Chosen Family Open Thread and Safe Space For Healing

Feature image via The Guardian

Hello, my dear friends. It’s been over 24 hours since I woke up to the news of the shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, and even though I’ve hardly read about or thought about anything else since then, I still don’t know what to say or how to talk about it. A lot of you are probably feeling the same way. Many gay and trans folks who were able to be with chosen family yesterday are back at their jobs today, surrounded by people who can’t understand what’s going on in our hearts right now, or — worse — using this hate crime to double down on racism, xenophobia, and gun mania. So, we thought it might be a good idea to get an open thread going, to create a safe space where we can process and begin to heal with each other’s help.

We love y’all very much. We will make it through this together, like we always have done, and always will do.

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Heather Hogan

Heather Hogan is an Autostraddle senior editor who lives in New York City with her wife, Stacy, and their cackle of rescued pets. She's a member of the Television Critics Association, GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics, and a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer critic. You can also find her on Twitter and Instagram.

Heather has written 1718 articles for us.

433 Comments

  1. I don’t have anything particularly eloquent or revelatory to say, but just know that if you’re in pain and struggling today, you are not alone, and you are loved <3

  2. The weight of this tragedy is especially heavy today. I’m so sad, y’all. I’ve been avoiding my mom because i don’t want to talk to her about this and today she texted me “how are things your way” and i said “i’m sad and tired” and she said “i know. it is sad” and i burst into tears.

    • I hear you. My mom texted me all about how scared she is for me and my wife and I must have started fifty responses and never managed to finish one. Nothing to say.

    • My parents are still warming up to me being out to them. All they said was “So you heard the news?” then changed the topic.

  3. I’m still pretty numb. There was a 5000+ person vigil/rally last night here in Louisville. I didn’t go because (a) too numb to get out of the house and (b) really, really don’t deal well with crowds of any size. But it was good to know that the energy was there. But, me, today — still just numb.

    • Thanks for posting, Willow. This was me yesterday with the vigil in Memphis and this is me today. I’m glad to know I’m not alone. You aren’t, either, if it helps. <3

    • I stayed in, too. I just wasn’t ready to grieve publicly yet. I needed to eat pizza and check in with friends via text and social media and that was all I could muster.

    • We won’t have a vigil in the city I live in so I lit a candle at home alone. Today at work has been very hard, and I will probably have to leave early. It’s so hard to contain how I feel. I’m with you.

    • Yeah, I didn’t go to the vigil either and I felt a little bad about it. But in the end some of my long-distance queer friends and I streamed the movie Pride together and it was really good and healing.

  4. I know I’m not up to going out but thank you Autostraddle for letting me connect to people who make me feel like I’m not alone

    • I’m not up to going out there. I was supposed to go yesterday to the Hollywood pride. I know nothing happened because they caught him but still. It would be my first Pride and my mom just finally accepted me as a lesbian. So, I’d celebrate until I couldn’t anymore. I even had planned to wear my pink and black tutu. I was gonna take my sister to go with me since I didn’t know anyone else to go with.

      I think I’ll just stay in and celebrate with watching The L Word or Orange Is The New Black <3

      Please, I could use some more queer friends to feel safer <3

      https://www.facebook.com/CrystalLivingDeadDollRamos

  5. i’m supposed to be working on my thesis, but haven’t gotten anything done today. my heart is so broken over this whole thing. all those lost lives, the unbearable sadness of their loved ones, the homophobia raising its ugly head, people refusing to acknowledge this for what it is, the inevitable increase in islamophobic hatred that will follow…
    what a shitshow recently. along with horrible racist occurrences in germany where i’m from, and all over europe, in the wake of the european soccer tournament. i feel so helpless and angry and just want to crawl into a hole…
    but autostraddle is such a good place right now. sending out all my love and solidarity. and happy pride month, because in spite of all this we have to keep celebrating.

    • i am especially grateful for this thread because i feel like i’m annoying people with my constant “i am so sad about this” texts. it makes me question whether my grief is even legitimate, considering i didn’t know anyone who was involved, and i’m from another country…

      • Your grief is legitimate, both on a human empathy level and on a personal level of being a part of this big queer family.

        <3

      • Your grief–and mine, and ours–is real and it is legitimate and yes, it is different from how the loved ones of those who died feel right now.

        But let’s remember what a hate crime is. From one perspective, killing an LGBT person for their sexuality or gender (or killing someone for belonging to a particular race, religion, etc) is no more terrible than killing any human being for any reason. But hate crimes are designed to instill fear and dread in a community of people. They mean we’ll always be looking over our shoulder or feel vaguely unsafe. They’re a toxic poison designed to replace freedom and pride with fear and shame. A single death is a crime with millions of victims. That’s why they are counted as crimes and punished by the law as such.

        We can all picture ourselves in that club. We’re not only grieving for the dead and their loved ones: we’re trying to heal ourselves before we can even begin to make sense of how the ground beneath us has shifted.

        Today, my heart and my thoughts are especially with trans women of color: they live with this grief and fear and ever-shifting ground today and every day.

        But you can give yourself permission to feel the grief that’s in you now. You haven’t stolen it from anybody.

      • Thanks for writing this. I’m from europe too and I feel the same as you. I’ve talked about it with friends, but I can’t stop thinking about it.

        I wondered too whether what we are feeling is legitimate or not, and I guess that it is. We are a community, even if we don’t know each other, even if we live a million miles away, we celebrate together, we grief together. And maybe by sharing our pain, there’s a chance (and a hope) that healing will be easier.

      • Your grief is legitimate. This hit me harder than it did my straight loved ones. I have to keep reminding them that I am still sad and that I am still not straight.

    • Hi, I’m new. Like, new new. My ex-bf and I broke up last month and I decided that was my cue to explore my queer feelings, and also consider moving back to the US from abroad. So this is the first Pride month where I’m reaching out to meetup groups and the like and start connecting with the queer community, and start dating women perhaps after my heart’s healed more from my breakup.

      and now this. It makes me realize that as much as I’ve berated myself for making it to 30 only having dated men and remaining in a fairly heteronormative bubble, there are reasons. I see the pointed silences among my old friends from school and my family. I see the Bible verses that say “love” but also say “sin.” I realize that my choices have been forged by fear.

      It’s just a lot. Thank you all for being here, for being visible, for making me feel that I can speak with you about this. <3

    • I am also supposed to be working on my thesis and also did not get any work done today and just thought about Orlando instead. <3

  6. i’m out to everyone but my parents and i know that’s a small and inconsequential thing but i have to see them tonight and i don’t know how i’m going to make it through small talk that i’m sure will involve orlando without just bursting into tears. i spent yesterday with my girlfriend and we cried and i’m trying to hold onto the fact that everyone who knows me, truly knows me, loves me and supports me, but it is hard and the world is so scary. i’m glad all of you are here, and i love you, and i appreciate you.

  7. You know if you had asked me objectively on Friday how a terrible event like this would effect me I would have said that it was sad but not much else. In reality I am completely devistated. I think that living in Canada means that I don’t often leave room for the moments when I feel afraid and unsafe. It has seemed unfair to voice those feelings when there are places in this world where I might not be brave enough to be out. This confronting of our vulnerability and the real hate that people have for our community is hard…but it’s better together. Thanks for the thread.

    • Thank you for putting into words exactly how I feel, processing this tragedy from Vancouver. This, exactly this.

    • Another Canadian (Ottawa) here. I couldn’t agree more. The shooting has served as a reminder that all it takes is a kiss in front of the wrong person to potentially change or even end your life… and the lives of 100 other people. Yes, some of us are statistically much less likely to be involved in a horrific event like this, and we need to prioritize the voices of those who have been affected or are more at risk. But even for those of us who are more privileged, it’s turned that whisper of “What if I’m next?” into a shout.

  8. Thank you for this. Having to share support online appearing as an ally because of people I am not out to. I just need a space to say that this is hurting me too. So thank you.

  9. There was a candle light vigil in our town but I stayed home and lit a candle and prayed. Crowds are overwhelming to me even though I think now they could be a comforting reminder that we’re not alone.

  10. I’m sad. I’m scared, and I spent yesterday with a homophobic family friend, my best friend, my mother, and a priest who is apparently trying to drink his internalized homophobia away. Yesterday was my mother’s birthday and I spent it swallowing grief and allowing her day to be her day. I didn’t see my girlfriend till the party started, and spent most of it trying to engage without crying or looking inward, with her holding my hand and doing the same. I missed the vigils, but I caught the Tonys and Lin and then John Oliver made me cry. I never cry. Ask my mom. “Are the Tonys making you cry?????’ Well, yes and no.

    What I’m trying to say is that I feel guilty that I’m safe and have my support system and my family and my girlfriend in my parent’s house talking to my aunts and family friends and being a part, being my part.
    I’m guilty and I’m angry that I have to explain what happened and why I’m angry and that I have to lock it away. I’m angry that I have to put family first while my chosen family is dying and mourning.

    I’m scared this will be with me for awhile. Forever.

    • Don’t feel guilty for being safe. We all deserve to be safe. I’m sure the people who died, and their friends and families, want us all to be safe, too.

      Also, all these people who are lining up to give blood want us to be safe– I’m sure of it:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YS8cm3kmyWs

      Survival guilt is a real feeling, so don’t feel guilty for feeling guilty. But if you can achieve it, I think it’s good to feel safe, and I want us all to want that for each other and ourselves.

      • Yeah. Yeah.

        I’ve….my response is gonna be guilt, because of who I am and other trauma i’ve experienced.

        It’s what I do. I know this, and I’m working on it.

        In any case i saw true colors yesterday: a bi classmate wanting to shut the door on the gun control conversation (and that was the first post I saw), straight classmates letting me vent and rage about the former without judgment, and with support. And my girlfriend, crying and being raw with me, pretending to watch the sharks so that we could get time to feel.

    • The Tonys made me cry too. They made it a little bit better though and I’ve been latching onto them (there are a lot of songs about resilience in there).

      And yeah to the scared this will be with us forever thing. Right now it kind of feels like there’s been nothing but tragedy for my friends and my community this year. I’m having trouble doing the hope thing.

  11. Decided to check in with a queer co-worker today, and discovered he knew one of the victims and was barely holding it together. We hugged, and he thanked me for caring to say something, even though we don’t know each other very well or work in the same department. It hurts my heart that he’s walking around the office with red-rimmed eyes and no one else even thought to ask.

    I have a rainbow flag that I bought in the Castro hanging above my cubicle. I originally only put it up to irritate a homophobic, misogynistic co-worker, since he can see it perfectly from his office, but today it’s a banner of Pride and love and support. There are only a few of us queers in my company, but I’m going to message them all and let them know I’m here for them, even if the rest of the office is silent and business as usual.

    Take care of each other out there, Family. You are loved. <3 <3 <3

  12. I’m really glad I have today off work. I live in a pretty conservative area and I’m not out to coworkers or family but I can’t talk about this in any way that’s not intensely personal. Hopefully by tomorrow my coworkers will have moved onto other topics. I’m just worried they won’t and I’ll have to either 1. Bite my tongue(again.again.) or 2. Possibly say something not smart. I’m just sad and even more tired.

  13. I got my ass over to a vigil here in my city last night. It was already scheduled to be Pride week and this was the kickoff event, but given what happened, they added a remembrance for Orlando. You know what I saw at the gathering? Happy people, folks of all ages laughing and coming together, dogs, children playing. I sat and chatted with someone I know from the local coffee shop, a nonbinary fellow I didn’t know super-well, but we hung out in total comfort and self-assurance, discussed sci-fi, and shared bread pudding.

    They can’t ever kill that. They can’t take that away from us.

  14. I love y’all so much. I’m so sad and overwhelmed I feel like my brain is only working at about ten percent of its normal speed, but I want you to know I am so proud to be a part of this community and I’m going to keep fighting with you every day for the rest of my life.

  15. I have felt mildly sick to my stomach since yesterday morning. I’m sitting at work, staring at a computer screen, telling myself to stay away from social media. But it’s so difficult. My father has been very ill, hospitalized for the past month, and I’m overall feeling a generalized sadness and anxiety. Nothing is safe, people die for no reason, and the general public is filled with assholes who lack compassion. Other times, I’m ok. I’m safe, I have people who love and accept me and my dad is getting treatment, even if it’s not exactly a return to full health. It’s been a very up and down few days.

  16. Thank you Autostraddle for giving us this space, and for being such a key part of my Chosen Family. I didn’t think I needed this right now but then I saw *another* straight friend put the “we are Orlando” filter over her profile picture and wow…I didn’t think I could get any more rage-ful than I already was, but it happened. I’m grateful that I had already planned to take today off of work, but I wish I only needed it to recover from dancing and drinking and celebrating Pride, instead of all that plus grieving and raging.

    So much love to all of you. ❤️?❤️

  17. Thank you so much for creating this thread. You are right, I turned on the radio to my drive to work and no one is talking about it at all. I cancelled my Sirius xm but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway because they shut down the OutQ channel. I listen to the news, not because I want to hear the gruesome details over and over again but at least someone is talking about it.

    I feel so at a lost and I keep crying. I feel so bad for all of those people. People in my community. That cold have easily been me and my friends. The victims faces look similar to faces I’ve seen at the gay clubs here in Vegas time and time again. Those last text messages. Knowing that you are about to die but hoping for a different outcome. I stand with my gay brothers and sisters on the this day and forever and to the mother on TV that was crying all day night looking for her son who happened to be one of the dead, I’m so so sorry.

  19. I am so sad and so scared about all of this.

    I know that this didn’t directly affect me – heck, I’ve never been to Orlando, I’m not latinx, I don’t go to clubs, I don’t know any of the victims personally – but gay clubs are a sanctuary for so many people. And we don’t have a lot of sanctuaries. I’m just so scared that people are going to engage in copycat attacks. I’m so sad that people are blaming Islam for this. I don’t want Islamophobia to be a part of this.

    I’m so sad that people are saying they can’t understand this, when I can understand this too easily. This is a natural progression of words into anger into violence. The politics of the US are building more and more into a frenzy, and I am so scared that this isn’t an isolated incident.

    • This is exactly how I am feeling. I have never been to orlando, didn’t know any victims, don’t even go to clubs, so I never would have thought it would hit me this hard but I am devastated by it, it felt so close to home, because it was our community.

      • The more that I’ve been thinking about this and meditating and just general spending my time – I realize that my biggest fear is for my community as a whole. If these sort of political and community spaces are in danger, and if so many other members of the lgbtqia community are in danger, it feels like our existence as a whole is in jeopardy. While I do feel less personally safe, what I’m really feeling is the danger to everyone else, especially Lantinx and Muslim communities. It’s more an fear and mourning of the community on top of the nervousness I have about my own personal safety.

  20. I ended up going to my friend’s get together even though while I was there I wasn’t “present” at all. I kept checking my phone and couldn’t stop thinking about it and wanting to cry and be held.

    I thought I slept ok, but then I had a bad dream where a friend turned against me and screamed “fuck you” over and over at me and began listing why; first was “you’re out of your mind” so that was also great

    I feel physically tired so idek how I feel rn except tired and drained. 2016 deserves to be canceled; everybody off the ride.

    I also saw smthg claiming that someone who survived the shooting is saying there was more than one shooter?????? Which is making me anxious to even consider, much less wondering whether or not its true.

    I see my psychiatrist tomorrow for meds and I don’t feel like I can talk to him at all. The last time I did, he gave me grief for how I reacted to my father walking out, telling me that pushing him wasn’t “civilized”; before that he had been all skeptical as to what rallies and protests were supposed to do. I don’t need to bring this up and have him say ridiculous shit in his calm-ass British accent, I really really don’t.

    There’s a vigil downtown tonight, but it’d take me 2 buses both ways, and that’s $4 for a day pass, and I have to watch my money carefully….. even though part of me wants to be with ppl.

    Baltimore pride isn’t until next month, & before I wasn’t planning on going bc of how corporate and stuff pride has become overall. Also it just makes me sad, idk. But then I felt like going and trying,but then I’m also scared. I roughly know the area, so I think I might know a few places where I could run, depending on time of day, but….. idk idk idk. I don’t want to text my mommy goodbye, yknow????????? (I guess you can find it “funny” since I’ve been so suicidal this year that this makes me so afraid, huh?)

    I wish I could hug ppl and be hugged by people but I don’t even ever feel like im accepted by anyone even when I try to be, so even though I want comfort and I want to help, I feel cut off from any queer community, even online. I try to reach out and. ..idk idk it feels so silent and I kind of want to scream that I need somebody right now who understands and idek

    I can’t articulate anything at all; i’m just word vomiting. I wish I could be eloquent and choose the right words and be supportive in that way, but im lonely and upset and afraid and drained and exhausted and all that shit. I just wanna be held. Idk

    • I don’t know that I can give you the fill comment you deserve but I just want to reach out and day a lot of this is resonating with me. And I hope you get to be held.

      Also I’ve seen multiple sources talking about there being up to 3 (with a 4th intended) person. Not to make you anxious, but because people deserve to know what’s going on.

      Please take care of yourself.

    • Hi, I’m in Baltimore and am going to the vigil. Sending you supportive energy to do what’s best for your spirit. <3

      • Thanks ♡ I don’t think I’ll make it; idk if I can manage it and idk about taking the bus home at night,coming from a queer event… I hate that I even have to think about it that way now

        I wish I could manage it bc I feel invisible and alone

    • not to say what is or isn’t true, but i know in the case of a suspected shooter incident at the university i went to, there were a lot of false reports of shots fired and multiple shooters because when people panic they think they see or hear things that aren’t factual. so, that to say, while it’s possible that there was a second or even third shooter in the orlando shooting, it’s also very possible that people got freaked out and misunderstood what they were seeing or hearing.

      also, i’m sorry you’re having such a rough time of this, caitlin. it’s all pretty fucking terrible. *hugs*

      • Thanks ♡

        I also keep seeing the most rage inducing comments, and some dumbass on fb going on about guns and shit and I want to rip his fucking cishet male head off

        They care more about their fucking guns than human lives.

      • And I also feel so alone like im posting a lot on fb but nobody’s like, ,,checked in on me or anything, and it’s bringing back feelings of not being “queer enough” & like I’ll never be accepted, even in a moment of tragedy where I’m also feeling affected by it …idk that sounds and feels selfish, but. Idk

        • This right here. I’ve talked to only one friend today and that was for about 10 minutes only. I’m like hellloooo, you all know I’m queer. Radio silence. Feeling very alone.

        • To tag on to Sydney’s comment, you’re not alone in this! Not a single person has checked in with me about this, so I feel like I can’t share my feelings about it to anyone.

