racheljoyscotts:

The families of some of the Columbine victims talk about Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. (13 Families, 2009)

This is my most favorite part of the 13 Families documentary.

“I went to Columbine.. so for anyone to say there was no bullying and there weren’t cliques, you know, you can’t put a thousand teenagers in one place and have a big happy family, it just doesn’t happen. Columbine was pretty bad. It’s not a happy little, never-never land. It’s high school.  As far as Eric and Dylan themselves are concerned.. they’re victims to.   It takes something to get somebody to that point where they are so depressed, and they are so angry that the only way they can see out of their black hole – or whatever you want to call it – is an event like Columbine. Obviously, those kids were crying out for help, they needed help, and nobody paid attention to them.”
 –– Angela Sanders

“I’ve chosen not to view them as monsters. I’ve chosen not to view them as anything other than young men who made choices that led them down a dark path – and ended up taking their lives.  Their parents suffered deeply just like we suffered. Occasionally somebody says “I can’t think of anything worse than what you experienced” – and I think there is something worse than what I’ve experienced – and that is if my son, my boys, had done what Eric and Dylan did.  To me that would have been a lot worse. Because these parents lost their children and they lost any semblance of a good memory”.  –-Darrel Scott

we-r-but-we-arent-psycho:

Today 19 years ago Dylan Klebold’s funeral was held with 15 people in attendance. The Reverend who officiated the funeral was ostracized by the community and lost his congregation for showing compassion and had to leave the community for practising what he preached. That same day, at the same time, Rachel Scott’s funeral was attended by over 1000 family and friends and was televised by CNN with millions around the world watching. It was (at that point and time) the most viewed CNN segment in history. Dylan’s body was cremated due to concerns that his grave would be desecrated. Eric Harris’s family had him cremated as well, with no service and an executive of the estate claiming his ashes. Gone but never forgotten

acinnamon-girl:

toinfinince:

April 24, 1999

“On Saturday, the twenty-fourth of April, we cremated our son…

No words are adequate to describe the pain of seeing Dylan’s body in that casket. The expression on Dylan’s face was unfamiliar, which Byron later confessed made it easier for him. That unfamiliar expression was perhaps the only thing that allowed us to get through that first, horrific, unreal moment. I smoothed Dylan’s hair and kissed his forehead, searching his face for clues and finding none. Tom and I had brought a number of Dylan’s childhood stuffed animals, and we placed them in the coffin so they rested against his cheeks and neck. Byron and Tom and I held one another’s hands, and together we held Dylan’s. We were finally by his side, a family again.

It was a chilly spring day, and I was overcome by a compulsive, almost biological need to make Dylan warm. I could not stop rubbing his ice-cold arms, exposed by the short-sleeved hospital gown he was wearing. I had to hold myself back from climbing into the casket so I could cover him with the warmth of my body…” – A Mother’s Reckoning – Sue Klebold p.49

The longest, most painful journey imagineable made in four short days…

🖤😔

Saturday, November 19, 2016 I Lost My Son, Dylan, In The Murder-Suicide at Columbine Guest Blog by Sue Klebold

lnlandfriends:

International Survivors of Suicide Loss Day is the one day a year when people affected by suicide loss gather around the world at events in their local communities to find comfort and gain understanding as they share stories of healing and hope. We have learned that stories of lived experience are one of the best ways to fight the discrimination and prejudice often associated with people living with of mental health conditions and suicidal thoughts, behavior and loss. People sharing stories of moving from despair to hope and recovery help inspire others to get involved in the movement.

Saturday, November 19, 2016, is International Survivors of Suicide Loss Day, and thus, we are highlighting a loss survivor’s story and her search for meaning after loss.

