It Could Be So Much Better Than This

Until the lion tells the story, the hunter will always be the hero.

~African Proverb

When I was a teenager my dad used to like to walk down the street with his arm draped over my shoulder, imagining that men walking by thought we were a couple. My dad was forty-five when I was born, twenty years older than my mother - so by the time I was a teenager, this man was pushing sixty.

Let’s move past the absolute nausea of a man getting off on the idea that other men would mistake his daughter for someone he was having sex with, because I haven’t eaten yet and maybe you haven’t, either - and let’s try to get past the fact that he would say these things out loud:

“Look at all these men walking by, wondering how that old coot got himself such a hot young thing…”

The part I want you to know is that I would go to a place inside myself where no one could find me and I could not really find myself, either.

I’d still see the city streets going by, I’d hear the noise, I wouldn’t lose pace with my dad - who was much taller and not a patient man - but I was no longer really there. I didn’t have words for what I was feeling in those moments - or if I did, I knew I wasn’t allowed to express rage - so I cut myself off from it. I cut myself off from joy, too, because that’s how it works.

I’d get migraines instead, or I wouldn’t eat because at least that was something I could control. I’d dance on my toes in the ballet studio until they bled, day after day, spinning and spinning and trying to clear my head. Pain I inflicted on myself was better than pain I couldn’t see coming. Not that one prevented the other, but in retrospect maybe I thought I was building up a tolerance. Making myself impervious.

I’d lose myself in books, which is probably how I’m still here.

That place inside myself where I was lost to the world - but also just lost - became familiar. I went there when my mother drank and came after me in a rage, or when she said something to me that was cutthroat, even though she was totally sober. I’ve never opened huge doors that I came upon in a magical forest - only to find stairs that went down further than it seems possible stairs could go. But I know what it feels like to exist in a space like that, cut off from everything, waiting until it’s safe to head back into your body. It feels like nothing, but at least no one can hurt you there.

Photo by Jonny Gios on Unsplash

It didn’t occur to my dad that these were not normal things to think, which is why it didn’t occur to him not to say them out loud. He never stopped, not until after I had my son and my dad came to visit. By then I was thirty-six and living in Los Angeles. I didn’t love it when my dad came to town, but it only happened a couple times a year, and he only came for the weekend. He’d stay at a motel nearby. He liked to go to the Promenade and walk to Barnes and Noble.

We were in an elevator at the Santa Monica Mall (the old one that doesn’t exist anymore) and I had my son in the Ergo, he was about seven months old. We were in the elevator with a young couple and the woman was asking me how old my baby was, and cooing over him.

We got to the ground floor and waved goodbye as we headed in different directions. As we started walking up the block, my dad turned and said, “Do you think they were wondering, ‘How did that old coot -’” and I understood what it felt like to have your blood boil, instantly. “No, Dad, I do NOT think they were thinking that. They were looking at you and knowing you were the Grandpa because it is one hundred percent fucking obvious!” Then my dad - eighty-one at the time if you’re wondering - looked chagrined because he knew how to play the victim like no one’s business.

It took me thirty-six years and one baby to find my voice. Maybe it took having a baby of my own to realize how much you want to protect and nurture them - not treat them like objects to feed your twisted ego. Maybe it’s a good reminder that “being a dad” doesn’t magically make you a wonderful person, or someone who is somehow deserving of reverence and respect. Some dads yes, some dads, no. Just like all people.

Sometimes things happen when you’re twelve or thirteen or fourteen and you don’t have words for them at the time. It’s one of the reasons I get so furious when I see people leave shitty comments about the Epstein survivors, or why I feel so devastated when any survivor of assault comes forward and isn’t believed - because I went through that, too. That’s another story for another time, having nothing to do with my dad.

It’s a strange thing to try to figure out your place in the world as a girl. I’m sure it doesn’t help to have a dad who objectifies women and objectifies you, but even without that, it isn’t easy. It’s why it hurts like hell to watch women and girls losing rights our mothers and grandmothers fought for us to have. I think people believe we can take our rights for granted because they don’t realize what a short amount of time we’ve had them, or how hard-won they were.

Maybe you know this, but women could not attend Yale or Princeton until 1969 (I wasn’t born yet), Brown University until 1971 (they year I was born), Dartmouth until 1972, and Columbia University until 1983 (I was twelve). Women were not allowed to run the Boston Marathon until 1972 (I was one). We could not have our own credit cards or bank accounts until 1974 (I was three). We could be fired from a job for being pregnant until 1978 (I was seven).

