I don’t mean to be rude but I believe Dylan’s way to commit suicide was just so girly. Way too girly. There you are watching your best friend’s brains splattered pretty much everywhere and you take that shot to the temple? I don’t get it, seriously.

yuzu-nishi-ichi:

vodkasvixen:

c0atimundi:

alwayshereblog:

I think it was the way he choose. I don’t know why he choose that way. And I don’t think is girly at all. Many people commit suicide like that: a shot in the temple.

This anon seems kinda stupid tbh… I mean, for one, implying that girls are sissys by saying that a less gory/violent means of suicide is feminine. Two, ranking one form of suicide as more serious than another when both are done with the intent/expectation to die. Maybe if you were comparing someone impulsively swallowing a handful of tylenol to someone planning months in advance to shoot a shotgun slug through their head, maybe, but that really doesn’t apply here.

Now, onto what I’m guessing/hoping the anon’s point might have been, or at least what can be salvaged from it; “Why did Dylan shoot himself in the side of the head rather than through the roof of his mouth like Eric did, also, why did Dylan use the weaker 9mm Tec-9 rather than his shotgun?” I’ve wondered this a few times myself. Shooting yourself through the roof of the mouth is almost universally more effective than shooting yourself in the side of the head. I’m not sure why adeadlyinnocence feels the opposite is true, unless by “through the roof of the mouth” we are including putting the gun below your chin, in which case to the temple would probably be more effective (with the barrel on your chin, the bullet or buckshot has more bone and tissue to go through to reach the brain, also, you might flinch when pulling the trigger and just destroy your face, this is how most people who try to off themselves with a shotgun but survive end up failing). Most people don’t know which method (to the temple or roof of mouth) is more or less effective or if their is a difference, unless they do some research, I’m guessing Dylan did not research suicide methods. Maybe he chose the temple just because it’s slightly easier and is what is typically depicted in movies/tv/games (the reason probably being that you get a clear unobstructed view of the persons face if the gun is to the side of the head, thus showing us the persons expression and if they had the gun in their mouth they wouldn’t be able to say some dramatic one liner before they pull the trigger. Basically, it “looks cooler” so we see it depicted more.). As to why he didn’t use his shotgun, I have a few ideas; perhaps because it was a double barrel shotgun he couldn’t easily fit it in his mouth, and maybe he wanted to use the tec-9 so his face would be better preserved. It may seem somewhat strange to have that desire, but not that uncommon, nobody likes to think about what happens to your body when you die, and if you’re intent on offing yourself you especially don’t want to chicken out at the last moment because you don’t like the idea of blood and brains splattered everywhere or your face being impossible to recognize. So maybe he chose the less gory method of using the 9mm because he didn’t like to imagine the gore from using the shotgun, or maybe he didn’t want his family to have to see him like that. Another idea is that he didn’t think there would be a difference in effect and just used the tec-9 because that was what was in his dominant hand and thus easier to manipulate.

Maybe we’re just over-analyzing it and to him a gun was a gun and either one would do.

Plus putting a TEC-9 in your mouth is kind of awkward. He just wanted to get the job done.

image

I love your response, c0atimundi!

Definitely all of that. Plus…Dylan spent a lot of time fantasizing about killing himself. The Suicidal fantasy foreplay was not exactly how it had begun to play out in reality. So, I think when he actually got to the moment, Dylan found himself…stalling.. a bit. The police found a small pile of his items near by his body, personal items of significance to himself: his necklace, a silver pocket watch, and his triple-barred cross (the only thing he left on himself was his black onyx ring and that may have been something he overlooked as it was on his glove encased trigger hand.) Dylan seemed to be preparing himself, almost as if in a ritualized fashion and that very spot was his like a burial ground. Unlike Eric, he’d thought of suicide many times before but now.. he had preceded carefully preparing for his death. If Eric decided to do it quickly, to avoid losing the nerve or having second thoughts, Dylan likely saw or heard peripherally as his best friend just blew his brains out, saw the blood spatter on the ceiling. If this was the case, Dylan was then standing there all alone, probably having a bit of an out-of-body experience, standing by himself in a vacuum of time – seconds..a minute? feeling like hours.. time enough.. to consider and prepare for death by his own hand in actuality. I also think he considered he would not want to be disfigured for himself as well as his family’s sake. He obliterated his computer data but he left his personal journal and he also decided to leave his physical body intact. It was his choice.

