It’s been a grim last few days. In light of Christina Grimmie’s murder, the mass shooting at Pulse night club in Orlando that left 50 people dead and about 53 seriously wounded, all my social media feeds are flooded with debates regarding who is to blame: guns or ISIS? Democrats or Republicans? It’s been miserable to read the news and see the back and forth that has been happening.

When I was younger and I’d hear about people dying from shootings or murders, it was always terrible news, but I didn’t feel it as much as I do now. It felt sad, but it also felt distant. I feel it a lot now. Sometimes I read the news, and I catch myself getting choked up by all these deaths and the victims’ loved ones reacting to the tragedies. Maybe it’s because I lost my brother to suicide three years ago, and I’ll never fully get over his death. Maybe it’s because I realize that these scary events could very likely happen to people I know and love in the places that we actually frequent. These shootings aren’t all happening in far away places in far away lands to far away people; they are happening right here, under our noses. Maybe it’s because I think.. even though we are strangers across states, across the world, on the train, walking on the same sidewalks and streets, we’re all united in that we’re all just trying to live and do something with our lives. We may be strangers, but we don’t want bad things happening to each other. In our minds, we don’t think that the guy sitting next to us on the subway train will get shot and killed the next day. We think that he will go to work, eat out, have fun. He will go about his day as we will ours. Or, so we think. We never know what will happen next.

It is a sick and sad week in the world. I don’t want to read the news anymore.