One Saturday night this summer, I was leisurely walking down main street hand-in-hand on a date, when suddenly, I heard a commotion about 50 yards down a busy side street. It was too far away to make out what was happening or what was being said. But I figured it was fine since the side street had plenty of people walking up and down it.
Still, I couldn’t help but peer into the distance, transfixed, like a deer in the headlights.
There was an anime convention going on that weekend. Initially, my brain reasoned that a couple of cosplayers were recording a TikTok video or doing a K-pop dance. Then my brain reasoned that surely, on a crowded street, nothing serious could be going down. Right?
Yet I waited there, unmoving, alert.
My date was casually standing there eating a cookie. She innocently asked, “What do you think’s going on over there?”
I faintly heard a woman yelling. While squinting, I saw sudden, physical contact between her and a man. I dropped my date’s hand and began aggressively stomping towards them.
All I could see was red.
I used to have anger problems during my adolescence. I didn't realize that maybe I was different from other people, until one day during my freshman year of college…
…I opened the door to my apartment to find a roomful of friends. One of them stood up from the couch to give me a hug with her arms outstretched, one hand high and the other hand low. I instinctually flinched, and then leaned in to give her a hug, but she pulled back and stopped.
“I noticed that you always flinch before I give you a hug,” she said. “How come?”
I thought about it for a second, then copied her—one hand high and the other low—then nonchalantly said, “Your high hand? That’s probably the angle from which my dad hits me.”
Her face dropped. I looked around. Everyone else’s side conversations had stopped and they were all staring at me. I noticed that I was confused—did I say something weird? My friend had asked me a question and I had matter-of-factly gave the answer. I had no idea why everyone was being so weird. I inquired, “What?”
My friend, the one who got up to give me a hug, looked at me sympathetically. “Your dad hits you?”
I noticed that I was confused again. They care about that? I gestured to the group of wide-eyed people and asserted, “What, your dads never hit you?”
Everyone stayed frozen. Then my roommate on the couch softly said, “No dude. My dad’s never hit me.” Slowly, others nodded their heads in agreement.
I felt a note of disgust. I didn’t need their pity. I retorted, “My dad’s not a monster. He doesn’t just randomly hit me for no reason. Only if I do something stupid or disobey him.” Feeling satisfied at successfully defending my dad and at clearing up the matter, my satisfaction turned into an admixture of confusion and anger—they were still just staring at me in stunned silence and pity.
“Whatever.” I went into my room and shut the door.
He was kicking her. The man was kicking her. As I stomped closer to them, my anger continued to build into a white-hot fury. My fury was only slightly abated by a thought that confused me: it’s a crowded street, there’s even a group of dads walking by and laughing with each other, so why is no one doing anything? Never mind that. My anger was building into an unstoppable rage.
Thirty feet from the assaulter, I did something that I haven’t done since I was a child—I screamed at the top of my lungs:
“HEYYY!!!”
The attacker whipped his head towards me in confused fear. I stormed forward and screamed:
“GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM HER.”
I must have had the twisted face of a rabid dog; the whites of the man’s eyes shined like saucers.
The woman screamed, “He’s trying to rape me!”
After that day in college, I reflected on my friends' reactions. Really? Their dads never hit them? Then how did their dads maintain their authority if not through fear? I couldn’t fathom an alternative method. So I shrugged and wrote them off as probably being weak.
Going forward, not much changed. I continued to exert my will over my four college roommates through intimidation and by yelling at them. Throughout my freshman year of college, one-by-one, my friends stopped coming by my apartment to say hi, stopped returning my texts, and were increasingly "too busy" to hang out when I ran into them on campus. I never felt lonely. No, I was too prideful for that. All these people just sucked. I just needed to find new, better friends. But new people, for whatever reason, didn’t stick around for too long.
This went on into my sophomore year of college. It went on until the day I had a bad trip while taking psychedelic mushrooms…
…So there I was, sitting on the ground of my university squash court with my friend, and beginning to hallucinate. At first, the spotted wood of the court looked like ants marching towards me, which was amusing.
