Evonne Madden - Life After

adam

skinner / 34

Adam Skinner was a toddler sitting on his mother Traceys lap when she was shot in the family car during Melbournes Hoddle Street massacre in 1987. Tracey Skinner, 23, was one of seven people killed by former military cadet Julian Knight. Adam refuses to use the name of Knight, who is serving seven consecutive life sentences in prison.

The day my daughter was born was the best day of my life. But even then, theres still that numbness. You dont feel as much as you probably should, even happiness. Its strange because you know you should be feeling a certain way, but you dont. Not much affects me. When I was a teenager I think I basically shut down the part of my brain that responds to emotion. I just stopped feeling anything. I really dont know how much I know about grief because most of mine is anger.

I was about six when my old man told me what happened. He basically said that we were in the car and a gun started going off and Mum got shot. He told me Mum threw me on the floor and that he thought she had just got down, but really shed been shot. At that age you dont really get what life and death mean but you get that the reason why youre never going to see your mum again is because shes been killed.

Even though I wasnt supposed to, I read the book that a cop wrote about Hoddle Street when I was a kid. I was staying at my cousins house and I noticed it in the bookcase, so I tucked it in my bag and took it home. Ive never been a fan of reading but I read the majority of it. My Nan thats my mums mum, she took care of me for most of my life didnt know that Id read it. I knew more than she thought I knew. I found out more through watching TV news than I did off anything else, and I think what made it worse was continuously hearing about it, and what he has got to say about it all. Every time he opens his mouth its about how hard done by he was. That eats away at you. You just get furious at the TV. I think Ive broken TVs through it.

Things were probably worst in my teens. It was just continuous rage, I couldnt get rid of it. Ive put myself in that many stupid positions, like playing chicken on train tracks, crossing when the boom gates have gone down. It doesnt seem to bother me that theres a big train coming. Or Id go out into the bush and jump off cliffs without thinking about whats under the water; it didnt bother me if there was a big pointy rock. Ive never had any fear of what happens next. Im so used to death being around me. Id rather die myself than watch somebody I love die. My daughter or son hurting themselves is bad enough, let alone thinking about what it would be like if they died.

Ive thought about taking my life plenty of times, plenty of times. If anything, I think my anger issues saved me, just a refusal to give up and die. You get to that point and think No, Im not going to let somebody like him beat me, but theres been plenty of times where Ive come very close. Ive near on drunk myself to death a couple of times. I think you do grieve for someone that you dont remember. Its grieving for what you never got. I was always used to not having a mum because she was never there and maybe that was an advantage that I didnt know what I was losing but it would have been nice to have known her. The only thing I can remember is the smell of her perfume.

Usually I just tell people what happened straight out. People ask you a question about your past, you give them an answer, and it blows their buzz. You get some stunned reactions and most of the time they back off. People dont know what to say, they dont know where to look. I just tell it pretty much as it is: my mother was murdered, she was killed in the massacre. I dont know any other way to put it. There is no nice way to put it.

Its worked out well that he has been denied any right to parole, but then I never got the chance to confront him. Its all Ive ever thought about, just out of anger, but then its probably better that I didnt get to confront him because I know what I would do.

I tend to see the worst in people before I see any good in them, because Ive seen most of the worst. I struggle to give people a chance, but Im trying. I went to see a psychologist for a while. Before that, I just shrugged it off and tried to deal with it myself. But since our kids have been born Ive got to figure out how to keep my temper and anger under control and not pass it on to them. Its helping. I dont see any way that it can be fixed, but Ive got to learn to deal with it better. I think if my mum had died in a different way, I could have accepted it more. Everyone dies, but its how they die that is the hardest thing to deal with.