I know this blog is primarily dedicated to my dating escapades and believe me, we'll go back to that next week but for today I feel it is right to take a step back and talk about everything that happened this past week, because a lot of stuff went down.
In the world of Natalie there is no such thing as violence. I hate guns, I hate knives, I hate anything that will remotely hurt anyone because I am a firm believer in harmony and equality for all. Unfortunately, my world and the actual world I live in are much different. Our world is a world where guns are easily accessible and mass shootings have become the norm. Everyday I turn on the TV and become inundated with guns, and shootings, and violence and hate and fear and Trump. Our generation has grown up in the era of 9/11 and Columbine and Virginia Tech. We live in a world where the opportunity for average people to grow up is so often taken by another human.
Pulse Nightclub was an average place. People from all different walks of life went there to blow off steam and enjoy a night of fun. In their wildest dreams they didn't think they'd become a face that's plastered across the news as one of forty-nine victims. They had mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers and grandparents and aunts and uncles and friends. They went to elementary school and played soccer. They worked at jobs, they went to college, they had lives. They made plans for the next day because in a normal world, who is going to bring a gun into a nightclub and kill innocent souls?
I could've been one of those people. You could've been one of those people. Maybe you weren't gay, or you don't go to nightclubs, but maybe you're a fan of music, maybe you go to the mall. It could happen to any of us, it could happen anywhere.
We lost forty-nine innocent souls who went to a nightclub to have fun. We as a country should be grieving but do you know what we're doing? We're going on Facebook and ranting about the government taking our guns, we're yelling on Twitter about how all Muslims are trying to kill us. Most of these people don't know the first thing about Islam or isis. They don't know that isis is attacking us because they want people to turn against our Muslim brothers and sisters. They want Muslims to turn around and join isis and unit against the people who've ostracized them. They want us to feel the pain we've caused them. Reacting the way we as a country have is exactly what isis wants.
I'm lost and sad and I'm not optimistic about the future. Most days I want to stay inside my house and go nowhere near the outside world. I'm too sad and angry and scared.
I wish we could talk about the forty-nine people who were lost. I wanted this post to be about those people but it's not because I can't talk about them without talking about how this easily could've been stopped. I can't talk about anything that happened in Orlando this weekend without talking about guns and weapons and how they're so easily accessible.
I read a story about one of the victims, she was a cancer survivor. She beat the odds and proved to everyone that people can rise above the circumstances they are given. She was a fighter. Another person I read about worked at Universal Studios in Harry Potter World, which he loved. There was a recent high school graduate who was celebrating. I read that she actually got out of the club right as the shooting started but she went back in to get someone who was left behind.
These were innocent people who could've been alive today if a man hadn't felt self-righteous enough to walk into a club and kill forty-nine people. Christina Grimmie was a talented young woman, she was two years younger than me. She had her whole life ahead of her. She was meeting fans, she was meeting the man who killed her. How is any of this okay?
I just want to live in a world where there isn't hate. Where there aren't people who feel such displeasure with their life that they feel the need to kill other people.
On top of all this we are on social media telling everyone how angry we are they are going to take our guns away, or how those people deserved it because they were gay. No one deserves to be killed. I don't know, I'm just trying to understand. I'm spending most of my days avoiding the outdoors because I'm scared something terrible will happen, that I'll be one of those forty-nine people someday.
I was at the mall yesterday and became panicked because I didn't feel safe. What kind of world is this where I get bad feelings at a mall? I don't know, I just want us all to stop and mourn and think about our future. Do we want to raise kids in a world like this?
In conclusion I want to urge every one of you who is reading this to stop hate, to stop writing on your Facebook or Twitter. To think before you post. It is time to stop the hate because it accomplishes absolutely nothing. Instead, project love because love is everything.
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