I was five.
Classmates were getting pulled out of the classroom and I had no idea why. When I got home that afternoon, the news let me know the reason. Two planes had flown into the twin towers. There was a terrorist attack on our country. Children were getting pulled out of classrooms everywhere in a panic, because the world didn't know what was going on. What was going to happen next? Where were they going? One of the planes didn't get to where it was supposed to and landed in Pennsylvania, a state right next to me. Specifically, in a part that is exactly 2 hours away from my hometown of Weirton, West Virginia. Now, at age five I just knew that something bad happened and everyone was scared. My parents looked on at the TV quietly.
That night, I cried myself to sleep out of fear that planes were going to crash into our home.
9/11 was the first tragedy I experienced. That was the first moment of global chaos that I can remember, and it's something we see every day in the news.
I don't want to say that we're a generation that has become desensitized from this. We're human. We're naturally empathetic. We know fear and sorrow. Knowing schools full of children or stadiums packed with people have been massacred fills us with those feelings, but it's a desensitization of shock to an extent.
We have grown up in a time period where we're used to see war. We're used to seeing murder and brutality. We're used to seeing uncaring acts of violence. Getting on social media sites and seeing in the headlines that a school shooting has happened every day isn't something we should be used to, but we are.
It's like when the seasons change. The first day you see snow falling and gather on an untouched ground, it gives you a sense of wander. It ignites something in you. From that moment on, you grow so accustomed to seeing snow that you might acknowledge that "Oh, it's snowing!" but you don't feel the way you did when fall left and you were greeted with something pretty and untouched that gets you in the mood for winter.
Growing up in a generation with nothing but chaos on the front pages and broadcasts is the sad side of that. Some events might be larger than others in casualties or other factors, but all of them are still ridiculous. They're still sad, but at this point it's like an expectation. We live in a world where you can't help but wake up everyday and wonder: what's going to happen next? Where is it going to be?
Our reactions to another shooting shouldn't be "well, there's the third one this week." We're saddened by it, and we're hurt that this is something people have to deal with, but it passes. We move on. We acknowledge the next tragedy and the cycle is endless.
This is the world we live in, and it's disgusting.