          And I’m pretty sure I’m off the weekend of Baltimore Pride – hope to see you there.

          • @claritaosita Yeah, i….. was making sure to check in on people so i guess they kind of returned the favor at least sometimes, but. idk. Maybe i’ve worn them out haha…

            Hopefully. Maybe. Hopefully. Is that your fluffy dog as your picture??? What a distinguished looking pupper.

          • It won’t let me reply below anymore, but yes, that’s my dog (he died a few years ago), but he was certainly very distinguished. :D

            I’ve checked in with a few people, but honestly I’m not sure if those people actually remember I’m queer. Since I’m married to a cis man, it’s easy for people to forget.

            Anyway, I hope you’re taking care of yourself right now (and always)! The Alexandria, VA vigil tonight was a little healing for me.

      • *also, there was an armed bouncer who exchanged fired with the shooter. Given the panic, I could see how people could mistake that for multiple shooters.

    • I had nightmares too! Not even about this, just about a friend like you. But it hurt and it sucked and I’ve been tired all day. I’m feeling the same way about 2016.

  21. Guys, I’ve been crying since yesterday and I don’t even know what to do. I feel so alone. I’m. So glad I have you guys because I have no other family. None

    Race, and gender, and sexuality aren’t meant to make you a target but being a queer woman of colour I can’t help but feel like there’s no space for me in this world. I know people who lost people and it all just feels so close. Too close and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to process

  22. The first thing I read when I opened my phone yesterday morning was the news from Orlando. I had so much I wanted to get done yesterday, but reading the coverage all morning just made me so exhausted, and sad and ANGRY. So instead I crawled back in bed with a book and didn’t leave until I had to get to a meeting at 7pm.

    After the meeting was over, I came right home, got back in my pajamas, and watched the Tony’s. That made me feel somewhat better. But then Barbra Streisand started talking about how art can comfort and console us, and it made me think about the Bury Your Gays trope, and how we can’t even turn to some of our favourite art for comfort and consolation anymore, because it’s just too real. And just, this tragedy after all the fictional tragedy we’ve already been through this year just felt like way too much to deal with.

    Needless to say, I’ve done very little work at the office today.

    • I watched the Tonys too and a lot of it made me sad because of how real it felt (some of the lyrics to Yorktown in particular) but all of those songs about resilience made me feel better (“If You Knew My Story,” which I’d never heard before) and made me want to do some writing about resilience to console myself. So I guess what I believe is that we can and will make better stories.

  23. Yesterday evening my girlfriend, after speaking very little for the entire evening (she’s usually very chatty and exuberant, so it was off kilter) told me she was afraid that the next time I left the house to go out I wouldn’t come back. At the time I told her nothing like that was going to happen, but I knew then and I know now that I can’t actually be sure. I feel impossibly scared and so confused as to how this is the America we live in. I just can’t believe it.

    • I deeply struggle with these same fears. It feels like there are no safe spaces anymore in this nation, and that’s a terrible state of being.

    • Every time I am publicly gay (i.e. every time I am in public, as I’m very very visible), I keep one eye relentlessly scanning my surroundings. No matter if I’m laughing with friends, or my girlfriend’s kissing me, or whatever, I’m never fully there.

      Most days I can handle it, but today I am exhausted.

  24. I’m just heartbroken and scared. I grew up in Tampa, I went to college in Lakeland, so I went to Pulse in Orlando a lot with my theatre friends while in undergrad (2010-2014).

    I haven’t lost anyone personally from this tragedy, but I do have friends who’ve lost people or who still have friends missing. It’s insane. My heart hurts. I just feel so helpless and scared right now.

  25. Today is harder. I don’t know why. Yesterday I was around queer family all day. Today I am at work and it all feels hard. This is the only thing I have processed so far: getting dressed is hard and making breakfast is hard, and talking to people is really hard, and I can’t remember when it felt easy, though I know it did, once.

    The people in my social world are talking about policy and Islamophobia and homophobia and religion, and I want to talk about those things too someday. But today all I can feel is that everything is hard. I’m trying to take time, to be in my body, to give myself permission to be late to things, to walk as slowly as I need for as long as I need. Allow myself to feel the difficulty of it all instead of brushing past it. Allow myself grief so I can continue fighting some day. So I can come back stronger and prouder and more complex than before. So I can keep going.

    • Thank you so much for this comment. I need to keep in mind leaving myself space to be like that is well.

      I’m sorry this is so hard, for all of us. Thank you for sharing, and I know it will get easier. It has to.

    • This this this. Yesterday I was more okay than today too. Work is hard, policy & issues discussions are hard, when all I want to do is feel. Sending support your way <3

    • I’m in a similar state. Yesterday I was surrounded by friends, I got to speak at a vigil and share food and drink and feel connected. Today I’m at my desk in a (happily) supportive workspace but it still feels very different from yesterday. Part of me is grateful do have work to do to help me feel purposeful, and part of me wants to curl up in a friend or lover’s arms all day and not leave the house.

    • Thank you for writing this out. I feel like I should be a voice in this conversation, on Islamophobia and gun control and policy and and and…

      And I just can’t. Not yet. It’s too raw.

      Sending you all the support and warmth.

  26. This has been almost surreal. I found out when a straight cis white dude I worked with told me – I had come into work unawares. And before I could even begin to process, I had to start contesting him for his islamophobic and icreadibly violence response – which made even less sense because he wasn’t affected. Not really.

    I didnt get to truly be hit by it, to process, until after work that evening when I began reading and talking to other loved ones in the community. I live in north Florida, far enough away to note but still… So close, you know?

    I’m still processing today, grieving, and dealing with wooziness at work since I made an appointment to donate blood first. And tonight I’m busing out to the vigil here in Max at Hamburger Marys – I missed the one last night.

    Its, funny, in a weird sad way – I’ve never been to a community event, to pride, been on spaces meant for me and people like me. And o understand for how many people this will keep them put, force them back.

    But the Vigil will be my first step into that space. And almost in a daze, in some almost robotic defiance, I put in time off request for the Pride events here on Jax on October, so I can finally attend.

    I don’t know what to say or how to process this but I know I want to be with community. I want to live and love, not because that’s a radical act, but I will embrace that radical aspect. I won’t let myself be so far from my community anymore. Not right now.

  27. Threads like this are so important. As others have said and surely are experiencing, my family has not reached out to me in any way. I’m at work today and not a single co-worker has even spoken about the shooting, much less shown concern for anyone’s mental well-being. I don’t want to make the attack about me me me, but to not even express general concern or sadness about it… ?! It’s like they live in another universe.

    But despite all that, it’s so vital to remember that we are a living, breathing, vibrant community. Even if everyone physically around us exists in a bubble, even if just online for some of us, we are absolutely not alone.

    • Same. I understand that “How was your weekend?” is Monday small talk but… friends. I’m out at work; they’ve met my partner. How do they think I’m doing?!

      *hugs*

      • It’s unreal. I’m out at work as well and thankfully rarely experience outright homophobia but the obliviousness is offensive in its own way.

        Thanks for the response. No one should be experiencing this but it somehow helps to know I’m not the only one.

        • I feel you. And I’m pretty tired of straight people who are accepting, even vocal allies in a lot of ways, but also seem utterly incapable of putting themselves in our place.

          When the gay marriage circus was going on here and there were thousands of homophobes in the streets and the airwaves, most of my straight friends couldn’t be fucking bothered to get up on a Saturday morning and come march in favor of the law. “Oh, it’s going to pass anyway.” Gee, thanks. Thousands of people are marching through town, in opposition to ME, personally, but no need to show up and support me because “it’ll work out.”

          It’s been a couple of years now and I’ve only recently realized just how bitter that left me.

          I wasn’t going to invite anyone when I saw the announcement for tonight’s vigil, but decided to try to have a little faith and text a girl who very eagerly went to Pride this weekend. But she had plans to go to the gym. So… priorities. I’m just over here dealing with the worst shooting in American history taking the lives of beautiful members of my community, but cardio is important too, don’t worry.

          Sigh.

          Makes me much more appreciative of the blessing of having people who don’t have to rely on empathy because they share your experience. And makes me more aware of my own shortcomings as an ally to other communities.

      • Same. I had a really hard time answering “How was your weekend?” Before I got to work, I dreaded them asking because it’s so tragic and so person; when I got to work and everyone was blithely cheery, I felt so alone.

      • And this is a company that marches in Pride! For the ally cookie-points. I appreciate the support but it also drives me up the wall. That’s a whole other conversation though.

  28. Just got home from a vigil here. I’m so sad and scared and I’m so tired of being both of those things.

    A friend asked me a little while ago, is the purpose of the LGBT community to make itself obsolete? I didn’t have an answer then but now, god, yes. We can be obsolete if it means we can also stop dying, stop hurting, stop facing these horrors.

    I no longer know if I can face Pride again this year, even though I’m in the UK. I know I should keep fighting but this much sadness and fear is exhausting.

  29. Thank you for this thread. I’m heading to a vigil tonight, and in the meantime: I’m at work feeling sick, angry, on the verge of tears.

    Social media is helpful to an extent, but I own a LGBTQIA+ specific business and have been inundated with well-meaning messages from straight customers + supporters who are basically asking for a crash course education in discrimination and why LGBTQIA+ representation matters. Like, y’all. I’m over here sobbing on the couch / trying not to cry at work. I know people are well meaning, but seriously. I’m in no place to help you with LGBTQIA+ 101 right now.

    <3

    • YES! I’m in charge of advocacy at our local queer and trans youth-serving org and if one more cis/straight person calls me to make small talk or ask for a training, my frontal lobe will explode with rage and grief.

  30. this space is beautiful. i’m so so so sad and don’t know how to be this sad and like keep going on every single day? like everything feels terrible right now. but i am also so so so so grateful to like be working with this particular community of queer women who make room for sadness in everyday life and don’t try and make you get over things before you’re ready. super grateful to get to be internet surrounded by y’all right now

  31. I had a horrible sleep last night, and today I just feel so sad. It’s really hard to get any work done. I feel anger, hurt, frustration, feeling like I can’t breathe sometimes. I’m not out and I struggle a lot with loving myself and I’m trying not to be fearful. My thoughts are with everyone struggling from this tragedy <3

    • I can’t imagine feeling this and still being closeted and afraid too. All my love and support, I wish you strength and luck finding or making a community that appreciates you for everything you are.

  32. I’ve been drifting between feeling the need to connect with people and feeling like everyone is yelling, even when I agree with what they’re saying. Then today I got into some weird argument (on Facebook Messenger of course) with one of my closest friends; when we’ve been supporting each other a lot lately and especially since yesterday. I told them I need their friendship more than I need to make my points in or “win” that weird conversation. I think I’m going to buy some olives and spices at the Lebanese grocery store nearby rather than draining my emotional energy on the internet . . .

  33. I’ve never commented on anything before, and I’m sad that this is what is motivating my first comment, but am simultaneously very grateful for this thread. I want to find a vigil in my area but there aren’t any nearby according to the site posted yesterday. It’s weird because I’m in the Bay Area, which should theoretically should be super queer friendly and open but most of my queer fam is in Los Angeles so I’m feeling pretty lost and anchorless. I’m from UCLA so our own shooting happened so recently and I’m so so afraid of becoming numb. I don’t want to become accustomed to violence but feeling all these feelings is painful and hard and sometimes it’s just easier to shut down.

    I’m trying to write a paper about race/gender/violence and it’s a little too real rn. Struggling to not disassociate but also not break down completely.

    Thanks for letting me share <3

    • <3 I understand the urge to just turn off.

      As a teacher, we can talk a harsh game about deadlines, but we are also human and can understand exceptional circumstances. if writing that paper is too much right now, maybe try to contact the professor and inquire about a delay or change of topic?

      Sending love your way.

      • Thank you for the advice. This is unfortunately already an extension because of the shooting at the UCLA campus last week. I appreciate your thoughts though. If it too difficult to finish this week I may ask for another extension. <3 Thanks again

    • Like Rachel suggested: always feel free to message professors about it. I used to teach undergrad (gender/sexuality/race/tech class) and this would be a 110% “I will work with you” scenario.

      • Like I told Rachel, I am hesitant to ask for yet another extension as this is already an extension after the UCLA shooting. Thank you for your support, though it means a lot. <3

  34. I keep crying and I, like others in this thread, didn’t know that this could affect me so much. I have felt a bit de-sensitized and removed from other mass shootings that have happened in our country and around the world, but I can’t shake this one and I’m letting myself feel every bit of it.

    Yesterday, I felt selfish about feeling anything because I wasn’t there and I don’t know anyone who was there. Today, it’s even harder. I dreamt last night that I was in the club with my friends before the shooting started and I knew that we had to leave.

    I’m trying not to make this personal, but it feels personal. I hugged my wife a little tighter last night and this morning.

    • This is how I felt as well. It is sad that I have felt so removed from the other mass shooting events that have happened. But this. I just feel like crying. I didn’t personally know anyone involved, and it has been years since I went out to clubs. But still. These people are my brothers and sisters. This is personal. This is about no longer feeling safe to congregate in a space where we all have felt safe before.

    • Agree with you 100%. The cover of the Orlando Sentinel has a photo of two seemingly white people embracing and while we all have an absolute right to grieve no matter race or any other identifier, and the image itself is heartbreaking, it feels shortsighted. It was called Latin Night at the club and the majority were, as you said, people of color. That should be emphasized and remembered, not ignored or shoved to the side.

  36. Thanks for this. My coworkers are well-meaning but clueless straights, so I’ve just been crying quietly at my desk all morning.

    My city had two vigils, and unfortunately the one I went to was short and not solemn. Which is a fine response, but I really wanted to join in some public grieving. Also I went with a straight friend who is a true ally who did everything right, but it still felt like his presence was holding me back from fully joining my community.

    Other than the vigil, my main response has been arguing on FB with my cousin who said it’s “not time to get political,” and his friend who explained to me that I just don’t understand Islamic terrorism, and this isn’t a hate crime, this could happen to anyone brave enough to stand up to Islamic terrorism. Spoiler alert: this FB comment flameup didn’t change anything.

    Tl;dr: I’ve been crying quietly by myself for a while. Thanks for being here AS.

    • Been crying by myself a lot too, but maybe it helps a bit that we can all cry separately but not alone?

  37. Grateful for this. Woke up today to texts from someone I used to be close to, reaching out because distance doesn’t matter in times like these. I appreciated that, but still just feel gutted. Went to a violence prevention training today at work, and before things got started, everyone was talking about their fun weekends and asking me what I did, and all I could say was that I spent it trying to process the Orlando shooting. The facilitator of the training briefly acknowledged the shooting before starting the program, but did not include the words “gay” or “lesbian” or “bisexual” or “trans” or “queer” at all. I felt so invisible sitting there, in the wake of a tragedy that literally rendered so many nonexistent. I left the training early. Now I am in my apartment, and I feel simultaneously restless and immobile.

  38. good morning junebugs. yesterday was not good and today is not good and i’m sorry. but i’m so grateful you all are here.

    i know we’re sad and i’m glad that there is space for that here. personally after years of being scared i am feeling like i am ready to get angry. i hope it’s a helpful, constructive, sustaining anger that gives me energy to fight for peace and safety and existing unapologetically.

    i don’t really know where to start so for now it’s about continuing to connect with the right people with an open heart and mind, like i was able to do at camp. it’s about seeing if i qualify to give blood, because blood is always needed everywhere, not just in orlando. and it’s about learning as much as I can about the history of gun ownership here and abroad so when i say #fuckyourguns I can back it up with facts.

    so much <3 to my AS family. please take care in every way you can.

    • also i recognize that as personal as this feels, it is that much more personal for trans, latinx and qpoc communities, and my heart is with you as well.

  39. I just have now words. All I know is that my heart feels broken. My family and friends are well-intentioned and sympathetic, but they just don’t feel this in their souls like I do. I don’t have any queer friends to go be with and cry with and hurt with, so I’m extra thankful for all you folks today.

  40. Luckily(?) I haven’t gone into work yet because I have a flat tire. And I’m procrastinating getting it fixed so I can purposely cut my shift short to avoid the conversation people will inevitably want to have with me since I’m the only queer some of these people know.

  41. I was at my little brother’s high school graduation yesterday with my fiancee and the rest of my family, so I couldn’t cry the way I wanted to. I nearly did a few times. Watching my brother, who is bi, and his friends, many of whom are queer, get their diplomas… they’re going off to college and to jobs and new opportunities and big changes, maybe to discover gay clubs and fellow queer people beyond our tiny little hometown. But on the same day, this happened. One of the graduates addressed the class, saying that their graduation is like a second birth, that yesterday was their shared birthday. Some birthday. Some world to be born into.

    I’m going to the vigil in Northampton, MA on Wednesday, despite living just north of New Haven. I’ve never been to a vigil, but I need this one. That’s where so many of my friends are… that’s where I learned what queer community means. I need to grieve with that community now.

  42. Grief is deep today. I am going through the stages. Cycling through around and around. Trivial thoughts about how short I cut my hair and how my entire being is a facade at best. Scared to go outside and need to use a restroom only to potentially come face to face with someone who wants me dead too. Then realizing….my feelings are nothing compared with those in Orlando today. That living in SoCal gives me such a general safe space while others in Omaha or Mizzola have no such thing. I can’t stop the thoughts though. I am trying to get the will to go out. Find that strength to not put on a skull cap…to not shave my face and to not hide my body under baggy clothes. To put on my binder and face this day as I present each day.
    My wife was much braver yesterday. She went out and saw a movie alone. Instead, I stayed home and dealt with my grief.
    Today, I found something small that I could do to help someone in the world. A library that hasn’t had any new books in it for decades got a new administrator and they are soliciting for books. They are not asking for cash–instead, they are asking for reading materials for the K-12 youngsters. Feel free to check it out: https://throwingchanclas.com/2016/06/07/just-one-book/
    I hope each of you stay in your comfort zone until you are ready to push the boundaries again. And I hope that when you are ready to push those boundaries you do it boldly and with pride.

  43. Hurt like this doesn’t feel real. I don’t have the ability to wrap my mind around it. I feel like I’m surrounded by plastic people. And they are talking about guns, and religion, and all I want to do is cry. I don’t understand and I don’t know how to understand. I tried to separate. I tried to have the conversations about Islamophobia. I tried to stick up for those who have to bear the burden psychopaths have left them with but my lips have turned to lead, my heart has turned to rubber to soften the pain. I don’t know how it’s possible to function right now. I don’t know where to get the strength. I have never needed you guys more than now. Thank you so much.

