Two more young people join our club

[Wheelerswife]

I'm devastated to read that two young journalists have been killed by a gunman in southern Virginia.  Both were planning futures with fellow colleagues.  I lived in the area where they grew up, where they worked, where they were killed.  I visited the place they were killed last summer.  I know people who knew the young woman killed. 

 

I'm exhausted from the stories of mass murder, gunmen, terrorists, death.  I lived on the east coast during 9/11.  My sister lost colleagues at the Pentagon.  She had been transferred from the Pentagon to another location 6 weeks earlier. My niece was at Virginia Tech, walking to a building adjacent to where the rampage happened when she was pulled into another building and saved from potential physical harm.  She lost an acquaintance there, and is still haunted, with depression and alcohol abuse by that massacre. I've had students in my class in school who survived the Aurora, Colorado theater shooting.  My sister lost colleagues and had friends injured at the Navy Yard shooting.  She used to work there, too, and was scheduled to be in the place of the shooting on the day it occurred, but her weekly meeting had been cancelled.  I used to live near Newtown, Connecticut.  I have a cousin who lives a mile from Sandy Hook Elementary School...and her children (now grown) attended that school.

 

How has our world gone so crazy that these instances keep happening?  It is all close to home.  Sometimes I just yearn for a simpler life again.

 

Thanks for listening to my ramble.

 

Maureen

[SoVerySad]

Sending you tight hugs, Maureen. These stories of senseless, violent deaths have always been heartbreaking to hear about. However, since experiencing the devastating loss of my T, the thought of others being forced to join our club and experience the same pain is even more upsetting, because we know the hell they face. I'm sending loving thoughts to their loved ones and families. It is so sad.

[Carey]

Everytime I hear about something like this, my mind immediately goes to the spouses and children left behind and the horror they are about to experience and it's a guttural reaction ... instinct almost ... to feel acute sadness for even strangers I will never know.  Because I know what they are facing and it sucks.  I internalize these things so much more now than I ever did before and tend to grieve everyones loss.  I even have to take a break from this board for awhile because it seemed I personally felt each persons living nightmare. I don't know why it's affected me that way but it's sure hard to live with. 

[Virgo]

There is a lot of senseless violence in this world. It's heartbreaking to think humans are capable of such violence.

[kjs1989]

It's all very discouraging and beyond comprehension.  This is such a violent world that it hard to be optimistic a lot of days. I will never understand human  heartlessness and cruelty, and it has been in our world since the beginning of mankind. Gives me anxiety.

[calimom]

Until our country is ready to have a real discussion (and by this I mean a REAL discussion - not "my uncle hunts and we need full access to firearms") about guns, and gun violence, we're going to continue to have these incidents occur with the frequency they seem to.  There are simply way too many unbalanced people having their hands on guns who shouldn't be.  Other countries must shake their heads in wonder why we keep allowing this to happen.