Yearning to be free

The part of me that identifies with Eric and Dylan is the one that has always felt like a caged animal - trapped, oppressed, imprisoned, burdened, shackled, chained. My ultimate goal has always been freedom - freedom to do the things I want; freedom from having to do the things I don't want; and, most importantly, freedom from needing or wanting or expecting anything.

I used to think that this desire for freedom was a universal human condition, but now I'm not so sure. Certain people seem to find servitude more intolerable than others. I've heard that most people find loneliness unbearable. But all of the happiest times of my life have been moments when I've felt completely, totally alone. I savor my precious moments of solitude. I cherish them. Most of the time I am surrounded by creatures that I loathe and despise, and I curse myself for my inability to get rid of them.

I don't like people - I mean, I really don't. I don't have any friends; I don't have a girlfriend; I don't have a wife and kids. I don't have anyone in my life and I don't really want anyone in my life. People make demands of me. They won't leave me alone. They won't let me be. They burden me with demands and obligations and responsibilities. They guilt-trip me into helping them. (Sometimes they tell me they will kill themselves if I don't do what they want.) They need me; they want me. I don't need them or want them. But sometimes I have to use them to get what I want. If I could do without them, I would. But I can't. I resent them for making such heavy demands of me, and I resent myself for not being strong enough to overcome our mutual interdependence.

There have been times when I have strongly considered killing myself. One time I was standing on a bridge overlooking a busy expressway and thought, "All you have to do is jump, and it will all be over." (My next thought was, "With your luck, you'll survive with permanent paralysis, and then you'll really be screwed.") What kept me from doing it was a) a residual fear of going to hell, instilled in me during the years when my grandmother insisted on dragging me to church every Sunday, b) a well-honed talent for finding ways to distract myself from my despair, and c) a deep-seated belief that, ultimately, people who commit suicide are weak, contemptible fools.

When I was 18 years old, my feelings of being trapped in an endless nightmare were so strong that I could barely breathe. My boiling rage stemmed from the fact that I felt completely powerless to improve anything about my life. In my mid-thirties, the pressure has eased considerably, but progress is still measured more by the (relative) absence of pain than by the presence of joy.

Something tells me that both Eric and Dylan felt just as trapped and just as powerless as I once did, and that going NBK was their method of seeking release from the eternal torment. They saw no way out but death. I saw no way out but ... taking things one day at a time, and hoping that eventually there would be something better. Generally speaking, my faith has been rewarded; gradually, I have moved closer and closer to a state of contentedness. It's been a long, slow, arduous journey. But I have traveled quite a long distance from where I started.

Last year I had a kind of existential crisis that lasted for about 6 months and I felt depressed. I wanted to die and didn't value life anymore. This was the period I got into Columbine and mass shootings. I told you that the post you wrote on the 20 years of Columbine thread about how it could be the last time you took a shower depressed me. Well last year this post would have made me sleep well, because it was a reminder that everything had an end, that life had an end and that it could happen sooner that you expected. As I didn't want to live anymore, knowing that it would all end was reassuring, it was comforting me. Weirdly it was the only thing that made me keep living. I guess for Eric and Dylan it was also comforting, but they didn't want to wait, they didn't want to let chance decided when they would die and wanted to control it, to cause it. Deciding how and when you will die is a kind of freedom in a way.

I didn't watch sand, but I watched stars at night, during the summer. It made me feel good because it was a proof that we are so little, it reassured me because it confirmed my thought that my life was insignificant. I could die and the stars would keep showing in the sky as they always did, the sun would keep shining, the earth would keep turning, the world would keep waking up on mornings and going to sleep at night. No alien up there would care if I died, no-one in China, in Australia would care. This was so reassuring to me. I felt that I was allowed to die.

What I find surprising is that now that I am feeling better, there is one thing I miss from that bad period of my life. Things are so much easier when you don't value life, when you don't value anything. It wouldn't have bothered me if I had failed at university, because what was worth succeeding anyway? What could it change to my life given that I expected to die in the next 4 years? Why worry about anything given that it would all end soon? In a way, I only felt really free when I was submitted to sadness. I only felt really free when nothing mattered to me. Now that I value life again, I find it hard sometimes to have to matter about things. I know that I have to study hard to get the job I want, I know there are some things I cannot say to people because I need to adopt a social role. In fact, I have never been scared about death, and I still don't. I don't believe in God so to me death is simply nothing. I have always been more scared about life. Life can be beautiful, but I also feel that it can be a burden in a way. The burden is not as heavy as it used to be though, and I hope when I will live my "definitive" life, that is when I will finally have a stable job and a home it will become even lighter.

I wonder if this is how Eric and Dylan thought about life. If they saw it as a burden that couldn't become lighter. I wonder if it could have become lighter for them. I can only try to understand them through my own understanding of myself sadly.