  44. I feel so stricken.
    Most of the people at work don’t know that I’m gay, yet, and no one realizes I’m from central Florida either.
    Which is very awkward because I found out in the middle of the night while on call..
    I read that list on buzzfeed stating names and pictures of a few confirmed dead, and it just drove home even more how much family they are.
    How much family we are.
    And having that erased, having homophobes and haters and conservatives use these poor boys and girls who were ripped from life so brutally, for their own, shameful agenda of hate and xenophobia,is filling me with so much outrage and bitterness.
    Trump spat in their faces, for being gay and mostly hispanic during their lives and now he abuses their will, their memory for his own sinister means.
    And everyone tags along.
    This was not an attack on American freedom, not specifically.
    This was a homophobic hate crime, of someone who hated us so much, he went out, bought an assault rifle and went to a gay club during pride week to use it.
    Of someone growing up in such a climate of hate and homophobia and violence that such is possible.
    But that is something that does not get talked about.
    The LA pride thing, does not get talked about.
    We’re relegated back to invisibility, these young men and women and between are “the innocent victims”, like there was ever a debate that they weren’t.
    This is so horrible.
    All of it.

    On a better note, here’s an article about gay clubs as sanctuaries in this context, a part of the discussion we should be having instead: http://www.thenation.com/article/please-dont-stop-the-music/

    • Went to the one tiny gay bar in my city for the first time this week. Definitely going back soon. Thank goodness for family <3

  45. I just don’t know how to go on like usual right now. How do I try to function surrounded by people who don’t understand and are completely un-phased? I can’t handle this.

  46. Having a really hard time feels like an understatement. I have been struggling his last month with managing my mental health, and an reading about what happens in Orlando just gutted me. I’m just trying not to cry at my desk. It all feels so out of control.

  47. Thank you so much for this thread. I have been sort of aimlessly refreshing Autostraddle in hopes that something like it would pop up. I’ve been so scared and lonely. I couldn’t go to the vigil in Amsterdam tonight, because I have to go to my @#^@!*$^* job tomorrow at 5am, and I live with a bunch of straight people… I recognise that I live in a country with gun control, some measure of anti-discrimination laws, as a cis white woman, and as such this really doesn’t have all that much to do with me, but fuck, this is a hate crime, and I feel so unsafe. This morning I had to leave my girlfriend alone in the city and all I could think was “I hope you don’t get murdered”. My first thought when I heard the news was to search sanctuary in the local gay bar, before I remembered that that’s exactly what the victims were doing, and I felt even sadder and more afraid. I feel like we’ve got nowhere to go. And life just goes on around us, I couldn’t even talk to it with my mother and my grandmother today. Nobody straight has been even mentioning it to me. It feels invisible. It feels like we are invisible, like our grief and fear are invisible.

    While the shooting happened, I was just waking up with my girlfriend, enjoying the morning of her birthday party together. A few hours later we got up and read the news. To think that in those last moments of peace, others were having their last moments, period. Jesus.

    • So much this! IRL no one except my wife has mentioned it to me. There are no vigils near me, nor gay bars. Life is going on and we’re watching the Internet mourn and crying together.

    • Yeah, this. I’m in Europe too and pretty much nobody has mentioned it IRL. Or if they’ve mentioned it, it’s only been so they can make comments about gun control and the US; nobody has mentioned the fact that it was a hate crime against the LGBTQ community. On Facebook, the only people I’ve seen sharing anything about it have been LGBTQ people.

      I can’t imagine what it’s like for those of you in the US – I’m keeping you all in my thoughts – but I know I feel oddly shaken by the whole thing and have had very little patience for straight people all day.

        • I found out about this on the way to the airport, leaving New York for Europe. All I can think about right now is how much I want to be with my queer friends in the US right now to mourn this. And how I was safely in my lover’s arms when this awful, awful thing happened. The whole Trump thing frightens me more than ever. How someone can respond to tragedy with a “ha, see I was right” attitude to something like this is just so f*cking inhumane and unbelievable, and it makes me scared about where we are headed as a society.
          It also makes me even more grateful for spaces like these, where people genuinely care about each other. Thank you Heather for creating this thread, you are wonderful!

  48. Honestly, I just need this. I’m so grateful that so many of you are feeling the same things that I am because I’ve just been feeling so sad and isolated. I live the next city over from Orlando so this really hit me hard. I had to wake up yesterday and call or text people I know to make sure they were alright. And yet despite this, my actions just felt mechanical because I haven’t been mentally here since I heard.

    I feel like I’m living on autopilot. Like I’m being ripped apart from the inside but I’m also separate from it. I’ve been alternately shaking, crying, getting angry, and feeling nothing at all. I’ve barely eaten or slept because every time I close my eyes I picture scenes I’ve heard about or read about. But I can’t stop looking for information because I’m terrified of finding someone I know was there. I haven’t even left my house since hearing the news.

    When I heard it was Latinx night it terrified me even more because my girlfriend is Cuban and I can’t help but linger on the thought that that could have been her who was killed. The anti-Islamic rhetoric people are spouting feels like a knife in my gut. After all, one of the friends I had to contact is Muslim and I can’t imagine how isolated he feels facing this as both queer and Muslim, particularly since he lives in Orlando and was hit especially hard due to proximity.

    I honestly want nothing more than to hold my girlfriend and never let go. But we’re long distance, all my friends are in other cities, and I’m left to face this alone because my family is only comfortable if they can pretend I’m not actually gay. I’ve had to avoid them because I don’t want to start crying in front of them and have to navigate the minefield that my family creates anytime the word “gay” is mentioned.

  49. Because of some personal life stuff, I was already leaning heavily on my queer community. I was feeling immense gratitude for the abundance of smart, sensitive, rad queer folks in my life. We went camping this weekend and it really highlighted how lucky I am. As we drove back from nature and got cell service the first thing I saw was a friends post regarding the tragedy. It hit so hard, right in the gut. My love and gratitude for y’all was already so big. But it sort of bloomed and is now so all encompassing. I hope y’all feel loved even if you don’t have a physical community. I hope we all continue to be our best selves and live our truths. Sending you all the biggest hug.

  50. Yesterday when I heard the news I was at LA Pride. Maybe 5 minutes later I learned that someone had been arrested with a car full of explosives, heading towards LA Pride. My mom called and asked me to please come home, and I said I would. But I had to sit in my car sobbing for a few minutes before I could drive.

    I spent all of yesterday online, refreshing my social media, watching as the tributes and loss and pain poured in. I cried and cried and cried. But this morning when I woke up I felt like it hadn’t happened, like it was some odd dream that we were all just going to move away from.

    My family has been very supportive, and I have a big queer community online, but I left Pride yesterday so fast that I didn’t get to grieve with any queer people IRL. I don’t have school today but I do tomorrow, and I just want to hold someone and cry together.

  51. Hi, I’m new. Like, new new. My ex-bf and I broke up last month and I decided that was my cue to explore my queer feelings, and also consider moving back to the US from abroad. So this is the first Pride month where I’m reaching out to meetup groups and the like and start connecting with the queer community, and start dating women perhaps after my heart’s healed more from my breakup.

    and now this. It makes me realize that as much as I’ve berated myself for making it to 30 only having dated men and remaining in a fairly heteronormative bubble, there are reasons. I see the pointed silences among my old friends from school and my family. I see the Bible verses that say “love” but also say “sin.” I realize that my choices have been forged by fear.

    It’s just a lot. Thank you all for being here, for being visible, for making me feel that I can speak with you about this. <3

    • I know. I am sad, too, that this is reminding me, just when I had been growing bolder, that the closets that smother us also protect us, sometimes. I am seldom one for big parties or clubs, but if I were to go to one, it would probably be on a Latin night. It is a chilling thought.

      It makes me question my tentative plans to venture to a Pride parade for the first time ever this month, even though it would be in Sevilla or Madrid, where as far as I know it’s harder to get high-powered guns… right?

      It makes me think twice about what I wear and how I act in public, and wonder whether it’s safer to walk down the street in a dress that makes me feel exposed to the male gaze and catcalls or in button downs and polos that cover more skin but probably make me read as more queer. I don’t have a good answer.

      • Yes, we are both in safer places now, but I expect European pride events to have a lot more security measures now. And a big police presence makes me so nervous. :(

        I guess the only solution is just to be us. I’m sorry you’re going through this too. Especially since you are connected to the queer Latinx community. It’s not lost on me that this, specifically, was the community targeted. <3

  52. I know that bad things happen around the world, and that queer folk are constantly being killed but being an immigrant America has always been the dream for me. So while queer folk are being killed in my birth country, America still felt safe. Now, I don’t know. I just know that the world is choosing not to love us, so we’ll just have to love each other harder, and fiercer until the only hurt we feel is from being pressed so hard against each other.

  53. The past couple of days have been heavy and I think there is expectation for me to have something to say–but I’m so overwhelmed with feeling that I can’t do much thinking and articulating.

    That being said, I’ve gotten to sit and read/listen to the voices of latinx and Muslim
    LGBT people which has felt way more productive than being on Facebook and reading my straight/cis/white friend’s opinions–which has essentially been expressing horror and allyship. But I just want to tell them to step down and loan their stage to other voices.

  54. I’ve been really numb since I first heard. My band played at a Pride festival on Friday night, and I can’t stop with the “What if it had been here?” thoughts.

    I went to a concert last night at an outdoor venue. The security line was extremely long, but the woman who patted me down and searched through my bag was very thorough, and I said thank you to her. I felt infinitely safer than I had all day after I went through that line.

    It hurt to get out of bed this morning and go to work. Everything hurts, I feel like a sack of bricks got tossed on me. And the thing is that I wasn’t even there, I wasn’t even IN this situation. My heart goes out to people who were directly effected. My heart goes out to all of us who weren’t directly effected. I’m sorry our safe spaces are being ripped from us. It’s not right, it’s not fair, and everyone deserves better.

    Love and hugs to you all.

  55. Yesterday I cried on and off all day whilst reading Twitter with my wife. We’re so far away and yet I think because of the time difference we had a lot of the info early on. So it just seemed to keep coming. I was appalled at the lack of coverage from The BBC. Thankful for you guys, for Twitter queer family, and for the guardian for covering it all day on their app as the headline piece-while every where else was covering the Queen’s birthday. Today I went to work, the dayjob is at its hardest point in the year and I made it through the day, barely, to then see some bullshit on Facebook from a friend of my mothers who also happens to be a client and I just broke again. One of my former students is proving to be an amazing ally on social media and I am so proud of her that it’s making me cry again. Thank you for being here Straddlers and staff. I needed this space so much today.
    There’s so much more I can’t articulate. But I am sending so much love to our community and hugs for those who want them.

  56. I work in a place where I’m surrounded by conservative cis white males and is very hard to be here at the moment. I’m from Toronto and I have queer Muslim friends who are deeply saddened and hurt by this tragedy and I worry about them, I would hate to think that a stupid homophobe/islamophobe might harm them. We are on the verge of pride and a lot of peolple of the community are afraid and are thinking about not celebrating pride altogether.
    All these things are going through my head at the moment and I have to sit at work and tolerate the mindless golf and fishing chatter and literally feeling that this people couldn’t give less of a fuck about us.
    Sorry about the rant but at least I think you guys would understand.

    • This is the place to share, there’s no need to apologise for any sort of rant <3 I'm sending hugs.

    • I work in a place with conservative cis white males too. Sending you lots of hugs and support.

  57. My wife and I live about 20 minutes from the Pulse, on the edge of Orlando. On clear nights with the right amount of breeze, we can hear the rumble-pops of fireworks set off every weekend by the theme parks; sometimes they catch me off guard and I think ‘gunshot!’ even though the sounds aren’t that similar. I’m afraid for the coming weekend, because I know every indistinct boom is going to start the panic attacks all over again.

    We’ve never been inside a queer bar or club though we’ve been together and out for nearly 11 years. It’s mostly because neither of us drink or dance, we both have anxiety, and we have no queer friends to teach us the ropes. We only just moved back to Florida after many years in Kansas, and we’re still adjusting to getting to see other queer couples hold hands in public – public!! where cis hets can see you!! – let alone the reality that whenever we’re ready, we can step into a thriving community of fellow queer folks. We’ll be going out this weekend or perhaps the next, however, because it’s past time to be with *our people* outside of the glorious gift of my phone and laptop.

    It’s ironic, but on Saturday I was singing Orlando’s praises to my parent because my wife and I are able to hold hands and share a quick kiss in public, which we often do when at Universal, because it just feels so much safer than Kansas. We’re both white, which affords us a lot of safety/privilege, and the Orlando area does have a long history of anti-queer violence, but just being able to hold hands and have it go largely unremarked has been… breath-taking and emotional for us. I started to forget, I think, that fear and Mad-Eye Moody levels of CONSTANT VIGILANCE are just a part of our lives.

    I got giddy and foolish. I thought that finally being able to be legally married and being able to be blatantly affectionate with my wife meant it was getting better. Even with bathroom bills and the like threatening friends and, perhaps, future me if my ongoing gender journey results in a definitive change of identity… even with my wife quitting her first job after moving to Florida because her new boss told her to keep her relationship “on the down-low” because it might make coworkers agitated… even lacking legal protections almost across the board… even with every queer character I love in shows and comics getting killed or sidelined… even with all the hate laws and media ignorance and violence and suicide rates, I thought, I’m okay. I’m doing better. I see a future now. We’re at the middle of the ladder, and we’re just climbing up these rungs, and we’re going to reach the top within my lifetime.

    I forgot about the ladder being rigged from the start. *Especially* for queer people of color.

    I’ve been camped out on Buzzfeed’s article on the people murdered what feels like minutes ago instead of hours and hours, refreshing it every few minutes to see new faces, read new sorrows. I want to know their names. I want to see the achingly human touches to their Facebook-pillaged selfies, the cell phone covers they used or the filters they loved or the people they’d been pressed cheek-to-cheek with, seeing who was stolen from their friends and family. I need to see, and remember.

    I’ve heard the phrase “we go to Pride because they can’t” many times over the years. I’ve never lacked reasons to celebrate who I am and what I’ve survived over the years with my wife, but every time I refresh this article, I see so many more.

    I am so, so fucking sorry.

  58. My partner and I had the really awful experience of attending a vigil yesterday which was run by an organization that was basically trying to promote itself throughout, not to provide services or anything, just to advertise. They run our Pride festival and started charging entry fees a few years ago. They spent a good chunk of their speaking time congratulating themselves for having a vigil. All the speakers who were not members of their board of directors were politicians or their assistants, who came across as trying to capitalize politically rather than offering any clear direction, support, or even emotional investment. No one even mentioned fundraising for victims and families of the attack. All but one speaker was white, all but one was male, all appeared to be over 50.

    My partner and I spent the day torn up about this, tearful, hurting, afraid. To see my local Gay Industrial Complex ™ capitalizing on this was just sickening. We felt slimed. We felt more alone afterward than we had before we came.

    Also: going back to work is so hard today. I didn’t sleep much the last 2 nights.

  59. I love you all so much. It means the world to me to know that I am not alone, that I will always have a home here at Autostraddle. This was the first queer space, online or in person, that I discovered when I realized I was gay and this will always be the first place I turn to when I need to feel safe, to feel ok. Please take care of yourselves. So much love to you all.

  60. No one in my family or any straight people have gotten in touch with me, and that cuts deep. Total silence in my inbox or at my workplace – a school, nonetheless – like this is another day.
    I remember how a few years ago as a teenager I used to be carelessly visible with my girlfriend, homophobic hecklers like water off a duck’s back because we were in love, too young and optimistic to not to be confident that an era without fear would be coming soon. That seems so far away.

  61. Thank you for this thread. I’m thousands of miles away from Orlando, but I can’t seem to stop thinking about how this could have happened in my home city. I was horrified initially, but now my heart just feels despondent and heavy. The straight folks in my life are well meaning and are trying to “help” by claiming that the knowledge that Pulse is an LGBT nightclub is purely coincidental but I know they are trying to distance themselves from the fact that this was a hate crime. One thing that is certain is that we will come through this with resilience and love. If you’re feeling like you have no queer friends or chosen family to talk with about this, we’re here for you, and I promise we love you.

  62. I feel like this whole thing has just made me so much more scared. I feel like I’m having flashbacks to just after I came out.

    I’m usually good at holding my partner’s hand, being out and not being awkward or apologetic about it. Even if people yell at us or something, I tell myself that we’ll survive and that I’m experienced overwhelming support from most people in my life and those people are just hateful losers who should be ignored. But Saturday night just brought home how dangerous those people are and reminded me of how many people still hate us. It’s sad and frightening to think about.

    It makes me sad to think of the survivors who were there with their chosen families and have now lost their support network. I hope we as a queer community are ready to support them and that we don’t lose even more people than the killer took from us.

  63. The first headline I saw, I knew it hurt like all get out. The more I read, the more the day went on, I felt heavy and tired and scared and sick like so many people on here, and I gave my cat many kisses and hugs. Today at work has been difficult. Trying to come to terms with everything I’m feeling while fielding questions and ignorant commentary from people all day has made it ten times worse. There are no vigils here where I am, and the community here is very small. It has been difficult at work to be two breaths away from crying at any given moment knowing that people will look at me and ask a million questions. I am out and outspoken, and people will say the most awful things in front of me or to me. I want to go home and light my candle and eat a cookie.

    I am glad this is here. I am glad you all can understand.

  64. This has just been a bad, hard weekend. I’ll probably go to a vigil tonight, and I’m planning on spending time with one or both of my siblings who are both queer. It hurts but so much but it just doesn’t seem real, that this is a real thing that could happen in our country today.

    But honestly, the thing that’s hitting me harder is the accident that happened in the state park I used to run in and the current body recovery efforts that are underway; one of the bodies has been recovered and I had several friends who were involved in that effort (and I worry about how they’re coping because body recoveries are always hard, but this is a body recovery for a child which is especially hard) and had I still been working there I would have likely gotten the call as well to come in for the rescue/recovery, and I feel weird and guilty that I’m relieved that I wasn’t in position to get that call.

  65. I’m just so downhearted, and then we have to look ahead to another six months of listening to Donald fucking Trump open his ugly mouth. Ugh. I just cannot today.

  66. It’s so frustrating to me to see people trying to take this conversation and turn it into an attack on Muslims or to try and ignore that it was a gay bar and that it was Latinx night. It keeps happening and I keep getting angry, and I basically can’t get anything done because it keeps happening.

    It’s so scary to realize that could have been me or could have been someone I loved.

