Nothing Is Allright: Confronting the Boston Marathon Attacks Posted by Nathan S. on 04/15/13 | Filed under Opinion

I was going to write that the waiting is the worst part, but now as I read over those words, they feel embarrassing. The pain of waiting to hear if any of my family or friends were injured or killed in the Boston Marathon blast is excruciating, but only the most naive would call it worst than the absolute knowledge that you have lost someone.

My instinct is to make this about me, to place myself in proximity to the blasts, to say, "That could have been my mom crossing the finish line, caught in the blast, like she has so many years before." Thankfully my mother is here in LA with me now, but someone's mother was hurt. Someone, several people, hundreds of people, would trade my panicked unknowing for their grief in a heartbeat.

My roots in Boston run deep, my entire family and most of my childhood friends are still there, so frankly it feels like only a matter of time before the bad news comes. If not someone I know, than their sister, cousin, brother...child. The people I would have called strangers, the thousands of countless folks I spent sweating in the summer when the air conditioning on the T broke, one of them lost someone today. Suddenly they feel like family.

I'm not even sure if I should be writing this. These days it can be so easy to channel tragedy into a blog post, to attempt to sanitize horror with a Facebook update, to contain it to 140 characters. We offer up our internet condolences and move on, happy to have proof of our caring and suffering a matter of public record. I may look back on this tomorrow and regret it, and I don't know if this is even the right place to be writing this. I built this site to entertain, as an escape, and there's no escaping from this.

But ultimately, whether it's New York during 9/11, Sandy Hook during the shootings or places like urban Chicago that suffer daily tragedies, we're now all sadly familiar with the sense of genuine connection that can happen in these moments. The internet can be a way to hide our true selves and true lives, but it can also be a way to reveal them.

So for the last hour or so, since I first heard the news, I've been terrified. I've been panicked. I've cried. I've stared at my phone blankly, waiting for a text back from someone confirming they're ok. More than anything I feel intensely vulnerable, and in some ways writing this only makes me more vulnerable, but not writing with complete honesty would rob me of the chance to connect with someone who felt the same. I need to feel that some goodness can come from this. To be reminded that the good people in this world far outnumber those who would do something like this.

Tomorrow I'll be right back at it. I have no illusions about how running a rap website helps prove to whoever did that that we our lives will go on, but the sense of normalcy will be welcoming. However, for the rest of today, I'm instituting a moment of silence (or the closest things I can get to it on the internet). This will be the last post of the day.

I don't know the right words to end this. Much love, peace.