I don't want to write about it.

I'm sick of writing about school shootings. I want change.

This Friday’s newsletter is going out to all of my subscribers because I felt like sharing what I wrote and because I’m going to visit the island next week (if you’re new here, this post explains more). My Tuesday newsletter will resume on June 7th. Supporters will still receive a short reflection next Friday. Thanks for giving me space to recharge after a loooong school year.

The news about Uvalde reached me during my last class of the day on Tuesday. In my 7th grade English classroom, we were watching the Hunger Games, a movie where children are needlessly killed because of the government’s laws.

The irony was not lost on me. It never has been.

It wasn’t lost on me when I was trained how to create a makeshift blockade for my classroom by wedging a chair just so in the door handle…despite a large pane of glass immediately to the left that would be easily shattered by a close-range bullet.

Active Shooter Directions | Bren Ahearn, 2011

It wasn’t lost on me when the same politicians screaming about the rights of unborn babies were silent as actual, breathing children were slaughtered by the same guns that prop up their political platforms.

It wasn’t lost on me when the tired conversation about arming teachers resurfaced, championed by the same people who don’t trust me to pick the books that sit on my classroom shelves.

Sometimes, I wish all of it was lost on me. It would definitely be easier to be a teacher.

I’m tired of being scared of a propped-open door at school, the unexpected announcement that crackles over the intercom, and the disturbing graffiti found in the bathroom. I’m tired of talking to people who will always see the guns first, their eye pressed up against the mouth of the barrel like they’ll find some sort of personality or solace at the bottom of that narrow abyss. I’m tired of the business as usual mentality that stalks the halls of my school the day after a tragedy, the quivering, half-mast flag as the only evidence that something unspeakable has happened.

I guess I’m just tired.

I don’t want to write about Uvalde. I don’t want to write about Sandy Hook or Parkland or any of those schools whose halls I have never walked but know all the same. I don’t want to see the bright, confident faces of Irma Garcia and Eva Mireles in stark relief again the familiar, washed-grey background of school pictures and know that this is how they will be memorialized: brilliant, caring educators fated to fade into the grey nothingness of inaction and apathy as our nation forgets all too quickly. Until it happens again.

As my social media feeds clog with thought pieces, names, and a double digit number that keeps climbing, I think of the phrase repeated over and over again in the Hunger Games: “May the odds be ever in your favor.” This unfeeling phrase is said to each of the 24 tributes, children who know full well that, in the face of violence, their odds are not good at all.

It is not lost on me that this fictional phrase applies to the very real lives of me and my students every single day.

Today is the last day of school. We’ll hand out awards for our cardboard boat races that we held on Wednesday. I’ll be thinking about little Amerie Garza, her hands clutching a colorful honor roll award with a date that will also be inscribed across her headstone.

Today, we’ll eat snow cones and listen to music and answer silly trivia questions about topics like ‘90s cartoon characters. I’ll be thinking about sweet Xavier Lopez, who was looking forward to swimming all summer long and whose family will never again see his gap-toothed smile, stained blue by the residue of a snow cone.

I search for these small, humanizing details in the midst of all of the horrifying ones. I cling to them, hoping that this will help me remember and to not shrug my shoulders the way the world wants me to. I don’t want their innocent faces to become two-dimensional and fade as the news cycle moves on and public interest wanes.

I know that it is the American way to move on. But I don’t know where I’m meant to go when we’ve been walking in the same, tired circles for years. Like someone lost in the woods, I swear that I’ve been here before: look, isn’t that the same pile of stuffed animals and flowers clustered around a flagpole that I saw a few years ago? Isn’t that the same talking point that someone in a tidy suit with a flag pin used last month? Did we even have time between shootings to make new, fresh memes to parade across our social media feeds?

Even writing these words brings a strange sensation of déjà vu: this is not the first time that I have written them. I have created the same sentences, time and time again, switching out only the details, like names, numbers and places. And yet, little has changed, other than having to sit in a training at the beginning of every school year that reminds me that, when we really get down to brass tacks and bullet shells, I am on my own.

So why write? It’s a good question.

Writing helps remind me that I’m not really on my own. I am not screaming alone into the void…many others are rising up and using their voices to call, once more, for change. As my friend Katie eloquently wrote, writing brings us hope. It reminds us that something must come out of all of this shit. Apathy is the enemy. Writing is an antidote to the alluring siren song of forgetting.

Though I am tired, still, I write. Because I have to keep talking about it. Doing so helps me believe that I am not the only one who wants to break the cycle.

I know that this week was tough, so I’m holding space in the comments for us to express whatever feelings are coming up for you—about Uvalde, about Buffalo, or about anything that’s on your mind.

✨The Me of Now

Leaving: my classroom for the last time. The walls are blank, and my closet is the most organized it has ever been. All week, the kids have been telling me how “sad” my room looks—and they’re right. Leaving is sad. But there is a lightness that I’ve been feeling in the wake of purging so much of my stuff, and there were plenty of fun finds as I cleaned out my room…like my very first teaching contract. I made $26,000. Yikes.

Listening: to this song on repeat. Aoife O’Donovan is close pals with Sara Watkins, who is a former Nickel Creek-er, so I already knew her stuff would be right up my alley. At my core, I am a bluegrass-lovin’ fool.

Sending: lots of messages of support and solidarity this week. Mercury retrograde has been terrible, y’all. Whether you believe in that or not, I don’t think I’m alone in observing a lot of miscommunication and tension in relationships with the collective. I strive to be the listening ear I sometimes wished I had had when I was going through my divorce, so I’ve been sending a lot of text messages this week to support my friends who are going through similar shifts.

Dreaming: of a new tattoo from my friend Amelia. She reopened her books this week, and I am dying to get a box turtle tattoo to represent the idea of impermanence that I wrote about last week. Also, box turtles are adorable.

Feeling: so freakin’ ready to be back on the island. Hilly has grand plans for us to go camping and to go on epic hikes…plus, we’re going to buy a stand-up paddle board! I can’t wait and already told Hilly that I immediately want to walk into the ocean once I touch down. I might be extra dramatic and do it fully clothed!

As always, I value every comment that I receive because it lets me know the real humans who are reading my writing…so leave one! :)

Don’t forget to follow me on Instagram for glimpses at my island life—I’ll be posting a lot next week! See you back here in June.