When Your Dad Tries to Kill You

First, I’m going to make it very clear that my biological father, who lives in Canada, is NOT my abuser. My mother, who was very abusive and neglectful, left my biological father sometime before I turned two. I want there to be no confusion. I have met my biological father, and he’s not the “hitting kids” type.

But the man I grew up with is a very different kind of person. He is in fact a convicted child murderer and torturer who tortured an infant to death over a number of days after my family somehow got rid of him.

The man’s name is Michael Augustine Lopez, and defense lawyers trying to cut their teeth in criminal law have been offering free service to try to free him from death row in San Quentin for more years than any of us care to keep counting.

I want to be clear that it is my feeling that killing this man is a positive thing for the world. I am not generally opposed to the death sentence, but I do recognize that it is used in evil ways in order to wrongfully convict and kill many people of color. I can attest that this man has not been wrongfully convicted, on the basis that I have personal experience with him torturing and attempting to murder me while I was under his care.

The wounds accounted for on the baby girl he killed numbered 97, and according to the record of presented evidence, matched many of the wounds he gave me. Same methods. Same tools. Same violence, but with the addition of a sexual element.

Death is a thing I am not afraid of. I am solidly at peace with the idea that I will die, and only hope with all of my heart that I can put the greatest good into the world that I can before I go. I don’t want compensation for that. I don't want to be remembered nor recognized. I don't want ease beyond what could normally be earned. I'm not looking for extra peace nor comfort. I just want to do good things and put, in some way, small or big, love into the world.

I don’t like the way the world is, and how it represents evil so solidly and with such positive affirmation. I don’t believe in forgiving and forgetting inflicting 97 wounds on a child before you let her starve and bleed to death in a locked room. I don’t believe a person who would do that is entitled to the same anti-death defense as somebody who is executed by police based on their race because they had a blown tail light.

It’s not the same. Not even a little.

And you know what? I don’t want Augustine to have to die either. I don’t want a world where children grow up to be this kind of monster. I do care about him, and I do have empathy for any person who is conditioned this way.

But I will say this: I was conditioned this way. My takeaway was to put love into the world. I made a choice. And he could have made the same choice. There does come a time when a person’s choices are their own, and if that person decides to kill children in our society, death for that murderer is in order, righteous, just, and part of loving the world.

I remember when my dad (again, I’m talking about Augustine, and not my biological father) tried to kill me by drowning.

“Watch this!” I yelled, trying to impress him. I swam the length of the pool from one side and then back, all under water, without coming up for breath. I just wanted to show him that I could achieve something, and that I was worthy. I wanted him to be proud. And that’s when he grabbed me by my hair and held me under.

I was already deeply in need of air. And the harder I struggled to surface, the deeper he pushed me under. He was not going to let go. I felt the darkness you feel when you’re just about to pass out, and remembered I was close to the edge of the pool.

I kicked as hard as I could away from the edge with my feet, which freed me from his grip only in that it ripped out a giant patch of hair from my bleeding head. But finally I could surface and breathe, treading water in the center of the pool.

I struggled to stay afloat until I could calm myself and get enough oxygen to stay conscious. Augustine walked around the edge of the pool for what seemed like hours. Hungry for more. He just paced and stared at me like a hyena watching a bleeding gazelle, waiting for me to try to come to the edge again.

I remember the sun setting and he was still there. I remember the sting of the chlorine and how tired my arms were. I remember a spectral rainbow outlining his now silhouetted head, and how that was somehow beautiful, even after what he had done, and even though I knew he still wanted to kill me.

You love them. But they don't love you. You're just a meal.

Physical abuse isn’t about the physical pain. You get over that soon enough. I honestly don’t remember much of it really hurting. I remember pretending it hurt, so that it would stop. But I was kind of a tough kid, not very breakable. Which maybe is why he targeted me, rather than targeting my older brother, who also abused me. Or maybe it was my crossed eye, or the fact that I looked back at him like he was MY prey on occasion.

But it’s not the sting from the punch. It’s the fact that they punched you at all. The fact that hitting you means they desired to hit you. That’s what hurts. The intent.

I mean sure, I remember a couple times where the physical torture was intense enough to break even me, but for the most part, I remember the intent hurting more.

It was the fact that I knew I was hated by this person who was supposed to be my dad.

When your dad tries to kill you, you believe you should be dead. How else can I put that? It’s a sort of existential challenge.

Physically, I don't care that I lost a patch of hair, or was drowned. I care that nobody helped me FOR HOURS in that pool after this all happened in broad daylight. I care that a person I wanted to call dad just wanted me to not exist. I care that I didn't feel worthy of love, respect, or even common decency. I care that people see me as a monster, even today, because I was abused and talk about it openly.

They look at me and talk about me like I'll hurt my kids, or maybe their kids, or maybe I'll murder them if they say something I don't agree with. That hurts.

Nothing is further from my way than intentionally harming people.

You know, most of us don’t survive. Us kids who parents try to kill; A lot of us don't live to tell the tale.

That’s why you don’t hear too many stories like mine. Kids whose parents try to kill them don’t often choose to keep living. Suicide follows, often in teens or early adulthood.

It isn’t because they can’t take being abused. They’re not weak. Most of them become fairly resilient.

It’s because of a deep belief that they SHOULD be dead.

Most of us don't survive, even after we survive. Because that parent is like God to us. They have decreed our death, and we feel like that is correct, because when all is said and done, we want to make them happy.

That's the heartbreaking thing about innocence.

After everything they do to break, and harm, and pervert, and corrupt, and even kill us, we just want to see smiles on their faces.

We owe it to ourselves, and to the world, to move beyond this innocence, and to not strive to make them proud or to do “right” by them.

Don’t make them proud. Make YOU proud. Make the choices they did not. Spare and save and protect and love the innocent, so that they will wish to do the same. And damn the rest.

Love one another,

Dad