I'm a little embarrassed to still be talking about Orlando. The Sunday the news broke out, I sat down and wrote three articles, all at the same time. This was written before #NoBillNoBreak but I think that still makes it relevant. I think that, in America, this is always going to be relevant, for a very long time.
In retrospect, I’m a little surprised I didn’t notice this earlier. But my life has been plagued by violence. It has always been a constant in my life. Admittedly it is less than others, but it is definitely more than what should exist in a place that boasts freedom and equality.
Going into 6th grade, a girl was shot through the head because she and her friends found some guns and started playing with them.
Malala was my age when she was shot through the head. She’s my age as she tells the world about how the U.S. sanctioned drones are killing her people more than the Taliban.
A student died at my high school, almost two months before graduation. She was murdered. I uploaded her obituary that other students wrote for our high school newspaper. I was 16 years old.
I run out of fingers when I think and count the people in my lives who have nearly ended their lives. The same goes for a separate list of people who have almost been killed or almost died.
Like thousands of other people, I am one of the children who grew up after the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. I am a child whose life isn’t characterized by Christmases, birthdays or school years. It’s characterized by violence and death of humanity.
When the Sandy Hook shooting happened, also when I was 16, I opened up my computer and wrote about the shooting. I found a photo and submitted it to my journalism advisor over the weekend and uploaded it the following Saturday. The day was measured by the hour as new information came out. I remember every moment.
When the attacks on Beirut and Paris happened in November, I called my mom, terrified. This was the first time I truly felt fear for my hometown, located right outside D.C. This was also the first time I was hearing about international tragedy hour by hour without my family within arm’s reach-- without being able to cry on my mother’s shoulder.
When I was coming home at the end of the school year, I heard about a man going around between county lines shooting random people. When he was caught, it was in a shopping plaza only a short drive away from where my little brother goes to middle school. My dad was with me, driving from Ohio, my mom was in a different region of our home state and my brother was in another county. My little brother was alone. He was in school, but how safe is that?
Over ten years ago, there was a sniper who claimed 17 lives. He killed someone in the same shopping plaza. My mom wouldn’t let my older brother and I play in the creek behind our backyard because she was terrified he was going to pass through that way undetected and claim more victims.
When I was 17, the UCSB shootings occurred. That’s when I realized there were people who didn’t like me who I knew had access to guns. I only realized it after nightmares of them chasing me down the hallways, armed.
Throughout my years prior to and during high school, people died. Every other year, someone at my school died. Because of the presence of death and violence, I thought I would be the student to die last year. For a while, every other year someone in my family would die. (It’s still consistent).
High school students in my home county are dying. A fellow student at my college died this past year. This massacre comes and kills 50 people who are gay, like me. The killer specifically went the night he did to kill Latinx people of the LGBT community. And now, people are focusing on radical Islam. People are focusing on the 2ndAmendment.
The issue has never been about casualties, and it will never be about lives twisted and damaged. The fact of the matter is that we cannot wait any longer for people to get their heads out of their asses and solve the violence in our country.
