I'm struggling to write this. People are dead and injured and yet that is not what is on my brain. After reading the news reports what has me so paralyzed is the suspected theater shooter's bio sounds a lot like mine.
According to most accounts he's only about a month younger than me. The New York Times says, he "struggled to find work after graduating from the University of California, Riverside." And nearly everyone interviewed about him says he was the quiet one. And then there is this in celebration of the Dark Knight, which I was really excited about a few years back.
Now I have that in my head. That I see myself in a crazed gunman. I don't know what to do about it. I don't know what to think about it. I just know that I have to find some way to deal with it. Which is what this is. Me trying to reassure myself that as reclusive, alienated, and generally fucked up I may be, I don't have that in me.
Part of what makes me want to write this is that I always had the feeling I wasn't alone in my eccentricities. Maybe I'm not the only one who has to go through this.
A lot of people are weird loners. I've come to grips a long time ago that am an introvert. I like hanging back and doing my own thing. And there is nothing wrong with that. Nothing ticks me off faster than someone trying to "fix" me.
When I was in middle school right after the Columbine shooting and even after the Virginia Tech shooting, I would always get some chucklehead saying with a completely straight face, "Don't mess with Greg. It's always the quiet ones who snap." Hell people who thought that they were helping me would use that in my defense against bullies. Like that isn't going to further alienate an insecure child.
And as much as I hated it then in a weird way I am doing the same thing to myself now.
Look sometimes bad things happen. Reflection is a necessity, but we need to be careful about overreacting. Now I'm going to go back into my hole and try to get over this.
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