Never Alone

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Of Boyfriends and Other Important Things

Some of you may have heard of the incident I was involved in, and I can't exactly say that I'm willing to recite it detail for detail. But I will talk about one thing. And that is about the shooter himself. Clark. Who also happened to be my boyfriend. And I'd be lying if I said I wasn't still a little bit in love with him. Which may sound a little bit sick, but hear me out.

Clark wasn't just some guy who thought it would be fun to run around with a gun. He was a guy with massive issues. He had some serious, real, severe issues that had him messed up in the head. And I'm not justifying his actions or anything but I think it's always good to look at both sides of the story. Because, yes, what Clark did was bad but, considering the whole thing, it could have been prevented. Because, as much as my school didn't deserve to get shot, he didn't deserve to shoot anyone. But it still happened.

Clark had had a pretty messed up childhood. He had had an abusive father who had some serious mental health issues of his own. He had dealt with both his mother's beatings and his own. And, at the age of eleven, he saw his father shoot his mother in the head. And I guess that messed him up, it would mess anyone up. He never had the normal sort of childhood that someone should have. That he deserved. Even when he moved in and grew up with his uncle, he was never the same. And his uncle was a really great guy, giving Clark the sort of childhood he should have had in the first place.

But I guess it was too late. Clark had seen enough violence to last a lifetime and it really seemed to be taking its toll on him. He had serious mood swings, going from being the sweetest boy alive to someone who suffered from quite serious violent rampages. It was like he couldn't control his emotions. And maybe it was something passed down genetically from his father, or a traumatic childhood. Or most likely both. But he was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. 

And you may wonder how I know this. Well, he told me. Everything. We started off as friends. And we got closer. And then one day he just broke down crying, explaining and apologising for his weird moods and for being broken and pathetic and all that. And I had to assure him that it was okay, that he was a great guy anyway. That he was brilliant, smart, caring, and that it wasn't right to let something like this define him. And then we started dating. And it was great. And I understood him. And he understood me. And we fell in love. 

But then the Borderline Personality Disorder took a turn for the worst when his uncle died of cancer. I tried to comfort him, I really did, but it was like he completely shut himself off from me. His violent rampages were becoming more and more frequent, flipping tables and punching anything in sight. He got angry at me for no reason. He actually hit me once. And I tried not blame him, because I knew this wasn't the Clark I loved and that he would be able to come round so that we could be together again like we were before.

Buy my dad found out. And he advised me to break up with Clark. And it took a lot of convincing, but I agreed. And I explained it to Clark, how I couldn't be with him when he was like this, that he should go back to the therapy sessions he used to have and take his medication. I told him that I would be willing to help him if he was willing to try. That I still loved him but he was scaring me.

But he just refused.

So I went through with it and broke up with him.

And he didn't handle the rejection well. At all. He didn't come to school for two days. And I was beginning to get really worried, like he had turned to suicide or something. And I kept calling him, apologizing and telling him that we could make it work. But it was too late. It was already done. 

The next time I saw Clark was when he was holding the whole school at gunpoint, screaming about how it was all our fault that the love died. That the school was to blame. That my dad, who happened to be one of the teachers, was to blame for putting all these terrible thoughts in my head.

And then he killed my dad.

And then he shot me in the leg.

But he couldn't kill me.

He had the opportunity to put a bullet through my brain. But he didn't. He couldn't. He shot me in the leg, heard my scream of pain and suddenly broke down into tears, bending down and hugging me as I started to bleed. But then he told me to run, to get away from him. And I was so terrified, that I did. I didn't even look back. I hid in a closet just as his mood switched back to angry again. And then the sirens came. And I saw the police shoot him dead. 

So, yeah, sure, what Clark did was wrong. But he didn't have to be that way. He had a violent childhood that messed him up from the start. It wasn't his fault that his father was a lunatic. Neither was it his fault that he somehow had access to the guns in the first place. In the end, it wasn't the shooter that killed those people. It was the bullet. Clark had grown up in a country and family that allowed that sort of violence. People blame their fellow humans for all these terrible shootings, when they really should be questioning the weapon. Why does such a weapon exist? How was someone so young given access to it? What was the motive behind it?

I'm actually pretty proud to say that I will always love Clark. And I will never forgive my country and my fellow humans for messing him up the way they did.