Life Sucks...but it's okay.

2000


1/3/00

Generally, I don’t write about anger as the particular emotion in and of itself. Rather, it always seems to present itself when I’m least expecting it: when I’m walking down the street, when I’m on the subway, when I’m talking to people, etc. Anger is such a commonplace experience for me that it’s more a way of life than a singular emotion. Anger is the powerful force that defeats my body in its physical and mental entirety. It’s the invisible demon that lives inside my brain and sits there patiently awaiting the most opportune moment at which to unleash its wrath and kill something. Anger is the emotion that makes me want to see blood. Anger is the emotion that makes me want to kill people. Anger is the emotion that inspired me to do days worth of research about the kids at Columbine High School because I felt they were the only two people on earth with whom I could compare myself: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Eric and Dylan--they’re like two little invisible people permanently implanted into my brain. They’ve become the ghosts of their former selves just as they had hoped. They’ve become the words of inspiration and truth and reason to me. They are something in life that I can understand.

When I think about Columbine, I feel jealous. I’m jealous of Dylan and Eric because they were true to themselves and actually followed through on the principles in which they wholeheartedly believed. How many people actually do that? Most people sort of half-theorize, half-plan, and then half-flow down the stream of life by the path it chooses for them. Most people get to a certain point and then get stuck. Most people give up. Most people are given something in which to believe and they choose to either follow it or not. Most people don’t come up with their own principles and continue by following through with them.

Dylan and Eric rationally and methodically planned an attack on the people with whom they associated every single day. They spent a year of their young lives acting as though nothing was going on, when in reality, they were plotting to kill their friends and foes in cold blood. They spent a year of their lives acting on two separate levels of consciousness: the state of consciousness in which you can carry on a conversation to the satisfaction of the other party, while simultaneously planning something else, while plotting their death, while determining the best course of action by which to get away with murder, while remaining constantly in a mental graveyard of dead thoughts, murdered ideas, and half-rotten corpses of dead friends. Dylan and Eric followed what their logical brains suggested they do; they made their own bombs and found their own guns and ammunition and went to school with the intention of killing as many people as possible. At least they were true to themselves.

I feel jealous of all the people that were killed at Columbine because they no longer have to deal with life. They’re dead--good for them. I’m jealous of the kids that attended the school and will be able to say for the rest of their lives that they lived through the Columbine “tragedy.” I don’t have anything that interesting to say about my life. I’m jealous of the kid that was shot nine times and is paralyzed from the chest down because he is just now beginning his journey through discovery and truth and understanding. I wonder what it would be like to take a knife and cut open your leg if you knew you wouldn’t be able to feel it at all? That would be pretty cool because there would be no connection between the blood and the flesh, the pain and the anguish. Blood is so cool. Blood is like the liquid form of the demon that lives in my brain. When it bleeds from the skin, it’s trying to escape from its prison in order to spread a lust for hatred throughout the rest of the world. I love blood. I’m supremely jealous of the girl that had the opportunity to see the face of a killer as he said to her, “Do you want to die today?” He got distracted and didn’t shoot her. I wish I could be able to say I was held at gunpoint. I wish I knew what it felt like. I think it might be the best feeling of my life, and it wouldn’t make me look bad to anyone who knew me.

I’m jealous of the spectacle that Eric and Dylan were lucky enough to witness as they performed the final scene in their poetically Shakespearean “tragedy.” Columbine wasn’t a tragedy, it was one of the definitive moments in our nations’s new identity as a panic-stricken, terror-ridden, hellhole of an Eden. I can’t even imagine the rush of adrenaline Eric and Dylan must have felt as they killed their fellow classmates. I can envision the scene like it’s a slow-motion demonstration of the ultimate perfection in artistry and cinematic beauty. I can see the faces of the killers as they marched into their high school for what they knew was the final time. I can feel the rushing heartbeat, the power-riddled hunger for blood and death and dictatorial satisfaction in Eric. I can feel the pacified angst in Dylan’s silent acceptance of the fate which Eric had designated for him. They were a leader and a follower, a pair of Natural Born Killer-like lovers, a flawlessly paired duo of passionate hate. They were fucked in the head--just like me.

I can see the walk to the school. I can feel my shoes pounding across the pavement in an echo that never existed before the heightened sensation of my newly discovered power. I can see the air and I can feel it as it cuts around me, parting like a wave of the Red Sea as it parted for Moses and the Israelites. I can feel Dylan’s presence behind me. I can feel the admiration, the love, and the knowledge that someone thinks I am the one and only important thing in life. I can see the green trees--still--as though they’ve never been moved or even touched by the wind. I can see the edges of the school building with a sharp new clarity of sensation and I can taste the Jack Daniels as it flows down the back of my throat. I can feel the rifle clanging against my legs as I try to walk into the school without being too obviously shrouded beneath my artillery. I can smell the black leather as its perfume wafts up to my nostrils and fills me with the carnal instinct to kill or be killed. I can see the first few students passing by me without the slightest clue as to how much they’re going to wish they hadn’t come to school today. I can feel Dylan’s fear, and it worries me a little, but it’s too late to turn back now.

I’m kind of thrown off by the fact that the first bomb doesn’t seem to have worked right. Well, nothing can be expected to go perfectly. Nothing can be expected to go right at all...ever. We’ll just have to improvise--doesn’t matter much now anyway. Nothing matters. We’re all just going to die. And thank god I’m gonna die soon.

I can’t wait any longer, I have to shoot someone now, or the adrenaline is going to eat me alive from the inside out. Hm...hey--I think I’ll shoot her. I can see the blood spraying out of her abdomen like it’s a fountain of joyous celebratory release. I feel like I’ve just released an entire shipload of lobsters back into the sea. I can hear her body falling to the ground and her voice trying to scream out in a horrified gasp of fear. Fuck her. Kill them all. This is fun. Maybe I should try and stay alive just to fucking kill people all the time. That would be the best existence ever.

I can see the library, and the confusion of the pitiful students around me. I can taste the tension in the air. It tastes like fire and ashes and the richest, bloodiest red wine. I can see the dust from the guns circling around in the air all the way down the hallway. I can see the glass breaking and I can feel my nose bleeding down my face, but I am completely numbed to fear or pain. I can smell the fear through my broken nose and it makes me hunger for more pain and more fear. It’s never enough. I can’t feel it. All I can feel is hate. I love hate. I love anger. I love anger, but it pisses me off.

