could that have been me?

i have been blogging for some time now. i was influenced by the knitting blogs of vickie howell, the yarn harlot, and the mason dixon ladies. this blog started out as "showing off my knitting projects" but over time has become a time capsule for my pregnancies, my loss, my opinions on news items, and sometimes a place for me to vent about things or people that annoy me. i don't really care who reads my blog but it's there for me to get my thoughts out of my head.

i've been thinking about the guy who murdered the women at the fitness center. he had a blog that expressed his frustration with finding love and detailed his gruesome plot online. i wonder if anyone read the blog. i also wondered if his family knew how frustrated he was with his social life. i can't imagine hiding my disappointment of not having a friend or SO to my family and friends.

he expressed frustration about not finding the right woman, that he was rebuffed. was he a shy man, afraid of rejection? was he afraid of putting himself out there and asking someone out on a date? or was he one of those guys who thought he was God's gift to women, and his behaviour turned women off. was he too picky - it sounded like he wanted a "younger" woman? or was he one of those guys who just had "creepy" vibes that made you want to avoid him? i wondered if he ever joined a dating service.

my dating experience is rather limited. rarely dated in high school becos "no one wanted to date the preacher's daughter". rarely dated in college because i was busy with my studies and activities, and also "no one wanted to date the music secretary's daughter" (most of my friends were in music studies). i wound up with more "boy friends" than boyfriends becos i valued their friendship and knew that if things went to another level, our relationships would never be the same. i met hubby a year out of college, set up by our folks. his dating experience was as bad as mine, and it was relief to have a relationship where we had a lot in common (both preacher's kids, same religious faith, similar hobbies) and similar visions of family for the future. he is my soulmate and i know i will never meet another man to match.

sometimes we talk about what could have been if we never met, never married. hubby claims he would have been a confirmed bachelor. i think i would have turned into one of those annoying, desperate women scaring men away becos i had dreams of marriage and children. i'm sure i'd have a life, but i admit that it's my hubby and my children who really add soul to my life.

i think about the people we meet in our lives, and how we receive these people may affect their lives. i thought about a guy who always shows up at my high school reunions - he was a loner, quiet, a little creepy (that could just be his schizophrenia showing). i know when the class meets up, we all break up into the little cliques that existed in high school, and usually this guy is left out in the cold (altho he tries to glom onto the group i cliqued with - we were the geeks who weren't in the popular group). we chat with him patiently, listen to how he's doing, then usually move on to our own lives. by the end of the evening, he's standing by the stereo (which by that time is usually blaring bon jovi or some 80s hairband), dancing by himself.

now that i think about it, is it enough to chat with someone casually to keep them from going off the deep end? what if this guy comes to our next reunion with guns blazing, mowing us down becos "we were the popular ones who never gave him the time of day"? how much is enough to give someone a chance, a passing glance.

i'm sure in the weeks ahead someone will figure out why this guy went off on innocent people. and perhaps a lesson for us to be sensitive to people, no matter where they are on the fringe.