It was amusing until, suddenly, a demon materialized in my stomach, crawled up my spinal cord, and invaded my mind. The most violent, envious, prideful thoughts spewed out of me. While it was happening, I believed it was the demon saying these things, not me, therefore not my responsibility and not my problem.
The next day, however, I realized that the demon was a manifestation of my innermost insecurities. That what the demon spake wasn’t gibberish nonsense, but instead a prophecy of what was to come if I didn’t get my shit together.
That experience scared me straight. And ever since that day seven years ago, I’m very proud that I never lost control again. I never yelled at anyone ever again. Until…
The man ignored me and started kicking her again.
Incensed, I advanced towards him and roared even louder, “HEY! GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM HER.” The man saw me stomping towards him and he stuttered backwards. Perhaps he saw in my eyes that I wasn’t fucking around, that I wanted blood.
They say that in response to immense stress, people typically have one of three reactions: fight, flight, or freeze. I was ready to fight. But it hasn’t always been like this…
As a child, I sometimes found myself on the other side of the kitchen table, playing a game of cat & mouse with my angry older brother, tears and snot streaming down my face, squealing like a cornered pig about to be slaughtered, while trying to avoid my brother’s grasp. For I knew if he caught me, he would wrestle me to the floor, pin my arms underneath him by sitting on my torso, and then rain blows down upon me.
Over the years, after repeatedly being hit by my father, by my mother, and by my brother, I learned that flight was not a good strategy for me. I was the youngest and the weakest. I was never going to be able to outrun them or outfight them. Instead, I figured out that it was far better to freeze, study what triggered them, and then learn to tiptoe around those landmines.
And this worked. I learned to suppress my emotions while living with my family. It was the only way to assure my safety.
When I moved away to college, I turned into a monster. All my pent-up anger was unleashed upon my innocent roommates and friends. And it felt good. Fuck, it felt so good to lean in to my newfound rage. I got to feel powerful for once. I got to feel in control. And it worked…until it didn’t. One-by-one my friends left me.
After the psychedelic trip, I underwent a years-long healing journey. I read dozens of EQ, therapy, and self-help books. I wrote thousands of pages across my journals. I laughed, I cried, I got in touch with my emotions that I had suppressed my whole life. And then I decided to get strong.
In the latter half of college, "The House of Iron" became my place of worship—every day I was in the gym at 6am for two hours. In the span of ten months, I went from barely being able to lift a barbell, to deadlifting twice my body weight. I put on 10-15lbs of muscle, and when I looked in the mirror, instead of seeing a scared kid, for the first time in my life I saw the body of a man looking back.
The last time my whole family lived under the same roof was my senior year of college. My brother and I had been getting along for a while, becoming friends for the first time in our lives. I thought there was mutual respect between us.
I was wrong.
One morning the dog ran down the hallway loudly, and in the process, accidentally woke up my brother. Watching it happen, I began chuckling at the ridiculousness of it. My brother burst out of his room and saw me quietly snickering. He assumed that I had deliberately woken him up to mess with him, and without asking questions, sprinted towards me and unleashed a barrage of punches. I froze.
Then after a moment, I realized that his punches didn’t hurt. Not anymore. I had gotten stronger since the last time he struck me.
He kept hitting me and accusing me, “You woke me up! You woke me up!” I grabbed both of his arms, stopping the assault, and told him, “It was the dog! It was the dog! The dog accidentally woke you up, not me!” He stopped thrashing, stared at me with suspicion, then shrugged and went into the kitchen to go make coffee.
I just stood there, stunned. Then I went into my room and closed the door. Five minutes later I joined my first Zoom class for the day. During that call, I silently processed what had just happened. I felt confused, shocked, angry.
After my class, I went looking for my brother, and found him in the backyard by the pool on a lounge chair sunbathing in nothing but his boxers, peacefully reading a book.
“Hey,” I called to him.
He casually turned his head towards me.
“Like I said this morning,” I stated in a cool, even tone while maintaining intense, unblinking eye contact. “It was the dog that woke you up, not me. And without thinking or asking clarifying questions, you attacked me. Look at me,” I demanded while pointing at my eyes. “I’m bigger than you now. I’m stronger than you now. And if you ever put hands on me again, I will fuck you up. There will be blood.”
