Unpublished Manuscript Excerpt. Please do not share without approval from Brandon T. Hunter.
“Trauma isn’t just the sadness that comes from being beaten, or neglected, or insulted. That is just one layer of it. Trauma also is mourning the childhood you could have had. The childhood other kids around you had. Instead, you have to pull up your bootstraps and solve the painful puzzle of your life by yourself. What other choice do you have? Nobody else is going to solve it for you.” Stephanie Foo, What My Bones Know.
When I turned thirty, something inside me began asking for shape. Not answers exactly, but understanding. I wanted to define what I had lived through, to make sense of the feelings I carried then and the way those same emotions show up now when I look back. The first five years of my thirties were marked by deep reading and quiet research, an attempt to give language to experiences that once existed only as sensations in my body. I wanted to understand my emotions, how they linger, evolve and sometimes resurface long after the moment has passed.
One word kept returning to me: trauma.
I’ve encountered many definitions of trauma over the years, each one circling the idea from a different angle. But one that has stayed with me comes from Daniel Black, who names it with particular clarity as it relates to the Black community. In Isaac’s Song, he writes: “We file hurt and pain away in dark parts of the soul, never knowing it finds its own way out, disguised as something else altogether. We protect it with silence, but we don’t heal it that way. We simply hand it to the next generation.”
That truth landed hard.
Part of why I stepped back to examine my emotions, who I am, where I come from and how I arrived at this point in my life, is rooted in a refusal. I do not want to pass my pain forward without also passing along the tools to survive it. If the hurt is inherited, then healing must be intentional. I want the next generation to have language, skills and permission to face what I was never taught how to name.
Trauma has layers. Some of them are buried so deeply that you don’t even realize they exist until something brushes against them. Often, you can’t name those layers because you were never given the words. Still, how you respond to trauma matters. You can outgrow it. You can survive it. You can learn from it.
I know this because I have already outgrown so much of mine. And yet, I am still learning how to name what remains without letting it take control. Trauma has a way of circling back, not because it defines you, but because it will always be part of my story. The work, I’ve learned, is not erasing it. The work is learning how to carry it differently.
I look back now and offer forgiveness to people who never had the language to understand the conversations that needed to be had. People who did not understand the impact their words and actions had on a little brown boy who was simply trying to make sense of the world. Those moments became months that shaped the way I learned to survive.
Survival was my first response to trauma. When you think about it, our bodies are built to react in moments of threat, whether it is an injury that sends the body into healing mode or the instinct to pull your hand away the first time you burn yourself on a stove as a child.
When I think about the first time survival truly settled into my bones, it was never just one moment. It was a series of moments that pressed themselves into me and have shaped how I show up every day.
Growing up, I do not remember my father being around. It was not until I was much older that I understood why. The simple answer is that he was in prison. I was never told stories about him. I did not know what he looked like. We did not visit. Yet I remember the day he was released with absolute clarity. I remember it because I had no idea what to expect. I did not know who to look for or whether he even knew my face.
What I remember most about growing up is that, for a time, someone stepped into the space where my father should have been. I remember him clearly. His name was Robert.
I was in fourth grade when he tried to teach me how to drive a stick shift, far too young to be behind the wheel, but excited to be exposed to something new, my feet barely able to reach the pedals. I can still see his hand hovering over the gearshift, hear his voice telling me when to press the clutch, when to ease off, when to try again after the engine stalled. I didn’t understand then that he wasn’t just teaching me how to drive. He was teaching me how to try, how to fail without panic, how to keep going even when things jerked forward too fast or came to an abrupt stop.
He introduced me to things I had never known before. Simple things, but foreign to a child whose world had been small. One of them was seaweed. I remember the exact moment I tasted it, the slick, unfamiliar texture, the saltiness that felt stronger than anything I’d eaten before. I remember it just as vividly coming back up. To this day, that memory sits in my body. I still cannot eat raw seaweed. Even now, decades later, my stomach remembers before my mind does. And yet, somehow, I love sushi. Memory is strange like that, how it can reject one thing and still make room for another.
Robert gave me more than isolated moments. He gave me glimpses of a larger world, one that existed beyond what I could see from where I stood. Those small moments shaped my childhood and carried me toward who I am now. But I know this much: those moments laid the foundation for my earliest understanding that there was more out there. More to see. More to learn. More life waiting beyond the edge of what I knew. That foundation is important to all of this and we will dive deep into later.
Back to the moment I meet my father, that I can remember.
When I finally saw him, he looked like a regular man. I was not sure what I had imagined, but it was not that. I did not know what to say. I did not know anyone at the house that day. It was also the day I learned I had a half-brother. I met him for the first time along with three uncles. I learned they all lived in that house together and that my father would be doing the same.
After meeting him, I began visiting more often. I wanted what a son should be able to want from a father. Yet what I found instead were small moments I tried to stretch into something meaningful. My clearest memory is standing beside him as he built boats out of popsicle sticks. I was amazed that he could do that. These were not simple crafts. They were detailed pieces of art, with tiny structures inside and out. People asked him to make them for display in their homes. He told me that one day he would teach me how to build them, and I held onto that promise. It felt like the connection I had been searching for. It felt like the beginning of something.
Over time, his brothers moved out, and he remained. My mother spent a lot of time at his house even while we still lived with my grandmother. The houses were close enough to walk between. We did not move in right away. We did not move in until my grandmother passed away.
As a kid, there were so many moments when I was bullied at school, in the community, and even by family members. I did not speak up, not because speaking was difficult, but because so many people spoke down to me. Conversations rarely existed. Instead, there was name-calling, teasing, and shame.
