So, About That Shooting Thing
Jan. 13th, 2011 10:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deirdreI have a different take on it and it's from some very unpleasant and unfortunately personal pain.
On November 15, 1996, my first husband (we'd been married five months) and I were having intimate relations. When we were done, he had difficulty getting up, but it sounded like he was having a wonky knee issue, so I wasn't concerned. Probably he wasn't able to articulate the problem, but I'm not sure he knew he had one yet.
When the aphasia started, though, I knew what had happened: he'd had a stroke, and the first symptom had been hemiplegia. I called the ambulance (aka the downstairs neighbors), who came and took him to the hospital. At the time they took his blood pressure, it was 260/160 -- worst part of a hemorrhagic stroke, frankly is the damage caused by the brain's demand for increased blood pressure, worsening the problem -- and he had lost the ability to speak entirely by that time, but was still able to understand speech and respond with his left side.
Seeing someone die one brain function at a time was the most horrifying thing I've ever seen, and I hope it remains that way for the rest of my life; I don't want to see anything scarier.
Now, as I was driving along behind the ambulance, I had no idea if Richard was going to survive or not. I just knew that the present reality sucked, and I hoped that he would not lead a life that he'd hate more than the intense poverty he'd known the years after moving to Vermont.
So, when the doctor came and sat beside me and told me he wasn't responding to intense pain -- I was relieved. I was relieved because I Knew What to Do. I knew What Was Appropriate. And, because I am a selfish person, because I wouldn't have to give up everything I knew career-wise and life-wise to take care of him. Don't get me wrong, I would have done so, but I don't think most people would prefer to do that than our own goals for our lives. So, I donated his organs.
At that point, we'd been being harassed by someone Richard had previously dated, so we had been recording calls because it was necessary for turning documents over to the police. You know it's bad when you know all the watch commanders by first name, right?
Now here's the part I don't talk about.
Earlier that evening, he'd gotten a call from a different woman who had been pressuring him to have an affair. He liked her, no question about it. (He was, well, he was just one of those guys. I wish he'd been honest about being poly, but he wasn't, and therefore he was prone to cheating, which I hadn't realized until after he died.)
She was an administrator for his college program and she was a sexual harassment investigator for the school. And yet, here she was, pressuring him, trying to manipulate him using her power as an administrator to curry favor. She'd threatened that if he didn't have an affair with her, she was going to report that he was harassing her. He went out into the garage after that call, banged on his car and cursed a lot, and then came to bed, where the rest happened, but he didn't tell me the contents of the call at the time.
I was angry, I was in grief, and I blamed her -- had he not been so angry as a result of that, would he still be alive? I was convinced so, but of course one can't know. Let's just settle on "it didn't help."
At that moment, I had means, motive, and opportunity, and I did seriously consider killing her.
There were two considerations that pulled me back to sanity:
1) The fear that I might not do things right and she might wind up the way I feared Richard would. I couldn't bring myself to do that to anyone.
2) The fear of prosecution. She wasn't worth any price I'd have to pay. Frankly, this was my lesser concern at the time.
In other words: I know what kind of pressure it takes for a sane person to get to that brink. Because of that moment, I now know that I can't pull that trigger, because I can't imagine greater motivation in my life.
I did what I consider the right thing: push until the school fired her. She'd abused her position of power, and that was the right outcome, even if I did figure she caused more than that penalty cost her, and possibly not just in this one case, either.
So when I hear about the Giffords shooting and her traumatic brain injury, it means something completely different to me. I'm glad her healing seems to be coming along, but Elizabeth Moon is right: It's a really long process and there's no sure thing. I simply can't imagine what kind of person would inflict that kind of pain willingly -- or even talk about it as though they were.
On November 15, 1996, my first husband (we'd been married five months) and I were having intimate relations. When we were done, he had difficulty getting up, but it sounded like he was having a wonky knee issue, so I wasn't concerned. Probably he wasn't able to articulate the problem, but I'm not sure he knew he had one yet.
When the aphasia started, though, I knew what had happened: he'd had a stroke, and the first symptom had been hemiplegia. I called the ambulance (aka the downstairs neighbors), who came and took him to the hospital. At the time they took his blood pressure, it was 260/160 -- worst part of a hemorrhagic stroke, frankly is the damage caused by the brain's demand for increased blood pressure, worsening the problem -- and he had lost the ability to speak entirely by that time, but was still able to understand speech and respond with his left side.
Seeing someone die one brain function at a time was the most horrifying thing I've ever seen, and I hope it remains that way for the rest of my life; I don't want to see anything scarier.
Now, as I was driving along behind the ambulance, I had no idea if Richard was going to survive or not. I just knew that the present reality sucked, and I hoped that he would not lead a life that he'd hate more than the intense poverty he'd known the years after moving to Vermont.
So, when the doctor came and sat beside me and told me he wasn't responding to intense pain -- I was relieved. I was relieved because I Knew What to Do. I knew What Was Appropriate. And, because I am a selfish person, because I wouldn't have to give up everything I knew career-wise and life-wise to take care of him. Don't get me wrong, I would have done so, but I don't think most people would prefer to do that than our own goals for our lives. So, I donated his organs.
At that point, we'd been being harassed by someone Richard had previously dated, so we had been recording calls because it was necessary for turning documents over to the police. You know it's bad when you know all the watch commanders by first name, right?
Now here's the part I don't talk about.
Earlier that evening, he'd gotten a call from a different woman who had been pressuring him to have an affair. He liked her, no question about it. (He was, well, he was just one of those guys. I wish he'd been honest about being poly, but he wasn't, and therefore he was prone to cheating, which I hadn't realized until after he died.)
She was an administrator for his college program and she was a sexual harassment investigator for the school. And yet, here she was, pressuring him, trying to manipulate him using her power as an administrator to curry favor. She'd threatened that if he didn't have an affair with her, she was going to report that he was harassing her. He went out into the garage after that call, banged on his car and cursed a lot, and then came to bed, where the rest happened, but he didn't tell me the contents of the call at the time.
I was angry, I was in grief, and I blamed her -- had he not been so angry as a result of that, would he still be alive? I was convinced so, but of course one can't know. Let's just settle on "it didn't help."
At that moment, I had means, motive, and opportunity, and I did seriously consider killing her.
There were two considerations that pulled me back to sanity:
1) The fear that I might not do things right and she might wind up the way I feared Richard would. I couldn't bring myself to do that to anyone.
2) The fear of prosecution. She wasn't worth any price I'd have to pay. Frankly, this was my lesser concern at the time.
In other words: I know what kind of pressure it takes for a sane person to get to that brink. Because of that moment, I now know that I can't pull that trigger, because I can't imagine greater motivation in my life.
I did what I consider the right thing: push until the school fired her. She'd abused her position of power, and that was the right outcome, even if I did figure she caused more than that penalty cost her, and possibly not just in this one case, either.
So when I hear about the Giffords shooting and her traumatic brain injury, it means something completely different to me. I'm glad her healing seems to be coming along, but Elizabeth Moon is right: It's a really long process and there's no sure thing. I simply can't imagine what kind of person would inflict that kind of pain willingly -- or even talk about it as though they were.