This post has a serious trigger warning attached. Due to the possible triggers, the post is after the jump.
When I was young my father was a criminal. He attacked people, he hurt them, he killed them. He carried his children along for these crimes, and showed us a side of humanity that I always am hoping no one else sees. When a crime does occur, like the mass shootings that are a curse on our society, borne out of our own choices, I run into a massive desire in myself and others to understand.
We never can understand the actions of these criminals because we are not criminals. To understand their actions requires on some levels the ability to think like them. I see this as an autistic woman, often. I cannot comprehend the social dance that a lot of people need to feel fulfilled. The small talk, and the way the body dances and twists (you call this body language) are all foreign to me. Just as foreign is the willful violence that people are inflicting on others.
Being raised in a culture of violence as comes with being a US citizen was not enough to bring me to understanding. My own impulses in violence, which were in part or in full taught to me by my violent family life, still do not explain to the core of my nature these crimes.
Not understanding is a gift. It feels uncomfortable, it is painful, and yet not understanding why someone could murder children, or any other human being at all is what keeps from being capable of those actions. I was taught to be violent but I am not a violent person. My life has been violent but at my core I am not. It is not understanding that let me personally learn other realms of expression such as the dance of words I am writing with now.
Mourn, struggle, grasp for understanding but do not let not being able to comprehend this atrocity or the others be a thorn in your flesh, instead let it sooth your soul because you have been given the gift of not understanding, as an aspect of the innocence of your mind.
There are no answers to be found, there may be a why that feels superficially correct, and that is okay. Now is the time to mourn, and make changes to protect people from the next act that is incomprehensible to us, and to hope that this is the last one.
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