"Hate is baggage. Life is too short to be pissed off all the time. It's just not worth it."
-American History X
But I wasn't normal. Inside, I was in agony.
It was in sixth grade when I started to see young couples. My friends began chatting up and dating other girls in school. I tried to do the same, of course, but time and time again, I failed.
Repeated rejection and failure in my romantic life - and my inability to grasp why I kept failing - began to take a toll. It began to change me and my personality.
By the end of sixth grade, I was harboring a festering, brooding resentment. I hated my life. I hated myself. I hated being lonely. But above all, I hated girls. I absolutely hated them with every fragment of my soul. I hated them for rejecting me. I hated them for not being interested in me. I hated them for accepting other boys over me. Hate was becoming a way of life for me, and it was leading me down a dark path.
One day, I wrote the following entry in a diary I kept at the time:
"I don't understand. I have no luck with girls. I have many girls in school I like, but not one seems to like me. It is so unfair! Every other boy I know has a girlfriend, except me!
Why am I so hated??
Why don't they like me??
What is wrong with me??
I wish I could start over from the beginning. If this doesn't get better, then I'll have to"
I wrote that on the evening of May 22, 2013. At the time, I felt like I was the only person on the entire planet with these feelings. I was falling deeper and deeper into a dangerous abyss and I felt like the loneliest person in the whole world.
I had no way of knowing that exactly one year and one day after I wrote that diary entry, a horrific tragedy on the other side of the country would occur at the hands of someone who had spent years in the same agonizing predicament as me. It would change my life forever.
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Elliot Rodger was a young man who came from a background completely different - and yet completely similar - to my own. The son of an esteemed movie director and born into a wealthy family, Elliot Rodger grew up a shy, introverted, and socially-awkward young boy.
Like me, he was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder as a child. Like me, he had a romantic interest in girls when he entered middle school. And like me, his repeated failure at courting women drove him down a deep well of despair and anguish, which ultimately consumed him with jealousy, envy, hatred, and rage.
By the time he was 22 years old, Rodger had gone from a shy, socially-awkward youth to a bitter, angry, and vindictive terrorist, hell bent on venting his rage on the women and young couples he had grown to hate. He wrote a manifesto - entitled My Twisted World - in which he detailed his long-festering hatred of women for rejecting him, and of young couples for being happier than he was. He raged about sexually-active men whom he felt had deprived him of the chance to find happiness with women.
And finally, exactly one year to the day after I had written that entry in my diary, Elliot Rodger posted a final video to his YouTube channel, entitled "Elliot Rodger's Retribution".
In it, Rodger lamented that he had spent the past eight years being "forced to endure an existence of loneliness, rejection, and unfulfilled desires, all because girls have never been attracted to me".
"I'm 22 years old and still a virgin. I've never even kissed a girl", Rodger raged. "In those years, I've had to rot in loneliness. It's not fair! You girls have never been attracted to me. I don't know why you girls aren't attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it!"
Rodger laid out his plans to drive to "the hottest sorority house" in the University of California Santa Barbara, and massacre "every single spoiled, stuck-up, blond slut" that he saw. He further vowed to "take to the streets of Isla Vista and slay every single person I see there". May 23 was, Rodger said, to be his "Day of Retribution" against the society and the people he had grown to despise.
On May 23, 2014, Elliot Rodger ambushed his roommates - 19-year-old Weihan David Wang and 20-year-old Cheng Yuan James Hong - as they entered his apartment. He stabbed his two roommates to death with a nine-inch boar knife and covered their bodies with bedsheets and clothes. A few hours later, 19-year-old George Chen entered the apartment to visit his two friends. He was immediately ambushed by Rodger, dragged into a bathroom, and stabbed 94 times, killing him.
After killing the three men, Rodger changed out of his bloodstained clothes and left his apartment. He drove to a Starbucks, where he purchased a triple-vanilla latte, mailed his manifesto to 34 people, and returned to his apartment to gather his weapons for the rampage that would make him infamous.
