Kansas City

I went to the Chiefs Super Bowl parade.

All the stars aligned for me to go. I happened to be off of work that day, a friend I hadn’t seen in years also needed someone to go with, and said friend lived in Kansas City. I originally planned to drive there and back in one day, but it was a rare day that the OR wasn’t busy the day prior to the parade. This meant I could pack quickly and hit the road with just enough time to get to my friend’s place to sleep before we head off to claim a spot in the rally crowd. I got off of work early, so early that it made getting to Kansas City feasible. A city I’ve never been to, amidst their celebration of the biggest Super Bowl win ever. Plus, the Swiftication of everything. I knew something like this wasn’t going to happen again and it sounded so fun. The weather was even supposed to be sunny with a high of 70 in the middle of February.

I just had to go. It sounded like a fun, spontaneous adventure for my day off.

So I did go. I didn’t even know there was a rally at all and that that would be the place where the team comes on stage and all the festivities centered in around. It was a party. I was so lively and fun.

People were climbing the stoplights while thousands of people cheer them on. There was a small drone that kept flying in the stage (which is totally not allowed, the stage is aired on national television) while security unsuccessfully tried to catch it. There was dancing. Everyone was so nice and happy to be there. Tech N9ne performed. It was a party, we were having a blast.

Mike Parsons took the stage, was appropriately boo’d and called a fascist by the crowd, and shortly after the Chiefs took the stage. We had a front-row view of Travis Kelce singing Low Places while he was absolutely plastered.

The team showcased their new hardware, everyone lost their minds with excitement, and then the confetti cannons started firing.

That was right around the time the shooting began.

The stage for the rally faced the back of Union Station. The scene of the violence took place in the front. People were filing away, the music and announcers got cut off, and a very sudden jolt sobered the crowd. People thought there were multiple shooters, dozens of emergency vehicles fled to the area, and even more emergency personnel flew past us towards Union Station. The world turned into streaks of red Chiefs gear, flashing lights, and running.

When we were a little ways away from the scene, I heard the shooting described as “a total buzzkill” and many people celebrating as they had been before. Just minutes after bullets ripped through a crowd.

The whiplash of it all made me see red.

I cannot explain the events of yesterday further than that. That was when I put on my game face and settled into the cold survival focus. It’s the same one I wear for traumas. We navigated out of the situation safely, I drove home and went to sleep, and then woke up realizing that I had survived my first mass shooting.

What. The. Fuck.

It felt eerily similar to how I felt when my mom died in that sense. It’s like I can hold back the tidal wave until I’m in a safe place for it to hit me.. or at least outpace it for awhile.

It hit me this morning when I had to wake up and work a half-shift I had signed up for. It hit me and it felt like my soul was drowning beneath it.

It was even worse because everyone knew that I had been there. I was getting flooded with texts asking if I was okay because I had been uploading videos and photos of the day onto social media. I could not process and feel this quietly because everyone already knew. Everyone had questions.

I hate being perceived on a normal day. Today, it felt like my heavy heart dragged behind me like a ball and chain. Everyone could see it and hear it and feel it on me. I hated it. I had been this fragile egg too many times in this past year and a half.

I hate the guilt that comes with it.

I feel guilty for being worried about as if I were an actual victim when there were actual victims. I felt guilty for talking about it in any way whatsoever because it feels like attention-seeking behavior. I despise people feeling badly for me. This is still a very raw thing that requires vulnerability that I don’t want to have with most people.

And, speaking of people I don’t want to be vulnerable with, my fiancé’s family did not reach out to me about this (despite having seen my social media musings). I think that that’s probably very telling, and I think I need to establish some distance in that department.

Anyway, back to today at work.

I tried to don that mask of cool, neutral features.

I couldn’t do it.

The shock of it all was flickering out, only to be replaced with the realization that I had brushed death. I and hundreds of thousands of other people. The apathy of it all was/is very shocking to me.

The complacent acceptance that this is becoming a regular occurrence in this country. That one of the biggest NRA proponents raced away from the scene he helped to create. That the number of injured continues to climb. That half of them were children. That the only death thus far was a young woman.

Yet I still feel this need to continue as I was. I feel like I should go to the gym and clean the house and catch up on everything that I have to do instead of trying to begin to heal. To rest. Like I probably should be doing less than 24 hours after the fucking shooting happened.

Then I debate with myself on if I even have anything to be upset about. I wonder if this is enough of an excuse and gauge it with all of my trauma in the past year and a half.

Because processing surviving mass shootings has some kind of threshold criteria in my mind, I guess.

I am still sitting with this, obviously, and probably will be for awhile. Each time that I experience some kind of trauma, the inconsistent way in which I feel it continues to shock me.

I fluctuate and feel it in waves. It feels like I am operating at different strengths.

But that’s where I am with all of this right now. Kansas City, I’m sending every last bit of my love your way. I am so sorry that this happened. Fuck Mike Parsons and everyone else that supports deregulating guns.