On tragedy

It’s not unusual that I sit down to write and draw a blank. Writer’s block, procrastination—there are many names and many causes.

This week, the name is shock.

It seems pointless to shout to the Internet void that I am speechless. We are all speechless. Not because these sorts of attacks don’t happen—they do, around the world and on an alarming basis—but because we don’t expect them to visit us. We don’t expect to be calling friends to make sure they’re alive. We don’t expect that, if we play the “What If?” game, we can wonder if we’d still be alive if we hadn’t taken a trip. We don’t expect to curl around our friends on a hotel bed in Rome, sobbing with a mixture of grief and shock and a little bit of relief that it wasn’t us. We don’t expect that the tiny Buzzfeed-approved Cambodian restaurant we went to last month would become the site of an international terrorist attack. And the shopping mall we walk past every day. And the Stade de France, which I will pass on the train from the airport when I hopefully return to the city on Monday.

I wish I had something wise to add to the conversation. What I do have instead is an admiration for the French people: for the girl in my history class who emailed our whole section to spread the police precautions and offer to translate for anyone who didn’t understand what was going on, for the calm demeanors our host families were able to retain while we called them, panicking to make sure they were okay. I have a healthy dose of reality and a slight fear of crowds that I know will not serve me if the bad guys are determined. I have so much love for the friends and family who have reached out to offer their homes across Europe and their prayers across the sea. I have so, so much thankfulness that we are alive.

It’s funny how we received word today that, on Monday, Paris will return to normal. Schools and stores and offices will reopen, and life will go on. But how can it? How am I meant to be frivolously enjoying my time in Italy when 129 people died in my city just two days ago? How can I do anything when being happy feels like a betrayal? We can say “business as usual,” but the truth is my study abroad experience will never be typical again. It will not be carefree or thoughtless. It will be a battle against fear. I wish I could return to Instagramming food pictures and killing time wandering around the city, but I don’t know how. I don’t know how to return to normal, because now I’m awake. The fear that has marked my last few days is all too common for many people around the world. A terrorist attack in Paris makes world news because we’re complacent—because suddenly, it could’ve been us instead of someone else across the world. And it could’ve been us, but it wasn’t, so we must go on from here for those who can’t. We must do better not at border control or gun legislation or war but at compassion. At opening our homes to the refugees who, like us, deserve to live without fear. At teaching religions of love instead of hate. I believe we can. I believe, however naïvely, that we have faced great pain and great evil before and won, and we will again.

But for now, it is okay to mourn. It’s okay to be shocked and sad and angry and whatever emotion you want to be—but not hateful. Hate will never accomplish anything, and that is what I implore you to remember. I am many things: scared, numb, grieving, aware. But I refuse to hate because, if we give in to hate, then the enemy has already won.

Krista Kowalczyk is a Trinity junior studying abroad in Paris, France.