Everytime I read or hear in the news about some guy barricading himself in his house or apartment or the apartment of his wife or girlfriend who has left him or threatened to leave him and holding her and sometimes the kids hostage or killing her and sometimes the kids and shooting it out with the police after killing her and sometimes the kids, either dying in a barrage of bullets or turning the gun on himself, tears come to my eyes.
I cry just a little bit because I know his pain; I know his desperation; I know his absolute terror given the abandonment of his wife or girlfriend and his choice to kill her and the kids rather than face the emptiness of life alone. And I am reminded of my own past pain, desperation and absolute terror confronted with being abandoned by a loved one to face the emptiness of life.
His sense of himself had become so enmeshed with his wife and family that even if he was an emotionally-distant, controlling, physically and emotionally abusive son of a bitch of a husband or boyfriend, life was no longer worth living if she and the kids were going to leave him. The blinding rage of learning that she was choosing to live her life without him, the overpowering jealousy, the terrifying recognition of his inadequacy as a husband or boyfriend or father or lover expressed in her desire or request or demand for independence or independent action was just too much for him to bear. He’d rather see himself dead, and by extension, her and even the kids.
This is such a common scenario. You read or hear about this kind of tragedy so often, too often. I lost my dear cousin, Jackie, to such a tragedy years ago. It was inexplicable. Her boyfriend shot her at her apartment and then shot it out with the police and was killed. Nobody ever really knew the details. They died with her and him and the torment of whatever drove their relationship to that tragic ending. I remember reading somewhat recently about three police officers even, two male and one female, killing each in the fevered frenzy of their dysfunctional relationship. OJ Simpson, even. I remember one tabloid picture of Nicole: incredibly sexy and seductive and attractive, and my thinking and understanding how that look must have so enraptured Simpson that the notion of the loss of that experience forever drove him crazy. The Dorothy Stratton tragedy, its just goes on and on…
It was only until I felt my own rage, and terror and inadequacy as a result of my separation from my first wife, Jacqui, that I began to have this level of understanding and empathy for these tragedies. And I feel so sorry for these sad and frightened sonofabitches who did not have the blessing of a counselor or a therapist as I did to give them insight into their own psyches. I am so grateful for the circumstances of my being able to make constructive choices when I was confronted with my own abandonment issues and maybe even averting a similar fate for myself.
I remember so well walking along a main thoroughfare in Oakland late one night unable to sleep due to my recent separation from Jacqui. Across the street there was this loud commotion of a liquor or drug-fueled argument between a man and a woman. All of sudden I heard, “smack!” the sound of his hitting her reverberating into the dark night. Uncontrollably, I yelled out loud, “Yeah!” Silently, in my own thoughts I followed up with, “Hit that bitch again!” And I was serious.
“Oh, shit,” I thought. “I’ve got issues with women.”
I never thought I had issues with women. From my perspective, women were the salvation of this man-dominated, out-of-control world and society. I called myself a feminist. I subscribed to MS. Magazine. I loved women; I respected women; I was non-threatening to women. Women were comfortable with me and I preferred their emotive company to the non-emotive company of men. Men were sexist, mysogynistic, homosexually-panicked, violent and saw women only as sex objects. I was not that kind of a guy and I was proud of it.
What I was expressed that night was just not like me. And yet, there it was, me wanting to call a woman a bitch. Where did that come from? What was that about? I had never spoken that word before. I hadn’t even thought it, until then…… when a woman was rejecting me.
Bob Earle, a Twelve Step speaker whom I consider to be a teacher and a guru, on one of his tapes said, “You cannot be rejected!”.....
