PO'D and Aggravated

Described as a ticking time bomb, "He was crazy as hell," Weaver said. "At one point, we were afraid that he was going to come up here and do something to his mother and me."

Dude, I can't begin to tell you how much I've shared your intense fear.  Try being me.

There was a time, many, many years ago when I had absolutely no clue as to what mental illness looked like.  I still can't come up with any one all encompassing descriptive adjective. I've used reams of blog posts just trying to process what I've witnessed over the years of varying degrees of mental and emotional instability, of threats of murder and mayhem, of crazy-like violence and danger, secondarily traumatizing the rest of us.

These mental challenges do not improve with time, if anything, they become more exposed, or more vivid to others, with time passing.

This man was described by his step father as dangerous, indeed he shot and killed two law enforcement officers yesterday in Texas.

Fingers will now again be pointed at everyone who didn't do anything about this illness, as if it is even possible to force anything upon anyone for any reason, certainly not just because one is suspicious that this individual's gonna blow.  We parents can't just walk into a police station and use words like, 'crazy as hell,' and get any safety precautions or setups.  Nor can a mental health professional.

Even law enforcement officials are powerless to act against perceived threats.

The irrationality, the destructiveness, the flat-out craziness of living with a mentally ill person is incredibly debilitating for everyone around that person.

Caregivers get blamed, which is ridiculous, usually the caregiver has been fighting an uphill impossible battle to access resources that don't exist anyway.

I'm clearly fighting major ragtag remnants of bitterness here, as I'd lived under an immensely heavy pall of constant violence and dangerously irrational acts for too long.  Had it been just me here, I might've felt less frightened, but having younger kids at all times, looking at me to stop the violence, to protect them, was excruciatingly difficult, I was having to sleep with one eye open for about a five year period then.

I have no answer still as to what needs to be done.  Forced residential psychiatric care for the clearly obvious dangers to our society just isn't available, nor is even an option for most anyway, what with immense individual freedoms ascribed to all citizens, which then puts other mild mannered, law-abiding citizens at great risk sometimes.

We just lost two courageous Texas police officers, men just doing their jobs, protecting citizens, because the visibly disturbed, mentally ill people have so many rights.  I'm not proposing an end to those rights, I don't really know what to suggest, I just feel that law-abiding folks should have a minimal right to safety.

I'm irked at a media that glamorizes violence or portrays law enforcement as the enemy.

I'm angry at my grown kid who was just arrested obviously.  Again I'm openly humiliated in our local newspapers by my last name being associated with criminal acts.  I'm also a bit less sure that these drugs were not his.  I'm super pissed that my address was included, he hasn't lived here, nor in this county, for several years, and the paper is making it sound gang affiliated, which I also believe, in that the thug aspect is very visible.

I believe they're all posers and wannabees, cartoon characters trying so hard to appear as tough as rap music stars try and appear to be.  The mug shots of all seven sullen men make them all look so dang ignorant, with smirks on their faces or dead eyes dumbly staring back.

I'm disgusted with the disregard for laws and law enforcement, I find criminals to be pathetic, not glamorous.

I contacted our sheriff, told him that this thug does not live here, hasn't lived here in years, that he lives somewhere in Athens.  I'd sure like them to beef up patrols down my dirt road, any suspicious thuglike fools don't have any business down here at all.

So really?  You newspaper editors wanna publish an address of a single mom, nearly 60, with 12 school age kids at home and an elderly mom?  When it's called a rival gang fight, when words like 'heard gunshots' are used?  A Jerry Springer fracas in a...wait for it... trailer park?

My thug loves this, revels in fights, aggressive acts, and violence, it makes him feel energized and alive, cool and edgy, feared by commoners.

And he's not mentally ill at all. So imagine how much more so some of my diagnosed mentally disturbed kids were acting here at home?

That I don't walk around wetting my pants nowadays is indicative of the inner strength I'm fairly proud of, but I have my limits, and they've been sorely tried for years.  I do twitch spasmodically nowadays.

Yesterday neither Grandma nor I had anywhere to be so our front gate remained locked all day, blissful for me as I wandered around working and listening to all my summer backed-up Suze Orman financial podcasts.

I love a day in which I get to stay home and try to play catch up.  I'm literally the unpaid, over-worked caretaker of a large amount of property and house, with very little help, except in the mowing where Scotty, Dubs and Allen have all hugely helped out this week.

"Why is the gate locked?" the school bus driver asked Tabby and Nando when he dropped them off.  "Isn't your mom home?"  See the many levels of folks watching out for my kids?

"Probably she's home, Grandma's home, and anyway if no one was home, my sister Yolie would be right there waving at us to come in to her house," Tabby replied, pointing over to Yolie's home, knowing we always have Plans A-Z in place.

I picked and preserved peppers most of the day.  "Smells like a Mexican home," I was told when all my good-looking, bonded Hispanic children returned from school, and the tantalizing, addictive aroma of jalapenos wafted through every room in our house, as I'd worked on quart after quart of Fire Hot Pepper Sauce.

The above mentioned thug thinks school, chores, bill-paying, gardening and all other aspects of non-violent activities are boring.  And being locked up in a cell isn't?

I just don't get it.  I really, really don't understand. This doesn't compute on any level.

Dear Deputies, Please increase patrols on my dirt road.  This thug and his cohorts have no business anywhere near here.