Nothing To Say
May 25, 2022
More school shootings, this time 18 kids and a teacher. 18 kids that did nothing to anyone. A teacher trying to help and make a difference in some kids life. A school shooter messed up from our society with easy access to guns.
I started to write about the changing weather, spring and the positivity it brings to me. Getting back at it on my diet and fitness. Losing this belly that creeped in on me. Fixing my shoulder injury I have been in PT for for the past 4 months. Slow gains and hard work and what’s to come…but instead I have to get the news that this happened. Again.
I have been numbed, as most Americans, to mass shootings. I have been desensitized. It’s just another mass shooting somewhere in America today as in every day, but this one was a breaking point. Not just because it’s kids, in a place where they are supposed to be safe, not just because it was in Texas: the land of the Good Guys With Guns. Maybe it’s the straw that broke my back but I just sat here at my kitchen counter and wept for these kids. Wept for our society and our division and our hatred and our fear. I sit here astonished that I even have tears left or that I am moved at all by this. I zoom in from the birds eye view of the news cycle to try to feel like what it’s like to be the parent, or the cop or EMT that has to clean this up. To see the dead kids with their school mates. It makes me absolutely sick to my stomach. Literally.
I watch the news and social media feeds. I see the same fucking useless debate between people. Right: “It’s not a gun problem it’s a mental health problem” Left: “we need stricter gun policies”. And the wheel spins and nothing gets done. Thoughts and prayers. Our country is so beyond hope. We are in that fourth stage of decay. Circling the drain. Polishing brass on the Titanic. There is no hope left. Inflation, gas prices, home prices, stagnant job wages, division, easy access to guns and drugs and tiny fractions of groups of people telling you who’s to blame. The “Them” that is not “Us”.
Kill “Them”.
Stop “Them.”
You are Right, They are Wrong.
I have no answers. I have no side. I don’t really care anymore. I will retreat to the mountains. I will retreat to my bike or a trail run or my guitar. I will put the anger in work and sweat and inner focus and try to tune it out.
I wish everyone I know, everyone who reads this, that you find peace in your life.
That is all for today.
Written by Corey Smaller Follow me on Instagram