He looked at me and saw that I wasn’t fucking around. I dialed my intensity down, smiled, and then told him, “have a nice day.”
I wasn’t a bystander, not anymore.
The man was conflicted. He wanted to continue kicking this woman, but he also saw the bloodlust in my eyes. He tried reasoning with me:
“She pepper-sprayed me!”
“I don’t give a FUCK,” I replied. “Get the FUCK away from her.”
The man teetered on his backfoot, unsure of what to do. And while he was doing that, I was mentally preparing how I was going to incapacitate him.
Had my half-naked sunbathing brother actually gotten up to fight, it would have been ugly. Neither of us are trained fighters. But ultimately, the threat of me fighting back for the first time was enough to deter all future conflicts. He gained a kind of respect for me that day. While we've had our ups and downs in the years since then, today we’ve never been closer as brothers. He's a good guy.
But had we fought that day, it would have been a mess of sprawling limbs. But that wouldn’t be the case today because…
…Last year I made a new friend at a coffee shop—an older gentleman. What an amazing and wise individual. In his youth, he was a hothead like me, and he also grew up with a brother that beat him.
But unlike me, as a young adult he got into dozens of street fights and learned how to defend himself through trial by fire.
One day, months into our friendship, he asked me, “Do you want to learn how to fight?”
“Yes.”
And thus began my training.
Punches. Kicks. Blocks. And also the psychology of fighting—people, especially untrained fighters, are predictable. The most common punch thrown from the untrained fighter is the overhead haymaker. My friend taught me how to block that—turns out that the wax on/wax off technique from Karate Kid actually works—and then how to counter with a series of devastating blows.
An older man who instills wisdom, philosophy, and the means to defend myself. I had met my Mr. Miyagi.
At my gym, I began using a punching bag without any gloves to toughen my hands. The first time I did bag work, I whiffed a roundhouse kick and landed hard on my ass. I also walked away with nasty bruises up and down my shins, arms, and fingers.
But over time I got tougher. When I would visit my friend, he would surprise attack me to try to catch me off guard. And gradually, my reaction time got better.
Over the course of a few months, I developed a newfound confidence when walking around downtown. It felt like I was armed. And I was. My body became acutely primed to defend itself. I was now ready if a fight ever went down…
When he charges, I thought, I’ll block the first punch, and counter with an elbow strike to his ear with all my force to go for a knockout blow.
I took a step forward, my eyes subconsciously communicating: please, enter the arena.
The man took a step back, scowled, and slinked away from the woman he was attacking.
I followed him.
I lived with my parents for a few years after college to save money. Before I moved out, I had one goal.
After dinner one night, I announced to my parents, “I’m pretty emotionally fucked up. And so are both of you. I’m going to singlehandedly carry this family’s trauma and stress on my back until we’re all healed.” They mocked me for making such a grandiose declaration, but I didn’t care. I didn’t know how I was going to fix us, but I was fully resolved in my ability to do so.
As I read more books and had emotionally challenging conversations with friends, I took what I learned and practiced at home. One night in particular stood out to me.
I don’t remember what they were arguing about, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that my father was yelling at my mother. And I was fucking pissed about it.
“HEY,” I exclaimed.
My parents looked at me, probably expecting me to complain about the noise they were making when I was trying to work. Instead, I furiously pointed an accusatory finger at my father and loudly asserted, “You’re not going to yell at my mother again.”
My father looked at me with a blank expression.
We all just stood there in silence.
I narrowed my eyes. “Got it?”
My father, not breaking eye contact with me, said “yeah” then walked away.
Had my father—who is bigger, taller, and stronger—challenged me and tried to intimidate me, I would have had no choice but to back down. Maybe he saw the resolve in my eyes, and in a moment of self-reflection, realized how he was treating his wife. In that moment, perhaps he overcame the rough childhood he endured and chose peace.
I wish I could say that everything immediately got better after that night. But it didn’t. Lots of hard conversations ensued over that year. Tears were shed. Yelling.
