Cho Seung-Hui: I Was There Once, Too

Andrew Sullivan posted today about the loner in all of us. He links to two posts that reminded me so very much of myself.

Like Cho Seung-Hui, Ross Douthat was in the midst of a bleak depression in November of 2001:

In November 2001, I was rattled, like a lot of people, by the news of the world. But I was also hit by what now seems like a laughably minor personal “tragedy,” namely a young woman broke my heart in the massive soul-crushing way that only an adolescent can really appreciate.

“I was depressed. Dangerously depressed, I’m afraid,” he wrote. He spoke of long hours in his basement apartment, reading and listening to “Photobooth” on endless repeat.

Apparently, some caring friends alerted his mother to his predicament. She took off from work immediately and showed up at his apartment, snapping him out of his daze:

On the rare occasions when I reflect on those really rough weeks I think about how lucky I was to have friends who were attuned to my pitiful mood, and to have a crazy, wonderful mother who’d go to tremendous lengths for me. So when I hear that Cho Seung Hui was “a loner,” my heart hurts.

Blogger Rod Dreher read Douthat’s post and responded:

Reihan’s entry put me in mind of the spring of 1986, when I was in my second semester as a college freshman. I was living alone in a dorm room, and seriously depressed. I was still pining away over unrequited high school love, and felt incredibly and crushingly alone in the world. I was in such a state that I couldn’t concentrate on my classes, and would walk to an off-campus bar most nights, and drink until I couldn’t stand any more, then stumble home and listen to the Velvet Underground until I fell asleep.

By the grace of God, I got pulled out of that hole by the advent of a marvelous life-loving lunatic from New Orleans named Joe Zahavi, who became my roommate and my friend. And I got out of it by starting down the road to religious faith after discovering Kierkegaard, and Thomas Merton.

But Reihan’s post got me to thinking about 19 year old me, lying there in the darkness and solitude of that dorm room, filled with self-hate, listening to sad music, unreachable. My anger and depression was never directed against other people, only myself, and I doubt I ever seriously thought about suicide. But I was closer to that trap than I ever have been, and it’s a little frightening to think back at how things might have turned out for me had I continued drifting down that dark river.

After reading those two posts, I felt that I would be derelict in my duty as a blogger if I did not respond with my own story. Because I’ve been close to the edge, too.

Like Cho Seung-Hui, I was a loner. Throughout much of my childhood, I was academically obsessive, ostentatiously unique and extremely awkward. Needless to say, I was picked on brutally from preschool to high school. My parents divorce certainly didn’t make my profound sense of isolation any more tolerable.

When I left for college in the fall of 2001, I was reeling from the recent death of my beloved grandmother. Then, nine days after I arrived on campus, the terrorist attacks on the United States undermined my already tenuous sense of security. This set the stage for my first experience with romantic rejection.

In late March of 2002, I drove up Route 39 into the San Gabriel mountains north of Azusa, CA. I pulled over on a turn-off and aimed the wheel of my 1995 Toyota Camry at a precipice overlooking the dam at the south end of the Morris Reservoir. I sat with the motor running, my foot on the gas pedal. I was fairly certain that the fall would kill me, and I was fairly certain that I wanted to die.

I imagined pressing my foot down. I imagined my car’s powerful engine pushing the little sedan over the edge. And then I imagined how I would feel after I had passed the point of no return. I realized that the second I had no choice in the matter, I would want to live.

So I turned the car off and cried for a long time. Then I started the engine and drove back to Claremont. I crawled into bed and vowed that I would try to make things better.

I’m not going to lie and say that it was an overnight transformation. It took me a long time and a lot of work to get back from the edge of that cliff. I had relapses. I had a couple more run-ins with the guy who broke my heart. On one particularly low night, I flew into a rage over a laughably minor slight and stabbed the broken shards of a mix CD he had made me into the cork board outside his door. It was a real uphill battle.

But very slowly, I reached out and made friends. I fell in love with Andy. I wrote a lot of stupid sad songs. Five years later, I look back on it all and I thank God that something He put inside my heart made me turn off that engine.

I remember hearing somewhere that “depression is rage turned inward.” That statement makes a lot of sense to me. Sometimes I feel angry one moment, only to start beating myself up the next. Even after all the positive changes in my life, it’s a relatively easy trap to fall into.

Like Douthat, when I heard that Cho was a “loner,” my heart broke a little. Obviously, nothing can excuse what he did two days ago. But I know all too well the feelings of rage and self-loathing that plagued him. With a little more testosterone and a lot less compassion for other people, I might have wound up very much like him.

My prayers are with the victims of the Virginia Tech tragedy and their families and friends. I am also praying for Cho’s family. And my prayers are with Cho. God has a capacity to forgive that transcends anything we mere mortals can hope to achieve. Wherever he is, I hope he has received that forgiveness.

And if you found this post because your long, lonely road has led you to Google Cho’s name some depressing night, my prayers are with you, too. I promise you, it’s never too late to get help and turn your life around.