Today is the anniversary of so many wonderful things. It’s the beginning of October, the month that truly makes everything feel like Fall is upon is. It’s Julie Andrews’ birthday - other than the actual Queen of England, Dame Julie Andrews IS my queen. It’s the anniversary of Walt Disney World, the secondary home of my boss, Mickey Mouse. On this day in 1995, *NSYNC was formed (at least from when Lance Bass officially met everybody, and he was the last one added to the group, so I go by that official date). It’s the day Yosemite National Park was established - I’d love to go there someday when California isn’t constantly on fire. It’s the 274th day of the year, very cool. All of these wonderful things mean that October 1st has arrived.
This particular October 1st is also the one year anniversary of the shooting at the Route 91 Harvest Festival for country music in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. 58 lives were lost, hundreds were injured, thousands were effected, and I’ve never felt more guilty about anything in my entire life.
The mind is such a strange and fragile thing. I hate country music - I mean, for whatever dumb reason, I refuse to ever use the hashtag #CountryStrong in regards to the shooting, just because I don’t want people to think I support or enjoy country music. HOW DUMB. Alas, here I am, never using it, even though I can’t even find a single sentence to begin to describe what it means to me.
Want to know where I was when Stephen Paddock unloaded hundreds upon hundreds of bullets on innocent music lovers and concert goers? My boyfriend and I were less than a block away, literally structures down from the concert lot. A day earlier, on Saturday, we went to a Sublime and The Offspring concert in old Downtown LV. I’d gotten tickets for José for his birthday earlier in the month. Since his parents live in North LV, I figured it would be a perfect little getaway with family, Sublime, and fun. Sunday night, we had dinner at a Brazilian restaurant, saw a variety show, and had been walking through the shops, just strolling around and enjoying the evening together. We tried to get together with some friends I knew would be in town for a country music festival, but we all had our own plans already, and most of the friends I worked with back home, so no big deal - I’d see them later on in the week.
Three times, I saw people running or walking past us through the shops, covered in blood, sweat, and tears. It didn’t click in my head that they weren’t just having a night full of drama and drunkenness, as Vegas is known to graciously gift many of its guests. It didn’t click that it was actually blood they were covered with. It didn’t click that one of the girls’ cowboy boots was ripped to shreds and she was limping.
I thought nothing of them.
It was finally time for us to make the drive back to Los Angeles. Around 10:30PM, we walked into the parking garage and got into the car, heading out through the back street and suddenly getting stuck in a weird amount of traffic. Atom of people dressed in cowboy gear were roaming around, many running, and I figured they were just trying to get to their cars to beat all of the traffic - foot and car - since the concert down the block was likely out or about to finish for the night. We cut over to drive on the strip to turn onto the freeway, and we saw a bunch of tents being raised. We saw cop cars everywhere. We saw people running. We saw ambulances blazing and weaving through cars and tourists. We stopped at the stop light, and I suddenly noted that these weren’t special event tents, these were triage tents, and they were the first ones going up. People under them were being covered with blankets and given water, others were crying. The ones under the yellow tent were covered in blood. Some were laying on the ground under the red tent. One man near them vomited onto the sidewalk. Still, more seemed to keep running, walking, limping by us on the sidewalks, some dazed, some wide-eyed in terror, some who could hardly see where they were going through their tears. A few were simply stopped on random points of the sidewalk, not sure what to do or where to go.
Though the picture was starting to be more fully painted in our minds as to what was happening, I still had to keep driving the car, so when it was time to turn right towards the freeway, I turned and almost ran headfirst into an ambulance coming off the freeway the wrong way. Not even the traffic officer standing in front of us realized it was coming, and didn’t stop us before seeing it barreling onto Tropicana Blvd. We pulled over onto the dirt, and I started frantically calling and texting my friends, realizing that they were supposed to be nearby, hoping and praying that they would pick up their phones, even though I wasn’t 100% sure what had happened. I called, José Googled whatever news he could find online, and he just said the word “gun” before my heart went mental. Of course, we didn’t have a clue to what extend the shooting was, but we knew it was at the Route 91 Harvest Festival, and we knew that our friends were there. We stayed parked on that dirt for a few minutes before José offered to drive so I could try to make contact with our friends and find out for sure that they were alive and well.
We were going to turn around, back onto Tropicana Blvd to try to find our friends and pick them up, get them out of there. All of a sudden, the entrance to the street behind us was blocked off by police cars, so we hopped onto the freeway and were going to try getting back off of it towards our friends. We wanted to help. We wanted to make sure they were going to be safe. So we got onto I-15 South.
