The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect the views of Her Campus.
I always wondered when the moment would come that I felt like a real adult and not so much like a child piloting a larger human suit trying my damn best. And I can’t help but feel like it came when it really clicked that there were younger, more vulnerable people than me — and that they were counting on me (and people older and younger than me) to do the things they just couldn’t.
For the last few days, I’ve been working out of my parents’ office just a short drive from Sandy Hook elementary school, the place they’ve worked since well before the 2012 shooting that left 28 people dead (including 20 first graders). I often think of that line tweeted from writer/columnist Dan Hodges following one of the several shootings that came after that terrible day: “In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate. Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.”
Today, another shooting. This time, in Santa Fe, Texas.
I’m sorry that the adults in the room haven’t done anything to prevent this.
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I can’t stop thinking about this haunting ABC 13 Houston interview with a Santa Fe High school student from outside the school in the aftermath of the shooting Friday morning.
The student, a young girl with long dark hair and glasses who looks so devastatingly familiar and I can’t really explain why (identified as Paige Curry) told reporters that, no, she wasn’t surprised that this could happen at her school. She was just scared: “It’s been happening everywhere,” she said. “I’ve always kind of felt like eventually it was going to happen here too.”
Heartbreaking @abc13houston interview with Santa Fe student Paige Curry asking if she was surprised by the shooting at her school
“It’s been happening everywhere. I’ve always kind of felt like eventually it was going to happen here too.” pic.twitter.com/Fgtg3YvEBm
— Media Matters (@mmfa) May 18, 2018
I’ve listened to that interview so many times today, I’ve lost count, and I can’t help but think about the weight it takes to make such a young person resign themselves to fear that way, for all the trust and faith they must’ve lost in the adults in the room to do right by them, and my first thought — my thought after every shooting I’ve seen since I started working in news — is I’m so, so sorry. I don’t want this world for you.
And I am sorry. Sorry for Paige and her classmates for everything they’re about to process and experience, sorry for the world-weary kids who have already begun that journey.
This isn’t how they were supposed to grow up.
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The fear of gun violence makes me, a grown-ass adult in my 20s, get this pit in my stomach and this lurch-y, icky feeling that stays put for weeks at a time.
It manifests as just general discomfort with large crowds, spaces with not enough exits, suspicion of pretty much everything. It sits there like a weight in my gut: It flares up when I see school buses full of kids, when my eyes can’t help but zone in on that one lone dude standing in the doorway of a dark movie theater for a beat too long, when I say goodbye to my younger sister before she heads back down to college each semester, when I jokingly (but not at all a joke) need to sit with my back against the wall at a restaurant or a bar or a particularly crowded coffee shop.
Carrying your fear around, in so many ways, is a part of adulthood.
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I work with young people every day and I feel like I am always harping about the ways they can advocate for themselves, the right reps to call, the votes to show up for once they’re old enough (all of them), the research to do, all of it.
As someone who feels like inaction and helplessness are two of the most suffocating things in this world, I kind of trick myself into thinking that these reactions, those bits of advice might be the thing to keep them and to help them keep kids even younger than them safe someday. (I’m slowly realizing adulthood doesn’t mean you stop telling yourself nice bedtime stories to fall asleep at night.)
But the thing about the Santa Fe kids, the thing that really destroys me each time I think about it, making me angrier and sadder and so pathetically apologetic: Plenty of them did that too, as seen by the photos tweeted of a number of them participating in the National School Walk Out on April 20 (not coincidentally on the anniversary of the first school shooting I remember living through as a child, Columbine). They did the work.
They participated, they walked out and acted up and I can only assume that a number of them felt, at least for a moment, empowered that day. But it didn’t matter. And again, my brain wanders back — because, god, I’m sorry that it wasn’t enough.
These kids? They asked for help, they asked to be seen and counted and protected by the adults in their communities (and, yeah, their country.) And they were, even if it wasn’t necessarily in words, told “no.”
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These, to me at least, should be Grown Up™ thoughts and fears — things that we introduce slowly, over time, in a way they can digest. But they’re not. We all know that. These are things kids like Paige, and some even younger, kick around in their brains during class and late at night.
And, fuck, am I sorry that they’re expected to hold that. I am sorry when I think of their parents, the therapists, doctors and teachers who will have to find a way to explain and comfort them through the unconscionable, I am just sorry when I imagine the world these kids (and all the other kids affected by gun violence each day) are about to wake up to.
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I spend a lot of time trying to wrangle all the apologies, the worry and guilt in my adult brain: How can this happen again and again? What can we do differently this time? How can we make things okay? I doubt I’m alone there.
But, here’s the thing, for adults (and the children who’ve become adults) who have seen inaction after Columbine, after Sandy Hook, after Southerland Springs, after Parkland — we’ve got a shot at redemption here.
We can decide to own up to all the lives we should’ve saved and the actions we didn’t take and the weight we’ve put on these kids. We can acknowledge the gravity of our mistakes here (like, really dig into that) and decide to turn our apologies (our thoughts and prayers and all the other platitudes we can muster up) into something meaningful. Maybe shoulder a bit more of this weight that we’re better equipped to carry.
We can listen to the kids who held signs and begged us to advocate for them and we can finally, finally decide that this — all of this — is utterly unbearable.
And maybe, in time, they can forgive us too.