I have actually experienced a moment of contemplating committing murder, many decades ago. I knew just where the hammer was and how to strike my unsuspecting target with it. For just a moment (that seemed to go on and on but was probably minuscule) my mind was in an altered, weird, semi-detached from reality state. Then it passed and I was safe again, as was my potential victim.
It’s never happened again, and I am a quite different person now in any case, but for that one moment I existed in the possibility of killing. It’s a sobering thought, for a peaceable person like me to go there, but there was there to go to. I wonder if it’s there for us all.
Have you ever found yourself there?
Absolutely never. I have thought “it would be easy to ….” push someone off a ledge or pick hemlock and put in food, etc.
I would/could never kill anyone.
Geeze….
Never. That’s not something I ever want to live with no matter how justified it might be.
Never even thought about it.
I would never in a million years have thought I was capable of killing, either. And then, for an instant, I almost was. And have never been again. So while I believe strongly that I would never commit serious bodily harm on someone, I have, will always have that reminder: “Never” is an absolute I came close to stepping past.
ETA: I was struggling with some mental health issues at the time, which is probably a big part of why I was vulnerable to the impulse, but I’m not going to hide behind that as an excuse.
After I gave birth to my son, I slept four hours in four days. I was very close to psychotic, if not actually psychotic. While I didn’t have thoughts about harming my child, I seriously considered surrendering him to the state (after desperately wanting a child for ten years – this was a radical departure from my normal state), and I did have some very disturbing violent thoughts, and I’ll say this:
I understand why some post-partum women kill their children.
I wish I did not understand this.
The thing about it is, I am very proactive about my mental health - and my husband is a psychologist, so we thought we had all the bases covered, the network and safety plan in place, etc. They even did a mental health screening at the hospital and I was anxious but okay. But when it happened, it was like turning on a light switch. I had zero time to defend against it. One moment I was living in reality, and the next moment I was living in a hellish alternate reality and I just believed my delusions were true. And for some reason I could not tell my husband what I was going through. I was too ashamed.
I’m not actually sure if I was having actual violent ideation or just suicidal ideation + severe OCD/intrusive thoughts, but I make myself crazy trying to figure it out.
My husband knew things were going south, but not how severely, so he hired a doula to come and take care of the baby overnight. I got 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep, woke up, and was fine (well, moderately depressed. But a vast improvement!)
When I think about how the difference between life and death for some people is just a good night’s rest, it freaks me out.
Yes! That was how it came over me; one moment my normal (for me) state, then the violent ideation. To this day I don’t know what snapped me out of it but am very grateful that I saved myself from myself. I do understand at least some of the stressors in my life at that moment that likely triggered it.
Do you have any history of that sort of thing in your family?
I wonder if that’s a factor.
I definitely do; my uncle was schizoaffective and my mother was BPD with (probably) delusional disorder, both of them had frequent violent episodes.
But in my case, I didn’t want to do violence, it just seemed like the only way out of my (deluded) situation. So I just kept turning it over and over in my head to try to figure out an alternative. I wonder if my uncle felt that way.
One thing I did, and I don’t know if it helped or not, really, but it was memorable. I wrote a note pretending to be my future self. This note was laboriously difficult to write. And the note said something to the effect of, “At first it felt impossible, but I stuck it out and it turned out to bring me more joy than I could ever have imagined.”
Which is actually, you know, true.
Oh yeah, I can be a very wrathful person in the proper moment. It’s very rare to get me in that state, but I know I have that in me.
That’s why the only gun I own is a .177 multi pump air rifle. I could kill someone with it, but it’d probably be a very slow, painful process. By the time I loaded the first pellet into it and pumped it up, I’d most likely be over it.
No, there’s no family history of mental illness leading to violence, thank goodness. With a half-century’s perspective on who I was then, in what mental state, with what life factors affecting me, I can pretty much regard that as a one-off where a bunch of things came together to ambush my mind. I’m for damned sure not happy I went through it, or all the crap that I was going through back then, but it did illuminate a number of things for me as I have reflected on it in the immediate aftermath and now and then over the ensuing years.
Haha, and apparently the crazy in my family goes back a long way. My great grandmother was institutionalized for bipolar + what would be known now as PMDD. My Aunt has been doing a little research on our family history. One of my female ancestors was hit by a train while walking on the railroad tracks.
Coronor: “Probably an accident.”
I’m betting not.
Wow! Combine all that with the sleep deprivation and thank goodness for the doula reprieve!
There but for the grace of Og go we…
No but my brother tried to kill me twice. The violence was abrupt, unpredictable and frightening.
I wouldn’t say I was seriously considering it because the whole event happened in just seconds. Back in the early 80s I lived on the second floor of a fourplex. For a few months, the unit across from me was occupied by the most vile person I have ever known. I won’t go into detail but believe me he was just scum of the earth. The only good thing you could say about him was that he loved his dog, which was the only being in his life he did not constantly abuse.
Late one night he started banging on my door and screaming that I had stollen his dog. I didn’t open the door but told him I did not steal his dog and would never do such a thing. He was almost incoherently drunk (his usual state) and kept screaming terrible things about me. I was hoping he would just go in his apartment and pass out but he kept it up. Finally, I got so pissed that I yanked the door open and yelled that I did not take his dog.
He was standing there weaving at the top of the stairs. I thought, I could just reach out and … push. Then immediately recognized that that would be a bad thing to do. I slammed the door shut. So yes, the thought briefly crossed my mind but I’m not stupid or a psychopath, so it didn’t transfer into action.
The dog was fine and still with him when he and his wife were evicted a few weeks later.
No. I have let God bring justice. I also felt glad when the person died.
I dont think Ive ever been angry at anyone.
I have never considered spontaneous violence. Though I would have no moral qualms at all about using lethal force to defend myself or my family from someone I seriously thought was threatening harm. But that’s a different case…