Tag: Vodka

So apparently when E and D entered the library, a girl heard one say to the other, “Are you still with me? We’re still gonna do this, right?”. I’ve wondered who was the one to say it and i wondered your opinion on who it was? (I love your blog so much btw)

Lisa Kreutz’ (page 62 of the 11k) account: The boys entered the library and started yelling then and one said something about blowing up the library. She heard an explosion inside the library then and she heard one of the gunmen say that they hated the school and that the school had messed them up. Then the shooting began inside the library, setting the fire alarm off. The girls pulled the chairs in closer to the table to hide behind but that didn’t stop the bullets when [Dylan Klebold] began to shoot under their table. Lisa’s right wrist was grazed by a stray bullet. She heard the “Do you believe in God?” exchange between Valeen Schnurr, which occurred about the same time that [Dylan] fired again under the table where Lisa was still hiding. She was hit several times, sustaining multiple gunshot wounds to shoulder, hand and both arms. She lay bleeding in the library for 2 1/2 hours, unable to move due to the severity of her injuries, before she was rescued by officials on scene. She was the last survivor to be pulled from the library.

When the shooters entered the library she heard one say: “Are you still with me? We’re still gonna do this, right?” 

Which time the shooters entered the library- that is, when her mind recalls she heard this –  is key.  

Which boy said this really is hinged on when Lisa Kreutz actually heard the alleged question and whether her recall of precisely when she heard this is correct.  If Lisa had heard one of them say this at the start of the library massacre, while the boys were first approaching the library doors, then I believe that Eric was asking Dylan for reassurance that he was still on board with the ‘make it up as we go along Plan B’ – to continue on with their KMFDM agenda to shoot, kill, maim classmates trapped in the library. This would’ve been before Eric had broke his nose and so he would’ve still been very enthusiastic and pumped up, thirsty for kills and revenge, in addition to the mere taste of it they got outside with some potshots at students on the school grounds.   Upon entering the school, they’d stalled and dicked around in the hallway by shooting and throwing pipe bombs at lockers and walls and randomly shooting at fleeing students in an ineffective free-for-all manner. The two even separated a good bit of time. Dylan killed no one in the hall, Eric killed Dave Sanders.  So, Eric was ready to head into that library and take revenge up close and in a personal way.  Was Dylan ready for this?  Eric had to be sure he was ready for the next level of destruction that was left up to them to accomplish since the bombs hadn’t yet gone off, and might never.

Since, Lisa was heavily wounded and remained in the library somewhere near  an unconscious Patrick Ireland the entire time after all the other students fled, her recall may have been hazy as to when exactly this alleged question was posed. It’s quite possible that it occurred when the boys returned for the very last time to the library.  By then, their mindset had become more distracted and aimless after failing to make the bombs go off in the Commons.  The blood lust against classmates had fizzled and committing suicide was rapidly becoming forefront in their minds since the cops were now closing in.  If the alleged discussion had occurred the second time, the last time, they ventured to the library, I believe Dylan would have asked Eric for reassurance that he too was committed to the act of suicide because this is what Dylan wanted most of all out of that entire day.  Oh sure, the rest was the ‘have fun!’ journey but the end was his destination he so longed for.  

I do believe that Eric may have been hesitant to commit suicide at some point or another, since he was seen to be remorseful on the Basement tape videos made two and a half weeks before the incident, and in their final testament video, Eric was seen to be saying how much he would miss his boss, Bob, at Blackjack, how he would miss some special people, how he wished he could go back to Michigan and see some old friends first, and how he knew his parents would be so hurtful, and his statement of “to everyone I love, I’m sorry about all this” or something to that similar affect. Dylan, on the other hand, was on a suicide mission from the very beginning, and made his suicide a key point in NBK, more than a year prior to the incident. Eric had also wrote that he and Dylan could escape after the incident, and destroy as much as possible, move to Mexico or an island where Americans couldn’t find them, or hijack and crash a plane into New York City afterwards. His alternative exits may have been wildly far fetched fantasy but it equates to a certain amount of disbelief and hesitation that NBK was a revenge mission which could only end unequivocally in suicide – either romantically by cop as he envisioned – or by their own hand.  At the point they made their way back up to the library, Eric would have had to rapidly come to the terms that he would have to do the job for himself in their failed mission.  Even though Eric knew that he wouldn’t live after the incident, and that he eventually would go ahead and commit suicide, he didn’t make his own suicide a key part of the event, something that was absolutely necessary, while Dylan did.  It’s not likely that Dylan would have been the one to have ideas of backing out since it was his utmost goal to complete NBK for the reward of freedom that awaited him.

