One word (or 600) more, honest neighbours.

Oh Facebook. Oh world wide web of limited communication and fractured understanding. Oh dear.

If you are a frequent reader of my blogs, maybe you understand where my mind is at these days. Or maybe you’ve read one blog and made an assessment of my opinion… and now I’m assessing the encapsulated opinions I’ve been reading all over the social network since Sunday night.

I am sad. I am not gleeful. It has nothing to do with and everything to do with the news that was released into reality on Sunday. I am going to say it again – but with incredible unease – that feeling good about that news does not sit well with me. And maybe you’re sick of hearing this from all those crazy bleeding heart liberals. But I want to clarify this. Right. Here. Right. Now. I – as in me, as in myself, as in I alone, feel uncomfortable. I feel uncomfortable taking any sort of joy in an act that occurred for the which I condemned that same man years ago.

It’s a paradox – and maybe it’s one of those things that shows I have too much time to think about things that don’t matter. Because I don’t have much of a life. Because I don’t have a spouse or kids or a house to worry about. Because I lost the momentum of writing my novel. So I just have my time and my thoughts to mull too long over things that no one should really care about.

But I do. It’s my reality. And I’m the one who lives with it, who struggles with it, who challenges myself to live within the definition of integrity I set for myself. I fail every single day. But I try to live up to my own standards of human goodness. With absolutely no expectation for anyone else to do what I know I fail to do every minute.

That said… it distresses me now to go onto Facebook and see this battle of words. Not because I don’t want to see the alternate opinion. Not because I do not respect the people who see this event differently from me. I understand. I felt the relief. I felt the sadness and fear that September day ten years ago. I’m not an idiot. And I wish… I wish the people who disagree with me wouldn’t keep assuming that I am ignorant for thinking – for feeling differently. 

Because… really, can we just stop this arguing about who is right and who is wrong about how they feel? You can’t do that. Ever. That’s why I detest religion. You can’t regulate love. You can’t regulate anger. You can’t regulate sorrow. There are no rules about feelings. It’s just who we are, crafted by our personal histories and emotional wounds and desires to make our world a better place. Some people need vengeance to feel closure… and some people … I… wish violent ends were not given such volume.

I cannot repeat enough how much I respect and pay attention to and absorb the other perspectives of this question. But… what breaks my heart and turns me away right now is how mean and how divided we are becoming over how we SHOULD react and behave. Isn’t that giving our critics a victory? And doesn’t it take this thing that ended an evil and release an entirely new vicious energy into the universe? 

I hope this is my final blog on this subject. Because… I am weary of using this moment of closure and healing to blast open brand new wounds of contempt and misunderstanding. I don’t want to celebrate death any more. I want to celebrate life and the things yet to come that will make that life a joy.