charismaticmicrofauna

Since January 2020, I have moved from Florida to Austria with my family, participated in 2 field sampling research trips on the Adriatic Sea in Slovenia, defended my honor against a very senior academic abusing the disproportionate amount of power her position holds (a difficult feat in academia, of which I am proud), wrote my first major research funding proposal with the fabulous Dr. Jillian Petersen, and was honored to be selected as a 2022 COBRA fellow. In June of 2022 we bid farewell to the western world and moved our family which now includes 1 more dog to Hanoi, Vietnam. Our little family of fur children are world travelers.

It has been three years since I graduated with my PhD in Ecological and Environmental Microbiology. Two months after I moved to Vienna, Austria in January 2020 for a post-doctoral research position, COVID happened. While living in Vienna under COVID restrictions with my partner Michael, our 2 cats, and dog we watched the USA continue to degenerate and dismantle while the orange pustule in command mismanaged the COVID response and since being voted out of office continued to threaten democracy. His toxic rhetoric about the “Chinese virus” and “kung flu” has scapegoated Asians which led to a 145% increase in hate crimes against Asian Americans between 2019 and 2020. Between 2020 and 2022 the coalition Stop Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Hate recorded 11,500 AAPI hate crimes. Even across the Atlantic in Vienna, I heard an Austrian coworker joking about being afraid of a group of Asian women in public without masks while they tried to take a picture, thereby normalizing casual racism against Asians. (I was just trying to enjoy my lunch.) Most notable was the night of the Atlanta Spa shootings when a man, under the racist assumption that all massage spas employing Asian women are brothels and the women must be sex workers, killed 8 people at 3 massage spas. Furthermore, from the safety of Vienna we watched reports of Black Americans being murdered by police, the insurrection on Capitol Hill, the homophobic introduction of the “Don’t say gay” bill in Florida, mass shooting after mass shooting, and the overturning of Roe v. Wade. We have been grateful to be living abroad all this time and don’t know if we will return.

During the first year of the pandemic, in November after the first COVID lockdown had just been lifted, an unprecedented mass shooting by an Islamic terrorist happened in Vienna 1 district away from where I lived. Not long before it happened, I thought I heard gunshots near my flat. The next day, when I told my co-workers at the University about what I thought I heard, they said that gun violence is extremely unlikely to happen in Austria. I don’t know if the two events have any connection, but it seems too coincidental to me for them not to be; however, anecdotal. In February 2022, Putin’s Russia attacked Ukraine leading to an influx of refugees into Austria, Slovakia, The Czech Republic, etc. The western world is deteriorating.

Tragically, on January 8, 2022 we got an alarmingly early morning call from Michael’s sister Kelly who was living in Idaho at the time. Michael answered on speaker phone. There was a slight pause before she spoke. She was surreally calm, but there was still an unsteadiness in her tone. She said, “Michael, mom’s dead. Kyle killed her.” I can’t remember the rest of the conversation, only that in more or less words Kyle shot Debra. Later we learned that Kyle, Michael’s brother, Debra’s son shot their mother 3 times at point blank range in her home, where he lived rent free, meanwhile quitting or losing every job that he ever had. One bullet hit her through the mouth and one hit her on her side. Twenty minutes after he called 911, he was arrested on the lawn of the house and has been in detention ever since. We don’t know how much time passed before he called 911 or what transpired during that time. He taunted Kelly with a text message earlier that evening with a cryptic message about a Taurus (his zodiac sign). Michael made the revelation later when he found the gun receipt along with hundreds of rounds of bullets in Kyle’s closet that Taurus was the brand of the gun that he used to kill Debra. He killed the only person in the world who had not turned their back on him due to his disagreeableness, toxicity, and unhinged contempt.

