lizbee | I think we're calling it "The Bourke Street Incident"

I've gotten into the habit of talking a walk on my lunchbreak. Usually I head down Bourke Street, into the mall, and wander around the department stores or accidentally fall into a bookshop. (I've also gotten into the habit of not taking my purse on these walks, for budgetary reasons.)

Yesterday, I almost didn't take a walk at all, but the Acclaimed YA Novel I was reading got on my nerves, so I changed my mind. I stepped outside around 1:30, looked down at Bourke Street, then impulsively went in the opposite direction. There was a helicopter hovering overhead, and I thought about tweeting something like, "The inauguration hasn't even happened, and we're already on high alert!" but decided it would be tasteless. I opened Pokemon Go, switched on the final episode of the podcast In The Dark, and headed down Lonsdale Street.

I had a quick look inside a discount book store, and I went into JB Hi-Fi to see if they carried the discount Spencer Tracy collection I spotted at a suburban outlet. I don't love Tracy, but this set had Desk Set, which I'm told is great, and Judgement at Nuremberg, which also features Marlene Dietrich and Montgomery Clift, plus it was only $12.98. I didn't have my purse, of course, but if it was there, I might go back after work.

I started heading back to work around 1:50. I'd planned to walk a block south and go up via Bourke Street, but I decided that I didn't have time. I'm almost the only person in the office, and none of my employers were around to notice if I was a few minutes late returning from lunch, but I decided that I didn't want to set that precedent for the year. So I went back the way I came, catching a Cubone along the way.

As I waited to cross Lonsdale Street, I heard sirens, and spotted a police car careening down the wrong side of the road and pulling into Queen Street. It waited for a few seconds, but the traffic on Queen was all banked up, so it pulled out into the oncoming lane and continued.

That's interesting, I thought, only my observation was less thoughtful and more amused: Apparently there are shenanigans afoot! Four years of transcribing police and court matters makes you a bit callous, and the true crime podcasts probably don't help. I pictured some kind of brawl, or maybe an incident at the controversial homeless camp on Flinders Street.

When I got back to my desk, my inbox was full of friends discussing the sirens and police presence. "Apparently a guy drove up onto the footpath on Bourke Street and started shooting."

Twitter had more details: a man had driven through the Bourke Street mall, mowing down pedestrians, then careened up the footpath. Shots may or may not have been fired. A baby had been thrown from its pram.

After that, it was just a matter of watching The Age's liveblog and Twitter.

For a few minutes, I had the same reaction I always get when events like this unfold: "This is worth paying attention to because it's going to be important in weeks or years to come, and also it's very interesting."

Then my brain belatedly went, "Ummmmmm, I came this close to being right there, it is only because I felt like a change and a Spencer Tracy movie that I wasn't a witness or a victim."

So I texted my parents and siblings to let them know I'm fine, just in case they heard the news, and settled in for an afternoon-long anxiety attack, coupled with a very fun sense of self-loathing for Making It All About Me.

But seriously, I could have been there -- and so could lots of my friends and former colleagues. Two former co-workers used to be in the building opposite the spot where the guy finally crashed. Another friend works just up the street. Several friends had colleagues, friends or relatives who were witnesses or near misses. This was very close to home.

And then, of course, I spiralled into "What if I had been there, and injured, while carrying nothing but my phone? Who would feed the cat/call my parents/get my bag from work/notify my bosses/return my library books?" Good times!

(Self, your parents' numbers are right there in your phone, from there, everything else could be taken care of. Including the cat.)

Eventually I managed to stop reading the news, and switched to Reddit -- and only spent a couple of minutes reading r/Melbourne. r/JUSTNOMIL was ... oddly soothing? Largely unrelated? Anyway, it was not the most productive afternoon, but I got out of the cycle of catastrophising and ramping up my anxiety.

I still needed a massage when I got out of work, mind, and then I treated myself to a therapeutic burger and pomegranate fro-yo. And then I was in bed by nine. But I slept okay -- the cat woke me up from a nightmare by gently biting me, he is the worst therapy cat ever -- and woke to the news that the baby whose crushed pram is all over the news is still alive. In intensive care, which can't be good when you're only three months old, but fighting. I can't even imagine what her parents must be going through, or the families of the other people killed. One of the victims is a ten-year-old girl.

...I had said more, but I jumped into another tab to get a link, and Dreamwidth reverted to an older saved draft. Point form:

- the alleged perpetrator is alive, albeit with a gunshot wound, so the trial should be interesting. (See that "alleged" I threw in there? Something, something sub judice.) The media is reporting that he has a history of family violence, just like all those other guys who commit acts of mass violence, it's almost like it's a clearer warning sign than religious extremism...
- an hour after the police stated that this was not a terrorist attack, the New York Times ran a story implying that it was. This led to Americans arguing on Twitter about the guy's "Middle Eastern heritage". Guys, he's Greek-Australian, come on.
- I think I've curated my social media well, because what I saw on Twitter was largely confined to reality.
- Just as I went to bed last night, I realised that I probably had this extreme of a reaction because my period is about to start, and remember, premenstrual dysphoric disorder makes me very anxious. So I've largely stopped beating myself up, and now that I've written everything down here, I feel like I can put it all aside and get on with other things.