Omar Mateen has killed 49 people—the most people who have ever been killed in a mass shooting in the US. I have an idea of why this man might have killed all of these people, and I believe that nobody else has thought about Omar Mateen in the same way. Omar had been going to this gay club for three years before he killed all of these gay men. People have also told newspapers that he was always very, very drunk each time he was in the club. His divorced wife told newspapers that he would hurt her, quite a lot of the time that they were together.
People seem to think that he had always hated men who love men, and that he was waiting for the right time to kill gay men because he hated gay men the most of all people in the world. This might have been the case, but I have another idea for this man’s problem in his mind. He might have been a gay man himself, but he of course wasn’t able to be out and be completely Muslim at the same time. So, he tried to have a wife, but that may have only confirmed to himself that he was gay and hated that he couldn’t do what he wanted to do; which was to have a boyfriend instead of a wife. Most religions are not happy with the idea of gay people being in the world and doing what they do naturally. He couldn’t live without the ideas of Muslim living, because that was such a colossal part of him from his childhood into his adult life. Many of us know the struggle to live as a the person who isn’t the true person that we really are.
He was going to this club for three years before he killed 49 people. If he hated gay men so much, wouldn’t he kill them sooner? It didn’t need three years of seeing the same things, men kissing each other and touching each other. That was maybe the problem, that he couldn’t do what all of these other men could do; and that he thought he would never be able to have want the other people in this club had. Perhaps the idea of being gay and Muslim was far too much for him to think, but he must have thought about it every day, which would make anybody a little bit crazy than if they could just to what they want.
Perhaps this is why he killed all of these people, because he knew that he could never have what they had. He was one of them, but he wasn’t one of them. He couldn’t tell his family, his divorced wife, or any friends the truth about him. Was this why he was at this club for three years? He may have thought about each time that he would try to kiss a man, but he never could. The idea of doing such a thing was too much, so he was there but not doing what he wanted to do.
He may have tried Grindr. Possibly looking for sex, or he might have been telling as many people as possible to change themselves. Maybe he wanted all of gay men to have the problem he had: not being the person that he truly was..
In the end, maybe he just wanted as many of them to be dead; just like how he felt inside of himself.
Christopher Twist is a suspension artist and author. His book Anathema is available at Amazon.com
