I was working on a post about when I was kid, and about how the kid version of me perceived things much differently than the grown-up me, but it makes me sad and I don't want to post it right now.
I have a seven year old daughter and several other seven and six year-old kids were murdered a few days ago, and it's really made me sick, and angry and sad. I don't understand the motives behind school shootings, especially when it involves adults going into schools that they are not affiliated with.
I was senior in a high school in Colorado in 1999, and I remember when those kids at Columbine killed all those other kids. I remember how panicked my Australian and Illinoisan relatives were when they kept trying to call to see if I was a student at Columbine and couldn't get through for hours because that's what everyone else's relatives were doing and it overloaded the phone system. I didn't go there, my school was a few miles away and in a different district.
My sixth-hour period was open and my friend Sean and I decided to skip our seventh (and last) hour and just go home. We had heard some kind of rumor that a kid shot another kid at a school nearby, but no one knew the extent of it. Soon after we left, they locked down our school.
Sean and I went to my house, sat on the couch with my mom and watched the coverage for hours. No one knew if the murderers were still in there killing people, or had barricaded themselves in and were waiting for the cops to come in so they could mow them down too. Was anyone still alive? How many people had died? Were there bombs? It was chaotic and terrible.
Everyone was shaken and crushed. We were all scared and confused and didn't know how things were supposed to be now. The future was now filled with scary uncertainty instead of 'this is the way the world works' security. We stumbled blindly, trying to find out where this dark new path would go, fearful that it couldn't possibly be anywhere safe and kind.
But you know what the worst part was? The worst part was that it happened again. And again. And again. And our hearts and minds were broken over and over, and our dark path kept splintering and veering off onto bumpier and more twisted trails.
Some people are calling for less guns, or no guns. Some say there should be more guns. More mental health awareness and funding. More this, less of that. All I know is that I didn't think the nation's collective heart could break this heavily quite like this again, and nothing will be the same from now on, no matter what we do.
Sorry, guys, but I'm pretty sad right now. I'll post something with some degree of my usual normalcy when I can think of an acceptable topic.
Happy Holidays.
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