My shrink told me to watch The Brave One. It’s intense. It is about vigilante justice. What does it take to make a nice normal woman crack and take justice into her own hands.

If someone killed one of my children in a brutal and purposeful way there is no doubt in my mind I would hunt that person down and kill them slowly and very painfully. I would not hesitate. Admitting this in public in advance means I would be found guilty no matter what. I would be ok with that.

We live in a very dark world. Tragedy is usually an accident. You can’t prevent it if you want to. Sometimes there are no “good” choices, only bad. Sometimes you just have to choose which bad choice you can live with.

I have beaten people until they lay bloody and nearly unconscious at my feet. Just because I wanted to find out what that felt like. What it took to actually do that to a person. I had their consent. We explicitly negotiated in advance and all. This was a person who had never been “traumatized” on accident in life. This was about seeing if it was possible to do that and not feel destroyed.

I keep up with this person. Life is a lot better than it used to be. Sometimes trauma that is consciously chosen can harden a person to what it takes to exist in the world