Anyway, that’s my take! Glad you enjoy E-C. 🙂 

One day, he [Dylan] and I got into a fight on the playground. He said something that made me mad, so I pushed him. Just like that, he jumped on me and started punching; we rolled around, locked together, until the teachers peeled us apart and sent us to the principal’s office. That was the first time I ever saw Dylan’s temper. Because Dylan internalized things so much, he would let his anger build up within him until one little thing finally set it off. When that happened, it was like an explosion.

No Easy Answers: The Truth Behind Death at Columbine by Brooks Brown (via marleficent)

Playgrounds on both sides of Governor’s Ranch Elementary School, where this apparently occurred.  This passage is on p. 32, within the discussion of Brooks’s and Dylan’s experience in the CHIPS program at Governor’s Ranch, and which also states, “Dylan and I got our first taste of bullying on the playgrounds of Governor’s Ranch.”

(via burnandraveatcloseofday)

This is just my opinion but Dylan seemed more like a Capricorn than a Virgo. Do you know if he had any heavy Saturn influences in his chart?

Dylan was definitely a Virgo – though I can see your assumption that he might be Capricorn in relation to the signs ruling planet, Saturn. Saturnine energy is very heavy, serious and restrictive. It’s a bit like a stern parental figure that forces a person to face reality, societal rules and challenges them with sometimes, harsh karmatic life lessons. Because of that fact, Capricorns have the negative tendencies of being plagued with pessimism, melancholy yet are adaptable and derive empowerment and strength from delving into the darkness. Caps can be rather serious, pragmatic realists and somewhat rigid and cautious. Capricorns have sarcastic, sardonic sense of humor which helps to bring levity to the obstacles they face and surmount. On the the flip side, they are dependable, loyal, patient, determined, practical and goal oriented. They do not have problems with being proud and successful of their accomplishments within the public limelight and supposedly have an innate knack for leadership.

Given all that, Dylan’s Sun sign is in Virgo and Virgo is ruled by Mercury which is noted for the intellect, awareness, logical reasoning and communication. A Virgo by comparison is not interested in the ‘big picture’, goal oriented, status climbing stuff that Capricorn excels in. Virgo is logical, analytical, observant and fussy about the details nor are they very effective leaders as with Capricorn. Their preference is to preform behind-the-scenes but produce with accurate, exacting details. While a Cap doesn’t mind being the status of a President of a business and Virgo is happy being the Wizard behind the curtain doing the detail-y stuff as a CPA or scientist in a specialized field. Both Cap and Virgos can be introverts and share the same cautious nature – however, Virgos are more quiet, shy and modest. They’re not eager to demonstrate their ability to succeed as with Caps. Virgos strengths are being inquisitive, logical, attentive, caring, dependable and accurate; their weaknesses are being cynical, inflexible, selective, and picky, critical perfectionists.

Virgo is ‘The Virgin’ sign and so there is focus on purity and perfection and to the extreme, they can be overly fastidious and focused on cleanliness. Given all of these attributes, you can see how Dylan might fit a bit better as a Virgo. Dylan was gifted and very curious with a voracious appetite for knowledge as a child according to his parents. You can see in some of his school assignments the attention to details especially in his creative storytelling: he spends time with one specific scene and really hones in on painting a vivid picture overloading with sensory details. If you read his draft for the Manson Family report you can see how he sticks to a precise formula for working out his thought process for the essay.

  If Dylan hadn’t been dealing with debilitating depression, you can imagine he would’ve produced much more high quality thorough school work. Math was second nature stuff for the most part though he was scraping by on AP Calculus, (nothing to sniff at) obviously not preforming at his peak because of his ‘meh’ apathy and boredom. If Dylan had made it through college graduating in computer science, you could imagine how well suited he’d be in that field as a software engineer or programmer. He’d have a natural ability to effortlessly churn out precisely executed coding with flawless accuracy. Not the most exciting stuff but if it was a puzzle to solve coding problems, he would probably enjoy the challenges involved.

The mental energy and acuity of Virgo’s Mercury meant Dylan was well suited for intellectual creative potentiality but his lack of focus and drive with his depression counterbalanced and prevented him from producing and bringing things into top-notch fruition. Instead, his mind was circuitous and he was lost in a haze of ‘why bother’. In his journal, he laments how his parents nagged, how they wanting him ‘to have fucking ambitions’. Hell, he even wanted to muster ‘ambition’ for himself but instead he just ended up frustrated and self loathing about it. He knew he was more than capable of, infact, the curriculum was actually too easy but he just couldn’t find it in him to give two fucks. There was nothing to create excitement, to engage and make hiim want to produce the brilliance he was quite capable of. Instead we see Virgo Dylan failing to stick with using one font on his homework assignments or he’s noting on the paper in his scrawly handwriting “printer screwed up”. It’s just a whatever all the way.  He was just too scattered and unfocused to give the all he was truly capable of. However, that said, if you watched him organize and play in his Fantasy Baseball, something he had a personal passion and love for, you would see a very organized, top-notched detailed oriented Dylan Klebold in action, knowing every little nuances about the players and also being pretty darn competitive too.

