Next day

October 10th, 2007

There was such a number of ambulances coming and going yesterday that it seemed there had been a mass slaughtery due to the shootingin a near-by house to my office, where many of my colleagues work. But it was not that bad - most of them were to a car accident - that, too, caused by a drug misuser just like the shooting.

I am cold all over like I felt cold at night too... I cry or if I don't, at least I try not to... I am not in balance at all... still... I am not going to postpone anything for that. Problems only cumulate with undone work that remains undone. But I also feel completely out of strength somehow. So it is just to collect myself and go to work although late today because I will have a meeting this evening and all night and all morning I have been telling myself that I won't change anything for that shooting... and I usually go to work later if I have meeting in the evening. I have realized I cannot concentrate there anymore like I should if I first have an over-length working day behind myself and then try to manage the meeting still...

I try so very much to reason and to assure to myself that I know everything that is happening in me, that I understand it all... so I think I just try to hide it somehow... how it really feels. I feel there is a huge loneliness in me that nothing can ease. I can't stand the thought that a colleague of mine has had that gunman in his room... in the middle of his working day... it feels just as if he'd been in my room... with what I don't mean to underestimate how he may feel now, he must feel really awful and I may have no idea of it. And in an odd way - I even feel I have no RIGHT to feel shocked, or to be in shock because I was not threatened personally. Someone else was. But to me it feels as a collective: one municipal worker is like another one, so it is just coincidence who it is... and we have talked about it in my working place even before ... if someone comes to the house and wants to shoot someone, it is either me or my secretary he realizes first. The first rooms you usually pass, you don't notice them... by my room you start to hesitate, and if not there, then you stop by my secretary's room to ask for a way...

Once we had an insane woman in the house late in the evening. First I thought I was there alone with her, and she was talking and behaving oddly, and I thought she might have a knife or something in her bag... then two other employees turned out, and then two of us were trying to find a way to get her out of there and one was keeping her occupied by talking and talking and talking.... which I had been doing since she came in - let through the locked doors by someone who left late... we phoned several places... we dared not call the police because she said she won't go with them... we dared not call ambulance because she said she would not go with them either... so we did a lot of phoning and finally found her son who promised to come and collect her... except that she was convinced that her son was dead... anyway he took her away finally but afterwards I was thinking that we have none whatsoever training for such situations... or any situations... all I did was - I used my instinct and normal sense... and that time it worked, together with brain work to find a way out, get her away. So up till now, it has not been so bad. But it seems to be getting wilder all the time.