I’m so done living here. My dad says I have no perspective because I haven’t lived long enough. I lived in Fullerton for a year. I’d say about 10% of people I knew were immigrants, and I saw their struggles first hand. They can’t get FAFSA, can’t get mediCAL, and are frequently..

...subject to police brutality. I heard things like “my uncle is being deported”, “my cousin got shot by a cop and is in the ICU”. “I can’t afford my bills, but i can’t exactly get help with foodstamps or section 8 or even FAFSA because I’m undocumented.”

One girl I knew was so happy that she had just paid off her medical bills, and the very next day she went to the ER, and owed $10k. She was right back where she started.

That’s poverty, that’s minority struggle, and my white privilege is that I observed it, and didn’t experience it. I didn’t get fafsa that year for other reasons, and that made my life there harder, but I was never kept down by a system of racism and oppression.

I was never stopped by a cop once in my year of living in Fullerton. I was never called a racial slur by some stranger on the street. Nobody ever bothered me in any way except some crazy homeless dude who threatened me because I locked up my bike too close to his.

But my dad says that my experience was in a “special bubble of diversity and progressives” and doesn’t consider it to be a part of the real world, but at the same time, talks about the gangs there and how they should be shot.

My entire life I was always disillusioned by my dad, even when I was in middle school. I knew from the start he was a hardass, ephebo/hebephillic, racist, abusive alcoholic shitstain. I have no respect for him. Though for now I have to stay silent just so I have a place to live.

I do have a one bedroom lined up about a month or so from now, and I’ll be living with my lovely Hanmah and we’re gonna get her pit bull from her uncles house! We get a yard and two sheds, and our own lives to lead, both together and separately.

So this thread has a happy ending, but yeah this is what I have to deal with right now. It’s hard to get over what I have experienced living here. The way that my dad behaves had left a huge impression on me when I was little and led to a lot of outbursts.

And having to live in that same abusive setting has made this quarantine a lot harder for me (not really quarantine anymore). But I’m getting out very soon and I see myself thriving in the future, and that’s what’s keeping me going right now.