Like I did at the time, Elliot Rodger kept a diary. Before leaving, he scrawled one final, vengeful message into its pages: "This is it. In one hour I will have my revenge on this cruel world", he wrote in angry, jagged handwriting. "I HATE YOU ALLLL! DIE!"
Armed with two SIG Sauer P226 pistols and a 9mm Glock 34 pistol, and carrying a full can of gasoline, Rodger drove his black BMW 328i Coupe to the Alpha Phi sorority house. He had surveilled the building for weeks, filming it and noting what times it would be most full of young women.
Rodger approached the door of the sorority house, gas can in hand, pistols on his waist, and carrying over 500 rounds of ammunition. He knocked on the door. There was no response. The door was locked, protected by a passcode. Rodger typed into the keypad, then pulled on the handle. The door wouldn't budge. Furiously, he began pounding and banging on the door, desperate to get inside and exact his revenge. But the sorority girls inside, fortunately, were too wary to open it.
Rodger gave up after about three minutes. Dropping the gas can to the steps of the front door, he returned to his car. His planned massacre at the sorority house had failed. Now, he would target those on the streets.
As Rodger returned to his car, three young women rounded the corner of the Alpha Phi sorority house. They were 19-year-old Veronika Weiss, 22-year-old Katherine Cooper, and 20-year-old Bianca de Kock, members of the rival Delta Delta Delta sorority. The three young women were returning to their sorority house after picking up some drinks.
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As Bianca walked with her two friends, she noticed a black car pull slowly up the road next to her. A dark-haired young man leaned towards the open passenger's-side window. The two made eye contact.
Bianca smiled at the young driver. "Hey!", she greeted him cheerfully.
The driver smiled back. "Hey", he replied slyly.
Bianca looked away, and as she did so, she heard a loud crack and felt something hit her back. Spinning around, Bianca saw the driver again. He wore a sinister sneer on his face, and he had a pistol in his hand pointing right at her.
Before Bianca could react, the driver fired four more rounds in rapid succession at her. The young woman was hit four more times in the arm and chest and fell to the grass, critically wounded. The gunman shifted his aim and fired five more shots, striking Veronika Weiss and Katherine Cooper as they tried to flee. The driver then leaned back into his vehicle, hit the accelerator, and sped off into the night.
Bianca de Kock knew she'd been shot, and she believed she was dying. As she lay bleeding, the young woman managed to reach her phone to call her mother. "I've been shot! I don't know what happened! It's crazy!", she cried over the phone. "I'm going to die! I love you. I love you so much! I'm afraid I'm going to die!"
Bianca de Kock would ultimately survive her injuries. Veronika Weiss and Katherine Cooper would not. As the gunman drove off, a group of bystanders raced to help the young women. One attempted to give Katherine Cooper CPR in a futile attempt to revive her. Another held Veronika Weiss' hand and head, comforting the young woman as she died in his arms.
-
Within two minutes of the shootings outside the Alpha Phi sorority house, Isla Vista Police and sheriff's deputies from the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office began responding to numerous 911 calls reporting an active shooter. A description went out of the suspect and his vehicle; a white man, approximately 20 or 30 years of age, driving a black two-door BMW, armed with a semi-automatic handgun. Officers began setting up a perimeter and cordoning off roads, hoping to contain the gunman so he could be confronted.
But the rampage was far from over.
Elliot Rodger rapidly sped down Embarcadero Del Norte, intending to head to the heart of Isla Vista, where students and other youths had gathered to celebrate the end of the college semester. The killer turned his black BMW onto Segovia Road, made a three-point-turn in a nearby driveway, and began driving at a high rate of speed down Pardell Road towards the Isla Vista Market.
At 9:28PM, a security camera captured Elliot Rodger's BMW as it drove by the Coffee Collaborative cafe. Fortunately, the cafe was unoccupied. The gunman fired a single shot through the building's window before continuing eastbound down Pardell Road towards the IV Deli Mart a few blocks away.
