To Orlando With Love

There comes a point where it's impossible to laugh.

Now I deal with depression so I'm accustomed to not laughing, but it's a different kind of feeling when the primary source is external. Today is June 13, 2016, and there was a mass shooting in Orlando over the weekend.

In this day and age, mass shootings seem to be turning into a bit of a series. I've lost track of how many have made the news over the past several years. As much as I hate saying this, I realized this weekend that a mass shooting is no longer unexpected. It's like car trouble. There's no schedule for it, but deep down inside we all know the next one is inevitable.

Perhaps I deal with the horrible things people are capable of in the only way I know how, I just try my best not to feel them so I can make it through work and then go home and write stories about monsters. But this one, I can't not feel.

Perhaps it's because it's because I lived in Orlando for a very important chapter in my life. Perhaps it's because the shooter was targeting the LGBT community, a portion of our culture which has achieved some very real and needed progressive victories in recent years. Or perhaps it's because this incident summarizes so many of the issues our nation is currently facing, and predictably everything that comes out of Donald Trump's mouth and keypad is going to make things worse.

But the bottom line is, today I feel wounded. Certainly not on a comparability to the families in Orlando. But this blog is my little time capsule in the world, and today I don't feel like laughing.

I didn't feel like laughing yesterday, which was why I didn't go to the Weird Al concert. I've seen pictures, a lot of people did go, and I'm sure Al and the band gave it the professional all that they always have. And I'm sure the people who went to the concert found a way to laugh. And I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful that John Oliver keeps doing his comedy show even when he clearly doesn't feel up to it. The world needs a chance to laugh.

But sometimes, some people need to not laugh. And to feel like it's okay to not be funny, or snarky, or sarcastic. For me that time is now.

So I've been trying to figure out what I want to say in this blog, being the rare moment where I'm purely me without the insipid performer's streak that usually can't seem to function without. And I think it's probably most appropriate for me to celebrate the LGBT community, and all of the wonderful friends I made in the six years I lived and breathed Disney in Orlando.

Homophobia is taught, even if it isn't blatantly taught. In my case, I grew up instilled with a sense of discomfort about it because it was something we didn't talk about, or else we talked about it in an over-dramatized setting. When I started working at Orlando, it was the first environment I'd been in where the LGBT community was not only accepted but also celebrated. And I had the wonderful journey of going from being okay with it to not even noticing it anymore because it was the norm.

Because of that journey, I felt a personal investment when gay marriage was legalized. It was as if the safety of that inclusive community had finally spread from the tunnels under Cinderella Castle and into the real world.

So when some asshole decides he won't be on board with it, to the point that he has some deluded right to take other people's lives, I say fuck him. I say, I'm no longer willing to endure some bullshit obsession with a verse in Leviticus when Christ was clearly preaching love for everyone. And I'm no longer willing to tolerate anti-gun control arguments from people who really need a fucking hobby that doesn't stand a chance of hurting someone else.

May God bless you, Orlando. And thank you for all of the laughs.