Here it is...

My heart is still so sad. I tend to be a very sensitive person. I take things that happen very much to heart even if they don't happen to me directly. I hurt when other people hurt and cry when other people cry. The latest events in our somewhat tragic-ridden recent history in the US has left me bewildered.

I work with kids. I work with teachers and I am a school psychologist. To actually be able to put myself in the shoes of the people who were murdered this past Friday has been very disturbing to me. I try not to think about the possibilities, the risks I suppose, of working in a helping position. There have been school shootings in the past and those events have always made me have that dark little worry in the back of my mind. But since Friday it's been at the forefront. I find myself constantly looking around me, jumping at loud noises, keeping a watchful eye on those I am not familiar with, hugging kids a little tighter, and making sure I tell them just how wonderful and special they are. I do love them. I go home and worry about them, I cry if they are sad, and I try to make them smile. I love my students, each and every one of them even if I don't know them well. They are each an individual wonderful human being and I just adore their existence.

 I can't even comprehend what darkness a person must find themselves in to create such a devastation in so many lives like the young man who murdered those innocent people on Dec. 14th. But in a way I am also very sad for him. He must have been so troubled and in such a dark place to have found himself in a mindset to commit such an atrocity. He maybe could have been helped...this could have possibly been prevented. Mental health illnesses are very serious and despite what many people might think, a person cannot just get over it. It consumes you. It becomes you.

The whole thing is just overwhelmingly sad. Sad is not even an appropriate term...but as I find myself once again wrapped in the emotion of it all I am without words.

Today was better than yesterday and still better than the day before...in time we will all get on and I hope with all my heart that something will change in this country for the better. It's just a terrible thing that change had to happen this way.