The Deli was packed with young people shopping for late-night snacks. Others lingered outside, chatting with friends and texting on their phones. Plenty of young couples were present, too - an ideal target for the gunman currently rampaging through Isla Vista.
Pulling up to the Deli, Elliot Rodger leaned out of his car window. He fired a shot at a young couple standing near the entrance, but missed.
One of the patrons - 20-year-old Christopher Michaels-Martinez - turned towards the sound of the gunfire. As soon as Christopher turned, Rodger fired a single shot into his chest. Rodger fired three more rounds into the store, shattering the glass windows and forcing the terrified patrons to drop to the floor. as rounds ripped through the air and smashed into the shelves.
Christopher Michaels-Martinez stumbled through the Deli doors and collapsed to the floor. The gunman's bullet had torn through his heart and liver and inflicted a fatal injury. Despite attempts by other patrons to stop the bleeding and call for an ambulance, the 20-year-old man died of his wounds before emergency workers could arrive.
Outside the Deli, armed policemen who had been on routine patrol ran down the street after the shooter's car, shouting at passers-by to take shelter and get off the streets. Police squad cars raced back and forth, searching for the elusive gunman who was wreaking havoc on the peaceful college town.
Elliot Rodger was far from finished. He crossed southbound onto Embarcadero Del Norte towards Trigo Road, driving on the northbound lane. The killer swerved his car onto the sidewalk and rammed a passerby with so much force that the man was catapulted several feet into the air and sent flying into the pavement. Rodger leaned out his window and fired several rounds at the wounded man as bystanders dragged him to safety; fortunately, nobody was hit.
The killer pulled onto Trigo Road and accelerated towards Pizza My Heart, a local pizzeria. As he drove up to the establishment, Rodger spotted a young couple - Aaron Zaglin and Bailey Maples - as they left with their dinner, holding hands.
Hate undoubtedly surged through Rodger's body when he saw the young couple. In his eyes, they surely represented everything he despised. The gunman pulled up alongside the couple and leaned out, flashing an evil smile. Rodger laughed and shouted an unintelligible insult at the pair, then took aim with his pistol and began firing. A round tore through Aaron Zaglin's left arm and exited out his elbow, and as his girlfriend ran for cover, she was grazed in the right arm by another bullet.
Rodger continued rapidly firing at the pair, shattering the windows of the pizza shop, until his gun ran out of ammunition, at which point he sped off and reloaded. Passing by a female cyclist, Rodger fired another five rounds, hitting her once in the thigh.
Rodger pulled onto Del Playa Drive, where several pedestrians - unaware of the carnage that had been left in the gunman's wake - walked obliviously among the shops.
Sierra Swartz and her friend, Hannah Miller, were walking westbound down Del Playa Drive when they heard several distant popping noises. Initially, the pair thought they were fireworks. They walked towards the sounds to investigate.
As the two women walked over to investigate, a black BMW pulled up into the middle of the road alongside them. The driver - a young dark-haired man wearing sunglasses - peeked out. "Hey, what's up?", he casually asked Sierra.
"What's up?", Sierra responded. The suspect flashed a grin, raised a black SIG Sauer pistol to the window, and fired a shot. Sierra felt the wind of the bullet as it passed by her face. For a split second, the young woman froze, stupefied. The gunman fired again, and Sierra snapped out of her stupor. She and Hannah Miller took off running towards a nearby house as the shooter continued firing at them from his car.
Rodger drove after the women and fired three more shots into the house before deciding to abandon his targets. A bystander watched the gunman reload his pistol with a fresh magazine and continue down Del Playa Drive.
Sheriff's Deputy Adrian Marquez was on Del Playa Drive when he heard the gunshots and saw Rodger's black car speed past him. The officer fired a single round from his service weapon at the vehicle as it passed, then ran to his squad car to call for backup.
