Orlando, Hatred, and Bloodshed

This has nothing to do with books, boobs, or boardgames.

Our country has mass shootings regularly. VICE magazine has been chronicling them. At a certain point, I became numb to the stories of people dying for nothing at all, beyond some crazy person with a gun and a bone to pick walking into a crowded area and making complete strangers pay for whatever crazed, hurtful, personal vendetta they have. As fucked up as it sounds, I just accepted it as a flaw of my country and figured we'd get it right eventually.

On Sunday, June 12th, at 2 in the morning, we witnessed the most horrifying mass murder of our country's modern history. As the gay club Pulse in Orlando Florida was preparing to close, as the bartenders stopped serving drinks and bar backs cleaned tables and got ready to shoo everyone out for the night, one man leveled a semi-automatic weapon at the 320 people in the club and began wreaking the most horrific bloodbath we've ever seen.

The Columbine High School massacre taught me what grief and helplessness and bitter anger meant in my formative years. Sandy Hook made me sick inside; it still does. The Virginia Tech shooting made me question everything I knew about humans and their ability for violence. I read the news; this has become a fucked up commonplace occurrence.

Something is broken in this country I love. I used to be the person yelling the oft accepted line, "Make guns illegal and only lawbreakers will have them!" The scariest part about this is that Omar Mateen, with a history of violence, abuse, and a brief stint on the FBI's watch list, bought his assault rifles and ammunition completely legally.

This time, after all the shootings I've watched and cried over, I openly wept. At my desk, in my bed, sitting on my couch trying to watch movies, I bawled and my heart broke. I lost the ability to think of much outside the moment when I heard that 1/3 of a club was slaughtered. I'm scared to go to the Solstice Parade in Fremont this weekend, or even the Pride Parade that is one of my city's crowning achievements and a source of joy and exuberance every year. I love gay safe places in Seattle like Pony, or R Place, or Neighbors. My thoughts are laced with this crippling fear that this can happen anywhere, at any time, for no fucking reason at all. And the worst part? I'm not wrong in being scared.

This was a hate crime. A hate crime against a group of people that already know what it's like to be beaten, raped, publicly ridiculed and discriminated against on a daily basis. This man may have cried "ISIS" but his agenda of hatred and violence is purely American. I don't know how to go about my life anymore.

The thing is, I understand hate. I've hated. I hate the men that beat one of my best friends at his front door for no other reason than they thought he was a "fag." I hate the man who took my best friend from me because of his addiction. I hate the men that convinced a beautiful woman that she wasn't worth anything beyond her drive for the next hit. I can't say killing wouldn't be on my mind if I met these men again, and I struggle with this every day. But this? This blind hatred that didn't care who died at all? I don't understand. I almost wish I could.

I'd give up on humanity, give up on the United States of America, if not for the few people that still give me hope.

Edward Sotomayor Jr. died from being shot in the back while he pushed his lover to safety through a back door. Joshua McGill, while fleeing from the club, saw a wounded man, took his and a bystander's shirt to use as bandages, and bearhugged the bleeding man in the back of a cop car until they reached the hospital. DJ Ray Rivera helped a woman escape from behind his DJ station after the shooting started.

I cling to these stories. I cling to the idea that there is still goodness in this world. I weep for those that believed this and were proven wrong. I need to know that there is something, anything, fucking anything I can do to stop this from happening again. I hear people saying, "This is why we need guns" and I weep again.

No one should have this power over me and my fellow Americans. No one at all.