Rough Week

I don't know where to start. Monday (and since) were tough here in Boston. Nothing happened to me or anyone I know, thank goodness, but I don't think this tragedy stops with those who are directly impacted. We only have our own lenses through which to view an incident like this. Whether we know someone affected physically or we are personally affected by the incredible range of emotion that overtakes us in times like these, we each have our story and our way in which we unravel it and slowly begin to deal.

A co-worker's boyfriend was running in the race. Before the explosions, he was aways out, so my co-worker decided to stay at the bar and enjoy another drink before making her way to the finish line grandstand with her VIP access pass. She was a few blocks away when the bombs went off. She believes that, without that beer, she would've been there. She can't talk about it and isn't reading about it, looking at information, or pondering aloud with the rest of us. Her perspective is clearly different than my own, which included a spotty cell phone call from Simon explaining what was happening and that he had to walk from the Sox game into Cambridge since the trains were halted. I felt uncertainty in that moment as well as the immediate need to be with him. In another example, some of Simon's colleagues who work a block away from one of the bomb sites have to brush shoulders with incredible armed military presence at the subway stop, pass debris-littered Boylston Street on their way into the building, and look over the site from their office windows. They can't escape it and many of them have responded with fear.

The range of feeling, emotion and reaction is vast. For me, in the time since this happened, I've experienced anger, fear, vulnerability, disbelief and absolute belief, sadness and guilt.

I'm angry that someone somewhere could hurt people, kill people, and change our reality. I'm also angry that this kind of thing happens every single day in a multitude of places around the world and yet it occurring here is shocking. Not just shocking to us, but shocking to those very places where bombs are commonplace. Why? How is that fair?

I'm scared. Scared that it could happen to me, scared that it could happen to people I love. And scared for none of those reasons. Just scared. It sure makes you feel vulnerable real fast on both a human body level and an emotional level. This messes with us, as it is intended to do, and that makes me feel emotionally vulnerable and also naively shocked that our bodies can be intruded in such a way. How silly of me to imagine we are not capable of being so damaged.

"How could someone do this?" is one of the first thoughts that entered my mind and right behind it was "Of course someone could do this." Disbelief and belief and the utter sadness in that belief. This is our world. People hate each other and people believe in that hatred enough to act on it in ways that we deem terrible and they deem as worthwhile to their passion, cause, and deep-rooted beliefs. I have no idea who did this and what they believe but I believe they think they did the right thing. Perhaps that is the saddest thing of all.

I don't really know where to go from here, where any of the victims go from here, where Boston goes from here, where our country goes from here and where humanity goes from here. But I know I need to take time with this and recognize that perhaps I may never arrive at a place of understanding.