Surviving in the eye of a riot zone.

In a 6-week period of time, I wrote 63 pages of poetry.
That's not counting the poetry I've written that's scattered like salt and pepper through my Timelines and my old group, old Libra documents... that I still need to go back through.
My writing is just like the chalk drawings I did last summer, creative, a way for me to express myself, honestly, sometimes bluntly... it gives me my voice.

I'm going to start getting everything together and putting a book of my writing together, I want the title to be
"Righting the Riots through Writing".
I want people to know the story of My journey escaping violence, moving out of it, and into healing, and moving on... I want to be an inspiration to others.

My therapist in Dallas used to tell me~
"Susan, God hasn't brought you this far to drop you on your ass."
I've made a lot of moves in my life, many for all the wrong reasons, running to or from something or someone... I couldn't look at myself and didn't want others to see the wounded and scarred soul I'd carried.
I've only been in 1 relationship where I had to "escape" it was violent, that was in 2001-2003 in Dallas.

Now I am faced with escaping Portland and the state of Oregon to save my life. I truly believe my situation has become this dire.
I HAVE TO RUN TO SAVE MY LIFE because I have been trapped in an active riot/anarchy zone for 18 months.
I've seen things I never should have had to witness in the United States of America.

I live about 2 blocks from the Federal Courthouse in Portland, Oregon where the 2020 summer riots happened after the death of George Floyd.
For over 150 consecutive nights I sat in my apartment alone, frightened, confused, triggered every time I heard another flash grenade explode, watch the reflection of the explosion off of the glass windows that surround my tiny little apartment on the 10th floor of an old Hotel, that now houses elderly, disabled Section-8 tenants. We were dwarfed, I remember feeling so small, tiny so minute in the eye of the storm as it continued to bear down on the downtown core night after horrifying night. Every moment I was filled with fright. To Be Continued... (TBC)