I want to let you know something about me. Writing has become my own therapy. Iβve googled and even went as far filling out intake forms in the thoughts of seeking help. But reflection, through words, keeps my adamβs apple above the tide. Still, I had so many questions. But because I donβt take my insides serious enough, I lean on writing these words instead. My body is fragile. I think through things instead of talking to people about them same things. Instead of asking for help I try to figure it out on my own.Β
Being grown and oldish and tested and double or triple educated and “woke” and experience-ridden and from there and now here hasnβt left me stronger, more wiser. Itβs left me broken. Iβve developed the ability to block things out like repugnant viral videos of kids lighting themselves on fire for the sake of a challenge or cops killing men that they view as dogs, to the point where them things donβt really affect me on a day to day. But after the shooting in Uvalde, I realize that those things slowly metastasize, regardless of whether I see them or not, in my brain, in my heart, in my soul. And damn, parts of me just slowly crumble away every single time I even hear about one of them.
Jayβs text read, β18 dead in a school shooting in Texas! Wow.β I wrote back, βThe fuck?!β I didnβt do what we do when we get a message like that. To be honest, when I read the message, I was driving anyway. βFor real?!?β I wrote back, typing in the two question marks and the exclamation in between while waiting at a red light. Itβs so sick. Iβm so immediate. Iβm so sick. Iβm so immediate. What the fuck?
We were all somewhere way before and now weβre here. Before, for me, I was in high school when ColumbineΒ happened. My interior nature made me look around, and even then I noticed that it, the school, was a place of shock, then subtle intersection, then consolidation. Then when I got my first job as a teacher half a decade later they taught us to teach math in three-part lessons. Minds on first, right? Action second, right? Third, you know.Β
Where I was way before here we all reacted to tragedyββdeep and dark and uncompromising tragedyββdifferently. I stuck to my television when it happened. We talked, to hear, to heal, to help, for days. When I was there a lot of the children and a lot of the adults were damaged but most were not broken broken. Weβre all broken now.
Iβm very broken because Iβve told you things about me. And the things Iβve told you about me should let you know that I know that you know I canβt do things on my own. But me and you just carry on. Donβt we? Havenβt we? We learned but did we?
Apathy and numbness, Iβve realized, are two separate things. I am apathetic to a text message alert because Iβve become numb to those alerts over fifteen sixteen twenty two years. A morning conversation in a classroom after a beyond-repugnant display of evil is beyond-helpful. But left at that is why my skin is so thick and my heart so calloused. Left at that is why some of them still feel left alone. Alone at that is not education, not learning, not love, and for sure not therapy. Left alone is why we will talk about it the next morning but not be vigilant in fighting ourselves for true help. I still have so many questions.