How I Get Through It

Please know I am writing this with the utmost respect for what the families and friends of those directly affected are going through.  I am just giving my personal feelings on this subject because the question has been raised in the past and I want to address it one and done for anyone else who may wonder the same.

The other day I had an acquaintance who was flooding my feed almost every 30 minutes with her thoughts on the tragedy in Las Vegas.  I messaged her and asked her if she knew someone there because her reactions were enough to make you feel like she was personally connected with it.  She said, "no, but how can you NOT say anything?"  I don't know if she meant "you" meaning me personally or "you" as in society as a whole but I wasn't going to engage her on it.  She felt strongly and somehow posting as if she were a newswire service brought some feeling of control by informing others when she couldn't really do much else, I guess.  It reminded me of a comment I got a few years ago on a 9/11 post where I brought attention to Aortic Dissection, the undetectable condition that took the life of one of my favorite actors, John Ritter on September 11, 2003.  The woman messaged me and said "how can you not talk about 9/11 today but you can talk about one man dying?  Unfollowing."  I tried to respond but it came back to me as undeliverable.  So in case anyone else has wondered the same thing, I will address it here once in the wake of what the country is going through right now.

I remember every detail about September 11, 2001.  The Mr and I were playing hooky.  It was a beautiful, sunny day and as we were getting ready to go out to see the latest American Pie movie.   I turned on the TV while he was going down to iron.  I was bombarded with images I thought were from another country and Dan Rather giving updates.  On the screen flashed "lower Manhattan" and all I could say was "oh my God!" over and over again.  When I couldn't answer the Mr as to what was wrong, he ran up and we proceeded to watch four hours of people running for their lives in the rubble, the planes hitting the towers over and over again in replay and finally watching them fall.  I couldn't take it anymore and we went to our movie as planned and as we walked the empty mall into the empty theater, there was a sense of relief that we could escape all we were being bombarded with by the media.  Wild theories and misinformation swirled for days and even weeks afterward.  You would get emotionally charged about something you heard only to hear later that wasn't correct.  The media was so worried about having something to say, that they reported all the things because we were leaning toward a society that was demanding answers immediately.  We'll give the people what they want even if it's not accurate.  For weeks, I had nightmares about the planes hitting the towers just like I'm sure many of you did.

As we as a country tried to make sense of this senseless tragedy, we all were clamoring for information to help us understand.  That somehow any answer would be good enough for what we witnessed.  I remember a year later watching a documentary that was originally supposed to be about one of the NYC fire departments but they recorded the plane flying overhead and then the calls coming in.  It was two hours of trauma to watch.  I still hear the sound of the bodies hitting the awning of the building as they chose jumping over fire.  I just got physically nauseous typing that.  It took six months before the images of the planes and the sound of the bodies stopped replaying over and over in my head both awake and asleep.  I didn't know anyone who died there.  I didn't know any of the families who suffered such great loss but was deeply, psychologically affected none the less.  When the anniversary came around, the bombardment was just as strong.  The weeks leading up to it were like this morbid countdown in the media and then the day of replaying the horror but now to music and filters to give more dramatic effect, like we needed it.  For the five years following, it was the same and while no, I will never forget, I also could no longer participate in the feeding frenzy of trauma seeing those images pop up every year.  When social media became big, it was worse because come midnight, the "never forgets" started and constant updating and need to comment on it.  I understand that completely.  We all went through something together as a country.  It is a horrible wound we're trying to heal but I didn't feel compelled to dig with a scalpel every year to re-open the scar that was slowly healing.  I truly feel the other people that had a hand in all of that but were never brought to justice, smile with every news story and social media post.  They know they got exactly what they wanted which was to haunt us every year without them having to do anything else.

I have a friend with a birthday that day who now suddenly felt like she was no longer allowed to celebrate socially or she at least couldn't thank people for birthday wishes without the caveat of the new meaning the day took on.  It was in seeing her new reality that I decided how I would mark that day and it would be to bring awareness to a heart defect that marked that day being sad to me for other reasons.  I have said my prayers for the families and those affected.  I have said my prayers for those who have bravely fought and died for our country in light of those attacks.  But then came the Beltway Sniper attacks, Fort Hood, Sandy Hook, the Boston Marathon, the Charleston shootings, the Pulse nightclub massacre and now Las Vegas.

After Sandy Hook, I told myself I could no longer plug into the media matrix of these events.  I sent out a blanket prayer for all of the horrible mass murders done by cowardly, disgusting people past, present and future because my psyche just cannot take the inundation.  I understand people's need to show their support by changing their profile pictures, writing long heartfelt posts and the like because they feel like they need to do or say something. I am all for anything that shows your heart.  Just because I do not do those things does not mean I don't care or am heartless.  Out of necessity for my own mental health, the furthest I can get into events like these is read a blurb, say a prayer and try to move on because I am super sensitive.  I feel deeply and I take on other people's pain and stress to the detriment of my own health.  I've always been that way from childhood and if it's one thing I know from 9/11, I cannot watch videos or read about it without it affecting my mood, thoughts, and dreams for weeks or months depending on what I see.  Given we live in a society that somehow deems it okay to show dead bodies without warning because it's "news", I can't unsee that.  I refuse to let some poor person going to a concert or commuting to work suddenly be emblazoned into my brain because of the way they died.  No one wants to be remembered for the way they died.

Your feeds will be flooded with enough stories and social media posts without me contributing to that.  So please assume that when a national tragedy happens, that I have said my prayer for all of those affected but have also chosen to do that privately.  Whatever you need to do for yourself to help you move forward, is your right as well.  Don't judge people for how they do or do not react to tragedy, we're all just trying to do the best we can for our own lives and how we live.

If you need help coping with the potential mental effects you may be feeling after the Las Vegas shootings, this article may help give you some tools to use to deal with vicarious trauma.


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