Pulse, Community, and the Black Heart Emoji

Photo by Meg Cameron

In musical theatre convention, we are taught that songs should not be random; rather, characters sing when words are not enough.

Life, however gay and theatrical as mine may be, is not a musical. When words are not enough, there is no orchestra, no melody.

Enter my most-used emoji for the last three years:

🖤.

Today marks three years since the mass shooting at Pulse, a staple of gay nightlife in Orlando, FL.

At the time, the shooting was the most deadly mass shooting in America, and queer people specifically were targeted.

There were no words.

I sat alone in my living room, my self-medicated sobbing underscored by MSNBC.

I needed to talk to someone, but I didn’t have the words. I didn’t want to trigger anyone or to become the messenger of this tragedy. I didn’t want to guilt-trip anyone into engaging with me if they didn’t have the energy.

I didn’t want to speak out loud, but I didn’t want to feel so alone, so powerless, and so utterly gutted by the history playing out in real time.

When in doubt and when in peril, I try to find love and scream it out until I can’t anymore.

🖤.

I sent black hearts to queer people. I sent black hearts to Muslims. I sent black hearts to people in gay nightlife. I sent black hearts to Floridians. I sent black hearts to activists.

I sent black hearts, because words were not sufficient to express the love and fear I felt.

Pulse was a gay club in Florida, but, as queer people know too well, it could have happened anywhere. It could have happened to any of us.

A red heart reads as a romantic cliché, a default option. A pink heart evokes the whimsy of a construction paper Valentine. Blue, yellow, orange, and purple are too creative, too bubbly, and too lighthearted to encapsulate the type and degree of love and sadness I wanted to express.

Black is a sentence and its own punctuation. Every black heart I’ve sent for the past three years has communicated something to this effect:

The world is scary and unfair.

I am thinking of what you’re going through right now.

I won’t tell you how to feel or how to respond, but please know how deeply I love you.

I see you.

🖤.

The world hasn’t felt right since June 12th, 2016.

Queer spaces all over the country were threatened in the aftermath.

The election ushered in an administration that has proven dangerous to queer and especially trans communities.

Trans women of color are being killed at an alarming rate.

Queer people are still being attacked, both personally and politically, every single day.

Even the brightest days are dimmed, somehow.

We can’t trust the government. We can’t trust the police. We can’t trust the actual safety of our alleged safe spaces.

All we have is each other.

Every community experiences loss. Every marginalized community experiences tragedy. How we survive is through coming together.

We come together in protests and polling places, classrooms and camps, dinners and die-ins, vigils and vantage points like today.

I don’t have answers. I still don’t know what to say, even after these three heartbreaking years since Pulse.

🖤.