Today I woke up to another shooting and I don't know what to say or do about it.

This week I wanted to write a comedic article about how to craft like a boss, but I can't sit idley by on this, so this is what you get from me. I promise next week will be fun, baring another social issue arising.

I heart hurts for the families who have to now bury their loved ones. I ache for those who are going to have to proceed with life with the mental toll that only an event like this can cause. I am angry that this has happened yet again.

Mostly though, I am not surprised. That's what has me the most shaken. I read the headlines and they didn't affect me. I scrolled past them. I ignored them for almost the entire day.

I am on the verge of twenty-two and I have not really felt the need to arm myself in the past couple years of "freedom" at my university. I feel safe. I have always felt safe in places that I shouldn't. I go walking fearlessly into the cities that I am least familiar with and I never have and maybe never will feel anxious based off of a shooting. Even when hearing about school shootings in elementary school, the mock lockdowns, I never felt nervous. However, I will always cry while listening to Sia's Greatest and I will always say a little prayer at my desk on the "meet me at the pole" day, I will never be able to forget the images I'm now sitting down to look at.

I want to believe that people are inherently good and that we should be able to trust our neighbors. I am of the impression that there are those who know what is wrong and what is inherently bad, and then there are those who know and don't care. I can not get with the whole "they didn't know what they were doing" argument with kid shooters. They know it is wrong and they don't care.

I don't want to stray from today too much so I'll get back on track.

As a sister of Alpha Gam, I will always "honor my home, my country, my religious faith." As long as I stay in my little Cullowhee, NC bubble, I have no trouble keeping that promise. Now that I am sitting at my laptop and I am looking at the faces of those injured, now that I am virtually looking in the eyes of a woman who will never be able to go in public again without the most overwhelming anxiety; I am shaken up. I am angry and I am not proud of my country. I have so much hatred in my heart for my fellow Americans and I am so ready to get done with college so that I can move on to a real job in another place. This is still my home though, if just for the time being.

I want to do all I can to help those victims, but unfortunately, I am not in a place to help. I'm not a first responder, I'm not financially sound enough to donate, I am not a politician to change regulations, I am not an adult-enough-adult to physically do something. And unfortunately, I'm just going to be labeled as a millennial and dismissed. That's the thing about being a millennial right now. Being twenty-something and not being able to physically change anything. We are the whiney generation because all we can do right now is speak our minds and write articles and tweet about our opinions. All I can do is say what I think should happen, but I am still a child in the eyes of so many of my elders and I am still naive and immature and underqualified to have an opinion.

That is okay. My fellow millennials will read this, my family, my church back home, my sisters will read this and they will say a little pray to their God and the world will keep turning. I will go on about my day and when I wake up in two weeks to another headline this will all start over because that is the world that I have grown up in. That is the world that has been fated to me and this is the world that I will have to live in. In ten years when this has happened for the billionth time, I will step forth and I will speak and people will listen. And when people ask why this hasn't been stopped yet, I will pull up all the articles and speeches that my millennial brothers and sisters have posted and we will make a change.

Until that day, I am going to go sign up for a gun control course and begin the process to have an NC concealed carry license. I am going to keep praying, I am going to keep scrolling and I am going to take every chance I have to tell people they are loved and they are important and that they have the truest potential to do good in this world, so that maybe, one less person will be susceptible to the shooting bug.

Stay safe friends. If you need me, I'm going back into my bubble.