The List of People and Things That Have Failed to Kill Me

Sometimes artists need to make things for themselves. And that can be incredibly ugly. Yet we still need to create space for it, because "a society is only as free as it allows its artists to be."

I believe deeply in publishing and sharing knowledge — it's one of the key things we're supposed to do as a species. Someone might find this artifact useful, or not. Either way, it's a running tally I keep for myself.

I've lived through some truly unspeakable shit. Unspeakable in that it can't be discussed in polite company, and ineffable — meaning even if I spoke it to you, you couldn't understand. You'd have to live it as me to understand it. All of the worst of the truly unspeakable shit I've survived, I have survived completely and totally alone. This is what made me what I am.

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👤🧠 "Dad." Thank you for being an abusive, absent, drunk, angry, hateful, and verbally poisonous piece of shit.

Thank you for forging $80K of bad debt in my name when I was a minor, you sackless sneaky, short coward. While it's not what I was wanting or hoping for — I wished for an intelligent and creative father who wanted to teach me things and include me — you did teach me exactly the opposite of what to do, so that I can attempt to be that opposite for your grandson, who you will never meet. Thank you for forgetting about me completely and hiding your shame by increasing your global work trips right when I was three years old and needed you the most. Thank you for leaving me — most of the time — completely and totally alone to figure it out and be babysat by public television, commercials and PBS in an empty room. Thank you for burning the solitude into my soul so that it is inextricable from my being and that I never forget that we are on our own — in close proximity, alone. Thank you for showing me — when I accidentally hit you with a block I threw out of excitement that you were finally in the same room with me, and it caught your forehead — with your entire body sighing and then sitting there in silence for several minutes, exactly what you were thinking: "Jesus Christ I fucked my whole life up with this fucking kid I cannot stand." Thank you for leaving that wound wide open forever and never fixing our relationship or reaching out to me even though you had decades to do so. Thank you for making me the hardest bastard that I have ever met. And just as you feared instead of celebrated, I am a greater artist than you could ever hope to be. And I actively move to support and will celebrate with tears in my eyes the day — fast approaching — when my children eclipse me in ability and creativity, you sad, tiny, broken and barely animate little husk. You too, have failed to kill me. You have failed to even slow me down.

👤🧠 Mom. Thank you for being completely out to lunch, for the enabling, for the chaos. For teaching me that the people who are supposed to protect you sometimes can't even protect themselves. Thank you for choosing the wrong side out of fear and teaching me that once someone's will and spirit are truly broken they will align with the worst of the worst rather than speak their truth and even protect their children. You too, have failed to kill me or even slow me down. I will never forget the lesson of what happens once your will is broken, and as a result the only way to break my will is to absolutely destroy me — which everything on this page has continuously failed to do, as will everything that is to come next.

🩸 The sledding ramp. Thank you to the highschoolers who built the ramp on the snowy hill when I was eight — the one with the patch of ice at the bottom that launched me clean over the edge. Thank you for the tailbone I broke that day, and for the pain I carried on and off for the rest of my life despite all the PT and exercises and adjustments anyone could ever prescribe. Thank you for teaching me — at age eight — that pain doesn't ask for a convenient time and that you learn to carry it or it carries you. You too, non-stop lightning tailbone pain, have failed to stop or slow me down. I hike in your face, carrying load.

👤🧠 Cutting off my toxic parents at a young age and being on my own since 17. You taught me that solitude and loneliness are different things, and that the former is a skill while the latter is a choice I stopped making. You too, have failed to kill me.

⚖️👤 Sallie Mae and every soulless, shit-sucking corporation that counter-sued me over debt my parents wrote in my name. It took 17 years to discharge. Resolved at age 34. You taught me that the system will grind you down if you let it, that I would never, ever let it, and that I am strong enough to take on massive soulless corporations — as a child — while teaching myself to code, while working multiple jobs for hourly wages, without a car or any support. Thank you for 17 years of being called a deadbeat by a stranger's heavily accented voice from a call center while I was actively working three jobs. Thank you for 17 years of being threatened by adult lawyers at powerful firms over debt that was not mine, debt I had no legal hand in creating and no clear legal path to escape. Thank you for 17 years of being denied credit, denied apartments, denied the basic financial scaffolding every adult is supposed to have access to, because of fraudulent loans I didn't take out and couldn't discharge. Thank you for the random 3am wake-up calls. Thank you for teaching me to dread the mail — to literally want to burn every envelope before I could even read it — a reflex I haven't fully shaken to this day, still flinching when something arrives that looks official. The likes of you could never break my will or drive to create. You are wholly lower tier than my creative impulses. You too, have failed to kill me. You have failed to even slow me down.

