Reflections

It's been a year.

It was early morning and I was at the car dealership waiting for the guys there who never listen to me to yet again fuck up my car, when I looked up at the television and saw the news: there were reports of a shooting in Blacksburg.

I immediately picked up my cell phone and called my best friend to tell her. She went to school fifteen minutes from there, and I wanted her to know something was going down. I had a bad feeling, and I wanted her indoors. She had no idea until I told her...

And within half an hour reports were streaming in: shooting spree at Virginia Tech. Heavy casualties. Swat teams. FBI. Terror. I'd never been so frightened. Tech was my school of choice. Tech is like extended family. Twenty five percent of my high school graduating class went to Tech. And I couldn't get in touch with my friends.

Childhood friends there, on that campus, in the Engineering school. Were they even alive?

It took two days to hear from people. Bizarrely, twenty five percent of the victims were from my home town. So was the shooter. I would unwittingly join three funeral precessions in the next two weeks, simply while driving to work. I would see three roadside memorials near the homes of the dead as I ran errands. I'd find out one of the nicest kids I knew had witnessed two of his friends shot and killed at point blank range right next to him.

Strangely, it feels more like a lifetime since that day. A year seems too short. And I'm still angry. I'm angry that it all had to happen. And I'm patiently waiting for the day I'm out with friends, in another state, in a bar maybe... and I'm waiting for some crass jackass to say something horrible and insensitive and inhuman about the shooting... so I can punch him as hard as I possibly can and spit in his face and let go some of the ghosts of that day.

And I wonder... if I wasn't even there and I have such strong feelings, I can't even imagine what people directly involved feel.