  67. I love that this thread is here. Yesterday afternoon I got on the internet and was horrified of what I was reading. I was visiting my family and I shared the news with my mom. Both the Orlando shooting and the man arrested in LA. Her response was basically “and???”. The complete dismissal of something that shook me to my core and has me thinking about my own safety in the extremely conservative area I live was like throwing salt in a wound. It made me feel so insignificant and small so you guys making this thread is amazing and makes me feel so much better about feeling the feelings I’ve have been since yesterday.

    • I’m so sorry. I haven’t spoken with anyone about this shooting except very accepting online spots, and this is why. I couldn’t take this from a loved one either. <3 <3 <3

  68. Thank you for this. I was trying to focus on work all day today and stay off un-work related sites and social media, but now, in my last half hour at my desk, I see this and am somehow relieved to see how deeply its affected so many others. I am sad, I am scared, I am so so angry and I can’t deal with the commentary I’m hearing. I didn’t expect to be this affected by it, honestly. My work means I’m constantly hearing about structural inequalities and violence and I have to be able to be empathetic but also a bit distanced and analytical… I’m not managing that this time.
    A friend reached out on FB today, and it made me cry but made me feel so much better. Thank you for the community here, and reach out to your friends and aquaintances today folx, even if you don’t know what to say.

  69. Thank you for this thread. I’m devastated. I keep hearing more stories of victims, of couples where only one partner survived, and feel this gaping hole in my chest. I can’t begin to picture that kind of loss.

    I kissed my partner goodbye this morning as she went off to work, and the rainbow pin that has lived on her bag for years caught my eye. I whispered “Stay safe” and we both started crying again.

    It’s so much to carry. Unimaginable horror. I’m trying to focus on the stories of the victims, I want to see their faces and hear the voices of survivors and loved ones. Every time I see a new face it sends me reeling again. All such beautiful souls.

    Thank you again for the space here. Sending love to our inextinguishable family.

  70. Two days ago, I spent all afternoon hanging out with another of my trans friends and sharing our favorite music/bands back and forth. I feel like tonight I’m going to revisit that music list and try to let the voices of LGBTQ+ musicians soothe me.

    Is there music other people have put on repeat today, to help yourself mourn or heal or find a little joy? Are there videos or poems that resonate with you, galvanize you, comfort you? I’d love it if folks could share some recommendations. I want to have the sounds of community around me tonight.

    I’ll probably be starting with all my Mal Blum and B Steady albums, plus PWR BTTM’s tiny desk concert: https://youtu.be/ji-EdRtL9qU

    • Idk I know she’s not queer but Tori Amos’ song “1000 Oceans” & “Carry” popped into my head last night. They’re both about loss and death, if that’s smthg you needed

      ♡

    • Celia Cruz is helping me, but I worry some people might find the 2 two songs offensive even if they fit.

      Yo Viviré is an adaptation of I Will Survive but it’s not about a person recovering from a toxic romantic relationship. Celia’s adaptation is about her music, the music of her people surviving. About her surviving in the music and her azúcar (sugar)

      I adapted the last line of the song:
      “Yo viviré, yo viviré, yo viviré y sobreviviré”

      into

      “Juntos nosotrxs viviremos, nosotrxs viviremos y sobreviviremos” yesterday and it basically means Together we will live, we will live and survive.

      Also in the Yo Viviré it’s about mourning friends lost, Celia Cruz is Cuban and she fled Castro’s regime, and them being found in the music. A part of them surviving in the music too.

      It’s not a finger in the eye of the dead, but a proclamation we live in each other and survive in on another no matter what happens.

      [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRID6bN71dY&w=420&h=315%5D

      And then there’s La Vida es un Carnaval
      but I really think that one might be upsetting because it proclaims not all of life is ‘bad’ but uh desigual is unequal and life is not equal.
      Where I take inspiration in the song is “Que la vida es una hermosura, hay que vivirla” or roughly “Life is beautiful, it needs to be lived” and I take it as live for those who cannot.
      Dance and sing don’t only grieve for the lost ones.
      It fits to me because we get killed for being ourselves but that isn’t going to stop us from being and the best revenge is existing and existing with volume.

      [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nBFWzpWXuM&w=420&h=315%5D

      *TW*
      I take inspiration in this one mostly because my sibling, I refuse to name him brother, tried to (sorry if this is upsetting but TW last chance)
      –
      –
      –
      –
      –
      strangle me to death because I talked back to him and years after this when we were no longer a part of the same household, but in the same place and I try to speak he would shout at me, “Shut the fuck up”. It’s gotten better, he stil doesn’t see me as a person but now at least he doesn’t say anything to me if we happen to be in the same place.
      So now that have started singing again and picked it up as spiritual practice as well the line “Es más bello vivir cantando” resonates very strongly for me because I’m supposed to be dead. Silenced at the hands of a teenage boy, but instead I live and sing and mourn for those who were silenced.

    • Tegan and Sara is a bit of an obvious gay-ass-music choice, but I’ve been listening to Hang On To The Night on near repeat since Sunday morning.

  71. I am really thankful for this space! I am very desensitized to events like this, but this one is really scary and is affecting me. It could have been anywhere and it could have been people I knew. Our community is small.
    I hope that everyone has someone to lean on and space for your feelings.
    I’m glad that some friends and I had already planned to have a soup night tonight. I need to put my energy into making tomato soup for them. I need to put my energy into being around my small lovely feminist circle here. <3

  72. I the Autostraddle community so much. If you are reading this, I want you to know that I love and support you. Autostraddle helped me come out to myself as Bisexual over the past year. I’m feeling a lot of emotions right now. I just read about Kimberly “KJ” Morris…

  73. I had no power yesterday, and did not hear about Orlando until I jumped on Facebook after breakfast this morning. So many feelings, joy for the future lost for so many in ways large and small. My minor senses of the kiss on the corner (yesterday’s kiss on the corner, queer + interfaith + interracial) just got a bit more political and a touch less “glad to see you, darling” which seems so unimportant in the scale of things but I feel like I’ve worked so hard for that sense of safety in our joy and don’t want to lose an ounce of it. And now there’s more reason for fear of safety in queer communities and empathy. And, of course, the grief felt by far, far too many families with dead and injured people. All of whom should be celebrating life’s pleasures and milestones with their beloved partners, brothers, sons, sisters, daughters, parents, and children. I can’t even comment on Facebook. Can’t… string words together.

  74. I think, miraculously, until now I have lived without being afraid.
    Today is the first time I thought that maybe being straight would have been better. I feel so guilty for thinking that, but it’s so damn unfair.
    I’m scared and I don’t want to be and I’m so angry at the world.
    I’m so grateful for the love and compassion this community has, fills spaces with, virtual and real. I feel like there are millions of people holding my hand – we have to help each other be brave.

    • Same. Same. I’ve never been afraid, I never even went through angst when I realized I wasn’t straight– but now im afraid.

  75. I’m glad you opened up this thread. Work has been weird today. I had a co-worker who complained about a bad trip to Whataburger for most of the day, and I was just thinking, “Is that really the most upsetting thing happening in your life right now?” All my interactions seem to be magnifying how alienating it is to live as a lesbian woman in a hetero world. This is just a news headline to so many other people, something they may have glanced at in Facebooks trending topics.

    And as hurt as I feel by this, I can’t imagine how it must feel for LGBT PoC.

    It might be beneficial to stay away from the news right now, but I keep getting pulled back in. I feel like I need to read as much as I can about this in order to understand it better, but I really don’t think it’s been helping.

  76. It was so terrible waking up on Sunday morning to learn the news. I had gone out on Saturday night to a gay pride party in DC. When I was in the theatre for the event, I turned to my girlfriend and said, “What if someone came in here right now with a gun? We would all be dead.” Then I woke up to find out that this premonition I had had come true, only in Miami. I am so devastated and scared.

    I know that we are supposed to be brave when things like this happen. Keep going out, keep fighting for our rights. But I am so scared. And so sad. Straight people at work don’t even seem fazed by this at all. Meanwhile I can hardly speak and have been crying throughout the day.

    Sending my prayers to all the victims and our whole community and especially QPOC. I love you all.

  77. Thank you for this. I’m so grateful for the Autostraddle community.

    When events like this I usually stay to myself and cry in my room. This time I allowed to cry in front of my mom who gave me the biggest hug. We didn’t say anything to each other but I have a feeling she knows that it could’ve easily been me.

    It really breaks my heart to read the names of the victims. I just..I don’t know, but I’m virtually showering all of you with lots n lots of love. <3

  78. Ever since I heard the news Ive felt a combination of fear and sadness that’s left me sick to my stomach. I went in to work expecting everyone to be talking about it and no one was. meanwhile I keep fighting the urge to cry every time it hits me again how horrific this attack against our community was. I’m not involved in my local queer community but I’ll be attending a vigil tomorrow. This thread has helped me realize how much I need to be around and communicate with people who really get it.

  79. sad, sad, sad. not numb, not scared, just really sad.

    my mom called me yesterday morning to gossip about family and then texted me today to say oh shit I didn’t realize I’m so sorry and I was like no it’s okay it was good to not just cry and instead be like auntie what is the matter with you.

    guns are the worst. people that murder people are the worst.

    love to yall.

  80. Can straight people just get their shit together and stop killing us already?
    I don’t want to have to live in constant fear, but if I don’t want to die, I have to embrace the fear.

  81. Also here to say… Done with straight folks telling me they feel our pain… Nope. You really don’t. *smh*

    • Some parts of the Toast open thread were making me angrily twitch today. What am I supposed to say if a straight white says ‘I feel you’??!

      • It was weird b/c there were a lot of people who didn’t identify themselves as either queer or straight and I just couldn’t keep reading.

  82. I hate that there is never any time to mourn

    The backlash of racism and hatred and blaming is so immediate, before there is any processing we have to defend against Islamophobia and people intent on erasing the LGBTQ aspect of this and people more willing to pin it on mental illness instead of guns and hatred

    I remember talking about Columbine on the playground in elementary school, thinking that’s so close to my cousins in Colorado Springs

    Virginia Tech, three hours away from my hometown in my homestate, all the Hokies flags alums flew on my street; schools here still fly flags half staff on the anniversary. The moments of silence we had every morning after it happened.

    My adult neighbor went to Sandy Hook elementary and her brother was a first responder there. A restaurant owner in our town responded to the gun control talk that happened in the wake of that massacre by starting “open carry wednesdays”. The state of Virginia responded by loosening already lax gun controls.

    The Aurora movie theater that same year. People tried to blame it all, Sandy Hook, Aurora, on the largely non-violent, often victimized mentally ill. I’d just gotten out of a psych ward. I learned about Sandy Hook during lunch in an outpatient psychiatric hospital day program.

    Learned about the community college in Oregon in the break room at work when I lived in Bend and heard my coworkers equate Obama to Hitler because of his opposition to the NRA

    Every American can measure their life with Where You When’s, with mass shootings

    There are too many

    This one hurt more than the others and I wasn’t really expecting that. There are too many. I wasn’t expecting to feel anything more than exhaustion.

    But we all just came off a mountain where it was as close to queer utopia as we can get and then this, and during Pride, and it’s too much it’s too much it’s too much

    • I’m so sick of ppl trying to blame us mentally ill ppl for shit like this. I’m so sick of ppl not opening their eyes and understanding and taking responsibility, but instead being far too comfortable with placing blame on others– on those they don’t like, usually.

  83. This thread is everything.

    I hail from and currently live on St. Maarten, having just relocated from The Netherlands. My father called me to tell me what had happened and that in itself was touching, because my dad and I have a great relationship but it’s sometimes still awkward to talk about the LGBT community with him. But he understood how sad it was, and truthfully, this touches people miles away from the tragedy. My friend from my days at uni in Miami is safe, but another woman who I only met once and spent a short time with is gone, and my other close university friend (who is straight) is left devastated. The allies in my life have been nothing short of amazing. Our local LGBT organisation is holding a small vigil and discussion evening tomorrow to allow people room to talk about how this makes them feel, and other LGBT organisations from other Caribbean islands are doing the same. We’ve all been in what we consider safe spaces for ourselves and know that sometimes irrational fear that something bad may happen, but the key here is to know that we are not alone, even in our small countries, and we must keep fighting. With you all in spirit and mind.

  84. I wasn’t expecting these emotions and it’s like two different fears

    The fears related to our reality as Americans that no place is safe from a mass shooting, that nothing is sacred

    (practicing lock down after lock down in fourth grade, sitting in the middle school parking lot and waiting for busses to take us home safe when a fake bomb threat was called into my high school)

    (“did you know they designed the library and auditorium and lunch room with multiple exits because of Columbine?”)

    And the fears related to being LGBTQ in a country where it’s still not safe for us

    Overlapped yesterday, and magnified eachother, and it was / is a punch in the gut

  85. My father had the nerve to tell me that it wasn’t a hate crime towards my community, that it wasn’t homophobia, that surely he could’ve chosen a movie theater instead, that he just wanted to shoot as many people as possible –

    And I’m just so, so tired.

    Sending all my love to everyone here.

    • I’m sorry you had this experience with your father. Even if this savage act was intended mainly to kill many Americans to placate foreign extremists,that he didn’t just choice a movie theater, that he did choice a gay club as his target – can’t be a coincidence. It can’t be understand that certain people singled out. Anyone could be a victim of this kind of crime it’s true, but some of us truly are more likely to be targets than others because of what we are and if your in at least one such category…it hits much deeper.

      It’s been hard to no what else to say, but I felt the need to say something. Even if I’m not in group that’s been part of a persecuted culture, I am in too others (Jewish and disabled). Yet even that doesn’t mean you know what to say when your only connection to the community as a few friends and family members.

      Stay together and be strong y’all.

  86. It hurts knowing that so many people are grieving and hurting right now. The same people who make A Camp feel like the safest space I’ve ever been in. Collectively we create that safe space. Knowing that many of us don’t feel safe right now is so painful.

  87. I reblogged smthg for queer ppl only and some fucktruck reblogged with “everyone deserves this; this division us what causes blah blah blah” & I’m so fucking angry im SO FUCKING ANGRY

    • exactly!! this!! I just CANNOT cope right now with people complaining about division and telling me that me wanting a space to voice my anger was “problematic” and that I should not shut off the conversation bc it wasn’t my right to “decide what this is about” oh my fucking God I cannot believe this. They just crawl out of their holes and give me their “opinions” that I did not call for and I am so angry and helpless

  88. Thank you for this space; I’m not ready for most of the Internet yet and I’m so grateful for this corner.

    I’ve read through everyone’s comments and if it weren’t a tremendous breach of Internet etiquette, I’d reply to every last one of them just to say that I love you, and I see you, and I’m holding you in my heart with the rest of our family.

    • I’m just liking every comment instead. But ver tempted to comment to everyone anyway. <3

  89. To echo everyone above me, thank you for providing this safe space to grieve and heal with our chosen family.

    I’m from Orlando and having a difficult time processing. My city is now just a name on a too-long list, forever to be associated with terror and a massacre. Any illusion of safety for our queer community, and most especially for our queer Latinx community, is gone and my heart is heavy.

    I’ve grieved before, for acts of terror all around the world. I’ve cried before for hate crimes. But this is different. I wasn’t expecting it. I didn’t know how different it would be, and part of me feels guilty for that, because people are people and shouldn’t I grieve them all the same?

    But this is my community. These are my lgbt brothers and sisters. These are my people and it hurts.

    I’m only semi-out and have no queer family to be with in person at this time. Thank you all for sharing your experiences. You’ve made me feel less alone and I’m more grateful than I can express for that. <3

  90. The first thing I saw when I got on FB yesterday morning was that an acquaintance I did theater with who’d been in the hospital for several days had passed away during the night. I only met her about a year ago and didn’t know her very well, but she was one of those people who it was always a joy to be around. Then a few hours later, I saw the news about Orlando. My feed has been almost entirely posts about one of those things for the past day and I’m basically avoiding going on FB at the moment because I just don’t think I can deal with thinking about either of them. (Probably not very healthy in terms of coping and all that, but oh well.) So many of my queer FB friends/real life acquaintances have been posting about Orlando and I feel like I need to make some kind of post, but I’m also really sad about the passing of this person that I knew and I don’t know how to articulate both of those feelings, plus it feels disrespectful in some way to combine them, even though for me personally hearing about Orlando would have been definitely less sucky if I hadn’t already gotten that news. Reading other people’s comments has also made me realize that I really wish my queer friends were around me right now – I wish I could talk this over with people but all of the friends I’d want to discuss it with are scattered across the country. I’m sort of dreading if one of my parents tries to actually talk about it with me because they do pretty well with the whole gay thing but sometimes don’t get how the little things can matter (the other day discussing weddings my mom said “the bride and the groom” and when I corrected her to “or two brides! or two grooms!” she just said “you know what I meant” rather than acknowledging that like, maybe her queer daughter would like to talk about weddings in a less heteronormative way). I’m getting off topic, but basically thanks for giving me the space to type out these thoughts.

  91. i’m scared and anxious and i barely got out of bed today and right now i’m crying and shaking on the floor of the bathroom at work.
    one of the students i’m tutoring is a frat bro from the midwest and he showed up in an NRA hoodie and he isn’t even wearing it ironically he called it badass and i want to vomit and i also want to throw him into the river and i also want a hug and i want to feel like i’m not alone

    i’m sorry i’m just a total mess right now

  92. The shooting hit very close to home. I live here in Orlando and frequently go downtown. I am so heartbroken for my city and for my LGBT community. Yesterday I came out to my very conservative/ religious parents and it was the hardest thing that I have ever had to do. The tragedy pushed me over the edge to coming out. I didn’t want to be an imposter anymore. Prayers and thoughts and so much love to everyone hurting right now.

    -Chelsea

    • You are very brave to have come out to your parents. I can only hope that they will see you for the whole, beautiful woman you are.

    • That’s really brave. I hope it goes well, if not now then at some point in the future. I’m so sorry for your community, and hopeful that maybe actions like yours can start to change the world.

  93. Thank you, thank you, thank you for this thread <3 I've spent yesterday and today waffling between forced cheer and immense sadness and anger. My girlfriend and I have been comforting each other back and forth via text, but I feel like I can't stop talking about this, can't stop processing it over and over again. I wish I was able to make it to the Stonewall vigil tonight; Pride next weekend will just have to do. Sending everyone all the love and hugs and healing possible right now.

  94. This event has made me feel angry. Angry for queer, people of color who are just trying to live in a society that is based on dehumanizing them. This is not the largest mass shooting in U.S. history. During the Wounded Knee Massacre our government shot and killed 300 Native people. Our government and this country is founded on the destruction of people of color. Why does our government express shock about violence against people of color when that is what they promote through policing, prisons, etc. I am angry that someone did this, but I am angry at our government for not acknowledging the fact that this violence is rooted in the start of this country. We excuse violence by white people as “self defense” while police officers kill black youth in the streets. And then we are surprised when killings like this continue to happen? The hypocrisy makes me livid.

