Tragedy

Today is an awful day.

Forgive me for being a little disjointed with this - normally when there's a topic I'd like to bring up on here I think about it for a little while to get my words in order.  Please also forgive me if in the hours after I post this the facts change as the picture becomes clearer. I feel like I need to dump some of my thoughts out and you all are, after all, my wonderful, loving diary.

I'm sure everyone knows about this already but just in case there's one person reading this who doesn't, this morning in Connecticut, a gunman entered Sandy Hook Elementary School and murdered 26 people, at least 18 of which were elementary school children.

I am by no means a Connecticut expert, I've been there only a few times.  The best lady friend, Kali, is from this particular town, and apparently Mr. T's sister-in-laws nieces and nephews go to this school.  From the little I do know of this particular area,  this having happened there is one of those events that reminds you it could happen anywhere.  The wealth, education, political leanings, population, and usual safety of any given town is in no way a predictor of whether or not something like this can happen there.  It could happen anywhere.

In a lot of ways this is a wonderful, amazing world with a lot of love and light in it.  In other ways, it's a disturbing, terrible place where the creatures who run it are the most violent and unpredictable imaginable.  It's both.  It will always be both.  It's hard on days like these to not think of the world as a body - as long as there are a few sick and twisted cells, the entire body will be sick.

You have to be dead inside to do something like this.  Our tendency as a society is to of course think to ourselves "how could someone do something like this?" because most of us, however strong or weak they may be, still have feelings and a conscience.  This person was clearly dead inside.

There are families who got up this morning just like I did.  They woke up thinking about Christmas gifts they still need to purchase, wondering whether or not they remembered to pay the gardener this month or if they should go see a movie this weekend. They woke up just like we all did, expecting it to be a day easily passed through with all the usual mild peaks and valleys, and instead by mid-morning it turned into the worst day of their lives.  A tragedy so terrible it will be held up as an example to all the world for just how awful it can be.

On some level all of us will be waiting for some sort of explanation as to why this happened.  It's not going to come.  There is not going to be any explanation at all, much less one that is any way satisfying. There is and will be a continued discussion of how this happened, and even that will probably not be in any way satisfying.

There's already a flurry of discussion on social media and news sites about whether today is the day to talk about gun control.  The argument ranges from 'we should never talk about it' to 'we should, just not now' to 'if not now, when?'.

I tend to lean towards the side of let's talk about it in a day or two when it's still fresh, but today let's just think about those families.  My only thoughts right now on the subject are what they always are... I grew up in a house with guns because my Father had to carry them for work.  I also hate that they exist in the first place, as did he.  Gun control is different than taking away everyones right to bare arms. I have no desire to take away everyone's guns, but how we're doing things now?  Not working.

This will also inevitably end up causing a discussion on mental illness.  Everyone including myself will want to blame this persons parents, friends, colleagues because they're still here and he isn't.  They should've known, they should've stopped it, maybe they even caused it.  It's hard to give a shit seeing as how whatever illness he had made him a monster, but there will/should be a discussion on what to do if you're aware of someone who seems to be going off the deep end.  I would like to think, for now at least, that no one who knew him thought 'in a few days he's going to slaughter an elementary school'.

This may not be a popular opinion, but I think often times in situations like this it's akin (but obviously the pure evil version) of knowing someone who may or may not be suicidal... often times the people in their life feel powerless and don't fully grasp what the ultimate consequence may be or if they do that it would ever really happen.

Forgive my somewhat disjointed thoughts, again I lean towards worrying about these details tomorrow or the next day, but they're there and I'm sharing them.

My thoughts, and love, and anger, and shock is with the families of these people.

I also think we should all hug our loved ones today and tell them how much they mean to us, because none of us know what tomorrow brings.