What I learned in grade school ...

I was mauled by my grandfather's dog when I was 5 years old. The most obvious effect of the attack was the extreme swelling of the right side of my head, which was badly distended from the loss of muscle mass and tissue in my cheek and around my ear. I lost a lot of blood. Years of surgery lay before me.

I remember how kids treated me, even now. I was hideous to behold; even I knew that. But they found a way to turn it into an opportunity for endless cruelty. I don't know how many times I got pushed around, shoved to the ground, smacked on the back of the head; how many times other children would react in horror and disgust at the sight of me.

All of that is neither here nor there, except that I learned a valuable lesson then: People are vicious at heart. Nothing that has happened in the intervening years, and I'm pushing 50, has changed that opinion. If anything, I've learned how cruel people really are, in the epic sweep of mass murder and cruelty on a mass scale, down to the more intimate moments of hostility and hatred that mark most of human communication.

Life is unending horror. There is no comfort, no relief. There is only an end to life. And that is all I have wanted since it finally dawned on my thick skull that an end was the only thing to be hoped for. I did not choose this life, but I can choose to end it. I pray for courage to do so.