Friday, April 20, 2007
On Monday, a Korean American college student decided to kill 32 of his classmates and then himself, giving news outlets plenty of fodder during an otherwise slow week. I have not been able to sleep well since. Bit by bit, the news outlets feed his story to us. I know I should not be affected by their little game, but the information about his past, his background, resonates strongly within me. As I guessed from the beginning, he was unable to adjust to his move to this society at age 8, the very same age I was, and lived an isolated existence since then. Growing up teased and bullied for his skin color, abused and rejected because of where he happened to be born... it all sounds familiar to me, and has dragged up many memories that I'd so deeply buried.
The media is careful to paint the portrait of a madman, an evil demon in an otherwise perfect, loving, and embracing society. An anomaly, a random mutation. I resent their attitude because I understand how a normal young boy, suddenly thrust into an exclusionary society, could grow angry and vengeful as the years of hurting pile upon each other. It occurs to me that a sick mind is the product of a sick society, and that one does not become emotionally detached from himself unless he was been abandoned and isolated from those around him. But that is not an allowed topic of discussion, and I am left wondering if I'm the only one who can empathize with him.
That is one thing that separates us, of course, as psychopathy is characterized by a complete lack of empathy. That, and my distaste for violence directed at the weak. So while he was unable to feel any emotional connection with anybody as a consequence of his exiled existence, ironically in his psychopathic act he has forced me to re-live from my memories how he must have felt while growing up... and I am in a world of hurt as a result. Unable to sleep, unable to work, I've been reading through old writings and letters, attempting to come to terms, at least temporarily, with a past spent in a foreign society that had no place for me. Irony would have it that my last entry in a neglected diary that I find, from two years ago, is an exact description of how many years of feelings of abandonment and isolation slowly ferments into violent anger... and I understand a little more about what exactly happened on Monday.
Having become cooler headed and less emotional in these past two years, I am in no danger of losing containment of old resentments. These days, it had been so rare for me to have strong feelings about anything, that I'd thought I had resolved all of the old scars and taken it as a sign of maturity or perspective. But now, feeling the past come back to haunt me once more, I am reminded that even without the anger, the old wounds are still a part of me.
