It certainly is not my story to tell, and I also have no intention of jumping on a trauma chain for something that is not mine. That doesn’t mean that I did not see people going through this tragedy, that I didn’t see that how for a minute the world united to agree that what transpired was immeasurably tragic, and a town began to heal. I cannot speak to what it is like to be a survivor, but rather a spectator in the wake of.

I will never forget waking up that morning, seeing my Facebook feed, the push notifications, and realizing I just woke up into madness. It was a Sunday morning, and I was supposed to have an audition that day, which I cancelled. The idea of moving away from my feed while people were still checking on each other, while I still had friends who hadn’t posted, friends that I knew went to Pulse, was an impossibility.

So, on June 12th, 2016, I watched the news. I didn’t watch with audio description because I wasn’t blind yet. That diagnosis came a year later, but I was unaware of what came next for me. This was also the year my father passed, in the same month, on my Birthday. He would have turned 90 this year. 2016 had a very unfortunate June, for some more than others.

I remember how the news kept cutting to this one mother who was trying so hard to get news about her son, and being this national presence, representing every mother’s worst nightmare. She did not get her happy ending. Her son was one of the 49 lives lost. 49. One person took out 49 others.

Our community came together like it always does, in the wake of tragedy. There were memorials, tributes, fundraisers, etc. Blood was needed, and people showed up to blood banks and waited in line for hours. When people say they don’t like Chik-Fil-A because the company is anti-gay, I counter them with the image of at least one franchise owner being supportive, opening on a Sunday to cook food and bring drinks to the people waiting in line. Sunday is a day Chik-Fil-A is always closed, but he went in, and donated his time and money to a community that Chik-Fil-A proper probably would have rather he stayed closed for. Other places followed suit. I ate at a 4 Rivers that had a day where all their sales went to charities designed to support Pulse victims and their families.

I participated in and helped arrange singers for memorial events, seeing how my students were directly affected and impacted by the loss. It wasn’t just the fear of loss of a safe space, but I constantly ran into people who knew one, two, three, or more of the 49 that were there. And while she’s still transphobic, I do appreciate that JK Rowling paid the expenses when she found out one of the 49 was a big Harry Potter fan and worked at the Wizarding World.

Celebrities came to town for From Broadway With Love, which the community once again came together to produce, and I was asked to assist with the talent. So the whole day and through the performance, and even the VIP after party, I was with these legends who came down to celebrate and raise money for our town. Chita Rivera, Darren Criss, Kelli O’Hara, Joshua Henry, Wilson Cruz, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Andrea McArdle, Keala Settle, and many others descended to donate their time and presence to raise money for the victims and survivors.

And for those not in the area, this was when Lin Manuel Miranda did his “love is love’ speech at the TOny Awards which aired slightly after the shooting. his performance of Hamilton that night was to include guns in their staging, but Miranda removed the guns, following the Pulse attack.

I look back at ten years ago, and I remember a community united, a people that came together, and the agreement that this was deeply tragic and everything should be done to keep it from happening again. But it just keeps happening. Mass shootings just keep happening. Not even a full two years later, Florida would be the spot of another major tragedy at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School. And too many outside Orlando have forgotten that just before the Pulse attack, a crazed fan murdered singer Christina Grimme at her concert in Orlando.

But there’s one man who would love for us all to forget, and Ron DeSantis has made it his life’s mission to erase LGBTQ as much as possible, despite anti-LGBTQ sentiment being in the minority. A lot of noise was made earlier this year as he kept ordering the removal of the rainbow crosswalk outside the location of the Pulse shooting, and was met with heavy resistance, with people traveling in to help restore what should obviously be there. But that little thing, that crosswalk at the site of a place where 49 lives were lost, couldn’t even sustain to the 10th Anniversary. An exhaustive amount of sidewalk chalk and protesting, and DeSatanist exerted his narrow minded thinking onto a community that is arguably still healing. Orlando has watched as the creation of a permanent memorial has been fumbled for a variety of reasons, and while the promise now seems to be that we are closer, we also seem so far away.

I hope I never personally live through a mass shooting, or personally experience one, but I hope that for everyone. It feels like something totally fixable, but lobbyists and political agendas have kept the fuel to the flame for selfish reasons. I’m sure there will be another, and another, and pulse will still remain one of the more notable ones, but someone will figure out how to keep increasing the body count. Will politicians ever be alarmed? No.

The shooting at Uvalde should have answered a lot of questions aobut what does and doesn’t work. Trained professionals stood outside the room as children died. A good guy with a gun, guardians, these things don’t work. If it is a mental health problem, our country is also doing an awful job at supporting mental health to see if improving that, improving our mental state, our quality of life somehow curbs domestic terrorism.

Ten years later, I live and work with people who have not forgotten, who keep on dancing. But outside of this little bubble is a minority voice that has wrangled power, and seeks to use it to strangle those it disagrees with, and populations it would rather see not exist.The idea that the people in power now represent all their constituents is a joke, and has been as partisan politics continues to thrive. I could no more sway the opinion of DeSantis or Trump than the next guy, not because I don’t have anything to offer to the conversation, but because they are conversations these men do not wish to have, and certainly not with anyone outside their inner circles of yes men.

Today I remember the 49 lives lost, and ten years ago, I was watching the news, my Facebook feed, and whatever else I could get my hands on.

Never Forget.