Numbers are too binary for the anguish caused by the swift removal of life that I have witnessed over the course of my life as an American. Statistics are too monotone to display the sorrow that families have been pulled into due to the bullets that breached their communities. Numerical quantities cannot define the fear that I have walking to class knowing nothing will stop a rogue individual’s random spite from killing me. 

But this will subside, just like the last shooting. We will go back to class with doors open. We will return to the common areas with nowhere to hide. We will be blissfully unaware of our part in the next tragedy of the new American epidemic.

I used to ask questions.

How can we prevent this? Why would this happen? Why have the societal structures built to protect me allowing this to happen? Why wouldn’t politicians enact laws to save my life?

But this is quickly met by a more visceral question.

As the bullets ripped through those victim’s tendons, tissues, ligaments and lungs – were they asking the same questions? If their pleas for answers are going unheard or ignored, then my fears will surely be as well.

The only question I have left is: When is my time? 

My words will be lost, discarded like the lives lost at a politician’s willful ignorance. This is normally where I would say “wait there’s hope” but I see no pillar supporting my claim. Again, this will subside, and we will wait for carnage to begin one more.

I’m not sure if this a call for action or a call for help, but the dread and anxiety I feel are, I’m sure, not just individual.