After my city's tragedy, the world's tragedy, I did not cry.
As the faces of the victims flashed, as Pulse survivors shared details of that unthinkable hell, my eyes welled but I refused to let tears spill. I was too shocked, too devastated, too in despair to fully release my horror.
I could not cry because if I did, I might not stop.
For years and reasons that no longer matter, I've carefully placed protective layers over my heart. You would not know this. My friends would not know this. I'm not hard or uncaring, cynical or distant.
I am however, careful what I let in.
And so throughout my city's many beautiful candlelit vigils, throughout the palpable overwhelming grief and tearful hugs between friends and strangers, throughout the growing piles of flowers and hand carved crosses lined with victims' names, I refused to attend.
I do not want to sob.
Still, I must honor our fallen and grieving families even, especially, if the tragedy is close to home
I watched briefly, the gruesome news. I swallowed painfully in sharp measured doses, the Pulse reality. I cannot imagine the overwhelming sorrow the mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, friends, lovers, daughters and sons bear now and forever.
There's no formula for how each of us choose to recover from our nation's all too often gun tragedies. When I feel drowned in the details of the slaughter that happened only 30 minutes from my home, I turn off the TV and radio.
A mother of 11 protected her son. She died. He did not.
Akya Murray, 18, the youngest victim, managed to escape but ran back to save her friend. Soon after she called her mother and begged for help. As Akya huddled in a Pulse bathroom the gunman in his random moving rampage, shot her in the arm. Akya was ready to graduate from high school and attend college in the fall. She might have lived, were she not hit in that artery and waited and...
My daughter is 18.
I listened to the Pulse stories, to the surreal the survivors endured while their friends and others died in pools of blood inches away. Brain matter one said, splattered on her clothes, cell phones ringing desperation in the pockets of the dead.
I shudder and then I move away from their words, away from the horror of that night. Because if I don't, I am paralyzed. And when I am paralyzed I do nothing; I do not honor Akya.
And so I grieve by activating, by renewing hope through action. I give. I fight for common sense gun control, for better mental health screening and services, again and again, and again.
I look for signs of recovery, of billowing strength. The signs are everywhere in Orlando.
I cannot can't step away from the wallpapering of sad reminders when it's my town, and yet I don't want to step away from the showering support from all over the world.
It was this Keep Dancing Orlando video I found on Facebook last month that finally allowed me to weep.
The joy despite the sorrow.
This is how I choose to grieve, through movement, through action, through communal celebration that expresses the resilience and strength of not just my town, but all towns across our nation.
I know I must allow myself to feel.
We must never numb ourselves or in time we anesthetize the heart. But I no longer want to know the victim's names and faces and stories of lost dreams. It is too much to bear.
My City Beautiful is the world's epicenter of fantastical fun, of imagination, of diversity and always, not just now, of support for our LGBT community.
And so as my city weeps, still, we rise and once again we dance.
#OrlandoStrong