Finally found a computer, but given that I have less than a week left before I return home, I figured it would be easier to just write a monster recap of everything when I go back to the States. Should be fun to write... haha. I'm in Carcassonne right now -- the walled city that the board game is named after. Detail shall follow eventually.
Found out today that one of the victims in the Santa Barbara shooting massacre was my brother's classmate in high school. I looked him up on Facebook and showed his photo to my mother. She recognized him. My mother was heavily involved with this one parent group at our high school that holds an annual fundraiser each year (she was even the Chief once... received a plaque from the city during her term, as a matter of fact... lol). He volunteered at this event, so my mother knew the boy and his mother. One of the traditions at the annual event is that for the last performance of the evening, all of the student volunteers go onstage and perform a coordinated dance. My mother told me that the boy was naturally shy and more withdrawn, but he still went up to perform with everyone. After the show, his mother told my mom that she really appreciated that her son had a chance to go onstage and open up a bit more. Supposedly after that, he gradually came out of his shell more.
I know that life isn't fair. But really, I have no words to describe just how much this... sucks -- and even this word doesn't do justice to the mixture of anger and sadness I feel when I think about this. This boy was nineteen years old. He died, just because he happened to be living with someone with violent tendencies who may very well have been mentally insane. I was researching housing options in New Orleans before I went on this trip... and really, how will I know if a future roommate is going to be okay or not? Even a cursory meeting in person or via Skype might not be enough to detect trouble.
And I guess what makes me sad more than anything is... nineteen was fours years ago for me, which doesn't seem like much but really... nineteen is still so young. I didn't know the boy personally, and based on what my mother has told me, I wasn't as withdrawn as he was... but I think anyone who has been uncomfortable with his/her own shyness can relate to those little breakthroughs when you shed the wallflower for a moment and slowly come out of your shell. I can look back on these four years and trace those little moments, those little cracks when the walls started coming down. And perhaps I'm just blindly speculating at this point... but I feel like this boy was getting there, only to be cut down too soon. And by someone who, from the accounts I've read, harbored irrational hatred towards everyone, but especially women. (There are a bunch of articles on the killer and the culture of misogyny in the US, but I'll leave that topic aside for another day.)
You can't rationalize this sort of thing. He was at the wrong place at the wrong time, living with the wrong housemate. I would hazard a guess that I'm more conscious of my mortality than most people my own age. My mother and I had a conversation about this recently. She tackles her art projects obsessively, while I try to write as much as possible -- because our biggest fears are that we could die at any moment before the prized idea in our heads can materialize into the physical world. And that's what scares me the most.
No comments:
Post a Comment