(no subject)
Stolen from anyathe :
In other news, I realize I haven't been around much. This past week with Fertile Grounds has been busy as hell.
The weekend went off beautifully though. I had a wonderful time, and one tiny emotionally traumatic time that is apparently giving me nightmares.
Basically, I found a six-year-old boy wandering, screaming and sobbing for his Mommy that he was lost. I managed to catch him as he went running down a dead-end path away from camp. Got him to Security and re-united with his mother. I've honestly never been so angry at a perfect stranger before. I really really badly needed to punch that woman in the face. When I found her child it was something like the third time she'd gone off and left him to fend for himself while she had her "grown-up" time.
This whole situation prompted a very violent dream last night which involved me saving another child, much younger (between 1 and 2 years old). A man was so desperate to be with this other family that he tried to kill his current one, including poisoning the little boy. I caught the man, and saved the child, but do you know what the most disturbing part was? His punishment. Which in the dream I felt was perfectly justified and now in my waking state vaguely sickens me.
Basically, a bunch of folks grabbed the man by the arms and legs and shoved him head-first into a really big oven full of fire. They listened to him scream, and when he stopped they pulled him out, covered in burns, woke him up so he'd be aware of the pain, and doused all his burns in cornstarch mixed with lye. Then they shoved him back in. They did this until he died.
And I stood right there and watched with this sort of smug satisfaction that the murdering child abuser was being punished. Then I went home to my new child, the one I had saved, which I had adopted.
It was beyond creepy and gives me kind of a weird worry about my inner sense of morality and justice. Do I really think that people who hurt children deserve that? Could I really watch such a thing so calmly?
I don't know the answer to that, and it worries me.
In other news, I realize I haven't been around much. This past week with Fertile Grounds has been busy as hell.
The weekend went off beautifully though. I had a wonderful time, and one tiny emotionally traumatic time that is apparently giving me nightmares.
Basically, I found a six-year-old boy wandering, screaming and sobbing for his Mommy that he was lost. I managed to catch him as he went running down a dead-end path away from camp. Got him to Security and re-united with his mother. I've honestly never been so angry at a perfect stranger before. I really really badly needed to punch that woman in the face. When I found her child it was something like the third time she'd gone off and left him to fend for himself while she had her "grown-up" time.
This whole situation prompted a very violent dream last night which involved me saving another child, much younger (between 1 and 2 years old). A man was so desperate to be with this other family that he tried to kill his current one, including poisoning the little boy. I caught the man, and saved the child, but do you know what the most disturbing part was? His punishment. Which in the dream I felt was perfectly justified and now in my waking state vaguely sickens me.
Basically, a bunch of folks grabbed the man by the arms and legs and shoved him head-first into a really big oven full of fire. They listened to him scream, and when he stopped they pulled him out, covered in burns, woke him up so he'd be aware of the pain, and doused all his burns in cornstarch mixed with lye. Then they shoved him back in. They did this until he died.
And I stood right there and watched with this sort of smug satisfaction that the murdering child abuser was being punished. Then I went home to my new child, the one I had saved, which I had adopted.
It was beyond creepy and gives me kind of a weird worry about my inner sense of morality and justice. Do I really think that people who hurt children deserve that? Could I really watch such a thing so calmly?
I don't know the answer to that, and it worries me.