I made plenty of mistakes, too, allowing my ego to get the better of me. The road was rocky, but I ultimately kept my promise: I carried my family out of the dregs of our emotional abyss by repeatedly modeling good behavior, choosing the right time to initiate difficult conversations, and believing that I could even do this in the first place.
Today, my parents and I have never been closer. I’m proud of them, and my brother. They all put the work in to become better versions of themselves, and they deserve the credit for that. They're not perfect (far from it), but they've come a long way.
It’s been seven years since the last time I lost control, when the psychedelic demon took over my mind. And now I’m following an attacker.
The man, sporting the craziest of eyes, was huffing and puffing, “She started it! That crazy bitch pepper-sprayed me!”
“FUCK off,” I fumed.
The man walked alongside the group of dads I’d passed earlier and tried to fraternize with them, “That bitch is crazy! Did you see that?? She’s crazy!” The dad closest to him nodded sympathetically with a half-smile to appease him.
I continued following the man up the street. Any time he turned around to gripe about the woman, I shouted, “FUCK off.” We got to the next street intersection and I watched him walk away while muttering to himself.
I wasn’t a bystander, not anymore.
When he got a far enough distance away and appeared to not be returning, I remembered what I was doing that night—I was on a date.
I turned around. My date was watching me. She was eating a cookie.
Weeks later, I sat down to write this story alone in my apartment. Remembering everything that happened that day, I began to relive the experience. My heart started beating out of my chest, I broke into a sweat. I felt so, so fucking angry.
What I still didn’t understand was: on a crowded street, a man was openly assaulting a woman, yet people just watched and moved along—why did no one else help? While writing this story, I sat back in my chair and stared out the window, waiting for the answer to come to me.
And then it did.
The man, and the woman he was attacking, were both homeless.
It’s been over two years since I last cried.
Sitting at my desk thinking about all this, overwhelmed with emotion, I began to open-mouth weep. I covered my face in shame (because men aren’t supposed to cry), I recognized how silly this was given that I was alone in my apartment, gargled a wet laugh at the irony, then I wept.
One Saturday night this summer, I was leisurely walking down main street hand-in-hand on a date, when suddenly, I heard a commotion about 50 yards down a busy side street. It was too far away to make out what was happening or what was being said. But I figured it was fine since the side street had plenty of people walking up and down it.
Still, I couldn’t help but peer into the distance, transfixed, like a deer in the headlights.
There was an anime convention going on that weekend. Initially, my brain reasoned that a couple of cosplayers were recording a TikTok video or doing a K-pop dance. Then my brain reasoned that surely, on a crowded street, nothing serious could be going down. Right?
Yet I waited there, unmoving, alert.
My date was casually standing there eating a cookie. She innocently asked, “What do you think’s going on over there?”
I faintly heard a woman yelling. While squinting, I saw sudden, physical contact between her and a man. I dropped my date’s hand and began aggressively stomping towards them.
All I could see was red.
I used to have anger problems during my adolescence. I didn't realize that maybe I was different from other people, until one day during my freshman year of college…
…I opened the door to my apartment to find a roomful of friends. One of them stood up from the couch to give me a hug with her arms outstretched, one hand high and the other hand low. I instinctually flinched, and then leaned in to give her a hug, but she pulled back and stopped.
“I noticed that you always flinch before I give you a hug,” she said. “How come?”
I thought about it for a second, then copied her—one hand high and the other low—then nonchalantly said, “Your high hand? That’s probably the angle from which my dad hits me.”
Her face dropped. I looked around. Everyone else’s side conversations had stopped and they were all staring at me. I noticed that I was confused—did I say something weird? My friend had asked me a question and I had matter-of-factly gave the answer. I had no idea why everyone was being so weird. I inquired, “What?”
My friend, the one who got up to give me a hug, looked at me sympathetically. “Your dad hits you?”
I noticed that I was confused again. They care about that? I gestured to the group of wide-eyed people and asserted, “What, your dads never hit you?”
Everyone stayed frozen. Then my roommate on the couch softly said, “No dude. My dad’s never hit me.” Slowly, others nodded their heads in agreement.
