I Believe in Monsters

Last weekend, as I watched the Super Bowl with my family, a heart-wrenching news story broke, flashing across the bottom of the TV screen. It was a story of heartache and loss, of innocent lives gruesomely taken in a murderous fit of rage, a story of sad choices, that has brought me, and many others, to tears.

Things like this happen, and they happen WAY too often. More often than any of us want to think about. But let’s be real.

Evil exists in the world.

It bores into the core of certain people, grows into a huge, ugly thing, and manifests in horrible, disgusting actions that will forever alter, destroy, or end the lives of others. It exists in men. In women. From elderly to—yes, I believe it—children. It exists.

There are monsters walking the earth. They may not be the demons we read about in books like I Am Not a Serial Killer, but they’re monsters, just the same. Worse, even, because the monsters are disguised as human beings. When someone does something so heinous as this, those left behind have nothing left but to wonder. Was it a sociological disorder? A chemical imbalance? A physical condition that overtook a mind and turned a person into a demon?

They are left forever wondering why.

Why would a parent abuse a child? Why would a husband abuse a wife (or vice-versa)? Why would someone—anyone—take the lives of his or her children? There are no real answers to these questions. But I think, sometimes, there are explanations. And I hope the people who need them are able to find them. I hope they somehow find peace.

Also, their own kind of power. The power to overcome, to move forward, and to defeat those dang monsters with shiny, plastic swords that shoot fire from the tips. (Oops, my writer-self is leaking out.) Or, you know, with something more scary-looking.