👤🧠 High school math teacher whose dumbass name I gratefully can't even remember now. The only bit of grace I've experienced is marijuana wiping your name from existence. Thank you for pulling me outside of class to tell me I didn't have "the math sense" and to basically give up. As it happens, I naturally see and think in systems and only needed ChatGPT to explain to me what that giant E symbol meant to instantly understand complex formulas like code at a level allowing me to publish novel work on vector database recall accuracy for Pinecone at its peak. So I guess you were also wrong, but thank you also for mirroring the fact that inside you was only a clown with your chosen dress. You were dressed like the Magic School Bus lady. My best hope for you is that you're dead by now so you can't poison any more young minds. You taught me that adults in authority are sometimes profoundly, dangerously wrong. You too, have failed to even slow me down.

🌍 Columbine, and every school shooting after. Thank you for teaching an entire generation that nowhere is safe, starting when we were children. You taught me that America will sacrifice its kids before it sacrifices its guns. You too, have failed to kill me.

🌍 September 11th, 2001. You taught me that the world can change in a morning, and that the response to fear is often more dangerous than the thing we feared. You too, have failed to kill me.

👤⚖️🌍 South Korean hagwon snakes in suits. Thank you for failing to adhere to the contract and attempting to force me to work all weekends — since I flew to your country to work when I graduated over $100K in debt with a philosophy degree during one of the first major recessions and the start of one of the first forever wars. Thank you for pushing me into a shit-covered apartment you refused to clean up after your lead teacher's shitty little dog lived in it. Thank you for trying and failing to deport me for speaking up about the mistreatment. Thank you for illegally withholding wages. Thank you for threatening me and having a physical scrap with me in the apartment lobby before the police arrived, who you tried to bribe into deporting me — because you were missing a finger cut in a very suggestive way. My family too comes from a mafia background and were complete fucking degenerates and criminals. You reminded me that this world is fallen — that heaven and hell coexist in us, and that our collective mistreatment of each other and mental illness is what skews the canvas red and black — while we have all the resources and capabilities necessary to make earth a paradise for everyone. You too, have failed to kill me.

🧠 My own brain. Thank you for making it to age 39 undiagnosed as being autistic — not a little, but a lot, with high masking behavior — and severely ADHD. Every doctor, every teacher, every person who should have caught it and didn't: you taught me that I would have to figure myself out on my own. So I did. You too, have failed to slow me down, but now I understand why I only ever feel like speeding up.

🩸⚖️ Kaiser California and every ER doctor in Berkeley. Thank you for dismissing my afib that I've known about since I was 3 years old - for three years of me telling you to your face I was suffering from chronic arrhythmia that I believed was congenital afib, as ultimately confirmed by a genetic test I had to learn about and pay for on my own because you are all truly fucking incompetent. Thank you for condescending to me about 12 times when I walked myself to the ER while out of sinus rhythm — apparently not everyone can feel every heartbeat or tell you if they're in sinus or not, but I can — and telling me I was just drinking too much. Thank you to Graves' disease for finally revealing what I already knew, after I redlined too hard at tech startups nonstop and did on-call during a divorce. You taught my body follows and is sustained by my will and that I am fury made flesh. Thank you for even further hardening my will. Thank you for finally diagnosing officially what I knew and read about for decades at age 34 — you are truly diagnostic failures. You "healers" have taught me that I can research at a level above most medical students, carry my own first aid kit, and be my own medic. The likes of you could never break my will or drive to create. You are wholly lower tier than my creative impulses. You too, have failed to kill me. You have failed to even slow me down.

🩸 Pneumonia, six times. Thank you for filling my left lung with fluid the last time. You taught me what it sounds like when your own breathing becomes the enemy. Pneumonia, I disrespect you, and that is why I smoked cigarettes on top of you the last time and survived just fine. See you soon, you floppy wet bitch. You too, have failed to kill me.

🩸🧠 Sleep apnea. Undiagnosed, like everything else. Thank you for the night terrors, the paralysis, the constant dreams of suffocating and drowning. Thank you for breaking my own teeth in my jaw as I slept and having to will and shake myself awake each time. You reminded me that I am fury made flesh, even when "asleep". Thank you for also robbing me of rest consistently for decades so that I could face all of these things not only alone but while exhausted, so that I could learn I do not need food, or rest, or support or even water sometimes, and can still muscle through and deliver no matter the situation. You too, have failed to kill me.

🩸🧠 17 years of addiction and hard drinking, reflux issues and searing pain. I finally quit on my own without assistance on my 8th attempt, which has stuck for 6 years and now forever. Thank you for reminding me there is no stronger medicine available outside of myself and for reminding me to return home to myself when things are truly bad, because I am the most capable when it comes to patching myself up and returning myself to the field for the next injury. You too, have failed to kill me. You have failed to even slow me down.

