I have told many people that the biggest reason I write is because it is therapy for me.  Regardless of whether anyone read my blog or not, I would continue to write.  I do it for sanity.

And I need to write today more than ever.  The tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, is shocking. How do you hear the news that 20 children between the ages of 5 and 10 have been killed and not think that you have misheard or gone a little crazy?  How do you not sit down and do the thing that helps you feel sane again?

But I’m not feeling more sane.  I feel insanely sad.  My nieces and nephew are between those ages.  I could throw up just thinking about someone shooting them.

I was in a meeting from 9 AM until 2 PM today and I had little knowledge of anything going on outside the four walls of the room.  I left work a little early and walked outside into some beautiful, sunny weather.  I checked my Facebook and saw all these updates on “shootings” and “tragedy” and “sick about CT” and “I will hug my child tight”.  I turned on NPR and quickly learned about what happened.

It’s so disconcerting to juxtapose a beautiful, sunny Friday with a tragedy.  It felt surreal to be driving home, listening to the details.

I do not agree with the majority of President Obama’s policies, but I will applaud him for his news conference today.  He did a great job.  I found myself crying in the car.

I’m just furious at the shooter.  I want to call him evil.  I want to paint horns on him and automatically assume that he had no morals, no conscience, no soul.  And maybe he didn’t.  Right now, all my anger is at Adam Lanza.

He had to have mental issues.  Didn’t he?  Doesn’t there have to be some sort of underlying mental health disease that would trigger a person to do something so evil?  I so want to believe that acts this ugly can’t be committed otherwise.

I am not casting stones on people with mental health issues.  I’ve struggled with my own mental health problems in the past, fighting depression.  But I have never, ever, not once in my whole life had one thought about hurting another person.  And I thank God for that.

I did some intensive group therapy once and one of the women in my group did think of hurting others.  She also heard voices.  But I also knew her very violent and abusive background.  And she was trying to get help.  I had a lot of sympathy for her.  She hated having these thoughts.

I have no sympathy for Adam Lanza.  Is it because he actually acted on his thoughts?  Or because I didn’t know him and his story?

In the end, I don’t have to have sympathy for him.  I can have a world of anger and that’s ok.  But the anger at him still doesn’t help me make sense of this tragedy.

I do not believe that “it was just God’s plan”.  That is one of the most asinine statements.  I don’t believe that God enjoys seeing us suffer.  I believe that He wanted Adam to get help, to stop, to make the right choice — and what happened “was just Adam’s plan.”  Adam made it and Adam  carried it out (at least based on what little I know right now where the media is calling him the shooter).  I believe that God is crying with us.

This is mostly an incoherent rambling of thoughts, but in the end, my prayers are with the parents, children and people of Newtown, CT.  My prayers are also with every parent and child as they deal with the scariness of this story.  May you all get through this.