Yes, the Ever-lasting contrast. Since existence has known, the 'fight' between good & evil has continued. Obviously, this fight can never end. Good things turn bad, bad things become good. My fav. contrasting symbol, because it is so true & means so much – the battle between good & bad never ends… Here we ponder on the tragedy of Dylan Klebold.
I will not lie. At 34 years-old (almost 35) and almost 15 years of therapy, I still have reoccurring nightmares about Columbine and being shot. I still suffer from physical side effects and have been battling a drug addiction (now I am more or less a functional addict). I cannot bond with people. I am constantly vigilant. I have never gotten over the experience. Not to sound like an asshole, but I was the one kid who shouldn’t have gotten shot. My life was fucked up as it. Imagine waking up in the hospital and the first thing your mother says to you is not to get used to being catered to and almost blaming you for being shot.
Anyways, I was neither angry at Dylan nor Eric because they were dead. What good would it do to shake my fist at them. But I HATED their parents. I wanted to KILL them. How the fuck could you not know your kids will planning that rampage? I would drive by their houses for the next 15 years and hoped that it would lead to some confrontation. I am glad it did not.
I got an advanced copy of Dylan’s mom’s book and it left me in tears. All I ever wanted was for someone to admit that what Dylan did to me was fucked up. I realized that she has been hurt as much as anyone else and that she and I did not get what we needed – empathy. My family did not empathize with me the same way the media didn’t empathize with me. That is painful.
I do believe that she would have prevented if she could and wishes it never happened. In a way, I feel like she has suffered as much as the families of the dead.
Because of that, I was able to forgive her. That sounds strange because I almost feel like she did nothing wrong. She didn’t shoot up Columbine. She was guilty by association. She paid a very heavy price.
Also, at 34, when I look at 17yos, I see kids. It’s hard for be to look at a kid with severe mental illness and hate him. In a way, I don’t blame him. I think he was just ill. Others will probably feel differently, but I have spent the last three days crying and coming to terms with everything and ending it with forgiveness and empathy.
You can buy her book here(it’s for a good cause, all profits go towards mental health and suicide prevention resources).
People sometimes have a hard time describing how the Klebolds look. Devon remembers Susan wearing Dylan’s jeans after his death, which is tough because Susan is not especially tall, while Dylan was around 6-feet 4-inches. But its also tough recalling much more. Devon believes it may be Susan’s sadness and her eyes that always seem to be filled with tears. “It’s sort of the thing were you don’t want to remember; you don’t want to remember pain, and Susan really embodies pain and she’s pretty much been through the worst that you can go through and so you don’t really; you try to block that out,” Devon says. “It’s obvious in everything she says; in her voice, yeah. In her eyes, and just her mannerisms.”
The CBC Radio interview from this morning! If you haven’t heard it…it’s amazing! She also talks about his funeral and having time with dylan’s body before the funeral….heartbreaking stuff.
In my personal experience.. having been one of those kids and having worked with those kids.. that quote is a dead giveaway for a gifted kid to have said in junior high/high school. It’s often the conclusion that is drawn after some months or years of observing their peers around them. From that conclusion often follows a decision: acting out or fitting in. In the case of the latter, “fitting in” becomes synonymous with “dumbing yourself down”. Dylan showcases quite a few signs of gifted children so far. I can only imagine that Sue’s book would fill in the blanks enough for me to definitely say yes/no to the question if he was gifted or not.
Sorry for the doodle spam but I sat down the morning after Sue’s interview and just started drawing. I know I have requests to finish but I couldn’t help myself…The story about Mother’s Day and the African violets Dylan ended up getting for her just about ruined me.
💖👏🏻🙏
What are best friends for?
Robyn later told a friend that Dylan behaved gentlemanly on prom night, complimenting her on her dress. “They were holding hands and stuff,” said Jessica Hughes, one of the limo crowd.
Jessica sat next to Robyn and Dylan during dinner at Bella Ristorante. There was a lot of silly joking between them, playing with knives and matches. "They were pretending to light themselves on fire,” Jessica said.
Dylan ate a big salad, followed by a seafood dish with shells, mussels she thinks, then dessert. “I was like, my Lord,” Jessica said.
It turned me into a momma bear. I get angry. It’s hard to even imagine how I could feel any kind of defensiveness or anger in light of what he did. But to me, of course, Dylan was not a monster. He did something that was monstrous, but I was looking holistically at the human being who was a treasure to me and one of the greatest blessings of my life.
Sue Klebold on Dylan being labeled a monster (via rebs-storm)
When Klebold does complain about Dylan in her journals in the year leading up to the attack, it is often to note that he was “crabby” or failed to feed the cats. She loved her son, but was also worried about him enough to be periodically searching his room for drugs or stolen goods after that first serious incident with the police. (She found nothing.)
Dyl, feed those kitties, c’mon now…
Would love to see @rainflesh illustrate this one.
😥 ‘A family again..’ so heartbreaking. That ‘unfamiliar expression’, is familiar to me. She realizes it’s Dylan lying there but it’s somehow not ‘him’ any longer as it no longer contains his essence.
In 2001, investigators showed you Dylan’s journal, which they’d removed from his room within hours of the shootings. While Eric’s theme was hate, Dylan’s was love. How did it feel to discover that?
It broke my heart that not only did I not know his feelings of anger, I did not know his feelings of longing. I felt overwhelming sadness that I didn’t know he had someone he was passionately in love with though she did not know he existed—literally. It just makes the whole tragedy all the more baffling.
Have you ever spoken to her?
No. And she’s not aware [of how Dylan felt about her].
What’s one of your favourite memories of him?
His whole childhood to me was this golden blur of cuddliness, and precociousness, and giggliness. Oh my gosh, I remember one time we were traveling and we stopped at a hotel after being in the car all day, so he was very rambunctious. In the hotel room there were two beds, and he started jumping on them like a frog. He jumped on one and went “Ribbit, ribbit” then jumped to the next, “Ribbit, ribbit”—he was so adorable, so funny. I could keep you here all day telling you things I remember.
The Everlasting Contrast 