Rakaith

[deleted]

Hello,

In 2011, I lost my husband and son in a widely publicised murder-suicide. My son was 2 years old at the time.

Firstly, I want to say I'm so sorry for what you've gone through.

I also want to ask: How do you deal with people who refuse to understand your forgiveness? I have never been able to feel hatred towards my husband, he was very mentally ill and we had been in a period of extreme stress for years when it happened - but I still get people putting words in my mouth, informing me that I "must hate my husband".

Forgiveness isn't a popular reaction to incidents, especially when your child was murdered. What do you tell people? Do you get confronted a lot about your views?

In the case of my husband, I can give you a long list of reasons why it might have seemed like a good idea to a mentally ill man, because I was close to him and I understood him, and I was there along every agonising step of the way. I can facilitate an understanding.

Who understood Jessie's murderer? What could he have gained from his actions? There's not really any way for us to empathise with him, because there's no information available about his situation. But I can tell you for pretty much certain, that he was also mentally ill. The vast, vast majority of people who commit crimes like these were horribly abused as children. Maybe he has a problem with women due to past abuse, but the thing I try to keep in mind is that people generally don't go and do a thing like this just for the hell of it. They're trying to accomplish something, even if it's selfish and only for personal gain. Even if it doesn't make rational sense.

There's a guy I researched extensively; Charles Whitman. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman

He murdered 16 people, including his wife and mother, and expressed confusion as to why he did it. He left a note before he went on a killing rampage talking about having intrusive violent thoughts. He wrote a will, and bequeathed all the money left from his estate to mental health institutions, and urged doctors to examine his brain when they did an autopsy, because he knew he was fucked up. They did, and found a brain tumour, placed in a way that was likely to be the cause of his irrational behaviour.

Is it a legitimate excuse? No, but we are almost never privvy to the full story. We have to accept that we don't have all the information, and it's never fair to judge someone unless we do have all the info.

[deleted]

What symptoms were you experiencing that lead you to going to the doctor's in the first place?

How urgent was the surgery?

Also, you said that you have a likelihood to get tumours in "fun places" - do you have to go for lots of tests because of this, or just go to the doctors for any small strangeness?