Indelible

I've Been There

[originally posted in "I've been there" ]

Columbine. Virginia Tech. Death threats made by teenagers at Port Saint Lucie, Shit Hole and Spanish River High Schools. All of these events strike fear into the hearts of many. For me, these names of places provoke something different. It's a mix of sadness, frustration and nostalgia with a sprinkle of pride. Yeah. That's a strange combination, but it stems from a critical moment in my life, the very event that catapulted headlong into the fire of adulthood. With the recent swell in mass hysteria over school violence, I find that I am more of an outcast I could ever have dreamed. However, that's partly because I have never really told the story of what I did, the actions I took that preceeded Columbine, the actions that saw me don the psycho label for the first time in my life.

Once upon a time, I was shunned by nearly my entire school because one of my notebooks was leaked to the entire eighth grade.

What was in this notebook, you ask? Well, there were a lot of things: drawings of male classmates dressed like women and with feminized names, drawings of me shooting Michelle, history notes, a statement declaring a substitute teacher deserved to be decapitated, a list of names of classmates with a purpose I can't remember. It was something that Michelle and I devised as part of a joke when Michelle and I were still friends. The notebook was part history notebook, part journal and all my work. It was my stress reliever and way to depict things worth remembering. On March 24, 1999, it became my worst enemy. After history class, I accidentally left my notebook in the desk and crossed the campus for lunch base. A couple periods later in band class, Michelle told me that kids were talking about what was in my notebook, including a supposed hit list. I thought she was full of shit. As the end of the day drew near, I realized that my notebook was missing, and I slipped into a full blown panic. I fanagled a pass to the guidance counselor's office from my Spanish teacher, and I told the counselor what had happened. After a half hour or so, she and I held a meeting with the dean, who happened to obtain the notebook from the principal. The principal, meanwhile, confiscated it after it made the rounds in the cafeteria (even though I was elsewhere [probably in the chorus room] during my lunch period). The dean said that I was suspended from school pending a psychologial evaluation. If I was deemed fit to attend school, I would receive a week of in school suspension, which resulted in being placed in a room separate from my classes for the duration of the day with other students receiving the same punishment. By this point, I was too numb to feel anything other than acceptance of what had happened to me. My mom came to pick me up from school so I could undergo an evaluation at a mental institution almost twenty five miles away. I remember my mom was in tears, but I barely reacted. I shed one tear, and that's because I saw my mom cry. Otherwise, I was still dazed and not sure what to expect.

The institution threw me for a loop. The lobby was pretty run of the mill with soft lighting, dark green carpet and fake plants. Soon, though, we were lead into the facility, dominated by gray-painted concrete walls and green, reinforced steel doors. The evaluation room was somewhere near the inpatient facilities, and I was a little freaked out by all this. They certainly had my attention with the decor, and I was more than willing to lay out my fears (in a strangely reticent way, though). I told the counselor about how my friendship with Michelle had gone downhill at a rapid rate, my insecurities as to a social life without her, general frustrations with school (mainly pertaining to teachers' personalities and not my grades) and other things that were not going well at the time. The counselor felt that I was just a frustrated teen using the notebook as a means to vent. Still, she arranged for us to get a second opinion at the Savanna mental health facility. The opinion we received there was concurrent, and I was deemed fit to return to school. I served out my suspension, even though it cost me the opportunity to participate in that year's Music in Our Schools program. I ended up attending even though I was still suspended at the time. Part of my regretted going, as I was in tears the first part of it since I was still pretty damn upset that I had the opportunity to participate. This notebook incident blew that right out of the water. I actually didn't mind the suspension that much. My guidance counselor and the dean both believed that I just created the notebook out of frustration and felt ISS provided me with a psychological breather. It did.

Going back to class and anything resuming a normal life was no easy feat. I lost all but three friends and felt socially isolated for the rest of the year. I was called a psychpath and asked about the supposed hit list more times than I can remember. Seat changes in class, having few friends with whom I could hang out on school trips and struggling to maintain my concentration didn't help matters. Just as I had settled into a new routine with a couple new friends and getting ready for high school, a bomb fell in my lap: Columbine. It just so happened that I had the day off from school the day Columbine occurred. I took the day off to have my braces put on. Joyous. Well, the braces turned out to be the least of my problems. School was roughly in its last month, and the heckling resumed. By this time, I had left the notebook in my house and had new notebooks for school. Still, I endured Round 2 of the taunts, and the fallout was so bad only one student (my friend Niggy) cheered for me at my eighth grade graduation. In any case, my reaction to Columbine was...weird. I was stunned, but I also wondered what its effects would be on ticket sales for The Matrix. I was in love with that movie at the time. I thought the gun scenes were cool to look at, but I never daydreamed about recreating them. Are you kidding me? I knew better than that. What I loved was the sense of triumph and good defeating evil, very primative emotions, really. I just wanted to make some headway since it felt like I was fighting all the time.

And the supposed hit list? I state it as supposed because it wasn't a hit list. It was just set up to look like one, albeit unintentionally. The declaraion about the substitute teacher was made in block letters on one page, but there was still empty space when all was said and done. That said, I used that space when coming up with the joke list of names. The two elements combined made kids think it was a hit list. I don't blame them. I didn't make it clear what purpose the list served. I didn't put a heading at the top or anything of that sort. So, such a mistake was not entirely stupid. Still, it made me frustrated that people claimed there was a hit list because I knew it was not such a list. Trying to convince other people of that, though, was an exercise in futility. But it was the lynchpin of my nonexistent social life, a lynchpin so damn important only going to high school made a difference. As it turns out, high school distracted my middle school classmates from my misadventures, and I was not called a psycho because of my notebook in high school. Still, as I fought through new relationships, suicide attempts, problems with my family, teacher issues and everything else that lead to my nervous collapse my senior year, one thing seems clear. The notebook incident loomed over my life more than I ever thought it could. It wrecked my ability to cope with life and conflict for several years. Only my collapse and first two years of college seemed to remedy that.

My point is, I can understand why people made these threats and sometimes. First, humans do that sort of thing when they're angry. Not everyone does it, but some of us do. Seond, if names are named and details are made clear, a psychological evaluation is beneficial. On the other hand, it helped me because I was willing to talk and come clean. Others will not be so willing. Can you blame the psychologist for that? Must everyone be treated as a sociopath because he/she made even a vague threat? A one time thing of huge gaps between threats is not as dangerous as our hypersensitive society wants to make it. Still, if there is attention to detail, a high frequeny of threats and other such issues, then these people need to be helped, not cast out of soiety. Outcasting them simply prompts those oppressed to storm the social castle and take some people out. My experience showed me what adults and social constructs do to people outside the mainstream philiosophy to protect those in the mainstream (popular kids, people of the hive mind, etc.). After this, I knew I could never be a follower, and I haven't had much nice to say about popular ranks (even though prior to the notebook incident I did flirt with popularity a bit). But yeah, I can understand when someone flips out and breaks out some firepower. I don't agree with it, because I was able to work through it. To me, the best long term solution is to make it clear to troubled people that talking is the best course of action. We have to address the mental-social issues in order for things like this to no longer take place. Yes, it will take a long time, but it's the only true chance we stand. Security upgrades, in my opinon, are just tools to appease the sheepy masses and will not stand the test of time. People need to learn how to cope, and only then will bullets not fly with such vigor.

This is my story and my recommendations. Ladies and gentlemen, I've been there.