Rodger pulled onto the 6600 block of Del Playa Drive and pulled onto the sidewalk. He rammed two cyclists with his car, shattering his windshield and sending one of them flying over 50 feet through the air. Rodger then turned and fired multiple shots at a nearby house, striking bystander Christopher Hoang twice in the arm and buttocks. He then swerved into a nearby skateboarder, hitting him and sending him flying through the windshield of a parked car. The gunman then shot at a second skateboarder, Antoine Cherchian, hitting him four times in the back, and shot a third man twice in the thigh and groin. Rodger continued firing out the window at other pedestrians as they took cover behind hedges and parked cars, swerving towards anyone unlucky enough to be too close to the road.
The time was now 9:33. As Rodger turned back onto Embarcadero Del Norte, he came upon a police roadblock manned by four sheriff's deputies. The gunman leaned out of his window and fired five shots from his 9mm SIG Sauer P226 at the officers.
Three of the deputies returned fire at Rodger with their .40-caliber service pistols, firing a barrage of 28 rounds at the gunman's vehicle. One round penetrated the driver's side door and struck Rodger in the hip. The wounded gunman abandoned the firefight and sped off in the opposite direction. Multiple police squad cars raced after him in hot pursuit, sirens and lights blaring.
Rodger knew his rampage was over now. The police had found him, and he knew he couldn't continue his killing spree now that he was being chased. In his manifesto, Rodger had vowed never to be taken alive, and that he preferred to die rather than spend the rest of his life rotting in prison. Now, at the end of his killing spree, he would act on that promise. As Rodger sped down Embarcadero Del Norte, he raised his SIG Sauer pistol to the side of his head and fired one final shot.
The black BMW skidded to the side of the road, striking and injuring another cyclist, before crashing into a parked car, coming to an abrupt stop. The gunman slumped forward against the steering wheel airbag, dead.
Elliot Rodger's rampage had lasted a total of 14 minutes. He had fired a total of 55 rounds. Now, his "Day of Retribution" was over. The hate-fueled, vengeful killing spree had taken the lives of three innocent people and wounded 14 others.
-
On the morning of May 24, 2014, I awoke in my grandparents' house in Schenectady, New York, and went downstairs to read the morning paper. I remember the day vividly; it will never leave my memory.
As I sat down to have breakfast, I picked up the copy of the Schenectady Gazette and read the top story. It was a tale of complete, senseless carnage. Of course, growing up in the United States, I was no stranger to news of mass shootings. But this time, it was different.
"MASSACRE IN ISLA VISTA KILLS SIX, WOUNDS 13", the headline read. The article went on to describe the horrific events that had upended the Isla Vista community and left so many innocent lives utterly destroyed.
But it also talked about the killer. It talked about his history of rejection, loneliness, and anguish at being unable to find a girlfriend. It talked about how his sadness and agony over being romantically rejected had festered into a raging resentment towards women and young couples. And the more I read about Elliot Rodger, the more frightened I became.
By this time in my life, I was 13 years old. Boys my age were very much dating other girls, and I had become all too familiar with seeing young couples holding hands as they walked through the school hallways. My inability to find a girlfriend had similarly left me saddened and bleak, and that sadness, too, was beginning to turn into a bitter, angry resentment towards young couples and girls.
I had acted out on my frustrations several times already. It was sort of an open secret that I didn't like young couples. When I saw them in the hallway holding hands, I would deliberately walk in between them, forcing them to let go of each other. When they stood by their lockers, embracing or kissing each other, I would purposely ram into them as I walked past, giving a sarcastic "Sorry 'bout that" as I did.
I would snarl at them, glare at them, make rude gestures, and spew a variety of threatening and angry insults at their direction. I would openly fantasize about them dying painful deaths. I would fantasize about killing them and punishing them for rejecting me and having what I felt I could and would never have.
