Sunday, December 16, 2012

Our Hearts Are Broken

For those of you that don't know, I'm currently up in Connecticut covering the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

Friday, I'd been following the news from the Pottstown Mercury's newsroom relatively closely.

I went out for lunch, came back, and was told my company was looking for volunteers to help out our sister paper in New Haven, the Register. I considered it for a few second,s then agreed to go because I knew I'd regret it if I didn't.

After running home, grabbing clothes for three days with no idea how long I'd really be there, I drove five hours and got to New Haven after 10 p.m.

For the entirety of Saturday and Sunday, I've been working non-stop, catching 5 hours of sleep at most, trying to catch up with victims' stories, running on tasks to help create articles, gathering data and contacts and whatever I can.

It's been difficult. It's been gut-wrenching at times, forcing yourself to call and look for someone that might share a story about the worst thing they've ever experienced.



This hasn't been fun, by any means. It hasn't been an adventure for me.

There have been times when I've been faced with a task that I've been almost terrified to take. But each time, doing it, I told myself, "Tomorrow, you'll have already done this. Get it done and it will be over tomorrow."

But what is really terrifying, what I almost cannot handle, is that there are people in the town I've been through a few times that can't tell themselves that, that, tomorrow, things will be exactly as they were today, they'll never be "done."

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