I know anger just as Eric and Dylan did. I feel like they are part of me. I feel like I know them better than I know my best friends. I feel like I know them and understand them better than I understand myself. Their lives are over, and they ended with all the action, intrigue, and motive of a life lined with symbolism. You can’t judge the symbolism in a story until the story has ended. I don’t know what all of the symbolism in my life means yet, and it bothers me that I won’t ever be able to find it. Only someone who thinks similarly to the way I think will be able to find the symbolism after my death. If I was in high school now and I was in their situation, I would have shot up the school too. Hell, even when I was in high school, I wanted nothing more than to kill a bunch of the people. The difference was that I didn’t have a friend who would listen to me or even acknowledge my opinion on the subject. All I needed was a follower. I needed a Dylan. I needed someone to say, “Hey, yeah, let’s go kill a lot of people. You’re brilliant. That’s just what we should do. Let’s plan it together.”

I actually said to Larke the other day, “Wouldn’t it be cool to know what it feels like to be a killer?” Her response was, “No, Perdita--killing people is a bad thing.” I swear I have never been more shocked in my life. I completely expected her to jump at the opportunity as much as I would have if someone had come to me with the same proposition.

I hate. I hate everything. I hate that people don’t understand the logic behind what Eric and Dylan did. I hate that people don’t want to believe that this is the awful truth of what consumes the world in which they live. Everyone is so opposed to these “horrible” things because they want to believe they’re better than that. They want to believe that bad things can’t happen to them. Well, fuck that. Bad things happen to good people all the time. People are so selfish. It’s an undeniably inborn human trait; there’s nothing you can do about it. People’s natural instinct is to protect themselves and themselves only. I hate people.

It just so happens that next to me on my desk at work today is the 365 New Words a Year calendar that appeared in my stocking on Christmas morning. The word for today is “rankle.” Doesn’t it just figure that “rankle” means “to cause anger, irritation, or deep bitterness in,” or “to feel anger and irritation?” I think they could define rankle much more simply by saying, “See Perdita.” Everything bothers me. Everything irritates me. Everything causes a deep bitterness and a deep hatred and a deep passionate, violent disgust for life. Everything rankles me.

Anger is what lies at the root of all my friendships. Anger is the embodiment of strength, of courage, of passion. Anger is the one thing I understand. Anger is the closest I get to the feeling of power upon which I thrive. I asked for the power to bewitch the audience of a musical, an opera, a concert, a recital, any simple fucking outlet for performing creativity, and all I have gotten in return is anger. I’ve been pushed around and stepped on so many times that all I can do anymore is hate. I’ve been training as a singer since seventh grade and I have taken more criticism than any one person should ever have to endure. The problem is that most of it wasn’t constructive. Most of it was extremely detrimental to my health. Most of it was mounds of conflicting information from instructors who were supposed to be reliable sources from world renowned programs. They did nothing for me. Nothing I have been taught has ever helped me. Nothing has ever been offered to me or given to me or presented to me as a reward for years of hard work and strenuous effort. I can’t take criticism anymore. I can’t take rejection anymore. I have taken too much. I have put up with too much. I have had to survive in a world where everyone is pathetic and more fucked in the head than I am, and I have to pretend not to notice. I have to pretend not to hear the voices of the media constantly buzzing in my ears, throwing out highly opinionated, highly biased, highly meditated essays of nonsensical bullshit. I have no interest in their opinions. I have no interest in opinions of people who have no respect for me. I used to have respect for people. I used to have a lot of respect for people. I have spent most of my time in life to this point trying to put other people before myself, and I still get screwed over. I don’t care anymore. I have no need for stupid people. I have no need for people who couldn’t give a rat’s ass what I think or why. I have no interest in hearing people talk about computers and sex and jobs and TV shows when all I have on my mind is death and blood and destruction. I have no interest in people asking me how my day was if I can’t allow myself to say, “Well, it was shit, and then I mentally witnessed four murders, three car accidents, and twelve suicides,” without people thinking I’m absolutely crazy.

I don’t pretend to think there is no one in the world that is worse off than I am. I don’t pretend to believe that things couldn’t get any worse--I’ve learned from experience that things can always get worse--but for whatever reason, I just can’t handle things the way they are. The only defense mechanism I still possess in its perfectly intact whole is my anger. My anger feeds my hate. My hate strengthens and builds from day to day, and then I realize I have been not only stripped of, but also finally relieved of, all my guilt. I can’t fight it anymore. I spend a lot of my time waiting for someone to piss me off to the point where I will snap. I don’t know what will happen then, but at least it will be something different, something other than the anger and the hate, and hopefully with a violent and somehow symbolic end.


1/10/00

I don’t feel well. I think I need new medication. My redness has returned. I am anxious again. I am depressed again. I am still okay with the concentration thing, but overall I don’t feel well at all. I can’t write about depression without getting all worked up. I can’t talk about cutting myself or killing myself or anything. I can’t do anything. I have to just sit down and be quiet and try to forget everything. I don’t think I can do it.

My head is tingly and my hands are tingly, and I have a headache, and my throat feels smaller than it should. Again, I’m obsessing myself with Columbine. I can’t stop thinking about it. Eric and Dylan, Eric and Dylan, I think I want to go to hell with them, I think I want to meet them and go find them and I want to follow them. I am not a leader, I am a follower, I am the Dylan. I want to die. I want them to die. I want everyone to die because anyone who feels like I do most of the time should not have to live. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. Help me, I can’t breathe. My body hates me. My body wants me dead. My body wants me to keel over and die but there wouldn’t be enough blood right now. This sucks. This is ridiculous. I want to die I want to die. Help me Help me....

I feel like a computer program that has entirely too many bugs. Every once in awhile I get this strange pang of fffffffffffuccccckkkkkk.a l;lkj ri

I hate this. THis is entirely not good. THis is useless. Why do I have to feel like this? Why do I have to be sitting here at work wishing I could just slit my wrists and die? Can’t I just close my eyes and will myself to death? WHy am I being tortured by being kept alive? Why? I hate it all! This is ridiculous! I know I am just having one of my momentary lapses out of sanity, but this is ridiculous. I hate that I have to recognize that something’s wrong with my brain. I hate that I have to recognize this as something I just have to put up with. There is no reason on earth why this should have to be put up with. There is no reason on earth that I should have to put up with this. No reason at all.

