Content: gun violence, PTSD, intimate partner abuse
The radio in my 2000 Honda Civic has stopped working. I put my earbuds in and listen to podcasts during my thirty-minute commute to and from nannying. I taught for almost nine years and this is a needed reprieve. Instead of fifteen preschoolers, I am responsible for only one child.
Today, I’m listening to Goldie Hawn on Oprah’s Master Class podcast. She is talking about her childhood experience with air raid drills. Air raid drills or “duck and cover drills” were mandatory in public schools across The United States in the late 1950s and early ’60s to prepare school age children for a nuclear attack. The idea was to keep children from looking out the window and directly facing the blast, training students to crouch under their desks instead.
The most common drills in schools today are “lockout” and “lockdown” drills. These are drills to prepare students and teachers for an active shooter.
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I grew up in Colorado, about forty-five minutes north of Littleton. I was in middle school when the Columbine shooting happened.
I was an awkward, chubby preteen being raised by two religious fundamentalist parents and was extremely sheltered. I had an unwavering belief that people were at their cores, good. The most important thing to me, at the time, was if the boy who lived on my block reciprocated my crush and if I would get my first kiss soon.
On the day of the shooting, I was in Spanish class putting the finishing touches on my elephant piñata, when the bell rang to mark the end of the day. Students were talking about the shooting in the hallways, but no one really knew the extent of what had happened and no one could confirm what they knew (this was before everyone had cellphones, before you got regular notifications in your pocket about breaking news). It was not until my mom picked me up that I was able to confirm what I had heard from an adult. How do you even begin to explain that kind of violence to a child? I let what my mother told me sink in — kids not much older than me had gone to school and were never coming home. I was in disbelief. There was a shift for me that day, a new fear, the world was not as safe as I had thought it was. I was not as safe as I had believed. People were not as good as I hoped they were; but I was assured it was an isolated incident, not a daily occurrence. It was a freak moment of violence. It wouldn’t happen again. It couldn’t happen again.
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Years later, I taught at a non-profit private school as a preschool teacher. I loved the mess, the play, the freedom, and I was a good at it. Once, I orchestrated a pretend camping trip on a snowy day. We used sheets to create tents, shined real flashlights, and roasted imaginary marshmallows. I played guitar and we made up songs about monsters, mermaids, and superheroes. We were co-creators of our own world. We looked up at the stars.
When the Sandy Hook shooting happened, like many others, I was devastated. This was beyond reason. I couldn’t bear to imagine what had happened in the hallways and classrooms at Sandy Hook Elementary School that day. I was grief stricken for the parents who had lost their children. I was grief stricken for the sweet and innocent lives stolen. I tried to write poetry, but there were no words that could possibly meet the immensity of that kind of tragedy. I called my mom and we cried together. I watched President Obama address the nation and wipe away tears. I wondered how I could possibly go to school to teach. I could not make sense of this kind of violence. At the time, I was doing little to treat my anxiety and depression, and did not get out of bed for several days.
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I am outside with several children when another teacher tells me they have received a phone call from the police department to do a lockout. This is not a drill. I usher children inside the building. I tell them we’re going to read books. Several children protest, I tell them this is non-negotiable. My only focus is keeping the children safe. We gather all together in the kitchen of the school. We close all the curtains, turn off all the lights, and lock all the doors (I can’t remember if I read the picture book or if another teacher did. I only remember telling myself to stay as calm as possible, so children wouldn’t know I was afraid). After what seemed like hours, but couldn’t have been longer than thirty-minutes, our executive director came to tell us the lockout was over — it was a false alarm. It turns out, a neighbor called the police after seeing a man taking a “gun” out of his car. It was either a B.B. gun or athletic equipment, I don’t remember — something that might look like a gun from far away. It occurs to me that I am not the only one who is afraid. I am not the only one who is anxious.
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I work at the same school for seven years before I leave. I need a change. I get a job teaching at The Boulder Jewish Community Center (JCC). There is an armed security guard at the front door. This does not necessarily put me at ease, but I know his presence is reassuring for many, and necessary. We do lockout and lockdown drills regularly. Teachers tell me about when they received a bomb threat the year before and had to evacuate the building. They tell me about leaving with tearful and anxious infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. They tell me about the emotional burden of going back to work and reassuring parents of their children’s safety.
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I am standing in front of a classroom of fifteen three-year-old children. A lockout drill is going to happen sometime today — the administration has started to tell us when drills are going to happen, so we can prepare children who might be extra sensitive to such an event. There is a child in my class who cries anytime he hears a loud noise — he shakes, screams, and covers his ears; the loud voice on the speaker announcing drills scares him and the fire alarm is downright terrifying.
