Two and the Glock: Rosary Night

Yup, Number Two had a gun. A big-ass Glock (9mm, if I remember right). She kept the thing in her bedside table drawer.

Keep in mind that she is mostly blind.

Keep in mind that she is bipolar.

Keep in mind that her docs are piddling around with her meds. When I first met her, she was on lithium. They changed her to Depakote in late September of '96. These meds weren't working out--and she was pretty much stuck on the down side of the poles.

Keep in mind that on top of all this...she was on Norplant. Interesting little chemical factory, Number Two. She made nitroglycerin seem stable.

Now let's go back to that gun. It was "for protection"; they always are. Her strategy was to be "hear something scary, point gun, shoot."

I took the bullets out of it and hid them after what I call Rosary Night.

It was a few weeks after we got her moved into the trailer. We went to bed as usual; I went to sleep as usual. But at some point I became aware of my hands being moved and something being put therein. I woke up to find Two arranging her rosary in my hands like I was a reclining saint.

She told me to go back to sleep, don't worry, I'm just having trouble sleeping, going to have some tea. She wouldn't explain the rosary and wouldn't let me sit up.

It took me an hour to talk her down and get the story: she was planning to have a last cigarette, then she was going to walk into the woods out behind the trailer, find a spot, and cap herself with the Glock--because she "was happy for the first time in her life, and wanted to end it that way."

I sometimes wonder how much of her depression and such were from all the meds and the Norplant, and how much was from having a shitty life as a kid. She told me that her parents and various former boyfriends had beaten her; her mother threw her into a dresser and broke it. I never laid a hand on her--something I'm still proud of, given how evil she could be when the various chemicals teamed up and something set her off--but I'm pretty sure she was expecting me to unhinge and give her a thump.

Boy, did she get pissed when I hid the bullets, even knowing WHY I did it.