“Do you want me to call the police?” I asked, as she stood a few feet from me, blood streaming down her face. “Are you sure?”
That fear of getting involved stops many of us, I think, even as adults, even in moments of crisis. We don’t want to interfere. Even when people scream for help, it can be easier to pretend not to hear.
At some point, we have to do something. It wasn’t till I was almost thirty that I did something. It didn’t cure the problem—life isn’t that simple. But it did mean that for at least that night, the punches stopped. Maybe, for just that moment, that was enough.
And in that sense, it was so easy. I wondered why it had taken me so much to take action, even when I’d seen the other side of it, even when I knew how quickly violence could escalate.
Though we judge those in abusive relationships for not getting out, we also don’t intercede on their behalf, to help. Because on some level, we also know how messy it is—that things aren’t that simple. And so instead we turn away.
Whispers: Interactive StoriesMake your own choices and decide what happens next!
* * *
In the years since those childhood flashes of violence and anger, I’ve somehow hit middle age. Even as I only now am learning to stop seeking the seat closest to the exit, to stop planning my escape route.
The moments that have given me peace have been both large and small. Some of it has required matching that intensity of fear with equal intensity of happiness, of love, from sources able to give it. To grapple with me, in safer ways.
Part of it has come from finding my own natural home—in refuging for the past fifteen years on the cliffs, as a rock climber. In embracing a lifestyle equally intense in its sensations of fear and joy. In which I choose the risk I’m willing to undertake. In which I can choose my own way. In which I choose not to flee, but to endure.
Part of it has come in having started to forgive myself. In having, for at least one moment, protected another, as I’d once wished to be protected. Part of it has come in knowing that I can protect myself, and part of it has come in finding people who I know will protect me. Who take my version of the past as what it is: my truth. Who will not invalidate it, because they are not benefited by a false retelling.
Part of it has come in seeing what a different man my father is in his actions now, in caretaking. Part of it has come from recognizing that his and my lack of relationship arises now out of mutual recognition—that we will never be able to communicate, that we can only cause harm to each other—rather than out of a place of anger. Now, it is freeing, to know that my father’s opinions hold no sway over my life or decisions. I lived in his shadow. It is only through disregard that I have emerged.
* * *
Biology fascinates me. Think of rats birthing in trash bags on crowded streets in Chinatown, on Mulberry Street, feeding on scraps of dim sum, or mosquitos releasing rafts of spawn into still puddles of rainwater. This is r-selection—rapid reproduction, in which having many offspring compensates for a lower likelihood of each surviving and reaching maturity. Then think of the converse, in creatures that nurture: giraffes, elephants, whales. This is K-selection, in which more investment is made in fewer offspring, instead of the more scattershot approach seen above. Humans, too, are supposed to fall in this second category.
I’ve often thought of r/K selection theory in relation to my own family, and families like mine. Without the parental investment typical of K-selection creatures, what becomes of these long-lived offspring? Do we find our own way, or do we succumb to the same forces that felled our parents? Do we become lost? Are our lives as valuable as those who were nurtured, in conventional ways, or are we forever stunted?
It isn’t just about r/K selection theory, either. It’s also about our most fundamental images of nature, the ones we see on all the nature documentaries. We see a predator—coyote, hyena, lion—approaching a cluster of sheep or gazelles or zebras. We see the herd breaking into a trot, gazelles springing in every direction, but still swarming in one trend. And then eventually we see those who lag, slowly but noticeably falling behind. We know it’s one of these creatures who will be felled, one of these sick or elderly or simply not as sure-footed. How does it feel when you know you’re one of those falling behind, wondering if the lion is going to spring on you, savage you?
Then, too, there’s genetics. Those who write fictional versions of Alzheimer’s disease rarely pay heed to the personality changes it involves, beyond simple memory problems, to the unpredictability of the day-to-day. My sisters and I used to fight over genetic testing. We, who grew up with the chaos of our mother’s degeneration, wanted to know if that same clock was ticking in us.
My oldest sister didn’t want to know, couldn’t bear the concept of that information being available. Because genetic testing for early-onset Alzheimer’s would’ve begun with mapping the APP, PS1, PS2, and APOE4 genes in my mother’s blood, not ours, because Alzheimer’s has no cure, because genetic testing requires counseling, it isn’t possible to get testing, as far as I know, without the consent of all affected by the results.
My family inheritance seemed a late November apple, riddled with worms. Our history lost, our bloodline tainted with illness. Then, too, beyond simple genetics, there’s the environment of family. My father and middle sister taught me about the importance of self-protection. It was due to them I learned to wrap my fists in tape, put up a punching bag, and defend myself. I tried to learn how to unfeel the pain of my own blood. I began lifting multiples of my own body weight, and later in life I began rock climbing, as a physical reprieve from all the ways in which I was powerless.
We climbers talk of base strength. It’s one’s base strength that matters, as much as one’s upper body. Your vertical grip begins with the curl of your toes, which travels up from your base to your knees, hips, core, and then finally your forearms and fingertips.
When you toss your body upward, lunging for a hold, and fall, screaming, twenty or thirty feet below, the fault lies, more often than not, in the tilt of your toes against the edged rock: the angle, the push away of your center of gravity. It’s just physics.
Your ability isn’t measured in how many party-trick, fingertip pull-ups you can muster on doorframes. It’s measured in balance, knowing how to shift your weight over your toes; timing, when to throw for a hold; and power, flexed biceps unleashed as last resort, lactic acid pumping through veined forearms.
It’s in how thoroughly you’ve caulked the cracks of your body, jammed white putty in the crumbling red brick of your fears. I can cross-train the rotator cuffs of my shoulder girdles. I can arc-weld the metal of my mind. I can send those fuckin’ badass climbs, the ones that bisect the sky.
But what if my odds of inheritance are already imprinted on m
y genes? What if patches of steel wool can’t keep mice from swarming? What if the only thing I can do is climb into the sun, hoping I’ve built enough base strength to carry through?
* * *
Whether I want there to be or not, there are similarities between him, this stranger whom I’ve never known, and me. I used to fight it—to dismiss any parts of myself that resembled him. To want to reject every part of him, which meant rejecting large chunks of myself, as well. Yet, though he and I may have superficial interests in common, I can see now that we are also innately different from one another. I own that knowledge.
It has taken this long, for me to learn to let go.
I’ve lived a life full of my own mistakes and adventures. Yet throughout, my actual outward journey, the one I tell myself when casting my own story, has been one related to family. How to reconcile myself to its fractures, how to heal myself. To do so, I’ve had to put as much physical and emotional distance between us as possible. I have strived for normalcy.
Even now, at thirty-three years old, a few hours near my father’s energy are enough to threaten everything I’ve claimed for myself. It is hard for happiness to take root near someone so deeply dissatisfied, so deeply angry. He is so deeply damaged and unforgiving of what has harmed him, in a way that I recognize, in a way that I hope to dispel from my own character, in my own time.
I know that I will never feel safe near my father.