Boston

I am turning away from my usual talk about mental illness and mental health because I am too distracted from the events of yesterday to write about anything else. First of all my prayers and heart go out to Boston. A beautiful place I would love to someday visit.

Today there will be pictures and witness accounts. Soon they will release pictures and names of those that were murdered while trying to watch their family members finish a marathon that was in honor of the tragic shooting that happened December. A shooting that murdered children and their teachers.
I don't know how to feel anymore. Many are angry and no doubt will comment on other sites that it is the fault of the president, gun control laws, mentally ill people with no help, or political parties. There will be blame thrown around on religion and ethnicity. Blame will be placed everywhere and on everything.

I don't know who to blame. I don't believe it is anyone's fault but those that committed this horrid crime.
Mostly, I am heartbroken, for the victims and their family and friends. Heartbroken for my country and the events that have occurred in the last ten years. Heartbroken that my children will never know what is like to go to the movies, go shopping at a mall, go to a marathon, or even something as mundane as going to school, and not have to worry if something bad will happen to them.
I am old, and therefore, remember being able to do these things freely and without any fear. I remember an America that was not perfect but certainly not as scary. I remember hours spent at the mall with my friends and going to the movies with them. I remember loving school. I never had the fear of being gunned down in my classroom or bombs blowing up beside me. Yes, we as a country will come together. We will improve our security measures to try and prevent something this horribly tragic from happening again.

Having children in this time and age is so hard. We have so many images and videos we have to look out for. It is the information age and all information is accessible from one click of a button. We have to be diligent on what our children are watching and hearing. Then carnage is displayed on our t.v.s, computers, and smart phones. Our kids get scared. We get scared. I am scared. They ask questions that there are no answers too. Why? Who would do something like that? Why do some people want to hurt us? Are we safe?
 We have no real idea. We assure them even though we are not really assured ourselves. We don't, unfortunately, have a crystal ball. We can not look into the future, and our parent's didn't have to answer these kinds of questions.

How do we answer these questions? It's not about what political party you are affiliated with or what laws you would like to see passed. It's not even which president we have or who the speaker of the house is. It is all about living our lives, safely. It's about the innocence our country has lost every time one of the acts are carried out.. That we now have to consider the fact that we could be blown up or shot when we go to an outing. It's all about not feeling safe. Americans, whether you agree with our policies or not are not bad people. We are not in charge of what wars our country decides to wage. We are shop keepers, moms, dads, children. We are postal workers and pilots. Teachers and doctors. We are just people. We have such capacity to love. Maybe that gets lost in all the media attention and political jargon.
These people that were harmed and murdered yesterday were real people with families and friends. They were real people with thoughts, memories, and ideas. Just like, other tragedies the media will forget them as soon as the next big thing comes along. They shouldn't be forgotten and neither should all of the others that have been harmed in the shootings, and bombings that America or any other country has endured.

I don't have any answers. I wish I did. I wish I knew how to show my children how I grew up. I wish I knew how to calm their very real fears. I wish that we could find a way to prevent things like this from happening again. I don't know how so, I am left with a extremely heavy heart. All I can say is that we support the people of Boston, Massachusetts [tweet this]. We stand by you and even if it is scary , we will not allow terrorism domestic or otherwise, to keep us from living our lives.
                                                           Neurotic Nelly