The title of this blog is Fugitivus. The Romans would brand this word, usually shortened to FUG, on the foreheads of slaves who had run away from their masters. I can’t think of a better collection of personal qualities than those that would exist in a slave who has run from their master. The term “fugitivus” has personal meaning to me; I ran away from an abusive home as a child, and I left an abusive marriage as an adult. Since then, there have been various smaller escapes; from friends who can’t cope with their own pain or my freedom from abuse, from ingrained concepts of worthlessness and self-hate, from the idea of a future I never really wanted, from a country whose ideology is as abusive as anything my husband or family could dish out. I view my life as one long jailbreak, day by day attempting to shed one chain or another, until eventually, inevitably, I shed the concept of fugitivus as well. Because who wants to be a fugitive all their lives?
My username is Harriet Jacobs, an homage to the author of an autobiography of a life in and escape from slavery. Harriet Jacobs was a helluva woman, and I don’t mean to insinuate that I have experienced a tenth of what she did, or have a tenth of the steel trap balls. But she’s worth admiring, as a slave who ran away from her master, as a woman who escaped sexual exploitation, who fought even being purchased by friends who would free her, because that would be admitting her life was a good to be bought and sold. I’m not trying to build up a comparison, even metaphorically. I’m just trying to tell you that Harriet Jacobs is the shit.
About myself: I'm a mid-twenties white girl living in the Midwest. I work at a non-profit that assists families and deals with a lot of racial politics.
I've had a fucked-up life, and I wanted a space to talk where the fucked-up people who did the fucked-up things couldn't find me and be creepy.
I am a firm believer in the idea of information and communication, and through my experiences, I tend to think the majority of fucked-up things continue to happen unabated because nobody wants to talk about them. The desire to cover our ears and eyes and mouth is just another master I'm trying to escape.
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