I can't remember a time when there wasn't a story about a shooting in the news. I've seen it on TV, and I've read it in newspapers. I have heard the victims' names, and I have heard their families cry. I have lived through it. I have seen it too many times.

The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting happened my senior year of high school. This was the first time in my life that I had truly been upset and heartbroken. Twenty children and six adults were lost that day, and Americans were enveloped in sadness. I was more terrified than ever; I had brothers the same ages as those children and felt guilty when I was worrying about their future more than I was worrying about the bigger picture. But I was so angered by that man’s senseless act — so upset that I lived in a society where things like this could happen.

That should have been the wake-up call for America. We let this go on for too long and almost ignored the problem. In the past three and a half years, there have been almost 800 mass shootings in the US, counting cases in which four or more people are injured or killed. There have been almost 200 shootings this year alone. Everyone agrees that there is a problem, but why is nothing being done?

Everyone offers their prayers and hopes for a better future when a tragedy like this happens. They share photos on Facebook, offer condolences, share their thoughts on how these senseless acts break families and homes, and I feel absolutely helpless as I watch it happen time and time again. Mass shootings happen far too often, and the conditions of those shootings are practically predictable. The people who commit them, the weapons they use, the events in their life that lead them to do it — the cases are all too similar.

I found myself completely heartbroken once again when I heard of the Orlando nightclub shooting. We’ve had tragedies in schools, in movie theaters and now in nightclubs. I found myself in Orlando just two weeks after that, and I was shocked when I saw the lack of mourning. It was in that moment that I realized people would rather ignore the problem and focus on whatever little positivity they have in their lives than pay attention to the negative and be powerless because no one wants to feel powerless.

People want to continue with whatever normality they have in their lives, rather than live in fear. The truth is: I do, too. I would change the channel when something horrible is on the news, I wouldn't engage in conversations about the violence around me and most of all, I would ignore the fact that I live in fear every day of my life. But just because I chose to not listen, didn’t mean the shootings stopped.

I never thought about being involved in a tragedy at my university until I saw another school shooting in the news. I never thought about walking into a movie theater, or a mall, or a nightclub only to be caught in a massacre ... until it actually happened in this country.

Time and time again, it keeps happening. And now we mourn again for the loss of three officers in Baton Rouge after barely getting over the loss of five lives in Dallas. Because we have once again gotten our monthly reminder that in America no one is safe from hate and madness and violence. Or guns.

I have never seen a world without gun violence, or any violence for that matter, and anyone in my generation would agree with me. The saddest part is I can’t see the end of it, because in all of my 21 years, the problem has only escalated. We've turned into a society that can actually imagine what a mass shooting feels like, instead of not being able to imagine it at all. I'm terrified that an America without mass shootings doesn't exist, because in a country where there're more guns than people, it just doesn't seem possible.

It’s hard to live and be fully aware that the world can be capable of such horrors, and it’s even harder to feel absolutely helpless about it. But at the end of the day, when it’s just me — a 21-year-old girl sitting at a desk writing this article — I feel lucky that it’s not anyone I know. And that makes me feel so much guilt.

An America without mass shootings would mean more birthdays, more graduations, more weddings, more doctors and teachers and artists and good people. An America without mass shootings would mean more people feeling safe, more people being happy. This is what I, and thousands of others, pray for every day in hopes that one day, after all of our nation’s pain and suffering, we all get to live.