Re: boston marathon bombing
Dude. I know exactly how you feel. I can remember the day of the tube bombings in London like it was yesterday. The night before the bombings, London was celebrating. We had just won the bid for the 2012 Olympics, it was a beautiful July evening and people were in the mood for a paryt. I went out to dinner with some girlfriends in Soho, we sat outside at a cafe and the mood in the streets was grand.
The next morning I must have caught one of the last trains out of Liverpool St Station before it was shut down, heading out towards Chelmsford for a meeting. I didn't know anything had happened until I was in the taxi from the station and heard the cabbie's radio; just as it was dawning on me what they were saying my husband called to check if I was OK as he'd forgotten I was going out of town and thought I would be on the tube. And on any other day, there isn't a reason in the world why it couldn't have been me on that Piccadilly line train at that exact moment; after all it was my regular route to work, and the normal time I'd have been passing King's Cross.
Meeting went on as planned but of course, with a serious pall over proceedings. Then of course I could not get home, since all transport was shut down - I was fortunte enough to find someone else at the meeting who could get me as far as Greenwich, where I stayed over with a friend. And we got a bit drunk and we cried and we laughed and then laughed and cried some more. And then the next day I took a mostly empty tube ride back to the city, and made my way home. (No work - the museum was closed; however most people did go back to work the next day.) Because that's what you do - you get on with the business of living. That's not to say it's nothing, or that you forget all about it - far from it. First there is a sort of numbness, then there is pain, then there is grief, then for some anxiety, and then any combination thereof. But you go on. You have to.
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