Lives Traded For Bullets

 

We now live in a grim world where public shootings have become the new norm. In a forsaken reality in which morning coffee is served cold with the traumatic deaths of children, women, and men. Death is a toxin to the psyche. Ambiguous veracity, it is. The only way to survive? Desperately slathering oneself with an irony, oozing substance-blood.

As disheartening as this is, people do not care. The officials we voted for...elected, refuse to aid humanity. They do not realize that students have to incredulously pile the body of a fallen student on top of themselves to remain unscathed. At that moment, students are besieged by horror. By the angst of not knowing whether or not they will be alive in the next few seconds. Or, perhaps, by the thought that they will die alone and forever cold. There are those who do not get the luxury of those ghastly thoughts. Why? No one saw it coming. Point-blank in the head.

These children were devoid of life as a result of broken promises. Let that sink in a moment. They died. Their hearts stopped. Completely. There will be no reviving them this time. They are truly gone and will never come back. Not to say "I love you" one last time. Nor will they come back to plead for help.

This is the reality we live in. What reality do you officials live in? Do you fantasize about a world where people can be replaced like a pair of socks? The people who sit comfortably on top of their high, furnished offices might as well have signed the dead's death certificate. Because that is what they did. While it may have been indirectly, the bloodshed was all the same. By the the sake of incompetent minds. Life is as polarized as the Earth is green and blue.

It is bad enough that we only "attempt" to come together in times of misfortune. You know it is worse when we can not develop a half-decent solution. "Equip the school personnel" you will hear them disclose. The idea itself is downright ludicrous. Teachers are there to teach, not defend. Needless to say, students would grow up in an environment where ceasing to live is a scar on their beautiful minds. 

Before the world started to go to Hell, we had a somewhat normal life. Movies on Fridays. Where our only excruciating thoughts were about Mathematics and when the dismissal bell would ring. The good old day are  gone, just like the lives that were lost. There was nothing but death in their once radiating eyes. This is the after-effect. No amount of anti-depressants or diazepam will ever alleviate the pain. Sadly, there are those who can no longer cope with continuing on alone-taking their own life. 

People are tired of planning funerals. Tired of watching their loved ones get buried six feet underground. So, I tirelessly ponder, do you feel the sting of death? Or are you forever numb to the pain you indirectly inflict?

To those of you who have lost someone to gun violence, you have my deepest condolences. I know my words will never compensate for what you have dearly lost. That being said, I hope to spread an imperative message: Gun violence can be prevented. Choose Lives. Not Guns.