Excuse My French, But Fuck Your Thoughts and Prayers

My current thoughts on gun violence in America

In April of 1999, I was 10 years old. That is the month and year that Columbine happened and shifted something within me. Going back to that time of my life, I remember just being in disbelief that something like that could happen in a place where children should be safe from harm. At 10, I could hardly conceptualize what took place, let alone the magnitude of what happened. Two highschool seniors planned for over a year to bomb their school and shoot victims in a secondary attack. The day of the incident, the shooting took place after the bombs they planted failed to explode. These two teens took the lives of one teacher and 12 of their fellow classmates. The two shooters also took their own lives. A fucking nightmare. Something out of a horror or suspense film.

My mom was terrified. As much as she tried to soothe my worries and concerns, she was very visibly shaken by this horrific massacre. We had several conversations over the next few weeks to try and prepare me or keep me out of unsafe situations, such as bullying, gun safety, peer pressure, being aware of your surroundings, and communicating with adults we trust when something isn’t right or off. These conversations only added to my anxiety and confusion. Why is this happening? Could this happen to me? Is school no longer safe? Am I in danger? Who is going to protect me when I’m in class or walking the hallways? This tragedy took place at the end of 5th grade for me. In a few months, I would start middle school which was already intimidating in itself. So now I would be going to a new school building that’s unfamiliar to me, with teachers I don’t know, students I’ve never met before (teenagers at that), on top of the possibility of a mass shooting happening and not being able to do anything about it. When I started middle school, that was the first year we started to do active shooter drills. They would buzz an alarm or make an announcement and all students would file into the nearest classroom. Everyone would crowd away from the windows and the doors with the lights off. Hiding behind desks and our book bags. These drills became more routine than tornado drills, which is telling for a middle school located in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. All of this was so ridiculously grim and unnatural to me but this became the new normal.

I’ll never forget on one particular day in 6th grade,I went to visit the bathroom during class. I entered the bathroom, walked into a stall and closed the door. And before I could even use the toilet, I spotted that someone had wrote on the stall’s door that a school shooting would happen here in a few days time (it had a specific date but my memory fails me of what that date was). I immediately ran to the principals office and reported this to administration. I begged to call my mom so that she could come and get me from school. I remember administration investigating to see if what I said was true by visiting the bathroom stall. I remember my mom rushed from work to check me out as well as my brother who was in elementary school at the time. And I remember her keeping me home from school for few days to make that the shooting that someone wrote about on the bathroom stall didn’t take place. I remember the school calling my mom and reassuring her that it was a false alarm and that I’d be safe back at school. I remember how petrified I was returning to that school just waiting for something bad to happen. I never stopped being anxious and hyper vigilant at school. I was always looking for possible exit plans and examining a room to see what I could use as protection or a weapon. There is no reason why any 11 year old child should be contemplating any of this, especially at the place they go to get an education.

I remember moving to Georgia in high school which had a completely different demographic than the white suburban town I was raised in. And honestly not knowing whether to feel safer or not. During my time in high school, I would estimate that we had over 10 bomb threats in which we had to evacuate the school and two incidences where a student was caught with a firearm on campus. I left high school and attended Georgia State University in the fall of 2006. I was excited to be going to school in downtown Atlanta but I was equally concerned about my safety because the campus was pretty open and spread out for blocks around the city. In April of 2007, my freshman spring semester, a mass shooting took place on the campus of Virginia Tech, ending in the deaths of 32 people. Once again, I was filled with fear of going to class, walking through campus, or visiting the dorms, not knowing if today could be the day that I could be a victim to gun violence while attending school.

It is now 2024. And as I get my daughter ready for preschool this morning, I sit with the fact that there have been over 400 school shootings in the United States since Columbine. Over 400 school shootings have happened since I was 10 years old. I am now a mother wondering everyday if my baby is going to make back home to me. I have seen that even the babies aren’t safe because in 2012, a gunman entered Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut and killed 26 people, 20 of them being children. I fight and battle with myself everyday on whether I’m being a good parent by sending her into a potential war zone. It makes me sick to my stomach that in almost 30 years, nothing has changed. If anything things have become worse. How many more of our babies have to be taken from us for gun laws to become stricter? How many more teachers and staff? Hell, how many more civilians? Because mass shootings aren’t just happening at schools. They are happening at movie theaters, grocery stores, churches, and concerts. There isn’t a place that is safe in this country because it is literally the Wild Wild West. The number one cause of death of children in this country is by firearms. What the literal fuck? This is not okay. Nor has it ever been okay. We deserve to live our lives without a cloud of impending doom hovering over us as we go about our day to day due to the fact that our politicians would rather get paid than keep us safe. I tired of their fucking thoughts and prayers as we mourn and bury our loved ones. I’m tired of your half ass plans and bullshit policies. On top of us as citizens facing a housing crisis, homelessness being criminalized, inflation, the aftermath of Covid, expensive healthcare and education, as well as pollution and global warming we still have to be hyper-vigilant every time we leave our homes. The American Dream is not for us to be under constant suffering, endless labor and hosting funerals for children because of thoughtlessness and lack of care. I kiss my baby every morning praying that this will not be the last time I see her. Praying that she is protected from what I have no power in controlling. That her, her classmates, her teachers and the rest of the staff aren’t victims to yet another AVOIDABLE and PREVENTABLE shooting. This is quite the dystopian storyline that America is living out and I do not know what to do. I’m just angry and tired. And I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling this way.