    • Thank you for this comment and for reminding us about Wounded Knee. I hope I never forget again.

    • This is exactly what I thought of, when they were talking about largest mass shootings. I thought, America was founded when guns were being used to take land from indigenous people. I feel like because guns have been used so often against people of color, and gun control would mean less gun violence against people of color, that gun control opinions are a litmus test for racism.

      I don’t think gun control will do it all, there is a lot of hatred promoted in this country, but it would help.

  95. I’ve been feeling so down today, I can’t digest what happened in Orlando and I can’t stop picturing myself in that club because I have been going to my local gay clubs since I came out – it’s where I felt safe. Straight people don’t get this. I felt safe and free on that place where they played all the music that’s catalogued as a “guilty pleasure” everywhere else, seeing familiar faces every weekend and feeling like I belonged every weekend. As much as I try I can’t fathom feeling like those walls aren’t safe anymore. If I can’t process this I don’t know how people from Orlando can. It is a tragedy of a magnitude that I honestly FAIL to see what’s the issue with media and people who KEEP insisting in the we are all the same in regards of covering this issue as a non LGBT issue. We are not the same. The first proof of this is that idk about you but in my Facebook feed not a solitary fuck was given about this by straight people, and I don’t have randoms on Facebook, I have friends. I thank all the gays I have raging and crying and venting about this because without them I would have felt more alone. I don’t think any of my friends think of gay people as second class citizens, but maybe unconsciously they do, or maybe they just see us as other, and as such, they don’t feel as close to this issue as they did with Paris’ terrorist attacks. For some reason this was either a crazy with a gun or a member of the Daesh but the fact the target was a packed gay club during Pride month is too uncomfortable to recognize. Is this my fault for thinking the people close to me were better? Did I ask for too much?

    Fuck this, fuck everyone. We only have each other and we have to fight because no one will do that for us.

  96. This past weekend I had the pleasure of attending the Philly Trans Health Conference. At the conference a mother came up to our table, desperate for resources and information on policies for her trans daughter. They live in NC and her daughter has been so traumatized by her experiences that she no longer leaves the house. She was too terrified to even attend the conference. We gave her what information we had and pointed her in the direction of people with knowledge more tailored to her needs. I felt sad at the situation, but hopeful, glad that this young woman had such a wonderful parent in her corner.
    We found out about the Orlando shooting on the drive home the next day.
    I keep thinking about that, about that kid whose mother wanted so much to help her, about what she must be thinking and feeling as she watched this horror unfold on TV. What are we supposed to say to our youth in the face of something like this? How are we supposed to convince them that it is okay to engage with the world as they are when we aren’t even safe in our own spaces?
    We got home in time for our city’s vigil. It was hard not to notice uniformed police officers standing in the periphery. About halfway through it a man walked up from behind to stand beside me, and I found myself looking him over, checking to see if it looked like a gun could be hiding in his bag. I would be lying if I said I haven’t wondered if I should go to pride this year. This has affected me so profoundly I just don’t understand the deafening silence from my straight friends and allies. My parents haven’t contacted me. The news keeps sweeping the homophobia under the rug. It’s enough to make me think I’m going crazy. So, thank you for starting this post. I’ve been a bit of a wreck, and it’s nice to feel solidarity with members of the community and hear everyone else’s thoughts. I guess we just have to try and hold each other up and keep moving forward.

  97. I have been upset all day. I cant focus. I have noticed my classmates said nothing to me today about this – in the past they have questioned my sexuality and have told me things like “its not normal”…well I say to anyone who has ever said to me – is it normal to shoot and kill people? What is more normal? Living in hate or love?

  98. Thank you for providing this space.

    I live in Kissimmee, which is in the greater Orlando area. Throughout my life, I have felt sorrow during other mass shootings and terrorist attacks, but I’m ashamed to say I took comfort in the knowledge that they happened so far away. The sorrow is deeper now and there is no comfort. I don’t know any of the victims personally, but I know at least one person who lost friends yesterday. And as a queer trans woman who is also Puerto Rican (though with white passing privilege), sharing identities with those lives lost makes this personal. This hurts and I’m terrified about my future.

    I feel guilty about writing all these feelings instead of being out there and supporting my community at a vigil or rally. But fear is keeping me here in my room today. Only my room feels safe, away from indifferent coworkers, hateful relatives and bigots that would do me harm.

  99. I feel really pulled between wanting to share over and over that this is hate crime against our community and is born of the same bigoted ideology of the far right and to try to make people listen to me, but when I see the rainbow flag being used with words like ‘Orlando Strong’ I get a sick feeling. It is a straight washing of the whole thing, all of a sudden our lives matter? It makes me even madder and I want to keep our grief among us.

    It is so easy for people to claim that they are in solidarity in this kind of tragedy, when the majority could care less on a daily basis, and it becomes more about co-opting grief to make their lives seem more important. And then my mind sinks deeper and I think ‘do people actually enjoy it when these things happen, so they can feel like they are surviving and their lives matter?’ I find that the US has created an entire sick melodrama out of these shootings that terrifies me because it seems divorced from the reality of what has happened and is also insulting to the families of victims. So while I want people to recognize that this was a hate crime, to acknowledge where it stems from, they don’t get to all of a sudden march alongside us when they were never there before.

  100. I moved to Orlando for college and lived there for 7 years (2000-2007). Orlando is where I found myself and my community. Orlando is why drag is such a huge part of my life. Clubs like Pulse, Southern Nights and Parliament House were sanctuaries for me and my friends.

    We found out today that we lost Drew, one of our classmates. The one whose mom was on tv. The one who will be buried next to his partner Juan who was also killed at Pulse. I found out I have friends who were actually there that night and managed to escape. I had a big group FB chat with all my college friends, many of whom are still in Orlando. Today has been harder than yesterday. I’m barely keeping it together at work.

    Ten years ago it would have been me and all my friends at Pulse on a Saturday night, drinking, dancing, watching a drag show. The biggest concern we would’ve had was worrying about whether or not our cars would get towed, or how bad our hangovers would be the next day.

    I’m going to the vigil in LA tonight and then I don’t know what to do with myself. We have lost 50 of our queer brothers and sisters, LGBTQ POCs who were just living their lives. My heart hurts. I love my Autostraddle family all the time but especially right now.

  101. This hits way too close to home and comes at a time in my life when I was finally comfortable saying I’m a lesbian or queer without flinching. I can’t stop thinking about the beautiful souls who were murdered and I can’t stop crying. I have a constant feeling like I am going to throw up. This could be any of us. We are simply existing. There is a neoconservative cultural war trying to eradicate all of us. I can’t fathom the hate. I am sad and confused. I don’t know what to do or how to act. And I missed the only vigil in my area. I was in Ann Arbor at the time but I didn’t know it was going on and I needed to be a part of that.

  102. I was having a really hard time last night after reading the news all day and tried to watch a nice queer movie to calm down and actually found a really soothing one on Netflix if anyone is interested. “Of Girls and Horses” is a German movie by Monika Treut (hashtag #lesbianwomeninfilm) and it is really very sweet–it’s the kind of movie to watch if you’re just trying to get calm. Nothing loud or aggressive happens, there’s absolutely no men in the whole movie, there’s no technology or phones–it’s just an hour and a half of pretty shots of horses and the german countryside and women loving women. It almost feels like a dream sequence. Granted, if you don’t like horses very much you might get bored, but it was really calming and a good way to unwind after a day of feeling very wound tight.

  103. I had the day off from work today, which helped immensely in terms of processing my feelings. I guess the hardest part is the fact that being in the closet means my parents don’t understand why this makes me so upset or why my friends and I are nervous about the Pride parade we are going to this weekend. Regardless, its nice to have Autostraddle here. I can spend the day browsing fluffy gay stuff to make myself feel better.

  104. I take extra time off to decompress from camp, I’ve never been more grateful to not have to hear my white middle class conservative co-workers opinions for the rest of this week. I would not have handled them gracefully about this.

  105. Thank you for this, all. Your words and grief and rage and love are so important and so valid, and you’ve eased some of the emptiness this weekend has made me feel. Today there was a group of hate preachers with a megaphone yelling about how all queers go to hell on my city’s main street, and I had to walk past them just to buy my groceries. The audacity of doing something like that after this weekend – I almost cried right there. The world feels dark and unsafe today, and I’m just a small scared queer who’s far from home.

    • I’m so sorry. I feel you. I live less than an hour away from Westboro Baptist Church, who was celebrating today. It’s a scary time.

  106. And tonight, reports that Mateen had been at the club repeatedly over a long period of time, and I cannot with the smug reactions to that piece of information. So self-satisfied. “Called it!” Well good for you, detective, for solving this massacre. If only we’d come to you first. Now I suppose we get to wrap this up with a pretty little bow and put it in the “self-hatred” box so we can keep pretending away the violence and hatred the LGBT community lives with every fucking day.

    • I’m sure many if not most homophobic murderers are acting out of internalized homophobia… and so what?
      It doesn’t change that homophobia is causing this. It doesn’t change that the straights are killing us, they’re just using someone else’s disposable body to pull the trigger. It doesn’t make the murders less tragic or political.

      • I actually was (very) surprised to discover that NPR did a report where they were cautioning against the narrative that most hate crimes against us are done by people with same-sex attractions. In fact, the “expert” they interviewed said what little research there is on this subject more supports the opposite conclusions.

        I think most of the NPR coverage has been … shall we say…subpar… but this particular interview does a number of things I think are both interesting and important to point out about the BS in how this issue has been analyzed.

        Here’s an excerpt:

        INTERVIEWER: “I think a lot of people may have heard this idea that the most anti-gay people are themselves repressed homosexuals. Are you saying that’s got no founding in science?”

        INTERVIEWEE: “I’m saying that that has happened, but, yeah, we don’t have support to say that that’s typically the case. And, in fact, we have much more evidence for saying that it’s not.”

        Here’s a link to the entire transcript:

        http://www.npr.org/2016/06/15/482206179/psychologist-urges-caution-in-speculation-about-orlando-gunmans-sexuality

        I was really helped by seeing this article, because the “it was coming from inside the house” reactions have been sending me into my most inflamed and intemperate places. The ability to give people this article provided me with a calm way to debunk it without spraining my “don’t lose your cool” muscles.

  107. Thank you for being here.
    Thank you all for sharing your thoughts and emotions.
    I am not good at putting my emotions into words but reading yours made me feel understood and included.
    Thank you!

  108. Not much to say, except love and comfort to everyone. I’m really grateful to have made so many new queer friendships at a-camp. Stay safe everyone. <3

  109. I had so much trouble concentrating at work today. Science doesn’t seem important anymore. I haven’t felt like this since the Boston Marathon attack (I was raised in MA).

    I think I’m going to channel my rage into some very angry letters to my gun-loving, queer-hating, probably slightly racist Congressperson.

  110. I don’t know how to process this. My mental health has been shaky at best lately. I just feel so tired and empty. I want to do something to help, but I also feel helpless and afraid. And I feel guilty, because this happened a half country away from me, and the last thing I want to do is co-opt someone else’s pain and grief.

    But I guess that’s the thing – this happened in Orlando, to 49 beautiful souls and their loved ones – but the same hate that caused this man’s actions spans continents. This could have happened to people celebrating Pride in LA if police hadn’t stopped a man with a car full of guns. It could have happened to any of us anywhere. It shouldn’t have happened to anyone.

    How do we stop this? When does it end?

  111. Thank you for this article!

    Yesterday I was mad, now I’m just sad and tired. Cried maybe three times today (hearing Cyndi’s True Colours on the radio didn’t help things!) and I just need a hug.

    It’s a time when I wish my girlfriend didn’t live so far away. I want to just be curled up around her, cry and hold her until I can’t anymore. Hopefully a skype date tonight will help a little. Really hope I won’t lose it on there, really hate doing that with her.

    Hope everyone is slowly healing, or will start to soon. Again, thank you for this article and I’m sorry we all have to go through this.

  112. First I was so, so angry, and then I was sad, and now I’m just wandering around numb and unable to reach back into a space where I feel real.

    In more personal news, I came out to my parents as demigirl today (yep, I’m one of the queerlings). I think something about the reminder of our mortality pushed me to try to live as myself for as long as possible. In retrospect, it was a bad idea. Now I’m grieving while trying to figure out how to get them to understand that my birth name makes me uncomfortable and that could they please, please put the person over the name, because being called the wrong name triggered dysphoria earlier and this whole week has just been full of crap.

    Thank god I have good articles about what is going on, and my friends are supportive and beautiful.

  113. I’ve been feeling so numb. Overwhelmed with grief. Been trying very hard not to cry at work but I lost it a few times. Listening to the news coverage doesn’t help. And then when they started releasing the victims names. *sigh*

    My best friend reached out via g-chat. Asked me how I was. I told her I was really fucking sad and in the verge of tears. She then said she wasn’t sure if she should say anything because she didn’t want to trigger anything. She thought I was sad about this confusing girl I’m currently seeing/not seeing. I corrected her and told her I was referring to what happened in Orlando. Her response was, “oh, yeah…sorry. that sucks” – Like, a total brush off. She kept on chatting about her life and her problems and I just couldn’t. I told her that wasn’t in a chatty mood and told her to have a good rest of her day. She’s straight and sometimes she just doesn’t get it.

    This is why we need queer spaces, queer voices, queer friends. Thank you for this space.

  114. I can’t say much now. I don’t want to feel like I have to say anything either. I don’t know. I’m feeling very bad.

  115. I just can’t really understand that this is the world that we live in, I can’t accept it and I feel so powerless and overwhelmed with sadness and anger. Like many commenters here I also was surprised by how hard this hit me — I’m geographically far away in Europe, white and cis. But fuck, this was a hate crime against a community we’re all part of regardless of physical location. I don’t think any of my straight friends understand this, and I don’t really know how to feel about rainbow-filtered selfies right now. I’m so grateful of this thread and I send all my love for all you wonderful humans.

  116. Thank for this safe space Heather.I feel like I’ve been wanting to explode all day. I was completely useless at work and couldn’t concentrate thinking about this. It didn’t help matters that my coworkers were completely unfazed and didn’t mention the incident at all. I felt so alone because I have no one to talk to about how upset and scared I feel. I know we have to stay strong as a community but I can’t help feeling hesitant to even attend pride this year.

  118. I had to work both yesterday and today. It’s not as bad as it could be, I work with a couple really close friends. The worst parts were too many people asking how I am, one of my coworkers doing some bizarre derailing shit when I had a little vent, and how wrong it felt that everyone else was going about as normal. I did get to see my best friend, that helped. She didn’t ask how I was, she let me rant randomly and disconnectedly, and she gave me a long hug. I got a couple hugs. I don’t know if the others were because they knew, or just because of how I looked, but.

    Meanwhile at home, (I live right next to my sister and her family, and my dad is in her basement,) there was no mention of it at all. Today she was almost willing to go to a candlelight vigil with me, but I didn’t have it in me to go anywhere else.

    I just saw a post on tumblr that sums it up so well. It’s so much more painful because there is no one in my immediate area that is grieving like I am.

  119. The airport won’t stop playing stories from the survivors repreating the events over and over again on every single tv near my gate. Thank you for this space, where I can feel sick without outing myself or scaring people who care about me.

    • The same thing happened to me today. In all three airports I was in, it was nonstop news about the massacre. All I could do was cry.

  120. Thank you for this post. I have spent the past two days moving to a new place and the exertion doesn’t leave much time to think, but any time I’ve had some down time to think I just break down. My heart breaks for everyone affected. And I feel so so angry about everything.

    • I just moved this weekend as well; it took me until this morning to fully process what happened. I hope you have a safe space in your new location. I understand how overwhelming dealing with feelings are when the stress of picking up your life is in the forefront of your mind :(

  121. I’am just really grateful for autostraddle at this time and all support on it, It’s been a really terrible few days, being gay and muslim, being raised and living in a Muslim family and country, i can see reactions from both sides and it’s been really shitty so it’s a comfort to find a place here,all i hope for at this point is for the next few days to not be as fucked up, and thanks again for the safe space

  122. I just wanted to say I survived this day. I went to work, and I did the thing. I sat there with my coworkers while everyone joked and existed in their parallel universes where this didn’t happen, and I did not break down, I didn’t cry. I survived. I don’t think I would have without you guys.

  124. I just came out to myself last month, and being in the closet right now is painful. Thank you Autostraddle for starting this thread; I feel less alone. <3

    • This is a scary time to come out to yourself. I promise it’s not always this bad. This is as bad as it gets. And, you’re not alone. *hugs*

    • This is a scary time to come out to yourself. I promise it’s not always this bad. This is as bad as it gets. And, you’re not alone. *hugs*

    • No, not alone. To echo Lolau, this is as bad as it gets, and there are so many wonderful glorious experiences. To speak for myself, even with the lows, I wouldn’t trade this for anything in the world. I get to kiss girls!!!!! I hope you do too (if that’s what you want). Much love to you on your journey.

    • Yes, to all of the above. A couple weeks ago at A-Camp during an Elicia Sanchez rendition of “Like a Prayer” while 300 queers were signing and laughing and dancing with joy, I thought “If this is what queer is, who would ever want to be straight? And miss out on this? No way.” I’m trying to remember that joy today so that I don’t sink in the sadness and anger.

    • Thank you for sharing this. I’m only partially out, and it really sucks right now. *hug*

  125. I want to post something on social media to express all of the complicated feelings that I have about what happened and the ways that people are responding (and not responding) to it. But I can’t put together words that convey all that I wish I could encompass.

  126. I don’t think it really hit me until this morning. It was weird because nearly a year ago now I just moved into a new apartment and I woke up the first morning I was there to a bunch of text messages about how the marriage equality bill passed. I remember I cried tears of joy, ate lunch with my best friend, then went to join the celebrations at Stonewall. This morning, I woke up in my new apartment for the first time to the exact same group of friends texting me, this time about their misery instead of their joy. I had lunch today with my same best friend and after we joined the vigil at Stonewall. The parallels are killing me because instead of crying out of sheer joy I cried for the first time today out of utter, bone-deep sadness. Last year I felt like anything was possible, and now I just feel angry. I just don’t know how to talk about it yet.