Virgos are also critical and they hold themselves accountable to high standards as well. Dylan spent a lot of time nit picking and focusing on himself and how he was not and never could be the ‘normal’ acceptable standard Columbine jock. He also upheld a pedestal-like criteria for ‘The Girl” he envisioned and longed for himself. In his journal, you see how he is constantly evaluating potential girls that he knows and whether they meet his standards.

“[redacted] is the newest…[redacted] the purest (for now) …seems perfect for me..I seem perfect for her.”

Dylan also struggled with a kind of binge/purge mentality regarding his sexuality. His notion of love and sex were kept at odds, and had a hangup with the kink porn obsession likely viewing it as dirty and base. He seemed apologetic and embarrassed about it in relation to thinking of his love in which he romantically fantasized about . He even went so far as to note in his journal that he had successfully stopped masturbating though not the porn.

“I do shit to supposedly "cleanse” myself in a spiritual, moral sot of way (deleting the wads on my computer, not getting drunk for periods of time, trying not to ridicule/make fun of people in school) yet it does nothing to help my life morally.“

-or – “What else can I do/give..I stopped the pornography. I try not to pick on people.”

All of this kind of judgmental thinking would be considered extreme Virgoan obsessive behavior to correct something that he held a self-enforced critical standard. It’s almost monk-like in his attempt to purify and abstain from his vices in order to bargain with and appease “The Creator of Shit” to make things easier on him.

You’d asked if Dylan had heavy Saturn influences and yes, he did have doozy. Though Dylan is not a Saturnine Capricorn, he does in fact, have heavy influencing issues with Saturn. Dylan has Saturn in his 12th House in Libra which caused him great misery and struggle.

Natal Saturn in the 12th house –

“Lost in my little insane asylum with the redneck music playing”

12th House Saturn signifiies that you feel you should deal with your responsibilities on your own, and that your burdens are yours alone. You have a hard time allowing other people to help you with your problems, and can isolate yourself as a result. Guilt, insecurity, and anxiousness can plague you, and the more you withdraw, the worse it gets. You may run away from your problems, afraid of dealing with them. Growing up is hard for those with this placement, and there’s usually something in your past that weighs on you and holds you back. You have to learn to let go and to let other people in. You won’t find the happiness that you need until you do.

12th House Saturn in Libra Exalted

Attracts the most good fortune when he/she is fair-minded, treats others with equality, is bending and compromising without being a “doormat”, is gracious, and uses [his|her] talents at promoting and mediating. Values people and relationships, and might succeed best in partnership. Relating as equals is important to you. The arts, architecture, law, math, mediating, and politics are possible avenues for success. Use of charm and grace to reach goals.

While on a personal level, Dylan was struggling with the Saturnine 12th House “Island on to himself; I must go it alone” heavy shit, and keeping all that silent suffering to himself, he still appeared a very flexible, harmonious, easy going dude in public. Dylan made and maintained friendships to the point of no strife likely because he suppressed any personal upsets so as not to lose any friendships. Having friends defined who he was and his self worth. Dylan made it pretty clear in his journal that he felt like Zack and Devon made him feel a bit like ‘a doormat’ when they got what they needed and moved up and over him, leaving him in the dust. Dylan most likely never communicated any grievance about it.

Saturn Semisquare Uranus   – “Dwelling on the beautiful past”

You find it difficult to be spontaneous, to get away from routine and do something different. Others see in you a creature of routine. Travel may also be hard for you. It is not easy for you to change or to accept changes. When you do enact a change, it is always at the deepest or core level and affects everything else in your life. Once a change is made, it at once becomes a part of you, solid and immovable. Those near you may feel that you inhibit the proverbial “life of the party.” Code, computer programming, and the like should interest you.

Capricorns and Virgos have a lot of overlapping tendencies as far as Earth signs go but there’s a few distinctions that really set them apart. They’re like flip sides of a coin.. so I can completely appreciate that you thought Dylan might be a Cappy. 🙂

it baffles me how dylan had such an appetite yet was so underweight

Yes, it is baffling isn’t it?   There is the typical voracious teenage male appetite to eat large quantities of food and not gain an ounce as they grow in height because of that super efficient metabolism.  In addition to that though, Dylan was struggling with a concealed deep depression and the eventuality of NBK and his suicide looming in the not so distant future all of which would’ve been an additional stress factors taking a toll on him physically. Dylan could’ve continued to stuff himself akin to emotional comfort ‘binge’ eating but his body would have continuing to expend more calories than was being taken it  Based on the account below from classmate Jeffrey Marquardt, and also a few other people, Dylan seemed to have some extreme mood swings going on.  

