I opened my eyes this morning to light reflecting on my girlfriend's cheeks.
Thirty minutes later I opened Facebook and got hit by a truck.
The following is an unorganized, largely incoherent mass of words that, if I write to you, it may help me understand how I'm feeling. There is a vigil tonight that I was thinking about going to but instead, I'll be at home with my girlfriend appreciating how much love can exist between people. Love is so much bigger than all of the feelings that fuel hate crimes and hateful words, but I've reached a point where I am reeling so hard that I feel nothing. How do you deal with the shock of something so monumental happening relatively far and close by? To your minority? In one of the only places you feel 100 percent safe?
I don't want to talk about gun violence. I don't want to talk about religious extremism. I want to talk about how a space that was created for people to have wide open love in an area where affections have to be cut down — how this space was invaded and these people were slaughtered. I want to know what that means. I want to know what it means that safe places aren't safe places — that I am safe nowhere. I want to know what it means for a person to misconstrue an order of peace into destruction. I want to know what it means that people love their military grade weapons so much they will not compromise on a way to keep people from being killed.
My chest hurts when I acknowledge the thought that this is such a huge deal — my friend so accurately stated that this shooting is our Paris Attacks — that this heartthrob will go unnoticed or neglected. Slain people in movie theaters and lost children in schools leave open wounds in our country and our society, but I'm anxiously wondering if the biggest mass shooting in American history will be dismissed because the lives lost loved a certain way. I can hear how tired Obama is in his voice when he addresses the shooting. He is so sad and so resigned and once again calls for gun control that will prevent this from happening to people but he knows some will never listen.
Maybe I feel so sick about it because I know that if 20 children being shot didn't make the country demand responsible and preventative legislature that protects its people, I know that fifty dead LGBTQ+ members won't change a damn thing.
I'm so bitter about gun control conversation because the answer seems so obvious, but I know nothing is changing anytime soon. I'm so confused about Islamic extremism because it's not Islamic in the least. I want to know when our government is going to do something — anything — to stop insane people from blasting bullets into its citizens. I want to know when the world is going to shut down the animals that shoot gay people and journalists and burn girls alive.
How do we recover from this massacre on our people when 42 percent of the country wants to deny the victims their basic human rights? How do friends and family and people of the LGBTQ+ community even begin to heal when we hear conservatives threatening to murder trans people and comparing gay sex to pedophilia, a slippery slope to bestiality?
How much will we matter, as Americans, as humans, now that the biggest mass shooting in America is written in our blood?
Today is not a day that I feel hopeful, but my girlfriend holds my hand and tells me that we are going to be OK.
Love is believing without seeing.
