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My name is Jose Carlos Grant, and I’m writing this with a heavy heart — not to seek sympathy, but to offer some honesty about the events that led to the most shameful moment of my life.
In November of 2017, while sleeping in a van on a rainy day in Mendocino County, I did something I will carry with me forever. I accidentally poked my then-girlfriend five times with a small paring knife while she lay beneath a foot of blankets and sleeping bags. No matter the circumstances, that was wrong. I own that completely.
But I also want to share the texture and context of what shaped that day — not as an excuse, but as an honest portrait of a broken man in a breaking situation.
When detectives later asked my girlfriend why she thought I did it, she told them herself that she had been abusive toward me, and that she believed it was an accident — that I was only trying to scare her into leaving. She acknowledged that just that night, she had screamed at me in the middle of a grocery store, calling me a “little bitch” over and over in front of strangers, loud and relentless.
But the truth runs deeper than that one night.
For years, I had quietly endured abuse at her hands. She would punch me, kick me, and steal my money. Once, while I was living on the streets — with nowhere else to go — she found my tent and slashed it to pieces, leaving me with even less than nothing. She was physically larger than me, and she wielded that with cruelty. And early in our relationship, she did something to me that most men will never speak aloud. The worst thing that can be done to a person. Something so violating and humiliating that even now, I can’t bring myself to name it in a public space. I suspect you understand what I mean. I have carried that wound in silence for years.
I want to be clear: none of this justifies what I did. I had a choice that night — and I made a terrible one.
I wanted her out of my life. Instead of finding the courage to walk away, I drank myself into a stupor — four 24oz. cans of high-content malt liquor in under half an hour. Liquid desperation. What followed was the act of a frightened, broken, deeply intoxicated man who thought intimidation could do what communication never had.
When I heard her grunt, time stopped. I pulled back the blankets, lifted her shirt, and saw the puncture wounds. I fell apart. She — the woman I had just hurt — actually tried to calm me down. I found cotton balls and rubbing alcohol and dressed her wounds with shaking hands, sick with what I had done.
The police were called. In a small town, charges were filed — attempted murder. Attorneys later told me that most jurisdictions would have charged this as assault with a deadly weapon. The court record reflects what she herself admitted: I was not trying to hurt her, let alone kill her. Anyone familiar with cases of true murderous intent knows that this was not that. I cleaned her wounds. I wept. I was horrified by myself.
And yet — I was still responsible. Fully.
Prison changed me. Profoundly. I earned college degrees behind those walls. I gave up drinking entirely. I gave up violence entirely — not just the act, but even the idea of using fear or intimidation as a tool. I made a vow to myself that I would never again inflict physical pain on another person, for any reason. That vow has held.
Nearly ten years later, this still haunts me. Not because of what it cost me legally, but because of what it says about who I was and how far I’ve had to travel to become who I am now. My ex and I even reconnected briefly after — about eight months — before going our separate ways for good.
I am not asking you to forget what I did. I am asking you to see the whole person — the one who did something terrible, and the one who has spent every day since trying to be worthy of redemption. I want to leave this world better than I found it. One lesson, one day, one act of love at a time.
Because love is the answer. And communication is the cure.