I want to kill. The computer screen looks like it’s falling off of the monitor. I feel like I’m sinking into my chair. I feel like my fingers are just moving. Lalalalalalalala....

I hate the world and I hate life
I want to kill and I can’t
I hate the world and I want to die
but I’m not allowed to do that either
I want to die die die die
motherfucker...
die die die die die
motherfucker....
I hate the world and I hate life,
but I have to live because everyone
else thinks I should
and why that is good
I don’t know and I don’t care
cause I hate the world
and I hate the fucking universe
and I just want to die and go
to fucking hell like Eric and Dylan
and the rest of the world can
just go fuck themselves because
they don’t know the half of it
they don’t know why I hate the world
they have never felt this hate
they don’t know hate
they don’t know hate
I hate I hate I hate
I hate the goddamn fucking world
I hate the goddamn fucking universe
and everyone who lives in it
and I want to go home so I can
slit my wrists and maybe then
someone else will understnad

I am to omean.
I don’t care.
I wouldn’t ahve wishesd
this on anyone else a little
while ago, but now I don’t care
and I want them all to know
because worxds do not describe
the painful numbness in my chest,
the tingiling in my hands
the panic in my head
hte frustration in my throat
it hate the world
didiee die die die die
motherfucker
die

die die die die kill murder kill die

i am mean and i hate the world
and no one knows and it’s NOT OKAY
it is NOT OKAY it is NOT OKAY
the stupid fuckingg drugs try to tell me
it’s okay, but it is not NOT NOT NT ONOT NOT TNOTNONTONTONTONTONONTONTOTNOTNTOTNO
nOTnotONTIONTONOTNOTNOTNOT
NOT OKAY
it is not okay
fuck the stupid ass fucking drugs
fuck the stupid ass mother fucking people
out there that don’t know what the hell is
going on and it is not NOT NOT OKAY
fuck the world
fuck fthe world
fuck the world
i can’t breathe
I hate the world so much that I can’t breathe
I cant’ breathe abd I kdon’t care
baecasue breaht sustains life
and I don’t wanna don’t wanna don’t wanna
fuckgi thi skwold towlworld.
fuck this shitty ass mother fucker of a world
kill like dylan and eric. kill kill kill\
dylan eric werhere are you ?

come to me i want you to come to me
I am im n you


1/10/00

That was weird. They just dragged some kid off of the sidewalk in front of Starbucks. I wonder what was wrong with him? There are the police. I think I want to just hang out on the street until people carry me away because it’s pouring down rain and I’m sitting on a Starbucks chair and refusing to move from the sidewalk. I don’t know why. Maybe someone could give me some guidance. Maybe someone could tell me what to do.

I think Dylan and Eric are trying to talk to me through my computer screen at work. Perhaps they are following me. Eric knows what’s going on with my drugs. He should know why I have such issues with muscle spasms and the like. He was on Luvox. He gets it. I need someone else who’s like me. I need an Eric or a Dylan. I need them. I love them. I need crazy people that are fucked like me. Fucked like me, fucked like me, why can’t more people be fucked like me? I can’t take it. Now I know I’m crazy. They were just so fucking unhappy!

I want to talk to them. I want to ask them why they hated life so much. I want to ask them how badly it hurt because I can’t believe it could’ve been worse than what I feel. They weren’t mean, they were sad. I want to hold them in my arms and hug them until they can actually feel the pain that beats in my heart. I want to tell them it’s okay because I’m going through it too. I know. I understand. I want to kill the entire fucking world. It’s okay. I know why. I get it.

I should’ve gotten to know them better. I should’ve found them before now. I should have found them We could have killed each other why cant any one see? why can’t anyone get it? the are back. they. who? it is eric. not dylan. why eric. does it fucking matter? we kould of killed each other. each other. we are one and the same. we are twothree souls together around hell. hell why here not hell. this is hell.

we should’ve gotten together. how should I kill? who should i kill? i think you should kill the Boy what boy? the boy that tries to talk you out of it. the boy drinking too much beer beause he will bleed a lot. thin blood. thin red blood am i going to jail? what is wrong with being like us? is it wrong?

not wroognkt. not wrong. i can’t take this anymore. can’t take it.


1/10/00

Eric? Dylan? Are you there? Tell me when you are in my body. Can yu feel me? I can’t feel you yeeteeeee. Hello? Are you there? Are you ther? Jus tle lme know when you want to kill mee. JU st let mek now when you want me to fuck you like you never got fucked before. I know you want me and I will let you ahve me and nothing will be worse than life and nothing will be bliss. there is nothing to believe in. there are only dead people and darkness and the world of the dead and why do you care you are going to end up where we are and you can’t hel pit. WHy is this happening to us? wE are not supposed to be able to do this.PPPPPPPPPPThis is pretty fucking cool. We are taking over now. We are in your body. Can you feel us? Yes, we know you can. We know you are there with us. You cna feel us fingering you and turning you on like all those fucking big assed chicks that get their brains blown out in the video games. heads tits. heads tits. moonshine blueness. gulekjelly meint latoeihhk kiling there is nothing to help you you wil end up here with us.

you too will kill and die and there is nothing you can do. There is nothing anyone can do. don’t let them talk you out of it. Don’t let them tell you there’s anything better than killing becauese there’s not. Killing is th answer. it’s all about the blood and the fucking guns and the screams and the power and the yello yello sun shining of othe roof wiht the bombs. do you need bombs? You take a pipe and fill it with sharps things shards of glass and nails and you lighter fluid and stuff inside and light and kill people. can you see us? we know youare trying. Can you see us? WAit. COme backkkkkkk.

GUys? Come back! Don’tt leave me. I need you to tell me something. Tell me what is on the ivdo tapes? GUys? Are you theere.???? MY head is falling into the endof the building and it hurts buuuut not to worry soon we will be all blackness consoling blackness WHat is on the tapes? We are on the tapes and we jump around like crazy people wiht guns and liquor and it is lots of fun. We wish you coul dhave been there. WE would have liked a chickk espeially a hto chick with big tits and a tongue ring this is not easy for us. We should out now.

Can yu come to me tonight? eeeerrreaeerlllllllkkkkkkttrrrrrr llift us outttttiiii will let you out. I will free you from your hell. I need you..


1/11/00

I really wish I could explain myself better. Fuck language and its utter inability to express anything of any legitimate use whatsoever.

