Run. Hide. Fight.

You were never meant to witness someone's final breath... and then laugh at a TikTok.

You weren't built for that. 

Your soul wasn't designed to hold that kind of weight and then move on like it's nothing.

This isn't just about tech.

This is trauma. This is spiritual damage.

We’re overstimulated, under-connected, and completely shut down inside.

We're seeing everything and feeling nothing.

And that should break your heart.

Dr. Raymond Nichols

I stopped watching the news about three years ago. Not because there is anything wrong with watching the news. It's just that I’m unable to handle it. Which makes me feel like a weak person. "I wish I was made of stronger stuff," I chastised myself while cancelling all my newspaper subscriptions in 2022. The news, and the way it is presented these days, makes me way too nervous and keyed up. Knowing that about myself feels pathetic but also, in an odd way, freeing. 

About five years ago, before I stopped engaging with the news in all its nefarious forms, I decided that it was American news that was stressing me out. I stopped ingesting news that had anything at all to do with the States and instead listened exclusively to the BBC World Service - and only when they were covering news that had little (or nothing) to do with me or my part of the world. But even then I simply couldn't hack it. America might be a scary place to live, but compared to all the news I heard coming out of Burundi and Mogadishu and Yemen from the trusty BBC correspondents - America really ain't that bad. 

But at the same time...it is. Last week a young man named Charlie Kirk was murdered, in broad daylight, by some psychopath with a gun. Even purposefully avoiding all news sources I heard about it right away. I went to get a late day coffee at Starbucks and overheard the chitter chatter. When I arrived home that night my son and husband were discussing the shooting in depth.

I knew nothing about Charlie Kirk or his politics. And although I probably should care about what side of the aisle he walked on, I honestly don't. I was just sad that another person (this one with two little kids at home) had been gunned down in broad daylight in front of a large crowd.

The next night my husband and I went to an annual dinner at one of our children's schools. The headmaster is a wise man. He is also a wonderful writer and orator and I always look forward to his thought-provoking address at this event. As he started to speak to a room filled with hundreds of attentive parents, I found myself surveying my surroundings. I do this all the time but in the past few years it has become a disturbingly obsessive behavior.

Because when the active shooter does march in...I want to be prepared. I want to be ready for him. I want to know in which direction I will need to run. 

I was sitting right near a door at this dinner, which is always a relief because that means I have an escape route. But the door was propped open to let the soft September breeze flow into the stifling auditorium, so the relief was short-lived. "That could very well be their entry point," I reasoned. 

The dinner was being held in a massive gymnasium - which is sort of three gymnasiums laid out side by side. When the school needs to divide this huge gym into three separate spaces they have a series of heavy black curtains attached to sturdy cables hanging from the ceiling to do just that. And that is what I focused on. The curtains were close enough to my table that I could, if need be, sprint or crawl over to them. Those curtains would provide excellent cover. "I can hide in the folds until the shooting is over," I assured myself. But then I realized that the curtain hems hovered about six inches from the floor. The shooter would surely see my feet. I needed to come up with another plan.

In the back of the gym, but several hundred feet away from where I sat, there are a series of ladders and ropes that ascend all the way to the rafters and then sort of disappear into what I prayed was a safe crawl space in which to hide from bullets. I calculated how long it would take me to dash over there, through all the blood and bodies and chaos, and decided that although that might be salvation for the parents sitting on that side of the gym it was not a viable exit strategy for me. 

The rest of the dinner went by in this way. I tried valiantly to pull myself back into the present moment but I could not. I was very anxious and making myself more so by the minute. My breath was rapid and shallow and I started to sweat. But this is not unusual. 

When I go into any area where more than fifty people are gathered, the very first thing I do is look for the safest way to exit when the shooting starts. But I only do this in America. I never do this when I travel to other countries. I’m only fearful of gun violence here in the states. Instead of moving out of America, which I very well could do, I have chosen to stay here. Where I am always on edge, fearful, expectant.

In supermarkets, movie theaters, school functions, sporting events, concerts, and all other gatherings the first thing I do is figure out how I will flee. I want to tell my children to make sure that they always do the same thing. But I don't want to scare them.

That’s a crazy way to live. And I live in this crazy way because I live in a country with crazy gun laws. The laws could be changed of course. Any law can be. But they probably won’t be. Not in my lifetime anyway. Gun control in America is the single most important issue for me on any ballot. But I have zero faith that anything will change. If twenty school kids, sitting calmly in their first grade classroom, can get gunned down one sunny December morning and nothing changes I doubt it ever will. It would take an absolute maverick to change our gun laws. And mavericks are not allowed in Washington. Yes men? Please, do come in! Mavericks who want to make real changes? You can wait outside.

But changes have been made. Gun advocates even assure us that our kids are still safe because we prepare them for the worst. “Run. Then hide. And if all else fails...Fight!” we teach them (from elementary school on) as if a child could fight off a killer, wielding a semi-automatic machine gun.

It was at the very end of the dinner when I had my last "escape fantasy" that I had the shocking realization that not only does being exposed to the chronic gun violence in America put me mildly on edge all the freaking time, it has also made me a much worse person. A paranoid person. A selfish person. 

Sitting between me and the open door was a large man. He was about 6 foot 4 inches tall, powerfully built and solid as a rock. I put him at about 250 pounds. "I can duck behind him and use him as a shield," I assured myself. This knowledge, that the bullets would hit him before me, made me feel much better until I realized that I had, in the blink of an eye, sacrificed some poor kid's father for my own safety. I had not given my husband or friends sitting at the same table a passing thought. I thought about me and how I would save my own skin. I was horrified. At myself. At my mind. But most importantly I am horrified at the prevalence of gun violence in America. 

Because when I should have been sitting still and listening to our school’s headmaster giving us parents a deep and meaningful speech about our boys and their futures I was studying my escape routes and hatching a plan to keep myself from getting shot dead. 

And because of that...I barely heard a word.