<<<<<. Trigger warning. >>>>>>>>
Blood. Violence. Death. Specifically about Little John.
I had to report for jury duty yesterday. It’s a weird thing. Jury selection. I have not served on a jury but I have gone through the selection process three times now.
Basically it is a judge and a bunch of attorneys trying to make snap decisions about a group of humans hoping that the humans that they select won’t make snap decisions on the case. They need to extrapolate data in a very limited amount of time to decide what kind of people we are.
They do exactly what they are trying to ensure the jury does not do.
weird.
Anyhow. I sat in the box. I answered questions.
do you recognize anyone who will be involved with the proceedings? Who in your life is involved in law enforcement? Were you familiar with this case before today? And so on and so forth.
Have you had any negative experiences with law enforcement? Will this affect how you perceive the testimony of any police officers that will be testifying?
It appears that I have had more interaction with law enforcement than the other folks there. I only gave a few examples as I don’t think any of my interactions with law enforcement will affect how I perceive their testimony. I would figure anyone in court has an agenda and I would take everyone’s testimony as being potentially suspect.
Have you or anyone in your family been the victim of a crime?
Again it appears I have more incidents with criminal activity than the other folks in the box. Someone actually said something along the lines of “my brother in law had his bicycle stolen once” and some people had their cars broken into.
I gave a couple of examples. Said that most recently my business had been broken into on Christmas Day (so just about a week prior) and that yes I had been assaulted when I was younger ( I did not give specifics). But as people talked about things that had happened to them I kept thinking of more and more things I could have said but didn’t.
I was doing generally okay. I thought that there was pretty good odds that I was going to get tagged for jury duty. At this point there were 20 of us left in the box and then were looking for 11 jurors. So I figured my odds were about 50/50. I was thinking about things that I would need to rearrange to accommodate this service. I thought that some of my friends would make fun of me for not being more direct in attempting to get “excused” from service.
One of the attorneys started talking about watching television accounts of criminal investigations versus what happens in the real world. He specifically talked about eye witnesses and then about forensics. Specifically about dna and trace evidence and how it isn’t always available or as simple as it would seem on tv.
That’s when it hit me.
Like a truck.
In a way that I am still trying to process.
Having the cops explain that it isn’t like it is in the movies. That they couldn’t know what happened. That there was so much blood everywhere that they were never going to figure out if there was gun shot residue on his hands.
Eventually they did decide that based solely on the trajectory that it was unlikely that he could have possibly shot himself and that they were pretty sure someone else did. As far as I know that was the end of anything faintly resembling an investigation. Maybe I wasn’t close enough to the situation to have been filled in properly.
No one thought that I mattered enough to fill me in. Maybe no one got filled in. I don’t know. It was such a complete and utter fucking mess.
I was a complete disaster. Destroyed in so many ways.
I was just an ex. An outsider. My partner was at home wondering why the hell I would be so upset about an ex. Some people were being pretty horrible to me at the funeral as they had been led to believe that I was the “other woman” in John’s life. (For the record when Beth and I were both involved with John she knew all about me… but I had no idea about her.) Other people at the funeral told me that if he and I had not split up he would still be alive. That everything had gone badly when we parted. To say the least it was not comforting.
I don’t need to explain to anyone what John meant to me. No one else needs to understand what was between us. I know. I know the mark that he left on my heart. I know that there was a brief glimmering moment when two deeply flawed humans connected on a level that many people never get to experience. We weren’t perfect. Far from it. Some very fucked up things happened. Some incredibly beautiful things happened. Some things that will affect me for the rest of my life.
All of it came rushing back. So many feelings that I have tried to stuff away. All came flooding in sitting in a courtroom surrounded by strangers.
I knew that if they showed me bloody crime scenes or starting talking about the victim bleeding out that I was going to be incapable of functioning. At this point there was no way for me to bring any of this revelation up. I sat stunned into silence. Lost in my own head. Horrible visions of him lying there in pools of blood. Unable to get help in any way. Alone. Suffering.
I suddenly wanted to vomit.
They wound up dismissing 15 of us. Keeping 5 for jurors. I was told that I could leave. I was so incredibly grateful that I didn’t have to talk. That I didn’t have to explain.
In the time since I have been thinking about it. I don’t have any one that I can really talk to about this. There are people who were around who might understand. They don’t need to talk about how John died. None of us needs that memory brought back up.
There are people who don’t understand. “He was an asshole” “It was a long time ago” “but you guys had broken up”.
So I speak back into the void. Here. In a place where I used to find comfort and the occasional connection. There was a time when I wrote here a lot. I found it useful on a number of levels. Blogs are a thing of the past. Not many people care anymore. There is a good chance that no one else will ever read this. That’s okay. I needed to talk about it for me. I needed to cry again and mourn John.
I want to wish that no one ever again loses a loved one in a violent way. We as human beings are not there. We have not evolved to that point. I have not evolved to that point. There are still days where I think I am capable of great violence against another human. Maybe I am. I don’t know.
Today I mourn the absence of a soul who was loved and is missed.
And I am glad that I did not have to serve jury duty.
I will go out. I will do my job. I will ask for extra hugs today and I am fortunate enough to have access to that love in my life. I will be grateful for it.
Maybe tomorrow I will do better at stuffing the feelings back down, but not today.
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