It's strange to have grown up in small towns where the idyllic and the violent exist close enough together that I can remember the idyllic as something that happens to other people. The violent didn't happen in school.

I remember a bizaare in between place where everybody hated me because I wasn't protected enough to fit in with the kids who grew up with the idyllic and I wasn't physically harmed enough to fit in with the kids who were growing up with violence. I didn't know how to be good and I didn't have the heart to be bad.

I hate those stories because some part of me wishes life could be idyllic and those stories remind me how glad I am that it never will be because I'd never fit into a world like that.