The Education of X González

After the Parkland shooting, I became an activist, a celebrity, a "survivor"and the pressure almost killed me.

- By X González

I will not tell you my triggers, or the things I can no longer enjoy, because they are fluid and changing. Sometimes I look up at a sky with no clouds and all I can think of is how that was what the sky looked like on the day of the shooting, but sometimes I just think, I wish there were clouds because it’s so, so, so hot.

The strangest part of being a survivor was how badly strangers wanted to touch me, like I was a living relic. They’d shake my hand, or hug me, or lean on me to cry. They also wanted to tell me about the tragedies that touched them. So many voices saying how their loved ones had been gruesomely shot and killed. I’m an empathetic person, and I had no idea how to guard myself, how to turn away and toward myself. So I listened and I hugged these strangers back. Only months earlier, none of these people knew who I was. I was just a high-school kid in Parkland.

Before the shooting—February 14, 2018, perpetrated by a 19-year-old white supremacist at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School—my plan was to get the fuck out of Florida, the farther the better. Now, I write this from my pink childhood bedroom, having moved back home after graduating from college last year. I spend my days trying to get my future on the rails, finding new music, making zines, sewing, smoking weed, cooking, cleaning, figuring out what I want to do for work. I’m trying to be a good roommate to my parents. We watch movies together every night, making up for lost time.