Tired of Thoughts and Prayers

I was 12 when I watched Sandy Hook Elementary students stream out of their school, crying. 

I was 17 when I cried watching Parkland students run out of their school, screaming. 

I was 18 when I watched and joined in with the tears of my Pittsburgh community after the Tree of Life. 

There are so many more examples. 

So many more innocent lives lost. 

When I graduated college a month ago, I had, potentially, the most sobering thought of my entire life. I walked out of the ceremony and simply thought to myself, "I escaped school shootings." As far back as I can remember, I have tracked escape routes from every classroom, in every school building. Classmates, teachers, and I would laugh during drills, in hopes of lightening the chilling feeling that we could be next. There has not been a portion of my educational career that has gone by entirely unscathed. In high school, we went into an end of the day lockdown. The only information we got was that there was a man trying to get in to the school, and that he may have a gun. Whether he did or didn't, I don't know. I do know my terror persisted either way. When I was in college, I sat in the library only to receive a text that there was a shooter in the Cathedral of Learning.  This, as it turns out, wasn't true. My fear was. The fear has, and will forever continue, to haunt me. Whether the threat is real or rumored there is the patriotic promise that ensures our distress.

Whether it has been a prevalent trepidation, or an underlying possibility, I have spent most of my life with the understanding that classrooms in America are not safe. 

America is not safe. 

Every single time this happens I find myself wondering when it will hit home. Not if, but when. My mother is a principal, my neighbor is a principal, my friends and family are teachers. I live in the epicenter of a potentially life-altering occurrence, surrounded by educators that did not sign up to be martyrs. The possibility of it happening to someone I love is, it seems, inevitable. Every day that goes by, every shooting we witness, every time our country does nothing, my hope dims and dies a bit more. 

America cannot be the land of the free when we are prisoners to violence. Citizens are tired and scared. The people of this country have good in them. Our lawmakers ensure that our citizens don't grow old enough to spread this goodness. 

I am tired of thoughts and prayers. 

I am tired of waiting and dreading the inevitable. 

Because this scourge of violence is inevitable until our lawmakers decide enough is enough. 

When will the people come first? 

When do we matter? 

Do we have to die first?