When I woke up on the morning of the Orlando attack, I checked my phone, going through my morning ritual of checking a few forms of social media. When I saw what had happened, I quickly got off social media and turned on the news. I could only bear to watch a few minutes of it before I was horrified and turned it off.

I was in shock about the Orlando attack for a few days. I teared up anytime someone mentioned it, and I couldn’t put into words how I was feeling. When I went to work on Monday morning, I tried to watch the news for a few minutes, but after starting to cry again, I changed the station to sports.

I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I felt sick to my stomach. I felt for the lives lost and for their families grieving. I felt for our country. But I couldn’t put into words how I was feeling.

I had been devastated to hear about all the other attacks that have happened during my lifetime (I’m 21-years-old and I’ve experienced way too many, but that’s another story), but none have affected me quite like this one. Maybe it’s because I’m growing older and more mature (hopefully), but I couldn’t really wrap my head around the situation.

That is until I got an email saying that there was going to be a gathering at my school at the LGBTQIA center and that anyone was welcome. I held onto this piece of hope, knowing that was going to help me start to process what had happened.

I showed up to the LGBTQIA Center a few minutes early, and the director said he wasn’t sure if 10 people or 40 people were going to show up. It was a small room, and within minutes, the room was packed with people from all over campus.

The gathering started out with the director reading off the list of names of those who had died in the attack, as well as saying their ages. We offered a moment of silence to them and already I was crying.

What happened next was one of the most moving hours of my life. Each person went around and introduced themselves and said what they were thinking about the attacks. Many people cried, which just made me cry more, and many people were angry and couldn’t speak much on the topic. Mothers cried about not wanting their sons and daughters having to grow up in this world with so much violence, and some cried about how terrible it is to have a safe space taken away from them.

When it got to me, I still hadn’t really processed how I was feeling. So, I said that. I said that it was real for me because I was going to do an internship in Orlando, that it could have been me and that scared me. I said that it was just hard, and that was all I could say before I was lost in tears again.

That day, I heard people expressing exactly how I was feeling. Everyone in that room was exhausted and tired of this happening, of feeling helpless, of being desensitized. We came together to try and move on as a community, and it was exactly what I needed.

I’m still processing what happened. I’m lucky that I go to a university that doesn’t sweep these things under the rug. I go to a university that sits down and brings everyone together and talks about it. I feel safe and supported at Elon. I’m so blessed because I know not everyone is that lucky.

I’m not going to get preachy or political, but I will say that all it took was one person to stand up and shake our nation. Which means that all it takes is one person to stand up and change our nation.