I have three sons. My oldest Alex and youngest Cam are wonderful boys- sweet and smart and funny. They are such caring boys. I am proud to be their mother. They will be do good things in the world. I love them.
But then there is my son Ben*. He is fourteen and he terrifies me. I was raped one night jogging, trying to lose baby weight from my oldest son. The man was eventually caught, after he raped a dozen other women. I don’t personally believe in abortion, I used to be a proponent of nurture vs. nature, and we couldn’t be sure whether the baby was the rapists or my husband.
So I had the baby. And I loved him. I did nothing different. But the older he got the more I noticed that something wasn’t right. He never learned to play well with others smaller than him. Those bigger, like his brother, he was fine with. But if you put him with a smaller kid, he’d be unbearably cruel. Punishment only made him be subtle.
He still terrorizes his younger brother. He’s in therapy and has been diagnosed with an alphabet of symptoms, he started going when he was 7 and kept stealing lighters. Despite being bright, he does poorly in school- in elementary school his teacher cried and said that he tortured her. She was a new teacher and he was big eleven year old who taunted her and she thought but couldn’t prove ripped her posters and ruined other things. That was just the beginning. I’m constantly at the school for some behavioral problem. It’s always heresay and I’ve always told myself that kids can lie.. but now I’m getting called in because he’s become aggressive with girls. And I now what he will become. I met what he’ll become on a running trail.
He is broken and I don’t think anything can fix him. He’s so big, I’m now terrified to be left alone with him- because when he has a rage I can’t stop him.
He is going to do bad things. I created this monster and he is going to hurt other people. I won’t be able to stop him. I sometimes wish he’d die in a car wreck, before he hurts anyone else and while he’s still young enough where people will remember him fondly.
