Hey, y'all, like a lot of folks I'm finding it to be difficult to keep track of the USA's mass shootings and officer involved shootings in the news.  I ration my news consumption and keep in touch with positive people to use my therapy tools to keep my head above water.  But this week one took place in a small town where I have lots of family and it was my tipping point and I got overwhelmed.

My back story is that I was raised in a city in a 6 year civil war as a missionary kid overseas.  Urban violence was common.  When I'd go to the dentist to get my braces adjusted as a kid, on the way out I'd have to hide in office building doorways and wait for shooting to stop so i could dart to the next block to catch the bus home.  I've written here about how my family's car was hit by a gasoline bomb when we went out for ice cream.  I've also written here about how a military patrol mistook me for a rebel fighter and I was tortured in an interrogation until i convinced the office I was a US citizen and not a local rebel.

You have helped me for years with my flashbacks and memories of those times I spent in an urban combat zone.  I am avoiding being political about anything that's going on, but I can't avoid how those officer involved shootings resemble my own encounter with that military patrol.  The office put his gun to my head and pulled the trigger twide but his pistol jammed both times, so though I was miraculously saved, it was traumatic for me.  Try as I might to avoid seeing any similarity, some of the officer involved shootings in the US news, whether they are justified or not, remind me too closely of my own experience with a gun in an officer's hand held to my head as I knelt in the street.

It's getting to me, y'all, so support welcome.