The shooting

This week has been a whirlwind of emotions and I am not sure how you go through all of this without the catharsis of writing it all down.  So that is what I am doing. I want to memorialize my thoughts on this, chronicle the events of the last week through my eyes, so that I will always remember all of this, so that the details will never stray from my being and maybe more importantly so that those who have not experienced it will do so through my words. 

June 12, 2016 there was a mass shooting at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando and what would become to date the worst mass shooting in our history. Those words have still not fully settled in my mind.  First that it had happened at all, that it had happened in a place of acceptance and freedom, or that it had happened in my own community.

The morning after the shooting I awoke to a message from my dear friend David asking if Jym and I were OK.  At first, not knowing exactly what had occurred overnight while I slept safely in my bed, I responded that unless there was a shooting at the Lowes or Floor & Decor I was probably OK (massive home tiling job I have undertaken lately) and that I was too old and tired for clubbing these days.

It wasn’t until I got to work that I started to see the devastating news and absorb the gravity of what had actually occurred.  And the more I watched the worse it became.  I am not someone who lately takes the horrors of this world well and this was almost too much to process.  The numbers at first were sketchy and trickled in.  Every new hour brought more to the casualty list until a final count…49 dead and at least 53 more injured, some critically. 

The news coverage was, as usual, day and night.  It was all you saw and all you thought about.  Having the TV on in my office I was privy to listening to every tragic detail all day long for 2 full days. I would then come home and watch the coverage all night. I guess I thought that filling up my mind with the facts and stories would help me to sort out what I was feeling.  CNN filled my days and at night in the silence of my bed I was left with my own thoughts to fill up the only quiet moments I knew. My thoughts were all over the place.  And in small moments of clarity I would stop to consider a friend I thought might have been there and scrambled to their Facebook page to make sure they were safe.  Thankfully all were.

For me I started to really struggle when the stories of the victims began to emerge.  First there were the heroic stories of carrying people to safety and the stories of how some escaped the melee.  Then the stories of the texts people received from their loved ones saying they were going to die, saying “I love you” one last time. But the ones that affected me most were the stories of those inside the club trapped with the gunman for hours listening to him kill those around them, hiding, hoping; stories of the last reported moments of people’s lives.  It was almost too much to bear. 

Then came the names and faces of the dead. And with that the stories of their lives, these 49 unknowns, who they were, who loved them, what they contributed to this world.  Their lives seemingly reduced to little more than a blurb under a random photo and if they were lucky a small mention of them in a packaged story meant to tear at the heart of the viewer. I suppose that is how it always goes with a tragedy like this.  But I tried to focus on those people as much difficulty as that brought to me because any focus on the shooter gave him a name and a face and his cause (whatever that even was) a voice.  And he doesn’t deserve that. 

But for me it was too close to home for the first time.  Although I have been saddened and deeply affected by previous shooting events and other mass devastation like the Paris attacks and 911, I can say that this event for me affected me even deeper than that. And I was unsure exactly why.

I struggled with the randomness of it all.  How some survived and others did not.  How fate or a moments change in plan affected the outcome.  Thinking of how it must have felt inside that dark club with the music blaring and the joy and laughter and then the sound of the gunfire.  What was that?  Was it the music?  Then the searing pain of a bullet piercing your skin, the sounds of screams echoing against the constant barrage of gunfire being pumped continuously from that sig sauer, people trampling the wounded in a desperate attempt to find an exit, or worse your mind reeling in panic as you search for a place to hide.

Then they played the snapchat cell phone video of one of the victims as she panned around the room at her friends all dancing and laughing and then as the camera moved to her own face she captured her own last moments on this earth as she heard the gunfire and the phone falls away, her body among the counted dead. Over and over they played it as if seeing it once was not searing it into my permanent memory. 

It also struck me deeply that it was the gay community which I have long been an advocate for.  And that in itself was troubling, to see a group of people already having to fight for every ounce of their humanity against a world that has long been devoid of compassion, having befallen yet another horrible incident.  Hearing that some of these people had been inadvertently “outed” as a result of the shooting was heartbreaking.  Not only are loved ones finding out that their son/daughter/friend was dead but that they were gay at the same time.  But what was by far the most difficult for me to process was that there was a man in the morgue who was yet unidentified.  In my mind I considered the reasons that might be.  Was his family out of state? Possibly he was estranged from his family and they wanted nothing to do with him.  Had come here for acceptance and to live the life he wanted only to die alongside the only friends he had in this world and now no one was left to speak his name?  Or did a family somewhere know it was him and didn’t want to claim the body for fear the name would be released to the press and their family name long “ruined” by what they have deemed a poor lifestyle choice.  Or was it simply that the family had no idea he was in that club because he hid the truth of who he was from them for fear of rejection.  Either way, there was a man who deserved to be honored and laid to rest and remembered. What would happen to him now? I was consumed by those thoughts and a deep heartbreaking sadness.

I have witnessed first hand the way that lives are manipulated and destroyed by those who fear and hate the gay community.  And now to see something so tragic unfold before me in a time when acceptance was finally starting to take a firm hold was devastating to me. 

The one thing I did not feel was fear.  Strangely.  I am not, nor have I ever been, someone who alters my life based on fear.  I still travel.  I don’t go to the grocery store or a restaurant and worry that I will be killed.  I guess that is the blessing of living in the USA.  And these attacks haven’t altered that for me.  I know for some it has.  But not for me. In fact, after the Paris attacks when everyone was canceling their plans I would have actually gone there in a heart beat if I had the money and time off. Would not have thought twice about it.

But all my words and feelings on all of this were bottled up.  I listened and gathered information and struggled inside my own mind for answers, for relief and release.

Then I began to see the reaction of my city.  When blood was called for people lined up so many strong that they couldn’t process them all.  They offered freely so much blood that the banks didn’t have the capacity to hold it all. They came forward selflessly offering what they could of themselves.  Not afraid.  Not hiding. Not defeated.  But empowered. Invigorated with purpose. The people of Orlando stood up.  That was meaningful and valuable and beautiful.  And so I added that too, to the many emotions I was processing.