This used to seem the most pointless and horrible crime to me. I've read about several incidents of it. Some guy goes nuts, shoots his wife, shoots his kids systematically, and then shoots himself. It's the kind of thing you try not to think about because it's so terrifying. Screw Stephen King. Screw Clive Barker. This is scarier by far, because it's actually happening, and it happens with normal every day people. As a result, it's not a subject I've spent a lot of time thinking about. I value my sleep. Jealous rages I understand. But I've never understood what could drive someone to want to kill their kids, of all things. But last night I was lying in bed, dozing off. I got to thinking about my current situation, and had one of my brief suicidal thoughts I get from time to time, force of habit of a horrible adolescence. Of course, I just discard them out of hand now. Last night my thought was "Of course, there's no way I could ever do anything like that, if for no other reason than because I have my love and unborn child to take care of." That was interesting, I followed that train of thought, and realized these people may be doing this because they can't handle living, and can't handle the thought of the pain (emotionally, financially) that their death would bring to their family. So, since they are already unbalanced enough to the point where death seems a better solution than the suffering they go through, and the agonizing they've done over reaching that point... You can see how someone would think they were actually doing their family a favor by killing them before taking themselves out. Saving them from a greater evil later on; the (to them) unbearable pain of life, combined with the suicide of their parent.

In some ways, those cases scare me less now, because I understand the cause a little more. In some ways I'm much more terrified because all of a sudden that's an evil that seems much more common, now that I've found an explanation. Before it almost seemed mystical, a pure act of evil. Now it's pure selfishness. I don't believe in evil.