I know this is a sensitive subject so please don't read this if you don't feel comfortable.

2012. My birthday, actually. There was a shooting in a Colorado movie theater. In December of that very year, 27 people died at the hands of the Sandy Hook shooter.

I watched the news. I didn't feel like keeping my birthday hat on anymore. I was devastated, and I was also very young. I remember thinking there was no way something like this would happen again. My childhood self didn't really understand the gravity of what just happened. I was convinced that no one would let another incident like this take place. How could they?

2015. San Bernardino. My family stopped what we were doing to tune in to NBC. Surely something will come of this tragedy; people in power will do something meaningful. Right?

2016. 53 people died in an Orlando nightclub. The deadliest mass shooting in American hi-

2017. 58 dead in Las Vegas. In the same year, 26 people die in the Sutherland Springs church shooting. I sit in silence for a little while. Hopelessness begins to kick in.

2018. Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Those kids were my age. I don't talk for the entire day. I go to our high school's scheduled walk-out. I feel like it does nothing. I hear kids next to me talk about how nice it is to skip class for once.

2018. The Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. I tweet. I reach out to my Jewish friends, At the end of the day, that doesn't do anything to stop these events from happening.

2019. El Paso and Dayton within hours of each other. I glance at the Twitter moment and go back to reading Room. We go out for dinner. The restaurant is playing CNN. No one looks up as the shootings are being reported.

The number of shootings isn't going down. Neither is the sense of tragedy and loss seeping through the country.

So why am I not looking up anymore? How can I keep going about my day? Tell me, what else are you supposed to do when you feel completely and utterly hopeless?