By Kassiane Sibley

Yet another mass killing. Yet another tragedy. It is terrible. It is horrible. It is wrong.

People are scared.

People are looking for a group to be scared of.

Ladies, gentlemen, other august personages, I am the monster you are afraid of. For my entire life I have been. The reasoning changes, but I always come down on the wrong side of the line. I am always who the media, the talking heads, the papers, now the blogs, who the people you listen to tell me to fear.

And this makes being me terrifying. It makes being me unsafe.

First, it was being an abused child from what they call a broken home. Abused children commit all sorts of violence, you see. We are dangerous and unpredictable because we grew up with violence and that is all we know. We are ticking time bombs, we have no empathy, our dysfunctional unstable home lives have made us fragile at best, cold blooded killers at worst.

So isolate us. Keep your children away from us. Warn every one that we are dangerous because of what our families are like. Make sure that everyone knows that we-not our abusers, but we-are the scariest thing on the block.

Do you remember all the news reports and such emphasizing the terribility of home lives of serial killers and mass murderers during these time periods? I do. I do in great detail-because I remember relating. And I remember staying up nights horrified that they were a glimpse into the only future open to me. I was 9 years old and scared shitless that my only career option was as a mass killer-because the media had everyone convinced that’s what happens to children with childhoods like mine.

Continue Reading.