🩸🌍 The five car accidents, none of which were my fault. Thank you to the drunk hit-and-run driver who rear-ended me and my coworker in Hawaii and then fled the scene, for teaching me exactly what it means to share the road with people who don't value your life. Thank you to the driver who brutally rear-ended and nearly killed the woman in the SUV next to me by pushing her through the traffic light into oncoming traffic after failing to stop — inches away from my then-pregnant wife — for yet another reminder I will never forget. The last accident had fatalities. You taught me that being alive is not guaranteed and never was, and that human beings are sloppy and dangerous. You too, have failed to kill me.

🩸🌍 Multiple incidents of road rage — separate from the accidents. You taught me that strangers will try to kill you over a lane change, and that the person in the next lane might be having the worst day of their life. All of you failed to kill me.

🩸 Unsupervised college rugby. Tae kwon do. Getting beat in the head by older kids, and trashy psychopathic neighbor kids wandering into my yard and putting my fingers in a vice grip for fun when I was toddler because my Dad was nowhere to be found. Fistfights in parking lots. The physical scrap in the Korean apartment lobby. Slipping off my bike and landing jaw first on the suburban curb. Passing out from dehydration in the BART, falling limp from 6'3" head first into a metal pole and then the ground — thank you for the memory of waking up with my face on the floor of the train. Every hit I've taken that I didn't ask for and every hit I took because I signed up. Thank you for giving me the feeling of fear before physical combat — cinching the core nerves in my belly around my spine — which I can never forget. Thank you for teaching me how it feels to get rocked directly in the fucking face and continue swinging anyway. Thank you for reminding me that all of us can access primal simian rage when needed, and that all of us have that violence written within us, and that anyone you see in this world is capable of it. All of you also failed to even give me a concussion as confirmed by CAT scans. So you can all get in line to get fucked.

👤🧠 Multiple partners with borderline personality disorder. You taught me that love and destruction can wear the same face, and that I had patterns to break. You too, have failed to kill me or even put a dent in my creative output.

🩸 The RF ablation surgery which I lived in terror of for at least a decade and ultimately had to have — lifting myself onto a 4 inch wide metal slab while doped up with a cocktail of 12 different drugs, spreading my arms out and giving up my body and consciousness in what felt like an Aztec sacrifice as I passed out to endure the 4 hour surgery where they went up my leg, radiated me to map my heart in 3D, and burned my heart in several places isolating my pulmonary nerves completely from my heart — so that I could feel upon waking the burning but also that the arrhythmia had been repaired and wouldn't recur, at least for a couple years until I likely need that pacemaker at a young age. I look forward to getting cut again. Take a ticket and get in line to get fucked. Thank you cocktail of 12 drugs and hours of surgery — you may have temporarily stopped me from being able to urinate, but you could not stop me from getting an erection. You too, have failed to kill me. You have failed to even slow me down.

👤⚖️ Divorcing someone with borderline personality disorder. Thank you to the spouse who concealed ~$90K of earnings and convinced the judge they had no income. We spent longer arguing over zero assets and only debt than we were married. No children. You taught me that the legal system is a weapon, and that I was capable of surviving its worst use again. The likes of you could never break my will or drive to create. You too, have failed to kill me. You have failed to even slow me down.

🌍 The forever wars. You taught me that governments will spend trillions on destruction while telling citizens there's no money for healthcare or education. You too, have failed to kill me.

🌍⚖️ Multiple unprecedented economic crashes. You taught me that the system is rigged, that the people who cause the crashes never suffer from them, and that the rest of us rebuild anyway. You too, have failed to kill me.

🌍🩸 COVID-19. Thank you, plague, for teaching me that humans in groups — especially when frightened — are incredibly dangerous and tribal. But also that most humans, even in dark times, still want to work for the common good and help each other. Both things are true at the same time. You too, have failed to kill me.

🌍 California wildfires requiring evacuation. You taught me that home is a concept, not a location, and that everything you own can disappear in an afternoon. You too, have failed to kill me.

🌍 11 years of Trump. You're still teaching. Thank you for reminding me that the world is so fallen we can elevate the basest, most hollow and degenerate form of humanity above all others while arguing about religion. In case it's unclear, John Lennon's "Imagine" is not fantasy — it's what could truly be. But thank you for reminding me that we make the worst choices and are our own worst enemies. The likes of you could never break my will or drive to create. You are wholly lower tier than my creative impulses. You too, have failed to kill me. You have failed to even slow me down.

⚖️ Being cleaned out financially — for the 12th time. Thank you for teaching me that I could be cleaned out 37 fucking times if necessary. I simply do not care anymore. You could drop me in an empty field naked next to manure piles and I will still rise again and again and again. Fuck you. I look forward to getting cleaned out and rebuilding so many more fucking times. Thank you for teaching me that I am the only unstoppable engine of progress and creativity that I need. When the nukes start flying, I will collect bottlecaps and build yet another new life for myself and my own. You too, have failed to kill me or even stop me. You cannot even slow me down.

Bring your noise, little one.

So, upon reflection, to the universe and its constant enfilade of disasters, I say:

Your boys are dead. They died badly. Next time, send men.