image

The fact that he was falling asleep in class due to apathy and also being sleep deprived from staying up late at night is consistent with his depression,  However, I have this theory about Dyl’s observed “unusually hyper and full of energy” mood swings. They might be attributed to his experimenting with popping over-the-counter caffeine and/or ephedra diet combination pills in order to boost his energy level to keep himself upbeat, if not jittery and ‘hyper’ and focused enough to get through the day, complete his homework at night and still have enough time to play video games late in the night with Zach. We know Dylan took natural St. Johns Wort but these supplements do not have side effects that cause hyper-like moods however, taking speed-like diet pills would amp him up enough for classmates to notice.  Dylan would have a suppressed appetite while taking these pills and probably forget to eat from school to working at Blackjack in the evening.  So, he’d be burning a lot of calories enough to lose at a more rapid rate than his usual fast metabolic rate which would explain such a rapid weight loss within the year. When he’d go off the pills, his appetite would level out and probably increase enough where he’d eat that entire bucket of KFC.  It certainly would explain the extreme and noticeable up/down vacillation of mood swings.. His weight loss would be attributed inadvertently to his depression because he was trying to interrupt his funk and lack of motivation by artificially jacking up his mood with acceptable over-the-counter substances.   Mr.Self Reliance was grappling with his misery and low energy so this might’ve been the occasional ‘fix it’ temporary solution to squeak by without completely failing in school; it’d be a way for him to continue managing his own problems in secrecy. Anyway, it’s a theory of mine to explain the unusual hyper-energetic moods in relation to the rapid weight loss and that contradictory ‘legendary’ appetite…;)

Which enneagram personality type do you think Dyl would be?

I’d easily place Dylan as a 5 wing 4.  I can also see him having 9 as another wing.

Primary – Enneagram Type is 5 – The Investigator

Thinkers who tend to withdraw and observe

People of this personality type essentially fear that they don’t have enough inner strength to face life, so they tend to withdraw, to retreat into the safety and security of the mind where they can mentally prepare for their emergence into the world. Fives feel comfortable and at home in the realm of thought. They are generally intelligent, well read and thoughtful and they frequently become experts in the areas that capture their interest. While they are sometimes scientifically oriented, especially with the Six wing, just as many Fives are drawn to the humanities and it is not at all uncommon for Fives to have artistic inclinations. Fives are often a bit eccentric; they feel little need to alter their beliefs to accommodate majority opinion, and they refuse to compromise their freedom to think just as they please. The problem for Fives is that while they are comfortable in the realm of thought, they are frequently a good deal less comfortable when it comes to dealing with their emotions, the demands of a relationship, or the need to find a place for themselves in the world. Fives tend to be shy, nonintrusive, independent and reluctant to ask for the help that others might well be happy to extend to them.

Fives are sensitive; they don’t feel adequately defended against the world. To compensate for their sensitivity, Fives sometimes adopt an attitude of careless indifference or intellectual arrogance, which has the unfortunate consequence of creating distance between themselves and others. Trying to bridge the distance can be difficult for Fives, as they are seldom comfortable with their social skills, but when they do manage it, they are often devoted friends and life long companions.Fives are usually somewhat restrained when it comes to emotional expression, but they often have stronger feelings than they let on. Few people know what is going on beneath the surface, as Fives have an often exaggerrated need for privacy and a deep seated fear of intrusion. Because of their sensitivity and their fears of inadequacy, Fives fear being overwhelmed, either by the demands of others or by the strength of their own emotions. They sometimes deal with this by developing a minimalistic lifestyle in which they make few demands on others in exchange for few demands being made on them. Other Fives make their peace with the messiness of life and engage it more fully, but they almost always retain their fears that life is somehow going to demand more of them than they can deliver.[more]

Enneagram Wing Type 4 – The Individualist

Identity seekers, who feel unique and different

People of this personality type tend to build their identities around their perception of themselves as being somehow different or unique; they are thus self-consciously individualistic. Fours tend to see their difference from others as being both a gift and a curse – a gift, because it sets them apart from those they perceive as being somehow “common,” and a curse, as it so often seems to separate them from the simpler forms of happiness that others so readily seem to enjoy. Thus, Fours can manage to feel superior to others while also secretly harboring some degree of longing and envy. A feeling of being a member of the “true aristocracy” alternates with deep feelings of shame, and fears of somehow being deeply flawed or defective.

