What Turning 30 Taught Me About Harm, Healing, and Queer Accountability

Seeking Community

While living in the Midwest, I searched for representation in queer spaces that were overwhelmingly white and found little space for myself or people like me. I didn't see myself or my community represented in posters, or at drag shows, and calling out privilege was met with denial and hostility. I was always aware that these spaces, while being part of a culture built by people of color, were not centered towards fostering a safe environment for us.

Growing up in what is termed a 2.5-generation household, dealing with major loss at a young age coupled with dependency and a lack of access to safe spaces for brown queer people, I hadn't given my 30s much thought. I never allowed myself to picture my future past the age of 25 at most, and reaching 30 was almost a laughable idea, but it crept up on me while I was busy building, surviving, and connecting.

In recent years, I started to create space for my wife and I by way of community building. Attending protests, potlucks, responding to mutual aid requests, and building up a small business with the intention of giving back to the community via an affordable, low-cost repair service. My wife contributed her invaluable part of giving back to the community as a social worker and therapist.

I knew that as queer people of color with no family locally, it was essential for us to have community we could go to. I built up a small group of trusted individuals who attended our wedding. Believing that if we ever struggled or needed mutual aid, care, or support, we could turn to these friends for help.

Last summer, the culmination of stress from being full-time caregivers, working full time, grad school, and toxic work environments became too much for my wife and I, and we separated. During our split, it was the very circle I had built that pitted us against the other, picked sides, and encouraged a permanent split. Many were not married themselves or in some cases were with partners they described as abusive and voiced that they thought "we should just break up" as if we had merely been dating.

This is not what my wife and I needed, but both of us had burnt out and hit rock bottom. For once, we had truly let our guard down and relied on the community of people that we placed our trust in to guide us and aid in facilitating repair.

Within this timeframe, I had connected with other queer people in the community and met an individual who claimed to also be a marginalized person of color who faced similar hardship. While I would normally be reserved with any new seemingly white person, this claim lowered my inhibition, and we quickly connected. I turned to this new friend, Mars, who appeared to offer his help and encouraged me to lean on him as my only support.

I'm always hesitant when creating a call-out because, while the primary intention behind these posts has always been to warn and keep others safe, it often has the unfortunate side effect of granting bad actors more attention and importance than they're worth. It also prompts a third-party response of "they said / they said", and can cause unintended drama that is not helpful.

That being said, Mars kept the drama going for three months into mid-December of 2025, and has kept up a false narrative that can only cause further harm to my wife and I. I find it necessary to let others know.

In the months leading up to my 30th birthday, Mars’s behavior escalated into what can only be described as manipulative and degrading. Within two weeks of separating with my wife of five years, he told me that I was in a vulnerable headspace and that he didn’t want to take advantage of me. Despite this, he was insistent on placing me into a BDSM dynamic that I told him I wasn't comfortable with.

He left me with bruises so deep his fingerprints left scars. He bragged to coworkers about “fucking a married man” - constantly misgendering me despite my corrections and even asked if it was “the Asian in me” that wanted to be degraded. He threatened to kill my cat after divulging that he had abused an animal in his youth, pressured me to tell him my deepest fears, and called me stupid for thinking I had a choice in my relationship with him.

He attended therapy with me and agreed to being made part of my safety plan while actively suicidal, and then he discarded me, telling my wife that if I killed myself this situation would resolve itself for him. He shared graphic details of my body and our sex life without my consent to my wife, who he lured under a false pretense, in retaliation for me blocking him. Telling her he at least enjoyed how I strapped him as if that was the only kind thing he could think of to say about someone that he had called his friend.

I wasn't the first person he called an abuser last year either, he did the same to his previous ex, vilifying them over a situational misunderstanding that did not merit the level of hatred he directed towards them and accusing them to friends, including my wife and I, of misusing Jewish concepts of repentance and repair to escape whiteness.

Continuing Escalation and Police Harassment

In my last writeup, I tried to end things on a positive note. Unfortunately, things proceeded after the end of the events described in that document, as Mars utilized the privilege of his white friends and police intimidation to try to coerce my silence months after I had finished editing my writeup.

In September, Mars and Cale both separately filed and were granted emergency orders of protection. EOPs are granted ex parte, which means entirely based on one side's claims. One can file for an EOP without any evidence at all, and it will be granted by default for 10 to 14 days and extended until a hearing can be set to establish if there is any real cause for a restraining order. Cale's EOP was only granted in the first place for its connection to Mars - whose case was eventually dismissed alongside hers.

In his petition, Mars claimed to have been dating me, and that as my partner, he had experienced domestic violence when I punched him the night that he lured my wife into conversation to tell her about our sex life.

Cale filed a petition under the pretense of stalking. A claim that the judge dismissed entirely under a directed finding. An Illinois court can make a directed finding dismissing the movant's motion by finding that the movant did not present sufficient evidence to establish that they even had a case in the first place. 

