I opened a new calendar the other day, unwrapped it from its cellophane, brushed my hand through the clean unmarked pages. It's starkly different from my 2012 calendar, stained from coffee, from my 2 year old's fingerprints.
I was excited to write in it. I started transferring birthdays and important events, looking forward to the upcoming weeks. It all seemed so promising, an empty calendar full of possibilities, the adventures still in progress, the potential almost limitless.
It made me realize how ready we, as humans, are ready to move on. To keep going, to cross out the day, to turn the page.
But sometimes it just makes me sick.
Mere hours after the shooting occurred in Connecticut, the posts and tweets began, from optimists linking lists of things to be happy for, to be grateful about. That the world isn't bad, that there is more good in the world.
Mere hours.
The children hadn't been buried yet and already, those who are far removed from the situation are singing the high praises of, "let's look at the bright side."
How about this...How about we stop turning the page for a moment? How about reading the day for what it is? To mourn what has happened. To find the truth about the situation. And maybe, to figure out how to not let it happen again. Optimism only works with action, not with living in a bubble, excluding the true feelings and nature of mourning, of being angry.
By false optimism, we can't reach out fully. We can't be empathetic. We cannot cry hard enough.
So I closed my new calendar. I haven't crossed today's date. I didn't cross off yesterday's date.
I didn't know anyone in Newtown. But I don't have to. We are all connected in spirit. And I will take this opportunity, in my own media outlet to say this:
When I am in a crisis, I want people to help me walk through my grief, not reminded that I should overcome it as quickly as possible.
</off my soapbox>
