I’m Thinking About Ending You
My first memory was at 8 months old. I know that sounds unbelievable, but the details I can recall are undeniable. After a while, no one debated it.
My dad, grandpa, uncle, and two of my adult half-siblings (from my much older father’s first marriage) were in the car that morning. The six of us loaded into our minivan and drove out on a day trip. Suddenly, an 18 wheeler ran a red light and plowed right into us. I was the only one who didn’t get seriously hurt. In fact, I didn’t have so much as a single scratch on my delicate infant skin. Things like that aren’t supposed to happen.
I don’t remember the accident itself because, apparently, I slept right through it. I woke up as the first responders began contorting my tiny body in order to pull me from a narrow, sliding back window. They then placed me into the backseat of a police car. I was left alone for a long time while everyone else was being cared for. I never cried, I just watched. I watched everything.
I held myself up to look out of the open back window of the police car. It was absolute chaos. I’ll never forget the strange taste of the blood-filled air as my dad’s legs bled profusely; hearing my half-brother cry out as glass was pulled from his eyes; seeing how my uncle struggled to breathe from his ribs being crushed; smelling the hot asphalt as my half-sister lied on the ground with a brain injury; and feeling the cruiser shake every time the cop reached in to use his radio to insist that my unconscious grandfather wouldn’t survive if the ambulance didn’t get there soon.
Just a few days later, I have vague memories of taking my first steps. My mom said I was determined to chase after my brother (my only full-sibling). They were both safe at home and sleeping that morning because my brother was sick and wanted to stay in bed with my mom after her night shift at the hospital.
My brother is 3 years older than me and I just wanted to do everything he was already doing. So, by 1 year I was running and swimming. My mom would tell anyone who’d listen how I jumped into the deep end of the pool and just started swimming all on my own. “Like a fish returning to water,” she’d say.
Most people don’t have any consistent memories until about 4 or 5 years of age. Anything before that is maybe a couple of memory flashes (like how I remember taking those first steps). I have several of these memory flashes after the car accident, but my active consciousness didn’t wake up until I was 3 years old.
It was a cloudy day on our beach vacation in California. My mom and babysitter took me swimming in the ocean while everyone else was at the hotel. We made it a girls day out. Being the astonishingly great swimmer I was, I was easy to lose track of. According to another mother on the beach, I set my sights on the horizon and got trapped by an undertow that swept me much further out to sea. My babysitter ended up rescuing my limp body from the water and carried me to shore. Thankfully, my nurse mother was able to resuscitate me, and from that moment on, my brain went live with a photographic memory.
From the second I woke up (after vomiting salt water), I started blabbering about “the man.” Frustrated that my mom didn’t know who I was talking about, I then went on and on about the car accident 2 years prior. I tried to tell them about what I’d experienced—what I saw as I watched from the back of the police car, and what I’d just seen in the ocean when I died. My dad didn’t go to California with us because he was very ill, so as soon as I got home, I ran and told him everything (thinking he would understand since he was in the accident with me). At first, no one took me seriously. Over the years, however, my family could no longer deny it.
Everyone was clear on the fact that I slept through the accident itself—but what no one knew was that I was dreaming about a giant truck running us over when it happened. The memory of this dream was lost until I was sucked into the cold, dark void of the Pacific Ocean.
To this day, no one has ever found the truck driver that almost murdered my family. Well, “almost” is debatable. With the exception of myself, everyone inside our minivan died within 6 years of that accident.
My grandpa (9 months later): went into a coma and never woke up due to a rare illness no one knew he had. He died weeks later.
My half-sister (4 years later): died of a massive seizure in her sleep after developing epilepsy from her TBI. Before she went to bed that night, she complained of smelling road asphalt.
My uncle (4 years later): suffocated to death after being crushed for hours in a machine at his job.
My half-brother (5 years later): was thrown face first through a 12 story window and fell to his death. It was ruled a suicide but we’ve never believed that. They found glass shards all over his body, including in his eyes.
My dad (6 years later): bled to death and was found in a pool of blood around his legs.
My dad’s death affected me the most. I was 7 years old and a total daddy’s girl. By the time they found him, he was supposed to be on a plane flying back home to us. I didn’t sleep at all that night in anticipation of my father coming back to me.
The last time I saw him was about a week after his kidney transplant. My mom flew my brother and I to the Denver hospital where he’d gotten his surgery. I was so excited to show him the special drawing I made for him. I was in second grade and my teacher had recently given us an audio/visual assignment. She put on beautiful instrumental music and told us to draw what the music made us feel. I was thinking of my father nonstop, so of course he was the focus of my artwork. But, to this day, I’ll never know why he smiled when I gave it to him. I ripped it to pieces when I got it back a month later.
My mom, an RN, had flown into the Denver airport on a cold winter morning so she could care for my father on the plane ride back home. When he never showed up at the airport where they’d agreed to meet, my mom took a taxi to the hotel where he’d stayed the night after being discharged.
Something went wrong with his kidneys and by the time he woke up, he’d been bleeding internally in his sleep for some time. He was too weak to get help and fell to the floor where he died. The blood filled his lower quadrants, then seeped out of his body and pooled around his legs.
When my mom found him, there was a child’s drawing on the nightstand next to his bed. It was the special picture I gave to him in the hospital after his surgery. That was the first time she’d ever seen it, and all she could do was scream.
With my favorite crayons, I drew a winter mountain scene. At the base of the mountain was a grave with “PAPA” written vertically down the cross. The sun was peeking through the clouds and a yellow ray of sunshine illuminated his cross. At the bottom of his headstone were blood-red roses growing from the snow covered ground.
One of the most vivid memories from the scene of the crash when I was 8 months old was when I looked over at the massive truck which hit our car. The driver side door had been ripped off by the firefighters and there was no one inside. I stared endlessly at that empty cabin, wishing someone would magically appear. The cops kept asking my family and the witnesses if they saw the truck driver. They all said the same thing:
“We never saw anyone behind the wheel.”
The road where we were T-Boned by the semi truck is right in front of the military cemetery. All 5 of my family members from the crash are buried there because they all served in the US Armed Forces.
When I drowned in the ocean at 3 years old, I didn’t just remember the premonition dream of the semi truck all on my own—someone down in the darkness showed it to me. He’s been with me my whole life, and he still visits me in my dreams. The only name I have for him is, “The Shadow Man.” He’s shown me so many things that I don’t have answers for. All I have are my memories, but the one thing I am absolutely sure of is this:
He’s thinking about ending you.
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I’m Thinking About Ending You
Based on true events
A “Those Damn Enigmas” Production
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An untitled, handwritten, and psychotic poem I have no recollection of writing at 10 years old after a sleep paralysis episode.
Dated September 6, 1996 in my journal.
Stillness interrupted
By the smell of black in the morning
I just want a hug
In this glass breaking symphony
It doesn’t taste like Cherry Kool-Aid
When light lets the darkness fade