02 April 2026

La Grita 2023

07 May 2023

“If you don’t back up, I’m going to scream loud enough to wake every child in the neighborhood.”

I said it loud enough that it did wake up our own toddler, and my husband suddenly had something more pressing to do than stop me from locking myself in the bathroom with the phone he had failed to snatch from my hand.

How did I get here?

I remember once, at the very beginning of being together, I saw him gently cradling one of his cats, being so soft and silly with his fuzzy baby, and I thought, “He’s going to be a good dad someday.” Everything in me hummed to the idea of having human babies with him, our genes intermingling to create new people that the world had never seen before, who were sure to be bright and beautiful. All of me was singing to raise those imaginary children better than we were raised, to use our big brains to skip them over the horrors we had endured. I was so sure he was the right man for the job.

And now I was back in my childhood horror, a big man looming above me, shouting me down, entering my space, preventing my escape, not even letting me back up into the trap I had set for myself all those years ago. What would have been next, without my voice, without the threat of my scream of rage?

Maybe a choke-slam against the wall, a big hand crushing my throat while my little head bounced on the matte paint- that was my father’s specialty for whenever I was “talking back”. Maybe my head would crack, my skull pressing little white shards into the grey matter, like the coffee mug my husband threw in a fit of rage one day when I wouldn’t stop arguing some point. I remember that mug had his name on it, with the equivalent name in many languages all around it. It shattered into so many pieces, and splattered the wall with coffee. He cleaned it up after I ran and hid, but I went back afterward to wipe off all the little spots he missed, and found a curved ceramic shard with some fragment of his name, and put it on the windowsill with the rest of my decorative clutter, the object holding evidence of the memory. I must have known I would try so hard to forgive, but should not forget.

Or maybe the wall would break first, like the wood paneling in the basement where he punched it in during another fight. I remember he told me, later, that I should try it next time I’m mad, instead of talking so much. I did run the experiment, only just once. It reminded me of cutting myself, but faster, the pain less precise, the damage, to the wall at least, never repairing. I taped up an art poster, made by our former lover, with a colorful robot declaring “FUN!” in its speech bubble, over the hole I had punched in the faux wood. The hole he made was never repaired, let alone papered over. Seeing the physical reminder of that explosion didn’t make him cringe.

“Forgive me, Hera, I cannot stay. He cut out my tongue, there is nothing to say.”

-Laura Marling, What He Wrote

It was always my fault, if he got upset, if he got violently dysregulated. My fault. It was what I said, or how I said it, or how many questions I asked, or that I interrupted him, while he was talking or while he was thinking silently. My suggestions were pressure, my requests were pressure, and my needs for connection and activity were pressure. All that pressure, and all the subsequent explosive aggression, were my fault. Okay, I thought, I can modify my tone, I can change the words, I can make it quieter, keep it calm. I did my personal best, and then I did my professional best, and then I did my best with personal help, and then I did my best with professional help, and by the end of that time, it was a good day if we didn’t talk much at all, which meant it was a day I didn’t talk much to him.

Relationships cannot grow with so much unexpressed, and my tongue is not the kind to become ingrown. The power of my voice has been honed with decades of practice, my words are carefully chosen from a vast thesaurus, my tone is not only above reproach, but usually enjoyable. I reserve the right to express my ideas, question and disagree respectfully, and I commit to the responsibility of being flexible when meeting people whose communication styles differ from mine.

There’s no voice that everyone will love, but there’s also no voice that deserves to be met with abuse. So talk when it’s safe, don’t leave anything unsaid, even if you’re talking to yourself, even if you’re crying alone. When you cry out, I am crying out with you- just keep an ear out for my echo in your voice. When you’re ready to bring the noise and scream for freedom, I’ll be listening to your sound, even as I keep singing out with my own voice, in the eternal human chorus for liberation.