About what happened in Boston...

It makes me want to vomit. The pictures of wincing victims, red-soaked sidewalks and bloody American flag gear made me teary-eyed in the teachers' lounge. I swallowed hard after seeing the video recorded from the finish line.

The first thing the teacher with whom I commute to work said to me this morning was, "Did you hear what happened in Boston?" I get it; I'm American, and it was small talk. But small talk should be that it was 10 degrees last Thursday and it's 25 today, not that an 8-year-old boy and two others were murdered in a senseless sideline explosion.

Tuesday's front page of "El Pais" newspaper

They talked about it on the radio - something along the lines of "another tragedy in the U.S." - and I gasped at the latest casualty count because it had more than quadrupled since I'd last checked: now three dead, 144 injured.

I have experience fielding the "did you hear what happened?" question. I wish I didn't, but the Sandy Hook massacre didn't happen that long ago. I tell whoever mentions it that the violence is disgusting and cowardly and that it makes my stomach turn. My most emphatic point is that the stories of shootings and bombings and knife attacks don't accurately reflect life in America. But when kids are shot at school and spectators are blown up at a marathon, how does it not?

Perhaps the worst part is that we're getting used to it. Sure, for the first few days we're numb, scarred, broken and unified. But by the next week, we're back to taking the kids to soccer practice or logging 80 hours chained to a desk. Life goes on, and we're all too familiar with the cycle of collective grief.

How do I explain the why? Is it a matter of gun control? Is our TV too violent, our mental health system too broken? The truth is I have no idea. It's a conversation in which I would choose my words carefully even in English. Imagine doing it in Spanish.

This post isn't about statistics or ideological debate. It's an off-the-cuff emotional rant of sorts, and I can't tell you how the number of shootings or bombings in the U.S. compares to other countries, per capita. Surely there are similar events happening around the world and the media machine doesn't bat an eye. But here's the deal: The U.S. can't throw its weight around in global politics and economics and then expect people not to pay attention when it's vulnerable. The country is under a microscope, for better or for worse.

I can only hope that in the next month and a half before I come home, I don't have to hear "did you hear what happened in the U.S." again.

Un saludo,
Teresa