The Mourner's Mistake

Abuse victims often become abusers themselves. So when an already anger-prone individual grew up an outcast
from an abusive family, was taught to use violence to deal with children's behavior, and then as an adult went out
of her way to breed, things did not turn out well. But this was no ordinary abuser, and her motive was not parenth-
ood. This was not someone ready or willing to teach a brand new individual how to navigate life in this world. Her
intent was never to raise a functioning adult.

It all starts with Connecticut's oldest cold case, a disappearance that placed an already broken family in grief. On-
e family member of the missing person took it particularly hard. The two had been very close, spending a lot of ti-
me together, and suffering together the toxicity of their hellish family. It is understandable then why the incident af-
fected the survivor so terribly. Sometimes, when people grieve, they do illogical things. Sometimes things that the-
y maybe shouldn't. Sometimes things they definitely shouldn't. Sometimes, mourners make mistakes.

Not long after the disappearance, the mourner got fresh out on her own and commonlaw married an unsuspectin-
g mark whom she would use for her purposes. She was preoccupied by one notion: she must have a baby, even
if her new husband didn't want to (and he was right!), and she'd already tried with who knows how many rando p-
awns before him. Nothing could stand in the way of her goal. Nothing would stop her sheer determination to bring
someone new into the world. No one could convince her it was too hasty or irresponsible a decision, or that she w-
asn't ready and maybe never would be.

See, the mourner had some unusual beliefs and some pretty off the wall expectations. She had been raised with
a conventional faith, but that didn't matter, because she had her own ideas. Whatever everybody else was doing w-
as not good enough for the mourner. She thought she knew better than her family, better than her church, better th-
an everyone else. She thought she knew better than (at the time) 3.7 billion other people. For one thing, the mourn-
er believed in all kinds of magical new-agey stuff, like chakras, astrology, a mother goddess, astral travel, ghosts, e-
xtrasensory perception, telekinesis, healing power of white light, magick, reincarnation, synchronicity, remote viewi-
ng, extraterrestrial space brothers, mind over matter, etc. She also had difficulty understanding the distinction betw-
een fact and opinion, and would insist that one could make anything come true just by believing in it. (Imagine how
well that worked once she became a parent!) And so the mourner was not simply answering a biological instinct to
perpetuate the species. She had a specific plan in mind, a hare-brained scheme to get what she wanted.

What kind of person copes with grief by using unsubstantiated magical thinking to try to undo their loss? What kind
of person gets so stuck in the bargaining phase that they create a whole new individual as a result? What kind of p-
erson convinces themself that they will get their missing loved one to reincarnate as their new baby, just by willing i-
t to be so? Who insists on becoming a parent only to raise their child wrong? Who goes on a mission to have a kid
they clearly don't want, overcoming the obstacle of having to try multiple times before finally giving live birth, ignori-
ng a doctor's good advice to respond to a life threatening condition with a treatment that would have meant sterility,
for no other purpose than because of this ridiculous belief? Who goes to give birth in the same town in the same st-
ate where the earlier family member was born, gives the kid the same name, all in an attempt to ensure the foolish
plan would work? Who betrays the memory of a person freed from a sad neglected life of abuse, by attempting to
wrangle their ghost back for more abuse?

Well, my toxic mother does, that's who. Debbie was my aunt. And reincarnation isn't even a real thing. (Okay, there
is exactly one case that might maaaaaaaaaaybe constitute good evidence for reincarnation. No, not the girl from In-
dia or the fighter pilot.) There's not enough evidence for past lives to base a theory on. Researchers trying to apply
the scientific method to the subject of reincarnation come up empty or have to bend the facts to get a bunch of ma-
ybes. It's unscientific, illogical, woo bullshit. Maybe reincarnation has a better footing than astrology or desert dogm-
a or water witching, but not by much. Let's see some p-values on the matching of "past life memories" to known ind-
ividuals who existed. I bet coincidence not only can explain these so-called verifications, but that the p-values woul-
d show coincidence to be the most likely explanation every time. In any case, there was insufficient evidence for re-
incarnation in 1968, insufficient evidence in 1981, and there's insufficient evidence now. Having a baby for the sole
reason that you believe they will be a specific person reincarnated is fucking unreasonable. And in a culture that fo-
r the most part doesn't believe in such things, it's stupid.

In a good, just, rational, reasonable, logical world, I would not exist. I wish to live in a world of logic and reason, but
by definition, that is not possible. People don't get it when I say I'm a mistake. But it's demonstrably true.