Perpetual Smile

I found out this afternoon that one of the Cheshire murderers tried to commit suicide yesterday, and I realized something. Normally, when I hear that someone tried to take their life, I empathize. I reach out. I wrap them with love and hope, even if we’ve never met. I do this because I have wanted to take my life on more occasions than I can count. I more than understand what it’s like to want to die.

This guy, Steven J. Hayes (46), raped and murdered two young girls and their mother, and badly beat their father. He was helped by his friend, Joshua Komisarjevsky (29). These grown men invaded a Cheshire family’s home after following the mother home from the grocery store so they could rob her.

And I can’t get it out of my head. They wanted to rob this family, but didn’t stop there. It was beyond unnecessary, beyond brutal. Every time I think about it, I want to vomit and cry. It breaks my heart that a thirteen-year-old girl, a seventeen-year-old girl, and their mother lost their lives so violently. It breaks my heart that William Petit, the sole survivor of the invasion, has to live without his girls.

I live probably twenty minutes from their town, in a city, but I still can’t shake the anguish and anger I feel when I think about it.

My model, especially since starting Letters of Love, is to extend love to those who are struggling with depression, self-injury, eating disorders, and addiction. I made it my business to reach out to people who had attempted suicide or thought of it daily.

This is one person I cannot ever love, because I cannot forgive his actions. I can never empathize with him, because his suicide attempt was an act of cowardice, an out because he didn’t want to face the music when his trial begins. He may struggle with himself, he may suffer from depression, but I attribute his depression with an act of pure evil.

Maybe this makes me a hypocrite. I attribute the depression that I and my friends at Letters of Love endure to a real illness that was not born out of evil, something we cannot help. We struggle to keep ourselves safe from ourselves. We try to live normal lives. We do not hurt other people.

But there is a line, blurred, because you could say that Hayes suffers from depression. You could ask, “How is that any different?” And I would answer, “He raped and murdered two young girls and their mother. His depression results from knowing that he is going to trial and faces the death penalty.”

Hayes’s and Komisarjevsky’s acts have destroyed any love I might have for them, because I cannot forgive them for what they did. The way that I feel toward them, a cold, apathetic hatred, scares me, because it is so different from the loving and healing warmth I might give anyone else.