Jaded

Eight years ago nearly to this day I sat at a desk in the University College Dublin library. I was ostensibly studying for my finals, but I kept opening the newspaper and reading about the previous day's shooting at Columbine high school.

I took a break and looked around; students around me were chatting quietly and laughing, frowning at their books in concentration or lost in thought. Then the sudden ricochet of gunshots and screams, people cowering underneath desks and behind bookshelves, eyes shut with shuddering knees pulled tightly under chins, silently pleading to be passed over but never more aware of the frailty of their flesh and blood and what a bullet could make of it.

Eventually I put the newspaper away and pushed my feelings aside. But the memory of that day is still clear and strong.

Eight years later, the news and the numbers should shock me again, but the real surprise is the numbness.