I start by reminding the children when we had a fire drill. They remember. “We went outside!” says a little girl with yogurt smeared on her face. We are having snack and this is a good time to make announcements, we have everyone’s attention. I think about how to best frame what is going to happen within what is developmentally appropriate, “Does anyone know what a drill is?”
“Practice!”
“Yes! Practice.” We have talked about drills in the framework of “practice.” Practice for a fire, a tornado, a storm.
“The drill that is going to happen is a practice drill.” I look at my co-teachers for reassurance. “This is to practice if there was something outside the school that wants to get in…”
“Like a bear!” I am so grateful for this interruption I could cry.
“Yes! Like a bear.”
“Or a lion!”
“Yes! Like a lion.” I go on to explain the drill using the euphemism of a bear. The children, of course, think I am really talking about a bear… or a lion. I emphasize the importance of keeping very, very quiet — the reality of asking fifteen three-year-old children to be quiet is nearly impossible.
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What would you do if there was an actual shooter? I am having dinner at a co-teacher’s house. There are five of us and we are all teachers. We talk about gathering as many children as possible and locking them in the closet. I imagine myself holding my hands over children’s mouths and telling them to be silent. I wonder if I would be able to impart the seriousness of what was happening with only a look. I imagine myself stopping the shooter with my own body. We all agree we would give our lives to save children. We talk about all the places in the building where we could hide. The entire conversation is making me anxious. We talk about the drills and how hard it is for the children in our classrooms — how they don’t really understand what is going on. I start to wonder if drills are developmentally appropriate at all.
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And then the Parkland shooting happens. And this time not only am I devastated and grief stricken, but I am filled with hot rage. How could this happen… again! I’m sure that assault weapons will quickly be banned, I’m sure that there will be sweeping gun bans, and gun control across the United States. I’m sure that even the most gun loving, NRA toting people will agree that this is just too much. To my dismay, this doesn’t happen, instead people criticize the teenage survivors for speaking out. They demean them and their calls for political action. Eighteen-year-old Emma González, who is a forceful speaker and activist, is met with a barrage of discrimination at the intersection of her identities. I am ashamed of Americans who have decided that guns are more important than the lives of the youth. Or rather, that money is more important. And it is this money that sways the gun policies in Washington.
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I am still working at The Boulder JCC when the shooting at The Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburg happens. It is the weekend. I check in with my co-teachers and see how they are doing. I go into caregiver mode. I am not Jewish and I know that this is the time for me to do more listening than talking. I try to offer comfort. It is difficult and I don’t know what to say or what to do. I go to a community gathering at the synagogue in Boulder. I hold the hands of my friends. I cry with them. I grieve with them. That night, I cannot sleep.
I open on Monday mornings and am the first teacher in the building. I am trying to make the space cozy for the children. I know that even if they don’t know what’s going on, they are attune to adult’s emotions. I know it is going to be a hard day.
We have parent teacher conferences in the evening. I feel unraveled. I have another sleepless night. Sleep is one way I can manage my anxiety and depression. I can feel myself starting to come undone. I spend the next day panicked and paranoid. I’m trying to hold it together for the children. My co-teacher assures me that the likelihood of a shooting happening at our school is very low. I don’t feel comforted. Everyone is on edge, even the children. I feel a weight in my chest.
We have another round of conferences in the evening. I spend twelve hours at the school. I snap at one of my co-teachers. I have another sleepless night. I spend the next two weeks like this. My PTSD is triggered by my lack of sleep and overwhelming anxiety, PTSD from past physical abuse.
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In 2013, I left my boyfriend of two years after a particularly terrifying and traumatic incident of abuse. I start to entertain irrational thoughts that he will find out where I work and come to the school. Rational me knows this is highly unlikely — I have not seen him for years. But I am not rational me right now and the connection between gun violence and domestic abuse feels inevitable.
In 2007, a woman I went to school with (elementary through high school) was stalked and brutally murdered by her ex-boyfriend. On December 11, 2007 he barged into her apartment, shot and stabbed her to death. Abigail Robertson was twenty-one years old. In an average month, fifty women in The United States are shot to death by an intimate partner.[1]
In 2017, twenty-six people are killed and twenty injured at The First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. The ex-wife of the shooter tells interviewers that their relationship was filled with abuse. He had previously threatened to kill her and her entire family and had once threatened her at gunpoint over a speeding ticket.
