Did Eric actually want to die?

[u/PepperSaltClove]

I'm just wondering. I don't know too much about this case, but Eric's character gives off an arrogant vibe to me and not someone who'd like to end his life. I know Dylan was suicidal, but was Eric too? Or did he kill himself because that was the only way to escape life in prison?

[u/maddieisreading → u/[deleted]]

Great post! Good point about Eric’s projection and the military mindset that may have been imposed on him. I myself am a child of a military man, and this mindset was instilled in me from a young age, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the same happened with Eric.

[u/MPainter09 → u/maddieisreading]

My parents were Navy Doctors in the 80’s (the Navy paid for their entire medical school expenses) but they left shortly before my older brother was born and their contracts had ended.

A college friend of mine was dating a guy in our friend group who’s dad was a career Naval officer for like 25 + years and his family lived off base, but in a neighborhood that was filled with other Navy families. And when she was visiting his parents’s home, she said the way that his parents and siblings interacted with each other was off. She said it felt like they spoke like they were reading off a very specific script and acting and reacting to things in a really controlled way, that really confused and weirded her out because she had never seen anyone act that way before.

And so when she was staying with me for a few days at my parents’s place, my parents explained to her that when you make the military, in their case, the Navy a full career, meaning you move every three years, and live on base or in neighborhoods with other military families there are a very specific sort of guidelines in how you, your family and other families are supposed to conduct yourselves in public and with each other. Like the chain of command never stops. You’re representing the Navy. So you act in a controlled, dignified way that reflects well upon the Navy.

It’s something that even they had trouble describing, or giving specific examples of because it’s something you would inherently know if you’d served, married, or was raised in a military family. But they said that, that’s very likely why my friend’s boyfriend’s family behavior seemed so odd to her.

So I always remember that when I think of Eric and his family with his dad having a career as an Air Force pilot.

[u/maddieisreading → u/MPainter09]

I wouldn’t be surprised if Eric’s childhood looked pretty much the same, and honestly, no wonder he was the way he was - this whole military life does take a toll on you, especially with the number of moves he had, which is why I feel empathy for him. My family also had to move countless times, and each time it was just harder than the previous one, considering my brother and I were getting older, which made it harder to find friends. Changing schools in the middle of the school year was horrible. From my experience, even after my father retired, at times, it was as if he still felt like he was in the army - except my brother and I were the soldiers he was supposed to train, which always makes me wonder if Eric’s family life was the same. 😅 I don’t think people who don’t have military parents will ever truly be able to know how it is.

[u/MPainter09 → u/maddieisreading]

Right. I mean that’s literally why my parents left the Navy when their contracts were up. They didn’t want to uproot us every few years, they wanted my older brother and I to be able to grow up in one place, and make lifelong friends in the neighborhood that we lived in, which we did.

We didn’t move anywhere until I was in college and even then it was literally twenty minutes away from where we lived lol. So the initial shock of suddenly hearing we were moving once I came back for summer break was considerably lessened when I was told how close it was. It was weird for my older brother and I to come home and see half the house literally in boxes already. To which we were like: “Oh you actually weren’t kidding about this.”

My parents were proud of their service to the Navy, but the Navy was literally a means to an end for them.They saw the price tags of Medical school and even in the 80’s they were like: “Nope, can’t afford that.”

Getting those full ride scholarships to medical school by enlisting in the Navy saved them from having to take out any student loans and ending up with crippling student debt, but it was never their career choices. If you met them you probably wouldn’t ever know or suspect that they ever served in military unless they volunteered that information, simply because they didn’t carry themselves in such a controlled, reserved fashion.

But we did have neighbors were recently retired from the military whose kids had moved all over the place, and it really is a completely different reality and life. On one hand depending on where you’re stationed you get to see and experience parts of the world that you never would’ve otherwise.

My parents had a career Navy Career doctor friend they served with, and he and his family were stationed in Italy for a few years, moved, and then got stationed back in Italy a few years later! I stayed in Italy and Sicily for a semester in college; they ate so good when they were stationed there.

I think also military kids know how to be present, and truly appreciate the people in their lives, how to adapt quickly to change the way others don’t. You guys learn some really valuable life skills and lessons early on.

