LITMIR.BIZ

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next memory is of sitting on the couch with my Bushmaster 223 AR-15 assault rifle in a sort of trance, resigned to ending my life as quickly and efficiently as possible. I had spent over an hour cleaning, oiling, and reassembling the firearm. It was my process of honoring the weapon and preparing for death—the Samurai’s “way of the warrior,” or bushido. Yet I was ashamed of what I had become.

      Hallucinatory shadows darted around me, clambering around the house, making ominous sounds and whispering terrible things to me. I took my weapon in my hands, sprang from the couch, and began walking the house, breathing heavily, clearing it room by room, and pointing the muzzle of the barrel into the darkness. My martial arts training was kicking in, and I was going through the motions, but what I was chasing, I still don’t know.

      Why am I doing this? I asked myself, looking down in confusion at the rifle in my hands. What am I doing? There’s no one here. I then began thinking about turning the gun on myself. Am I really about to shoot myself with my rifle, in our home, so that Lisa can find me?

      Lisa had been cleaning up my messes for years. Did I really think that killing myself this way, so that she could find me in a bloody mess on our floor, was going to help her?

      I was so disgusted with myself, and full of fear. The hallucinations taunted me again, and I screamed a terrified, “Aaaahhh!”

      The full force of what I’d planned to do hit me like a sucker punch. I dropped to the floor, letting go of the rifle, and cried so hard I couldn’t breathe. Can’t I kill myself the right way? I wondered. Could I do anything right?

       SIDEBAR:

       Over the course of the weekend, I

       had grown stronger in my resolution

       that I was done. I didn’t want to lose

       Josh but I could no longer go on

       feeling the way I did. I wanted to be

       happy again, and those days were

       few and far between. It felt like the

       only time I was happy was at work

       and I was tired of the worrying about

       Josh and whether he would end up

       dead, in the hospital or in jail.

      After a long time spent crying on the floor of the hall, an idea occurred to me like another sick voice in my head. My martial arts training was so refined that I could do it myself, through autonomic control.

      I could meditate deeply with extreme focus, which I had done many times before. But this time, if I could meditate deeply enough to block out physical pain and tap into energy, I could also reverse the process and shut down my body, depleting it of energy using those same methods. This last, deep meditation would just go deeper than I’d gone before. There would be no blood, no mess to clean up. Clean and efficient. This was my way out.

      I crawled on my hands and knees into our home office, then lay down, preparing myself to enter the meditation that would ultimately shut down my body. I focused on pulling the energy from my feet and hands through my limbs and up into my body, then dropping that life force back to earth. I repeated this, pulling and pulling energy through my body and then down to the ground. I focused on my breathing and could feel the frigid cold in each part of my body as it slowly, limb by limb, became lifeless.

      When I could no longer feel or move my limbs, I then focused on my head and neck, pulling the energy into my chest and into the ground. I pulled deeper and deeper into the darkness. I grew colder and colder, and finally I could no longer feel my body. Then I blacked out.

       SIDEBAR:

       I don’t know how we had gotten

       to this point, how we let our lives

       spin this far out of control, it wasn’t

       supposed to be like this. I knew my

       decision could go one of two ways

       and although I didn’t want to lose

       Josh, I knew that was a possibility.

       Addiction would eventually kill him

       and I was always torn on how would

       I feel if it happened after I left him,

       would I feel like it was my fault

       because I didn’t stay? Was there

       something I could do? How would

       I feel if I stayed and he died? I knew

       that by giving him a choice it would

       allow me to move forward and not

       feel the burden of that weight.

       I hadn’t talked to him all weekend

       so I had no idea the shape he was

       in, or what he was thinking, I just

       knew that we both were hurting.

      I was gone. I drifted through darkness, eventually coming upon a faint light in the distance. The light moved swiftly toward me, and when it reached me, it transformed into the figure of a woman who looked familiar, though I couldn’t place her. She reached a hand out to touch mine, caressing it in such a loving, comforting way that it reminded me of being in the arms of my own mother, in the innocence of youth. I felt safe and loved, fully believing, for the first time in a long time, that I would be okay.

      Then she said to me the words that changed my life forever: “No … Not yet. There’s more work to do.” Then she let go of my hand and disappeared as quickly as she’d come.

      Like a patient receiving an electrical jolt from a defibrillator, I startled awake and took an enormous gasp of air. I realized that my plan had failed. I was trapped, once again, in this miserable life. My strength completely drained and my mind emptied, I could do nothing but cry.

      After hours passed this way, I heard the familiar sound of Lisa’s keys in the door. It was time to face her and the desolation I’d created. I lay on the couch in the living room, holding my breath and waiting for the inevitable dressing down I knew I deserved.

      She slowly made her way through the house, and spied the rifle in the hallway. I heard a slight gasp before she appeared, standing above me, looking down.

      The look in her eyes was a mixture of pity and strength. She stood there in full uniform, badge over her heart and gun strapped to her side, and she looked different to me now. There was resolve in her eyes, watering with the enormity of what she was seeing, but I could see by the expression of distaste and disregard on her face that she was done with all this. Lisa, the strong, determined Lisa I’d fallen in love with, was once again standing here before me. I felt relieved to see her, even as I dreaded what would surely come next.

       SIDEBAR:

       I was ready for it to stop. I was

       ready to take a stand for me. To

       either move forward together or

       move forward alone. I was glad

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