Split

990818, they/them

I haven't written in a while, I've been so incredibly stressed.

I have finals coming up, AP Exams, this stupid thing called a DELE Exam? Found out about it a week ago.

I'm not even in the Spanish program anymore but they want me to take another Spanish exam. I thought I was done.

Whatever, it's not like I can do anything.

I have to rewrite an entire essay for my Seminar class. It just didn't have enough context the first time around.

We had a minor lockdown a couple days ago, some shooter in the area. They didn't even tell us, the teachers, not until it was over.

I remember protesting gun violence in the 8th grade.

There had been a massive school shooting that year, back in 2018. It was a country-wide organized protest, calling on students from everywhere to walk out of school and march, holding signs, wearing bracelets and pins.

We went out and marched around our soccer field, chanting for change for a few minutes before the time came for students around our country to all hold a silence.

We stood in solidarity with those who died, with their families, with our fellow students, with future victims of gun violence in schools.

Seventeen dead.

Seventeen minutes of silence.

Seventeen minutes of silence for seventeen kids who don't have to worry about finals anymore.

It was my first protest. And hopefully not my last.

I want to go out and march. For my friends who are Black. For my friends who are Asian. For my friends who are Muslim. For my friends who are LGBTQ+.

Sometimes I think about the Parkland kids. About how we've failed to give them the closure they deserve.

Their children will probably have to deal with the same fear of being shot up while they're learning.

Some of those Parkland kids are voting on the laws that'll change that.

Some of them may be dead.