might be bloody and famished, she will make it to that highway.
Adults think, “Oh my God, but she’s a baby, she’s twelve. She would die in those woods out there alone.”
Twelve is not a baby.
Little girls are not delicate, new green ferns. They can be starved, beaten, raped, and beaten some more and not only survive this, but survive it and become black belts in anyone of the martial arts so that if somebody tries again to fuck with them, the little girl, larger now, can kill them with either hand.
All children should be loved, protected, nurtured—emotionally and intellectually—respected, and never, under any circumstances, underestimated.
Especially, most essentially, by themselves.
ONCE, A YOUNG MAN told me that he didn’t have a mother, she was long gone. And his father was a drunk, volatile, and beastly.
He told me he was gay.
And he was worried that his father wouldn’t accept him.
He spoke at some length about why he suspected his father would not accept a gay son.
Then he asked me, what should he do?
I told him the truth about parents, one I myself had learned many years ago.
If you have one parent who loves you, even if they can’t buy you clothes, they’re so poor and they make all kinds ofmistakes and maybe sometimes they even give you awful advice, but never for one moment do you doubt their love for you—if you have this, you have incredibly good fortune.
If you have two parents who love you? You have won life’s Lotto.
If you do not have parents, or if the parents you have are so broken and so, frankly, terrible that they are no improvement over nothing, this is fine.
It’s not ideal because it’s harder without adults who love you more than they love themselves. But harder is just harder, that’s all.
I told the young man what I myself had learned when I was even younger than him: parents are a luxury.
I also told him something I did not know at the time: people can change. Parents can change, friends can change, you can change.
While it’s true that you cannot change another person, it is also true that you can do or say or be something that inspires them to make the change within themselves.
I told him that if his father rejected him he should accept this rejection for the terrible and painful and infuriating and devastating blow that it is. He should rage and wail and grieve.
And then move clean on forward.
I said, “You can’t ever look back and point your finger at this man and blame him for a single thing, not even those things that are his fault. Any damage that’s been done, you have to fix yourself because it needs fixing and there is nobody else to do the work. Blame may well be justified but it’s not going to move you forward in your life. So don’t cling to him after he’s taken himself away. There simply isn’t that much time in life to waste.”
IV
Once you have moved forward, away from the point of assault, the assault slides into the past and becomes a casualty of time’s arrow.
Time moves only forward, never back.
We look forward to a moment and then it arrives and an instant later it is gone. Like something on the surface of a river that we reached for but did not touch in time and it carried on, away.
You cannot be a prisoner of your past against your will. Because you can only live in the past inside your mind.
H OW TO R EMAIN U NHEALED
I
W HEN I WAS THIRTY-TWO , somebody I loved died on a plastic-covered twin mattress at a Manhattan hospital.
His death was not unexpected and I had prepared myself years in advance, as though studying for a degree. When he died, I was as stunned as if he had been killed by a grand piano falling from the top of a building. I was fully unprepared.
I did not know what to do with my physical self. I could not accept his death at first. It took me about a year to stop thinking, madly, I might somehow meet him in my sleep. Once I finally believed he was gone, I began the next stage:
Adults think, “Oh my God, but she’s a baby, she’s twelve. She would die in those woods out there alone.”
Twelve is not a baby.
Little girls are not delicate, new green ferns. They can be starved, beaten, raped, and beaten some more and not only survive this, but survive it and become black belts in anyone of the martial arts so that if somebody tries again to fuck with them, the little girl, larger now, can kill them with either hand.
All children should be loved, protected, nurtured—emotionally and intellectually—respected, and never, under any circumstances, underestimated.
Especially, most essentially, by themselves.
ONCE, A YOUNG MAN told me that he didn’t have a mother, she was long gone. And his father was a drunk, volatile, and beastly.
He told me he was gay.
And he was worried that his father wouldn’t accept him.
He spoke at some length about why he suspected his father would not accept a gay son.
Then he asked me, what should he do?
I told him the truth about parents, one I myself had learned many years ago.
If you have one parent who loves you, even if they can’t buy you clothes, they’re so poor and they make all kinds ofmistakes and maybe sometimes they even give you awful advice, but never for one moment do you doubt their love for you—if you have this, you have incredibly good fortune.
If you have two parents who love you? You have won life’s Lotto.
If you do not have parents, or if the parents you have are so broken and so, frankly, terrible that they are no improvement over nothing, this is fine.
It’s not ideal because it’s harder without adults who love you more than they love themselves. But harder is just harder, that’s all.
I told the young man what I myself had learned when I was even younger than him: parents are a luxury.
I also told him something I did not know at the time: people can change. Parents can change, friends can change, you can change.
While it’s true that you cannot change another person, it is also true that you can do or say or be something that inspires them to make the change within themselves.
I told him that if his father rejected him he should accept this rejection for the terrible and painful and infuriating and devastating blow that it is. He should rage and wail and grieve.
And then move clean on forward.
I said, “You can’t ever look back and point your finger at this man and blame him for a single thing, not even those things that are his fault. Any damage that’s been done, you have to fix yourself because it needs fixing and there is nobody else to do the work. Blame may well be justified but it’s not going to move you forward in your life. So don’t cling to him after he’s taken himself away. There simply isn’t that much time in life to waste.”
IV
Once you have moved forward, away from the point of assault, the assault slides into the past and becomes a casualty of time’s arrow.
Time moves only forward, never back.
We look forward to a moment and then it arrives and an instant later it is gone. Like something on the surface of a river that we reached for but did not touch in time and it carried on, away.
You cannot be a prisoner of your past against your will. Because you can only live in the past inside your mind.
H OW TO R EMAIN U NHEALED
I
W HEN I WAS THIRTY-TWO , somebody I loved died on a plastic-covered twin mattress at a Manhattan hospital.
His death was not unexpected and I had prepared myself years in advance, as though studying for a degree. When he died, I was as stunned as if he had been killed by a grand piano falling from the top of a building. I was fully unprepared.
I did not know what to do with my physical self. I could not accept his death at first. It took me about a year to stop thinking, madly, I might somehow meet him in my sleep. Once I finally believed he was gone, I began the next stage:
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