November 13, 2015.
It's close to 5 p.m. and I get a concerned text from my boyfriend saying, "Everything is starting to kick off in Paris." I heard there was something going on, but I wasn't too sure. I didn't pay much attention to it on Facebook at this time. He proceeds to tell me about the multiple explosions, the 40 people dead, and the 100 hostages. My heart breaks. I proceed to go to work, still thinking about the victims and the families affected by this horrible tragedy. It's close to 8 p.m. now, and I take a water break at work, check social media, and find the situation has worsened. More than 100 people are confirmed dead.
I don't live in Paris, no one I know is in Paris, so this doesn't personally affect me, but it does. It affects all of us. On Friday we saw a group of people who had lost all sense of humanity destroying lives, murdering, injuring all out of evil and spite. We saw evil manifested into human beings.
It's 10 p.m. and I get home from work. My roommates are sitting around, laughing, having a good 'ol time (which is not a bad thing). But my heart continued to ache. I go through the pictures I took when I was in Paris and just think to myself about the tragedy that happened. I can't get this out of my brain. When I think of Paris, I see a city of my dreams and a place full of magic. During my time in Paris, it was hard to be miserable because of the beauty I was surrounded by. It's my city of wonder and imagination. Paris, to me, is memories of communicating with the bus driver in broken French and trying to find ways to only buy one metro card. Hateful people have come in and destroyed that image for me. Now Paris is a place of fear and anguish. The city will never be the same. It will never again be the Paris I've seen.
It's 2 a.m. on November 14, 2015. The worst is over, but now there are families that have to put their lives back together after a travesty happened in their lives. There are children who will have to go on without their parents, and there are families that will be forever broken because a group of hateful people decided that innocent people should die. I'm not sure where we go from here or what's the next step to the terror situation. But what I do know is that I'm going to mourn the loss of humanity and the loss of innocent people. This is history made. This is a day the people of France will never forget. This is a day so many people will never forget.
All we can do now is pick up the broken pieces of a shattered city and help mend it as best as we can. I know there's not much we can do from America, or wherever you may be from, but just thoughts and prayers can do wonders. I beg you not to forget about this next week or the week after. This could have happened anywhere, but it happened in Paris. With Paris we will stand. Paris stood with America after 9/11, and now it's our turn to repay the gesture. We all need to stand with Paris until the city can put itself back together again. In the wake of this horrible act of terror against the Parisian people, I am Parisian and I am French.
Je suis français.
