SHE DOES NOT IN ANY WAY CARE ABOUT WHO GETS HURT

One night, she emailed the kids directly. The house was dark. Qiet. I wanted them to sleep. When they do not sleep, the next day, their bodies and brains literally torture them. I used to wonder why they were so cranky. Now, I know.

They read their email immediately. Because they are afraid. It is their default.

Some had parents in prison. Those kids were always looking over their shoulders for the day that would arrive that their parents (who they testified against) would find them. And there are released parents who have done exactly that. Contrary to the sterotype, these are not stupid people. They’re just deranged.

     I have greeted them on my front steps with a gun.

     “We’re taking our kid. He belongs to us.”

     “Back off.”

     The writer who directly email the kids I was sworn to protect, does not undertand the term: Back off.

     Back off.

     She insists that she is continuing to write something (I have no idea what form this project is taking, and I do not care). That she is still out there attempting to characterize (she claims she isn’t doing this but you can’t write about me with writing about them, and what you end up with is obscene), about kids she does not know, kids who have faced the dragons of trauma, something they will not recover from, trauma can cause real brain damage, and she has intruded into the fragile nature of our existence. Even if we all came over for coffee, that does not mean you know shit about them. 

All the red flags popped up in one night a paranoia.

What she did was hurtful.

These kids remember things. They remember that I approved of her as writer of the project.  She went around me to communicate and manipuate boys already living at the edge. She claimed to them that I approved of her invasive focus. I did not and I do not approve. Not of her being the writer. Not of any invasive questions she would interrogate. But she does not relent. She demanded that they communicate with her.

Because she doesn’t get it, and doesn’t care.

They are vulnerable.

There are no guarantees she will not identify them even inadvertantly. And she has insisted that I participate.

I have tried and tried and tried to explain to her I will have NOTHING TO DO WHATSOEVER with this project. I do not want to touch it, see it, know about it, read it, comment on it, I will denounce it, and I consider this to be a consequential betrayal.

She emailed me again today. I have told her NO so many times, it just PISSES ME OFF. She will not relent. She doesn’t understand because she does not want to. It’s a writing project to her. I will not write another angry email denouncing this project. Burn it. Shred it. Eat it.

She doesn’t know what she is doing.

She puts kids who have been abused enough in the inevitable reaching for the grab bags they left behind in another life, and they can change their brain chemistry at will. I have obscured the photograph of the skinny boy in the reproduction of a piece I commented on  in the New York Times. You cannot know him. You cannot have any access to his hurt, his pain, his coflicted grief  over how he, himself, has survived because that is what it’s about. It’s not about writing. Write about all the fuck you want. But leave me OUT of it. Fuck abuse. What this writer is doing is abuse. As hard as I tried, I could not entirely obscure the bruises around his neck and arms. I do not think they make much of an impression as people look at the photograph. It’s just not in the initial focus of the human eye. I could obscure the cigarette burns. You do not know him. Someone is following them, and they use the term following as adults who follow them in ways not confined to the act of walking around one’s place. She has no place with us. No permissions.  Trick’s want this boy’s asshole, too. Do you have any idea how emboldened tricks can be. Because they have the power in this patriarchal culture to get exactly what they want with no complicity whatsoever. No impunity. No consequences.

Those red flags keep popping up with her abusive intransigence. She owns no territory that includes us. She totally ingores my distress at what she consciously is doing. She revels in that distress. I will not explain, explain, explain. I do not have to and I won’t.

These kids have moved into placements where they cannot be located. But I have said that before.

Would you keep so-called friends around who would insist that they will betray you, and furthermore, they want you involved to facilitate the betrayal.

No. You would not.

I obscure the kids I work with. You do not know them. You cannot locate them. I will not relent. I do not trust anyone.

I need some time to cool off again.

It’s been warm this winter in the South. It has allowed me to visit (masked) many friends. I am their friend. They have to figure it all out – life – without holding my hand. Their own two feet. They’re ready, They can do this. But if I come to them with the news that this writer is doing what she does,  in her presumptuous, nosy, and intrusive 

modus operandi, it’s like going backwards. There is NO ONE I am aware of who lives in the past. She insists I explain, explain, explain. I owe her nothing. I will not explain anything to her because it is none of her fucking business. I am done asking her to forget about exploiting us. I am TIRED of it. Time and time again. Put the project in the garbage. I will NOT so much as look at it.

Cease and desist. Cease and desist.

Back off.