This morning I woke to the news that a second young Australian woman was the victim of the cowardly attack that took place on Saturday night.
Sara Zelenak and Kirsty Boden are among the now eight people believed to have died when three men took their van to the sidewalk on London Bridge and began their eight minutes of terror.
These were two young women in the prime of their lives, enjoying a Saturday night out in one of the greatest cities in the world.
When I heard the news, I was sat in a pub in Swansea, Wales, when the bar staff switched channels at around 10:20pm.
The breaking images showed people running for their lives and the words across the screen said, “Incident at London Bridge”.
A sick feeling developed in the pit of my stomach.
My work is located next to London Bridge and I walk across there every single day. Sometimes when I finish late shifts I’ll be walking across late at night.
My first thought jumped to my colleagues on the late shift who could have been walking home.
In the coming days I’ll find out that one of my colleagues, Geoff Ho, had survived being stabbed by one of the attackers as he stepped in to help a bouncer.
With the Manchester bombing less than two weeks earlier and the Westminster attack only three months ago, this is the third major terrorist incident in the UK in as many months.
After the first attack, I wrote there was an air of resilience; Londoners fight back in that we resume our everyday lives and won’t let the terrorists make us live our lives in fear.
This time we’re being a bit more cautious, especially in the lead up to the general election taking place tomorrow.
Personally, I have stopped getting off at London Bridge station, just for now and go the extra station to Bank to avoid walking across the bridge.
Talking to my friends, we’ve agreed to stay away from major landmarks until things feel a bit safer.
Even on the tube there is an air of unrest. The other day there was a shopping bag someone had left behind and your mind jumps to the worst conclusion (one man checked and there was nothing in it).
It feels like another attack is imminent as even yesterday a man tried to attack a police officer with a hammer at the Notre Dame in Paris.
This feeling is what the terrorists want. They want to incite fear, they want you to be scared and not go about your day to day lives.
In the UK, we are resilient. This was shown in spectacular fashion on Sunday night, where just a day after the London Bridge attack, Ariana Grande put on the One Love Manchester performance to raise money for the families of the victims of the Manchester attack.
Over 50,000 people attended the concert that night. 50,000 people who were probably scared, sad and worried about the future. Yet they came.
We saw a similar act next to the Tower Bridge in London last night where thousands of people showed up for a vigil for the victims of the London Bridge attack.
While I do feel scared and worried that I could end up in the wrong place at the wrong time, this is exactly what the terrorists want, and I recognise that.
They want to ignite fear in our country, and stop us going out and enjoying ourselves, which is exactly what Sara and Kirsty were doing on Saturday night.
And we won’t let them. We will keep going about our everyday lives, albeit with extra caution and awareness of our surroundings. We won’t let them win.
Listen: The latest string of terrorist attacks have left us reeling. (Post continues.)
I want to live in a world where I don’t have to mark myself safe on Facebook every few months just to let my friends and family back in New Zealand and Australia know I’m okay.
I want to live in a world where my mum doesn't finish our phone conversations with, "I love you, be safe."
I want to live in a world where we shouldn't be afraid to walk across a bridge at night, or go out for dinner and drinks.
All we can do is fight back by living our lives, and not living in fear – that’s how they’ll win.