Every day reality gets worse, bodies dropping like leaves in autumn. Human rights disappearing like a snowman in a heatwave. The future is as on fire as California during the summer. Yet I’m supposed to ignore the things happening around me and keep on going. Ignore the people dying around me, just like I ignore the fear in my heart. Yes, I do live in a “safe state” so safe that an “active shooter incident” happened less than a year ago at my college. Where I used to go to avoid the turmoil at home, and in my brain. 

Walking into rooms automatically in survival mode, mapping out escape plans in every space. Walk around with a knife in my boobs, and a scream in my throat. While remembering to never scream for help cause no one is coming to my rescue. Having to scream fire, because the loss of property is more important than the loss of human life. Walking into classrooms and automatically thinking about all the ways I could escape. Questions gather up at the back of my mind, all while a smile plays its role on my face. How far am I to the emergency staircase? If I jumped from that window could I survive the fall? What can I throw at the shooter? How far is the nearest hospital? Is it even worth it to try to survive? How can I let the police know that I am not the shooter, just one more victim? 

I’m scared of a thread that is yet to come. Not going out on days when the weather calls for it because I’m scared of what could happen to me. Scared of what people will do in the name of a god whose name they don’t even really know, praying from a book they have never actually read. Using the teachings set to be interpreted by biased men with agendas filled with hatred. 

My sister keeps on sending me pictures of the baby she just had and the thoughts in my head and the fear in my heart have only gotten worse ever since. A 10-month-old black baby living in America. I’m terrified of the thoughts that pop into my head because of the things happening around me. I am terrified of what people will do to him because of the color of his skin. So many questions in my head all without an answer and I want an answer. I want someone to give me the answers. Is he gonna die at the age of 12 like Tamir E. Rice for holding a toy gun or will it be at 16 like Angelo Crooms all because his music was too loud and he could not hear the police officer. Will he be killed at a later date? Will he even get to turn 18 and live to be anxious about what college he got into? Will he get to go to prom and make mistakes with the person he loves? Will he turn 21 and have his 1st official drink with his dad? Will he be able to have a family of his own? Will he take control of the family business? Will he take after his dad or his mom? I can barely sleep at night, I lay awake thinking of all the ways he could die. All the ways I could die. 

People are constantly asking me why I say that I don’t want to be a mother. Well, I don’t want to be a mom because I could not send my child to school to be murdered. I couldn’t help them get ready every morning just to hope that they come back to me alive and without the trauma of being shot at in a place they were supposed to be safe. I couldn’t go to work every morning and wondered if I’m going to make it back to them or if they were going to lose me. I can’t have a kid just for me to lose them. I can’t have a child just to watch them lose their innocence. I can’t have a child to watch them be a victim. I refused to bring another victim into the world. I refused to give the news another face to put on their headlines, another name to be forgotten like words in the wind. 

Alone with my brain, 

was never the trouble

being alone doesn’t cause pain.

Alone with my brain, 

makes the truth run through my veins 

letting me see through the rubble.

Alone with my brain, 

was never the trouble.

       I only have one memory of my childhood. A memory that would not make sense without a little bit of background information. I grew up in the Dominican Republic in an area where the living conditions were hard and the surroundings were dangerous not because of robberies or anything like that but more because it was in the middle of the forest and you only had your neighbor to help you survive. It was about a 15-minute walk up and down hills to the bus stop and an hour-and-a-half bus ride to the city. It was by definition the middle of nowhere. It rained all the time and we were surrounded by forest on one side and sand on the other. 

       Growing up there was the highlight of my life. When I was about 5 or 6, my grandmother and I were home alone like most days and it was raining. I still remember the sound of the rain hitting the metal roof of our house and the rhythmic sound of the water falling sounding almost like a small waterfall. The smell of the wet grown and the lemon tree out back. It was like paradise to me. My grandmother and I were sitting by the door in our backyard which looked out into the forest. We sat eating mangoes and singing songs to the rain. I could swear that I saw the trees dancing to our song. I wanted to dance with the trees and I told my mother, she got up and started dancing in the rain. She screamed at me to never be afraid to dance with the trees in the rain. She told me that the trees were my friends because I belong to them as much as they belong to me. I danced with her that day in the rain. I sang to the rain and asked her to turn the water into blessings. I danced with the trees and made them my friends. To this day I do not use an umbrella when it rains. I just let the rain wash over me, just like it did that day.

I read Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury in high school and never thought it would become a reality. Never even though that book, which was considered a classic, would be banned during my lifetime.
Many think that I’m an extremist for saying that the book-burning practices of the Nazi party are the same as the book-banning here in the United States. However, it is being done with the same purpose of keeping people away from a certain type of material that is not allied with the message of the oppressor. The only books that are being banned are books that provide knowledge to those who need it the most, and validation to those who can’t find it in a world that would rather see them dead. Here in the US, it’s being done on a relatively small scale however it is just a matter of time before it begins to happen on a larger one.
A couple of years ago my father told me that he would love to move to Florida, but now I doubt that a man who was an atheist, a fantasy reader, with a bisexual daughter, and two transgender sons would be welcomed in Florida.
How long will it take before the US starts burning books and persecuting people for reading books they are not supposed to? In any case, the state should not have the power to decide what books should be allowed in the classrooms. It is frightening to think that All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson is now one of the most banned books in the US. It feels like yesterday that my friends and I had picked it for our book of the month; we were just excited to read it and talk about it with each other. How many other books I have read or plan to read will be banned or have been banned in the US and I am just not aware of it? The thought of not being able to escape into a new world and leave this one behind scares me. Even more so when life right now feels like a never-ending collection of dystopian novels that keep on repeating themselves. Not one of those books ends before a new one starts.
My friends keep on telling me that I’ll be fine if they banned all the books in the world just because I have maladaptive daydreaming and that I should be grateful for it. But I don’t want to just daydream, I want to be able to see what other people dream about. I want to be able to be in a fictional world of my choosing, I want to be able to live a million different realities.