I Refer You To A Monster

Today I was presented with a shock so severe to my soul, I was sure it couldn't be true, somehow.  TODAY I discovered a sad truth:  Some women are born either missing or never find nor feel, maternal instincts.  Human, maternal drives, before, during and after giving birth.  Some women know they're not meant to be mothers and therefore, hopefully have none.  That necessary instincual need to love, nourish, protect and guide this new soul ushered into the world must be the most important priority in your life.

Watching this program my tolerance was pushed beyond all barriers.  I composed my own motto not long ago, to TOLERATE the intolerable, LOVE the unloveable, and forgive the unforgiveable.  It's worked for me many a hard-pressed time.

The program was "The Steve Wilkos Show" and I found it from its premiere.  This is a man, who, though knowing people who beat their progeny before it's even born, will need help of a specialized, more impersonal kind.  He is not impersonal.  His goal seems to be to spotlight and verbally punish deadbeat Dads and Moms, drug addicts who make excuses, baby-beaters, pedarasts who think the child they "loved" with their hands surely loved them back, and they didn't "cause" it - the child (baby) invited these attentions.  What he does is, present a forum where these folks can be shown in full graphic truth, and people watching who perhaps felt they couldn't voice their thoughts could now say what they think of such as these, using language meant only to confront and perhaps antagonize them into some kind of emotional reaction other than violence, idiocy, indifference. 

I confess I enjoy this program.  Someone SHOULD berate them publically (guests ASK to be on this show) and even if it's only to bring such horrors to light via the person who knowingly performed them, I still believe it's a needed thing, perhaps finally and at long last in this country.

As for maternally bankrupt mothers:  This woman is in prison for her natural life (L-Wopp'd in legal terms, as in life without the possibility of parole).  "Alicia" had allowed and participated in the torture and death of her 4-year old baby son.  For months, he was hung by his ankles from a closet, gagged, burned, beaten, his eyes tapped shut, severly malnourished, bruised everywhere, his little boy skin beaten raw and bleeding.  He had an open hole in his chest and on the right side of his little head.  This is just one incident among far too many others, which is going on right now as I type this and you read it.  What POSSIBLE horrendous crime could that little boy have commited??  I'll tell you:  He danced.  Her boyfriend saw him dancing to a song, thought it "looked gay" (he's 4 years old!!) and decided to torture his gayness out of him.  How can a baby know what gender preference is?!?  A question that needn't be asked but ...

When Mr. Wilkos, a father of young children himself, visited this woman in prison, he was trying to elicit SOME kind of emotion, a reason, a sensible fact, like "I couldn't help because I was tied up myself" or "When I got loose he beat me up again and..." etc.  Seems he never beat her, just focused on her "gay" 4-year old.  God help us.  God, HELP us from judging but this woman?  Any soul watching her smirk, her twisted half-laugh, her dead eyes, her complete lack of expression, no affectation at all, while Mr. Wilkos poured out her own confessed words to what she did and allowed to be done, as she stated over and over, "I didn't know it was happening", when in fact she certainily knew and even helped a monster go about his cruel business.  The boy was found dead, emaciated, open sores all over his little broken body, rope burns on his ankles, and incredibly, it was obvious to the paramedics who were called in that this child had been dead alot longer than a few minutes, as told.  Lividity has set in and gone already, that's at least 14 hours since the time of death. 

Why am I relating all this?  As painful and heart-wrenching as it is, why in the world bring it up?  I'll tell you.  Not because people don't know babies are abused, that's been brought home all too obviously. 

It's to make the unspoken, unbelieved point that some women who give birth find absolutely no maternal instinct kick in, even while pregnant.  They lack that essential response which comes to most so naturally and though there's probably a reason in her past that started this lack of emotion, if you bring a new soul into the physical world and don't care, don't "feel anything" as this woman said, have no instinct on any level to even FEED your child, well...so yes indeed, they do exist.  These woman (I won't call them mothers, I cannot) are people who somehow sleep soundly, dreamless, content because "boyfriend" is there, and in order to keep him, allow such monstrosity as I've described.  A woman who doesn't recognize her baby as being entirely helpless and completely dependent upon her loving ministrations is lacking a primal, visceral ingredient, and no one believes a woman can give birth without fully adoring that life.  But they can.  They do exist.  I saw one today.   

I watched her face, her affectation.  Absent of anything other than what affected her personally and directly, this woman, at the pleading of Mr. Wilkos, finally showed something other than her smirking "I don't know".  She shed a single tear which she quickly wiped away.  What caused it?  She was talking about her own nightmares, her dreams.  HERS.  Where she would put her baby boy in the swing at the park and smile.  Was it a maternal act she was performing, for her child?  No I'm afraid it was because watching her son on the swing brought attention to herself when others came over to comment on her "cute little boy".  Nothing mattered but the moment, and she was that moment.  This baby was nothing.  EVEN WHEN GIVING BIRTH!  She claimed she felt...nothing.

For those who think every mother certainly must feel at least a small something for her baby, think again.  Incredibly, some do not and cannot.  This woman will rot in prison and I'm ashamed to say I'm not unhappy to know that.

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                            To Lattie McGee - rest in peace dear child.       

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                                                            AFTERWARD

In reading your comments, so passionately conveyed, I just want to refer to you one by Sharon (buggieboo1) who inserts a link to the story in greater detail, as this boy did have siblings.  I'd be indebted if you'd click that link from her comment.  In the interim, I've been thinking, re-reading your words, and trying to wrap my brain around some kind of working theory or at least some dynamic I can present about the majority of responses which of course, are to burn the woman and her boyfriend alive.  Preferably in public.  Next entry, then.  I need to address the idea of pain, dying, death, and murder. 

                                                               THANK YOU !