I felt a note of disgust. I didn’t need their pity. I retorted, “My dad’s not a monster. He doesn’t just randomly hit me for no reason. Only if I do something stupid or disobey him.” Feeling satisfied at successfully defending my dad and at clearing up the matter, my satisfaction turned into an admixture of confusion and anger—they were still just staring at me in stunned silence and pity.
“Whatever.” I went into my room and shut the door.
He was kicking her. The man was kicking her. As I stomped closer to them, my anger continued to build into a white-hot fury. My fury was only slightly abated by a thought that confused me: it’s a crowded street, there’s even a group of dads walking by and laughing with each other, so why is no one doing anything? Never mind that. My anger was building into an unstoppable rage.
Thirty feet from the assaulter, I did something that I haven’t done since I was a child—I screamed at the top of my lungs:
“HEYYY!!!”
The attacker whipped his head towards me in confused fear. I stormed forward and screamed:
“GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM HER.”
I must have had the twisted face of a rabid dog; the whites of the man’s eyes shined like saucers.
The woman screamed, “He’s trying to rape me!”
After that day in college, I reflected on my friends' reactions. Really? Their dads never hit them? Then how did their dads maintain their authority if not through fear? I couldn’t fathom an alternative method. So I shrugged and wrote them off as probably being weak.
Going forward, not much changed. I continued to exert my will over my four college roommates through intimidation and by yelling at them. Throughout my freshman year of college, one-by-one, my friends stopped coming by my apartment to say hi, stopped returning my texts, and were increasingly "too busy" to hang out when I ran into them on campus. I never felt lonely. No, I was too prideful for that. All these people just sucked. I just needed to find new, better friends. But new people, for whatever reason, didn’t stick around for too long.
This went on into my sophomore year of college. It went on until the day I had a bad trip while taking psychedelic mushrooms…
…So there I was, sitting on the ground of my university squash court with my friend, and beginning to hallucinate. At first, the spotted wood of the court looked like ants marching towards me, which was amusing.
It was amusing until, suddenly, a demon materialized in my stomach, crawled up my spinal cord, and invaded my mind. The most violent, envious, prideful thoughts spewed out of me. While it was happening, I believed it was the demon saying these things, not me, therefore not my responsibility and not my problem.
The next day, however, I realized that the demon was a manifestation of my innermost insecurities. That what the demon spake wasn’t gibberish nonsense, but instead a prophecy of what was to come if I didn’t get my shit together.
That experience scared me straight. And ever since that day seven years ago, I’m very proud that I never lost control again. I never yelled at anyone ever again. Until…
The man ignored me and started kicking her again.
Incensed, I advanced towards him and roared even louder, “HEY! GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM HER.” The man saw me stomping towards him and he stuttered backwards. Perhaps he saw in my eyes that I wasn’t fucking around, that I wanted blood.
They say that in response to immense stress, people typically have one of three reactions: fight, flight, or freeze. I was ready to fight. But it hasn’t always been like this…
As a child, I sometimes found myself on the other side of the kitchen table, playing a game of cat & mouse with my angry older brother, tears and snot streaming down my face, squealing like a cornered pig about to be slaughtered, while trying to avoid my brother’s grasp. For I knew if he caught me, he would wrestle me to the floor, pin my arms underneath him by sitting on my torso, and then rain blows down upon me.
Over the years, after repeatedly being hit by my father, by my mother, and by my brother, I learned that flight was not a good strategy for me. I was the youngest and the weakest. I was never going to be able to outrun them or outfight them. Instead, I figured out that it was far better to freeze, study what triggered them, and then learn to tiptoe around those landmines.
And this worked. I learned to suppress my emotions while living with my family. It was the only way to assure my safety.
When I moved away to college, I turned into a monster. All my pent-up anger was unleashed upon my innocent roommates and friends. And it felt good. Fuck, it felt so good to lean in to my newfound rage. I got to feel powerful for once. I got to feel in control. And it worked…until it didn’t. One-by-one my friends left me.
After the psychedelic trip, I underwent a years-long healing journey. I read dozens of EQ, therapy, and self-help books. I wrote thousands of pages across my journals. I laughed, I cried, I got in touch with my emotions that I had suppressed my whole life. And then I decided to get strong.
