17

It was difficult thinking about how I could have known someone who was killed at the Stoneman Douglass High School shooting. When I was smaller, my family used to visit Miami and stay with some friends. I learned to get along with two girls, Andrea and Paola, who would take me out to see places I’d never seen around Florida. When I heard about the shooting I was not extremely concerned knowing that it was in Florida, but anxiety settled in when my mom told me that that was the school the girls went to. She told me that they graduated the year before from Stoneman Douglass and were now in college which made me slightly less stressed, but knowing the possibility had me uneasy. It made all of the other school shootings and crime seem more real. I now felt a deeper concern than I had in the past which I realize now, a lot of people are missing.

As a teenager, it is pretty difficult to stray away from my social life and think about something bigger than just my community. When I saw things on the news, I would just think about how sad and difficult any particular violence might be, but I didn’t really empathize. It wasn’t as important to me as it is now and I don’t understand how or why I would think that it is not a priority to care and empathize with people who could be me, in their given situations. I am now struggling to figure out how to make more teenagers care, without having to have such a near experience or having to fully experience such pain.