i just finished reading this book about the columbine school shootings from ten years ago. i'm not exaggerating when i say that i had nightmares about the event probably five times. of course it doesn't help that i read right before bed or that in addition to reading the book, i've read just about everything online about the case. i can tell you the timeline leading up to and including the massacre, the killers' paths that morning, a bit about most of the victims, a lot about the shooters backgrounds and motives, and about the families left behind.
i've read a lot of true crime books and checked out many, many of the more morbid things on the internet, but none of them affected me like this book. it was literally in my head all day for the few weeks it took me to finish (it took so long to finish because having small children only allows you to read at night after you've done everything else that needs doing). i actually teared up multiple times and felt sick to my stomach during certain parts of the book, which, again, never happens to me.
of course i felt awful for the victims and their families; the book does a tremendous job of conveying what they went through, both during and after. but i was incredibly distressed and troubled by the plight of one of the killers, dylan klebold. he turned out to be a cold-blooded murderer, so my sympathy only went so far, but what struck me particularly hard was how much he reminded me of someone i knew in high school; me.
let me issue the disclaimer that i never entertained homicidal thoughts in high school or really anytime for that matter. i mean, outside of people who leave shopping carts in the parking lot or people who drive really slowly in the fast lane. the main thing i took from the book regarding dylan klebold was that he wasn't a particularly violent kid either; quite the opposite. he had rage issues and a temper (very, very familiar to me), but he was a hopeless romantic. his journals were filled with typical teenage pining for a girl at his school that he claims didn't know he existed. whereas eric harris' journal was chock full of anger, threats, contempt, and revenge fantasies, dylan wrote mainly about finding love and about how depressed/suicidal he was. again, very familiar to me.
eric harris was a textbook psychopath. zero empathy and an extreme ability and desire to con those around him. i believe if it wasn't at columbine high school, his path would have led to murder, either serial or spree, somewhere down the line. eric did all the planning, purchased the guns & ammo and built the bombs. dylan was a depressed, impressionable boy who mainly wanted to commit suicide and was very much on the fence about eric's big plans. even right up to the end, dylan was making future plans. he had been accepted to college and appeared excited about the idea even days before the massacre. most of what i've read in his journals indicate that he didn't really want to go along with eric, but that if love or something else good didn't come along in his life, he was willing to do those horrible things, with suicide being the finale. obviously, we know which way he went.
now i did differ from him in one major way, other than the fact that i obviously never killed anyone; i was fairly popular and outgoing in high school. dylan, by most accounts, was very shy around those who weren't part of his inner circle. he also appeared to be a follower, which i never was. his lack of self-esteem and his shyness made it easy for eric to manipulate him.
but he and i had a lot of similarities and i'm sure if you could find the pseudo journals i kept in high school, you'd find a lot of common themes - lack of self-esteem about my appearance, desire to have a girlfriend, and the fact that most of the people around me had zero idea of what i was struggling with.
now in my case, i'm 100% certain that i could not have shot anyone. but it was just very very sad to me that dylan probably wouldn't have either had he not come across eric harris. i graduated, eventually treated my depression, got married, had kids, and lived happily ever after. dylan klebold armed himself with a TEC-9, pipe bombs and a sawed-off shotgun and killed his classmates.
a big, big difference obviously, but not so large a gap when you look at the early stages. and that my friends, is why i couldn't sleep for shit these last few weeks.