Marathon 2013

I don't understand what just happened. Explosions at the Boston Marathon's finish line. The area is in havoc. Nobody knows anything for sure.

My friend Yinuo posted about this on her blog, but I think I need to talk about it too.

Boston is one of my homes. I love it dearly, and the Marathon is of course an important part of our city. To have something like this happen - I just don't know what I'm supposed to think.

Right now nobody knows who did it and why. I heard that one bomb went off at the JFK Library, and I hear that another one was found at Riverside Station, which is three train stops from my house, but I don't know if anything is true. The train (or as we call it, the T) is, of course, down at the moment. Facebook is exploding, and I'm honestly terrified. Not really for myself but for other people and how close it is to me. I am not invincible, and no one I know is invincible. It takes something like this to realize that.

The worst part of this is not the injured or the dead, although both are absolutely terrible. No, the worst is that nobody knows anything for sure and nobody knows where more bombs might be found. Everybody is terrified because nothing is certain.

And another thing - it seems so horrifically planned. There are enough bombs that no one knows if there are more, and they are in strategic places. Whoever did this must have spent ages thinking about it. The fact that there is someone who will target this area and be so focused on it is truly frightening.

It seems so surreal. It's something that seems like it would never happen here - and now it has. And I don't know what I'm supposed to think anymore.

This Time Last Year

Just today I've been thinking back to last year.

It's been nearly a year since I created this blog, and that year may have been one of the most tumultuous periods of my life, including some of the hardest things I've done.

This time last year I was depressed and thoroughly terrified of the prospect of going to Israel, which frankly I had a right to be because it was one of the hardest things I've ever done, but it turned out for the better. This time last year I was still in eighth grade. This time last year I hadn't yet watched Doctor Who. This time last year I still had writer's block constantly to some extent. This time last year, hell, I was still writing last year's NaNo novel - it's a story I have yet to finish.

In some ways, this time last year, I was an entirely different person.