I apologize in advance. I know I said this blog was for writing-related posts. But I need to say something. It’s too important to keep silent about.
This post is primarily aimed at my American compatriots. Because it’s with them I need to have this talk. And we’re going to start it now, and we are going to continue to talk about this and talk about this until we are serious about turning talk into action.
I’ve heard it often said that in the immediate aftermath of a tragedy, it’s “too soon” to address the underlying problems; that we should let the “bodies cool” first before speaking of solutions. But if we don’t talk about it now, then when? After we’ve let our collective attention deficit disorder distract our minds back to football or Christmas shopping? When our emotions have cooled and we are again blighted by a false sense of security that this can’t possibly happen to us?
It does happen to us. My cousin was there. He attended the elementary school where twenty young lives were felled. He’s a teacher now in the high school down the street. He spent hours locked down with his terrified students as the bodies of dead children were counted a short distance away.
As he reflected last night after he was safely at home with his own family, he understood that these are twenty kids he will never have the opportunity to teach, who will never fill the empty seats of those high school classrooms. Who will never have the chance to build families of their own and give back to the community that promised to raise and nurture them.
The problem here is mental illness–and our piss poor attempt at curtailing it and easing the minds of those who suffer from it. The problem is that we find it acceptable to spend billions—if not trillions—of dollars to “protect” us from foreign threats but somehow don’t have anything left to protect us from threats that exist next door. That we think the solution is to spend an additional billions of dollars to punish the perpetrators when tragic acts are unleashed upon our families and communities, but spend almost nothing to prevent their occurrence in the first place.
We don’t regularly screen for signs of mental illness among our youth. We don’t have good enough support systems for kids being “raised” (if you can it that) in homes or institutions ill-equipped to offer them nutrition for their bodies—much less for their minds. We blame an individual for “not knowing better,” when they have never been given the educational and emotional tools to even know what the better options are. We think that the threat of imprisonment is a deterrent to those already living in mental imprisonment far worse than a physical one. We don’t have ways of intervening on the behalf of those troubled with mental illness until they’ve already committed depraved acts. (Or have at least voiced their intent to do so to someone with the power to detain them; and even then holding them—if beds are even available—is hindered by mountains of bureaucratic red tape.)
The bottom line is, we don’t have enough people trained to recognize trouble while it is still latent. And for those who are recognized to be in danger from their mental illnesses, we don’t make available the counselors, treatment facilities, and drugs that could help keep them free from the terror of a mind plagued by emotional demons.
We call the actors “evil” but refuse to acknowledge that perhaps the seed of that evil lies within the very fabric of our society and its willful ignorance about the true nature of these evil acts. And the ease with which we turn our focus away from those who suffer back to the wonderland world of our televisions, movies, and books. Because we think it’s got nothing to do with us. It’s far easier to blame an individual and his failings than to look in the mirror and see that the failings start with us.
Come on, America! It’s time we start looking at our own reflection. It’s time we start looking ourselves in the eyes and acknowledge that we’re failing to protect our kids. Not only from the bullets of deranged individuals, but from the ravages of mental illness and drug addiction. Our science about the chemicals in the brains and the genetic markers that can lead to these problems is being refined by the day; we are building the tools right here in the US to potentially fix the problems before they even begin.
But we aren’t using these tools in time. We’re not willing to see those with these problems are sick, just like someone with strep throat or cancer. We aren’t willing to pony up and help provide the resources for those who otherwise wouldn’t have access to them. We’re not even willing to put ourselves in their shoes and suffer alongside them so we can understand what it will ultimately take to end their suffering.
But until we do, we will also suffer. We won’t end the suffering of the innocents until we are willing to stop the suffering of those who would harm the innocents in the first place.
After all, they were also innocent once.
Starling Stories 