Such naivety.  I can't speak for them, but I know how someone could feel that just maybe going around the school with a machine gun wasn't such a bad idea.  I remember resentment for not being with the "in" crowd in school.  I remember endless teasing and psychological torture.  I had never learned the tools needed to defend against these things.  I was a good child who was gentle and kind and treated all with respect and love.  And I lived in a world that tortured me day in, and day out for the stupidest things.  The greatest horror of it all was that it was "ok" for it to happen.  Asking your oppressors to stop of course ends nothing.  Asking the teacher? Hah! they laugh at you and tell you, to tell them, to stop.  Is that a sick joke or what.  My parents God bless them wanted to do something, but didn't know what to do.  They talked to the school, *hug them* they wanted so much to do something.  But these things don't stop.  So when the world around you hates you and persecutes you for nothing, I can completely understand why you would hate that world, and even feel positive about its destruction.

     Is that a good way to handle the problem?  Certainly not.  I, like most other people, was strong enough to get through it without resorting violence.  And violence and hate will not ease your pain, ever.  The damage done is a hole that can't be filled in the normal sense.  The hole is caused by hate and resentment, anger and such.  You have to learn to let it go, to pass on.  And reject its influence on you, if you wish to close that hole.

     Life got interesting around the time the Columbine shootings came along.  I was creeping into my late 20's (eek) and minding my own business.  Quite a few years before I had been shopping with my parents and happened to be in a coat area.  I looked and noticed a nice coat, a trenchcoat, which happened to be black.  I liked the look of it.  The design was distinct from the other modern styles.  I have grown up with much older parents and perhaps from that have a taste for the archaic.   I have to tell you it was much cooler than those 80's jackets with the buttoning neck strap, buttoning sleve ends, and front stretchy pockets that everyone else was wearing.   I tried it on and liked it.  So it became part of my wardrobe, to be worn when the weather was appropriate.  A nice pleasant weight and feel.

     Anyway, the Columbine incident goes down some years later, and suddenly people are turning to me saying "Oh do you really think you should be wearing that?"  I kind of boggled at that for a while.  Random people fed me back a vibe that indicated they felt some measure of fear, intimidation, or suspicion.   Hey, its a coat, I like it, its comfortable.  I think this was the first time people made any bones about my tendency for dark colors, my dark sense of humor and all that.  I think that incident made me for the first time look into the label of "goth."  As I've send, none of the folks I had been close to used the term "goth", but it was increasingly bounced around and I was frequently being referred to as being part of such.  It's been interesting as it afforded me an opportunity to start getting in touch with some resemblance of a "community" I hadn't really noticed for what it was.  Scaring the willies out of sheltered people was also easier and fun.  I sometimes refer to those people as living in the "Disney Land world".  A constructed world having often little to do with reality.  A fake dressing pulled over the truth of the world that lays all around.  People who live there say a field is full of beauty, and try to pretend that countless animals have their guts ripped out and eaten for breakfast there each morning.  They try to pretend their cute sweet cat could never hurt anything.  Its just a cute sweet cuddly cat.  Like a teddy bear... really...

     Don't get me wrong.  I love beauty, I love sweetness, but I really can't stand the saccharine, fake taste of the "Disney World" our mainstream culture seems primarily based on.

--AsterothX@goth.net