"this isn't the day to talk about this"
(part eleven)


remember seven or so weeks ago when TWENTY kids were gunned down in their classroom?

i'm sure you remember it. it was terrible. i cried. sarah cried. it felt like, for those that thought about it long and hard enough, everybody cried. it felt terrible. but it felt like we had finally reached it, a tipping point.

in my opinion, i felt like something terrible and tragic and "close to home" would have to happen to change the national discourse on guns. guns and their lack of control were a debate topic and had been for years, but there's only so much angst one can work up for a random person dying here, or many random people in a movie theater dying there. we don't often directly know those people around the country that are senselessly gunned down, and we are so desensitized to it happening everyday anyway, we see a story on the nightly news or online and we casually scroll past it to the next cute picture of one kitten licking another kitten's head.

but then newtown happened, and then children died. many children. in the most haunting setting one could ever dream up. every one of our kids, we send them off to school and we expect them to be safe. on that day, not only were they not safe, they didn't come home.

my anger at the lack of gun control combined with bothered people with no regard for human life enraged me. i couldn't stand the thought of one more person dying. and i wanted you to feel my pain, but, more importantly, i wanted you to feel those kids' pain. i wanted every person in this country to imagine a bullet ripping through their body, exploding every bone and organ in its path, leading to twenty children breathing their last breaths through shredded lungs. i wanted the imagery to be fierce, because the action and results are fierce.

and for a few days, it felt like things were going to change.

and then they didn't.

yada, yada, yada.

fast forward to this morning and i woke to this article.

1280 people dead from guns since december 14.

ONE THOUSAND, TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY.

man, what the fuck is wrong with us?

think of your life. think of how precious you feel every part of your life, your health, and your well-being is. think about how you would do anything to keep yourself alive. better yet, think about your children or grandchildren, and think about what you wouldn't do to keep them safe. to keep them healthy. to give them a chance to grow up and be happy. nothing, right? and then think about how it would absolutely destroy your world if something were to happen to them.

considering how precious we would likely claim any one life to be, wouldn't it be logical that we would feel a massive disturbance in the force if we lost even one life unnecessarily?

if not one, surely we'd be disturbed to move if we knew that 1280 of those precious lives were taken in a span of seven weeks, right? think of the lives lost. think of the parents/families/friends whose lives are now destroyed forever.

please, think about them and be moved.

please, don't just scroll down. kittens really aren't that cute. not so cute that they should draw your attention away from such devastation. draw your attention away so you can bitch about how early you are up on a saturday.

i'm still so mad, and i just don't know what to do. every one that keeps talking about their rights and the "gubmint" and how it could never happen to them. that attitude is literally killing people every day.

and we're okay with that?!

goddammit.