Single mothers could be turned away by landlords until 1988 (I was seventeen). Women were not allowed to wear pants on the Senate floor until 1993 (I was twenty-two). It became illegal to rape your wife in 1994 (I was twenty-three).

Prior to 1994, a husband could demand sex from his wife, and if she wasn’t feeling well, or wasn’t in the mood, or didn’t want to because he was being unkind or violent or any number of things - he could overpower her and take what he wanted, because legally she was viewed as his property. I’d graduated from college and was already out in the world for a couple of years by then.

The Equal Rights Amendment is still not ratified in the United States Constitution and last I checked it was 2025. I’m fifty-four.

People who casually talk about “leaving it to the states” amaze me. Why is it okay with you that your rights change every time you cross state lines, but your brother’s rights don’t? Your father’s, son’s, uncle’s…their rights remain the same. The gender pay gap is widening by the way, so if you and your brother do the same job and you do it just as well as he does, you get eighty cents for every dollar he makes. Why? Things are going in the wrong direction, and we have an administration actively trying to make it harder for women to vote.

This week the POTUS said crime in Washington D.C. would have been crushed completely by his unconstitutional use of the National Guard but, “Things that take place in the home they call crime…If a man has a little fight with the wife…They say this is a crime.” On average, three women each day are killed by their domestic partners in the United States, but by all means, make light of it.

The Secretary of Defense - who I guess is now the Secretary of War - would be happy if men did the voting for the household. If these men have their way, women's rights will be rolled back to where they were in the 50s in the time it takes to make your own sourdough starter. That’s how they get you. You’re making sourdough, thinking this is nice, and then bam, you have no fucking rights.

I’m tired of this man, but I’ve probably known him longer than you. I was born and raised in New York City so I knew who he was back in the eighties. How empty and insecure must you feel to want to put your fake name in tacky gold block letters across one of the most beautiful skylines in the world? He’s been trying to buy his way into the Billionaire’s Club forever (he finally got there, but it’s still not enough because it never is), just like he’s been a racist forever, just like he’s treated girls and women like objects forever. He didn’t get the love he needed from his dad, and we’re all paying for it because a lot of people fell for the con. Still are.

Sometimes I wish I was a straight, white, male yoga teacher who could spout off about non-attachment and choosing what to focus on - how your thoughts create your reality and it’s really up to you how life feels - because that must be nice. I mean, I can quiet my mind for as long as a meditation lasts, as long as a yoga practice lasts, as long as I decide to focus on joy for a little while so I don’t fall into a puddle of despair, but I can’t do it for days on end.

I live in a community, after all. I live on a planet, too. And deciding not to focus on painful or difficult issues so you can enjoy your cold plunge and kombucha isn’t what yoga is about. The idea is to face reality as it is, and also to care about it when people are suffering - and try to help.

It must be nice to be so detached from reality and so protected from harm. I will never know how that feels, and neither will anyone else who is not a straight, white, upwardly mobile man who doesn’t really care about anyone else in this country. Well, that’s not true. There are a lot of people going about their lives like everything is cool, women, too. They’re people with a lot of money who have not really been touched by any of this yet, and don’t spend a lot of time worrying about other people.

The truth is, I’d never want to be like them, but I miss feeling like I don’t have to be worried so much of the time. I know a lot of us feel that way. I’d love to wake up and just have a day. Go to the beach, dig my toes in the sand, work on my book edits, walk the dog, call a friend, plan a trip. So what if our government is on fire! So what if our president thinks the Constitution is just a piece of paper he can ignore and Congress lets him! There’s a sale at Vuori!

Instead I’m wondering if a friend, someone who has been “trying to do it the right way” for years, is going to be okay now that the six Supreme Court justices appointed by a five-time-draft-dodging-adjudicated-rapist have decided “roving immigration patrols” (aka racial profiling/denying people due process/masked men throwing people into the back of unmarked vans)…somehow do not violate their Fourth Amendment rights.

Because of the “Big, Beautiful Bill” which they are desperately trying to rebrand as the “Working Families Tax Cut Bill” (Working Families = Billionaire Families), I’m wondering how or if I’m going to be able to afford health insurance in January. I pay for private health insurance through the Affordable Care Act because I own my own business. Up until now thanks to Obama and also Biden-era tax breaks, I’ve been getting insurance for $350/month. If I want to maintain the same coverage I have in January, it will cost me almost $2k/month. That is not doable. I have two kids, one in college, one not far behind.

