Content Warning: This post includes discussion of hate-motivated gun violence toward the LGBTQIA+ community and death.
How painful it is to scroll through my Instagram feed — where I have cultivated an online LGBTQIA+ community with those I’ve never met and probably will never meet — and be inundated with story after story, videos, and posts about the mass shooting at the LGBTQIA+ nightclub called Club Q in Colorado Springs.
Conversely, my Facebook newsfeed — where I interact with people who actually know me in real life, are biological family, co-workers, and colleagues — is void of any mention of this tragedy.
It feels as if two different worlds coexist.
Coincidence created by the algorithm? Perhaps. Regardless, this difference resonates.
I am once again reminded how this sort of tragedy is so commonplace for Americans that most are unbothered to even send their virtual thoughts and prayers at this point. I imagine most cisgender and straight people went about their Sundays as they would have any other Sunday while Queer and Trans people across the country gathered for Transgender Day of Remembrance to mourn for Trans lives lost and added the additional names from those lost at Club Q.
I owe my life to my LGBTQIA+ community and I mean this quite literally. When the world wishes you were different, distant, or dead, you start to think that maybe they’re right. It was my LGBTQIA+ family who showed me how wrong they were. In the LGBTQIA+ community, we refer to each other with familial terms like fam, family, siblings, etc. because for most of us we are only fully seen, fully understood by other Queer and Trans people. I like to imagine we are connected to one another through the lineages of our Queer and Trans ancestors and thus feel known to one another even when we’re strangers.
One of my favorite poets, Andrea Gibson, wrote a gut-wrenching post on their Instagram yesterday imagining the terrible scene unfold, describing LGBTQIA+ patrons of the bar while they continued to dance because they couldn’t hear the gunshots. They wrote, “they died shining with dance sweat. They died holding each other’s hands. They died while falling in love. They died while loving themselves in spite of every single way this world has taught queer people not to.”
I wish I knew what to say to best honor the victims of the shooting and their families. I wish I could pen the right words which would properly convey my condolences. This year has been so hard for my community and I love you all dearly. May the victims rest in power and peace. May their families find justice and healing. And may my beloved community continue loving ourselves and one another irrespective of all else.
