When the woman found the notebook, she didn’t think much of it. But the inscriptions on the cover made her look inside even though she knew it wasn’t right to go through her son’s things.
But what she found among the pages of the notebook was incredibly disturbing. She never expected her teenage son to have such thoughts. At that point, she had to make a difficult decision about her son’s future.
Mary Schubert was a single mom since her son Aiden was just a toddler. When his father left them, he left a huge hole in their lives. But she’s been doing her best to raise the boy on her own.
The woman struggled many times to take care of the family and even had to cut down on things so she could afford the essentials.
Aiden Schubert didn’t have any male role models in his life. With his father gone and his mother almost alone, he only had her to look up to. That was obviously enough for the boy while he was very young, but as he grew older, he started to feel frustrated.
Whenever he saw his friends talk about their dads and how awesome they were, Aiden often felt jealous of them. He never blamed his mother for it, but he acted out in front of her many times. And the woman had no clue that this would lead to much bigger problems in the future.
To top it off, Aiden had always been a difficult child. Mary struggled to keep him in check, especially since she couldn’t dedicate as much time as she wished to him due to her work.
The woman had to take two jobs to sustain both of them, which meant that Aiden was left alone at times or with the neighbors.
When Aiden became a teenager, he began acting out even more. He was missing classes, and her mother was often called to his school.
And when she tried disciplining him by limiting his internet time, he just ran away from home and lived with a friend for a while. His mom thought he would never come back.
When he returned home, Aiden was furious at his mother for trying to discipline him. Mary didn’t know how to react, and deep down, she was just happy he was back home safe and didn’t get into more trouble.
But he continued to lash out at her and yell in frustration. He blamed her for most of the things that were not going well in his life as well.
While the mother was the main breadwinner of the family, she also took care of the house duties by herself, especially since Aiden became a teenager and refused to help her most times.
One day while she was cleaning the house, the woman stumbled upon something incredibly strange in Aiden’s room.
Mary discovered a notebook on her son’s desk. This wasn’t unusual. He had plenty of notebooks for school, but something had caught her eye.
On the notebook’s cover were some symbols that she realized were quite offensive and even hateful. What was her son hiding in that notebook? It was also the first time she saw it, so he must have kept it hidden most of the time.
The mother soon realized that what she had in her hands was her son’s journal. This made her worry even more. It meant that inside that notebook were his most intimate thoughts.
At that point, Mary had to choose between invading her son’s privacy and letting the notebook where she found it but worrying about what things could have been inside. It is not an easy choice for any parent.
The worried mother finally decided to open her son’s journal. She knew it wasn’t right, but her gut told her something was wrong. The symbols on the cover were quite disturbing.
The woman stood on her son’s bed and finally opened the notebook. What she found inside made her tear up. She couldn’t believe her son had this kind of ideas.
Mary stood on the couch with the diary in her hand for hours, crying, thinking about what to do next. This was her son, after all, but she couldn’t believe he wrote those things.
Inside the notebook, there were plans about an attack on a school. Aiden had written detailed steps about how to acquire gear and how to proceed. This broke his mother’s heart. She knew she had to do something. But what could she do? This was her only child.
After hours of thinking, Mary finally decided to call the cops on her son. It was the hardest decision she had to make in her life. But deep in her heart, she knew it was the best thing to do.
It still hurt. This was her son, so it wasn’t easy. No parent would ever want to make this call. Mary took the phone and finally called the police saying she was worried about her son.
When the cops arrived at the woman’s house and saw the journal, they immediately began the search for Aiden. They knew they had to do everything possible to prevent another school tragedy. There had been so many of those lately in America.
The cops found the boy at one of his friend’s places. They arrested him on the spot and took him in for questioning.
After being confronted about the notebook, the teen is said to have claimed his notes were just a story. It was a joke. He wasn’t serious.
Mary had called the police just hours after making the discovery. Even though her first instinct was to protect her child, she knew her son would have been safer incarcerated than if he had followed through on the apparent plans in the journal.
The woman later said, “If there’s a possibility to save even one person, one child, I think it’s worth it. Obviously, we can’t control our children’s actions all the time. Who can? But there are signs that you know something’s not right. I was in his room asking, ‘what are you doing, where are you going?’ all the time, and he hated it, but he’s alive, and everyone’s alive. And that’s all that matters.”
The teenager is said not to have had any issues with the law after being turned in by his mum and has since got a job and made plans to go to university. In order to protect the privacy of those depicted, some names, locations, and identifying characteristics have been changed and are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblances to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, are entirely coincidental.
