- For some reason the media, and various columnists at its various levels, have tiptoed around how seriously mentally sick this guy was. It’s been mentioned that in high school he was seeing a therapist every day. I think without an understanding of the mental health system it’s hard to imagine how rare that is. After I was sent home from the hospital after a suicide attempt, I was ordered to see a therapist once a week. And that wasn’t some insurance guideline; after less than a month of that the therapist suggested that I would be able to cut back sessions to once every two weeks. I didn’t even see a therapist every day when I was in the hospital; nobody did, unless they were in the “bad ward.” I cannot imagine how bad off you have to be to be seeing a therapist every day, even for a brief amount of time. To be honest, I can’t even imagine that seeing a therapist every day would do all that good; even on a weekly basis I ran out of things to talk about with the therapist very quickly.
Having said that, I don’t know why this part of the story has been so buried. Perhaps it’s assumed anybody going on a shooting spree is mentally ill, so it’s hardly worth mentioning it. But in what I’ve read it seems writers are projecting their previously-held beliefs on this person; he is a blank canvas that represents what they want eradicated from life. Why he did what he did, or how we can stop the next person from doing it, has long become irrelevant. While they argue, I will sadly wait for the next mentally ill person to snap, and remember to take my medication as prescribed.
- If this person is simply the latest in a long line of mentally ill people to fatally lash out at others, why am I writing this? I, too, was 22 and virginal once, with what I felt was no hope of getting a girlfriend, of having sex, of living a normal life. How could I, with a significant history of depression behind me? Who would want to be with someone like that? At that stage in my life I had had one affectionless two-month relationship and I was certain that was going to be all in my life. I had no way of knowing that in two years I would be married, in ten years I was going to be in a polyamorous relationship, in twelve years I was going to be a marriage that managed to last. I was as “incel” as he claimed to be.
And yet when I was at that stage in my life I didn’t join some misogynistic message group. I didn’t despise pickup artists (or whatever their equivalents were called). I didn’t hate women. Why did he? It certainly wasn’t less misogynistic of a time back then; if anything I recall it being much worse. Was I a better person than he? That begs the question, doesn’t it—why didn’t he reject the call of hate?
The only difference I know of is that I had a number of female friends who I cared about. Some of them trusted me enough to tell me about the loneliness in their own lives, or about their mistreatment at the hands of their boyfriends. And it was clear to me that life on the other side of the gender divide was not much different when it came to relationships…probably worse all things considered. Looking back, I do wonder why so many women—whether friends or fellow patients in group therapy—have unburdened their relationship problems on me. But they did and I listened and I took what they said to heart. It’s all I can think of.
And yet at the same time I know there are probably millions of adolescent men across the world in the same situation that he and I were at 22, no relationship, apparently no hope for a relationship, fogged by mental illness into believing they are unwanted and worthless. What drove him to hate? What lured him into noxious “anti-PUA” message boards which fed his hatred? What drove him to kill? I don’t think we’ll ever know, and that scares me. Will you look at my mental illness and see a potential killer because of him? That scares me too.
- When I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, my psychiatrist asked me if I had a gun in the house. During every further visit with that psychiatrist, he asked me the same question. He understood the nature of my illness. I live with low to medium-level depression most of the time. But there are also times when I have severe depression, or a mania that sends me whirling around the apartment looking for things to do. Those are the dangerous times. There were times that were so bad I even removed all sharp objects from my office, and had my wife hide the kitchen knives, only to be brought out if we needed them for dinner and she could see me. For three months I had to walk across the hall in the office to borrow a pair of scissors.
I was being safe and responsible in the only way I knew how. I was looking out not only for my own health but for those of others. Yes, it was inconvenient to have to ask someone else to borrow a letter opener, but more convenient than my wife having to explain to her children as to why they would never see me again. Just as it was incumbent on me to control my issues as best as possible around others, it was important for me to protect those I loved and those around me by limiting my access to things that could hurt myself and them. Yes, I had the right to possess those things, but it was not good for me to do so.
There is no defense for this person to stockpile guns and knives, just as there was no defense for him to use them on innocent people. I can’t begin to say what a selfish jerk he had to be, knowing how sick he was, to be hoarding weapons like that. And, as I suggested above, to compound that by wallowing on hate sites, to take the easy way out of blaming others for your problems, and letting that hate build and build until his insanity took over. I can’t imagine he learned anything at all from all of his therapy.
Be good to others, doubly so when you cannot always be good to yourself. It’s the most important thing I’ve learned in this journey. I don’t face my problems alone but I can’t impose on others.
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Having said that, I am a bit saddened by those who express disgust that despite his arsenal of weapons he was able to pass a police “welfare check.” A welfare check is not an open invitation for the cops to come and rifle through your belongings. Unless you think that the constitutional right against unlawful searches and seizures doesn’t apply to the mentally ill, then you have to also believe that the police couldn’t look for his weaponry during a welfare check. I hope this situation doesn’t lead to that. I don’t want the cops swarming through my apartment, confiscating anything they thought was threatening, because somebody thought I was acting strangely.
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I wish people in America were serious about doing something about mental illness. I’ve seen so many lives destroyed, both by those who are ill and those who deal with their fallout. Usually when something like this happens commentators are quick to say “something needs to be done!” and sometimes even politicians make a half-hearted effort to pretend to do something. This time around there wasn’t even that.
In a way, though, I understand why nothing is done about mental illness. I have come to realize I will never be cured of mine. I can control it, and sometimes it escapes for a while, but it will never be fully away from me. I could sell everything I own, spend all my possessions on a cure, but it would not work. How do you chase a ghost, a disease that slips away from you just when you think you have caught it? The disease is within me. I can ask others for help, but in the long run I must fight it myself. We as a nation have tried so many things: restraining patients, locking up patients, “community care”, drugs with unpronounceable names, therapies from sound to wacky. None of them have quite worked. How can we chase millions of individual ghosts? We’ve tried. And still we end up with a Jared Loughner. A Seung Hui-Cho. An Eliot Rodger. And another person tomorrow, who may slit her wrists, who may take his gun and shoot up the nearest populated location, who may swallow poison, who may smother her children in their cribs, who may hang from a beam in the garage. The ghost goes free in those times, and we only dare hope it only takes its host. I cannot let the ghost go free, but rather must keep it locked up.
I will never be free. And if nothing can be done for me, someone who is fortunate enough to have a loving wife, children who care, a job which pays my way, a place to sleep when life overwhelms, what can be done for everyone else out there struggling with the same ghost who has none of those things? I have known people like these, who have passed in and out of my life during various forms of treatment. I hope they are well, although I fear not. I just pray they are safe.
Doing something about mental illness would mean doing two things America isn’t good at. Firstly, and obviously, spending money on someone other than ourselves; but secondly, admitting we can’t solve a problem but can only alleviate it. There is a curious American belief that if we cannot solve a problem completely, we should not even try to do so—if there is one exception to an idea, the entire idea must be thrown away. There is no one solution for mental illness. No one thing would have saved both me and him, and the innocent lives he took.
I can only chase one ghost at a time. As much as I wish to save everyone, I cannot, and perhaps nobody can–perhaps everyone together can’t. And that is frightening, yes.