In 1990 or 1991, in eighth grade, “Luke” (a pseudonym) started wearing all black. He had worn mostly black for a while, but I can remember him, that year, finally phasing out a bright red sweater and a green-and-white-striped shirt.

That was around the time we became friends, in algebra class, since we were seated next to one another. Our algebra teacher – Mr. Booth, let’s call him – was a bigoted blowhard. That’s simply an unassailable statement, I think, although it feels odd to say so because Mr. Booth also had his moments of kindness. But, for example, Mr. Booth routinely made fun of any non-anglo names — whether belonging to students in his class or characters in word problems. A word problem about a boy named Jorge prompted a long rant about how “they should just call their Georges George.” Also, every time he came across an error in the text book he would say, “You know that’s because of all the women on the editorial board, don’t you?” Once, in the middle of one of these rants, Mr. Booth was seized by an idea he found hilarious: “Hey!” he said to the class, snickering. “Let’s make a list of all the things women are good at. Hang on, let me get a little piece of paper…” whereupon he tore off a tiny, tiny corner of a sheet of paper, and laughed and laughed.

But back to Luke. Luke did not sit in the middle, in the rugby-shirt-wearing clump of incipient jocks who were Mr. Booth’s cheering section and party base. Luke sat on the ignored edges, and so did I, and we both found the class tiresome, and that’s how we began to be friends. We ended up having a lot of math classes together, on into high school. Once the math teacher – a different math teacher – had everyone switch desks, and I wound up where Luke had been sitting. That’s where I saw that he had written “I [heart] Sarah.” Meaning me. That was Luke: someone who at sixteen wore all black, cut himself, and loved fire and knives, and also someone who would draw a little heart on a desk because of a crush.

We left for different colleges and then started dating long distance. We clung to each other the way lonely misfit eighteen-year-olds do, albeit mostly over the phone and with a few visits, plus winter and summer breaks. And then we broke up, unremarkably, and then lost touch in the way that high school friends lose touch. A decade later he ended up marrying another one of our high school crowd, “Leah.” She wasn’t one of my very closest high school chums, since we were in different grades and never had classes together. But we were part of the same group of smart kids who did various activities together and hung out at Denny’s.

So when I heard she and Luke were married, four or so years ago, I dropped her a line to reconnect over email. She responded pleasantly and generously. It sounded like they were doing well. She was teaching, and had a masters degree (maybe two?) No surprise: she had always been accomplished, poised, attractive, terribly bright, and hilarious. In high school I’d been a bit jealous of her.

Luke, Leah, and their baby daughter are all dead. Just a couple of years ago he killed Leah, quite violently. And then killed their daughter, less violently. The next day, according to the inquest, murders still undetected, he went to work, ran some errands, and came home and tried to set fire to the house. Then, when the fire trucks roared in, he took off in his car — crashing it into another parked vehicle on purpose, killing himself.

What am I supposed to say about the shock and anger that followed? Hadn’t this been someone who, in high school, cut himself, dressed all in black, had attempted suicide and run away, played with fire, shoplifted, and liked weapons? (Yes, but he also drew hearts on desks and made mix tapes.) What the hell did we think he would grow up to be? (I had thought a dentist, since that’s what he was in school for.) Why didn’t someone do something? (I can only speak about the early/mid-1990s, which let’s remember was pre-Columbine, but people did do things: he saw a psychiatrist, those who loved him were worried, the school took some steps to help him address his depression after his suicide attempt.)

In the coverage of the Tucson shooting, I’ve heard words like “madman” and “disturbed” and “monster” used to describe Jared Loughner. And, you know, I suppose that’s one of those things that human communities do. After one of us does something so heinous, spurred on by motivations so inscrutable, the rest of us perform our rites and recite our laments, and remind ourselves of who it’s not okay to be.

I mean, the killer’s way of being a person has now resulted in the desperately unfair deaths of people who were very loved. The killer’s way of being a person could destroy us all if it became a typical way of being a person. And so we ritually gesture, pointing backwards toward what the person was (all along! we seem to think) becoming. And we say: This can’t be how people are, ever. You can’t be broken in the way where you end up, one day, thinking it would be a good idea to kill a bunch of people because you’re angry or scared. You can’t even be on your way to being that sort of a person, because that sort of a person is not really a person. Such a person is a madman, a monster, and plainly has been (we confidently proclaim) for a long time. After all, who but a madman or a monster would grow up to do such a thing?

And from there it’s easy enough to conclude that, gee, maybe nobody with a mental illness should be able to buy guns when it’s legal for other people to do so. Or to raise the question of whether at some point “you say this person shouldn’t be a part of any community and we have a responsibility to do something about that?”.

Except: shouldn’t be part of any community? No. Even if that were compassionate or just, it wouldn’t be possible. Enough other people have written, better than I would, about how othering and ableist it is to somberly intone, particularly if one is not a mental health expert, “This was the act of a mentally ill person, a deeply disturbed individual.” As though that actually explains anything, for one, and as though mental illness equals propensity to violence. (Here are a couple of the most thoughtful such posts that I’ve seen.)

That’s exactly right. But I suppose what I’m talking about is the desire – not unrelated, obviously – to excommunicate people from the human community after the fact, because it makes us feel safer to think “they” were never one of “us” to begin with. Which is ridiculous, but mass delusions are meant to provide consolations other than truth. Look, obviously, people who do these things are “one of us.” Obviously “they” are in “our” communities. Jared Loughner drank in a culture which treats implausible conspiracy theories like respectable intellectual positions. Luke and Leah and their baby lived in a culture where being different meant you were probably bad in some way; and in which men were supposed to be powerful and and invulnerable, and oh, incidentally, power means domination. I live in that culture too. So, probably, do you. It hasn’t made me physically violent. Is that a credit to me? I’m not a man, although I’ve been depressed in my life. Many men drink in that culture and don’t commit violent acts. Did that culture “make” Luke, or Jared Loughner, violent? What would that mean? How could one begin to answer such a question?

By getting degrees in criminal psychology, I suppose. But for the rest of us, the non-experts, the ones – appropriately – sending up wails of lament and trying to figure out how we can prevent this in the future: surely, at some point, we shall have to contend with the fact that we can’t kick people out of the human community in retrospect. I’m not saying that I don’t think we should do so; I’m not singing a hymn here about that great web of life that connects all of us, nor am I making any claims about there being a little bit of good in every person. I’m saying: this is how it is. We’re here. We’re involved with and vulnerable to each other, and very often that’s essential to our happiness and survival. And very often it’s heartbreaking, unfair, unacceptable, and deadly. And complicated. I hope that, after a bit of time, that’s where we all get — rather than moving on by getting distracted, while meanwhile hanging on to spiteful and ill-informed opinions about people with mental illnesses or people who own guns. I don’t know where we go after that. But I hope it can be our next stop.