Today has been surreal.
After the attacks in Paris a few months ago the world was shocked. Europe was shocked. It confronted us with people who had been operating in secret, in our supposedly private and safe world. It showed us that no matter how safe you think you are, there is always some lunatics willing to kill innocents for no good reason at all.
The last few weeks I’ve been eyeing the situation in Turkey, how there too innocent people fall victim to things they shouldn’t be involved in in the first place. The Turkey conflict has an extra dimension though, since they are in active conflict with the Kurds who default to guerilla tactics since army wise they will never win the conflict.
I look at the innocents getting caught and my heart bleeds. I don’t understand, and I will never understand, why innocent people need to get caught in the crossfire.
When I got the news about the attacs on Brussels this morning I was shocked. I have a good friend stationed for work there so the first thing I did was send him a message to make sure he was safe, and he was. After more news popped up things got more and more terrifying. Two explosions at the airport, another one at the metro network. All still in Brussels, but I couldn’t help but think that if I wanted to, I could take the train and be there in 1.5 hours.
When the first news arrived that here in the Netherlands around the Schiphol area they had locked down a trainstation and stopped multiple trains my initial shock began to turn into genuine fear. Schiphol is a major airport hub here and it’s really easy to get to from Brussels. What if they planned to come here too?
Luckily nothing actually happened, there were a few false alarms and thing were handled mostly correctly and quietly. But the fear never really ceased for me.
I’m terrified. I’m worried. I’m angry and I’m alone. I’m not questioning where the next strike will happen, because I’m positive my home country is one of their targets aswell. But I am wondering when, and that thought alone is enough to keep me terrified for a very long time.