Things are beginning to hit a little too close to home.
I distinctly remember the Columbine shootings. I was ten years old, and it was my sister's sixth birthday. I was fascinated in a way that only little kids can be about something so gruesome. I didn't understand what it meant. I knew we had family in Colorado. We had vacationed there two years before, and were planning a trip for that very summer. That didn't bother me, for some reason. I wasn't scared. I remember feeling like that could never happen to me, to the people I know.
Flash forward to high school. I was barely sixteen when the school shootings at Red Lake High School in northern Minnesota happened. I remember thinking... I'm in high school. That guy is my age. What... what is happening to the world?
Then, in April of 2007, I was two months shy of graduating from high school, of leaving home to go to Michigan for four years of college. And someone opened fire at Virginia Tech. The silliest of thoughts popped into my mind - Oh. I thought that it was only high schools where people were losing their shit. Now it's colleges too? Will I ever be safe?
I could keep going. Last summer, I was in Colorado when someone opened fire at the midnight showing of the newest Batman movie. A lot of my friends are elementary school teachers now, which is all I could think of when someone shot and killed students at Sandy Hook Elementary School. I run four or five days a week with dreams of qualifying for the Boston Marathon, and that was targeted with bombs in the spring.
I love movies. I work at a university. I run. Should I be afraid to do these things? When I am handed a ticket stub at a theater, should I say a prayer that it isn't the last thing I do? When I turn my key in the lock at work in the morning, should I be telling my family how much I love them? When I wake up before the sun rises to get to the starting line of a race I've been training for for months, should I be kissing my boyfriend goodbye, possibly forever?
These are things that I shouldn't have to think about. It's too close to home, for me.
But it has gotten worse, if that's even possible.
Yesterday, I was walking to work, be-bopping along past TCF Bank Stadium, checking my email on the way. When I opened up the CNN Breaking News email, I faltered.
No. This can't be.
I was sent back three years, to the summer I spent in Washington DC. My memories of that summer are scattered, chaotic - I hardly slept, I wore heels everyday, I ended a relationship, I had a military intern ID. I was a Summer 2010 Naval Criminal Investigative Service Intern in the Biometrics Department, stationed in the Washington Navy Yard. I couldn't even walk through the front gate with headphones in my ears. How did someone get automatic weapons inside? How did this happen?
I am still Facebook friends with most of my fellow interns from that summer, and I knew that one of them had been stationed back in the Navy Yard. My heart sank. I logged into Facebook as I approached the busiest intersection on my walk to work. All I could think of was, is she ok? This can't be happening. Please tell me she's ok.
She was, and is. (Grace, if you're reading this, I am so thankful that you updated Facebook right away, and that you and everyone you work with are safe and sound.) But that didn't really calm my heart down. I felt so safe in that base. I was surrounded my military personnel. The whole place was streamlined, orderly. Just... how? And why?
I'm not sure we'll ever know for sure, to be honest. In this day and age, where we can get information at the tap of a screen or the touch of a button, we're not used to the unknown. Conspiracy theories are surfacing. I don't know what to believe, when it comes to news. Is anything 100% accurate? Is anywhere safe anymore?
Probably not.
I'm afraid of everything. I can't watch episodes of Criminal Minds before I go to bed, for fear that I will have nightmares. Heights. Falling. Snakes. Spiders. Clowns. Mascots. I'm afraid of the strangest things. But, for some reason, I'm not scared to go outside, which would, logically, make more sense, with the state of the world. No, I'm not afraid to go outside. Why? Because, even after all of this tragedy, I'm not afraid of living.
It would be so easy for me to say that I'm going to go straight from work to home from now on, that I'm not going to speed through yellow lights, that I'll never jaywalk again. But I know that I would be lying to you. So I won't say those things. I could just as easily get jumped while walking to work, or get rear-ended while I am stopped at a red, or picked off by a careless driver while I'm in the crosswalk and have a walk sign. Life doesn't work like it's supposed to. People's lives get changed by random acts of violence. People die. How are we supposed to honor those people if we never go outside?
When I get home from work today, the first thing I'm going to do is change my clothes and lace up my running shoes, because I have a seven-miler ahead of me. It's going to be just like any other day, except I'm planning on leaving the headphones at home. Because, while I'm not afraid of living, I don't want to miss out on anything. So I'm going to run those seven miles along the Mississippi River, taking in this beautiful fall day, breathing in the relatively cool air and thanking God that I've made it this far. Tragedy could always strike when I least expect it. But you can't live worrying about it. What happened in the Navy Yard was a complete and utter tragedy. It was. There's no denying that. The Washington Nationals ballpark is only a couple of blocks from the Navy Yard, and their game versus the Atlanta Braves was cancelled yesterday. On the MLB website, it simply said "Postponed: Tragedy." To me, that is the epitome of the American spirit. The game was postponed, so that everyone can understand the magnitude of what happened. But it wasn't cancelled altogether. The game is still going to be played. We are resilient. We are not afraid of living our lives.
