Vicious, anonymous

I was harrassed for more than two years by some of the teen boys in Kilkenny Ireland.

I learned something about the viciousness of kids when they feel impervious.

After moving to Cork City in August of 2009 and after getting a good job and place to live, I have found myself thinking, on long walks, about the anguish that these kids put me through. I find my anger getting more intense. In the peace of mind that I have now, and in memory of the hurt that I felt back then, I find a core of indignant rage.

I want vengeance. [Or justice — I don't know. I'm not sure how to distinguish the two, right now.]

I want to impose consequence for what some of these lads did to me.

Of course, the nature of the anonymous voice behind my back being what it is, I don't actually have many faces to attach specifically to specific incidents. But there are a few — and there's one especially [who, as if to support his "election," harrassed me when I was in town over Christmastime.] I have a desire to make somebody pay. Okay, then — so it's clearly not justice that I seek. The nature of "making somebody pay" does not serve justice. Picking an individual from the crowd and making him suffer is not justice, but vengeance, I think — or maybe it's just a potential solution.

And it's solution that I want. I want little bastards to know that there may indeed be consequences if they want to harrass me.

One moment that replays in my head is the first time that somebody shouted at me, from a group of six or seven, just as I passed out of their view. I went back. But I didn't do anything. I was just fuming. They knew, then, that they had me — and they knew how much fun it was to make me suffer.

The re-living of that moment has made me question my core belief in non-violence. If I would have hit somebody — anybody — there may have been unintended results, but I know for sure the word going around would have been that anybody who wants to give it a try might get hit.

Consequence.

Of course, I'm not planning violence now. That would be a whole different sort of violence, and not one that is within my morality at all, as far as I know.

But I want to do something.

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