I keep crying. Every time I look at the pictures on the news of the young students being led out of their school, or when I look at my own two children, or when I think about the fact that Christmas is just about a week away and by now parents will have stacks of presents stashed away and will have to look at them and feel the sorrow- once again- of losing their innocent, beautiful children. I just keep crying. The high school students that I teach were very upset this afternoon, and the school had an eerie, quiet feel to it as the news of the day spread, but I had to be stalwart and strong for them and not let them see just how scared and upset I was. But from the minute I got into my car at the end of the day until I walked through the door of my house and grabbed my kids and hugged them, I couldn't stop crying.
The pain I feel is nothing compared to what the people suffering through this must feel, but yet my heart aches. I am a Connecticut parent and a teacher, and perhaps that is why I feel so terribly sad about all of this. I just keep thinking about how scared those children must have been, about how their lives and their memories of school are forever marred. Parents will forever associate Christmas with the time of year that a crazed madman took their lovely, innocent childrens' lives.
How does one go back to school when an entire classroom of students is not going to return? How does one go back to her job as a teacher when she will forever remember the day when her students weren't safe and she couldn't do anything about it? How do you keep a building full of so much terror, and sorrow, and grief open? How?
Furthermore, what is happening to our world? It's terrifying! One can't go to the movie theater, or the mall, or even work or school anymore without looking around for someone suspicious looking. How do I send my son to school next week? So many questions.....questions I know will never be answered. You can't explain crazy, you can't account for human nature and physiology and psychology that drives a person to such an irrational, crazy, and terrible act. I keep vacillating between trying to make sense of it in my brain to not thinking about it at all, and I just feel sick to my stomach.
The fights online about gun control and how schools need to have better security and policies are already beginning, and I fear that they will take away from the 20 little lights that went out tonight. The 20 innocent, inquisitive, smiling, giggling lives that were taken before they even began. And as I even type these words I begin to cry again because it's just so unfair. I can almost....ALMOST....understand a crazed person going after someone who has wronged him, but to take 20 lives of these BABIES???? How? Why?
I suppose I'll never have answers. I just needed to get some of my thoughts out. I pray that the families affected will find the strength to make it through this terribly hard time. I pray that the children and staff who survived will find a way through their grief and terror to live "normal" lives, and I pray that this event doesn't cause more people to lose faith in the human race.
~S
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