Like everyone else I was glued to my phone and TV over the weekend watching the horrific news unfold from the French capital. As the days have gone on I’m still struggling to get my head around how and why this atrocity has happened just two hours down the road from me.
The scariest thing is that it could have been you or me: out on a Friday night for drinks, excited to see one of your fave bands playing and spending an evening with family and friends relaxing over dinner in a small restaurant. Any one of us could have been doing that.
I ran on Saturday morning after binging on the news trying to let it filter in, watching the death toll rise and the harrowing photos emerge. I ran as if I didn’t want to stop, I ran like I had this strange lump in my throat imagining those people who had been murdered who would never run again. The rest of the day I was teaching English to classes of French children. We had planned to give them a lesson all about Poppy day, handing out poppies and explaining the importance of Remembrance Day and how we will never forget those who have lost their lives for us. Instead they could witness this first hand by just turning on the television.
How do you explain to children what has happened in their capital city? To give them answers that as adults we don’t know. To play down the rising fear this has caused, to respect the dark shade of grief covering the nation, to tell them that they are safe when the truth is we don’t know if we are. You don’t expect to go out on a normal Friday night and not come back.
I’m sorry if I’m rambling I’m just trying to get my head round it all. I don’t know if I ever will.
I’ve been living in France for the past two years, the French have welcomed me with open arms and double kisses and I am proud to call this place my home. We all witnessed the resilience of the French after the Charlie Hebdo attacks: they are not willing to let this beat them, they will come back stronger and fighting for this wonderful country and its people.
It is times like these where you not only see the worst that human beings can inflict on other human beings but also the best. Heart-warming stories have emerged that taxi drivers were turning their meters off to pick up fares for free and help take people to safety, that the following morning hundreds of Parisians queued for hours to give blood, that hashtags were invented such as #portesouverte offering a safe place to stay and that people risked their lives to protect complete strangers.
Good still exists in this world, it may not feel like it when your brain cannot compute the information flooding in from the news, but there is.
And yes I, like many others, feel helpless.
This morning I went to the town hall where a two minute silence had been organised. We huddled in the open air courtyard, people from all backgrounds and ages standing side by side paying our respects. As the bell chimed everyone started singing the French national anthem, this emotional energy pulled us closer together. I cried, hearing this song and others around me wearing their grief like a winter coat as the heavens opened.
But I guess the only thing we can do is to try and carry on as normal, go about our lives as business as usual, not let the fear overtake us and stop us from living. We are the lucky ones, the ones who can hug our loved ones tight and tell them we love them, crossing our fingers behind our backs that everything will be ok.
