Last thoughts of a 21-year-old
Yes, today is my birthday, and I'm now 22. So far, all's been well. What is below is what I wrote in my written journal, and I just felt like I needed to share it.
"April 19, 2007
45 min to 22.
I know...there's something about it that's so strange. Tomorrow, I enter into the realm of 'twenty-somethings'. that nebulous eight years where you're trying to make it on your own, and the only really significant thing about your birthday is that you're a year older - and, don't get me wrong, that is significant.
On Monday, April 16, 2007, while I was still in bed sleeping, two girls were shot in their college dorm rooms. Tow hours later, after the killer had made a tape explaining himself and sent it to NBC, he went to a class building on campus. He chained the doors closed, went room by room, and shot 30 people, including himself.
32 people died at Virginia Tech that day, 31 of whom just thought it was another day. I can't imagine.
Just getting up one day, rolling out of bed and getting ready for class. I'm running late, so I take the stairs. A desperate boy sees me on the stairs. Maybe I've seen himm before. He has a gun.
He shoots me. I might not have died, but the bullet's impact and resulting pain make me fall backwards down the stairs, breaking my neck.
All I would have known was 21.
I mean, 22...it holds so much for me.
Another summer at Middlebury.
Germany for 6 months.
My senior recital.
Graduation...well, I'll actually be 23 by then...but no one can be 23 w/o being 22 first.
And then there's all the other life I haven't experienced.
Being in love.
Marraige.
Sex.
Kids (?!)
Helping my parents grow old.
Road trips with the Ya-Yas.
Seeing the world...
All because I was in the way of a psychopath. I just...I can't imagine.
And then my mind goes to the next inevitable place...what if it was a close friend? Jane? Lindsay? Hannah? ... The guilt for not being there. The anger with no place to put it. It's all just...so unfair. I can't even put myself in the place of the parents. I can't imagine that kind of grief because I can't imagine that kind of love.
All this, tearing apart a campus. making every college parent afraid, tightening security on every college campus, making every college student go through this same head trip while they're also facing finals, graduation, the rest of their lives...
And tonight, at 20 minutes until I'm 22, I am so thankful that I may face such a plight. I am grateful that, all these years, my family and my friends have been spared. I pray we may all face the challenges of this life...of this time in each of our lives...and come out of them as the most beautiful instruments of God's peace.
Eaerlier this week, our guest composer, Brian Cherney, was here. H's a mostly atonal composer from Canada. We had to go to his concert which actually wasn't as painful as we'd thought it would be. We had to study one of his (few) choral works. I kid you not, it was like walking in on the Holocaust.
I must say, working on it this week was painful. It was like giving evil a musical sound. Giving Death and Destruction name and voice.
I understand the importance of this - I do. We must know their sounds so we may recognize what Evil feels like. So we may learn the place - if only the shadow of it - of the Holocaust so we don't revisit it. And maybe that's part of my job just as much as giving joy to the sad and hope to the hopeless is.
But I don't want it to be. I don't want to give Evil a name and sing its music.
The Evil which killed millions in the Holocaust, milions in the USSR, that rapes and kills hundreds every day in Africa, that kills hundreds in car and suicide bombings in the Holy Land. The Evil that killed this day roughly 13 years ago in Oklahoma city, that killed, 8 years ago tomorrow, 15 high school kids and a teacher at Columbine, that killed, 5 1/2 years ago, hundreds in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
I'm so tired of it. It has a name, and it has workers. In my short life, it has already accomplished far too much.
Excuse me if I would rather spend my time giving voice to the Light which is trying so desperately in the darkness to shine. Of course the darkness does not understand it. Sometimes I wonder, with so much of this type of destruction happening, what I understand better - Light or Darkness.
I'm so glad I haven't gotten so confused that I've forgotten which is better.
Midnight.
Happy 22."
"April 19, 2007
45 min to 22.
I know...there's something about it that's so strange. Tomorrow, I enter into the realm of 'twenty-somethings'. that nebulous eight years where you're trying to make it on your own, and the only really significant thing about your birthday is that you're a year older - and, don't get me wrong, that is significant.
On Monday, April 16, 2007, while I was still in bed sleeping, two girls were shot in their college dorm rooms. Tow hours later, after the killer had made a tape explaining himself and sent it to NBC, he went to a class building on campus. He chained the doors closed, went room by room, and shot 30 people, including himself.
32 people died at Virginia Tech that day, 31 of whom just thought it was another day. I can't imagine.
Just getting up one day, rolling out of bed and getting ready for class. I'm running late, so I take the stairs. A desperate boy sees me on the stairs. Maybe I've seen himm before. He has a gun.
He shoots me. I might not have died, but the bullet's impact and resulting pain make me fall backwards down the stairs, breaking my neck.
All I would have known was 21.
I mean, 22...it holds so much for me.
Another summer at Middlebury.
Germany for 6 months.
My senior recital.
Graduation...well, I'll actually be 23 by then...but no one can be 23 w/o being 22 first.
And then there's all the other life I haven't experienced.
Being in love.
Marraige.
Sex.
Kids (?!)
Helping my parents grow old.
Road trips with the Ya-Yas.
Seeing the world...
All because I was in the way of a psychopath. I just...I can't imagine.
And then my mind goes to the next inevitable place...what if it was a close friend? Jane? Lindsay? Hannah? ... The guilt for not being there. The anger with no place to put it. It's all just...so unfair. I can't even put myself in the place of the parents. I can't imagine that kind of grief because I can't imagine that kind of love.
All this, tearing apart a campus. making every college parent afraid, tightening security on every college campus, making every college student go through this same head trip while they're also facing finals, graduation, the rest of their lives...
And tonight, at 20 minutes until I'm 22, I am so thankful that I may face such a plight. I am grateful that, all these years, my family and my friends have been spared. I pray we may all face the challenges of this life...of this time in each of our lives...and come out of them as the most beautiful instruments of God's peace.
Eaerlier this week, our guest composer, Brian Cherney, was here. H's a mostly atonal composer from Canada. We had to go to his concert which actually wasn't as painful as we'd thought it would be. We had to study one of his (few) choral works. I kid you not, it was like walking in on the Holocaust.
I must say, working on it this week was painful. It was like giving evil a musical sound. Giving Death and Destruction name and voice.
I understand the importance of this - I do. We must know their sounds so we may recognize what Evil feels like. So we may learn the place - if only the shadow of it - of the Holocaust so we don't revisit it. And maybe that's part of my job just as much as giving joy to the sad and hope to the hopeless is.
But I don't want it to be. I don't want to give Evil a name and sing its music.
The Evil which killed millions in the Holocaust, milions in the USSR, that rapes and kills hundreds every day in Africa, that kills hundreds in car and suicide bombings in the Holy Land. The Evil that killed this day roughly 13 years ago in Oklahoma city, that killed, 8 years ago tomorrow, 15 high school kids and a teacher at Columbine, that killed, 5 1/2 years ago, hundreds in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
I'm so tired of it. It has a name, and it has workers. In my short life, it has already accomplished far too much.
Excuse me if I would rather spend my time giving voice to the Light which is trying so desperately in the darkness to shine. Of course the darkness does not understand it. Sometimes I wonder, with so much of this type of destruction happening, what I understand better - Light or Darkness.
I'm so glad I haven't gotten so confused that I've forgotten which is better.
Midnight.
Happy 22."