Still stuck on the Columbine issue, I sit here at work poring over website after website, finding out more and more fascinating things. I keep finding more things to disagree with, and now I have some bitching to do. As far as I can tell at this point, in the midst of my own personal, over-analytical psychological debate, nothing can help hate. Nothing can make it go away. If the world keeps on moving in the direction it’s headed now, things are going to get a lot worse before they get any better. There are a few main problems.

It seems to me that anyone who feels depressed, anxious, angry, and/or resentful the majority of the time, or enough of the time to make them feel like it’s a significant threat to their sanity, fully believes that they are the only one who feels that way. They think they are simply a misunderstood, lonely soul. Usually, that’s not the case. Usually, a lot of people feel the same way, and if they had someone to talk to, the pain would go away with most of the hate and the anger. If the news media could present to the American public a list of names, statistics, indications of any sort that tell us there are more people out there like us, maybe we’d have a fighting chance to become something other than killers. Maybe if I had had someone like me to talk to, I could have found some hope. Maybe if people like me--people who have gone through depression, anxiety disorders, panic disorders, etc.--volunteered to do help lines, people would call. Maybe if we advertised them on the news, maybe if we advertised them as something that the normal everyday teenager would not be embarrassed to use, maybe it would work. Maybe if we looked at depression, anger, and hate as serious issues that do not make someone crazy, people would think of it as something which can be helped. Maybe if it wasn’t always presented as such an out of the ordinary occurrence, the sufferers wouldn’t feel so lonely and abandoned by the rest of what seems to be another world--the sane world.

Psychiatrists are of little help unless they’ve personally experienced it themselves. This is not frequently enough the case considering the number of perfectly sane and rational psychiatrists we have milling around our country. You can’t take a mentally distressed person, a depressed, angry, or frustrated person, a “crazy” person and expect them to listen to a sane person. You also can’t take a depressed person and expect them to listen to a completely psychotic person. What we have to do is find people who have similar problems, issues, worries, hates, and frustrations, and get them together to shatter the stereotypical ideas about depression and anger. Chances are that they might gang up and kill larger numbers of people, but at least they wouldn’t feel misunderstood any longer. Where does hate come from if not from an overwhelming lack of respect for oneself? Where does it come from if not from an overwhelming dissatisfaction with the life one has been given? Who knows if anything would help? I guess the point is that it isn’t necessarily going to get any better regardless of what is done. The best conclusion for which we can hope is that all of the crazy people take over and make the world a better place.

What disturbed teens don’t understand is that high school isn’t all there is to life. High school is nothing like the real world. In the real world, you can do whatever the hell you want. You can get job after job after job, trying things on a temporary basis until you find something you can tolerate. Yes, at times it seems like a wild goose chase, but most of the time it’s healthy to at least be able to realize that you’re not stuck anywhere. Teenagers need to be told that they will get out of high school and they will go on to bigger and better things. There is more to be had in life. There are more things to find and discover. There are experiences that will provide endless satisfaction in the retelling of them as stories. There is more to life than high school. There is always something else.

They should also know, without having to figure it out on their own like I did, that drugs make everything worse. Parents can’t tell their kids that drugs are “bad” or people who do drugs are “bad.” They will sit there patiently waiting for you to finish your happy little dream-world story and hope to God that someday they’re old enough to become exactly what you don’t want them to be. I know; I’ve been there. They need to know that any frustrations they feel will get worse after drugs. They need to know that anything that feels bad now will feel ten times worse after the drugs. They need to know that the drugs cause a lack of appreciation for things of real substance. They need to know that drugs aren’t bad just because grown-ups say they’re bad.

I was always told to avoid drugs because drugs kill your brain cells. What do you expect that to mean to a fifteen year old? I assumed that meant my depressed, angry, relentlessly distressing pain would be killed off one brain cell at a time. No one told me I could lose control of my sanity because of it. No one told me it could make me lose control of my bladder. No one told me it could make me drool all over myself. No one told me it could make me lose my ability to walk. No one told me it could make me lose my ability to read a book without the worlds swirling around on the page in front of me. No one told me it could make me into something I didn’t want to become. It was just bad. “Drugs kill brain cells”--big deal. Good--maybe I’ll feel better when I don’t have many memories to think about. Good--maybe they will eat away the constant pangs of violent hate. Drugs can’t be bad just because they kill brain cells. The reality is, though, that drugs make it all worse. Drugs tell you you’re not who you think you are. Drugs tell you the things that make you crazy. Drugs tell you things that make you think you’re everything you want to be, but it’s an illusion. It’s an illusion that inevitably fades away into nothingness, leaving nowhere to go but down, and the down keeps getting deeper and deeper.

High school students need to know that they’re more than likely still going to be here living on the same planet tomorrow. They need to know that it’s not all going to end before something else happens that might be better or at least different. The instances in which youth today find their friends ending up dead at the hands of a gang member, gunned down by a peer in their own school, or hit by a drunk driver happen frequently enough to convince them that it will never end. They happen frequently enough to convince them that it will never get better. It happened to me when I was fifteen. It took me seven years to realize that thinking I’m going to die today or my friends are going to die today wasn’t helping matters. I was wasting my time. Yes, life does go on. It hurts to believe it, and you can fight it, and you can scream and yell as much as you want about it, but what will never change is the fact that there is always a tomorrow. Seven years of being surprised to wake up in the morning has finally convinced me. I wish it hadn’t taken seven years of my life away.

I know everyone’s heard that life does go on. You can hear it day after day and sometimes it just won’t make any sense at all, sometimes it will just make you hate everything more, but if you hear if from someone who’s been there, from someone who can testify to the extent of the hate and knows the anger, it all makes a little more sense. Maybe there is someone out there whose hate and anger is worse than mine ever was, and if that’s the case, I feel nothing but absolute horror at the thought and I wish I could cure them of their pain with a magical touch. They could make it all end today, and no one’s stopping them, but what good would that do? I understand how it may have made all of my pain go away. In fact, I still have a lot of pain, but what I also have now is pride, self-reliance, satisfaction, and the assurance that I can be who I want to be and it’s okay. I am stronger than the average person. Anyone who gets through depression and its resulting anger and hatred is stronger than the average person. Anyone who conquers depression deserves a gold medal. Fighting against inner depression and inner hatred is fighting a war against yourself, and it’s okay to win. No one ever told me that.

