mocked and any tool that would make it easier for victims is vetoed.
Everything is connected. Everything is a reminder of of the situation that makes the situation worse that reminds you of the situation that makes the situation worse that reminds you of the situation that makes it worse.
And so here I am, dripping with sweat, shaking, my mind reaching out desperately for a distraction from the relentless terror for just a few seconds, and wondering if I’ll ever pee comfortably again because of some weirdo from Alaska who hates black people. But also because of a lot of other people.
I hope I’ll be relaxed enough when the time comes to pee on their graves.
