It has been six months since the tragic shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. I still struggle with nightmares and I have a heightened anxiety because of it. I live about twenty-five minutes from the club, and once I found this out on that day, the tears came in harder and harder waves. The club is about a minute up the street from Boone High School, or Thespian Troupe 1139. On June 12th, 2016, all that could run through my mind was the possibility that one of the forty-nine identified would turn out to be one of my close friends. I still do not feel as though I am ready to write this article. I mean, just reread this paragraph and you'll see how jumbled my thoughts are. There is too much to be said and none of it can be strung together to form a coherent sequence. In that right, this article seems to mimic that night...June 12th, 2016...

On the 11th of June, I spent the day with a very close friend. Out of respect, I will not use their real name or reveal their gender, so we will call them "Sam." Sam and I hung out for a while and Sam happened to have a performance that night in Bare: the Musical. So it turns out, one of the cast members had a birthday and the entire ensemble was planning on visiting Pulse. As a few people in connection with the company explained later on, it was "by some twist in fate" that nobody went to the club that night.

The following morning, I awoke to texts from Sam's phone, but it was their sister who texted me, at 2:59 in the morning, "hey are you with [sam]? / this is his sister" I replied at 4:58 A.M. and nothing sent, but, needless to say, I was terrified that I was getting witching-hour texts from the sister of my friend. I became more and more terrified when the first contact from Sam was at 5:29 P.M. The whole day I cried. I could not bear the thought of hearing Sam's name on the news in every segment for the rest of the month.

You never expect something like this to happen. Ever. And you never expect it to, literally, hit so close to home. Not only was it geographically close; it hit me that I could have been a victim. I could have been someone to take a fake I.D. into this club for a fun Latin Night with friends and be one of forty-nine to have never gone home. It has been six months on the nose since that fateful day. The only satisfaction I have is that the shooter is dead as well as the martyrs he murdered. I meant to write this article a month ago, on the same day as the Orlando Pride festival, which was rescheduled due to Hurricane Matthew. However, I was simply not ready for it. I still don't think I am. I don't think I ever will be. One month ago, it was another one of my friends' birthday. We spent a lovely day at the Pride festival, but every joyful noise and every rainbow bracelet I saw hit me harder and harder that it had been five months since the worst mass shooting in American history. The whole day, there was a fear in the back of my mind that somebody would come to Lake Eola with a gun or a bomb and wreak the same havoc that had happened a month prior, only they would make the spectacle bigger and better. Cheers for the queens at the amphitheater would change to screams. Thankfully, security was heightened and more prepared for such an event.

In closing, I have a message to all of the intolerant, ignorant, bigoted arseholes in the world:

Go home. I need you to realize that the world is moving forward. It is trudging along and growing from all of these shootings. University shootings, nightclub shootings, what have you, every shooter has their motive from the mindset that someone has wronged them. The shooter who killed nine innocent people at a church in South Carolina, he was a racist. The Pulse shooter, he was a homophobe. No matter the news story that reveals he may have had a gay backstory, the Pulse murderer was a homophobe. When is it going to get through your head that the minority IS NOT trying to take your rights away from you? I was bombarded on June 12th with tweets at me saying "For the wages of sin is death." ARE YOU NUTS? I am not a religious person by ANY stretch of the imagination, but I know enough to have a valid point: it is stated in the Bible that no sin trumps another. All sin is sin. And if you choose to cherry-pick your verses, I will, too. Ignoring that all sin is equal, it is one of the Ten Commandments that murder shall send you to Hell. If the Ten Commandments are the Word of God, the Law of the Lord, whichever, then the sin of murder must CERTAINLY be worse than being gay! Don't ever try to come at me with the "for the wages of sin is death" verse, because I promise you there is no way to justify the murder of 49 clubgoers who were contributing members of society. With that, regarding any situation involving the minority making a home in a safe place, or trying to advance themselves, the minority is not trying to take anything away from you. I'm looking at you, Straight-White-Christian-Middle-Aged-Male. Gays being allowed to marry only gives us the chance to marry. It doesn't mean you can't have your Happily Ever After as well. Colored people being allowed to use the same part of the bus as you does not mean you aren't allowed to ride the bus. Women being allowed to vote does not mean that your vote is no longer counted. Muslims being allowed to live in America does not take away your freedom. You must be deranged if you think any of these things. If you do, go home, because you are wrong. You are what is wrong in the world, and you are why murderers have this mindset engrained into their brains and crap like the Pulse shooting has happened. I hope this message has gotten through, and I hope I can soon be able to wake up without the fear that I could still be killed for being who I unapologetically and irreversibly AM.