The Sickness of a Generation

I remember being in elementary school, around the age of 7 or 8, and we had our annual lockdown drill. To me, as a wise 7 or 8-year-old, a lockdown drill was for if there was someone in the area trying to hurt us, or maybe a bank robber was taking cover in our school. When I was in 2nd grade, I had my first real lockdown drill. It only confirmed my naive definition of a lockdown drill. There was a hot pursuit for a criminal loose in my hometown so as a precaution our whole school was on lockdown. There was no in-depth direction given to me, ever. The steps were always the same: turn off the lights, hide in the corner, and put furniture against the door. As my entire second-grade class sat in the dark reading books, I remember not being scared. I remember thinking “well, we're hiding so we're safe. It’s not like anything bad could ever happen to us.”

Then I went into the sixth grade, my sister in 4th, and my mother picked me up from school. She looked at me with sorrow in her eyes and said to me “Something really bad happened today.” I was confused and naturally asked her what was wrong. She informed me 20 kindergarteners and 1st graders were killed at Sandy Hook that sunny December day. While I’ve always been a very intelligent child, I was still very naive. I lacked the ability to sense that humans were bad as I had never feared for my own life. I mean, stuff like that only happened in other schools, right? I lived in a quaint town, nothing like that could happen to me. As I grew older and the years passed, so did the number of mass shooting stories. It felt like every other week I heard of a massacre, but it still left me feeling apathetic.

Then I was a freshman at my public high school with a population of around 3,500 teenagers, not including staff. I was in my 4th-hour class when a beeping sound came over the intercom. I remember thinking it was just another announcement to congratulate one of our sports teams. But then I heard my principal's voice. The words “We are having a hard lockdown. Hide, and do not run” shakily rang throughout each classroom and hallway. My teacher’s eyes bulged out of her head and she motioned for us to hide. It was at that moment that I realized I had no idea what to do. All those “lockdown drills” we practiced did nothing. We were all just sitting, waiting for someone to come in and shoot us like the ducks we metaphorically were. My optimistic view of the world changed within that short amount of time. There was someone in my school and I could die. Did I even tell my parents I loved them? What will they do with my room after I’ve passed? I started texting both of them but my hands were shaking so bad none of it made sense. I was trying to concoct an escape plan in my head but with such minimal knowledge as to what to do, I wasn’t sure what would get me killed or not. After what felt like forever, our lockdown was over. Then the stories came out, a student at our school had a gun on him but it was very likely he had no evil intent. At least, that’s what the rumors told me. Even though we weren’t in any real immediate danger, I still was mentally changed forever.

I’ve had intense anxiety since I was a child, and it only worsened when I grew older. After that lockdown, I started to go to school every day wondering if it would be the day someone actually shot up our school — if it was the day I, Reese Seberg, was to die. I would get nervous to go to school every single day. If someone even dropped a book in the hallway, my heart skipped a beat. My stomach dropped. I gasped for air. I guess at the time, I had never thought about my short 15 years coming to an end. But suddenly — it was all I could think about.

I don’t want to die — there’s still so much I have to do. I haven’t even gone to college yet or gotten married. Hell, I don’t even know who I am yet.

Why do people want to kill people like me? That’s a question I don’t think I will ever have an answer to.