On Thursday morning, February 15, 2018, I had a hard time going to work. My heart was beating so fast that I had to crank up the music and scream to blow off some of the adrenaline that flooded me as traffic carried me down my usual route. Once I arrived, I barely made it into my classroom and locked myself in before I lost it. I sat at my desk and sobbed for a few minutes. Thankfully, it was a block day and I didn't have a first period class. I had some time to pull myself together.
It wasn't fear, really. I feel pretty safe at my school. And I wont lie, part of that feeling of safety is taking small comfort in statistics. We've already had a shooting event on our property, before I came to teach there. Lightning doesn't strike twice in the same spot. I tell myself this, regularly.
But. Still.
It was an overwhelming sense of helplessness. It was imagining my own students, all of whom I adore and would lay down my life for, laying injured on the floor, or dead. Envisioning the same of my friends on staff, knowing who would be in the hallway giving directions in a crisis. It was the realization that the lockdown/intruder drill we held just the FUCKING DAY BEFORE would be meaningless based on what happened in Florida. He pulled the fire alarm and waited for people to come to him.
(Side note: don't talk to me about mental illness right now. Premeditated. Planned. He's not insane.)
I cannot wrap my leather belt around the hinge of the door when the fire alarm goes off. I can't push a table in front of the door and turn off the lights and say we stay here until we get the All Clear.
I cannot retrain my kids to erase the muscle memory reaction we've taught them since the age of five to exit the building when they hear the alarm. I will not do that. I will not ask them to override their natural instincts. Or mine.
We are sitting ducks. And I can't fix that.
You have no idea how powerless this feels.
When Sandy Hook happened I was in a low-boil panic for days, maybe weeks. My Fight or Flight response was dialed up to 11 all day, every day, while I forced myself to appear calm and functional to the point of total exhaustion. I spent all my free time standing in the middle of my classroom imagining the various scenarios of where would I hide children when he came for me. How could I arrange my classroom footprint to ensure the most survivors? I cleaned a bunch of junk out of my storage cabinets to make room for little bodies.
My youngest son was in the classroom across the hall at the time, in fourth grade. Would I run for him first? Or second to whomever was in my room at the time? How would I choose? I didn't have an answer. But I wondered constantly.
It has occured to me that this event may have been a catalyst in my adrenal system overload which resulted in Fibromyalgia diagnosis, or at the very least, the final straw. You can't imagine the stress this puts in teachers everywhere. How many teachers in this country operate daily with PTSD? And I mean just those of us who have yet to live through a real event. This is the point of view I have. I cannot speak for the survivors.
That we have accepted that a massacre of innocents like this in our schools or churches is a When, not an If and that we must prepare, is mind-boggling. And it breaks my heart.
Like the time of Sandy Hook, I have avoided the news. I have not read the articles, not read the names, turned the channel, watched only coverage of the Olympics. I am unable to let myself process this. I've turned off the spigot of that emotional water pipe. I can't get to angry in the grief cycle, because I cannot start the process. I'm too afraid I won't be able to stop crying once I begin. I won't be able to get out of bed. I won't be able to go into my classroom. I won't be able to face my students without trembling at the slightest noise. (I already jump out of my skin when somebody pops a balloon. Did I mention my Fight or Flight response is broken?) It may not be healthy, turning completely away, but it's keeping me functioning on some level.
But I have not been able to stop the scenarios that run on a loop inside my very imaginative brain. During a five day week I teach classes that include all grades of students K-12. How would I manage the situation with my high schoolers differently than my kindergarteners? They all have phones, they could help each other since they're more mature, perhaps we really could be stone silent and wait to be saved. Have you ever seen a group of kindergarteners be stone silent?
Some don't even include me, some of these scenarios are about my own children. What would happen at their school, a public high school just down the block from where I teach, not unlike the one in Florida? What if they're in the band room - it has an outside exit and doors that connect to other classrooms, plus doors that look like closets. Their English and math classes are at the end of the farthest hallway, they'd have more time there.
The scenarios in my brain run as both a teacher and parent.
How are we supposed to get past this?
And why do we have to?
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