8:00am January 17, 2012

Unnerving thought.

“I’m the only person who could take care of her even remotely well.”

I’ve heard people mostly say that about pets or disabled children.

That one thought can lead to doing horrible things to the person in question. It’s how people become cat collectors, murder their disabled kids (or anyone else they’re a caregiver to), or arrange in their will to have their dog killed after they die. It can turn suicide into murder-suicide.

All of those things and more can have that thought at the root of them. Which makes me not trust people who express it without any self-examination attached. And makes it one of those thoughts where I put warning beacons around any of my own thoughts that could possibly lead to that thought. Because it seems so heavily tied to abuse, neglect, and murder.

I wish more people really looked hard at the thoughts that can lead to awful things like that. Instead of just assuming people who do such things are in some category called “crazy” that’s separate from the rest of humanity. That, among many other bad things, sets people up to believe that they don’t have to watch such thoughts in themselves.