An Eye for an Eye

The cruelty that people show towards one another makes me feel sad, outraged and impotent to make it better. It’s why I avoid the news much of the time, and when I don’t you get posts like this, this and this (I think that was my best ever post title!).

It’s gotten much worse since I became a mother. Before motherhood I could read and watch stories about human cruelties, but could never read or watch anything about animals being hurt, even unintentionally. I’ve never seen Sounder, and the scene in Benji where the dog gets kicked triggered a crying jag that forced my Mom to take me out of the theater at the ripe old age of eight. I’d feel very sad and sorry about kids being hurt, but I could watch and read the stories.

Sometime during my pregnancy with Son things changed. I began to have the same reaction to stories about children that I’d always had to stories about animals. It causes such pain in my soul that I avoid them at most costs. When an online friend who was pregnant at the same time tragically lost her son shortly after birth I could not even hear what happened, and to this day don’t know the entire story. I can’t. I just can’t.

Today I read a story that I would not normally read. I don’t know what had me read it, but read it I did. It’s about a mother who lets her disabled daughter starve to death, and the friends and government workers whose lack of morals and the most basic common decency allowed it to happen.

This particular case was so heinous because this poor child was failed at every turn. Caseworkers who never went to see her and then conspired with agency supervisors to create and backdate reports detailing visits that never happened. Another that went once and had the mother pre-sign for future visits because he was too lazy to go back. Friends who lied about the girl’s state in the days before she died.

There’s more, and it’s all so very appalling.

I feel an overwhelming sadness for what that poor girl was made to suffer. The fact that it was at the hands of her parents – the people who were supposed to love and care for her – makes me weep. I think of my friend who lost her precious son, and I wonder how these parents – and all the other parents who inconceivably harm their children – can take such a precious gift from G-d so for granted, especially when there are other parents-in-waiting who would do anything to be so gifted.

I am not violent nor a vengeful person. But all I can think about is how much I feel these people should suffer. How I would love to see an eye for an eye. Warning! If you are like me and can’t read specifics about this tragedy please skip the rest of this paragraph! How much I’d like to see them lying in their own urine and feces, unable to move, as their raspy voices beg, beg for water. I want to see maggots in their bedsores, formed because they were forced to stay in the same bed for so long that the outline of their body is imprinted in the mattress.

I want them to suffer. A lot.  Why should they get mercy when that poor girl was denied?

So please join me tonight in a little prayer for the soul of Danieal. May she find in death that which she never experienced in life: peace.

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How Do They Sleep At Night? Vol 2: MySpace Impersonators

This is part 2 of a series about people who screw people, sometimes for a living.

How Do They Sleep At Night? Part 2-MySpace Impersonators

There are few news stories from the past few years that have disturbed me as much as this one. A young girl committed suicide after parents of an friend of hers opened a MySpace account, created a profile of a young boy, and used it to first gain her trust, then berate and harass her. They instigated the cruel joke, they say, to see if the girl was talking trash about their daughter, from whom the girl had recently become estranged. Perhaps it even started out that way, but it became more about the rush they got wielding the power to hurt a young, vulnerable girl.

Suicide is always tragic, even more so when it involves a child. This girl, already troubled, struggling with her weight and self-esteem, reached her limit. We all know that things would have gotten better, but the poor girl didn’t, couldn’t see past the despair and humiliation she felt lurked outside the door, and on her computer monitor. She wasn’t even safe in her own home.

The people who created the false MySpace account apparently didn’t break any criminal laws – at least not any currently on the books. The laws of humanity, though, were forgotten, or ignored, so that the impersonators could get a cheap thrill.

Are they responsible for her death? It’s true that they didn’t kill her, didn’t put the rope around her neck. I’m even sure that they’re genuinely sorry she’s dead. But they certainly did deliver what turned out to be a fatal blow to her spirit.

Even if she wasn’t troubled, there’s no excuse for such behavior. When children misbehave we say, “They should have know better.” But in this case it was an adult, a parent, saying such horrible things to a child. How could they? How could a parent say that to any child? THAT is the most unfathomable part of it to me, and to the parents I know.

If that weren’t enough, even as these barbs were arriving at their home via the internet connection, the Impersonators were actually imposing on the hospitality of Megan’s family by storing items at their house.

Those are some very, very large testicles.

I feel sorry for the Impersonators’ kids. They certainly aren’t getting many good lessons in character development. Who is teaching them to treat others how you wish to be treated, to share, to be kind? Who is teaching them all of the things I learned from my parents, and that were reinforced in Kindergarten? I hope they’re at least learning lessons on how NOT to be, otherwise I hope my son never runs across them…

How do the Impersonators sleep at night? If they do I hope Megan visits their dreams, and I hope that when they die G-d gives them the same consideration they gave Megan.

Like this post? Read the other post in this series!