It surprises me.

It surprises me that this is our norm now. We breath this in every day. The released audio! sections of articles shine in front of us every day, they ring in our ears, high pitched scream, whispered shouts, then the pop, pop, pop, silence.

We wonder why this happens, we scrunch our brows, shake our heads, run our hands over our face.

It doesn’t remove the truth.

It has been revealed, why they do this. Why, after Florida, there was another, and another, and another, almost until Sandy Hook was forgotten, thrown into the rest, almost the statistic.

Just years ago, these events had us gasp, had us place our hands over our eyes and cry, had us smash our hands together,

pray.

It didn’t stop.

How do we learn about these incidents? Is it from a friend? Is it from the loudspeakers in our classes? Is it from the low, itching ring you hear, right after the shots themselves?

We point to the person in cuffs at the end, a smile on his or her face, erratic, wild.

One hand points, the other has a camera, guilty. The news has live coverage, pictures are up immediately, only steroids to the smile of the person in cuffs. We think what we’re doing is right, we’re neck-deep in this mess, our heads tilted, gasping for air.

On December 14, 2012, Sandy Hook. My mother had brought all three of her children onto her bed, oddly awake, fidgeting. Days later there was a moment of silence at school. Weeks later she told me what had happened.

We breathe out thoughts and prayers, a waste, an odd shield of clear glass, our wide eyes looking back at a barrel, we are in the web of retweeting and liking. “Like to send prayers to these children,” “retweet to stop Sandy Hook from repeating;” we are oblivious to the penetrability of the glass, how our mere thoughts and prayers only thin our shields, draw the next bullet closer, the next victim in such proximity to birth a different fear itself.

There’s a distorted figure of fame in our world, prized enough to forget of everything else. To strip it down to red carpets and heels, dresses too long to fit in a building and colors too bright to face.

These people entering our places, our schools, our lives with guns, pointing it without thought, they are people who look for the “everything else” of fame. Their ears strain to hear their own name, it doesn’t matter how, as a curse, a praise.

At the end of the day, to themselves, it is a drug.