Guilty

I have been angry all week.  Deeply, inexplicably angry.  I've blamed the weather, my job, my kids, my husband, my lack of exercise.  Everyone and everything to blame, without really knowing the root cause and not caring to probe further.

Today I got an email at work that the verdict in the marathon bombing case was in.  The verdict was in?  The verdict?  In?  When did it go to the jury?  I felt my ostrich head pull gently from the sand, dispersing grains as my feathers fell slowly back into place.

I turned to Twitter (a medium I have only recently discovered), experiencing the moment as closely as I was able.  "Live" in the controlled sense.

Guilty.

I have consciously avoided the coverage of the trial.  "I don't care" I told myself.  That's irrelevant to my family at this point.

Guilty.

I am so beyond it, and he will be found guilty anyway.  I don't need to read the coverage, to see the photos, to know the details.

Guilty.

It's a new April.

Guilty.

I can't believe how far we've come in the past two years.

Guilty.

I don't even want to examine my views of the death penalty in this context...

Guilty.

Refreshing my feed like a lunatic, fresh tears with each count.

Guilty.

Each new tweet, confirming what I did not realize I needed confirmed.

Guilty.

Guilty.  Guilty.  Guilty.  Guilty.

Guilty thirty times over.  And really, guilty so many more times over.  Guilty hundreds of thousands of times over.  One verdict of guilty for each person impacted that day, in both big and small ways.  Guilty.  Guilty.  Guilty.  Guilty.

Guilty.

I am less angry now, although the weather still stinks.  But April showers bring May flowers, or so I've been told.  So here's to Spring.  Life.  Re-birth.  Runners.  Spectators.  Boston.  Marathons, of all kinds.  And the thriving of our collective innocence in the face of all this guilt.