dispatches from quilt city

Virginia Tech

Most of you know me well enough to know that when I was sixteen there was a shooting at my high school. A very disturbed young boy walked into our lobby and opened fire, killing three girls. It's not something I think about everyday, but it has, without a doubt, profoundly affected the way I think.

Of course, today was different. Today I thought about it a lot.

I can only begin to imagine what the people at Virginia Tech are feeling. What has happened there is so far beyond the reality of what happened at Heath that I'm having trouble truly comprehending it. Our school had only about 550 students. Virginia Tech has over 23,000. Our shooter lived and we learned that he suffered from severe paranoid schizophrenia. The shooter at Virginia Tech is dead and all that is left is speculation. Then, there is the number killed.

However, as I was reading the coverage, I saw a quote that made me realize how some emotions are the same no matter the scale of the tragedy.

"I'm terrified," she said. "It's gonna be so hard to walk back into class and trust that nothing bad will happen."

I can honestly say I know EXACTLY how that girl feels. I read that and realized that since December 1, 1997, I have never really trusted that nothing bad will happen. I have a profound understanding that in one second your entire life, your total understanding of what is reality and what is not, can change forever.

I would like to say that this means I value life more and I live every moment to the fullest. And, in some ways, I guess I do. If an opportunity presents itself, I take it. I rarely think, "Oh, I can try this another time," or "This won't be my last chance," because the truth is - it could be.

Unfortunately, there are also negative manifestations. I am terrified of losing a loved one in a tragic way and I know I think about it more than is normal. On more occasions then I care to recount, I have called emergency rooms looking for family members who were late coming home. Sometimes I look at Nicholas next to me at night and I start crying. In those moments, the imbalance between how much I love him and how quickly something tragic could happen to him seems too much to bear.

So, in the end, I guess the hardest part about understanding the fear they are feeling in Blacksburg is knowing that a small part of it will never go away.