#121

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Cho Seung-Hui. I can’t help but feel that I understood him the more I saw of him, the more I read about him and the things he did. Where others saw crazy, insane, totally off the wall, I saw something much different. I saw my own past and my own feelings inside of him spinning and spinning until he lost control. I know what it’s like the feel the ways he did. Of this I’m certain. He was not insane, he was not crazy. Not in my eyes. He was aware and he was intelligent. He wouldn’t have done things the way he did if he wasn’t. He was planned and thought out and he was effective. He burned out like I could have.

When I look at him I see understanding, I see an alternate reflection of myself. A myself who didn’t meet a girl who understood me and my feelings and tried to make them better. A myself who warped, and warped, and kept warping until I became something very different from who I am now, until I became the murderer of thirty three. I see myself very, very strongly in him. I think that if he got to know me, truly got to know me, he would see himself in me, too.

I think that the people who see crazy are just being ignorant and blind. There was no crazy in the equation. I know this because there was never any time where I was out of control of my own actions. I controlled every bit of them when I was there myself. The weakness was not in lack of control and thus not being ‘crazy.’ The fault lies in the lack of a release. The lack of support and the lack of a way out. That and the lack of caring. Why was there no caring? Because no one showed caring back.

He had no Lindsey, he had no one who shared his darkness and who would love him and push him in a more positive direction like I did. He didn’t have to go that way, I’m sure of this. I believe that I would’ve went a similar way myself if I hadn’t had the things I’ve had the way I did.

I could’ve helped him. I doubt the system could have helped. I doubt the average person could have helped in the slightest. So while the current commotion about ‘reaching out to the loners’ is a good and positive sentiment, I feel that for those like him, like who I used to be, it will be worthless in the end. Without understanding there would have been nothing there for him (or for me). His anger and his pain would have to be understood, emphathized and soothed and most people just don’t understand it. I see this even now. Even with someone who knows me as well as Jacinta does or as well as Jessica did…neither of them understood my hurt, not truly. They tried, they really did, they know it hurt incredibly, too, but they don’t understand just how it felt, what it was truly like to go through some of the things I did. It’s just unfathomable. Just like living a good or even childhood is unfathomable to me. Just as I lack the ability to understand what it’s like to live in a family and to be loved consistantly, others don’t truly understand what it’s like to hurt and to have that pain boil up into hate over it.

But I could’ve helped him. I understand him just as Lindsey understood me. If I had known him before the fact and had the time, I feel that I could’ve helped turn his life around. I could’ve been there for him, to make him feel loved and wanted and cared about, to help him shape up his life and to feel the positive things rather than just supressing everything and only feeling the hurt and the anger because there’s just so much more of that than anything else. I could’ve pushed him in the right directions, I’m positive of this. I feel I could’ve ended the very possibility of this shooting if I had known him beforehand.

Could I have made him a good person? Could I have encouraged him into being a positive person like I am now? I don’t know. That’s more him than it is me. But I could’ve been that one link necessary to give him the hope and the direction to not focus so much on hate and rather vent it off and give happiness a chance. I wish I had. I could’ve helped him.

I would’ve, too. Simply because I know what it’s like. Because I’ve been there. Like the veterans of World War II. Have you noticed the tightness and the strong sense of respect between them? Have you ever been to a reunion where grown men break down and cry when they see their squadmates? It’s like that. He and I, we both went through wars and we would understand each other…it’s a bond that’s hard to understand. But it’s very real, it’s very strong, and I feel it for Cho. I would’ve done whatever it took to help him. After all, who will be standing there for me when everything goes to hell? It won’t be the people who’ve never experienced extreme hardship. Those are the ones who are more likely to give up and go their own way. Those are the people who will stop being friends with you simply because it’s difficult. No, those aren’t the ones who’ll stand beside you. The ones who will stay with you no matter what the cost are those who know that you’d do the same for them, the ones who know that no matter how hard it gets you’ll both survive. The broken ones who know that they will survive. That no matter what comes, no matter little hope there is, they will survive. No matter what. That’s what I could’ve been for him. I could’ve been the last link there holding him up and showing him that there is always hope and to not let the hurt dominate him. He could’ve had a future. He could be happy just like I am now.

I should’ve been there for him.

I will be there for others like him in my future.