Desensitized

Desensitized: v. 1 : to make (a sensitized or hypersensitive individual) insensitive or nonreactive to a sensitizing agent
2 : to make emotionally insensitive or callous; specifically : to extinguish an emotional response (as of fear, anxiety, or guilt) to stimuli that formerly induced it


Sunday was a tragic day for my small Alabama town, or so I've been told. The parents of two students, brother and sister, were killed in a motorcycle accident. The two students were transferred here from Decatur, Indiana. They hadn't been here long, and yet, since I live in a small town, there was at least a bit of connection.


The mood was incredibly somber when 3rd period rolled around. The sister was in that class, though obviously not that day. It was then that most of us heard the news. There was no acting out or anything of the sort. We all passed a card around to send with her on her way back to Indiana. I imagine she's already well on her way by now.

If on some off-chance either of them are reading this, I wish you both the best, and hope you do not read any lower into this post.

I'll repeat myself; it was a very somber day, some were close to tears at the thoughts of being in similar situations, and yet I was not. For some reason, it didn't phase me in the slightest. But it did get me to think. Not the accident, not the unfortunate situation these two teens are left in (again, I wish them the best), but the fact that it didn't phase me.

It made me think of other things that can push people to tears: The Holocaust, 9/11, even the current problems in the Middle East. And yet none of these phase me.

I get it, millions of lives, or even a few loved lives, are being destroyed before their time. Depending on your beliefs, they are ceasing to exist or floating off to some sort of afterlife, but the point is they're gone.

I understand the pain these two must be going through, and yet I cannot empathize with it. I feel as though I've been desensitized to death. Even when I think back to my grandmother's death, I don't shed a tear. But I stay somber in respect for her and my family.

Maybe no one I hold close has died yet. I just knocked on wood because I'm certain I wouldn't want it to happen. Yet, in this day and age, is anyone not desensitized to death? You hear so often of people dying, and yet they're just numbers. Even when I think of all the families left behind and children left in broken homes, I am not moved.

Am I a monster? Are we all monsters?

Or are we victims of an age where death is such a common thing?

Either way, I speak for myself when I say the only thing that moves me about the subject is the fact that I'm not moved by it.