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Free to Fear
I spent this year’s Fourth of July indoors, per usual. Some people find this odd and question my patriotism when they find out. But between the crowds of people packing close together on parade routes or park lawns, the oppressive heat that no amount of shade can stave off – not to mention the mosquitos attaching themselves like magnets to my skin and the shock my nervous system goes into every time fireworks go off – I get overwhelmed by our nation’s Independence Day activities. In the words of Toby Flenderson, “Is that enough… should I keep going?”
While I didn’t have the words or understanding for it as a kid, once I was old enough to stay home without holding other people back, I celebrated my freedom by avoiding other revelers. When we were dating, my husband and I would spend the long holiday weekend watching tv marathons (Monk and Psych on the USA network were perennial faves.) Now with our kids, we intersperse tv marathons with video games, arts and crafts, or science experiments. And when the fireworks start outside, we ooh and aah over whatever we can see through the tree tops in our backyard and then wish the incessant booms would cease so we could get some sleep.
Fireworks or Bullets
But yesterday, a new element was added to the calm and (relative) quiet of our festivities, as well as to those of our more boisterous and celebratory patriotic neighbors throughout the region: fear. About 20 miles north of our Chicago neighborhood, a mass shooting took place in Highland Park. It took 8 hours for a “person of interest” to be apprehended. During that time, parades and fireworks across the region were cancelled in fear.
I still can’t tell if they were cancelled in fear of the same shooter or copycats cropping up. Either way, it sent me doom-scrolling the news sites, waiting impatiently for the perpetrator to be in custody. What if he drives into the city and seeks to hideout nearby? Is it safe to send my son to camp in the morning if he’s still at-large?
The Boogie Man was on the loose uncomfortably close to home. My anxiety took the opportunity to dredge up adolescent fears of home invasions, hostage situations, and kidnappings. It then added the more realistic fear plaguing me and our society: mass shootings in unexpected places. Why wouldn’t a kids theater camp be a possible target? Why not me and my family?
Victims who thought, “It could never happen to me,” still fail to warn many that it can, indeed, affect any one of us. Meanwhile, I’ve been living life convinced time is running out before someone I know and love experiences a terrorizing event. I used to think that my anxiety worked magic by fending off the feared result. If I planned ahead and thought of all the potential pitfalls, I convinced myself everyone in my proximity would stay safe and sound. I worried to save lives, people!
Lesser Evil
Fortunately, extensive therapy, life experience, and Zoloft have quelled this delusion. Now, I typically vacillate between apathy and optimism when it comes to societal issues. But it’s times like these when my medication and exercise and all the precautions I take to stabilize my anxiety fall to the wayside.
Anxiety takes the wheel. Each subsequent massacre is a violent reminder I’ve let my guard down. Doesn’t the increase in mass shootings mean our odds of being in one increase too? Thoughts and prayers did jack shit after the last mass shooting, or the hundreds before that. Some would like us to “move on” and celebrate life’s joys, but I can’t. GoFundMe campaigns inevitably pop up in the wake of each murder, which I donate to in order to feel part of some solution. I vote for representatives who vow to pass safer gun control laws.
Living in fear exhausts me mind, body, and soul. But I don’t want to live in denial, either. They feel like two sides of the same inevitable coin. What’s the point living in fear when you’ll die anyway? What’s the point enjoying life when you might not survive a stroll through the neighborhood? I’m searching desperately for a middle ground, some lesser evil between those two extremes.
I can’t shake the feeling, every time we leave our homes, that we’re in a lottery system for the Hunger Games. Who will be chosen as tributes this time?
1 comment
I’m choosing to believe that compassion was the reason neighboring fireworks were cancelled so the booms wouldn’t traumatize the residents. Change is possible. The activism of high schoolers from Marjorie Stoneman H.S. in Florida resulted in gun safety legislation there. I just watch some fireworks form my backyard too.