Totally Numb

I am from Aurora, CO.  Many people have never heard of our city - that is until 7/20/12.  That was when a psycho man from San Diego went on the worst rampage this state, and possibly this county, has ever seen.  12 people died, and 50+ people were injured.  He surrendered, and I am hoping that some day we will have a few answers as to why this happened.  In the Columbine shootings, we knew fairly quickly why it happened.  But this just seems senseless.  WHY!??

Here is another set of thoughts on this:
http://erikaandlifehappens.blogspot.com/2012/07/a-terrible-tragedy.html?spref=fb
Her thoughts mirror mine and just about everyone else I have talked to about it.  We just don't understand.

I found out about this tragedy via someone I had met a day before.  My company is buying a truck from Dallas Dodge.  On Thursday I spent some time talking to a man named Scott Arnold about the truck, and we also talked about the places we lived.  He mentioned how he loved Denver and how safe it seemed, and how Dallas just wasn't as safe.  When I woke up Friday morning, I started it just like every other day.  I got up, turned on my phone, and crawled in the shower.  I heard that I had a message during my shower, but I didn't check it right away.  When I got out of the shower, I checked my email messages first instead of the voicemail because I wasn't at my desk.  On my personal email, I had a couple of Yahoo emails asking me to write an article about the shootings first hand.  That is my first knowledge of the shootings.  As I was reading that email, I got a call from Scott.  The first thing he asked me was if I was okay, and he said that he had left me a VM already to check on me.  He said he was worried about me because of the news he had just heard.  It was really super sweet of him, given that I had never met him in person and had just talked to him the day before.  Not one person from my company in TX called me or checked on me that day, or even 3 days later - just this man.  I am still amazed by that.  Kind of gives you an idea of how people value you, huh?  Okay, not going to worry, because they're busy enough right now that I wouldn't expect them to read the news or think too clearly about it.  It was really sweet too that a friend from high school checked up on the people he knew that loved movies and lived in Aurora to see if they were okay.   Luckily I woke up late enough that I was able to find out enough about the people I would worry about most early on.  And the person I thought about right away was safe as well.  

I am numb and have no idea how to vocalize how I feel about the situation.  How does anyone in this community come to grips with what happened?  How do we express our grief, our feelings, our thoughts, or our questions?  We can't.  How does our community come back from this?  Is there any way?  Some of the worst tragedies have a way of making a town/city stand out in the mind of our country.  Think Waco, TX - do you know anything about that town except for the siege at the Branch Dividian in 1993?  Is Aurora, CO going to end up like that?  4 days ago, the only city named Aurora that you would remember is Aurora, IL, from Wayne's World fame.  I wish we were famous for that instead of a freak that terrorized a huge city.   I know that the media have made it seem like we are just a small suburb of Denver, but Aurora has almost 350k citizens.  That is huge to me.  It has a higher population than any other suburb of Denver by a large amount.  On a side note, it bothers me that some articles say "Denver, CO" instead of "Aurora, CO".  We are a big city, big enough that it should be recognized!!!! 

My biggest question in all of this comes from being a mom.  How do I discuss this with my children?  I haven't yet.   We had planned to take our kids to the movies this weekend to see the new Ice Age movie and I was afraid that if I told them about the massacre, then they would be afraid to see the movie.  I need to talk to them, I know.  They will find out about it at school in a couple of weeks, no doubt.  But what do I say to them now?  How do I make them feel safe after this?   I am at a loss.  Part of the problem is that I don't know how to deal with my own feelings about it, and if I am crying while talking to them about it, how do I keep them from dealing with it as I have?  There are counselors at several of the high schools in the area to help people deal with it - maybe I should take them there?  I don't know.



Okay, before I break down again, I need to stop talking about it.  I have so much more to say, but this is not the time nor the place.  I am just sad and I don't know how to go about my daily duties.  I am hoping that happy times are close and that as a community we start to rebound. And I hope that I can start to get my mind off of it soon.

I am afraid that my life is more affected by it than I previously thought.