The Broken States of America...

I continue to cry off and on since the news of the shooting in Orlando in which 49 of my fellow LGBT Americans lost their lives... I haven't felt this way, honestly, since 9/11... I imagine this is what it may feel like to have ADHD--constantly losing train of thought, drifting out of my mind on even menial tasks... While I personally knew no one who was affected (thankfully!) and, as far as I know, none of my friends were either, we have all seemed to express a melancholy, an effervescent intangible weight of sadness... 

And now Trump is fucking talking... I hate this man... If anyone embodies hate and vitriol, who piles wood on the pyre just waiting for someone to light a match? It's this man. Much like Kilgrave never owned up to how he forced people to kill, never owning up to his personal responsibility, Trump just...

Ugh... this isn't supposed to be about this goddamned motherfucker.

Our safe space was violated. Not for the first time, not at all... between New Orleans in 1969, the Stonewall Riots that same year, to the hundreds of other group and individual attacks on our person throughout the ages... We have been attacked, murdered, for... why? What is it LGBT persons do to threaten the rest of the community? What is it about the very existence of those whom are in a minority that enrage, anger, and upset others to the point that our deaths are required?

I just... I feel so lost and adrift... a tad afraid, truth be told. This maniac lived just one hour north of me, yet drove himself two hours further north to reign death upon my people, my fellow humans, my LGBT brothers and sisters... An American killing fellow Americans...

For what?

Hold on--#TRUMP!!!-- this is NOT about immigration, this is NOT about #Hillary or #Obama or #syrian refugees!!! Sweet Odin's ass, SHUT UP YOU STEAMING PILE OF SHIT!!!!

Ugh! Anyway... I shouldn't be surprised, I suppose. Our lives are politicized over marriage, housing, bathrooms, jobs, equal protection under the law--why should I be shocked our deaths are as well?

Forty-nine more lives lost. Forty-nine brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, children, parents, uncles, aunts... Humans. Lost.

Should this conversation be about the intrinsic homophobia of the nation, the world? Gun control? Self-defense? It is usually said after something like this that it's "too soon." Don't mention these things yet, wait til passions and emotions have died down... It's not guns, it's a mental health issue... It's not Muslims, it's extremists... it's not religion, it's something else... it's not ______ (insert excuse of the day here...)

And I just can't anymore... My soul aches... My heart feels like it's bleeding out... I'm exhausted from the death... From when we as a nation said, "No, no, it's not guns" after Sandy Hook, where twenty young children died... when we decided the right to bear arms were more important than the next generation being educated in safety... Where every other industrialized nation on earth can not have this happening weekly, yet we do? And we think it's not about guns? At all? Not even a smidgen?

I'm also scared... Not terrified, but scared... Who is next? Where is next? L.A. almost had a similar incident to Orlando but for pure luck...

Pure. Luck.

I don't want to feel "lucky" to be alive. I don't want to be scared to be alive.

Who does?

From the posts celebrating the deaths of these people to the posts screaming to spread "God's love" to all the gays in the aftermath...

And it's a twist of the knife, honestly... Don't sit there and tell me how loving your Abrahamic god is when another just used his Abrahamic god to slaughter us. Don't tell me how much your god loves me when he just allowed forty-nine of us to be senselessly slaughtered, and certainly don't give me that freewill bullshit. The way I see it, the biggest difference between myself and your god? I'd have prevented their slaughter if I could have. Don't tell me you suddenly care about me and my people when you've been actively--actively!--been trying to pass legislation and laws that treat us as less equal, less deserving of rights and benefits, less deserving to use a fucking bathroom...

Don't even try to fucking tell me about your god when I expect YOU to be the decent human being you purport to be when all I've ever heard from you is condemnation, legislation, and hellfire preaching mixed with conditional love my whole fucking life.

My biggest fear right now? Is some of these poor people have family that don't even care that they are dead. Who won't claim their bodies. Who will bury them hastily, if they bother, and ignore or even lie, about who their loved one was, where they were when they died, who they loved in life... Right now, that's my biggest fear. Or that some church will refuse to give them a service because of who they were. Will refuse the family comfort and grieving services. Will refuse to acknowledge every facet of who these people were...

My second biggest fears are already reality--there are people celebrating this massacre, of every religious stripe. Muslims and Christians who are thinking, "good! they had it coming, living in sin like that!" Some of them are thinking it but too cowardly to say so... Others, if you have checked the links above, have no problem being overall assholes at this time...

And I weep even harder.

This country is broken. It is not the United States of America at all. Indeed, we are the awkwardly-living-together-refusing-to-be-a-melting-pot-any-longer States of America.

Better? The Broken States of America.

WWJS: Who Would Jesus Shoot?

We can't keep going like this. The mass shootings, the prevention of equality, the legislating of laws to prevent equality and opportunity for even the least among us... the systemic racism, misogyny, sexism, the purposeful class warfare...

We can't keep limping along, making excuses, and burying our dead every single fucking day, and claiming we can't fix this. Claiming we can't do anything about it. That we can't talk about it until tragedy stops happening.

Because at this rate?

Welcome to the Broken States of America... we'll get around to burying you sooner or later after we're done talking about how much we love our god, our guns, and our country--not in that order, and never in any meaningful way that's helpful to anyone else...