I saw a murder. CCTV footage of a woman shooting another woman. Up close, personal. There are details of course. Names, dates, articles, jury statements. Who cares. None of that matters. Not even the women.

For the first time, I felt it. Something I never understood before. After she shot the woman she kicked her. Well after she was dead. Went up to her and kicked her. Again. Talked to the limp body. At first I wondered, what for?

Then it the truth shook me. In all the movies and stories and books I’ve ever read or seen, there’s always a bad guy. In the case of violent media, the bad guy kills people. Batman doesn’t y’know. That’s his whole gig.

But this bad guy, kills people. His motive only being power. That never made any sense to me. Power is something over the living, over the moving system. To kill is to remove a cog instead of turn it.

And in life when serial killers of whatever sort give testimony over their own dark deeds, one of the running themes is the power they felt. What a crock of shit. Not that violence isn’t power, I’m just saying.

It was always an expression of power, not the power itself. You couldn’t gain power by killing. (Tell that to politicians and whatever. I get it, its more complicated than I’m putting the effort into explaining.)

But watching this lady kill someone. With a gun. Then do as they wished. Kick the wasted flesh, yell at it, move it. To see that the spirit leaves so quickly from the vessel, and then anyone can manipulate it. Like a rock.

It blew me away. I’d never gotten that level of, of, I don’t know? That level of power. You can actually take someone away. Make them no different from dirt or trash or meat at the super-market.

Why did this occur to me? And so strongly? Over some grainy footage of a dispute escalated beyond any reasonable bounds. Over not the shooting, but the treatment of the body afterwards.

Things have been falling into place for me lately. Emotionally. Its like over the course of my life I’ve been collecting puzzle pieces and only now they are coming together in sudden realizations.

It disgusted me. Saddened me. I felt my heart in my throat and I was afraid. Just like that you can be nothing. And just like that someone could make someone else nothing. It shocked me.

Thoughts that never fully occurred to me. Feelings that have never totally settled in. New heights of empathy and compassion have been becoming me lately. New lows too of course.

Things have been striking to me more and more. I am more receptive. More open than ever before. More influenced by my emotional state. Sometimes for the bad like in this case.

I think more and more social media is not for me. Well not for anyone. To not see everyone and everything all the time. Best to only see what is in my life. Be struck by that. In all the new ways that maturing has brought me.