Lingering Fears

I've always had an overactive imagination, and am somewhat susceptible to suggestion. That's why I avoid horror movies, thrillers, violent TV shows, and the like. After glimpsing a trailer for a zombie movie over a year ago, I still sometimes will fling the bathroom door fully open at 3 am to make sure there's no creepy living-dead neighbor hiding there waiting to get me.

Normally in these situations, I think of my kids, and my irrational fear dies own. No, Dani, there are no vampires/werewolves/zombies/scary monsters. This is real life, you're a mom, you have kids, you're Jewish and you don't believe in that crap!

Still, I sometimes see images or read things that disturb, and my mind goes into over-drive. This is best accomplished when I'm tired, everyone else is sleeping, and it's getting late.

Tonight I was watching a show where there was a murderer on the loose. As the show was wrapping up, my baby started to cry. I got up, and a little prickle of fear started at the back of my neck. I shrugged it off with my usual "Hi, real life calling - that's your baby crying!" I walked into the kids' room, still with this vague sense of danger. I looked at my sleeping daughters, my wailing son in his crib, and I thought of the Fogels. I thought of the real monsters that are in the world, the horrors that can't be shrugged off. I grabed my baby and walked out to the living room shaken.

I feel that I have been somewhat emotionally unstable since I read about the Fogels' murders. I have been moved to tears very easily for the last week and-a-half. I have been over-reacting to things, jumpy, and somewhat neurotic. I don't think I will ever fully go back to that same complacent self I was just 2 weeks ago, that person who could walk into the room of sleeping children and be assured that all was right with the world simply because they're there.

I can't

I can't.

I can't stop thinking about it. About them. About a mother, walking out of her bathroom to see her dead baby in her dead husband's arms, the murderers in front of her, knowing that she would die, knowing that more of her children would die...

I can't stop thinking about the people whose reactions have been so callous.

I can't look at my children now without thinking about how, why, what it means to take a knife to a child, a baby...

I can't understand. I just can't understand. My soul is screaming. It's one horror piled on another.

There is a distinct loss of humanity in the people who killed the Fogels. There is a loss of humanity in the people whose first reaction was political, whatever side those politics may be.

My head is spinning, and I'm not sure what I'm thinking anymore. I am overwhelmed, still somewhat unbelieving that what happened happened. I can't bring myself to look at the pictures, partially because I'm scared that I'll eventually get used to the images. I don't ever want to get used to what happened. I don't ever want to get over the butchering of a family, of babies in their sleep. There are things in life that always haunt us, and the murder of the Fogels will always be with me.

I can't have it any other way.

Tears in my eyes

My friend just posted this video:



To think that in my life I've gone from marching on DC for Russian Refusniks to watching Jews sing in the streets of St. Petersburg about Purim...

Chodesh Adar Sameach! והחודש אשר נהפך להם מיגון לשמחה ומאבל ליום טוב - כן תהיה לנו (h/t Dov Karrol)