I’m just your typical average girl. I grew up in the suburbs, attended a major university, and dine out several times a week – you know, like most people. I live in a really nice neighborhood, so the specter of random gun violence didn’t cross my mind as something I should be concerned about.
I never thought it could happen to me, but it did: After carefully planning for weeks, I shot someone.
I’ll answer everyone’s first questions right off the bat: Yes, I am okay. Yes, they caught the guy who got shot by me (he was dead). And no, I will never feel safe again.
I’ll never forget when he looked me right in the eye and said, “I’ve been shot.” And I said to myself, “Why me?”
I’d heard all about people who fell victim to becoming a murderer. One day they were going about their lives – going to work, spending time with friends, enjoying oyster happy hours on Park Avenue South – you know, like most people. The next day, completely out of nowhere, they spend copious amounts of time and effort fomenting an assassination plot.
Perhaps you’re thinking, “How is this possible?” I’ve asked myself the same question while flipping through the paper, silently scoffing to myself over the police’s bumbling attempts to find the killer. And I believe it’s because people can’t empathize with murderers. It pains me to think of how cruel people can be to murderers.
Let me be clear: if it could happen to me, it could happen to anybody. Totally out of the blue, I spent over five months and thousands of dollars methodically securing everything I’d need to end the life of a man who’d crossed me. The shock, the panic, the jamais vu of calmly raising a Smith & Wesson M&P22 with an Aviator AAC silencer capably threaded to the barrel and aiming just above the occipital ridge from 18 inches away– I mean, how am I supposed to come back from that?
Carrying out first-degree murder was hugely traumatizing for me.
There will never be a day that goes by where I don’t think about that fateful night that I planned out meticulously for weeks. The symptoms of my trauma come on at times that I cannot control: I’ll be out with my girlfriends at a sample sale (we are all like most people) and suddenly I’ll see the blood, hear the bang, smell the smoke – bringing on a terrifying rush that can only be caused by cold-blooded, unrepentant murder. It’s hard to focus on my work while I evilly kiss my new “vintage ring” that I “got on Etsy” and “looks like a human tooth” but is “actually high-quality resin.” I just want to be normal again.
I didn’t ask for any of this. Sure, I caused it. But that doesn’t mean I don’t deserve to heal enough to go back to my normal, average life. And maybe, just maybe, feel safe enough to kill again.
I’m not one to ask for charity, but considering I had to dissolve all my good tarps in a barrel of lye, I’m starting a GoFundMe page to help me get back on my homicidal feet. $50 pays for one month of Klonopin. $100 buys one hour of EMDR therapy. $419 buys me a new rimfire pistol to take out the next person who has it coming.
If you can’t afford to give, you can still help by remembering one thing: becoming a cold, calculating assassin can happen to anyone. Even you.
