I am a true crime nut. I am aware that there are a lot of violent, incomprehensible, even evil people who think nothing of harming another.

This is just a quick musing, wondering if any of my fellow true crime afficinados are equally similar to me by way of their physical capacities, i.e. a wonky-walking serial killer obsessed individual?

The reason I feel compelled to ask this is, I recently went to a theatre show led by a psychologist who I came to know as a talking head in my constant forays into true crime series.

She talked about what our characteristics and traits were likely to make us with regards to our criminal capacities. For example, first borns are more likely to become highly organised offenders, thinking through the consequences of their crimes in order to evade capture and justice.

As a fifth born, I was told I was likely to be socially awkward and a bit of a weird loner. Painfully accurate, I have to say.

At the end of the show, she asked if we could identify via a video clip known as The Corridor Test, which one of 3 people innocently walking past was going to become the victim of an assault.

Those of us that guessed correctly were immediately identified as likely psychopaths.

I guessed correctly, ha.

Except, it hadn’t been a drive to victimise that had led me to the correct answer. It was empathy. Because the would-soon-be victim was a young woman with an altered, staggering gait. I think the implication was that this young woman was drunk, but I actually saw someone that moved like me.

The psychologist explained that psychopathic predators would pick out her altered gait as a weakness that indicated she could be easily overpowered.

Ugh, my blood literally went cold.

Because I have had to work intensely to train my brain out of a self inflicted state of victimisation, of feeling weaker, or less than. The idea that people – actually no, I don’t think it’s fair to categorise psychopathic murders in with us ordinary lot – could use something that is totally outside my control or even desires, against me was horrendous.

I have only just learnt not to do that to myself mentally and emotionally. Telling myself that decent people are far too involved in the craziness of their own lives and the world around us to be bothered by any of my differences, even if they did still bother me, I could at least own that they were indeed a part of me.

I was drawn to the young girl because I felt like I could have been looking at myself, before being reminded that I was in fact, seeking out a victim.

Not who I am to myself any longer sure, and probably not to the wider world either, because I’m just one person and frankly, I’m not that interesting.

But ugh. Just the idea that my signature gait, staggering and unsteady would be the thing to mark me out as a target to some of the most unsavoury specimens of humanity that this planet can offer, even if nothing else was ever known about me?

I kind of feel as though the body and mind I have worked so hard on making peace with has betrayed me again. Because when I saw the would-be victim, I saw myself. Instinctively. Immediately. And I felt doomed.

Why couldn’t I just have been a psychopath? Not a murdering one, just one of the 20% inhabiting the world’s corporate boardrooms would have been nice. Instead, I’m worrying about whether I look like a victim. I don’t think I am. Oh to just be a psychopath!

</end musing>