As I stared down the barrel of the gun my thoughts were not of my life, but rather of my infant daughter who I held in my arms. It was a few days after Christmas, the air was crisp and cold, and there a beautiful tranquility about the day, a dusting of pearl white snow covered the driveway of my front yard. My new little family and I were returning from a relaxing few days of Christmas festivities with my wife’s family. The family SUV was loaded with too many presents and two quietly sleeping babies. I was on my second trip after bringing my three year old son inside, he had awoken and my wife was putting him down to continue his uenap. I had just unbuckled my little angel and was pulling her out of her car seat when I heard someone running toward me. I turned and a masked assassin wearing all black was upon me. I instinctively pulled her close to my chest to protect her, my brain screaming and telling me to push her back into the SUV. “Wait,” was the word I heard myself saying, slowly putting my still-sleeping infant daughter back into her car seat. My mind was racing a million miles a minute, thankful for these last few moments to get her to safety, imagining my wife cradling my dying body, my blood making hot red rivers in the crisp white snow. Never had my will to live been so strong—somehow, I needed to protect my family. I looked my killer in the eyes, there was no time to register fear. I felt a sense of acceptance wash over me like a tidal wave of tsunamic proportions. The rocky, painful, often self-inflicted road of decisions I had chosen to end up where I now was. The clarity was overwhelming, crushing, and total. As the universe stood still, I heard an echo say, “not today,” and he turned on his heel and disappeared. The only visual evidence was his running muddy footprints in the crystal white snow of the quiet driveway. The squeal of tires snapped me back to life as if I was waking from a nightmarish dream. It was in those after moments of acceptance that I finally realized the dark truth, the knowledge that I had been denying to myself. The tumultuous battle that had been waging for years in the hidden recesses of my subconscious brain, always bubbling but never coming to a full boil. That it was me, that I was a danger to my family. The cold hard incorrigible reality crystalized and it was absolutely and incontestably undeniable.
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