Sue Klebold lost her son, Dylan, on April 20, 1999. He was one of the two shooters in the Columbine Tragedy. Her grief and recovery has been a long process. She became connected to the Carson J Spencer Foundation as she started to learn more about suicide and suicide prevention. Today, she is part of the Suicide Prevention Coalition of Colorado, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s Loss & Healing Council, and a valued volunteer of the Carson J Spencer Foundation. This is her story:
I lost my son, Dylan, in a murder-suicide. He and his friend murdered 12 students and a teacher, and injured more than 20 others before taking their own lives. He was very smart, funny and well-organized. He had a great sense of humor and made me laugh.
He loved trying new foods and new experiences. I will always miss him.
Dylan taught me what it feels like to be completely proud of a child, and to understand how blind we can be to someone’s inner suffering.
I have honored his memory and the memory of those he killed by writing a book, A Mother’s Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy, and donating the proceeds to brain health and suicide prevention organizations. Because of Dylan, I try to make things better for others.
My grieving process was complicated because of the murders involved. Years of grief were convoluted by lawsuits, public condemnation, and personal health problems. The loving support of friends and family helped, along with therapy, reading about suicide, journaling, drawing, exercise, and connecting with other survivors of suicide loss.
I derived meaning by learning about the suicidal mind. I began to accept that his judgment was impaired at the time of his death, and this helped me cope with the reality of his destructive behavior.
I hope he would be proud that I honor his memory by trying to improve mental health care for others. I want him to know that nothing he did could ever make me love him less than I do.
Recovery is a process. At first, we are victimized by what has happened to us. We feel devastated, confused, grief stricken, and helpless. As time goes by, we slowly move from feeling like a victim to feeling more like a survivor. We don’t know how we made it, but we want to help others who have more recent losses or who are struggling. We find that by trying to serve others, we slowly gain strength and balance. Eventually, we may become advocates, driven to make a difference in a larger sphere of influence. We see that we never have to stop loving or missing the person we lost, and we remember them with joy, honor, and gratitude.

The effects of a suicide loss are long lasting and far reaching. Many survivors seek to make meaning out of their loss and celebrate the life of their loved one. There are many wonderful organizations that provide life-saving suicide prevention programming. Carson J Spencer Foundation seeks to elevate the conversation and make suicide prevention a health and safety priority. Through a variety of prevention programs, Carson J Spencer Foundation is changing the face of suicide loss. Whether you partner with our organization, or another, we encourage you to get involved. Giving a gift, in memory of a loved one lost, helps to create the meaning that so many seek.

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Source: The Carson J Spencer Foundation Blog

He is proud, Sue. ❤️ We all are.

I want to thank you a lot for EVERYTHIG!! One year ago the guy I was in love committed suicide, but read about Dylan, his journal and everything you post makes me feel… Idk, like I can understand their reasons. Instead of anger I feel something different, sympathy, I guess. THANKS.

That is so sad. 😕 I’m SO very sorry for your loss. 😔 Grief is such a long and complex process; You need to be sure to feel everything that you’re feeling authentically and not deny those emotions no matter how volatile or upsetting. I’m gratified if in your explorations of Dylan through E-C, it has given you some small comfort and has helped you to reach a place of understanding, sympathy and a sense of calm and peace. I’d like to think that in knowing more about Dylan we know more about ourselves or someone just like him a little bit better. ☺️I want to thank you for sharing/confessing this. Be kind to yourself and patient. I’m here if you have need of anything or would just like to talk. ❤️

Please forgive my ignorance but, was Dylan capable of doing well in Calculus and just didn’t care or was math an area he truly struggled in?

Absolutely 100% capable but he was lacking in motivation due to his depression. He didn’t care and didn’t see the point of making an effort and getting top grades. He was also a gifted kid and he didn’t particularly like his teacher. I’m sure the teacher probably taught it in an uninspiring, dull, sort manner which probably didn’t encourage and nurture him to want to perform at his best with his natural abilities at math. As it was, he was in Advanced Placement Calc so even with Ds or Cs he was doing okay. His low-end grades were still good enough to get him invited to decent colleges. So it was boring for him. He was falling asleep a lot in class in the last few months. To give you an idea of how Dylan viewed it: he asked his math teacher if he could just do all the assignments from home and only attend class on test days. You can hazard a guess as to what the teacher’s responses to that was… 

I heard somewhere that Devon Adams had reported Eric to the principal for having her on his hit list, is it true? If it is, wouldn’t that be a little weird considering that she and Dylan were good friends?