  127. I’m so sad and I’m so tired and I’m so scared

    there’s a part of me who feels like I shouldn’t be so scared because it’s not like I practice Islam anymore, not like I walk around in a hijab or whatever. But at the same time it says Islam on the ID card of the Muslim country whose passport bears my Muslim last name and I’ve had people catcall me with “9/11!” on the street and I’ve had white queers ask me if I “realize that this is a party for lesbians” while a white straight friend goes by unasked and I’ve had people tell me to just go back to where I came from

    and yet “where I came from” releases a statement every few weeks about how gay rights are anti-Islam and they keep telling me to “go back to where your parents came from” and “where my parents came from” a couple of prominent LGBT activists was murdered for being “enemies of Islam” and the supposedly secular government does fuck all

    and I’m in a new city in the same country where even the progressive socialist queermos don’t see the problem with holding anti-racist meetings that only have one person of color in them and where it’s hard to make friends because people just kinda snub you if you’re not cool enough and people think Halal food is the work of the devil

    and a friend said that our gun laws are probably the ONLY thing that’s prevented a massacre here, not because people are necessarily more tolerant or whatever, it’s just harder apparently to act on heinous bigotry though that doesn’t stop attacks from happening it’s just smaller

    and there is a gun shop down the road from my house

    and this fellow got his guns legally despite being on a list of terrorists and yet this country does not exactly have a list of white bigots

    and i’m scared of the repercussions and i’m lonely and i feel like i have no right to either but here i am failing to apply for jobs for the xth day running because i’m just so heartsick

    (if you’re in melbourne and especially if you’re poc please say hi)

    • I’m not poc, but i hear you and see you and your thoughts and feelings are valid and you’re so so so loved and im so so so so sorry that you have to feel all these things right now ♡♡♡♡♡

    • hey, hi, hello I don’t have the words to describe how much I feel you and even though I consider myself a practicing Muslim and I wear hijab so the narrative is not entirely the same but your feelings are the closest thing I have found to my own. Tired and scared and lonely and heartsick are just the beginning. I’m so sorry you have to deal with this a new city on your own.

      I’m in Melbourne, I’m poc, so hi. hugs and a shoulder to cry on are on offer, IRL or virtual if you need it.

    • Not in Melbourne, not POC but you were one of my first thoughts after I got the full details.
      @blzkg has been amplifying queer and straight muslim voices that are speaking out against the attack as well as a piece or two on latinxs and others smacking down Islamaphobia right now.

      You’re not alone in the world fighting this.

      But still I’m scared for you and I’m scared for my man who has the same first name as the shooter. Who is latinx but has gotten his identity mistaken before and heard either “As-salam alaikum” at best and slurs or threats at worst.

      All the things you feel are valid and you are in my thoughts.

    • a little belated because I’ve been trying to stay off the internet and not get overwhelmed—I’m in melbourne for the next month, I’m poc, I’ve been feeling hella isolated because it seems like none of my local friends really get why I’m taking this so hard; hmu if you want to chat online or off.

  128. Thank you for this space.

    I found out while at work yesterday. I am in customer service, and every smile hurt. None of my queer co-workers were scheduled to work, which made me feel lonely, but was probably also good because I doubt I’d have been able to keep it together if I had had someone to share my grief with.

    I texted my best friend on the way home and we hadn’t spoken all day but all I had to write was “I don’t want to talk to anyone but you today” and he knew exactly what I meant.

    There was a pretty huge vigil in my town last night but I did not go. Just hearing people talk on the subway on the way home was enough – the callousness, the lack of empathy or care.

    I’m still broken and so scared today and I don’t really know what to do with my feelings. It’s too hard.

  129. I’m not up to going out there. I was supposed to go yesterday to the Hollywood pride. I know nothing happened because they caught him but still. It would be my first Pride and my mom just finally accepted me as a lesbian. So, I’d celebrate until I couldn’t anymore. I even had planned to wear my pink and black tutu. I was gonna take my sister to go with me since I didn’t know anyone else to go with.

    I think I’ll just stay in and celebrate with watching The L Word or Orange Is The New Black <3

    Please, I could use some more queer friends to feel safer <3

    https://www.facebook.com/CrystalLivingDeadDollRamos

  130. I’ve been crying all weekend. I work at a big company, and there’s only three of us out at work. We were all three walking around in such a deep haze, while (almost) everyone else carried on like it was just another shooting. I don’t know if I feel worse that we have so many shootings that this could be “just another” one, or that people are already trying to erase the gay and make this about religion, or that I’m so ostracized from my family because i’m gay that I can’t even call my mom and say how sad and scared and upset I am. So many feelings, and feels so overwhelming. I’m glad for this space and for all of you. So much love.

    • I know. I wanted to call my mom too and have her comfort me. I even tried, but she refuses to acknowledge. I’m glad you’re in this space, though

  131. today i got to spend time with my chosen queer family. i cried so hard, i don’t even know how to accept the love and support they’ve shown me. i’m thankful but still feel horrible somehow.

  132. Just want to say thank you all again. This morning, I feel less hopeless. The crying has stopped. Thanks to you all, I can go to work now and not feel a damn thing until I get home. Just… thanks <3 Hang in there, everybody.

  133. I’ve been at a library conference since Sunday morning, so I first learned about this when the confirmed murdered was only 20. I’ve only been shocked, and have cried, in fits and starts because conference-ing is its own weird mental space, and it feels so discordant and wrong to be expected to network and be professional and smile while at the same time all I really want is a hug from my girlfriend. There was a silent prayer vigil downtown that I saw while I was rushing to a conference event, and I paused for a few moments. The streets were eerily silent, as the police had blocked off traffic, the crowds said nothing, and they circled the city hall building. It was completely silent even hours later with the candles spread out across the stonework on my way back from the conference.

  134. I was alone when I read the first headlines, and I couldn’t cry. I felt like someone hit me in the chest with a sledgehammer, but I couldn’t cry.

    I don’t have a queer family. I’m out to my family and friends, but the folks who are queer and near to my heart are scattered across the continent.

    I spent my day trying to follow through with plans I had made, and while everyone else was downing mojitos and laughing, I smiled along and tried not to take off my sunglasses so nobody would see how close I was to losing my shit completely. I wanted to be on Facebook to see how my community was handling it, and every time I took out my phone I got “don’t be that person on the phone, be here.”

    Normally I’d agree. But yesterday I didn’t care.

    Today during work it was the same – sitting in the work truck trying to catch up with everyone, and my coworker kept making fun of me for being on my phone.

    It is such a relief to be alone, to be able to connect to this without an audience, and to have the space to finally cry.

    • Yes, I hear you on this. I hope you’re finding some solace in finally being able to be alone with your feelings, and also in knowing you have AS with you

    • Feeling very much the same. It’s amazing how many of us are feeling like we need to be physically together and can’t because of circumstances. I sat on my phone during the end of the year meeting at school just scrolling through the news feeds and posts and wishing I could get out of there and stop listening to their stupid agendas and training because who cares! 49 of my family members just died! No one in the room really got it even though they tried to be supportive when I started crying everytime someone talked to me.

  135. Thank you, Autostraddle and everyone here, for creating this space. Going to work today with a bunch of straight people who knew I was sad but couldn’t *get* it was hard. I stumbled through the day, with lots of trips to the bathroom to cry. I keep a bottle of eucalyptus oil with me, and smelling that or rubbing some on my palms helped to calm me down. Love and peace to each and every one of you. Queer family.

  136. Here’s a bit of crabbiness, tbh as a welcome break from unmitigated sadness:

    A straight white cis woman I know decided to show her “support” for the community by putting a picture of herself laughing and kissing her straight white cis husband with one of those rainbow GLAAD frames as her FB picture with the caption “Love wins.”

    YOUR love wins. YOUR love is unchallenged. This is NOT. ABOUT. YOUR. LOVE. It felt like a slap in the face.

  137. Yesterday I think I was in shock. I went about my day, disheartened by yet another tragedy, but also not really feeling it. Today I just feel sad. Disappointed. Defeated. I’m sad about the state of the world, all the hatred and violence and just sheer lack of kindness towards others. I just feel like what is the damn point, ya know? It’s like we fight and fight and struggle for representation, recognition, acceptance, visibility, things kinda/sorta/but not really get better…maybe there are more queer people on tv, gay marriage is legal in the US, maybe a school gets a gender neutral washroom, but then one day we wake up to 50 lgbtq people shot for being who they are. 3 steps forward, a couple thousand back.

    I’ve dedicated my life’s work to LGBTQ rights and right now, I just feel defeated.

  138. words. not my thing. but my heart is ill with grief and fear. yet the ignorance of people, friends and family, is pushing me towards all out rage. without a support system of queer friends or even acquaintances i have no trusted outlet. so here i sit, a tropical storm of emotions, trying to shed a tear for the first time, because i finally feel validated for my many tumultuous emotions.

  139. I feel so much grief. It’s overwhelming. When you’re feeling like this, the best – only – comfort is the solidarity and support of the people around you.

    I’m not out so I don’t have this. Everything I go through, I do it alone. So I’m really grateful for this judgement-free space and a family I don’t know but love all the same.

    • Hugs and love. I’m feeling isolated right now as well and am grateful for an online community even if there isn’t a physical one to mourn with. Know that you’re not alone in this and we’re here with you feeling this pain and grief.

  140. I decided to leave the house and go to trivia and the table next to us named their team “Facebook Gun Control Debate Squad”.

    Fuck no. Get away from this bar. Your name is shitty and you should feel bad and it set me off on a rant (to my coworkers, not to them)

    • I have trivia night tomorrow, and I am so scared that some of the names will be tasteless and awful. I don’t know if I can deal.

  141. I never comment but I really don’t know where else to go or who to turn to right now. It hurts so much, and to hear so many people outright deny that homophobia had anything to do with this, or if they do it’s only to talk about Islamic extremism. It’s the worst coming from my family. My Christian dad thinks, like many seem to, that homophobia ended in the 80s. I can’t out myself to defend how upset I am about it. I hate arguing anyway.
    I wish every day for a Chosen Family, I wish I could just be in the company of someone who understands. Instead I feel like I’m totally alone. I’m out to one straight friend, and I see their eyes glaze over when I bring up this stuff.
    I was starting to feel safe in who I am, now I’m not. It seems like no one gives a damn about lgbtq people unless it furthers their agenda.

  142. I did not expect to be affected by this in the way I have been, I’m so far away really, on the over side of the world, but it has completely shaken me. I’m supposed to be studying for my university exams and I just haven’t been able to do anything. The complete apathy from so many of the straight people in my life has just made the whole thing so heart breaking. I don’t know how long I’m allowed to be this upset when I didn’t know anyone involved, but I can’t imagine ever thinking about this and not crying

  144. Going back to work was weird and hard today. This tragedy has kind of taken over my head and heart and I had to get into this work rhythm that didn’t feel right at all for what I was feeling and needed to feel. My bosses are a lesbian couple, but they had nothing to say about it, and they didn’t even seem to remember it had happened at first when I referenced the tragedy of Sunday. I felt like the only one there feeling the loss in my bones. And every time I forgot about it long enough to get some work done or have a conversation or laugh, I felt so guilty about it. Like I should be too deep in mourning for anything else to intrude, even though that’s not really possible. I feel like anything I feel isn’t good enough or strong enough for what has happened, and nothing I can say won’t sound trivial as soon as it’s spoken. So I hardly say anything about it.

    Anyway, a hard day. I hope tomorrow’s better for everyone.

    • Feeling the same. Hugs. So many hugs. I wish all of us could just get together in the same space to process and mourn and love.

  145. First place I saw the news was on the Guardian (UK) website Sunday morning, when there were no confirmed fatalities. By the time US news picked it up, there were twenty. I watched the live news conference when they upped the number of dead to fifty. There was an audible gasp among the reporters, and that’s about where I lost it for the day.

    Had planned to go into work, but I called in and just said I wasn’t going to make it. Sat and watched things unfold for hours, kind of shocked at how hard it hit me. All I could think was, it’s PRIDE month, some a$$hat shot up family on Pride month.

    Dragged out to lunch with a straight, oblivious friend, dragged out to work on Monday (avoiding most coworker interaction with long practice), still dragging along at oh-dark-thirty. I know it won’t be easier tomorrow. Still can’t talk about it without tearing up.

    I can’t imagine how much worse, how astronomically worse it must be for friends and family and the surviving victims.

    Stomping on my social anxiety and anti-religious sentiment tomorrow, and going to a vigil. I need to physically be part of the community right now, and that’s weird, because I never really needed that, before.

    • I’m finding I too need to physically be with the community right now which is very unusual for me to need. I unfortunately am in a pretty rural area and although it’s very liberal here and there are lots of LGBTQ people living here, there’s no real community that I’ve been able to find. I just want to be with my queer family. When tragedies happen we usually reach for family and I’m finding that mine is all far away.

      • ((hugs)) I hope you were able to connect with someone! It’s hard to be alone and dealing with this, especially around people who don’t quite get it. I’m not sure why I’m surprised at how many of us here feel so disconnected, whether physically or emotionally. Just another reflection of how great things AREN’T despite the progress that’s been made.

        We’re semi-rural, but with a good tourism board and lots of commuters moving in, so we’ve had a community come together over the past few years. It was great to see all the support we have (they were expecting enough people to crowd the church steps; they ended up having to block off the street to accommodate everyone). Still didn’t feel like enough. Now I’m just emotionally exhausted.

  146. I am so full of depression and rage right now I have no idea what to do with myself. I don’t know if it will ever go away. The fact that this is the country I live in right now terrifies me.

    I am currently living with my parents for financial reasons. I’m not out to them. My dad blasts Fox News all day long, so my entire house is filled with the sounds of Islamophobia and why we should have put even MORE guns in Pulse and solved everything like the Wild Fucking West. This is before they decided that doing a retrospective on Ronald Reagan’s involvement in the Cold War was more important. I would be working out a budget and scouting apartments to move into, but I only have the energy to scream all over Twitter and cry, since my Facebook is full of straight people talking about how we “shouldn’t politicize this” or posting prayer requests before going back to supporting anti-LGBTQ legislation and politicians the other 364 days of the year or putting rainbow filters on their profile pictures and moving on with their lives.

    All I want is to see people coming together to change this nation after a tragedy and instead I just get people fighting over hockey. I am numb. I want to get more involved with the queer community in my city, but my work is actively preventing that (not only because my schedule won’t allow me to do anything before 9pm on weeknights, which is when our vigil is, but I just found out that I can’t volunteer at the local AIDS clinic because of a conflict of interest with my employer). I want to donate blood, but I’m worried because having blood drawn always makes me so dehydrated. The last time I had bloodwork done, they drew maybe 5mL at most and I nearly passed out despite having eaten a full meal and drinking tons of fluids beforehand.

    I just have a lot of feelings right now and reading through this thread has been so cathartic for me.

    Reading this thread has been incredibly cathartic for me.

    • that sounds really tough. sending some hugs! (if you want.)
      also want to let you know that it’s not your fault you’re in a position where you can’t help in the ways you want. it sucks to feel helpless, but don’t blame yourself. we’re coming together here <3

    • There’s plenty of ways to help besides giving blood! Don’t worry if you can’t do it.

  147. Thank you so much for this thread. I hadn’t really had time to process as I was in the rush of a big meeting for work and cut myself off from social media to focus on it until now.

    I’m a bit shaken, but I also feel quite invisible… Back in November after the Paris attack a lot of people came to me or sent me messages here in the UK to ask how I was. And there was a lot of conversation with my family, friends, etc. And yet now, as I don’t necessarily come out to EVERYONE at work, and as I’m not out to my family, those questions aren’t asked. I want to shout “I’m here ! This affects me just as much as the Paris attack did ! Even more so maybe because this wasn’t a “random” target, a “this could haven’t happened anywhere / to anyone”.

    I also want to send out all my love and thoughts to the people of color within the community, and our muslim brothers and sisters, all of whom are even more erased and rendered invisible by the public discourse on “West/Us vs. Islam/immigrants/refugees” produced by the bigoted media.

    • I swore I replied to these the other day… hmmm…
      That feeling of invisibility is hard. So often, when we’re in pain, it’s very visible and people respond. Not having that is such a strange and isolating disconnect. I hope you’ve got some support up there in the UK, sending more hugs your way from back here in Franceland.

  148. I pinned a pride button to my purse today before I left the house. I’m scared more than usual but also spiteful af and trying hard to be visible and queer and asserting that I should get to do that in public.

  149. So many people here write that they feel isolated in their grief at home with their non-chosen family or at work where nobody really understands. So do I.
    And it horrifies me to think that in the massacre there were possibly survivors who are not out to their family or roommates – people who they live with and who can be homophobic. So, those closeted people were either outed when they ended up in a hospital (and possibly put in danger of later violence from people they know) or had to go “home” in the night or in the morning and conceal all evidence that they were in the club that night. A shocked, scared and grieving person has to promptly and secretly clean their body and cover their bruises, and then smile while having a “civilized” morning meal. Or possibly even laugh at homophobic jokes told by their “family” members who are literally saying: “They got what they deserved”.
    I hope that nobody has to go through this. But it is possible. I know that, if this happened in my town, in our club, and somehow I survived, that would be my situation.

    • I hope that this tragedy helps to start to change more minds and hearts. The national coverage I’ve seen is mostly very loving (not sure that the right word. Maybe sympathetic?) rather than overtly homophobic. I’m hopeful that some good will come out of so much bad. But you’re right…there will undoubtedly be those who must hide their scars. I hope that they are able to find support in other survivors and continue to survive.

  150. I’m currently living abroad on my own, and on Monday morning, the day after we all got the news, I had to take my girlfriend to the airport because her two-week visit had come to an end. Yesterday was so horrible, and I am feeling really isolated and alone right now with my grief and anger and exhaustion. I am literally an ocean away from my queer friends and community and home. That’s a big reason why I stayed connected to facebook all day yesterday, because I needed to feel connected to something. And there were definitely supportive and respectful and grief-stricken posts from fellow queers and allies, which I needed to see. But there was also just so much awful – like a family friend who posted that she felt offended that the media kept saying it was a gay bar, and when I called that out she made the conversation about needing me reassure her that I don’t think she is a bad person. And so much Islamophobia. And on and on. I am so sad and so angry and so tired and so fried. This is just a really, really hard time to feel alone. I have no idea what to do with myself and all of these feelings, or where to find comfort. I’ve posted some thoughts because I thought that might help, but it has just ended up feeling like I’m launching my energy into the void that is the internet, and not so much like I’m finding the comfort or the sense of being-with-community that I so need right now. Seeing this open thread has helped some, and I am so thankful that this space exists.

    • It is so hard being an ocean away from your loved ones on a good day, and on days like this…
      The internet can’t replace physical presence, sometimes it even just makes you more aware of the distance. But it does help me too to see the support of all the amazing people on here.
      Sending love your way!

