This post contains strong language and graphic imagery. It is not my normal post, so I am letting you know that you can skip this one if you prefer.
I heard sirens today. It's been a long time since I heard them, and I hoped wherever they were going, a good outcome would be theirs.
But no.
Another disaster with dead children and dead teachers murdered by a dead inside child is what they met when they pulled up to the school.
Apalachee High School is 7 miles away from me. 15 minutes from home near a shopping center where we go to Target, get Mexican food and eat oysters.
After finding out, I sat in 2 meetings with my heart pounding and tears in my throat. My daughter almost went to work there this year. It could have been her, and I couldn't stop my stomach from churning.
I am too tired of this to find rage. I am flattened like old road kill, defeated, empty of any energy to ask the same questions that never get answered -when does it end? When will we vote for politicians who listen to the one issue Republicans and Democrats agree on - common-sense gun control?
When will we dig the blood-stained, utterly depraved, soul-devouring child-murdering talons of the NRA out of our government? What the fuck is WRONG with us?
We always ask how many more children have to die before we stop the madness?
Apparently, 2 more kids and 2 more teachers can now be piled on the staggeringly high tower of innocent bodies, and we know they won't be enough to change anything either.
Oh, the horror that a drag queen might read a child a book. Guess what? Not one drag queen has EVER clomped into a school and destroyed children while wearing a Dolly Parton wig.
Oh, Lawdy Lawd, a trans kid wants to play sports or change their name or be seen as a different gender, and it's - stop the presses - bring out the law books - march into school board meetings to raise hell and spit nails.
But let bullets shred some more kids' bodies, and what do you hear - NOT A PEEP. Oh, sorry, no, you hear - thoughts and prayers, the hot air useless phrase that I can't hear anymore without wanting to throw up and gouge my ears into deafness with a sharp stick.
Most of you haven't seen what bullets do to an adult body, much less small ones like kindergartners and teens. I hope you never do because it is the stuff of nightmares.
When Columbine happened, my daughter was a little girl. I was horrified and watched the news over and over and over again. I took her to school the next day and cried all the way to work because what if there were copycats? What if this was a larger coordinated attack on kids? How could this happen?
Here I am, with the same fear and sense of being wildly out of control over 20 years later. She now works as a teacher, and I am afraid for her all over again every time this happens. What is it now? Every damn day?
I was afraid for my daughter in 1999, and now I'm afraid for her AND my granddaughters because our country has allowed this to go on and on and on.
We just keep saturating our land through the arterial bleeds of those who just wanted to go to a movie, a concert, a Wal-Mart, a school, FFS.
We care more about firing teachers for reading non-binary books or teaching that slavery was actually an abomination not a trade school and making sure books are banned before guns are.
I am some unknown word beyond appalled and powerless. The marrow of my bones feels as bitterly acidic as gunpowder, and my heart is as tattered as a blown-out shotgun shell.
If it is true that "The true character of society is revealed in how it treats its children" (Nelson Mandela). Then we are shameful and vile, twisted and cruel, and we have let those in power get away with turning their money-blind eyes away from these repetitive, abhorrent acts for far too long.
Sharing my shock,
LMW
I live about 30 miles south of the high school. I want to shout out: Who thinks giving an automatic weapon to a 14 year old is a good idea?