He posted his diary online and it’s an amazingly fascinating read.  Being the student of religion I am, the reason I looked at it was because I wanted to see if there was anything religious in it.  On the day of his shooting, I found this:

Maybe soon, I will see God and Jesus. At least that is what I was told. Eternal life does NOT depend on works. If it did, we will all be in hell. Christ paid for EVERY sin, so how can I or you be judged BY GOD for a sin when the penalty was ALREADY paid. People judge but that does not matter. I was reading the Bible and The Integrity of God beginning yesterday, because soon I will see them.

But that’s it, that is really the only religious entry.  Reading the entire diary, we find that he’s tried at least once before to do the shooting, but does not do it.  Is the thought of an afterlife and the forgiveness of sins what he needed to push himself to do it?  I don’t really buy it.  He says a couple of times that “religion is shit.”  I think his previous attempts–his online diary existing in the first place–were all cries for help.  He just wanted someone to love him.  Maybe he believed that God would love him, but I think we can make anything into a justification if we want to.

And feeling hurt, lonely, and deprived is the justification he used.  He, a strong, virile, white man, how could he not be without young, hot, vivacious sex action?  I said he just wanted to be loved.  No, he needed to be loved.  What he wanted was to have lots of sex and prove his worth as a man by his sexual conquests. No matter how far we have or seem to have progressed, in America we can’t seem to shake the superiority of men to women, especially sexually. Our myths support it, our rituals support it, and our ideas about love and relationships support it.

How can I say such sweeping generalizations?  Well, first, they are generalizations.  It’s true for everyone and it’s not true all of the time.  But it’s very prevalent and often under the covers, because we don’t want to talk about it.  One of the things that stood out the most for me in his diary, of all the things, is when he says:

Told by at least 100 girls/women over the years I was a “nice guy”. Not kidding.

For those of you who have never had these words spoken at you, this is the death sentence, this is the no hope for romance, this is the end of the line.  “You’re a nice guy” means “I’m not going to sleep with you and, by the way, since you’re so nice, would you mind doing this thing for me?”  This is as opposed to the mythical bad boy, the one who is hard, fast, and daring on the outside, but soft, sensitive, and caring on the inside.  Our knight in shining armor.  Our prince charming and his god damn white horse.

This kind of thinking is where I put on the brakes though.  Is it… really all about sex?  Really?  Is that all we, as progressive, advanced, rational, civilized people have at the core of our relationships with each other?  Yeah, I don’t buy that either.  Well, I believe this is how it is for a LOT of people, but I just don’t think it needs to be.  And this is where the guys like the shooter don’t understand what is going on.

Unless you want single nights of ugly, retarded sex, stay away from the girl who thinks “nice guys” are duds and the guy who think “hot chicks” are all that’s important.  You can get, have, and deserve much better.  He looked at all of these young college girls, all of these gym rats, and said “why can’t I have any of that?”  I ask–why would you want that?

I’m not going to let “society” take the blame for this.  I am pretty upset at the thinking and mythology that perpetuate not only the back-asswards relationships we seem to strive for but the kind of masculine machismo which makes it okay to walk into a place and randomly kill people for some kind of petty, symbolic retribution.  But, folks, it’s the individuals who perpetuate this thinking.  This guy was lonely, and tragic, and a gigantic fucking asshole.  He bought into idiotic cultural myths and let them control his life.  He then took his pain out on others, never accepting accountability for his actions nor, from what I can tell, ever thought of another human being, especially women, as an individual, as a person.

Don’t be this asshole and don’t perpetuate the asshole myths that made him believe he deserved to have lots of sex (and if he didn’t he was worthless).  Take some responsibility.

People move, relationships end, death happens.  Life doesn’t stop and entropy marches blindly onward.

TIME! Is marching on.
And time.. is still marching on.
This day will soon be at an end and now it’s even sooner.
And now it’s even sooner.
And now it’s even sooner.

They Might Be Giants, Older

As we all do, I have seen many of my relationships (family, friends, lovers) end.  When I was growing up, I moved every year or two.  These moves were always dramatic, to different cities and different states.  Rarely was it across town, but even when it was, it was to different schools with different friends.  I got really good at making new friends, but I also got really good at spending time with myself.  I also got really good at letting go.

My father died when I was 25. A good friend of mine died when he was 27–we were the same age.  All of my grand parents and great grand parents are gone, most of them within memory.  (My mom is alive and well–and, since I know you are reading this, you better stay that way!)  Death is not a stranger and in some ways that is comforting.  When I was in high school, I went through the stereotypical depressed years.  I, in fact, almost died in my sophomore year of high school when I had a misdiagnosed case of appendicitis.  I went for a week and a half with a ruptured appendix.  For those of you not paying attention, the typical life expectancy is something like 48 hours.

I went through a very weird period where I personified Death (yeah, capital “D” Death personified-booooy!).  I imagined Death as anthropomorphic figure who rationed, reasoned, and maybe even felt. I imagined what it would be like to die and converse with this person.  You might understand why the first Terry Pratchett books I fell in love with involved Death as a character–and if you don’t, then you simply haven’t read enough Terry Pratchett and I insist you stop reading my drivel this moment and go pick up one of his books.  Ahem, anyways…

When I moved to California, I felt very lost.  Even though I hated Texas, where we had lived before, I had really started to feel at home there.  I was in advanced classes, I had some good friends, I even had girls flirting with me.  I felt like things were starting to come together and I was also working off of the promise my parents made not to move me when once I got to high school.  I can still recall my mother telling me “I had to move my freshman year of high school and I never want to do that to you.”  For reason beyond most mortals control, we did end up moving, and, yes, it was in my freshman year.  I remember on my birthday, one of the girls in my Honors English class gave me a snickers bar wrapped around an old stuffed animal frog for my birthday, shyly, about a month before we were moving.  All I remember is blurting out “I’m moving!” and getting away as fast as I could.

Romantic relationships end.  While I’m open to sharing many things with you, my faceless readers, these are mine.  If you want to hear these stories, I doubt you’ll read them many of them here.  But they do–and those of you who know me, know some of those stories.  Relationships, even ones ending, are important to me.  People are important to me.  I strive to not have messy endings and I think I’ve done a pretty good job.  I’m still friends with many of the people I’ve dated–just because something doesn’t work out doesn’t mean you can’t make something of it after enough time has passed.  Then again, sometimes you can’t and I recognize that too.

This is even more important to me when dealing with romantic relationships within social circles. I don’t tend to date random people–I’ve never been one to pick up on a random woman in the library or coffee shop or whatever.  And I try to be as honest as possible IN my relationships and part of that is working through problems.. and acknowledging when they’re probably unsolvable.  I prefer to break-up mutually and amicably.  This not only allows for, hopefully, no bad feelings, but then there’s not all this awkwardness in the social circles.  You’ve already lost a romantic partner, why lose friends as well?  And there’s a strong likelihood people in your social circle may date people you have, this is part of how social circles work.  If you date someone I have, I won’t begrudge you your shot at happiness, so don’t worry about feeling awkward about me.  I say more power to ya!

Emotions are hard things to wrangle sometimes, so I’m not suggesting that I’ve got good control over those all the time.  But I believe: you do good, you get good; so I try my best to do good, especially in all of my relationships (family, friends, lovers).  And this ties back to the whole death thing.  You never know when someone will leave you.  You never know when you will leave. So why mess around with it?  Get the best out of life.  When it’s worth it, hold on for dear life… and when it’s not, don’t hold on when you don’t need to.

There’s a lot more to life than carrying the past around with you.