Pulse Nightclub - One Year Later. #HonorThemWithAction

This is a piece I wrote last year, after the Orlando #Pulse nightclub shooting.

I don't know what to say about Orlando. I wish I did. I don't know how to process this. I don't really understand how to exist in a world that wants to own my body or kill me.

I have been paid a decent amount of money in my life to be funny, sharp, present. And I've read a lot of things by people I admire over the last two days who are funnier, sharper, and more present than I have ever been. I'll just keep sharing those for a while.
I'm sitting on a bus heading to Washington D.C. to support and celebrate new friends and allies who want to help me and others accomplish a new mission. Bus rides provide a lot of time for reflection. I thought I'd be sleeping, or doing prep work, dissecting and digesting stats.

But all I can do is think about all of the times in my life I didn't hold a partner's hand. I remember my resistance as a teen, not quite sure how to show someone I care in the same way that other "normal" people did. This event, this shocking attack on love and identity, has challenged me. I'm shaken. Uprooted.

If you cannot be a 22-year old LGBTQIA+ Latino dancing on a Latin night in a big city without being at risk... What other message does this send to you? How can you BE anywhere? This is not war time--Dancing and drinking in a city should not be a privilege I have that others have died for.

Have I really always hated PDAs? Or was I simply terrified of revealing myself to a world that wants me in a closet, in a kitchen or in a pine box? There comes a moment when you forge a skin made of something other than flesh, as you prepare for the daily ferocity of a world that DOES NOT WANT YOU.

There are people who still zip themselves into a binding hetero-costume every day, not living the lives they deserve to live. How can we ask them to come out now? How can we ask them to fight back? How can we ask people to be their best selves if we cannot process the sheer minimalism of a woman without a male companion and vice versa? How can we exist to push forward a seemingly advanced idea of "love is love" when we are still fighting for safe spaces--battle lines drawn outside of the clubs and party houses we have chosen to not just be ourselves but to only, and briefly, be?

When I was young and I switched train cars when some dude called me a "fucking dyke"... It was because of the dirty fear of people who don't want me here. The folks who don't want me to win. To love. To laugh. And they don't want me to receive those gifts either. Orlando was a mass shooting AND a robbery, stealing the light of so many from a world that clearly needs it.
I have had so many issues with #Pride in the past and it's purpose and power. Now I will be there, supporting and enduring and probably crying under my Ray-Bans. And I hope that you will be there too, wherever you are because there is so much work to do.

I wish there was some sage wisdom I could bestow upon us all. The truth is, I'm sitting on a bus with tears in my eyes and what feels like a broken, bewildered heart. I'm mourning for a beauty I didn't get to see impact the world I get to live in. These are just words, and they don't move as fast as bullets. Stay aware, stay open to the magic that this world can provide. There is good left. It's the only thing I truly know right now.