I’ve realized in a short time that reading certain things on the news doesn’t shock me. A politician involved in a cheating/stealing/conning scandal? Racism and Homophobia still exist? I don’t think I’m the only one who can read the news and read appalling news articles without batting an eye; we’ve become desensitized to a lot of horrible activities.

Often times when I’m at a loss of what to write about, I read around the news articles to find something that seems worth it. Some days this takes forever, and I end up picking up inspiration elsewhere. Today, it took me all of 4 minutes to discover something so revolting it needed to be mentioned. Sadly, reading more into it I was angrier than I had been in a while. Most importantly, I felt angry that I wasn’t more shocked that something like this occurred. A part of my short story collection is a piece about bullying and I assure you this will find its way in there.

Bullying occurred all the time growing up. I was bullied; I’m pretty sure everyone I know experienced some form of it. Things were different then, it wasn’t as malicious as it is today. I’m not entirely sure if that’s a result of social networking and easy access to media or if it’s a result of our culture just being crueller than it used to be. I’m leaning towards a combination of the two, but that doesn’t matter at all. Locally two younger teenagers received attention for committing suicide, a girl even made national news for her death and both blamed on bullying. That’s disgusting enough, but I promise the story I read even surpasses that in how awful our society has become.

Right on my Yahoo! Page, I see a story of a girl who was taunted and died. I blindly went into it and discovered that this girl my son’s age died of Huntington’s disease, which was sad enough for me. Reading further, I saw that her neighbor was bullying her and doing horribly cruel things. Disgusting right? Then I saw the kicked and I saw how awful this story would really become: The neighbor responsible for this was an adult, a mom. I regret to use the word adult for this, that person was just an overgrown teenage bully. I read in horror that she made pictures of the girl with skulls and crossbones, her and her mother (who died of the same disease a few years earlier) as a grim reaper holding a baby all on the social media. As if that wasn’t appalling enough, she would drive a truck around the neighborhood with a coffin attached to it. As if I didn’t lack enough hope in humanity, I read this.

I couldn’t say I wouldn’t sink low enough to hunt down someone who would do the same to my child and physically harm them. I think that’s a natural instinct any parent has. It pains me to see how her children will grow up; she did more than just emotionally assault a dying girl. She potentially is raising her children to be vicious and heartless bullies too. This is why the bullying cycle starts.