Sol Pais, the 18-year-old high school senior from Miami who led police in Colorado on a 24-hour manhunt, fearing that she would mark the twentieth anniversary of Columbine by shooting kids with a gun she had purchased, is dead, a victim of suicide.
JANUARY 15, 2019
lately it feels like time has been moving faster than
usual. or better said, it feels like evolutions in emotions and sentiments
of mine have been occurring faster than usual, my views and
thoughts becoming more extreme and solidified as time
goes by. to be honest, i don’t know exactly where i am, and there is more than one
way that that statement applies to me. i feel like a pot of scolding water on the verge of boiling
over… so dangerously close to spilling over.. and what that may cause is yet
to be seen and most likely a hazard, to myself and others. i’m afraid of my currently unknown
capacity for pain and misery and anger. each time it gets exponentially worse
and worse. my soul is in deep suffering and dis-belonging. i have done
quite a good job at keeping all of the explosive energy
inside of me but every time… worse and worse. and worse. like a new
channel of emotion inside me opens and more anger and frustration and
sadness fills it. there are no adequate words to describe
the feeling.
This young woman was alienated, miserable, despairing and lost.
And she, like countless others her age, found a marketplace that catered to this despair. For one thing, she followed a number of bands that feed these lost souls more of the same, “entertainment” that profits off of such pain and angst. She lists her favorite bands on her blog and gives samples of the lyrics of many of their songs. The lyrics sound like her journal entries.
She also provides a list of links, including pages that advocate anarchy and satanism.
One of her handwritten journal entries makes it clear that she loves a boy. Amidst the sketches of guns, bloody knives, the Columbine killers and a cage into which is etched the words I CAN’T GET OUT is an entry on love.
This boy seems to have returned her love at one point (though she has blocked out his name) – and yet even that is unclear. And, though Sol Pais’s writing does not reveal a psychosis, it is not out of the question that this boy was perhaps an idealized version of one of the Columbine shooters, rather than a living boy she knew in real life. It’s hard to say.
Whoever this mystery guy was, this entry is the only ray of hope in the entire blog.
There are entries in which Sol Pais hints at buying a gun and preparing for “the day”, and reminding herself that she will have to respond to the police.
It is quite sad that Pais was being at least partially public about this – and yet no one intervened before it was too late. And though her online persona “dissolvedgirl” was an attempt at a form of anonymity, apparently the FBI and USA Today were able to access these posts and others – and so one wonders why someone closer to Sol Pais didn’t.
Teens like this young lady are common. I have worked with them for years. This is not an unusual response to life – this brooding and potentially violent nihilism.
This young woman was let down in many ways. Not only were her partially veiled calls for help ignored, but she was given apparently unfiltered access on the internet to sites promoting satanism, violence and the kind of music that only fueled her depression and sense of dissociation and unreality.
We can be thankful that she harmed no one else physically. But her anguish and despair led her to kill herself. May the Lord have mercy on her soul.
This young woman’s statements and pain had literally nothing to do with Satanism. While I find that entire belief system to be ridiculous and highly hypocritical, the same can be said of those who practice Christianity; mind you, I’m purposefully making a distinction between Christianity and certain individuals who claim to practice it. That being said, you have literally no idea about the people in this girl’s life, or what they may have tried to do to help her. It’s incredibly easy to judge others based on what you feel should have been done or said, but unless you have any personal experience or knowledge of the situation, or those within it, you have absolutely no right to blame anyone for not helping her. From her journal entries, it seems clear that she made an effort to hide how she truly felt. Making these kinds of statements is incredibly unfair and hurtful to the people around her who loved and cared for her; saying these judgemental things and then immediately stating that you “are praying for her family”, shows that this post is more about yourself than her, or her loved ones. Religion has literally no place in this discussion, and making this tragedy about your own beliefs is honestly self-aggrandizing and disrespectful. Perhaps you should instead be praying that God help you to be more cognizant of other people’s feelings and how your words can either help, or hurt. This was an actual person who died and was in serious pain and this tragedy affects actual people who loved and cared for her; it’s not a situation created solely for you, so that you can discuss your own personal belief system. Christians are supposed to aim for walking the path Jesus laid out…you might want to actually take the time to think about how He would respond to something like this in the future, before making yourself and/or your personal beliefs the standard by which a person or event is viewed.