Like Elliot Rodger, I, too, was in a dark place, spiraling downward and plummeting further and further into despair. Every day, I dreaded going to school because I knew I would be subjected to the sight of young couples. I would be forced to bear witness to experiences that I could not share, but desperately wanted to share. It was a life of agony, envy, hatred, and self-loathing. And it was the same life that had led Elliot Rodger - and six innocent people - to their doom.
I remember looking at the picture of Elliot Rodger in the newspaper. It was a screenshot from his final video. He had a sly smile on his face, staring into the camera. Looking into his eyes, I felt like he was staring directly at me.
You see?, the picture of Rodger seemed to be saying to me. You're not the only one with these feelings. Soon, it'll be your turn.
I remember how countless thoughts, pictures, questions, and visions went through my head as I read the article. It felt like I was looking at an article not just of the massacre in Isla Vista, but an article documenting my own future. The rage, the anger, the jealousy, envy, resentment, hatred... it was all the same. It was consuming me like it had consumed Elliot Rodger.
Is this my future?, I remember thinking to myself. Is this what's going to happen to me? Is this what my future holds for me?
I knew in my heart what this meant. It was almost like I was being sent a message - a warning of where my mindset would inevitably end. This is the end of the path you are on. This is what will happen to you. Do you really want it to end like this? Do you really want to be the next Elliot Rodger?
I didn't know it then, but the shooting in Isla Vista would serve as one of the most drastic turning points in my life. The carnage that Elliot Rodger wrought on Isla Vista would forever be cemented into the back of my mind - eternally warning me of where my hatred, anger, resentment, envy, and frustration would lead me.
Later, I would learn that there was a term for the mindset I had: Incel.
I've talked about the incel movement before, and my own experience in it. While I was an incel, I never referred to myself as one, as I never had a name for the kind of hateful mindset I was in, but in retrospect I had all of the characteristics of a classic incel. I had been frustrated and angry over being unable to find a girlfriend, had let that anger and frustration build up into jealousy and envy, and then let that jealousy and envy boil over into raw, raging hatred.
Elliot Rodger was not the first incel-type mass murderer, and he would be far from the last. In the ten years since his massacre, dozens of innocent people have been killed or injured by other young men sharing similar resentments. Some of them - most notably Canadian mass murderer Alek Minassian - have adopted Rodger as a sort of incel folk hero, branding him "St. Elliot" and celebrating the anniversary of his "Day of Retribution" as "St. Elliot's Day".
One thing I am eternally grateful for is that, as long as I was an incel, I never once found one of the dozens of online incel forums, which serve as toxic echo chambers that fuel and inflame hatred of women and young couples among bitter and angry young men. Had I found one of those communities, and formed any sort of bond with people who were in the same kind of situation I was in, I am convinced I would not be here writing this piece today. I am positive - absolutely POSITIVE - that I would be dead. And when I say that's the most positive outcome of where the path I was on was leading me, I mean it.
The massacre in Isla Vista did not end my time in the incel movement overnight. One thing you should know about hatred; it's very difficult to get rid of. It consumes you. It binds itself to you. It envelops your soul and twists your mind. It steals everything from you - time, friendships, opportunities, everything. It is truly a cancer of the mind, and like a cancer it is very, very hard to cure.
Yet in the back of my mind, Elliot Rodger remained a constant warning. I feared him. I feared I could turn into him. I wanted so desperately to get out of the incel movement, but try as I could, I just wasn't able to.
I remained in the incel movement throughout middle school and into high school. More and more boys in my grade began dating girls. When I entered high school, I began learning of other boys in my grade losing their virginity. It only served to make me even more angry. Here I was, a normal teenage boy interested in girls just like them, and yet I continued to wallow in my own self-pity, lonely, angry, and convinced that the entire world was out to get me.
When I was 15, I wrote a manifesto of my own. It was incoherent, rambling, histrionic, and full of hate - the same kind of hate that consumed Elliot Rodger. I titled it The Inherent Selfishness of Females.
"I have never met any group of people as selfish, as sadistic, and as brutal as females. They truly will tear you to pieces, not caring who they trample over on their path", I wrote.