I can’t focus on it right now, but I’m not at the right age to go without health insurance. I need to be able to get mammograms and skin cancer screenings and all the normal things you need to do. That should not be a thing I’m worrying about in a developed country in 2025, that is pathetic and embarrassing - not for me, for this country - but I didn’t vote for this. I’m just dealing with the repercussions. If you voted for it, thanks a lot. It all has real-world implications for lots of people. I feel pretty certain everyone is going to feel the repercussions eventually.

I genuinely don’t know what we’re going to do here. Only last week I was writing about the school shooting in Minneapolis at Annunciation Catholic School and Church. I was talking about all the many ways the Republican party has blocked sane gun control legislation at both the state and federal levels for decades. How disheartening it is and how much rage and despair I feel and have felt as a mother with two school-age children in this mess.

I was talking about this administration and how it has cut $2 billion in funding for mental health initiatives and support for schools so they can hire psychologists and other mental health experts to be on campus. And then as I was writing this essay - the one you’re reading - Charlie Kirk was shot and killed while he spoke at Utah Valley University. He was doing one of his “Prove Me Wrong” events, where he’d go to college campuses and “debate” students on various issues.

He was talking about mass shootings when he was shot.

“Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?” an audience member asked.

Kirk responded: “Too many.”

The questioner followed up: “Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?”

“Counting or not counting gang violence?” Kirk asked.

The answer is we’ve had about 4,400 mass shootings over the last ten years, and the percentage of shooters who have identified as transgender is 0.1%

Charlie Kirk was a staunch proponent of the 2nd Amendment, and I’m sure you’ve seen this quote from a talk he gave at a Turning Point USA event in 2023:

“I think it's worth it. I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.”

Which is why I had to walk away from my phone and my laptop and everything else when I happened to see someone I know post that she was “shocked and saddened” by the shooting of Kirk. This is someone who has never posted about gun violence or about school shootings, but apparently yesterday was the day.

It is always horrific when someone dies due to gun violence. It’s why I’ve been talking about it for years, writing emails, protesting, donating, trying to have meaningful conversations with people. Because we have a serious problem in this country and it is uniquely ours. It’s horrendous to see children getting shot down at school every week, and it’s incomprehensible that we don’t fix it.

I guess that was just the thing that put me over the edge. Seeing someone I know expressing despair over Charlie Kirk, when she’s never said a thing about all the children who’ve lost their lives. I don’t understand it. Then I saw a ton of posts just like hers. And there was another school shooting yesterday, in Colorado, at roughly the same time.

I wrote something succinct that encapsulated my feelings, and a man got in my comments and said “Stfu nut job pro abortion psycho” which was wildly off-topic since I hadn’t said a word about abortion, and also, I am not “pro-abortion” I am pro-choice, I am pro respecting women and trusting them to make decisions about their own bodies. I am pro PTO and affordable childcare and healthcare and a whole bunch of things I didn’t bother to say to him. I just blocked him.

I went to buy my neighbor some groceries. He’s elderly and he lives alone, and it gave me a task I could go and complete while my head was spinning, and, funnily enough, I try to do things to make the world a little bit better instead of attacking people on the internet. It’s one of those radical leftist quirks I guess.

By the time I got back, there were more outrageous things happening, things like the POTUS saying the shooting was because of radical leftist lunatics, and Nancy Mace saying she was devastated by the death of Charlie Kirk - and Democrats had blood on their hands. Even though we don’t know who the shooter is, or anything about them because they are still at large.

When a journalist asked if that meant Republicans had blood on their hands because Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark and their dog Gilbert were shot dead in their doorway by a crazed MAGA Trump supporter, Nancy Mace made a lot of throat noises and looked flabbergasted. I wish he would have followed up and asked her about Representative John Hoffman, his wife Yvette, and their daughter Hope, because the shooter went to their house first and tried to kill them, too, but they survived. He also had 45 more Democrats on a “kill list” in his car. He was a dad, too. Still is.

No flags at half-staff for the Hortmans, in fact the president didn’t even call the governor to offer his condolences. Instead he made fun of the governor. Because the governor happened to be Tim Walz, and the president is a petty, petty man. He didn’t call the Hortmans’ grown children, either.