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We are having music time at the JCC. All of the children are gathered. The marketing department comes in with a video camera. No one has told us this is happening. They have an actress dressed like the character Belle, from Beauty and The Beast. I am uncomfortable — it occurs to me that my ex-boyfriend will see me in the video and will know where I work. I am filled with anxiety. I tell one of the assistant directors that I don’t want to be in any future promotional videos or photographs. I tell her the reason. She is sympathetic, if not incredulous. Few employers know the proper protocol when domestic violence effects people in the workplace; one of my friends was fired from her job after her ex showed up while she was working — this is the exact wrong thing to do.
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I quit working at The JCC in December 2018. I worry that if I talk about my anxiety people will think I am a coward. If I say that I cannot sacrifice my mental health any longer, people will think I am making up excuses. I am ashamed that I cannot just “grin and bear it” or “suck it up.” I tell my director I need a break from teaching and this is true. I talk to one of my co-teachers about how I am in constant dread of a shooting happening. How I cannot work with this kind of anxiety. How I am unable to teach joyfully. She is almost angry, annoyed. She tells me how a child was shot two blocks from the last school where she worked — how you just have to keep going.
I understand that there are people all over the world who live with the threat of violence on a daily basis. I understand that some people have no choice. I understand that I have enormous privilege (even as a brown, multiethnic, bisexual woman). I understand that having the choice to leave a situation that isn’t working, is in itself, a privilege. And yet, I know that sleepless nights, anxiety ridden days, irrational paranoia, and panic attacks are not just a part of teaching. I understand that every time we accept what was once intolerable as “just the way it is,” we have set a standard for a “new normal.”
We should never think of school shootings as “just the way it is.” And like Aude Lorde said, “there is no hierarchy of oppressions,” I also believe there should be no hierarchy of trauma or violence — every life lost to gun violence matters[2]. Gun violence is not a natural disaster. It is not a hurricane or an earthquake. It is not something that is beyond our control as human beings. It is a reflection of our society and our policies.
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Six days after the attack on worshipers at a mosque in Christchurch, where fifty people senselessly lost their lives, New Zealand’s parliament voted to ban most semiautomatic weapons and assault rifles 119 to one. Since Sandy Hook, there have been 1,600 mass shootings in the United States and yet there has not been any sweeping legislation to ban semiautomatic weapons[3].
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April, 2019 was the twenty-year anniversary of the Columbine shooting — the shooting that middle school me knew would never happen again. Hundreds of schools across Colorado were closed due to the threat of violence when an eighteen-year-old woman obsessed with the Columbine shooting flew from Florida to Colorado. Officials later found the woman dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the foot of the mountains close to Denver. Parents across social media shared their struggle explaining to their children why school had been canceled. How do you explain to a child that school is canceled because someone wants to enter a school, maybe their school, and shoot people? How do you send your child to school the next day?
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On May 7th, 2019, one student was killed and eight others were injured at a STEM school in Denver. Kendrick Castillo was killed after rushing the shooter. He lost his life and saved many others. He was called a hero. I can’t help but feel that our heroes should be fire fighters and EMT’s, not high school students lost to gun violence. Castillo should be alive. Castillo will never get the chance to walk across the stage with a diploma in hand. I look at a picture of this smiling young man and his death is nothing less than a tragedy.
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I wonder if, in our American society, human lives matter more than money? I wonder if we are already desensitized? I know that one life lost to gun violence is one too many. What the f*** America?
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I think about the pretend camping trip with my preschool students — roasting marshmallows and singing songs, gazing up at the stars — co-creating our own world.
I think about the way all of us create the world we live in — whether we believe it or not. We are responsible — whether we believe it or not.
I want to live in a world where people can worship without fear of being shot. I want to live in a world where people can go to the grocery store, and the club, and the movie theater without fear of being shot. I want to live in a world where teachers and children can go to school without fear of being shot. I want to live in a world where women are believed and protected. Can we create that world? First, we have to imagine it’s possible. Can you imagine it? Can we imagine it…just for a moment, together?
[1] Everytownresearch.org
[2] I am not attempting to co-opt the language of The Black Lives Matter movement. I believe Black lives matter and I believe gun violence and white supremacy are inextricably linked.
[3] I wrote this piece in May, 2019; before the El Paso shooting on August 3, 2019 that killed 23 people. As of today, March 23, 2021, there have been 103 mass shootings since January 1st, 2021. There have been seven this week, including the shooting in Atlanta, Georgia where eight people were killed; six of the victims were of Asian descent. This was clearly a hate crime. On March 22, 2021, ten people were killed at a grocery store in Boulder, a few miles from where I work.