I don’t think people give youth enough credit. They’re smarter than you think they are. They’re very bright. They know there’s more to it than a mere “drugs are bad” campaign. They know there’s no such thing as God. They know that adults don’t always have the answers. They know that adults make stuff up. They know that it’s okay to swear because they’re just fucking words and they get the fucking point across. What’s the harm in a word? What’s in a name? Words can only be offensive to you if you were told to take offense to it. We were told, but a loosely outlined hope that we will believe our elders doesn’t have any validity in our generation. They’re just words. It’s not an adult world any more. It’s a world for youth.

There are moments in my journals that make me sound crazy to non-crazy people. I realize it because those are the entries that scare me when I am in my real world identity. Does that make me a killer? My friends try to tell me I’m not a killer because I have a line that I won’t cross. My question is: how do they know that? Who’s gonna stop me if I want to kill them? Who’s to say they know the status of my sanity better than I do? I feel like I could snap. I read quotations from Kip Kinkel’s journal. I read quotes from the Columbine videos. I see the similarities between their thought processes and my own. Who’s going to challenge that? Who’s going to tell me I’m wrong? And why the hell would they be so stupid as to do that? Then I’d have to kill them to prove them wrong. I know I can kill, and that’s all the assurance I need. I don’t need to prove anything to myself. I am stronger than that.

The mind-altering drugs I take have a serious problem. I believe the problem is that, in order to release the circle of thoughts that had run rampant in a cyclone of rage within my brain, the drugs have to remind me what sanity is like to the rest of the world, and then release some psychoses every once in awhile. Psychosis is caused by thoughts that weren’t given enough recognition at the proper time. Psychosis grows out of the attempt to ignore a natural human emotion. It comes from running away from fear instead of facing it. It comes from trying to deny things to yourself. Little about psychology is a proven science and when questioning the validity of reality, nothing is a proven science. One of the only things psychology can be fairly certain about is that nothing in the human brain can be ignored without making it worse.

Every once in awhile I think I’m channeling the Columbine killers, and maybe I am. Who knows? I don’t know. Every once in awhile I have such an intense craving to see, feel, and taste blood that I actually salivate. Every once in awhile, I completely lose control of my entire mind and body. Every once in awhile, things go a little haywire and I can’t help it and I don’t even know until I look back on it later. Before the drugs, I would have either cut myself to concentrate on the soothing blood or laid on my bed staring at the wall for hours on end. I couldn’t write intellectually, and I couldn’t express myself through conversation at all. I could hold conversations with people for a long time before I realized I didn’t even know who I was talking to or what we were talking about. Anything that scared me or angered me or upset me in any way would cause me to withdraw into my own head, and invariably, I turned to foreign substances to run away from my torturous reality. Since the medication, I can write more effectively. I have given up drugs. I have given up drinking. I have given up smoking. I think I can channel dead killers. I still cut myself, and I think I may be more capable of effectively plotting a murder, but at long last I am capable of holding a conversation. I don’t know. It’s really a toss-up. Is it better to be an entirely useless alcoholic drug abuser in everyday society who may or may not snap and kill myself and some other people at any given moment? Or is it better to be an intelligently vengeful blood-loving fiend who is actually capable of dealing with society on some level and has at her disposal a somewhat decent vocabulary? You tell me; I can’t decide. I just wish someone had known what I know now. And I wish they had told me seven years ago.


1/12/00

I think I have to kill myself. Things aren’t getting any better, instead they’re getting worse. As soon as I can find some E, I’m gonna take two, drink a bottle of wine, and go out to buy a beautiful, expensive, and really sharp knife so I can go out and kill some people and then slit my wrists. Life is not okay. It is too much. I know no one will understand and I really couldn’t care less. They at least have to admit to themselves that since I have to die and they don’t, obviously something in my head is vastly different from whatever’s in theirs. And if they still can’t get over my death a year from now, at least then they’ll be heading to where I am now. Then they will understand how the world has infected me with a mental virus. It’s like some tiny insect has burrowed deep into my brain, and slowly but surely it’s releasing a deadly poison. That’s what’s killing me. I really have no choice in the matter. May that miserably oppressive, non-existent God bless the antidepressants for giving me one last glimpse into sane contentment before my death. I hope people can find some comfort in knowing the night of my death will probably be the best night of my life. I don’t care anymore. If you want to think of me as selfish, go ahead. I realize people will think I’m selfish, but it would be even more selfish for them to expect me to continue living through my experience in life for their sake. There is no need for that. My experience in life is a slow and painful torture.


1/12/00

When I was in the car on a family vacation once, I wrote down a list of things I wanted to do before I die. None of them apply anymore. I don’t care. When I was a freshman in college, I made a list of reasons why I wouldn’t kill myself right then. None of them apply anymore. I don’t care. There is more to life than high school, but for me it just got worse from there. How the hell did I get through college? Why did I bother? I don’t care. It’s not that I don’t love my family, either, because I do. I love every member of my family. I would’ve died for Speranza at the drop of a hat. I say Speranza because I spent several years with her as my only live-in sibling. We were very close for those few years. I thought she might grow up to become a little bit like me. I thought when she grew up she’d become someone who would understand me. I know she loves me too, but she doesn’t know me anymore. When I was home over Thanksgiving, she asked me to help her with an English paper she was writing. I asked her what it was about and she said, “I have to write a paper about why assisted suicide is bad.” My response was, “You have to write a paper about why assisted suicide is bad?” She said, “Well, no, I chose to write about that.”

I couldn’t help her write a paper about why assisted suicide is bad. I can’t even tolerate the thought that she’s writing one. I almost fell over, I was so shocked by the fact that she thinks assisted suicide is wrong. Of course she’s entitled to her opinion, but the problem is that I was under the impression that her thought processes were more similar to mine than that. How can assisted suicide be bad? How can you force someone who hates life to keep on living? I don’t understand that. It bothered me that she doesn’t feel the same way I do and I’m convinced it’s because I left for college and she grew through some of the most important years of her life without me. I don’t know. It shouldn’t bother me so much, but it does. And it’s not her fault at all. It’s mine. Something about me isn’t right, and I’m sorry but I don’t care anymore. I put up as much of a fight as I could. Go ahead: call me weak. This is hell. It can’t get any worse. I don’t care. I’ve heard all the responses. I know them all and they are all invalid. They don’t even apply to the situation. Fuck your absolutely invalid justifications. Lie to yourself some more. Yeah, there’s a reason. Yeah, things make sense. Yeah, life is worth something. Yeah, there’s a god. Keep lying to yourself. Maybe something can make you happy.

