My Hometown Is Hurting

Sunday my hometown became a place of confusion and panic.

People in my life, people who I have known since childhood were there. I stayed up until past four o'clock in the morning staring at nothing.  Thinking about everyone affected.  Worrying because I didn't know if there was anyone I knew there. As it turns out, a man with two young girls (I grew up with his sister) was there because he was working the pyrotechnics. My cousin and some of my friends left just before it happened. I still have no idea if I have friends among the wounded or killed.

All I can think right now as I write, as I have thought all day, this is the world I'm growing up in? This is what generations past are leaving future generations? I am growing up in a world where it's not super surprising that an act of terrorism was committed in a big city. Examples? Paris, London, New York. Those are recent but it's not the first time things like this have happened recently.

Since Sunday night I have felt as if I have no emotions. I can't think, I've gotten no schoolwork done, I can't study, I don't remember anything I've heard, read, or seen over the past two days. I wasn't even there and I feel awful. You know how people who survive something traumatic live with what's called "Survivor's Guilt"? I feel like I have that because I wasn't there when something was happening to my friends, family, even strangers. It doesn't just affect those who were there, people who weren't there are affected too.

This city has raised me. I've learned to be aware and careful, but also that people are a great thing and friends become family. I can't bear the thought of people being hurt or killed in my hometown, in my "backyard," so to speak. There are great people in this city. There were lots of tourists just there for food and entertainment. My city is in pain. I don't just say that for those who were there, I'm saying that for the people on vacation, for the people who live here and weren't there as well as the victims.

My home was attacked, and as such I feel personally attacked. It hurts because these people are fellow humans, they are neighbors, sons, wives, husbands, girl and boyfriends, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, friends. They were people. I'm a person, so are you. It hurts my heart to the point of almost physical pain that these people's families will miss them forever. I can honestly say that I will miss them as well, I may not have known them, but I will mourn them. It hurts when I see people saying that people deserved it, or that you shouldn't feel bad for them because they're stupid or other political reasons. 

Let's just take some time to mourn our fellow humans, men and women who died long before they should have died. Who cares about their taste in music or their political standing. We all bleed red, we all have family, we are all people, can't we just remember that for a little while at least?

Links to other articles on Vegas:
Trying to Process it All
The Shock: Las Vegas