In the latter half of college, "The House of Iron" became my place of worship—every day I was in the gym at 6am for two hours. In the span of ten months, I went from barely being able to lift a barbell, to deadlifting twice my body weight. I put on 10-15lbs of muscle, and when I looked in the mirror, instead of seeing a scared kid, for the first time in my life I saw the body of a man looking back.
The last time my whole family lived under the same roof was my senior year of college. My brother and I had been getting along for a while, becoming friends for the first time in our lives. I thought there was mutual respect between us.
I was wrong.
One morning the dog ran down the hallway loudly, and in the process, accidentally woke up my brother. Watching it happen, I began chuckling at the ridiculousness of it. My brother burst out of his room and saw me quietly snickering. He assumed that I had deliberately woken him up to mess with him, and without asking questions, sprinted towards me and unleashed a barrage of punches. I froze.
Then after a moment, I realized that his punches didn’t hurt. Not anymore. I had gotten stronger since the last time he struck me.
He kept hitting me and accusing me, “You woke me up! You woke me up!” I grabbed both of his arms, stopping the assault, and told him, “It was the dog! It was the dog! The dog accidentally woke you up, not me!” He stopped thrashing, stared at me with suspicion, then shrugged and went into the kitchen to go make coffee.
I just stood there, stunned. Then I went into my room and closed the door. Five minutes later I joined my first Zoom class for the day. During that call, I silently processed what had just happened. I felt confused, shocked, angry.
After my class, I went looking for my brother, and found him in the backyard by the pool on a lounge chair sunbathing in nothing but his boxers, peacefully reading a book.
“Hey,” I called to him.
He casually turned his head towards me.
“Like I said this morning,” I stated in a cool, even tone while maintaining intense, unblinking eye contact. “It was the dog that woke you up, not me. And without thinking or asking clarifying questions, you attacked me. Look at me,” I demanded while pointing at my eyes. “I’m bigger than you now. I’m stronger than you now. And if you ever put hands on me again, I will fuck you up. There will be blood.”
He looked at me and saw that I wasn’t fucking around. I dialed my intensity down, smiled, and then told him, “have a nice day.”
I wasn’t a bystander, not anymore.
The man was conflicted. He wanted to continue kicking this woman, but he also saw the bloodlust in my eyes. He tried reasoning with me:
“She pepper-sprayed me!”
“I don’t give a FUCK,” I replied. “Get the FUCK away from her.”
The man teetered on his backfoot, unsure of what to do. And while he was doing that, I was mentally preparing how I was going to incapacitate him.
Had my half-naked sunbathing brother actually gotten up to fight, it would have been ugly. Neither of us are trained fighters. But ultimately, the threat of me fighting back for the first time was enough to deter all future conflicts. He gained a kind of respect for me that day. While we've had our ups and downs in the years since then, today we’ve never been closer as brothers. He's a good guy.
But had we fought that day, it would have been a mess of sprawling limbs. But that wouldn’t be the case today because…
…Last year I made a new friend at a coffee shop—an older gentleman. What an amazing and wise individual. In his youth, he was a hothead like me, and he also grew up with a brother that beat him.
But unlike me, as a young adult he got into dozens of street fights and learned how to defend himself through trial by fire.
One day, months into our friendship, he asked me, “Do you want to learn how to fight?”
“Yes.”
And thus began my training.
Punches. Kicks. Blocks. And also the psychology of fighting—people, especially untrained fighters, are predictable. The most common punch thrown from the untrained fighter is the overhead haymaker. My friend taught me how to block that—turns out that the wax on/wax off technique from Karate Kid actually works—and then how to counter with a series of devastating blows.
An older man who instills wisdom, philosophy, and the means to defend myself. I had met my Mr. Miyagi.
At my gym, I began using a punching bag without any gloves to toughen my hands. The first time I did bag work, I whiffed a roundhouse kick and landed hard on my ass. I also walked away with nasty bruises up and down my shins, arms, and fingers.
But over time I got tougher. When I would visit my friend, he would surprise attack me to try to catch me off guard. And gradually, my reaction time got better.