"I see these couples every day I go into school, and I hate them. I hate all of them. I hate them more than anything else in my entire life. I would rather die in agony a thousand times than see these people have what they do not deserve, and obtain what I cannot. When I see them, I want to hit them, to beat them, to give them the same pain they cause me every single day. I feel nothing but a burning rage every time I lay eyes on a young couple. I absolutely hate them. I wish they would all die. The very thought of them makes me want to vomit."
As I said, hatred - when left unchecked - becomes all-consuming. If my writings from the time sound similar to what Elliot Rodger had professed, it's because they are similar. I was going down the same path he went down. At times, I had moments of lucidity. At times, I self-reflected and would ask myself What are you doing? What are you doing with your life? Don't you remember what happened to Elliot Rodger? Do you realize what will happen if you don't change?
But most of the time, I didn't care. I rationalized my hatred and envy. I justified it, saying that, if anything happened, any future victims of my wrath would have it coming.
I turned against longtime friends who had girlfriends, shunning them and branding them as sworn enemies. I vilified girls as irredeemable subhumans, incapable of rational thought and conspirators in a vast, indescribable plot against me. Hate, rage, and resentment had taken over my life.
The age of 16 was perhaps the worst moment of my time as an incel. By this point, I'd lived the past four years in a vengeful, resentful, and envious state of mind. I felt like I was being wronged by not having a girlfriend by 16. I felt like the entire world was out to get me. In my mind, if the world was out to get me, I would have to strike first.
I did many things that year that I am utterly ashamed of. Horrible things. Horrible thoughts. Horrible actions. About a month after I turned 16, I did perhaps the worst thing I have ever done in my entire life.
I will not speak of it here. It hurts me to even think about it. It was the one and only time my hatred of girls manifested into victimizing someone else, and to this day I am haunted by it. I am still wrought with anguish, guilt, and sorrow over what I did, and no matter how sorry I feel about it, I know there will never be any way to take it back. No matter how far I have come since then, the guilt of that will stay with me for the rest of my life.
That is all I am going to say about that.
But through all this, the memory of what happened in Isla Vista always remained ever-present. As much as I was consumed with hate, the fear of my life ending like Elliot Rodger's was a major factor in keeping me from falling past the point of no return.
But it wasn't just fear. Even in my darkest times, there were those who stood by me. Close friends who understood my pain, extended a helping hand, and helped guide me out of the darkness. Friends and family who kept me tethered to this world, and gave me something worth living for. They listened to my angry ramblings and my hateful rants, and crucially, instead of turning me away or shunning me, they empathized with me. They gave me the compassion and empathy I was incapable of giving others. They gave me reason to keep fighting, to find a way out of the hell I had landed myself into.
I credit them with saving my life. Some of them don't even know how big of a role they played in saving me. I will forever owe the rest of my life to them.
Gradually, I slowly began pulling back from the abyss. I slowly began to realize that there was more to life than teen romance, and that as much as I felt like I had been wronged by women, in the end it was my own inaction, lack of confidence, and aberrant personality that was responsible for my predicament.
I won't say it was easy to leave. It wasn't. It took a very, very long time, and required years upon years of sustained efforts to improve myself. I had to step out of my comfort zone, to learn to take risks and, yes, to learn how to take failure. Failure is a part of life as much as success is. What's important is that you learn from your failures.
Shortly before I turned 18, I left the incel mindset behind. The hatred no longer controlled me. The anger was no longer at the forefront of my mind. The rage and the jealousy and the envy were no longer in control of my life.
But they lingered. As proud as I was - and I was proud of how far I'd come - about leaving the incel movement, when you live a life stooped in hatred and rage for six years, it becomes a part of you. It was still there. Dormant, perhaps, but still there. And I would continue to get reminders of it. Every time I saw a young couple, the intense - yet brief - flash of rage that surged through my mind reminded me it was still there. When I heard other boys my age talk about how they lost their virginity in high school, the raging - yet instantaneous - feeling of envy and bitterness reminded me it wasn't over yet.