Fours are emotionally complex and highly sensitive. They long to be understood and appreciated for their authentic selves, but easily feel misunderstood and unappreciated. They have a tendency to withdraw in the face of a world that seems harsh or crude, and are often somewhat moody or temperamental. They are emotionally centered and spend much of their lives immersed in their internal mental landscapes, where they feel free to cultivate and analyse their feelings. A desire to manifest this internal world often leads Fours to an interest in the arts, and some do become actual artists. Whether artistic or not, however, most Fours are aesthetically sensitive and concerned with self-expression and self-revelation, whether it be in the clothes they wear or in the overall nature of their often idiosyncratic lifestyles.

Fours are somewhat melancholic by disposition, and under stress tend to lapse into depression. They also tend to be self-absorbed, even under the best of circumstances, but when unbalanced, easily give way to a self-indulgence which they perceive as being fully justified as a way to compensate for the general lack of pleasure they experience in their lives. Rather than look for practical solutions to their difficulties, Fours are prone to fantasizing about a savior who will rescue them from their unhappiness.[more]

Combining the two it looks like this…

image

I also think Dyl could tend towards 9 wing as well given all Libra influence in his astrological chart.

Enneagram Type 9 – The Peacemaker

Keeping peace and harmony
People of this personality type essentially feel a need for peace and harmony. They tend to avoid conflict at all costs, whether it be internal or interpersonal. As the potential for conflict in life is virtually ubiquitous, the Nine’s desire to avoid it generally results in some degree of withdrawal from life, and many Nines are, in fact, introverted. Other Nines lead more active, social lives, but nevertheless remain to some to degree “checked out,” or not fully involved, as if to insulate themselves from threats to their peace of mind. Most Nines are fairly easy going; they adopt a strategy of “going with the flow.” They are generally reliable, sturdy, self-effacing, tolerant and likable individuals.[more]

It Couldn’t Be Dylan

“Have you seen the paper, Dad?” he asked Jay Holliday. “Jess is on the front page.”

Holliday went downstairs and picked up his Denver Rocky Mountain News. On the cover was the same photo Derek had seen in North Dakota: 18-year-old Jessica Holliday, her hands clutching her head, her mouth open in a silent wail. HEARTBREAK read the headline, a word that barely expressed the emotion written on Jessica’s face.

Her anguished image showed up on front pages in every corner of the world – along with magazine covers, the Internet, television. The camera caught a pretty face so distorted by despair that only family and friends knew for certain who it was. And only Jessica herself knew what she had been thinking and feeling just then.

But that didn’t stop the rest of the world from claiming Jessica’s pain as its own.

“That picture tells the whole story,” said Jessica’s mother, Kathy Holliday. “I can’t look at it without crying.”

Jessica’s photo seemed to move everyone except Jessica herself. For her, the events of April 20 seemed unreal, and they still do.

It felt unreal when the killers walked through Columbine ‘s library, laughing and shooting, while she hid under a table and prayed.

Because Jessica Holliday is not just the girl in the picture; she’s the girl in the middle. 

She knew the killers, and she knew their victims. They were nice guys. And they murdered her best friend

Jessica had seen Dylan Klebold with the gun before she ducked under the table, and it was difficult for her to reconcile that image with the quiet kid she knew.

“It couldn’t be Dylan,” she thought, even though she knew it was.

Dylan had been in her government class the semester before. He sat right in front of her, so they talked, mostly about homework. He would pass papers back.   It couldn’t have been Dylan.

Later, she told her parents how she thought about standing up and telling Eric and Dylan to stop, as if reason might have been bullet-proof. Maybe they wouldn’t have killed her, because they both knew her.

Jessica told her mother she felt like a coward because she didn’t do anything to save her friends. But now she has accepted the fact that there was nothing she could have done.

“Nobody could have stopped them. Nobody,” Jessica said with certainty. “They didn’t have a reason for shooting somebody. They just shot. I think no matter what anybody would have done, if someone had stood up and tried to stop them, that person would have gotten shot.”

When the killers reached Jessica’s table, they had to reload. She heard them talking about cutting someone with a knife, what that would be like.Jessica, dressed in shorts, became painfully aware of her bare legs jutting out from under the table. Would they cut her? she wondered.

Instead, they left to get more ammunition.

She told her story with feeling, but no tears. Her voice resonated with love for Lauren but no hint of bitterness toward Eric and Dylan.

“I don’t have any hate,” Jessica said. “I feel sorry for the boys, because they hated life so much that they had to destroy others. I feel sorry for them. Because they couldn’t enjoy life, like me and Lauren could.”

“I can’t hate them. Because I knew them, both of them.

"But I don’t want to ever think about them again. Because they killed my best friend. My best friend, who knew every little part of my life. They took her.”

Jessica doesn’t like the photo of herself. As many times as she has seen it, she still doesn’t feel its power, even though she knows it has touched millions. It just rubs her the wrong way.

