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Aswad -> RE: Tragedy In Colorado (7/22/2012 10:45:40 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: LadyHibiscus
You didn't come across that way at all!
Sorry for the misunderstanding. I just know I can seem very cold about such things at times.
quote:
Though I don't feel a personal attachment to any of the events, I am appalled at how the victims' lives were trivialized in the name of someone's need for recognition. And very aware that this could have happened to any of us.
Yeah...
One can't help but think about it sometimes.
Like the woman who died while the guy was trying to help her. The first thought goes out to Jessica Ghawi herself. A bullet to the leg hurts like hell and you're scared out of your wits and people are panicking all around, and then that's it. She gets shot through the head. End of story. And eventually you put that thought down. But then you start thinking about what went through Brent's head when he realized his efforts had been for nothing, when realized she'd stopped screaming and he saw she had been killed. And what will go through his head in the future. Will he wonder if he should have just held her instead, comforting her in what it turned out would be her last moments? Will he wonder if cradling her would have let his body shield her from the fatal bullet? How's he going to deal with reading about it, seeing it on the news, catching the trial, living with people that recognize him from seeing him on the news and only know that one thing about him: that he was the guy who tried to save his girlfriend while shot in the leg, and then lost her?
Or, from up here, the girl that was shot through the hands while covering her face. You go away to that mind's eye space and start to picture it. It is a fairly normal human response to cover the face during an attack, or while pleading with an attacker. It would've been a sensible response back in the day when predators had claws and went for the throat. Instead, a bullet tears through those hands, through her jaw and out the other side. Shock and fear and then a bullet to the chest. Lying there under a corpse, hearing the others, seeing the attacker walking around to put an extra round in everyone's head at point blank, wondering when it's going to be your turn. Waiting for it. And waiting. And waiting. Unable to move, seeing a nearby cell phone ringing, the display saying "Mom". Knowing the person whose phone it is, having seen them die already. And then somebody calling out "we've got a live one over here!"
Then the mind drifts to the people that find them. Whether here, there or any other such tragedy.
The police, stepping over both corpses and people alike, making sure there's not a second shooter around. Then going back for the living and the possibly living that aren't moving. Nurses, doctors, paramedics, all chomping at the bit to get in. Then being faced with a warzone. The intense effort and hours of working to save people, lives in the balance with everything you do. And then, when crazy hour is over, and everyone goes home: the sudden emptiness inside, the vacuum that craves something to fill it, that leads to unpleasant thoughts. You know you have to sleep, or you'll collapse and be no good to anyone. Try to put aside the blood and gore, the staring eyes, the empty faces, the screams, the crying, and the ones not making a sound. Every moment you spend on being a human may be a moment you're not resting, meaning another moment you're not helping. And you still can't make it stop. Can't put it down. Or maybe you can, and you start wondering what that says about you. And then the days, weeks and months to come, thinking about it and your part in it.
Or those that have to clean out such a site afterwards. Picking up bits and pieces of real people, sorting them into bags, labelling, documenting. Trying to make sure one of the bereaved isn't going to walk in there some time in the future and find a part of their loved ones because you missed a spot. Like up here, where a family found part of their daughter's jaw. The only bone fragment not recovered from an island of a million square feet of forest, and it was stumbled across by the worst possible people to find it on their first visit to the site. That sort of thing is going to go through the heads of everyone clearing out that cinema. And at the same time, they know it's crucial to make sure all the evidence is in order, so they have to do it by hand, in painstaking detail.
I'm obviously not touching on a fraction of the thoughts that can surface, even those concerning the thing itself. It can be painful to think about such things. Takes time to process. Some are more deeply affected than others, or need more time to do so. Some aren't touched at all. But my experience from what happened up here is, a lot of people needed to talk for weeks to months afterwards. And I do think it would be a good thing for people to share their thoughts here, on this thread. Therapeutic. Cathartic. A place where people know you well enough to share, but not so well that it becomes difficult to.
I may be way off, but I think that would be in line with what LP had in mind.
IWYW,
— Aswad.
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