Shannon OLeary - The Blood on My Hands: An Autobiography

The Blood on My Hands

The Blood on My Hands

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Shannon OLeary

2015 by The Author

All rights reserved.

ISBN-13: 9781519695871

ISBN-10: 151969587X

Contents

Prologue

I HAVE FELT THE COLD steel of a gun in my mouth and against my temple.

I have tasted warm blood on my lips and witnessed horrific scenes of mutilation, where nameless people took their last breaths. In my life, I have experienced poverty, met people who had plenty, and lived through fire, floods, and drought. I have befriended the intellectually challenged and physically impaired and have known the mentally ill and misfits who were geniuses. I also assumed anonymity with my mother and brothers without people realizing we had disappeared.

In my youth I was exposed to many facets of raw emotion.

Ive seen a living heart, beating and pulsating for its last time; seen broken fingers tossed in the wind; and watched a severed head dance. Tormented by recurring memories, I have chosen to write this book and put these ghosts to rest.

I first contemplated suicide at the age of four.

I devised my death plan down to the very last detail but never had the courage to see it through to completion. Instead, my mothers face would keep interceding, begging me to stay alive. Faced with the fact that I could not inflict my death upon her, Id pray for miraculous intervention. During hysterical bouts of entreaty, I would beg Jesus to strike us dead at exactly the same moment so that neither of us would feel the pain of enforced separation or the prolonged agony of death.

As a child, I dreamed of better things to come and lived in spiritualistic hope that one day my world would change. I thought my trauma was normal and didnt know what other families experienced. I thought fear, sadness, and horror were just the by-products of a barely tolerable childhood. My self-esteem was nonexistent, and after a while I sought approval through the creative arts. I loved to sing, and as my voice was strong, I sang to cover my feelings of inadequacy and desolation. To me, music represented true happiness, a make-believe world where I could cling to melodious sounds instead of the tortured screaming of my nightmares.

As an adult, I have felt exhilaration when audiences clapped and called my name. At the same time, I have felt myself torn in two, experiencing the immobilizing fear of personal exposure when not protected by the proscenium arch of a stage. When I present myself without camouflage or without a scripted character to protect me, my gut wrenches itself into a catatonic knot, an all-enveloping state of fear. If I feel I am being examined on a personal level, my arms and legs become frozen, and I feel my soul moving toward automatic pilot. I smile and behave in the correct manner, but Im mentally blank and devoid of all feeling.

I know what its like to be branded, to be labeled, and to work within the confines of a title. As a child I was called brilliant, genius, a child prodigy, and a precocious little troublemaker. I was also called an actress, liar, and evil. My teachers admitted they didnt understand me and often left me to myself. As an adult, I experienced national fame as a childrens TV personality. I have brought joy to thousands of children by teaching them the elements of performance.

It brings me great fulfillment to see children experiencing happiness. It puts my own life in perspective.

I cannot find the words to describe my childhood. Words such as passionately naive, emotionally lacerated, and holistically experiential all pale in significance, in the shadow of living itself. My childhood was so creatively textured that it carried into adulthood without allowing me to become consumed by the insanity playing havoc around me. I am sane and strong, and for that I am eternally grateful. I have felt and seen extreme emotion. I have smelled my own flesh burning. I know what it feels like to have baby snakes wriggle across my body, to smell decay, and to see an eyeball popped between someones fingers. Alone, I have spent what seemed like hours in a blackened hole, a makeshift grave with a steel curtain, waiting for death.

Through all this, I stayed courageous and strong.

I treasure the power of love and the absurdity of shock, and I deal with these emotions on a day-to-day basis.

This is the story of my childhood.

CHAPTER 1

THE NAME SHANNON MEANS "SMALL and wise. I have always been small. I was the shortest in my class at school, and I was younger than my fellow pupils by two years. I also never grew taller than five feet, so the small part of my name suited me. Yet my name also implied that I was wise. As an adult, I have often wondered if wisdom is an acquired, inherited, or learned skill. In some ways I feel it was foisted upon me. Did my home environment force me to become wise beyond my years? Yes, I was a wise child, but many people made a point of telling me I was also unnaturally old, almost adult, and beyond my years.

My mother conceived me in 1959. She was dismayed to discover she was pregnant, as she had recently had a miscarriage. When she broke the news to my father, he became angry. The last thing he wanted was another baby.

Maybe youll lose it, he said optimistically.

By the time my mother was four months pregnant, she was suffering from anemia and chronic morning sickness. During this time my parents and my older brother, Michael, were living with my fathers mother, Ethel OLeary. Grandma OLeary ran a tight ship. It was my mothers responsibility to complete all the household chores and have dinner prepared by the time Grandma returned from her work as a scrubbing woman in Pymble, New South Wales. On one occasion, she was unable to complete her daily chores and look after Michael at the same time. She panicked because dinner wasnt ready and everyone was on the way home. She bundled my brother into his pram and headed up the steep hill toward the shops. A sudden flash of inspiration left her with the idea that she could buy some pies from the cake shop.

Maybe theyll enjoy a change from my cooking, she thought.

Suddenly, a stab of pain ripped through her lower abdomen. Clutching her stomach, she clambered up the hill, the fear of an argument with Grandma OLeary and my father driving her on and far outweighing the pain she felt. The pain continued until she returned home. Unknown to her, she was carrying twins. The pain worsened during dinner, and later that evening, my mother miscarried one of the babies. It was her second miscarriage in six months, and the doctor had told her that if it happens again, she was to bring the fetus in for tests. Distraught, my mother wrapped the premature fetus in a plastic bag, put it in the freezer, and went to bed.

She awoke the next morning to the sound of my brother crying. Exhausted, she went into the kitchen to make Michael his bottle. My father was in the kitchen cooking breakfast.

Watch my kidneys, he said as he went to dress for work.

Smelling something strange, my mother looked into the frying pan.

The frozen lump was thawing. Crying out in dismay, her stomach churning and gulping for breath, she grabbed the pan and hurled the contents back into the plastic bag. My father had nearly eaten my twin.

After my twins death, I lived on in my mothers womb without anyone suspecting she was pregnant. My mother was six months pregnant when her maternal grandmother died of a cerebral hemorrhage. It was a great loss because she loved her grandmother, Amy, dearly. Amy was the perfect Victorian grandmothera beautiful mixture of chocolates, Eau De Cologne, and piano music. As I was growing up, Mum often said that I reminded her of Amy and that her spirit has returned to earth in me. She said that Amy had been prone to nervous breakdowns and has come back to experience strength in me.