I understand the violence. I can explain it to you. But I have serious reservations about doing so. I don’t believe it will make a difference. I don’t believe you will understand. More likely, someone will be offended or someone will want to argue over something I said. Or someone who is so filled up with themselves will make some rude remark. The issue of violence is not about guns. It’s about compassion. America hasn’t had any compassion for decades. I know people feel bad but this is just another incident, another violent memory that will fade as time passes.
This type of violence has a simple formula. It goes something like this:
Pain = anger = rage= fury=violence
Unresolved pain always evolves into anger. Traffic is a good example. Traffic is painful. Psychologically it is challenging. Some people have learned how to deal with it so to lessen the pain. Some people have just learned to live with it and dull themselves to it. Some people get angry. Some people get very angry and it translates into road rage. And then there are a few whose rage turns into violence. What makes the difference between someone who finds a way to cope with it and someone who resorts to violence? The answer may not be as complicated as you might think.
I understand the anatomy of a killer because I have a family member that could commit such an act. He is capable of crossing the line from anger to fury to violence and killing a lot of people. For 20 years, I did everything in my ability to prevent that from happening. But now that he is an adult, there is nothing that I can do to prevent it. It scares me so much that he doesn’t know where I live because I don’t want him coming over here and killing me.
I understand the insane thinking of someone in so much pain that suicide is their only hope of no more pain. There was a time in my life where I had similar thoughts. In my 2nd marriage, I was abused physically, sexually, mentally, emotionally. I was in a lot of pain. I thought about shooting myself. I thought about taking out my husband before shooting myself. I thought about shooting my husband and a lot more people who made my life harder because they lacked compassion. I thought that if I was going to kill myself, I might as well take out a whole bunch of other people with me. I was in a lot of pain over a very long period of time.
What kept me from crossing over from sanity to insanity? What kept me from carrying out those suicidal thoughts and ending that pain? I’ve thought about it.
1) Lack of easy access to a gun. I’ve always said that not having a gun in my house has kept me alive and out of prison because if there was a gun in my house I would have either used it or had it used on me. For me to commit such a violent act, I had to go out and get a gun. I could have gone to my parents’ house and took one of my father’s guns. What kept me? Honestly, I kept thinking that if I did that, killed my husband, and didn’t kill myself, it would be seen as premeditated murder because I went and got the gun. Clearly, not the thinking of an insane person. But I gave it very serious consideration for an extended period of time while I was stuck living in this situation.
2) Reason to live. No matter how much pain I was in, no matter how isolated and desperate I feilt and no matter how badly I wanted it to end, I had something to live for….my kids. If I hadn’t had those kids, I don’t think I would be here today.
3) Marijuana. Honestly, if I hadn’t had pot to smoke when I was on the edge, I might have crossed over the line……I might have acted impulsively. If I had used alcohol or any other drug to deal with this anger and pain, the result most likely would have been different.
Looking back over the years, I have smoked the most pot when I was in the most pain and the angriest. Even to this day, when I am very angry, I will smoke a joint and calm down before I act. It is like my medicine. It helps to keep me grounded.
Before, you make a bunch of nasty comments, I need to add, that marijuana is the one thing that keeps my family member from becoming the next mass killer. I firmly believe that. I have seen this kid cross the line between sanity and insanity several times in his short life. Smoking pot is the only thing that works to stop the rage from becoming a violent fury and many other forms of medicine both legal and illegal have been tried over 30 years. And I’m thankful for that because if he had become another drunk or meth head, he probably would have killed someone by now.
Now lack of mental health resources does play a huge part to the puzzle. The truth is that unless you have a lot of money and a primo health insurance you can’t afford mental health. And the public resources were overtaxed and underfunded 20-25 years ago when this child first started manifesting problems. But I don’t believe that we have the will to make the major changes to our health care system that it will take to provide the millions of people who need it access to mental health. To do that would require real compassion and although we are shocked by the violence and we feed badly for the victims, I don’t believe that as a country we have the compassion it will take to stop the violence. No we want an easy answer like getting rid of assault weapons and arming the employees of the school. One Conservative congressman said that if they had guns in that school, they could have prevented it from happening.
20 years ago when I was desperate for help for this child, and actively advocating for more public funding of mental health resources, one man had the audacity to say to me that he didn’t understand why my problem was his problem and why his tax money should go to help people like my son. My answer was you can pay for it now while he is a young child with a future that is still wide open or you can pay for it later after he has become an angry violent man with access to guns. But that will come at a cost. The cost of the loss to the people his fury hurts. The cost of trying him, and housing him in a prison. The cost of executing him after all legal appeals has been exhausted. But there will be a cost one way or the other. At that time, I was doing everything I could think of to prevent the possibility of violence. It was exhausting because lack of people’s compassion put roadblocks in my way every step of the way.
He still has the potential of going off and just killing people indiscriminately. It could happen. All it would take is some unkind asshole setting him off by drawing a line in the sand at the exact point when he has no hope, no reason to live and no pot to smoke. And then if he kills 20 people, some children, he will be called evil and his family vilified. So I just don’t believe anything will ever really change because the first step in real changes has to come within us. We have to understand that words hurt. We have to understand that abuse is not just physical. We have to understand that any kind of name calling is rude and unkind and doesn’t do a damn thing to enhance our day or our life or anything else that is productive. To stop the violence, we have to have a change of heart. We have to understand that the root of violence whether it is small scale like a man killing his family before killing himself, or a mass shooting like Newtown or even a massive terrorist attack, it all comes from the same place. It all has the same equation.
Pain = anger = rage = fury = violence
Address the pain, no matter where or how that pain originated, and you can eliminate the violence. But when I look around at the state of our society, I just really have a lot of doubts that we have the will to do anything about it. I think there will be a lot of words spoken about it, but very little change because it’s easier to harden our hearts to the pain.
Your replies to this diary will be a reflection. Will it be attacked for its honesty? Or will there be a real conversation about the violence?