I was in a store the other day when I heard two girls talking about how they wanted to leave the country because they didn’t feel safe. With all that has been going on, I didn’t blame them. But I thought about it more, and I realized that it wasn’t because of where we are that made us not safe, it was because of who we are. It’s because we’re black, or because we’re Muslim. It’s because we’re women, or because we’re LGBT. It’s because we’re different. The world is dangerous, not because of any certain location, but because some of us just happen to be born differently.

Whether it’s Orlando, Ferguson, or Dallas, bad things can happen wherever you go. I realized that running away wasn’t going to solve anything. We could leave the country and still horrible things like this would happen. It is not the place that needs to change, but it is us. We need to recognize that human is human, and that is all that defines us, not the color of our skin, not our gender, not our sexual orientations. We’re never going to change into better people if we don’t learn to accept everyone for who they are. I wish this was something that was easier said than done. I wish it was possible to make everyone realize that there are more important things in life than who or what we are born as.

It is not up to us to decide who lives and who dies, because nobody deserves to have their life taken from them by the hands of another, regardless of who they are. We should be able to walk into a nightclub and have fun, we should be able to face a police officer without the color of our skin standing between us, and we should be able to safeguard a protest that can end peacefully. We should be able to be human and live our lives without fear that someone will come and take them away from us.

The present we live in is terrifying, but the future doesn’t have to be. Our younger siblings, future children, and other young family members shouldn’t have to grow up in a world where they have to worry about where they go all because of who they are. We need to work together as a country to become something better than what we are now. We need to educate ourselves on how to take the right steps to achieve this goal. We need to learn how to contribute to our community in order to better it. We need to learn that people are people, and that is all that matters, not race, not gender, not sexual orientation, but just the fact that we are alive and deserve to be.

This is just my say on everything horrible that has happened recently, which is too long of a list. Other people may feel differently, but we should all agree that every individual has a right to live. I am a straight, white female, but that doesn't stop me from being outraged at what has been happening to people whose skin is a different color or who love someone that happens to be the same gender as them.

I apologize to anyone who has lost someone they love to a hate crime. I apologize to those who have lost their lives because they were “different.” I personally don’t know how to fix the world. I don’t know how to stop someone from thinking they have the right to end someone else’s life, but I do know that from the second we are brought into this world, our life matters, and I know that something needs to be done before we all forget this.