Boston Strong

            So Boston. Something that’s on a lot of people’s minds here this week is the Boston Marathon. Tomorrow is the anniversary of last year’s marathon, when the bombings happened. The week that followed was insane, and terrible, and terrifying. But the year that followed was uplifting, and heartwarming, and let me grow a lot as a person, I think. The 2013 marathon, and the week following, isn’t really something that I’ve talked about with people who aren’t in my living group. Honestly, it’s not really something I’ve talked a lot about at all. When I look back on it, it’s a thing that I know happened. And it definitely shaped the person that I am today. I think that it would be impossible to have been in Boston or the surrounding cities during the week after the marathon last year, and to not be changed by it, at least a little.

            Last year, in an attempt to reconcile things in my head, I wrote down what I was feeling. It was a very angry five pages of text. Given my tendency to look on the downside of things, the fact that it was angry and pessimistic isn’t entirely surprising. But reading over what I wrote last year was weird, because my outlook on the event has changed rather drastically.

            In general, my outlook has changed simply because I was wrong. This is some of what I wrote last year:

After the elite runners had finished- after almost 75% of the runners had finished- there was an explosion at the finish line. And then about 15 seconds later, there was another. Current reports state that 3 people were killed in the explosions, and anywhere between 100 and 130 were injured. In addition to these losses, the citizens of Boston and all those watching, running in, or volunteering for the marathon lost something as well- the opportunity to enjoy a peaceful day enjoying a great race and Patriots’ Day, a holiday that holds special significance for the city of Boston.

To be honest, it wasn’t just today that we lost. It was the untainted joy of next year’s marathon, and the year after that, and the following year. Every Marathon Monday until this event fades into a memory is a Marathon Monday that has, to an extent, been lost.

            I’m happy to say that I was almost entirely wrong. Yes, there’s a certain apprehension that still surrounds the Marathon this year. It would be foolish to think that there wouldn’t be. I’ve been reading accounts of runners who ran last year and are running again this year- nearly all of them have expressed that they or their families are slightly uneasy about the idea of running again this year. But they all also express something else- the desire to run. And I think that that quality is what I failed to see last year, when I was being pessimistic, and hadn’t really had time to process what had happened.

            The Marathon Bombing was the first tragic event in the U.S. that I can legitimately say I understood. When 9/11 happened, I was too young to get what was going on. I didn’t grasp the magnitude of Hurricane Katrina when it happened, largely because the region affected seemed kind of like it was far away, on its own planet. But the bombings happened right across the river. If I hadn’t been lazy and procrastinated on work last year, I probably would have been on that side of the river watching the runners pass by. It was closer to home than anything else I’d previously experienced. Which is probably part of why my reaction at the time was so negative- I was focused on the immediate situation and dealing with that, rather than looking to the future and actually considering what was likely to happen.

What I forgot to account for is the fact that Boston is a tremendous city. Even before the United States was a country, the people here were willing to stand up for what they believed in, regardless of the consequences. Obviously the same people who participated in the Boston Tea Party and similar events of that time period aren’t alive today, but I think that their spirit is. I haven’t seen a community come together as cohesively as Boston did after the Marathon, and I think it’s fairly unlikely that I’ll see anything like it again.

Until I actually witnessed the community coming together, I didn’t really consider Boston a second home. But seeing the MIT community, and the greater Boston community, drawing together to support their own cemented the fact that this is home. The Pacific Northwest is always going to be my home, I think. But Boston is sort of like your best friend’s house- the place you know you can go whenever, and you’ll be as comfortable as if it were your house. The people here- both the ones I know and the ones I have only read about or listened to- are incredible. There are so many amazing people who gave their time and talents after the Marathon to ensure that everyone was able to go back to their old lives as much as possible. Every person I know gave something to help others recover, whether it was a large or a small thing.

Yes, the weeks after the Marathon were hard. They were hard in a weird way for me, since I did the thing I normally do in crisis situations, where I stay calm and deal with everyone else’s needs first. I didn’t actually break down until several weeks after the Marathon, and even then I think it was only because there was school stuff piled on top of everything else that I actually ended up breaking down. I still have a moment of ‘Oh God, what happened’ when I hear multiple police sirens going by. I will probably feel apprehensive when I go across the river to watch the Marathon this year. But I’ve realized that nothing is going to stop Boston from being amazing. We’re going to keep running. Because we’re Boston Strong.