In many ways, the Columbine massacre on April 20, 1999, was the first heads-up my generation was given that Everything was not Okay, the first real sign of universal indifference we had to face as human beings. 

The Oklahoma City bombing in 1994 shook us, but we were also eleven or twelve years old, not even teenagers.  All the gooey, sweet, and sentimental things we believed as children were allowed to cover the wounds of Oklahoma City because there was a remove.  One man blew up part of a building, and lots of people died, but they found him quick, they caught him on tape, he was brought to justice, and one of the biggest hits of the time, “Lightning Crashes” by Live, was turned into an anthem for the tragedy.  America rallied, or better put, American Spirit rallied in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, and it gave us all hope that, though bad things will happen, everything will get taken care of because we live in the best country ever and God is good.

The Columbine massacre did not elicit such a hopeful conclusion.  Thirteen people, twelve students and a teacher, were murdered, and about two-dozen more were wounded.  Over the course of an hour, a seventeen-year-old and an eighteen-year-old stalked the halls, shooting whomever they saw, before eventually putting the guns to their own heads and eliminating the possibility of justice being served.

In the middle of a school day, some fellow students found out in real time over the Internet and began whispering about these kids in Colorado that shot up their school.  My biology teacher turned on the new TV bolted to the wall above her desk, and CNN showed video of SWAT teams and cops running into a school, of students running out, of people everywhere crying and looking for all intents and purposes like they no longer believed in anything but sorrow.  Many of my classmates’ faces held a similar visage.

There was an essential hopelessness to the Columbine tragedy, in and of itself.  Some people shook it off with a “Shit Happens” mentality, a feeling that they somehow already knew the world was a scary place and nothing was guaranteed.  But for those of us theretofore enshrouded in a protective cocoon of good feeling and a basic belief in the benevolence of a universe run and protected by an all-powerful God, or at the very least that our country was a safe place ruled by fairness and law, the whole thing came crashing down.

Many articles I have read in the run-up to the ten-year anniversary talk about the strength the Columbine and Littleton communities drew from their grief, of the survivors’ will to become something more than the product of an unspeakable tragedy, to become people apart from their proximity to the massacre.  Within that community, there is a lot of strength drawn from such a conclusion.

But from a town in southwest Ohio, where I watched the drama unfold on television and read about the blame tossed around from movies to Marilyn Manson to video games, everyone yelling about who was responsible while no one in their right mind would step forward and claim responsibility, the process of disillusionment began in full force.  All was no longer right with the world and never would be again.  Acceptance of the world and the concept of moving on first made their appearances on my emotional radar; each has been integral to the process ever since.