Oh you’re right – no specific mention of surgery. I just assumed. I do wonder then what was REALLY going on. Maybe just idiopathic virgo pains? They do process their feelings/stress/grief/anxieties through the intestines after all. Poor guy. I’m thinking she will clear this up in the memoir… :)

Very Virgoan to be sure. 🙂 Plus, with 5 planets in Libra and his Moon in Aquarius, Dylan was rather imbalanced with waaay too much Air going on in his chart. Problematic because his intellectual head space was at odds with expressing feelings and processing his emotions. The supression/denial/compartmentalization is, obviously, going to manifest itself somewhere else in his body. Weight loss and stomach/intestinal issues – why not? It makes good sense. I definitely hope Sue is candid and thorough – even with the seemingly, insignificant ‘small stuff’. She’s had 15 years to endlessly ruminate in hindsight – so, whatever it is she selects to tell us, will be bits and pieces she senses were clues in retrospect that will help allow us to assemble more of his puzzle in the important context from within his family.

do-it-for-the-thrill-of-the-rush:

everlasting-contrast:

‘Upper right quadrant’ marks the spot

I wonder how he got this.

Dylan was 5’3 at age 16? And 6’4 at age 17? Pretty big growth spurt damn.

I believe that would be 6’3 in Dylan font. 😉

Also, thanks to kettlewhistle for mentioning the appendicitis referenced in Dylan’s Diversion File. Sue offers that Dylan went to the emergency care in Fall ‘97: “Stomach pain – thought to be an appendicitis but wasn’t.” I guess to expand on my vague question: Did this scar actually originate from a mere attempt at a diagnosis? Isn’t surgery a bit extreme? Wouldn’t they run tests first before operating to determine the condition? Sue does not mention surgery, just that it was ruled out as not an appendicitis. The autopsy report indicates the scar present is located on the “right upper quadrant” of the abdomen yet Appendicitis’ tend to originate in the lower quadrant of the abdomen and the surgery performed is within that localized region. So, hmm.. I wonder how much stomach issues Dylan had with the stressful conditions at school? This scar may have been a misdiagnosed symptom of anxiety ridden stomach pains. Interesting that he might’ve gone under the knife only for them to determine that he did not have a medical condition – that it might have turned out to be psychologically stress-induced stomach issues. It will be interesting to see if Sue mentions this in more detail in her memoir. Probably something like this that seemed insignificant to her at the time may have turned into tiny red flags in retrospect. There is a good possibility that Dylan may have had a lot of stomach ailments due to anxiety issues. Fall of ‘97 was a tough time for him according to his journals. October specifically, he got suspended for 5 days for hacking locker combinations with Zack and Eric. Jan 30th, he was caught stealing from the van with Eric followed by getting caught for scratching the locker next to his. Add in two traffic tickets and then on into March when the Diversion File was produced and his inception into the year-long program. Add to that, Dylan lost a signifcant amount of weight in ‘98. The result of that ‘upper right quandrant’ scar may have been from ongoing stomach issues after the shame and fallout from the January Incident.

“I’ve had thousands of dreams about Dylan where I’m talking to him and trying to get him to tell me how he feels. I dreamed that I was getting him ready for bed, and I lifted up his shirt, and he was covered with cuts. And he was in all this pain, and I didn’t see it; it was hidden.”

– Sue Klebold, Far From The Tree

Not gonna share how I know her, but I know the girl who wrote this – and no, it wasn’t Martha or Marsha or whoever the people on Tumblr guessed. Anyway, she told me this story about eight months or so ago and didn’t reveal who he was to me until the end.

This letter was about Dylan Klebold. They weren’t super-close, but he was always nice to her – smart and funny too, if in an awkward way. They had classes together and would talk, and would always greet each other in the halls – sometimes with hugs. She described him to me as “John Smith’s [from Pocahontas] cuter, taller, dorkier little brother.” Anyway, she had a crush on him for over a year and when the shooting was going on, I can’t remember where she hid, but she wrote a note right then and there she was going to give to him if they survived describing everything she liked about him – his blue eyes, his laugh, his intelligence, etc., finishing with those three little words we all choke on the first few times.

Then, she saw the news. She was destroyed, but decided to try to deliver the note the only way she could. She told her mom that she had a crush on one of the kids who had died and her mom went with her to the memorial. She walked to the cross, touched it, and whispered a few things (you can imagine). Her mom asked what the hell she was doing, freaked out and they had what she said was probably the quietest shouting match ever. She left the note at his cross despite her mother being disgusted and angry – as she should have done. (I want to note that the crosses for Klebold and Harris had just as many notes and things left on them, although people who left things there would sometimes face abuse and threats from other mourners.)

