All of you out there who've made the Newtown, CT massacre
about YOU should be ashamed of yourselves. From political agendas to
unscrupulously subjective rantings about how God has abandoned our secular
school system, please shut the fuck up.
Now is a time for mourning. Now is a time for sorrow. Now is
a time for contemplation and resolve. Now is a time for grasping one another’s
hands and quietly acknowledging that there will be families with presents under
their trees this year which were meant to go to children that are no longer
with us. It is incomprehensible. And, yet, it is survivable. Somehow, the worst
victims of tragedy get better. Somehow, we always seem to heal. Somehow, we eventually
accept these tragedies as a part of our new and future reality.
I’m not trying to teach anyone anything by writing these
words. I’m just trying to stir it around and mix it in with the rest of my daily
food so that maybe it can be palatable enough for me to gulp down. I’m too
pissed off not to try to get this down the hatch so I can move forward. I’m
pissed at every one of us—every one of our leaders—every one of our schools—every
one of our families—and I resent the implication that ANY OF US knows a fucking
thing about why this happened.
I resent the implication that ANY OF US understand anything
at all about the list
of massacres in each of the US States since the early 1800’s. 40 of our 50
States have experienced multiple instances of reckless, unconscionable waste of
human life that NONE OF US can wrap our brains or hearts around.
If you really want to explain something to me then try
making me understand why all of the malicious, malevolent, cowardly acts of
mass homicide within my lifetime have been perpetrated by white men ages 20-35.
You know what? Forget I even mentioned it because someone out there will
actually try to answer the question. They’ll try to apply a logical answer to a
systemic morphing psychological virus of predation.
News flash: seeking a purpose for everything and
insisting on defining, labeling, and cataloging unimaginable chaos, depravity,
and cowardice leads to a net gain of squat—nada—zilch. We have to wrestle with
the reality that another white male between the ages of 20-35 will do this kind
of thing again. We have to prepare ourselves for the inevitability that
somewhere within our midst is more than one white man contemplating a way to “up
the wager” and hurt us even more.
I am allowing myself the next 24 hours to continue
visualizing these children screaming out and huddling in fetal positions as a
white male stands over them and puts the barrel of a semi-automatic weapon
right up to their terror-stricken faces and pulls the trigger. I think it’s
important to burn that image in my mind. I think it’s important, somehow, in
the sharing of grief and mourning and lamentations. But enough is enough. After
the next 24 hours I’ve got to move forward. I’ve got to find the next level of
grief. I’ve got to make up my mind that I will not be weakened or rendered
motionless by my sorrow.
I’m going to add this experience to the collection of other
tragic experiences I’ve witnessed and lived through, and I’m gonna keep sifting
through the pile looking for ways to use these negative experiences for
something positive. I’m gonna think about ways I can be more involved in the
lives of abused children. I’m gonna think about the ways I can watch for
troubled white men and bring them closer to me instead of pushing them farther
away. I’m gonna take more responsibility for the fatherless and the widowed and
the poor and the sick and the imprisoned. I’m gonna use these experiences to
fortify my resolve that THIS CAN ALL WORK SOMEHOW.
Tragedy is supposed to evoke a heroic struggle instead of a
wave of talking heads and brooding Facebookers relishing the opportunity to
scream out their opinions yet again. The heroic struggle isn’t against
legislation or hate groups. The heroic struggle is NOT any sort of monolithic
idea or policy or attitude. The heroic struggle is a mosaic of hearts and hands
and efforts and backgrounds and ideas all coming together to form a unified
front of protection from the imminent threat of tragedy next time. There’s
always a next time. And if next time isn’t met with cooperation instead of
sanctimonious ideological segregation, then more children and teachers die.
And if that happens, we’ve all failed once again.
