A Little Self- Reflection with my Morning Cereal

Often times we wake up in the morning feeling like this poor fellow to the right, Edvard Munch's "Scream". This painting is infinitely famous despite how creepy the main attraction to the canvas is. Perhaps that's because we identify with the horribly grotesque centerpiece? The way he clasps his head, opens his mouth in the silent cry of monotony and purposelessness, how his eyes bug wide from fear that maybe, somehow, this really is all there is.

Well, thank goodness I don't believe that this is all there is to the world and my purpose in it. How hopeless I would be without my faith in Christ! Depression often leaves me exhausted and without motivation. Utter, irrational and causeless despair sometimes makes sleep seem better than living. Through much trial and error I've seen the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.

Though I grew up with Christianity, I never truly had a peaceful and full relationship with my Creator until the world I had built for myself came crashing down around me and I looked an awful lot like Munch's painting. I was stabbed in the back, the blade was twisted around an around, and I thought "This pain isn't worth living for". Through the help of the Bible, supportive friends and The Purpose Driven Life, my journey ended much happier than it began but it was a close one, and I'll never forget that.

We come through these things with a scream on our lips and horror in our eyes in order to better understand our fellow man, and to reach them with our stories of triumph. Even through moments of despair we can be comforted in knowing that pain brings about infinite possibilities of purpose and meaning. Through my struggles with chronic depression, I've become interested in mental illness and plan on writing my next project on a character who has one. Through the "explosion" of my fake little world, I can better help my friends through similar situations. Through my experience with anorexia I can look at my friend and say, "No, seriously, you need to eat".

Though these experiences were, an are, painful, they still allow me to feel as if I'm here for a reason, and I personally think it was worth it.

Old Hallows Eve

On Halloween, children and even adults quiver in fear at the thought of ghosts, goblins, monsters, and killer ninjas. It's a night of fright, however irrational, and people love it because of the thrill of adrenaline that accompanies a spooky surprise.

I pose the question, what about real evil? Not the things that go bump in the night, not the little brothers in Freddy masks, but the real, tangible evil that pulses in the hearts of serial killers. They are the real monsters, and they surpass time and culture, simply living everywhere and in every era.

From H.H. Holmes to Albert Fish, Jack the Ripper to Bundy, they are men (though women are among the number) who violently, sadistically and tortuously end the lives of their fellow human beings. They are around 365 days of the year, and many are still unknown to us. Because of their estimated number, is in fact statistically possible that you, yes you, have come into contact or crossed paths with a serial killer once in your life. They may even have looked at you as a potential victim, eventually switching their attention to some unlucky stranger while you go free and unaffected. That doesn't mean you weren't there, and it doesn't mean you weren't in the presence of evil. Not the image, the mirage of dark things presented to us on Old Hallows Eve, but the real, true-blue evil that runs in the blood of those who take life after life with little or no remorse.

This is the world we live in and what we have to contend with. Why do we create evil, an entire day dedicated to evil, when evil is all around us already? This Halloween, instead of switching on a scary movie with some Freddy or Jason villain, try a serial killer documentary. I guarantee you'll sleep with the lights on, and isn't that what today is all about?

Be a Modern Day Abolitionist

The slave trade in the Civil War Era was considered booming. It was a big industry then, with slave traders sailing to Africa and other such countries to steal unsuspecting people from their villages. It is estimated that there were 4,000,000 slaves during this time.

The slave trade in Our Era is considered exponential compared to pre-Civil War times. It's a massive industry now, with international sex slave traders swooping into villages and making false promises to children who want to monetarily support their families. It is estimated that now, in 2010, there are 27,000,000 slaves.

There is some sort of disconnect here. When people of 2010 are reminded of the black slave trade, they're filled with outrage (and rightly so). Now, picture this. Skin color no longer matters. There is no one group of people who need protection. Every child is in danger. It could be your daughter or son, nephew or niece, brother or sister. They could be Cambodian, Asian, Russian, Thai, or from the Bronx.

These children are stripped of their names and given a number. They're put on a menu for men to choose from. They are raped an average of 5 times per night. There is no limit to how young they are.

When we see our little ones, the children we know and love, picturing them in that kind of situation is painful enough. Now imagine it's happened, and you're helpless. They're forced to take hard drugs to keep them from complaining or fighting back. They are horribly abused. If this were the case, if it were more obvious, everyone would be outraged NOW. Last year, I, Kate Thompson, at the age of 19, should not have been hearing about the modern day slave trade for the first time.

If you're interested in doing something big or small (everything helps!), here are a few organizations you can look up:

1. Love146
2. Not For Sale
3. Invisible Children (focus on child soldiers)

Look them up, read the stats, and see how you can help.

Be a modern day abolitionist.

Even death may die - H.P. Lovecraft

"That is not dead which can eternal lie
And with strange aeons even death may die."
- "The Call of Cthulhu", H.P. Lovecraft

For my Writing the Literary Novel class last year, we had to write to one of our peers at the end of the semester. This person had to be the one whose writing we enjoyed the most. My classmate Ryan compared me to a man named Lovecraft, who I'd only heard of in the vaguest of ways. Today I went to Twice Sold Tales (owned by Jim Logan) in downtown Farmington, Maine in search of one of his books. There was only one copy in the entire store, and I snapped it up for $3.50! I read the first few sections while waiting for my fiance to get out of a meeting, and I loved it. I can't believe it took me 20 years to discover Howard Philip Lovecraft!

His life was sadly short, but full of meaningful friendships, though some only flowered through the writing of letters (it is said that he penned 100,000 letters in his 46 year life). Both parent's died of insanity (or at least in insane asylums after surgeries) and he lived a lonely life swathed in dreary and chilling stories. He was a visionary, and someone I intend to look up to from now on. More on him later! Time for dinner!

