The World We Live In

Dissociating from the fear, anxiety, and grief

We live in a world that requires one to dissociate. There is an overwhelmingly, crushingly obvious pattern that happens when we are the midst of tragedy; we doom-scroll, we post, we talk about it, we mourn, we lose sleep, we donate, we sign petitions and Go-Fund-Me’s…and then, as a means to protect what’s left of our mental health, and a means muster up the energy to get through our daily responsibilities, we dissociate.

When Columbine happened I was 11 years old. School let out and my mom was always one of the first ones in the pick up line, I could easily spot her car the moment I opened the double doors that led to the parking lot. In the car though, the day of Columbine, she was annoyingly quiet. She did not smile or turn her head back around or ask me any questions about my day. She was numb. My grandparents had the news blasting when we got home, the TV was showing helicopter footage and people in dark uniforms armed to the teeth. I did not comprehend any of this, I did not understand the palpable fear pouring out of my mother and grandparents. I did not understand what could fuel something like this. I was a baby witnessing an act of extreme hatred, and it did not make sense to me.

Craig Nason @nasoncraig

@pgcornwell Columbine survivor here. My oldest son just finished his first year of college. This is America. There is no end in sight for the steady cadence of mass gun violence we seem unwilling to ever address. A reality my peers could not have imagined on our worst day in April 1999.

It is impossible to keep track of how many mass shootings there have been since 1999. I may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, and I am certainly not a numbers person, but when I try to look up lists like this and this and this, it becomes unbearable to even attempt to.

Min Jin Lee @minjinlee11

Our bodies are not designed to absorb and process this much violence, loss, and grief.

The hatred that felt so foreign to me when I was 11 years still feels just as foreign. But what I recognize now as an adult and as a mother is the fear. The fear that has consumed my mothers house many times (Columbine, Virginia Tech, Red Lake, Sandy Hook, Marjory Stoneman) now consumes mine. Last night I tried to compose myself in order to perform a normal bed-time routine; some teeth brushing, some dancing, some reading, some singing, some dinosaur trivia, and a lot of kisses. I couldn’t stop thinking of all the empty beds last night, the kids that won’t be sleeping in their rooms. I thought about what kind of sheets they slept on (my son sleeps on dinosaur sheets), or what their bedtime routines were. I tried to imagine the kind of grief that enters a body once a body finds out their babies have died by a gun, by a person fueled by senseless hate. But I had to compose myself, my children are alive, right infront of me, in my arms, and they need me. So I do what I need to do, I dissociate. I am scared to death, but somehow I have to keep going.

So when a tragedy happens, I have reached the part of my pattern where I feel I’ve had enough doom-scrolling and now I’ll read tweets of politicians “lifting the families up in prayer.” I’ll see the closest thing to leadership coming from a basketball coach. I’ll see fellow teachers in a state of desperation, begging for change, threatening to not go back to work. And along with all this comes a muted sense of hopelessness. Today, the hopelessness wears me like a veil. I will remember how I felt during all of the past school shootings and remember that not a single gun-control law has been passed throughout the history of school shootings. Now as a mother, I know that my son will learn lockdown drills in school, I know that he will learn a safe word. I know that as a parent, I will always be fearful like my family was the day we found out about Columbine. I know that the fear will debilitate me, taking away my ability to speak or act. When we go out into the world, we have to be prepared to say goodbye. This is the world we are raising our kids in.

Erin Alberty @erinalberty

I just told my 3rd grader about the shooting. She replied: "Yeah. We had a lockdown drill today. There aren't very many hiding places in our room. The good ones all get taken in like 3 seconds." Then she left.

As a Mother, I fear for my kids.

I fear that I am not a good enough parent, I fear that they are eating too much junk food, I fear that they are having too much screen time, I fear that I am not making the best decisions for their futures. Generally, my natural state is a subdued state of fear.

I fear for the state of the world.

I fear I must release my children from the warmness of my arms and project them out into the society. I fear that I have to prepare them to witness acts of hatred and help them understand it in the way I never could. I fear that this country is rotting and is forcing my babies to grow up sooner than they should.

I have to somehow subdue my fear. I have to dissociate in order to perform. Because somehow the world moves on, even when 19 children didn’t have their bedtime routines last night.