It’s over halfway through winter.
It’s over halfway through February.
I’m over halfway over any person, place, or event that has ever had a negative impact on my life. It’s a very fortunate place to be. I recognize this and acknowledge that there are many, many people in the world who will never have the opportunity to be “halfway there”.

Given my personality and preferences I often choose to stay closer to home. I choose a smaller bubble. I keep a keen eye trained on the world at large from a distance and then choose to turn away from it.

It’s a safe space where I am now and the world is a supremely fucked up place. Side by side monitors at the gym this morning are displaying the beauty and grace of some of the most talented athletes alive today and the most tragic pictures and videos from yet another mass murder by gunfire. I just can’t.

Those people will never get to be halfway over what has happened to them. It’s truly heartbreaking and sadly not even incomprehensible anymore. It’s so common there’s a cadence to it.

There’s some lull, you know, and everyone is just going about their business. Then it happens and there’s a swell..The media, the emotions, the outrage. All of a sudden all sides are on high alert.

There’s “thoughts and prayers” offered in the most shallow of ways possible and waves of aftershock that are equally as shallow.

There’s a spike in people pointing fingers at law makers and the NRA and the retaliation and push back by those groups.

There’s a deep dive into the situation and which has become so routine that it seems scripted. It’s like some bad reality television train wreck that you can’t look away from as you pass by it. It’s purpose is not to inform, but to boost numbers.

This is followed by a fade out. It could be slow, if nothing else noteworthy is there to take the lead. It could be quick if there’s a natural disaster or uprising somewhere else in the world or if Angelina and Brad decide to get back together. Eventually the situation will dissolve into just another statistic or bullet point on Wikipedia and we’ll all just ride that curve through to the lull to the next thing.

People are high on the curve right now. They are in a state of outrage and demanding something be done. Some choose to believe that if enough people voted for certain individuals to replace other individuals in a government office, something would change for the better. The fact of the matter is that it doesn’t matter. IT DOES NOT MATTER!!

The damage is done. Guns are a reality and they have been fashioned into finely tuned human killing devices. Semi-automatic weapons have been built and released into the general population. Once something is in the wild, you can’t get it back.

Anyone who wants a gun can get one. Anyone who wants one probably already has one. And it just takes one. One weapon in the hands of anyone who is mentally unstable or has delusions of grandeur or has grown up in a desensitized society with some thought about proving a point or getting revenge is all it takes. Changing a law now does nothing.

That person is already out there. They are probably watching the media coverage right now and thinking about what they could do too. How it might feel. They might be thinking about the actual people they want to target or they might just be swallowed in the sadness that it’s the only way they will be strong enough to end their own life. Those people will also never be over halfway over what they are going through either. Isn’t that just as tragic?

I’m watching from a safe distance. My heart aches every time I witness the horrible things that happen in this world. I’ve got empathy but am shielding myself from the shrapnel that is inevitable as we are thrust along the curve. My primary responsibility is to myself and to my children and to make sure we are never in a bad situation where we can’t find our way to being halfway over it. You have to be able to get halfway there before you can get all the way there and that’s when things are good again.

Taking Care,
~Miss SugarCookie