Change of Plan, NaNoWriMo, and George Eliot

Wednesday is the busiest day of my week. I'm up at 7:30AM, out of the house by 8:45AM and don't return until after 4 in the afternoon. Yet, now at 4:16PM on a Wednesday, I feel the need to blog my little heart out. Perhaps it's guilt at having neglected "Abyssopelagic" in the past, but more likely I want to satisfy my vanity by imagining someone actually reads these posts. This blog began as a chronicle of my character, Daniel, as he navigated the murder of his sister, and joined in the investigation to catch her killer. Through out the process of discovering Dan, I discovered a personal fascination with crime, criminals and criminal psychology that I didn't know I had, hence the change in the purpose of this forum. Now, I'm working on the idea that by investigating and blogging on various crimes, I'll learn more about what crime really is and how criminals really think, as well as how I feel about each case. Maybe this idea will completely ruin this blog, but I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who reads it anyway.

On another note, I've entered the NaNoWriMo contest. November is apparently National Novel Writing Month, and the challenge is to write 50,000 words (12,500 words/week --- 6 days a week = 2,083 words/day) from November 1 through November 30, 2010 (though it does commence every year). Because I've reached approximately 70,000 words in my novel thus far, I've decided to aim to ADD 50,000 words. Hopefully, this challenge keeps me motivated!

Since reading Middlemarch, by George Eliot (pseudonym for Mary Ann Evans), for my English Novel class, I've decided that I absolutely LOVE her style. In fact, I can't recall ever reading anything so fantastic. I went into it with a bad attitude because I hated Silas Marner with a fiery passion. Middlemarch left Silas in the dust. Now I have this crazy idea about abandoning Daniel for a more "Dorothea" kind of character... can't really make Daniel a "later born Theresa"...

Aileen Wuornos: Her Story and My Thoughts

There are a lot of things I don't understand in this world, including the government and Teletubbies, but nothing stumps me quite like the mistreatment of the mentally ill, and the abuse and neglect of children. As human beings, we're programmed to survive and protect ourselves at all costs. The fight or flight response is a fine tuned machine that spans over our entire species. What happens when the person wielding this machine was sexually, physically and mentally abused as a child? The effect that can have on a person is evident in the case of Aileen Wournos. This picture is of a devastatingly charming little girl. Honestly, she's beautiful.

In forty-eight years this child will have been put to death as a serial killer, with the blood of seven men on her hands. It doesn't seem possible for such a metamorphosis to occur, that a face like this could be changed by a hard life of drugs, drinking, smoking and highway prostitution. Aileen was a very sick woman, and her innocence didn't last long past the taking of this picture. She became known as a "cigarette pig" at the age of eleven, because she would have sex with local boys in exchange for cigarettes. She was abandoned by her mother, sexually abused by her grandfather, had incestuous relations with her brother, Keith, and eventually ended up a withered woman on the end of her tether. Her life is a story of being used, but she didn't start killing until she fell in love with Tyria Brookes. Her obsession with Ty overshadowed everything else. Ms. Brookes wasn't frightened away by Aileen's famous and well documented rages. They were together for four years.

It seems like the triggers for Aileen's highway killings were moments of insecurity in her relationship with Tyria. Wournos felt that in order to keep the woman she loved, she had to be able to provide some big money to keep them comfortable. At this point, the cute little girl above had changed into an overweight alcoholic and any remnant of her good looks were completely gone. Men stopped to pick her up for sex less frequently than ever before, and she was desperate. So when Richard Mallory stopped to pick her up (presumably as a hitch-hiker, but we'll never know for sure) Aileen began her immediate rationalizations. Soon, she'd convinced herself that 51 year old Mallory was going to rape her. Later that same night, her first victim was dead (1989), and the year long spree had begun.


Aileen is the perfect example of what I don't understand in this world. Used and abused from a very young age, is it any surprise that she became violent in her later life? In her last interview and final words, it's obvious that she was not in her right mind. The question is, was she ever? Did she deserve to die by lethal injection, or was her place in a mental institution, where her paranoia and rage could be treated, or at least handled? Towards the end, it didn't matter. Aileen stopped protesting her death penalty sentence. She was unstable enough to become a serial killer, but not unstable enough to warrant help. Her last words, while strapped down and waiting for the lethal injection to be administered, where the following:

"I'd just like to say I'm sailing with the rock, and I'll be back like Independence Day, with Jesus June 6. Like the movie, big mother ship and all, I'll be back."

Aileen Wuornos (February 29 1956 - October 9, 2002)

NOTE: I am not in any way suggesting that Aileen Wuornos was innocent. The evidence proved to 12 people beyond a reasonable doubt that she was a murderer. I simply wanted to share Aileen's sad story and get a few thoughts out there. As someone who struggles with a mental illness, cases like these really hit home. Chronic depression is no paranoid schizophrenia and I'm no Aileen Wuornos, but just think about how many times this has happened over the years... Who decides when someone needs treatment, and when someone needs to die?

A Daily Page Goal

I've decided to try something that I've left by the wayside for about five years now (if time went any faster I think it would cease to exist altogether). A Daily Page Goal towards the completion of my manuscript. Seems silly that I have to tell myself to do that, but planning a wedding and taking a full course load leaves me want for time. A page goal is exactly what Daniel needs to get across the finish line. I was going to go with ten pages a day single spaced, but rushing through the end of the project is NOT the point of a page goal. Rather, the point of the goal is to get you pumped!!! So, I'm thinking five pages, single spaced, with at least an hour set aside to do it per day. Being familiar with the monster that is inspiration, I don't expect to always succeed. Writing five passable-first-draft-pages and writing five-completely-forced-pages are on the opposite sides of the spectrum.