Did you hear that horrible story about the (child-aged person) who was (past tense verb) by the (anything here, really)? This is my Misery Pørn Mad Libs, a stab at being funny when there is little to find ha ha. The thing is, I think I am addicted to stories of terrible things that go bump in the light. Take the Huffington Post, for example. In the morning I read the headlines on my phone while on the bus: titles about GOP fundraisers, Dem Polls, the Human Cost of Drones and bugs found with the iPhone 5S. I do not open any of these stories, scanning instead until I find something about a mom who killed her baby and cooked it. I hesitate for a second before clicking, but I do and then I read it and feel absolutely sick with
oh god, fuck no, why.
Why do I do this? The mere act of clicking a link a talisman of sorts to
pleasepleaseplease, keep it a story.
(Last week a local 12 year old girl was hit by a car and died. And every day since then I read the same article in the paper with very little updates. She was riding her bike home. They do not suspect alcohol was involved. The same photos of a white dented Suburban and a pile of stuffed animals on the street corner.)
This is the way the world works. Tragedy mistaken for profundity. All of us so close to being written about as a (insert age) year old woman and her (insert age) year old child. Keep it far away, I think, not me, the musical chairs of it all unsettling enough that I download Jaycee Dugard's book,
A Stolen Life, curious and thin with fear.
5 comments:
The news nowadays are so terrifying, dunno why people are doing what they are doing, how sick and crazy can you be to wanna hurt your own kids among other things? Very sad :(
Ugh. I had to stop reading the news after I became a mother, because I could not stop myself from clicking those horrible headlines. I had a special weak spot for weird medical stories, which inevitably devastated some family. I just over-empathize and internalize to an unhealthy degree, and now I can't bear to hear about any tragedy befalling a mother or child. I hope that my mental health is better now that I've kicked the news habit, but I'm not so sure...
OH SUSANNAH...
I think you and I were separated @ birth! I, too have these same habits of clicking when my gut tells me not to click. Although I have some control over it now and I never watch Nancy Grace anymore because I became much, much too involved emotionally in the horror of it all. I understand and sometimes think I want to go and live among the Amish...but, hell all of them are trying to break free...just check out TLC. Just hug your family tight.
How is the book? I almost downloaded it, and then I wondered.. "Do I want to know?"
I read the preview, and it's pretty ohwowthisisreal.
do we all do the same thing? cause i think we do. but oddly enough, i can't handle the fictionalized versions anymore. sometimes the whole world seems unfathomable and i want to wrap my kids in a bubble and lock them in an attic somewhere. you know, for safekeeping.
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