In his writings, Dylan takes comfort from the idea of death. But he does not seem to have the capability for suicide by himself.
As Dr. Joiner points out, people have to become desensitized to the violence and the fear of pain in order to be able to harm themselves. (He posits that this is why suicide rates are higher in populations routinely exposed to—and therefore inured to—pain and horror, such as doctors, soldiers, and people with anorexia.) Our natural instinct for survival is hardwired, and most people have to work themselves up to ignoring it over time.
Dylan couldn’t—by himself. He talks about suicide, but he does not by himself come up with a plan to do it. His writing about it, as it is about most things, is abstract. That paralysis is reflected throughout the journals. He wants a job working with computers, but he can’t get one or keep the one he gets. He talks over and over about the girl he has a crush on, but there is no evidence he made any advances toward her. He agonizes over the letter he writes to her, but doesn’t deliver it. In fact, there’s no evidence they ever spoke.
The same thing appears to be true for suicide, and he turns to Eric for help: “Soon….either ill commit suicide, or I’ll get w. [redacted girl’s name] & it will be NBK for us.” Dylan appears to have “needed” Eric’s homicidal plan in order to be able to do what he most wanted to do: die by suicide. Dr. Joiner suggested to me that planning with Eric for the rampage may have been part of the way Dylan rehearsed his own death. The preparations helped him to desensitize himself.
For years after the attack, I resisted blaming Eric for Dylan’s participation. I believed, as I still do at some level, that whatever hold Eric might have had over him, Dylan was still accountable for the choices he made. At one point, at least, he was separate enough and objective enough to tell me Eric was “crazy,” and ambivalent enough to try to get help to distance himself from the relationship.
Given what I have learned about psychopathy, I now feel differently. I find the violence and hatred seething off the page in Eric’s journals almost unreadably dark, but his writing is clear, whereas Dylan’s was not. As Dr. Langman puts it, “Dylan’s writing is jumbled, disorganized, and full of tangled syntax and misused words. Eric’s thoughts are disturbing; Dylan’s thought process is disturbed. The difference is in what Eric thinks and how Dylan thinks.”
We know Eric was overwhelmingly persuasive. His Diversion counselor, dismissing him early from the program, said at the end of her final report, “muy facile [sic] hombre,” which my Spanish-speaking friends translate as an affectionate characterization along the lines of “super-easy guy.” Eric’s perceived halo may have extended to Dylan, whose own grades weren’t good enough to justify his early dismissal from Diversion. A number of the psychologists I have spoken to have told me how scarily charismatic and charming psychopaths can be—how quick they are to find the wedge, and how masterfully they work the lever. I am not sure that Dylan, especially in an impaired state, was in a position to extricate himself from that relationship.
Dr. Randazzo has interviewed a number of would-be school shooters, intercepted before they could execute their terrible plans. She describes both their ambivalence and their tunnel vision. “When they reach that point of desperation, they’re looking for a way out. They can’t see any other options. They just don’t care.” Knowing this does not for a moment lessen Dylan’s culpability, but it may get us closer to an explanation of how he came to be there. Dr. Dwayne Fuselier, a clinical psychologist and the supervisor in charge of the FBI team during the Columbine investigation, told me, “I believe Eric went to the school to kill people and didn’t care if he died, while Dylan wanted to die and didn’t care if others died as well.”
CHAPTER 13
Pathway to Suicide
Dylan’s Junior Year
Dylan with family at a local restaurant, about three weeks before Columbine.
The Klebold Family
Four-hour lawyer appt was upsetting. The more we talked the more we saw how this “perfect” kid was not so perfect. By the time we were done we felt that our lives had not only been useless, but had been destructive….We wanted to believe that Dylan was perfect. We let ourselves accept that and really didn’t see signs of his own anger and frustration. I don’t know if I can ever live with myself. I have so much regret.
—Journal entry, May 1999
In his junior year, Dylan got into trouble. Not once or twice, but a few times, in a series of escalating events.
That makes this the hardest chapter in this book for me to write, because I know most people reading it will say: Hey, Sue: this kid was falling apart, and you just stood by and did nothing. What the hell were you thinking? The signs that Dylan was struggling were not overt or glaring, but we observed them—and misinterpreted them.
Now, the overwhelming majority of children, even if they are facing brain health challenges, are not going to commit a school shooting. If you live with a teenager, though, there’s a reasonable chance he or she is struggling with a brain disorder. An estimated one in five children and adolescents has a diagnosable mental health condition. Only 20 percent of those kids are identified. That is why parents too often learn or think about brain health issues in teens only after those issues result in violence, crime, or self-harm. Despite its prevalence and the danger it poses, brain illness in teenagers too often goes unrecognized, even by caring teachers, well-meaning counselors and pediatricians, and the most vigilant parents.
Left untreated, even the mildest brain health impairment can derail a young person’s life, and stop a child from reaching his or her full potential, a tragedy in itself. A disease like depression can also have much more serious consequences, as it sets many of the traps that snag children in adolescence: drug and alcohol abuse, drunk driving, petty crime, eating disorders, cutting, abusive relationships, and high-risk sexual behaviors among them.
In 1999, I did not know the difference between the sadness and lethargy I had always called depression, and clinical depression, which many sufferers describe as a feeling of nothingness. I had no idea that about 20 percent of teenagers experience a depressive episode, or that experiencing one episode puts them at higher risk of another. (A recent CDC report puts that number closer to 30 percent.)
I did not know that depression manifests itself differently in teenagers than it does in adults. Where adults may appear sad and low-energy, teenagers (especially boys) tend to withdraw and show increased irritability, self-criticism, frustration, and anger. Unexplained pains, whininess, sleep disorders, and clinginess are common symptoms of depression among younger children.
Neither did I know that the symptoms of depression in adolescents are often masked by the many other developmental and behavioral changes they’re going through, which may be one of the reasons diagnosis often comes too late. Parents may not be alarmed by a teenager who sleeps late into the weekend, or a good eater who pushes away his plate—“ugh, gross”—although changes in sleep and appetite can be symptoms of depression. Diagnosis is further complicated because many depressed children show none of these signs.