I’m tired of pretending to be happy for people. I’m not happy. I feel like I can’t tell anyone I’m not happy because they don’t want to hear it. For someone to be able to help me through this, they’d have to listen to me 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They would need to give up their own life in order for me to continue mine. I don’t want to ask that of anyone. I don’t want to have to depend on anyone. Why would I want that? God, life sucks. And it is not okay.

I’m sitting at work right now. I love my job. I love my job. I really, really love my job. I don’t know why that doesn’t make me happy. It’s lonely here. It’s lonely in life. There is no way for me to relate to another human being. It’s useless. I am sitting here at my computer with the word processor up and running while I type, type away, trying to release some of the pain through the movement of my fingers, the expression of my anger, the ticking of my brain. It doesn’t help anymore. Writing doesn’t help anymore. It’s helped to prolong my suffering, that’s all it’s done for me over the last seven years. It’s given me a few extra years to appreciate what I have here on earth between my talents and my family. I have a lot. I can’t deny that I’ve been given a lot of good things, but it doesn’t matter! Nothing matters! It’s all going to end and why should I hate it for any longer than I already have?

I don’t believe it’s possible to overcome depression entirely. I’ve never actually encountered someone who’s recovered from severe depression. In fact, I don’t believe that depression exists as a singular problem. Doesn’t anyone remember “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction?” Doesn’t anyone remember that simple rule of science? Psychology is a science. I think depression has to involve some sort of a manic reaction, whether it evolves into anxiety, panic, anger, hate, or happiness of some sort. I have manic symptoms and they’re trying to make them go away with a drug that only helps one of the problems. Who am I to try and convince the world they’re wrong? I’m a nobody. No one will listen to a nobody, especially a nobody that seems to them to be rather strange or aside from the norm in a lot of aspects, maybe even enough aspects to make me psychotic. The only things that qualify me to make these statements are my intelligence and the fact that I am actually living the experience. I am speaking out from the inside, trying desperately to shout out to the rest of the world, reciting a description of what I see on my side of the walls that surround me, hoping that someone believes me and can try to understand even part of what happens to someone who’s depressed and hates the world because of it. I can’t believe that some people think this doesn’t exist. I’m living proof. Well, at this very instant as I type, I’m still alive.

I can understand those Columbine kids. I can understand killers. That’s not to say I don’t feel for the families of the victims, because I do. If anyone knows how intense pain can get, I do. If I could say one thing to those families for whom my heart positively aches, I would tell them to get help and get help now before they turn into something like what Dylan, Eric, and I became. The pain doesn’t just go away. Find someone to listen. It doesn’t matter if they understand or not, just find someone to listen and don’t feel guilty for expressing your pain. I know the families would say I don’t understand their pain. I know they would probably be offended by my boldness, and the truth of the matter is, they’re right. There’s no way for me to understand their pain, but I do understand pain. I understand that pain is a personal ordeal that no one will understand in exactly the same way. It doesn’t matter who understands the pain, as long as their pain is expressed to another living breathing soul. If you let the pain grow for years and years, it will turn you into the slaves that Eric, Dylan, and I were forced to become. To the rest of the world, all I can say is: please listen. They’re not being stupid, selfish, or ridiculous. They’re doing what they need to do. Have some sympathy.

I can understand sane people, and I can understand insane people. This can’t be healthy for me, but perhaps it can help someone to interpret the signs from a person who really knows. There is a serious problem with depressed people in their inability to recognize the conflict between themselves and the people around them. It’s like we’re living in a special world of four dimensions. We see your three, plus an extra one of our own. We can do things that you can’t do. We can see things that you can’t see, and we don’t understand why that makes us wrong. We don’t understand why that makes the world think we’re crazy. We’re not crazy. We have a wider scope of dimensions to recognize, and our minds lack the ability to interpret it without making us killers. We lack the ability to recognize the validity of your reality over ours. I’m walking a very thin line right now between being sane and being insane. Sometimes I feel like a normal person, but more often than not, I feel like I’m completely out of control, like something is taking over my body. I’m convinced that I must write as much as I can about it now before I either die or turn completely psycho. I need for someone to discover this and trust it as valuable information. Put some faith in something worthwhile for a change. Put some faith in someone who’s seen the light, and the lack thereof.

In my opinion, the most important thing to realize when dealing with an angry depressed person is that no matter how you try to agree or disagree with them, they will always feel challenged. We will always feel challenged because nothing you say makes sense to us just like nothing we say makes sense to you. Sometimes you think you know what we’re saying, but you really don’t. We live in a different world. We live as a different race, and we are taking over your world.

Behind the window of my word processor, I have Netscape up with the picture of the Columbine killers from the security camera in the cafeteria, the one that was the cover of Time magazine in December. My good friends Eric and Dylan are there, guns in hand, waiting for me to flip over to their window. I love that. I love that I can have Eric and Dylan by me all the time. I love that I finally feel like I can relate to someone. I love that I can feel their presence, and I love that I know I can feel sorry for them in a way that most of the world cannot. I feel sorry for what they had to go through to become who they became. Hate doesn’t grow out of nothing. It may have little justification in your world, but it has a lot in ours. Our world grew out of your world. Don’t forget to take some responsibility for that. Don’t forget when we’re growing too powerful for you to handle that we were a creation of your faults, and we hate the world for it. We will be the destruction of an empire. We will see the end of the world as you know it.

Whenever I think anything, I always have in the back of my mind the knowledge that someone somewhere is going to challenge it. I always know how they could challenge it, and I always know why I disagree. I always know before they ask, and when they finally do ask, I get so aggravated that they’re bold enough to contradict me when I’ve already considered their angle. It’s like I’m two steps ahead of everyone. It’s like I planned an attack on my high school and no one knew. It’s like I’m looking you straight in the eye and telling you something I know you want to hear, while my mind is somewhere else planning a massacre, a murder, or a suicide.

