I have written and re-written the first paragraph of this article more times than I know.

Fifty people are now lying dead on American soil after being gunned down in a scene that is, to me, reminiscent of a video game. That’s how surreal the whole thing is – a man with a weapon walks into a crowded big city nightclub, starts shooting people like fish in a barrel, and then a three-hour hostage situation ends in a diversion explosion and a SWAT team firefight. I mean, this is the stuff Call of Duty is made of.

And then I realize what a disgusting and grossly shallow metaphor that is for what happened in Orlando this weekend.

That’s why I’ve written and re-written that first paragraph so many times: because I’m too prideful to be so shallow. So I guess this is me swallowing that pride because I’ve been thinking about what happened in Orlando all day, and the only thing I can connect that to in my mind is a video game.

A video game. Here’s why.

I’m part of a generation of people that has seen more mass shootings in America than all of the other generations combined. In December of last year, President Obama said this after a shooting in San Bernardino, CA: "The one thing we do know is that we have a pattern now of mass shootings in this country that has no parallel anywhere else in the world."

I have grown up in the thick of that pattern. I was three years old when Columbine happened. I remember Virginia Tech and seeing the shooter’s pictures on the news, posing with his guns. I remember Aurora and I remember the Navy Yard. I remember exactly where I was when I found out about Newtown, because I couldn’t think of a single thing that would bring a person to murder school children. And today, I’ll remember Orlando because the pattern continues, and each time this happens, the death tolls get higher and the same conversations get started, but they’ll eventually fade out until this happens again, because it will.

It’s a pattern that’s absolutely sickening because it doesn’t mean much to us anymore. Each time a mass shooting comes up in the news, it means less and less, because we skip over the sadness – we don’t even feel it, really – and immediately jump into talking about what we think.

Fifty people are dead today, and when I sat down to process my thoughts on it, all I could get out was thinking about a video game and some angry tweets about gun control. I’m ashamed of that.

I saw on CNN this afternoon that investigators were having a hard time working the crime scene because of the constant ringing of cell phones in the pockets of the dead. Fifty cell phones ringing, and on the other side, there are 50 moms and dads and sisters, just hoping and praying that their son or daughter or sibling will pick up and say that the game’s over and they’re turning the console off to come back home.

Fifty people are dead today, and it doesn’t matter right what you think about where it happened, who it happened to, or who did it. Twenty-four hours after Orlando, I don’t want to talk to you about politics today because I’m ashamed and I’m embarrassed for being shallow about this, and I want to do something different.

I don’t want to talk to you about gun control today, and I don’t want to talk to you about ISIS today. Politics is still going to be there tomorrow, an election is still going to be held this November, and our enemies all over the world aren’t going to be defeated in one day.

Today, I want to talk to you about 50 lights put out far too early by a force of pure evil. I want to talk about people today because when we make mass shootings about policy and politics, those victims become numbers and figures, and those people were so much more than shallow metaphors and social patterns.

Let’s talk about the victims and let’s remember them today because the rest is still going to be there tomorrow, and these people will not.

Tomorrow (to quote one of my favorite songs by Toby Keith) we’ll talk about how we'll have a boot in their ass, and tomorrow, we’ll talk about gun control and we’ll talk about how presidents and candidates are supposed to act in times of crisis, but today, let’s rise above the fray, and let’s do better than we've been doing.

Fifty families and 50 friends who won't ever hear their loved ones say hello deserve so much more than this.