Boston Marathon Manhunt: Searching For Solace Amidst It All

This morning, I woke up to the sound of my phone alerting me to a text message. It was from a friend, telling me to stay inside. The nightmare that began on Monday entered its second (and hopefully, final) act. Suspected Boston Marathon bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev shot and killed an MIT police officer after robbing a 7/11n late last night, igniting a ferocious manhunt for the region's most wanted men. Tamerlan died earlier today, but Dzhokhar remains at large.

The suspects lived in my neighborhood, just a few blocks from my house and a stone's throw away from my favorite sandwich shop. It's been unreal watching the news run live footage from the places that are familiar, terrorized by two (or more) people that I could have walked by once, twice, or dozens of times, never bothering to register their faces as I ran errands, visited friends, or walked home from the bar. 

For hours, we have been inside. The sound of choppers and sirens punctuated the early morning and afternoon. We've kept the news on inside my apartment, alternating with watching intently and trying not to go stir crazy. I really should learn to buy groceries at regular intervals. But in the minutiae of living in an area locked down by terror, the tragedy can be overwhelming. The anxiety, crippling. And the 24-hour news cycle, Sofa King maddening. The major networks keep trotting out anyone that can say anything even slightly tangentially related to the Boston marathon bombers. They've paraded former FBI agents and Chechnya experts (apparently, the bombers are from Chechnya, although family says they never lived there). 

Thank God for witty Facebook updates from fellow Bostonians and Cantabrigians. 

Hopefully, the speculators and their wranglers will quiet and this nightmare will be over and we can move toward recovery. We canre-claim our neighborhoods, re-populate the streets, and drink coffee from Dunkin' Donuts. The One Fund can raise money for those impacted. We can enjoy the luxury of going outside on a nice day. 

Until then, I'm reading magazines in my apartment, playing rounds of Catan, and listening to the helicopters overhead, praying for a safe tomorrow.