Joe Loya

Back at once, I'll put a pin in that real quick.

When he told my brother, you should have died instead of your mother, something important happened.

Something clicked in me that gets me to this point.

Up until that point, I had twin traumas, my mom's death and the brutality we were experiencing.

And they were happening next to each other, but they never were connected.

When he says, you should have died instead of your mother, we're getting beat up.

And he's talking about the death of my mother.

And now they're locked.

And I think, oh, shit, he wants us to be dead, too.

He wishes my brother was dead.

That means, by extension, his children are expendable.

He wants us dead.

He's using the dead language.

That's one of the reasons it accelerated into me this idea that, oh, shit.

He could kill us or I could kill myself.

But this is like in my head, I've made this be a big thing.

So now I'm standing there with a knife.

I've thought about it.

It's time for me to stand up, do the right thing.

I'm not a coward.