When I heard about the Paris attack, I reacted like I was hearing any normal piece of information… like someone was telling me what was for dinner or what kind of homework they were doing tonight.
I sat there and heard about 120 people dying and did not feel shocked.
I did not feel an automatic, writhing despair.
And that absolutely terrifies me.
I’ve only been alive for 20 years. September 11 is one of the first huge things I vaguely remember in my life. Then at the age of 8, the war in Iraq started and continued until I was 16.
I didn’t understand the relevance of these events because they happened at such a young part of my life. I knew what these tragedies were called, I knew that they meant attacks and death, but no one ever told me that they weren’t normal.
And now I hear about Paris, and I’m not 6 or 8 years old anymore.
But for a moment I still didn’t feel anything. Just like at those ages, I didn’t know what I was supposed to feel.
I’m over that now.
Now I feel anger. I’m angry that so many terrible things have happened around the world that I became desensitized to the murder, the cold-blooded murder of over 120 people.
I feel sick as I think about the screams that filled the air on Friday. I hear the screams of the hurt and dying. They beg for mercy and for help, please someone help them. I hear the screams of onlookers. They scream because they’ll never un-see what they witnessed that day. And I hear the screams of the attackers. They scream with pleasure and with madness. They scream as they bomb themselves along with those unfortunate individuals around them.
I’m morose to envision those people sitting casually in a Paris coffee shop. One moment they were mothers and sons and husbands and wives. And the next they weren’t. The next they were victims. The next they were lying on the ground fearfully screaming for their lives. And then some of them weren’t.
The mother didn’t tuck her baby in tonight with a kiss on the forehead and smell that sweet scent of Johnson’s shampoo. She is dead.
The son wasn’t eagerly waiting for his dad to come home from work today; he didn’t tell him about how he finally made the basketball team. He is dead.
The husband has no wife. And the wife has no husband. They’ll fall asleep in cold, empty beds tonight and they’ll cry. They’ll franticly beg to know how this could happen and why anyone could think killing innocent people was the answer. They’ll ask all the questions I forgot to ask when I heard the news. But even if they do get an answer, it doesn’t matter. Their husbands and wives are already dead.
What am I supposed to feel now?
How am I supposed to go about my life knowing that these things happen and they continue to happen? That people are evil and they kill people they don’t even know for reasons that just don’t make sense?
I don’t know.
I don’t have an answer.
Today I can only say pray for Paris.
Pray for those whose loved ones didn’t make it home on Friday.
Pray for those individuals who did make it home but will never be the same because of it.
And pray for the attackers. Pray that somewhere or somehow they’ll realize what they’ve done. They’ll realize the pointlessness of their anger or fear. And pray that they’ll realize that the decision of life and death should not be in their hands.
Pray for Paris.
