Why I won't go back to TV....

I bet none of the reasons you are thinking are why I will NEVER go back to TV. I have many, but today is the best example of why I left it staring at me blankly in the living room. Someone I know personally was gunned down by his ex-wife early this morning at her house. There are not many details yet, but enough to make you think you could see a "re-enactment" of what happened on CSI or Law and Order soon enough.

I know far too many people who LOVE to watch the myriad of CRIME shows on TV. I watched my fair share of them, but when SVU hit the screen I called it quits. I felt sick watching that one and finally just got sick altogether of all of them. It was a show, but it wasn't. It was about stuff that's happening to real people, what's enjoyable about that? I just couldn't dig it any more.

I'll never forget sitting in a Perkins in Orlando, the area where this shooting took place and watching a Dad hold his three or four year old in his arms and giving him a plastic pistol to shoot at the bad guys in a video game in the waiting area of this family restaurant. The numbness was so thick you could have put syrup on it instead of a pancake.

It struck me then and still does every time I see kids and adults playing or watching violent video games of TV. . . . How did we get so numb? How did the people who fought WWII bring this to the playrooms of their kids and grand kids????

The ultimate irony perhaps was the murder of Time Warner CEO's son Jonathan Levin in 1997. Shot stabbed and tortured for his ATM card by some kids from the other side of the tracks that he'd tried to mentor. I could never get over that story....The CEO of Time Warner, purveyor of all kinds of violent entertainment and content got to experience the REAL pain of what it's like when it happens in the real world first hand.

This morning's shooting is reported to be a case of domestic violence. The wife is in custody for the shooting and then stabbing herself to make it look like self-defense. Sadly, I can relate to that one too. My best friend from college was murdered by her husband, an Iraqi guy who she met on a furlough from prison where he was doing time for murdering his ex-girlfriend and the boyfriend she took after leaving him. After killing them, he turned the gun on himself and shot himself just enough to become paralyzed from the waist down. Ironically, this all happened around the same time as the Dukakis campaign's Willie Horton debacle.

Anyway..my friend met him at this party and believed he was remorseful and ended up marrying him to help save him from being sent back to Iraq once his sentence was up, which I guess was close when she met him. She told me they would have just killed him upon his return.

He would have shot her, but she was already dead when he got to the hospital after running her car off the road when she left his house after breaking up with him...he had followed her in the car he had that was fitted for him to drive. He arrived at the hospital with a gun in his hand in case he'd not accomplished his goal.

My own numerous experiences with domestic violence reared their ugly head today too and had me off kilter since the news was delivered to me and friends. Others said, "This just doesn't happen to people you know"...I had to beg to differ. . . and added that it's happening all around all of us everyday.

If you know a woman or a man that is in a situation that is way to intense emotionally, physically or violently, take it seriously. This, according to Robin Norwood, author of the BEST book ever on the subject, Women Who Love Too Much, is a progressive situation and it will eventually lead to the death of those involved if they don't figure out what's keeping them in such unhealthy situations.

Are they bad people? Having been there, I say no. People involved in relationships fraught with domestic violence simply hate themselves so much that they take it out on others who they are able to draw close to and invite, albeit subconsciously, others to take it out on them. "It" that I refer to here is anger/rage and bottomless shame and utter loathing. It's hard to believe that people can be suffering in this stuff and you may never, ever know it. Or, you may think it's all the "other" person's fault. I say it's not. Sadly, in truth it's a system.

Just to be clear, I know nothing about this person who was killed except his name and what he looked like and what his voice sounded like. We were not friends. I'm not saying that I know any of this to be true about him specifically. But speak from my own experience and that of others I've been near in this situation.

Bottom line, if you need help or know someone that does, man or woman,...read that book, call the local domestic violence shelter and pray for them. And remember, you can't change them or make them well. They will have to choose that themselves. If you are spared this anguish in your own relationships, be grateful and work hard to make your relationships as honest and loving as you can. Get help at the FIRST sign of inappropriate behavior. Denial leads, ultimately, to death.

Annie Quicksilver
5-4-2010