She had me fooled.

My wife kellyv called it right; I got it wrong.

She said A. would go back to her abusive husband. I had higher hopes than that; I sincerely believed that she had gotten away from him for good, and was willing to make the commitment to raising her child in an environment free from abuse.

Yes, I know this is the typical pattern of abuse, and yes, I know that battered wives rarely leave their abusive husbands for good. Still, I really thought she’d stay away from him.

But she went back, because, you see, this is what God wants.

I’ve always wondered about that. Why is it that all the really sick fucks–I mean, all the hardcore, twisted, violent sociopaths I’ve ever known–are religious? What is it about devout faith in God that attracts irrationally violent psychopaths like flies to honey?

I’m not saying that people who are religious are sick sociopaths; I’m saying that the sociopaths I’ve met tend to be religious, and to use religion to justify their mental illness. “God wants me to put a whuppin’ on my whore of a wife.” What the fuck?

I really do believe that in order to be truly evil–not merely wicked, but really evil, the kind of evil that thinks it’s OK to beat your wife or fly an airplane into a skyscraper–you almost HAVE to be religious.

Mere garden-variety wickedness is not wicked all the time, because the merely wicked are wicked for some kind of gain; if there is no gain, there is no motivation for wickedness.

But real, hardcore evil is irrational. It is evil at all times, regardless of the cost and regardless of the situation, because that flavor of evil is inspired by the motivation that believes itself to be good.

In any event, she’s gone. I already have a sick dread that I know how this is going to play out. Goddamnit, I’ve seen too many adults who were destroyed as children by abusive homes, and even if it’s too late for A. to escape the cycle of violence and abuse, I had hoped that having a child would make her want to try to save it.