Two years ago, the Pulse Orlando shooting took 49 and wounded 53 of my community. Today, I still barely have the words to talk about it, but I do know the LGBTQIA+ community has always known mourning.

There are so many days of my life I’m thankful I journal.

There are days, however, that I wish I could forget. I wish I could tear the pages out and burn them. I wish when I burned them, the memory would burn with them and when the fire is put out I could dump the ashes and let them wisp away into non-existence.

I have tried to write about the June 12th, 2016 Pulse Orlando Night Club shooting for two years. Every year I have fallen short. I have tried to incorporate the tragedy into the plays I write, but it feels exploitive so I stop. I try to write poetry for my 49 killed, 53 wounded brothers and sisters, but I don’t know how to speak to them so I stop. I try to post tributes on the anniversaries of the events, but I don’t know what to say when the world is still as unsafe as it was that day so I backspace, backspace, backspace, until eventually I am silent for another year.

I recently stumbled upon the journal entry I wrote on the day of Orlando, and then another one in a diner a day or so after – scrawled after pages of inconsequential To-Do lists, appointment reminders, and doodles as if to concrete how impossible such a mass tragedy seemed.

The only way for me to jump into writing about that day is to start by transcribing my own words from those journals – to remember that, as a writer, there are always words and perhaps those words have power:

June 12th, 2016
The day of the Orlando shooting.

I don’t know what to say. I have no clue how to write or respond to what has happened in my lifetime.

I know it could beans of us. I knoww that at any time any of us could be lost.

I vow to give up on petty infighting and love the people in my life – from all walks. 

We have all done wrong, but we must hold tight to each other and fight another day.

There’s something incredible about public spaces that are split down the middle. I’m in a diner N.J.  Right now Fox News is playing Trump talking to Bill O’Reilly. Someone who is eating in here supports Trump. I can tell by the sticker on their car outside . I feel unsafe – and because of that I’m forced to hold my head high and look forward. In my diners at home – I can do whatever the glittery hell I want. But you never know. 

You can never know if a bar will be safe or not. You can never tell if a diner, a store, someone’s parents will be safe. 

Public life is a necessary gamble. 

Social media has become part of this public web of unsafety-safety.

We are all becoming a gamble.

The day of the shooting, I was at work. Bustling hard around my little cafe, I had no connection to the outside world and my mostly conserative clientele gave me no clue during my 7 hour shift. It was the day of the Tony Awards – I was dreaming about what snacks I would make for the viewing party for me and my friends. The minute I got out of work, it all flooded in. I sat in my car in disbelief – drove home in disbelief – sat on my couch in silence in disbelief – showered and sobbed.

I learned that a vigil would be held in a small local park. I flip-flopped between going or not at first – I was afraid to be surrounded by so much sadness – but I eventually cancelled on my Tony viewing and headed down. My then long-distance partner, now the fiancé who I live with, drove nearly three hours to attend with me.

I don’t remember exactly how many people attended, but there were over 100 that came and went and at least 50 or 60  people at the sight at all times. People had created a heart out of tea lights around a small printed paper that read a memorandum for the victims. Flowers were laid around the site and people stood huddled together in the wind, holding their candles and their loved ones close. I knew almost everyone. I remember at one point looking up and counting 49 heads at random – those were the amount of friends I would have lost. The number felt impossible.

 

The night was silent except for crying and howling wind. The air was too heavy and when people tried to smile or crack a joke to help cut the darkness, no one could bring themselves to find the joy. I hugged people I hadn’t spoken to in years. I hugged everybody that showed up. Every once and awhile, someone would burst out in tears and the masses would swoop in to comfort them. I was greeting someone who had just arrived and saw out of the corner of my eye my partner crumple, then disappear in a mass of support. We were literally holding each other up. In times of crisis, I try to put myself on the frontline and do everything I could do help. There was nothing to do – I kept searching and searching to help hand out candles, get people safely to their cars, offer emotional support – but we all were just one mass of people who didn’t know what to do but stand together as a community and keep the candles lit.

 

When I look back on the night of the vigil, I feel connections between that moment and the queer history of mourning. I think about Marsha P. Johnson’s vigil – everyone who had known her marking where her body had been dragged out of the Hudson River with empty liquor bottles and candles, filling the inside with flowers and branches of evergreen over a handmade memorandum poster much like the one used during our vigil. Randy Wicker, videotaping as street youth remembered Marsha with stories in a way we were unable to at our vigil – because there were too many people it felt so hard to focus on any one life.

