I'm Not Feeling Witty

I was going to write a happy post today, one that was funny and witty and completely not my usual style.  Then I found out that an 18 year old girl, a senior in high school, was murdered by her ex-boyfriend this morning.  He then shot himself. 

My mood took an extreme downhill.  All day long, the story has been at the back of my mind.  These were young people, on the verge of...who will ever know, now?  Those lights have been snuffed out forever.  All because that boy decided that he couldn't live without her and therefore she shouldn't live without him. 

Breaking up with someone is difficult.  It is supposed to be difficult.  Relationships should be begun with the idea that they will last awhile. When they don't, a tsunami of emotions spill out.  Anger. Grief. Pain. Relief. Things can get messy as they come to light.  I can remember being dumped.  I can remember being rejected.  I can remember feeling like my chest was a singularity, sucking all the brightness out of the world around me as it broke.

I may have been angry. I may have felt abandoned. I may have felt abused.  I would wish the worst forms of plague upon my exes, or wish that they would leave town and never come back. Yes, my heart got broken, but I always decided that anyone who left me wasn't supposed to be there after all.  End of chapter, onto the next. 

What I never, ever thought about?  Killing. 

Sometimes the things that happen in life are too terrible to really confront head-on.  If you are brave enough to look such events in the eye, there's a good chance that you might see a piece of yourself in the mix.  Not everyone can handle that.  It is easier to pretend that it never happens. 

I've thought about these two people, the lives of their families destroyed.  An entire senior class has been traumatized seven weeks before graduation.  It would be easy to say that this was all the fault of the media, dismiss this horror as kids being kids. Unfortunately, this is a very adult sort of crime.  Dating violence is real, just like domestic violence and child abuse.  We can't keep saying that it is a cultural thing, or a married thing, etc.  This happens every where, every day, and that is too much.  This kind of intimate violence is a cancer, eating away at families.  It should not still be happening.

I'll think of something witty to say tomorrow.