It was dead-wall traffic at every single exit for miles in either direction towards The Strip, and suddenly, we knew we couldn’t get back into Las Vegas that night. We couldn’t do a thing to help our friends.
I’ve never felt more useless in my life.
We kept going until we got to a gas/convenience station almost an hour away. I’d heard from 3 friends at that point, and one of them said he’d made contact and confirmed the safety of 4 of our mutual friends/coworkers, so I at least knew they were okay. I say “okay,” but we all know that simply “alive” is more of the proper description. He went on to describe as quickly as possible the severity of what had just happened, and suddenly, we knew that this wasn’t just that someone had a gun at a concert - it was so much bigger and worse than that. That meant I knew 7 of my friends were safe. There were still at least 3 more people I knew, and one of them was another coworker of the friend I’d just spoken to. He didn’t know she was there, so he tried to make contact with her as well. Turns out. She was on the wings of the stage when it all happened. She made it back towards the airport somewhere with her friends and some of the artists who were performing, but we wouldn’t know that for some time. I waited hours to find out whether or not my other friends had survived. One of them had at least used Facebook Messenger recently, literally to tell his mom he was alive and then he handed his phone around so others who had lost their phones in the frenzy could call their loved ones as well. I at least knew he was alive due to the messenger app’s note of when someone was last “active,” so I accepted that he would get back to me later after getting to safety himself and getting his phone back. I was glued to my phone the whole time, and we kept checking the local radio and news stations to listen for any other updates. At the time, all of the news outlets were mainly treating it like someone had a gun and had simply shot someone. The way they were initially describing it was like there was just this quick little event, but that was it, and they were just waiting around for the official word from LVPD that the suspect had been caught or something, and they’d move on. Another Vegas crime - tragic, but nothing out of the ordinary.
When we got to the rest stop convenience store, two cops were on a break and grabbing some snacks and coffee at the same time we were. They were talking with the clerk about how much they knew at the time, but most of their knowledge only told them that there was no getting into or out of Las Vegas at that point. When I mentioned what time we got out, they said we were likely the last of the cars to get by. After that, it was gridlock on The Strip. My heart fell. He was basically saying that if we’d stayed, even just a couple of seconds more, we would’ve been in there, able to get to our friends, give them a ride, get them somewhere safe, even if it was still in the city. Maybe we’d have been stuck at that stoplight, but at least we could have given our friends an option, a little escape to the safety and comfort of a friend’s car. But we didn’t. We couldn’t. We were locked out, and I had no way of helping.
My mom and dad like to tell me it’s a blessing that we got out of there when we did. They remind me that I have a good heart, but that for whatever reason, I wasn’t meant to be able to help this time around. For whatever reason, I was rendered useless. For whatever reason, people I cared about were alone and terrified, and I couldn’t even attempt to alleviate any of that. For whatever reason, we didn’t leave earlier, we didn’t leave later, we left at precisely the moment that would get us out of Las Vegas when we could have been helpful. For whatever reason, all I feel is complete heart-wrenching guilt.
I didn’t hear the gunshots, I didn’t get trampled by people running for their lives, I didn’t once have the thought of my imminent death via bullets rushing through my mind, I didn’t have to worry that my beloved would need my protection and potentially in lieu of my own safety or life, I didn’t worry that I would die at the hands of a madman, I didn’t watch strangers or friends get shot like animals running from a hunter and fall to the ground, I didn’t hear all of the screams and cries of a thousand people who suddenly found they had major survival instincts, and I didn’t hear 1,100 bullets from 23 different guns whizzing through the air or last my head or into flesh.
I was there, but I wasn’t even there.
Those friends, all of whom by God’s grace survived, have exclaimed how they constantly suffer with what’s called Survivor’s Guilt. Little do they really know that I feel the same way. I feel so guilty that I couldn’t help them. I feel so guilty that I was RIGHT there, but didn’t know. I feel so guilty that I couldn’t get back in there to help them, save them, be there for them. I feel so guilty that I wasn’t even as useless as a pawn - I was simply nothing. People lost their lives, their children, their parents, their friends, and I lost nothing. The guilt kills me.
