America,
I'm tired of waking up with tears streaming down my face reading the many news updates that pop up on my phone in the eight (if I'm lucky) hours of sleep I get. I'm tired of sending positive vibes to people who I know are struggling. I'm tired of telling my dad, a retired police officer, to be safe when he leaves the house. I'm tired of watching people like a hawk on the subway — I'm tired of getting off at the wrong stop because someone just rubbed me the wrong way. I'm tired of the terrorist attacks around the world, especially the ones that don't get the media coverage that they deserve. I'm tired of waking up to another black life lost.
Damn it. I'm tired.
Something has to change. Something has got to give. We shouldn't be living in a society where "The Purge" is becoming too reminiscent of our day-to-day lives. We shouldn't be living in a society where black men and women are gunned down quicker than we go through Kleenex. We shouldn't be living in a time where because of those deaths, all police officers are looked at negatively and then killed as well.
Why did we let it go this far?
When did we lose sight of what it means to be American? To be proud? To be free? I am none of those things. I'm no longer proud to be an American. What exactly do I have to be proud of? My freedom died in Orlando. My patriotism died with Michael Brown. For God's sake, our presidential nominees are a laughing stock. I'm genuinely debating writing "a can of creamed corn" down on my ballot.
I'm tired of politicians referring to the Constitution as if we don't make new laws every day. Stop telling me about our right to bear arms when we were still using gunpowder at the time the Constitution was written. There's more of a screening process to get into college than there is for a terrorist on the FBI watchlist to get semi-automatic weapons.
Proud to be American? I'm embarrassed.
Every time I see a "Make America Great Again" T-shirt, my stomach flips. Please open your eyes and see that "building a wall (you are deeply in need of a stronger education if you seriously think Mexico is paying for a wall. Quite possibly the stupid sh*t I've ever heard)," or "stopping Muslim immigration" is going to fix what is going on in our country. Please don't elect a man into office that has more similarities to Hitler than any of you would like to admit.
Police officers, I was raised by you. My father, my uncle, essentially most of my family wore a blue uniform proudly. They would still wear it proudly. But police officers, we need you to start calling each other out. Those violent protests? The anger? The backlash? It's because you're all being grouped into one, big, scary group of people who don't know how to use the gun they were given. You're allowed to say that a fellow officer was in the wrong. They were. I'm the first person to jump to the defense of police officers, but the men who killed Alton Sterling, the man who killed Philando Castile, the men before them, were wrong. Tears streamed down my face watching Philando's girlfriend film the aftermath of the shooting and still proceed to call the police officer that shot her licensed to carry boyfriend to death, "Sir."
The black community, I will never fully understand your pain, but I share it with you. Black Lives Matter, I know you are not a violent organization in your roots, but please try and continue to spread the word of anti-violence. We will not all live in harmony if we continue to pick up guns and point them at each other. The people saying, "it's not Black Lives Matter, it's All Lives Matter," you're partially right; of course, all lives matter. But I know most of you say "all lives matter" as a means to cast a shadow over black lives matter. This is an equivalent of Heterosexual Pride Day — what exactly are you proud of? All the hardships that you went through to get "equal" rights? Most of the people saying "all lives matter" are white people, and for the love of God, what have we had to fight for? This country was given to us on a silver platter with a ribbon around it. Let's not forget our history. Black Lives Matter because since our country's inception they have been fighting to prove that. Listen.
I know this was more of a rant than anything else, but please, I urge you to lobby, write letters to Congress, sign petitions, donate. Do what you can to end gun violence, to elect the right candidates into office, to create a better, safer, happier world. I'm tired in living in the opposite.
