How are you supposed to feel?

I was mopping my floor, thinking the best part of my night would be going to sleep knowing my house is spotless, when my phone rang. My mom was calling to let me know I should break my no-news rule just this once because president Obama would be addressing the nation soon confirming that Osama bin laden had been killed.

He's dead. I've wanted to hear those words for years and now that they are here, I don't even know how I am supposed to feel. He's dead and yet it still doesn't seem like enough. He owes the world, our country, families who lost loved ones, and me personally so much more than his life.

He is responsible for so many lives lost, so many innocent people killed or persuaded to kill. He is the reason why we have been fighting for nearly a decade. He is responsible for ignorant followers and for educated followers taking their own lives in order to take others' as well. He is the reason some children will never know their parents, some parents will never see their children grow up. All of that is on him, so while I am overcome with joy for his death I can't help but feel like he owes more.

I want to inflict pain on him. I personally want this, and I don't know that I have ever wanted to hurt someone in that way. I want each family member who has lost a loved one at his fault to be able to inflict pain on him. But we can't. I can only imagine the gratification the man who shot him must have felt.

And then, when I realize more tears have streamed down my face tonight than have since I lost my dad, I feel guilty. Should we rejoice in death? Is that ok? I have made so many sacrifices in the name of this war, and yet I have sacrificed no where near what others have, and my hatred towards the war has centered around the fact that there are people in this world who rejoice in death. There are people who want to see our country stumble, suffer and fall when they have never even met us. How can they want me dead? And to try to hide behind the name of religion- how cowardly. My faith teaches me to pray for my enemies, not hate them. Pray for them. So how can I be joyous now? How can I celebrate his death while also praying for him and for his evil followers?

That is a struggle I will allow myself to navigate through tomorrow, though. I won't worry tonight about my guilt for feeling joy. With plenty of work left to be done, I am able to feel some sort of peace in my heart knowing that the sacrifices my family and so many other families have made over the course of this were have not been for nothing. We have this great accomplishment regardless of the work we still have ahead of us.

So celebrate with me as that evil son of a bitch is dead.

Oh say does that star spangled banner yet wave, O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave!


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