I find it selfish of people to only think of themselves in the case of a “tragedy” like Columbine. Everyone is always thinking about their own well-being. Everyone always thinks, “How could this have happened to me? Why did my child have to be killed?” No one will say, “At least those kids don’t have to suffer any more.” No one has respect for the depressed. If you tell someone you’re thinking of committing suicide, all you will hear is, “Don’t do that to me. What would I do without you? How could you be so selfish? How could you be so weak?” There’s never someone to just say, “Don’t.” There’s never someone to say, “Oh my God, why? Are you okay? Can I do anything to help?” There’s never someone who will listen without telling you you’re being ridiculous or selfish or just plain wrong. I listen to other people. I don’t care, but I listen and I listen carefully. I listen, I react, I offer my opinion without challenging theirs. Why can’t I expect the same in return? Why can’t I find someone to respect me? Why can’t my opinion be okay? Why can’t they see that they’re not practicing what they preach? Why am I the only one who’s been cursed to see it all? Why can’t they feel some pity for killers? Why can’t they see that the pain in our minds is greater than the greatest physical pain they’ve ever experienced? Why are they lying to themselves?


1/13/00

Suddenly I’m very tired. I don’t know why. I’ve been going to bed really early lately. Well, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised considering how many other strange things have been going on with me lately. I don’t know what’s going on. The world is becoming a different place everyday when I wake up. Every time I look around, I notice something I never saw before. Everyday before I even get out of bed, I think something I never thought before. My apartment looks different to me everyday. The street on the walk to the subway station looks different everyday. It’s very strange. I am one very confused person.

Today, during the hour I have between when I’m ready to leave for work and when I actually leave for work, I picked up my journal and read over what I wrote yesterday during the same hour. What the hell? Basically, yesterday I woke up and decided that I needed to die. Yesterday, if I owned a gun, I would’ve been out there shooting people and then myself in an instant. Yesterday, I felt worse than I have ever felt in my life. Today, I’m relatively fine. I woke up, I got my shower, I got dressed, did my make-up, then I pulled out my old pictures and looked through those. For the first time ever, I didn’t feel like I couldn’t be separated from my past. For the first time ever, I felt like I was looking at memories of myself instead of images of a ghost-like version of me that I couldn’t bear to admit was gone. I could never bear the thought of growing up. I could never bear the thought of getting older. I’ve never felt young. I’ve never felt like I was where I was supposed to be. This morning, I felt a lot closer to my actual age than I ever have before. It was pretty nice. It was a little strange, though, picking up yesterday’s journal entry and seeing my own handwriting say that I am going to kill myself. It seemed like a threat to me this morning. It seemed like something that may still happen even though I don’t want it to at the moment. I don’t know. It was weird.

Yesterday, I was convinced that I am a killer. Right now, I am convinced that I am not a killer. Who the hell am I? What the hell is going on? I feel perfectly well and good today. I feel like a normal human being. I feel like I can function rationally. Yesterday, I had no idea what I was doing, and it’s still so much better than being where I was before my medication. At least now I have moments of contentment.

Last night, I went home and Larke came into my room to tell me what she thinks about the first half of my book. She came in and said it seems like I am terrified of death, and instead of recognizing it and dealing with it, I’ve been holding onto it and trying to make it appealing to myself. I think she used the analogy of how it’s easier to hug a monster than it is to admit your fear and run away from it. I’m not sure if the analogy would apply to most people, but I think it certainly does apply to me. I think my biggest problem right now, though, is that I’ve been the way I am for so long now that I don’t think I can recover. I don’t think I can be true to myself and who I really am if I’m denying myself the pleasure of thinking about death. I don’t think I can be me and be able to accept that everyone is going to die. I don’t think I can turn things around. Take for example the things that I am supposed to learn to recognize and accept:

I don’t think these things are me. They may be all well and good and right, but they are not me. Everything is not okay. If I say it’s okay, I’m being sarcastic. If I say it’s okay, it’s with the understanding that it’s only okay because of the drugs. There’s a larger underlying problem surrounding the world, and I am always going to know to a certain extent that everything is not okay. I am always going to know that if things are going well, it’s just a fluke. It’s just a matter of time before things go wrong again. That’s not going to go away. Every time something happens that I don’t like, it all comes back, and it’s usually worse.

Yesterday, Larke sent me an e-mail telling me that she loves and respects me and actually listens to all of my philosophies. She said she believes she’s a good friend and she’s always willing to basically devote herself entirely to friendships. It was really nice to hear that from her. It’s true that I can talk to her about anything. I can’t talk to anyone else about everything. I think talking with her last night was very therapeutic.

I’ve recently determined that there are more issues with my medication. I knew this to a certain extent already, but it’s becoming more and more clear. You see, if we can look back at what happened with Gale in October, we might notice that I yelled at him for pissing me off. I never yell at people. I never used to share my thoughts, I always just expected bad things and I was ready to accept any trouble as being the fault of my own stupidity for getting involved. But you know what? I’m not stupid! I’m not stupid and I have a lot of interesting things to say. I am going to give people a piece of my mind if they step over the line and fuck with me. I am going to do something. I will not be taken advantage of. This is a very nice thing about the drugs. Whenever something happens that I just don’t like, I will do something about it. I will say something. I will amend the situation to the best of my abilities, and I can work things out.

The problem arises when it comes to things that have built up a lot of anger and frustration. All of that anger and frustration seems to want to come out at once. Perhaps this would be best illustrated by example. I think my issue yesterday was that I have been so angry at the world for such a long time that my body wasn’t going to deal with it any more. My brain decided to release the anger any way it could. Yesterday I wanted to kill everyone. I would’ve too, if I had had the chance. It’s not only the fact that the anger needs to be released; it has also to do with the amount of anger that has built up over time. If the anger has been allowed to build up inside for years and years, it’s going to come up more suddenly and in a higher concentration than it would for something that’s a new issue. So, instead of yelling or explaining to get my point across, I actually wanted to kill people yesterday. Literally and absolutely, I would’ve killed, but I am not a killer. I don’t see it as my fault if the serotonin in my brain has decided that it doesn’t know how to work properly.

Theoretically, if everyone’s serotonin levels were normal, no one would kill. The only problem is that trying to get everyone’s serotonin levels evened out would require monitoring them until all the anger has been released. If you stuck me in a mental institution (not that I want to be in a mental institution), gave me drugs, and gave me therapy, I feel confident that eventually the anger would all be gone and no one would get hurt or killed in the process. There must be some way to measure the serotonin levels in the brain. There must be some way to know when the anger is gone or significantly reduced. There must be ways to find the source of the anxiety and the hate. This isn’t a matter of controlling the number of guns in the world. It’s not a matter of banning SSRI medications from schools. It’s a matter of making sure all the people in the world, or just in our country at least, have normal serotonin levels. That’s all there is to it. Anger breeds hate. Hate breeds killers. Kill the anger; kill the hate.