Over the course of a few months, I developed a newfound confidence when walking around downtown. It felt like I was armed. And I was. My body became acutely primed to defend itself. I was now ready if a fight ever went down…
When he charges, I thought, I’ll block the first punch, and counter with an elbow strike to his ear with all my force to go for a knockout blow.
I took a step forward, my eyes subconsciously communicating: please, enter the arena.
The man took a step back, scowled, and slinked away from the woman he was attacking.
I followed him.
I lived with my parents for a few years after college to save money. Before I moved out, I had one goal.
After dinner one night, I announced to my parents, “I’m pretty emotionally fucked up. And so are both of you. I’m going to singlehandedly carry this family’s trauma and stress on my back until we’re all healed.” They mocked me for making such a grandiose declaration, but I didn’t care. I didn’t know how I was going to fix us, but I was fully resolved in my ability to do so.
As I read more books and had emotionally challenging conversations with friends, I took what I learned and practiced at home. One night in particular stood out to me.
I don’t remember what they were arguing about, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that my father was yelling at my mother. And I was fucking pissed about it.
“HEY,” I exclaimed.
My parents looked at me, probably expecting me to complain about the noise they were making when I was trying to work. Instead, I furiously pointed an accusatory finger at my father and loudly asserted, “You’re not going to yell at my mother again.”
My father looked at me with a blank expression.
We all just stood there in silence.
I narrowed my eyes. “Got it?”
My father, not breaking eye contact with me, said “yeah” then walked away.
Had my father—who is bigger, taller, and stronger—challenged me and tried to intimidate me, I would have had no choice but to back down. Maybe he saw the resolve in my eyes, and in a moment of self-reflection, realized how he was treating his wife. In that moment, perhaps he overcame the rough childhood he endured and chose peace.
I wish I could say that everything immediately got better after that night. But it didn’t. Lots of hard conversations ensued over that year. Tears were shed. Yelling.
I made plenty of mistakes, too, allowing my ego to get the better of me. The road was rocky, but I ultimately kept my promise: I carried my family out of the dregs of our emotional abyss by repeatedly modeling good behavior, choosing the right time to initiate difficult conversations, and believing that I could even do this in the first place.
Today, my parents and I have never been closer. I’m proud of them, and my brother. They all put the work in to become better versions of themselves, and they deserve the credit for that. They're not perfect (far from it), but they've come a long way.
It’s been seven years since the last time I lost control, when the psychedelic demon took over my mind. And now I’m following an attacker.
The man, sporting the craziest of eyes, was huffing and puffing, “She started it! That crazy bitch pepper-sprayed me!”
“FUCK off,” I fumed.
The man walked alongside the group of dads I’d passed earlier and tried to fraternize with them, “That bitch is crazy! Did you see that?? She’s crazy!” The dad closest to him nodded sympathetically with a half-smile to appease him.
I continued following the man up the street. Any time he turned around to gripe about the woman, I shouted, “FUCK off.” We got to the next street intersection and I watched him walk away while muttering to himself.
I wasn’t a bystander, not anymore.
When he got a far enough distance away and appeared to not be returning, I remembered what I was doing that night—I was on a date.
I turned around. My date was watching me. She was eating a cookie.
Weeks later, I sat down to write this story alone in my apartment. Remembering everything that happened that day, I began to relive the experience. My heart started beating out of my chest, I broke into a sweat. I felt so, so fucking angry.
What I still didn’t understand was: on a crowded street, a man was openly assaulting a woman, yet people just watched and moved along—why did no one else help? While writing this story, I sat back in my chair and stared out the window, waiting for the answer to come to me.
And then it did.
The man, and the woman he was attacking, were both homeless.
It’s been over two years since I last cried.
Sitting at my desk thinking about all this, overwhelmed with emotion, I began to open-mouth weep. I covered my face in shame (because men aren’t supposed to cry), I recognized how silly this was given that I was alone in my apartment, gargled a wet laugh at the irony, then I wept.
I was thinking of Teresa.
Part 1: I would have shit in that alley, too
Part 2: A City Within a City
Part 3: Assaulted
Final Part: Not just a bystander, not anymore…