A Columbine of the mind
Sol Pais's journal: an examination
Note: this article is a continuation of my previously published article, “Sol Pais’s Columbine Pilgrimage,” which itself is a thematic continuation of the article which preceded it, “My Columbine Pilgrimage.”
Sol Pais’s blog (which, interestingly, is still posted, five years after her death) is peculiar, enigmatic, and fascinating in numerous ways.
Hosted by neocities.org, under the title “Dissolved Girl,” it is divided into five sections: an intro page, an “about me” page, a “my music” page, a “links” page, and a “my journal” page.
On the “intro” page, which contains links to the other four sections of the blog, a grim reaper bathed in neon orange wields its scythe menacingly. Sol has written, “I want to leave a record of myself, before I, well…” One is led to the conclusion by the placement of these ellipses that she plans to die, though her disinclination to state this directly comes across as somewhat oddly evasive, even slightly coy.
The “about me” page features a photo of an adorable, brown-haired, solemn-faced little girl of about six (presumably Sol herself) wearing a white gown, looking mentally preoccupied. The pic bears the caption, “in this tiresome reality that I do not belong in, I take the form of Sol.”
The “my music” and “links” pages reveal a penchant for 90s popular culture and early-internet aesthetics. Her favorite bands all seem to be 90s staples: Deftones, Korn, Alice In Chains, Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, Smashing Pumpkins and others, including KMFDM, the German electronic thrash act that was so beloved by Harris and Klebold. (The very name “Dissolved Girl” is derived from a 1998 song by Massive Attack.)
The “links” indicate an interest in the conspiratorial and the occult. There is even a link to “a spiritual satanism resource” webpage called joyofsatan.org. But the true substance of the blog is undoubtedly Sol’s “journal.”
Strikingly, all of the entries are photocopied from a notebook, and seemingly written in pen. The pages are littered with illustrations of various kinds. The first one that greets the viewer is a picture of a pistol firing a bullet, with the accompanying words, “being alive is fucking overrated.”
The first entry, dated May 27 (2018), sets the overall tone:
hit with a discomfort that I can’t shake off, that I can’t turn off. not disillusionment, it’s… there’s something wrong. it’s in the air and I can’t shake it off. something’s wrong with the time, this time. supposed to be another… don’t know why I’m here and not there.
Later, in a June 1 entry, she writes:
I think I’m losing my mind… weird things happening every day… I’ve been wishing to go back in time to my reality… I don’t feel out of place for no reason. I think… life messed up, glitched. I’m not supposed to be here now. not in a depressing ‘oh I’m not supposed to be alive’ way, more like my existence was misplaced in time…. I have discovered that I am not at home.
Time and again, Sol emphatically expresses the firmly-held conviction that she has somehow been deposited into the wrong place, at the wrong time, and asserts that she belongs elsewhere.
I know I’m stuck in the wrong reality so I guess nothing I do really matters.
Again and again I encountered discrepancies in my life and my life only— things that nobody else saw or experienced. I could just fucking sense that something was off. I always knew. I was a fucking child and I knew. You don’t even realize how traumatizing it is to be a child and feel the wrong-ness of your existence… I’ve had to live like this my whole life.
There is virtually nothing I can do to convince anybody of the nature of the pain that I'm in: that I'm not fucking depressed, I am fucking miserable that I'm not where I'm supposed to be.
There is one comfort, however, that Sol entertains: that, through recourse to some never-discussed method, she can find a way back to the place where she truly belongs:
The one thing that can motivate me anymore is knowing that the steps I take may bring me back, take me where I’m supposed to be. That is the only thing I am willing to use my waning energy on, and I will get there. Mark my words, I will get there.
Some may be tempted to dismiss such a perspective as mere dime-a-dozen teenage angst, but in Sol’s case, the source of intense alienation seems far-removed from any actual life struggles. She never mentions things like homework, teachers, friends, enemies, “frenemies,” classmates, dates, or parents. There are no descriptions of events like school dances, final exams, spring break, or summer vacation.
Though she occasionally mourns being misunderstood by others, or fulminates against the “stupidity” of people, or expresses how tiresome she finds the hypocrisies of the “progressive” milieu wherein she dwells (“living in quite a liberal place and going to quite a liberal school… it's not about acceptance here, you can only be different if you're cool and trendy… more liberalism does not equal less stupidity”), she never mentions anyone specific, either for good or for ill… with one striking, but quite enigmatic, exception.
In an entry from June 21, Sol writes:
This life is the most painful thing I could ever have lived through. The anger and sadness I’ve had to feel has been otherworldly and terrible, but I would do it all over again if it meant I’d be with _____. I would live through it all… learn everything again, feel everything again… would do it all in a fucking heartbeat if it meant I could be with _____ the way it’s supposed to be…. I would go through immense amounts of pain for him… at the end of the day, without fail, it is all worth it because I get to love _____. I get to have the honor, the blessing, to love him, and for him to love me back is just… the greatest pleasure, the greatest bliss I could ever have, in any universe, in any reality,
Sol continues to wax rhapsodic about this mystery lover (whose name she always covers with liquid paper), a man with whom she claims to have established some semblance of contact, to the point where he even imparts encouraging messages to her:
I thank the stars every fucking day that I know he loves me. Every time he says it to me, I feel new, I feel ok, content, in the most intense way. I could never fully explain what goes on inside me when he tells me he loves me. My heart and my fucking soul melt into euphoria and the only thing I can think and feel is that I am so grateful for ____. I will never let him go. Everything he has done for me, with or without him realizing it, has made me, me. I only found myself because of him. The only cure to my loneliness is him. When I need someone to turn to, he is there. I will always think of him, and love him… with every fucking inch of my being entirely, for eternity— there is no changing that. I may be highly insecure of my emotions, but for once I truly know that fate has put me in his hands, that fate put him in mine. I will always know (“believe” is scratched out) that I know it with a sureness nobody can ever challenge.
She wraps up this swoony passage with a direct address to her beloved: “I do everything for you, _____. and that will always bring me happiness.” Next to a drawing of a heart, she adds, “PS, I really hope you see this, ____. Please read this!”
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There is something curiously heartening about seeing this desperately sad, deeply frustrated “dissolved girl” suddenly express such jubilant sentiments-- it is even rather charming to witness her effusing so shamelessly— acting, for once, just like a “typical” lovesick teenager.
However, one cannot help but feel disconcerted by the question: for whom exactly does Sol feel such intense affection and devotion, and why?
And further: why did this “love” she felt, coupled with her intransigent sense of depersonalized alienation, lead her to travel across the country to the town where Columbine High School is located, only to purchase a rifle, obtain transport to the a mountain wilderness, then, in utter isolation, shoot herself in the head at the tender age of 18?
(to be continued)
Andy Nowicki is the author of several books, most recently The Insurrectionist, Muze, and Love and Hidden Agendas, as well as the just-published The Rule of Wrath. Visit his YouTube channel.
How horrible. In the Catholic Middle Ages, before the "Reformation," suicides were close to nonexistent. Maritain, in "Three Reformers," detailed how despair set in after Luther's revolt and suicides and other social maladies rose. Most of the late 1960s hippies who went to Haight-Ashbury and Woodstock also were young Catholics who lost their way after Vatican II.