Lessons learned from loners and losers

© David Chartrand, 2006
April 29, 2007

    It apparently goes without saying that Cho Seung Hui, the nation's latest school shooter, was a loner and a loser.

   Not that this keeps anyone from saying it over and over again. It’s the official portrayal of those who take their own lives, whether they take 32 others with them or die alone at home in a shroud of carbon monoxide.

   Loneliness/Loserness causes madness, right? Or maybe it’s the other way around.

   I’ve written about mental health, depression and suicide for a decade now. My current research project led me to the obituaries of hundreds of young suicide, especially high school and college students.

   To the bitterness of their family and friends, many of the victims were portrayed the same way. Whether it was true or not.

   “As far as we knew, he had few friends,” a high school principal told after the August 1995 suicide Mark Andrew Huston, a 15-year-old high school sophomore in my home town. “No one really knew him.”

   In fact, I would later learn, Mark was known by many as a sensitive and charismatic boy genius. School officials and police assumed he was a loner. None of them assumed that Mark might died after a long battle with depression, which he did.

    Unlike Cho Seung, Mark Huston did not write sick essays or stalk women. The only scary words he wrote were his last.

   When the cops cut Mark down from a giant silver maple tree in a local park, they found a loving farewell to his family and friends. That was the first page.

   On the second page, Mark explained that he saw no future for himself in a “corrupt world.” Mental health experts recognize this as a common expression among highly intelligent but depressed young people. Unless you consider it the ramblings of a loser.

    Another local teen took his life n Feb. 20, 2003. This time our town came frighteningly close to its own version of Columbine or Virginia Tech. Sixteen-year-old Jason Mares also left a note. He wrote of hating school and hating certain teachers. “I was hoping I could get a gun and kill them, but I never found one.”

   Jason Mares, like Mark Huston, died quietly and alone. Afterward, the school principal told me … You guessed it.

   “There were very few people at his funeral,” the principal explained. It wasn’t true. I have the funeral home’s guest book.
    (A Kansas court has set a trial for this summer in the Mares case. The family alleges that misconduct by school personnel led not only to Jason’s suicide but also to the suicide six months later of his 18-year-old brother, Justin.)

   Mark Huston and Jason Mares were labeled loners and losers when they were no longer around to speak for themselves. Unlike Cho Seung Hui, they received no media coverage. There were no CNN interviews with friends and teachers. Loners rarely get good press.

   Like Cho Seung Hui, however, Mark and Jason considered themselves lost causes. They gave up on the world because it had given up on them. That wasn’t true, either. A VaTech counselor reportedly reached out to Cho but he did not reach back. Mark Huston and Jason Mares could have turned to loved ones and friends, but did not.

   Those who have visited the brink of suicide say that once the cacophony in the mind becomes unbearable, seeking help often deepens the despair. Only a loser needs a psychiatrist, right?
None of this is to suggest that we should weep for psychopaths and losers. It might be a good idea, however, to understand the differences and definitions.

   As a parent, I grieve for the families of the VaTech victims. As a journalist, I understand why Cho Seung Hui did not go quietly.
I believe Cho calculated the pointlessness of mere suicide. Like many who cross the line between despair and hopelessness, he knew it was too late to reinvent himself. He had long ago accepted his status as loser; his mind was in shutdown mode. A loser has nothing to lose.

   By taking 32 lives as well as his own, Cho made a statement: “I am no longer a loner or a loser. Now I matter.”

   And he was right. What we do and say now about Cho Sueng Hui matters. We can declare him a star-crossed loner under some malignant and inexorable influence, and then get on with our lives. Perhaps the next episode of “Dancing with the Stars” will help us get over it.

   Or we can stare into the ashes of the lives snuffed out at Virginia Tech and learn something — do something - that might save others.

   Sorting people into loners and losers will save no one. The way I see it, we’re all alone this week, and we’re all lost.