One Year Later (Pulse Reflections)

A year ago this place was surrounded by police, FBI and special agents as the bodies were identified. A year ago families and friends searched desperately for their loved ones as we waited for that fateful list to be released. A year ago I crumpled in my shower as I wept for those families. A year ago I found myself questioning over and over how someone could be so filled with hatred for a community that he could sit in Pulse watching people dance, drink and love only to decide their lives were his to take.

A year.

It’s been a year.

I’ve come here multiple times. I’ve laid flowers, raised candles and prayed on an endless loop that the 49 angels would find their peace.

Yet here and now, a year later, it feels like no time has passed at all. It’s as though we’re right there again, in the midst of indescribable pain and heartache.

My heart is fractured, seemingly holding on by some unseen stitches. But I know what those stitches are made of. It’s love and kindness and empathy and hope.

It’s shown when there’s a line to donate blood or when a stranger offers me water or a hug.

Over and over again Orlando has come together over the past year. The LGBTQ community has more allies then ever before, and I hate that it took senseless violence to get here, but here is how we know fear and terror will never win.

Here, as we support and love each other everyday, is how we fight back and show that you cannot silence our voices, you cannot cease our connection to one another, and no matter what – no matter how many bullets rain down – you will never stop our Pulse.

This is Orlando.

 

#orlandounited     #orlandostrong   #onepulse   #rememberthe49   #loveisloveislove

Six Months Later (Pulse Reflections)

It’s 1:40 am. I’m in sweats and an old t-shirt. I almost didn’t go. I tried to convince myself that it would be the same if I went by myself in the morning, after my doctor’s appointment and before work. But my gut told me I was wrong. I made myself stay up and go to my car.

This time of morning the roads are empty, not a soul to be seen, and the blanket of hazy light produced by neon signs and old street lights hovers. I park on a residential street across from Pulse. There is a candle lighting and a moment of silence planned. It’s been six months since the attack. Six months. Once again, time has escaped me.

As I walk from my car across Orange Ave to Pulse my legs seem to turn to stone, dragging slowly behind me. There is a small irrational fear that tells me it won’t be safe – that maybe someone will see this as a perfect opportunity for round two.

“Just drive, you can always drive past it if you changed your mind,” I told myself. I forced myself to follow through on my commitment to attend. There are cameras set up on the street across from Pulse and the reporters are pacing – hungry for interviews. I go to the fence and begin to read the messages scrawled across the canvas – messages of hope and love. A reporter asks me if I knew anyone that was there that night. I tell them no and they move onto juicier prospects.

I turn the corner to go through the opening in the fence, and as I am scanned and patted down by security I’m not paying attention to the process. It’s the first time I’ve seen the doors of Pulse since before the shooting. A lump lodges in my throat. A circle is gathered in front of the building. They’re reading the names, the 49.

 

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

 

I join the circle and stand with my head bowed. 2:02 rolls around and the silence starts, this is it. Six months ago, the first shot rang out at this time. The tears begin. Sobs break out around the circle. Couples hold onto each other as if their partner might dissolve and slip through their fingers. The full moon bounces off the silver paneling on the front of the building. My tears are rolling now, running down my cheeks and diverging onto my lips, I can taste the salt in them. The silence stretches. I look at the door; I imagine them clawing and fighting to get to this side of that door. I imagine their cries and pleas as they hoped for even one more second of life.

It was a fight the 49 lost. The minute comes to a close and members of the Pulse staff light candles on the ground. As the circle disperses we all move to gaze at the candles, they’re lined up in a Pulse line and behind each candle is a rainbow star with a name and age on it. My heart breaks all over again and I weep. This was such a monumental waste. I will only be here for a few more minutes, I am sure of it.

But as I turn away from the candles I bump into of my co-workers. We see each other and say nothing. We just fall into a bear hug. He lost his best friend in the shooting. We cry. He introduces me to his friend, whose twin brother was one of the 49. When he saw me crying, he enveloped me in a hug. I squeezed as tightly as I could – hoping he would feel my sympathy. We don’t let go. It seems to last for hours. When we pull away, I hold my co-workers hand. He doesn’t like being there. He doesn’t know how to process it all. He came for the sake of his friend.

