The worst thing I did to myself after Columbine was living the expectation that I wasn’t “getting over it” fast enough. For years after I obsessed about why I was still so shell shocked, so traumatized. But I’ve realized as an adult that this was an unreal expectation of myself. No one can define how a survivor will integrate that trauma into their life, into how they continue their existence.
In my experience (and I’m coming to find out in the experience of many other survivors) you don’t get the option of just leaving it behind, of moving forward, of not letting it change you. It’s easy to imagine life is like traveling down a road with a map and GPS, knowing which turns to take and what is over the next hill. But after surviving tragedy, I no longer had a road, let alone a map. I no longer had fuel or a desire to have momentum. Life does go on, in it’s way. But I was changed, irreversibly, by my experience. I believe most of us probably were.
I know that the Columbine community is more vulnerable drawing up to and on the anniversary. For many, I would say that day has become written as a day set apart on a cellular level. It might not even be conscious, but something deep within acknowledges the anniversaries. Even now, all this time later, I still feel the day nearing deep within my body.
“Get over it, move on, don’t let it change you....” I think these are the most insensitive, unenlightened, even harmful statements to say about any kind of traumatic experience, whether a person was directly involved or not. Saying these types of things is in its essence NOT allowing people to feel. By not talking about tragedy and trauma, by not addressing violence in our lives, we are bottling up pain and emotion and grief. Individuals need to be allowed to integrate those traumatic experiences into what life looks like now, because lives have changed, most people that are impacted didn’t have a choice. I think it is a myth that trauma can be “gotten over,” it has transformed a large community of people whether they are conscious of it or not.
Should we brush it aside and tell those families, friends, and affected to just move on and get over it? And when it happens again, do we just brush that aside? We never address the real issues when we keep silent and expect people to move on, move forward, leave stuff behind, and not be changed.
How can we expect things like this to never happen again if we never address them? How can we change our culture of violence unless we say that violence touches us profoundly? What if we all actually talked about it? Not in a sensational sort of way, but in a real way full of the truth and pain and real change that comes from abuse, rape, shootings, suicide, and all other violent acts? It’s about taking into account that we need to change something. Don’t we? Or do we just keep watching people be killed?
I do want this kind of thing to change us. I want it to change our society, our culture - this culture that has Columbine, Virginia Tech, Tucson, Aurora, Newtown. This culture that somehow breeds young, disassociated, violent individuals who kill innocent people. And we want to move on from this? To keep going forward? Isn’t any one else dreading when and where and who will be next? So please, don’t get over it, allow yourself to be changed, and tell someone how you feel.