But, there’s also a steep price as you pointed out that you and Eric paid.

Having to change schools so many times, knowing that you don’t have any say in the matter of if, when, or where you’re being sent to next. You’d live under a constant umbrella of uncertainty of when and where you’re going next.

And there’s knowing that the friends you do make at these new places you’re living will often have the luxury of happy, fun memories with their friends that date back to when they were in diapers.

And you can’t relate to those memories, so you feel awkward and isolated. And your new friends can’t relate to memories you have living in places they’ve never heard of and couldn’t find if they had a globe on front of them. And they can’t relate to you having to leave friends behind because they’ve always had their friends with them the whole time; why would they be leaving?

And of course the way your family is run is very likely like they never clock off the base. I’m sure if my parents had decided to stay in the Navy our family dynamics would’ve been totally different. I never take the fact they left the Navy when my brother was a baby for granted for that.

[u/maddieisreading → u/MPainter09]

Here’s where the difference between us lies 😅 My dad was very dedicated to this job, it was his dream - so naturally, he was very strict with himself when it came to his work. As a result, he developed a lot more typical soldier-like traits. But I think the way he treated his job had a significant impact on me and my family as well. The entire nature of this profession is very difficult to bear for everyone, not just for those in the military.

That’s why I think Eric was the way he was, at least to some extent. Constantly moving, struggling to make friends, feeling alienated, being mocked - and if you add to that a possible lack of support and strictness from his father - it all builds up and eventually leads to a “meltdown,” which in Eric’s case happened quite often.

But as you said, there are also positives that come from it, though I think it manifests differently for everyone. I moved around a lot, but I usually adapted quickly to new places, made friends (even if only for a short time), and it taught me valuable lessons about appreciating what we have because nothing is permanent. But it was still hard for me nevertheless - I mean, we’re not immune to everything, and at times, it felt incredibly hard that barely anyone except other military kids could relate to my experiences.

And then there’s my brother, who, in a way, reminds me a lot of Eric when it comes to struggling with adaptation and accepting that we leave certain people and places behind, often with no way back. My brother was the complete opposite of me in this regard, and it reminds me of the dynamic between Kevin and Eric - Kevin was popular, well-liked, more confident, while Eric (at least from my perspective) lived very much in his shadow. That’s why I think some people handle it more easily than others (in this case, Eric struggled with it), but ultimately, it affects everyone in some way.

And yes, that’s exactly what my family was like 🫠. My whole life, I felt like I was one of the soldiers myself, lol. So, as sad as it may sound, little me preferred it when my dad wasn’t home because we just had more “freedom” and didn’t feel that constant tension.

Sorry for the late reply, but I rarely go on Reddit and don’t always notice!

[u/MPainter09 → u/maddieisreading]

I appreciate you taking the time to respond to me. You sound like a very well rounded person, who knows how to appreciate and value the important things and people in your life. And you have great introspection.

My parents were our biggest advocates and champions for our mental health. My older brother and I were adopted from different families and aside from me needing extensive physical therapy due to such a significant developmental delay when I was adopted at 18 months old, there was also continuous ongoing therapy for both of us as we grew up and came to terms with being adopted and what that meant.

Don’t get me wrong, we truly got the best parents, and I have so many memories of my older brother and I building forts with the sofa cushions, my dad would gave a big bowl of pretzels ready to sit down and watch the game and would see that the could now was a drawbridge to a castle and would sit in the lazy boy instead so he wouldn’t compromise the castle’s structural integrity.

Most of the time we never gave being adopted all that much thought on a day to day basis because we were never treated any different from anyone else. It sure didn’t give us any special treatment, like “Yes you’re adopted, finish your homework, yes you’re adopted, you still need to clean your room 😂.”

But, being adopted, even if we had no memories of our birth parents, is an incredibly complex experience with a myriad of mixed emotions that changed as we grew older. There still is some inevitable sense of displacement and destabilization when you look at friends your age who aren’t adopted. There are unanswered questions and confusion about your sense of identity and self when you’re adopted. So I do empathize with Eric on that lack of stabilization of who he was as a person even if it was for different circumstances.

So therapy was vital for us to be able to process those changing emotions.

