Since the day I was born, I was a daddy’s boy. My mother used to tell me that every time she cradled me, attempted to console me, I would hit the roof like some demented child out of the “Exorcist.” And despite all of her efforts, there was always only one way to cure me—dad.

My father used to say, “We are our choices.” Every seemingly innocuous decision is a chisel carving, shaping us into who we are, who we will become. We all have our rough edges, including my father, who had a longer relationship with cigarettes than he did with my mother, and flirting with the devil’s nectar more than he should. He had never laid a finger on me other than to comb his hands through my bushy hair, or when we wrestled.

The first time we wrestled was when I turned eight. What matters is I lost. Every time. From what I can remember, my father wasn’t a big man. What he lacked in muscle and size he made up for with hair. Even when I played dirty and took a hard yank of his arm hair, he would just laugh and throw me down. I loved that laugh. We would wrestle for hours, usually calling it quits once I started crying. I hated to lose. He always told me not to cry—that men don’t cry. The only thing worse than losing to him, was finding out I would never get the chance to beat him. Because one day, he just... left. And that’s when the real wrestling started. With the gaping hole he left behind, a hole so big I could shove my whole life into it and still have room for the guilt, the anger, the questions I’ll never get to ask. I wonder if he cried.

Notes / Thoughts

It’s about surviving.

“We are our choices.” — Jean-Paul Sartre

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering. Friedrich Nietzsche

read Nietzsche while in juvie

“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

If a little boy is abused and no one is around, did it happen?

Surviving was one thing that I was confident about. After losing my father when I was just a boy of eight, I was left

I remember my dad used to say, ““

Abusive stepfather

Moved around a lot

That why started Muay Thai

It didn’t start out abusive. He used to take me to

Like a cancer tumor started out small then got out of hand

I didn’t even know what the words child abuse meant. All I knew was that when I saw him, there would be pain. I grew to love that pain, crave it.

The Whodunit Diaries