I can’t sleep. 

I woke up at 2am with a toddler pressed up against my back. Slowly turning around, I tried to push him back toward the center of the bed. His arm reached out in response and wrapped around mine.

My first reaction was one of frustration.

Always needing to be touched. 

Feeling claustrophobic.

And then my mind was flooded, once again, with the parents who are probably longing to have their babies tangled up next to them.

I cannot stop thinking of the families. 

The ones that had to wait for hours to find out what happened to their kids. Only to be met with the most earth-shattering news of their lives.

I can’t stop thinking of the teachers. The ones who shielded their students with their bodies. The ones who are leaving behind their own children and families. I can’t stop thinking about the kids who survived but watched everything unfold around them. The trauma they have endured and will now have to live with for the rest of their lives.

I allow myself a second of hope, thinking, “Maybe policies will actually change before he goes to school. Maybe when we say ‘enough is enough,’ it’ll be different.” 

And then I snap back to the reality of our country. 

And know that, with governors who make comments like, “this could have been worse” (not quite what a grieving community needs to hear…) and with senators placing blame on the designs of the school and the unlocked doors, they don’t care about our kids as much as they care about our guns. 

So while I will continue to call our representatives (here’s a script for you) and e-mail the chairman of the board of the convention center where NRA will be holding their annual meeting (here’s a template for you), it feels like nothing will change. In a few days, we’ll go back to business as usual and we will all carry on with this low-level and subtle-but-present-fear of sending our kids into school buildings. Where they are meant to be safe. But can we even make that promise anymore?

I looked at Ankur yesterday and semi-seriously asked him, “Do we want to homeschool? Or do we want to move to Canada?”

It feels like those are our two options. 

Our parents moved here to give us a better life. 

And maybe we are now the generation of parents that need to move out of here to give our kids a better life. 

Because this is not it.