Yes, that’s true, see video here at 06:58.  Devon hadn’t been friends with Eric for some time at this point. Not only did she not like him, she was afraid of him because of the threats he made by Dec ‘98. She hung out with Dylan when he wasn’t hanging out with Eric.  Dylan was used to Eric being hot and cold with people and he just steered clear of the drama between Devon and Eric or Eric and Brooks or Eric and Nate – and so on.

How do you think Sue spent the day on 20/4/2018? :( ?

Keeping herself busy. Last year she was presenting at a conference on April 20. Sue has learned how to deal with this time over the many years by distracting as much as possible. I would expect she spent time with friends, including her suicide prevent support friendships she’s made and keeping herself occupied and productive among the company of others that make her feel good. I’m sure in quiet moments her thoughts return to the day and her beloved boy but she’s learned tools to not dwell. I think we here in this community spend far more time reflecting on this sad day than she does..because she can’t give herself over to dwelling on it as she once did in the early days after the tragedy. 

Do you think Dylan’s Cancer Midheaven played a part in the way his depression manifested? His IC would have been in Capricorn and so he may have felt like a hardworking and studious child in order to please one parent in particular. Cancer Midheaven’s feel a lack of affection they feel they missed as a child (at least not the type of affection they desired) and so they project this watery and unstable persona. Would Dylan have felt this perceived rejection of the world more deeply due to his CM?

Sure, the Cancer Midheaven is sensitive to the feelings and thoughts of those surrounding them and combine that with Dylan’s heavy Libra chart meant it was like second nature, at an almost subconscious level, for him in going with the flow and adapting to the needs of people and providing for them in any given situation. Like a chameleon that is changeable but can give people what they want in order to keep them happy. People pleasing and protectively care taking. But his natural sensitivity and empathic receptiveness to the needs of others could then be at the expense of his own feelings and desires.  But far worse factors contributing to the innate depression was Dylan’s Mercury conjunct Saturn. A Saturn conjunction shows restriction of expressive speech and an inclination towards depressive thoughts and thoughts of hopelessness. Mercury/Saturn is very forlorn, it is not easy, it is like having a viewpoint of constant gloom with a huge propensity for self-loathing and being trapped inside one’s own mind. His one hopeful earth planet, Virgo sun. had a nasty square to Neptune, showing self-delusion, a lack of self-identity and an erosion of one’s ego and sense of self. It is almost impossible for a Sun square Neptune person to see themselves as they truly are. Extreme sensitivity, especially concerning what others think about you and how they treat you because that was how Dylan defined himself. Dylan’s emotions weren’t the issue, he had a grip on them and he wasn’t all that emotional tbh especially given his Aquarius Moon which caused him to distance from identifying and expressing/emoting feelings. Instead, it was his sense of self and his overactive gloomy mind. And that’s not to mention his 12th house Saturn issues which is the house of destruction of the self and internalization and submerging the hate and negative feelings.This placement is one of a great sense of loneliness, isolation, of being solitary and disconnected from others even while in their company.  In my opinion, Saturn in the 12th House defines the existentially depressed and lonely existence of ‘Dylan Klebold’ to a tee. I always tend to think of him as The Hermit in the Tarot card deck. Intelligent, alone, sad, hopeless standing on his lone mountain top looking down at this world and with no one to truly relate to.  

me is a god, a god of sadness
exiled to this eternal hell
the people i helped, abandon me
i am denied what i want,
to love & to be happy
being made a human
without the possibility of BEING human
the cruellest of all punishments
to some i am crazy
it is so clear, yet so foggy
everything’s connected, seperated
I am the only interpreter of this
Id rather have nothing than be nothing
some say godliness isn’t nothing
humanity is the something i long for
I just want something I can never have.
The story of my existence -Dylan

Mother of Columbine shooter reflects on that day, 19 years later | CBC News

acinnamon-girl:

“We’ve passed through these doorways of just feeling like a victim where you feel helpless and beaten by life and then you begin to feel like a survivor, like I still feel horrible but I’m going to make it, and I’m going to try to help other people going through this type of loss. And then you become an advocate, someone who wants to make a change and it kind of crystallizes what you want to live for and fight for. And I think that’s sort of what has happened to me.”

