Am I all by myself?

This post might be a bit confusing for people who don’t know me personally, but if you do know me then me writing about this won’t surprise you. Out of every historical event, few have influenced my thinking more than the tragic 1999 mass shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado. I’ll explain more about it and why it influences my thoughts in the future but right now I would like to take some time to talk about the first student who was killed that day, Rachel Joy Scott.

Rachel was born on this day in 1981. She was born to parents Darrel and Beth. She had 4 siblings, 2 sisters and 2 brothers. In 1988 Rachel’s parents unfortunately got a divorce. Her mom later remarried, and they moved to a suburb of Denver, Colorado called Littleton. Eventually, she started attending Columbine High School in 9th grade. She was a very energetic person, she had a unique fashion sense and a flair for the dramatic. This led her to joining the Columbine theater program. She wanted to be a famous Hollywood actress. Right before the shooting she starred in the school play, The Smoke in the Mirror.

Rachel was only 17 when she died. It was a beautiful sunny day. She went outside to eat with her friend Richard. As they were talking 2 boys walked up and started shooting. Richard was paralyzed for life, and Rachel was killed instantly. After she died, friends and family would cover her red Honda Acura with flowers and letters. It became a temporary memorial for her. A little while after her funeral, her family found the journals she had written.

Rachel loved writing, she had been writing in her journals for years. She had written for a school essay shortly before she died that she thought that kindness and compassion were the greatest forms of love mankind had to offer. She said that one act kindness could start a chain reaction of the same. That essay ended with her challenging her readers to start their own chain reactions. Her family was so inspired by this essay that they created an organization dedicated to the ideals set forth in it called Rachel’s Challenge.

I first found out about Rachel (and Columbine) in general around 2016, I was in middle school. But what stuck with me at the time about her wasn’t her words about compassion, it was her words about God. Rachel was a profoundly Christian girl and this was something she wrote about often. She wrote about how she wanted to live for God and how she was bullied and lost her friends because she decided to take her faith seriously or “walk her talk” in her words. Her family was very Christian too, and they wrote a few books about her faith, and it’s impact. Rachel even got a PureFlix movie made based on her life and her faith. Her faith was what inspired me at first. I was a young Christian looking for identity and Rachel’s faith inspired me to take mine more seriously. Fast-forward to 2020, the year that changed everything.

At this point, all I knew about Rachel was that she was a Christian who taught other people to be kind towards others, and that she died in a school shooting. I’ve written about this story a lot but basically in April 2020 I got really depressed from everything that was going on in the world. It really got to my head. Then around April 20th, I decided to watch a few documentaries about Columbine.

I had always been a true crime nerd, so I already knew a bit about the shooting. But something about this time was different. In ways, I will explain in the future, the people who died, including and especially Rachel, stood out to me. They were good people who were just trying to make the best out of their lives. They didn’t hurt anyone, they weren’t bullies, they were just regular human beings like you and me.

Rachel’s message of compassion really touched me in a way it didn’t before. It, along with other Columbine related things, led to me feeling like I had something to live for, I wanted to dedicate my life to helping others. Rachel’s faith also inspired me, but it also kind of puzzled me. At one point in her life, she decided to be more open about her faith, but she faced bullying from her friends about it.

At first, I thought it had something to do with abstention from drugs or sex or things like that. But as I learned more and more about her and read some things that her friends had to say, I questioned that. I began to read more and more of her journal entries and I realized that she was a really deep thinker whose statements about the world I think about often. As I grew up more, I began to realize how fallen this planet really is. I felt alone again, but Rachel’s words provided me with some solace.

“People are crying, losing their minds. People are dying, taking their lives. Will anyone save them? Will anyone help? Will somebody listen, or am I all by myself?” — Rachel Scott

This line from one of her journals hit me hard. I felt the same way, I was looking at the world’s many problems, and I was seeing a pitiful lack of empathy from most people. If they had any, it was kept under wraps, lest they be judged for trying to do something. Like Rachel, I felt all by myself. I had so much love for a broken world, I felt powerless to put that love into action. Around the same time my idea of Christianity began to fall apart, I’ll explain more of this later, but I was questioning many of the doctrines of Orthodox Christian belief. I felt more alone than ever, because now I didn’t feel at home in my church or around my Christian friends.

I was trying to find more information about Rachel, because at this point the Thirteen victims were what kept me going. Likewise, I wanted to know all I could about them, and I found a post on Reddit from someone who claims that their sister knew her in high school. Obviously, they could be lying, but the amount of detail they gave made me believe them. What they’re sister had to say about Rachel absolutely changed everything about how I was feeling.

According to them, Rachel wasn’t as traditional of a Christian as I had thought she was, and as her family seems to think she was. She apparently didn’t attend church with her family over theological issues and instead attended a church in Denver that was known for assisting the poor and needy. She wasn’t known for being judgmental with her beliefs. She wanted to walk her talk and let people take what they could from that. She faced judgment from her peers for the way she lived. But she kept doing it anyway. She kept walking her talk because it was the right thing to do. Her words continue to inspire me and I hope they inspire you.

I have no ill will towards her family. I never knew her, I am just going off what I believe her friends have said about her. If remembering her as a Christian martyr is what helps them grieve then I think there’s nothing wrong with that. Beyond that, they have used her legacy to spread compassion through the Rachel’s Challenge program which I think is very admirable. I just wish they would be more open about the other aspects of her life beyond her strong faith.

Happy Birthday, Rachel. Your words have provided me and many others with solace in this cruel world. I hope we can walk our talks as nobly as you once did. And no, you are not by yourself.