For Dust You Are And To Dust You Will Return

I've stayed quiet until now. I have the tendency to refrain from writing anything until I am very certain, in fear that I will regret my words and change my mind. I wait until I have sorted out my thoughts before I bring the pen to paper, the finger to the key: I need to be certain of my truth before I share it with the world.

But I'm left uncertain of everything I once believed to be true. I'm left shaken down to my very core; I no longer know how to move forward.

I spent all day Sunday curled into the fetal position in my bed, endlessly scrolling through my social media, trying to somehow convince myself it was real; that hate so strong could still beat in the pulse of American society. I couldn't wrap my head around the news, I still can't, honestly. I know you're going to say that is self-centered, imagine how the families of those directly affected feel, and you're right. 

But if I can confess to anything here, and this speaks volumes about the generation I am a part of, and the senseless violence we have grown up accustomed to, it's this: I've grown numb. From Virginia Tech to Sandy Hook to Santa Barbara and the countless shootings in between, I've become used to it. Mass shootings no longer shock me. Somedays they go hardly reported and possibly unnoticed, lost between tweets and finstagram posts and snap streaks and everything else. 

Sunday, for the first time since I can remember, the pain cut through this shell I've grown. As I lay there, unable to bring myself to do anything at all, silent tears fell from my eyes as I read article after article about the senselessness and violence that has left us here, in the wake of the deadliest massacre in American history, at the hands of someone who had hate in his heart for other human beings, other beating hearts, other blinking eyes and breathing chests. 

I've always considered myself an ally to the LGBTQ+ community, though I'm not sure I've always taken as much action as I could have. But equality was never a question in my mind: love is love, humans are humans, my air is no more important than yours. If there's anything I took away from my years of attending Catholic Mass it's that we are born from dust and to dust we shall return. All of us. This is fact. 

But I was never close to it. Issues this big were never capable of making me feel so small. I have always put my whole hearted trust in humanity, in goodness, in my faith that love and happiness and fairness will prevail, no matter how much evil challenges it along the way. I knew homophobia existed, but firmly believed that acceptance and support greatly outweighed this baseless and hateful belief. Now, I'm not so sure. 

4 months ago, the most proudly gay 5' nothing spitfire of a girl walked into my life and changed it for the better, forever. She has become someone I can count on, someone who counts on me, someone I laugh with, cry with, and can't wait to share memories with for the rest of my life. She's not just my little, but she's become one of my best friends. 

And I've never felt so helpless. How can there be people who wish her ill, this incredibly talented and smart person? How could you ever wish harm or death on anyone, let alone a person or AN ENTIRE GROUP OF PEOPLE you don't even know? How is there nothing I can do to make this better? 

Worst of all, what can we do? What can I do to get through to these people? What can I say, write, preach, scream to get them to understand that humanity is qualified by nothing more than a beating heart? I've never felt more like a pinpoint on the universe, completely incapable of doing anything at all. I've never felt more uselessly singularly here, biding my time until the violence finally reaches me. 

Here in my safe, privileged bubble, I'm drowning. Every window I look out of, I see violence and bigotry and hate and ignorance that leads to more hate. I see a world I don't want to raise kids in. I see my future, but in this future everyone I love who isn't straight and white and Christian is suffering under the oppression that I try and try to lift from their shoulders, but never succeed. 

How much longer can we keep up the fight? How much more suffering must the citizenry, conscious and uncomfortable with the state of our nation, endure while we push for reform and Revolution and progress, before we're crushed under the weight of the world we are trying to advance forward? 

If the second amendment of the Constitution is so important, please let's review the very first sentence, and what it calls for: 

"We the People, of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."

Justice. Tranquility. General Welfare. Blessings of Liberty. 

Now show me what part of today's America represents that one; the one that the Founding Fathers poured their hearts and souls into forging for us. Now I may be a liberal, but I'm fairly certain if George Washington and Benjamin Franklin rose from their graves and saw that the only one of their values we still hold dear is the right to bear arms, they would willingly return deep, deep, deep into the Earth and never come back up for air. 

And so I wonder, will this ever end? Will we ever know America: Land of the free, home of the brave? Or will we remain forever America: land of bigotry, home of hate, flying a bullet-spangled banner perpetually at half mast in memory of lives that needn't be lost?