Once she knew who the mystery boy had been, the girl’s mother didn’t want to hear anything about him. She told her she should be happy he was dead and not to grieve for him because he didn’t deserve it – even though she had been supportive when she first heard of her daughter’s crush a few months earlier, telling her it was “cute” and to “go for him,” and knew it was the same boy. It was as if her mother expected her emotions to just flip on and off like a switch. So not only was it general public opinion, but the girl’s own mother basically told her she was wrong for feeling sad.

Ironically, her mother also helped her grieve. Two weeks later, she told her daughter to tape King Of The Hill for her (this was in the days of VHS) because she had to work and couldn’t be home to watch it. The girl usually didn’t watch it but she saw the commercial with the angel and felt like it was a sign, almost. When she watched it, something just hit her. There were so many little scenes in it – she mentioned to me about Luanne asking where Buckley was; she said it made her wonder about the afterlife and where Dylan was, and then the comment about Buckley “guardianin’ another girl” – if Dylan was somehow on Earth as a ghost, he wouldn’t know to visit her because she never told him she loved him. There was also a scene in which one of the other characters is trying to use the angel like a genie and tells another character “Don’t touch [whatever the angel was coming to] or the angel won’t come back and I’ll be alone forever.” These little moments added up and Buckley putting the halo on was the straw that broke her floodgates.

She still has the VHS with nothing but this episode on it, with “ANGEL! [heart]” written on it in cute teenager writing and pink gel pen. She keeps it on a shelf in her house, on top of the school yearbook from that year. I asked her about it when I visited and she told me what I just told you, albeit with more dramatic delivery (as you can imagine).

Lostlove_Throwaway, a Reddit user, on the letter a Columbine survivor wrote to Mike Judge about “Wings of the Dope” (via fuckyeahdylanklebold)

Susan Klebold Memoir to be Published by Crown – The Crown Publishing Group

burnandraveatcloseofday:

The press release Crown Publishing put out about Susan Klebold’s memoir.

(September 23, 2014 – New York, NY): On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked into Columbine High School. Over the course of minutes, they would kill twelve students and a teacher and wound twenty-four others before taking their own lives. For the last fifteen years, Susan Klebold, Dylan’s mother, has lived with the indescribable grief and shame of that day, trying to come to terms with the incomprehensible. How could her child, the promising young man she had loved and raised for seventeen years, be responsible for such horror? And how, as his mother, had she not seen it? What, if anything, should she have done differently?

It is that question that Klebold has grappled with every day since the Columbine tragedy, and she has spent the past fifteen years in tireless pursuit of the answer. While she has previously declined to publicly share her experiences, the devastating events at Newtown, UCSB, and most recently at Seattle Pacific University and Reynolds High School in Oregon have shown that the need for insight has never been more urgent. It has not been an easy decision for Sue Klebold to come forward after so many years of silence. But she has seen firsthand that sharing her story can help other parents—and she therefore feels a deep responsibility to broaden the circle of those who know it. If the lessons and insights she has gained in the terrible crucible of Columbine can help others, then she feels she has a moral imperative to share them. Knowing there is nothing she can ever do to atone for what Dylan did, she has dedicated her life to trying to prevent anyone from having to endure such suffering ever again.

Roger Scholl, Vice President & Executive Editor, acquired world rights from Laurie Bernstein of Side by Side Literary Productions, Inc., and will edit the book. The UK and Commonwealth edition will be published by WH Allen, an imprint of Ebury/Penguin Random House UK. A simultaneous publication date has not been announced.

With unflinching honesty, Klebold will share her story in this yet-to-be titled book in hopes of shining a light on one of the most pressing issues of our time. She will invite readers into the very private struggle of the last fifteen years as she and her family have tried to understand the events of that terrible day and the role they ultimately played in it. Klebold has shielded herself from nothing, exhaustively exploring the depths of her memories, interviewing family members and friends, combing through her journals, and meeting with countless mental health experts in an attempt to understand how her child could have hurt so many—without her ever recognizing anything was wrong. Klebold will never know if she could have prevented the events of Columbine, but her hope is that the insights she has gleaned from her experiences can help other families see the signs when their children need help. Although at times paralyzed by her grief and remorse, for close to a decade Sue Klebold has become a passionate and vocal advocate working tirelessly to advance mental health awareness and intervention. Author profits from the book will be donated to research and to charitable foundations focusing on mental health issues.

Susan Klebold Memoir to be Published by Crown – The Crown Publishing Group

Columbine Shooting Memoir by Susan Klebold

Killing many and yourself could be an easy ride into history, but what does it do to the surviving family when your name becomes a national headline? Here is a story from one such survivor.

The mother of one of the Columbine shooters has signed a book deal to write a memoir, 15 years after Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris opened fire at the Colorado high school, killing 13 and wounding 24 in one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history.

