George Sodini

George Sodini is the man who shot up a gym club recently.

The big news online is his journal which goes back a year. The journal is raw. You’ve been warned.

As I read the journal, I was amazed at just how raw it is. It’s like a raw stream of data from his mind, somewhat random but close to the bone on the topics it does touch on.

George Sodini’s thoughts about women are disturbed but mirror, or mimic, the jocular jokes spoken around arena change rooms by teenagers or twenty-somethings. George Sodini was 48. His mental age doesn’t match his physical age.

Some of his thoughts are piercing. One thing he keeps bringing up is his inability to change his situation.

I know nothing will change, no matter how hard I try or what goals I set.

Looking back over everything, what bothers me most is the inability to work towards whatever change I choose.

No matter how many changes I try to make, things stay the same.

The future holds even less than what I have today.

I predict I won’t survive the next layoff. That is when there is no point to continue. RIght now, life is bearable and I can get by indefinitely. Something bad must happen. The paycheck is all I have left. The future holds nothing for me. Twenty five years of nothing fun. I never even spent one weekend with a girl in my life, even at my own place. Also unlikely to find another similar job. I guess then is when I take care of things. I don’t have kids, close friends or anything. Just me here. If you have nothing, you have nothing to lose.

Some people are happy, some are miserable. It is difficult to live almost continuously feeling an undercurrent of fear, worry, discontentment and helplessness. I can talk and joke around and sound happy but under it all is something different that seems unchangable and a permanent part of my being.

I need to expect nothing from me or other people. All through the years I thought we had the ability to change ourselves – I guess that is incorrect. Looking at The List makes me realize how TOTALLY ALONE, a deeper word is ISOLATED, I am from all else.

I no longer have any expectations of myself. I have no options because I cannot work toward and achieve even the smallest goals. That is, ABOVE ALL, what bothers me the most. Not to be able to work towards what I want in my life. I believe I am deserve that. I read recently it is called “self efficacy”, but who knows. Is that more psychobable?

As I read more, there’s a crazy sense of American Beauty here, only twisted in another direction.

Many of the young girls here look so beautiful as to not be human, very edible.

This type of life I see is a closed world with me specifically and totally excluded. Every other guy does this successfully to a degree. Flying solo for many years is a destroyer.

My dad never (not once) talked to me or asked about my life’s details and tell me what he knew.

Don’t know why, find it fun talking to young kids when I visit someone. Brother was actually counter-productive and would try to embarase me or discourage my efferts when persuing things, esp girls early on (teen years). Useless bully. Result is I am learning basics by trial and error in my 40s, followed by discuragement. Seems odd, but thats true.

I have been in barrooms and church groups. The worst people by far are the religious types. Especially a right-wing, stiff-faced fundie like Andy. A condescending, demeaning, passive-aggresive person. Frigid, rigid, linear and totally inflexible. Being a very serious person, he cannot hide his frown-lined face. He better not try to smile; lest his face might crack. I knew children of parents who grew up in strict religious homes. Religion has a certain stink to it of guilt, shame, fear, and that moral standard that always contradicts the natural tendencies and desires of a person. Therin lies the conflict. Young person cannot experiment with things to decide on their own and establish their own parameters. So they tend to cut loose and really rebel much worse than the average young person.

How can someone be cold, vicious, sarcastic and generally nasty ALL THE TIME and then make the claim about their church life and how good they are? Total hypocritical idiots.

I see twenty something couples everywhere. I see a twenty something guy with a nice twentyish young women. I think those years slipped right by for me. Why should I continue another 20+ years alone? I will just work, come home, eat, maybe do something, then go to bed (alone) for the next day of the same thing. This is the Auschwitz Syndrome, to be in serious pain so long one thinks it is normal.

Life is over. Even though I look good, dress well, well groomed – nails, teeth, hair, etc. Who knows.

I like to write and talk. Ironic because I haven’t met anybody recently (past 30 years) who I want to be close friends with OR who want to be close friends with me. I was always open to suggestions to what I am doing wrong, no brother or father (mine are useless) or close friend to nudge me and give it bluntly yet tactfully wtf I am doing wrong. A personal coach or someone who knows what he is doing would be perfect. Money is highly secondary for a solution.

I am feeling to good to do carry this out, but too bad to enjoy ANYTHING. My life’s dilema.

Another lonely Friday night, I’m done. This is too much.

I guess some of us were simply meant to walk a lonely path. I have slept alone for over 20 years. Last time I slept all night with a girlfriend it was 1982. Proof I am a total malfunction.

The biggest problem of all is not having relationships or friends, but not being able to achieve and acquire what I desire in those or many other areas. Everthing stays the same regardless of the effert I put in. If I had control over my life then I would be happier. But for about the past 30 years, I have not

It’s very difficult to say something adequate to this grotesquely honest monologue.

The truth is these thoughts are very familiar to many people. The difference is most of these people live in a hopelessness that doesn’t cross the line into violence.

I was very interested in Sodini’s take on Andy Pulkowski, a Christian, who Sodini felt was a fraud. Many, many people see Christians in that light. The more conservative Christians, especially, are thought to be fakes, see-through, preaching but not practicing. This has been a problem throughout all history but I think institutions like the roman catholic church, or protestant denominations, or sects encourage this cold, heartless perception.

George Sodini was a man who had all the material things this world tells us we need. He discovered in actual fact what everybody knows academically.

Despite the failures of mankind to live up to and to communicate Jesus’s love for us, the truth still remains. Jesus loved you so much that he sacrificed himself for your sins so that you could find the one thing that makes you whole.