Journal Note to Self For Future Writing

Among my many other interests, I have an interest in true-crime, particularly that of serial killers.  Many I know would call this a rather macabre interest, some would call it unhealthy.  Whatever.  Look, I know there's a level at which it can be unhealthy (my fascination used to be with the fear generated by the dark and twisted way in which the killers mind worked - yeah, not so much anymore THANKFULLY), but I'm a fully sane adult now and I do not look at my interest in the subject as unhealthy or intentionally 'goth'.  I view it as... well, as a journalist might view it, which I find interesting personally because this is the only manner in which I can think that my writing interests veer anywhere close to journalism.  Research.  That applies both to journalism and to genre writing.  And I try to view it just as a human being.

I just finished watching a documentary movie entitled, 'Aileen' which is about America's first (and only, that I know of) female serial killer.  Years ago I read a book about this woman, and I recalled much of that as I watched the film.  The predominant feeling I have from that movie is just downright sadness... for many reasons I suppose.  Aileen Wuornos was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, a disorder that I believe my own mother also has.  I guess in that sense, I should find it particularly disturbing and frightening... but to me, I still feel predominantly sad.  This woman was assaulted with pain from the moment she exited the wound.  Her family was broken, torn...dysfunctional is an understatement for her life and even for her childhood.  At the age of thirteen she was pregnant and had a child.  Immediately after having the child (who was put up for adoption), Aileen was living in the woods up the street from her house because her grandfather (and alleged father) would not have her in his house any longer.  She prostituted herself there from the woods as a method of staying warm.  And I mean, that's only a tiny fraction of what this women had to endure.  I won't say more here.
She was very clearly insane right up to the moment of her execution.  The film-maker, who had known her personally, gave a press statement afterward that stated he truly believed that Aileen had completely lost it at the end and that the state of FL had executed someone who is mad and he didn't know what that said about society and our legal system in general.  Aileen had met while in prison a friend from the outside who was supposedly a born-again Christian and who witnessed to Aileen.  Aileen stated that she had also become a believer and a Christian.  Again, while I do pray and hope that this was true, this makes me SO sad.  Not sad that she was allegedly converted, but sad that, if true, it did not happen until years after her crimes and even more years after she suffered all the abuse and all of the pain that she went through.

Part of my major problem with that whole deal is that there are SO MANY people in the world, not just in America, who go through so much hurt and so much torment and do not have ANYONE to turn to.  Like Aileen, they never had anyone who would intervene, even when others KNEW of the abuse, she had no one to encourage her, to love her, to tell her in any tangible means that they were GLAD she had been born... Aileen believed herself to be a victim of society and insisted that the cops knew that she had killed her first victim and LET her kill the remaining 6 men because they wanted to profit from the movie rights and books from her story... I know that part of that may just be her own desperate attempt to justify her actions and absolve herself of some measure of guilt, but, I guess at least in some part, I agree with her - I mean about her being a victim of society.  The rest were the paranoid ravings of an already over-stressed mind that had snapped completely... 

I was thinking about this some more as I drove to the grocer and back.  My son's father had very poor social skills and was constantly getting into trouble at school for smart-mouthing teachers and saying inappropriate things.  He got into a lot of fights, not because he started them, but because others just didn't like him and would provoke and attack him.  But I learned from him later that he hadn't always done the things he was blamed for.  It was just that he seemed to have developed a reputation of being a trouble-maker (part of which wasn't his fault - he didn't ask people to make fun of him and attack him and fight), and because of this, many teachers would blame him for things that were not his fault.  When he tried to tell him that he hadn't done it, they thought he was lying and just being smart-mouthed to them again...eventually, he tells me, he just gave up.  I feel very strongly that this was the case with Aileen, and is likely the case with many others.

I'm sorry Aileen, and I'm sorry to so many others when we (as Christians and human beings) failed to step in and acknowledge you as the human being you are and were, and for failing to get you the help you needed when you needed it.  I'm sorry for failing to see you, for failing to love and open our eyes to your suffering when you needed us the most.  I'm NOT saying that what you did was right, but perhaps if we had cared, some of it could have been prevented.

This has led me to want to write a poem/song for people like Aileen, the victims of society, from their point of view.  "Society made me this way."  That's the first (and one of the only) lines I have thus far.  I just wanted to get down my thoughts on this and the spark of the idea.

I'm sorry for who I am and what I say

Society, you made me this way

You looked away when I was small and scared

But watched as my crimes were bared

The result of a life where no on dared

To intercede