Some inspiring words from Sue Klebold on another painful anniversary – a pain that might be heightened, perhaps, by the increased media attention on this particular 4/20.

Mother of Columbine shooter reflects on that day, 19 years later | CBC News

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@interfectum600 here is the supporting evidence in the 11K that suggests that the boys likely carried around a dark-colored duffel bag or two with their overflow ammo and explosives which they couldn’t carry on their person.  As it was, they were a virtual arsenal and loaded to the max with pipe bombs, crickets on their torso with military webbing and bullets stuffed in their multiple pockets and pouches to the point where it gave people the impression that they looked bulky and overweight. lol  What they couldn’t manage to carry on themselves ended up being lugged around in the duffel bag/s.  For practical purposes, they needed to have enough so they wouldn’t run out too quickly but obviously couldn’t carry it all on them. Too much weight.   It seems to me that initially, when Autumn Hettinger saw Eric Harris walking up to the school from the Junior Parking lot that Eric was trying to hide his bag under his trench coat which looked like a ridiculous bulge not to mention much more suspicious than carrying the bag low to the ground as is typically done with a duffel bag. But by approximately 11:15, when many eyewitnesses saw the two outside, they were either carrying the bag or had it their feet about ready to start NBK.  In the library, John Savage’s hears one of them loudly call out to the other for ‘the bag’ and shortly after one says ‘let’s go kill some cops’ which seems to suggest they loaded up on more ammo to go take out cops. Then you have Hengel seeing Eric in the hall bent down looking for something in a bag.  I do they think lugged those suckers around and dropped them in close proximity to where they’d be. They’d wander around shooting and then circle back to retrieve them when they were moving on to another location inside the building. 

And Kim Blair Woodruff was a 17-year-old student at Columbine HS in 1999. 

MK:You were at Columbine when the two shooters came in, you knew one of them. Did you see him the day of? Did you have a direct interaction with him?  

Um, I was outside where it began. So, I saw them take the duffle bag up to the top of the hill, pull out the guns, nod to each other, and begin shooting everybody.  I had my best friend shot up right next to me. Um, before she was shot, I, you know, made eye contact with the gunmen, he recognized me, he moved the gun and shot her. I have an identical twin as well, and she was a library kid. And in that moment for her, they looked under the table, and couldn’t tell if it was me or if it was her because we’re identical. Um, and I was always very nice to Dylan. And, uh, he moved to the next table.  

MK: You think that he spared you for that reason? It’s the only thing I can hope for otherwise it just seems like chaos. And I tend to think that we’re more kind in our nature than we are evil. And I’m hoping that in just that brief moment, he remembered that piece of his humanity and all that kindness I gave him.

MK: Any survivors guilt? Not anymore. I’ve actually been able to find peace, I was able to find peace about the 10th year anniversary. I’ve been able to live in my peace since then. 

 Columbine survivor uses tai chi to aid healing at Aurora Strong center

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Click here to read the full account plus the account of Kim’s identical twin sister Patti who was in the library.

 Oddly, the way Kim’s 11K account reads,  Suspect One and Two are backward and the opposite of what Kim relayed to Megan Kelly in being sure she made eye contact with Dylan who had spared her. But here, it sounds like she made eye contact with Eric as Suspect Two.  It’s entirely possible that the investigative officer interviewing her got confused between Suspect One and Two as Kim was relaying her story and mixed it up.  I would not at all be surprised since the investigators did an overall botch job of things. One amusing takeaway is that when Dylan first started shooting in an easterly direction he was apparently rapid fire shooting around at nothing in particular..”she could not be certain what the first suspect was shooting at” whereas Eric immediately started targeting kills, a group of boys, in particular. 

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Kim’s twin Patty crouched under a library table…

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Written on Reddit in 2010 

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)