Newtown

This mother's account of having a kid with a mental illness has been making the rounds:

I live with a son who is mentally ill. I love my son. But he terrifies me.

A few weeks ago, Michael pulled a knife and threatened to kill me and then himself after I asked him to return his overdue library books. His 7 and 9 year old siblings knew the safety plan -- they ran to the car and locked the doors before I even asked them to. I managed to get the knife from Michael, then methodically collected all the sharp objects in the house into a single Tupperware container that now travels with me. Through it all, he continued to scream insults at me and threaten to kill or hurt me.

It reminds me of Boy Interrupted, where by the end the mother was worn down to the nubs from having to constantly worry the kid was going to kill himself. His shrink said he was the scariest kid he'd ever seen. Not only can someone like that hurt you, like the kid in the link above, but they can pull the ultimate hurt by killing themselves, as the young boy in Boy Interrupted eventually did. Terrifying.