Close to Home

I can't see something like this and not be deeply affected. This is my hometown. I will be moving back there in two short weeks. I might have even driven over that bridge to get home. It seems like these tragedies that grab the news are all getting closer to home for me. There was Virginia Tech this past year which is close enough to Charlotte that I could feel the very immediate effect. There was the steam pipe explosion in NYC this past July. I happened to be 5 blocks away from that very explosion and was walking around in the midst of the chaos and worries that their worse fear had come true again. And now there is the bridge collapsing. I might have been on that bridge on the way to the Twins game if I had been in the Twin Cities. No lie! Wednesdays are half price upper general admission night which I don't pass up often.

It's all very surreal. In all honesty I had to look up the bridge on the map because I had driven over it so many times that I didn't even really think about the fact I was driving over a bridge. And you know, that's how it's supposed to be. We aren't supposed to expect the worst when we do everyday stuff like go to class, walk around the city, drive home from work, etc. And that's perhaps what's the most frightening thing about all of this. Stuff like this rips away our security. It makes us question everything. Makes the ordinary and mundane something scary. We start questioning everything. And what's more, you can't avoid it. You can't not go to class unless you want to fail it. You need to be able to wander outside of the safety of your house freely. When I get back to MN, I will need to drive over multiple bridges in order to get anywhere.

Right now I'm simply grateful my family is okay. Friends are checking in and I am grateful for all the prayers on concerns of people out there. I know I'm not the only affected by this so for those of you with ties to the Twin Cities, my prayers are with you as well. And I guess I just keep on living life after all of this being painfully aware that stuff like this can happen and it can happen close to home but also that I can't live my life in fear. That I can't stop driving over bridges because of this one incident. Life is not meant to be lived in fear.