Despite I keep quite a distance from the world, I still tend to be informed from time to time through my mother. Now, while this occurrence came to be on April 16, 2007… I did have my thoughts about it. I decided not to write them though. I believe it was paranoia and all that jazz. Well, to the world, it is no longer thought of except those who were truly affected.

Well, while my thoughts are no longer fresh on the topic and my memory is fuzzy on all the fine points, I remember this: I could relate to the nut job. When I looked up the information on him… what I saw… it reminded me of my middle school years actually. The main difference between him and me other than gender and the age all the internal bullshit began to surface… is that I went farther inward while he went outward.

I remember watching some clip on the news… things the guy wrote and said were spoken of and an analyst said everything was incoherent and pretty much made absolutely no sense… in other words they were just ramblings of a mad man. When I saw that, I could not help but snort, shake my head and see the analyst to be an utter dumb ass. Why? I understood exactly what the shooter was talking about.

What was all of it about? The nut was doing the “wipe out all and no more pain will be left because there will be no one else to cause it” thing. Maybe it was the wealthy who were his main tormentors, but in my view… it was merely people he came to believe thought themselves better than he.

Spectators began talking about the ability to hold fire arms and such. Whether a person can access a gun or not had little to do with this. People automatically thought the kid was just insane or the like. Well, I don’t think whether a person has access to weaponry or not has anything to do with the issue. That is just a quick solution. It only skims the surface and not the core problem.

When I learned about his childhood, school life and heard and read his words… all I thought was… “I understand that”. I read somewhere he was made fun of a lot in class. It made me reminisce as well. He merely stopped talking. I merely had thoughts about getting rid of my “issues” in more drastic measures.

I did not stop taking like he did. I went to speech therapy and while I learned to speak properly, I certainly lost self esteem. There were other issues I had… ones that caused me to wish to have my legs amputated just because of how cruel my peers could be.

It was said that the shooter was speculated to be mentally ill and thought to be mute. I never talked until I was three or four and I was quiet. I’m mentally ill. Heh. He was considered cold, quiet and well-behaved otherwise. Me? I was a loner, quiet, and well-behaved.

He seemed fine in elementary school. I was the same. It was middle school and high school that are the changing points, as many will tell you. Many will say that middle school is the lowest part of hell and that high school is the level just about it. I would say that is damn well true in my experience.

It seems the nut was picked on for his shyness and “unusual speech patterns”. Things like people offering him money just to hear him talk, others telling him to “go back to China” since he couldn’t speak American well, the teachers not being sympathetic… they all made me think of my time in school.

There was talk about his peers recalling rumors about a “hit list”. While he may or may not have had one at the time… it reminded me of rumors and jokes said about me of similar topics. There were rumors that I could beat up the football team, I would be the next American Psycho, and I even remember a rumor about a hit list regarding me as well. All of those were false of course… even the predilection.

It also got my attention when there was talk about him possibly being autistic and about hospitals… again I could not help but look at myself. Could that have been the fine line between us? I really don’t know… and truthfully, I lean towards the side of “No”. I’m looking at the time before I was diagnosed correctly and was medicated with medication that was not going to make my mental illness worse… I’m thinking of the time… when I was just like the shooter in terms of mental waves and emotional turmoil.

Ah right… I remember reading about one of his professors removing him from her class. She saw he had issues, had a “mean streak” and all that junk. Then when the shootings had occurred she said it did not surprise her and she automatically knew it had to be him. See that, you dumb-fuck? Woman, you just prove my point. People see they just don’t care.

Well, okay, that is not my point. But really, they tried to blame it on fire arms. Yeah, right. The problem deals in the schools, the scenarios, the life and the effect others have on people.

Do they have any idea how painful school life can be? From middle school to high school you are awkward, lost, angry, driven by hormones, depressed, paranoid and all that shit because of your very peers.

Teachers don’t notice and if they do they usually do nothing. If they try to do something they cannot control it. I had teachers once in a blue moon who tried to help me against my peers, but they never could fix the issue. The kids kept at it and I endured the crap.

“We were just having fun”, “I did not think you’d take it so personally”, “I was picked on and I did not end up hurting/killing other people or commit suicide”… Yeah, well that is you, dumb ass. Some people have mental problems; some people internalize things; some people have a shitty life where no one will listen no matter how much they scream; some people cannot even find their voice and are locked within themselves; some people live in hell and their peers just add on to the flames! Ever think of that?

Of course not.

I remember the video… A quote? I’ll Google…

Ah.

“Do you know what it feels to be spit on your face and to have trash shoved down your throat? Do you know what it feels like to dig your own grave? Do you know what it feels like to have your throat slashed from ear to ear? Do you know what it feels like to be torched alive? Do you know what it feels like to be humiliated and be impaled upon on a cross? And left to bleed to death for your amusement? You have never felt a single ounce of pain your whole life. Did you want to inject as much misery in our lives as you can just because you can?…I didn’t have to do this. I could have left. I could have fled. But no, I will no longer run. It’s not for me. For my children, for my brothers and sisters that you [fucked], I did it for them… When the time came, I did it. I had to…You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today, but you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off.”

Now that, I believe is what started my interest in reading up on him a bit. Why? It reminded me of my writings back in my youth. Reading back on mine, I laugh a bit on how my mind set was… but reading his, reminds me just how much hopelessness, aloneness, betrayal, pain and anger there had been.

All of those, I believe were metaphors of what people can do to others’ emotions, mind, and soul. It reminds me of things I wrote… at the moment a poem is most glaring. It was titled “Rape away my Joy”. The soul can be broken. The mind can be shattered. The spirit can be chained.

What set us apart? He went external. I went internal. He took out his rage on others. I took out my pain on myself.

Choices of weapons. Seeing how he had interest in guns, reminded me how back when my mind was not so different than his… I had a thing for blades. His guns went external… he killed others. My blades went internal… I cut myself and thought of suicide.

In the end, he massacred people and then killed himself when his line snapped.

In the end, I drank all the medication I had and put my parents through hell when my line snapped.

He died.

I lived.

I still think I understand what he was saying though. It made sense, only it was only a sense in his mind-set that few would ever understand or at least admit to understanding.

“I’ll kill my peers and the ones who did not help me in my time of need. I’ll hurt those who have hurt me. I’ll kill those who will come to be for there will be others who will end up having a life like me due to those who have lives like those who were my tormentors. If such is done, there will be no more victims.”

Do I believe in that? No. As long as there are human beings… such will always occur. Even if people try to keep such things from occurring in schools, work places or such, there will always be that one person who is looked over. There will be that silent kid who is missed. The problem is no one stops to look. No one stops to think. The problem is the one who is missed does not know what to do. The kid is alone and distrusts.

Hello, World.