Out, out, brief candle

Last week's horrible events at Virginia Tech really affected me on levels I wasn't even aware of. The night after it happened, I had nightmares of my parents being dead, probably as a result of reading about an Indian man with a wife and two daughters who was one of the professors killed in the shooting. I guess it shook me up that this is the kind of thing that could happen anywhere to anyone. It was, on a smaller scale, the same sense of instability and uncertainty I felt on September 11, 2001. Perhaps also because my sister is a student at MIT, the parallels to Virginia Tech being however superficial are nonetheless significant when it's someone you love. It was one of those days that makes you want to drop what you're doing, gather everyone you care about into your arms and hold them for a little while.

As more details emerged about the troubled young man at the center of it all, the fear in my heart gave way to empathy and sadness. Mental illness is something I strive to make others regard as equivalent to any physical ailment. Just like diabetes or cancer, severe psychiatric diseases have profound physical and emotional impact and, if left untreated, destroy lives irreversibly. As the week went on, it became evident that the whole situation brought up more issues than the obvious. Undoubtedly and appropriately, there was a focus on gun control and campus safety. But as the inevitable question of why began to take center-stage, so much more emerged: ethnic identity (the significance, if any, of the shooter's heritage as a Korean-American who emigrated to the States as a young boy); community (his family's isolation and unsuccessful attempts by their cultural and geographic neighbors to reach out to them); responsibility (many of his teachers recognized that he was unwell and shared their concerns with the school's administration, to no avail); and of course, the stigma of mental illness, especially when the illness is poorly understood or socially uncomfortable, such as the likely autism and/or psychotic disorder the shooter suffered from.

In the end, I am left not only with grief and sympathy for the families of the victims who did not know that the last time they said I love you was truly the last, but also with understanding and compassion for the family of the shooter, a victim in his own right, who felt isolated and unloved despite the thousands of I love yous he heard throughout his brief and tortured life.