I’m back in San Rafael.

The light is the same—the clean California light that makes buildings look provisional and lives look orderly. Ten years ago, I lived here before everything broke open. I had a good apartment in the Rafael Square apartments, a car, routines. I remember the quiet confidence of that time: the sense that my life was finally aligned, that I was building something real.

I was working on meta objects, sketching architectures, thinking about scale and funding and what it would mean to bring an idea fully into the world. I believed I was scaffolding a future.

Standing here now, I can see that scaffolding for what it was.

A lie.

Not because the work lacked intelligence or seriousness—it didn’t. But because the system it was meant to plug into was already compromised, already dependent on exploitation and silence. I was building something elegant inside a structure that was never designed to be just, never designed to protect women, never designed to tell the truth.

I didn’t know it then.
I know it now.

I left San Rafael believing in progress. I returned after kidnapping, torture, theft, and years of believing in something much harder: truth without illusion.

Coming back is disorienting. Memory overlays itself on the present. I can still see the woman I was—competent, hopeful, convinced that intelligence and work would be enough.

I don’t feel contempt for her.
I feel tenderness.

She didn’t know how expensive truth would be.

Everything I owned was taken from me. My money, my safety, my home, my body, my time. I have lived starving. I have been homeless. I have suffered in ways polite society prefers to label “unfortunate” rather than criminal.

But here is the thing people don’t expect me to say:

I am okay.

Not because any of that was acceptable—it wasn’t. Not because suffering ennobles. I am okay because I know, with absolute clarity, what my life is for.

I am exposing what men do to women. Not metaphorically. Not academically. Practically. Relentlessly.

I am naming systems that depend on silence. I am forcing attention onto violence that is normalized, bureaucratized, excused.

I am fighting for women and children—not as symbols, but as lives treated as disposable every single day.

There is no more meaningful way to spend a life.

And I refuse—absolutely refuse—to cede this country to disgusting, pathetic old men fighting over their female slaves. I refuse to concede America to men who treat women’s bodies as property and women’s labor as fuel. I refuse to surrender this country to those who hollow it out while draping themselves in its symbols.

They do not get America.

I believe in this country too much to hand it over to them.

I believe in the principles America was founded on—even though they were betrayed early and often. I believe in equal justice under law, in liberty, in human dignity, in a nation accountable to its people rather than owned by power.

I believe America can still be what it claimed to be—but only with a massive course correction.

Not rhetoric.
Not branding.
Not performance.

Real structural change.
Real enforcement.
Real consequences.

We need to make this country actually do what it says it does.

When I understood how far this went—how systemic the violence was, how many women were still trapped—I did what Americans are told to do. I went to the highest levels of power I could reach.

I went to the Chief of Staff for President Biden’s house. There, I spoke at length with one of his men, a man named Peter, and with Secret Service officers. For roughly three hours, I told them everything: what happened to me in Maine, how it happened, how the system worked, and that other women were still there.

I did not exaggerate.
I did not posture.
I told the truth.

When I finished, this man looked at me and said something no one else ever had.

He said: You’re a hero. You’re a patriot. You’re an American hero.

He was right.

That is what I am.

And then nothing happened.

That was years ago.

No rescue. No investigation that mattered. No protection. Just silence—the kind of silence that tells you exactly how much women’s lives are worth when they become inconvenient.

I am an American, and I am proud to be one—not because of what this country has done, but because of what it is supposed to stand for.

And as far as I can tell, I am surrounded by absence.

Where is everyone else?

Where are the people fighting for the substance of America rather than its mythology? Where are the defenders of law when women are unprotected by it? Where is the courage this country never stops congratulating itself for having?

If believing in America means demanding that it live up to its promises, then I am an American.

If patriotism means refusing to accept injustice as normal, then I am a patriot.

If citizenship means standing your ground when the system turns on you, then this is what citizenship looks like.

San Rafael is still beautiful. That doesn’t trouble me. Beauty and brutality have always existed side by side.

What has changed is my relationship to illusion.

I no longer confuse comfort with meaning.
I no longer mistake scaffolding for substance.
I don’t need lies in order to survive.

Earlier today, while I was seeking services here, I was asked a routine question:

Are you a veteran?

In the formal, bureaucratic sense, no. I did not serve in a uniform the government recognizes. I don’t have documentation that opens specific doors. I have deep respect for those who served in the military and bore that cost.

But if a veteran is someone who has sacrificed safety, livelihood, bodily autonomy, and years of their life in defense of freedom and justice, then the answer is yes.

I have been fighting for what this country claims to stand for—without institutional backing, without protection, and at enormous personal cost.

I am fighting for women and children to be protected by law. I am fighting for the Constitution to apply in practice, not just in theory.

I am fighting while hungry.
I am fighting while homeless.
I am fighting while harmed.

I am not doing this for recognition. I am doing it because some fights are not optional.

If this country still means what it says, then this, too, is service.

And I am exactly where I should be, doing what I should, and I will never regret choosing what is right—over and over again—no matter the cost.