I see another man on crutches with only one leg. My co-worker tells me was there, inside Pulse six months ago. I’m a wreck again. I spend the next hour talking with strangers and loving on my co-worker. The tears never leave my eyes and when at 3:20 am I get back in my car I sob all over again.

So much pain and heartbreak over hate, over caring about someone else’s sexuality. You would think after six months, I could fathom it, that I could apply some logic to it in order to make sense of it all.

But I can’t.  It still hurts like hell. It still breaks my heart. It still makes me weep. It still makes me furious. And maybe time will never heal that, whether its 6 months or 6 years, but maybe time allows me the ability to dampen my own grief in order to be there for a friend who barely knows how to express his.

Maybe time allows a certain reflection and acceptance. Maybe. I wish there were something more concrete I could say. No words seem to suffice. So I’ll conclude with this, my prayer for the 49.

 

God, I pray for the souls of the 49.

I pray you would keep them in your mist. That they would be given peace and love unending.

g.

For the families, I pray you would watch over them. Let them feel your comfort and love.

God, I pray for this country. I pray we can reject hate and fear of something that’s different from us.

God, bring understanding to this world so this will be the last time there is a six months after.

One Week Later (Pulse Reflections)

As I write this my home country, England, is reeling for another terrorist attack. It was a little over two weeks ago that 22 people lost their lives in Manchester, an a little over a month ago that 3 people were killed in a similar incident on Westminster Bridge. Repeatedly in my life it seems like my two homes seem to mirror each other, and it’s heart wrenching that almost a year after Pulse England would be going through that sort of atrocity. I could go into politics and thoughts about why this is happening, but I’ll keep it simple. All of this stems from hate and fear. The only way to combat that is through love and forgiveness – as incredibly torturous as that feels.

So my dear beloved England, the country that raised me and will also be my home – please love and forgive. Take your time to scream, cry, and grieve, but I promise you the only way to be whole again is to learn to love and forgive. I will not lie and say that I have wholly forgiven. Omar Mateen will always be a villain to me, but I refuse to let his hate and fear infect my community or myself.

I will be praying for you my dear England, with all I have. You are my heart, and I know during this time of what seems to be constant attack you will let your English spirit rise and take care of one another. I have no doubt you will see a better day. I love you.

In that sentiment, I have three posts left in regards to Pulse – this one, 6 months on and 1 year on. That’s how long it’s taken to feel okay, but the wound never truly heals. You just learn to accept it as part of your anatomy.

 

                        ———–

 

Yesterday I stood with 50,000 members of my community around Lake Eola, the heart of our city. We raised candles in honour of the dead, and the sight of those candles flickering around the lake was maybe one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. I will not easily forget that sight.

However, today the US Senate blocked a bill that would prevent people of the terror watch list (like Omar Mateen) from buying guns. Why? Because lobbyists, and the NRA and the second amendment. As I drove home today, listening to the news on NPR, I thought about all the memorials around town. The photos of the dead filtered into my mind as well as the families and friends I saw crumple to the ground in crying heaps at the crisis center across from my apartment building as they read the name of their loved one on that fateful list.

I couldn’t tear the image of them weeping from my mind. I remembered my own tears as I collapsed in the shower the day after. I wept as I thought about the innocent blood shed and how, just four walls from my apartment those family members were having their hearts ripped out and for what?

Because one man hated the gay community so much that he thought it was his duty to kill as many as he could. And today, today I think about how all of this could happen again so easily in another part of the country because of this government. After all, didn’t we say enough after Sandy Hook? We all mourned, cried, and said our prayers were with those parents only to do nothing to actually stop another massacre happen and then it came to my city.

It’s disgusting. And then these politicians, like Marco Rubio, will be sure to visit the memorials to say their ‘prayers’ are with us yet they block bills that could prevent these horrors. So now another city, another community could go through this and that knowledge devastates me.