When I look back on the night of the vigil, I think about ACT UP’s Ashes Action in 1992 during the AIDS crisis.  How the ashes of those who were neglected by the government and died of AIDs have fertilized the white house lawn because people couldn’t handle candles and vigils anymore.I think about the immensity of the AIDS quilt. How my community tried to make beauty in memorandum and also tried to make change, with tears in their eyes and loss in their hearts.

 

When I look back at the night of the vigil, I think about the seven burned during Upstairs Lounge fire that police refused to call arson, the five dead after a bomb was detonated in the lesbian nightclub Other Side Lounge, how someone poured gasoline into a stairwell of Capital Hill Night Club in order to set ablaze everyone inside during a New Years party. I think about all the queer that have been gunned down and beaten to death by police.

When I look back at the night of the vigil, I think about how many shooting have happened since. I think about the threatening letters left at the houses of my local trans sisters in a town that is known for being liberal. I think about how I am afraid to apply for jobs in my new hometown because there is a confederate flag hanging on a house down the street from me and someone in the neighborhood mows his lawn with a handgun in his holster and if I have suffered so many atrocious assaults for my transgender body and soul in the liberal town I just moved from – how much worse would it be here? I think about how badly I do not want to get shot and how badly I do not want the ones I love to get shot, but I know it is only a matter of time and until then I am just one of the lucky ones. I think about how I do not want to be in public because being in public at all means I am open for attack. I think about how I’ve come to terms with being afraid every time I am celebrating or proud.  I think about how the average life expectancy of a trans woman of color is 35 years.

I think about how to be queer is to be in a constant state of mourning and to never get too comfortable because soon there will be another wave of death. To be queer is to constantly be on the outskirts or the in the middle of an epidemic of death. To be queer is to know death personally.

Visit The Coalition To Stop Gun Violence.

Know you your representatives are and know where they stand on gun violence. Then, do something about it. 

If you have, give –  to the onePULSE Foundation, to The Sylvia Rivera Law Project, to the Hetrick-Martin Institute – to your local LGBTQ center or any LGBTQIA+ NPO you are passionate about.

To the victims of the Pulse Orlando shooting,
rest in peace and rest in power.
They should not have been, but your spirits will always be with me.

Stanley Almodovar III, 23 years old

Amanda L. Alvear, 25 years old

Oscar A. Aracena Montero, 26 years old

Rodolfo Ayala Ayala, 33 years old

Antonio Davon Brown, 29 years old

Darryl Roman Burt II, 29 years old

Angel Candelario-Padro, 28 years old

Juan Chavez Martinez, 25 years old

Luis Daniel Conde, 39 years old

Cory James Connell, 21 years old

Tevin Eugene Crosby, 25 years old

Deonka Deidra Drayton, 32 years old

Simón Adrian Carrillo Fernández, 31 years old

Leroy Valentin Fernandez, 25 years old

Mercedez Marisol Flores, 26 years old

Peter Ommy Gonzalez Cruz, 22 years old

Juan Ramon Guerrero, 22 years old

Paul Terrell Henry, 41 years old

Frank Hernandez, 27 years old

Miguel Angel Honorato, 30 years old

Javier Jorge Reyes, 40 years old

Jason Benjamin Josaphat, 19 years old

Eddie Jamoldroy Justice, 30 years old

Anthony Luis Laureano Disla, 25 years old

Christopher Andrew Leinonen, 32 years old

Alejandro Barrios Martinez, 21 years old

Brenda Marquez McCool, 49 years old

Gilberto R. Silva Menendez, 25 years old

Kimberly Jean Morris, 37 years old

Akyra Monet Murray, 18 years old

Luis Omar Ocasio Capo, 20 years old

Geraldo A. Ortiz Jimenez, 25 years old

Eric Ivan Ortiz-Rivera, 36 years old

Joel Rayon Paniagua, 32 years old

Jean Carlos Mendez Perez, 35 years old

Enrique L. Rios, Jr., 25 years old

Jean Carlos Nieves Rodríguez, 27 years old

Xavier Emmanuel Serrano-Rosado, 35 years old

Christopher Joseph Sanfeliz, 24 years old

Yilmary Rodríguez Solivan, 24 years old

Edward Sotomayor Jr., 34 years old

Shane Evan Tomlinson, 33 years old

Martin Benitez Torres, 33 years old

Jonathan A. Camuy Vega, 24 years old

Juan Pablo Rivera Velázquez, 37 years old

Luis Sergio Vielma, 22 years old

Franky Jimmy DeJesus Velázquez, 50 years old

Luis Daniel Wilson-Leon, 37 years old

Jerald Arthur Wright, 31 years old

^{List From: http://www.cityoforlando.net/blog/victims/}