Moving Forward

*I've been working on this for a while.  It feels very raw.  Thank you for bearing with me.*

I want to hold my arms out, hands extended, feet planted firmly, and scream STOP.  The world just keeps spinning.  It just keeps going.  Seventeen more lives lost, and the world just keeps spinning.

Sometimes I get stuck.  I don't know how to move forward from an event.

With each new shooting, each new reality, I feel as though I get more stuck.  My head spins, and I think, "Please God, not again.  Not again."  And I need to talk about it.  I can't let it go.  I need to get it out of me.  There are real people hurting, moms and dads with empty arms, wives with empty beds, children without dads. I can't take it.

The kids, teachers and staff from Stoneman Douglas went back to school last week.  With looky-loos galore, their parents protectively shielding them from what they couldn't before, and holding their hands, and their community cheering them on, they reentered the buildings that hold their absolute worst nightmares.  This week, they began full day classes again. I cannot imagine. How do these precious babies move forward when so many adults are stuck?  How can we possibly expect them to learn?

I still struggle with PTSD from the active shooter event from Noah's freshman year.

It was hours of hearing nothing, just a robocall from the school informing us of an event that caused a lockdown, not being able to talk with my child, a huge fight with my husband the one chance we did have to talk with Noah.  Shawn told him to help protect his friends and other students, and I told him to run.  A huge fight when we should have been united and comforting each other.  We were both scared out of our minds.  Terrified.

"We didn't raise a coward!"
"And we didn't raise him just so could bury him, either!"

It was physically and emotionally painful.  It was being within sight of the high school when I could finally pick Noah up, but not being able to get there because every single panicked parent in the county was doing the same thing I was.  We just wanted our hands on our kids.

It was another mom shoving me forward, yelling, "She's got a baby, she is!" when the officer manning the door asked who was next to pick their child up, even though we were both about 20 parents back.  It was a sob caught in my chest, and my legs turning to jelly, Ezra squished between us when I finally laid my eyes and hands on Noah.

It was a rush of relief when the usually friendly, grandfatherly deputy with an M4 physically handed my son over to me after checking my ID against the paperwork on his clipboard.  That day, that gentleman was a stone-faced protector.  Every other day, he is the SRO at Avery's school, a big ol' teddy bear of a man in the elementary school. I hug him every time I see him now.  We don't talk about why, but he knows.  He also now works scenes with the teenager he once protected.  

We got lucky that day.  At the end of the day, it turned out to be a BB gun, the police found the kid, and he was arrested.  We all tucked our kids into bed that night, where they belonged.

There are parents and families who don't get to experience that relief at the end of such agony. Their agony only worsens.  And it weighs me down.  It wears down my soul.  It is a physical and emotional and spiritual burden. My heart physically hurts.  I'm weary Lord, I'm so weary.

The other night Noah loaded my grocery cart with supplies for his first aid bag.  With his FF certifications, came a BLS certification.  My boy is now officially a first responder.  A target, and a first responder.  As he added each item to my cart, we didn't speak of why.  As he restocked his first aid bag once we were home, we didn't speak of why.  When he put his first aid bag in his backpack--his BACKPACK--we did not speak of why.  

We've raised Noah to put others first.  When he's looked at careers, they've always been helping and serving careers.  My biggest fear as his mom is that ethic will be my undoing.

I'm tired of the infighting, the politics.  I'm sick of hearing the debates and the theories and the conspiracies and the accusations and the projections. There are children dead, and all we can do is point fingers.

I don't know how to move forward from this.  It used to be as parents, we couldn't wait for our kids to graduate with that coveted diploma--now, we just want them to get through school alive.  Alive.  This is the world we live in now.  There's no going back to normal--this is normal.

I cannot stop thinking about these families, first physically attacked, then verbally attacked, then the fallout as they learn the many ways their children were failed leading up to the attack.  I cannot stop thinking about the first responders, and what they are still have to work through.

I just want it to stop.  Please, someone make it all stop.