Christi
May 27th, 2014, 01:36 PM
I know this is totally off topic, but since this site has a wealth of moms out there, I thought this would be a good place to post my thoughts....
As many of you probably know, there was a mass shooting at UC Santa Barbara this past weekend. My heart goes out to all the people who lost love ones in this tragedy. I was a student at UCSB 13 years ago when a student (also a son of a movie producer) went on a similar type rampage by speeding 60 miles an hour down a busy Isla Vista street packed with students on a Friday night, killing 5 people. His anger and intent was also motivated by women not having sex with him.
I remember how sad I felt for the students who died 13 years ago when I was a UCSB student. I remember being thankful that no one I knew had died that night and how thankful I was that I had been home that awful night 13 years ago. But my feelings were much more self-centered--it was about how I was safe and sound.
But now, as a parent, I have a completely different perspective. Obviously, I still feel for the families of the students who died, but I feel so much more helpless when these horrible things happen because I think about the agony of what it would be like to lose a child. Its like I could care less if I died, but if my child died? No way. Its like the realization of the mortality of your child just set in for me, and that makes me feel completely helpless. And there was really nothing any of the parents of the children who died could have done to change it. Even the parents of the shooter were literally driving up to UCSB to try to intervene when they sensed something was wrong and their child was going to snap.
I'm sure that many of you have already experienced this change in perspective, but it really set in for me this weekend because I had an opportunity, sadly, to compare and contrast with pre-baby and post-baby experience.
As many of you probably know, there was a mass shooting at UC Santa Barbara this past weekend. My heart goes out to all the people who lost love ones in this tragedy. I was a student at UCSB 13 years ago when a student (also a son of a movie producer) went on a similar type rampage by speeding 60 miles an hour down a busy Isla Vista street packed with students on a Friday night, killing 5 people. His anger and intent was also motivated by women not having sex with him.
I remember how sad I felt for the students who died 13 years ago when I was a UCSB student. I remember being thankful that no one I knew had died that night and how thankful I was that I had been home that awful night 13 years ago. But my feelings were much more self-centered--it was about how I was safe and sound.
But now, as a parent, I have a completely different perspective. Obviously, I still feel for the families of the students who died, but I feel so much more helpless when these horrible things happen because I think about the agony of what it would be like to lose a child. Its like I could care less if I died, but if my child died? No way. Its like the realization of the mortality of your child just set in for me, and that makes me feel completely helpless. And there was really nothing any of the parents of the children who died could have done to change it. Even the parents of the shooter were literally driving up to UCSB to try to intervene when they sensed something was wrong and their child was going to snap.
I'm sure that many of you have already experienced this change in perspective, but it really set in for me this weekend because I had an opportunity, sadly, to compare and contrast with pre-baby and post-baby experience.