10 years and Starfish

As a child I fantasized about running away. I would rock myself to sleep silently storytelling about escape. No matter the crashing and screams outside my bedroom door, no matter who opened that door, the dream of freedom kept me safe.

I dreamed that I made it, that I got away. The fantasy centered on making it to a city. I’d never met anyone anything like me before, but in my imagination I was not alone. I dreamed of a warehouse hidden and abandoned. In my fantasy I lived there surrounded by other kids. We slept together in huddled masses, climbed in and out through broken windows reached through fire escapes.  I started comforting myself with these stories at 8 no idea how the idea ever entered my sheltered semi-rural/semi-suburban mind, but it kept me alive.

I always knew I had one run in me. Knew that if I didn’t make it out that time, that I would never have another chance. I didn’t know if I would make it. I didn’t believe escape was possible, but I knew I had to try.

10 years ago today I escaped.

I hadn’t known for sure even the day before that the time had come, but things were getting worse and I was getting desperate. Her two bottles of wine a night had turned to three, she never sobered up. Everything was chaos and unpredictability. I was on high alert at all times. I was never safe.

I remember simple details of that morning 10 years ago. Standing in the filthy bathroom looking through toothpaste and soap scum at my reflection. I prayed to a God I had forgotten how to believe in that the bruises were big enough, dark enough that I would be believed. I prayed to be forgiven for every rule I was about to break. Talking. Leaving.

She thought I would be gone for the day. It was early. I remember her standing in the garage stained bathrobe, coffee cup filled with wine as the automatic garage door slowly separated us. She had no idea she would never again stand in the same room as me.

I found those kids I dreamed about. Found the family and community that had dominated my fantasies for all those years.  It was a world far more real than anything I could have imagined.

I started writing a year after I got away.

 I met Linda in my first semester of college. My crusty punk-barely housed-baby dyke self sat in the back of her Women’s Studies 101 classroom. Talking about anything gay had gotten me beaten in the hallways of my high school. Linda gave me stories. She introduced me to queer words, trauma words, messy stories that saved my life.  Linda also got me writing. I had no privacy growing up. Putting words to page about what I was thinking, feeling, or experiencing was incomprehensible. Linda made a world safe enough for me to write and convinced me my stories deserved to be told.

Linda would often tell her students a story about a boy walking along the beach picking up starfish and throwing them one by one into the sea.  Partway along the beach he was stopped by a man who asked, why are you doing this?  You’ll never save them all. The boy tossed another starfish into the tide before turning to the man and saying “it mattered to that one.”
I was one of her starfish.

Linda made college safe place for me; she made the women’s studies department of my undergraduate college safe for those of us for whom academics would never be our native tongue. She was the first queer person who talked explicitly about being a survivor. She introduced me to all of my favorite writers, to storytelling as an art form, told me I was an artist and encouraged me to tell my story, she gave me my foundation in facilitating, and gave me the support to facilitate my first workshop.

Two years ago next month Linda lost her war with cancer

In the couple years before that Linda and I hadn’t been in extremely close contact. I had moved to NYC and she was continuing to fight cancer. About a year before her death we got back in touch and began connecting on Facebook of all places. I was so excited to tell her about Kicked Out, a book that without her would never have been possible.  I still have the email saved where she told me “please let me know or send me a special signed copy of your book when it comes out. You are a great storyteller and have powerful and important things to share, never stop speaking your truth… You are doing what you are meant to do, and doing it well.”

Linda died the week I got proofs for the book.

I was never able to send her that signed copy.  

I think of Linda often, especially when I hold space for writers fighting to put memory to page.  The lessons she taught me are always with me, and the foundation for all of my work.  I don’t have a Band-Aid big enough to fix all the pain in our community, and I’m far too broken to be a healer, but Linda’s starfish lesson has never left me. If I can write a story that touches one person, if I can create a space for one person to write when they never believed they could, or never thought they could tell that story I am doing what I meant to do, and it mattered to that one.

I’ve wanted a memorial tattoo for Linda for a long time – a piece that would represent the important role she played in my life, and also to signify the values that I try to bring into all the work that I do.  When I got the news last month that I had been selected as an honorable mention in the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund I knew the time had come.

Last night I sat as steel mixed blood and ink.

I thought about Linda, about stories and storytellers. It wasn’t until I got home and it was pointed out to me that last night coincided with the 10^th anniversary of the last time my mother beat me, of the last night I spent in her house, the eve of my escape.  

I never forget that anniversary, but this year, of all years, somehow I hadn’t made the connection it was coming up. I’m humbled and in awe that I was blessed with such a special intense way of marking a decade of freedom

It mattered to me.