But he called Charlie Kirk a legend and a hero and an incredible human being, and ordered flags across the country to be flown at half-staff, and placed blame for the death squarely at the feet of the Democrats even though as of this writing there is still no suspect, no motive, nothing:

“For years those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals,” said President Donald Trump in a taped address posted to his Truth Social account. “This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in the country today.”

How presidential. How calming. Makes me think of January 6th.

I find it so ironic that the people up in arms about everyone being allowed to speak are supporting an administration who told foreign nationals to watch what they say about Charlie Kirk this morning.

The thing is, no one needs to say anything. He made his views clear on so many subjects. Here are a couple:

Civil rights

At a December 2023 political conference hosted by his Turning Points USA group, Wired magazine reported that Kirk decried not only Martin Luther King Jr., calling the civil rights leader "awful" and "not a good person," but also the Civil Rights Act of 1965 that outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, colour, religion, sex and national origin, and prohibited segregation.

"I have a very, very radical view on this, but I can defend it, and I've thought about it," Kirk said. "We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s."

Kirk argued the statute had brought about what he said was a "permanent" bureaucracy meant to promote diversity, equity and inclusion.

Abortion

Last year, for the social media program Surrounded, Kirk faced off against 25 liberal college students to defend his viewpoints, which included the belief that abortion is murder and should be illegal, including in cases of rape.

"It is a growing consensus in the pro-life world that abortion is never medically necessary," he told one female student, who then asked, if someone raped his hypothetical 10-year-old daughter, would he want the child to be born.

"The answer is, yes, the baby would be delivered," he said.

I don’t know if you understand what a ten-year-old girl looks like. Or how much I’m filled with dread that any little girl could have a father who would decide that after she’d been raped, the next thing that was going to happen to her tiny body, was that she was going to bring a baby to term and deliver it.

He also told a fourteen-year-old girl who said she had aspirations to be a political journalist that if she wanted to go to college, she should go to get an MRS degree. As in Mrs. As in, go to find a husband, don’t bother trying to fill your pretty little head with knowledge. He believed women should prioritize being a wife and mother over careers if they worked outside the home, that birth control made women “angry and bitter” and that females over thirty weren’t “attractive in the dating pool.”

He said Ketanji Brown Jackson, Michelle Obama, Joy-Ann Reid and Sheila Jackson Lee were “Affirmative Action” hires who did not have the brainpower to be taken seriously and had stolen slots from white people. That doesn’t even sound possible, I know, but he said it. Right out loud, in broad daylight. If you need more, we aren’t going to be friends, but here you go.

And our president calls him a “good American” and a legend. Do with all of that whatever you will. If that’s your definition of a good person, we have very different definitions.

The party that blocks gun control legislation and offers nothing more than “thoughts and prayers” now follows their leader once again and parrots his talking points. The violence is because of radical left lunatics? Liberals are at war with Conservatives? They - the party of “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” - are asking, “how much political violence are we going to tolerate?” This was an act of gun violence in a red state with some of the most lax gun laws in the country: 18-20 year-olds can open carry in Utah, and once they turn 21 they don’t even need a permit.

It’s like a man, walking down the street with his daughter, hoping other men will think they’re a couple, and then telling everyone it’s his daughter’s fault they aren’t close. It does not work like that.

A man died yesterday. He was a father, yes. He had his one wild and precious life and he chose to spend it spreading racism, misogyny and bigotry. He made a lot of money doing that, and he helped to create the great divide we find ourselves dealing with right now. I didn’t agree with him on anything, but I think the way he died is so pointless and violent and horrible. I feel very sad for his children, the way I always feel sad for the children of terrible men. I guess to him it was worth it. I’ll never understand that.

My heart hurts for all of us who have kids in this mess and say silent prayers over their heads when we kiss them goodbye in the morning - even if the prayer is just - please let them come home. This is a ridiculous way to live and an unforgivable way for our kids to die.

It’s enough to make you want to find a set of doors in a magical forest somewhere, with a staircase that goes down further than you’d imagine a staircase could go. A place where you could gather your friends and neighbors, where you could keep everyone safe until the danger passes. The friends who cannot fathom why we would choose all this death and destruction when it does not have to be like this. It could be so simple and so beautiful. It breaks my heart.

I wish I knew where the doors were, friends. These people seem determined to go to war. I want none of it.

It’s 9/11. Sending love to those who were in NYC that morning, to those we lost, to those who will always be mourning, and to those of us who will always feel this day in our bones. I was really hoping the world would be better than this.

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