I'm Not Mad At You

My own story feels irrelevant right now...

Renee Nicole Good

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“The past was alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.” - George Orwell - 1984

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When I started publishing here on Substack, my intention was to write about the body, “the one thing we can’t live without.” I planned to tell the story of my disabling stroke at 30 years old, my subsequent recovery, and what I learned about the life of the body from exploring and experimenting on my own out of necessity. I believed that my story could help others who were facing physical challenges, disability and aging. I’ve been posting regularly since August 2025.

As I was faced with publishing my next post (one I had already written) I suddenly felt blocked. I still feel blocked. I don’t want to write about myself right now. I don’t want to spin a good yarn about the many afflictions I’ve overcome or still deal with. I’ve already written about how blood vessels suddenly ruptured in my brain rendering me completely paralyzed and numb on my left side. But I survived.

I was planning on writing a post soon about how my appendix ruptured because a doctor misdiagnosed my symptoms so I didn’t seek care until it was too late. I ended up with peritonitis, my body awash in poison for a week before the cause was discovered. But I survived.

I was planning on writing a post soon about developing seizures years after my stroke from scar tissue in my brain. The onset of my first grand mal seizure happened while I was driving in heavy traffic on the 405 freeway in Los Angeles. But I survived.

And there is plenty more. I still might tell these tales. But not now.

I’m on the verge of turning sixty-six. I’m an old woman and glad of it. Grateful to have lived a life that has encompassed many disparate, intriguing and sometimes painful things.

So far, I’ve survived thirty-six years after I was first touched by death.

But Renee Nicole Good only survived to the age of thirty-seven. She said her last words with a genuine smile to the man who would, a moment later, murder her. Her soon to be destroyed body, her soon to be destroyed brain, her soon to be destroyed nervous system all worked in beautiful harmony to allow her to say, “That’s ok, Dude. I’m not mad at you.” before his bullets took her life.

After the state-sanctioned, masked agent fired his weapon while filming it on his phone, his brain, his nervous system, his living mouth worked in harmony to say: “Fucking bitch.”

Because of my many bodily tribulations, I’ve learned that the systems we rely on and take for granted can fail suddenly or gradually, and it is dreadful and difficult and sometimes strangely powerful - If you survive.

We live in nation, in a world, in a time when all systems are stroking out, seizing, and being flooded with poison. When our bodies - all of our bodies - are seen as little more than disposable commodities to be controlled.

This isn’t a new story, and I have nothing to say about it that others aren’t saying more eloquently. I suggest you read Dina Honour’s American Woman, or Steve Schmidt’s The Warning, or Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters From An American, or any number of writers who are chronicling this chaotic and dreadful moment that we’re all sharing. I highly suggest you read Han Kang’s stunning book, Human Acts, about the terrors that happened in South Korea in 1980.

Yet, this post is still about the body. This whole thing that we’re living through is about our bodies. The one thing we can’t live without. The one thing that those with ill intent are determined to threaten or destroy.

It’s always the same thing. Always. And it’s also about the desecration of our sacred bodies, by minimizing the horrors they long to inflict on them, and are inflicting on them, and will inflict on them. Those bodies that belong to people who they must portray as dangerous and sub-human and deserving of everything they get.

Even now, they’re saying that Renee Good was daring to dance and toot her horn and block the men who are the latest version of those who have played this violent, oppressive role throughout history. Let’s remember that in the oft-referenced Germany of the 1930s and 40s, there were those who risked their lives to stand up for human beings who were, by law, deemed disposable. And there were those who were happy to follow the law and rat out, arrest, deport and kill those same human beings. To pick another iteration of this dismal and endlessly repeated story - there were those who ran the Underground Railroad and there were those who legally hunted runaway slaves.

We’re supposed to see Renee Nicole Good’s actions as punishable by death. We’re supposed to see non-compliance, mockery, pushing back or protesting inhumane actions as punishable by death. Because if we don’t…well, the threat is implicit.

Their narrative seeks to desecrate and defile the amazing flesh, bone, muscles and nerves that allow some of us to fight, some of us to comply, some of us to pretend, some of us to scream and some of us to have the grace to smile and say: “I’m not mad at you” before the end comes.

"At that moment, I realized what this was all for. The words that this torture and starvation were intended to elicit. We will make you realize how ridiculous it was, the lot of you waving the national flag and singing the national anthem. We will prove to you that you are nothing but filthy stinking bodies. That you are no better than the carcasses of starving animals. " -Human Acts by Han Kang