Michael immediately booked a flight to the US and was gone hours after the call. Kelly and her family were there when he arrived, and I followed a week later. They saw her body one last time, talked to the detectives, cremated her corpse, and planned a memorial service. Michael wrote her obituary. When I arrived, we emptied the house. We saw the bloodstained chair that she was murdered in, a bullet ricochet on the floor behind her. A Christmas candle with the profile of Vienna that we had sent just weeks before was sitting on a table next to the chair across from the TV. I imagine that she was just trying to relax after a long week at work on a Friday night, and drunk Kyle had quit or was fired from another job. An argument probably ensued, and the mid 30’s man-child living in his hard-working mother’s home felt his masculinity was being threatened. Why did he have so many bullets? The house was cleaned out by Michael and I, and Kelly and her husband, Matt. Things were kept, sent to dump, or donated. We packed every color coordinated handbag, and the color coordinated T-shirts and capris alongside her color coordinated sandals, sneakers, flats, etc. She kept every memento of each of her children’s lives in labeled boxes in the garage. We learned that everybody we knew throughout the state of Delaware had a story about how Debra, a nurse and natural caretaker, had touched their lives. She adored her kids, beamed with her grandkids, was closer to her ex-husband’s mom, Shirley than was Shirley’s own son. Kyle took her from everybody. He took her from us because we loved her and hate is all he is.

When Michael and I got together, Debra and I did not get along. However, over the 9 years we grew to know each other her initial distrust of a slightly older, tattooed woman from the city, with radically nontraditional values turned to the realization that I have devotion to her son, that we take good care of each other, and I will protect him. We were growing closer, albeit from abroad. We didn’t talk very much, but neither did she and Michael, but we all told each other we loved each other whenever we had a chance. She tried to visit us 3 times when we lived in Vienna, but due to COVID travel restrictions she was never able to come. She was furious about it. We would explore the city and visit the Austrian countryside constantly wondering if Debra would like to visit this place. Would she make it up these stairs? Would she get hangry if we stayed here too long? Better pack a snack for her. No matter how far or how much she and I disagreed, she was always there for us.

Yesterday was the anniversary of Debra, mom, omi‘s murder. When she was murdered my priority was and still is to be there for Michael. He lost his mother. I never really had one, but I know as an orphan the immense pain that I will always have of losing mine as a toddler. I have witnessed his grieving process transition through deep sadness to homicidal rage to suicidal ideation and back. I did not have support through any of my traumas and I have been grappling with PTSD and maladaptive coping mechanisms for at least 30 years. I don’t have the tools to support Michael the way he needs me to right now, but we are both doing our best not to fuck each other up any more than we already are. I grieve also. I miss her more and more as time goes on. She was my mom too.

When we returned to Vienna, we realized that there was a complete lack of support from the International School where Michael was teaching, so they mutually terminated their work contract and my research contract had ended earlier in the summer of 2021. A head hunter offered Michael a position in Vietnam and we thought, “why not?” This is an opportunity to immerse ourselves in someplace completely different, be employed, and focus on our mental health. I do not know if there are two more completely culturally opposite cities to live in than Vienna and Hanoi. Austria has infrastructure, excellent utilities, clean streets, noisy children screaming in German, and delicious clean water from the tap that flows from the Austrian Alps. The Viennese are popularly insufferable people. Vietnam is still a developing country whose colonization is only decades in the past. The infrastructure is poor, the streets are littered, the water is unpotable (we even cook our food in filtered water here), and there don’t appear to be any traffic laws. The sound of motorbikes honking is white noise to me now. It isn’t the same honking that people do in the west to let you know that you are driving like an asshole. The honking here is out of courtesy to let others know that you are coming around the corner or flying through an intersection. The people in Vietnam are kind, friendly, resilient, and warm. We have moved from a population of colonizers to a population of very recently colonized.

I don’t know where we will end up next, if I will return to academia, if Kyle will spend his life in jail. We know that our hearts are broken and our lives will never be the same, but we have each other and that is everything in the world.

Be kind to each other. Be kind to yourself. If you have suspicion or any knowledge that someone is experiencing domestic violence. Don’t keep it to yourself, you could save a life.

I am bidding 2020 thru 2020-too an enthusiastic and fond farewell and bracing myself for a cautiously optimistic outlook on this new year.