Swallowed

These past few days, I've felt like I've been been swallowed. Consumed. The very first thought in the morning. Struggling not to make it the last at night so I can sleep. At once horrified, moved, touched, obsessed, and so very very sad. Where is the line? Wanting, needing to know more, futilely trying to make meaning from absurdity. To find order and control in chaos. Yet knowing that no amount of burying myself in information will answer the deepest questions. Knowing that living and reliving every detail from afar keeps me preoccupied, swallowed. When I first read about it, the first vague but nonetheless paralyzing, heart-stopping reports, tears sprang to my eyes. Before I could even “think” about it. Before I had framed any words, any anger, any stark terror or outrage came tears of disbelief and sadness. For the kids, the teachers, the principal, the school psychologist who died. For their families. Their friends. The children and adults who survived in the school's offices, hallways, classrooms. The town. This Newtown, now another chapter in a horribly, painfully familiar story.

So much has been written and said about this incident. “Sandy Hook”: It's already morphed into a label that will forever represent that gruesome day. My thoughts about this feel so fragmented. I have mental piles of clippings, tidbits of news read and heard, pictures. Much of this, my mind has undoubtedly already re-written trying to create a sensible pattern where there is none. But these fragments have no glue. They’re like a pile of feathers that can be scattered into chaos by the next breeze of rumor or detail, by a photograph or a quotation from a child.

In the past few days, I’ve read three very different pieces that have seemed helpful as I, like millions of other people, try to find some thin thread of understanding and direction to tie all this together in a package that I can carry. If you’re still looking, you might find them helpful. Or not. We all do this in our own ways. Please feel free to pass on other ideas.

The first is an informative, analytic piece that draws a parallel between suicide bombers and mass murder/suicides. I found it interesting and persuasive—maybe because it makes some sense, as little does in this frantic search for the “why?” But it leaves me wondering what we can do about it. As individuals and as a nation.

Then, the second offers some helpful thoughts about how we (try to) cope with such incomprehensible tragedy and what we can do in its wake.

And finally, the third is really grounding in its reminder that trauma does not spell unmanageable distress or unending problems for most people, of any age.

Friday is Solstice, the return of the light. And there are murmurings of hope that gun control will finally enter the public and political conversation again. Too late, and probably too little. But although the light returns slowly, return it does. I hope that’s a metaphor.