Last Updated on: 30th April 2014, 04:44 pm
I heard about the story of Serena Sutton-Smith and felt unbelievably sad and disturbed. Here’s the story. Apparently, she came off a side-road and rammed another woman’s car. Then she started revving her engine like mad, so hard that she caused her front tires to disintegrate, her wheels to dig into the road, sparks ignited the brake fluid, and her car set on fire. A man opened the door to help her get out, and she raised her fists at him and told him to fuck off and slammed the door. Then she burned to death.
They say she has bipolar, but she must have been hit with a pretty bad episode to do this. I mean, there comes a point where you realize you’re about to die and I would hope you would fight for your life.
I guess the reason this disturbs me so much is because of something that happened to me when I was little. I can’t believe I’m putting this to paper. Am I going to regret this?
I remember going to school for Grade 1 one day. I remember getting there. Then, there is a chunk of time that is missing from my brain. Something happened, because I remember a point where I was running up and down the hall with no discernable direction, then I was directed to sit in a chair. I sat. I muttered. I muttered some more. Words came from a couple of my teachers. I should say sound came from them, because my brain could not process the words. More words. An angry tone. My mom appeared. there were more phonemes that were supposed to be words. I muttered. I sat and stewed and muttered. I honestly dont’ remember if I stayed for the afternoon.
the next day, I arrived, and my teacher said, “Are you ready to work today?” I looked at her, bewildered. “yeah, sure I am. She asked me what happened yesterday. I told her that I honestly don’t know. I asked her to tell me. she said “I have a better idea.” She pulled out a sheet of braille. It said “dear Santa.” Then there were just tons and tons of full braille cells. I started to write a letter to santa? This was news to me. I asked her where this came from. she said, “You did this yesterday.” I did? Apparently, without warning, I flew into a rage and started slamming the brailler around and muttering and stuff. She explained everything that happened. It didn’t clear the block on my brain. It never has. Mom told me never to tell a soul about this, because they’ll think I was on drugs or something. I didn’t. For years, I didn’t. Thankfully, this never happened again. I can only reason that this weird episode had something to do with the problems I had with hypoglicemia back then, which have thankfully gone away. Probably everybody thinks I’m crazy now. Oh well, the damage is done.
So, a small part of me can’t help but wonder if something happened with her meds and she ended up in this foggy state where she was completely unaware of what she was doing. I’m not saying I blame anyone for doing what they did. Hell, they tried to help her. but I can’t help but wonder if I could have put myself in a similar situation if this stuff happened to me whenI got older, or if I could see to drive.
The first google result I found for her name was this tribute site to her. Am I reading it wrong, or is it completely devoid of tribute messages? Or do you have to be a member to read them? I hope it’s that you have to be a member, otherwise, that site is a sad statement.
Wow. I can’t even fathom being in such a state that you would allow yourself to burn to death. I just can’t. I feel for her family.