For all those I know in Boston. And for those I have not yet met. I find myself surrounded by this circle, gradually closing in on me - each incident gets closer to my home. Newtown. Boston. Miles away from where I onced lived. Minutes from the homes of those I love. Give me some reassurance - this reality is becoming too real, too fast. It isn’t a headline anymore of some city and some freak accident. It is in my neighborhood now, where my teachers lived, where my friends had uncles or sisters or brothers. It has become so much more than a “horrific event”. It has become my life, taken my acquaintances, friends, lovers. What bothers me most is those who don’t know, don’t care. I do not understand why the world cannot stop - it keeps going. Time keeps moving. It’s as if no one else cares ,and those affected are forced to trip along the strands of time, falling over their grief and uncertainty, until they can either move on enough or get trampled by those behind them. The reality of the world - must it be so cruel? Is it necessary to assume that every person outside of our family is to be an enemy? Oklahoma City, 7 hours from my home, was an act from our own soil. Will we let the fear control us, growing into an untamable beast where we cannot even trust our own mothers? I do not want the generations to come to have to feel this fear - that each event grows closer, mile by mile, no matter where one goes. I do not want my children or grandchildren, or even my younger brother to know what its like to lose someone close and have to accept it could have been anyone. I do not want to see the fragility of those around me, their lives hanging on by the strings people around them support. I do not want it, but life goes in circles, history repeats, people move forward, but that does not mean that we should not stop trying to get what we believe in - a clean, beautiful future, where there isn’t a place in town where one cannot walk alone at night. Where someone can run a race and be part of their country and not have to worry about being bombed. Where someone can eat outside at a restaurant and not think about the rain of shrapnel that could come soon. A future where it is no longer about what might happen, but about what is happening. What has happened. And what will.