Content warning: This post is going to involve discussion of a mass shooting, PTSD resulting from it, topics around death, and triggers. Please be mindful of this while reading.
Every day is a sequence of events, whether large or small, that make up how we spend our time and what we’re doing. Some of these are mundane, forgettable, so boring we don’t even think about doing them, like going to the bathroom or grabbing a drink from the refrigerator. Some are notable, maybe important in context, but ultimately nothing special, like work meetings, or a project deadline. Others still are unique and memorable, things you think back to sometimes, like a concert, or getting something new you really wanted. None of those are what I want to talk about today. In fact, today’s topic is going to center specifically around one event in my life, one earthshattering day that I will not, in fact cannot, ever forget, even if I want to. It is one I don’t talk about terribly often, and one that has haunted me for nearly a decade and a half now, along with many others who experienced it right alongside me. So, lets talk about April 16, 2007. The Virginia Tech Massacre.
I entered Virginia Tech as a freshman in August 2006. I was excited to go to this new place, to be away from parents and go to football games and explore college life. There were, of course, many adjustments, figuring out dealing with classes and homework entirely on my own, new dynamics to how my social life played out, all those things that a new college student has to deal with. This continued for the next several months just like that, occasional trips home for holiday breaks notwithstanding. One morning, my alarm went off, and I felt absolutely awful. My head was pounding, my nose was stuffed up, I was nauseous, I just felt like crap. So I decided I would skip my class that morning and rest more. This would turn out to be one of the most critically important decisions of my life, quite possibly.
I woke up again a little later to my roommate and my Resident Advisor talking. The very first thing I heard after gaining consciousness was “so, wait, someone’s dead?”. This is the kind of thing that catches your attention and snaps you awake. My roommate went to turn on the TV in our room and find a news channel. At this point it was about mid-morning, and they were reporting on the woman who was shot in her dorm room. They said the shooter had not yet been caught, which was worrisome, but it sounded like a crime of passion and not a large-scale concern. I did have a friend in the hall where the shooting occurred, which was a little scary. At the time it seemed like it was mainly a precaution that everyone was remaining indoors and we would just wait it out until the police secured the campus otherwise. Then everything changed.
The reports started coming in about Norris Hall. The gunman had entered and shots could be heard. People were fleeing from all corners of the building. We had no clue how many, or who, or what was going on. We only knew someone was on campus, shooting, and that we had no idea why. It was impossible to use a cell phone. I couldn’t tell my family I was ok. It was dangerous to use social media, since we knew nothing about who was doing this or why, so posting anything that might give away a location could very well be issuing a calling card. This went on for hours. We locked ourselves in our room. We closed the blinds as best we could. We kept the noise from the TV down, but we didn’t want to turn it off in case something extremely important came up. It was our lifeline. And then we waited.
Hours later, it was over. They had found the gunman, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, in Norris Hall. Stories began to emerge, stories of teachers, or students, who stood in the way and let others escape. Stories of the gunman entering a classroom and opening fire. Too many stories of people who didn’t make it out. He killed 32 people that day, as well as himself. On the college campus where I lived and spent my time, in the halls where I walked and went to class, in the dorm where my friend lived. I found out a little later that day for sure that she was not the victim in that hall, thankfully. I had friends who lost people they were close to. And the sanctity and safety we had all believed we had was gone.
All of this, undoubtedly, is horrific. But it doesn’t explain why that decision to sleep in and rest that morning was so critically important. The answer to that question is this: the class I skipped that morning was in that hall. Thankfully, it was not one of the rooms where he went. But what if I had gone, especially feeling like I did? What if I had needed to excuse myself and use the restroom? What small sequence of seemingly unimportant events could have ended everything right there in that building for me? Of course, ultimately, it didn’t, because I did end up sleeping in. But it haunts me. How something so seemingly simple and innocuous could have ended everything over 12 years before I am writing this post.
Everything about the event is haunting. That piece augments it in my mind, thinking of the things that could have been, and amplifies the visceral gut reaction when it occupies my thoughts. I don’t handle death well, especially up close. I haven’t since that day. I can’t do funerals. Processing death takes time for me. I have PTSD around it. News stories about shootings give me flashbacks, put me right back in that room, flinching any time it sounded like there might be movement in the courtyard outside my window. It is paralyzing. That summer I missed my grandmother’s funeral, because I couldn’t stomach the idea of being in that kind of environment. I haven’t been to a single one for anyone since that day. Hearing about them makes me tense up. It probably also contributes to my need to be constantly aware of my surroundings. I have seen firsthand that you can’t ever know where it’s coming from. It can happen anywhere, at any time.
I do fight these thoughts in some ways. It’s not easy. But it also doesn’t happen everywhere all the time, so it can’t rule me like that. It does make it hard, hearing about shootings or acts of violence with the regularity we do, to engage with current events sometimes. I almost never watch the news. I have a mental aversion to it. Not every incident sets off a major reaction, but there’s an uneasiness even with the smallest things. Big, notable events trigger me in an instant. Even memorials, like the recent anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shootings, send me back. It is painful. It is damaging. And getting through it is hard. I hate every second of it. I hate what it does to me. I hate that a friend can pass away and I won’t even be able to bring myself to show up at their funeral because of the ways in which this has broken me.
What I do not want to do in this post is get into any kind of discussion about gun politics or anything like that. There are times and places for that, and people better equipped to do so than I am. Here, in this post, I am spilling out this thing I have held onto for so long, that I do not talk about openly most of the time, that I tell people about to explain why I might be struggling on a given day but do everything I can to gloss over and move away from. Regardless of any greater discussion, this is about me, the pain I have, and the scars it has left me with that I struggle to deal with. I don’t think it will ever go away. It has been 12 years and I can still vividly remember details of *that entire week*. It robs me of my ability to breathe. I start trembling. My heartrate spikes. I can feel it happening while I’m writing this. But I have to get it out. For once, just one time, I have to let it all pour out onto this page.
This event is a permanent scar on the face of my life, on the landscape of my mind. There was the 19 years before April 16th, and there is all the time after. I don’t think I will ever be able to process that in a way that allows it to make sense to me, but it is my reality. And it is devastating. I have found ways to move on with a lot of pieces of my life. I have found other purposes, found connections with people, and managed to not allow it to completely rule and engulf everything about me. But it is my constant companion. It is the cold sliver in the back of my mind every time I see a news story about an act of mass violence. It is the needle in my heart every time someone starts talking about a gunman. And that’s the reality I live with.
I don’t have any real grand point with this post. I don’t have any answers, I don’t have any life lessons. This is me, spilling out catharsis in a way I have never been able to do before. I think this is probably the only medium in which I can. I couldn’t possibly sit in the same room with someone and say all this. I don’t think I could say it out loud in a room where I was alone. I wouldn’t get through it all. This time, this is just my story. The incomplete, untidy real life story of someone who was there for something awful. That’s all this is. Take it as you will.
Draconic Evolution 