“It was weird to see myself. I didn’t like it, and I still don’t like it,” she said. “I was so sad that day, and so confused. And then here it is, right there. All the stuff I was going through, and everybody could see it.”

(full article here)

The Girl in the Picture 

By Lisa Levitt  – Rocky Mountain News StaffWriter

On April 20, Jessica Holliday became he face of the Columbine tragedy to millions around the world. This is herstory. 

She is a very private person whosevery public moment of grief made her the poster child for unspeakabletragedy. 

The flood of unwelcome fame beganthe morning after the deaths at Columbine High School. First came the early
morning call from her brother, Derek, in Bismarck, N.D. 

“Have you seen the paper,
Dad?” he asked Jay Holliday. “Jess is on the front page." 

Holliday went downstairs and picked
up his Denver Rocky Mountain News. On the cover was the same photo Derek had
seen in North Dakota: 18-year-old Jessica Holliday, her hands clutching her
head, her mouth open in a silent wail. HEARTBREAK read the headline, a word
that barely expressed the emotion written on Jessica’s face. 

Her anguished image showed up on
front pages in every corner of the world – along with magazine covers, the
Internet, television. The camera caught a pretty face so distorted by despair
that only family and friends knew for certain who it was. And only Jessica
herself knew what she had been thinking and feeling just then. 

But that didn’t stop the rest of the
world from claiming Jessica’s pain as its own. 

"That picture tells the whole
story,” said Jessica’s mother, Kathy Holliday. “I can’t look at it
without crying." 

Jessica’s photo seemed to move
everyone except Jessica herself. For her, the events of April 20 seemed unreal,
and they still do. 

It felt unreal when the killers
walked through Columbine ‘s library, laughing and shooting, while she hid under
a table and prayed. It felt unreal when she went back into the library weeks
later, and saw her best friend’s blood on the floor. 

"Even to this day, I like to
pretend that I was out to lunch or at home,” she said. “Or that it
happened at some other school. But not our school." 

Because Jessica Holliday is not just
the girl in the picture; she’s the girl in the middle. She knew the killers,
and she knew their victims. 

They were nice guys. And they murdered
her best friend. 

They sat at the same table, the one
nearest the entrance, every day at lunch time: Val Schnurr, Lisa Kreutz, Jeanna
Parks, Jessica Holliday, Lauren Townsend. All good friends and seniors, excited
about graduation and college. 

On that Tuesday, Jessica was sitting
where she always sat, across from her best friend, Lauren. So far, it had been
a great day. Jessica was wearing a new outfit. She was looking forward to
starting a new job. She and Lauren had spent the whole hour before together;
Jessica was counting on Lauren’s help with her physics. 

Another friend, Amber Huntington,
caught Jessica’s attention, so she left her usual seat to walk to the back of
the room to talk. And that’s where she was when she heard the first
shots. 

Firecrackers, Jessica thought, or
hammers. A senior prank. She didn’t really believe the teacher who came in
yelling about guys with guns. 

And then everyone began ducking
under tables, and Jessica started to run back to her table, back to
Lauren. 

And at that moment, Amber grabbed
Jessica’s hand and pulled her under the nearest table. “She probably saved my
life,” Jessica said. 

Amber hadn’t wanted to go to school
that day. And all morning, she had felt a powerful need to see Jessica, talk to
Jessica. When the shooting began, Amber immediately reached for her
friend. 

"I was scared,” Amber
said, “and I wanted Jessica to stay with me." 

Back at Jessica’s table, her other
friends had become targets: Val. Jeanna. Lisa. 

Lauren. 

Under their table, Jessica and Amber
held hands and prayed, through the gunfire, through the screams. Through the
killers’ laughter. 

"In that moment, all you can do
is pray that they won’t shoot you, pray that you won’t die,” Jessica said.
“You’re not ready to die.” 

Jessica had seen Dylan Klebold with
the gun before she ducked under the table, and it was difficult for her to
reconcile that image with the quiet kid she knew. 

“It couldn’t be Dylan,”
she thought, even though she knew it was. 
Dylan had been in her government
class the semester before. He sat right in front of her, so they talked, mostly
about homework. He would pass papers back. It couldn’t have been Dylan. 

Later, she found out that the other
boy was Eric Harris. That was just as hard to believe. 

Eric’s older brother, Kevin, was her
brother Derek’s best friend. Kevin was a great guy, like another brother to
her. Eric had eaten dinner at her house once. 

Later, when it was over, Kevin
Harris came to see her. 

“Are you OK?” he asked.
And then, “Was it really my brother?" 

And Jessica said yes, but she
wouldn’t say more. She felt sorry for Kevin, for all he suffered. But that
couldn’t change what Eric had done. 

