On the day of April 20, 1999, I was being watched by a family friend. I remember eating a pack of Scooby Doo fruit snacks. I didn't understand what was going on exactly, but I knew it was bad. Students were running away while cops were standing around. A body lay on a sidewalk and another across a grassy field. Eventually someone climbed through a broken window and there was blood. I was impacted by that day, as just a child. That is the day I learned that going to school was not as safe as I'd once believed.
The family friend who was watching me didn't approve of the TV show Rugrats. She brought it up to my mom on multiple occasions due to the fact that my little brother and I quite enjoyed the show and often watched it together. Yet there I was, watching death and chaos unfold right in front of me. My parents were in Utah at that time. I remember being so scared they were hurt. She had to explain to me that Littleton, Colorado and Springville, Utah were not as close to each other as I was certain they were.
Rugrats v. Columbine; priorities of Conservatives never make sense.
I haven't even begun to process yet another loss of young lives. A preventable tragedy in a country that can't seem to put life before ego. Violence brought upon the world most often by men, although we are told that isn't the case. The violence is downplayed and excuses are made. Both of which result in the never ending cycle of loss in the form of murder, abuse and rape. We hear and read people bellowing about abortion harming life yet *motions around* here we are.
It's hard to feel hope in a world, and more specifically a country, that is detrimentally hopeless. As a woman or living, breathing child, it has become quite clear: we don't matter.
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