By the end of the final hearing in December 2025, the judge stated that based on what she heard, I could have filed for an order of protection against Mars as he had also caused harm under the Domestic Violence Act. After the last time he spent the night at my apartment, I was already aware that I could have filed against him based on his behavior, but I did not.

Going to the cops against people of color and queer community, especially someone who told me they struggled with their own mental health, is against my moral standing. At most, I might consider calling a wellness check by a friend or family member, and rely on trusted community. I would not send the police after them.

The cops have been known to shoot and kill Black and Brown people after they've been called to perform a wellness check. The cops have been known to kill people of color when called for anything at all. For Mars to use the police against me, he chose to ignore that reality and subject me to the potential risk that follows.

Mars started the rumor mill in September.

Before I knew it, I was immediately getting unfollowed by people I barely interacted with or that I'd maybe met once, and people I didn't even realize followed me, as he attempted to isolate my voice before it could even be heard and eliminate the community that I had tried to build up for my wife and I. I've never been concerned with my follower count, but it was informative to the nature of the grapevine and the rumors spreading.

That's why I decided to go public with what happened before I could even put all the information together in one place. He then kept this harassment going into mid-December 2025, months after I was done editing my first writeup about his actions with me that summer. Placing more stress and strain on my mental health, work life, and personal relationships.

When I told Mars that I was done with him in September, I also told him that I would publicly call him out for as long as he kept playing the victim.

Mars's actions leading into December include erasing my racial identity as a Dravidian person entirely by willfully misrepresenting my race as white in a "fill in the blank" free-text box on legal paperwork, keeping equipment worth over a hundred dollars from my small business in his possession, attempting to body shame me in court for an infection he contracted due to his own lack of personal hygiene (an action that, in my opinion, contributed to his case being dismissed), and spreading a false narrative in what was, for my wife and I, already a very limited number of local safe spaces.

These actions collectively placed an unbearable amount of strain on our personal relationships and work-life balance.

For the lasting harm caused, and because Mars continues to spread his own false narrative, I have decided to expose the truth.

Choosing to Be Served

As both Mars and Cale consistently kept the police at my door trying to serve me, I opted to get served in November. With the police known for violent conduct against people of color and ICE being spotted nearby, I needed that watchful eye off of me, and to work and live unhindered by the police outside my home.

I scraped together the nearly six thousand dollars necessary to obtain legal counsel and accurate transcription and took time off from my full-time job in healthcare, driving over an hour to Champaign to be served.

A demanding work life and full-time graduate school on top of chronic illness on top of the new drama meant I would have lost focus entirely had I let it continue. If I had time to waste, I would have simply refused to be served and let them waste the endless amount of time they seemed to have in trying to harass me and have me served.

As my current lease was soon coming to an end and I was contemplating relocating, they wouldn't have had an updated address, leaving my whereabouts questionable. It would have been a goose chase for them and yet more effort on their part to serve me through other means.

In the words of more than one attorney I spoke to at this point, it seemed like harassment from Mars and Cale because I had already stated I was done with Mars in September and meant it, but they had kept things going well into December, with no new events, no new contact from me, and despite being unable to locate me to actually have me served.

As a queer person of color, I knew that in our justice system, going up against Mars and Cale, both white and one male presenting, I was not likely to receive fair representation without a lawyer.

Especially since, as an autistic person, I can't change the fact that neurotypicals form what is often a negative first impression of autistic people within less than 10 seconds based on "thin slices" of behavior. This fact already places me at a disadvantage in court, in the workplace, at school, and in every situation that requires me to be perceived by neurotypical people and judged according to their made-up allistic standards.

I missed the first court date, as I hadn’t yet been served. When I showed up to the second court date to get served on November 4th, the judge communicated to Mars and Cale that I had shown up with a lawyer emphasizing that this was a serious matter, and that they could also get a lawyer or represent themselves. She informed them that they could also choose to not pursue the case. Neither of them opted to let things go and neither ended up retaining a lawyer. 

Mars’s behavior in court was disgraceful and put his privilege on display. He refused to answer the judge entirely when she got his last name wrong even though she was looking right at him and refused to address her respectfully at all during both occasions I had to be in court with him, omitting “your honor” or even a “ma’am”.

His privilege permitted him to act this way and still expect the judge to rule in his favor. He dressed appropriately by the third hearing at least, a change from November, when both he and Cale showed up looking like they hadn't showered in a month and were out on a late-night store run.

However, he still refused to comply with a legal discovery process, spoke out of turn, attempted to present material he had withheld from my lawyer, and was permitted to continue in this manner for three hours, even when it was revealed by witness testimony that he had lied about how the physical altercation took place.

I waited until the legal process concluded before writing about the court case. It’s delayed because outside of a full-time job in health care, there are constantly other things I’m working on and writing about, and I’m also in grad school so time is very limited.

This next part is my account of the December 16th hearing, sourcing the official transcripts of what was said that day:

The Hearing

Following my decision to walk away, the conflict escalated into police visits, public accusations, and legal filings. Forcing me to defend myself in court with already limited resources under my deadname. The impact of privilege became part of the official record. Part 2 of 3.

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