I still struggle with that. One thing I learned after leaving the incel movement was that it never fully goes away. I may not be controlled by it anymore, but it's still part of me. It's still there. It's dormant. It's repressed. It's been sequestered deep in my conscience, kept out of my life. But still, it lives.
I've often been asked about how I left the incel movement. The truth is, there is no clear answer. Perhaps I outgrew it. Perhaps I had learned to live in spite of it. Perhaps I realized it didn't have to control my life.
But one thing I did know was this, and it is by far the most important life lesson I have taken away from my time in and out of the incel movement:
Hatred is a progressive disease. If you relapse, you will pick up where you left off.
Until recently, though I had left the incel movement, the fear of a "relapse" was still ever-present in my mind. The fear was constant, almost as consuming as the hatred had once been. Despite no longer being an incel, the fear of having my heart broken and potentially falling back into it - picking up where I had left off - was a major obstacle in my attempts to start a romantic or social life. I still feared rejection. I still feared failure. I still feared what would happen if I made a mistake.
Though hate no longer controlled my life, fear most certainly did.
And it wasn't until last week that I finally realized that.
I still can't explain what happened to me last week. It was as if someone had turned a switch on in my mind. Perhaps the combined stress of my final classes caused my mind to snap somehow. Perhaps my mind simply couldn't stand being afraid anymore. Or maybe even it was some higher power, gifting me the knowledge and the courage to overcome the fear that had consumed my life as much as hatred once did.
Whatever it was, when I awoke on Friday, May 17th, 2024, I had one of the most drastic epiphanies I have ever had in my life. It was like everything suddenly made sense to me. It was like I finally knew what to do and how not only to stay out of the incel movement, but to leave it behind for good.
I remember looking in the mirror and thinking to myself, addressing the incel part of me that had been dormant for so long. You took six years of my life away. You stole countless opportunities and memories from me. You tried to take me down. And you've spent the past five years trying to pull me back. I will never get that lost time back, but I swear before God Himself that you will never get the chance to hurt me again. Your time is over, and I will never let you take one more second away from my life. Not one more second.
For the first time in my life, I felt as if I had conquered fear. I was no longer afraid. I was no longer living in fear of relapsing, or being scared of failure or rejection.
Leaving hate behind was only half the battle. Leaving fear behind was the final - and most important - step in moving forward from the incel movement. And for the first time that I could remember, I felt truly, completely free.
I began talking to girls in my area. I began messaging them, conversing with them, and overcoming my shyness and anxiety that had for so long inhibited my ability to talk to them. I was direct. I wasn't afraid of rejection anymore. It was something I would have to live with, and if I wasn't willing to experience it, then I would never be able to leave my fear behind.
On May 21, 2024 - after only four days of going outside my comfort zone and taking a bold risk I never before thought I had the courage to take - my efforts finally paid off. I accomplished what I had been trying to do for 11 years, and what people like Elliot Rodger had never been able to do.
I lost my virginity.
And with it, the incel movement lost its final grasp on my life.
Of course, the possibility of a relapse is still ever present. I've often said that being an incel is more than being a virgin. It's a mindset. It's a disease. It's an illness and affliction that twists the soul and destroys lives. The incel part of me may be severely diminished in strength, little more than a bad memory of a bad time, but it will always be there in some form.
But for the first time in my life, I'm no longer afraid of it. I'm no longer a slave to it. I'm no longer a pawn. I no longer live in the shadow of my past. I am finally free of the incel movement.
And today - ten years to the day after the hate-fueled massacre in Isla Vista - for the first time in my life, I can truly, honestly say that I, too, am finally free of Elliot Rodger.
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In Loving Memory:
Veronika Weiss, 19
Katherine Cooper, 22
Christopher Michaels-Martinez, 20
George Chen, 19
Cheng Yuan Hong, 20
Weihan Wang, 20
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