Contradictory thoughts

I have a good friend who is a grad student at Virginia Tech. With the tragedy that happened on that campus a couple days ago, it's obvious she's the first person I thought about and was so afraid for her well-being. I was eating breakfast at Selleck right after the first shootings happened and saw the footage on CNN, so I immediately tried to get a hold of her and was so happy to actually talk to her. Needless to say, she knew better than to go to campus that day and thank god she didn't because at the time we spoke, the second and more horrific round of shooting still hadn't happened. I know that she is okay and I cannot stop thinking about what kind of things she must be thinking now and also, what kind of things must have been running through the shooter's head as he was pulling the trigger.

Several things have been floating through my mind because of this... some obvious... some surprising... some that make me uncomfortable.

First and foremost, I think about the 33 students that happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The thing I wonder about them is what they had on their minds that morning when they woke up. Were they happy to start a new day? Were they regretting not calling their parents/brother/sister back the night before? Did they have a feeling of what the day might bring? Did they sense anything that made this morning different than any other? I always thought that you would have some sort of intuition about the last day of your life, but now I'm not so sure. Putting myself in my friend's shoes, if she had been a victim, she probably would have started her day like any other and thought nothing of it. After all, these poor kids were probably only awake about an hour before they died, they probably didn't have time to even think of what time they would eat lunch. I wonder what their dreams were like during the night before.

Second, it was strange to feel my fear, anger, and sadness build throughout the day. Why does it happen this way? One would think that your emotions would be the most raw at the moment you hear the news... when it's most shocking. However, my emotions didn't really hit their peak until the day after. Maybe it's because the shock wears off and you process more thoughts as the day/time goes on. It still seems backwards to me... actually... I don't know... there probably isn't a hard-and-fast rule for how humans process emotions.

Third, it's a strange thing to feel both happy that someone is alive while being sad that others died. I don't know quite how to process it and maybe that's why the previous thought is confusing to me. Also, I know that my friend has family and other friends that are much closer to her than I am, and I almost felt guilty about trying to contact her to see if she was alright, because people that matter more to her were probably trying to do the same thing and she was probably trying to contact them. I felt guilty about taking time away from them. But then that also made me feel guilty that I felt maybe I shouldn't be trying to contact her.

Finally, the cliched question... I wonder if she was aware of all the people who cared about her and were worried about her well-being. If I was in her shoes, who would try to contact me? I feel selfish for even thinking that while so many people are grieving, but I'm guessing that more people than she thought were worried about her and tried to call her.