Month: April 2013

The Thermodynamics of Tears [#52weeks]

In case the internet hasn’t said it yet, I’m going to say it here: This week was a no good, very bad week from hell and I would like for it to be gone, very, very much gone and over as soon as possible or else.

I haven’t quite figured out what the “or else” part of that statement should look like, but if you have any ideas, please let me know.

Somewhere around 11:30pm on Friday night, I lost my ability to cope with this very bad week. After pepper-spraying a would-be assailant on my way home from a birthday gathering, then spending the rest of the night locked in my apartment and on FaceTime with a friend, my Saturday wasn’t much in terms of productivity, either. And though I made it to church in one piece this morning (exhausted), somewhere right before the homily I devolved into inconsolable flood of tears that just would not end. I cried and cried and cried I kept crying until, and at some point, I had absolutely no idea what I was crying about anymore. An hour and a half later, I had cried enough to self-soothe, and with my very puffy face and a very large post-cry headache, I reached a point where maybe, just maybe I just could (even) with today.

Whenever I find myself in this state– tear-stained and puffy, with a lingering headache– I can’t help but think of everything involved in my fit of tears in terms of science.

It all starts when I think of emotion as a system. When I apply the laws of thermodynamics to systems– these laws, by the way, are very much about order and disorder– it all falls in place and all of the crying starts to make sense in a very abstract way. Why I gravitate towards science when I get a huge case of the feels, I will never know (actually, wait, yes I do!) but here is the way my thinking generally works:

  • The first law of thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, but it can be transferred/ transformed into one form from another.
  • The second law of thermodynamics states that as energy is transferred from one form to another in a system, some energy is lost. (We usually refer to this as the law of entropy, and the energy is usually lost in the form of heat.)

When I apply this to emotions– remember, we’re considering emotions as a system here, nothing else– it works like this:

  • The first law of emotions is that they cannot be created or destroyed, but they can be transferred or transformed into other emotions.
  • The second law of emotions is that they can be transferred from one emotion to another, but in this process, some energy is lost.

For me, thus, it follows that when I get an overwhelmingly major case of the feels, particularly the negative ones, they can’t be destroyed, only transformed into something else. And because systems are always moving towards a state of equilibrium– stability may be a more fitting word to use here– it’s the job of that system, when I’m overwhelmed, to transfer my feelings into something else entirely. When there is too much disorder going on, whether that disorder is happy or sad, my system can transforms that energy into tears or butterflies in my stomach or some other physical reaction (entropy) or whatever else it takes to make the system self-stabilize. (As the energy– or whatever the damned feeling is that’s taken over and wreaked havoc on me– decreases, so too does the disorder, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing). Once enough of that energy is lost, things return back to normal. We may feel pain again or we may remember the pain we suffered in its original state, but it will never be as strong as it once was when its energy first entered our systems.

When I think about it, I don’t think that it’s an accident that we share tears or other similar reactions as a response to sadness or to trauma of any kind. I know that the crying doesn’t fix everything, that it isn’t a real answer to all of the sad and scary and frustrating and terrible things that happen in the world, but is an important step in transforming one kind of emotion into another.

I’ve often wondered why, when I’m upset, I find myself turning to scientific laws for consolation. When it comes to the processes behind my tears, though, when the actual feelings are ripping into me, it’s so very hard to have the faith that they will get better. Sometimes, especially after weeks like this past one, though, it’s a relief to think that systems, whatever they may be, are constantly moving towards a state of thermodynamic equilibrium, towards a place where things “get better” or become “optimal.”

I can tell myself all day long things will to get better, but it’s difficult to have faith and truly believe that in the face of fear and bad feelings. It’s better when science says so, because I cannot, cannot, cannot argue with science in the face of reason.

“No one deserves a tragedy.” (4/16/13 edition, for Boston) [#52weeks]

After yesterday’s bombing during the Boston Marathon, we have another date in April by which to mark a tragedy. April 15th is theirs. April 16th belongs to those who were killed at Virginia Tech. April 19th is for the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing and for Waco, TX. April 20th is for those who were killed at Columbine High.

