Your High School Reality in 2018 (Please Read)
• It is announced to the class that another school shooting has occurred. There is no shock. There is no crying. You hear someone mutter “not again” behind you as they sigh. It’s subtle, but a feeling of anxiety rises within you and your classmates. It roots itself in everyone as you all begin to think that you and your classmates are just another tragedy waiting to happen.
• You jump and cringe anytime a loud noise that even remotely resembles a gunshot reaches your ears. A book in the hallway gets dropped and it ends up slamming flat onto the ground? You’ll hear the noises that sorround you fade out as people become quiet. Your teacher will tense up and falter. The person sharpening their pencil up front will snape their head towards the noise and will only relax once they see that it was only a moment of clumsiness and not what they’ve had nightmares about.
• You are filled with fear as rumors of a school shooting threat spread like wildfire at your school. Police officers flood the halls of your place of education. Bags are searched. Lockers are forcibly opened. A kid who has slipped through the numerous cracks of the system is led into the principals office, and eventually off school grounds. You look out the window as they’re being shoved into a police cruiser and all you can think about is how close you were.
• Your parents pull you close and you see tears prick your mother’s eyes. You talk with your family about what to do should your worst fears come to life. They tell you that you shouldn’t try to be the hero, because they want you to come home alive and not in a body bag. That you should run and hide with your classmates, even if it means hurdling over the bodies of those you’ve known since kindergarten. Even if it means shutting out the sounds of a beloved teacher as they lay on the ground, incapacitated and unable to move because they took a hit for their students. All your parents can do is apologize after every grim peice of advice slips pasts their lips. You can see the hopelessness in their eyes.
• Your school has another drill. Your principal is talking over the intercom as they attempt to walk you through the unimaginable. Your lesson on the French Revolution has been cut short because you need to know how to barricade a door. As you sit in the dark, huddled against your classmates, your mind wanders to thoughts of chaos. Of what you would do if everything went to shit around you. Would you stay behind and aid the wounded? Would you freeze up and collapse in shock? Would you perhaps get lucky and escape through an unlocked window? Or, perhaps, would you be apart of the death toll? Just another American tragedy for people to cry and bicker over? You don’t know. You’re barely even 15 after all.
• You scroll through social media, even though you know it will only upset you. You click on the comments section of one of the many articles that have sprung up on the latest tragedy to hit America’s youth. You see prayers. You see bickering. And you don’t see much else. Your mouth sets into a line as you close out the app and lay your phone on your bedside table. Your head hits the pillow and you hope to not face a shower of bullets the next day. You are an American high school student. This is your reality. And you hate it.
Note: I needed to write this. I needed to get these feelings off my chest and I needed to share the reality that my peers and I live and face everyday. Seventeen of my fellow high schoolers died on a day that is meant to celebrate the love we have in our lives. They join the many children who have lost their lives during school shootings since the beginning of 2018. I’m sick of it. My classmates are sick of it. We’re all just sick of it. We deserve to go to school without fearing for our lives. We deserve to not have to wake up to news of another masacre. We deserve better. But until we DO better and CHANGE the dialogue that sorrounds this critical issue, nothing will change. It’s up to you. It’s up to me. It’s up to EVERYONE. Advocate for gun control. Call out the politicians who take fatty checks from the NRA. Change the discussion and change the reality that all American students face for the better.