In the end, it doesn’t really matter what Dylan’s particular diagnosis might have been. Nobody disputes Dylan’s depression, or its ability to confuse a person’s decision-making process. In fact, nine out of the ten school shooters Dr. Langman profiles in his recent book, School Shooters: Understanding High School, College, and Adult Perpetrators, suffered from depression and suicidal thoughts. Even if serious depression was the only thing going on, Dylan was not, as Dr. Langman put it to me, “in his right mind.”
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Kay Redfield Jamison, in her masterful book about suicide, Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide, writes: “Most suicides, although by no means all, can be prevented. The breach between what we know and do is lethal.” In Dylan’s case, of course, the decision to die was lethal not only to him, but to many others.
Even if a person does not discuss their intention to die by suicide, there are often warning signs that they are in trouble. Certain events, such as a previous suicide attempt or trouble with the law, can put people at higher risk. There are often behavioral indications as well, like social withdrawal and increased irritability.
If those warning signs are noticed and recognized for what they are, treatment can help. Because—and this was hard for me to hear when my loss was recent, although I derive great hope from it now—suicide is preventable. Every expert I have talked to emphasizes the wealth of successful treatments for mood disorders, if people can only be convinced to take advantage of them, and stick with them.
Not every suicide is preventable—yet. (Ed Coffey, a physician and vice president at the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, pioneered a program called Perfect Depression Care, which made a goal of zero suicides in the program. When asked if reducing suicide death to zero is realistic, he’s known for shooting back: “What number would you choose? Eight? Does that include my mother, or your sister?”) Brain health disorders can be pernicious. Sometimes they progress, and win. We can say the same thing about cancer, though: even with gold-standard treatment, some people will die from the disease. Does that mean we throw our hands up in despair? Or do we commit ourselves to early detection and prevention, and to better and more personalized treatment—to catching these diseases at Stage I or II, instead of Stage IV?
I sometimes feel envious of families who did everything they could to obtain effective treatment for a loved one, even if they ultimately lost that fight. My son struggled alone with his illness. I did not suspect Dylan was depressed until I was shown his writings and learned he thought about suicide and longed for the peace and comfort of death. His closest friends, boys he hung out with every day for years, did not know how depressed he felt. Some of them refuse to accept that characterization to this day. But I was his mother. I should have known.
Dylan might have died by suicide later in his life; that I cannot know. Eric might have hatched and executed a version of the plan to destroy the school by himself, or with another kid. He might have gotten through the crisis without violence, or gone on to commit an act of terror in another place and time.
What I do know is that Dylan did show outward signals of depression, signs Tom and I observed but were not able to decode. If we had known enough to understand what those signs meant, I believe that we would have been able to prevent Columbine.
CHAPTER 12
Fateful Dynamic
Definitive statement: “I do not think that Columbine would have happened without Eric.”
—Note from a conversation with Dr. Frank Ochberg, January 2015
Dylan’s journals also shed light on his relationship with Eric—and, in particular, the terrible interdependence fatal to them and to so many others.
In the summer of 1997, Dylan’s friend Zack started dating Devon, who became his girlfriend. Nate also started dating a girl. To us, this was hardly noticeable—Dylan still spent time with Zack one on one, and Zack, Devon, and Dylan all hung out together. He spent time with Nate and other friends, too. Yet Dylan experienced Zack’s new relationship as a betrayal. This is another example of the marked separation between Dylan’s reality and how he perceived that reality.
The summer Zack met and fell for Devon, Dylan and Eric started spending more time together. Eric’s name appears more frequently. Dylan writes about suicide many times that summer, as he did many times previously, but there are no homicidal comments in his journal until that fall. Even after the boys have begun making plans, Dylan reveals a secret in these most private pages: he believes he will be dead by his own hand before they have a chance to carry them out. After talking about the temptations of suicide for close to two years, Dylan finally says good-bye in June 1998. “This is probably my last entry. I love my self close second to [redacted] my everlasting love. Goodbye.”
The next entry, dated January 20, 1999, begins with his dismay at finding himself still alive. “This shit again. Back at writing, doing just like a fucking zombie.” Later in that entry, he mentions the plan with Eric as a possible solution to the way he feels. “I hate this non-thinking stasis. I’m stuck in humanity. Maybe going ‘NBK’ (gawd) with Eric is the way to break free.” (NBK—for Natural Born Killers, after the Oliver Stone movie of the same title—was the name the boys used to refer to their plan to attack the school.)
After that, the journals become noticeably darker and more hopeless. Dylan’s thoughts are more scattered and difficult to understand as he comes to believe that Eric’s plan represents a way out. His ambivalence is present right up until the shootings.
At the end of his life, Dylan was connected to only two emotions: anger and hopelessness. Any feelings that might have connected him to others in a positive way were beyond his reach. He believed death was the only possible escape from his pain; there simply wasn’t anything else left in his emotional toolbox. To use Joiner’s language, he perceived himself to be profoundly alienated from everybody on earth. To use mine, Dylan was loved, but he did not feel loved. He was valued, but he did not feel valuable. He had many, many options, but Eric’s was the only one he could see.
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One night, probably during his junior year, Dylan told me, “Eric’s crazy.”
I responded, “You’re going to meet people all your life who are difficult, and I’m glad you have enough common sense to recognize it when you see it.” I told him his dad and I had a lot of confidence in his ability to make good choices, with or without his friends.
Our confidence was misplaced, but neither did we have any idea of what Dylan was dealing with. I had no inkling that the situation might be truly dangerous. Nor did I have any conception of what Dylan meant by “crazy.” Eric was higher-maintenance than Dylan’s other friends, and I’d seen evidence of his volatile temper at a soccer game. The problem, though, was much more serious.