This Place We Call Home
Written on 12/15
Rarely does youth get snatched away from you.
The laughter, the bliss, the naïveté. The feeling of being alive, your soul aflame with passion, should gradually wane — if at all. But in this life, we have been stripped of our youth, without notice, and it happened right at home.
I’ve been unable to come to terms with what took place two days ago, a block away from my apartment. The same hallways that I would walk through regularly, the same building in which I was a teaching assistant last fall. The same class that I took, and dropped, during my first semester at Brown.
I’m in Boston for the time being. I’m physically removed from the situation, but I wonder if I ever will be mentally and spiritually. My gut wrenches and my head pulses. A dull pain crawls around my body, this body, that could’ve spent its last few moments in a haven meant to birth ideas full of life. Guilt and anxiety consume my heart as I imagine the what if’s: endless combinations, endless permutations of who could have been where at when. These frayed thoughts whisper to me throughout the day and roar at me at night.
Yesterday, my friend and I planned on visiting campus for the vigil before finding out that the shooter was still on the loose. Now we’re not so sure. A post I saw on Instagram stated, “Students’ biggest concern right now should be final exams, not a school shooting.”Having grown up abroad, I had never fully grasped the gravity of mass shootings. I never had to. Even after experiencing the 9.2-magnitude earthquake in Japan or the COVID-19 pandemic in Korea, not once did I ever think that I’d be associated with such a violent, despicable act of murder. Why would anyone?
Things will never quite be the same in this place we call home. The afternoon walks across the Main Green, the group study sessions at the Rock, the late night jokes at Jo’s. The fall foliage, the soft snow, the first warm day of spring semester. The people: kind, considerate, creative, and witty. So ambitious yet genuine. Experiences and interactions that have shaped all of us. Memories that we will relish oh so dearly.
As a senior with mere months left until walking through the Van Wickle Gates, I can’t help but ache for the younger students. Perhaps it is our role, our responsibility to ensure that they can get to know the Brown we have grown to love. I dream of a community that comes back stronger than ever.
No one should ever have to go through this. I don’t care where you’re from, how you look, or what you believe in. The way in which our home was torn apart should never occur anywhere else. Despite this frustration, part of me knows that nothing will change — the usual inundation of hopes and prayers will be replaced by the coverage of some other tragedy. The world will move on.
We must fight against this tide of inevitability, however. It is our duty to not only remember and reflect but also act and achieve. Life deserves to run out, and only after a fair game.
#EverTrue