How I Survived a Gunshot to the Gut

On July 5, 2013 I became an innocent victim of a drive-by shooting in Brooklyn. I survived (am surviving). I’m so happy to be alive. And I’m so happy to have a body that heals. But this is what happens when guns get into the hands of lunatics who can’t aim. Look at it. Deal with it. If this is your first visit, you can read about my shooting here.

[gunshotantonius]

1826 days since the shooting. Greetings from between Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridge, otherwise sold by realtors as Chumbo (Chinatown Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass). What a week! Today marks five years since I was shot in the chest, and I am happy to be back home in NYC. You may think it odd that I return to the city that I was shot in for the fifth anniversary of my shooting. You may find it even odder if I told you how much I love this city. I can't express in my own words why, so I have to rely on those of better wordsmiths. The poet María Meléndez wrote:

A river killed a man I loved, And I love that river still.

from the poem Why Can't We All Just Get Along? which I first found out about when I saw the above excerpt from Emmy Perez's Not One More Refugee Death. The whole poem is good to read and I am taking things a little out of context here. But I guess what I'm getting at is: I nearly died in New York City. And I love New York City still. If I can extend any little bit of that love, even to the man who shot me in the chest, then I think I'm doing right and I believe I am living the life I promised to live in honor of those gun violence victims who died.

Here's to another five years of surviving.

[gunshotantonius]

1822 days since the shooting. It's my final day at the HIT Helsinki residency. I really will miss this large space - so much easier to take selfies than in my apartment in NYC. But I'm also looking forward to going home. The anniversary of my shooting is in a few days and I know it always gets a little rough around then. I find surrounding myself with people who support me and also giving myself the room to be alone is best for these rough patches. It's hard to believe it will be 5 years in a few days. Some days I wish I could just move on and let it fade from memory. But my scars won't let me forget. And I show them to the world so it doesn't forget us, survivors of gun violence, either.

[gunshotantonius]

1821 days since the shooting. Happy Pride, Helsinki! The parade here broke records - 100.000 people attended, which is a lot for a country that has roughly 5 million inhabitants. From the people I spoke with, they tell me that just 10 years ago such a showing of love would be unfathomable. It's really amazing to see how people change their minds and also how people show their support for others through the goodness of their hearts. When love is put at the forefront, there is no space left for hate.

[gunshotantonius]

1820 days since the shooting. There was another mass shooting in the US today, in a newspaper office in Annapolis. Five people died, and a room full of survivors who will be traumatized for life. My heart goes out to the family and friends of the victims during this difficult time. I hope that with time your wounds, physical, emotional and otherwise, will start to heal.

[gunshotantonius]

1819 days since the shooting. I realized I never fully explained my story to the HIT Helsinki residency crowd. So here goes. Today is June 28, 2019. In less than a week, I'll be celebrating the fifth anniversary of the day I survived a gunshot to the gut. It wasn't directly to my gut - I actually got shot in the chest. But the bullet traveled to my stomach. How I got shot in the first place, I don't completely know. I was an innocent bystander of a shooting one block away from my house in New York as I was walking to the subway. The intended target, a woman I do not know and only have met at the courthouse, was pregnant and her unborn child did not make it. She was shot twice in the leg and the bullet that would have hit her head hit me in the chest instead. I was helped by several strangers on the street, including one barber who helped me keep pressure on my wound. He was shot and killed less than a year after my own shooting in a separate incident. His death actually hit me harder than surviving my own wounds. Because while he was there for me, I wasn't there for him. And the guilt of surviving my shooting while so many other Americans did not will always consume me no matter how hard I try. So this is my vengeance, this is my therapy, and this is my way of living for the 104 people shot and killed in the US every single day: I travel the world to bear witness to its beauty and all its ugliness. And I share my scars, in all their beauty and ugliness, in the hopes that no one will have to bear these wounds again. In the hopes we can think of a better path than to bear arms. In the hopes that we can find peace.

[gunshotantonius]

1817 days since the shooting. Greetings from Helsinki! HIT Helsinki is hosting me for an arts residency for the next 6 days, and I get to explore the theme of Empathy. I am going to take the time to explore why this blog was so important to me in the first place and what to do with it next. One of the things people responded very well with was when I displayed my images in an animated GIF format, which I did at the DUMBO Arts Festival in 2013. I think I'll explore that in the next few days. In terms of my healing - I am doing fine. I have to admit that a month ago my scar started bleeding at one of the spots where it spat out a suture five years ago. I think I'm all right now, I think my skin was just agitated and blistered at that same spot because it protrudes a little. But it's hard to attribute causation in such cases. Nevertheless, I'm doing well - just aging into my 30s as one should!

[gunshotantonius]

1460 days since the shooting. Four years since the shooting. Greetings from Glasgow, in one of the world's most eclectic collection art and curios. I think my bullet wound and I fit right in. Keep going.

