By Okay.
Can we all agree that the next few weeks are going to be rough and call it a day?
That’s really not fair to the month of June and for that I am sorry. But the next few weeks are going to suck.
We are just a few days away from the one year anniversary of the shootings at Pulse.
I’m having a lot of mixed emotions about it all as the day draw closers and they were feelings I could put off so long as it wasn’t June.
But then June happened.
Today was actually a really good day. I spent the day with friends having fun and ended it all with a run because I was feeling like a potato.
I have great things planned for this month. I’m excited about them.
But then there’s that day. Sitting right there on the calendar.
I have planned ahead. I took a few days off from work and have some plans with friends. I just signed on to volunteer at an event that day in Downtown Orlando. I’m really nervous about it but we’ll see what happens. I haven’t heard back from them yet.
I don’t know.
I think I started off with a point but I’ve lost it.
I’ll quit while I’m ahead.
Some past reflections on Pulse:
Avoiding Neverland 
I won’t pretend to know what it feels like in Orlando right now, but I’m glad you’re there taking the time to remember, and that you’re going to volunteer. I’ve personally been close to two similar tragedies. I was a freshman in High School when Columbine happened just a short forty miles or so away from where I lived. Then in 2013 my world got turned upside down by the Boston Marathon bombings—I wasn’t at the race that day, but when the Tsarnaev brothers went on their rampage a few days later I was just about to leave work when they shot the police officer a few blocks away. I spent the next three hours in lockdown at MIT wondering when it was all going to end.
Both of these events touched communities I was a part of, but I can only imagine how much more deeply I’d have felt it if it had been the LGBT community they targeted directly. I was in the Adirondacks on that horrible day last June—about as far from it as I could be—but the horror infiltrated even that remote paradise.
I guess for me, in my own quiet way, I’m going to celebrate Pride every day this month. I’m going to exude extra love and compassion, celebrate the progress this community has made, and remember that there is still work to be done.
Good luck over the next few weeks.
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