The reason I started this memoir was based on a decision that came out of therapy. It was not a traditional therapy where one seeks to heal. Rather, I was trying to remove a block I have on shooting a gun. I am trapped, with no way to survive or make money. The only way I could see was to go back to my old profession no matter how much my heart is not in it.
It does not matter what I tell myself is the motivation, nor matter what object I aim at, I cannot pull a trigger. But what I will say now is what I did not tell the mind doctor. My old way of compartmentalizing my life proves worthless when trying to deal with my present reality. I thought I could tell the doctor just enough to remove the block, that I could get an answer without total confession.
Now I know differently.
There was a specific point in time when I could no longer shoot a gun. Oh, I have talked of my rejection of the gun before, like I'd come to a moral decision. But that is not the case. No, I remember that January day. I remember the sky and every cloud in it. Had I not been me it would have been a beautiful day, I recall thinking. But I was me, and I walked with a loaded gun. I was a man possessed.
Sheila had a smile that lit up the heavens. I was overwhelmed by her, bowled over by her kindness and intelligence. She found me at my lowest ebb, drained of hope and filled with doubt. I was in Los Angeles and still had money, open to trying anything. So naturally, I met her in my acting class. It was an explosion for me. Every word she spoke I treasured, every conversation a Christmas morning. She was exactly whom I prayed to meet.
Can you pick out the assassin?
Like me, the class was a bit of a lark for her. Whereas I had a deep drive to act from a lifelong campaign of deception, she was tentatively reaching out in recovery after a painful divorce. I threw myself into my roles but mine was a dead soul. She was more measured but hers a living soul – she actually had something to protect and preserve. It’s much harder to risk exposure when you have something to lose.
But at our height we wrote a skit together. She was “damn proud” of it, realizing her creative powers were greater than she thought. I didn’t realize until later I was driving her, pushing her to that extreme. She needed me. It was a glorious time of sharing but we only met in class, neither one broaching the subject of anything more.
But all this time a parallel course of guilt and loathing was building. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her of my dreaded past. How could she trust me after that? How long could I keep up the deception of normalcy, that I could never have a marriage such as she had? She was looking for a return to life, but my life only came alive when I was with her. While I knew she was not the woman for me, she made me feel like I was worthy.
Then I came to the crossroads and chose the devil’s path. I couldn’t confess my wicked life to a person such as her. Sheila was no fool and knew the meaning of life. It would be the end of our relationship. But I trusted her without reservation and to go forward in life I needed her. Never in my life before had I deferred to another person’s thinking. She could lead me out of the wilderness. But how could I impose myself on her life? What evidence was there I deserved her time? I could find none.
So I started to tear her down, to drive her from the class. She would put me and my needs out of her life. One day she stopped showing up. No one but me knew why. I was shattered, in tears, grieving day and night. I stayed in the class only to save face but my heart was not in it and it became just one more place where I was forced to lie about my destructive actions. It was suicide right on the stage.
After six months of falling I was a written wreck. My health deteriorated and remains affected to this day lo these many years later. My self-loathing mushroomed like an atomic cloud, judging myself, condemning myself. I stopped using a mirror for shaving. In movies I watched I knew it was I who was the bad guy the audience despised and reviled. I fell off a cliff with no end in sight. I was alone on an alien planet.
I imploded, swallowed whole by the void, losing my mind in the endless black, reaching out but finding nothing; fool for the ages. Then came the seizing panic. Always alone, a prisoner of my head, I pulled the plug on reality. Already an outcast, Sheila’s knowledge of me - of my true existence - left me with an unbearable fate: to be known. I felt sure I was to be the next O.J. spurned by high and low alike.
Not that she was the sort to tell - just the opposite, in fact. But the visions in my head, of her dragging me down the street by my ear. “Here he is! Judas reincarnated! A soul doomed for the ages no matter how many times he returns. Beware! Beware!” The compulsion for suicide after betrayal is an urge to be dearly reckoned with. Your entire being cries out for it. Only cowardice kept me alive.
Destroy the evidence. That’s what I told myself. With my secretive life before, I left no evidence to ever prove or disprove the wisdom of my ways. But Sheila knew – and I could not be stopped as my focus narrowed and narrowed until I saw nothing but her. Killing was what I knew. So killing is what I did.
I can still hear the sound of the gun falling to the floor afterwards. The spell was broken. I’d been sleepwalking only to awaken to a body dead by my own hand. I screamed, something I’d never done before. I found the deepest hole I could find and dove in. Never sleeping more than two hours at a time, the nightmares deep and intense. Seems I could not make a move without making things worse.
But I was forced into survival mode, details of which I mostly cannot describe. But first and foremost was repulsion of guns. I could not see them on TV or bear them in any way. If I did see one I would beg and plead for the owner to destroy it before it destroyed him. “It will not save your life. It will take your life!” No more guns, please. Not anywhere, not ever.
That is my one wish: for all instruments of death to be gone. We are fools to trust them. Beg for peace. Beg for forgiveness. Please don’t be like I was. Don’t think yourself clever or smart. “First do no harm.” That is the only way. Do you want to be forever trapped in hell like me? Can a gun bring back the dead? How can I shine this light to the world? How can I make them heed my knowing word? Only love can save – and a bullet won’t save you from that.
"If you cling to your life, you will lose it. If you let your life go, you will save it."
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