1/13/00

I tried to eat a bagel with cream cheese today for lunch. It didn’t work. I can’t eat. It was kind of interesting, though, that the cream cheese was in a little package from Dunkin’ Donuts and it had an expiration date on the side. You’ll never guess when the expiration date was? April 20, 2000. You know what that day is? That will be the one year anniversary of the Columbine incident, which was, in effect, a celebration of Hitler’s birthday. Just an observation.

When I got home from work the other day, I was so weirded out by the channeling of Eric and Dylan that Larke tried to help by hypnotizing me. Granted, she’s not a professional in these kinds of matters, but I think what she discovered is definitely worth something. She relaxed me into a deep meditative state and told me to feel like I was floating. She told me to feel like I was floating in mid-air with nothing but blackness all around me. After that, she asked me if something strange happened to me that day at work and I replied affirmatively. She asked what it was, and I said, “Kids.” She asked if I knew the kids, and I said, “Yes.” She wanted me to say who they were and I said, “Eric and Dylan.” She asked me a bunch of things that I don’t remember much about, but I do know that at some point she asked me if I could see them, and I said, “Yes.” She asked what they were doing, and I said they were pointing guns at my head. When she asked me why they were pointing guns at my head, I remember feeling really anxious, but I calmed down and my mouth said, “Protecting me.” At the inquiry as to what they were protecting me from, my answer was, “Hate.”

This is hard to remember because most of it was told to me after Larke woke me up, but I definitely remember seeing Eric and Dylan. I remember seeing them as two small figures, one on either side of my head. They were holding rifles on an angle across their chests with the tips pointed up to my head. I could see the hate in their eyes, but they didn’t look threatening to me at all. I was comforted by having them there.

Upon finding that Eric and Dylan were in my head to protect me from hate, Larke told me to look for a string on the ground and follow it to my door of hate. I pictured a very funny brown wooden door with an 8.5” X 11” piece of paper taped horizontally across the front. On the sheet of paper was written, “PERDITA’S HATE” in thick letters of messily scribbled black marker. I followed the string to the door and Larke told me to open it a crack and peek inside. I did that, but I didn’t see anything. She then told me to open up the door and step inside, whereupon I was verily confused because I didn’t know how I was going to see anything if she didn’t tell me to turn on a light switch. I looked around for a light switch, and there wasn’t one there because she hadn’t created it in my mind. Eventually, though, the space beyond the door lit up dimly with a yellow glow. She asked me what I saw and apparently I didn’t respond at first. I remember it very clearly now, though.

When I stepped in through the door, I looked around in the darkness and saw nothing. Once the yellow glow began to illuminate some of my surroundings, I saw the grey interior of what I suspected to be a long, narrow, coffin-shaped tomb. The center of the tomb was sunken by two steps, and that part of the floor was completely empty. The tomb was dim and cold with the smell of death and the dank mustiness of stale air making me sick to my stomach. Eric and Dylan remained standing at the entrance to the tomb with their rifles, guarding the door. At the far end of the tomb, I saw a large black casket, and along the sides of the tomb were rows of slightly smaller black caskets. It was all grey and black except for the yellow glow which was shining from behind a giant golden crucifix hanging down from the ceiling above the largest casket. That was my room of hate.

I remember standing at the entrance, frozen in fear, with Larke’s voice saying, “Can you see anything?” I just kept looking around, wondering what to say because I just couldn’t figure out how to put everything I saw into words. I was overwhelmed with the cold and lonely atmosphere, and I couldn’t speak. When I remained silent, Larke’s voice said, “At your feet there’s a seashell. If you pick up the seashell and look inside it, it will tell you what your hate is.” She asked me if I wanted to know what my hate was, and I said I did. I picked up the seashell, and Larke asked, “What’s your hate?” My answer was one word: “Death.”

Before awakening me, Larke asked if I wanted to find out anything else about myself. I said yes, and when she asked what, I said I wanted to know what would make me happy. She told me to leave my room of hate and go into a hallway of doors. We were going to find my happiness, but when she asked if I was ready, I suddenly felt unreasonably weak and tired. We decided I wasn’t ready, and it might be better if we came back to that some other time.



Conclusion



To this point in my life, I think it’s safe to say that I have learned a lot. I’m only twenty-two years old, and I feel like I’ve lived four lifetimes. I have lived in two very distinctly different realities. I have tried so hard to grasp all of the mysteries and inexplicable meanderings of life. I have seen the grotesqueness of truth, and I don’t think it will be easy to recover from the trauma.

In retrospect, I think one lesson is by far the most important. I have learned that if you try hard enough--yes, you can learn to see, and understand, and realize truth. You can grasp the world around you in ways most people don’t think possible. You can see through all the falsities, and fantasies, and fabricated realities people create as comforts for themselves. You can learn the meaning of life. But I don’t advise it.

In searching for the meaning in life, you will probably find that you have unmasked an atrocity of truth that will haunt you forever. You will probably find that all the years you thought you spent confronting your fears, you were actually becoming consumed by them. You will probably find that your serotonin has begun to cyclone out of control like water being sucked ferociously down a drain. You will probably find that you have become very lonely. You will probably find that you have become a specter of your former self. You will probably find yourself in need of an antidote for the monstrous duality unleashed inside your head. And you will probably find what I have found: the complete lack of anything to use as a reliable defense from the truth, the pain, the anguish, the emptiness, and the horror.

A lot of things in life suck. I seem to require medication to overcome the realization, and it is only since the medication that I have finally come to understand esthetics. I used to believe that problems would roll off me like water off a duck’s back. I foolishly believed that the perpetrator would always serve the sentence for the crime. But now I know. Now I understand. Now I have faith in myself. And I still regret nothing.

The search for truth destroyed me...but it’s okay.



“You know I hate, detest, and can’t bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appalls me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies--which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world--what I want to forget. It makes me miserable and sick, like biting something rotten would do.”

“They trespassed upon my thoughts. They were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretence, because I felt so sure they could not possibly know the things I knew. Their bearing which was simply the bearing of commonplace individuals going about their business in the assurance of perfect safety, was offensive to me like the outrageous flauntings of folly in the face of a danger it is unable to comprehend. I had no particular desire to enlighten them, but I had some difficulty in restraining myself from laughing in their faces so full of stupid importance.”

-from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness



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