Why Ximena Stabbed Me To Death
A Disagreement Between Motivational Speakers
As I told the adoring audience how to achieve prosperity and joy through self sacrifice, a heckler yelled that I was a con artist. Her criticism was nothing new. She’s been my ex-wife since last summer.
Ximena looked stunning in her tight red dress, long blonde hair, black heels, and gold earings, necklace, and bracelet. I invited her onto the stage and gave her the microphone. She held the rapt attention of everyone in the auditorium.
She glared at them and pointed at me. “This man killed my career so he could take my place and rake in all your money with his phony ideas about sacrificing selfish desires to attain a higher good. He never sacrificed anything but my success!”
I spoke to her without raising my voice. “Ximena, the investigative reporter killed your career, not me.”
She turned toward me and spat. “You told her a pack of lies, and she brought me down!”
“You were preaching unconditional love but not practicing it. You lorded it over your terrified employees and mistreated your own parents. Your best friends left you. You longed for somebody to love you unconditionally, but you never loved anybody that way yourself.”
“You hated me! You put conditions on your love.”
“I loved you then. I love you now. The stress of fame was killing you. The only way to rescue your soul was to end your time on the stage.”
She threw down the microphone. A growl turned into a scream as she lunged at me. I saw a sharpened screwdriver in her fist just before she sank it repeatedly into my chest.
I dropped to my knees and gazed up at her. I placed my bloody right hand on her bosom. She halted her stabbing and blinked at me. “Why are you smiling, you freak?”
“I’ve done it. I’ve made the ultimate sacrifice. Look into my eyes, Ximena. Do you see love? I’ve given you what you craved so desperately all these years. This is what unconditional means.”
This story was inspired by Dean Craven’s mom. Dean went to school with my daughter a couple of decades ago. His mom was one of the fifty percent of bus-stop parents who avoided divorce. I had no reason to believe her love for Dean was anything other than unconditional.
Last year, I read in the New Castle News that Dean had been sentenced to prison for life after stabbing his mom in the head, face, neck, and body more than three hundred times. She may have felt love along with fear and horror as she left this world in the most traumatic way I can imagine.
If you don’t feel capable of this level of devotion, do not chatter about unconditional love. You will harm people. You will profess to love them, then later judge them (perhaps correctly) to be a toxic influence in your life. You will wisely cast them away for your own good. We all deal with rejection, but even the worst scum on earth doesn’t deserve it from a person who gains trust by pretending to a pure and unending compassion.