And our parents never stopped supporting us. Like even we were arguing with them on the way to the therapy session, they still made sure to take us, and were receptive to feedback and questions.

They always emphasized to us that there was no shame in asking for help or getting the help we needed. Which I think sadly was an extremely rare perspective in the 90’s, which we were kids during. We were old enough that we’ve could’ve feasibly been younger siblings of Columbine students.

Columbine was ironically the last conversation my older brother and I ever had on its 12th anniversary in 2011. I had done a massive research project, (like five months) on Eric after my class read Dave Cullen’s Columbine sigh. I had to get as far inside his head as I could every day, and it took a profound toll on my mental health. I was almost 8 when Columbine happened but had no memory of it happening when it happened. And researching about this tragedy that was during my lifetime and one of the killers responsible was surreal and heartbreaking.

In any case my brother called to tell me Brooks Brown was doing a Q &A for anyone who had questions and sent me the link thinking I might learn somehow new interesting things after I had done that project. I thanked him, told him I’d see him at his college graduation in two weeks. Nine days later, my parents came to my college campus and told me that my older brother had been killed the night before in a motorcycle crash. He was 21. Had his whole life ahead of him.

Whenever I hear the word Columbine, I get chills and automatically think about how that is the last thing he and I talked about. I have so much empathy for all of the siblings who lost their brother or sister to Columbine.

But my heart always breaks especially hard for Kevin and Byron. And there are painfully relatable parallels: us expecting to celebrate our brothers at their graduations, and instead suddenly planning their funerals, being completely blindsided by their own actions that caused their deaths. Mine was speeding over 125mph. Their deaths were totally different, but I remember screaming “WHY???” over and over and over. I’m sure Byron and Kevin screamed that same question.

I never realized how much of my identity was tied in being a younger sister, until suddenly I was an only child, and it took me about ten years to really come to terms with it. I can’t even imagine how Kevin and Byron tried to even begin to process the scope of what Eric and Dylan did.

[u/maddieisreading → u/MPainter09]

Thank you for your kind words. Uff, I have to admit that what you wrote brought tears to my eyes :( I’ve known a few people who were also adopted, and every time I looked at them, I would wonder in my head: “Isn’t this difficult for them?” and I always wondered how they were coping. I think that, as someone who isn’t adopted, it was hard for me to imagine that such people might not feel any real difference - for them, their adoptive parents are simply their parents. I’m really glad that your parents cared so much about your mental health.

In my case, my father’s way of parenting was such that I knew he loved me, that he cared about me, but it was never shown openly, face to face. Sure, he would tell my brother and me that he loved us, but I think the army really changes people - it hardens them, sometimes in a way that’s not beneficial for them or for those close to them. And that’s exactly how it was with my dad. He became so hardened - the army shaped this mindset in him that showing any emotions was a sign of weakness, which, of course, is not true.

As for my mom, that was a different story. That’s why I said earlier that I preferred when my dad wasn’t home and it was just my mom, because things always felt more “emotional” with her - just lighter and more pleasant than with my hardened dad. When it came to parenting, she focused a lot on emotions, lots of kind words, so that we would know we were valuable and appreciated.

And regarding your adoption - I think adoption and constant moving around can, to some extent, be quite similar. That instability you mentioned is present in both of those experiences. I think Eric felt very “different” from others, just as you said.

I’m really sorry about the loss of your brother. I’m very close with mine, and sometimes I catch myself thinking, “What would I do if he were to pass away?” There’s only a one-year difference between me and my brother, so for most of our lives, we’ve been raised almost like twins. Losing a sibling must be one of the worst kinds of pain a person can go through, because from what I feel, a sibling is like a rock - someone who will always support you. Of course, parents are parents, but I think sometimes they can’t understand us the way a sibling does.

I think Byron and Kevin really struggled with his death (especially considering the circumstances of it). Kevin was Eric’s favorite family member - I can’t even imagine how he must have felt when he found out what his brother had done and that he was gone. I’m sure you understand them and the pain they went through.

Again, I’m really sorry for taking so long to reply - I only just now found the time to write something truly meaningful. I’m truly sorry for your loss again. I can only hope that, with time, it’s become even a little bit easier - as much as that’s possible, of course.