I haven’t been able to sleep. I woke up in a panic at 6:30 am on my day off and immediately signed up for therapy. My thoughts are racing.
Why did this school shooting hit so much harder for me?
Lots of reasons.
My daughter is 11. I went to her awards ceremony two days after the shooting. She was awarded as a top student in her class. I was so proud. I can’t look at the pictures of these victims, these children, someone’s babies…holding their citizenship awards and honor roll certificates…and not see my own baby.
These were sweet babies. Crying for help. Calling 911. They were served up as bait. They were disregarded.
This was a small town. 16,000 pop. And they STILL had shooter response training and procedures for their town. And it didn’t matter.
During one of the press conferences, the police gave their news and updates. They were then begged to translate the information into Spanish. En español por favor. In desperation to understand what happened. And the police turned, ignored them, and walked away.
Can you imagine…moving to a country that you know to be “the best country in the world” so you can raise your children in the best environment, and where you also rely on your children as your translators…and your children are then dead…and the authorities won’t help you? Won’t even acknowledge you.
The American Dream. The American Nightmare.
Our leaders in Texas are failing us. And I’m not just talking about the human piles of refuse and filth that are Greg Abbott and Ted Cruz, all of our leaders. Why isn’t anything changing? Why is every week darker than the week before?
The arguments for the importance of the 2nd amendment…All moot. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter anymore if guns kill people or people kill people…Americans are killing each other. With machine guns. All. The. Time. We have to fix it. Who cares the root cause anymore. Mental health isn’t even an argument anymore…Texas.Gov gives 0 fucks about mental health.
Doesn’t it feel…like we are cattle? Like we are living in a dystopian sci-fi novel written 100 years ago as a cautionary tale? That this was predicted and we all drone on with our screens in hand. We look down and not forward. Couldn’t Orwell have written this? Atwood did.
And the mothers. You want us to complete all pregnancies, no matter any circumstances, all pregnancies (which is also…insanely impossible for so many reasons), charge us $30-60k per for third-rate care that is KILLING us for these births, provide no care for mothers post-partum creating cycles of mental illness, sleep deprivation, and deaths…only for us to send our babies to school as lambs to the slaughter? You want to violently and carelessly kill the babies you forced us to bond with and love?
What’s in it for us? This government? Who is benefiting from this other than the wealthy, which 99% of us are not a part of?
I’m not ok. And I am a white, middle-class woman. I have immense privilege and a huge support system. I have little to worry about within my own bubble.
I’m terrified. We all should be.
I don’t think that we have anyway to change this other than reform. We need to stop taking sides between two political parties that are in-effective and evil, who care little to none as a collective for the well-being of Americans.
I think we should start a new political collective. Not an independent party. Not a Green Party.
A Responsible Party.
The party of honesty and vulnerability.
The party that acknowledges mistakes, that act as humans and treat others with decency.
The party of kindness, neighborliness, empathy, love…all the things that so called Christians preach and never practice.
The party that has a system for compromise rather than pouting. That acknowledges gaps in systems and manages these fixed through an updated, agile process. With quick turnarounds and ease of pivot.
The party that uses the skills we’ve all been taught via our cripplingly expensive educations to create systems that look like the rest of our lives?
The party that accepts that we don’t know the answers to everything - where the small representative group reaches out to and prioritizes subject matter experts to make correct choices.
The party without the possibility of spinning and changing the system to benefit only this group representing over the entire population.
The party that recognizes our differences are what brings balance to our collaboration as humans, and should be celebrated together and unite us rather than used against us to further one a few individuals agenda.
I’m so tired. But I’ve gotta push on. We all have to push on and push back. Stop letting the news cycle push these horrid out of our mind in place of celebrity relationships and inane televised controversies.
We have to keep going. If we don’t act now, we will lose the chance.
What is the call to action? I am trying to figure that out. Is it running for office? Is it getting inside the system somehow to change it? Aren’t others trying that and failing?
Do we ask for everyone’s resignations? As Leaders. And start over?
Is it the guillotine? We’ve been circling that drain for years.
If you feel like I feel - email me. Boss@sagedidthis.com.
Maybe we can come together and do something.