I May Need to Stay Off of Facebook

I guess I don't get it. I do have children. To the best of my knowledge, they have only ever been bullied, though not so drastically that schools or parents needed to get involved. To the best of my knowledge, my children have never been the bullies. Thankfully, they have never been abused in the way that this autistic boy from Maryland was by two teenage girls who were pretending to be his friends.

One of my Facebook friends who has an autistic daughter wrote, "I would prefer them to be tried as adults.... sick" in response to the article mentioning that one of the girls would be sent to Juvenile Detention. Well, I guess I must have had enough of reading other posts about entirely different things where people make emotionally charged knee-jerk statements, because I commented on her post with this:

That girl is sick and needs serious psychiatric intervention. I'm confused about what happened with the other girl in this case, and the victim doesn't seem to be traumatized by this excerpt maybe traumatized that the girls are going to jail? I guess I haven't learned enough from NAMI yet and what I have learned trends to make me upset whenever I see stories like this and everyone automatically wants to send the perpetrator to jail forever without considering mental illness.

She responded by kindly explaining her viewpoint as mother with an autistic daughter and explaining more about what she knew about the case. I thanked her, and figured that was that.

Then her friend comments that there is no place in society for people like that, and that a firing squad sounds good to them. That kind of highlighted my point about knee-jerk responses, but this was her friend, not mine, so I let it go (which, yes, I should have let the WHOLE entire thing go to begin with.) Oh, and to be precise, I don't even know this FB friend all that well. Our husbands grew up together. I may have met her in person once or twice.

Then my FB friend makes another post: "Donna: I think I get too emotional with these stories because I live with a daughter who is Autistic and I see how easy she can be led & easily harmed. It truly hurts my heart for the young man and his family. 
[her friend's name redacted]:  seriously... 2 bullets... I'll pay.

So in the same comment where she sort of apologizes for getting too emotional (not that she should have had to apologize, especially considering the horrific circumstances of the event), she jokingly offers to supply bullets to the firing squad. I wasn't able to stay out of it:

See...this is what I am talking about --do you honestly believe these girls deserve DEATH for what they did? DEATH? I wanted to know what happened to the other girl...was she the one whose mom found the video and turned her in? Or was it the girl in article whose mom turned her in? I am sure if it had been my son, my emotions would take over, and I would want a Scorched earth policy. But what if it had been my teenage daughter? A girl whose brain will not be fully formed in the areas of decision making skills and impulse control until she is closer to 25 (NOT at saying that she had no control of her actions or that she should in any way be EXCUSED). I would hope that she gets the psychiatric help and counselling SHE needs as well. Or do we just give up, decided they are evil and kill them? Where is the chance for the girls to learn something from this--to learn why what they did was so awful? Give them a chance to make reparations somehow. How can they do that if they are locked in a prison for adults where all they will learn is how to commit more crimes, and no hope for actual rehabilitation?

And I added:

I'm not saying they shouldn't be locked down somewhere.

During this time, I was telling my husband how I had decided to let it go, and then he noticed me typing again, and said, "Uh, oh, just couldn't let it go, huh?"

After I posted that last bit, I tried to explain, then just told him to look at the post, and then I promptly burst into tears. I'm not even sure why I burst into tears exactly. It may have something to do with fighting my depression un-medicated because the side effects are bad for my high blood pressure and high blood sugar. I do not know what is wrong with me that I have to post all that crap and can't just let things go. Later, I found that she responded to my last post with:

Nope... I don't really wish for the death penalty. It just makes me feel better for a moment saying it though.

And see, I totally get that. I have no idea why I couldn't just see that was what they were doing in the first place. What is wrong with me? This is a serious question.