In light of the shooting at Reynolds High School today I am overwhelmed with thoughts of what it means to be safe and who makes those choices. So often other people take our lives in their own hands. Sometimes it is out of love, other times out of hate, sometimes we don't know the reasons.
Safety is just a strange thing to think about. I come from a community of women that will never feel "safe" because someone took that away from them. A community where everywhere has a danger to it because the person they thought was there to protect them violated them and/or that trust. Lately there has been this focus on the #yesallwomen hashtag and I have heard SOOO much backlash around it. Like women are blaming all men. There is so much more to it then that.
Being someone that has been in one, or a few, of those relationships it can become a way your frame how you look at things. When you've been forced to do things, or you've been isolated from your friends and family, or you've had your decisions made for you, you look at things differently. You respond to things differently.
I think of how I have never been able to stay in one house/apartment for longer than a year because there is risk. It takes a long time to show friends where I live because there is risk. I make different choices and ones that may not make sense to others because of the risk. It's not that I am thinking about the risks directly but they are just a part of my thinking now.
It's a part of my own personal risk management. I'm always looking at the way out. The quickest exit.
I think of how this isn't just becoming something that people in bad relationships are experiencing. I've never been in a shooting. I've never lived that so I cannot by any means speak to what that experience is like. I remember the Clackamas Town Center shooting and how many of my friends were there. How their immediate thoughts were on the quickest exit and where their loved ones are. I think about how there are children and college students that are being faced with the reality of gun violence constantly.
Schools shouldn't be the place they are being faced with this. I've worked with so many kids that come from poor neighborhoods, abusive homes, homes where they didn't know where the next meal was coming or if their parents would even be home, school was the consistency. I think about when my life was in turmoil with Javad and school was where I would thrive because it was consistent. So I think about the kids at Reynolds High School, located in an already difficult area of the metro, and think about how this shooting was that much more of a violation.
Sure it was a violation of their safety. But I worry about the kids where school was their place that they felt safe. Their place that they went to get away from the chaos and then this happened. I hope those kids still put their faith in their administrators and in their school to keep them safe. I hope that the kids can lean on each other and celebrate the life of the boy that was lost. I hope that the community will be there for each other instead of blaming people for how they could have done things differently.
Yes all women experience harassment and 1 in 4 will be abused in their life time. And I pray that not one more life will be taken by a bullet in a school. We live in rough times and I can only home and pray that everyone will stand together and not apart.
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