    • I am thankful this space exits too. I am so sorry you are not closer with a community, friends, or chosen family at this moment. And I know you don’t know me, but I am sending love and good vibes your way.

      And for everyone else in this thread as well.

      • And one more thing… I know it can feel a little awkward or vulnerable to reach out and send love to strangers, but your little bit of warmth is making a difference for me today and I hope you are getting that from this safe space, too. Here is an old-school internet hug for you if you would like one: (>^_^)> <(^.^<)

        • Thank you for the old school Internet hug! It made me feel better.

          I am glad we all have this space to connect and to heal and to share love.

    • I feel the same way. I moved to a rural area a year ago for a job that’s kept me pretty busy and I never connected with the sparse queer community here. All of my LGBTQ family is back in NYC and NJ and I’m feeling really isolated. I feel like I need to be at a vigil or a service or something with my community but all I’ve seen here is a protest against guns. I’m not ready for that kind of action. I’m still trying to process my grief. I’m still trying to deal with the knowledge that this could have easily been myself and my friends. I don’t go out to the clubs much anymore but Pride is the time of year when I do (when I’m not in a rural spot or finishing work for school- I’m a teacher). I’m grateful that my friends are safe but 49 family members lost their lives and it could have been me. Or my fiancé, or my ex, or my friends from home. They were celebrating freedom and life and love just like the rest of us do every June. My heart hurts so very much.

      • I am so sorry you are feeling so lonely and isolated and in pain like this, too. And as someone who comes from a rural area, I can also definitely understand feeling like there are no people and no spaces for you to find community in. My heart goes out to you. I hope that your people from back home are reaching out to you and checking in. Unfortunately that has not really been the case for me. But at least I have found some solace here.

    • Be proud of yourself for reaching out into the void- its exactly what you needed. A queer power up :)

  151. Well, hopefully a lesson drawn from this will finally make us reconnect with who we are, our sexuality, refocus and stand up for it once again – instead of habitually selling it down the river to an ideological hijack.

    Being gay and same sex attraction is a fundamental, non-negotiable part of us without which we fail to be ourselves – ideologies, belief systems and campaining on new types of idealised power hierarchies on the other hand are entirely optional and a frivolous choice.

    The violence every single time is directed at a site of same sex sexual activity – not at political radical camps or rallies, especially ones who would readily work with the religious fundamentalists on common goals of puritan mindset, normative sexuality and further marginalising of other groups.

    Do not lose the grip on facts. If you’re on receiving end on blind, biologically preprogrammed hate – it’s because you are attracted to same sex, not because you’re part of a culture or movement. There are no ‘greater causes’ that ‘will eventually fix ours in the future’ – every single one is a lie. There is only our cause – to end sexuality based hate and discrimination under a clear message that sexuality is NOT in the same league with systems of belief.

    I stand in solidarity with the LGBTQ folks in US in the face of the recent events.

  152. I’ve been reading AutoStraddle for a bit now. So I guess this would be my first comment. I really wish it could have been about something great for Pride.

    For the record, I am not out with my family. I am trans, but pretty much pre everything. I have two long distance BFFs who are my chosen family. They know.

    And we talked about this yesterday, and it just hurts. Not just as a trans woman, but as a human being. It just hurts that someone would just want to hurt others because they couldn’t see past a difference.

    And of course, I am scared to come out on a larger level (work, family, and other friends), but I felt to say something here, a place I really admire, and not come out would be just as bad.

    • Wish your first comment could have been in happier circumstances, but still want to say welcome welcome welcome!

      • I do as well. But the silver lining, I am hoping for is that brings LGBT folks closer. I have seen a lot of people coming out more since this happened. So maybe that could be a good thing?

  155. Honestly this has been so terrible that I’ve avoided safe spaces altogether, because I didn’t want to think about it more…but today I can manage to be here, and I’m grateful for this place, for everyone in our global LGBT community, for Autostraddle…massive love to all…

    If anyone needs some powerful music to process all of this pain, I recommend a piece I had the honor of performing recently – “Compassion” by Nigel Westlake. Nigel suffered the effects of a similar senseless murder, because his son was killed by a deranged woman on a night out with friends, out of the blue, very much like the Orlando tragedy. His music is gorgeous and empowering, and this piece is his response to enormous loss. If you choose to listen, may you feel peace surround you along with these notes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-hrR47VIx8

  156. Of course I’ve been concerned about my son’s safety ever since he came out to me as gay (and came out at school to a lot of people) when he was 12, which was 14 years ago. More so than I’ve worried about my own safety as a trans woman. It’s a dangerous world. And he never even told me until later about some of the things he had to deal with in high school, like people calling him a f-g, or sometimes has had to deal with just walking down the street.

    But I’ve never ever really worried about something like this happening in a safe place like a club. Now, I can’t stop myself from thinking about all this and imagining him in this situation — since I’m a terrible worrier to begin with –, and thinking about all those poor kids who were murdered, and their parents. I know that if my son had happened to be in Orlando, he very likely could have been at this club. Just like he was in L.A. on vacation for 10 days until Sunday night, and went to various places, or was in Miami last fall and went to different clubs. It’s always made me happy to think of him being out enjoying himself, and then to hear from him about what a good time he’s having. I talked to him a couple of times on Sunday, and I know how deeply sad he is about all this. He’s devastated. I know how lucky he is in general, for a lot of reasons, to have been born in 1990, rather than in, say, 1960. And having been “out” since he was very young, and being what might be called visibly gay, he’s not going back. But still. I wonder if he’ll ever feel like he used to.

  157. Thank you for this space. I went to the vigil in LA last night and felt love. This morning I feel anxious and scared again. I’m afraid people will expect me to behave like everything is fine, but it’s obviously not. Thanks for listening. Love to you all.

  158. Reading these comments has been helpful. Going back to work yesterday and moving about the world as if nothing had changed was difficult. And even though I have some awesome (straight) friends that wanted to check in and ask how I was feeling, the silence of those who didn’t was deafening. Part of me understands, because I know I’ve been the silent one out of fear/not knowing what to say. Never again. For me, one positive thing that’s come from the last two days is a reminder of the importance of community and not being silent and complacent while someone in your life endures, alone.

  159. Is anyone else feeling really disconnected from the regular world? Like my best friend keeps texting me about seeing so and so on the bus or like some Star Trek episode and I just can’t make myself care about any of that. And no one at work is talking about this at all, and I can’t really focus, and the only one of my FB friends really posting about it (besides all of you beautiful people who I’m friends with from camp)is my cousin who posted that she hoped it would provide a come-to-jesus moment for the survivors…and I don’t want to be *that person* who sucks the air out of the room for anyone else because everyone grieves and processes stuff like this in different ways but that’s where I’m at and I’m finding the real world pretty darn hard to face this week!

    • First of all, it’s terrible that your cousin is taking that idea away from this tragedy.

      I feel the same way… it’s really isolating to be the only one in my space that’s grieving and feeling impacted by the tragedy. I am a middle school teacher, and I teach in a school that is 90%+ Latinx, so while I am working, the only other people who are feeling the hurt are my baby queers that I already mentor so hard. Trying to help them and help myself and create a safe and loving space is taking everything I have mentally and emotionally and I don’t have the energy to deal with the rest of the world right now. Mundane stuff just can’t be a priority and it sucks that no one else here even appears to notice the struggle we are having.

      • oh wow, being a teacher on days like this and having to stand strong for the kiddos must be really draining. sending love and energy your way.

    • I feel you. Aside from my dog (who knows somethings up, he has been extra cuddly), it has been hard to find energy to care about anything. I can’t focus on anything and I don’t want to talk to anyone who doesn’t at least share my anger.

      I just impulse bought a new (released today!) YA book though, so I am hoping to get lost in that now that I’m home from work. Resisted the urge to one-click by this other gay YA new release, but it might be a follow up if I can manage to focus on the first one.

      • my dog has been extra (and more insistently) cuddly as well. sunday night he pushed his way up from his normal spot at the foot of the bed to burrow his face into the spot below my chin and didn’t even roll over for tummy rubs, just sat there with his little body pressed against me, and i thought of the pets whose people weren’t coming home and i lost it again.

        reading is such a good thing, tho, isn’t it? last night i actually read one of my old Babysitter’s Club books, lol. Entirely juvenile and comforting.

    • I’m feeling really alone in my grief right now. I’ve been living in a rural area for a year and all of my queer family including my fiancé are back home. I usually deal with grief like this through connecting online and talking to friends but right now I feel like I need to physically be with my community because no one around me seems to get it (they’re all very sympathetic but they don’t get it) and I just want to hug my queer family and cry. This one hurts so much.

    • Very much so. I’ve been feeling super disconnected from everything but other queers this week, and it’s so hard to just exist without screaming???? <3

  160. Sharing love and solidarity with my chosen family here and on social media is getting me through. I wish comfort to all of you.

    Now I have 5 more minutes to stop crying before I teach 8th grade, so fingers crossed…

    • My school was having a celebratory end of year BBQ for faculty and their families yesterday and I was thankful for distraction. I had been bursting into tears all afternoon before it. I’m trying to remember that I’m alive and I should be embracing life. But I’m hurting so much.

  161. I feel sad when I see ppl saying this is a false flag to promote the gay agenda. Or that the gay mafia is trying to replace poc movements with the lgbt movement. Sometimes I believe in conspiracies but it’s sad that ppl think that a so called gay mafia would orchestrate this. Although there were reports of someone holding the door so ppl couldn’t escape. And did the seat team kill some ppl in the gun battle. And possible multiple shooters. I was feeling that I am gonna be as gay as possible now cuz ppl hate me for being gay. So fuck them lets piss them off by being true to ourselves as we have nothing to lose. Also i was thinking of a song by NaS called “Lifes a Bitch” where he says “im destined to live the dream for all my peeps who never made it” meaning that our brothers and sisters who have passed on would want us to be happy and the best way to honour them is be proud. But now, since the shooter was possibly lgbt, I feel kinda ashamed/embarrased that ‘one of our own’ did it. Even tho I know I shouldn’t feel like this. I guess in real life nothing is black and white. The shooter had complex reasons. Bi polar (i have mental health issues so im not saying these cause shootings) n steroids (which can cause aggressiveness and brain damage), his co-workers said he hated blacks and women and gays but some witnesses said he said he didn’t have an issue with blacks, ,,his wife might have known he was planning the attack,, his dad was homophobic,, his imam preached against gays (just like all religions mostly do), he pledged allegiance to Isis,, it’s a lot to try and make sense of. And a certain gossip website is all excited about ‘tea being spilled’ saying “I knew it! He was in the closet!’ Like it’s a fun game or sumn. It’s a lot to take in. Because of my mental health issues I am scared to read replies to my comments so sorry if you reply and I don’t respond.

    • Yes! And I’m fucking pissed off that the wife didn’t say anything!

      I know she was beaten, threatened and stuff but she could have fucking saved those people! :/

  162. I don’t even know how to start this comment. I’ve been sick thinking about this since Sunday morning. I had been at Disneyland two days before, where everything is sunshine and churros, and then suddenly 50 people are dead and the rhetoric skews almost immediately to ISIS and Islam and gun control, and I just can’t fully wrap my brain around so many people not seeing this as a hate crime on a massive scale.

    I’ve been questioning my sexuality for over a year, and while I try to figure myself out and make some kind of decision, I’ve got a husband who loves me and would do anything for me. Part of me feels so lucky to be in this protective bubble of perceived heterosexuality, but a bigger part of me is disgusted by my own cowardice. Pulse was full of people living their lives authentically. They owned the risks of being out. Many of them lost their lives, but they weren’t hiding — they were bravely living their truth. And here I am, hiding behind my husband because I can’t accept that I don’t even know what it feels like to be genuinely sexually attracted to a man.

    I feel sick that someone could do this to anyone, let alone 50 people. Something like makes it so hard to want to come out. There are people out there that would kill me if they knew I was interested in women. Actually, literally end my life. I’m trying to continue moving forward on my journey of self exploration and understanding, but the shame I feel for being so cowardly when other people are so brave is making it very hard right now.

    I hope nothing like this happens ever again, but I think it would be naive to think that it won’t. :(

    • I just want to say – you are not a coward. You are a human being, (bravely!) trying to figure out something that so much of our culture conspires to prevent us from knowing. I am really glad you have at least one awesome person in your corner, because coming out/figuring shit out can still be really fucking hard, no matter what privileges you may have. So good for you.

    • Yep! Don’t judge yourself! Don’t feel that you are a coward. People take their own time coming to terms with things and i think you are brave in coming here and talking about it.

  163. I’ve had all sorts of reactions to the Orlando massacre. It wasn’t until a friend reminded me that I had been in a mass shooting that I realized part of my reaction was due to that. It was a random event about two years ago. My friend (also an ex) and I were standing near some guys who were targeted.

    They may have been targeted at random as well. We heard the shots and the bullets screaming by. Three of the guys were hit as was my friend. Everyone survived. But, yeah, it qualified as a mass shooting, which I had never labeled as such in my head. My brain didn’t even let me connect those dots. That the Orlando massacre targeted LGBT people at an LGBT club was traumatic enough, but then being reminded there was something else it was triggering…without realizing it myself, was scary. I pinball between rage, despair, and numbness.

    So I spend my time thinking about the people who died and their loved ones, the queer latinx communities in Orlando, and broader LGBT communities in the U.S. and around the world. Much love to all of you.

    • Gretchen – I am sorry that this experience has triggered thoughts of another scary time in your life. I have been feeling a lot too, and remembered that this has just brought up all the losses in my queer community where I live: a man who was hit by a car and died in the pride parade, a young woman who committed suicide, the loss of a proposition that would have included sexuality and gender identity in our non-discrimination clause. As I’ve heard someone say before, loss always brings up previous loss. And this huge tragedy in our community just brings up all the other tragedies we have been through. I am sending love and healing your way.

    • I… don’t know what to say. The kind of pain you must be going through…

      Sending you major, squishy, comforting {{HUGS}} and as many Internet cookies as you can handle.

    • what a terrifying experience. I’m so sorry that you have to relive that memory right now. sending more love your way!

  164. I’m not sure how to interact with the real world. I saw a person protesting outside of the local Planned Parenthood and I am so mad. I am so MAD that someone would even think that today would be a good day to be publicly hateful. How? I am so angry.They looked so smug and confident too, they knew what they were doing and it’s scary.
    I’ve been planning to visit my parents for a few days, starting tomorrow. Seeing my family is always challenging. But i’m really scared of being around family right now. I’ll be upset if they don’t say anything but I also don’t want to hear anything they have to say about it. Anything they say will probably be misguided and more harmful than anything else.

    • I’m going home in two days and wondering about the same thing with my family. I especially have near zero interest in hearing what my dad has to say about it.

      • I hope that while you are home you can find time and space for yourself. Its hard but there is always support and love here <3

  165. thank you for this. this hurts, this is a spotlight on every unhealed area personally and socially, it is all i can think about. it’s been tough to find support in a sea of straight people.

    i want straight people to stop referring to “queers” in their messages of support because it’s still a slur and that hurts even more at this time, to see that obliviousness.

    i love y’all so much.

    • *hugs* hope you’re doing ok in France, especially when we’re so GOOD at erasing identities in the name of “anti-communitarism”.

      • also, I will rant with you for days about France’s issues with erasing identities BUT at least my osthéo-kiné is completely covered by social security, so when I go have him put my jaw back in place I won’t have to pay anything. :) I’ll just have to listen to him say “Oooh la la comme vous êtes stressée!” over and over.

        • <3 mine gave me massages up to the day before my thesis viva and sci fi movie recs as prescription !

  167. I’m so glad this thread is up. Thank you AS. I haven’t been feeling much of anything when it comes to Orlando, except a sort of muted sadness, followed by anger. So A)I know the grief will probably smack me when I’m not expecting it, and B)how awful that this violence, in my country, is on some level no longer a shock. Fuck everything.

    I was fortunate to be at A-Camp last year, and one of the campers joined the ‘talent’ doing standup on comedy night. I am ashamed to say I don’t remember her name (it started with an L! Lydia? anyone else remember?). Her set, which drew in part on her experiences as a trans woman, was not only funny, but so sharp it cut. I don’t think I’d ever felt so viscerally the utter rage of recognizing that a seemingly vast section of ‘humanity’ wants to wipe you out of existence as I did during her comedy set. I should have thanked her for telling the truth so clearly, so directly. I hate that that is part of the truth about many of our lives.

    It’s hard for me not to sink into believing that the number of people out there who will not tolerate this kind of hatred and violence is too small in comparison to the number of people who not only tolerate, but even incite this kind of hatred and violence. God. This is so wrong, on so many levels.

    ..okay I may need to take a break and go watch that movie about horses and women loving women now.

  168. Thank you, Autostraddle, for this space. I need it so much, as someone who is still closeted. In the midst of my mourning and grief over this, I saw a post on my fb feed which said that bisexuals had no right to mourn or grieve this if they were in “straight marriages”. I wanted to vomit. Dear precious bi sisters, never ever forget. We are queer. Our queerness has *nothing* to do with the gender of our partner. Please, let us come together as a community instead of spewing hate and biphobia. Please. Please. Please. I am alternately numb and cannot stop crying. So grateful for AS today and every day.

    • I’m about to start crying. Again. While at work. Over this comment.

      I’m a bi woman, married to a bi man. We have just as much right to be upset as everyone else.

  169. I can’t stop reading the news. I can’t stop reading the comments. I had a nightmare for the first time in years and ground my teeth so hard I thought I was going to chew through my bite guard. My entire body hurts.

    I feel sick and depressed and can’t get anything done. I know I need to walk away from this for a while, but it’s like, I have to know. I have to.

    I knew how hateful people were, but mostly I was insulated from it. Now though, I just feel defeated. The ignorance, and bigotry, and hatred is coming from every corner and I thought we were doing better, I thought we had more allies.

    At the same time I’m so sorry for the POC and trans community who have to deal with this so often. I’m sorry, I knew it was shitty and I was empathetic, but I didn’t know how it felt. Now I do. And I’m sorry.

  170. I had a therapist appointment Monday morning and I felt like I couldn’t talk about how this affected me at all becausehen I gathered all my courage and came out to her a while back, her response was “are you happy being monogamous? yes? ok, moving on.”

    Uggggggggggggggh

    I did feel better after the vigil in Seattle but it’s sort of a fragile “better.”

    • Ugh, is it just me or have you encountered a lot of straight people in Seattle acting like being lgbtq “doesn’t matter” yet it ends up feeling a whole lot more like erasure/not acknowledging how this actually affects us?

