I don’t talk about college much. Maybe because I didn’t finish or because I didn’t feel like my time there was well spent. It’s hard to say. It seems that I only ever complain about college but I did get to know a great many good people and I had some good teachers who facilitated my mental exploration.

I spent a semester at NIU. My friend graduated from there and Dekalb is just under 1 hour from where I grew up in Illinois. I am not going to recount what happened. There are plenty of people who can do that. I am just going to share my feelings and thoughts, for what they are worth, with you.

It is shocking to think that something like this can take place. I remember when the V-Tech shootings happened. I was engrossed with trying to comprehend what could cause such hatred and such a reaction. I read every news article that I could on the subject.

Since then I have gotten a lot more personal with tragedy and have come to appreciate its collateral effects. I never knew that just being close to something colossally heartbreaking could so change you. I felt selfish for wanting to complain about how I felt but the need to talk about it. I stifled it to some degree but still haven’t even begun to work my way through how I feel about it all.

Call it post traumatic stress disorder or just pain old hurt inside, I haven’t figured it all out yet. There is a balancing act there that seems at times to be best left alone. But today the emotions and stirring forces within myself have all come rushing back.

To see places you once went to class with rushing policemen in the foreground, the buildings that I went to school in with streams of injured individuals flooding from them is hard to take. I would have never thought that something that happened so far away could reach into me and cause such a reaction. It is devastating. And yet again I feel selfish.

I won’t bury anyone. I won’t be watching a person heal and yet still bear the scares of the day. I won’t be bitter at another Illinois St. Valentines Day massacre. But I will hurt. I will internalize and later down the road something will jar this pain loose and I will hurt as fresh as I have today.