A dear friend of mine this morning read my blog and asked why I am not writing more on a personal level rather on this over the top stuff that only irritates and disrupts my life. To be honest, I had no answer, so I listened intently to everything she said, and I would now like to try exactly what she suggested, and just talk about me for a bit.
My heart is full of anguish with this latest shooting, although I am seriously angry at how the media is treating this right now. We are all, as a nation, having to personally deal with this tragedy and each of us has to deal with things our own certain ways and I believe that no one needs the sensationalism at this point. My personal way of dealing with things is to generally separate myself emotionally from it- and in doing so, I speak in terms that more like an outsider looking in. Of course, that is how I generally feel most of the time, so it isn’t surprising that my speech would reflect such a conscious disconnect. The entire world as a whole just makes me sad and though I wish I could change it- I have not a clue as to how and am beginning to believe that I can’t even change my own little piece of it, let alone the whole world. I have been beating my head against the wall trying to figure things out- trying to act like an advocate, when the truth is- I have no faith in the world, and fighting against all of what I have come up against goes contradictory to my fundamental belief that you “can’t beat city hall”. David and Goliath was nothing in comparison to what I have found myself up against, and in a way this shooting has shown me that.
Twenty dead children are indeed horrifying, but my experience was so severe that I find it hard to grasp the severity of this situation. You see, I once asked my sister if she could put a number to the children she saw murdered as a child, and she told me that she couldn’t- and the fact is, neither can I. The masses cry out with righteous indignation that twenty seven people are now dead, yet never once give a thought to the hundreds if not thousands of children that were murdered here in Omaha. I have been attacked over and over for not having any proof- yet when I ask others to prove their childhood, they can’t do it either. It wasn’t like I was collecting evidence as a kid, and even now as an adult- I am no detective. I just know what I experienced, and that is what I have tried my best to present in the most rational, logical, and as honest manner as I could. As a victim of all of this, I feel as if I shouldn’t have to investigate and gather evidence- and even if I did- I doubt that it would make much difference. Try as I might, I have yet to put the absolute severity of my childhood out of my mind and move forward, which, in turn, has resulted in me having developed a defined sense of “tunnel vision”, causing my feelings all the more conflict.
This situation has not made me question my faith in God, but rather, our society as a whole, as well as myself as an individual. As individuals, I find people to be amazing, wonderful, and engaging- but as a mass of people, we are unmotivated, not because we are lazy or bad but because all of us have our noses so close to the grindstone so to speak that none of us have the time or the energy to do anything other than what our day to day living offers. The fact that I don’t believe there are any true leaders out there make me doubt myself and the world around me, and I don’t think I am alone feeling like this. Things are spiraling down quickly, and I am disheartened because just when I think that things can’t get any worse- life surprises me. I really do want to believe that a leader- or better yet, a group of leaders- will rise up and help get our nation and our world back on its feet, but unfortunately, it has been my personal experience that there is a concerted effort to keep that from happening- and so I guess I would be better off believing that skittles are going to rain from the sky.
From what I understand, there are five stages to grief, and I guess that I have been trapped within anger and despair for so long that I have lost all sense of the final stage- which is acceptance. Perhaps it was through the intensity of what I was forced to endure that I somehow forgot about the concept of forgiveness, not for those who have transgressed against me, but for me personally. In my conversation this morning, I discovered that I still fight survival guilt- why did I live when so many others didn’t, and what am I supposed to do now that it is over? What do I owe myself in relation to what I owe others, and when am I able to claim that enough is enough? When do I allow my ego to give into defeat?
Noreen Gosch once told me that I was “way out of my league”, and judging by the previews I saw about her postponed show on her son on MSNBC last night, I am beginning to believe that she is right. Asked to keep an open mind by another friend of mine, it just seems to me that the media is going to actively promote the same tall tales as before, and now- esp. after the recent shooting, I believe few will have the compunction to doubt a “grieving mother” who “lost” a son. My facts are within the details of what I have said and presented on this blog and in my book- but the truth that I have presented about my own personal life will never get out, and I am going to have to come to terms with this much as if it were an actual death. I have done what I can and to proceed further is only inviting further chaos in my life, and if this recent shooting has taught me anything, it is that life is fragile and short and I just want to begin to enjoy it for the time I have left, instead of constantly fighting those who have always rather I just keep my mouth shut.
Honestly, I have reached a point where I don’t want to hear about the tragedies of the day any longer- as I find it overwhelming and disempowering, knowing that there is absolutely nothing I can do as an individual. I have to find the difference between giving up and moving on, and struggling alone in a fight I can’t possibly win is only serving as a distraction from my achieving inner peace. Is it selfish to want such a thing? I don’t know right now, as I am conflicted, but I know that the definition of insanity is doing something repeatedly and expecting a difference result each time, and I have danced this dance long enough. Having said, in the past years, all that could be said about my past, it is time that I focus moving forward and allowing God to deal with this mess in Heaven’s own time. I am done sacrificing myself with this over and over, and achieving only heartache in return- and I grieve for the victims who have come before me and who will come after who will face the same type of organized adversity that I have had simply trying to tell my story. However, there is nothing that I am able to do, and so I must move onward and upward and leave all of this to repeat itself, forgotten within the folds of time and safe within the lies that surround it.
Will our nation overcome this last episode of violence? Most definitely, esp. when the next media driven event distracts us from what is really going on in the world. What that truth is seems to be different to all of us, and until we wake up and take a real hard look at the world around us, I fear that we are just doomed to repeat our mistakes of the past, and it is with this that I end this entry with a heavy heart.