bear with me here, or skip this.

quasi-political interjection, skip if you want
So tragedy is numbing to me at this point. We saw it on the news as it unfolded, I find myself more angry than sad, because while it's beyond tragic, I have far greater grief over my complicity in paying taxes that finance drones that kill kids in Pakistan and Yemen and God knows where else than I do for some nutcase with a gun. It's terrible all around, but is a mother's grief in the suburbs worth more than a mother's grief in some village with no running water? I can't imagine the final moments of those little kids, or what their parents are feeling. This has happened in other places too, and I don't have kids, but the proportional outrage involving a crazy guy with a gun compared to the terror that we perpetuate for other kids every day trying to go to school makes my blood boil.

 I ran this by my mom who I disagree with sometimes but who's got a beating heart and a thoughtful soul because I just got blank stares saying this to others, or "well their lives are already hard anyway." It was hard for me to sit in church this weekend (my pastor at the one I go to regularly is Arab so we pray for Palestine and Syria just as much as we pray for our own land) and hear prayers for the families of these children and think about all the other innocent kids (and how angried up does my blood get when even they're regarded as targets?) who die every day thanks to we the people and whose families are constantly troubled by that trauma that continues to repeat itself over and over again to the point where life is impossible to be normal because of the constant zoom of death. Who prays for them here? Even if you see them as your enemy, didn't Jesus tell you to pray for them too?

Maybe it's different for me because in Clevelandia I've met kids who've lost half their cranium to Israeli rockets and have friends who survived civil war in Lebanon and Rwanda who still have flashbacks when they hear fireworks or the airshow and have lost family members to shotguns and machetes. I went to college with a girl who survived Columbine, watched her friends die, but went on to have a beautiful decent life. With our place in the world, it's slightly more possible. It isn't for others.  It hits me in an entirely different place in the gut and it's hard to express that without sounding heartless. I believe that life is sacred and not to be taken lightly, whether that's in the womb or in the next state over or a country across the globe. I don't know what else to say except that I feel so alone in that sentiment.