This is not a very good week for us– a very not good week for us indeed.

Much of yesterday’s media coverage and social media discussion encouraged focusing on the good that prevailed in the face of the terror that has killed three and injured 165+ more. Look to the first responders who immediately ran towards the bombing to help those who had been hurt. Look to those who opened their homes to runners who were unable to make it home because their cars and hotels were inside of the evacuation zone. Look to those who, immediately after running a marathon, gave blood, offered their services as doctors and nurses and as concerned human beings to those who needed it most. Look to the good in the world, it has been said, and in this they are not wrong.

After six years of knowing the pain that comes with senseless tragedy, the only thing I know is that I know nothing at all. I have found in this time, though, that if you look for it, you can find hope and solace in the people around you. There are millions of people who you’ve never met who are thinking of you and who are praying for you, many of whom who want to help and will do so if they find a way. In time, the physical wounds (if you have any) will heal– and so too the other more indiscernible wounds will follow.

And if all else fails, a wonderful little band called Guster sings it best:

Hang on
Hang on

When all is shattered
When all your hope is gone
Who knows
How long
There is a twilight
A nighttime and a dawn

We break
We bend
With hand in hand
When hope is gone
Just hang on
Hang on

“No one deserves a tragedy” or, the end of life as I knew it [#52weeks]

We’re going to have a little talk about Sunday, April 15, 2007… the calm before the storm that erupted six years ago when 32 students were murdered in cold blood on my college campus. We’re going to talk about it because it was the last day of my normal life– I didn’t know it then– and it is the last time I remember life without the anxiety, the heartbreak, the loss, the panic, the PTSD and everything else I’ve had to work so hard to overcome since that terrible, horrible, no good very bad day.

We’re going to talk about it because it was Reema’s birthday, and because Reema was a classmate in an Urban Affairs and Planning Course that I took during my junior year to fufill some Core Curriculum requirements towards graduation. We were in the same 10:10 class on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and she was one of the younger students in the French Language and Literature program at Virginia Tech. In addition to being a gorgeous young lady of Lebanese descent, she was smart, she was passionate about dance, and she was incredibly excited about spending her summer working in France.

There’s not very much that can be said about the day itself, except that it was cold and rainy, and that a friend of mine driving through town had stopped in for a late lunch at my favorite restaurant, the Cellar. That Sunday was the rain date for the International Street Festival held by that the Council for International Student Organizations that had taken place for some 22 years, an event that had to be called for rain and moved indoors because of unseasonable weather. Having had fond memories of every other International Street Fair weekend being sunny and beautiful, I was upset that the hours I had spent making Mousse au Chocolat and crepes with others for the French Club fundraiser may have been spent in vain. Despite the crappy weather (so cold! so windy!), though, turnout seemed to hold and the French Club and the rest of the participating organizations were packed into the Commonwealth Ballroom in Squires Center. I was late the event, as usual, but I made it just in time to Reema, my classmate, in the middle of a troupe of Lebanase dancers on stage in traditional costume, doing what she loved the most.

Just days later, I realized that Reema’s parents were there too when she was dancing on stage. They had driven four hours from Northern Virginia to see her dance and to celebrate her birthday that weekend. Through my friends, I found out that her parents were sure to let her know that they loved her very much and that they were very proud of her before driving back home.

They didn’t know it then– and I didn’t know it when I saw her, either– but that day, her birthday, was the last time that any of us would see her alive. The next morning, not even 18 hours later, she was murdered with eleven of her classmates on second floor of Norris Hall in Madame Couture-Nowak’s French class. In total, 30 people lost their lives that morning for no reason other than that they were in the right place– in class, as they should have been– at the wrong time.

After the deaths of so many of my classmates that day, I’ve never looked at an empty seat in a classroom the same way again.

