Here's the thing about low-grade depression, the kind you find yourself lugging around with you after something really horrific happens in the world: it's big, but it's murky. It's hard to identify. In fact, I was thinking today that if I were a busier person, I might not have picked up on the fact that I was feeling really low. Or if I did, I might have attributed it instead to some annoyance about my day, or the fact that I was tired, rather than recognizing that yes: I am feeling depressed because of everything I saw on the news yesterday.
I have a theory that some part of the brain knows that even when we're not directly affected, the news wounds us, somehow, and we deserve to heal, so it latches itself onto whatever it can find that connects us to the tragedy, makes it relevent to us, and us to it.
For me: I keep telling people that this is a Tech town. And that's true; I would bet that the majority of the university-bound kids in Abingdon go to Tech. But does this make the situation harder for me personally? Not really. And yet, I keep bringing it up. I feel the need to establish, in most conversations today, that I live in a Tech town and that is my connection.
Here are some comments posted in response to Hode Kotb's Dateline piece, Not at my Alma Mater.
"My daughter is currently attending MI Tech. Through all of this, I have felt I am there with all those parents who children attend VA Tech."
"I'm not a VT grad, rather an alumni of James Madison University ('81), but I fully understand the sense of community, pride, and security we all felt at our schools."
"My grandfather taught and retired from the engineering department."
We did this after 9-11 too. Me? I was six miles from the Pentagon. You could see the smoke from the top row at Byrd Stadium. Did I go to the top row of Byrd Stadium, did I see the smoke? No, I didn't. I went to the stadium and changed my mind. I didn't want my connection to be quite that real, I suppose. I remember that almost everyone I knew talked a lot about people in their lives-- sometimes friends of friends of friends-- who had at one time worked in the World Trade Center. I'm also realizing how quick I am to bring up the fact that an acquaintance of mine was in the library at Columbine High School when so many of her classmates died.
I honestly don't think anyone does this to try to get sympathy or make it all about them. Or maybe we do, but maybe we're just not equipped to process the hugeness of these events as they are. The numbers don't even register sometimes. So we break it down into something we can relate to, or at least we try.
So here I am (100 miles from Blacksburg, for the record), thinking about every creative writing class I ever took, in which at least a handful of students would submit terribly dark pieces and it never occurred to me that they might be troubled (I still don't think so, by the way; I think the majority of college students who write terribly dark things are doing it to prove that their ideas are adult enough, edgy enough).
I'm thinking about tornados on campus, snipers just miles from campus, stabbing deaths on Knox Row, and the logistical nightmare that would have been locking down an institution of UMD's size.
I'm thinking about how what saddened me more than almost anything yesterday was the look on the (interim) campus police chief's face as he got pounded with questions, accusatory questions, questions he had no answers for. I guess it's my thin-skinned-ness, my fear of letting people down, doing the relating in that case.
But yeah. I can't relate to 33 dead, or 33 families suffering. And I'm not sure that will ever make any sense to me. I hope it doesn't to any of you.
5 comments:
Once I heard about the gap in notification, the journalist in me thought, "Security management is going to be savaged at the press conference." And I still think those questions are fair, but it's obvious the answers aren't there yet.
And it's also obvious that aside from friends and family members, nobody is more devastated by this than campus security officers. Talk about feeling helpless.
No kidding. And I agree with you-- the questions are fair. But I just couldn't stomach the way they were being asked, and especially the timing. Maybe I'm just too sensitive to this stuff and that's the way a free press is meant to work, but... it was so damn heartwrenching.
I don't blame campus security - I blame people who think ANYONE should get a gun if they want one, because that's the God-given right of every American. I've said it before: you have to prove you're capable and responsible enough to operate a car, why not a gun? Why not mandatory classes in gun safety? Why not an EYE test, for goodness sake, and a physical, like you have to do for a driver's license? Maybe a doctor would say, "Whoa, wait a minute; this guy is seriously depressed and should NOT get a gun."
As predicted, the gun rights people are saying, "If just one of those students had a gun in a pocket or purse, the guy could have been stopped before he killed so many." This is what happened after the cafeteria massacre in Texas some years back.
Seriously, what more were the people at VT expected to do? The professor recognized he seemed troubled, urged him to go to counseling, offered to go WITH him to counseling, offered to teach him one-on-one so she could stay connected with him. But you cannot FORCE someone to go to counseling just because they seem angry (or sad).
I really worry that shy (but perfectly mentally healthy) kids without a lot of friends are now going to be under the microscope as potential threats. "He keeps to himself" could be a trigger for all kinds of well-meaning interventions. Sometimes, you know, the happy-go-lucky ones go off, too - happened in a high school near here not long ago. Not one shred of suspicious behavior.
Yes, the university administration and security are going to be savaged, unfairly, I think. I listen to BBC and the world is pretty much of one mind in saying that the U.S. gun culture should make us unsurprised when this happens.
Paige, I too have been feeling really low all week, and struggling to write a sermon for Sunday....because I think that there sometimes needs to be a time of silence and simple human companionship with those who "walk in the valley of the shadow of death" before offering words of comfort.
My first impulse was to want to hear Brian's voice and know that you three were ok, and to connect with Megan. Harry and I have been talking about it all off and on... His comment was the disparity between how we are totally consumed with the VT tragedy and yet do not want to even think about the 100+ Iraqis, killed by a suicide bomber around the same time...
I completely agree with Kate's comments on our gun culture too.
At the Y last night our aerobics instructor played a lot of "happy, disco type songs" to help us cope with "all we have been going through the last few days" (her words) - sort of like comfort food, I guess.... Now that I think of it, the pre-workout conversations seemed to be focused on food and pillows - which I found odd given the commitment to health and discipline which motivates most of us to come...
Hope that you guys have enjoyed the time together with Megan!
I was just thinking the exact thing earlier this week that, even though I'm far away and don't know anyone at Tech, it still feels like it hit close to home for me having gone to JMU and knowing so many people still in Virginia - particularly from Centreville who went to high school with the kid. Strange isn't it, how we feel the need to find our connection to it all to understand our sadness.
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