      • That experience was for sure erasing. It’s like FUCK YOU I AM BI. JUST BECAUSE I’VE BEEN WITH MY NOW-HUSBAND FOR OVER A DECADE DOES NOT MAKE ME ~*~STRAIGHT~*~. ffffffffffff *ahem* I have a lot of feelings.

        I haven’t discussed the shooting or what’s going on with me wrt it with any streeple that I’m out to irl. My dad, who I’m out to, hasn’t checked in with me or anything. Though, tbf, he might have forgotten (again) that I’m queer. (In his defense he was kinda drunk, more so than I realized, when I told him the first time and his memory is kinda terrible in general.)

  171. I’ve been putting off feeling anything about Orlando. It was like hearing the news turned off this switch inside of me, and said, “you cannot bear this right now, feel it later.”

    It’s later now, and I am shaking thinking about it all. I am hurt, and I am angry, and I am scared.

    I went to a candlelight vigil on Sunday night. I’ve never been to one before, and I didn’t know what to expect. Even if I did, I don’t think that I would have realised how much I needed to be there. I needed the support of the people around me so badly. A friend gave me a hug and asked me how I was doing. “Fine,” I whispered, even though it was a lie. I need that support again, and so I am grateful for this thread.

    I am not doing fine. I am going crazy inside my skull because there is nothing I can do. There is nothing that I can do to make this right, and I need to make things right. My social media feed is sporadically sympathetic, but mostly it’s like nothing happened. I want my friends to care, I need them to care. I need them to reach out, and talk to me. I need to cry into their shoulders. I need them to stand beside me, carrying rainbow banners and telling the world that they will not allow the world we live in to be a place where this could happen again. They aren’t there, and I think it’s my fault.

    I turned away from my church when I came out last month. I couldn’t handle their old-fashioned views on homosexuality anymore, and so I left not knowing where the loving God I once knew is anymore. I need friends, and I need God, and I don’t know where to turn to find them.

    How could someone do this? How can we live in a world where we are still fighting for basic rights in countries that brag about being free, and about how all are equal? I feel ashamed, and disgusted, and sick.

    • I don’t know where you live, but Metropolitan Community Church is a queer-centric Christian church that has congregations lots of places. It’s been a wonderful, faith and identity affirming place for me.

      I’m actually kinda pissed with myself for not going to church on Sunday, I can’t help thinking that I might be in a better place for having gone.

    • I’ve been following this queer pastor on twitter, I recommend checking out her tweets or perhaps reaching out for resources.

      I hope you find a friend you can reach out to. I’ve been angry with my straight friends for not reaching out, but I know they do care and just don’t have any idea how much this hurts. They’ve grown so used to a daily massacre that they don’t realize how for us this is something else. I’m lucky that I know they are accepting and I’ve been out to them for a long while now, but I also wish they were more supportive without me having to ask or explain why right now.

      In any case, we’re all here for each other. Hugs.

  172. I don’t comment on here that much, always reading but never commenting. I felt moved to comment tonight.

    I’m scared.
    I’m disgusted.
    I’m shocked.
    I’m heartbroken.

    So many emotions. I came out to my mom 6 years ago. She has embraced me completely. She loves my wife. She told me today that this has ‘thrown her for a loop’. She said she wasn’t immune to the idea that it still isn’t safe for the LGBT community in this country. But she embraced me so much and my wifes family embraced us so much she felt like we were in a bubble. She is now scared. She didn’t want us to go to vigil that was in our area on Sunday (we didn’t end up going due to being emotionally exhausted by the days events). I feel like she is reverting back to me being a child, terrified. I feel like I need to console my own mother and reassure her that I’ll be fine…but I can’t do that. Because I don’t know. My wife and I tend to shy away from PDA in public. We don’t frequent gay bars that often mostly because we don’t drink. But it’s terrifying. I feel like I need to go see a counselor due to these fears I am having but what will a counselor do for me? They can’t keep us safe.

    I feel like I need a media black-out but I can’t tear myself away from it. I listen to the survivors stories today, cried at my desk at work. I’m the only gay person in my entire office. I walk in to work on Monday, everyone is cheery, ‘how was your weekend?!’, big smiles. I wanted to scream ‘DON’T YOU KNOW THEY ARE KILLING US?’

    But I can’t do that. I’m not a religious person anymore but I actually considered going to the gay friendly church in St Louis on Sunday. Just for some sort of solace. My wife and I sit on our computers, with our TV on, consuming everything we can about this story. My wife cries. I rant and rave. I make smart ass comments about Donald Trump.

    But nothing makes me feel better. I’m just at a loss. I’m so grateful for my community. I’m so grateful for this website and for the people here, even if I don’t ever talk to any of you.

  173. It just keeps crossing my mind that it could’ve been anyone of us here..people I care about more than most know. People I know from Camp from this site..in real life. All just because we love someone. All because we are part of a certain community. Because two men decided to share a kiss. A kiss in a space that we call safe. A space designated as ours. I feel that it was so unfair to happen over Pride weekend..a time when we celebrate a period where we stood up for ourselves and fought for basic human rights.

    That’s why I ask straight people…DO YOU STILL WANT A STRAIGHT PRIDE?

  174. i rarely reach out but i need to say something. i was assaulted on the street on sunday. because i “look queer.” because i am queer. because violence emboldens others to be violent.

    i took care of myself. i thought i’d be ok. i talked to a friend. then tonight the little boy i live with came up behind me and scared me and i jumped out of my skin and burned myself with a pan of bacon grease and then i had a panic attack and now i am sitting here typing this with one hand. i am so angry. and hurt. and the ice is melting.

    • taking care of ourselves is never done, even sometimes when we think it is. don’t be too hard on yourself. also bacon grease is the worst and i feel for you so maybe start with that (and eating said bacon)

    • I’m so sorry. That’s fucked up that someone assaulted you. And it’s ok that you’re not ok. Your body will hold onto this memory for awhile. Do what you need to do to feel better.

    • This might seem like I’m not acknowledging what happened to you but:
      DON’T USE ICE, 2 extremes are not good for the tissues.
      If you have any blisters don’t pop them.
      You can totally use an antibiotic ointment.
      For pain use something like ibuprofen or aspirin
      And use a band-aid, or if it’s a large burn use burn dressing not tightly tape or wrapped bandage. You don’t want any pressure on the wound and not just cause it’ll be uncomfortable.
      Also did you wash the area off b/c grease can hang around and the name of the game is avoid infection

      Not a doctor but I’ve been burned by probably everything at this point and was at some point certified in first aid. Once I got a mild chemical burn from my own puke and I’ve been on actual fire twice.

      I’ve never been assaulted by a stranger for anything past middle school, but I have been physically assaulted and something worse ( specifically attempted second degree murder) by a sibling for back talking because he viewed, heck still views, me as a non-person and a waste of space. I had to live in the same household as him for years.

      The startle response and stuff that can happen after panic attack or in some cases like mine going into fight or flight response.

      It lessens over time.

      How much time? I can’t tell you I’m not you, but I can tell you getting help and talking to somebody will help you. I didn’t get help or really have anyone to talk about stuff with and I sunk myself into a hole that I’m still trying to climb out of get very frustrated with.
      Don’t try to go this alone you don’t have and look you’re not.
      You’re here on AS with people who’ve been there or support you, and you have at least one friend available to talk.

      It’s okay there is nothing wrong with having a startle response like you did and it will lessen with time.

  175. Like all of us I’ve seen many violent tragedies in the news but they’ve never made me feel like this made me feel and I’m scared that I’m going to do the wrong thing. That rather than take the pain and the anger and find a way to be stronger from it and make a difference that I’m going to retreat, and hide, and be more afraid the rest of my life. I’m more afraid of that than I am of the things that could actually happen to me if I became more bold.
    It’s this threshold of fear that I am scared I won’t pass.
    This event seems so much more than it is in facts. It’s all the microagressions that each of us face every day that in themselves don’t cause much hurt or anger but the sum of them is enough to drive a person to hopelessness and to value themselves less because of all the small times our culture says to us “you are not wanted. If you must exist, do so quietly so I can pretend you don’t”
    Fuck I’ve stopped liking shit on Facebook because I’m afraid my red neck coworkers will see I liked it and will confront me at work about being “a fucking liberal”
    How messed up is that? I can’t even like a queer article on a social networking site without being afraid I will be ostracized at work.
    And I blame myself for being a coward probably rightly so but shouldn’t I also be furious at them for making me feel like that’s how it’s gotta be?
    I don’t know what to do. I’ve got to be more of myself. But I’m afraid and this event only amplifies that fear and crushes my hope that I cling to that things can be better for all of us.

    • Just wanted to let you know that I hear you. And I get what you are saying. And yes, it is the fault of fear and hatemongers or people who are too closed minded not to be open to differences that you (and many others) are scared of being themselves. It is not your fault, it is theirs. And it is not cowardly to be scared of negative reactions. I am pretty sure everyone is. It is only natural to want to protect yourself from pain and hurt, isn’t it? Don’t be so hard on yourself for that.

      I don’t know how to deal with not being able to like stuff on social networking sites though. Everything is complicated there. That is one of the reasons why I don’t frequent those sites.

      But whatever you choose to do, be kind on yourself. And may you have friends around you who support you!

  176. I came on here for comfort. Thank you AS because I absolutely got it. I’ve been crying off and on since this happened, its coming in waves. My partner is experiencing the pain completely differently so I thought maybe I was crazy to feel so deeply, viscerally alone. Looks like there’s a whole lot of us going through that.

    At first that shared experience made me feel so calm- better than I’ve felt in a few hours. But then I kept scrolling and reading all of our brilliant reflections and I thought FUCK. All these AMAZING humans are hurting and feeling alone when we are seriously what this world needs more than anything. The fact that we are all out here hurting and processing the embodiment of violent homophobia and hate is insane. I haven’t felt ready to “act” yet, just sad, but this is getting me there.

    On a different note- mostly straight spaces were given up to “process” and “acknowledge” at work both today and yesterday for me and both times I could not look up and I felt even more alone and angry. I feel guilty about that- should I be grateful these people gave the space or angry for feeling like they were waiting for me to be a spectacle? Or the fact that some people who chose to speak acted like these events were just the media or “out there” and they just needed to turn them off to find peace? I CANT TURN THIS OFF ITS REAL FOR ME SO OMFG IDK WHAT TO SAY

    • “waiting for me to be a spectacle” This. I went to a thing today, and I found myself unable to even experience my own feelings in response to (the very elogquent) speakers because a camera kept panning in my direction. I have an anxiety disorder so I thought maybe it was just me. Thanks for this comment.

  177. my GIRLFRIEND just said, “Why are you still so upset? More people died in the Bataclan and you didn’t have this much trouble.”

    and I just stared at her and did not scream, so I have more self control than expected.

    but I just can’t… the lack of comprehension of both what I am feeling right now and how much I *was* hurt and upset by the attack in Paris is just entirely beyond me. Thank goodness my dog is here.

    • OMG that’s awful, that level of lack of understanding from your girlfriend, is mind blowing to me, here I’m getting upset that straight people don’t understand

    • *more hugs* for the record I am more upset by this than I was by the Bataclan attack. Those felt random and like they could have happened to anyone. THIS targeted MY community.

  178. the amount of anger, frustration and hopelessness I feel upon some comments by straight people regarding this surprises me. I think society does not allow us to grieve for our community, and is reluctant to call this a homophobic attack. I have never felt the thought “I hate straight people” this strongly till these days. I have never had this much violence in my heart. How DARE they to comment defending homophobic Christians and telling me that, by focusing on the fact that many religious people of differing religions are homophobic, I am DISCRIMINATING against poor heterosexual Christians, because I never “asked any Christian if they’re homophobic” wtf seriously do I have to educate you on the church’s homophobia?? How DARE they say these things after this happened. How dare they be offended and twist history like that. I don’t understand.

  179. I just have to say. Thank you! Thank you so much for all these Posts and the solidarity. I was on vacation with my mum when the Shooting happened and afterwards all the News stations talking about it. And my mum just went “do they still Report about that?” with such disgust that I just wanted to crawl in bed and cry. I had my 5 minutes of crying under the shower then. But it was really hard – especially because she knows I’m gay, and she’s just not accepting it, which is fine by me by now. But such comments hurt, especially after such horrible days.
    So thank you all for being there and just sharing your love.

    • You can talk to me about it if you want! :) I’ve been there (my mom actually said that she wasn’t approving or accepting of it when my aunt outed me).

      You know where to find me :) <3 *Hugs*

  180. If you need some positivity today, may I recommend #queerselflove on Twitter?

    It does tend to make me cry, but in a good way.

  181. Why was I just moved to tears reading Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Tweets about rainbows? I had no idea that science would be so moving.

  182. I’m glad this is here. I wish my first comment was under happier circumstances.

    I’m exhausted and sad and angry. The public vigil I went to was filled with laughing high schoolers taking selfies and (seemingly) straight passer by who kept taking my picture but didn’t seem interested in mourning or showing solidarity at all. The speakers kept using exclusively Christian language and then made a grab for some local political power.

    Even in a crowd of people I felt very, very alone. And I felt even more angry.

    It’s Pride month…first they try to profit off of my love and now they are tying to profit from my grief and pain. I refuse.

  183. I’ve come and read through all the comments on this post multiple times to remind myself I’m not alone. I have local support, but it’s mostly allies, my LGBT friends are spread out, far away, and my lady love is on the other side of the country. I would not be coping half as well if not for this. Thank you, all of you. I love you guys.

  184. I’ve only told one other person this besides y’all: I was at Pearl in Houston (our lesbian bar) on Saturday night. They had a guest DJ in from Denver. I was dancing with lots of people (as one does when the music’s pumping and she plays Prince and Whitney Houston and Rihanna). When I left at 1:30, I wonder why there were three(!) HPD cruisers in the parking lot.

    Then I got my post-drinking tacos and saw the news on my Twitter feed.

    I drive home numb, because that absolutely could’ve been me. I’m not even out to my family – they would’ve found out from the medical examiner. And now I’m angry, and scared, and so many other conflicted emotions.

    I will definitely be going to Pride this year as a big “FUCK YOU” to the assholes of the world.

  185. Disposability. That word keeps coming to my mind whenever I think of the Orlando shooting. The disposability of brown bodies, queer bodies, migrant bodies, and the ways that this shooting has reminded me- with gut wrenching clarity- that it is dangerous to be in my body. That there are those who think I am disposable. I am filled with rage- about the murders, and about the fact that there’s no time to properly mourn. I feel inundated by Facebook posts and instagram and news articles and politicians talking just to hear their own voices. Even the vigil I attended turned into a publicity rally for the governor and his cronies. Is there any place untouched by the noise? Any place a sad brown queer can sit and cry in peace?

  187. Hey everyone. Sorry for the disappearing trick in this thread that I pulled. I meant to stay in longer and throw my voice out this thread.

    I am on vacation. Have been since the 9th. Currently, I am okay. But I am allowing myself to cry if need be.

    Not being out (I am trans, female pronouns, but pre-HRT), makes it hard for me to see a way to come out. Outside of a forum like this or Facebook. I am not out to family (pro-Trump mostly, and big watchers of Fox News, I am not), but I do have two friends, plus a kick ass therapist, who know the whole of me.

    But I do still feel alone. And it is hard because awful terrible things like this are designed to do that. I’m sorry if these words are not coming out well. I have been trying to articulate my thoughts and I am just so scrambled.

    I am happy for my vacation and time away from my family. I am saddened and hurt by this attack because of what it means for those involved, the LGBTA+ community going forward, the Muslim community going forward, gun control, and way more. So I have being using the time I have to find my voice so to speak. Been lurking on this thread, which has helped. It is assuring to see that I am not the only one confused, mad, sad, and hurt by this.

    Hope you are well and safe today.
    With love,
    Sarah

  188. I don’t know how much people in the US follow UK news, but yesterday a Labour MP was shot and killed whilst serving her constituents. I know this isn’t linked to what happened in Orlando, but as both a bisexual woman, and a member of Labour party considering standing for election I just feel so attacked on both sides. Like none of my identities are safe. And my heart aches for a world where there is so much hatred for people just because they are themselves, just because they want to make the world better, just for existing. Sorry for mentioning something that’s not about queer lives directly, I just needed to be in a place where I can say both of these things hurt me, and to me, they feel like they are related, because the world just seems like an angry and hurtful place right now.

    • I am starting to think we all need to wear kevlar under our shirts. It’s terrifying, and I don’t blame you for being scared. I hope there is some comfort to be had in talking about it, but I know that there’s nothing that makes it fully go away.

  189. I love you all. ‘Thank you’ feels inadequate, but thank you for this thread/community.

  190. It’s been days and it doesn’t feel like this is getting any easier. The more I hear, the more I read, the more I see their faces and hear their names, the more heartbroken I feel. The more this hurts so damn deeply.

    A club where I live had a vigil/fundraiser tonight. I wanted to go. I wanted to pay my respects and help fundraise for the victims and the staff of Pulse. But I couldn’t go. I’m terrified. Every moment of every day now. I was already scared. I was already hiding myself. Now, I feel even less safe to be who I am.

    I’ve already stopped dating. I rarely, if ever, tell anyone I’m gay. I know the stakes.

    Every time I stupidly think things are starting to get better or I start to feel safe, I’m reminded of how unsafe it really is.

    I’m not a gay person of color or trans, so I’m sure I haven’t had it as bad as some people. I am disabled and gay though, which presents its own challenges. However, it makes me very empathetic to other minorities within the LGBT community. I can’t imagine the pain and isolation many people are feeling on a daily basis and how that’s likely been amplified by this tragedy.

    I want to feel safe. I want others to feel safe. I don’t understand why there is so much hate in this world. It’s so much easier to love people than to hate them. I love you all. Each and every one of you for your individual uniqueness.

    I don’t know…I’m rambling. I don’t really have anyone else to talk to, and the pain is overwhelming.

    • Hi. I don’t really know what to say except that I’m still here too and I’m scared too and I hear you. I’m… not exactly not out, but most people I know just assume that I’m straight and I don’t correct them. So. It’s been a lonely week. And I feel like as a white, cis lesbian who doesn’t go to clubs, generally passes as straight, etc. I should be past the hurting point by now and on to the angry, activism point (especially for the sake of all of the minority groups within our community that have it so, so much worse than I do), but I’m really not. Today is Pride in my city and I really want to be there right now, but I don’t do well with crowds, so instead I’m just sitting at home feeling generally shitty about myself and everything. Anyway, now I’m rambling too, but I just wanted you to know that I’m still listening and that it’s okay that we’re both still hurting and that we’re going to be okay. <3

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