Committing Statuscide - 3

Committing Statuscide - Chapter 1 - Final - Memoir of Bryton Gore

STATUSCIDE

(Excerpt from the memoir of Bryton Gore)

CH.1 Ending

Statuscide for me wasn’t always a deliberate act of rebellion, it began as a raw survival instinct, much like capuchin monkeys choosing between a wire mother and a soft cloth one. In my childhood home, survival was hijacked by a narrative of image. While Ashley fed our mother’s twisted socialite story until it became our only comfort, I lurked in the shadows, convinced I was nothing more than a monster. Every act of nonconformity, from declaring “green” when every other child clung to pink, to refusing to sing along to my religious teacher’s rendition of hell, became an act of statuscide. I dismantled the carefully constructed identity imposed on me, even as I longed desperately to belong. I learned early that survival sometimes meant tearing down the very image that, paradoxically, was meant to sustain me, a self that branded me a monster.

In high school, my defiance erupted into a public, raw, and painful spectacle. I shunned authority with every step: striding in knee-length Doc Martens or blood red high top converse with unapologetic ferocity, dyeing my hair black, and deliberately shredding the uniform that was supposed to define me. While colleagues and friends whispered their judgments, I discovered a dangerous kind of freedom amid the ruins of their expectations, the freedom to be myself, no matter how much it hurt. I even mused how my later love for horror became a way to reclaim power over what I once feared; looking the part of a monster was my quiet, defiant “yeah, and?” to a world intent on silencing me. Yet, the legacy of childhood chaos, the internal war between conformity and rebellion, haunted me like a relentless poltergeist.

That truth came into sharper focus when Ashley moved to America and began weaving her own counter-narrative against cultural icons in her late 20’s. Her choices amplified the fractures in our shared past, the cracks that had begun when our mother relocated us back to Australia after Dad died. Those fault lines widened until I could no longer ignore the inevitable: survival wasn’t just about defying authority, but about reclaiming the self they had so desperately tried to erase. In living out my daily acts of statuscide, I was giving them the easy narrative they craved.

Those pink lines meant, everything shattered. I discovered I was pregnant, a revelation that forced me to confront the consequences of a life defined by constant rebellion. In the sterile glow of a doctor’s office, as the soft beep of machines confirmed my new status, I realized that every act of defiance, every deliberate rejection of conformity, had led me to a crossroads I never asked for. I had spent my life tearing down the masks that suffocated me, and now a new reality demanded I build something genuine from the ruins.

My daughter's father was nothing like the strong, steadfast figure one might expect of someone who accepts abandoned minors in exchange for money. Instead, he was a towering, gangly specter; a bean-stalk crackhead stumbling through life with erratic, dangerous energy. His claim of belonging to a biker gang was merely a desperate attempt to fit into a world that had long rejected him. From an early age, he introduced me to a toxic cocktail of drugs and rebellion. I became the unwilling apprentice in a life destined to crumble into chaos. His criminal escapades, drifting from state to state on parole for disabling someone, weren’t just headlines in a life I couldn’t control; they were the very air I breathed. Nights filled with glitched-out Australian hip-hop tracks provided the soundtrack to his drug-induced stupors, dragging me ever deeper into the abyss.

The memories are seared into me: the nights I dropped out of school, too busy navigating the treacherous underworld he thrust upon me; the bitter realization that his presence was less about care and more about fueling his own mid life crisis and unraveling. Mid pregnancy I was blindsided when his new girlfriend moved into the hotel room with him, she was even younger than me, the betrayal cut deeper than any drug-induced haze could numb. His partner before me, my manager at Baskin Robins; an angry, pig-like woman with a permanent sneer, was quick to blame me, even as she wrestled with her own demons but I never blamed the girl who moved into the hotel with. I was just caught in the crossfire, numb and quite used to being the scapegoat for every shattered expectation, every abusive word and cold dismissal that reaffirmed I was meant to be discarded.

Yet, in the aftermath of his betrayals, the legacy of his chaos became my battleground. I learned that survival meant not only rejecting the false images imposed by others but also confronting the very sources of my personal torment. The man who haunted every misstep of my past was now the embodiment of everything I needed to dismantle. His life, a grim rope of drug-fueled nights and self-destructive choices, tying a noose around the mirror of what the worst the world had to offer, and I was determined to reject it.

In that final, raw heartbeat of my turbulent journey, I came to see every act of statuscide, each deliberate rupture of the identity forced upon me, as both my weapon and my wound. The sterile beep of the doctor’s machine confirmed my unbidden transformation into teen motherhood, a consequence born of the drug-addicted chaos of my daughter's father.

After the ultrasound, the nurse’s firm grip on my arms sent a jolt through me. Her words, meant to be reassuring, fell flat ‘you need this’ as she handed me pamphlets on getting an abortion. But I knew he wouldn’t let me go through with it; he’d already sabotaged my medicine and stolen essentials for his own selfish needs.

But as punk rock once taught me to embody the monster, my rebellion evolved. It was no longer enough to brand myself with black hair, eyeliner, and horror. I demanded respect for the life growing within me, not as a concession to weakness, but as a fierce declaration of my worth. In tearing down the self-inflicted status codes and the imposed narratives, I reimagined rebellion as a means to save the life inside me, her heartbeat echoing a promise of a future defined not by chaos, but by unyielding strength. To give her a better life than I had become my new rebellion, a future that would be forged on my own terms, from the ruins of a past that I would no longer allow to define me.

…. Until it did

---

https://quillbot.com/ai-content-detector

"The preceding text was proofread and grammatically corrected by ChatGPT, but the original content was not generated by it."