To be or not to be...

[a_blackpanther]

This is the discussion post for Episode 7x06 - "Epilogue". Watch out for SPOILERS in the comments

Comments

I think it's the combination of shitty parents and the complete lack of redeeming influences

[gsyh.livejournal.com]

Like, in the Monster manga, the twin sister went through the same horror programming as her brother and maybe WORSE (prior to the killing which started before the orphanage of hell her brother went to at least), but she turned out okay because she had loving foster parents.

Gavin de Becker in The Gift of Fear notes both the damage a child suffers from shitty parents, AND how much it matters, to have even one loving moment with a good teacher or neighbour who acknowledge the child as a child deserving of love and respect and not derision.

I had my ups and downs with my parents, they are sometimes horrible, sometimes great, the thing is though, no matter how many good moments they have, because it's unreliable, I never felt /safe/ when I was with them, and neither did my brother. I often wonder what would have happened if we didn't have our friends and our neighbours and our teachers.

Maybe we could have become psychopaths, maybe my brother would have graduated from torturing small animals to people, and I would have become a Karla Homolka who would do ANYTHING for male approval, or maybe we would have turned out just like our parents, Mr.and Mrs.Fred Phelps, law abiding citizens who would never commit murder but happily voted yes on letting the poor starve or recriminalizing homosexuality, or, while serving on a jury, attempted to rule that a woman who had verbally provoked a man on the subway deserves to be beaten into hospitialization before his fellow peers sideeyed him into next week.


I never felt safe with my parents, they didn't look out for me if it means it conflicted with their interests, so /I have to look out for me/, that's how sociopathy /starts/.


...but my gradeschool teachers looked out for me, and I know if there was a fire or an assassin they would have lain down their lives to protect any of us, they stayed late, they helped us with questions beyond the curriculum, they cared for us as children and not as trophys or obligations or burdens. It was at school, with the teachers looking out for me, that I could relax enough into looking out for my fellow peers.