When I think about what happened the next day, my heart breaks every time that my mind wanders to her parents and begins to imagine how they must have felt the next morning when they found out that their daughter had been murdered just hours after they had last seen her. They were so lucky to have had that last day together– so fortunate to have been able to say to their daughter on what was the last day of her life that they were so proud of her and they loved her very much– but so, so unfortunate to have had her taken away from them in such a horrible, horrible way.

On this day, the sixth anniversary of the last “normal” day of my life, I can’t help but think that we could have prevented the parents in every other shooting rampage that has taken place since of the unbearable cruelty and pain of outliving their children. In a convocation speech made just two days after our most horrible loss, poet Nikki DiGiovanni reminded us in her speech that “no one deserves a tragedy.”

We will prevail, she said, and we have. Never forget, she said, and we haven’t forgotten. No one deserves a tragedy, she said, and yet they still happen with frightening regularity.Why, people, why? Why aren’t we doing everything in our power to keep this from happening again?

Across Six Aprils [#52weeks]

I know it is coming, because I can feel it inching closer and closer with every fiber of my being.

“It,” in this case, is the anniversary of the worst day of my life. That day, April 16th, 2007, was a cold and windy Monday. In the early hours of the morning, a gunman shot a student and an RA in West Ambler Johnson. After a brisk walk downtown, where he stopped at the post office to mail a videotape to NBC, the perpetrator of the early morning shooting headed to Norris Hall. There, he chained the doors to the building and, around 9:47am, he began a shooting rampage that lasted for only a few minutes. After taking the lives of 32 students and faculty at my university, the gunman turned the gun on himself and took his own life.

I’ve thought the shooting every day since it happened, for 2, 188 days to be exact. I’ve had time to think about my classmates who died, about the girl I had known since we were five years old in Sunday School at the church down the street from my Grandaddy’s house, about the first responders who had to see the bloodshed and carnage firsthand. I’ve had 2,188 days to grasp what has happened.

The rest of the country, specifically those in charge of it, has had that long to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. And yet…

When I look at the state of things, I’m disgusted because I feel like our loss wasn’t big enough to change things, despite it being the biggest in US history. At times, it feels like the deaths of my classmates were in vain, that any good that could have come out of them never met its full potential, that the suffering and the pain that we’ve all endured weren’t big enough or important enough to ensure that it could never, ever happen again. On average, a mass shooting happens every four months in the United States. How many of those could have been avoided if people took the opportunity six years ago to make sure that something similar could never ever happen again, not just in an educational setting, but anywhere else in our country?

Sure, a commission was formed to answer the questions surrounding the shooting but the report they completed was riddled with factual errors. The $10 million spent in the aftermath of the shootings went to on-campus security measures to ensure that it could never happen there again… but that was for one campus, not all of them. Lots and lots of money was thrown around to cure the ills that were brought about by the shootings (not enough, though, because it was a six month wait to get an appointment with a therapist), but how did writing some laws and installing locks on doors help? Where were the widespread preventative efforts to make sure this didn’t, couldn’t happen again? What does it say about us that we let what happened in the parking lot of a Safeway in Tuscon, AZ., what happened in Aurora, CO, and what happened to those young, innocent children in Sandy Hook, CT come to pass, when surely other courses of action could have been pursued?

It has been six years, and another body of students will spend their lives fighting PTSD, anxiety, and all that comes with a school shooting. More parents, this time of younger, more impressionable little persons will grapple for answers and will search for answers that just don’t come. More communities have been and will be torn apart until something is done.

Ours was the biggest mass shooting in history, and for six Aprils I’ve feared the moment that I turn on the TV to find that another similar tragedy will have overtaken ours, that more people on a larger scale will so intimately know that through which we’ve worked so hard to prevail. We need more than partisan discourse and a few meager laws to change things, we need decisive actions that impart huge obstacles to those attempting to procure the weapons through which such terrible, horrible things can be done. We need to do everything in our power to make swift and strong decisions on gun control and on supporting mental healthcare. We need to do it now, before the other shoe drops and something worse that what we’ve already seen happens. Anything less would be dishonoring the lives of all that we’ve lost to these massacres, absolute folly for a society that is supposed to value life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.