Tag: abuse

Dear Hallmark,

I have two card ideas for you today.

#1 A cartoon drawing of a Calvin-and-Hobbes style father, yelling, angry, eyes bugging. Inside text: Dad, I realized today that I am now older than you were when you were raising me. I’m still so angry, but now I don’t know what to think. I have made my mistakes as well.

#2 A drawing of a bashful puppy with a comical bandage around his fluffy jaw. Inside text: It kills me that you’re afraid of me now.

I’m happy with the first card, but maybe someone at your offices can help me with the second? It doesn’t seem like enough.

I wish there was a card that could fix things.

-Joey Comeau

Please post more of your own art. When you’re famous I’ll be able to think to myself “I wrote her when she was just starting”.

Oh man. What a lovely comment. I don’t generally post the text of my writing, because I am shopping my work to publishers right now and any prior publishing is frowned upon, but here is a link to an audio recording of the first section of my collection, The Orchard, with some weird sound effects. 

Again; thanks so much. I have scant ambitions toward fame, but I do have aspirations to achieving some sort of emotional and intellectual cogency, so this note made my night. 

What do we do about the batterers? This question is an urgent one. You pull them off of one woman, they find another woman. There
aren’t individual solutions to this problem, although every woman’s life saved is a victory of sorts. What I’m trying to say is that escape is always only partial.

Andrea Dworkin, from Life and Death