The kids in the neighborhood talked about my clothes and my teeth. They called me gay (little did they know, they were right, but the pride that I have now within my gayness is far beyond their bulling). Every insult was wrapped around something I had no control over. They talked about my mom and her job at the car wash. They called me a crack baby. Their words shaped how I saw myself. They gave me language I did not have, language that allowed me to see myself as less than them. I never understood why I was their target. Even now, I still do not know why. I felt alone, which never made sense to me because I had a sister only two years older, and we went to the same schools. Still, I felt invisible. I never had the chance to make a name for myself. I was never picked for games, not even in something as simple as community kickball.
My cousins added to the same narrative I heard from the neighborhood kids. Their words made it even easier to believe the worst things about myself. They went deeper, talking about my bed-wetting, making me feel isolated, and confirming that I did not understand love the way families on television seemed to love each other. They taught me that my worth was no more than what the kids in the community had decided it was.
This bullying became the norm. It became who I believed I was. My survival strategy was silence. Silence kept me from saying anything back. Silence felt like the only option because I did not have the language to defend myself. I did not know that I had a right to. I only knew that it hurt, and the hurt stayed. There was nowhere to turn.
Silence was all I had. It was the only thing that felt safe. I never told an adult, because I did not know what an adult would do to help.
When I look back at the first time I finally spoke up for myself, it still hurts. Because the first person I had to physically defend myself against was the one person I believed should never have been the source of my hurt.
My father.
Moving in with him after my grandmother passed away was not easy. It was a relief in one way because I no longer had to face the kids in the neighborhood who made fun of me. But it was also the first time I had to watch both of my parents struggle with their addictions. What made it worse was the drinking. The drinking always told me that the night would not end well. It told me that sleep was not going to happen.
There is one night I will always remember. I can walk through every moment of it and still see the details clearly. When my dad drank, he sometimes played music very loud. It did not matter what day of the week it was. If he was drinking alone, he played music. Then he would come looking for me or for my mom. My sister was not always there. It did not matter if it was a school night or if my mom had to work early the next morning. She was the only one with a steady job. My dad worked odd jobs with a friend, and sometimes my half brother would come drink with him.
On the night I remember, my mom and I were asleep in the other room when the music started blasting. She got up and tried to get him to turn it down. He would not listen.
He came into our room singing and talking. When he drank, his words were impossible to understand. He called me by the nickname he gave me. I never had nicknames that were not born from bullying, but he called me Skywalker. I wish I could tell the story of where that name came from. Even at thirty-five years old, he still called me that. I hold on to the hope that there was some moment between us that gave me that name, a moment that felt like love.
After asking him to leave over and over, nothing changed. He kept singing. He kept dancing. My mom stood up and tried again to move him closer to the door, and that is when things shifted. He pushed her, hard. Without thinking, I pushed him back, and he pushed me. He started yelling, cursing, and telling us that we needed to leave his house. A house I thought was supposed to be home, even though it never felt like one.
His yelling grew louder, and I remember grabbing the phone and calling 911. That was the first moment I stood up for myself. That call was the first time I chose to fight back.
Everything that came next felt isolating. I remember the blue lights flashing through the windows when the police arrived. My mom went outside to talk to the officers first and told them it was a simple disagreement. She told them her son had called. I did not hear much after that because they stepped off the porch. The officers asked to speak to my dad, and whatever he said made the situation escalate. I heard them tell him to put his hands behind his back, then a series of thuds and noise, as if he had fallen or tried to run. Later I learned he was trying to get away from them. They were trying to get him cuffed. I heard the sound of the taser. I heard my mom screaming his name and begging him to be still.
I was terrified. I do not remember speaking to the officers. I only remember my mom telling me to go to bed and not saying anything else to me. The next morning was silent. Getting ready for school felt like moving through fog. No one asked how I felt. No one said a word. I waited for my aunt to take me to school, and I went through the day as if nothing had happened. When I came home that afternoon, my dad was there.
The only words I remember from him were directed at my mom. He told her she needed to find somewhere for me to go because I had to leave. Those words burned themselves into my memory. I was not like the families on television. I was not like the kids at school who talked about their dads picking them up or teaching them how to play sports. I was him. I was the problem.
A few days passed. Then one morning, my mom told me I was not going to school. I did not know why, but I soon learned through overhearing her phone calls that we were going to court.
My dad had already left the house when it was time to go. He still was not speaking to me. The next time I saw him was in the courtroom. My mom and I walked up the steps and into a space that felt cold and unfamiliar. I had no idea what would happen. When his name was called, my mom told me to come on. He walked to the podium on the right, and we stood at the podium on the left.
The judge spoke. My dad responded. And then came the moment that shaped so much of my life. My mom told the judge it was all a misunderstanding.
I did not understand how any of it could be a misunderstanding. But I went to the one place that always felt safe. I went back into my silence. Silence was the only thing that made sense.
The hearing ended quickly. We left the courthouse. My dad made it home before we did. I remember standing there in that house, unsure of what to do or what to say. I remember feeling wrong. I remember feeling like I was the problem.
All I wanted was to go to sleep that night and wake up for school the next day. Even if that meant being bullied, school meant breakfast and lunch. School meant structure. School meant escape.
And sometimes escape was enough to survive.
Notes to go back add next writing day:
My dad buried his son – I have seen him cry – however nothing has changed and he is on the same track as his son.
I became an adult too early in life
My ADHD later in life served as my survival.
Unpublished Manuscript Excerpt. Please do not share without approval from Brandon T. Hunter.