Later, she told her parents how she
thought about standing up and telling Eric and Dylan to stop, as if reason
might have been bullet-proof. Maybe they wouldn’t have killed her, because they
both knew her. 

Later, Jessica told her mother she
felt like a coward because she didn’t do anything to save her friends. But now
she has accepted the fact that there was nothing she could have done. 

"Nobody could have stopped
them. Nobody,” Jessica said with certainty. “They didn’t have a
reason for shooting somebody. They just shot. I think no matter what anybody
would have done, if someone had stood up and tried to stop them, that person
would have gotten shot." 

When the killers reached Jessica’s
table, they had to reload. She heard them talking about cutting someone with a
knife, what that would be like. 

Jessica, dressed in shorts, became
painfully aware of her bare legs jutting out from under the table. Would they
cut her? she wondered. 

Instead, they left to get more
ammunition. 

The survivors of the library spilled
out from under their tables and began to run. 

"And I didn’t want to run.
Because I thought they were going to come back and just shoot us all. So for a
second, I froze,” Jessica said. “Then the people at my table left and
ran, and I finally got up." 

And while Jessica ran, she thought
about being shot in the back. 

When she got outside, she saw Val,
who was alone and wounded, so Jessica held her. And then Jeanna was there, and
she had been shot, too. Surrounded by her friends, bleeding. 

But no Lauren. 

"Where’s Lauren?” she
asked Diwata Perez, who had been sitting at their table up front. 

“We tried to wake her up,”
Diwata said. “Her eyes were closed. Maybe she passed out." 

And at that moment, Jessica knew
what had happened to Lauren. 

"Lauren is the strong one,
she’s the survivor. She’s the one who would bail me out of anything,” Jessica
said. 

“So I knew she was
dead." 

The bullet that killed Lauren broke
Jessica’s heart. 

They became friends in their
first-grade class, once-in-a-lifetime kind of friends. They went on a church
retreat every winter during high school, where they’d talk about God and their
feelings and their lives. 

"We’d talk about our way-down
secrets that we wouldn’t tell anybody else,” Jessica said. “Lauren
had problems, but she’d never really let anybody know. She talked to me about
it. But she never had a bad day. She had quiet days. But not bad
days." 

Lauren was always there: Coming over
late to help Jessica with her math homework. Picking out Jessica’s prom dress
with five days to go. Always ready to listen. 

They were bound together by their
love of music – both played the piano and the clarinet – and by more difficult
things, like the health problems suffered by Jessica’s mother, Kathy, and
Lauren’s mother, Dawn. 

"We talked really in-depth on
the winter retreat,” Jessica said. “Sometimes about God, but mostly
about what we were going through in life right now, what it’s like. Me and
Lauren, sometimes we don’t have easy lives. And we talked about
that." 

They drew strength from each other –
and Lauren drew pictures for Jessica. Jessica saved them all. Sleeping Beauty.
Jasmine. Jessica as Pocahontas. “We always sang Jesus Christ Superstar, and
we’d dance to it. And so she drew Jesus on the cross for me.” 

On the back, Lauren wrote, “May He
always be with you.” 

A week before she died, Lauren gave
Jessica her last drawing. 

"She had smudged it,”
Jessica said. “And I remember her saying, ‘I had a picture for you, but I
ruined it. So I’ll redraw it for you.’ She never did. And finally I said,
‘Lauren, can I have that picture you smudged?’ 

So Lauren gave it to her. Her last
drawing: an unfinished angel. 

It was a day after the shootings
before Jessica knew for sure what her heart already had told her: that Lauren
was dead. She felt anger then, and a survivor’s guilt. 

“If anything, I should have
been the one to die, and not Lauren,” Jessica said. “For the first
couple of days after, I thought, if I would have stayed at our table, I would
have gotten shot and not Lauren – Lauren would have been safe. Or if I was
there, my angel that was with me would have been with my whole table, and my
whole table would have been OK." 

Lauren’s parents asked to see her,
and she didn’t know what she would say to them. 

"Her mother wanted to know
exactly what had happened,” Jessica said. “And I told her most of it.
But not all of it." 

She told them about things she and
Lauren had done together that they never knew about. She told them about
Lauren’s drawings, which she gave them for an art show. She took Lauren’s
yearbook and had all her best friends sign it, and then brought it back to
Lauren’s parents. 

At Lauren’s funeral, and the Red
Rocks memorial, Jessica stood in front of friends and family and strangers and
brought to life the Lauren she knew, the smart, funny, down-to-earth girl who
had a thing for space aliens and was perpetually late. A person everybody
loved. A person without an enemy in the world. 

"Your best friend doesn’t
die,” Jessica said. “Even to this day, I don’t believe it. I think
maybe I could go call her, and she’ll be home. 

