Nothing worse than that

I don’t turn the TV on very often during the day. It’s just not something I’m comfortable with the little ones around.

But I did today.

And I shouldn’t have.

Plastered on every channel was a breaking news story about the massacre of more than 25 people, 18 of them just little kids, in a school in Connecticut.

I cried.

I rarely cry.

My very first thought, if I’m being honest, was: One more reason I’m not putting my kids in school.

But that wasn’t a fair thought at all. It was biased and selfish, but nonetheless, it was still there.

I can’t watch the news. I can’t watch just the “petty” crimes without feeling sick. The news was banned in my house before it was ever my house. It’s just not okay. Yes, I want to be informed of the world. But I just can’t take the emotional overload.

And this was overload.

Holy fucking God! All those babies murdered. How senseless. How tragic.

The thought of taking H to preschool one morning and it being the last time I ever see her makes me want to vomit. It definitely makes me cry.

I don’t get it. I don’t get murder at all. I understand the murder of small children even less.

It’s tragic. It’s asinine. It’s senseless. It’s monstrous.

Kids are so good and pure and innocent. They have the potential to change this world. Hopefully for the better. They whole their whole lives ahead of them.

They don’t understand this kind of violence. They don’t understand this kind of hate.

And they shouldn’t.

And they shouldn’t be exposed to it.

I was annoyed today. I was annoyed that B hasn’t slept without physically touching me for almost two weeks now. Annoyed that I have to go to bed at 7pm with him at the moment and don’t get to spend time with J. I was annoyed that B screamed and cried from 2-5am when I finally called it a day and got up. But he still cried unless I was holding him.

I was annoyed that the kids had destroyed everything I cleaned. Annoyed that the entire batch of granola I made my mom for our Christmas Sunday a certain small child dumped on the floor. Annoyed I had to make more.

I was so annoyed with just everything.

But it’s so freaking petty. At least I have a baby to insist on touching and cuddling me all night. At least I have a baby to drag my ass out of bed at the crack of dawn for. At least I have a darling to dump granola all over my floor.

Because today more than one mother lost her baby. Her little darling. She dropped him or her off at school, or waved good-bye at the bus stop, and never knew it would be the last time she’d see that precious child breathing.

And I can’t imagine anything else in the world worse than that.