Hey, guess what, this episode of Cassie’s blog is not for you if you don’t like to cuss.

I just found out a friend of mine was stabbed to death by a random homeless dude in my hometown downtown.

What the fuck. Seriously. What. The. Fuck.

Seriously mentally ill people, why do you make it so hard for me to love you? I try to treat you with compassion and respect. And you’re all like the fucking scorpions in the fable.

My hometown has a ton of homeless people. They get shipped in from all around the state. Because we’re compassionate and willing to take care of people. I really hope they trace things back and figure out which municipality gave this man a bus ticket so that he could come to my home and stab my friend.

This guy has a record as long as my arm. He’s been in and out of state hospitals. He’s been jailed for assault.

Why is he out?

I realize all the complications there are in mental health care. Believe me. More than fucking most. I get that. I honestly do.

And I get that some things are acts of random violence. Maybe. Not really. Not when they happen to friends of mine.

I’ll always remember in nursing school when we were at a board and care facility and this guy fixated on another girl in my class. He kept yelling at her that she was a murderer, this tall blonde volleyball player looking chick. He wound up laying in wait for her and punching her in the face.

He got verbally reprimanded. But nothing changed. They didn’t even revoke his subsequent smoke break.

I think about that a lot, now, as a nurse. It was a good lesson to get. (While simultaneously being glad it happened to somebody else.) I know it’s so much easier to go along with people who are ill, to not try to rehabilitate them. And I do believe that people should be able to refuse meds, I do, because I realize society is not perfect and if we start forcing pills on people we’ll be at the top of a slippery fucking slope.

But I wish we were doing more. Better. With more funding. More people taking things more seriously. I like to think I put myself out a lot there as a nurse, even when I’m off duty, to make eye contact and smile, to nod and have conversations. To make people feel like people, whenever, whereever I can.

I don’t want to live my life in some sort of gated, forget about the people who need us most shell.

But my friend getting stabbed? That is some bullshit.

This is also why mentally ill people are not magic. Same thing for homeless people. If your book has one of these characters in it, where somehow being unfit for society = fairy dust, I will put it down. Or throw it across the room, with violence, and tell everyone I know that it sucks.

I’m not sure what the answer is. I doubt there is one. I’m just mad and I need to vent, and sometimes that’s what this blog is for.

No one should die, stabbed to death in the middle of the street in daylight by a stranger. It fucking sucks.