The first job I ever wanted was Hitman.

I was seven years old. It was a sunny Saturday, and the only people home that morning were me and my mother’s long-time friend Josée. A thin, nervous, and neurotic woman from money, Josée had recently left her abusive husband and had started renting the extra bedroom in our 5 ½ apartment with her three-year-old daughter, Daphne. I liked Josée; she was one of those women who was decidedly and firmly unmaternal, who liked who she was pre-baby, and was intent on not letting that version of herself die. She was funny and sarcastic. She had rows and rows of expensive beauty products in her bedroom that I loved to stare at. Rows and rows of pill bottles, too.

She was sitting in the living room that morning, probably zonked out of her mind on whatever pill she’d popped, watching Luc Besson’s new film, Leon: The Professional. In it, a 12-year-old Natalie Portman’s entire family is shot dead in a crime-related hit and her neighbor, Jean Reno, who happens to be a hitman himself, becomes her misguided guardian and reluctant role model.

Josée barely registered me, keeping her eyes glued on the screen: a woman shot to death in her bubble bath, pink bubbles.

I sat on the floor and watched along with her. At some point, she turned to me and said:

Jean Reno….quel sex pot!

I didn’t know about all that. I was more consumed by Portman’s character, Mathilda. More specifically, Mathilda’s desire for revenge and her eagerness to learn. Something about her need for revenge felt familiar and gripping. Watching her become a student of righteous death unlocked something in me that still rattles around sometimes, like what I had needed back then was someone to teach me how to defend myself and others.

My mother claims she had a recurring nightmare while pregnant with me. In it, someone is trying to stab her, and she has to grab the knife out of the aggressor’s hands and then stab him to death, frantic and violent, in order to save us.

Parce que je te protegeais…she always says, proud of her dream heroism. 

I was protecting you.

Putting aside the fact that this is probably one of the very few times my mother has protected me (and it was in a dream), this struck me. Like that primal fear, instinctual, guttural violence was absorbed by me, and I came out fighting. It would appear to be true. 

For years after watching Leon, I demanded my parents explain how I could become a hitman. They seemed largely unconcerned by this, having learned to tune out my near-constant questions. Occasionally, they’d half-heartedly indulge it if, for example, I brought up the topic on a long car trip with no escape. I remember one particularly long drive, a stretch of grey sky and my father driving, finally caving to my endless series of questions. 

I guess, hypothetically…you’d have to be in the mob or something.

The mob??

Well, I don’t know, some kind of criminal organization. You’d be killing for them.

What if I don’t want a boss?

He laughed.

When I saw my father recently, I asked him why he’d never tried to dissuade me from this strange fantasy. He said:

I mean, it’s better than being a cop, right?

Which is a great response.

I did drop it eventually, in favor of Other dreams, slightly more normal dreams (although one of them was temporarily coroner, and you could argue becoming a poet isn’t exactly normal either).

And yet, I still feel this attachment to the role of Assassin, divinely appointed to the truth. It is less about violence now, I don’t think it ever really was, but the intensity is the same, the never shifting paramount of justice and truth in my heart, guiding me. It’s still true; I guess it always will be—some things do need to die.

Sara Sutterlin writes Realism Confidence, a Substack newsletter of essays on class and culture from a nonacademic perspective.