03 Dec 2015

I moved to Australia just over a year ago. I’m American, born and raised, and nowadays my heritage isn’t something I broadcast. If you want to know why, it’s because some people will question me, point-blank, about the gun control issues between here and there. I was asked once while at club at 1 am how I felt about how much better it is here and I’m not proud but I told the guy to eff off. Here’s why.

It hurts everytime. It hurts everytime I turn on the news and the headline reads “US Mass Shooting.” It’s not a kick in the guts or a mad fury of emotions, it just creeps on me and reminds me of how much change there needs to be in the world and how I was raised to believe America, my country, was the leading force of that change. We aren’t.

Today, an estimated 3 attackers walked into a disability centre and killed a reported 12 people. Paris rocked the world, but today rocked mine.

I graduated from Virginia Tech, a university that suffered the worst school mass shooting since Columbine. We lost 32 people. My older sister was there during the events and she came back different. Not changed, just different.

I have two mentally disabled siblings. They are taken care of by my parents. They are beautiful people and I can’t imagine someone, anyone, deciding they should be targets for hate or discrimination. And then today happened and it was a reminder that evil doesn’t discriminate.

Paris united after their terrorist attacks and it made me proud to be a member of this world. I wasn’t an American that day, I was simply a person who had traveled Paris, explored its wonders and witnessed the Eiffel Tower lit up at night, spoken to the Parisian people and broken bread with them, and that day hurt me. It hurt the world, but we didn’t turn on each other. Our greatest victory over these attacks is not turning on one another.

Australia, you are a beautiful country and an even more beautiful people. If I were in the states during these shootings, the news would be broadcasting about the rights of gun control and people’s opinions on the matter, people who weren’t there and haven’t walked the halls of a school that’s soaked up the terror of its own. It doesn’t haunt, it just builds layers and we keep on moving on because we preach change to everyone else. We refuse to look inward because, at this point, if we were to change it would mean the whole world was right and we were wrong. We don’t know it all, we don’t have all the answers, and that’s a hard pill to swallow.

The worst part is my story isn’t necessarily unique; almost every American can tell you their own horror story or six degrees of separation from one of these attacks. I left but my family’s still there and everytime those headlines pan out I have a split second thought that I’ve lost a sibling, a parent, a friend.

For the most part, I write this for myself. It’s easier to process these mass shootings, each and everytime, when I write it all out and throw it away. But, I do have one single message, and that is patience. Please, be patient with us because the wounds never have enough time to heal before another attack happens. I like to think we’re trying, if only for my own mental well-being, but I’m hopeful one day we’ll follow in your footsteps.