The real bullying happens at home

A friend once said to me, “I’m surprised you’re not a serial killer.” It was not a joke, and it wasn’t meant to hurt me. It was the truth. The psychosexually deranged relationship between my mother and me (yes, it’s Norman Bates, that’s a real phenomenon) shows up in the backgrounds of so many violent male criminals.

Had things been just a bit different, I might have killed my mother, or shot up a school. I don't like that this is true, but it is.

I don’t know why I didn’t become a criminal while others with a home life like mine do. Nor do I know why I didn’t become a school shooter while others like me did.

Right now we’re watching the narrative get set over the recent shooting of four people by a 14-year-old kid. It’s early days, and we don’t know many details. But already, the media is working to give us the easy, comfortable answer. The one that lets us blame “phobias” and “guns.”

It’s not just the woke that fall for this. Few adults, left or right, want to face the truth about why some kids go so wrong. Look into the home life of almost anyone like this most recent example, and you find Cluster B. Neglect, abuse, drugs. Shitty, horrible parents.

Lefties don’t want to hear it. Righties don’t want to hear it. We live in a narcissistic era in which most parents are far less willing to take responsibility for how they rear their children than has ever been the case before.

We fall for ideas like "being mean to the gay kid is why he murdered people." We need to stop this, but we won’t. We love this narrative because it allows us to avoid the actual problem—abusive homes.

In the 80s and early 90s I was that bullied gay kid. By 12 years old I had attempted suicide twice. In those days, I would have told you that my major depression, dissociation from reality (for a time I believed I was dimensionally phase shifted from another epoch), and strange behavior was all because mean kids picked on me. And they did pick on me, but because I needed to believe that at least one parent, my mother, loved me, and that home was safe, I inflated my wounds from peers and discounted the truly painful ones from home.

Just before I was put into an institution—a glorified orphanage, then a group home for teen criminal boys, though I was not a criminal—I was starting to exhibit truly strange behavior that I don’t understand to this day. One morning I walked into class with red crayon all over my mouth like clown lipstick. I sat at the front of the class and stared at the blackboard.

Ms. Haag, my teacher, came over and squatted in front of my desk. She said to me in a soft voice, “Josh, is something bothering you? Why did you put that on your mouth?” I said “I don’t know.” And that’s all I said. I still don’t know. I remember the incident as clear as day, and I remember thinking and feeling nothing at all. But I also remember how genuinely kind and concerned she was for me in the moment, and if I could, I would thank her.

Of course the other kids picked on me. I was acting insane.

Why?

-No father. He left my mother before I was born.

-Violent stepfather who concussed me, raped my sister, and tried to murder our mother while three children watched.

-A mother who screamed, lied, hit, dragged me out of bed at midnight to re-clean the kitchen. My first memory of her at nearly four years old was being slapped across the face and told I was "dirty."

All of this was far more consequential to making me mentally unstable than the bullying at school. At school I had at least some friends, and most of my teachers were very good to me. Much better to me than my own parents were.

If you look into the backgrounds of school shooters, serial killers, and similar types, you almost always find a depraved and unbearable home life. I don’t know, because no one yet knows, what may have been going on in this kid’s home. But I would put serious money on child abuse.

In truth, we’re unlikely to ever know. Child abuse and domestic abuse (wife-battering) were major topics of conversation and public awareness in the early 80s. Yet for all that attention, nothing has changed. The rates of child abuse are not better; they’re probably worse. Today, in 2024, we are even less able and willing to hold parents responsible than we were back then.

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‘Yes, I think I’m OK; walked into the door again.

If you ask that’s what I’ll say, and it’s not your business anyway’