This morning I’m gutted. I couldn’t take anymore. I was feeling so emotional about 19 kids getting gunned down in their elementary school in Texas yesterday. I finally felt it was my duty to tell my kids before another kid shared the news with them about school shootings. So for the first time I told my own girls how some kids go to school and don't come home.
All the while thinking I should be recording this because this is disgusting. The innocent eyes, the gentle questions. The sheer clarity of how obscene it sounds. I agree with them whole-heartedly. This is our world, this is America, and it’s not OK.
I told them that the drills that they do at school are drills for this situation - they hadn’t really known that before now. I told them that the person who did this in Texas was sick and, when they asked, I told them yes he was dead, a police officer shot him.
A didn’t want to go to school. M asked if we could go now. I’m not quite sure which is more disturbing in the face of this: the desire to just shut down or resolve and resilience.
I can’t believe this has been repeating itself since Columbine - that moment still so fresh in my mind. All the parents, family, and friends who have gone through this each day since they’ve lost a loved one.
We are all victims here. We are all entrenched in damaged communities and I have no misjudgments that some communities have been surging for years because of decades of disproportionate resourcing. But still it indicates sickness in our streets.
I had to tell them it’s not just in schools. It happens in grocery stores and places of worship, it happens at concerts, it happens in yoga studios, the list goes on and on. What the fuck is wrong with us?