I was almost a school shooter

This was so good, thank you for sharing it. This is one of the reasons I had such a hard time with the idea of worthiness interviews.

“Love the ones you feel deserve it the least because they need it the most”

I love this.

This was so good, thank you for sharing it. This is one of the reasons I had such a hard time with the idea of worthiness interviews.

“Love the ones you feel deserve it the least because they need it the most”

I love this.

Thank you! There are a lot of lessons to be learnt from this.

Nothing can justify a school shooting, of course, but we can at least try and understand where shooters are coming from. In many cases, bullying, abuse and an in-crowd/exclusivist individualist culture all play their part.

I was bullied. I remember urinating on all the urinal handles in my school bathroom. For a moment I thought, “what if the next person to come in here has not been mean to me?” I stuffed that thought down by rationalizing that even if they hadn’t been mean, they hadn’t been nice either. They were all complicit. I also remember considering suicide to teach everyone a lesson. I remember thinking that while the kids at school would be shocked and saddened for a few weeks my family would be devastated for many years. That was not a good trade off. Perhaps if I was able to inflict more lasting pain on my tormentors it would have seemed like a better deal.

Looking back it is easy to see the error in my thinking. A few kids were active bullies. Most just avoided me for fear of being targeted themselves. Social caste systems often work like that.

I believe that I had 3 things going for me that helped to keep me from going down the path of a school shooting: 1) I do not think that I was desensitized to violence. I did not have much exposure to violent video games or movies. I believe that a basic gut revulsion to inflicting harm and pain would have kicked in. 2) I did not have any access to guns. They simply were not a part of my world. 3) I had an imperfect but loving family. In my consideration of suicide, the sacrifice of my own future did not seem like a big factor but the pain I would have inflicted on my family was not an option. I guess, in a way, their love saved my life.

I was bullied. I remember urinating on all the urinal handles in my school bathroom. For a moment I thought, “what if the next person to come in here has not been mean to me?” I stuffed that thought down by rationalizing that even if they hadn’t been mean, they hadn’t been nice either. They were all complicit. I also remember considering suicide to teach everyone a lesson. I remember thinking that while the kids at school would be shocked and saddened for a few weeks my family would be devastated for many years. That was not a good trade off. Perhaps if I was able to inflict more lasting pain on my tormentors it would have seemed like a better deal.

Looking back it is easy to see the error in my thinking. A few kids were active bullies. Most just avoided me for fear of being targeted themselves. Social caste systems often work like that.

I believe that I had 3 things going for me that helped to keep me from going down the path of a school shooting: 1) I do not think that I was desensitized to violence. I did not have much exposure to violent video games or movies. I believe that a basic gut revulsion to inflicting harm and pain would have kicked in. 2) I did not have any access to guns. They simply were not a part of my world. 3) I had an imperfect but loving family. In my consideration of suicide, the sacrifice of my own future did not seem like a big factor but the pain I would have inflicted on my family was not an option. I guess, in a way, their love saved my life.

I got horribly bullied too.

But what did I have?

* Some love at home.

* I was pretty good at the main sport at my high school which gave me some social status and friendships.

* One or two kind teachers (and some awful ones).

* I could make people laugh, if not with me, at me. In a way I turned that disadvantage round. If they found my appearance funny, I could at least use it.

I think getting onto the sports team integrated me and meant people could overlook my eccentricities, and I actually became fairly popular. After school that disappeared but I’d moved on by then.

Despite all this, I do think I developed a sadistic streak. I often used to fantasize about destroying the school building, but I found out many people did. It even appeared in a fanzine someone produced! But thankfully, I never had the desire to murder everyone. I hated certain people but I wouldn’t have felt hatred towards some of the school kids I didn’t really know (there were a few of them – we had hundreds of kids at my school). I could be cruel to people verbally, but I never wanted to cut them up or shoot them.

I did do petty vandalism though. I even faked letters from the principal for satirical purposes and put them on his noticeboard.

Many of the girls at my school were very arrogant and stand offish in the main, despite being physically attractive (to a teenager)… But I never hated them for it very much. I think some people would have done so.

The key point here is “othering”. If you are bullied, you are alienated from various people. If you are socially excluded, all the other people become an other and you appear less human to them, and vice versa. If you are ignored, you may feel a need to compensate for status loss or even gain a martyr complex.