Just Another Dead Kid

When it’s clear that Americans really just don’t care.

I’ve walked around heavy today.

As soon as I read the news, my stomach lurched, and I almost vomited. A mother’s worst nightmare, an inexplicable tragedy, a clear result of years of propaganda and brainwashing…

Another dead kid.

The headlines

I began my scroll of my daily headlines, and there it was:

Okla. nonbinary teen died after school fight amid reported bullying

My heart plummeted, and I clicked the headline to read how Nex Benedict, 16, was assaulted in their high school bathroom by three older students, received a head injury, and 24 hours later was dead.

What happened in those hours? What happened in that bathroom?

To make it worse, the school is opting to call a clear assault [3 or more on one] a “fight” (implying the victim had some involvement in the violence aside from merely fighting back/defending themselves), and Nex was suspended immediately following the incident.

In case you haven’t experienced life in a public school recently, a victim of a violent assault also being suspended for the slightest bit of self-defense seems to be extraordinarily common. Many students are afraid to fight back or defend themselves as they would be subject to the same disciplinary measures as their attackers.

This seems particularly common when the victim is LGBTQ.

The articles all differ slightly. The details blur. But the overall consensus is this: this nonbinary teenager was assaulted in a violent altercation involving multiple students in the bathroom of their high school in a conservative region and is now dead.

We can put the pieces together.

The media, the school district’s PR team, conservative groups, all these entities with their own agendas can attempt to spin this in all directions, but we know.

We know.

The grief

I immediately felt waves of empathetic grief for this kid’s family. It’s astounding how a mother’s heart can hurt for a child she never met. I’ve had tears held just at bay for most of the day today — a few times they’ve seeped out, when I blink and I see their face in my mind.

I see my daughter’s trans boyfriend, who’s been a part of our family for almost three years now.

I see my son’s last boyfriend.

I see my son.

I see my child in that face. In their style, their hair, their eyes.

A kid who has already struggled mightily to pin down their own identity; who has fought upstream in what sounds like a pretty unsupportive area, politically speaking, and who was forced to use a bathroom based on a rule set by men down at the State House and perhaps not the bathroom that Nex would have found the most appropriate — or the most safe.

I can imagine their thoughts as they entered the bathroom and saw the older students, ones with whom they’d almost certainly already experienced negative encounters.

I can’t imagine what happened next.

Teenagers didn’t behave like animals in the restrooms at my public high school when I was in tenth grade. No one got assaulted so badly in the school bathroom that they had to be hospitalized back in 1998, at least not where I’m from, but this seems to be an increasingly routine event in our nation’s public high schools, and it has seeped out to the most rural of schools like my alma mater.

These kids are becoming killers before they can even vote.

The vitriol that has seeped down from the adults in their lives, unfiltered and crude and raw, has poisoned these children’s minds and made them hard and cruel and ruthless.

What is happening??

The heavy sadness swings wildly with thoughts of pure rage as I do a mental inventory of the violent incidents just in our local public school district and realize how easily this could have happened here.

In fact, we did have a local transgender student assaulted in the bathroom of her public school here in Norfolk, Virginia, and was taken to the hospital with a neck injury and severe concussion. Her mother has withdrawn her from school and has an active, pending lawsuit against the school district.

Just like Nex, the bullying didn’t begin in that bathroom. Bullies had been harassing this local student for months, and the school administration chose inaction.

My son was repeatedly assaulted at our local high school in the same school system, and his school administration also chose inaction. We finally made the decision to withdraw him as well, and he is doing high school from behind a computer screen.

To say that there is a level of constant anger… I’ve had rage on a simmer pot for a couple of years now.

No one should be treated the way these kids are treated.

And that’s what they are. Kids.

Kids are dying.

Matthew Shepard was killed 26 years ago, tied out on a fence post for the world to see his tortuous demise. Now, LGBT youth are meeting their aggressors in the steel and tile and brick of their school bathrooms, as the adults charged with their safety and well-being look the other way, and pretend to ignore the hate crimes bleeding through their fingers.

My heart is breaking.

There’s nothing further to say

My heart breaks not only because of the loss of yet another beautiful life but because of my inability to change it. My helplessness in the face of such enormous, overwhelming darkness.

I send emails and letters, I write opinion pieces, I speak on local news, I speak at local school boards.

I am but a gnat buzzing about the ear of the machine.

The darkness put forth by self-serving politicians, who don’t care one whit about children and prove it nearly daily, the darkness that pours over these people, these midwest, middle class, midlife people, it sinks in, it oozes down deep into their bones. It changes the way they think and the way they speak. And then it spreads on.

When they speak, their children are listening. When they say ‘queers’ and ‘pedophiles’ in the same breath, when they talk about men walking into women’s restrooms as a reason for “bathroom bills,” their children, they hear them, and they are sponges and all of that darkness, all of that hateful, false, political narrative, it drips down… down… down into these children’s souls.

And they become monsters. They become hateful, rage-filled murderers.

And then they kill our children for simply having the courage to live their truth.

This mother’s heart can’t take it. I feel so helpless. I feel so broken. This one hit hard; it felt too close this time. That face looked too familiar.

My heart just can’t take it.

My name is Melissa Corrigan, and I’m a freelance writer/thought sharer/philosopher in coastal Virginia. I am a mom, a wife, a veteran, and so much more. I deeply enjoy sharing my thoughts and receiving feedback that sparks genuine, respectful conversation.

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