is this real life?

Anyone that knows me knows that I love a good crime drama. I love to escape into the fantasy of chasing the bad guy and determining why a crafted villan executed his absurd crimes. The problem is that recently, I can barely differentiate the terrifying reality of the local news with the fantastic escape of these made up tales. The crime scenes are not sets built to look familiar, they are the stores I frequent and neighborhoods I have driven through on streets that I know. The responding officers are not actors, they are my neighbors. The blood of the wounded and killed is not from the prop closet, it is from the hearts of those that loved people close to me and protected our homes.

How is this real? I know that being in a "lockdown" is to keep us safe so I try to take comfort in a day at home. But then I watch SWAT teams invade not a camp in a warzone... or a city in another country... or even a city in a different state, but the neighborhood down the street. Down the street. That's not a random mall that they are using as a terrorist-tracking base camp, that's the mall I was at last week - there is a military vehicle where I parked my Corolla last week. This doesn't happen here. It happens, but it doesn't happen HERE.

Shit just got real and I am NOT handling it well. And this is barely happening to me.

I am one of the lucky ones - I got the "you're next-door, so you lockdown too" warning. I got the "shaken, but ok" responses from my panicked texts and frantic calls. I got to respond with "good, please stay safe" and someone was alive and well on the receiving end. There are others out there that are not that lucky. They are sitting in their houses, afraid to watch the chaos unfolding outside their front door, literally. They are in hospital rooms or worse, staring at make-shift memorials trying to wrap their minds about how they are going to continue on without loved ones.

So if I'm removed, why can't I handle it? Because this is what it means to be human: to feel on behalf of someone else. And even though we want to remove ourselves from such horrible experiences, we cannot ignore what hits home. We use physical distance to create emotional distance from tragedy because without that defense mechanism we would never be able to muster-up the strength to exist, but then it happens down the street and you have no choice but to be affected.

So here we are Boston, being affected. And it sucks. But so far we have done a damn good job. We have helped each other, we have informed each other, we have been there for each other, and we are feeling for each other. We are Boston Strong and we will continue to live up to our reputation of being the tough, resilient city at the foundation of America.

"You showed us, Boston, that in the face of evil, Americans will lift up what's good. In the face of cruelty, we will choose compassion. In the face of those who would visit death upon innocents, we will choose to save and to comfort and to heal. We'll choose friendship. We'll choose love." - President Barack Obama

Boston, you're my home. And I cannot wait until it is a wicked peaceful place once more.

growing up

Forget about breaking up, growing up is what is hard to do. When you are a 20-something, you're too young to be old but too old to be young. Your years of thinking you knew it all are but a distant memory yet, you know the years of actually knowing anything are still way, way, WAY off in the distance. You've made enough mistakes to have some clarity, but the vision is still hazy enough to have no clue what obstacles are still out there - even though you know there are way more of those than there are patches of clear sky ahead of you.  It's daunting - the only thing you are sure of is that you are not sure of anything.

It seems you can't do anything right. In fact, do you even know what right is?

You want to do what is right for you but with the changing times, there are so many options for what that right thing could be it is hard to judge whether you are actually on the right track. The days of being able to compare yourself to your peers to ensure progress went by the wayside with dowries. It can no longer be assumed that men will follow in the pre-destined footsteps of their father in the family trade nor should women to simply expect to be wed and preparing a nursery within a few years of graduating from high school.

We've obviously come a long way from that, but all these possible options presents an opportunity that is equally as terrifying as it is liberating. With so many options it is comforting knowing that there is likely going to be one that works for you but hard to figure out which is the best. And even harder to determine how to define success when everyone's success is now so customized rather than the one-size-fits-all success of generations past.

Being in between is difficult, but I guess this is why we focus in on the fact that what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. We might have no clue how to define success or identify when we have achieved it, but we do have the opportunity to experience life with every attempt at getting it right. And maybe, just maybe, one day we will look back on this time in our lives and be thankful that it played out the way it did because being clueless and in your mid-20s was really living.