I shouldn't be.

Fear is winning. It strangles our throats to silence our screams, it stitches our lips so tightly together so that our minds become the only remaining auditors of our confined thoughts. Our thoughts claw and ravage at our brains as innocent prisoners rattle at the iron bars of their cells, dying to be heard.

Hatred is winning, tugging and tying cords around our hearts until they drown in their own blood. Our hearts become nothing but organs, mere machines to pump life around our bodies, forcing flesh and bones to stay alive, even though that is all they'll ever be. We are being stripped of our own love, deprived of our own compassion, being forced to bring mortality to our 'undying' support of the causes we believe in, the causes we fight in.

Seven deadly days in Germany. A priest beheaded in France, following an attack on the country just a couple weeks ago which killed 84 and injured 202. All this in the wake of the biggest mass shooting in US history, a date that will and should never be forgotten, the 12th of June 2016.

It is 2016, and I am feeling overwhelmed by the tragedy of the moment, of the realities I am facing right now, not by watching the news or reading a book but by living in a world plagued by hatred and war. I definitely believe there are causes worth risking your life for. LGBTQ+ rights can definitely be one of these causes. Yet a parade is not.

Firstly let me start off that for the past couple of weeks a creeping feeling of shame has come over me, like an incessant itch you can't seem to scratch out. Why have I been planning what to wear for PRIDE, I began asking myself. What does it even mean? PRIDE has become more of a showy spectacle rather than a demonstration of the normality, nature and integration of the LGBTQ+ community. Of course I am not against the genuine joy and festivity, the literal pride of the parade. I want it to be a celebration. I want it to be a moment of freedom, of pure joy, of unleashing who you truly are. Of pride. ​Yet as soon as people begin 'dressing up' (as if there was some sort of trademark outfit for being gay, following some kind of makeup tutorial on YouTube), as soon as people begin using this day as a means to do something 'crazy', dressing and doing things they wouldn't normally do, it rather becomes a parade of the 'abnormal'. A zoo where it is the people that stand behind bars as they watch the animals roam the streets.

When in reality it is meant to be the opposite. It is meant to be a demonstration where the LGBTQ+ community is shown as humans just as anyone else, where we prove to the hating world that they are not outsiders, that there's no such thing as 'one of us' versus 'one of them', where in order to finally reach peace we must firstly eliminate these norms and stereotypes rather than reinforce them. That is to say that there is no denying differences; just as simple as it is to admit differences in sexuality and gender, one can understand the differences between the privileged and the not. One needs to admit and acknowledge the structural discrimination the LGBTQ+ society faces in this world, fueled by phobia and prejudice. These are the differences I want to hear screamed at PRIDE Parades, the differences I want to be battled until the LGBTQ+ community no longer feels the need to exist and set itself apart form the rest, for the world has finally defeated the differences and turned them into equality. In other words, what I mean to say is the parade becomes a reinforcement of media-inspired stereotypes, convincing the public of the distance between heterosexual cis people by painting the differences of the LGBTQ+ community as physical, external appearances when in reality they lie in internal, societal structures which can only be changed through movement and demonstration.

In fact, freeing the nipple or sparkling your cheeks with glitter for a couple of hours will not make a significant change in the outside world. Once these differences are noticed and the societal inferiority of the LGBTQ+ community is bared and acknowledged, one can actually begin eradicating it. The parade does mean a great deal, the support counted in the numbers and strength of a crowd, however if you are going to pledge allegiance to the cause, why not join a group? Set up a campaign at your school, spread awareness of the injustices in the world, emphasize the wrongs and dedicate your work and compassion to change them, to prevent them. Why not join a party which highlights and tries to solve these inequalities? Sign a petition online, speak to those who need help, speak to those who don't understand. A parade is a perfect way to celebrate, a needed victory in a long list of battles yet to be won, yet not the ideal means to make a real difference. As I said, there are definitely causes worth risking life for. These are those that set out to improve our world, to heal it from horrors.

This is why I will not be going to PRIDE this year. Call it an act of cowardice, I choose to call it the heartbreaking yet right choice. I understand when people say that hatred is fought with love. Yet what am I supposed to do as a 16 year old girl when that same hatred and fear is armed with bombs and homophobia? Am I supposed to turn the other cheek, warm myself with the illusion that it won't happen today, not here, not to me, when why shouldn't it? What other teenage girl's self-assuring thoughts have stopped it before? Should I raise my chin up high and fearlessly walk the streets when a single fire could be able to stop my legs from moving at any second, preventing me from living a life where I could be able to do so much more than hold a pink poster or banner?

It breaks me to allow fear to win the war in my body, to stop me from attending something my heart yearns to fight for. I am ridiculously overwhelmed by the fact that I live in a society where I am afraid to speak my mind, to express support for the right cause, in fear of death.

Except it shouldn't break me. It shouldn't make me sad. It shouldn't be tears of sadness cascading down my cheeks. Instead they should be enraged with fire, fuming at a world that forces such thoughts to enter my mind, for my fingers to type such words on a screen. I shouldn't be, I shouldn't be, I shouldn't be forced to do this. Fear and hatred shouldn't be wining. They shouldn't. That is what I want to scream.