It has been over two years since my life drastically shifted. On February 14, 2018, a gunman entered my high school, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, in Parkland, Florida killing 17 of my classmates and faculty members.
Now, memories are fuzzy. But the trauma remains active in my nervous system. At the time, I photographed and documented the tragedy in my community. The photographs are now all that I have to remember what my brain has forgotten. Each day after the shooting was waking up in a different nightmare. Relief from the nightmare was scarce. Sleeping opened the gate for the nightmare to continue. Relief only occurred during the split second of waking up, until the painful reminder of what happened washed over. The emotions were often too big to handle. We were teenagers looking for guidance, but even then, the adults did not know what to do.
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Two days before Valentine's Day, I competed in my last track meet. Coach Aaron Feis was there to witness it. It was my last time speaking to him. He congratulated me on my win. We shared our last laughs as we talked at the fence, watching others compete. I decided to wait to show him a picture of my new truck. I decided I would rather show him in person at the senior lot gate, where he always greeted the upper class every morning from his golf cart. That day never came and now his prayer card from his funeral sits on my dashboard.
The day after the shooting was my 18th birthday. It was a sleepless night, as many of my classmates and friends were still considered missing, but soon to find out, the FBI would identify them around 2 a.m. Vigil arrangements for that night were in the process. I tried to wrap my head around my new reality on my first day of being a legal adult. Part of me desperately wanted to crawl back into bed and cling onto the last bit of innocence I had left after witnessing such evil take place.
In addition to the uncertainty of how to push forward, a yearbook still had to be completed. At the time, I was editor-in-chief and photo editor of the 400-page yearbook. Many of my staff members witnessed the deaths of their classmates, lost their best friends, and were coping with mass amounts of grief. For us, there wasn't a how-to for covering the deadliest high school shooting. All we knew was that we had no choice but to honor our friends and classmates by creating memorial pages and obituaries.
It has been a blessing to be an artist. Navigating through the loss and hopelessness through my camera lens provided a sense of grounding. My camera followed me everywhere I went. During protests and walkouts, I had found a small glimmer of hope. Clicking my button on my camera provided a sense of what it felt like to be human again after days and weeks of feeling stuck and desperate for a sense of normality.
Two years later, my heart still skips a beat when I hear my high school's name mentioned.
Whether it's on the news, during a protest, or a national political debate, time stands still. It's a moment that remains unreal and I have to remind myself, yes, the shooting did happen. Not that I have forgotten about it, but because of the shock that it happened to my classmates and I is a raw wound. Simple tasks such as going to my college's campus and going to the grocery store became daunting. The fear of being in another mass shooting opened a door to hyper paranoia and vigilance.
I learned quickly while away in college that my new friends could sympathize, but empathy was scarce. After a tragedy, loneliness fills the void and isolation is easier than reaching out for help. That's when therapy saved my life. Every day the wound embedded in my soul stings as if it's fresh and unhealed. I learned that post-traumatic stress disorder does not resolve with just time. Time doesn't heal the pain. Hours of agonizing counseling sessions and encountering triggers slowly heals the broken heart. I learned that when the overbearing emotions flood, running away from them did more harm than good but facing them with open arms created a path of compassion and radical acceptance. Not shying away from the pain and practicing kindness opened the door to healing for me.
The journey has been long and not over yet. It's a battle I know that I will have to face for the rest of my life.
