Prologue

Vulnerability... It isn't something I've ever liked to feel, much less to acknowledge. It's okay for some people, for victims, but not for me. How can I fight so hard for victims and harbor this secret contempt for them?

Today I feel vulnerable in armor, in my bullet-proof vest with my gun belt and my loaded gun. I might as well be naked. There is nothing that will cover the scars, that will make me not exposed, not a sight to be gawked at and pitied.

It has been almost six months since my attack, six months since I felt the barrel of a gun in my mouth and that breath on my neck, that terrible, sick, rancid breath from the lungs of a man who ought not to exist. But he does. And there are others.

I have always believed that if we are going to suffer, we should do it quietly. There is something ennobling about keeping our greatest hardships secret. I don't like to cry out in pain when I'm hurt, to lash out in anger when I've been confronted. I like to wait; to take it in, to feel every indignation, every cut, every scratch, and to let these things become a part of me. I absorb it all. At least, that's what my therapist says I do.

He suggested, in fact, that I start keeping this journal. When I was young, I was a good student, and I liked to write. But over the years I've become so accustomed to working with a weapon in my hand, that a pen can seem rather useless. I'm a perfectionist in everything, and I don't think I could be much of a writer if I tried. But I suppose that isn't really the point.