But we couldn’t go back. All of us know what it feels like to be Harry Potter now. Even when people come up to us quietly to say thank you, you never know if they’re just trying to shoot you at close range.

Going up against the country’s largest gun lobby organization was obviously something that needed to be done, but it means that the people we’re arguing against are the ones with the guns. I am personally deathly afraid of them, and I know, from traveling the country during the summer for the Road to Change tour, that many of the people who disagree with us mean it when they say that they only want to talk if we’re standing on the other end of their AR-15s .

In the midst of all this, I try to take good care of myself. I shaved my head a week or two before senior year. People used to ask me why, and the main reason is that having hair felt terrible. It was heavy, it made me overheated, and every time I put it up in a ponytail (and I looked terrible in a ponytail) it gave me a headache. And, it sounds stupid, but it made me insecure; I was always worried that it looked frizzy or tangled. What’s the best thing to do with an insecurity? Get rid of it. It’s liberating to shave my head every week.

I also cry a lot . But crying is healthy and it feels good — I really don’t know why people are so against it. Maybe because it’s loud. Crying is a kind of communication, and communication is awesome. The lack of communication is what keeps us in this situation.

People say, “I don’t play the politics game, I don’t pay attention to politics” — well, the environment is getting poisoned, families are getting pulled apart and deported, prisons are privatized, real-life Nazis live happily among us, Native Americans are so disenfranchised our country is basically still colonizing them, Puerto Rico has been abandoned, the American education system has been turned into a business, and every day 96 people get shot and killed.

You might not be a big fan of politics, but you can still participate. All you need to do is vote for people you believe will work on these issues, and if they don’t work the way they should, then it is your responsibility to call them, organize a town hall and demand that they show up — hold them accountable. It’s their job to make our world better.

It has been months since the shooting. But whenever one of my friends finds an old picture of someone who died that day, or another shooting happens, or I hear helicopters or one too many loud bangs in one day, it all starts to slip. It feels like I’m back at the vigil, in the hot Florida sun, with volunteers handing out water bottles to replenish what the sun and sadness had taken away. Looking for friends and finding them, hugging them, saying, “I love you.” Looking for friends and not finding them.

Everything we’ve done and everything we will do is for them. It’s for ourselves. It’s for every person who has gone through anything similar to this, for every person who hasn’t yet, for every person who never will. This isn’t something we are ever going to forget about. This isn’t something we are ever going to give up on.

Emma González graduated from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School this year and is an activist for gun reform. She is one of the authors of the forthcoming “Glimmer of Hope: How Tragedy Sparked a Movement," from which this essay is adapted.

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