I am a single cell in a body of three hundred twenty-nine and one-half million cells. Regrettably, our collective body has caught a virus, and contagions are duplicated by the masses. Our blood has spilled without consequence. 

In the concepts of biology, the death of a cell must be regulated to prevent the malfunction of the whole system. However, in the body that is the United States of America, the death of one cell or even twenty-one cells at once, does not warrant the elimination of the incessant gun violence epidemic. 

The founding fathers of our nation created a document meant to uphold and be amended as the future generations saw fit. The Second Amendment allows for individuals to possess firearms to be used lawfully in events of self-defense. Logically, if the Constitution upholds the individual right for those to bear arms, it also upholds the individual right to not be shot.

It is hard to breathe in a nation when, so often, there is another news story that surfaces about the murder of a Black person at the hands of a police officer. There is another woman whose boyfriend killed her following a heated argument, and another parent who is mourning their child who never returned home from school. There is a teenager, like me, who is more stressed about the probability of a mass shooting’s occurrence than she is about her final exams. There are people with recurring nightmares, and there are those who live in a nightmare, one where their loved one was stolen from this world. 

We are a country perpetually in mourning, while those we trust to end this epidemic offer only thoughts and prayers. Thoughts will not bring back those we have lost. Thoughts must be turned into action, in which we can prevent the further spread of this contamination. 

We live in a white supremacist patriarchal society, and we must continuously fight for our freedom to live—our unalienable right to life. And, I may be one single cell, created to function as a part of a greater whole. But, this does not diminish my individual value as a contributor to my country. I breathe in the United States, and I breathe out my frustration. 

I was not born to die.