We Are All a Bit Broken

After yesterday's tragedy, I have a few thoughts. I don't know everything that happened. Even if I followed the news about it and read everything I could, I doubt I'd know what happened.

I have a theory that we, as humans, are all at least a tiny bit broken. Not intentionally. We all start out as perfect, innocent babies, but we are being raised by someone who is broken, and that is going to create some kind of a break in us.

For example, my mother was not ready to grow up and be an adult when she had me. She was broken in that she had been treated like the baby of the family her whole life (she was the youngest of all her siblings). And suddenly, she was supposed to be an adult and raise a child (or three... eventually). So, she did what she could until my father asked for a divorce. And then she just kind of decided that her 13/14 year-old daughter (me) was ready to grow up and be an adult and be responsible for her other two children.

And that decision, among others, caused me to break. In some really odd ways. I feel responsible, still, for making sure my sister and brother are happy. They are both adults (in their early 20s, both of them) and they should be responsible for themselves. And it's not just them. I feel like I should be taking care of everyone. Except when I feel like someone should take care of me for once. I walk a weird line between selfishness and selflessness. Because that's what I learned I had to do around my mother. Give until I had little left, and then jealously guard what little was mine alone so I could keep it. (It does not help that my mother is a liar at times when she thinks she can guilt someone into giving her something she wants/needs. It just creates more towing of that line.)

I don't know why someone would shoot a bunch of innocent kids. I don't know how the parents are starting to deal with this new fracture in their lives. I hope I never know.

But I do know that being so fundamentally broken seems to cause very different reactions in people. I get overly fussy and want to take care of people (except when I want to be taken care of). Some people get stuck in a place where they don't want to grow up and be an adult and find other people to deal with most things. And apparently others can't find a healthy way to relate to their families and cause destruction.

I have a theory that we are all at least a little bit broken. But we should be thankful that we aren't broken in ways that hurt others. And maybe we should look for people who are a bit broken that way and see if we can help some. I know that we can't fix the world, and we may not be able to fix them, but maybe we can stop such tragedies in their planning stages. Maybe.