Susan Klebold plans to confront the “indescribable grief and shame” she has experienced since the shootings, The Associated Press reports. Crown Publishing acquired the book, whose title and publication date are yet to be determined.

Shooting rampages at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School, the University of California, Santa Barbara, Seattle Pacific University and other places prompted Klebold to share her story, according to a press release Crown Publishing put out Tuesday.

“Klebold has shielded herself from nothing, exhaustively exploring the depths of her memories, interviewing family members and friends, combing through her journals, and meeting with countless mental health experts,”says the release, to try “to understand how her child could have hurt so many—without her ever recognizing anything was wrong.”

In 1999, Newsweek writer Sharon Begley grappled with the complex reasons the shootings took place. They were an “event of extreme national trauma” that still haunted the nation on the 15th anniversary earlier this year, Newsweek editor Rob Verger wrote.

Klebold has previously spoken publicly about her son’s involvement in the shooting. “Dylan did not do this because of the way he was raised,” she told New York Times columnist David Brooks in 2004. “He did it in contradiction to the way he was raised.”

With her husband, Tom, she talked to Andrew Solomon for his 2012 book Far From the Tree, about parents who raise abnormal or exceptional children.

In an essay in O—The Oprah Magazine in 2009, Klebold addressed what it felt like to be accused of bearing some of the responsibility for the shootings.

“I was widely viewed as a perpetrator or at least an accomplice since I was the person who had raised a ‘monster,’” Klebold wrote in O. “Our elected officials stated publicly that bad parenting was the cause of the massacre.”

A Pew Research Center report in April 2000 found that shortly after the shootings occurred 85 percent of Americans said it was the parents’ responsibility to prevent potential perpetrators from going on shooting rampages like the one at Columbine. Nine percent thought it was the school’s responsibility.

Six out of 10 Americans surveyed the year of the study believed closer scrutiny of troubled children with “antisocial attitudes” would help prevent future shootings—a significantly higher number than those who thought school security, gun laws or violence in popular entertainment was responsible.

It can be unfair to assign responsibility for mass shootings to families, Peter Langman, a psychologist and the author of Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters, tells Newsweek. “For families to be blamed…is really misplaced anger,”Langman says. “People want to take out their rage on people who did not contribute in any way to the attack.”

Based on his research, “there are three basic types of people who commit school shootings,” Langman tells Newsweek. “Traumatized” shooters come from broken homes, where they suffered from physical and/or sexual abuse and had at least one parent with substance abuse problems and at least one parent with a criminal history, according to Langman’s article “Rampage School Shooters: A Typology. But most of the families, like the Klebolds, he says, are “basically intact, stable middle-class families.”

The day after Crown Publishing announced the memoir, a study released by the FBI on Wednesday showed that mass shootings have increased in frequency between 2000 and 2013. The study does not mention the shootings at Columbine High School.

One way Klebold has processed her son’s actions and coped with the shootings has been to involve herself in efforts related to children’s mental health and suicide prevention, according to Langman.

“I hope that someday everyone will recognize the warning signs of suicide,” wrote Klebold in O, “as easily as we recognize the warning signs of cancer.”

Klebold plans to donate the profits from her memoir to mental health research and charities, according to the press release from Crown Publishing.

“The fact that I never saw tragedy coming is still almost inconceivable to me. I only hope my story can help those who can still be helped,” Klebold wrote in O. “I hope that, by reading of my experience, someone will see what I missed.”

Source

I’d say she’s already got a good bit of her memoirs constructed from over the years of processing. With the help of editing it might not take that many years to publish.

Rosh Hashana and Dylan’s roots, part 1

burnandraveatcloseofday:

It’s Rosh Hashana (literally, “Head of the Year”), the Jewish New Year—happy 5775!

According to all sources, Dylan’s sole connections with his partially Jewish roots were: 1) his circumcision (but then most boys in the US are circumcised, regardless of their religion; Eric was, too!) and 2) his…

Can picture him mumbling the recitation of The Four Questions..
Rosh Hashana and Dylan’s roots, part 1

Susan Klebold, mother of Columbine shooter Dylan Klebold, working on memoir

thedragonrampant:

superbuggledrpg:

peoplearesounaware:

can´t believe it.

Oh wow how exciting. I’m sure it will be an incredible book.

I cannot wait to read this. What a wonderful thing for her to do. =)

Amazing, wonderful news. *applauds* If anyone can do this, Sue Klebold can. She’s finally moved past the long, hiding-in-shame mode and can now reach out with her story about Dylan, to help educate and potentially prevent other shootings. It won’t need to be in vain.
Susan Klebold, mother of Columbine shooter Dylan Klebold, working on memoir