[gunshotantonius]

1461 days since the shooting. Greetings from Loch Ness. It has been four years and one day since my shooting. This used to be the most important thing in my life. Updating this blog and telling people I'm doing well. It served its purpose as my source of energy. But it soon became to drain me. As I got stronger, the shooting became less a focus of my life and other things were more important in the foreground. How other things are more important. How precious my time left in this planet is. And how little of it I have seen. I still take selfies of my bullet wounds daily. Except I choose not to share them all. I will in the future. In the beginning I was blogging daily, maybe even more than once a day. That was difficult to do. And then it became a weekly experience. And then monthly. And now yearly. I am so grateful that it has evolved to this. It means I have healed to the point where I can say the shooting is in the past. The pain still comes and goes. But I don't let it shape me. And I look further into the horizon instead.

[gunshotantonius]

1096 days since the shooting. I survived another year. Here I am, standing at Checkpoint Charlie. In my first seven months after the shooting, I could barely walk without a cane. Since then I have traveled to fourteen countries, living in at least three of them. My experience has cemented my belief that people are genuinely good-hearted and humanity will prevail. But I have seen many injustices in every corner of the world. We cannot stand idle while the malicious few hurt the ones we love. Let peace triumph, but honor the sacrifice of those we lost with venerable actions. Say no to war. Tear down the walls of imperialism. And in the noble words of Dawn Hochsprung, principal of Sandy Hook Elementary: "Be nice to each other. It's all that matters."

[gunshotantonius]

Antonius Wiriadjaja was just walking down the street when he was struck by a stray bullet. See him reunite with the man who saved his life.

I'm still taking photos daily, but taking a hiatus from posting them for the time being. Meanwhile, here is a short documentary about me meeting the barber who helped saved my life by pushing down on my wound so I didn't bleed out on the street that day. I am extremely grateful for the very talented people who made this video. Thank you.

[gunshotantonius]

I am still taking photos daily but I am taking a hiatus from posting. See you in the next year.

[gunshotantonius]

116 weeks since the shooting. It started as a great week. I was pretty happy with how everything went. But then I started to feel a little bit of pain today. Worried about the pain I preempted with a little bit of pain medication. I don't like doing this. But I feel I have to.

[gunshotantonius]

115 days since the shooting. My scars are lightening up. I'm very happy to report that. And the two holes where they drained my organs are no longer hollow. They still feel concave though. I hope in another year these scars won't be so prominent. For now I have another winter coming. The temperature is going down. I am saved from the sun again (sunshine on fresh scars is not a good thing).

[gunshotantonius]

114 weeks since the shooting. Today is a day of mourning for many. This week has been especially filled with mourning as many people in my social media feed are doing an action to call for gun violence prevention laws in the U.S. I feel so useless from this far away. But it's also good to have some distance physically from the place of my shooting. I don't plan to be here forever. But I can't deny that it's healing. Sometimes. The air pollution doesn't help.

[gunshotantonius]

113 weeks since the shooting. I thought I got really good at hiding days when I'm in pain. But the director of the program knew because of how different I was acting over social media. She is particularly good at noticing these things. But I wonder: how many people notice when something is off but don't mention it. She's brave enough to but maybe others just don't say anything because they don't know how or don't want to be involved? In any case I'm learning once again I have no poker face, not even in the context of social media. If I'm in pain probably someone will notice. But it has been a good week. And as I mentioned earlier this month, I no longer measure time in increments of pain. It will likely be a longer time between now and the next time that I felt as bad as I did last week. And my scars are healing up. Maybe in a year I won't even remember what happened to me. One can only wish.

[gunshotantonius]

112 weeks since the shooting. I was in a lot of pain this week. I had to take some days off. It wasn't a good feeling. And I looked in the mirror and saw how horrible I looked. But over the past few days I started to feel better. Every so often I feel pain but they're not so bad as it used to be. But the pain sadly reminds me how miserable I felt during recovery. And everything in the news is also triggering some emotions I had. Like the horrible Roanoke shooting that was broadcast live. I saw the video on auto play in my social media streams. I remember how I felt when I saw my own video of my shooting. It was a relief because I survived mine. But this shooting in Virginia didn't have a happy ending. What a terrible thing to have happened. My thoughts go out to the remaining survivor and the victims families.

[gunshotantonius]

111 weeks since the shooting. I went to Sichuan last Friday because it would be my last free weekend in a very very long time. I got to see two more national parks that are in my bucket list of places to visit. I did catch a cold, however, on the way back. And unlike before, if I am sick due to a virus or bacteria, I cannot get over it in just a few days. I had a rough week of healing. But I'm starting to feel better. I'm just glad I lived long enough to see more of this world. Spleen or no spleen. On another note, I Skyped with several survivors of other shootings the other day and it was a really pleasant conversation. I am so happy to have such a supportive group of people watching out for my health.