Turns out, there’s a bonus type of guilt! Not only do I feel worthless from this whole ordeal, I feel completely out of place in saying that I’ve been affected by this event at all. I wasn’t there. I shouldn’t feel the pain and guilt that my brave and courageous and wonderful friends felt from this tragedy, but for whatever reason, I do. My boyfriend was in the car with me the entire time, but he hasn’t even kind of been affected by this like me. This is not to say that he’s heartless, by any stretch! He just has a different mindset than me, and that’s okay. I wouldn’t wish this upon anyone. I feel it so strongly, and so now, not only do I feel guilt for my uselessness, I also feel guilty ABOUT feeling guilty. BECAUSE I WAS NOT THERE. Yes, I saw things that will be burned into my brain for the rest of my life. Yes, I realized later on that the people I subconsciously noted walking by me had just been literally running for their lives, and that they hadn’t been to some weird Vegas club that covered them in chocolate or something; they were covered in blood. I noted all of this too late. There’s literally nothing I can do about it, and it doesn’t feel right or fair to complain or vent about any of it, because I wasn’t there. My story is NOTHING compared to the ones who wondered if they’d ever see their family or friends again. No one should have to feel that. I didn’t feel that at all, but for whatever reason, the effect on me seems nearly as epic as it’s been on my friends and all of the other people who WERE there.
I recently went on a trip to London, and was flying back into Las Vegas before flying home to Los Angeles shortly thereafter. The flight from the U.K. to Vegas is about 10 1/2 hours. Roughly halfway into the flight, I realized where I was going. I hadn’t been back to Vegas since the night of October 1st, 2017. Each time the opportunity arose, either to go with friends or go with José to see his family, I bowed out, attributing it to school or work or sickness, only ever revealing my panic at the thought to my boyfriend or parents. It doesn’t feel like I have a story that’s worthy of this dread. Halfway into that flight, I started to hyperventilate. The cabin crew was gracious tried to quietly bring me water and pretzels as the two large German men slept soundly on either side of me. I couldn’t explain to them why I was acting so terrified, and I never got the chance go afterwards, either. Regardless, they were kind about it, and quietly kept their eyes on me for the rest of the flight, while I eventually calmed myself down by watching some random film from the screen in front of me.
People wonder why I seem to “waste” so much time on TV and films and books, but they’ll never truly realize that it’s not laziness, it’s merely escape. And hey, it was either scripts and stories or drugs and alcohol, so, you know, I at least feel confident in my choice there.
When I landed in Vegas, all I wanted to do was leave. When I was waiting for my flight back to LA, the only thing I could do to keep my mind occupied was play the Willy Wonka slot machine they have in the waiting area of the terminals. Social media had already started to pick up on the anniversary of the shooting, even nearly 3 days before the date itself. The hashtags “#VegasStrong” and “#CountryStrong” and “#Route91” were already strewn about the airport and on several billboards outside. I couldn’t seem to escape it, especially since I was already thinking about it and trying so desperately not to. Wave after wave of panic and tears kept hitting me, until finally, I was home. I went about a whole day without thinking about any of it, but that’s mostly because I slept for roughly 18 of the 24 hours in the day. After that, not much more has been able to occupy my mind and my heart, and I wasn’t even there.
I know that if someone else were in my shoes and I heard their story, I would tell them that their experience IS valid. Their feelings are legitimate and fair. I’d tell them it’s okay to feel that way, and that it’s better to let it all out instead of suppressing everything and letting it fester. I’d tell them what I tell everyone else all the time: you’re allowed to feel how you feel. Everyone is entitled to their own emotions. But I don’t feel that way for myself, as much as I’m aware of the fact that I should.
I don’t have a traumatic experience here, I just have a memory of something that happened to other people that I feel a tremendous amount of guilt over, even though I didn’t actually do anything wrong. I should just feel overwhelming sadness for the victims - which I completely do, obviously. However, I don’t talk about any of this to anyone other than my boyfriend or my parents, because I don’t want anyone to think I’m trying to draw any attention away from the real victims. I don’t want them to think that I believe my feelings are even REMOTELY on the same level as theirs and what they went through. I’m embarrassed that I feel this way at all, and I’m ashamed that I keep having the urge to talk about it to someone - anyone. Each time the topic comes up, I want to chime in and say, “Hey, I was part of that! I suffered, too! Here’s what happened to me...” But nothing happened to me. I’m not one of them. I don’t have the tee shirts or the tattoos, I’m not part of the lawsuits, I don’t get invited to the vigils or support groups. My name or face isn’t even remotely thought about when the topic comes up. When people do hear that I was there, they kind of go, “Oh yeah, I forgot you were in Vegas then, too...” I sit just on the outer rim of tragedy, never able to remove myself from it, but still never able to really be on the inside, either. I wish I was fully #CountryStrong and #VegasStrong, knowing full well that the ones who are among those hashtag groups want nothing more than to NOT have reason to be included in them. Instead, I just have to sit back and be quiet, watching as my friends mourn together, never being completely included or remembered in the remnants of the Route 91 Harvest Festival shooting, because, hey, I wasn’t even there.
