So I moved back to the north side

The south side chewed me up, spit me out, and called me a “white bitch”. It was in a shitty red car. I was in my Ford Fusion. God I loved that car. It had a great sound system.

For real, though.

They say traumatic events can be a catalyst for creativity. It’s sick, but true. My life hasn’t been the same since I was chased, trapped, chased, trapped, chased, and then trapped a final time while praying my Ford Fusion would protect me from chunks of steel and cement being thrown at my head – and, as I would find out later, the possibility of being violently yanked from the driver’s seat (where the seat belt was an added restraint).

Sure, my story had already included trauma – real talk, whose doesn’t? (As the world has learned in the years since I was growing up, trauma touches almost everything and everyone.) My attachment trauma – parents do their best but even really good ones have their own coping mechanisms; domestic violence; giving money to the shot caller, the guy on the other end of the block saying “I don’t know what you’re talking about”, and then following him and his crew and demanding I get what I paid for (PSA: don’t do that).

This attack, on the LSD exit to 55 South, was the final straw. Ending up crouched down on the rocker panel on the phone with Alice, dissociated, screaming “this is it, I’m done, I’ve tried, I’m too far gone and I’m going on disability!”

Later on, I will most post more on that day. New content, as I keep processing what happened. Old content – when the vivid visions in my rear view mirror, and outside the locked window and door, would come non-stop – from days and months after that late September day, in 2020.

For now I’ll just say nothing could have prepared me. Nothing, none of the volatile experiences from my past 45 years, could have made me ready for that 15 minutes (or was it 5? Or 30? Fuck if I remember. For all I know, it’s still happening right now.)

I was never the same. James and I were never the same. My sobriety was never the same. His drunkenness, and the way he betrayed me by relapsing, was never the same. Nothing. Not even the air was the same. Fear took my hand that day and still won’t let go. I’ve tried to get away so many times. Its fingers are long and strong and leave no wiggle room. I'm still trapped.

…he looked at me through the windshield and mimicked my screams, to mock me, before screaming “white bitch” and driving off in his shitty red car.