"And I’ll say, ‘What’s
up?’" 

Jessica doesn’t like the photo of
herself. As many times as she has seen it, she still doesn’t feel its power,
even though she knows it has touched millions. It just rubs her the wrong
way. 

"It was weird to see myself. I
didn’t like it, and I still don’t like it,” she said. “I was so sad
that day, and so confused. And then here it is, right there. All the stuff I
was going through, and everybody could see it.” 

What people see now is a young woman
looking forward. In the fall, Jessica plans to go to Mesa State College. She
isn’t sure what she’ll study. But April 20 gave her a new perspective on her
future. 

“I want to live more like
Lauren – try to get along with everybody, try to work harder. She’s my
hero,” Jessica said. “I want to do something to help people. So that
every day is like a new day, you know?" 

Jessica still struggles to get past
that one day. She returned to the library with the other survivors, thinking
that it would help her accept Lauren’s death. But it didn’t help at all. 

She saw the bullet holes and the
blood. It was like a movie set, like dye splashed on the floor. All of it,
still so unreal, obscured by a heavy curtain of denial that Jessica has yet to
pull back. 

She told her story with feeling, but
no tears. Her voice resonated with love for Lauren but no hint of bitterness
toward Eric and Dylan. 

"I don’t have any hate,”
Jessica said. “I feel sorry for the boys, because they hated life so much
that they had to destroy others. I feel sorry for them. Because they couldn’t
enjoy life, like me and Lauren could." 

"I can’t hate them. Because I
knew them, both of them. 

"But I don’t want to ever think
about them again. Because they killed my best friend. My best friend, who knew
every little part of my life. They took her." 

Jessica’s parents worry about her.
“She’s strong, so strong,” said Jessica’s mother, Kathy. “But she hasn’t dealt
with all of this yet. She hasn’t cried. I cry all the time. But she hasn’t
cried.” 

She wasn’t crying in that photo,
either, Jessica insisted. People seemed to think they could look at her face
and know her thoughts in that terrible second. Life magazine printed the
picture with a caption that said Jessica was reacting to the news that her best
friend was dead. 

That wasn’t it. 

"I was praying,” she said.
“And I was asking, ‘What just happened? Why our school? Why is everybody
hurting?’ I was thinking about Lauren, and I was asking why? Why? 

“It was a moment with
God." 

Related Links:
Jessica Hollidays 11K account  
Dylan straddling Jessica’s leg

Was Dylan’s hair more brown or more blonde?

I answered that here. I’m going to maintain that Dyl had dark blonde/light brown (‘dirty blonde’) with strawberry blondish red highlight in certain lighting. In a nutshell, I would call him ‘blonde’.  I would bet that Dyl was probably a towhead when he was a baby/toddler and his hair darkened as he grew older around 4-5 years of age. When he spent any amount of time out in the summer sun, the exposure would make his hair lighten up quite a bit enough to be considered ‘blonde’ with massive highlighted streaks of it.  The autopsy report dubs his hair as ‘brown’.  However, you also have to consider that Dylan was laying on the autopsy table in a room with garishly bright lights and also a great deal of dark,coagulated blood saturated and caked all over his long hair which would make his hair color appear darker in that setting. Autopsy reports generally only stick with basic colors: it’s either a quick glance and they tick ‘brown’ or ‘blonde’ and no precise descriptions like say ‘molasses syrup blonde’. 😉   His facial hair, however, reveals fair ‘blonde’ hair. 

Apparently, the new Tumblr settings doesn’t allow for adding images (?!) so I’ll add an image post in relation to this ask next up. 

Dylan’s autopsy hair color description

Do you think anything could of made Eric and/or Dylan not want to do Columbine anymore? Stuff like; the Marines accepting Eric, or one/both of them being in a relationship that they care about, or the bullies suddenly apologizing to them, etc

Certainly, yes.  Anything simple and ordinary could’ve reengaged either of the two to begin to care one iota again, to feel reconnected and valuable enough on the planet to change their course of destiny like the switch of a train’s tracks from a crash course over a cliff’s end onto another route that sprawls onward towards a sunny horizon.  Once one of the two cared enough, I do believe the deadly dyad dynamic would’ve fizzled and come to a halt. I do not think the two separately had the momento and strength to do what they did as in their alliance. It was a symbiotic relationship.

Okay so question.. Are you very selective about following people?? Great blog btw

No, not particularly. I’m pretty inclusive because, well, it’s Dyl’s blog and everyone is welcome. 🙂   I don’t always get the chance to follow back because of the volume that comes in daily but I do try.  If you’d like me to specifically follow you, feel free to PM me the request.  And thankss! I’m glad you enjoy <-E-C->.Â